Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (5 page)

 
          
 
"The signs read as how we're gonna be
needed down thar, son.
Gita-movin'!"

 
          
 
The one-time Mountain Man moved downhill at a
swift pace, which made Ritchie breathe faster. He hadn't yet seen what had
startled the scout into action.

 
          
 
There was a wagon coming up the fort road.
Mules ran at a full gallop along the rutted stretch, their ears laid back,
their
mouths spewing foam about the bits. From the wheels
came tiny puffs of whitish smoke.

 
          
 
"Golly—the greasin' tar's bumin'!"
shouted the sentry. "That's travelin'!"

 
          
 
Ritchie ran for the barracks. He could guess
that such speed meant bad news. He was strapping his belt about him, forgetting
even the pain in his bruised shoulder, when the summons he had been waiting for
rang out—the trumpet call of "Boots and Saddles."

 
          
 
They pounded for the stables. Anything from a
short sally after a raiding party to a whole Indian war might be before them
now.

 
          
 
The lone wagon which banged into the fort at a
dead gallop, its wheels smoking from friction, proved to be the only survivor
of the paymaster's cortege.

 
          
 
"Roast 'n fry them ‘Paches!" growled
the dragoon on Ritchie's left as they swung into the saddle. "Stow away my
pay under their lousy breechclouts will they! I'll double-eagle the—"

 
          
 
Ritchie was watching the falling snow.

 
          
 
"Kind of bad weather for an Indian
attack, isn't it?"

 
          
 
The dragoon spat an expertly aimed brown
stream, "Lissen here, there ain't no winter fer Apaches—no, ner no summer
neither.
Them
dodblasted devils raid all year round.
We freeze 'n then we fry, but them—they jus' laugh at the weather. This time
we're gonna freeze."

 
          
 
To this gloomy prophecy they rode out of the
fort, carbine on hip, the guidon cracking in the stiff wind at the head of the
column. Breath from men and horses made blue-white streams on the air. It
wouldn't be long now before dusk closed in. Up front Lieutenant Gilmore,
Tuttle, Velasco, and Herndon headed the small troop.

 
          
 
The snow was falling steadily but in fine
shifting particles that had not yet covered over the back trail of the fleeing
wagon. They rode at a steady trot, the jangle of equipment providing an
accompaniment to the pounding of hooves on the frozen ground. Ritchie pulled
his scarf up to cover his mouth. When the wind puffed snow into his face, it
was hard to catch a full breath.

 
          
 
Night had closed in by the time they reached
the scene of the ambush, a rock-strewn, narrow slash in the foothills. The
carcass of a mule lay in a pool of bloody slush, hacked so that the bare white
bones protruded from the shredded flesh. Mule meat was an Apache delicacy.

 
          
 
As the sound of their advance echoed up the
passage, black shadows drifted back into the cover of the rocks. Ritchie caught
a glimpse of yellow eyes. Already the wolves were out. For the first time he
was glad he rode fourth in line and was assigned as horse-holder. It was better
to stamp around in the snow holding the reins of four bored and impatient
mounts than to be up ahead making the necessary grim search. He kicked at a
round object half-hidden by a stone. A canteen slithered across the rock, the
round eye of a bullet hole in its side.

 
          
 
The next horse-holder edged closer, saw the
nature of the find, and cleared his throat.

 
          
 
"Let's hope they
was
all lucky," he said flatly.

 
          
 
Ritchie glanced again at the bullet hole.
"Lucky!"

 
          
 
"Yeah.
The lucky
ones git it quick, head or heart. The unlucky ones—
they's
still breathin' when them red devils git to 'em. Always keep one shot fer
yoreself, soljer. That's what I do."

 
          
 
Ritchie swallowed and pulled at the reins he
held bunched in his hand. Bess snorted and rolled her eyes at him warningly.
The business ahead was taking a long time. He tried to keep from thinking why.

 
          
 
But now Herndon came tramping out of the
darkness.

           
 
"Emmett, Harkness,
Grimsall, Worth, and Robbins.
You will escort the bodies back—under the
command of Sergeant Woldemar."

 
          
 
There was a confused milling as the troop
sorted into two parties. Ritchie was hurriedly relieved of his three charges
and dropped into the single file of men and horses going on. It was too dark to
see much, for which he was grateful, but he did not look around until they were
out of that horrible pocket of stones and death.

 
          
 
Still dismounted, they went on, each blindly
following the man just ahead until the order to halt was passed along. A
sheltering outcrop of rocks and some pinons gave protection against the wind
and driving snow. Ritchie stripped the mare and dropped his saddle beside
Sturgis'. Later, numb with cold and half-blind with staring into the dark after
a tour of guard duty, he crept into the cave of blankets and boughs that
Sturgis, an old campaigner, had designed and slept heavily but not without
dreams.

 
          
 
Reveille brought him up at daybreak with a
wildly beating heart. His hands were stiff with cold as he rubbed down the
mare, putting his driest blankets next to her hide and the snow-wet one under
the saddle. The crack of side arms and the sharp ping of carbine fire brought
the snow sliding down branch and rock as the dragoons tested their arms against
the damp and reloaded.

 
          
 
"What a bivouac!" Sturgis held his
steaming cup of coffee under his chin to warm his face before he sipped the
scalding liquid. "Let us piously hope that the scuts we are after had a
worse one." His tin cup rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"And—to add to all our pleasure—we may only be running about in circles
now."

 
          
 
Ritchie struggled with a mouthful of
bitter-tasting bacon and iron hardtack crumbs. He jerked toward where Gil-more,
Tuttle, and Herndon made a tight little group. The more picturesque Velasco had
disappeared.

 
          
 
"They must have something to go on—"
he mumbled after a valiant swallow.

 
          
 
"Oh, sure.
They have
something. And we'll be pulled on over mountains on a trail only an eagle could
comfortably follow. With that crowd in command there's no hope of anyone saying
'sign lost' and marching us back sensibly. Tuttle could smell out a kite five
miles off and up, and where he leaves off, Velasco begins. He's more'n half
Apache, and you know what they say about them— 'The Apache has the eye of a
kite, the ear of a cat, the cunning of the desert fox, and the courage and
tirelessness of the gray wolf.' That zoo, rolled up in a blamed good fighting
man, is what we're going to chase in our usual flat-footed fashion." He
scowled and tilted his cup for the last drops.

 
          
 
Ritchie had never expected pursuit on a
still-warm marauders' trail to be such a dull and wearying business. They
plodded on through the gray light of the morning, with frequent halts to allow
the
scouts
time to verify the traces.
Once one of the dragoons picked up an arrow with a broken shaft,
its quartz point catching fire from the weak sunlight.
But that was the
closest they came to the elusive enemy all that long day.

 
          
 
By early afternoon the snow began to drift,
and the process of breaking trail became a real job. Two and two, by turns, the
men dismounted and broke the way for the horses and pack mules, pushing through
snow which was too fine to pack and in which the animals might be bogged as in
quicksand. Ritchie was taking his turn at this when a sudden jerk on his arm
brought him up standing, swaying a little because of interrupted action.

           
 
It was Tuttle who had stopped him, and the old
scout was looking under the spread palm of one hand at the crest of a rock spur
which cut across their path maybe a half a mile ahead.

 
          
 
"What is it?" Lieutenant Gilmore
churned up through the knee-high snow.

 
          
 
“Flash on the rocks—" Tuttle pointed with
his chin Indian style.

 
          
 
"Flash on the rocks?" The young
officer plainly did not understand.

 
          
 
"Mirror," Herndon explained.
"Apache signals?" he asked Tuttle.

 
          
 
"Wal, I don't know as how anyone else is
minded to make a bird of hisself 'n climb up thar jus' to go flashin' a
mirror," the Mountain Man drawled. "We must make a right smart
picture for him, all strung out on the snow this way—"

 
          
 
"Get back into that fringe of
timber?" Gilmore nodded to some trees not so far to their left.

 
          
 
"Unhuh."
Tuttle shifted his tobacco from one cheek to the other. "Leastwise I'd
like to have a leetle look-see 'bout before we go marchin' on so bright 'n
sassy-like. What
say.
Sergeant?"

 
          
 
"I'd like to wait for Velasco, sir,"
Herndon said to the officer. "He'll know pretty much the true state of
affairs when he comes back."

 
          
 
Tuttle had been looking at the landmarks about
them with more than casual interest.
"Seems like this
place ain't so unfamiliar to me, Lootenant.
Up thar a ways thar's a good
campin' place—might even be some forage 'cause it's sorta sheltered-like. Say
we mosey up thar 'n give our mirror flashin' friend somethin' to wonder 'bout.
He might even come sneakin' down to see what's changed our minds—"

           
 
Under the scout's direction the line of march
angled left, and they brushed under snow-laden branches of pines to find
themselves in what did seem to be the best camping site they could have found.
A tiny blind canyon ended in a shallow cave, and the arching walls along most
of its length had given shelter, so that the withered grass was bare of snow.
The picketed horses and mules pulled at this ravenously, while two of the
dragoons greeted with a shout of triumph a spring not capped with ice.

 
          
 
Tuttle was poking around in the back of the
cave formation. Ritchie, having done his duty by Bess and dropped his saddle
roll in the place Sturgis had chosen for them, slipped around to see what the
old man was doing.

 
          
 
Two steps brought him to a narrow crevice
through which the scout had just squeezed. Boldly Ritchie followed, just in
time to see the flare of a match.

 
          
 
"Snug as a pack rat!" Tuttle's voice
sounded hollow.

 
          
 
They were both standing in a small pocket of
water-worn rock where queer shadows danced along the walls in ragged pattern.
Tuttle had put fire to a dry bundle of sticks.

 
          
 
"Stop right thar!"

 
          
 
Ritchie stopped. Tuttle went down on one knee
beside some charred ends of wood. He poked at them with a cautious finger,
bending over to sniff at the dust which arose from his probing.

 
          
 
"Injun."
He
sat back on his heels and began to give the walls a second and more searching
examination.

 
          
 
"How do you know?" demanded Ritchie.

 
          
 
Tuttle indicated the blackened ends.
"Fire was built Injun style. See—a white man builds his fire with sticks
burnin' in the middle. The ends fall off 'n ain't burnt. Injuns—they ain't so
careless 'n more savin'. They start a fire on the ends laid in a circle touchin'.
As the wood burns, they push it in 'til it's all gone. 'N this here buck wanted
to sleep warm. Built him a fire las' niglit, got the rock good 'n hot, then
raked them coals out 'n rolled up in their place with what was left of the
blaze to toast his toes. He weren't
no
young buck out
on his furst warpath."

 
          
 
''What are you looking for now?"

 
          
 
Tuttle was on his feet again circling the
cave, studying each bit of rock.