Novel 1972 - Callaghen (v5.0) (22 page)

Moreover, although he preferred not to mention it to the others, he was within half a mile of one of the entrances to what he liked to think of as the Cave of the Golden Sands. The trouble was that that damned Irish soldier up on the side of the mountain was even closer.

Bolin made a trumpet of his hands and called out: “You want to come down, Callaghen? It’s no use to shoot each other. Wylie’s dead…it’s just you an’ me now.”

Callaghen heard him, but made no reply. Bolin wanted to talk, and that meant that Bolin was losing a little patience. It also meant that Callaghen had something Bolin wanted.

Was it the women? It was possible. After all, it was more than a hundred and fifty miles in any direction to where one could find a woman.

Callaghen looked around him. Already shadows were thickening under the mountains to the west. Night was going to be a bad time. Still, under cover of darkness they could perhaps move on up the mesa. He knew, though, that travel at night might be noisy. Loose gravel or rock that one can see in the daytime cannot be seen in the dark. He turned his back on the enemy below and, lying against the rock that was his parapet, he studied the face of the mesa, carefully picking out a possible route.

It could be done, he believed. There was a sort of notch up there…it
might
offer access to the top, but then what? Would it be better to fight it out here? No, higher up was better, he decided. Not all the way to the top, but close.

He motioned the others to him and pointed out the way. “Beamis, you’ll have to lead. Malinda can follow, as she’s a good climber. What we’re looking for is water, but what we want most is some kind of a defensive position with a good field of fire. There’s too many ways they can flank us here.”

“It is too light,” Beamis said.

“We’ll wait. When it is full dark, you lead off, quietly.”

It was already dark down below where the rays of the sun, which had now set behind the mountains, could not reach. Here there was still a half-light. Somewhere he heard the call of a quail, that most beautiful sound of the desert evening.

He waited, scanning the boulders below. He could see the horses occasionally, and for a while there was a thin trail of smoke visible that gradually merged with the night.

“Now, Sergeant?” Beamis asked.

“Now…and be very quiet.”

Beamis moved out, followed by Malinda. Aunt Madge lingered. “I am worried about McDonald. When I do not come he might start looking.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll be seeing him soon.”

She left, and Callaghen listened but he heard no sound. They were moving well, and now he was alone.

He had never minded being alone in the desert. He was not one of those who always had to be talking or sharing thoughts. He liked people, but he felt there was nothing like being alone in the desert or among the mountains, for it is then you begin to know them. The wilderness does not share its secrets with the noisy or the talkative; its secrets come to you with silence.

Animals move, birds stir, and the whisperings of the night become audible. The desert itself speaks, for the earth lives, and in the night’s stillness one can hear the earth growing, hear the dying and the borning and the rebirth of many things. A bit of sand trickles, a rock falls, a tree whispers or moans—these are the breathings of the earth.

If there were some way to speed up the sounds of the night, to bring them more precisely to the ear, one would hear the music of the changing earth—the ripples, the falls, the tricklings, all grown into one vast but infinitely delicate symphony that would charm the ear of men.

Callaghen waited only a little longer, and then he drew back from his rock, rifle in his right hand.

“Well, now, you moved just in time!”

A flame stabbed the night just as he threw himself aside and swung with the rifle. It was not a considered blow, merely an instinctive thing with the rifle poorly balanced for it, but his grip was hard as the barrel drove forward.

He felt the burn of flame, and then wild with sudden fear he caught the rifle with both hands and swung, forward and back, with butt and barrel. He heard a grunt, a blast roared from the gun, a choking blast that illumined for an instant a staring face. Then the pistol clattered among the rocks and he swung the rifle butt upward in an uppercut that smashed the man’s head back against the rocks.

And then, like a cat, Callaghen was scrambling upward, leaping from rock to rock, ducking the spines of prickly pear by instinct more than by judgment. Behind him a gun roared, and he heard the bullet strike off to his right, but he went between two junipers and on up the slope.

His eyes were accustomed now to the darkness, and he could see to place each foot carefully, wary that he might have a broken leg or twisted ankle should he slip between the rocks. He had no idea who it was he had battled so fiercely among the rocks.

He paused and listened. There was a stirring down there, a muffled curse and a murmur of voices. Somebody struck a light, and Callaghen’s bullet spat where the light had been, the sound of the shot racketing down the slope.

He moved instantly, putting himself away from the firing position, and went farther up the slope. He had a feeling they would try nothing more during the night. He had been lucky.

He paused again to catch his breath and heard his heart throbbing, as much from reaction to fear as from the struggling climb.

It had been a narrow escape. Somebody had crept close to him, and in another moment he would have been dead had he not moved and had the stranger not felt a compulsion to speak.

Well, he reflected grimly, from the feel of that uppercut butt stroke there was one man who wouldn’t be opening his mouth for a while. If the man wasn’t dead he would at least have a broken jaw.

His hand was smarting as sweat got into the powder burn. He moved up higher, and had climbed for several minutes when he heard a soft call, barely audible.

“Mort?”

He moved in that direction, and saw that it was Malinda. “We’ve found a place,” she said.

It was a wind-hollowed half-cave in the mountainside, perhaps thirty feet wide, and less than half that deep, a poor shelter if a storm came, but a difficult place to get at. It was a sandy place, partly sheltered by a slight overhang, and scattered boulders were in front of it, rocks that had tumbled down the mountain and fallen off the edge of the overhang, hitting the ground in front of it to form a not very effective parapet.

“Are you all right?” Malinda asked.

“Yes,” he said reassuringly, and Beamis moved over to him.

“We heard a scuffle down there, and some shots.”

“I think one of them is out of it,” Callaghen said. “I don’t know which one, but he was a good Injun…he came right up to me without a whisper.”

“Champion?”

“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have spoken, and had it been Champion I’d be dead.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Malinda shuddered and moved closer to him.

He liked having her close, but not now. A man had to keep his mind on the business at hand and not be thinking about a woman at a time like this.

“Get some rest, Beamis,” he said. “I’ll wake you up in a couple of hours.”

“We can watch,” Aunt Madge whispered. “Both of you need sleep.”

Off to the northeast Callaghan could see the flat outline of Table Mountain, low on the horizon, and to the north the bumpy ridge of the Mid Hills. Due west, not much over fifteen miles away, was the Marl Springs redoubt. Suddenly he realized he was behind the mountains at which he had gazed from Marl Springs.

Then he slept, and in the night he dreamed again of his battle with Nusir Khan when he and his wild tribesmen swept down from the Suleimani Hills. He stirred restlessly in his sleep, his hand gripping for the sword hilt that was not there. He awoke suddenly in the gray of dawn and lay still for a few minutes, trying to figure out where he was.

He sat up slowly, feeling the stubble of beard on his jaw, and hating the stiffness of his clothes—the stiffness of sweat, dust, and bloodstains. His mouth was dry. He stared around him.

Only Malinda was awake. There was a faint grayness along the ridge, a fading of the darkness overhead.

“You were dreaming,” she said.

“I’ve not much to dream about…battles and blood and gunshots. It isn’t pleasant.”

“No women?”

“Here and there…one meets them.”

“You’ve fought a lot?” she asked.

“Most of twenty years…ever since I was a youngster in Ireland.”

He turned to look down the slope. It was rocky, and dotted with cedar and brush. He could see the hindquarters of one of the horses, so he knew they were still down there.

It was a steep drop, some of it a tough scramble, some of it not too difficult for climbing, but there was a lot of cover, areas where one could not be seen.

Malinda sat close to him. She was wide awake now, and was not frightened. She had been somewhat conditioned for times like these by the tales her father and uncles had told; and there had been the time she first met Callaghen, when he had ridden up out of nowhere, a dashing and handsome man who had saved them all.

He did not look dashing and handsome now. She smiled at the thought. His clothing was torn from his scrambles through brush and rocks, but he looked tough, capable, and confident.

“Do you ever worry about how it will all turn out?”

He shrugged. “A man does what he can, whatever the situation. There’s only one way to fight: to win, and anybody who uses force without using it to the utmost is playing the fool.

“I have been fighting all my life, yet I believe in peace. That doesn’t do me one bit of good, though, against those men down there, because they have no idea of peace at all. The only thing they understand is violence. They would like for us to go down there and talk peace, but they would kill us all, and that would be an end to it. They would have peace over our dead bodies.

“I have sometimes noticed,” Callaghen added grimly, “that the people who preach peace so fervently are doing it from a comfortable place—often after a good meal. It’s quite another thing when you face armed men in the night in a lonely place, men who have no standards beyond their own selfish interests.”

“I think they are coming,” Malinda said. “Something moved down there.”

“It’s lucky,” Callaghen said ironically, “or I’d be needing a pulpit.”

He slapped his rifle. “This is one of the best arguments for peace there is. Nobody wants to shoot if somebody is going to shoot back.”

He moved the rifle forward a little. “They are coming up the hill because we are in their way. There are only two men, and they believe they can handle us. If there were four of them they would not have even stopped.

“They know Beamis is young, and they know from comments he’s made that he didn’t want to be a soldier. What they don’t know is what a lot of good stuff the young man has in him, and in the last few days it has hardened into real strength.”

It was lighter now—light enough for good shooting, and the horses down below were looking up the slope.

Callaghen looked around. On the far side of the hollow there was a space between the side of the mountain and a slab of fallen rock.

“Malinda, see where that goes, will you?” he said.

Callaghen did not like cul-de-sacs. One man could not defend the position they occupied, and if he himself were shot, the others ought to have some kind of escape route. Sooner or later a detachment from Camp Cady would come looking for the vanished stage, but until then there must be some place where they could make a stand.

He watched for any further movement below. He was sure he had put at least one of the men out of action. But he realized that the men who were coming up the slope were not tenderfeet—they were taking their time, sure they had their quarry where they could not escape.

Once he saw a flicker of movement as a man moved into concealment behind a rock, but there was no chance for a shot. It was merely a shadow on the slope that flitted across his vision and was gone.

Malinda was back. “Mort, there is an opening back there. I don’t know whether it will be any help to us or not. I doubt if we can get your horse through.”

“Does it lead up the slope?”

“Not right away…I only went a few yards.”

“We’ll chance it. You take the horse, and you and Aunt Madge see what you can do. Tie the stirrups up. That might help you get through.”

He saw a hat appear alongside a boulder halfway down the slope, but it seemed an obvious attempt to draw his fire and so locate his position. He had no ammunition to waste, and had no intention of responding to such a crude tenderfoot temptation. When he saw something he could identify with some chance of scoring a hit, he would fire.

The sun was up behind Wild Horse Mesa, but his own position was shaded and cool. He located several possible approaches among the scattered boulders and sighted his rifle at those spots so his action, when it became necessary, would be quick and smooth.

It was the right and left flanks that worried him, for the area was too large for Beamis and himself to cover with any success. Their natural parapet was too low to allow them to shift position very much.

He moved over to Beamis. “Take your time, soldier, and don’t waste any shots. You saw where the women took the horse?”

“Yes.”

“When the time comes, run for it. Follow the trail until you come up to them. Then try to find another good position.”

“You think Major Sykes will send out a patrol?” Beamis asked.

“He will. My guess would be they are marching now. If they can find us, we’ll be lucky.”

A bullet struck a rock over their heads, showering them with fragments. Hurriedly, they moved to firing positions. Though Bolin was a dangerous man, as were the others, it was Champion who worried him most. The old outlaw was canny, and he could find a route where most men would not dream of looking. Moreover, he was not overly concerned with Callaghen. Whether Callaghen was alive or dead was of no interest to him as long as he stayed out of Bolin’s way.

A
DOZEN MILES to the north Captain Marriott rode up to the abandoned stage at Government Holes. Only a few miles back they had come on the body of the stage driver, and had buried it in a shallow grave.