Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Description: Few authors have achieved such renown as World Fantasy Life Achievement honoree and Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Andre Norton. With the love of readers and the praise of critics, Norton's books have sold millions of copies worldwide.In Andre Norton's action-filled story Stand to Horse, the tensions of men against men are balanced by the tensions of men against nature, often a cruel and unequal struggle. Throughout it all, the reader senses the nation's growing unrest as events lead up to the Civil War. Many of the incidents and much of the colorful dialogue are based on actu
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Rights: Copyright © 1956 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Stand to Horse

Andre Norton

Author’s Note

Trading caravans and the fur-trapping Mountain Men found their way to Santa Fe early in its history, but when the War with Mexico in 1845 added the vast Southwest to the territory of the United States, that land was virtually unknown to the majority of Americans. A skeleton force of the army occupied a string of forts and posts across desert and mountain, holding as best it could the unposted borders against Apache, Ute, and Navaho.

Between the end of the Mexican War and the beginning of the War Between the States, this pitifully small force was forgotten by the people of the civilized East. Undermanned, criminally underpaid, with poor supplies or none at all for long stretches of time, they did their duty and were wardens of an empire their fellow countrymen did not really want.

It was largely an army of the foreign born. Irish escaping from the famine which devastated that land in the 1840’s and Germans eager for a freedom lost at home poured into the United States and readily found their way into the frontier army. The business failures of 1857 and 1858 brought into the ranks native-born Americans who enlisted to eat and to get a new start.

And it was not an ignorant army. Buried in regimental histories or in small privately issued books and in state historical journals are the diaries and letters of these men. Not only the officers but also the privates and the sergeants kept careful accounts of their daily lives, the raiding forays which they accepted as a matter of course, and descriptions of the wild land they had made their own. Many of them after serving one or two hitches in the army settled down on the frontier and helped to build the western nation.

Captain Bourke’s memoirs, Sergeant Bennett’s journal, Sergeant Bieber’s diary, and Private Lowe’s account are all rich reading for the one lucky enough to find them in reports of state historical societies, regimental histories, and university publications. Some of the stories set down so matter-of-factly in these pages seem like the wildest romance—yet they are true.

The author wishes to express appreciation for the help of Miss Root and Miss Lybarger of the History Division of the Cleveland Public Library, since it was through their efforts that many of these long overlooked accounts of frontier warfare were unearthed for use.

All the incidents in Stand to Horse are based on actual experiences of army men who have left their records to astonish the modern reader.

Contents

1.    “Sergeant, Dismiss the Detachment”

2.    “Company K Has Style”

3.    “Ain’t No Winter Fer Apaches”

4.    “The Game’s Made, ’n the Ball’s Rollin’!”

5.    “A Right Smart Lot of Snow”

6.    “They Brought All Their Sand—”

7.    Cold-Pork Christmas

8.    Mounted Pass

9.    “Rather Have Me a Mule!”

10.    Never Stick a Picket in an Anthill

11.    “You Ride to Your Funerals, Soldados!”

12.    “Mort à Cheval à Galop”

13.    “If We Had Water—”

14.    One From Five Leaves—Death

15.    “Camels’n Apaches Don’t Drink”

16.    “Reckon I’ll Cross Over—”

17.    “This Is as Good a Place to Die as Any”

18.    “I Have Drunk of These Waters—”

Bibliography

1

“Sergeant, Dismiss the Detachment”

To hunch one’s shoulders and still stand at attention is something of an acrobatic feat, but Ritchie Peters, Private, First Dragoons, tried to do it as the keen mountain wind picked at the line of men on the Santa Fe parade ground. Late November in the First Military District of New Mexico meant winter—just as it had back home in New York. Only here were no buffalo robes and hot soapstones to comfort the toes. And an army overcoat had none of the wind-beating properties of the fur-lined one he had worn last winter. Ritchie abruptly tried to turn off those straying thoughts. He was not going to think of last winter! Instead he concentrated on here and now.

As one of the recruits arriving after the fall march from Jefferson Barracks and as green to his job as the droop-eared remount he had ridden most of the way, he found his present surroundings vaguely depressing. The small group of officers who had assembled to inspect the newcomers had very little swank or gold braid about them. Bearded, their faces coarsely reddened by exposure to just such winds as punished them now, they were bundled up in a motley collection of fur coats, heavy Indian-style leggings, and scarves. They appeared far less military than the ragged line they had come to assess, because those of the recruits who hadn’t traded most of their worldly goods for whisky still were in regulation uniform.

By lottery, company commanders had drawn each man’s name in turn from a hat. Willy-nilly, he, Ritchie Peters, was now attached to Company K. with four years, eight months to serve in its ranks. For a second time he had to jerk his mind back to the matter at hand. The Colonel was speaking. He had a high rasping voice, which sounded tired and old, as if it had fought against the wind too many times on too many parade grounds making the same little welcoming speech.

“. . . credit to yourself and your comrades, holding a frontier against an enemy more determined and bitter than any the arms of the United States has faced before. Your duty and your life . . .”

Ritchie blinked and tried to wriggle his numbed toes inside his boots. The remount behind him stamped and blew impatiently. Shrewdly Ritchie squirmed an inch or so forward—that roan bit at times.

He let his eyes travel from the Colonel to the officers who stood behind their commander. There were four of them, one a pace or so beyond the other three. And he was the one who had held the hat for the lottery. Unlike the others he was clean shaven, not even wearing a cavalryman’s full mustache, and he held himself lance straight in spite of the wind. His face was only a handsbreadth of tanned skin between cap brim and upturned collar, but Ritchie found himself wishing he could see more of it. Something in the lithe way the unknown officer moved suggested that he was younger than most of his companions.

“. . . depends upon your own conduct.” The Colonel’s voice dropped. He moved his feet in the light scuff of snow that had fallen as they stood there. Now he jerked his head around to the man Ritchie had been watching.

“Sergeant, dismiss the detachment!”

So he was the Troop Sergeant! Mechanically Ritchie’s body obeyed the orders that had been drilled into him during the past bewildering months. He went through the business of stabling the roan, dodged the last vicious snap of that animal’s yellow teeth, and followed the rest of his fellows into the barracks.

The fort was constructed after the usual pattern of a hollow square with the parade ground in the center, bordered on one side by the low adobe officers’ quarters facing the guard house, the commissary department, and the offices. On the other two sides were barracks. Ritchie, having learned to be thankful for the smallest of favors bestowed by fate, was glad that the one he was to inhabit was nearer to the stable yard. The buildings were all of one story with flat roofs and a parapet protecting the outer wall, a parapet which was loopholed. There were no windows in the outer wall of any building.

It was already dusk in the barracks, and small lanterns and flickering candles made pools of light to fight against shadows. But the thick ’dobe walls kept out the wind, and there was a fire on a sort of raised hearth at the far end of the room.

Ritchie had a quick impression of masses of raw color—Indian blankets, weapons, baskets, illustrations clipped from old papers and pasted to the walls. But he was so tired that he stumbled thankfully toward the bunk pointed out to him and dumped his small collection of baggage on the floor beside it, content for a moment or two just to squat there and let the warmth sink in through the layers of all the warm clothing he possessed to his ice-touched bones.

“Hi, there, Johnny Raw! Green as they come, ain’t he, fellas?”

Ritchie looked up. He had to raise his eyes some distance to meet those in the round head with unclipped shoulder-length hair that met and was lost in a wiry mat of black beard. A thick boot nudged his knee.

“Yo’—I’m talkin’ t’ yo’, Johnny Raw! Does yore Maw know yo’re playin’ soljer with us bad boys? Does she now?”

Ritchie got wearily to his feet. This was a greeting he had had to face before. There always was one of these would-be-funny men in every barracks. But if you didn’t take your own part against them, nobody else was going to stand up for you. He hated fights; the cold little tingle of fear that ran along his backbone every time he faced up to one began to run down from the nape of his neck. He still wore a fading bruise along his jaw as a souvenir from the last one, fought on board the steamer which had brought them to Independence. But there was never any other way out of this.

“Rather out of your class, aren’t you, Birke?” The new voice was low, and a drawl slurred the words. “Tigre facing down a ring cat?”

There was some laughter in answer to that. The speaker lounged past the tall Birke and sat down on the next bunk. “Seeing as how this is my front parlor, so to speak, I’m not hankering to have it discommoded. Go roar somewhere else, man.”

Surprisingly Birke accepted that suggestion with good humor.

“Johnny Raw’s got him a bunkie. Smell out th’ pennies, d’ya, Sturgis?”

For a single tense second there was a dead quiet as if all the men in the little circle about them had been struck dumb. Then the lounger on the bunk laughed.

“Six months since payday. Anybody who shows a penny around here is like to be mobbed. Hear that, Johnny Raw?” He turned to Ritchie.

Birke guffawed and shambled away, taking his followers with him. Ritchie gave his full attention to the man who had saved him from battle—or who had at least deferred the encounter.

He was much slighter than the black-haired giant he had quelled, slender, narrow of waist and hip even in the bulk of winter clothing. A light-brown beard had been trimmed into a dashing imperial, and mustaches had been lovingly and painstakingly rolled into needle points. His features were finely cut, his hands those of an expert horseman. He smiled at Ritchie and then rose and bowed with a grace only one trained from birth to the social niceties could equal.

“St. George (it sounded more like S’George) Sturgis, at your service, sir.”

Automatically Ritchie slipped back into the old, familiar world and responded as he would have six months before to one of his father’s friends.

“Ritchie Peters, sir.” His answering salutation was as unstudied as the other’s had been.

Sturgis nodded, as if some question of his own had been answered. With the air of a host aiding a welcome guest, he began to help Ritchie stow away what remnants of personal property still remained to him. There was little enough in his blanket roll, though at that he had come far better equipped than had most of the other recruits. He had taken the tip of the recruiting officer and had laid out most of the cash that remained from the sale of his watch, his two hunters, and the brace of pistols his father had given him on his last birthday to buy extra clothing and other small supplies, worth more than their weight in placer gold on the frontier. Sturgis looked over this wealth and then glanced at Ritchie with a tinge of real respect.

“You can’t be on a second hitch,” he mused. “By the look of you in a clear light you have no right to be signed up for your first. Was the recruiting officer blind on the day you signed papers?”

Ritchie shrugged. “They don’t ask too many questions when a man wants to sign up. If I have a few added birthdays on the company roles, it doesn’t concern anyone but myself!”

“That’s the right spirit, m’boy!” Sturgis was grinning. “But you’ve better than a good head on you if you picked out all this on your own.” He motioned to the stuff Ritchie was unpacking. “Lord, most of the boys show up here with one pair of socks and their shirttails flapping in the breeze. You’ll be a nabob here. And now, what will you do with yourself the rest of this fine afternoon?”

Ritchie stood up and gave his short cavalry jacket a jerk to bring it smoothly down at his waist.

“If we linger here, Herndon will find a little work for idle hands,” Sturgis continued.

“Herndon?”

“Our worshipful Troop Sergeant—the sternest slave driver west of the Mississippi. I’ll bet a month’s pay he could make a cane-field boss look like a cooing dove! Stay clear of Sergeant Scott Herndon, m’lad, and you’ll live an easier life. Would you care to see the town?”

Ritchie looked doubtful. “Can we?”

Sturgis produced a slip of paper. “There are ways, Peters, of getting what you want—even in this man’s army. This is a pass. We can take it and go—right through that gate and into the big wicked city of Santa Fe. Santa Fe”—his voice fell into a sort of chant—”in the valley of the Rio de Santa Fe, where the river emerges from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains on the east. And on the west is the Jemez Range, most times full of Apaches. Is that what you remember from your school days?”

Ritchie laughed. “Don’t think they ever mentioned the place. There was too much agitation most of the time about Greek irregular verbs and such—”

Sturgis was buttoning his jacket. “My, my”—he shook his head sadly—“how your education has been neglected, my son. It is now my duty as a sober and respectable member of this community to remedy that lack. Let us fare forth and add to the sum of your knowledge of this rare beauty spot of nature. I would suggest pulling another scarf about the ears. In this season our breezes are not so much balmy as straight.”

Santa Fe was brown adobe houses with the scent of piñon smoke fighting older and less pleasant odors; it was irrigation ditches through the town; it was creaking oxcarts and shawled women; it was blanketed Indians staring about them with oddly blank eyes; and, last of all, after a most perfunctory tour led by Sturgis, it was the Eagle.

At first the cloud of heavy tobacco smoke tainted with whisky fumes almost made Ritchie gag. He might have stepped out again, but Sturgis caught his sleeve and tugged him through the murk raised by the long cigarrillos, which most of the patrons seemed to smoke incessantly, to an empty table.

“We must blood you right.” Sturgis banged on the table for the attention of one of the hurrying Mexican waiters. “They serve the real food of the country here. You, Jose, we’ll have chile Colorado and tortillas and all the rest—”

The brown-skinned boy nodded. “Si, señor.”

“A man needs a decent meal once in a while, maybe only to realize how bad army grub can be. We have us a cook who knows just how many coffee beans to put in to color the water—and uses those—no more, no less! Hello! There’s Tuttle. Wonder when he got back.” He pointed to a man crossing the room toward the long table where a faro game was in progress.

The long hair and pointed beard of the newcomer were iron gray, and he walked with a limp, which, while it gave him a rocking gait, did not seem to slow his pace any.

“Tuttle’s one of the scouts attached to us. Old Mountain Man! Ran furs through here twenty years ago, made his pile in the gold fields, and lost it all again. But he’s come back here to stay. Knows more about the Indians than they do themselves. Some say he was blood brother to Mangus Colorado, the great Apache chief. He’s a darn good scout and a fool gambler. Ha—here we are! Now lift a lip over that, son, and tell me what you think of our native dishes!”

Ritchie regarded with some wariness the contents of the earthenware plate that had been slammed down before him. The smell, spicy and strange, was not too forbidding, and he took a cautious spoonful, a spoonful which set him gasping openmouthed for air to cool his blistered tongue. Sturgis, laughing, thrust a glass into his hand, and he swallowed a good half of its contents in one gulp before he discovered that it too was misleading. He then faced his companion with suspicion.

“Go on; it’s harmless. Just tiswin. The native youngsters are weaned on it. Take it easy—slow and sure—”

Ritchie chose a minute portion of what looked like a grayish mush and chewed it thoughtfully with no bad aftereffects. And then he tried a tortilla but with none of the nonchalance with which Sturgis swallowed.

Now that his eyes had become more accustomed to the smoke, he looked at those around them. The weathered, worn blue of army uniforms mingled with buckskin and the gaudy shoulder blankets and embroidered coats of the Mexicans. He was so busy watching this constantly changing crowd of fellow diners that he did not see the small man who came drifting up until he had slipped into the empty seat at their table.

“You hav’ seen Pedro, señores?” His voice was very soft, hardly pitched above a whisper, and he looked from Sturgis to Ritchie, a thick line of worry scored the skin between eyes which were brown and curiously childlike. It was hard to judge his age, for his face was boyishly smooth except for a jagged white scar along the angle of his jaw.

“No.” Sturgis shook his head and spoke slowly. “I have not seen him, Ramon. Here!” He filled his own glass from the bottle Jose had brought and pushed it into the little man’s hand. “Have a drink, amigo.”

“Drink,” repeated the little man and stared at the glass as if he did not quite understand what he was to do with it. Then he took a single sip. “You will pardon me please, señores. It is necessary that I find my brother Pedro—” He slipped out of the chair, bowed, his hat in his hands, and wandered off.

“Where is his brother?” Ritchie asked.

Sturgis answered almost harshly. “Under some rocks in Bloody Canyon about a hundred miles from here—where he has been lying some five years now. The Salazars had a rancho down along the river, raised cattle and some horses. Then the Apaches came raiding. They took a big slice of the Salazar herd with them. Pedro Salazar came up to the fort for help. He and a squad of the boys hit a hot trail leading back into the mountains. They followed it and were ambushed. The lucky ones were killed outright. By the look of Pedro when he was found, he wasn’t one of the lucky ones.

“When they didn’t come back, Ramon came up to the Colonel. He was only a kid then, but he said he was riding alone to hunt his brother if we wouldn’t help. So the dragoons went out again. They found what was left of the first gang and were picking them up for burial when”—Sturgis made a quick gesture with his hands—“the world blew up. The Apaches had set a trap—set it with the bait of the bodies of their first victims. If one buck hadn’t been just a little too eager and shot a second too soon, they would have had a full bag the second time, too. As it was, about ten escaped. Ramon came back, his face hanging in shreds, with the memory of how his brother looked after the Apaches had amused themselves in their usual fashion. It was a little too much for his mind. So now he can’t remember Pedro’s death, and he waits here for him. Five years he’s been waiting. Finished eating? Let’s see some action.”

Jose, who had been hovering beyond the table, now pounced, assembling a pile of dishes in a lingering way. Sturgis grinned.

“Birke was right, y’know. Months since the paymaster hit these parts. Can you spare a little of the needful?”

Ritchie spun a coin across to the waiter. “And what if I keep accounts?”

Sturgis shot him a single glance. For a moment there was a hint of something less than laughter about his mobile mouth. But when he answered, his words were light enough.

“As you wish, sir, as you wish. Now for the action—”

He threaded his way through the maze of crowded tables with the ease of long familiarity, and Ritchie followed. Sturgis’ grim tale of Apache warfare had been unsettling. One read of such things back home, and there was always tall talk in the barracks, but Ramon’s story now— And sometimes under the surface of casual good nature that cloaked Sturgis, there appeared to hide another person entirely. But the older dragoon was the nearest companion to those of the old days that Ritchie had yet found; he was a link with that past which Ritchie had thrown away on a hot dreary day in July when he had turned his back on his old life with what he hoped was firm courage.

They fetched up beside the faro table and for a few minutes stood watching the play, Ritchie with the interest of a newcomer and Sturgis with the narrowed, intent eyes of one to whom this was an absorbing business.

Besides the scout, Tuttle, there was a full circle of other players. Every seat was filled, and onlookers crowded two and three deep behind their shoulders. About half were Spanish-New Mexicans, but among them was a buckskin-shirted frontiersman, three soldiers, and the dealer, a small, whitehanded man whose linen was immaculate and whose frock coat was of the latest fashionable cut.

Pomaded curls were low across the forehead of his almost boyish face, and there was the sheen of pearls in the ruffles of his shirt front. Now and again he looked up from the cards and shot a swift, measuring glance around the circle of players and the men who watched. And all the time his hands moved with the quick precision of one engaged in a delicate art.

Ritchie nudged Sturgis.

“Who is he?”

“Who? Oh, you mean Quinn? He’s a gambler. They say he owns half interest in this place. Used to be in the Mounted Rifles during the Mexican War. Invalided out with a game leg and stayed on. He’s straight, though. Straight and tough. And the deadliest shot in town. Ha, Currillo’s cleaned out—”

One of the New Mexicans, a dignified gentleman whose puce velvet coat was stiff with silver embroidery, had pushed back his chair. Sturgis edged forward. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes at Ritchie.

“Care to try your luck?”

Ritchie shook his head firmly. Quinn had paused in the game to speak a few courteous words of Spanish to the retiring player. Now he got to his feet, reaching as he did so for an ivory-headed cane. Another dark-coated man, not quite so perfect of linen or polished of manner, slid into his place. Quinn, leaning heavily on the cane, stumped past Ritchie and Sturgis, then stopped and turned back with a half nod to Sturgis, who answered with what seemed to Ritchie real reluctance.

“Good evening.” The gambler’s voice was an emotionless monotone.

Sturgis muttered. His squared shoulders had the look of defiance.

“The paymaster did not come in, I believe,” Quinn continued.

A dull red flush spread across Sturgis’ cheekbones, and it did not come, Ritchie guessed, from the heat of the overcrowded room.

“He did not,” the dragoon answered shortly.

Quinn’s thin lips stretched in what might or might not have been intended for a smile of social good manners. “A pity. He is sadly overdue, is he not? Good evening, gentlemen.” This time he plainly spoke in dismissal and swung away in a slow hobble headed for the back door of the room.

Sturgis watched him go, the dark flush still staining his tanned skin. Then he turned and strode away, his spurs clicking on the flooring. Ritchie tagged along a little uncertainly.

They fetched up against the bar. Sturgis had already ordered and was pouring most of that order down his throat. He flicked a finger at the bartender, who slid another glass along to Ritchie. The younger dragoon pushed it back. Sturgis laughed, and something in that sound tightened Ritchie’s mouth and made him wary,

“Don’t gamble, don’t drink, and you call yourself a dragoon!” Sturgis held his drawl down so that it couldn’t carry beyond their own ears. “Johnny Green—maybe you are a little too green for us!”

Ritchie’s chin went up. “Maybe I am!”

But Sturgis didn’t meet the challenge. He laughed again, and this time all the taunt had gone out of it. “The Lord forbid that I should set your young feet on the path of evil. But neither will I waste a good drink.” He reached for Ritchie’s glass. “Let Sam give you a glass of tiswin, and we’ll call it square. It’d take a barrel of that stuff to make your virtuous head go round.”

Ritchie was doubtful of the drink the bartender had pushed in his direction. It tasted vile, but he downed it, since it didn’t smell like anything stronger than Sturgis had said it was. There was no afterbite in the throat, and a gentle warmth spread out in his middle section. He was sorry for his suspicions. After all Sturgis was only trying to show him a good time frontier fashion.

The second glass of tiswin went even better. But the heat grew inside him, and he was very grateful for a glass of water which had appeared out of nowhere at his hand. He swallowed a good half of it before he discovered that the contents were anything but water.

“What brought you into the army, Johnny Raw?” Out of the golden fog someone asked the question.

He looked down at his hands resting on the polished wood before him. They were grimy about the knuckles, and there was a scar or two where reins had cut and a spur scratch had become infected.

“We lost our money in the crash,” he replied simply. “My father was a heavy investor in railroads, and he went under. He died of a heart attack last June. There was just enough left to keep the girls for a while—they went to live with Aunt Emma. I thought if I could get west and learn something about ranching or mining—”

“You could make a new start.” There was an angry edge to the answer. “Well, you weren’t the first, even in this year of 1859. Travel at the army’s expense, serve your five years, save your pay, and make a new start. Is that it?”

“Yes.” Ritchie caught at the edge of the bar. All of a sudden the floor had swayed. At the same time he felt other embarrassing symptoms which he had known once or twice before in his life. He shook his head miserably trying to clear it of the dizzy fog which wrapped him in.

“Time to go, Johnny Raw—”

A firm hand clamped on his elbow and steered him through a wild haze of noise and color and smells which added to the churning in his middle. But he reached the street in time.

Having been thoroughly and miserably sick, Ritchie still clutched at his companion and allowed himself to be towed along. He stumbled in the dark but managed to keep his feet. And, although his guide snorted his impatience and seemed none too sure of his own footing, they fetched up in time at a door Ritchie dimly recognized as being that of the barracks.

But there was someone there before them. A lantern made them blink owlishly, and a voice, metallic hard and cutting, snapped them to wavering attention.

“A case of the drunk leading the drunk, is that it, Sturgis? Who’s the cub with you?”

Ritchie faced the questioner; the voice had scraped raw what pride he had left.

“Private Ritchie Peters, Company K, sir.” Just his luck to be caught up now by an officer—

The lantern swung. Through its beam Ritchie caught a glimpse of a smooth chin square set. “Peters, eh? A little young for this, aren’t you? And don’t call me sir! Any more of this sort of thing, Sturgis, and you’ll be up for a non-com’s court.”

The lantern and the man who had held it turned away abruptly and swung off across the yard. Sturgis cleared his throat noisily.

“The mighty Herndon!” But the sneer was only halfhearted.

Ritchie raised his hands to his whirling head and felt a return of the miserable sickness. There was something else clawing at him, too, a feeling that he had lost something, something precious that he had not known he possessed until it had slipped through his fingers. It was almost as if that slender, erect shadow had taken it away with him.

2

“Company K Has Style”

Reveille split the wintry dark of the Sunday morning. Ritchie tried to banish the taste in his mouth by wriggling his tongue vigorously, found that impossible, and crawled gingerly out of his cocoon of blankets. His head was all one pounding ache, and he nursed it between his two hands for a long moment. Then, setting his teeth against the pain and the faint reminiscent heaving in his mid-section, he pulled on his clothes.

The stables were dreary, and the light of the lanterns made little headway against the general gloom. Ritchie and his assigned mount, a thin-legged gray mare, eyed each other with mutual disfavor and disgust. He started in wielding the currycomb in a wary fashion.

“You have Bess I see—”

Ritchie swiped the back of his hand across his itching nose and stared sourly over the gray’s back at the speaker.

It was Sergeant Herndon who stood there, hands on hips and a critical gleam in his eyes as he watched Private Peters’ performance.

“And you needn’t be so chary of doing your duty about the hindquarters. She doesn’t kick, do you, old lady?” The latter part of the speech was made in a softer tone than the former, and the mare nickered and stretched out her head toward her questioner.

“Doesn’t she?” was all Ritchie found to say, stupidly enough. His headache was now a permanent fixture, and privately he though that even a good kick upon the seat of that pain might improve matters some.

But he was not so sunk in his bog of misery as to ignore Scott Herndon. And, he decided, the Troop Sergeant was not a man to be overlooked in any company he might desire to frequent.

Taller than Sturgis, the Sergeant moved with some of the Southerner’s instinctive grace, but his shoulders never relaxed, and his voice had a crisp crack to it which brought hearers to attention. In that company of bearded men his smooth cheeks seemed youthful until one noted the square jaw, the firm straightness of his thin lips, and the cold tiredness of his eyes.

Now he stepped forward and ran his right hand, encased to Ritchie’s amazement in a white glove, along the flank of the mare. He held up smudged fingers, and Ritchie flushed.

Doggedly the boy set to work again, expecting the Sergeant to make himself scarce after that unvoiced reproof—to try his method of inspection elsewhere down the line. But, instead, Herndon held out a grayish sack.

“When you saddle up, put this gunny sack under your blanket. Keeps a horse from getting a sore back. In this country a man’s life depends upon the health of his mount—a dead horse may mean a dead dragoon.”

“Thank you, sir.” Ritchie stretched the coarse stuff between his hands.

“Don’t call me sir.” The voice was chill, remote. And he heard the stamp of departing boot heels.

“High-n-mighty been on your neck?” Sturgis, his blue eyes dark rimmed and bloodshot, his face a trifle puffy in the wavering light, peered in from the next half stall.

Ritchie was trying out the gunny sack on Bess, smoothing out the stuff so that no pucker or wrinkle remained. Sturgis emerged an inch or two further.

“I see he has—presenting you with his little invention for the comfort of these four-legged instruments of torture. Company K. has style; so it has, so it has.” The Southerner was evidently repeating some oft-heard quotation. “We can’t give up and drop in our tracks after riding full gallop after the Apaches, so we can’t! We just leap from our saddles, deploy in about five acres of saw-toothed rocks, and wipe ‘em out! Ha! Let me tell you this, son—straight words from one who knows—it’s hard work, this snatching the laurels from the fair brow of fame. And it’s stiff-backed bell sharps like Herndon who make it all the harder.” He spat a length of straw out of his mouth and went back to work.

But the shrill notes of the bugle echoing across the parade ground brought him out again.

“Sick call,” he identified unnecessarily. “Lord, I feel dead, but I doubt if Doc would agree with me on that diagnosis. You don’t look so spruce yourself.”

Ritchie tried to grin. But the wan stretch of skin he achieved was almost too much for his face.

“I thought you said that tiswin was harmless,” he began.

Sturgis waved a hand. “Well, if you will mix gin with it, what do you expect? And wasn’t our worthy sergeant aroused to see one of his new lambs in such a state? Now what is the matter, babe? You needn’t ball those fists at me. If you can’t take a joke and learn to hold your drinks, you’re in for a tough time in this army.”

Ritchie quickened his pace. He knew now the trick Sturgis had played on him. A wink to the bartender had put up the gin, and safely stupefied by it, he would have been the free and easy spender Sturgis wanted as an evening’s companion. He’d been a green Johnny Raw all right. Funny that the Southerner hadn’t gone through with the whole plan instead of getting him back to the barracks. But let Sturgis or anyone else try to catch him like that a second time!

A little righteous anger, he discovered, is the right prescription to relieve bodily misery. He was able to get through parade without disgracing himself. Since it was Sunday, they were treated to a discourse from the Colonel, during which Ritchie’s mind roamed freely and none too happily. But there was no drill, and he was able to eat all the bean soup and have that hot liquid settle his stomach in its proper place once more.

He kicked across the yard later, wishing that he could take Bess, in spite of her forbidding attitude, and ride off into the hills. But a mounted pass was more than a recruit could hope for. With a sigh he tramped back to the barracks and improved the hour, by putting a super-shine on every piece of equipment that would take polish. Several card games were in progress, but since the last payday was so far in the past, only the most hardened gamblers clung to the stakes they chiseled by vast proficiency out of one another. Ritchie dropped his carbine in the rack and went exploring.

Sturgis, when Ritchie had refused a second invitation to do the town, had slammed off on his own, and the newcomer felt rather alone as he toured the barracks room looking at the trophies and loot assembled by Company K during its campaigning. The veterans of the troop held aloof from the recruits. They inhabited a world of their own with incomprehensible jokes and allusions to past events as its language, shutting out those who could not understand.

But the room itself was worth close inspection. Above, a ceiling of strips of canvas kept the centipedes and other summer livestock from falling on one’s head. Round-bellied, brightly patterned clay jars hung on twisted cords from the beams, ready to cool water in the heavy midsummer heat. A row of baskets so tightly woven from grass and roots that they could be used for washbasins—and were—sat on a bench in the middle of the room.

The walls were a lace work of spears tipped with beautifully chipped obsidian points, quivers of coyote and mountain lion skin, some still holding arrows, and bows of wood and horn. Ritchie was guessing at the history of an oddly shaped pair of savagely roweled spurs, which dangled, rusty and useless, from one nail, when a man thrust his head in at the outer door.

“Hey, fellas!” His voice carried down the room. “Diego is here with that thar performin’ dog o’ hissen—!”

There was a concentrated rush for the door in which Ritchie was borne along. And a few seconds later he found himself one of a tight circle on the parade ground where a mushroom-hatted Mexican stood bowing to the company.

A small white rough-coated dog sat quietly at his feet. Its forelegs and shoulders had been forced into a blue military jacket, and aslant on its head was a miniature copy of the broad-brimmed dragoon hat. At a hissed word of command it arose to its hind feet, holding between its forepaws a small carbine whittled out of wood.

Following Diego’s orders the dog went through the manual of arms. Its whiskered face showed an expression of boredom, but it came to life when some of the men tossed it bits of pork filched from the kitchen.

“Smart dog, Diego. Give yo’ a double-eagle fur him!” came out of the audience.

Diego showed yellow-white teeth in a discreet grin.

“Thees dog are ver’ ver’ smart, si, señores. An’ where does thees señor geet heem one double-eegal?”

“Yeah, Benny, where?” demanded several of the would-be-buyer’s friends. “Bin a-holdin’ out on yore pals?”

“Robbed the paymaster, Benny?” inquired someone else. “Maybe that’s why he ain’t bin around, boys!”

“Ah—Diego would trust me—” began Benny.

But the Mexican showman shook his head firmly. “Diego trusts no man, señor. That ees why he ees still frien’s weeth many. Perro,” he spoke to the dog. “Where ees Apache’—you fin’!”

The dog dropped its toy gun and ran in widening circles through the crowd—the men edging out to let it through. Finally it stopped short before a man on the very outskirts of the circle and began to bark sharply.

For one amazed moment Ritchie thought that Perro had really discovered one of the enemy in their midst, for the man’s black hair was pulled back by a red headband such as the desert warriors favored, a blanket was draped about his shoulders, and the feet and legs the dog was now snarling at were covered with the high, bootlike moccasins of the mesa men.

The man stood perfectly still and did not even appear to notice the dog now working itself into a frenzy of barks and growls. Diego had approached slowly, but now he took a sudden stride and grabbed at Perro’s collar, jerking back with a force which half strangled the animal.

“Your pardon, Señor Scout.” He touched his hand to the brim of his hat, but the mockery in that gesture was plain. “Perro mistakes the counterfeit for the real. You weel excuse heem, please.”

“Sure—” The one word came in the soft drawl of a Mountain Man as the moccasined feet turned and the red-crested figure drifted off toward the Colonel’s quarters.

Perro’s mistake seemed to put an end to the show because Diego refused all urging to continue and departed out of the gate. All but a few die-hards who followed the showman to the road went back to the warmth of the barracks.

“Don’t know as that thar pooch was so wrong in his ’Pache huntin’,” one of the men walking just before Ritchie said.

“Oh—you know Velasco—”

“Yeah. I’ve seen him—hangin’ round the fort. But he was raised ’Pache, warn’t he? Catch ’em young ’n raise ’em right ’n they stay ‘Pache. He’s got him blood brothers out thar in the hills. How do we know he ain’t tellin’ ’em things now ’n then? They’re pretty cute—they savvy fightin’. ’N Velasco, he can’t remember nothin’ but livin’ with ’em. I’ve heard him say that with his own mouth. His own people don’t like him much. Bet Diego taught the pooch that thar trick jus’ to show him up.”

“Well, he’d better not show it off where the Colonel can see him or he won’t get in here again. The Colonel swears by Velasco, and he won’t take kindly to anyone making fun of him open that way. Hey, where’s the cards? All right, your deal, Sam.”

Ritchie lingered, wishing that he dared ask about this Velasco who was raised an Apache. He had heard tales of children captured young enough to conform to the Indian way of life, and tough enough to survive it, who had grown up as warriors of the tribe and, when reclaimed by their own people, had been misfits in the civilized world. But the card players were deep again in the interrupted games, and he went back to his own small section of the barracks.

But he stopped short before the rack where he had hung his newly polished equipment. Belt, carbine, sabre—all had disappeared. And in their places was another set, fouled, tarnished, and unrubbed. Ritchie let his breath out slowly through his nose. He knew very well what this meant. Sturgis had stepped in the night before and had stopped the showdown. But this time he would have to force it himself or else lose face with the whole company. Even if he took a beating and lost, he could still cling to the shreds of his self-respect.

There were eyes watching him now—he could almost feel them burning between his shoulder blades. This was it! But, as he turned abruptly and marched down the room looking carefully at each racked carbine he passed, he was thinking furiously.

Here it was. He put out his hand for the weapon he recognized as his own. Below it was his sabre. His sabre—!

Ritchie’s eyes widened the least fraction, and his lips parted in a soundless whistle. He remembered a story told at Jefferson. And it might just work here, too. It would all depend upon whether Birke was really popular in the company.

“Jus’ a minute, sonny.” The paw of a hairy arm fell on his shoulder and half jerked him around. “We don’t touch another man’s tools ’les we ask furst!”

Ritchie met Birke’s gap-toothed grin and too-small eyes with an outward show of placid confidence.

“That’s what I thought. And so I’m wondering why you moved mine—”

Birke’s grin grew tight around the edges. It was plain that he had not expected this kind of answer. He slapped down at Ritchie’s reaching hand.

“Them thar’s mine! Keep yore mitts offen ’em, sonny. Git back to yore own corner ’n stay thar. Babies wot do as they ain’t told git paddled! Yore pants fit tight, baby. What if I heat ’em fur yo’—right now?”

Ritchie was out of range before that ham-sized fist connected. He was holding his own scabbarded sabre on guard. Now it was time to play his last card—and hope that Birke was not a popular man.

“If you want a fight, Birke, let’s make it a dragoon one. Meet me with scabbarded sabres, Jefferson style!”

Birke blinked. He had lost his grin entirely, and the thick veins on his temples were swelling. His pleasant little game had gotten out of hand, and he did not like that at all. He growled and lunged but jumped back again as Ritchie swung the heavy sabre.

There was a ring of spectators about them now, almost as close packed as the one which had gathered at the dog show. But, as yet, Ritchie could not judge the temper of the men. It was with relief that he heard the small, quiet man on the far side of that circle.

“Well, Birke, d’you fight him? He’s right—that’s a challenge, barracks style.”

A murmur answered him, a murmur of agreement. Ritchie waited. The small shred of tradition he remembered might yet save him from a bad mauling—even if he couldn’t escape a fight.

“Not in here.” The small man was taking command of the situation. “Out by the burying ground’s best; more room and we’ll be off post limits. Well, Birke, we’re waiting; d’you fight?”

The big dragoon turned and grabbed at the nearest racked sabre.

“Sure I’m gonna fight! I’m gonna beat th’ brains outta this jumped-up fancy boy. Let me do it!”

Escorted by all of the troop present, they moved across the parade ground to a level space below the rise of a small hill. Ritchie shucked off his tight cavalry jacket and stood shivering in his shirt sleeves, trying to make up his mind whether to discard his boots also. That was settled for him by a newcomer.

The scout Tuttle suddenly materialized by his side and held out a pair of moccasins.

“Off with them boots, son, if yo’ want to keep yore footin’ here. These should be ‘bout yore cut, I’m thinkin’.”

In the moccasins his feet felt free as he stepped up in answer to an authoritative wave from the small man. Birke loomed up, sheathed sabre in hand, a black scowl pulling his thick eyebrows into one bushy bar.

“You fight fair, and when a man is down, you don’t hammer him,” warned the master of ceremonies. “When I say go—you go!”

Were this a duel of bare points, Ritchie would have had little doubt of the outcome. He had spent too many hours with a fencing foil not to believe that he was the superior of most of the dragoons. But the added weight of the sheath would be a drag on the wrist which had to be allowed for. Birke, he believed, however, was of the bull type—striving to win through sheer weight and the beating down of his opponent. And the rush with which the big man greeted the “go” proved his point.

Ritchie twisted to the left, escaping the full brunt of the charge, managing to get in one counter thrust which brought a grunt out of Birke. The awkwardness of their weapons cut down Ritchie’s advantage of skill, while it gave full marks to Birke’s greater muscle. When he had a hard time staving off the second rush, Ritchie began to wonder if he had been so clever after all. A pounding from a sheathed sabre might be even worse to endure than one delivered by Birke’s fists. No longer so confident, he began to use his wits, attempting to adapt to this fight what he had learned with the tricky foils. And on the second sally he was able to get home below Birke’s short ribs with a force which drove the air out of the big man’s lungs and left him gasping—but not before Ritchie had taken a slam across his shoulder which made his left arm numb.

“What’s going on? Stop this!” Ritchie’s sabre was swept out of his weakened grasp. Birke stood with his hands pressed to his aching ribs.

Sergeant Herndon was between them, the stout cane he had used against Ritchie’s sabre held up like the master-of-arm’s governing foil at a match. Out of the tail of his eye Ritchie saw the audience thinning away. But Tuttle not only stood his ground but came up, a quirk of a smile touching his lips.

“Goin’ t’ be all official-like, Scott?” he drawled. “Ain’t nothin’ much yo’ can do with these boys—they was careful t’ git off limits ’fore they set ‘bout tryin’ t’ carve each other. ’N it looks like they ain’t had much chance to do real damage t’ government property—meanin’ themselves. Now yo’ve stopped it. Might as well fergit, eh?”

Ritchie stooped to grope for his jacket. His left arm was beginning to ache. And he was foreseeing a gloomy stretch of time to be spent in the guardhouse. But, to his surprise, Herndon was not ready to march them back into the clutches of law and order. Instead the Sergeant spoke to Birke who was still nursing his ribs.

“Second brawl this month you’ve been mixed up in, Birke.” Herndon’s clipped words were hard. “This means a noncom’s court. As for you,” he looked to Ritchie, “you seem totally unable to keep out of trouble, Peters. You may report to my quarters after retreat.”

He went off as if neither of them mattered any more. Ritchie was making a hard business of putting on his jacket when Tuttle came to his aid. The young dragoon’s sabre was under the scout’s arm, and the older man took him by the elbow and steered him up the hill to a low adobe wall.

“At least I’m not yet in the guardhouse.” He spoke his first thought aloud.

Tuttle chuckled. “Not likely, son. Herndon knows Birke ’n he’s had an eye on yo’. Yo’ ain’t the gamecock sort—goin’ outta yore way t’ pick a fight. Birke’s bullied new men before, ’n the Sergeant knows it. Only—mind yo’ take yore wiggin’ respectful-like tonight. Scott ain’t an impatient man, but he don’t take any sass from young ’uns neither. He ain’t the sort as most likes—too keen on his job ’n bein’ mostly right. But he’s got more guts than most, ’n he leans hisself over backwards bein’ straight with the men. That’s why he’s got some here as will follow him inter hell, should he take a leetle notion of patrolling down that thar way. Should be an officer by rights, but somehow he won’t make the jump. Got somethin’ back behind those gray eyes of hissen what hurts him bad now ’n again—makes him hold hisself up all tight ’n hard. Jus’ don’t yo’ rile him none when he lights inter yo’. He’s like to flay the skin offen yore back with his tongue—all a matter of what he considers his duty. Only them what don’t take to doin’ duty regular—’n some what do—mostly winds up here. If they are found at all!”

He jerked his finger over his shoulder up the rise of the hill. Ritchie looked more closely at the narrow wooden boards that stood sentry at the end of each mound. He could read the words carved on several of the nearest.

“Hiram Johnson, 1st Dragoons, died of wounds inflicted by the Apaches. Lester Silvers, tortured to death by Apaches. K. Knowles, met his death at the hand of Indians. Unknown man tortured and killed by Apaches.”

“Kinda intimidatin’, ain’t they, son?” Tuttle spat a stream of tobacco juice downhill. “That’s why a man hasta keep his wits ‘bout him in this here country. In the summer we fight thirst ’n Apaches. In the winter we fight snow ’n Apaches. When yo’ see Apache sign, be careful, ’n when yo’ don’t see nary a sign, yo’ gotta be more careful yet!”

But almost before the words had left his lips, Tuttle was on his feet, staring keen-eyed down the slope. Then he reached down and pulled Ritchie up.

“The signs read as how we’re gonna be needed down thar, son. Git a-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 burnin’!” 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.

3

“Ain’t No Winter Fer Apaches”

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 piñons 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 Gilmore, 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’ night, 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.

“Trail signs. This ought t’be a regular stoppin’ place fer them red devils. Ha!” He picked up a small brand from his tiny fire and held it close to the wall. Ritchie could see only a series of crooked scratches.

“Sonny, yo’ git yoreself back ’n bring the Sergeant here pronto. Velasco too, if he has come in!”

Ritchie obeyed. And he did find the second scout drop ping off his pony just as he went to call Herndon. Not only the scout and the Sergeant but Gilmore, also, pushed in to join Tuttle. Since no one of them noticed Ritchie, he dared to lurk behind and listen.

Velasco crossed the rock pocket with his noiseless stride and half crouched, almost rubbing the rock with his nose as he squinted at the scratches.

“Fresh?” Gilmore asked the first question.

Velasco grunted. Herndon touched one of the upper ones with the tips of his ungloved fingers. He nodded at the Lieutenant.

The scout sat back on his heels and took out one of the long brown cigarrillos the Mexicans smoked. Over its length he grinned.

“I think, Lieutenant,” he said softly, “that in one day, maybe two, we shall have some ver’ surprised Apaches, ver’ surprised!”

“Is that a giveaway?” Gilmore pointed to the scratches.

Velasco nodded. “Ver’ much the giveaway. They have done what they always do, attacked and then slipped away in many small parties. One party we have followed. But I think that they were left to fool us, lead us into the mountains and then—poof!”—he made a little gesture with his cigarrillo—“they are gone like smoke! If we are fools, they watch us be fools and then will come another ambush. If we are not fools—too great fools—we shall only be lost and mad and ver’ hungry before we get back to the post again. This, you understand, is how they plan. But this”—he pounded his fist on the cave wall—“this is what they do not plan for us. This tells plain for those who have scattered and must pass this way where the true rancheria is, where the women and children and the old ones wait for the victors to return.”

“Can you find the rancheria?” Gilmore’s face was boyishly eager as he looked at the palm space of marks, which might mean a face-saving victory for the army and a real defeat for the always too successful Apaches.

A faint frown appeared between Velasco’s heavy brows. He conned the lines a second time.

“Lieutenant, if a large body of men march to this place, then they shall betray their coming. A small party could slip up through the canyons in surprise. Also if we all leave this trail, they will suspect and come back to see why we go—”

Gilmore pulled at his lower lip. Then he looked at the Sergeant and Tuttle.

“You know this country and the Apache. Have we a chance to get to the rancheria unsuspected?”

Tuttle’s jaws moved rhythmically on his tobacco cud, and his eyes narrowed. “Guess not, if we go stampin’ in like a herd of buffalo bulls. They’d have us marked in a half-hour—maybe less—”

“We could split up.” Herndon’s voice was colorless as if he did not want to push his suggestion too much.

Gilmore made up his mind. “All right. It’s too good a chance to lose. If we can knock out just one rancheria, we’ll be striking back enough to hurt. Herndon, you know this country better than I do. You and Velasco pick your men and take your own trail. I’ll march on with the rest of the detachment along the trail we’ve been following. We’ll play their game and you play ours. Tuttle—?”

The Mountain Man arose from his leaning position against the wall. “Guess I’d better go ‘long with the boys here. Yo’ve got Belmore ’n Watkins, ’n they know their business. Jus’ don’t ride too far into the hills. Might let yore-self git a bit disgusted with the whole business ‘bout noontime tomorrow ’n start moseyin’ back, slow-like.” His eyes twinkled and Gilmore laughed. Then the Lieutenant spoke to Herndon.

“We’ll pray luck rides with you, Sergeant. I’m likely to be broke if this play turns out to be a foolish one after all.”

Herndon saluted, and Ritchie had barely time to get out of his way before he came out, brushing shoulders with the boy. His glance flickered over Ritchie’s eager face; there was a faint frown between his eyes.

Had it been Tuttle, Ritchie would have dared to ask, but now he hesitated and Herndon started away. The Sergeant had taken a step or two before he paused, looked over his shoulder, and said curtly, “Come on!”

Ritchie followed so closely on his heels that he almost bumped into his superior’s back when Herndon stopped short a second time to watch the men making camp.

“You’re only a recruit!” The words might have been fired from a carbine.

Ritchie blinked. “Yes—yes, sir.” He looked down at the tips of his boots. This was it—the end of any wild hopes he might have been nursing for the past five minutes.

“We won’t have time to urge on any stragglers—”

Ritchie clamped teeth on tongue. Out of his past experience he knew that when authority made explanations instead of giving an out-and-out refusal, “no” sometimes became “yes” if the speaker was allowed to argue himself to that point without interruption.

“You know nothing about the mountains—”

“No, sir,” he ventured to agree in a whisper.

“It would be utter folly to accept you as a volunteer—”

Ritchie struggled to control the corners of his quirking lips.

“We travel light—”

“Yes, sir!” Ritchie took this as permission and was away before the Sergeant could be visited again by qualms of conscience. He made for the blanket roll which encased his small store of personal belongings and took hasty inventory. Boots were no good on mountain rocks; he should change into the high winter moccasins he had bought from the Crow squaw on the march to Santa Fe. His prairie knife, with its deadly six-inch blade whetted to a needle’s sharpness, was already in its belt sheath. As he made hurried choices, he became aware for the first time of a hot voice behind him.

“So you’re passing over me?”

“I haven’t forgotten the Los Gatos affair, Sturgis. This is no expedition for anyone who can’t obey orders—”

“Orders! What do you have for blood, Herndon—orderly-room ink? I know these hills—you’re not the only one who does!”

Sturgis, breathing fast through his nose, his head up and his eyes very bright, was blocking the Sergeant’s path. For a long moment he waited for an answer which didn’t come, and then his mouth moved wryly before he could shape words.

“You icy fish! You don’t know what it is to get excited over anything, do you? May the Lord let me be there on the day that you do!”

He stepped aside, and the Sergeant went on. With Sturgis directly behind him now, Ritchie did not dare to look up but fumbled with the things he had laid out, picking them up and laying them back as if he had never seen them before.

“Stand up!” There was such a whip crack of order in the tone that he obeyed and found himself facing Sturgis eye to eye.

“Yes, we’re of a size. Get off those breeches on the double!”

Ritchie’s fingers went to the buckle of his belt.

“But why? What—?”

“Think army issue stuff will stand up to clambering around on rocks? Want to come back frozen stiff? Get out of those and into these.” As he spoke, Sturgis was peeling off his trousers of buffalo calfskin, the hair side in. He fairly pulled off Ritchie’s jacket and got him into the deerskin one he had worn, adding his wolfskin cap to finish the exchange. When Ritchie tried to thank him, he growled and slammed away in a black mood, refusing to watch when the party pulled out.

They went at dusk, heading out through the tangle of trees that masked the cave canyon, keeping close under the protection of the rock walls. Their mounts were the sturdiest and toughest of the troop, Ritchie having surrendered Bess for a wise-eyed black gelding that seemed to know more about this business than did its rider.

How many miles they made that night there was no way of guessing. And their winding track through whatever cover the country provided was so twisted that Ritchie was hopelessly lost within ten minutes of their setting out, though he had tried to follow the advice given newcomers in the country—to fasten on some peak or landmark ahead and hold to it.

Just ahead of him rode a black lump which was Kristland, the trumpeter, his instrument making a light spot against the dark fur of his coat. For some reason Kristland’s musical ability had won him a place in this company. And behind Ritchie Tuttle allowed his sure-footed riding mule to pick proper footing at the steady pace set by Velasco who led the line.

Before dawn they stopped for longer than the usual breathing spell, coming out of their saddles and rubbing down the shivering legs of the animals. A bundled-up figure came down the line shaking something out of a bag into each man’s hand. Ritchie held the palmful of gritty stuff uncertainly until he saw Kristland lick up his portion with a long tongue.

“What is it?”

“Penole—parched corn,” the trumpeter mumbled. “It keeps a man going, but it don’t stick to the ribs none.”

Ritchie ground the tasteless stuff between his teeth. It was getting lighter now, and he could count the men who were strung out along the dried-up stream bed. Eight—nine—ten—thirteen—fourteen—One was missing, but, even as he discovered that, a second man vanished on foot among the rocks.

“All right, men!” That was Herndon’s whisper carrying authority. “Every fifth man—horse-holder.”

Ritchie counted again. This time he had no desire to remain in that noncombatant post. But, with a sigh of relief, he found himself fourth instead of fifth.

“As soon as Velasco reports back, be prepared to move.”

Carbines moved down the line. They would leave sabres behind—they were little good when climbing. A carbine, a knife, and maybe a pistol—if one was lucky enough to rate one—that was for this work.

Ritchie was tapped lightly on the shoulder. He jumped, and when he saw the tapper was Herndon, he flushed.

“You and Kristland are to follow me.”

Had Herndon looked amused when he said that? Ritchie scowled at the nearest rock.

Velasco was back; he had flitted in as noiselessly as a snow owl.

“On foot—” Ritchie could catch only a word or two. “Two—three miles to the northwest. Cross the spur ’n come down from the ledges before they know— There is a house of the Old Ones which can cover us—”

“Very well.” That was Herndon again. “Ready.” His raised voice went down the line. “No noise and close up. We’ll have to climb, and if any fool gives us away—”

There was no need for him to add to the threat in that. Ritchie nervously slung his carbine and edged along with the trumpeter at the Sergeant’s back.

4

“The Game's Made, ’n the Ball's Rollin'!”

Ritchie moved awkwardly and tried to disguise it. His bruised shoulder was tender, raw flesh under the jerk of his carbine strap. But he dared not try any adjustments. He had too good an opinion of Herndon’s ability to see all and know all, and he had no wish to be sent ignominiously back to companion the horse-holders.

They climbed steadily, and the pace Herndon set was not too taxing. But the thin cold air blowing down over the mountain snow was one to sear the throat and lungs, and they were all panting. The trail they took kept them to what cover there was, angling up the heights in every bit of shadow afforded by piñon, bush, or outcrop. Near the top of the rise Herndon paused under an overhang of red rock and waited for them to crowd in about him.

Then, with quick strokes of a pencil on a slab of rock, he plotted the course of the action to come.

“Velasco, Hermann, O’Neill, and Dermont, with Kristland, will go down here, cross the ridge, and take cover on the opposite mesa top. At the signal shot Kristland will sound Attack.

“The Apache rancheria is located here—on a ledge jutting out from the mountain. We’ll wait a while to see most of the warriors come in before we strike. We want to get the men, not the women and children.” He rubbed absently at the marks he had made. “Poor devils, if we win, they’ll get theirs anyway, left without food or shelter. Now”—his voice was crisp again—”the rest of us will cut aside from the trail in another hundred yards.

“Right about here, overlooking the camp ledge, there is a big cave with some of the old ruins in it. Apaches don’t like ruins. We get in there and stay until it’s time to strike—they won’t be apt to prowl around close enough to sniff us out.”

“If they do come up,” Tuttle drawled, “we do a leetle owl hootin’, ’n they’ll go kitin’ out again with their tails up. Makes blood come up in the throat—that’s what an Apache says about an owl hoot.” This tag of Indian lore lightened some of the tension which had followed Herndon’s orders.

Ritchie dared to lean back against the rock, easing his shoulder a little. He wondered if Tuttle had said that on purpose. There was something in the picture the scout’s words had evoked—of bloodthirsty Apache warriors scuttling off like a herd of frightened mountain deer at the hoot of a bird—that relaxed a fellow, coaxed the icy crawl out of his spinal column. He came away again from his rock with a real snap of eagerness as Herndon gave the sign to move on.

“Hmm!” Tuttle was sniffing the air. “Looks like the cactus telygraff is workin’, right enough. Smell that, son?”

There was a faint, almost spicy taint on the breeze, an odor which grew stronger with a wind puff down slope. Herndon’s advance had become a crawl, and the others, taking their time from him, were creeping too. They were all watching the sky and the edge of the cliff ahead.

Then Ritchie saw it, too, a pencil of gray-white smoke ascending, first as a streamer and then, batted by the wind, a long curve—signal smoke born of a fire of resinous pine cones.

Herndon consulted Tuttle with a look. But after a moment the scout shook his head.

“If it was us they was talkin’ ’bout, we’d already be crow meat. I’m thinkin’ that they’re callin’ in their young men. They’ve got them a pile of rich loot to pick over. ’N maybe Gilmore is so far off by now they think they’re really safe. So they’re plannin’ a bang-up party for all the boys.”

“So!” Herndon’s mittened fingers drummed a tattoo. “If we wait—”

“If we wait—’n I ain’t growed as simple as a beaver kit in my old age—we’ve got us a mighty fine chance to clean out the whole kit ’n caboodle of ’em. Game to try, Sergeant?”

Herndon’s eyes sparkled; he didn’t have to answer. The way he hurried them on was reply enough. Ritchie smelled the smoke—but it was fainter now. The fire, having served its purpose, must be almost out.

Their last halt was at the beginning of an extremely narrow ledge. Tuttle was the first to squeeze out along it. After several hour-long minutes Herndon reached back for Ritchie’s sleeve and tugged him up.

“Hug the wall all the way, and don’t make a sound!”

With his tongue tip caught between his teeth, his hands damp and shaking a little in spite of the bite of the cold as he shucked off his gloves, Ritchie ventured along the scrap of path. He kept his attention on the rock wall at his left, gluing his fingers to any knob or crack which would give him purchase. Then the ledge widened out and was canopied by the beginnings of an overhang. He stumbled forward to be caught up in the scout’s grip.

“Git over thar ’n keep still!” That fierce whisper sent him into the shadows where he burrowed into a pile of debris and nursed his arm. Tuttle’s pinching fingers had started up the ache of his bruise again.

By the time Tuttle was hauling in the second man Ritchie was satisfying his curiosity about their surroundings. Although it was past sunrise, the sky had not cleared much, and dark gray clouds were piling up with the promise of more snow. So the niche they were occupying was still a place of dusk and shadows.

Straight before him ran a wall, almost to the lip of the drop, and above its crumbling crest he could make out a square, tower-shaped structure. Even the pile of stuff against which he had been sheltering was man made. He had heard of these strange cliff castles, but this was the first time he had seen one.

“All right.” Herndon swung in, the last to cross. “Take cover along the outer ruins and thin out. Pick a place that’ll put your sights down there.”

He pointed a little to the left. Ritchie squirmed forward. But he never reached the place of his own choice, for the Sergeant rounded and pushed him down in an angle of the broken wall.

“Loosen a couple of these bricks,” Herndon ordered in a half whisper. “That’ll make you a loophole. And stay put—right here!”

Ritchie unslung the carbine and pulled out his knife. He had to keep his fingers bare while he dug and twisted at the powdering adobe. From time to time he stopped and stuffed his hands inside coat and shirt to thaw out the warning numbness. But he had the first brick loose and was easing it out of its age-old setting when Herndon returned to drop down beside him.

The Sergeant was picking away, too. But he moved with astonishing speed to catch a second brick which almost dropped out of Ritchie’s blue, raw-cold hands.

“Put those in—next to your hide and keep them there! This is no time to get frostbite!”

Reluctantly Ritchie obeyed, shuddering all through his body as the icy flesh slapped against the warmth over his ribs. At least the knife wind of the mountain slopes did not come here. If they could only have a fire now—why, it wouldn’t be half bad!

Herndon put down another brick.

“Take a look down there. And keep awake!”

Keep awake—that was good! As if anyone could sleep now! Ritchie hunched up a little and looked down through their improvised loophole. Some distance below, a wide ledge, which might almost have been the top of a small mesa, jutted far out. Fires burned there, and the curious heaps of dried brush covered with ragged blankets that were the lodges of the Apaches made lumps not unlike the untidy nests of pack rats. Blanketed squatty figures—probably the squaws, he decided—were moving around the fires. He could see only one red-turbaned warrior, a lookout mounted on a rock to watch the valley below.

“He’s your target.” Herndon indicated the lookout. “When the time comes, see that you freeze on him. And shooting downhill is tricky. If you’re not sure of the range, fire at that line of rocks—the ricocheting bullets are sometimes as good as straight shots. Ah—”

His voice faded. There was a sudden stir of activity on the ledge of the camp. Three warriors, conspicuous against the general drabness because of their fiery headcloths, were trotting up the incline to the camp. The sound of voices came up through the clear air, though not clearly enough to distinguish words. Tuttle was right; the raiding party was coming home.

The next hour was both the most miserable and the most exciting Ritchie had ever spent. Although cold seeped into his bones and his body ached with it, he dared not stir from his vantage point to ease cramped limbs. He watched the raiders gather in by twos and threes.

That fire which had tantalized them since their arrival with its fragrant smoke and promise of heat blazed higher, and another smell came up with the smoke, the hot stench of too-well-roasted meat. Ritchie swallowed. If he closed his eyes, he could almost visualize the roast ham which had been the centerpiece at Aunt Emma’s dinner on the last occasion he had been there. Roast ham with sweet potatoes and beans and—

Herndon’s sudden move snapped him back to the present. The Sergeant was up on one knee, his pistol resting on the wall, as he watched with very intent eyes a swirl of movement in the camp.

The murmur of sound from down there had ended in a couple of wild shouts. Ritchie’s hand tightened on the carbine. Discovery? No, no one down below was thinking of the cliffs. Instead the Apaches were packed in a wide circle around two of their own number. The men were stripped bare, their powerful stocky bodies showing as dark silhouettes of strength and endurance against the few patches of snow as they circled warily.

“Apache duel!” Herndon spoke more to himself than to Ritchie.

A steel blade in one dueler’s fist caught life from the fire. There was an attack, sudden, direct, but it did not get home. For one long moment Herndon watched the contest. Then his pistol lifted, and he fired into the air.

Ritchie’s trigger squeezed as the answer came from across the canyon in the clear notes of the bugle. A steady wave of fire poured down into the massed target below.

What followed wasn’t pretty. But then the canyon of the ambush had not been a tidy sight either—and the fuse which set off this powder train had been long in weaving. None of them doubted that Apache war was war to the death.

Wailing cries came up. Dark sacks of clothing fell to the rocks and did not rise again. A few escaped into the brush. But most of the red turbans fought, backs against rocks, making a firm last stand, sending up arrows which could not even nick the cliff tops held by their enemies.

Ritchie coughed. Powder reek filled the ruins, held in by the overhang. He coughed, squeezed the trigger, loaded, coughed. It was a mechanical business now. And after the first few seconds he did not even think of those below as human beings.

“Cease fire!” Herndon’s order was a shout which rang along the cave mouth.

Men were climbing down the far wall of the canyon.

“Want we should git down thar, too, Sergeant?” Tuttle called from his post.

“Yes.” The single word was curt. Ritchie pulled himself up to his numbed feet and followed his commander, stumbling over the piles of ruined adobe.

The dragoons ventured out into the camp cautiously. It wouldn’t be the first time a dead Apache came back to kill a careless enemy.

The camp itself was a poor thing, the sort of shelter animals might have sought. Ritchie had no desire to poke into the interiors of the bush huts which gave out the stench of unclean human bodies. He headed for the fire.

“Wonder what the cuss was fightin’ for—” Tuttle had come to a stop beside the brown body of one of the duelists where it lay sprawled across the rock.

“Woman or loot, quién sabe?” Velasco shrugged and held out a bundle of hide. “Maybe even this—”

From his fingers now unrolled a shirt of buckskin. Across it were sewn in rows and patterns a multitude of small objects: arrow points, bits of crystal, little bags plump with stuffing, even a cross of metal and—Ritchie recognized with astonishment—the looped chain of a rosary.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Medicine shirt,” Velasco explained. “The man who wore this was either a great chief or a medicine man. These bags now—they are full of hoddentin—the sacred meal. And here is wood which has been lightning struck—”

“But the cross—that rosary—?”

Velasco’s face grew bleak; his jaw seemed to sharpen. “There has been raiding across the border to get that. Those are the spoils of warfare.”

“Hey, Sergeant, lookit this here!” One of the dragoons dragged a lance up to the fire. “This ain’t Injun stuff!”

Something in the curve of the old metal head was vaguely familiar to Ritchie. He must have seen one like it somewhere.

“Old Spanish,” Herndon said after examination. “Could have been brought by Coronado himself.”

“Yep.” Tuttle spat into the flames. “I’ve heard tell as how they found a skeleton out in the desert aways some years ago. Had it a helmet ’n armor on—one of the old fellas from down Mexico way who came up here huntin’ gold. No tellin’ where this here’s come from ner how long it’s been passin’ from hand to hand—”

Velasco folded the medicine shirt and slipped it under his belt. “I trust,” he spoke to Tuttle, his teeth an amused flash of white, “you are not neglecting to explore their bullet pouches, my friend.”

“No. But ’twon’t do much good. They only had ’em two-three trade guns, that’s all. ’N here’s the total.” He took his hand out of his pocket and opened it. On the palm were four balls made to fit the muskets of an earlier day.

“Can buy myself a couple of good chaws with these here. They’re gold,” he told Ritchie. “Injuns think one metal’s as good as ‘nother for pokin’ holes in a man, so they run a nugget into a bullet ’n here yo’ are!”

“Lay the bodies out over here. Then fire the huts—” Herndon broke into the circle warming by the fire.

Ritchie helped with the grisly task of clearing the battle ground.

“Leave ’em to the wolves, eh? Like they left our boys!”

Herndon rounded on the man who said that. “Their women are back there. We’ll leave them to their own folks,” he snapped. “But get fire into those huts and be quick about it.”

Three of the dragoons took burning branches from the fire and hurled them into the piles of brush. The flames crackled up into vicious and devouring life as the detachment prepared to march.

The women and children who had escaped, where would they go now? Their supplies were gone, and it was beginning to snow again. Ritchie wrenched his thoughts away from that path. He’d better keep thinking what it meant to the peaceful ranches and travelers in the valleys below to have even one rancheria wiped out—its manpower never to go raiding again.

They moved along the canyon at a sort of shuffling trot, still alert to every bit of movement behind them. They were close to the end of the canyon when one mitten was shaken from Ritchie’s hand. He stopped to recover it and so, by a hair’s breadth, escaped the arrow which skimmed past his shoulder to splinter against stone.

A thin whimper marked the miss. There was no time to aim—and nothing he could see to aim at. Knife in hand he plunged back toward the pile of loose rocks which marked an ancient slide. And, by the very quickness of his move, he cornered the enemy.

It was a very small specimen of fighting man who faced him defiantly, back against the canyon wall. There were wild dark eyes staring into his, a tangle of black hair looped back with a red cloth string, a thin face sharpened by desperate fear into the muzzle of an animal.

Ritchie put his knife back in its sheath and reached out his hands.

“Look here, kid, nobody’s going to hurt you—”

The captive flung himself forward in a frenzied attack, but Ritchie had braced himself against that very maneuver. He caught and held the skinny little body in spite of its flailing arms and kicking legs. Then the head darted down, and teeth sank into the flesh of his bare hand.

With a quick hot word Ritchie pulled away, but he still kept his grip on his captive.

“What the—!”

Herndon stopped short as Ritchie and the struggling boy careened from behind a boulder and crashed into him. There was a moment of tangled battle, and then they separated. Ritchie, his wounded hand held stiffly before him, was still clutching the little boy’s arm, but the Sergeant had an even tighter hold on the nape of the Apache’s neck.

“Look out! He bites!” Ritchie’s grasp of that too-thin arm was anything but gentle.

“Maybe you would, too, if the only weapon you had left was your teeth!” Herndon commented. “Let go now, I have him.”

Ritchie nursed his injured hand. A row of bright red dots marked the skin across his palm. It hurt out of all proportion to the extent of the damage. Herndon’s control of the Apache was better than his. Either the Sergeant’s demeanor had effectively cowed the boy, or else he had wasted all his strength in the struggle, for now he was standing quite still while Herndon twisted a loop of rawhide around his hands, fastening the other end of that leash to his own belt.

“What will—?”

“We do with him?” finished Herndon. “Take him in with us. If we leave him here, he’ll starve or freeze. This snow will blanket the trails of his people so that he can never find them. Now—” He repeated a few guttural words to the boy.

The young Apache stared stolidly before him as if neither of the dragoons were there. But when the Sergeant started down the trail and gave a short jerk to the leash, he spat out a stream of harsh words in a high thin voice, then held up his head and marched bleakly along, paying no more heed to his captors.

“What did he say?”

“He was just condemning all Pinda-lick-o-yi to a region a great deal warmer than the one we now traverse.” There was a hint of laughter in Herndon’s answer.

“Pinda-lick-o-yi?” Ritchie twisted his tongue about the word.

“White eyes. That’s the Apache name for us. Ours for them—Apache—isn’t much better. That just means ‘enemy’. They call themselves simply ‘The People.’”

“Wal, got yoreselves a scalp still walkin’!” Tuttle observed as they caught up with the rest. “Took two of yo’ to bring him in, ’n”—those keen eyes had not missed Ritchie’s cradled hand—“he set his mark on one of yo’ into the bargain.”

“Little varmint!” One of the dragoons shifted the sling of his carbine. “Better knock ’im on the head, Sergeant, or he’ll knife yo’ first chance he gits. These rock snakes are pizen from their cradles.”

Herndon tugged the leash gently, bringing the captive up to them. “Now”—again that note of humor colored his tone—“do you all think this character such a desperate one?”

A miserable collection of rags was tied over a small body too thin but still wiry. The high-held head was crowned with an untamed mop of coarse black hair through which the Apache gave them back stare for stare. Suddenly Ritchie was ashamed of the way he had handled those matchstick arms. He dragged off the wool scarf he wore under his coat and pulled it clumsily around the boy’s neck with his unhurt hand. Then he spoke directly to Herndon.

“Can he march? Those moccasins don’t look very tough—”

“Lord!” The man who had spoken of varmints laughed cruelly. “The bottoms of his feet are leather. They ain’t human—the Apaches—they’re half-lion, half-bear. He’ll march us all out on our feet—if he has to!”

But the Sergeant had taken a small package out of the front of his coat and opened it to display a pair of heavy socks and a second pair of moccasins. He signed the boy to sit, and when the Indian paid no attention, swept him off his feet and with Tuttle’s aid got both socks and moccasins on him.

“Let’s go!” He was on his feet again. “We’d better reach the horses and be heading out of the mountains before the storm closes in.”

Ritchie glanced up at the mountain peaks above. The thick curtain of clouds which had hung there most of the morning was more dense. And certainly the snow was falling faster; the fine mist of spinning particles was taking on more weight and substance.

“Hm.” Maybe no one but Ritchie heard Tuttle’s mutter. “The game’s made, ’n the ball’s rollin’, gents.”

That had been the cry of the gambler in Santa Fe. He shivered. The game had started, but what were the stakes this time—their own lives?

5

“A Right Smart Lot of Snow”

The canny black Ritchie was riding was foot-sure and steady—even over a trail which had ceased to exist sometime back except as a white-blanketed cut through never-ending heights. Above, the gray clouds had broken, and now the air was thick with whirling flakes which muffled sound and hid from sight the men ahead. When they halted, Ritchie almost rode down the very man who had signaled the stop.

By tramping and beating down drifts, they achieved a pocket under the overhang of the cliff. As Ritchie rubbed down the steaming black, he wondered how long the gelding could keep going on the handful of corn which was all that remained in his provision bag. Tuttle’s mule was gnawing hungrily at a pine branch, and two of the horses reluctantly followed its example.

The fire they huddled about was pocket-sized. Forage for enough wood to enlarge it would have taken them out of sight. And both Tuttle and the Sergeant were against that. It was Herndon who outlined their position in frank enough words.

“We’re staying here until it clears. Wander out in this and lose our bearings, and that’s the finish!”

“Stay here ’n starve!” burst out one of the men. “We ain’t got more’n ’bout two days food with us—”

“Two days full feed can make ’bout five or six short rations,” Tuttle pointed out. “We draw up our belts a mite maybe. Git out in this stuff, man, ’n we can be goin’ six ways from Sunday ’n not know it! Want them fellas to have the last word?”

Down the wind came a long mournful howl. The horses stamped uneasily, and the men glanced over their shoulders into the gray mist of the outer world.

Something moved against Ritchie, hunching close enough to make him feel real pressure. He looked down. The little Apache was holding his hands out to the fire. He did not raise his eyes. But, when again that dismal howl came floating through the snow, he shivered. Ritchie picked up one of the blankets he had just pulled off his horse and dropped it around the small bony shoulders. Brown claw hands caught at its edges and whipped it tighter, so that only darting eyes could be seen through a slit.

“Turn in our rations, huh?” Kristland sounded slightly shocked. “ ’N who’s goin’ to divide ’em? Some of us have bin more savin’—”

Herndon’s remote, tired voice still held a patient note. “We’re all in this together, man. If we don’t share and share alike, work, food, clothing, we may not be able to make it.”

Ritchie had already pulled out the too-small bag of his own food, and now he passed it along to lie beside those Herndon, Tuttle, and Velasco had already laid down. With visible reluctance and some grumbling they all added their shares.

There was the native corn meal, hardtack, some jerky as brown and hard as the wood it so closely resembled, and a lump of the sticky yellow mescal—the sugar-energy of the Indians. Herndon measured the small hoard with his eyes before he touched it. Then he asked a single question of the scout.

“What about game?”

Tuttle shook his head. “Can’t do any huntin’ in a storm. Later maybe we can scare us up a mountain bird or two. But this ain’t huntin’ weather.”

No, it wasn’t hunting weather, and it wasn’t traveling weather either. As Ritchie scooped the half cave out of the snow to hold his blankets, he missed Sturgis. The Southerner’s fatalistic approach to life might even be cheering tonight. He packed the wettest of his blankets at the bottom and put his saddle at the head of the makeshift bed.

“Who’s your bunkie?”

He stopped slapping the snow from his trousers. Herndon, trailed by a small lump muffled in a blanket, stood there.

“I’ve been with Sturgis, sir—”

“Hmm. We’re putting two men together for warmth. Three here—if you have no objection.” The Sergeant dropped his own saddle to rest beside Ritchie’s and began to spread his blankets with the skill of an old campaigner. As he worked, he glanced several times at the diminutive Apache.

“Let us hope that the weather is too cold to encourage the spread of wild life,” he said at last with a quirk of a smile. “There being no anthills at present to work for us in the morning—”

“Anthills?” Ritchie could not follow this at all.

“Anthills. When, in this country, one entertains unwelcome personal guests, the quickest way to get rid of them is to peel down and drape clothes and bedding over the nearest anthill. The ants go a-hunting and you get a thorough clean-out!”

But Ritchie was too tired to wonder whether the cold was as good a preventative as an anthill. He was asleep as soon as he crawled in. Some hours later he awoke after a dismal dream of being imprisoned in a black box. The sky was midnight dark, and stars glittered icily over its dome. It was so cold and still a night that he might have imagined himself on a world as old and dead as the moon. Only one pinpoint of red promised life and warmth—the coals of the fire tended by the guard. It must be close to the time of his own tour of duty. With a wormlike wriggle he freed himself of the tangle of coverings trying not to awaken either of his bedmates. Tuttle grinned as he came up to the fire.

“Have a snort of this—” The scout lifted a tin can which had been resting almost in the heart of the coals. “T’ain’t nothin’ but hotted water—which don’t do much ’bout warmin’ yo’ up proper—but it’s hot. If we had knowed what we was headed into, we might have brought us a proper warmer. Take Arizona whisky now—” He sighed longingly. “Arizona whisky’s good as a hoss liniment—’n we’re gonna need a hoss liniment—’n it’s good as a drink too. I’ve tried it both ways, ’n I know!”

“Stopped snowing anyway.” Ritchie tried to reassure himself with that observation.

“Yep. ’N it’s done a right smart lot of snow-layin’ while it was ’bout it, too.”

“D’you suppose we can go on tomorrow?”

Tuttle studied those brilliant stars. “Tomorrow? You mean today, son. Yep, we can head out. Only it’ll take a deal of footin’ ’fore we sight Santy Fe again. I ain’t smokin’ Jimson weed over that!” Seeing Ritchie’s bewilderment he explained. “Jimson weed in a man’s pipe makes him see what ain’t thar, or ain’t never gonna be thar. Injuns use it for makin’ medicine. Time to start the rounds, son—”

Ritchie stamped his cold feet in the snow and set off around the camp, visiting the improvised picket line where the mules and horses stirred uneasily and then quieted as they caught his familiar scent. Beyond the immediate circle of the camp the snow was a great unbroken expanse of white. Diamond crystals in it caught the moonlight and made cold fire along the wind-carved ridges. The frost was worse than Ritchie had ever felt before.

And the cold did not break at daylight when they dug themselves out, swallowed the few mouthfuls Herndon doled out, and started on. Within fifteen minutes they all knew only too well what back-breaking task lay before them.

There was no firm crust on that snow, and the animals sank into it almost belly-deep, thrashing as if they were engulfed in quicksand. The men went into the only action which could fight such stuff. Three abreast they attacked the snow on foot, another three following close behind to pack it tighter. They sank to their waists and flailed out with their arms when and if an unwary step sent them off balance and floundering. It was an agonizing job, pulling the strength out of them in the unequal struggle. At first they dug in with some show of confidence; then it became a dull weary round when sometimes they fell to hands and knees trying to beat the snow down with the sheer weight of their bodies.

You had to fasten on some landmark ahead, Ritchie discovered, and watch that, saying to yourself that you could hold out until you reached that reddish rock or snow-drowned bush. But even Velasco’s wiry strength and Herndon’s dogged endurance could not last through more than fifty continuous yards of such labor.

When the lead man or men could go no farther, they flopped aside and, their places taken, they puffed and blew and beat their hands together until the animals came up and they had to crawl to their feet and shuffle on until their turn came once more to face the eternal drifts.

The stuff was a nightmare. From apprehension and discomfort, the mood of those who fought it became red hate and flaming anger and then just a weary apathy, during which their fatigue-drugged bodies went mechanically through motions which their minds no longer reasoned. When they halted for the noon rest, Ritchie looked back. He could have moaned aloud. They were still within sight of the morning camp!

But the worst was not yet. The clouds cleared, and the sun broke through to make a blazing mirror of the snow. They stopped and broke open cartridges, blackening their faces with powder—the only remedy they knew against snow blindness. Scarves were pulled over faces, leaving only the merest slit through which to peep. But then the fight for a path must begin again.

Ritchie was almost too exhausted that night to eat. He sat staring at the portion of hardtack and the lump of mescal which had been allotted to him without really seeing it—sat there until someone shook his shoulder and ordered him sharply to eat. He obeyed as Herndon moved on to bully the next man into eating, all of them into making the beds that would save them in the cold, into hunting wood for the miserable fire that at least allowed them to warm their hands.

It was the sight of the fire which aroused them the most. Here and there a man made himself clumsy mittens of blanket to protect his hands during the snow crawl which must begin again with the morning. They no longer looked like even part of an army. Their motley winter clothing, wet and bedraggled, covered them lumpishly. Mustaches were no longer smartly pointed cavalry style, and even Herndon showed the prickly shadow of a beard on his drawn face. The gunpowder blackening made menacing masks for the whole party.

Wearily Ritchie dug in, and as silently the small Apache came to help. Seven or eight feet must be cleared to reach the ground, then some pine boughs broken off and trampled in the hole for a flooring of sorts. Two forked sticks set up on the snow to the windward with another across them and more boughs made the roof. It was the only shelter possible.

On the third day the first of the mules died, and they butchered the corpse before it could freeze stiff. The coarse meat was chopped and haggled off the bones and broiled over the fire which had been lit on the scene. And the tough stuff was bolted rather than chewed, in spite of the warnings of the scouts and the Sergeant. Soon after they started on, the remnants of the meat bundled up in the green hide, retribution struck with the gripping pain of cramps. Half-doubled with that torture, the men still fought the snow.

“What’s the use?” The words formed in Ritchie’s brain, and he found himself repeating them over and over in time to his floundering steps. It would be so easy to give up, to just drop out of the line and let the rest pass him by. Even while he was thinking that, he tripped and fell forward. Instinctively he threw out his sore hand in an effort to save himself and struck with his full weight upon it.

There was a flash of such pain as he had never known could exist, and he slid to the edge of a dark abyss. Someone was tugging at him, but he made no effort to respond. It was all he could do to pull his torn hand free.

“What’s the matter, son?”

That was Tuttle, he thought foggily, and did not answer. He knew that he was crying with pain, and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything but that burning throb in his hand, a throb which beat up hot and red right into the inside of his head.

“—his hand, I think—” More words from somewhere.

Tuttle reached, and Ritchie set his teeth on a mad scream when the scout touched his mitten, drawing off the clumsy covering and revealing a strip of stained cloth bound around puffed flesh swollen shiny red.

“Good—!” Whoever was holding him had sucked in his breath. “I’d forgotten about that bite!”

“Hold him!” snapped Tuttle.

Ritchie writhed and tried to fight as steel fingers clamped down on him, viselike, while Tuttle unwound the bandage. He couldn’t see what the scout had uncovered since one of the torturers who held him had humped a shoulder in the way.

“Let me go!” He thought that he had shouted those words with force enough to reach the mountains, but he had barely shaped them with twisted lips.

Then Herndon’s face swam through the mist which was closing in over him.

“We’re going to save your hand.” The chill clarity of those words struck home to him. He made a great effort and tried to come back. The mist cleared a little. He was lying on a blanket in the trampled snow track. The Sergeant had opened a small pack and was putting out strips of linen and other things. When he looked up, he spoke to Ritchie as if they two were alone there.

“This will hurt—”

Ritchie almost laughed—as if anything could hurt more than the throbbing which had beat through him since his fall!

“Bite on this.” Herndon thrust the shaft of a knife between his jaws. “All right, boys, pin him down!”

Weights clamped across his feet, his thighs, his shoulders, and arms. He could only twist his head. When those hands tightened their hold above his sore wrist, he could have shrieked. Instead he bit down on the knife haft.

Torture went on and on and on. Was Apache torture like this? Velasco was part Indian, and he must be one of those holding the hurt hand steady for them to work on. Maybe he was enjoying this; maybe they all were. It wasn’t possible to stand pain like this. He was screaming inside his head. Why couldn’t he faint—just go into the dark and never wake up again?

The weights which held him were shifting. There was a queer sound from without the boundaries of his own private hell. The throbbing pain was still there—with new refinements added. But he found that he could just bear it. Someone jerked the knife out of his mouth. Herndon’s face, powder blackened, hung above his for a moment and then was gone. Ritchie closed his eyes.

“—put him up on Jessie—she’s sure-footed—”

“Peters!”

“Son!”

They were pulling him up. His hand hung in a sling across his chest. With a sigh he opened his eyes. He was sitting up in the snow, leaning back against someone’s shoulder while Herndon and Tuttle led up the small gray mule belonging to the scout.

“You’ll have to ride,” Herndon told him shortly. “We’ll see you stick on.”

Ritchie didn’t answer; it took all the strength he had left to get into the saddle. He set his teeth against the jolts which shook his whole trembling body as the mule stepped forward.

“We’re pretty good medicine men, us,” said Velasco as he trotted along beside him later that day. “That hand, that was ver’ bad. Not fix it with knife and fire and you would lose it—maybe lose you too. Si, the Sergeant and Tuttle, they fix it proper. Good medicine men. Apache medicine man good, too. He has to be. Let six patients die—and he is roasted over slow fire—”

Ritchie’s answer was more grimace than smile.

“I’d like to do a little roasting over a slow fire myself.”

Velasco’s grin was wider. “Aha, once more you can make the joke, no? I do not think you will be leaving us this time. You are proper dragoon—tough like saddle leather and prickly like cactus. And tonight we feast—no mule meat. See?”

He pointed to the horse in line just before them. Tied on its saddle were several white-tailed birds, their limp heads dangling.

“Snow birds shot this afternoon. They are good eating.”

Ritchie could not remember much about that night’s camp, and the next day, too, was just a hot blur. He must have had some fever, he reckoned later. When life sharpened into reality again, he was still riding the mule. Herndon shuffled along beside him, and there seemed to be fewer animals in the line than there had been. He tried to count, and the Sergeant saw him.

“The horses—four are gone.”

Herndon nodded stiffly, as if the action hurt. “They gave out yesterday. How are you feeling?”

Ritchie ran his tongue over dry and cracked lips. The throb was duller, or maybe he had just become used to it. When he looked at the moving ground, he was slightly dizzy, but that was nothing.

“All right. I don’t remember much about yesterday though—”

“Several yesterdays,” amended the Sergeant. “But you’re still lucky, Peters. You might have lost your hand. Should have had that bite attended to earlier.”

Ritchie’s eyes dropped. So that was what they were thinking—that he had been too much of a greenhorn to look after himself? He tried to nod, and his head whirled so that he caught at the saddle horn with his good hand.

“It was dumb,” he began, hot at the thought of his own stupid carelessness.

But Herndon had pulled out his knife and held it so that Ritchie could see clearly the half moon of deep gouges in the haft. “You don’t do so badly with the teeth yourself,” he commented. “I wouldn’t care to have you clamp onto me like that.”

Tuttle puffed up through the snow.

“Thar’s cliff ruins ahead, Scott. Want we should hole up in ’em fur a breather?”

Herndon studied the sky. “I don’t like the look of those clouds. What do you think?”

The scout squinted skyward. “They’s nasty lookin’ all right. ’Nother set of drifts over these ’n we’ll be ’til June gittin’ out—”

“Let’s see the ruins.”

Herndon and Tuttle quickened pace, and the mule plodded after her master. At the foot of a rock wall they all came to a halt. About a third of the way up was the dark break of a ledge and on it the softened outlines of the squat houses built by the unknown men of the far past.

“How can we get up?”

Tuttle answered Herndon’s question by pointing to a line of holes cut into the rock.

“Seems like we’ll have a climb, Sergeant.” The dragoon who made that observation was almost jovial. “But them walls look snug, don’t they? ’N when the storm hits, we’ll lie dry enough—”

Herndon wallowed through the drifts to the climbing holes. He stood there, his chin cocked up, his head at an angle as he studied the ascent. Ritchie wondered how he was going to pull himself up there with only one hand. Herndon came back.

“Pick up your stuff!” he ordered the men who had put down their bundles. “And get moving.”

But no one moved, and the man who had commented on the snugness of the ruins stared at him in open amazement.

“What’d ’yuh mean, Sergeant? There’s a bad storm comin’, yuh kin smell it! If we don’t hole up, we’ll be goners fur sure. ’N this is a swell place to wait it out—”

Behind the mask of powder, growing beard, and fatigue Herndon’s expression was unreadable. But his voice was patient when he answered.

“Look at that climb, man. We couldn’t get the animals up. And they’d die down here in the storm. We’d have no wood for a fire, and then we’d freeze. Our only chance is to keep moving. So let’s get on—”

But the dragoon remained where he was, his feet set stubbornly. “Git on, if yuh want to, Sergeant. Me ’n them what’s wise, we’ll be stayin’ here. Git out in the open ’n the storm hits, ’n we’ll be all through—like thet!” He snapped his fingers, and there was a murmur of approval from the hunched figures closing in behind him.

“In two more days we’ll hit the stage station.” Herndon’s words were dug painfully out of his weariness. “We can make that easily if we keep to our present route without any lingering.”

“ ’N if we ain’t bowled over by that?” Winters, the dragoon, poked a finger toward the sky.

Herndon shrugged. “Pick up your stuff. We’re moving on.”

“We ain’t! ’N don’t try to pull the officer on us, Herndon. We ain’t no slaves of yoren—”

Herndon half crouched as if that last sentence had been a lash laid across his face. Then he sprang. But Winters was ready for him, braced to meet the attack. And, although the force of the Sergeant’s dive threw him off his feet, his fist struck home before he fell. They rolled, a tangled fighting blur in the snow, not like men but as clumsy panting animals, while the clouds swept in and the first white flakes began to fall again.

6

“They Brought All Their Sand—”

The fight ended as abruptly as it had started. Herndon got to his feet, pulling away from the limp body of his opponent. He stooped and slapped Winter’s face until the dragoon opened his eyes.

“On your feet!” In spite of its snap the Sergeant’s voice was only a weary thread. “Bring up the black, Stouffer, and help him on. We’ll move along the canyon here; that will give some protection against the storm.”

It was as if the ineffectual mutiny had drained the spirit from all of them. They picked up the few pitiful bundles of supplies they could no longer load on the worn-out animals and went on, Tuttle and the Sergeant in the lead.

Herndon caught now and then at a handhold on the rock as if he had difficulty in keeping his feet. But he did not drop back, Ritchie noted, or hold onto the stirrup of one of the plodding mounts as did the other men when they could. There was no more talk; they had to save their breath to keep going, shuffling through the tails of the drifts.

But the Sergeant had been right. In the shadow of the canyon the drifts grew fewer, and they did not have to fight for footing every inch of the way.

Winters slouched in the saddle of the horse just before Ritchie in line. He moaned once or twice and rode with both hands clutching at the horn. The snow continued to fall, but lazily and with none of the rush which had made such a tight curtain of the first storm.

Suddenly Ritchie saw something else on the trampled snow, a pinkish mark which made a pattern. He watched for it a while stupidly, without trying to puzzle out its source. And then he called to Tuttle who had dropped back for a breather.

“The snow’s pink—”

“Eh?” The scout had been rubbing Jessie’s patient nose. “What’s that ag’in, boy?”

“There.” Ritchie pointed to a stain which was darker and more pronounced. “See? Pink snow.”

As if it hurt him to stoop, the scout leaned over and examined the patch Ritchie had pointed out. Then he started, at a swifter pace than he had shown for hours, toward the fore of the party. When he returned, Velasco came with him, carrying an untidy bundle over his shoulder. It was the Apache boy.

“Can yo’ ride Star, boy?” Tuttle paused by Ritchie’s knee. “The critter’s been wore down so he ain’t so skittish, ’n yo’ can maybe manage him. Jessie, she can’t carry double now, ’n someone’s got to hold the brat—”

“Sure.” Ritchie slipped down from the mule’s saddle, giving his bad hand a wrench which made him set his teeth. “What’s the matter?”

“This.” Velasco whipped aside the edge of the blanket which wrapped his patient, and Ritchie saw bloodstained, tattered moccasins.

“Walked the soles off his feet.” Tuttle brought up the strong stallion, the most powerful horse in the depleted train. But Star did not plunge now or try any of his more annoying tricks, and Ritchie was able to mount him. They settled the Apache boy in the curve of his good arm.

“Dermont’ll give yo’ a hand if yo’ need it—jus’ sing out.” Tuttle indicated the man who plodded beside Winters’ horse. “Don’t drowse, ’n don’t let the brat neither! T’ain’t good—”

Ritchie nodded. He knew the menace in the strange lethargy which could settle upon a man in the cold. He shifted the boy and peeped under the hooded curve of the blanket. Black, blank eyes stared back at him, but there was a taut line of pain about the child’s mouth. To keep those eyes open—well, he could talk, though what he said might not be intelligible to his listener.

“What’s your name?” he began, not knowing that he committed a great and lasting sin against Apache etiquette with that innocent question. One did not ask an Apache to spew forth that sacred and particular possession—his own name.

With an awkward movement of his slinged hand he indicated his own chest.

“Ritchie,” he repeated slowly. “Ritchie Peters.”

Did or did not a shadow of intelligence cross the other’s small filthy face at that? Ritchie persevered. He said the word for the horse they rode. It became a challenge—to awaken a response from the boy—and on the tenth word he did. The bluish lips repeated the word for saddle. Ritchie grinned and began all over. This time his pupil echoed him.

“Time for a break, son.” Tuttle materialized beside Star. “How’s the brat?”

“Horse,” replied the student briefly with a strong accent and then gave his full attention to Ritchie again.

Tuttle gave a shrill hoot of laughter which turned all heads toward the little group.

“So I’m a hoss? Wal, I’ll be dang-shotted! Humped yoreself a-learnin’ that one, didn’t yo’, sonny? Anyway, this old hoss says it’s time to light ’n have yoreself a snack. Had us a bit of luck comin’ down the canyon. See?”

He led them toward a fire, and the smell of roasting meat hung warm and comforting on the air.

“Fool deer got hisself lost—jus’ nice for us. Mighty little lot to go round, but sonny here’ll have him a bone to suck.”

Ritchie chewed his portion a long time, trying to make each mouthful satisfy as much as a dozen would.

“Glad we didn’t hole up in them ruins.” Tuttle spoke louder than usual so that he could be heard around the circle. “When we was hidin’ out before the fight, I drawed me a place where a kit fox had bin furst—stunk like a skunk’s hole almost. Kin smell it yet!”

Winters grunted at Tuttle’s words and shifted his feet. He was watching not the scout but the Sergeant who sat a little to one side.

None of them could see much of Herndon’s face, but something in the drooping line of his shoulders made Ritchie uncomfortable. He wanted to cross the range of the firelight and join the Sergeant—to say something—what he didn’t quite know. But he did realize, deep inside, that if he dared to do that he would not be welcome. He swallowed his last bite and licked his fingers with a sigh.

“Yo’ can’t do anything fur him, son—”

Ritchie started at that low whisper from Tuttle. Under the intentness of the scout’s gaze he squirmed.

“He’s made what he thinks is a big mistake. ’N he’s got to fight it out for hisself—”

“Why? Because he fought Winters—”

Tuttle’s fingers twisted a small lump of tobacco. He seemed to be considering whether to consume this last bit of treasure or to preserve it for another day.

“A man’s head ’n his heart, his feelin’s ’n his duty, ought never to git mixed up. They do a lotta times. Jus’ that’s brought a sight of us out into this dad-blasted country. But if a man can hold onto his head, then he’s got a chance to be great. Scott—he does it most of the time. But he let his feelin’s git the better of him back thar, ’n now he thinks he’s damned hisself. He’s broken his medicine—as the Injuns say. He’s got to build up his walls ag’in. Now, like as not he’ll go too far the other way ’n freeze up—all ice. Remember that if he does, son. But if we git through this, it’ll be that iron in him what brings us in. ’N that’s the dead truth of it!”

When they started again, Winters refused to remount the horse. He wavered on through the snow with Kristland to give him a hand. As he passed Herndon, who stood checking the last man out, he spat into a drift.

“Better ride—”

“Huh!” Winters’ voice came thickly between his battered lips. “Want to make a parade of me like them brats, eh, Sergeant High-n-mighty? Wal, yo’ ain’t a-goin’ to. I kin foot it as good as the rest of the boys.”

Herndon made no answer. But he saw the horse Winters had been riding led out behind the stubbornly limping dragoon. Ritchie got back on Star and waited for the Apache to be handed up to him. When they were ready to move out, the Sergeant crossed over to them.

“Watch your hands and feet and the boy’s,” he said in a low voice. “If they get numb, sing out. D’you understand? At once!”

“Yes, sir,” replied Ritchie automatically.

“Don’t call me sir!” The heat of that was like a fist in his face, and he looked down into eyes that were blazing with real rage.

Ritchie swallowed before he found his voice. “Sorry—” But the word trailed off unheard, for Herndon was already setting off to the head of the line.

Coming down the canyon had indeed been a lucky choice. Through the rest of that dragging day the snow grew no heavier within its sheltering walls, and the footing became better instead of worse. They found one or two patches almost free of covering, where the animals were able to snatch mouthfuls of dried grass. It was on the edge of such a grazing ground that they made night camp.

The second bright spot in their day was the news Velasco had. With a smooth piece of snow for a blackboard and a twig for chalk he explained.

“Here we are now. And here”—he tapped another point—”is the stage station. Tomorrow I will take Star and ride through here and down. Then I will come back with supplies and fresh mules. So it shall be well with us—jus’ like ‘Left front into line!’” His voice took on the rasp of official command. “‘Gallop Ho!’ And we shall be home again.”

But none of them aroused to answer this prophecy. Winters, Kristland, and two of the others sat apart. Winters had shed his foot gear and was bending almost double trying to see his feet.

“Rub them with snow—hard!” Herndon dropped to his knees and gathered up a wet handful, rubbing it over the dragoon’s insteps. And the Sergeant kept to his task, accepting snow brought by the others in caps and cupped hands when he had used all within his own reach. Winters swore, a steady mumble, and once or twice he bit and tore at his mitten.

“Let me spell you, Scott.” Velasco elbowed the Sergeant away. Herndon leaned back and watched the operation with narrowed eyes.

“Frostbite.” Tuttle joined Ritchie. He was carrying the small case of medical supplies Herndon had guarded so carefully all through that nightmare journey. “ ’N he didn’t have sense enough to sing out when it started! Now Herndon’ll blame hisself for this, too—” He opened the case.

Ritchie, with no pleasant anticipation himself, slipped his hand out of the sling and braced himself for his nightly period of torture.

“Why’ll Herndon blame himself?” He wondered if Winters’ remedy of a mitten between the teeth would work for him, too.

“That stupid pig’s stubbornness kept him goin’ when he should have reported. Herndon’s near out on his own feet, ’n he’ll work hisself silly tryin’ to git that cussed fool out of his own mess!”

For several moments then Ritchie forgot Winters and Herndon, being very much occupied with certain sensations of his own. But, when he was free to slip his freshly dressed hand back into hiding again, he saw that the dragoons were still working on Winters with snow.

“Man—?” The Apache tugged at Ritchie’s coat and pointed to the group of men who were rubbing. Ritchie explained as best he could, and the boy nodded solemnly.

“Keep on with that snow,” Herndon advised Kristland who had taken over from Velasco. “Velasco—?”

The tough little scout arose in one lithe movement.

“Star has carried double all day. Could you take the roan—maybe after about three hours’ rest?”

Velasco studied his own crude snow map. “As long as I follow the canyon, it will be easy. After I strike the plain—who knows?” He shrugged. “I have seen drifts there that have grown like the mountains. However, what can one do but try? The roan, si, it is the best except Star. I shall try, my frien’.”

Herndon forced his own portion of the scanty food into Velasco’s hands, and perhaps in the package he fastened to the saddle was his rations for the next day. Velasco, after a cheery look around their fire and an almost flippant wave of the hand, rode his reluctant horse away from the circle of dried grass, thudding off into the dark. It was clear and cutting cold, and all but the finger tips of the searching wind were cut off by the natural walls around them. And they huddled together for warmth and for something else that they did not put into words—the companionship of shared misery.

Winters cried out now with the agony of returning circulation, the tears tracking through the grime above his great bush of beard. He pleaded with them to leave him alone, to stop, but they still worked over him. Now it was necessary to go some distance for the snow they must use.

Suddenly out of the blackness beyond the fire rim came a sound which brought fear into the open, a raking scream as if from the throat of a woman bound to the stake. Ritchie stumbled to his feet, expecting to hear the patter of arrows or the roar of the Indians’ muzzle-loaders. But Tuttle only laughed.

“Old Man Lion missed him a kill ’n is gonna tell the world ’bout it. Must be mighty thin huntin’ round these parts nowadays.”

Ritchie stared into the shadows, and Tuttle laughed again. “Don’t imagine things, son. He ain’t a-slinkin’ round out thar now—”

But Tuttle was wrong. Another shrill scream, this time from the lungs of a fear-maddened horse, tore the air. What was left of their mounts stampeded across the edge of the fire-lit circle, heading down canyon.

For one stunned moment they stayed still. But a second pain-filled scream, cut off in mid-note, brought them into action. Tuttle leaped for the fire, seized a piece of burning wood, and whirled it around his head as he bounded out into the dark.

The flames darting out of the wood struck answering green fire in the night. Across the broken body of Jessie, limbs taut, jaws dripping and agape, was a hissing gray cat, its ears flattened to the skull, a snarl lifting its lip from the fringe of fangs. For a single second it faced the fire; then it was gone in a long arching bound which carried it beyond the farthest reaches of their light. It was too late to shoot.

They went back to the fire. And for the first time Tuttle had nothing to say. He dropped cross-legged in the range of the heat and drew his knife from its sheath. With infinite care he set about honing the blade on the sole of his moccasin. When Ritchie drifted off to sleep, he was still there, still at work, now and again lifting his head to listen to the sounds from beyond the firelight.

The missing horses had not gone far. They had been too exhausted to really lose themselves, and the canyon walls had held them from scattering. By midmorning the next day, even moving at the snail’s pace they were now reduced to, the dragoons had come up with all but one of the truants.

But it was when they hit the plain that the worst blow fell. A scrap of brown protruding out of a drift, which appeared disturbed at the top, drew Herndon out of the line of march. It did not need more than a few scoops of snow dug out by hand to reveal the stiff body of the roan Velasco had ridden out of their last camp. Neatly through the white star between its wide, glazed eyes a bullet had been fired. One leg was snapped, the bone thrust through the thin hide of the shin.

Across the body of the roan Herndon faced Tuttle. Kristland came up, looked blankly at the horse, and began to laugh, a low sound growing into a wild peal that made Ritchie want to cover his ears.

“Lots of luck, boys,” sputtered the trumpeter between gasps of insane laughter, “lots of luck—’n all of it bad!”

There was the smack of flesh meeting flesh, and the trumpeter rocked back on his heels. Herndon flipped his hand across his coat with a wiping motion. Kristland had stopped laughing, but his eyes on the Sergeant’s back were bright and hard.

“Velasco”—Herndon’s voice still had all its hard, assured ring—“is a veteran scout. He knows this country, and there is no reason to believe that he cannot reach the stage station, even on foot. It is up to us to push on as fast as we can to meet the relief force he may have already started toward us. This horse is frozen; the accident must have taken place hours ago, maybe soon after he left.”

“Sure,” muttered the man next to Ritchie. “March on ’n die in our tracks ’n they’ll find us when the thaw comes in the spring. Join the army ’n freeze it out! On yore feet, kid.” He turned to Ritchie and put out a hand to pull him up. “Where’s the Injun brat?”

“Up on Star. Hope he’s light enough so that horse won’t give out too—”

“Ain’t more’n a bag of bones,” commented the dragoon critically. “But none of us are exactly fatties now. ’N we won’t make pretty corpses—’nough to scare the guts outta the fellas as will find us.”

No one answered that sally. They had come again to a place of drifts through which they had to beat their way as they had on the first dismal days of their march. Only this time the heart was almost gone out of them; their last hope had flickered and died with the discovery of Velasco’s horse.

It was Tuttle and the Sergeant who kept them on their feet and moving. Men who fell were pulled, even beaten up again, pommeled until they escaped punishment by crawling forward a step or two. Half-dead horses and mules which could barely drag their hooves were brought up and bodies thrown across them, the same bodies stung into wakefulness by constant slaps and punches. Toward the end Herndon stripped off his belt and was using it with grim energy to keep them going.

And when help came, they simply didn’t believe in it. There was some sort of noise up ahead which meant nothing to their dulled ears. They did not even look up from the trampled snow—that snow which must be eternally beaten down and down.

Ritchie stumbled into the man who had been in front of him. Mechanically the boy began to edge around him, thinking that he had given out from trail-making. But the man caught at him as he brushed by.

“Look—” His voice quavered, and he blinked rapidly. “Can yo’ see them, too?”

Ritchie tried to shake free. Then he heard something—a confused shouting. And above it rang the call of a bugle. Across the drifts, coasting up and down like a ship beset by a rising sea, came a sled pulled by a four-ox team. But spurring ahead of this plodding bulk was a knot of mounted men, the snow dashing up like foam around the stamping hooves of their horses.

As if something had pulled all the stiffening out of him, Ritchie dropped where he stood. He could not wink his eyes free of a swimming film which blurred the world, and salt burned across his cracked lips. He heard a voice from far off saying with emphasis:

“They sure brought all their sand with ’em!”

It was heaven to lie flat in the ox sled, even if his head and shoulders were supported by another uneasy body and someone’s long legs crowded his. He drifted off into a shadow world which had little connection with reality and never remembered their arrival at the stage station or the second journey on to the fort.

A stab of familiar pain brought him back at last. Overhead was a roof of strips of dusty canvas. He lay on a hard cot, and working on his hand was the post surgeon who tut-tutted sharply at what he had found beneath the bandages. Turning to reach for an instrument he encountered Ritchie’s open eyes.

“Awake are you?”

Ritchie muttered assent.

“Well, you’re a lucky young man, I can tell you. You’ll bear a nasty scar for the rest of your life. But thanks to those mates of yours and their treatment, you’ll still have your hand—which is more than poor Winters— And Velasco will have his feet, too—even if he’ll have to favor them awhile—”

He broke off abruptly and hurried through his job, as if to avoid questions.

Ritchie struggled to one elbow when his hand was released. “What’s the matter with Winters?”

“Frostbite!” The surgeon picked up his kit and was gone before Ritchie could ask another question.

“Yeh, tough on Winters.” From the next cot came Kristland’s voice.

“What happened?”

“Ain’t happened yet, but it’s goin’ to. They’re gonna take off his feet—gangrene. If he’s lucky, he’ll die. Wonder how Herndon feels— Winters won’t be forgettin’ him!”

“Shut up!” Ritchie turned his head and looked at the rough ’dobe wall. The pain in his hand seemed to feed the ache behind his eyes. He closed them, but his thoughts still went around and around. It wasn’t Herndon’s fault that Winters had been too stubborn and contrary to report his feet soon enough. Of course it wasn’t! But where was Herndon now and what devils must be plaguing him in his particular dark!

7

Cold-Pork Christmas

Through the wavy glass of the small window Ritchie could see across the barracks square. From the flagpole the Colors were forced into a stiff bar by the force of the wind, a wind which also scoured and broke down the drifts it had but moments before built. Dark figures were performing the evolutions of drill veiled with swirls of driven snow. He fancied he could hear the guttural snorts with which Kristland warmed up the mouthpiece of his instrument before he attempted to play the calls.

“Who is here?”

Ritchie snapped to attention and then relaxed as he identified the man in the door of the convalescent ward.

“Ritchie Peters, Sergeant Woldemar.”

“Peters—ach—yah. It is your hand, is it not? What says the surgeon of it now?”

“I’m on light duty ’til he gives the word.”

“Light duty?” Woldemar rubbed his chin. “Maybe I have now the answer for that. Light duties I have altogether too much of. Come now with me, Peters.”

Ritchie lost no time in pulling on his jacket and cap. He was so eager to be through with the dull monotony of doing nothing at all that he almost pushed Woldemar through the door ahead of him. But the pace of the young German continued to be quite deliberate as they crossed the edge of the parade ground to the orderly room.

Inside, an iron stove gave off just enough heat to toast anyone who might be pressed close to its round side. But the outer corners of the small room had an arctic tinge. Two rough tables piled with papers and a chair for each, with backless stools for—apparently—sinners required to do penance, completed the furnishing. One chair was already occupied.

“Look you upon my find, Scott.” Woldemar unwound the vast muffler which covered him from shoulder to eye level. “Here is a ‘light duty’ to serve us. Do you write a clear hand, young man?” He turned upon Ritchie suddenly.

“If I don’t, it wasn’t for want of feruling.” Ritchie fumbled awkwardly with the fastenings of his coat. He hadn’t learned even yet how to manage very well with only one hand. But now Herndon’s fingers slipped the troublesome top button out of its hole, and he was free.

“Sit here.” Woldemar pointed to one of the stools. “These shall be copied—so. And no smudges upon them afterwards.” Woldemar laid out the papers. “If your ink begins to ice, hold it to the stove. Now then, we work—yah?”

Ritchie set to writing, the pen oddly light between his fingers. At first he was interested in what he copied, but the monotonous lists of supplies finally made him sleepy. Woldemar picked up the first sheet he had finished and passed it on to Herndon. The Troop Sergeant studied it for a moment before he nodded to confirm Ritchie in his job. Private Peters flexed stiff fingers and pulled the second sheet to him.

“Well, well.” Woldemar regarded a letter which had come up on top in his pile. “Camels is it now?”

That caught the attention of both of his companions.

“Is Beale making another cross-country gallop?” Herndon wanted to know. “Thought he proved his point last year—that camels can be used.”

“Not Beale now—this is a Captain Sharpe—Captain Thornton Sharpe—an engineer with the camel fever.”

“The Chama job!” Herndon threw down his pen. “When, Fred?”

“Summer here it says. And camels—Pah!” The Sergeant spat accurately into the box of sand by the stove. “Where shall we put camels? They make horses and mules go mad—I have seen it happen.”

“But Beale proved them successful on long marches,” Herndon said thoughtfully. “They can live off desert country better than horses or mules—don’t have to carry fodder for them—”

“Yah. And they stink, and they bite, and the decent animals—they hate them! Give me no camels I beg of you!” Woldemar begged. “Ha—and what have we now—visitors?”

There was a hollow thumping outside the door. Woldemar got up and opened it to let the visitors in. Beside a huge gray, rough-coated dog padded the Apache boy.

“So.” Woldemar regarded them with raised brows. “It is already that time, is it? Well, come not to me; I have not the supplies. Go to him who has—”

Both boy and dog favored him with a single solemn glance and then passed on, to stand in front of Herndon’s table. Quite matter-of-factly the Troop Sergeant opened a tin box and picked out two small blackish lumps of the native sugar, which he put on the edge of the board. A long pink tongue flicked one away, and a brown fist closed over the other.

“Away with you now.” Woldemar made shooing motions with both hands. But the visitors withdrew no farther than the corner of the room, where they bedded down together for a nap.

Ritchie ventured to ask a question of his own. “What is the Chama job?”

Woldemar pushed back his chair. “Ach, for that story you must ask Sergeant Herndon. It is partly his dream—is it not?” he asked over his shoulder.

Herndon was frowning at the paper he held. “We haven’t time for chatting.”

Ritchie flushed and gave his full attention to his list. Their quiet was broken only by the mess call, but it was with relief that Ritchie put on his coat. But he couldn’t escape that easily. Woldemar fell into step with him as they went out of the orderly room with the staghound and the Apache for escort.

“That is one smart dog,” Woldemar commented. “He is a staghound—belongs to Lieutenant Gilmore. But he is very, very smart, that one. Once he was bitten by a rattlesnake. The Lieutenant did what was to be done, burned out the bite with gunpowder, and brought him fast to Dr. Billings. Again they hurt that hound bad, cut away skin, burned with caustic—all bad, hurting things. But the hound—he knows it was good for him.

“So once again he is bitten. This time the Lieutenant is not with him—he had run away to hunt rabbits alone. So in he comes, all by himself, and he goes to Dr. Billings’ quarters, and he holds up to the doctor that bitten paw to be treated. Yah, he had brains, does that hound. If I were going upon a trail, I would wish him with me. At bull-hunting he is very good—”

Ritchie swallowed the boiled pork, the stewed, dried apples, and the scalding coffee. Since he had had no orders to the contrary, he supposed he must report again to the orderly room. But the thought of spending the afternoon at work under Herndon’s disapproving eye was a little daunting. He lingered over his food as long as he could and was pleased that Sturgis caught up with him on the way back.

“When are you coming back to our palatial quarters?” the Southerner wanted to know. “I’ve kept an eye on your bunk and—”

“The Doc won’t let me go yet. I’m in the orderly room—copying stuff—”

Sturgis whistled. “Boy, you were born with Lady Luck beaming right down at you. Nice warm orderly room—and me out freezing on this plain. If it weren’t for the Colonel’s bright eyes, I might be in all cozy with you. He’s made and broke me so often I put my chevrons on with hooks and eyes. Now he just doesn’t try to raise me from the lower ranks any more. How’s working with His Lordship? Good thing he’s keeping to cover right now. The men aren’t any too pleased over Winters. But it was better for the poor chap to peg out the way he did than drag out life as a cripple.”

Ritchie stopped. “Why does every one blame Sergeant Herndon for that? Winters was stubborn enough not to let anyone know he was frosted until too late. Was that the Sergeant’s fault? And when he discovered what was wrong, he certainly did what he could. I was there—I saw how they worked over Winters’ feet. They rubbed almost all night long! If they’re blaming Herndon, it’s a blasted shame!”

Sturgis was laughing. “Turkey cock! Goin’ to burst some day if you don’t watch out. What’re you so worked up about anyway? Old High-n-mighty isn’t any special friend of yours—or is he?”

Ritchie did not miss the veiled hostility coloring those last three words. “No, he’s no friend of mine. I don’t think he wants any friends. But I’ve got a hand on my left wrist. And if it wasn’t for Herndon and a couple of others, I wouldn’t have. It was he who kept us on our feet and going; we would have died in our tracks if he had let us!”

“I’ll admit he has guts,” Sturgis agreed more soberly. “They say his hands were frozen fast to the bridle of the horse that was carryin’ Winters, and they had to peel his gloves from his hands, strip by strip. But he’s such a cold fish that nobody likes him. Can you get a pass for tomorrow?”

“Why?” asked Ritchie flatly. “I’m broke too now—”

“Once in town with me was enough, eh?” Sturgis grinned. “Oh, but this time is different. I’ll swear to that. Company K’s thinkin’ about Christmas. The paymaster never got here, but one or two of the boys think they can borrow, and we’re makin’ up a party to explore the resources. No bar trips, I assure you—”

“I’ll see—” Woldemar was turning in at the orderly room. He’d better hurry before he gave Herndon a chance to be sarcastic.

The cold—that certainly spelled Christmas. But—Ritchie eyed the orderly room with frank disfavor—the surroundings were not conducive to belief in that festive date. He blew vigorously and with some show on his fingers and scowled down at the papers before him.

However, their afternoon of toil was not to be without interruption. The knock which brought up three heads a little while later had enough authority in it to lead Ritchie to expect the Colonel at least. And he stared somewhat slack-jawed at the muffled creature which shuffled in at Herndon’s call.

A broad-brimmed black hat had been turned into a sort of bonnet by the device of tying a scarf tightly over its crown until only a thin slit of daylight could be seen by its wearer. Shaggy buffalo hide formed the enveloping coat, which must have wrapped almost twice around the body it concealed. And from under its hem flapped a sort of black skirt, the sight of which made Ritchie jump to his feet—though he was sure that this could not be the Colonel’s wife, Mrs. Major Jackson, or any of the other fort ladies.

But the very masculine voice coming out of that strange assembly of coverings and the gnarled hands busy at shedding them were anything but feminine. Both Herndon and Woldemar came forward to greet the visitor with real pleasure, and he was pushed by their combined efforts into a chair by the stove.

“Padre Justinian! What in the world brings you out in this weather?” demanded Woldemar, while Herndon assaulted the fire into greater efforts at heat.

Out of a brown and weathered face very bright eyes surveyed them all and then darted to where the little Apache and his rough-coated companion had again hidden out.

From somewhere within his coat the Padre produced a small tin box from which he exhumed a glistening set of very white teeth. These he inspected carefully before slipping them into his nutcracker jaws to face the world once more a whole and articulate person.

“My son, in our lives there is no such thing as weather. Do you not ride out even in the face of a gale if your duty demands it? I received your Colonel’s message only yesterday, having been on a journey among my people. So this is the child he wishes me to take into our school—”

His attention was now all for the small Apache who had never turned his wide-eyed stare from the priest since his entrance. And now the thick gutturals of the boy’s own tongue flowed between those brashly gleaming teeth.

The Apache got to his feet with caution and, after darting a suspicious glance at the soldiers, came across the room to stand before his questioner. After a while he even replied with a stiff word or two.

And at winning that response from him, the priest nodded briskly. “It is well. He shall come to our school. In time, my sons, I may offer back to you a scout for your forces. They have good minds, these Apaches, and they can learn from us, even as we may learn from them. Your Colonel is wise in giving him into our keeping. A fort is no place for a child so young and so alien.”

So was Ritchie’s captive swept away, almost as if carried out of the fort upon the swirling skirts of Padre Justinian’s shabby soutane. Ritchie wondered how the child would take to the redoubtable Padre’s school. There seemed to be a brisk common sense about that preceptor of the untamed young which argued well for the future. And maybe the priest was right. When Ritchie Peters had brought back the biting young fury of the mountains, he had really entrapped a future army scout.

He went to hunt up Sturgis with the news, only to be drawn into the Christmas buying trip after all.

But the town expedition was a failure. Since all of Santa Fe knew that the pockets of army breeches were still empty, or so close to that that it made no difference, no shopkeeper particularly welcomed the delegation from the fort. Ritchie trailed along with the group of persuasive talkers who had been sent to bargain. But after their fourth failure, discouragement drove them to the bars. Among them they could raise the price of a beer. And there were warmth, light, and the latest Eastern papers, only five or six weeks old, to be read. But Ritchie refused to be drawn in with the rest.

He walked back along the street which led out to the fort road, his back hunched against the wind, kicking at lumps of clay and snow. And, in spite of all his efforts, his thoughts swung backward a year. The two high-stepping pacers and the light sleigh they had pulled, the crispness of the eastern air, the ride home from the station, Father at the head of the table—even then he must have been worried to the verge of his illness but he had not let them know—the last Christmas at home.

Well, Laura and May would be riding to church in the sleigh again this year. Aunt Emma liked the girls, and they liked her. It wasn’t too bad a life for them. He touched the three coins in his pocket, and wished he had something to send them—not that it would get there in time. It’d have to fly through the air to reach Washington Square by the day after tomorrow.

There were one or two shops along the street—mean little holes in the wall. He’d like to send the girls each one of those lace head scarves the ladies wore out here. The Colonel’s wife had a black one. But where was he going to get forty dollars? He couldn’t even send one of those pound cakes of native sugar or a stick of horehound.

Something crinkly, rose and gold, fluttering in the air drew his attention to the doorway of a shop. He crossed the drifts to see what those long paper streamers could mean. And because the sign was so unlike the others, he went in.

There were odd spicy smells in the air, and he saw a thin curl of blue smoke mounting from a little bowl on the counter. In daylight the room might have been as tawdry and mean as all the others, but in the candlelight it was enchanted and strange.

“You wish—?” Words, singsong and different in tone.

A Chinese had slipped out of the shadows. His long dark blue gown, his ageless—and to western eyes—expressionless face was in stark contrast to the red Indian blanket pegged up on the wall behind him.

“Tea—coffee—?”

“No.” Ritchie was embarrassed. “It was the sign.” He pointed with a mittened thumb to the streamer.

“File clackels? Si.” One hand went beneath the counter—to reappear holding a package wrapped in vermilion paper.

For the second time Ritchie had to shake his head. “It’s not the Fourth,” he began.

Then something else caught his eye, and he stepped over to examine a pile of small polished boxes. Some were carved with queer Chinese symbols; some merely depended upon the beauty of the wood for decoration; some were inlaid. Trinket boxes for the girls!

“How much?” He had picked out one of the less decorative ones.

“Five dolla’!”

He sighed and pinched the coins in his pocket. By no miracle did they total five dollars—or even two.

“You like?”

“They’re mighty pretty.”

“No five dolla’?”

“No five dollars, no four dollars, no three dollars,” Ritchie admitted with wry amusement.

“We balgin—you savvy balgin?”

“Balgin—?” Ritchie translated hastily. “You mean bargain?”

“Si—balgin. What you give—one box?” The shopkeeper selected three and then a fourth box. He tapped each with a long forefinger and pronounced the words slowly and distinctly.

“This mesquite, this maderone, this manzanita, this mesquite. You like?”

Ritchie looked them over carefully. The polished maderone was certainly dignified enough to meet even Aunt Emma’s strict standards; the manzanita one had an Indian design which would amuse Laura; and either of the mesquite pieces with their inlays would please May.

“I like.” He singled out the maderone one. “Two bits?”

“Fo’dolla’,” was the solemn reply. “Wait—”

The shopkeeper disappeared into the shadows. When he returned, he had a small tray on which stood two handleless cups equipped with lids. One he set before Ritchie with a ceremonious gesture.

“Tea. You dlink—cold—”

“It sure is,” Ritchie agreed. He put aside the lid of the cup, and the fragrant steam, different from any tea scent he had known before, met his nose. He drank slowly, and the fragrance became part of the tang on his tongue.

“Look here.” He put down the cup. “I really haven’t enough money to pay for these.” Out of his pocket he brought the sum total of his current wealth and dumped it on the counter. The coins looked even less than they had felt.

But the Chinese merchant refused to look. “Balgin,” he repeated firmly.

“All right!” Ritchie laughed. “Now that you know the worst, I’ll bargain.”

It was warm in the store; the tea was stimulating; and the stubbornness of the Chinese intrigued him. He “balgined.”

When the price reached one dollar each, the shopkeeper produced a sheet of red paper and started to wrap the three selected. Ritchie protested.

“But—see here—” He counted out the coins. “Honestly—that’s all I have. I can’t pay your three dollars!”

“You solda, you get pay—bling to Fung Yu then tlee dolla’.”

“But you don’t know me—you never saw me before tonight!”

“I see—you will pay.” The Chinese was tying a cord twisted out of straw around the package now.

“I sure will!” Ritchie took the bright bundle. “Thanks for the tea and—and—” He really did not know how to put into words what he wanted to give thanks for. But when he was out of the shop and back on the fort road, there was a warm glow inside him that was not wholly born of a cup of hot tea. What luck—seeing that paper sign that way!

Back in the barracks he gloated over his gifts. They were good looking with the satin-smooth finish. He was still rubbing them up when the food committee burst in, all talking at once. And through the babble he heard the bad news.

“Skipped—!”

“Yeah. Cold pork is what we’ll git now. Some Christmas!”

“Dirty trick!”

“Ought to have his slimy neck stretched!” The last was Sturgis’ contribution as he flung himself on the bunk.

“What happened?”

“What happened? That dirty, no-good”—Sturgis rapidly became both technical and unprintable in his description of certain personal attributes of the man under discussion—“Sergeant Camp has been collecting for Christmas—screwing our last pennies out of us. Well, he’s also had a bad run of luck at the table. And tonight he takes our funds and skips out of town! We’ll get cold boiled pork for Christmas—if we’re lucky—and nothing else!”

This calamity hung like a cloud above the fort the next day. Even Sergeant Woldemar showed none of his usual cheerfulness, and Ritchie scratched away at his writing, glad when he was overlooked. Only once was the disaster mentioned by the lords of the orderly room.

“Any chance of Tuttle bringing in some game?” Herndon looked up from his file of reports to ask.

“No.” Woldemar’s one absorbing interest, outside the affairs of Company K, was in the fauna of this wild country. He had tried to raise a fawn on mare’s milk, had tamed and trained squirrels, and had kept a snake-fighting road runner for two whole seasons. “In this weather the deer, they are gone, and the turkeys—they vanish! There are hungry Indians now begging in the town.”

“We might round up Diego. The men seem to like his show,” Herndon suggested.

“Now I will tell you one very odd thing, my friend.” Woldemar laid down his pen. “Diego, he has not come to the fort for weeks. I do not think that he is any longer in the town. He has not been here since the day of the paymaster’s ambush—”

“Hmm. Weren’t there rumors of a man with a performing dog visiting the Temple camp a day or two before they were ambushed? I was in Burwyen then, but I think I remember mention of that on the final report.”

“That was so. And it was Diego who was the visitor. I myself saw him—”

Herndon slewed around in his chair. “I forgot you were one of the survivors, Fred. So Diego was there. It might be interesting to know just how many other times Diego has appeared in forts and camps before a raid—”

For a moment the German sergeant stared, and then he laughed. “It sounds foolishment—what you talk now, Scott. You have read too much, maybe, of those wild adventure tales in the Ledger. You see a spy in Diego. He is no Indian—he is Mexican. His family, they were all killed by the Apaches. He would not act as a spy for them.”

“And who told us that sad story about his family? He did. No, we might never be able to prove anything, but I shall feel easier if Diego keeps away from here. A very suspicious form of ill luck seems to follow him. And let’s hope that Tuttle can turn up something for dinner.”

There was silence except for the scratching of their pens until stable call. But Herndon’s shelving of the problem could not keep them from thinking.

When Ritchie went back to the barracks that evening, he found Sturgis pacing impatiently up and down.

“At last!” He caught Ritchie by the arm. “How much cash can you raise right away?”

“About four bits. Why?”

“I’m hot, I know it!” There were sparks in his eyes; he could not keep his hands still. “I’ve a pass. If I can get a stake and use it tonight, I can cash in. But Quinn won’t let anyone gamble on tick—I’ll have to have money to put on the board. Don’t put on that Puritan face, boy. I tell you—I’m hot! I know I’ll win tonight, but I have to have the stake to start with. I have to!” He beat his hands together.

Ritchie pulled out the handful of change and showed it. “Honestly, that’s all I have—”

The Southerner gave it a contemptuous glance. “Chicken feed! I tell you, if I can raise a starting stake, I can take the house. I know it! Well, there’s one way to raise ready cash in town!”

But Ritchie had caught that quick movement of the other’s questing hands.

“Sturgis! Don’t be a fool!” He tried to clamp down on the older man’s wrist, but he wasn’t fast enough. The other wriggled free with the object he had snatched and was already halfway down the room. Ritchie stumbled after him.

Sturgis must be mad. Sure, there were plenty of men in Santa Fe who would pay good money for government weapons. But if a man was caught selling side arms, it meant a court martial and prison. He must stop Sturgis before he got out of the gate. Once the Southerner got into town, he would never be able to trace him.

There was one chance, to round the barracks the back way and tackle him beyond the wall of the stables. Ritchie skidded through the snow along his chosen path. Sturgis would have to slow down to walk past the sentry. Then would be the time.

And his luck was in! Sturgis was just by the gate walking briskly. Ritchie flung himself forward. He did not know how natural his tumble would look, but all day men had been falling on strips of ice.

He hit the ground, and a moment later struck Sturgis. The Southerner let out a surprised yell and came down hard. Ritchie twisted and sent the elbow of his injured arm into the other’s middle. His right hand went into the flap of Sturgis’ coat, and seconds later the pistol was inside his own shirt. Sturgis lay still on the frozen ground as Ritchie bent over him solicitously.

8

Mounted Pass

“The Captain wished to see me, sir?” Ritchie stood to attention and hoped that he had forgotten none of the forms.

“Yes.” Captain Clark favored him with more than a glance. “Peters, isn’t it? Have you been passed for full duty yet?”

“Yes, sir. Yesterday.”

“Hmm. Woldemar has put in for a clerk, and it seems you have been helping him out while on light duty—”

Ritchie wondered what the Captain was leading up to now.

“Do you wish to put in for clerk, Peters?”

“No, sir!”

“It might mean promotion—a stripe.

“If the Captain pleases—no, sir.”

“How long have you been in the army, Peters?”

“I enlisted on the second of July last, sir.”

“And this is the second of February, 1860—almost nine months. Ever think of making a career of it? You have some education, I believe. There’s West Point—”

“I prefer to remain in the service here in the west, sir.”

The Captain laid down the paper he had been holding. There was a little quirk of distaste about his lips as he answered coldly. “So you are one of those, Peters? Well, what has happened before you entered the service has nothing to do with your life now. Continue to do your duty, and you will get along all right. Dismissed.”

Ritchie saluted and left. Outside he kicked at a frozen clod. Now he had put his foot in it—he and his big mouth. The Captain believed that he was hiding out in the army, had done something back home so bad he couldn’t face it. All because he didn’t want to be sent back east! There were others in the ranks who couldn’t go back—he was pretty sure that Sturgis was one of them. And maybe even Herndon. Anyway he had changed the Captain’s mind about appointing him clerk. He could be sure of riding into action with the troop and not being tied to a stool and a pen all day.

“Hey, Rich!” Sturgis came up behind him. “Didn’t you hear—mail’s in!”

“Mail!” He forgot about the interview as if it had never been and went pounding off in the direction toward which almost all the personnel of the fort seemed to be heading.

Later, when he shared his bunk with three fat letters and a package, he turned his share of the loot carefully over and over. The world it had come from seemed so far away and almost fabulous now. And yet he had once been a part of it. He carefully slit the first envelope.

Laura wrote elegantly with curly capitals, her violet-ink words marching in slightly crooked lines down the page a little extravagantly. It was almost like hearing her talk. But what she spoke of was so foreign to him now that he had to reread sentences and sometimes whole paragraphs to understand.

May was more staid, careful to put in what she thought might interest him most, but the notes about the doings of his former schoolmates were also far removed from here and now.

As he read, he flexed his scarred hand as he did conscientiously whenever he thought of it. Herndon had suggested doing that as a remedy for the stiffness which had frightened him so much when the last bandage had been removed. And now he glanced from the page he held to that hand bearing the twisted red brand which would never fade. They didn’t go very well together.

A little reluctantly he opened Aunt Emma’s letter. With its stiff phrasing he oddly felt more at home. Sometimes, he chuckled, sometimes Aunt Emma sounded just a little like Sergeant Woldemar!

“Good news?”

Sturgis was shuffling together the pages of the one letter he had received. And from his looks it had not contained any of that commodity.

“Just my aunt. Her ideas of army life are a little peculiar at times. Bad news?”

“Oh, they’ve hung that troublemaker John Brown. My kid brother went to see him turned off. D’you know, Rich, if those abolitionists don’t keep their long noses at home and tend to their own business, there’s going to be a smashup before long. A bunch of northern hypocrites can’t come down and tell us what to do!” He stuffed his letter in his pocket. “Every state has a right to decide its own affairs—”

Ritchie frowned. “But what if it decides against the good of the country as a whole? Look here, Sturgis, suppose this arguing does keep up until somebody touches off a powder keg—why, it might even mean war!”

Sturgis shrugged. “That’s what I’ve been saying. If they don’t leave us alone, there’s always secession. Wouldn’t take us long to teach those Yankees to stay home where they belong—”

“Us? But, Sturgis, you’re in the army—the Army of the United States!”

“And just how long do you think this army is going to last if there is a break between the states? My young innocent, maybe Herndon, Woldemar, and a few other diehards will be left here high and dry, sitting on their tails and wondering how long they’ll be safe before the Apaches learn what’s up. The rest of us will be elsewhere.”

Ritchie slowly refolded his letters.

“But, if the army goes, then the Apaches would think they had won. There would be raiding from the Mexican border clear up to the Mormon towns—”

“Maybe and maybe not. If the army pulled foot, there’d be a lot of settlers go with us. Wouldn’t be much left in the country after a while. And who would care—honestly? Do you think anyone back in Richmond or Atlanta or New York or Boston cares about this death trap? We could be all wiped out tomorrow, and maybe one small paragraph would be written about us—appearing on the back page of some eastern paper. Why, to most people back east, there isn’t any such country as New Mexico at all. And why should there be? Stinking pest hole where you either starve, freeze, or die under Apache knives! We’d better get out and leave it to the Indians—they like it!”

“We’re still in the army.” Ritchie could not see the flag which hung outside, but he knew that it was there. And while it was there, they held this stretch of land against the coming of a war so vicious that no man liked to even think of it. He had never yet ridden to the smoking ruins of a ranch house and buried what the raiders had left. But he had heard plenty of tales told by men who had. With that flag gone the whole countryside would be a funeral pyre within the month.

“What’s in your package?”

Ritchie roused and accepted the change in subject. “Something from the girls—that’s Laura’s writing.” He unwound the cord and pulled off the wrappings.

“Will you look at that! Some one sure loves you, boy. That’s a nice bit of foo-fraw—”

Ritchie shook out a square of fine soft silk badly creased from packing. He had seen such neckerchieves. Herndon and one or two of the officers had them. They were invaluable in summer worn over nose and throat on a dusty trail to keep out the thick powder. This was a glowing golden shade, close to the glisten of a polished button. Sturgis touched the soft stuff wistfully, trying to smooth it out.

“You can have it up the snoot with the rest of us when you go sporting that. It’s better than the one the Colonel’s wife ordered from the east for him.”

“Glad I had the boxes to send the girls.” Ritchie folded away his treasure. “Maybe I can get them some of that Indian jewelry that Hastings was showing around last night.”

“Then you’ll have to take to cliff-climbing,” Sturgis answered. “He found that under a stone in one of those ruined cave houses. Scraped out the beads with his fingers and got that Chinaman in town to string ’em for him. They’re pretty, I’ll admit.”

But what Ritchie remembered was not Sturgis’ stories of cliff-house finds but his dark hint of war and disaster to come. On the other hand, the Apaches during the following days seemed to have withdrawn to the ends of the earth for all the news which reached the fort. And Company K settled into the steady monotony of drill, drill, drill, with only a paymaster’s visit and subsequent disturbances in the town to brighten existence.

“Peters!” It was Woldemar who caught him at the door of the barracks one day. “So you would not be a clerk? Why? Because you are afraid that when it is time for the guns to go bang, bang you will not ride with the troop? Ah, I see by your face that that is so. Maybe you are right—only a little bit right. But what do you do now with yourself?”

Ritchie grinned. “What do I do? Why, Sergeant, you know the order of the day. I have very little time for idling, I assure you.”

“Idling? And who was playing at monte the other night? Yah, always there is mischief for young hands to meddle with. That is why I now say to you come with us—”

“You? Where?”

“You will make yourself nice and neat, and then you will go to Lieutenant Gilmore and you will apply for a mounted pass. Having that, you will prepare to ride with us—hunting. Do you not care for that, Private Peters?”

“I’ll say I do! Right away, Sergeant?”

“Right away. We go to hunt meat for the fort and maybe learn a little about the country. Now hurry, boy, hurry.”

Four of them rode out of the fort with Gilmore’s lank hound and another as huge running easily beside the horses and the pack mule. The Lieutenant himself was not with them, but Herndon had authority to take the dogs. It was midmorning, and the air was clear. The snow which had blanketed them in remained only in draggled patches. Tuttle held his head high, drawing in great breaths, and Woldemar chuckled.

“Is it Taos Lightning you are drinking, Jesse?”

“Better’n that, Fred. That’s mountain wind; comes roarin’ down from the high ranges. Ain’t no thin’ like it no where’s else in the world! This is gonna be a fine day—a fine day ’n a fine trip.”

“Old buck swinging his antlers,” scoffed Woldemar. “The spring is running in your veins, Jesse. If we don’t watch out, Scott, he will be shelling the town—like a dragoon on pay day—”

“No.” Tuttle shook his head. “Ain’t no dragoon born can stand up to a Mountain Man. Me, I was with Bridger, ’n went with Cutler into the bilin’ spring country. I was runnin’ buffalo on the plains ’n keepin’ my scalp on my head ‘fore yo’ were britched, sonny.”

Ritchie urged the pack mule to a brisker pace and wondered for about the tenth time why he had been included in this outing. Certainly none of the three had ever given him reason to believe that they had very much esteem for him. And he knew very well that any man in the fort would be only too glad to be asked to ride with them.

They left the fort road for the open country, and Woldemar and Tuttle, still engaged in their mock dispute, forged a little ahead. Herndon dropped back to ride with Ritchie.

“This isn’t just a hunting expedition,” he said abruptly. “We’re to do some mapping to the northwest—”

“Why?” Ritchie asked before he thought, but this time the Sergeant didn’t seem to resent questions.

“For Sharpe. He’s intending to travel up the Chama this summer to survey a possible road north into the Utah country. Roads to tie the posts together, to give us speed of movement, are what we need now more than ever.”

“Do you think there could be war—in the east I mean?” Ritchie asked the question which had plagued him since that talk with Sturgis.

“There might well be. It will depend upon the election. If a southern sympathizer wins, maybe there could be some sort of compromise—patch things up for a bit.”

“And if it doesn’t go that way?”

Herndon’s face was bleak. “We can look forward to as bitter a war as the world has ever seen. And God help New Mexico!”

“What would happen to us?”

“Ordered east maybe. And this land would be left with only token garrisons. That would mean the beginning of continual raiding. I give us a year—with luck a little more. And that is not much time in which to consolidate out here. That is why Sharpe’s expedition and the others like it will be so important this summer. A few roads—even if they are only mapped—can mean the difference between disaster and the thin margin of safety—”

“So Sharpe is thinking of heading into the ‘Tower’ country.” Woldemar had fallen back to join them. The hounds were running in questing circles out over the plains, disappearing now and again into the dry arroyos which nature had cut to trap the unwary.

“The ‘Tower’ country,” repeated the German. “Do you believe that story they tell about it—of castle towers mounting up into the sky? No one has ever confessed to seeing them with his own eyes—he is only repeating stories he himself heard.”

“Someday”—Herndon tugged at the tight collar of his jacket—“we may be able to learn more about these ruins. Maybe there are sky towers back in the mountain canyons. We have all seen the cities in the cliff caves. What kind of people built and left them—”

“The Old Ones?” Tuttle had come up in time to hear that. “I wonder now—could they be them old ‘Gyptians what were in the Bible, them what held the Jews in bond-age?”

“What about those Indians down in Mexico?” ventured Ritchie. “Didn’t they build regular cities of stone?”

“No.” Tuttle shook his head decisively. “No Injuns ever built them cliff places—they ain’t no Apache livin’ what could put two stones together ’n make them stick!”

“The Pueblos do,” pointed out Woldemar. “Anyway, these towers of which Velasco has spoken—those of the Gallina country—they are not even like the cliff houses.”

“This must have been a great country before the water went,” commented Herndon. And then he straightened in the saddle. “Hello! Boru has started something!”

The hound had given tongue and was lengthening out in the chase, a gray shadow joined by his mate. All four of the riders set spur and were off, Ritchie only delayed by the responsibility of the pack mule, which saw no reason to gallop over the countryside. Whatever the hounds pursued was heading straight for the dark line which marked timber.

Their prey was a coyote and an old and wily one. It made the timber and freedom before Boru could come up with it. But in the scent of the piñon and juniper the hunters reined up good-naturedly without too much disappointment.

Tuttle squinted up at the sun. “ ’Bout make Charlie Black’s place by mess call,” he observed. “If he’s at home, he can put us onto a good hot trail. Charlie’s master at huntin’.”

They rode on with loose reins, easy in the saddle. Woldemar began Ritchie’s woodcraft instruction under a running chorus of chaff from the scout.

But with the aid of the German sergeant’s keen eye, a dry tangle of leaves and twigs stuck helter-skelter like a handful of drift in a greasewood bush became a prairie mouse nest.

“Apaches eat ’em,” was Tuttle’s footnote to that. “Hunt ’em out with switches ’n broil ‘em. T’ain’t nothin’ in this country Apaches can’t eat ’n nothin’ he won’t!”

“Except fish,” struck in Herndon, steadying a notebook on his saddle horn as he made some of his constant entries.

“ ’Cept fish,” conceded Tuttle. “They think fish is deadly poison. Fish ’n owls—they can’t stand neither.”

Charlie Black’s place duly appeared on the bank of a dry stream bed, but it had a small spring in attendance. They accepted the hospitality of the small red-bearded man who came bouncing out at Tuttle’s hail and jabbered at them joyfully.

“I sure like company!” he spluttered as he hacked a steak off the deer carcass he had hanging in the lean-to. “Ain’t seed nobody else in a month o’ Sundays, fellas. Huntin’, eh? What you want—deer, lion, bear—? Bear ain’t good—jus’ outta winter sleep—”

“Charlie Black!” Tuttle swelled. “I ain’t no greenhorn. Sure bear’s no good. ’N how’s the Apaches bin lately?”

The small man flung back his head and gave vent to a laugh which appeared likely to split his scraggly throat.

“Not a bit friendly-like, Jesse, not a bit. Don’t know why, I’m sure.”

“Yo’ ol’ horned toad!” There was honest admiration in Tuttle’s voice. “They ain’t caught on yet, eh?”

“Still got my hair, ain’t I? No, they ain’t.” The little man suddenly dropped on all fours and rocked back on his haunches. His posture suggested the dog or wolf, and from between his lips came the nerve-shattering howl Ritchie had last heard in the snow wilderness of the mountains—the cry of the hunting wolf. As quickly again his stance changed; by some magic the angular lines of his body faded into the sinuous grace of a cat. And now the scream of a demented and tortured woman arose, sending the hounds outside into a frenzy of wild barking. Then Charlie was himself again, back at the fire and busy with his cooking.

“Yeah.” Tuttle nodded critically. “Yo’ ain’t lost yore touch—ner yore voice neither, Charlie. Yo’ see”—he turned to Ritchie—“the Apaches they caught Charlie ’bout five-six years ago. Got him stripped fur the torture ’n all. Then Charlie, he jus’ up ’n went mad on ‘em. He barked like a coyote, howled like a wolf, ’n let off steam like a lion. Then they let him go—pore ol’ locoed fella.”

Charlie chuckled. “ ’N I sat me down right here at their favorite spring, so I did. They jumped me here, ’n here I’m gonna stay. Makes ’em mad, but they can’t do nothin’. Kinda fun—’noyin’ them thisaway—keeps me from goin’ hill-nutty sometimes. Wal, boys, eat up good ’n heavy ’n then tell me what yo’ lookin’ fer. Good lion huntin’ in these parts now. Fresh trace all over the hills out back.”

Lion, it was decided by Tuttle and not objected to by the rest, should be their quarry. And when the meal was done, the mule and the horses were saddled and packed, and they went on, Charlie jogging along on foot at a pace which matched the mounts’.

“Put yo’ on the trail of Big Gray. He’s smart, learned hisself how to skin porcupines. Yessiree, kin git ol’ porky outta his hide as easy as peelin’ a grape. I’ve bin chasin’ ol’ Big Gray two years ’n ain’t seed more’n a tail-tip flirtin’ away whar I can’t git to him. Seein’ as how yo’ is an ol’ Mountain Man, Tuttle, yo’ kin have the runnin’ down of Big Gray. Looky here—his sign right enough!”

The hounds were sniffing cautiously at a queer little bundle on the ground. It was a porcupine skin turned neatly inside out—the deadly quills still intact. Woldemar greeted this sign of the lion’s skill with open amazement.

“But it—it is impossible! The quills—they would fill the mouth—”

Black shook his head. “Not Big Gray’s. He likes the critters. Found four in one day oncet—peeled right outta their hides. ’N he’s bin doin’ it ‘bout two years. I’d give a full poke of the right kinda dust to catch him doin’ it ’n see how he works it!”

It was almost as if the big cat, knowing that its trail would be followed, had decided to make it as difficult for pursuers as possible. Either the tracks led down almost perpendicular slopes, where the horses had to put their feet forward and slide eight or ten feet down smooth rock before they could get proper footing again, or else they led up cliffs where there seemed to be no holds at all.

“Maybe he grows hisself wings when he has to—” suggested Tuttle at last.

But Charlie Black motioned them forward. There were traces in the gravelly sand which they could read and which Herndon translated for Ritchie’s enlightenment.

“Deer stalk. See, there’re the marks of the lion’s tail—that fan shaped imprint—he twitched it back and forth just before he jumped—and that trough in the middle was made by his dragging belly fur.”

“Got his deer, too!” broke in Charlie. The signs of the kill were so clear that not even Ritchie could misread them.

“ ’N cached the rest away right here.” Several hundred yards further on Tuttle raked aside branches and sand to disclose the stiffened, bloody remains of a carcass.

“Ain’t bin back for a second feed—which means he ain’t gonna be. If Big Gray don’t come back within the day, he never does. He’s funny that way—”

“Nice haunch here.” Tuttle eyed the kill professionally. “Ain’t more’n clawed a bit. If we’d come up to it sooner, might have had us a good feed, too. Man could eat pretty well jus’ followin’ one of the big cats around ’n stuffin’ at the same table. Ha—Boru has the trail again—”

The greyhound was giving tongue at the far end of the canyon, and they hurried to join him. He was pawing at the end of an almost straight wall of rock.

“Silly dog,” panted Woldemar. “It is lion we hunt, not birds!”

“Maybe so. But Big Gray went up here.” Charlie pointed to some deep scratches in the rock. “That thar’s his sign.”

“Well, we can’t follow him!” Herndon measured the slope with a calculating eye. “This gray devil of yours, Charlie, must have suction pads on his feet!”

“Yessireel He’s a smart ol’ devil!”

“Smart enough to have hisself a good laugh now ’n then. Look thar!” Tuttle stabbed his finger in the direction of the cliff above them. “Leetle to the right of that thar scrubby bush. Thar’s a ledge ’n on it—”

“Big Gray!” Herndon was the first to follow directions.

For a long moment Ritchie saw nothing at all. And then a slight movement of the big furry head gave it away. Crouched on what must have been a very small ledge was a long sinuous body. And looking down at them from a snarling mask of cat rage were two slits of green eyes. The lips curled back showing fangs too sharply pointed to be pleasant. And then, as might a ripple of water, the whole long body flowed up and was gone with a last contemptuous flirt of the black tipped tail as it disappeared over the sky line.

“Ate hisself a big dinner ’n holed up for a leetle snooze,” Charlie deducted. “We woke him up, ’n he ain’t very pleased ‘bout that. Mighty mad tomcat jus’ went over that thar ridge—”

“Whar we ain’t goin’ to follow him,” Tuttle observed. “Guess we’ll go back to deer—they ain’t goin’ to fly away on us. Big Gray will be halfway over the next mountain by now.”

Woldemar swung back into the saddle. “It is true what they say of this land—only the Apaches and the rock lions can live soft here. We dragoons—we have to work for what we get.”

“Which will now be deer.” Herndon patted the rifle he held. “And shall we get to that business now, gentlemen?”

9

“Rather Have Me a Mule!”

The number of mounted passes which Herndon and Woldemar managed to obtain during the next weeks seemed unlimited, and Ritchie found himself—to his own secret surprise—included in the majority of them. On the other hand, when they were at the fort neither of the sergeants were particularly friendly, so he was puzzled as to why they asked him to join those hunting and mapping expeditions for which there was always a crowd of eager applicants. He finally decided that it was Tuttle who brought him into this select group and was increasingly grateful to the scout for it.

Because, away from the environs of the fort and town, he rode into a new world. And while they always came home with game strapped on the pack mule or mules, hunting itself was not the prime reason for their travels. Herndon and Woldemar were both map makers, and the German in addition gathered seeds, roots, and pressed leaves and flowers in his attempt to compile some sort of botanical guide to the region.

“Last time to kick up yore heels, son,” Tuttle said one morning as their party came away from a spring where they had camped. “We’re goin’ back to work—”

“A raid?” Ritchie’s hand almost unconsciously dropped to the light shotgun he carried across his saddle.

“Nope! Sharpe’s comin’ in to join us.”

Ritchie remembered. “He’s the camel man!”

Tuttle aimed a bomb of tobacco juice at the head of a polka-dotted ocellated lizard sunning itself on a nearby rock.

“I don’t hold with camels. Rather have me a mule any-day. Now a mule, yo’ can tell how he’s thinkin’, even if it is contrary. But them camels—a man can’t ever git hisself inside one of their heads!”

“They can pack from five hundred to over a thousand pounds and live off the country,” Herndon pointed out, “which is more than any mule can do. They don’t need much water, and their feet never give out. Don’t have to carry extra shoes for them.”

“Hosses ’n mules hate ’em. ’N they make mighty good targets for Injuns. Goin’ to try to git yo’ that bull today, Scott?”

Herndon laughed. “That bull’s more likely to get me someday, Jesse. But it won’t do any harm to trail along in his territory a while. He’s a monster, isn’t he?”

“Biggest critter I ever seed. Like to match him up to a buffalo bull ’n see which’d come out of that a-flyin’ with his tail up!”

“Where did he come from in the first place?” The tracks of the wild bull had been pointed out to Ritchie the night before, but the story of how he had come into this bush country had not been told.

“Apaches raided out some ranches down here two-three years ago. What stock they didn’t butcher went wild. This bull, he’s smart, he has been livin’ out here ever since.”

“That bull—he thinks like a man,” Woldemar cut in. “It is the truth—he thinks. I would not want him on my trail!”

“Well, no one has collected his hide yet. Let’s see if we can, gents.” Tuttle led off on a trail which even a greenhorn such as Ritchie could follow.

Yucca in dingy white flower began to stand out among the greasewood. The Spanish daggers pointed menacingly to the cloudless sky, and the tall branched stocks of God’s candles made avenues down which they threaded their way, avoiding the spiky, thorned arms of the plants as best they could.

“There he is!” Woldemar pointed.

Sure enough, a large white animal was moving slowly, grazing on a few scattered clumps of buffalo grass. Tuttle gathered into his hand the loops of the lariat that had hung by his saddle horn.

Almost as if he had heard the German’s exclamation, the bull raised his head and turned to look back at them. The wide spread of his heavy horns made a threatening triangle of his head. He stood with his front feet planted deep, and now that head went down.

Ritchie tightened rein. He had seen that stance before and he knew what it meant. As the head swung a fraction of an inch lower, he used his spurs.

The bull charged straight at them. For all his bulk he was as quick as a snake in dodging the lariat loop, making a skidding turn. The knot of horsemen broke up, and now they circled him at a distance. The bull’s heavy snorts of rage were loud as he hooked his horns into the turf and pawed deep holes with nervous hooves.

For the second time he charged, this time straight at Tuttle. The scout’s horse was away, skimming fleetly between two giant Yucca. Then a shot snapped out. The bull stood still for a long moment before he plunged forward in a second raging rush. But this time he was not sure on his feet. He tossed his head, and Ritchie saw a rope of bloody foam break from his muzzle. At the foot of a tall cactus tree he keeled over to his knees and then fell on his side.

“Got him!” There was boyish exultation in Herndon’s voice.

He rode up and slipped from the saddle, dropping reins for his mount to stand. As he drew a skinning knife from his belt, he walked toward the white body on the ground.

“Scott!”

“Gott, man!”

The warning cries blotted each other out. That white body was heaving up to its feet again. Herndon jumped back. But the horse he was heading for was already gone. One look at that rising shape had sent it running wildly away, snorting in terror. Ritchie’s shotgun was at his shoulder. He was able to snap out a single shot as the bull charged.

Herndon flung himself to one side, right into the torturous embrace of a cactus. There he clung in spite of the thorns while the bull pulled up, bellowing harshly.

Ritchie fumbled at reloading. But before he could get the cartridge in, Woldemar’s shotgun and Tuttle’s rifle both spoke. There was an answering cry of pain and fear, and for the second time the bull fell to his knees and then rolled over on the trampled ground. But this time they stayed at a safe distance until the round side stopped heaving and the snorting breath faded away.

It was then that Ritchie became aware of a monotonous sound at his left. Herndon was singsonging a few choice words as he pulled himself, with a maximum of rips, bloody scratches, and inches of torn skin, out of his refuge. He stood there dripping blood and nursing torn hands. As his companions came up to render aid, he glared at them.

“Go on—say it!” he spat out. “I’m the greenest fool that ever forked a horse. All right—I am! But get these unmentionable spikes out of me before I go crazy!”

Tuttle walked around him. “Big job—this,” he observed with a professional air. “Picked yoreself up a right smart lot of prickles that trip, boy—”

Herndon exploded, and his words smoked.

“All right, all right.” The scout made soothing motions with his hands. Woldemar was laughing openly, and Ritchie bit the corners of his lips to keep them sympathetically straight. “Git yore knives out, fellas.” Tuttle turned to them. “Might even be a skinnin’ job ‘fore we’re through.”

The extraction of the cactus thorns was a painful job both for the extractors and their victim. But at the end of an hour Herndon said briefly, between set teeth and with a very dangerous gleam in his eyes, that he now thought he could survive without their further ministrations and would they please go attend to the bull so that they could all get out of there and start back for civilization.

He stayed spread out on the blanket where they left him, gathering his strength for the return trip, while they skinned the bull. Woldemar regarded the horned skull regretfully.

“Such horns you do not often see. They would look good over the barracks door—”

“We can maybe pick them up later,” Tuttle consoled him. “ ’N the ants and birds’ll have the skull cleaned up for us too. Huh—what’s that?”

That was the sound of an army bugle, sharp and clear across the level ground. Ritchie was on his feet and snatching for the reins almost before the last notes broke. Herndon hobbled up, his face a thundercloud of pain and disgust but his hand out for the bridle. The Sergeant reached the saddle and gave a little screech of real agony, but he spurred forward through the thicket of cactus in the right direction. And the others were not slow in following.

A queer caravan was winding across the plain. The guidon slapping at its head and the predominance of dark blue shirts marking its length identified it as an army one, but the odd, lumbering, brown-gray beasts at its tail were not so easy to recognize.

“Sharpe ’n his camels!” Tuttle broke out.

“Let us join them,” Woldemar suggested. “It won’t take us long to load that hide, and we shall be able to catch up easily.”

Herndon shrugged, winced all through his body, and made a scorching comment. He stayed mounted, waiting for the rest to gather up the hide and load it. And the pace he set to join the caravan was anything but a wild one.

So it was that they came into the fort riding with Captain Sharpe. The mules and horses in the corrals scented the four camels. Heads up, snorting in wild alarm, they dashed around and around the enclosures like mad things and kept it up until the camels had been picketed on a line of their own some distance beyond the stables.

There was a lot of excited talk in the barracks as Ritchie came in, his saddlebags across his arm.

“Bite, don’t they?” one dragoon was demanding hotly. “Got teeth like sabres. Bet they could take a man’s arm clean offen him! I ain’t messin’ ’round with none of them babies—that I tell yo’!”

“Mules aren’t too comfortable,” Sturgis observed.

“Yeah, I know. Mules can swop ends quicker’n a woman can change her mind, ’n they’re as ornery as all git out. But they ain’t got necks like snakes, ’n they ain’t ‘bout eleven feet tall. I’m a dragoon—but I ain’t enlisted to be no camel dragoon!”

“What kind of luck did you have this time?” Sturgis asked Ritchie under cover of the continuing camel discussion. “How did our mighty Nimrods conduct themselves?”

Ritchie remembering several moments of the past morning snickered and then laughed outright.

“We got that big white bull the boys have been talking about. Tuttle took his hide over to town for tanning. Big enough to make a real rug.”

Sturgis rolled over on his bunk and lit a cigarrillo, puffing the acrid smoke out into the room.

“Turning you into a regular scout, aren’t they?”

Ritchie distrusted Sturgis in this mood. “Tuttle knows a lot,” he answered warily. “You can pick up quite a bit about this country from him—”

“Sure. Sure.” The Southerner allowed the smoke to curl out of his nostrils.

“I don’t know why they want to be bothered with a greenhorn like me,” Ritchie was goaded into saying by the other’s tone. “I suppose I’m a pest—and Woldemar and Herndon are almost as good as Tuttle.”

“So you don’t know why they do it?” Sturgis’ voice held that light mocking inflection which could get under a listener’s skin. “You, m’boy, are the brand being snatched from the fire. Catch ’em young and train them up in the way they should go. That’s what’s happening to you. You’re being hand-raised and milk-fed now. They want to make you into a perfect little dragoon, a credit to the company—a living example of their schooling—”

Ritchie threw his belt across the bunk.

“Did I hurt your feelings now?” That hateful voice went on, low pitched so that it did not carry beyond their own corner. “But it’s about time someone opened your innocent eyes for you. You’re going to be a lily white lamb—a credit to this blasted regiment. I know the whole process—I went through it once.” Sturgis sat up; his eyes were on the brown roll of tobacco he was turning between his fingers.

“When I first hit this post, I had some quaint ideas about starting all over, my slate clean and so forth. How incredibly young one can be!” His face was suddenly pinched and old. “They all gathered round. Then came payday, and I made a misstep—several of them all together. After that I was allowed to proceed to the Devil in my own warped fashion. It’s entertaining at times—watching the righteous at work.” He got up and stretched. “Some tame Apaches set them up a little trading post outside limits. Want to look over their stock?”

The mocking note was gone. He was again the Sturgis whom Ritchie could not resist. With eager assent he piled away the rest of his hunting gear and joined the Southerner.

Beyond the sentry’s beat was spread out the meager stock in trade of the desert men. An iguana in a crude cage—Apaches considered them good eating was Sturgis’ contribution to Ritchie’s store of knowledge—some skilfully made bows and, at the end of the line, a sword. It was very old and the blade notched and worn, but the guarded hilt gleamed.

“Where did he get that, I wonder?” Ritchie looked from the blade to the wrinkle-seamed face of the oldster who squatted there holding it.

To his surprise Sturgis made a stream of guttural sounds and flipped a cigarrillo to the old warrior. Through the yellow stubs of his remaining teeth the Apache lisped back an answer.

“Looks like you’ve latched onto a real relic, Rich. This old fella says his father found it out in the desert alongside the skeleton of a man. Might be a Spanish piece—even belonging to one of Coronado’s gold hunters. He says that he is now too old for the war trail”—Sturgis jerked a thumb at the Apache— “and has come in to make peace. He will trade the sword—”

“For what?” Ritchie forgot to disguise his eagerness.

The old man grunted and pointed. Ritchie’s hand went to his own throat where the silk of the girls’ gift lay in folds.

“I guess not!” he snapped.

Sturgis shrugged. “No use offering him anything else now that he has seen that.”

“Hey, Sturgis!” Kristland pounded up behind them. “Here’s a chance to get back some of that cash you dropped to the gang. Ant fight!”

Sturgis’ tongue swept over his lips. There were little eager lights in his eyes.

“Where?” he demanded.

Kristland was already on his way. “Back of the barracks.”

Sturgis’ hand closed in a viselike grip above Ritchie’s elbow. “Come on, boy. This is a chance to get some spare cash. Maybe you can win enough to tempt that old devil out of his sword after all. Only, don’t bet on the blacks ’less they’re about three to one. They haven’t got the guts of the reds!”

The fighting arena was a large basin, and the warriors were just being emptied into it as Ritchie and Sturgis plowed through the crowd to where they could see passably well by standing almost on tiptoe and holding their heads at a neck-cracking angle. Some enterprising promoter had hacked in halves a can of fruit, extracting the contents but leaving in the botton of each half a thin film of sweet syrup. Each part was then partially buried in the side of one of the three-foot anthills to be found all about the fort. As soon as the sweet-seeking ants had been attracted in large enough numbers, the cans had been hurriedly brought in. However, one was dotted with black and the other with red ants, mortal enemies who fought to the death upon meeting, so a good show could be expected. The betting ran high as the combatants were dumped in, and Ritchie heard Sturgis feverishly offering three to one on the reds. He had several takers, since the black forces seemed to be numerically greater. But, as he had told Ritchie, the red fighters were more ferocious, one of them daring to tackle two or even three of the blacks at once.

But the red warriors, in spite of their fighting spirit, appeared unable to make up for their lack in numbers and at last were worn down until their full fighting strength became a few bitter duelists at bay around the basin. Sturgis thrust his hands far down in his pockets, pockets which Ritchie could guess were empty.

“What filthy luck!” he muttered.

“Wait a minute,” Ritchie cautioned. “Watch that ball over there.”

Even as he spoke the ball broke, and from its center staggered three red ants, crawling over pieces of their dying enemies to head back into the fray. As if the coming of these heroes was a signal, the few remaining reds struck into battle with renewed ardor. And when the corporal with the watch called time, there were five reds to four blacks still on their feet.

Sturgis grinned at Ritchie. “Luck’s turned!” he crowed. “First good break I’ve had in months! I’m going to go places now—I know it!” His face seemed hardly older than Ritchie’s as he stood there accepting his winnings and exchanging chaff with the disgruntled losers.

“How did you do?” he asked as they left.

Ritchie laughed. “Broke even. I didn’t bet.”

“You are a lamb in wolves’ clothing.” But there was no taunt in that, and Ritchie did not lose his grin.

“Guess it’s just my cautious New England blood coming out in me. I can’t enjoy—”

“Sinning?” queried Sturgis vastly amused. “Very well, now that I have drawn you into the depths and we have escaped, it’s your turn to call the amusement. Hey, where are we going?”

“Camel lines,” Ritchie returned. “Didn’t get a good look at them this morning. My horse wouldn’t get within ten feet of them. Say—they are big brutes, aren’t they?”

“Regular elephants,” agreed Sturgis, “especially that monster on the end. Wonder what it consumes for breakfast—about four fields of hay, I would judge—”

“They eat greasewood—some of them anyway.” Ritchie looked at the one Sturgis mentioned. The animal did seem larger than the rest and was of a dusty grayish color.

“Greasewood, cactus, anything, soljer,” a man in nondescript civilian clothing said. “This here’s Babu—he’s a mule—cross between a camel ’n a dromedary. Sure pays his way—can carry over two-thousand pounds if he has a mind to.”

The “mule” continued to chew its cud and gaze into the middle distance disdainfully aloof from the affairs of mere humans. A large bell hung around its neck, and the cumbersome pack saddle sat a short distance away.

“Good critters fer this country,” continued the camel enthusiast, glad of an audience. “Don’t git sore feet, don’t need shoein’.”

“Why not?” asked Sturgis with interest.

“ ’Cause they don’t shuffle none when they walk, jus’ picks their feet straight up from the ground ’n puts ’em back without no slidin’. Bottom of the foot spreads out a mite, doesn’t rub the skin off on tough ground. ’N they can live off on the country without water ’n eatin’ greasewood ’n screw beans ’n such. They really relish that trash, I tell yo’!”

Sturgis regarded the “mule” critically. “This fellow has a meanish eye. I wouldn’t care to have him clump those teeth at me. I’ll stick to horses and mules awhile yet—”

The camel man shook his head. “This country needs camels, soljer. That’s why the army brought ’em in. They can carry heavy ’n travel twenty-five to thirty miles a day. Show me a mule as can do that!”

“You have a point there,” Sturgis conceded, rocking back on his heels. “Only some Apache is going to begin wondering how camel steak tastes. And between wondering and tasting is mighty small distance for Apaches. An animal as big as this one will make a mighty good target.”

“Jus’ let ’em try!” The camel man was fierce. “I ain’t leavin’ all the guardin’ to yo’ soljer boys.”

And he wasn’t, as Ritchie discovered when he went on duty as picket guard that night—for the four hours he walked his post the camel herder spent as wakefully only a few feet away. That is, that was the situation for three hours and forty minutes. The last twenty minutes of Ritchie’s tour were crowded with incident.

It all started with the appearance of a shadow a foot too long. He had heard a good many stories of the Apaches who could strip down, roll in ‘dobe mud and reeds, and do a snake progress into the fort itself to carry out successfully either a project of private murder or make away with some treasure they coveted. So ground shadows a foot too long were made to arouse suspicion.

And he was sure—in spite of all evidence to the contrary produced later—that the shadow had detached itself from the blackness and had flowed across to join another dusky spot. That was when he challenged. The camel man echoed his challenge, and being a nervous man, accented his demand by firing into the air. The post came to life at once.

When the excitement simmered down somewhat, Ritchie came up before an extra inquisitive group consisting of the Captain, the Colonel, Lieutenant Gilmore, and Captain Sharpe, backed by a disapproving chorus of sergeants. His story sounded thinner every time he told it. And it was a very deflated sentry who turned in at last, the comments of his aroused barracks mates adding nothing to his self-esteem.

Comments were still being made in the morning, and it was hard to overlook all of them. Even Sturgis crossed to the mess hall with eyes on the hard-packed ground vowing he was looking for moccasin prints. But it was also Sturgis who spoke out of the corner of a cautious mouth at drill.

“Told you Lady Luck has turned her smiles on me. My name’s down for Sharpe’s party in the mountains. And do you know something else?”

“No, what?”

“Yours is too, Rich, yours is too!”

10

Never Stick a Picket in an Anthill

The Sharpe expedition set off at dawn after some days of feverish last-minute preparation. Being given an hour’s start, the camels were out of sight before the main body got to horse and out of the fort. Although the midsummer heat had already closed in upon them even at that hour in the morning, there was a welcome freshness in the air, and some of the horses were skittish, inclined to resent work on such a day.

Sturgis rode almost knee to knee with Ritchie. He was in wild spirits, a constant babble of talk flowing out of him. Almost like Boru, Ritchie thought, when the big hound had been loosed and was running free on a hot scent.

“From ten feet of snow to roses and rattlesnakes,” the Southerner was saying. “That’s this country for you! And we’ll be seeing all three before we’re very far along—Velasco’s mysterious towers in the bargain! I wouldn’t be surprised to come up with a giant or an ogre back in those hills—!”

“How come Velasco isn’t along?”

“The Colonel has a southern trip planned, too. Velasco knows that country better than Tuttle. Yes, maybe we’ll find something new in the hills.”

“Aren’t Apaches enough?”

“Apaches, Utes, Navahoes! What do I care? Let’s see ’em all! This morning S’George Sturgis is ready to stand up to the whole world!”

“Let us hope that you are able to keep that spirit, young man.”

Their heads swung almost as one. Captain Sharpe, his fawnskin hunting shirt tight across his shoulders and his heavy shotgun under his hand was trotting past. But Sturgis was not to be daunted by authority today.

“I will, sir,” he promised confidently. “My luck’s turned for good.”

But Sharpe had probably not heard that, for he was already beyond them. Sturgis pulled at his neckerchief. “Now if we can just manage to keep out of High-n-mighty’s range we’re sure of a grand outing. Maybe we’ll prance all the way up to the Mormon country. Shuck off that sober face of yours, Rich, this is the life!”

And even the heat, the dust which arose to choke them, and a tour with the mulada did nothing to dampen his infectious good humor.

Having no duty to spur their pace, they moved leisurely, taking time to map and survey possible roadways as they went. Twice they stayed over half a day in small valleys to build up and improve springs they had discovered. But the route they followed was bringing them into an arid country of sun-baked red rocks from which the water had withdrawn long ago. And the ancient crumbling remains of forgotten towns lined irrigation ditches that had not carried moisture in the memory of living man.

The camels lived up to the claims made for them. They waxed fat on the produce of this desert. No corn had to be carried for them. In fact, Ritchie had seen them turn away from corn to chew the unpleasant greasewood branches or actually swallow screw beans, leaves, briers, and all. Patient and uncomplaining, they did a steady day’s travel without slacking the mile-eating quality of their deliberate pace.

Where horses had to be nursed and reshod and mules expressed their opinion of the whole affair by outbursts of devilish contrariness, the camels made no trouble at all. And yet few of the men warmed to the big beasts. There was something alien and unearthly about their very stolidness. To nostrils which accepted horse-sweat rankness and the odor of working mules as necessary and even rather pleasant, the camels still stank. And the suggested menace of their yellow teeth kept most of the dragoons at some distance.

“Mules ain’t got the sense they was borned with.” Private Harkness looked out over the bunched mulada. “There’s the water hole, but will these pesky, long-eared devils drink so we can mosey along? Naw, they have to be broiled good furst—and us with ‘em—’fore they’ll touch a drop!”

“Oh, they’ve sense all right,” cut in Sturgis. “They’re having a nice quiet rest while the horses and camels have to foot it on. No mule is going to drink until he is thirsty. And if he pretends he isn’t thirsty, why then he gets to wait around ’til he is—like this.” He waved his hand toward the pack mules being held out in the sun until they would drink, since reaching another water hole by evening could not be counted upon.

“Huh.” Harkness wasn’t much impressed by that. He fanned himself with his hat and kept on grumbling moodily. They all had wet sponges to set in the crowns of their hats as a precaution against sunstroke. But, Ritchie thought, already the heat was just like some giant hand pressing them down into the earth.

“Hey—looky!” Harkness was on his feet. “Somebody’s comin’ along our back trail.”

Sturgis shaded his eyes with his hand to look. “He’s either drunk or crazy. A man traveling alone in Apache country is either or both! Why—it’s Diego!”

Metal braid made fire about the brim of the Mexican’s hat and in the embroidery of his short, tight jacket. He led a mule, a finely kept, white-coated animal. And from a basket fastened to the pack saddle popped the head of his dog.

“Buenos dias, señores,” he hailed them as he came up. “Eet ees one fine day, ees eet not?”

“A fine hot one!” returned Sturgis. “You taken leave of your mind, Diego?”

The man looked perplexed. “Don’ comprehend, señor. I do what?”

“He means—yo’ plum loco?” demanded Harkness. “Comin’ out alone into Apache country thisaway?”

Diego laughed. “The Apache, zey do not bother Diego. Si, to Apache, Diego ees loco. See”—he lifted his bare hands—“I carry no gun, jus’ one knife weeth which to eat. I do not fight—so to Apache I am loco. Seex times have I traveled so een Apache country. I hav’ wake at morning to fin’ them by my fire. I do not speak. I act as eef I am alone, as eef I do not see them. They wait awhile, an’ then they go. Diego ees loco, an’ he can walk een the Apache country weethout fear—”

“Now that’s plum smart.” Harkness regarded the small Mexican with open admiration. “But this time you can travel safe with us. You’ll find the main drag on up ahead.”

Diego shook his head. “Ah, no, señores. Should I travel weeth you an’ be seen by the Apache, then will I lose my eenocent appearance. Maybe I shall share food, si. An’ Perro shall amuse those who care to watch heem. But I go on alone. There are eyes een all these hills, señores. Ever do they watch what passes. Eef eet ees small an’ weak, then death comes down from the rocks. Eef eet ees strong, then are those eyes never seen. So—buenos dias, señores. Diego must march. Ha, Perro, make the manners!”

Perro yapped twice, and the Mexican showman plodded along the well-marked trail of the advance guard, pausing to wave farewell once.

“Y’know,” Harkness commented, “he’s got a darn clever idea there. The Apaches won’t touch a crazy man, ’n if he acts crazy—why, he’s safe.”

“Like Charlie Black,” Ritchie mused. “Only if that trick is so easy to work, why don’t—”

“More of us do it?” asked Sturgis. “Maybe there is an idea in that. And an army acting crazy would be nothing new in this country. We are crazy enough when just going about the usual day’s business. Wouldn’t take much play acting to be real loco. You might suggest it to the Colonel when we get back to Santa Fe. It would prove you’re taking a proper interest in your work—”

But Ritchie wasn’t listening to that with more than half an ear. What had Herndon once said about Diego months ago—that the Mexican had a habit of appearing just before disaster? And here he was again. If Diego had some relation to the Apache raids, then that, rather than his game of insanity, would explain his immunity from attack. Herndon and Woldemar were up front. They knew Diego and would watch for him. Just the same he wished that they could hurry on, too, right behind that man with his well-trained dog and his sleek white mule. Fortunately the mules were condescending to drink at last, and soon they could start on.

That night Diego and Perro performed their act for the amusement of the camp. But sometime before dawn the Mexican slipped away into the maze of canyons with the same skill as the Apaches might have shown. And after the long hours of a dry march Ritchie had half forgotten his suspicions.

On the second day of that march Ritchie rode out with Tuttle. He tried to remember all he had learned of scouting on those hunting trips, and he followed the old Mountain Man with a dogged persistence which sometimes brought exasperated comment from the scout. It didn’t help matters any when the first spring they found proved to be rimmed with a telltale band of chemical stains. Tuttle teetered on a rock above it and made a few heated remarks.

Ritchie looked down with longing at the first water he had seen in two days. He touched a dry tongue to dryer lips and swallowed what felt like a nasty selection of dirty cotton wisps.

“ ’Course yo’ can drink if yo’ want to!” Tuttle, recovered, eyed his companion’s obvious distress with a certain sly humor. “Then, what happens after is only yore own fault. Pure salts that stuff is. I went up to the mouth of the Virgin once—that’s whar yo’ git the other sorta salt. They got a kinda mine up thar whar they dig themselves out chunks of the stuff two-three feet thick ’n as clear as ice! This is the dangblastedest country! Stone trees, ’n then over California way thar’re soda lakes all spread out. Hit one of them when my grub was runnin’ low oncet, ’n got me a duck. Only, could I eat him after I toasted him up good ’n brown? I could not—bitter’n gall. Water tasted like dirty soap suds, ’n yo’ couldn’t choke it down. Yo’ don’t know what it means to be uncomfortable, son. Wait ‘til yo’ git some of that thar soda dust in yore nose ’n throat! Wal, seen enough of this disappointin’ spring? Then let’s vamoose—”

“All right. But what do the Apaches use for water when they live in here?”

“Wal, in the furst place an Apache don’t need to be a-guzzlin’ down a drink maybe every five minutes or so. He’s lived in this furnace so long he’s kinda dried out like the rest of the country. Then he can stomach stuff like this—maybe not so bad—but stuff which would twist the guts right outta a white man. ’N he has his own leetle ways—he’s a desert fox. When he runs him off a mule or horse ’n hacks out a few steaks when the pore critter gives up, he pulls out the big gut ’n cleans it—jus’ a leetle bit. Then he fills that fulla water at the next spring ’n winds it ‘round his middle for a belt. He can keep goin’ a right smart time with a canteen like that stinkin’ up his hide. ’N don’t think that he doesn’t know every spring that is anywhere in these hills. He’s got him a better map right here”—Tuttle tapped his forehead—“than any the soldier boys can draw out all fancy. The Apache, he ain’t never a soldier, he’s a warrior, ’n he’s fightin’ right in his own backyard. Don’t ever forgit, son, that’s important. Yo’ll live longer if yo’ keep it in mind. Yo’ can’t fight the Apache soldier fashion—yo’ gotta meet him his own way.”

Ritchie pulled his kerchief up over his nose as a shield against the puffs of dust the wind bore down the canyon. “Isn’t that what we’re try to do now?”

“That’s what we’re tryin’ to do, son. Thar’s some what takes to this natural, ’n thar’s some what can never learn. Makes me think of that thar Britisher ‘way back in the Injun wars—Braddock, I think his name was. I ‘member my grandpappy tellin’ of him. His pappy was kilt in that thar foolishment. Wanted to march right up in nice ordered rows to the Injuns ’n shoot it out man to man, that Brad-dock did. ’N what happened? He ended up shot in the back by one of his own men who didn’t take kindly to bein’ kilt without no chance of fightin’ back. Yeah, thar’s always those what can’t fight a war nasty-like—’n Injun fightin’s downright nasty. They want to make it all accordin’ to rules, only the Injun, he has his own rules, ’n he don’t take no stock in the loco ones the Pinda Lick-o-yi go shootin’ off their mouths ’bout. So we fight his way or we don’t come back.”

“What about Charlie Black and Diego? They have their own method of meeting the Apache on his own ground.”

“Wal, now—Charlie—his story is true. I saw him right after he got away from the Apaches. Stripped down he was, ’n they had started workin’ on him a leetle. If yo’ took off his moccasins, yo’d see his feet are mighty queer lookin’. But Diego”—Tuttle was frowning—”that’s a right bright idea he told yo’ about. ’N it seems to work—leastwise he ain’t come up missin’ yet, ’n he does cross Injun country alone.”

“Could he be in with them, getting information for them?”

Through all that tangle of beard it was hard to read the scout’s expression. “In this country, son, we don’t say things like that without we have our proof handy. ’N that’s ‘bout the worst yo’ could say of a man. Velasco, he’s as white as yo’ ’n me. But when he was five-six years old, the Apaches raided the mine where his pappy was Cap’n of the guard. He was took off into the hills ’n raised Apache, bein’ tough enough to live through it. Only when he was growed, he came back to his own people. He lives Apache, but he thinks white. The man who’d think Apache and live white—wal, now, he wouldn’t be spit on by rattlesnakes if they saw the color of his hide furst. I’ve had friends among the Apache, but their minds—they work different from our’n. Sometimes we ain’t got us no common meetin’ ground at all. Ha, Lucy, what yo’ smellin’ now, gal?”

The mule he was riding by preference had lifted her head and quickened her pace. And a moment later Ritchie’s horse showed equal signs of excitement. Tuttle nodded.

“Water,” he said and gave his mount her own head to follow the trail she wished.

They came out on the banks of a dark pool that was fed by a trickle of spring water, the overflow of which apparently sank into the dry gravel a few yards beyond. But scrubby vegetation clung to the soil around it, and there were no signs of the poisonous salts here.

Never did water taste so good! Ritchie rolled it over his tongue trying to cleanse his mouth of the feverish dryness which had burnt there most of the morning. They allowed their mounts a brief drink and then stripped off saddles and blankets to wipe down dust and sweat-matted backs and legs with handsful of coarse grass pulled from the edge of the pool and dipped into the water. Then Tuttle lit a small fire and boiled up a tin of coffee, putting out on the flat rock which served them as a table some of the piki, paper-thin corn bread, which he carried in preference to hardtack, and some stringy jerky.

“We’ll do a leetle huntin’ on the way back,” he said. “ ’Long as I have most of my teeth left, I don’t relish army beef. Git me a deer or somethin’. ’N that thar cook we got with us—wal, he ain’t what I’d call a cook. He ain’t no pastry cook, nor a tasty cook—but a doggoned nasty cook! ’N fur that I’d back him agin’ all of Santy Fe.”

Ritchie slapped at the cloud of tiny brown mosquitoes that infested the grass about the borders of the pool. “Sturgis called him worse than that last night. Found a beetle in the coffee, and when he complained, the cook said he wasn’t responsible for things flying into the food.”

“Expect he thought yo’ should be thankful for the fresh meat.” Tuttle licked some crumbs of piki from his fingers. “Now, looky here! These leetle fellas are sure right on the job—gittin’ grub.” Some ants were already busy about the dropped crumbs. “ ’N thar’s their lodge—right over thar.”

An anthill, not so large as those he had seen near the fort, rose on the other side of their table rock. Ritchie caught sight of a glint of blue-green halfway down the side of that gravelly mound and leaned closer to investigate. A little scratching with his fingers gave him half a dozen round beads, smooth and polished.

“Turquoise,” the scout identified them. “The Old Ones were mighty partial to ’em. Unhuh—look up thar!”

He pointed to a black shadow on the cliff wall well above them. There was no possible way to reach it that Ritchie could see.

“Wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that thar ain’t a burial cave. If we could git up to it, we might find a chief’s bones ’n all his foo-fraw laid out. That’s whar these probably fell from.” He picked up one of the beads. “The Injuns, they set a big store by turquoise—make regular jewels outta it-it ’n shell.”

“Shell?” The desert around them hardly looked like the place in which to find those.

“Traded west for ’em, maybe.” Tuttle shrugged. “What yo’ plannin’ to do with those?”

“I’ll see if that Chinese can have them set in silver for me—the girls might like rings made that way.” He buttoned them into his shirt pocket before getting up to stretch.

It was quiet there by the pool. And as Ritchie stood there, he had for a second or two a queer, spooky feeling, as if they were not alone at all. He had felt almost the same back with the mulada that day listening to Diego’s talk of the unseen eyes ringing the hills. He didn’t like it.

“Better be gittin’ back with the good news.” Tuttle saddled Lucy. “Only this time, we’ll strike down canyon ’n see if our stream does peter out thar or whether she pops up agin later on. They do, yo’ know.”

The canyon deepened and grew cooler as its walls shut off some of the sun. Patches of vegetation suggested that water was not so hard to find. And within half a mile Tuttle’s prediction was proven right—the stream reappeared and threaded along, sinking now and again into strings of scummy pools. Having made sure of water, they turned off to cut back to the main party. They were riding at an easy pace when Tuttle suddenly caught at Ritchie’s reins and pulled both mounts up.

Over the edge of a small rise shuffled a brown-feathered horde, raw necks outstretched, wings hanging to the dust, beaks open and gasping.

“Turkeys!” Ritchie yelled.

The flock brushed by without a glance for their mortal enemies—man—intent upon the water they could scent. Tuttle made no move, and Ritchie, through sheer surprise, could not. Then the flow of trotting bronze was gone into a side gully that would give upon one of the pools the scouts had passed earlier.

“Leastwise we won’t starve,” Tuttle announced with some satisfaction. “Once they git to water, they ain’t goin’ to leave it in a hurry. Some of them looked right plump, too. We can sorta relieve the Cap’n’s mind about his commissariat ’long with the water. This is a lucky day.”

“But where did they all come from?”

Tuttle’s answering gesture embraced most of the horizon. “Anywhar’s likely. It’s whar they’re goin’ that matters to us—”

As they pounded along the back trail, Tuttle suddenly asked a question of his own.

“Had any more trouble with Birke, son?”

“Birke?” That hulking barracks bully had not more than crossed the outer rim of his life since their clumsy duel. Maybe Birke feared a return match too much to notice Ritchie. But both had been included in this expedition, and sooner or later they might be teamed on guard duty. “No, I haven’t seen much of him. Why?”

“Kinda figured him for a ‘snow-bird.’ But he’s stuck with us right into warm weather.”

“A spring deserter?” Ritchie translated the barracks slang. “But he seems to like soldiering—”

“Maybe. Only when I catched him roughin’ up your Apache boy, Del-she—”

Ritchie stiffened. Once he had visited the boy at the mission school. To his eyes the Apache had lost none of his sullen silence, and he had wondered at the Padre’s interest in the boy. But the thought of Birke knocking him about did not please him.

“He won’t try that agin in a hurry, son. But he don’t love either of us none—thinks of yo’ ’n me ‘bout the same as he thinks of rattlesnakes. Better keep yore eyes peeled when he’s hangin’ round.”

So he’d have to remember that along with other things, Ritchie thought, as he herded thirsty mules along a few hours later. It was too bad one simply could not sink into a nice quiet rut—what army life should properly be. It was an existence in which everything was decided for one, from the shirt to wear to the place one dared walk. But so far his his tour of duty hadn’t been a placid one. And if a mere private had to have eyes in the back of his head—why, what must go on between Scott Herndon’s well-shaped ears or under Lieutenant Gilmore’s sleek cap of blond hair! And Captain Sharpe—who was responsible for all of them—did he ever have a quiet moment to call his own?

A little hard work on the picket line added to his own dissatisfaction with life. The stone-hard ground resisted the picket pin he was trying to pound into it, and he used some of the more pungent words he had learned from Sergeant Herndon during the cactus-bull episode to encourage the stubborn thing.

“This will add to your joy in life.” Sturgis grinned at him over a rock. “You’re on guard duty—the last tour, just before the stilly dawn. Hush, my child, that is an exceedingly naughty word with which you have just sullied your boyish lips. Should any of your stern mentors hear you now—” He shuddered with realistic horror. “But come now to our own private bower and let me revive you with a portion of Mormon tea. That’s what the cook calls the stinking stuff. How well you remember the rules!” He came around to admire Ritchie’s work. “We must never stick a picket in an anthill—no matter how inviting the prospect, though I fear that some of our lazier brothers-in-arms have just forgotten that sage advice. Let us hope that nothing untoward will occur before morning to make them wish that they had been wiser men.”

But something did. It was close to dawn when Ritchie became sure of the menace of certain shadows—he was sure of them this time—sure and deadly. The crack of his carbine was swallowed up by the wild howl of a wolf. And then all hell itself broke loose in the canyon as the horses and mules stampeded and ran before an enemy they dreaded of old.

A loose picket pin whizzed through the dark and caught Ritchie a sharp crack above the ear. The blow sent him sprawling back between two rocks and so saved his life, as a minute later the rush of maddened horses swept across the spot where he had stood.

11

“You Ride to Your Funerals, Soldados!”

Ritchie clawed himself to his knees beside the rock over which he had fallen. Someone had built up the fire, and the wavering lights of improvised torches shuttled here and there. He raised one hand to his splitting head.

“Here’s the wolf! Got him right through the center. But he’s still kickin’!”

Ritchie hitched his way around the supporting rock. There was a knot of men gathered several yards away. He shook his head and then wished that he had not tried that method of clearing it.

“Apache!” The same voice which had identified the wolf now shrilled out the warning. Ritchie’s carbine went up automatically. But where, in that darkness pinpointed only by the fire, was the enemy?

A bugle call broke across the camp, echoing from one canyon wall to the other. The crowd in the reaches of the firelight melted away. From behind his rock Ritchie looked out at a deserted camp site. Then, from out of the fringes of the half shadow a horse nickered. So all of their mounts had not been swept away in that wild stampede! Why, that sound had come from about where he had picketed Bess—slightly off from the regular line because the soil on the bank of the dried stream had seemed a little too loose to hold a picket pin secure.

“Huh!” A dark shape loomed up, rounded the rock, and stumbled on Ritchie. “Who’s thar?”

“Peters. Who are you?”

“Birke,” the other growled and edged away.

For a second or two Ritchie was almost sorry to see him go. He disliked Birke more than any other man he had ever known, but in the uncertainty of the night he would have welcomed any company of his own kind.

That crouching in the dark, trying to forget his pounding headache and wondering what minute an Apache would materialize within knifing distance, seemed to have no end. After what appeared hours of such employment Ritchie fancied he could see a lighter band in the sky.

And that band had turned a faint pink before they were given the signal to come in. He stumbled out of his cramped position, stamping circulation back into a foot which had gone numb. Now he was able to see what had been shot.

From under the matted, grayish fur of a badly tanned wolf pelt protruded brown legs knotted with muscles which had tightened in the last agony of death. And within the hood of the hide was a contorted face, a wild mask of dried blood and powdered copper-ore paint.

“That was a right smart shot, son.” Tuttle had come up behind him. “ ’N what happened to yo’—try to stop the stampede with yore head?”

“Guess a picket pin clipped me.”

“Hmm.” Tuttle caught Ritchie’s chin in one hand and turned his face to the light. “ ’Bout an inch or so down ’n we’d be gittin’ us a ’nother horse guard—which would be a pity, seein’ as how yo’ ain’t such a bad one! Sergeant, here’s ’nother bit of patchwork for yo’—”

Herndon glanced over his shoulder. At the sight of Ritchie’s bloodstained face a trace of concern sketched a little frown between his eyes. But after he had inspected the blood-caked skin around the shallow cut he said with relief, “You’ll have a headache. But this’ll mend, quick enough. You’re lucky.”

“As everybody has managed to tell me so far this morning!” snapped the patient. “I may not have been brained, but neither do I relish having mining operations carried on inside my skull—”

“Here.” Tuttle came up and thrust a steaming tin cup into Ritchie’s grasp. “Git this down under yore belt ’n hush yore big mouth, boy. Yo’ miscall yore luck, ’n it’s apt to git up on its two legs ’n go marchin’ off from yo’. That’s for sure. Sergeant, the Cap’n’s lookin’ for yo’—”

Ritchie took little sips of coffee. The red band in the sky was wider; he could see all of the camp. The corpse of the raider sprawled beyond the dying fire. And farther along some horses still stamped to drive off awakening flies. Ritchie counted—seven horses left and no mules at all. The entire baggage train had high-tailed it into freedom. What about the camels?

He squirmed around to face the space a little distance away where the big beasts had knelt placidly last night chewing their cuds and watching the mules with tolerant eyes. No snake necks bobbed there now—the camels were gone, too!

Marooned here in half-desert country with a limited amount of supplies and only seven horses! And where there was one Apache, there were probably a great many more. The prospect was not one anybody liked to think about-only everyone had to.

“Looks as if seven of us does a leetle trackin’,” Tuttle cut in across his own gloomy reflections. “Lucky thar was mules in that gang. Mules is right accommodatin’ critters. They may go slam-bangin’ off jus’ like them fool hosses when they has a mind to—but they stop runnin’ a mite sooner. ’N when they stops runnin’, maybe some of them hosses will do likewise. We can always hope so. So it’s up to us to hit trail ’n hunt—”

It was as if Tuttle was in telepathic contact with Captain Sharpe’s mind—for after a hasty breakfast, eaten mostly in gulped bites between inventory of equipment and supplies, the commander called together the men whose horses were still there. It was an odd gathering: Sergeants Woldemar and Herndon, Lieutenant Gilmore, Ritchie, Sturgis, and—to Ritchie’s surprise—Birke. Tuttle lounged nearby, the reins of Captain Sharpe’s own mount hooked between his fingers.

“This is ‘break’ country, and in the narrow canyons you may be lucky enough to find the stock holed up. They certainly can’t disappear for miles as they do after a stampede on the plains. So it’s up to you men not to neglect any side turns. If the Apaches ran them off—”

“I was wonderin’ ‘bout that, Cap’n,” Tuttle drawled. “Seein’ as how that thar wolf was a two-legged one, we might as well be prepared to find ’em butchered for a feast—”

“That may be. Apaches don’t steal horses to ride. They drive a mule or horse until it drops and then eat it. If a party has raided us, then they weren’t mounted to begin with, and the majority of the animals may have gotten away—”

“Thar’s this here to make yo’ feel better, Cap’n.” Tuttle held out a short length of hollow cane. “I found this tucked into that young buck’s gee-string. Means he was on his furst war trail. They can’t drink then ‘ceptin’ through one of these—somethin’ to do with one of their gods or such. Maybe he was on this alone—tryin’ to show off a leetle—”

“If I could believe that, Tuttle, it would mean a lot. But this is Apache country, and we’ll prepare for the worst. Take provisions for forty-eight hours, but don’t stay out longer than twenty-four. Don’t overlook a trail, and, for Heaven’s sake, don’t be ambushed!”

Ritchie threw his saddle on Bess, adding to his usual equipment the small sack of extra cartridges, a packet of provisions, and a full canteen.

“We ought to come up with the camels quickly,” he suggested to Sturgis. “They can’t run very fast—”

“Maybe they can fly,” grunted the other. “And if we do find them, who’s going to be camel-herder? Not one of us knows how to manage the blamed critters. Stop that puffing, Blackie, you’re a lazy old cuss and you know it!” He gave his horse an admonitory slap as he settled into the saddle.

The path taken by the stampeding animals led downstream, plainly marked by the tracks of shod hooves. They rode along it at a good pace. Unless the herd broke and dribbled away in threes and fours into the small side canyons, the job ought to be a fairly easy one—always providing, of course, that Indian raiders had not been awaiting the freed animals.

“Somethin’ daid!” Tuttle jerked a finger skyward.

Black wings circled there, slowly and ominously.

“Yeah,” Birke spoke for the first time. “ ’N thar it is.”

A gray dog raised a dripping muzzle, snarled, and faded away into the bushes before Ritchie realized that it was no dog but a lobo wolf they had interrupted at its feasting. The birds, which made a black cover for the thing on the ground, were less wary. They clung to their banquet until the horsemen almost rode them down.

It was a mule on the ground, its head snapped back and held at an impossible angle by the taut picket rope.

“Caught the picket pin in between those rocks,” Tuttle sized up the scene, “ ’n broke its neck. Wal, that’s one off our list. Git off, yo’!” He waved an arm at the circling birds. “I hate to see a good, long-sufferin’ mule go down yore gullets. But thar ain’t nothin’ we can do ‘bout that.”

The tracks were still thick in the sand and gravel, and they could follow them without dismounting to read trail. Before noon they found two live mules contentedly grazing in a small side canyon. When Bess whinnied, both crowded up to her eagerly, in spite of her open disdain for their company, and showed no distrust of the men who were examining them for injuries.

“Old hands these.” Woldemar slapped their rumps. “They lost their skittishness early. If we leave them here, they won’t wander far. There’s water in that pool and good feed. We can pick them up on the way back.”

Lieutenant Gilmore considered the point. “Most of the mules were seasoned stock. Maybe they’ll all drop out of the race quickly. It’s the horses we’ll have to worry about. What do you think, Tuttle?”

“Leave ’em free, Lootenant. They’ve taken a likin’ t’ that thar mare—may try to follow her along. But their run-nin’ is over.”

“Tuttle!” Herndon had wandered off to the side of the pool. “What do you make of this?”

They all crowded around to study the small depression he had found in the mud.

Tuttle squinted at the mark. “Too small for wolf—even for coyote. If we weren’t out here a good hundred miles from nowhere, I’d say that thar was the print of a leetle dog’s forepaw.”

“Dog!” The Lieutenant’s head snapped up. “Apaches keep dogs?”

“Sometimes. Only their dogs are close to wolf. ’N that ain’t large enough fer that. I sure would like to set eye on that critter. Ain’t a cold mark neither—made maybe last night. Think I’ll do a leetle smellin’ ’round, Lootenant—might be wise.”

They ate sparingly of the provisions they carried. Nowhere else was a second paw mark, although the pool was one well known and much used by the wild life of the district, as the slender claw marks of birds, interlaced with the tracks of wolf, lion, skunk, lizard and rat, testified.

As Tuttle had predicted, the rescued mules refused to be separated from Bess and followed her without urging, much to her disgust. And during the afternoon six more were added to this train. There had been no more fatalities, which Tuttle thought remarkable.

“No sign of the camels.”

“For which I continue to be glad,” Sturgis answered Ritchie’s comment. “Those plagued mules are bad enough, but if we had to pull along those desert schooners, too, I’d give up! How long, d’you suppose, are we going to march along with this train of lop-eared wonders?”

He glanced back at the line of mules. Birke brought up the rear of the procession, riding heavily, slouched in his saddle as if his temper was several degrees worse than Sturgis’.

“More trouble!” This time Ritchie had been the first to sight those drifting black shadows overhead. “Something else must have gone down with a broken leg or neck.”

This time no wolf fed, but when the sluggish birds were driven away from their feast, the men stood staring. Ritchie blinked. Those remnants of white hide were smooth and glossy as if the animal had been well cared for. He said aloud what they all thought.

“But we didn’t have any white mules!”

Tuttle, using the barrel of his rifle, tried to roll the head over. “Broke a leg, clip ’n clean.”

“And then was shot through the head.” Lieutenant Gilmore squatted down to look, though he did not attempt to touch the battered thing.

“Dead maybe two-three hours,” Tuttle went on. “Blood still sticky.”

“It ain’t our’n.” Birke kicked at the carcass. “The Cap’n, he wouldn’t have no whites when he was choosin’ up the mulada.”

“Only one mule like this in these parts,” Herndon said slowly.

And Ritchie remembered where he had seen that mule walking delicately along the trail, a small, rough-coated dog barking from the pack saddle on its back.

“Diego’s!”

“Where is the saddle?” Woldemar looked about him as if he expected it to appear magic-wise from the sand and stunted bushes.

“A question we would all like to have answered,” Gilmore said dryly. “That saddle must have been shifted—”

“To one of our’n!” Birke broke in. “He picked one of our’n, Lootenant, ’n marched off with it! But what’s he doin’ ’way out here? This ain’t the road to Abiqui—’n that’s where he said he was goin’.”

“No, it is not!” Gilmore’s lips made a thin line under his trimmed mustache. “Señor Diego seems to carry his pose of insanity a little too far. Tuttle, if we turned these mules into that small box canyon we saw back there and did a little stone-rolling to close it up, would they stay safe until we returned?”

“Guess so, Lootenant. Thar’s grass ’n water in thar. ’N we’d travel a right smart faster if they weren’t hangin’ on to our coattails.”

“Doesn’t that black of Waterford’s favor his off front leg?” asked Gilmore of the world at large a few minutes later.

“Bin doin’ that for ’bout a week, Lootenant. Yeah, that thar looks mighty like his track. ‘N this is as good as his name in writin’!”

The scout leaned from the saddle and pulled two long black hairs from the jealous grip of a thorny stem. “Let’s mosey up this break a piece. Seems like the black favors side trips. Here’s ’nother piece of his hide flappin’ in the breeze—”

“In there?” Gilmore had pulled rein at the narrow red and yellow walled cut. It was a narrow slash in the lichen-stained mountain, as sharply dug as if it had been laid open by a giant dragoon sabre. There was no suggestion of water or vegetation within, but Tuttle was waving a second black hair.

“Don’t look likely, I’ll admit,” agreed the scout. “But critters do queer things. Them hosses started runnin’ from a combination of devil smells last night—wolf ’n Injun. ’N they might have had their brains riled up for a time after. The black musta gone this way, ’n a hoss ain’t likely to break outa the herd ’n go off on his own.”

But they were reluctant to enter that gap. The sun heat, reflected back by the bare rock, was of furnace quality, and it was hard to believe that any horse had chosen to go this way over the bad footing they found within the slash.

Sturgis had swung his carbine to ready, and the rest echoed his gesture. The pinch of rock about them had taken on the appearance of a trap. Their advance was more of a crawl, which, without orders, they had made as soundless as possible.

That was why, when the scream came, it almost shook them from their saddles. They crowded together, a handful of men and nervous, sweating horses caught in a pocket of blood-red rock.

There was only one of those long tortured cries. Ritchie tried to believe it a lion’s squall or even the protest of a hunting eagle. But Tuttle put an end to that flight of imagination.

“Hoss!”

Somewhere up ahead a horse had died—died, because that cry had surely only been torn out of the laboring lungs of a mortally wounded creature.

“Can’t climb here!” Herndon measured the sheer walls around them with an expert eye. “Might be some footholds farther on.”

“Maybe a cat got the critter.” Tuttle mouthed a square of his strong black tobacco. “Shall we keep goin’, Lootenant?”

“We should know more about what we’re heading into.”

“Can do, Lootenant. Scott—?”

Herndon was already out of his saddle and had tossed his reins to Ritchie as the scout gave his to Woldemar. Together they crawled forward.

“I smell smoke!” Sturgis sniffed down the break. “Just once in a while—there! Smell that?”

But no one answered because somewhere ahead a rifle cracked, and the discharge of a carbine rang and re-echoed from the stone.

“Lordy!” Sturgis was already kneeing his horse on. “What did they run into—the whole Apache army?”

But when they burst out into the small valley the break led into, the fight was over, or almost so. Flames sputtered, and the stench of burning meat was strong. Brown skin, red headcloths, high white moccasins—Ritchie had seen those all before. Only then the ground under them had been white instead of green.

“Dismount! Birke get back with the horses! The rest of you fan out!” Gilmore’s snapped orders brought them into action.

“Take it easy, Lootenant,” advised Tuttle’s drawl from out of a bush clump. “Them what was havin’ lunch might not be all of the varmints. They hazed the black in here ’n had steaks offen him quicker than yo’ could say Colonel Gibson—”

“Say—look there!” Sturgis arose to his knees behind an aloe.

A small white animal trotted purposefully out of the bushes and came to the fire, stopping twice to nose the dead warriors.

“That’s Perro—Diego’s dog! Here, boy, here—”

Perro faced about at the sound of his name. His pink tongue lolled out of his jaws as if he were laughing at all of them.

“Come on, boy—here!”

“Stay down, yo’ doggoned fool!” Tuttle’s voice was whiplash sharp.

Perro came forward a step or two. If he had been an Apache captive, he had been a well-treated one. He was still a sleek little beast, and the light flashed from the silver knobs on the collar he still wore.

Apparently he decided that they were worth investigating. He started for the aloe behind which Sturgis crouched. And he was almost into its shade when a piercing whistle brought him about and sent him running back beyond the fire down the slope of the valley and out of sight into a clump of dwarfed cottonwood.

“So we didn’t git all of ’em after all.” Tuttle pulled himself out of hiding, and Herndon appeared just beyond him.

“That’s torn it wide open,” said the Sergeant bitterly. “If we’d only been able to cut behind the fire before that dog—”

“That thar’s a pile of ifs.” Tuttle had already reloaded, and now he carried his rifle at an angle ready for use. “Sure, ’n if we was the hull army, we could go gallopin’ along like Napoleon. But now—”

Gilmore waved up Birke and the horses. “Better back-trail?”

The old scout nodded. “If Diego’s alive ’n ridin’ with ’em, he ain’t goin’ to leave us alive to talk. That crowd will jump up some dust on our trail right away. He’ll ride spur on ’em until they do. ’N if we still want to be eatin’ ’n breathin’ tomorrow, we better lift foot mighty fast tonight!”

“Hosses ain’t so bright ’bout that,” commented Birke sourly.

“Let’s hope then some of those mules we left back yonder have been ridden before. ’Cause if they haven’t, they’re going to be!” Sturgis burst out.

For the first time Herndon favored him with a glance that had a shade of real approval in it. But Sturgis did not see that; he was already urging his tired horse toward the narrow opening of the break.

“Take it easy, son,” called Tuttle. “If those friends of our’n have ambush in their heads—why, this bottleneck will be the proper place for it.”

The Lieutenant was frowning. “I don’t know this country—we’re off all the maps. If we go down the valley, we may get into something worse. I can’t see anything to do but head back—”

“Sure. Ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ’bout that, Lootenant. We head back—only a leetle less impatient-like ’n doin’ a bit of scoutin’ as we go—”

“Holla!”

That cry jerked all their heads up, brought their eyes to the cliff top.

“Holla!” Again that challenging cry rang down.

“You ride to your funerals, soldados!” That was a crow of triumph—from a voice they had heard before!

And then the narrow mouth of the break breathed out upon them a blast of smoke and flame and death.

12

“Mort à Cheval à Galop”

There was a moment of wild confusion, of plunging horses and shouting men, and then Ritchie found himself pounding back along the valley. That was the instinctive reaction to that sudden blast which had leaped at them. But almost as suddenly he pulled rein savagely, bringing Bess under control by force.

One blue-shirted rider crowded by him, and after him ran a riderless horse, its eyes white-rimmed arcs of terror as it came. Ritchie grabbed for the dangling reins of the runaway. He brought it up short against Bess and recognized it for Woldemar’s mount.

“Woldemar!”

Ritchie looked back. He saw Tuttle fire, once with his rifle, the second time with his Colt. And he heard the thin scream which answered at least one of those shots. Beyond the scout a long blue figure lay still on the ground. With a kick of his heels Ritchie brought Bess around and rode back, bringing Woldemar’s horse with him.

“Yo’ blasted young fool!”

At first Ritchie thought Tuttle was shouting at him, and then he saw that all the scout’s attention was for the smoky mouth of the break. A horse struggled on the ground there trying vainly to get to its feet. Beside it a man crouched behind the frail shelter of a very small rock, a rock that already was patterned with white bullet scars.

And back into the rain of leaden death was riding another man. As Ritchie fetched up by Tuttle, he saw that rider swing lightly out of the saddle and urge the marooned man to his seat. A bullet struck the rock between them. The unhurt horse reared, and the rider had to fight it as he tried to get the rescued man into the saddle. Ritchie came to life.

Again he spurred Bess on, tugging the reluctantly led horse with a sharp jerk. As he passed the quiet body in the grass, he gave it a single glance. Sergeant Woldemar would have no more need for his horse, but the men in the break did. Ritchie rode on.

By sheer force of will Herndon had the Lieutenant on the horse and his hand was raised to deal the slap that would send them away when Ritchie bore down upon them. The slapping hand grabbed for the dangling reins. Ritchie and the Lieutenant fired together into the shaking bushes as Herndon fought his feet into stirrups set for the shorter Woldemar.

Then together the three pounded back, skirting Woldemar’s body and picking up Tuttle who had been sniping at the enemy. Beside the scout rode Sturgis, firing with easy precision, a half grin quirking his lips.

They wasted no time in putting the length of the valley between them and the break. There was a road out in that direction, the bed of a dried stream. This was rough country, broken by arroyos, stretches of rocky outcropping, and the shoulders of the mountains beyond. In the stream bed they overtook Birke. His mount was staggering, head down, pinkish foam dripping from its jaws. And yet the dragoon’s arm still dealt heavy blows across its flanks.

“Stop that, you damn fool!” Sturgis rode up beside him. “Want to put yourself afoot now?”

“Birke!” Gilmore’s voice echoed the Southerner’s. “Slow down! We can’t afford to lose a horse.”

But Birke’s arm rose again. Sturgis leaned over, grabbing his wrist and twisting it. For the first time Birke looked at them. His face was a yellow mask, shiny with oily perspiration. There was no intelligence in his eyes, no humanity left in his slack-lipped, half-open mouth. He tried to pull away from Sturgis with the petulant motion of a peevish child. Tuttle came up on the other side.

“The fella’s loco,” he announced. He leaned across and slapped Birke’s face hard. On the yellow-white unshaven skin of the man’s cheek the marks of Tuttle’s fingers showed first pale and then red. Birke blinked and moved his mouth. Intelligence came back into his eyes. He scowled malignantly at the scout and tore his arm free from Sturgis.

“Le’ me alone!”

The sharp crack of a rifle broke over the rocks. Gilmore gave a queer little grunt and caught at the horn of his saddle. There was a look of astonishment frozen on his face. Herndon threw one arm about the shoulders of the slumping man, crowding his mount against the other’s.

“Ride!” he snapped. “Get into cover—all of you!”

It was hard to flog the tired horses into a shuffling trot, but they kept to it. Birke and Tuttle were ahead, then came Herndon still supporting the limp Lieutenant, with Ritchie and Sturgis bringing up the rear.

“Going to be dark mighty soon,” Sturgis said. The reckless half smile with which he had greeted their return from the ambush was fixed on his lips. “And we don’t know this country. Good chance of having them beat us out—like pack rats out of a nest.”

He looked from side to side and then suddenly nodded his head as if he had found an answer to some question of his own. The stream bed they followed was boxed in by high walls now. If they were pursued, there was little chance of being sniped upon from above; the trailers would be forced to take the same path. The dried grass, greasewood, and brush along the rocks would give little cover to either party if they did come.

Sturgis jerked a beckoning finger at Ritchie and pushed up to Herndon.

“How is he?” he asked baldly about Gilmore.

Herndon’s teeth showed in a dust-coated snarl. “Dead!”

Ritchie dropped back. He didn’t want to see Gilmore’s face, still wearing its look of startled and eternal surprise.

“Got an idea to cover our tracks,” Sturgis went on unmoved.

Their horses had halted of their own accord. They were too tired to move except under urging. Herndon, still supporting the Lieutenant, hunched over a little. The mask of trail dust and the fading light made him look like an old, old man.

“What—?” His voice was flat and as old as his face.

“Wind’s rising,” Sturgis pointed out. “We’re facing into it. Suppose we set a little fire. That fire would blow right back over our tracks. ’Nough brush in here to make a good hot blaze!”

Herndon was already nodding. “It’d give us some time—”

“Then you get on—you and the Lieutenant. Rich and I’ll see to the fire—” He hesitated and then added softly “sir.” And there was no mockery in that word.

Herndon did not seem to hear. He was already plodding on, his iron grip fast upon his burden. Sturgis slid to the ground and jerked a thumb up canyon.

“Come on, fireman, let’s get to work!”

With their belt knives they hacked at the brush and grass, pulling handfuls, which tore the skin from their fingers, dumping their booty into piles, working feverishly against time.

“I always did like to play with fire,” panted Sturgis as he came up on the run with an armload of inflammable stuff. “But I like to do it a little more leisurely. Hm, feel that wind, boy? That’s what is going to put the finishing touch to this little bonfire of ours. Yes, siree!”

“All right,” he said minutes later. Ritchie had lost all track of time. It seemed to him that they had been days and days on this trail and hours and hours lugging bush to choke the back road. “You start on with the horses,” Sturgis went on. “I’ll tend to the lighting.”

Without argument Ritchie went, stumping to where Bess and Blackie waited, their heads drooping spiritlessly. He didn’t have energy enough left in his aching body to mount. Instead he shuffled along on foot, towing both horses with him. There was a crackling sound, and flames shot up in a sudden wind-fed spurt. He could feel the wind on his face. The grit of the dust and sand it carried crunched between his teeth and sifted down between his neckerchief and his open collar. The crackle behind was now almost a roar. But why didn’t Sturgis catch up? Surely the fire had start enough now and did not require tending!

Ritchie stopped. And for the second time that day he turned back.

“Sturgis?” His voice echoed hollowly from the walls of the cut. Blackie tugged at the reins, and Bess added her weight, too, when she saw that she was being led back toward that terrifying light and sound.

“Sturgis!” Ritchie shouted now. He stopped trying to pull the horses along and dropped the reins.

“—get away—” The answer was coming out of the bed of the dried-up river. Then, against the curtain of the fire, in the overhang of a flaming skeleton of a bush which had toppled off one of the piles, he saw the dark shape trying to crawl along.

Ritchie ran. The crawler sat up, trying to fend off the bouncing flame-wrapped bush. But Ritchie reached it first and sent it rolling back with a thrust of his scarred hand. In its light he saw the feathered shaft which protruded at a crazy angle from Sturgis’ shoulder.

“Get away!” The Southerner tried to wriggle out of Ritchie’s grasp. “He may still be alive—”

But Ritchie hooked his hands under the other’s arms and dragged him back from the fire.

“Got me just as I stooped over to light the fire.” Sturgis jerked out the words. “Lucky—maybe—might have been through the throat if I hadn’t been all bent over that way. Hey, not so fast, Rich. Think I can make it on my own feet if you’ll just give me a hand.”

“What—about—the—Apache?”

“May be roasted for all I know. He was on the wrong side of the bonfire. Just a minute! Let—me—get—my—breath—” His voice was broken by painful gasps, and he raised a shaking hand to his mouth.

Ritchie got Sturgis into the saddle, an eternity of painful effort for both of them, and they went on through the long blue shadows, Ritchie walking beside Blackie and holding Sturgis in his seat. Bess came behind, now and again betraying her feelings with a little mournful whinny of self-pity and distress.

Sturgis’ grin was a crooked grimace, and he held onto the horn with an iron grip.

“Forward!” His voice took on a little of the cracked roll which carried in the Colonel’s. “Forward! If any man falls, I’ll make him a corporal! Bet I’ll get m’ stripes first of ’em all, Rich—”

Ritchie shook his head. “Not you—too tough. Get along with you, Blackie—” He slapped the dusty hide halfheartedly.

“Talk sweet.” Sturgis’ words were a little blurred as if the effort to shape them properly was a task almost beyond him. “Blackie don’t cotton to your Yankee push. Looks as if we sure started a right smart fire back yonder, doesn’t it?”

The rocks about them were a faint yellow-pink. Ritchie glanced back. Tongues of flame shot up. It would take something even tougher than an Apache to break through that barrier.

“If the wind doesn’t change, we’ve sealed ’em off all right. Oh!” The last was a grunt of pain as Blackie stumbled. Ritchie steadied his companion and wondered if they could keep going. But they didn’t have to, for a long arm covered with buckskin protruded out of the rock ahead and waved them on.

Tuttle came up to bring them in, walking with the same unhurried stride with which he had crossed the barracks yard so many times.

“Stopped a mite of lead?”

“Arrow,” Ritchie returned. “In his shoulder. But the Apache was on the other side of the fire when he shot—”

Tuttle pushed him aside and went to Sturgis. Ritchie had only his own uncertain steps to mind as he followed into a shallow cave. A dust-grimed, wooden-faced man worked with stiff mechanical precision there, fitting into place as a barricade some small stones and rock lumps. Birke just sat, a lump of sullen mutiny, against the back wall. Ritchie made a vast effort and unsaddled their two horses. Tuttle was already working over the recumbent Sturgis, and Herndon stopped building to join the scout.

He was cutting away the blue shirt carefully. The arrow shaft still stood up in the flesh, moving a little with the rhythm of the panting breaths Sturgis could not control as well as he did his voice. Ritchie flinched as he watched that work. His hands fell upon a stone and he added it to the Sergeant’s crude wall. Here was something he could do. But Herndon had a question for him.

“The fire?”

“Burning. He lit it, and the Apache shot at the same time—but from the other side. It was roaring right down the stream bed when we left—might have caught the fellow before he got away.”

Herndon straightened up and stood for a moment with his hands on his hips looking out into the gathering forces of the night.

“We can’t count on that holding them up long,” he said half to himself and then spoke to Ritchie harshly. “What’s the matter with your hand?”

Ritchie examined with real surprise the fingers he had been holding at a stiff angle. They smarted some. But he was almost too tired to feel it. “Guess I was scorched—”

“Antelope tallow’s good for burns.” The Sergeant was absent again. He went back to Tuttle and Sturgis.

“Well?” That was a demand for a straight answer.

“I can git the shaft out, the point’s in the bone—” Tuttle was matter-of-fact.

“Didn’t jump quite fast enough this time, did I?” Sturgis’ voice was only a thin shade of its usual tone. “All right, butcher, go get those saddler’s pliers and have this damn thing out!” His words suddenly ran together up the scale.

Tuttle turned to Ritchie. “Build up that fire a leetle, son. How about water?” he asked the Sergeant.

“Yes.” The word came out in a lopsided fashion between Sturgis’ set teeth. “How about water? I could do with a drink.”

Herndon produced a canteen. He was down on his knees now, lifting the Southerner’s head and watching him swallow with an eagerness which betrayed parched need. Ritchie grew very busy with the fire-feeding. He couldn’t watch. Fire and water—they needed both for survival.

Survival—that word snapped across his drugged fatigue. Two of them hadn’t survived that sudden dash across the valley. And now they had been driven into unknown territory with no chance of retracing the trail which had brought them. He bit down on his lip and laid out the sticks the Sergeant or Tuttle had brought in. Meanwhile, there was Sturgis to think about.

That was a bad job they were doing. But halfway through, the patient mercifully fainted, and the faint became a deep feverish sleep. Tuttle tossed a broken arrow shaft into the fire.

“Best we could do!” His fingers twitched as he laid down the bloodstained pliers.

Herndon’s face was wet and shiny. He mopped it with his sleeve, wiping off a paste of sweat and dust, and leaving streaks, like war paint, across forehead and cheeks.

“Well?” For the second time he asked that question of the scout.

Tuttle shrugged almost angrily. “It broke, yo’ saw. It’d take a regular sawbones to git it outta him now. If it poisons him—”

“He’s daid!” That came from the back of the cave, and all three started. They had forgotten Birke. Sunk in his own world, he had made no move to help. “He’s daid—we’re all daid. Only we ain’t buried yet. Why don’t yo’ plant us under stones, Mr. High-n-mighty, jus’ like yo’ did the Lootenant? We’re all daid, ain’t we?”

“Keep quiet, Birke!” Herndon’s voice was a lash.

“Keep quiet, Birke!” the other mimicked. “Why don’t yo’ make me be, Mr. High-n-mighty? We ain’t got much food ner water. The Injuns are behind us, ’n our hosses are daid—or thereabouts—same as us. ’N lookit that compass of our’n—”

Herndon’s fingers snapped to the small metal case, which swung on a buckskin thong from one of the buttonholes of his shirt. The glass cover was gone, and in the face was the leaden butt of a bullet.

“That compass ain’t gonna git us nowheres now,” Birke continued. “Better say we’re daid ’n speak the truth of it—”

But the Sergeant was staring at the punctured case in his hand until Tuttle took it from him.

“Luck was sure breathin’ down yore neck this afternoon, Scott. That thar pill might have got yo’ through the heart—”

“Naw. That ain’t luck,” prodded Birke. “Them what dies clip ’n clean, they’s the lucky ones. We’ll git it with thurst or Injuns or starvin’.”

“Mort à cheval à galop.” Herndon’s eyes were still for the compass.

“Morty what?” demanded Tuttle.

Words long forgotten repeated themselves in Ritchie’s head. “ ‘Mort à cheval à galop,’ death on horseback in battle—the best death for a cavalryman—”

“Is that so?” Tuttle’s words had more than their usual drawl. “Mighty educatin’, lissin’ to yo’ boys. So yo’ didn’t morty proper, Scott? Wal, that ain’t sayin’ as how yo’ mightn’t even yet.”

Birke crawled out into the firelight. He had the same attention for the compass that its owner had shown.

“Broke. ’N with it broke, how’re we ever gonna git outta these mountains? They run all the way to the Utah country! ’N if we have to lug him—” He glanced at Sturgis.

“You won’t have to lug me, Birke. I can still fork a horse.” Sturgis’ eyes, suspiciously bright, were open and regarding them. “Give me a little rest, and I can take the trail all right. You aren’t heaving dirt over me yet!”

“We certainly aren’t.” Herndon was back in his calm shell again. “If you can ride in the morning, Sturgis, you’ll more than pull your weight—”

“If there’s anything left to ride!” Birke broke in again. “Them hosses are ’bout ready to drop. ’N if the Apaches come up—”

“We’ll be able to handle them,” Tuttle said. “We’ve got the Lieutenant’s carbine ’n Woldemar’s ammunition extra. ’N his canteen and provision sack came through, too. We can eat all right ’til we git us a deer or a bear. ’N we’ll git through all right, circle back ’n catch up with Sharpe in three-four days—”

“Yeah?” Birke was beginning when the Sergeant turned on him.

“That’s enough, Birke. If we pull together, we can make it. That fire down the canyon will hold back pursuit, maybe turn it off altogether. They don’t know what condition we’re in or how well prepared for the trail.”

“Wal, lots have got through narrower squeaks than this here.” Tuttle was separating some strips of jerky. “Think yo’ might favor this some, son,” he asked Sturgis, “if we boiled it up a mite?”

But those too bright eyes had closed again, and Sturgis had sunk into an uneasy sleep. He twisted once and moaned. Herndon eased him back on his uninjured side and tried to wedge him in that position with two of the horse blankets.

Ritchie ate his share slowly, but Birke grabbed and chewed avidly, his little eyes on the stores Tuttle had taken in charge.

“We’ll keep sentry go.” Herndon pulled his watch out of his money belt pocket. In the firelight its gold case was a blot of soft color. “Two hours each. Guard will take his own carbine and keep the Lieutenant’s loaded one within reach.”

Ritchie tightened his belt before he inspected the gun he had been nursing.

“Ready, sir.”

“You take first tour then,” the Sergeant continued. “Wake Tuttle at the hour. Keep the fire going if you can—but not too high. The rest of us had better turn in.”

Ritchie settled down by the rude wall they had built. At first the darkness outside was a black curtain to eyes dazzled by the fire. But slowly outlines grew, sharper shadows came into focus. There was no moon, and he could not see the stars. It would be good to be able to whistle or even hum—to make some sort of familiar noise.

Then something familiar and natural did sound through the dark. But it made the flesh crawl between his shoulder blades. Somewhere, out in the wilderness of the night, a little dog had yapped happily and busily, as if welcoming a friend or master. And in those hills tonight he knew of only one dog!

13

“If We Had Water—”

An impatient shake brought Ritchie out of a horrible dream. He hunched up. The Sergeant had already turned away.

“Up ’n out.” Tuttle slid, as easily as a black-tailed rattler, over the barricade. “Diego’s fool dog may have done some barkin’ in the night, son, but he ain’t hangin’ ’round now. Leastwise thar’s no sign. We can hit the trail ’fore the sun starts broilin’.”

Breakfast was enough hardtack to make two good bites. But Ritchie chewed it in a mouth so dry that he could hardly make an impression on the flinty flakes of the stuff. He eyed his canteen longingly. But until they found a real spring he knew better than to indulge that longing.

“The wounded hero on his way home from the wars!” Sturgis’ voice was not what it had been, but his mind was clear enough. He lay half-propped against the blanket and saddle support they had built behind him the night before. Rags of a blue shirt made a cumbersome bandage roll about the upper half of his chest, and his hand trailed limply across his thighs.

“I can’t shoot,” he told Ritchie, “but if we run into the devils, maybe I can load with one hand. Well, Sergeant, come to get me aboard?” he asked over Ritchie’s shoulder as Herndon came up with a horse. “Hello—that isn’t Blackie—it’s Birke’s—”

“Blackie’s a leetle too brisk for a one-armed man,” Tuttle explained.

Sturgis’ head was up. “Birke isn’t going to ride him! Blackie won’t stand for that big ape beating him—”

“No.” Herndon bent over the Southerner. “I’ll ride Blackie. I’m giving Birke Woldemar’s mount.”

It took three of them to get Sturgis into the saddle. And Ritchie did not miss the look which Herndon and Tuttle exchanged when it was done. He had a moment of pure panic when he imagined what might happen if they were ambushed for the second time in one of the winding turns of this break country—ambushed with the helpless Sturgis in their midst.

“Could do with a drink—” Sturgis murmured. Through the matted hairs of his neglected beard, his pale tongue licked paler lips.

“We all could,” agreed the Sergeant. He unslung his canteen and held it for the Southerner.

Ritchie took that for an order. But he barely wet his lips with the flat, faintly odorous stuff inside. Birke swallowed three or four times from his canteen and even smacked his lips as he drove the stopper back in. Ritchie moved closer to Tuttle.

“What chance of finding water?”

“As good as any we got, son. We’ll jus’ hope the chips are runnin’ our way today.”

When they had come into this stretch of country the night before, it had been too dark to see it clearly. But now raw color struck them face on. Bold slashes of it drew the sun until they had to squint their eyes against the glare. In the same rock wall Ritchie counted splashs of red, blue, purple, yellow, and white as clearly laid on as if by giant paint brushes. It was a wildly broken land, too, jagged colorful canyons opening in crooked patterns, with now and then a glimpse of a forest-crowned mesa high enough beyond their reach to torture them with its promise of coolness and concealment.

The whole country was a maze of dazzling, sun-blazoned colored walls and blue-black shadows through which they moved half-blindly. Why, thought Ritchie hopelessly, half the Apache nation might crouch here undisturbed to watch the struggles of their quarry, able to pick them off at leisure.

Tuttle scouted ahead. Now more than ever they were dependent upon his knowledge painfully acquired as a Mountain Man. If their circling would ever allow them to cross Sharpe’s trail, it would be because of Tuttle’s guidance. But every time the scout slipped ahead, a little shadow of fear darkened the day for Ritchie. They could not do without Tuttle.

Birke tramped heavily, jerking Woldemar’s patient horse at his heels. He carried his carbine at ready, and his eyes swept the rocky walls as might those of a cornered and so doubly dangerous puma. He had not spoken all morning, and during their rest halts he had sat apart.

Taking turns, Herndon and Ritchie walked beside Sturgis, ready with a steadying hand when the wounded man needed it. They alternated this with duty as rear guard. But as the morning passed without incident, their fear of pursuit faded, and the hope that Diego had lost them in the dark grew.

“How about a drink, Rich?”

He looked up at Sturgis. Above the fine fair hair of the beard the Southerner’s face was darkly flushed. His eyelids hung heavy and half-closed.

“Seems like I have a bonfire inside,” the slurred speech went on. “Could do with a little water to sort of dampen it down a bit. Got a drink for me, Rich?”

Ritchie scrambled up on a rock and pulled the plug out of his canteen, putting it into Sturgis’ good hand and helping him raise it. The wounded man’s hand was like a coal of fire. And Ritchie had to pry the canteen loose when Sturgis had only taken a couple of swallows.

“ ’Nother—?”

Ritchie drove in the stopper with a hand which shook a little. But he was able to say quite firmly, “Not now.”

“Hey—water!” Birke’s shout brought them hurrying on.

But the big dragoon’s face was a mask of pure rage as they came up to the pool fed by a finger-sized trickle of spring. And even as Ritchie brought up his canteen, Birke kicked a rock into the water and pulled savagely at the trailing reins of the horse, which had made no move to approach the spring. Herndon dipped a finger in the liquid, smelled it, and then licked gingerly. He made a wry face and shook his head.

“Salts and alkali—”

With a sigh Ritchie reslung his canteen. He’d heard enough about what happened if you poured that sort of stuff down your gullet. He was almost moved to follow Birke’s example and kick a few rocks. But instead he dropped into line as they plodded on.

They were well away from the site of that disappointment when they came into the black flies’ territory. The creatures lit and stung almost before a man could sight them. And where they stung, the skin swelled and itched as painfully as it might after a brush with poison ivy. Sturgis began to moan feebly, flapping his good hand at his face and neck. Herndon’s beard-shadowed cheeks showed the red blotches, and Ritchie gritted his teeth against the torment. A meeting with Apaches seemed the lesser of two evils now—in fact he could almost welcome such a diversion.

Herndon had stopped, and when Ritchie looked up to see why, he motioned him up. As he came, the Sergeant spoke tersely through bitten and swollen lips.

“Keep Sturgis quiet if you can. There’re lizards here—might be able to get one—”

He pointed to a rockslide which in times past must have thundered down the side of the canyon, bearing with it trees from the mesa to form a wild tangle of sun-bleached and dried roots and splintered trunks. Lizards, whose scales winked with the glints of jewels, swarmed in this reptile paradise, skimming like flashes of colored light between one hole and another. Herndon cut a long switch from a bush. Then he sat down and drew off his boots before approaching the hunting ground.

Ritchie had heard that the Apaches ran down and killed with a switch the lizards of the desert, which they esteemed as food. But his stomach still was uneasy at the thought of touching such meat himself. However, the few scraps of hardtack and jerky they carried would not last long. And if they were to have the strength to go on, they must learn to live off the country. He resolutely swallowed his queasiness and hoped that Herndon would be lucky.

But the Sergeant, perhaps made clumsy by his very eagerness, was not successful. He pounced and struck without results as far as Ritchie could see.

Sturgis was growing restless; he was moaning regularly now. And once or twice he muttered, “Water!” The skin of his arms and body where not protected by the roll of bandage showed thick welts left by the fly bites. Ritchie put down his carbine and unbuttoned his own sun-faded shirt. He rebuttoned it capewise about the unresisting Sturgis. Then he tried to adjust his neckerchief to cover his own back as far as possible. He was still tugging at it when Herndon returned, the broken switch dangling from his fingers.

As he came up, he snapped the stick in two and threw it away. And, saying nothing, he waved Ritchie on, dropping back to play rear guard. Birke and Tuttle had disappeared ahead while the lizard hunt was in progress, so that now the three were alone, walled in by the multi-colored rock of the endless canyon that led nowhere but deeper into the center of a maze of sun-baked, waterless rock and mocking mesa. They would just go on and on, thought Ritchie wildly for a moment, on and on and on until their feet could move no longer, and then they would lie never to be found—

“It’s a grand morning.” Those words came from the man at his side.

Sturgis was erect in the saddle, looking about him with a show of real interest.

“A grand morning,” he repeated. “The scent will lie right, gentlemen. I’ll wager Belle will find within the quarter hour. Have I any takers?”

He waited courteously and then nodded in answer to some expected reply. “Fifty it is, Jeffrey. You hear that, gentlemen? Fifty that Belle will find within the quarter hour. She’s a keen-nosed old girl, and there isn’t a fox in the valley that can outwit her in the chase—”

Ritchie had to look about him. Sturgis was conjuring up a picture so vividly that he could almost see those other shadowy riders, too. But Sturgis had forgotten his horsemen almost as quickly as he had summoned them. Instead he was now smiling at a greasewood bush, and the smile which lit up his flushed, bitten face was one Ritchie had never seen there before.

“Louisa—” He was eager, welcoming. But a moment later some of that eagerness died, the shade of boyish gaiety faded out of his eyes. “Louisa,” he said again, not welcomingly but questioningly. Then the smile disappeared altogether, and he added sharply, “You do not understand. A friendly wager between gentlemen—” He stopped short as if interrupted and then went on almost bitterly.

“It shall be as you wish then, Louisa. I shall not come to Greenhaven again unless you signify I am welcome. Good day.”

Ritchie pulled the reins. The horse, head hanging, followed. But Sturgis was still stiff-backed in the saddle. His face was dusky red, and his eyes watched what Ritchie could not see. Then he laughed recklessly and harshly, as if anger not pleasure had brought that sound out of him.

“Won again, eh, Jeffrey? For you the old saying doesn’t hold, does it? You’re lucky both ways, aren’t you, man? What do I mean? Why”—he laughed again and it was all anger—“you are infernally lucky with the ladies, too—”

Sturgis stopped and drew a deep breath. When he spoke again, his voice was chill and cold.

“Haines will act as my second, I believe. You will excuse me, please, gentlemen—”

They went on. Sturgis was so deeply lost now in that other world that he had no touch with the present one. He did not try any longer to beat off the punishing flies that traveled with them in spite of Ritchie’s ineffectual efforts to brush them away. Then, for the third and last time, he brought his dream world alive for Ritchie, too.

“You are mistaken, Louisa.” His voice was still cold and infinitely remote. “The matter is no longer a private one. I was struck. Only a public and complete apology can answer that. And do you honestly expect Jeffrey to make that gesture? No, we shall not discuss this further—this is an affair of honor, which has only one answer now—a meeting.” He paused, his attitude that of a man listening with strained courtesy to a plea that appeared to him to be utter folly.

“Do you realize, Louisa, that were I to follow that suggestion I could no longer live in this county? Dueling is an accepted procedure among gentlemen. Men forgive in time most of the sins—but they do not forgive cowardice. You want me to play the coward before my own kind. That is not worthy of either of us, my dear. I think you had better go now—before we both speak those things better left unsaid—”

Ritchie could not stand to listen any longer. He dared to give Sturgis a slight shake and then was conscience-stricken when a little cry of pain answered him.

“Sturgis! Sturgis!”

The Southerner shook his head as if to dislodge some dizziness.

“A cold morning, Haines,” he continued, now so enmeshed in the dream that not even pain could break through to him. “No sun, I think. That is good—”

His right hand came up from the saddle horn, its fingers crooked as if they encircled something. He raised that hand, pointing the invisible weapon before him. For a long moment he sat so; then the trigger finger moved, moved with the ease of long practice. Ritchie could almost hear the sound of that shot.

Sturgis turned his head and looked over Ritchie as if consulting someone standing a little beyond.

“Through the heart, I think, Haines. Jeffrey always did tend to fire—to fire—to fire—wide—” The red-welted face crumpled about the mouth like a child’s, and like a frightened and beaten child Sturgis gave an odd little wail. Slowly he began to slip, and as Ritchie sprang forward, he fell, a dead weight which carried Ritchie with him to the ground.

For a moment Ritchie was too winded to move. He sat there with Sturgis’ weight resting across him. And to his horror he saw the red stain seeping again through the bandages.

“Sergeant! Herndon!”

The blue eyes opened as he tried to move the limp body. And Sturgis said, in the conversational tone of one discussing the weather: “I killed him, you know, killed my cousin Jeffrey. It was very quickly done. Only I killed myself, too, just as neatly. Bullet through Jeffrey—through me, too, me, too—” He was quiet as the Sergeant came up.

Herndon made a quick examination and then shook his head.

“We can’t stay here.” Ritchie looked about the barren cup of rock where they stood. “If we had water—”

Herndon shrugged away that vain wish. “We can’t manhandle him much further, Peters. His wound has opened, and a shaking might bring on a hemorrhage—it’s too near the lung. We’ll try to get along as far as we can—”

Together somehow they put that limp body back across the horse, and steadying him from both sides, they inched along at a snail’s pace. A sudden turn in the canyon brought them out in another of the small valleys. Horses stood with lack-luster eyes and trembling legs around a basin that held water. Birke sprawled some distance away face down. And Tuttle sat on a rock in a curious hunched position. To Ritchie’s surprise, though the scout looked up when they came, he made no move to aid them.

Herndon started for the pool, but Tuttle shook his head.

“ ’Nother of them stinkin’ surprises, Scott. Got enough salts in it to kill even an Apache, mean as the critters are. If we could git up thar now, maybe we’d find us better drinks—”

“Up there” was the top of the mesa that provided part of one wall of the valley. From below, the green of the foliage growing there was a restful band to greet eyes burnt by the vivid paints of the rocks. And where all that green made such a carpet, surely there must be water too.

“Tried to git me a look-see,” Tuttle went on, “ ’n got me a tumble instead. Kinda shook the breath clean outta me for a while.” He held both hands to his right side, and he was breathing in short gusts as if it hurt him to move his ribs. Herndon watched him with a frown.

“How bad?” the Sergeant demanded harshly.

Tuttle did not raise his head but peered up through the half screen of his bushy eyebrows. “Jus’ lost my breath a trifle, son. Nothin’ to git all hetted up ’bout now—”

“Yeah.” Birke braced himself up on one elbow. His lips worked as if he wanted to spit but had no moisture in his mouth to spare. “Fell down ’n busted his fool self. Now he’ll have to be toted, too, ’les yo’ git wise, Herndon, ’n leave all the crocks. Else we won’t never git out!”

Herndon’s fist tightened, but he did not use it on the lounging dragoon. Instead he kept most of his attention for Tuttle. With a little sigh, which was more like the wheeze of air expelled from aching lungs, the scout straightened and took his hands away from his side. But the knot of pain was still etched deeply between his blue eyes.

“How’s Sturgis?”

The Sergeant indicated the body they had eased down from the horse. He lay very quietly now, a huddle of drab blue and brown without any life. Tuttle got slowly to his feet and came over. For a minute or two he examined the still oozing bandages.

“Better call it a day, Scott,” he said to the Sergeant, “ ’n make camp here. The water’s bad, but maybe the hosses will drink. ’N if yo’ can figure a way to git up that thar cliff, we maybe can have us somethin’ long ’n cool down our throats, too—”

“So we’re gonna be flies now?” Birke’s voice rose. “Well, I ain’t! I ain’t goin’ up a cliff ’n take a tumble to bust me all up like yo’, Tuttle. I’m damn hungry, ’n I’m eatin’ ’n drinkin’ right now!”

Before they could move, he drew Gilmore’s six-barreled revolver. The blast of the shot was not followed by any cry. But the horse which had borne Sturgis all day sank forward and rolled across the trampled soil. Birke, with the suppleness of a striking cat, was on the carcass and his knife plunged deep. Ritchie’s stomach heaved violently. He buried his face in his sweating hands rather than watch what followed.

The sharp smack of flesh meeting flesh snapped him out of his sick horror. Birke sprawled full length, but his fingers groped in the dust for the knife he had dropped, even as his eyes glared with a wild beast’s fury at Herndon. Blood not his own was smeared and slobbered over his mouth and chin.

The Sergeant kicked, and the knife was gone. Ritchie darted out and scooped it up. Birke got to hands and knees and scrambled hastily between a cactus and a boulder, screaming obscenities which echoed fantastically from the mesa heights.

Herndon walked steadily forward and gathered up the revolver Birke had dropped in his short flight and the dragoon’s carbine. His face was as unmoved as if the horrible scene had never been.

“All right!” the Sergeant snapped. He handed the revolver to Ritchie and dropped Birke’s carbine by the scout. “There’s a barrel cactus down there aways—”

“Rats, eh?” Tuttle nodded. “Try it, boy. They ain’t bad eatin’—kinda like squirrels—”

For once their bad luck did not hold. The barrel cactus had been hollowed out by the sharp rodent teeth of the bushy-tailed cactus rats until it was only a shell housing several families, all of whom were not quick enough to move. Swinging half a dozen small shapes by their tails, the hunters came back to camp. But Herndon’s eyes measured the rocky top of the mesa.

“How are you for heights?”

Ritchie shrugged. “All right, I guess. I’ve never done much climbing, but I don’t get dizzy easily.”

“We’re going to try that one tomorrow.” Herndon nodded toward the cliff. “We’d do better on water—if we can find it!”

14

One From Five Leaves—Death

Ritchie could not sleep. He had passed the point of sheer exhaustion to encounter its worst neighbor, a fatigue so deep that he could not escape it into unconsciousness. Overhead the stars were bright and clear, sharply cut as if he could reach out a grimy finger and touch them. And the bark of a coyote carried like a bugle call across the ranges. Each rock and cliff showed perfect edges, as if they had been cut from paper with a very keen-bladed pair of scissors. Slowly he pulled himself up on his elbows.

Horse meat, half-seared, half-raw, lay heavy in his stomach along with a few bites of cactus rat. It had gone down hard without water. Maybe tomorrow—he studied that tantalizing mesa top. In the black and white of the night it was startlingly clear.

Something moved. Birke venturing out of cover? He had sulked just beyond the camp all evening, ostracized by the others. Ritchie’s hand swept to his carbine without thought. A hunched shape detached itself from the rocks by the bitter spring. It crawled a little then dropped flat. A faint moan from it brought Ritchie forward.

“Who’s there!” The challenge came out of the dark.

“Peters.” Ritchie had reached the huddled shape.” Here’s Sturgis, sir. I think he’s been drinking the stuff—”

There was no answer to the soft word Herndon said then.

“Toss a cactus root on the fire and make sure!” he ordered from his post.

The flames spread to the stump, and the light touched Sturgis’ face. There was a slime of wetness across his chin to make Ritchie’s foreboding sure.

“He did—”

Someone else sighed. “Wal, that ’bout puts the lid on it, son—”

The Sergeant’s bootheels clicked on the stone as he came into the circle of firelight. He stood looking down at Sturgis’ flaccid body. His thin face was a chip of weathered granite.

“I didn’t think he had the strength to reach it,” he muttered. “Well, let’s get him back—the damage is done now—”

“Any chance?” Ritchie straightened the blankets from the tangle Sturgis had left behind on his fatal crawl.

“While a man’s still breathin’, son,” Tuttle returned, “thar’s always hope. Only to swill that stuff would rock a well man back on his heels, ’n Sturgis—he’s lost a powerful lot of blood. He ain’t a well man—”

Ritchie dropped down beside the Southerner who was moaning again. “I’ll stay here. If he tries it again, he’ll have to crawl over me—”

Somehow he actually slept after that. When he awoke, the sky was already light. Sturgis had ceased to moan. His face was a dirty gray against the rough blanket, and he was breathing heavily in a way which seemed to shake his whole body.

Ritchie, stiff and aching, got clumsily to his feet. Gold was cutting across the green of the mesa. More than ever it seemed an unobtainable paradise.

“Rise ’n shine, son.”

“Why didn’t you call me for guard! My tour must have been hours ago—”

“Yo’ shouldn’t deny an ol’ man his usefulness.” The old humor colored Tuttle’s voice, but something else lay beneath that, something which Ritchie could not identify but which made him uneasy.

“Them thar rats was mighty tasty last night. A leetle better for invalids than hoss meat. Suppose yo’ mosey down the canyon a mite ’n look round for ‘nother of their hidey holes—”

Ritchie bent over Sturgis. The Southerner still slept or else lay in a stupor which held him immovable. He took up his carbine and prepared to follow the scout’s suggestion.

Just beyond the fire Herndon lay, as stiff and straight as an engraving which had ornamented one of Ritchie’s history books. He was one of the effigies used on the Crusaders’ tombs—all he needed was the dog at his feet, the sword hilt between clasped hands. Nothing in that stern face had been relaxed by sleep; the lines of pain and fatigue were as deep as they would be when he awoke. Ritchie stepped over those straight legs and walked along the sandy ground toward the cactus which might or might not hold their breakfasts.

It was just beyond the plant they had demolished the night before in their hunt that he came across something else, deep and so freshly printed that none of the sand had shifted yet. He awoke very suddenly out of his half-stupid lethargy.

Yes—and there was a stripped branch with a few chewed leaves clinging to the bough. A second track. His quarry was going at its own deliberate pace then, free. If he could only catch up with it and get control! He hugged that wild hope—it was almost like having a drink of real water! What he did now might mean all their lives.

Then, beyond the screen of cactus, he saw the big dun-colored body moving with its curious rocking gait. Ritchie’s trot became a slow crawl as he edged along. It was the best of the camels—the huge “mule,” which both the driver and Captain Sharpe had so praised. No saddle encumbered the rising mound of its back, and the short ends of the halter, which dragged from its lower jaw, were frayed. He squatted down to consider his next move.

All he knew about camels was what he had picked up during the short time before the stampede. Should he make the wrong move now and frighten off the beast, there would be small chance of catching up with it again. This country, as harsh and horrible as it seemed to him, was the natural land of the slobbering, cud-chewing creature before him.

He rose to his feet and edged out of the concealing cactus. Rubbing dry lips with a tongue almost as cracked and hard, he tried to shape the call he had heard the camel drivers use. But his imitation was not a good one.

The “mule’s” rubbery neck swung; the flattish head raised. A half-chewed strip of tasteless dry stuff wavered from the working jaws as the creature sighted him. Ritchie stood still. But the camel moved off with the ponderous tread of an animal which did not fear capture.

That slow step deceived Ritchie. He threw aside his carbine and leaped for that bit of halter rope that bobbed below the clumping jaws. With a swiftness he had not thought possible, the snake head dodged. Then the camel rocked away through the cactus. Ritchie stumbled and fell. He lay flat, his cheek grinding into the gravelly soil while sounds tore out of his throat, dry sounds which could not be muffled by his clawing hands or the dust and sand.

At last, very slowly, he pulled himself up again. Grimly he crawled back and retrieved his carbine. And, as grimly, he turned away from the trail the camel had left. There was no use in following it now; the creature would be alarmed enough to keep out of reach and none of the horses—even were he able to find one which could still be ridden—would approach close enough to a camel to capture it.

“Heee—” The call came up the valley. He guessed it was for him, although it was uncannily close to a coyote’s questing bark. Herndon, Woldemar, and Tuttle had adapted that as a signal on their hunting trips. He started back dispiritedly.

Beside the fire Tuttle was tending, he told of his failure.

“I’m thinkin’ that critter won’t be goin’ far. Them brutes is more civilized than mule or hosses. They ain’t never lived wild out here. Like as not it’ll come around agin when it sniffs us out—”

“A good meat reserve—even if we can’t put it to work,” Herndon answered almost absently. Most of his attention was given to the mesa wall. “Where did you try climbing yesterday, Jesse?”

“Over thar—where that thar prong sticks out a mite—jus’ like a yearlin’ buck’s antler. Goes up nice ’n easy ten feet ’r so, then she busted off right when I was changin’ grips ’n down I came!”

“Hmm.” Herndon went back to the work which had held him on Ritchie’s return from the hunt. He was braiding into one the two lariats which he and Tuttle had always carried coiled on their saddles.

“Eat your breakfast, Peters,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll try climbing when I get this in shape.”

Sturgis was still in the half stupor, and of Birke there was no sign. Since his disappearance into the brush the night before, he had not shown himself, but there were indications he was still near. Most of the extra weapons of the camp, Ritchie noticed, lay close to Tuttle. The old scout still sat in a curiously cramped position, favoring his side as he had the night before.

Ritchie choked down the scraps of meat they had left for him and allowed himself one scant swallow from his canteen. Another such and it would be bone-dry.

After a survey Herndon decided that, in spite of Tuttle’s accident, the place the scout had chosen for his ascent the night before was still the best point to attempt.

“Where’s Birke?” Ritchie wanted to know.

“Up yonder.” Tuttle pointed up the valley. “He’s after cactus rats. As long as we have his knife ’n guns, I ain’t afeared of trouble. Now watch yoreselves, boys—”

Herndon and Ritchie tied the canteens to their belts, having poured all the water left into the one Tuttle kept.

“Don’t worry.” For the first time Herndon’s tight lips stretched into a kind of death’s-head grin. “We’ll grow lizard pads on our fingers and toes and be down again before you know it!”

“All right, all right.” Tuttle chuckled. “Laugh at an old man, will yo’? I’ll sit right here ’n like as not shoot me a bear. ’Member one bear as I shot oncet, weighed nigh six-hundred pounds skinned, he did. Had hisself raking claws ’bout four inches long—”

“And you killed him with a bowie knife?” asked the Sergeant.

The lightness of question and tone were so much in contrast to his face that Ritchie almost dropped the canteen he held. But Herndon was already heading for the cliff, and he had to hurry to catch up.

They rounded the spur Tuttle had pointed out and saw before them an expanse of rough, pitted rock which seemed to offer a maximum of handholds. Following Herndon’s example, Ritchie pulled off his boots and threw aside his hat, twisting his neckerchief around his head like an Apache’s turban.

“Don’t let go of one hold until you are sure of the next. Take it slow, and don’t look down!”

Ritchie nodded, saving his breath for the first assault. He watched Herndon’s hands and toes search out support and the Sergeant’s slim body spread-eagled against the rock as he went up. Then he, too, was finding a good grip, and with an odd taste in his mouth and a ripple of ice down his backbone he began to climb.

There were two bad stretches, one the place where Tuttle’s tired fingers had betrayed him, and another, higher, where Ritchie clung to what seemed scant inches of slippery rock and prayed aloud to the rough stone as he hunted another hold. But in the end a hand took firm grip on his sweaty shoulders, and he was heaved up and over rock which scraped his skin raw and bloody.

He lay on his back staring up into a sky of molten blue. Far above, a black dot wheeled and dipped as an eagle surveyed its own hunting ground. Somewhere near he could hear heavy panting breaths beating almost in time with the pumping of his own laboring heart. He rolled over on his side and discovered that he lay on a bed of real grass.

Herndon was stretched out full length in the cool green stuff, his face buried in his folded arms, his shoulders heaving, the pink flesh of one showing through a long ragged tear in his shirt.

Using his lacerated hands to lever him up, Ritchie looked around. They had climbed into another world. The trampled parklike expanse where they now were was covered with grass—green and blowing as a meadow at home. The ground sloped toward the interior of the mesa, and through the scrub cedar and piñon he thought he could sight a gleam which was promising. Hardly daring to hope—telling himself that if it was water it might be as contaminated with chemicals as the stuff which bubbled so disappointingly below—he felt for the canteens.

A brown furry shape materialized in front of him. Ritchie remained on his knees, startled into immobility as a jack rabbit, which was certainly a giant even among its kind, watched him with all the signs of unafraid curiosity. If man had ever discovered this sanctuary before, it was not in the memory of this particular inhabitant. Ritchie moved, and the jack hopped on a pace or two just to be on the safe side, but it did not go far.

“Trusting beggar, isn’t he?” Herndon’s chin still rested on his arms, but he had raised his head to watch the withdrawal of the jack rabbit.

“Not afraid at all—”

“No. So I don’t believe we’ll have to worry about any rivals up here. Shall we go down and see if that really is water?”

“You see it, too?”

“Sure. And unless we share a common delusion, maybe we can hope for the best.” Herndon was a little slow in rising, and involuntarily Ritchie put out a hand which the Sergeant actually grasped as he got up. Their pace toward the water which might or might not exist was a slow one.

Around them the grass whispered. Desert quail scuttled away, and the curious jack rabbit was not the only one of its tribe to watch them. The metallic blue of the sky arched over them as if it closed them in captive in this forgotten pocket of the world. There was a buzz of life here that was not known in the desert below, a happy life that had no part in the parched canyon country.

And so they walked slowly through the knee-high grass into the reaches of a stunted little wood and on to the banks of a pool, a pool almost large enough to be termed lake. The water was dark and seemed to be very deep, its very darkness giving forth a rich cool promise. Ritchie pitched down on the verge, rippling his burning hands through it. Herndon smelled, tasted, and then drank from his cupped hands.

When Ritchie followed that lead, he knew that never in his life had he known so satisfying a drink. They poured the water over their heads and shoulders, stopping every few minutes to drink sparingly. The very trickle of the stuff down the skin was like bathing in something alive, which both stimulated and renewed.

Ritchie rinsed the canteens twice and filled each one to the brim. This would be an excellent place to camp until they were all on their feet again. Maybe if they could figure some way of getting Sturgis up—

“If we could get Sturgis and Tuttle up here—” The Sergeant was voicing Ritchie’s thoughts. “But neither one can make it.”

Ritchie hated to lose that faint hope. “Couldn’t you and I and Birke and the lariats—”

“Sturgis would be all dead weight. We couldn’t get him up. And Tuttle—” He was frowning again.

“Tuttle—?”

“Jesse’s hurt worse than he’ll admit. Broken ribs in this country with hard travel ahead of us—”

“He’s tough!” Ritchie gave the stopper on the last canteen a vicious twist.

“They don’t come any tougher. But Jesse’s old. He’s been roaming this country thirty years or more—why, he was out with the Mountain Men back in the Twenties! If he’s hurt bad, he won’t let us know—until—until too late.” Herndon got to his feet and picked up the extra canteen he had been holding.

“I’ll go down first.” He was already heading for the place where they had entered into this green and smiling island. “Then you lower the canteens by rope, and I’ll send up the one we left with Tuttle. We’d better get all the water we can; we may not have many chances to come back here.” He uncoiled the lariat and made it fast on a cedar before slipping over.

Ritchie could not come close enough to the edge to watch his descent. Instead he played the rope through his hands. It went easily enough; the Sergeant must be finding the road down smoother than he had the way up. Then the rope hung free, and there were a couple of quick tugs on it. He pulled it up to find the empty canteen fastened to its end.

Tying the ones he had filled to it he lowered away before he doubled back to the pool to fill the last one. Another jack rabbit, or perhaps it was the same one, bobbed up at the edge of the wood and eyed him unafraid. Ritchie stood still. His knife was in his belt, but he could not throw it as either Tuttle or Herndon might have done, and his carbine was out of reach below. But that jack was plump, its haunches smooth and round. And jack was better eating than half-spoiled horse meat or cactus rat. Ritchie recalled the smooth stones he had seen by the pool. Maybe one of those, well aimed—But water came first. He filled the canteen and hurried back. He was pulling up the rope when it was suddenly given a jerk from below that almost tore it out of his hands. Fastening the canteen to his belt, he went over the edge, one hand on the guide rope.

Once his feet slipped, and he had only his frenzied clutch on the rope to save him. A second later his bruised toes spun back against the rock and found purchase. He closed his dry mouth and merely clung to that frail support for a long moment before he crawled downward again. Then he was close enough to let go and jump, landing painfully in the gravel. But he was running in that same instant around the pinnacle toward the camp. Apaches might have come up—but certainly Tuttle, armed, could have shot at least once or twice before they jumped him.

Ritchie’s knife was in his hand. The camp looked undisturbed. Sturgis lay as he had the hour before. But there was another prone man by the spring, and Herndon was working over him.

It was Tuttle who lay there, his head resting on the Sergeant’s knee. A thin Ted stream made a wavering pattern across his forehead, and his eyes were closed.

“What—?” began Ritchie.

Herndon’s lips were curled back in just such a snarl as Big Gray had shown when they interrupted his nap. And his eyes had some of the feral anger which had made the big cat such a picture of dangerous rage.

“Birke’s doing!”

Ritchie glanced around. Sturgis’ black horse was gone, and the carbines that had been left to Tuttle’s care had vanished. The saddlebag that held their meager supply of food was missing, and the blanket that they had raised on small stakes to shelter Sturgis had been torn away.

Tuttle groaned, and Herndon held a canteen to his lips again. The scout choked, raised a limp hand uncertainly, and opened his eyes. For a second or two he seemed dazed, and then he swallowed and spoke.

“Bin a bad guard, son.” The words were a mere whisper of sound. “That polecat crept up on me from behind when I was seein’ to Sturgis. Gave me a good one—”

Herndon put his fingers over those trembling lips. “I should have foreseen this. The blame’s mine, Jesse, for being a chuckleheaded fool!”

“He didn’t git all the guns.” Tuttle twisted his head away from those restraining fingers. “Look in the pool—”

Ritchie looked. Under the surface of the tainted water lay the scout’s rifle and Ritchie’s carbine. He pulled them out hurriedly.

“Kicked ’em in when I went down.” Tuttle’s weak laugh was a ghost of itself. “He didn’t wait to fish ’em out agin. Must have lit out in a hurry.”

Herndon settled the old man back on the folded blanket Ritchie hunted out of the tangle of gear Birke had kicked into a mess in his search for supplies.

“He took the best of the horses,” the Sergeant observed bleakly.

Tuttle hunched himself up a little on his new support. “Which ain’t sayin’ much, son. ’N we have water!”

But Ritchie was thinking of Sturgis and Tuttle. Only he and the Sergeant were on their feet now. And the three horses unable to graze the forbidding stuff about them were walking skeletons. Had the odds become so weighted that the answer could only be death?

15

“Camels ’n Apaches Don’t Drink”

The Sergeant and Ritchie sorted out the mess Birke had made and totaled the losses. Most of the ammunition was gone, all of their food supply, two blankets, and Herndon’s gold watch, which he had left with Tuttle, being afraid of breaking it in the climb. Herndon’s face was bleak when he finished. They still had the carbine and the rifle Tuttle had thrown into the spring with limited ammunition for both, their knives, two pieces of flinty hardtack that had spilled from the provision sack, and the now full canteens.

Sturgis lay unmoving, moaning now and again. Herndon made a swift examination of the bandaged shoulder. He got up from that too slowly. Tuttle cleared his throat before he spoke.

“No use tryin’ to git on today, son—”

Herndon was arranging the edge of a blanket to shade the wounded man from the sun.

“No use,” he agreed.

“We could sling a blanket between two of the horses,” ventured Ritchie. The urge to get away from the place was strong. If they could only reach the mesa top—but that was impossible.

“It would kill him within the quarter mile. Any handling now might end the only chance he has. Listen.” The Sergeant turned to Tuttle. “I took a look-see from up there. Do you know a peak which looks like this?” With a stick he drew a jagged outline in the dust.

The scout squinted down at the wavery line. “North, south ’r east?” he wanted to know.

“Northeast.”

Tuttle was counting on his fingers, his lips moving.

“Is a sorta rounded knob to the west of it? A kinda leanin’ knob?”

Herndon thought and then nodded.

“Seems like I saw it oncet then—a long way off. ’N it marks the Torreónes country, Scott. Gotta git ’cross thar to reach the Gallina, then follow that down to the Chama—”

Herndon’s eyes dropped to his empty hands. “How long will it take us?”

“Wal, now, that’d take a mite of figgerin’. Velasco, he went through the edge of that thar stretch of land—back in ’55 it were. He says it’s all breaks, rough stuff ’n hard goin’. Water mighty scarce. It’ll be a tough trail—”

Ritchie was watching Sturgis. If they were all able to walk, or if they had ample supplies and mounts—why, a tough trail was nothing. But now—

Herndon dug at the soil with the point of his knife. Suddenly Tuttle laughed.

“Gonna ruin the point, Scott, doin’ that. ’N yo’ ain’t goin’ to dig us outta here neither. We can’t hit back trail, ’cause the Injuns ain’t forgot us yet. The Apaches are right smart at trailin’ when their dander’s up, ’n Diego’s with ’em to keep ’em to it. ’N ahead, thar’s jus’ the Gallina country. We’re between the devil ’n the desert here, son. Either way we jump, we’ve got us jus’ one slim chance in a hundred-thousand now—”

“We have water.” Ritchie clung to the one bright spot in their nightmare. “And there’re the jacks up there. Sup pose I go back up and do some hunting?”

“Jacks!” Tuttle pounced on him and demanded details. When Ritchie had done, he began to give some orders of his own. “Hand me that thar stick of wood, son. Take a gun up thar ’n bang away, ’n yo’ll bust ’em four ways from Sunday! A club—that’s what yo’ need.” He used his knife swiftly as he talked, shaving away thin slices of wood until he was able to hand Ritchie a well-shaped club.

Herndon brushed the sand and gravel from out a hollow that dented the top of a nearby rock. When he finished, there was a sort of shallow trough there about a foot across and several inches deep. Into this he poured—with the care of one mixing rare chemicals—the contents of one of the canteens. And then he brought up his horse. So they watered all three of the animals left. Then Ritchie prepared to climb again, Tuttle’s club hanging from a thong about his neck.

Above he hesitated for a moment to try to locate the mountain peak Herndon had used for a guide. There it was against the cloudless sky, like a ripple of barren rock. And he was sure he could make out, just beyond, the knob which Tuttle had mentioned. But there was no time to waste now.

He jerked up the guide rope and untied the blanket fastened to it. Inside were the empty canteens, and they were filled and sent down before he began his second task. When they were safely lowered, he took his knife and set to harvesting the grass of the pocket meadow, sawing it off as close to the roots as he could manage. Although the heap on the blanket grew, he knew that it would hardly more than tantalize the patient and starving animals below. But it was all they could give them. Perhaps after drinking, the mounts would be able to eat the prickly shrubs that the camel appeared to relish.

Salty sweat stung his eyes and trickled down his back, biting through the kerchief on his head until he went to wet it in the pool and mop off his face and chest. He had cleared quite a patch of grass and had been able to lower the filled blanket more than once. But he was still hard at chopping when a jack popped up to watch him.

Driven by hunger, which had advanced from a faint ache to the gnawing stage, Ritchie reached for the club. But when the wood fell true and the bundle of brown fur collapsed kicking, he could not pick up the body at once. He sent it down by rope as quickly as he could without looking too closely at it. The second jack that wandered out to watch him curiously was no easier to kill.

With another blanket full of grass harvested, he was getting close to the end of the small field. Maybe there might be another pocket meadow on the other side of the wood. But the heat bit down so that he had to have water again. As he dragged himself wearily back to the pool, he started up a cloud of small butterflies, which danced into the air, sailing up and out over the edge of the parched canyon to mock the life which could not climb here.

Ritchie splashed water across his head and shoulders. Maybe he should get back down and give Herndon a chance up here. Or Tuttle—But he guessed that the old scout could not make that climb now, not even with the help of the rope. Here was salvation for them, and they could not take it as long as two of the company were disabled. What a fool Birke had been to go off that way! If he had waited, he would have had both food and water. He must have been half crazy to do it—

He went back to tie the four corners of the grass-filled blanket and push it over. Then he followed. The sun had passed over the slit of the canyon, and their camp was now shadowed. Along the flat rock the horses nosed with pathetic eagerness at the last of the grass. Tuttle tended a fire on which the bubbling contents of a pan gave out fragrant odors.

“Rabbit stew. One of the best feeds I ever had. Oncet in the Mexican War when we was mighty beat out ’n hungry, we came ’crost a stray steer along the road. Took us nigh four-five minutes to git off its jacket ’n carve it up. We was hungry ’nough to eat rattlesnake ’long ’bout then. Yeah, any snake as was makin’ a mouth at us would’a gone right into the pot ’fore he could shake his rattle—”

“Where’s the Sergeant?” Ritchie squatted down by the fire and inhaled the scent, which brought the juices swimming between tongue and teeth.

“Gone for some more wood ’n to do a mite of scoutin’. Gittin’ close to sundown, ’n he’s wantin’ to see if we’ve got us any neighbors—”

Ritchie knew he had lost track of time, but he had not realized it was so late. It might be well to make one more trip for water before darkness. But he just had to eat first; his hunger was a harsh fist squeezing his whole middle.

Herndon was back before Tuttle pronounced the stew done. He had a brace of cactus rats and a lizard, and he was full of news as he threw them down. The “mule” camel had not gone away but was lingering near the camp as they had hoped. There was just a chance that the beast might become so accustomed to them that it would allow itself to be caught.

“Jus’ what we need for a jaunt up Gallina ways!” Tuttle said. “Camels ’n Apaches, they don’t drink. We ’n hosses do. Better git us the critter if he comes close ’nough. Now sit down ’n git some of this brew under yore belt.”

Sturgis did not rouse. With Herndon’s help Ritchie managed to get maybe a teaspoonful of broth between his gray lips, but the rest dribbled away, and there was no evidence that the wounded man swallowed. His skin was fiery to the touch, and his half-open eyes were glazed and set. Ritchie knew now—though they had not said it aloud—that St. George Sturgis would never move out of that camp. And the best thing for him—as well as for the rest of them—would be a final stop of that painful gasping breath which whistled between his shrunken lips. In that gray-white death’s-head pillowed on the folded blanket Ritchie could see hardly any resemblance to the dashing young dragoon who had swept him out of loneliness in the Santa Fe barracks and who had welcomed this trip with such gay eagerness.

Slowly Ritchie untied his neckerchief and spread out the silk, trying to smooth away the wrinkles. Tuttle licked the small iron spoon with which he had eaten his stew.

“Bin doin’ a leetle washin’, son? This ain’t a very good place for that. ’N washin’ ain’t never so good out here—mostly yo’ jus’ chase the dirt from one place to ’nother. That thar’s a right purty scarf though—”

“Yes.” Ritchie’s roughened fingers caught on the silk. “How about one more trip topside, Sergeant? Get another supply of water for tonight?”

Herndon studied the changing color of the sky. “If you can make it, yes. But don’t stop to cut grass or hunt. The horses will have to do with what they’ve had until morning.”

Ritchie went up, filled the canteens, and brought them back to lower over the cliff. He looked out over the broken, saw-toothed ranges. The brilliant colors of late afternoon were on the mountain that was to be their guide out. Overhead the eagle was long since gone; there was nothing to break the smooth stretch of the sky. He might have been the only living thing in a country which even the Apache Spirit Uisin had forsaken. With a sigh he started to climb down.

They watered the horses sparingly. All the grass was gone, even most of the single blades had been licked up from the rock. But the animals did not stand with hanging heads tonight, and Herndon brought the picket ropes out for the first time. Tuttle had the fire up, and by common unspoken consent they gathered around it as the shadows grew thicker and the sky faded into gray.

Herndon, with a stone for a desk and a stub of pencil, was writing in the pages of the small book that always rode within his shirt while on patrol. Tuttle watched him lazily.

“Puttin’ us into history,” the scout said to Ritchie. “Gittin’ all this writ down. Someday maybe we’ll be in a book—explorin’, that’s what we’re doin’. Only this time he’d better bribe some coyote to deliver it back to the post—”

The Sergeant almost grinned. “All right. Then I’ll get a coyote to ride mail for me if I have to. Sharpe’ll want to know about this side road, and it doesn’t do any harm to put it all down. Somebody else might want to come this way—”

“Anyone who does is a plain durned fool!” observed the scout. “But thar’s plain durned fools enough in this world. Write it down, boy. If they find the book with yore bones, it’ll make yo’ a name—maybe.” Only a trace of the old zest lingered in his voice.

Through the wave of fatigue that made Ritchie heavy-eyed, he sensed that. He had accepted Sturgis’ fate—no friend could wish St. George to suffer any longer. And now he was even able to accept the fact that Tuttle did not believe they had a future. But Herndon still wrote, the small crisp lines of words marching across the page like dragoons at drill. Herndon had not given up. And he wouldn’t.

While there was life in him, he would go on and on—just as he had through the drifts of snow on that winter raid. And he would keep his mind and heart alive by just such devices as that book. Ritchie stared fixedly at the Sergeant, trying to puzzle out what made Herndon what he was. And now Herndon lifted his eyes and looked back at him.

When the Sergeant’s attention returned to the book, which he now had to hold at an awkward angle to catch the firelight, Ritchie sighed unconsciously. Perhaps there was a shell about the real Herndon, enclosing the man and making of him a levelheaded, efficient, fighting machine, the only machine which could stand up to this land and its native people—a machine without fear or weakness, which could save the man inside from feeling anything too deeply.

The barracks and Santa Fe he could remember now only as a series of shadowy scenes that had once contained him for a space. And when he tried to go back to his life in the East—why, even his memory failed to make it true. Ritchie Peters must be growing a shell, too, layer on layer as the pearl was fashioned. He tried to focus on Laura’s face and saw only a pink and white blur without any expression or meaning. Then he yawned.

Herndon wrapped his journal in a twisted handkerchief, cleaner than his shirt. “Roll in. I’ll take first guard.”

The stars were bright overhead when the Sergeant prodded Ritchie out of sodden sleep. There was a chill wind blowing down canyon, and the horses stirred restlessly. He spread his beat in a wider circle about the camp, pulling his protesting, sleep-drugged body from rock to cactus grove, to the side of the tainted spring.

“Rich—”

That came hardly above a whisper, as strained and cracked as the lips which shaped it. He hurried across to Sturgis.

“Water—Rich?”

“Sure!” Relief ran through him at the sound of that rational question. He reached gladly for the nearest canteen and lifted up the tousled head. But the first swallow brought on a fit of coughing, and wet spray was on his hand. Hurriedly he lowered Sturgis.

“Rich—?”

“Right here, Sturgis. Want to try another drink?”

“Why waste water?” The faint ghost of gay humor clung to that. “I’m going, Rich. If you get out—”

“Yes?” He forced his voice to remain steady.

“Good luck! Didn’t I tell you once”—the blurred tones sharpened into almost their old-time strength and clarity—“that it’s darn hard work, this snatching the laurels from the brow of fame?”

A strangled sound, which might have been a laugh, followed the words. And then there was nothing more. Ritchie got to his feet. With the carbine across his arm he walked along the boundary of the guard post he had set for himself. He walked steadily and at an even pace, and he did not look back.

They buried Sturgis in the morning, scooping out with hands and knives a shallow hole under an overhanging rock. Before they moved the blanket-wrapped body to its last resting place, Ritchie pulled away the harsh woolen stuff to spread over the quiet face the smooth silk of the scarf Sturgis had envied him. Then it was a quick business to put in place the rocks and thorny branches of cactus that would keep inviolate the best grave they could make. They avoided each other’s eyes as they worked, and Ritchie fought to keep his hands from shaking betrayingly.

Now they could move on. Ritchie packed their meager belongings while Herndon paid a last visit to the mesa for food and water. They shared out a last blanket-load of grass among the horses, gave them water, and filled every canteen to the brim, all without speech. Tuttle mounted Herndon’s horse, and the Sergeant started out, Ritchie bringing up the rear.

Birke’s trail was still to be read. Ritchie wondered dully what would happen to the deserter. His only hope would be to find water, and their luck on the mesa top might not be repeated within several hundred miles.

Tuttle slumped in the saddle, and he rode with one hand on the horn as if to steady himself. As the day wore on and the heat, reflected back by the rocks, grew worse, the old scout shriveled as if he were withering away from his own bony frame. But he made no complaint, nor did he ever urge that the rest periods Herndon observed scrupulously be prolonged by as much as a minute.

They chewed on bits of cooked rabbit and rat they had brought with them. There was forage of a sort—sun-withered grass which the horses grazed with no show of relish. As they started on again, Ritchie did as his companions and picked up a smooth pebble to hold under his tongue in the fight against thirst.

“Blisterin’ country—hotter ’n the hinges of hell,” Tuttle remarked.

“Wonder what a thermometer would read here?” Ritchie worked the words around the pebble.

“Any thermometer as was fool enough to git brought here would blow up.”

The horse Herndon was leading shied, jumping side-wise with a quick jerk of the reins, which pulled the Sergeant off balance and so saved his life. He swung Tuttle’s rifle, bringing it down twice with vicious force. Still threshing, a whip-shaped body disappeared into a crack between stones.

“That’s one rattler what ain’t goin’ to sound off no more.” Tuttle greeted the happening with satisfaction. “Best keep yore eyes peeled, boys. Whar’s thar’s one of them devils, thar’s like to be more. This is jus’ the country for ’em.”

They had some difficulty forcing the horses past the stone the rattler had died upon. Beyond that they passed under a natural arch of burnished red rock, as bright and metallic as copper, into a seamed land where they could see down slope into a maze of breaks and sharply cut mesas ringed with pinnacles of painted rock.

“Green sign!” Tuttle’s eyes were still keen enough. He had sighted that telltale bit of coolness among the red ridges.

To them green meant only one thing now—the hope of water. They headed for it without question. It had been so long since they had seen Indian signs that they had almost forgotten the menace which might lie in wait.

The slip of green arose out of a cut small enough to be almost termed an arroyo. But as they hurried toward it, Tuttle snapped out a single word which stopped them short.

“Smoke!” He sniffed the air hound-fashion, his head up, his beaky nose pointing straight for the green slash. “That’s fire—”

Ritchie could smell nothing, but he unslung his carbine, checking its loading. Herndon was doing the same with the rifle.

“Take cover—over there!” The Sergeant indicated a pinnacle which was almost mushroom-shaped.

Tuttle, herding the loose horses before him, was already in motion. Ritchie tagged along behind, trying to keep the whole countryside under observation, suspicious of any move from the patch of green. Herndon had melted into the rough ground. They reached the shelter of the outcrop without any shots or arrows to speed them. The scout was shaving an infinitesimal bit from his palm-sized block of trade tobacco as Ritchie threw himself belly-down between two rocks that gave him command of the only path Herndon could have taken.

Then out of that green a black bird arose sluggishly with a croaking scream of rage—to be followed by two more. They lit on a shelf, reluctant to venture farther away. And Herndon appeared on his feet, waving his companions on to join him.

16

“Reckon I’ll Cross Over—”

Ritchie clung to the twisted trunk of the desert-warped cedar and retched violently. He had managed to hold out as long as he was needed, but now he had crept away to lose the scanty meal he had eaten a few hours before. He would probably never be able to forget the grisly business he had just been engaged in. He had heard all the horrible barracks stories of Apache handiwork, but this was the first time he had actually witnessed its result. And he had discovered that his most vivid imaginings could not measure up to actuality. His stomach muscles knotted, and he swayed against the rough bark of the tree.

“Peters!”

He lifted his head but did not dare to turn it as he answered, “Yes—”

“We’ll have to move on.”

He wiped his shaking hands down his thighs. He hadn’t actually touched anything, of course, but— Resolutely he tried to put it out of his mind. He stood away from the tree and walked back.

“It was Diego’s men, all right,” Tuttle said as he came up. “Dog hairs on that piece of blanket.”

“How long—”

“Wal, that watch was still tickin’, warn’t it? Beats me how they came to overlook that! ’N them birds hadn’t been here long enough to clean up any. Say maybe an hour—maybe a mite more. They must’ve jumped him early this mornin’. ’N they had their fun with him for quite a spell.”

Ritchie fumbled with his carbine. He had never liked Birke; the man had been a stupid bully and coward. But he hadn’t deserved to end like this—no human being did.

“We know one thing,” Tuttle continued. “They ain’t hangin’ round here. If they were, we’d be laid out right now. Either they don’t know we’re about, or they’re back-trackin’ to find our camp—”

“Birke might have told them about us,” Herndon agreed. “They’ll be on our trail if they cross our sign—”

“ ’N that leaves us one thing to do.” The scout scratched at the roughness of beard on his forward-thrusting chin. “We got to skedaddle along ’n find us a good place to hole in. Git fixed up proper ’fore they catch up with us.”

So they headed away from that gruesome slash of greenery, back into the sun-baked reds and blues and purples of the rocklands. The breaks closed about them, and they trudged again through stone that echoed back the ghostly sound of their passing.

Ritchie, scouting ahead, found the first sign of other life, a track stamped heavily into soft earth. Mountain lion—and a big one, too. It was fresh—even as he found it a bit of earth toppled from the edge into the center of the deepest depression. Surely the big cat would not range far from water. He pointed out his find to the others.

Tuttle studied it from the saddle. “Cat—’n a big one. Yeah,” he answered Ritchie’s hopeful suggestion. “It might jus’ lead us to water if it don’t take it into its head to go straight up the wall someplace like that Big Gray of Charlie’s. Anyway, it’s goin’ our way, so we can follow it easy-like.”

What the cat did lead them to in time was its kill. Under the edge of a rock, with dirt and stones scratched over it, they found the carcass of a small deer. Herndon hacked off what he could, and they tried to pack it on the horses, only to find the animals made unmanageable by the combined scent of lion and blood. At last Tuttle took up the major portion before him, and they traveled on to shelter in a rock pocket and, not daring to light a fire, fed on raw meat.

Tuttle had been unable to dismount without help. And when they had lowered him to the ground, he had doubled up in a fit of coughing that seemed to tear him apart. Tears of pain ran from the corners of his faded blue eyes, and even when the worst was over, he still crouched as if he were afraid to straighten up. He did no more than taste his portion of the meat, but he drank too eagerly when Herndon passed one of the canteens.

That night was made up of sodden, nightmare-ridden sleep and then guard duty, with the added torture of memory to goad the mind. It was so easy to be mistaken about the shape of a shadow in the moonlight, so easy to see things move when they did not. So it might be just as easy to overlook real danger crawling belly-down toward them through the night. And they dared not waste a single cartridge or bullet. The extra supplies and guns which Birke had stolen now armed their enemies.

Of all the hallucinations born of the night the worst, Ritchie decided, was the one that he could hear, somewhere not too far away, the constant drip of water. He tried not to listen to that regular rhythm, but he found himself straining to catch the faint sound. And once he almost woke the Sergeant to suggest that they try to trace it down. Only the fact that Herndon must have heard it while taking his tour and had not thought it worth investigating kept him from doing so.

There was the lion. Had the creature returned to its cache to find the deer gone? And would it trail them in return? He had never heard of the lions attacking men. But a beast as big and wily as Big Gray would make a formidable opponent if it decided to hunt men as carefully and guilefully as it hunted deer. There was that one which had killed Tuttle’s mule on the winter march—it had taken fire to drive that one away. And tonight they had no fire.

Tuttle was mumbling, a steady sound, too low for listeners to distinguish words—yet it rasped the nerves. The scout had never allowed Herndon to examine his injuries. And the knock over the head Birke had given him after that smashup on the rocks hadn’t done him any good—

Birke! Ritchie’s mind shied frantically away from any thought of Birke. He was afraid that he would never remember him except as he had seen him last. And to think of that was madness!

It must be time to inspect their improvised picket line. He walked softly to the semi-corral they had thrown up of stones and cactus. It was safe. Neither cat nor Apache was near if he knew horses. The scent of either enemy would have made them restless. The harsh brilliant light of the moon was cold. He shivered as he shuffled back to their cave.

Something was wrong. For a moment he didn’t realize what was missing, and then he knew! Tuttle no longer lay there, and the faint sound of his mumble was still. Ritchie shook Herndon into wakefulness.

“Went out to see the horses,” Ritchie sputtered. “Came back—found Tuttle gone!”

The Sergeant’s hand was already on the rifle.

“All right. If you didn’t see him, then he went up, not down past you. And he can’t have gone far. Probably he’s off his head and hunting water.”

As they started along the only path Tuttle could have taken, Ritchie wondered if the scout had been aware of that odd dripping noise and had gone off to trace its source. Tuttle was trail-wise enough to do that even when he was half out of his head.

At almost the same instant they sighted him and their exclamations of relief came as one. He was on his hands and knees, like some sort of shaggy animal, clawing his way over the ground.

But before either of the others could move, a sinuous black shadow detached itself from a ledge, flowed across a rock, drew together for a second, and sprang, striking Tuttle crushingly on the shoulders. The scream of the man was echoed by a snarl from the cat as it lashed out vicious claws. Afraid to shoot, Ritchie clubbed his carbine and ran, but Herndon used the rifle.

A second scream of rage and pain burst as Ritchie reached the thrashing tangle of man and beast. He saw the outline of a flat-skulled feline head and brought the butt of his carbine down on it, feeling bone crunch under the force of the blow. Herndon’s knife flashed in the moon as he struck twice. Then Ritchie hooked his fingers in the coarse fur and yanked the heavy body off its victim.

They had to have a fire now. Ritchie got a few sticks lighted while the Sergeant straightened the limp figure they had carried back. When the thin flames blazed up, they saw the worst. Great raking red wounds laced white flesh. They worked feverishly to stop the pumping blood. But they had already lost the battle; Ritchie could guess that without being told. They could only make Tuttle as easy as possible and hope that for him the end would come soon.

During what was left of the night he talked, but not to them. He was at old fur rendezvous smoking pipes with Sioux warriors, sweating out battles of the Mexican War, walking again the valleys of the smoking spring country, marveling at what he saw, bathing in the Pacific where he had gone to spend the gold he had found in unknown mountain streams—

“Flour gold—” His words rippled on. “That’s what the boys called it. Fine as dust—but, Lordy, a man could spend it—same as money. I had me ten days in ’Frisco as I won’t ever fergit. Busted me, but it was worth it—sure—” His poor ripped face was smiling.

For a while he was quiet, and when he spoke again, he was back to here and now.

“What got me, son?”

“Lion. You were crawling along—”

“Yeah. Guess the critter thought I was a deer. Lion—” His voice trailed off, but he was making a visible effort to hold to consciousness and them. “Watch out for Injuns, sons—”

“We will, Jesse!”

But he was already lost to them again. “Boys”—his tone was stronger, almost happy—“thar’s the river now; see it, fellers? ’N it’s beautiful over thar, ain’t it? That thar grass so green ’n all. Water—cool—jus’ ripplin’ ’long easy like. I’m tired of marchin’. I reckon I’ll cross over ’n go into camp—”

Herndon pulled away abruptly as if the hand he had been holding had turned red hot. He was gone into the dark, but Ritchie sat where he was. The fire sputtered out, and wind swept down the canyon with a faint, far-off sobbing note.

At the first break of gray dawn they buried Tuttle as they had Sturgis, walling up his shrunken body with the stoutest rocks they could pick. But when they came to the horses, only Bess was still on her feet. Herndon’s face was a stone mask, and neither he nor Ritchie spoke through that morning.

But when everything was done and they broke camp, having to pull Bess by main force past the stiff body of the lion, he stooped and picked up something from between two stones.

“A legacy which we can use.” His words were bitter and as chipped as ice. In his hand was the piece of tobacco Tuttle had treasured. He shaved off two pieces. One he forced upon Ritchie, and the other he mouthed himself.

“Chew,” he ordered. “It’ll keep you going—”

Ritchie chewed. It didn’t much matter, he thought dazedly, what they did now. In the end it would all be the same. Either the Apaches would catch up with them or thirst and hunger would knock them out.

They prodded on into a basin where the sandstone walls opened out in a series of long jagged points, like the fangs of a trap waiting to close on them for all time. Herndon stopped and caught Ritchie’s arm.

“Look!” Dust and thirst had made his voice a croak, but the ring of command was still in it.

Ritchie obediently raised his head and looked.

On the top of one of the rock fangs was a tower—not a crumbling ruin of adobe such as they had seen before, but a real tower of squared stones, sturdy against wind and weather.

Slowly he turned his head. Now that he had sighted the first, he could see the others where they stood on the tops of the pinnacles close to the encircling cliffs, outlined against the solid rock of the natural walls behind them. Some were alone and others clustered together. There were more towers than he could count.

“The land of the Torreónes,” Herndon said softly. “The valley of many towers—”

“But where are the people?” Ritchie searched those flanking cliffs with restless eyes. There seemed to be no life within those patiently erected walls, unless it was the life of bird, snake, or lizard. It was a valley of the dead, sucked clean of movement and life.

“Gone. There are the lines of their fields. But how long has it been since water ran in those irrigation ditches? This may have been ancient and deserted before the first European dreamed of the western world. Lost and forgotten—”

“Dead.” Ritchie struck at the black flies. Bess stamped weakly and whinnied. Herndon urged her toward the cliff side. Getting up on the saddle, he was able to scramble to a higher vantage point. His lookout duties took some minutes. Ritchie flopped down behind a screen of low growing cactus, his carbine to hand. But the country through which they had come seemed as barren as the waste of the tower land. Herndon came down with a jarring thud.

“There’s an old river bed down the center of the basin. If we use that for a guide, there’s a chance it will lead us to the Chama—”

“Yes?” Ritchie pulled himself up again with an effort. “You mean it will if we can keep going—which we can’t. Diego’s Apaches are probably beating up our back trail right now—”

But Herndon had more attention for the towers than for what his companion was saying. “I wonder if Apaches would come here? Most primitive peoples are superstitious, and some tribes avoid the cliff ruins for fear of spirits. These towers seem so untouched—this whole section might well be forbidden territory. We can get down that river—follow it—”

“And something is following us!” Ritchie had glanced over the Sergeant’s shoulder, and now with a push he sent Herndon sprawling into cover as he himself went to one knee and steadied the carbine across a rock.

A large dun-colored creature was coming at a deliberate pace down the basin. For a moment Ritchie just stared at it, and then he began to laugh weakly as the Sergeant sat up spitting gravel and hot words. It was the “mule” camel, a whisp of spiky desert stuff protruding from its working jaws at almost the same angle as that of a Mexican cigarrillo, its dignified tread that of a pompous man of affairs on his way to his appointed place of business.

Herndon made for the lariat which had been hung over the horn of Bess’s saddle. The mare was rolling her eyes in the direction of the camel, trying to pull free and go far, far away.

Looping the lariat, Herndon jerked out an order to Ritchie. “Circle to the left and see if you can force him over in this direction. I’ll try to get him with the rope—”

Ritchie circled. The camel was watching him. When he came within ten yards or so, it removed itself—to the right as they had hoped. Breathlessly Ritchie went on in a direction which he trusted would drive it toward the waiting Sergeant. Why the beast had continued to follow them, yet refused to let them get near it, was a mystery they could not solve—not knowing the tricks of the camel mind. But there was a good chance that if they once managed to get a rope over its ungainly head, it would allow itself to be mastered.

The circling continued. Herndon scrambled up to the top of a boulder and spread the rope in the way the cow-herders did. The camel proceeded to drift at a slow, unhurried pace.

And at that moment Bess at last broke free. With a neigh of pure terror she streaked away from the monster she saw bearing down upon her. Ritchie could not suppress a cry as she went. The camel stopped, making an uneasy sound not unlike a snort.

Herndon threw the lariat. But, either by sheer luck or with an intelligence Ritchie did not believe it possessed, the camel swung its head aside at the same moment. And before the Sergeant could try again, it trotted off at a speed they could not match without the aid of the vanished Bess.

Ritchie walked up to the boulder, and Herndon greeted him with a grimace which had no hint of humor in it.

“My skill does not seem equal to this, does it?” With the coil of lariat in one hand and Tuttle’s rifle in the other, he jumped down to follow the mare’s track. “At least we can be thankful she kept going in the right direction when she bolted.”

“What’s the big hurry?”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that the spare canteens are strapped to her saddle?”

It was like taking an uppercut on an already aching chin. No, he had forgotten that fact. He matched Herndon stride for stride through a fine sand that shifted and slid underfoot until their progress was that of drunken men. They had no eyes now for the silent towers they passed.

A combination of chance, hate, and overeagerness saved them from the death that padded at their heels. The sharp crack of a shot broke, and they dropped, each as if that bullet had plowed between his bony shoulders.

“Apaches!” Herndon’s lips shaped the word rather than spoke it aloud.

Save for that warning shot, they could not have guessed what menace lay behind. They could see nothing. But who had ever sighted a rock-lizard Apache when he wanted to pass unnoticed?

The Sergeant’s fingers dug into Ritchie’s upper arm, pulling him back. On their stomachs they made a worm’s progress between rocks and stunted bushes, Herndon leading the way. He brought them up against a small break in the cliff wall, a fault like a narrow chimney vent.

“Up!” Herndon pushed his companion toward that impossible stair. “I’ll cover you. When you reach the top, bark like a coyote and then cover me.”

Up—up where? But with a blind faith in the Sergeant, Ritchie slung his carbine and climbed. With torn nails and bleeding fingers he crawled out at last on a ledge at the base of one of the mysterious towers—this one not quite so well preserved as some of its neighbors. He barked sharply twice, his eyes watchful, finger on his trigger.

It seemed a year of days before the Sergeant heaved his longer body out beside him and lay panting a few seconds before he crept into cover, his rifle ready to fire.

The valley still seemed deserted. But as they strained their eyes against the glare of the sun, a familiar dun shadow bobbed along, backtracking its own trail, covering the ground at an awkward speed. And as the camel went by, Ritchie saw the telltale red trickle down its nigh shoulder and the arrow shaft sticking in its hide. Some Apache had not been able to resist such an interesting target. So menace now lay ahead as well as behind—they were being boxed in.

“Here they come!” warned Herndon.

Come they did, a thin fan of red-turbaned figures flitted over the edge of the basin and disappeared among the rocks. Ritchie was sure he had sighted a small white blot following on the heels of one of them—Diego had not given up the hunt.

For the two on the tower ledge there was perhaps one slim chance in ten thousand. Apaches were master trackers, but the trail which led over bare rock was doubly hard to trace. If the dragoons could lie quiet, they might be passed by without discovery. It was the only chance they had.

Ritchie nipped his lower lip between his teeth and bit down hard. The Apaches were showing some contempt for their quarry; they were not even keeping to cover now. Two had trotted out into plain sight.

Slowly they were working down toward the point where the climb had started. Ritchie blinked salt sweat out of his eyes. He could hardly draw a full breath. Black flies bored into his flesh, and he dared not beat them off.

But the worst was not yet. The trackers had reached the foot of the pinnacle; their guttural speech drifted up. But another sound puzzled Ritchie, a faint slithering as if something was slipping across the stone by his side. With infinite caution he turned his head one inch at a time.

A yard away and gliding nearer was a black rattler. And the snake was already suspicious and angry.

17

“This Is as Good a Place to Die as Any”

The snake was coiling, and after it coiled—! Ritchie cringed and then froze as he watched the flat head sway, the thread-tongue flicker. Unable to turn his eyes away, he sensed rather than saw Herndon move.

There was an odd smacking sound, and a splotch of brown liquid splashed on that ugly head. The coils writhed as the blinded snake lashed around close to the edge of the ledge. Then it went over, falling straight into the knot of savages gathered below. The Sergeant’s hand jerked his companion back with scant feeling for scrapes and bruises.

“Behind that bit of wall—”

There was no need for silence now. That floundering reptile had betrayed them as a surprised shout from below had testified. They fled, bumping carbine, rifle, and canteen along with them.

In some forgotten storm the tower’s top rocks had crashed down to make a natural breastwork. Herndon was already making a pile of small stones he wrenched out of the ruins. When he had enough to hand, he got to his knees and pitched. The stone he hurled went over and down, its landing marked by another furious yell.

Ritchie built up his own pile of ammunition. Unless the Apaches could win up to their level, the beseiged still had a chance. But the familiar ping of a carbine put an end to that faintest of hopes. Ritchie dropped flat and lay looking up at the white furrow banded across one of the top stones of the breastwork.

“On that other pinnacle—hiding out like a lizard!” Herndon explained briefly.

There was a tower on that pinnacle, too. And if that sniper got on the top of it, he could pick them off at his leisure.

“If he gets up in that tower—”

The Sergeant shook his head. “These towers must have been entered only by ladders through the roof—there’re no wall openings. And I don’t think they’ll try to climb—not while we keep an eye on them. But they have got us nailed here. And it’s a waiting game in which they hold all the aces.”

“If we had those extra canteens—” Ritchie had shaken the one by his hand, and the answer was not pleasant.

Herndon snorted. “And if we had a battery, we could rival Napoleon. If that fool snake hadn’t gone over—”

“What did you do to it?”

The Sergeant’s shadow grin showed for a second. “Spit tobacco juice in its eyes. Rocked it right out of battle formation, didn’t I?”

“Listen!” Had he or had he not heard that faintest of sounds, not unlike the slithering advance of the reptile? “Would-be-heroes!” Herndon’s attack had a speed even the rattler might have envied. His stone whizzed, and he flopped back into shelter before the sniper was ready. The bullet sang by too high and too late.

“Look!” Ritchie dug with his hands into the rubble of the fallen tower. What he uncovered was a thin slab of stone, smooth and carefully edged.

“If we could push this over the wall, lean it with the end down on the ledge, we could roll rocks down it and maybe they would bounce off just about on a line with the place where we climbed—”

Herndon’s eyes gleamed. “We’ll have to get rid of our friend across the way before we can rig it. He’d drill us both if we left cover to move it. Let me have your hat.”

Using both their shirts and Ritchie’s hat, the Sergeant constructed a bundle that might just pass as the head and shoulders of a dragoon. Having punched it into the best shape possible, he passed it to Ritchie.

“When I snap my fingers, let Zero here get a little careless—as artistically as you can—”

Ritchie nodded as the Sergeant squirmed around to face the other tower, Tuttle’s rifle ready, his eyes squinting against the sun. At the faint sound Ritchie raised Zero, trying to mimic the motions of a man crawling behind the barrier, holding his body just a little too high for safety.

Zero was almost torn from his hands as a slug drilled the headless hat. And simultaneously the rifle cracked in reply.

The Sergeant’s voice had a purring note in it as he said, “See that spot of red—to the left of the needle rock?”

Ritchie saw it. It was very still.

“Now let’s get to work before someone else mans that post!”

Ritchie tugged and pulled on one side of the slab and Herndon on the other, reckless of barked fingers and raw flesh, expecting every moment to feel the blow of a shot. But at last one end dropped on the other side of the barrier, and Herndon brought up a reasonably round stone to try. It rolled down and popped squarely over the spot they had climbed. Herndon laughed.

“Here’s to the Tower Artillery!” His thirst-husky voice probably even reached those below. “Bring up the ammunition, m’ lads!”

The ammunition had to be properly shaped to roll, and they discovered to their dismay that the number of available stones was none too great. But all they could grub up were piled within reaching distance of the slab. When that job was done, Herndon set out on a small shelf in the wall a row of bullets, a very short line of them. When he had put them all out, he had an odd look.

“There’s our future. Ten for our friends, and one for yours truly. How about yours?”

Ritchie investigated his supply. He could not match the Sergeant’s display. Only seven loads remained for the carbine. From these Herndon separated one.

“When it comes to the end”—he might have been explaining any ordinary procedure to a recruit—“kick off your boot. Take this.” He had been twisting a bit of hide thong between his fingers, and now he handed it to his companion. At either end was a loop. “This loop on your trigger, the muzzle to your forehead, and your toe in the other loop. One jerk will do the business for you.”

He was making another thong for his own weapon. “However”—he glanced to where that red dot lay on the neighboring pinnacle—“we shall contrive to send as many of them ahead of us as we can. Aha!”

A thin curl of smoke was tailing up from an outcrop out of range. Signal smoke to draw in reinforcements!

“Holla, Soldados! Now you die!” Triumph once more in that familiar shout which might have come from anywhere.

“Diego. That’s one brown monkey I’d like to get my sights on before the last rush!” said the Sergeant between his gritted teeth.

“But would he lead the charge?”

“Indians don’t follow men who aren’t battle leaders. And Diego has some power over them or he could never have kept them on our trail this way. We’re pretty small fry to be hunted down so persistently. Small fry—and unlucky!”

It had been ill luck that had dogged them all right, thought Ritchie. The ambush and getting lost in this country, Sturgis’ death and Tuttle’s, the camel refusing to be caught—and all the rest.

“Two day ago that might have saved us.”

“What?” Ritchie was pulled out of his own thoughts.

“That storm.”

There was a patch of dark cloud over the mountains, a handsbreadth of spreading gloom. But Herndon had already forgotten it.

“Artillery!”

Ritchie was ready. Their rolling stones hit the slab and were funneled down the cliff. They could hear that rattling descent and then a dull thud and a muffled cry. Ritchie answered with an exclamation of his own as a branding iron seemed to be laid for an instant against his jaw.

“They’ve manned the sniper’s post again,” Herndon observed dryly.

Ritchie’s fingers came away from his face red and sticky, but the cut was only a shallow one.

A ragged whip of light snapped across the sky, striking on the ridge across the tower valley. That patch of dark cloud had spread fast.

There was an answering fusillade from the sniper’s pinnacle. Two of them must be there now, and they were keeping up such a fire that the dragoons dared not use the slab. If that continued, it could well cover any climbers. And then all that would be left for them was Herndon’s trick with trigger and toe.

The Sergeant brought out his battered journal and was cramming it into the small bag that had held his extra ammunition. Pulling the string tight, he thrust it into a dark hole, which must lead straight to the heart of the ruined tower. He wriggled close to push it the full length of his arm.

When he caught Ritchie watching him, he appeared embarrassed. “It won’t ever be found; sure, I know that. But at least they won’t tear it up. And there’s always that faint chance that someday someone else will find the Torreónes.

“I had some delusions once that I was going to be an explorer—find new lands and map them for the world. Then everything went wrong for me, and I came out here.” He was watching the sniper’s pinnacle, his finger on the trigger. “I’ve had my wish. It would be good to know more about these towers—if we had time. But time is the one thing the old gods are never lavish with. Whee—that must have struck!”

The spear of purplish light which had been flung across the mountain almost blinded them.

“Now!” Herndon shouted. “Up with Zero again!”

Ritchie grabbed wildly for the dummy and hoisted it. A shot sang, and Herndon fired in return.

“Let’s hope that will discourage them a little.” He reloaded swiftly.

“You know”—he brought the rifle back into firing position—“this is as good a place to die as any. They can’t rush us as they would like to, and we have some chance to choose how we’re going to end—which is more than those poor devils who get trapped in the canyons have. This may not be the only battle this valley has seen, but it’s going to be one of the best!”

Ritchie rolled a stone from hand to hand. “Shall I try the artillery again?” He was glad to find his voice as normal and level as usual. “That wind is coming up, and the sound may cover climbers—”

“Take it careful when you do. I’ll try to cover you—”

Ritchie reached up and felt along with his left hand for the edge of the slab. And it was well he had been so cautious, for a shot chipped the stone only an inch from his questing fingers. He heaved the rock he had been holding and hoped for the best. But the angle of that last shot bothered him. Surely it had not come from the other pinnacle. Herndon confirmed his suspicions.

“They seem to have discovered the back door. We’re between two fires now.”

The Sergeant was tugging off his worn boot. Ritchie, a nerve twitching under his eye, did the same. The loop of hide was small, but he forced his toe into it. Tight but it would serve.

It was so gloomy now that it was difficult to see the pinnacle of the snipers. And under cover of the storm all the Apaches must be drawing in, a pack of wolves about a buffalo, still wary but ready for the finish. Lightning flashed again, and by its searing beam Ritchie saw a crawling shadow. He fired.

As if that shot of his had been a signal, sound rose to fill the basin. It began as a low wailing moan that swelled into what might have been a scream torn from a hundred tortured throats. About them the very air curdled with that weird singing. Then, as suddenly, it was gone. They crouched shoulder to shoulder waiting.

Again the moaning swept along the tower-topped pinnacles, as if those who once dwelt there were raising their voices in a last cry of misery and death. Ritchie could not still the shaking of his hands. Nothing he had ever heard in his life had sounded so fearful.

When for the third time, that keening began to sweep along the ridges, there was a chorus of sharp cries from the basin. Herndon shook alertness into Ritchie.

“Out on the ledge—” The Sergeant had to yell to be heard above the wailing. “Shoot to kill!”

They scrambled over the barrier and looked down into the basin. A knot of red-turbaned men huddled there, facing outward as if to front an invisible enemy. As they watched, two more Apaches fled across the open ground to join their kin.

If Herndon fired, the sound was swallowed up in the rousing crescendo of the storm. But one of the Apaches was falling. His fellows stampeded away from him as if they believed he had been struck down by supernatural forces.

Lightning made a burst of purple light to run straight down the cliff opposite them, blinding them for the moment. When Ritchie could see again, the Apaches were cowering flat on the ground.

Then the rain broke. It came, moving like a curtain with the wind to drive it, a wind which set rocks rolling from the walls of the ruined tower behind them. The Sergeant had risen to his elbows and, shielding his eyes against the drive of the rain, was trying to sight the Apaches when a large stone bounced once on the ledge between them and went over. Ritchie simply lay still, letting the falling water beat down the length of his body, licking at the streams of it which ran across his sunbaked face and parched and broken lips.

“Can’t stay here!” To be heard, Herndon had to drop his head almost check to cheek with Ritchie. “Be smashed flat by a slide—”

He pulled the carbine out of Ritchie’s hands and shoved it and the rifle to the back of the ledge.

“Take your knife— Climb down into the open!” The words were torn away by the wind, but Ritchie had heard enough to start him moving.

With his knife between his teeth he went over the lip of the narrow passage. The stones cut his feet, but he reached the ground speedily. Nature was now aiming rocks in an artillery barrage of her own. Ritchie had barely time to move aside when Herndon came down the same way.

They were still concealed by the debris of other rock-slides and the fury of the rain. But the Sergeant flattened himself against a rock and began to move in the general direction of where the Apaches had last been sighted.

Ritchie was about to follow when a snarling white thing launched out of the shadows. Diego’s dog! Instinctively he threw up his arm, just in time to cover his throat. Fangs ripped his flesh before the dog tried for another hold. Ritchie stabbed desperately with his knife and felt the blade bite at least once. But the dog crouched snarling, lips curled back over viciously sharp teeth.

Ritchie kicked, trying to stop the third attack. His heel sent the small beast spinning, to come up with deadening force against a rock. Hoping it was stunned Ritchie got away as quick as he could.

The curtain of the rain still hung heavy, but it did not entirely hide the bank of the ancient river which was deep-cut, arroyo fashion, in the soil. And down this was now moving a murky wall of water five feet or more in height.

There were men below scrambling to clear the racing flood. The majority were clambering up the opposite side of the stream; only two came toward Ritchie. One of these appeared to be crippled; he crawled along on hands and one knee, dragging his right leg as a dead weight. When he reached the slope up which he must win to safety, he tried to pull himself up, twisting painfully to clutch the soil which only crumbled under his frantic fingers. His companion paid him no heed but threw himself at the rise and made up it in all haste.

The wall of water moved on, beating down sand and gravel. Ritchie watched the crippled Apache turn to look. His hands dropped to his sides, and he crouched, a snarl on his thick wide mouth, facing death. The water swirled, and he was gone as the flood made a barrier between the survivors. It had grown so dark that Ritchie had lost sight of the men across the stream.

But there was the matter of the man who had safely reached this side. Ritchie hunched his shoulders against the force of the rain. The fellow hadn’t carried a gun, but in this dark a knife would be even more dangerous. And where was Herndon?

Ritchie moved along the riverbank, trying to see in all directions at once. The roaring of the water was almost as hard on the nerves as the moaning wind had been.

And it was this roaring which covered the sounds of the Against the light-colored rock of one of the pinnacles he saw a dark shape like a charging animal. And before he fight until Ritchie almost stumbled over the fighters. could move, it threw itself forward to strike with a forceful impact against another body. There was a flash, which might have been a knife, but when they tangled, it was more flesh against flesh than steel against steel.

Who was friend or who was foe in that tangled mass Ritchie could not tell. With his knife in his hand he could only wait and hope for some sign to identify the wrestlers. One of them was on his back now, and the other knelt upon him. This time the knife was in that hand which came down in one hard, driving stroke. The man on the ground quivered, and his head rolled limply back.

The victor hesitated a long moment as if looking for further signs of life. Then he hurled his knife from him before he rolled over convulsively to lie almost as still as the man he had just stabbed. Ritchie’s knife went back into the sheath; then he leaped across the trampled ground. He linked his hands under the victor’s armpits and tugged him farther up the slope.

Already the water of the newly born river was eating up the ground, carrying off huge bites closer and closer to the body. Ritchie was not satisfied until he got the Sergeant into what seemed a safe enough nook out of the path of the river.

Herndon was shaking as if a fever chill racked his thin body, and he was no longer conscious of where he was or what had happened. Without fire or blankets there was little Ritchie could do except to hold him close and hope that the warmth of his own body would in time make some impression on the icy cold which seemed to encase the other.

Ritchie peered out between two of the boulders behind which they sheltered. The storm, he decided, must be in its final phase. The driving wind was gone, and the rain was no longer so hard or steady. He trusted that the Apaches were thoroughly demoralized and that the hunt would not be up again tonight. All he had for defense was his knife.

The slash which the dog’s teeth had opened on his arm smarted. He held it out at a stiff angle for the rain to wash. The terrible shudders which had shaken the Sergeant were coming at longer intervals. Under Ritchie’s fingers searching blindly in the dark, Herndon’s skin did not feel so deadly cold. His own jaws cracked in a gigantic yawn. He could no longer force his tired brain and body into the work of lookout, scout, or guard. His head drooped forward until it rested upon Herndon’s, and in a moment he was asleep.

18

“I Have Drunk of These Waters—”

Ritchie was conscious of the heat even before he opened his eyes, of the heat and a weight which pressed his shoulder and side into numbness. He screwed his eyelids against the glare of the rising sun. He was empty and hungry.

Still trying to shield his eyes from the sun, he attempted to move, and his struggle was answered by a protesting sigh. Herndon was curled up against him. The bones of his skull were sharply marked under the dirty skin, but even in sleep his jaw was still set stubbornly.

Ritchie gasped as he straightened cramped muscles and edged out from under Herndon. The torrent that had filled the river bed the night before was now only an oily trickle. But some of it had been caught in depressions and held in cupped abundance. He crept down to the nearest of these and sloshed first hands and then face. Then he drank the precious stuff.

Spitting sand, he sat on his hunkers. Save for the towers, stark, dead, and clear against the morning sky, the valley held no trace of man. If the Apaches had survived, they were gone.

That thought made him remember the last struggle in the dark, and he padded along to the battleground. The body they had left there was gone, perhaps swept away by the flood. But from between two stones the Sergeant’s knife winked out in the light. Rain had washed it clean. Ritchie picked it up and went back to where he had left its owner. But before he reached their shelter, he stopped short.

A line of prints was cut in the sand, prints oddly smeared as if that which made them had fallen to drag itself on. Diego’s dog!

He followed that strange trail down past the battleground to the very edge of the shrunken stream. A harsh sound, half-snarl, half-bark, warned him off.

Almost buried in the sand that the flood had loosened was a body. Ritchie did not try to uncover the hidden face. He could well guess who lay there because of the dog which still bared fangs in defense of the dead. So it had been Diego the Sergeant had fought, just as it had been Diego’s voice raised in triumph as they had ridden into this nightmare venture days ago. And with the Mexican renegade dead, the men he had led so long might well abandon the hunt—

“We can’t leave that hurt dog!”

The Sergeant had come up. Now that he was on his feet, his face had lost the fragility it had shown in sleep. It was true that he was not the same man who had ridden out of Santa Fe, but if he were only a shadow of his former self, it was a shadow fashioned of whipcord and steel. Now he picked up a small stone, balancing it in his hand a moment before he threw with the same expert precision that had served the tower artillery. The stone hit squarely and there was not even a yelp as the little white body fell across that of its master.

“It’s Diego—”

“Yes, Diego. Now—we’d better be getting on.”

He took the knife Ritchie offered him without comment, putting it into his sheath. But neither of them were as strong as they had believed, and the climb back to retrieve their guns left them panting. Ritchie found his boot and pulled it on. Luckily it had been protected from the storm by the tower and was not too sodden to wear.

Meanwhile, the Sergeant was working with the buckskin thongs he had tied for a grimmer duty. Into the two loops he had twisted for the purpose Ritchie didn’t care to remember he fitted small stones. Then he made an imperative gesture to warn Ritchie to remain where he was—quietly.

He twirled the weighted thong around in the air and let it fly out across the rock behind the tower. A sort of frenzied cheeping broke out there, and they both rushed to see what luck they had had.

Entangled in the cord were not one but two desert quail. A rain-pool basin had lured them to their undoing. Herndon scooped them up with one wild grab.

Minutes later Ritchie licked his fingers regretfully. Raw meat without even salt to savor it, and yet it was the best he had ever chewed. He was a new man, ready to tramp across the hills from ridge to ridge should that feat be demanded of him. He glanced up to find the Sergeant regarding him with eyes that were certainly full of silent laughter.

“Richard is himself again, eh?” quoted Herndon. “Maybe we have had the worst and can now hope for better luck. Feel strong enough to dig a little?”

“Dig?”

Herndon nodded at the ruined tower. “I’d like to get back my notebook. As long as I’m still alive and kicking, there is no use in leaving such a monument to our memory.”

The delving was real work, as they had to pull down a section of the still-standing stones to get to the hollow where the bag lay. And in doing so they uncovered a tragedy far older than their own—for the tower people had died by flame and arrow and their mummified bodies lay contorted within the home they had defended to the last.

“Must have had a wooden roof on this, maybe several floors of wood, too. The enemy shot fire arrows and brought it all down on the heads of any still alive. Look, even the women fought—” Herndon touched a bow that still lay in the grasp of a contorted hand.

“Do you suppose every tower is like this?”

“I think so. If we had time to look, we’d find each had been gutted. They built these towers because they were afraid, and in the end what they feared did catch up with them.”

“Apaches?” wondered Ritchie.

Herndon shrugged. “Maybe. We’d have to do more digging to find out. And that we haven’t time for.” He backed out of the crypt they had opened.

“What made that horrible wailing?” Ritchie wanted to know when they were in the open again.

“Weird wasn’t it—and it came just in the nick of time for us. It must have been caused by the force of the storm wind over the tops of the towers. Did you ever blow over the top of a bottle when you were a kid? Something like that did it. And this is a good place to hear ghosts. All right, we’re ready to go. Watch out for a pool to fill our canteens.”

They dropped down again into the basin and started along the bank of the dying river. Before they were out of sight of the tower that had sheltered them, Ritchie stumbled over an Apache bow. The cord trailed from it as a bit of frayed twist, but the bow itself was whole, and Herndon snatched it eagerly.

“We’ll have to turn archer anyway. And this rain should bring down some game. Keep an eye out.”

They took their second rest period that morning at the end of an outcrop that had been grooved and scored by the primitive tools of men long dead, so that it was a reservoir. From it they could still trace the faint line of the irrigation ditches which had once made farm land of the valley. Ritchie splashed in the water gratefully. But it was already evaporating. A dark stain just under the rim showed the high point the supply had reached, and the water was a foot below that now.

Around that dark stain, wherever a piece of mud clung, were tracks. The prints of quail feet made a delicate pattern, and Ritchie tried to pick out others—but he was not trail-wise enough except for one slotted track.

“Deer.” The Sergeant confirmed his guess. “Suppose we take a bit of a rest behind those bushes and wait.” He wet a finger tip and held it up to test the air, and then he loaded the rifle.

Ritchie’s eyelids drooped. His feet burned, and the dull, pounding ache that had been in his head when he awoke that morning was still there. But his mouth no longer felt as if someone had been storing cinders in it, and he would be ready to go on when Herndon gave the signal.

The Sergeant was watching the water trough with concentration. Tuttle’s rifle, several new scars added to those which laced its stock, was in firing position. The rain seemed to have killed off the black flies, or maybe both of them had been bitten so often that they were now immune. Ritchie drowsed.

He jerked his head up as Herndon fired. A tawny brown animal fled away up the river.

His companion was already on his feet, trotting up to where the deer had been. After a careful examination of the ground he went along, and within a few seconds Ritchie sighted the first warning trace, too, a splatter of pink-red, sticky and fresh. He remembered the hunting lore they had dinned into him. A deer struck in the vitals will seek water. It would keep to the river as long as the rain pools existed.

Within the quarter hour they found it, lying on the edge of a muddy waterhole. Herndon’s knife was out almost before he had squatted down beside the stiffening body.

They dared to light a fire and sear the flesh before they bit into it. When they had taken the first edge off their hunger, Ritchie noticed that Herndon regarded the pool with narrowed eyes.

“Better fill the canteens now?” He could guess the meaning of the wide band of mud as well as the Sergeant could. The rain’s abundance was evaporating fast.

“Yes.”

Together they hunched over the water, waiting for the worst of the mud to settle before they scooped up what they could.

“How long—?” began Ritchie in as casual a tone as he could manage.

“Who knows? We don’t know anything about this country. Only, if this is the Gallina, it will bring us out on the Chama—”

That “if” was a big one. But why think about it? If he only concentrated on food and drink and the patch of soil immediately under his broken boots at the moment, he could keep going.

“This must have been a wonderful country once.” Herndon had brought out his journal. His fingers were cramped about the stub of his pencil. “It could be again if there was water. Suppose one could control the water in the mountains, send it down through the right valleys—”

“Using dams or something like that, you mean?”

“Dams. But on a greater scale than anything we’ve tried. It was the disappearance of the water that killed this land. Bring it back again, and it would come alive. I’d like to walk through here fifty or a hundred years from now and see what it looks like when the engineers and the homesteaders have found and tamed it—”

“If anyone tries to build a dam between Apache raids, he isn’t going to find it easy.”

“The Apaches will go. That won’t be easy either. It may take years of fighting to drive the last warrior out of these mountains. But the Apache will go and white men will come—because we are land hungry, greedy for our own holdings, and we spread out and take and take. Fifty years from now there will be trains running through such valleys as this one, settlements, cities, live land—”

Ritchie, propping his chin on his hands, watched the heart of the fire dreamily. The smoke curled up into the night and vanished. Back in the towers hearth fires had once burned. Then came the killing fires, and the towers were left to the wind and the rains, to the desert sun and the lash of lightning bolts.

The tower people had gone long ago. And now he and Herndon were fighting their own private war in the same setting, and they would pass on. But maybe later would come those who would not go, who would linger and with water as their tool would rise up to conquer the deserts and wastelands. And after them—?

He rolled over on his back and closed his eyes for a moment. When he had cleared the glare of the fire out of his eyes, he could look up into the night and count the low hanging stars. They never seemed so bright or close in the skies back home—as if you could reach up and pick a cluster of them for the fun of it.

“You going to try to build a dam?” he asked abruptly.

“No, not dams. But this country gets into a man’s blood. I don’t think I shall ever leave it—willingly. I’ve four years to go on this hitch before I’m free to choose anyway.”

“There’s all that secession talk—” Ritchie stopped. He remembered too vividly the one who had first suggested trouble to come.

“Yes, a lot can happen in four years. But the land will wait. Once I heard a chieftain—he wasn’t an important man, just the leader of a handful of fighters who had been starved and beaten out of their hold in the hills. But he knew how to talk—Indians do, you know. They put things into words very well. And he said to our commander when he came to make peace, ‘I have drunk of these waters; I am a part of this land.’”

Ritchie repeated those words softly. They did sound good and real.

In the morning the water had shrunk away to a few stinking, muddy pools far apart. And there was no more hunting. Herndon had restrung the Apache bow, but with that weapon he proved to be a poor marksman. To their mutual surprise Ritchie had the hand and eye for the more primitive weapon and was able to knock over a jack rabbit and pick up a ring-tailed cat, limp after a last despairing kick.

For a day or two Ritchie clung to the hope that they might find some trace of Bess or the camel. But neither animal had left any tracks. Either the storming waters had engulfed them or they had taken some side canyon in search of grazing.

In spite of the drying up of the water, they kept to the river for a guide. It was the one hope left of getting through the maze to the Chama. Now the few bright hours that had followed their victory in the valley of the Torreónes were only a dim memory. They only dared wet their mouths with the muddy water sloshing in the bottoms of their canteens, and they ate lizard and once snake. But they went on.

Strips from their shirts were bound turban-wise about their heads for sunshields, taking the place of hats lost long ago. Their skins were thorn-torn and so burned that they were as dark as Apaches. They seldom spoke after they cached the useless carbine in a niche. There was still a load of ammunition for the rifle, so Herndon trailed it. And they kept on.

They drank from a chemical-infused spring because their thirsty bodies had grown stronger than their dulled minds. And then they were sick, so sick that the following day’s journey was the few yards between the spring and a clump of cacti beneath which they lay at nightfall. But after hours of racking cramps they crawled on.

Ritchie didn’t know which day it was that they followed the bird—time had no meaning any more. The bird had been brown—rather like a chicken—and it had run along the ground instead of flying. Herndon had given a strange, cracked cry when he saw it and had tried to run—not that he managed to catch it. It had fluttered very easily out of their clutching hands.

But it was the bird which brought them to water, good water. And the grassy green stuff growing around it, which they crammed into their mouths, allayed the tearing pain of the cramps. A trickle of the water seeped away downhill. Ritchie watched that for a long time. Then he made a great effort and dropped his scarred hand into it, feeling the soft caress across his skin.

“The—Chama—” A hand, which was all bones under a tight stretch of skin, caught at his shoulder and tried to pull him up. He stared up at the brown face of a mummy. There were red-rimmed eyes in it, oozing tears which dribbled down into a mat of sun-rusted beard. “Chama,” the thin voice repeated.

Chama! Once that must have meant something. But he couldn’t remember what. It was of no importance. He tried to free himself from that bony grip.

“Chama!” Broken nails bit into him; the weak tug grew stronger.

He raised his head. There was more water below—much more water. But all the water in the world couldn’t save them now. Ritchie knew that deep inside. And he didn’t care. It was no longer important to get up on the torn feet—from which the last scrap of boots had sloughed days ago—to keep wavering toward a goal beyond the next ridge. He couldn’t go on.

He lay back again and felt blindly for the cool water. But the skeleton hadn’t given up. It was on its knees, and with fumbling, pitiful movements it was loading the rifle. The bullet slipped through trembling fingers and must be searched for on the ground, with a whimper of relief to mark its recovery. Then it was done, and Herndon fired into the air. As the sound echoed and re-echoed, the rifle slipped out of his hands and he pitched forward, striking hard across Ritchie’s legs. Ritchie moaned. It was growing dark, and he could no longer feel the water trickling through his cramped fingers.

A strip of bright yellow made a pattern on a white expanse. And it moved. Then there was another light, brighter, which came and went. Sometimes it bothered his eyes. If he watched either long enough, he slipped back into the cool, waiting darkness where there were no dreams.

Then he became aware of the table. It was smooth, but he could see the grain of the wood. All lines, something—something like other lines he had seen, lines drawn by the stub of a battered pencil, rivers and mountains and tangled canyons. But to remember the pencil and the lines always made his head ache.

The man came next. He stood beside the table, and he had a glass in his hand. He made booming sounds which meant nothing, and he pushed aside the dark in spite of Ritchie’s effort to hold it. Sometimes he brought the light with him, and then he did things to Ritchie’s body that hurt.

“—fever gone—”

That was the day those two sounds became words. The world was coming into focus again. But he still lay on the hospital cot very tired, sleepy, and ready to go back into the place from which the surgeon had dragged him.

On the day he was first propped up with pillows behind him there was the bite of fall in the air. But he was more interested in the other bed across the room and the man who sat up in it grinning back at him. There were questions to be asked and answered with long pauses between the words. They could marvel alike at the thought of that patrol which had heard their last shot and tracked them down to save them.

Then one morning Ritchie stood on his two feet before a shaving mirror and studied with grave intensity the face of a stranger. All the boyish roundness was gone from cheek and jaw. The lips were tight, compressed at the corners, straight set, and around the unsmiling eyes wrinkles had been etched by sun and wind. His own face—he ran his fingers in exploration along the angle of that jaw. There was something else. He saw in that murky mirror a faint resemblance to someone else—he couldn’t remember and he frowned.

The door squeaked as Herndon came in. As yet the old spring was not in his step, and he dropped down on his cot with a real sigh of relief, lying there staring at the ceiling as fingers which still bore some likeness to claws worked the buttons of his short cavalry jacket out of their holes.

Ritchie sat down on a stool by the window and waited. There were lines of fatigue between Herndon’s eyes, but he was satisfied, satisfied and, in his own way, happy. Odd how Ritchie knew that without being told. He guessed vaguely that he would always sense things like that now—at least with Herndon. There was a bond between them—one which would never be put into words. He relaxed in the bar of sunlight and prompted.

“What did the Old Man want?”

“Had news from Sharpe. They went through all right.”

Ritchie nodded.

“George Caster and two of his Pima scouts caught up to them the day after we left. They got back the mules and some of the horses. We were just a little too previous, I guess—” Herndon’s voice trailed off.

Ritchie remembered graves. Just a little too previous—the game had been stacked against them that time.

“Sharpe’s been promoted and is to organize a special detail. Going to map more mountains—”

Ritchie was still watching the parade ground beyond the window, but his attention was all in the room.

“He can pick his own men. If there’s trouble blowing up, he has to be sure—”

Herndon unbuckled his belt. He was still studying the cracks in the ceiling.

“It seems he has asked for a Sergeant Herndon—”

Ritchie had to moisten his lips before he could answer. “You’re the right man for a detail like that, Scott.”

“A Sergeant Herndon,” the other repeated as if he hadn’t heard, “and a Corporal Ritchie Peters.”

Out on the parade ground the chill wind was ruffling the tails of the mounts. Ritchie could hear the commands—maybe better with his heart than his ears.

“Stand to horse! Lead out! Count fours! Mount!”

“I told the Old Man,” Scott Herndon went on, “that he could have the both of us—”

Ritchie glanced down at his sleeve. Stripes there now? Well, why not?

“Am I right?”

Ritchie turned full face. The tight control of his lips broke in a smile. “I have drunk of these waters,” he quoted. “I am part of this land!”

Bibliography

Bancroft, Hubert Howe. History of Arizona and New Mexico. San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft & Co., 1889.

Bandel, Eugene. Frontier Life in the Army, 1854-1861. Translated by Olga Bandel and Richard Jente; edited by Ralph P. Bieber. Glendale, California: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1932.

Bennett, James Augustus. Forts and Forays. Ed. by Clinton E. Brooks and Frank D. Reeve. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1948.

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All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1956 by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-4976-5678-9

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Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Author’s Note
- Contents
- 1. “Sergeant, Dismiss the Detachment”
- 2. “Company K Has Style”
- 3. “Ain’t No Winter Fer Apaches”

- 4. “The Game's Made, ’n the Ball's Rollin'!”

- 5. “A Right Smart Lot of Snow”
- 6. “They Brought All Their Sand—”
- 7. Cold-Pork Christmas
- 8. Mounted Pass
- 9. “Rather Have Me a Mule!”
- 10. Never Stick a Picket in an Anthill
- 11. “You Ride to Your Funerals, Soldados!”
- 12. “Mort à Cheval à Galop”
- 13. “If We Had Water—”
- 14. One From Five Leaves—Death
- 15. “Camels ’n Apaches Don’t Drink”
- 16. “Reckon I’ll Cross Over—”
- 17. “This Is as Good a Place to Die as Any”
- 18. “I Have Drunk of These Waters—”
- Bibliography
- Copyright Page