Shalako (1962)

by L'amour, Louis

  Something jerked at his sleeve, sand kicked against his boots. He saw a horse fall, heard a shrill scream of pain from behind him, and he thumbed back the hammer of the .44, firing coolly.

  There was no doubt in his mind. With shocking clarity, he realized this was the end.

  A bullet smashed into his shoulder, turning him half around. He dropped his gun, but with a border shift tossed the gun from hand to hand, then fired again. He stood, spraddle-legged atop a hummock of sand, his long hair blowing wild, a splash of blood across his face from a split scalp.

  A bullet knocked a leg from under him, and on one knee he calmly fed shells into the gun. His shoulder was hurting, but he could still use it, so no bone was broken.

  Behind him there were yells, screams of anguish, and the crackle of flames.

  Now a dozen Indians surrounded him, baiting him as they might have baited a wounded bear. He mopped the blood from his face, holding his fire.

  His horse was down not far away and his canteen was on the saddle. The distance to the rocks was no more than thirty yards. Straightening to his feet, he limped and staggered to the horse for the canteen and slung it over his shoulder.

  Glancing around, he saw the wagon top ablaze, and the bodies of the others scattered around, festooned with arrows. Indians were looting the wagon before the burning canvas fell in upon it.

  Taking up his rifle, he merely glanced at the Indians, who watched him curiously.

  Then he started toward the rocks.

  He understood them, he thought bitterly, and he knew they would wait, just as he in their place might have waited. They would allow him to get close to the rocks, almost to safety, before they opened fire.

  So he must judge. He walked on, his back muscles held tight against the expected bullets. One step … two … three.

  He broke into a plunging run, staggering and falling, dragging his injured leg.

  He managed at least three steps before every rifle smashed lead at him, every arrow sought him.

  Yet he made it to the rocks, pierced through and through with bullets and arrows, and then fell into a crevice among the rocks. In the last moment before he toppled into the rocks he turned on them and opened fire, emptying his pistols. And then he fell.

  An Apache, riding close, thrust a spear into his side. And then they left him alone, for they knew he would not move again and they would return for his weapons when they had looted his wagon.

  He coughed blood, lying jammed among the rocks, and once he opened his eyes to look up at the wide sky. Like Bob Marker, Rio Hockett had been a Missourian, and when only a youngster he had ridden on a couple of raids with Bloody Bill Anderson, riding with a young horse thief with red-rimmed eyes who kept batting his lids named Dingus James. Jesse James, they called him later.

  The sky looked the same as in the days when he had plowed a straight furrow back on the farm … he had never plowed one since.

  He coughed again, and closed his eyes. There was so much pain that he hardly felt any of it at all, but he could hear the Indians shouting and laughing as they pulled the rest of the supplies from the wagon.

  Suddenly he felt a tug at his belt, and opening his eyes he looked up at Bosky Fulton.

  Fulton was holding a finger to his lips, but seemed unharmed. Swiftly and roughly, Fulton pulled Hockett’s gun belt loose, then took his gun and what remained of his belongings. With no thought for the pain he might cause by the rough handling, he turned the wounded man roughly this way and that, going through his pockets.

  Hockett grasped at Fulton’s sleeve with fingers that no longer had the strength to grasp, but Fulton brushed them aside, and then he was gone. Hockett tried to call after him, but no sound came, and then he died.

  Fulton had been hanging back when the wagon was attacked, and in the first flurry of movement, he took to the rocks and fired no shot that would attract attention to him. He abandoned his friends without hesitation, and remained in the rocks until the shooting was over, then crawled out to get Hockett’s weapons and ammunition.

  Returning to his horse he led the animal farther away, then waited. In his pockets he had most of the money and the best of the jewels taken from the hunting party, which he had held pending a division in Mexico. It was not, he decided, a bad deal.

  The rest of them were dead, and in stead of going to Juarez, he would go west to Tucson and San Francisco.

  At approximately the same time that Shalako took leave of Buffalo Harris, Bosky Fulton was searching for a trail through the same mountains from the east, and shortly after sundown he turned his horse into the same trail as that on which Shalako rode.

  Ten miles or more divided them, and each made dry camp, each went to sleep without food. Bosky Fulton in a small clump of brush, Shalako behind the ruined adobe.

  Beyond the Hatchet Mountains, Lieutenant Hall, with a small detachment of troops from Fort Cummings, made a fireless bivouac. West of the Animas Mountains, bound for Stein’s Pass, Lieutenant McDonald camped with his Indian scouts and one corporal.

  To the north, not yet in the arena of action, Lieutenant Colonel “Sandy” Forsyth camped with some four hundred men of the 4th Cavalry.

  There had been a big fight at San Carlos, and now the scattered bands of the Apache were gathering under their three leaders, Chato, Loco, and Nachita. They were perfectly aware of McDonald’s presence and that he had with him a number of Yuma and Mohave scouts, including Yuma Bill.

  The Apaches had fled south from San Carlos, while Forsyth had come west from Fort Cummings. The Apaches, who usually know everything in the desert, did not know this.

  Their scouts had seen McDonald’s small force, and they knew of Hall … of Forsyth they knew nothing.

  In the small area at the head of the canyons, Buffalo Harris argued for small fires, carefully shielded, and he kept them together in the most defensible position he could find.

  Von Hallstatt spread his blankets and stretched out, deadbeat. He had expected nothing like this. When attacked, he had believed they would be mass attacks of running, easily killed savages, and instead there had been few targets, those few fleeting and gone. Deserted by his teamsters, he was here, where he had never expected to be, moving at the whim of a man he scarcely knew and profoundly disliked.

  Thinking of the Indians irritated him, for it brought to mind an almost forgotten lecture heard while still a cadet, when they were told that all warfare would be revised, influenced by the fighting on the American frontier.

  The warfare of the future, they were told, meant aimed rifle fire, mobility, infiltration, and individual enterprise. The idea had been unpalatable to the students, and they had rejected it en masse, for it meant initiative by the individual soldier, and seemed to imply less control from the top.

  Von Hallstatt lay with his hands clasped behind his head and coldly appraised the situation as it took place at the ranch. Despite superior fire power, superior weapons, and perhaps superior marksmanship they had been immobilized and rendered incapable of counterattack.

  For the first time he had faced an enemy who was virtually invisible, an enemy who knew and utilized the terrain.

  Despite his unfamiliarity with the country and Indian warfare in general, he was beginning to see how a small, well-trained force, virtually living off the country, could defeat or at least nullify the efforts of a much larger and better equipped command. It was his first experience with guerrilla warfare, and the very idea of war conducted on such principles made his gorge rise.

  War under such conditions was no longer a gentleman’s game. It became harsh, practical, and utterly realistic business. Firing in volleys as at a massed enemy front was absurd, for there was no enemy front, the enemy was a shadow, a will-o’-the-wisp.

  Frederick von Hallstatt was nothing if not a realist. Lying stretched on his back, staring up at the stars, he considered the situation. Encumbered by the women there was nothing they could do but hope for the arrival of the Army … the very Army he had often ri
diculed for being unable to dispose of a pack of naked savages.

  The chances of getting out were small indeed. The food supply was low. There was ammunition enough for a good long fight, and small chance of worry on that score, but the food they carried could last them only three days, four at the most.

  Despite his resentment of Shalako, it was obvious they could not survive without him. Even Buffalo admitted that Shalako was much more familiar with the country and the Indians than anyone else.

  This very trip to America had been less for the purpose of hunting big game than for an opportunity to fight Indians.

  He admitted to himself what he had not admitted to anyone else, although he had jestingly commented on hoping for a brush with the Apaches. Well, he was having it. And so far he had acquitted himself very poorly indeed.

  He was a superb rifle shot, yet he had killed but one Indian in all the rounds he had fired. Moreover, he had a feeling the Apaches were shooting more effectively than he, for there had been at least twenty extremely narrow misses back at the ranch; at least twenty times when bullets had come within fractions of an inch of hitting him.

  Firelight flickered on the under branches of the surrounding pines, reflected from the smooth faces of the rocks. The air was scented with pine and cedar, and the fire crackled and sparked as it burned pine and needles.

  A quail called, and far off, a lone coyote cried his immeasurable woe to the starlit sky. Buffalo Harris knelt by the fire, feeding its hungry flames with sticks gathered from under the trees. Irina placed the coffeepot on a flat stone, close to the flames.

  “I’ve set some snares,” Buffalo commented. “In the morning we may have a rabbit or two.”

  “Where is he now?”

  Buffalo stretched his big hands toward the warmth of the flames in a timeless gesture of devotion to the gods of fire. He waited while the flames seared the few drops of spilled water from the outside of the coffeepot.

  “Sleepin’, most likely. He’s a man sets store by sleep, although I never knew a man to get less of it.”

  “What’s he like? I mean, beyond what you see?” “He’s an uncommon hard man to read.

  Leaves mighty little sign, no matter how you study his trail.”

  “Has he been married?”

  “Now as to that I couldn’t say. Kind of doubt it. Women folks take to him. I’ve seen that a-plenty. And he’s uncommon gentle with them, although I doubt he’d be that way if they crossed him.

  “You’d look long to find a man who knows wild country better, he tracks like any Apache. He can live off less and travel farther than anybody except maybe an Indian.

  “One time I saw a book of this here poetry in his saddlebag. Near wore out from reading.

  Of course, that doesn’t spell, because out here a man gets so hungry for reading he’ll read anything in print. I’ve lived in bunk houses where the cowhands used to see who had memorized the most labels off tin cans … and any book or paper is read until it’s wore out.”

  “Where’s he from?”

  Buffalo glanced at her. “Question we never ask out here. We count a man as one who stands up when trouble shows, and we never look to see how much of a shadow a man cast back home. You can’t wash gold with water that’s run off down the hill.”

  Von Hallstatt had come up to the fire. “Tradition is important,” he said quietly, “and a man has a right to be proud of what he has been and what his family have been.”

  “Maybe so,” Buffalo acknowledged, “but out here we feel we’re starting tradition and not living on it. One time you folks in Europe founded families and shaped a tradition, and I’ve no doubt they were strong men who did it.” He got to his feet.

  “We’re making our own traditions now, founding families, building a country.

  “We don’t figure a man’s past is important. We want to know what he is now. The fact that his great-granddaddy was a fightin’ man won’t kill any Indians today.

  “A man starting into wild country wants a man riding beside him that he can depend on. We’re a sight more interested in red blood out here than in blue blood, and believe me, General, the two don’t always run together.”

  Buffalo added fuel to the fire. The wood was very dry and burned with a hot, eager flame and little smoke. He accepted a cup of coffee from Irina, tasted it, and said, “Ma’am, you make a man’s cup of coffee. Never figured it of you … you so stylish and all.”

  “I learned to cook over a campfire when I was twelve. My father often took me hunting with him.”

  “That there’s the way it should be. A woman should know how to cook and do for a man.”

  “Does Shalako think that?”

  “He’s a puzzlin’ man, like I said. Who knows what he thinks? But he’s a man to have on your side in a difficulty, and addicted to sudden violence when wrongfully op posed.” He sipped coffee. “He favors desert and mountains more than towns.”

  “Is he running from something?” Von Hallstatt was irritated that the conversation should have turned to Carlin. “Whatever else may have happened, I strongly doubt Shalako ever ran from anything. He’s a most stubborn man when it comes to troublesome times.”

  “Whatever he is,” von Hallstatt said stiffly, “he will be well paid for whatever he does for us.”

  “Meanin’ no offense, General, but if it wasn’t for the ladies I reckon you’d all be dead by now. He’s of the opinion that every man should fight his own battles and saddle his own broncs. You can lay a bet he’s never given a thought to payment.”

  Buffalo wiped off his mustache with the back of his hand. “Obliged for the coffee, ma’am. I’ll be getting out where I can smell Indian.”

  When he had gone, Irina glanced at von Hallstatt. “Frederick, be careful about offering money. These men have a pride every bit as stiff-necked as your own. You must not offer money to Shalako.”

  “Perhaps not.” He took the coffee she offered. “The man gets my back up. I have no idea why, but it is so. I went to school in England as you know, and always got along fine with the British, but these Americans … I cannot like them.”

  “You are not accustomed to independence in men you think your inferiors, Frederick.

  I think, perhaps, that is the reason.”

  “No… No, it is something else. I confess that disturbs me in some of the others, but somehow”-he was surprised to realize this was true-“somehow I never thought of him as an inferior.”

  He tasted the coffee. “It is good coffee, Irina. You continue to surprise me.” Then he added, “The man has education, undoubtedly a military education.”

  It was her turn to be surprised. “I was not aware of that.”

  “The names of Vegetius, Saxe, and Jomini are not as familiar to you as to me, nor are they familiar to the average educated man. They speak of specialization.”

  “Hans said something to that effect, but he may merely have read the books.”

  “Possibly. As Harris has said, he is a puzzling man.” He glanced at Irina. “And one not to underestimate in any respect.”

  Irina kept her eyes on the fire, a little startled by the implication. A few days ago she would have been merely amused at the implication that she might be interested in such a man as Shalako Carlin. Now she was no longer sure.

  “If we are fortunate, Frederick, we will be far away from here in a few days. Then I doubt if we shall ever see him again … or any of these people not of our own group.”

  “Perhaps.” He sounded doubtful, and he was not a man to be uncertain of anything, especially of himself or any situation in which he was involved.

  She pushed some sticks farther into the fire and watched the sparks fly upward. How much their lives had changed! Hans was dying… Frederick was less arrogant than at any time since she had known him… and she her self? Had she changed?

  Von Hallstatt got his rifle and moved out to the perimeter of the camp, and Laura came to the fire from Kreuger’s bedside.

  “He’s asle
ep, I think. Sometimes it is hard to tell … he makes believe so we will not feel it necessary to remain at his side.”

  “Strange, that it should be him. Frederick said two of the wounds were enough to kill him, each in itself. I don’t know how he has lived so long.”

  Laura was silent, and then she said, “Irina… I like this … the desert, the fire, the stars. If the situation was different, I could love it.”

  “So could I. Once when I was in Africa with Father, we were camped away out on the veldt, just a small group of us. It was a lovely night. I remember him saying that he would like never to go back.”

  “It all seems far away.” Laura looked thoughtfully at her friend. “You’ve changed, Irina. It seems so impossible that it was just the day before yesterday that all this started.” “Your father will be worried.”

  “I hope we’ll be safe before he hears about it. He didn’t want me to come.” She glanced at Irina again. “Father didn’t take to Frederick. Thought he was too stiff necked.”

  “He isn’t, really. And he’s lost a lot of what he did have, these past few days.”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  Irina seated herself on the log near the fire and care fully spread her skirt over her knees. “I don’t know, Laura. I really don’t know.”.

  “Shalako?” “That’s silly, isn’t it? We come from different worlds, we live in different ways, we think differently. The whole idea is absurd.”

  “With a man like that? Not to me, it isn’t. Anyway, I’ve heard you say many times that you had no desire to live in London or Paris … that you wanted an estate in the country. So why not a cattle ranch in New Mexico or Arizona?”

  “That’s foolish, and you know it.”

  The night was cool and, above all, singularly still. Beyond the light of the fire the night was a curtain of darkness.

  Count Henri came in from the edge of camp and poured a cup of coffee. “It is too quiet,” he said, “I don’t like it. It reminds me too much of Africa.”

  He sipped his coffee. “They are out there, I think. I think they are very close to us.”