A Good Day

by James W. Marvin

  It was the best they could do.

  Carter had wanted to bury the body, but the two non-coms had opposed that, supported by Crow.

  “Harm enough done killing the boy,” said the shootist. “Figures he could be the son of one of their leading bucks. Maybe even Small Pony’s own son. They’ll be out lookin’ for the kid sometime after dawn tomorrow. No way they won’t follow tracks. We bury him, that just makes things worse all round. Be like spittin’ in the lad’s face. Best leave him yonder. They’ll find him.”

  “What should we do?” asked Carter.

  Chandler suggested returning to the fort to tell Lovick things had changed. Haydon was partly for that, but felt they might press on for one further day before returning.

  “We can’t go back like this,” said the young officer, voice shaking with anger. “Damned if we do.”

  “May be damned if n we don’t. Mister,” said Crow, calm as ever.

  “There’s a dozen of us.”

  “Maybe fifty or more of them. Plenty more if they happen to have some friends around.”

  “So you’d turn and run, Crow? Like a scared dog! I guess the money’s not enough for you.”

  “You’re young, son,” replied the shootist. “Young and scared. What you ought to realize is that every man here’s scared. Chandler, Haydon, the troopers resting yonder. Isn’t a man not near to terror at wondering what’ll happen now we killed that boy.”

  “I didn’t kill …”began Carter.

  “We all did, Mister. All of us. That’s the way the Apaches’ll see it, so that’s the way it is.”

  “I guess … guess that’s right. I’m sorry for the way I spoke, Mr. Crow.”

  There was the hint of a smile, teeth flaring white in the darkness. “Sure, Lieutenant. You’ll learn. This patrol could be the makin’ of you.” He paused. “If we get to all live that long.”

  Crow’s private inclination was to cut clear and run. He’d been forced into going with the patrol by the dying Major Lovick, and that didn’t leave him feeling any special obligation towards the soldiers. But Carter was trying hard to learn, and there was something to admire in the way that Chandler and Haydon wore their profession with a sense of honor and purpose.

  It was possible that Small Pony wouldn’t want to risk losing anyone else by attacking the small unit. Knowing that he was likely to take some losses before he could overwhelm the dog-face soldiers. But if Crow ran alone, the Apaches might come down on him like winter wolves on a frail straggler.

  They talked over plans late into the night, gradually pulling the whole patrol into the discussion. There was no real feeling for going back. Most men wanting to go on and

  recover Cyrus Quaid and teach the impudent Apaches a lesson they’d richly earned.

  “Maybe if I went ahead with a couple of troopers?” suggested Crow. “Keep in front and track on after the friendlies that ran from Fort Garrett. Can’t be that they’re far now. Probably somewheres in those foothills we saw at dusk.”

  “They’re around fifteen miles off,” said Chandler. “Mess of ravines and cross-canyons. We lost men there before.”

  Carter had a penciled sketch map out, trying to angle it to catch the shreds of moonlight that occasionally tore themselves clear of the veiling clouds. “Seems we think Small Pony’s fortress is here,” pointing with a gauntleted finger at a steep-sided canyon, surrounded with high cliffs.

  “Maybe,” said Haydon, doubt riddling his voice. “I was with Captain Britton when he drew up that map and I don’t … beggin’ the Lieutenant’s pardon … but I don’t believe the Captain got his ass within five miles of Small Pony. Sir.” The ‘Sir’ coming as an obvious afterthought.

  Carter grunted. In the poor light it was impossible to see his face but all of them felt his uncertainty. “Then that’s … Could be that’s a reason for Mr. Crow here to go with a couple of men and scout ahead for us. Just to those hills. That right, Crow?”

  “Sure is, Mr. Carter.”

  “Take Troopers Dale and Harris, Crow,” suggested Corporal Chandler. “Both good men. Both men you can trust if you meet trouble.”

  They met trouble.

  The three men rode off at first light, leaving their silent comrades behind, grouped around the line of horses. Nobody waved or even called out good wishes after them. All of them knew that Dearman’s one bullet could spell the end for all of them.

  It took them close to three hours to cover what Crow figured was nearer twenty than fifteen miles. It was a gentle, easy terrain. The wind that had brought bursts of fine rain during the night had also raised the temperature a little. The sky was clearing, with the promise of some better weather on the way. But the lack of cloud was likely to make the temperatures drop again once night came.

  “When do we stop, Crow?” asked the taller of the soldiers, Dale. He was a little difficult to understand, the shootist had found, owing to the trooper having paid a terminal visit to the fort’s dentist only a couple of days previous, to have every single one of his remaining teeth drawn. This had left him with a swollen jaw, a strong lisp and a foul temper.

  “Soon. Don’t plan to get too damned far inside those canyons.”

  “Want me to go away back for the others, Crow?” said Harris. A sturdy Texan with the kind of legs that looked lost without a horse rammed between them.

  The shootist considered the question. The whole point about scouting was to get so far ahead of the main body of men that if there was trouble you’d scent it in time to get warning to the others. So far there was no real sign of any Apache trouble, but there was something about the hills around that nagged at Crow.

  “Let’s wait on a whiles. Guess I …”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t say. Just that it don’t set right. The tracks of that party from Garrett lead clean on into those canyons. Plain as plain. But if there’s an ambush it’ll be further in.”

  “Yonder?” asked Harris, pointing with a stubby finger to where the trail vanished among the twisting walls of amber rock.

  “Yeah.”

  He looked up, right hand absently dropping to the polished butt of the Purdey. Feeling the wood cold to the touch. The temperature was falling fast, with the promise of a freezing night to come.

  Among the foothills around them the air was a little warmer than out on the exposed plains. Far above Crow’s head he could see a hawk, wind-hovering, riding a thermal of less cold air, wings spread. Etching lazy circles against the blue. Every now and then it would fold back on the wind, swooping lower, then rising again. As though there was something in among the arroyos or the hills that kept catching its attention. Something that bothered it a little. That attracted it, then frightened it away again.

  One of the basic rules of survival that Crow had learned during his time among the Indians was to watch everything. Learn everything from the animals and birds. From even the insects and the reptiles. A hint of muddiness in a stream could tell a dramatic tale if it was properly interpreted.

  A hawk that behaved like this one could easily mean nothing. A hunk of tumble weed trapped in a ravine, rolling back and forth. Jackrabbits moving among shadows.

  Or men?

  Chiricahua warriors waiting silent and still. Like corpses. Intriguing the hunting bird. So that it kept coming to investigate. Not satisfied with what it saw so that it returned to the safety of a thousand feet in the cold air.

  “You watchin’ that hawk?” asked Dale.

  “Sure. Something’s lyin’ on its mind. Something in among those rocks.”

  “Apaches?”

  “Maybe.”

  Harris spat in the dirt. “Lyin’ there for us.”

  Crow whistled silently between his teeth. “I surely don’t know. They can’t be sure about the boy yet. But if they’ve seen us coming, they might want to try and take at least one of us alive to tell them. And tell them where the rest of the patrol is.”

  “I’d tell them to go fuck themselves �
�fore I’d betray a friend,” said Dale, his words muffled by his lisp.

  “Then you’re more of a damned fool than I figured you for, trooper,” said Crow, unable to keep a note of anger from his voice.

  “Why?”

  “All that talk is just dust in the wind, soldier. Sure, it’s easy to blow hard now. Free and easy, out in the open, with two armed men with you. Mounted and able to gallop away. Sure.”

  “Hell, Crow, you know …”

  “Yes, trooper, I do know. By any god you care to name, I do know.” He paused a moment, controlling himself. That silken voice unchanged. “I have seen men, brave as any, weeping. Officers and gentlemen. Naked and bound, blinded and castrated. Lie on the floor and kiss the feet of old squaws and beg for death. Really beg for it, Dale.”

  “I guess that …”

  The shootist ignored the interruption. “Don’t forget they have a culture way older than anything you’ve got. They hunt their own knowledge. They curse the laws and religions of the whites. In a thousand years there will still be Indians on this land, still singing their old songs. They know about surviving, soldier. And they know about courage and pain.”

  Harris coughed. “You got a lot of love for them Indians, Crow.”

  It was a loaded comment and the shootist turned his head and stared at the Cavalryman, locking eyes until the short Texan blinked and looked away.

  “That something you want some more words on, Harris?” he asked.

  “No. Just that you know a lot about ’em.”

  “Yes.”

  Just that. A single word of agreement that concealed far more than it revealed.

  Finally, there seemed nothing to do but press on. If one of them had gone back as a galloper to the rest of the small force, he could have told them nothing of great value. It was obviously safe up to the edge of the foothills. It was what lay within that lowering mass of age-old rocks that mattered.

  “We go on,” said Crow. “First sign of trouble and we all get out. Fast as we can.”

  “What if anyone goes down?” asked Harris.

  “He stays down,” replied the shootist.

  “That’s not the way of the Cavalry,” said Dale. “We look after our own.”

  “Shit,” said Crow, disgustedly. “You two can look after each other. I don’t give a sweet damn about it. But I’m looking after myself.”

  It was with a chilly and unfriendly atmosphere between the three of them that they heeled their horses forwards, away from the temporary warmth of the sun, into the shadowed coolness of the high-sided trail.

  Crow went first, with Dale second and Harris last. During their brief halt the tall soldier had tried to eat some dried biscuit but it had hurt his mouth. Made his sore gums start bleeding again, so that he had to keep stopping and spitting out blood, speckling the trail behind them.

  It was very quiet.

  So cold in the dim light that they could all see their own breath hanging frostily in the still air.

  After a quarter mile they came to a wider place, where several trails wound off from the main track. Some snaked left and two went off to the right, leading towards the higher cliffs.

  “Straight on, Crow?” asked Dale.

  “Yeah. Keep tight in.”

  “My mouth hurts like a bastard,” moaned Harris.

  “Pain’ll stop soon,” said Trooper Dale.

  Not knowing how right he was.

  But not quite in the way that he’d meant it.

  The first arrow took Harris through the centre of the chest, a second shaft feathering itself in his throat as he began to fall.

  Chapter Eight

  Crow’s ears were tuned in to danger, and he heard the faint hiss of the first arrow through the air. The thunk as it struck home in flesh and bone. Then the stifled groan of shock as the soldier found himself falling from the high McClellan saddle.

  Before the second shaft hit Harris, Crow was already turning, drawing his pistol from the back of his belt. Seeing a half dozen Apaches standing behind boulders, most with bows. Two … three with rifles.

  The hawk had been a warning.

  Harris was dead.

  Down and dead. Maybe his fingers still clawed at the freezing pebbles and his lips moved in a reflex action. His eyes were still open and they conveyed some picture to his closing brain. But nobody would ever know what images the soldier carried with him into the far blackness of eternity.

  Dale was slower. Despite all his experience as a soldier in the South-West he still couldn’t believe the speed and efficiency of the ambush. A bullet kicked his horse out from under him, sending him down with it. His head turned desperately, looking whether he could take cover behind the wounded animal, but there seemed to be Indians all around him. Blocking off the trail they’d just used, walking in towards him, firing steadily as they did so. More on both sides.

  “Jesus, Crow!” he screamed. “Help me, for Christ’s sake!!”

  The shootist was busy looking for his own way out.

  Digging his spurs into the flanks of the stallion, so that it reared and flailed out with its fore-feet. Making it a harder target for the attacking Chiricahua. He didn’t bother trying to return the fire. From horseback there was no point. But his mind was racing.

  About a dozen or so in all. Behind and around. And, unless the man leading the Apaches was a total fool, there’d be a few more round the next bend in the trail, waiting for the attempt to run for it.

  “Help me!” yelled Dale. Trying to hold on the reins of his horse, while the mare struggled to rise, blood pumping from a severed artery in its neck. Steaming in the cold.

  It had to be a side trail.

  Those to the left were the widest, tempting and inviting. Up to the right they looked close to impassable, winding out of sight towards the blank cliffs and sheer precipices.

  “Left,” he said to himself, wincing as a bullet scored across his forearm, tearing a furrow through the cloth of his black coat.

  “Crow! Christ, help. Help!”

  Despite what he’d said the tall shootist hesitated for a moment. Looking back at the helpless soldier, his dark blue uniform stained with dirt across the hip and shoulder where he’d fallen. Dale’s face slack with terror, seeing his death closing on him. The Apaches were holding their fire for a moment, hoping to do what Crow had guessed they might. Take the pony-soldier alive so that their women could work on him and loosen his tongue.

  For a moment the tall man in black considered gunning Dale down, to save him from what was to come. And to try and save the rest of the patrol.

  “Come on!” he called, holding the stallion still for a few seconds.

  “Now?”

  “Sure. Come on or you’re …”

  At his words the trooper dropped the reins of his own dying horse, glancing once at the approaching Chiricahua, then powering himself across the few yards of open ground.

  Fists pumping, his short legs thrusting at the earth beneath him. Head back.

  Too slow.

  “… dead,” finished Crow.

  It was a bullet from a captured Springfield carbine. Crow actually saw the Indian level it and fire. From less than ten paces range.

  The forty-five hit the running man in the small of the back, punching him forwards. It must have hit him in the spine, as he went down like a brain-struck rabbit. Falling all at once, hands reaching for the wound, like a woman easing a muscular strain after a day spent leaning over the washing-tub. He didn’t even cry out, the shocking force of the blow taking away all his senses. His eyes were squeezed shut, mouth clamped tight.

  With a wound like that Dale might have lived on for some hours. There wasn’t a shred of hope that Crow could save him now. All he could do was …

  Level the pistol and fire twice, thumbing back on the hammer of the Colt. Seeing both bullets splinter into the wounded soldier’s skull. One just above the ear on the right side, the other slightly higher and further back. Dale’s head bounced at the double im
pact, but he didn’t feel any pain.

  The numbness in the middle of his back was puzzling him. There was no feeling in his legs, and he didn’t want to open his eyes to see the Apaches grinning in at him. Didn’t want that. If he kept his eyes shut. . . .

  That hope died with him.

  The moment he’d squeezed the trigger a second time, Crow was moving.

  “Come on, you bastard!” he bawled, clubbing the horse between the ears with the barrel of the pistol. Not hard enough to stun it, but hard enough to convince the surprised animal that this was for real. It took the warning, setting off away from the two dead men and the advancing Apaches.

  He snapped off two more shots at the approaching Chiricahua, with the satisfaction of seeing one of the warriors clutch at his shoulder and spin sideways, blood flowering against the pale blue of his cotton shirt.

  His suspicions that the Indians were under orders to try and take one of them prisoner were reinforced when he heard an older man call out a harsh, guttural warning not to kill him.

  No arrows came winging after him. No more bullets were fired.

  For fifty yards or so he let the stallion run on free, gathering speed, then he wrenched at the reins, bringing it sharply round to the right, towards the higher ground and the steeper trail.

  There was more shouting and this time shots were fired at him. That meant he’d slipped their trap by taking the least likely path. The leader of the Chiricahua—he wondered whether it might be Small Pony himself—obviously didn’t have sufficient men to cover every trail out from the scene of the attack. But he must have figured that ninety-nine men from a hundred would simply have looked for the fast and easy way away from the ambush.

  Crow was that one in a hundred.