A Good Day

by James W. Marvin

  Haydon and Chandler rode through the wreckage and made a cursory count. Tolling up the dead where they lay.

  O’Croxley’s castrated corpse had been made more decent and tied over the back of his mount, with the hope that he might be given a proper burial somewhere later. Not that it made a lot of difference to the dead trooper.

  “Twenty-two dead, Sir,” reported the Sergeant. Clapping his hands together against the bitter wind.

  “How many children, Haydon?” asked Crow.

  “Difficult to say. We figure some of the dead have been dragged into the wickiups. The ones that aren’t burned.”

  “Twenty-two,” mused Carter. “Jesus, but that’s … And not Cyrus Quaid.”

  “No sign of him. Hide nor hair, Sir,” said Chandler. “Guess the total count of hostiles could be around thirty. Some wounded. You can hear them screamin’ inside their huts.”

  “And a few maybe drowned in Sandy Creek, tryin’ to escape,” said one of the troopers.

  “Good day’s work, Lieutenant,” said Crow, his voice totally neutral. So that the young officer wasn’t able to tell just what the shootist felt about the brutal massacre.

  “What the Hell do we do now?” asked Carter, looking round at the circle of men. One of the troopers was trying to rig a bandage for himself. Patching up an elbow wound where an elderly Chiricahua woman had lashed out at him with a shovel, nearly breaking his arm.

  “Get out quick,” said someone, but the officer didn’t see who it was.

  “Sergeant?”

  “We’re kind of low on man-power to try and go into those mountains and raid Small Pony in his camp.”

  “I agree,” said Chandler.

  “Why, corporal?”

  “Small Pony must have upwards of thirty or forty men. Chances are that he’ll learn of this killing,” pointing through the curtain of snow behind them. To where they could all still hear the tumbling waters of Sandy Creek. “Then he’ll be on after us.”

  “In this weather?”

  Crow spoke. “You slaughter thirty Apache women and children, Carter, and I doubt you’d find a hole big enough to hide in between here and China.”

  “We got guns.”

  The shootist came close to a smile. A smile that lacked much humor. “Sure. You. Sergeant and a Corporal. Me. Six troopers, one with a bad arm. Not a lot to fight with, son.”

  “We can’t leave that poor child.”

  “Sure we can.” Stepping in near to the young man, so that Carter jumped back and nearly fell. “Listen and listen good. I may sound like a preacher at a river-crossing camp-meeting, but you best listen. Or every man here’s deader’n a beaver hat.”

  “Go on, Crow,” hissed Haydon, brushing some flakes of freezing snow from his moustache.

  “I’m in command, remember. You are hired just as a scout.”

  “Time’s wastin’, boy,” said Crow. His quiet voice larded with menace. “I figure we’ve got ourselves a real nest of spiders here. And it’s only goin’ to be a few hours before they come after us. If we’re lucky we can ride hard until dark. That gives us time tomorrow morning.”

  “If we aren’t lucky?”

  “They’ll be with us by around noon. Trail us fast on ponies. They’ll know ways we won’t. Maybe circle us.”

  “I don’t like giving up on a mission,” said Carter, biting his lip until a bright bead of blood showed, vivid against his pale skin.

  “Sure. And I don’t like endin’ up dead, Carter,” replied Crow.

  “Then we’ll go. Straight here and now. Mount and move out. Sergeant.”

  “Sir?”

  “Give the order. Ride tight and hard. Corporal Chandler?”

  “Aye, Sir?”

  “Cover the rear. Keep your eyes well open and well sharpened.”

  “And we hope for the luck,” said Haydon to the shootist as he stepped past him ready to mount up.

  “We hope,” agreed Crow.

  The mission hadn’t gone well.

  And that was the way it carried on.

  Unlucky.

  They didn’t see a sign of any of the Apaches. The worst news was that the snow eased down around five that afternoon. Finally stopping as the light failed and the moon appeared. Clean and silver, like a sliver of polished steel. Throwing its sharp shadows across the white land.

  “Just what we didn’t want,” commented Crow as Carter called a halt.

  “Now what?”

  “We go on.”

  Through the night, Crow?” asked Haydon, unable to hide the surprise in his voice.

  The temperature dropped fast, to something close to thirty below. A biting frost that turned the fallen snow to crusted ice, making the horses labor, hooves crunching as they moved back towards the distant Fort Garrett. The stars came out through the drifting high cloud, sparkling like diamonds scattered on a cloth of blackest velvet.

  “Sure, through the night. We’re goin’ to be seen from ten miles off in this light.”

  “Black on the snow?”

  Crow nodded. “That’s it. Stand out like a dead dog in a baby’s feeding tray.”

  So they kept going. Every now and again Carter would give the order for every man there to dismount and walk alongside his animal. Allowing the horses a brief rest. The cold was agonizing. Seeming to set its teeth into the hollow bones of your face, making them sing with pain. Teeth seemed too large for gums and the eyes watered, then the liquid nearly froze. Making the eyes feel sore in their sockets.

  Chandler saw the Indians first. Faint dark smudges close to the beginning of the hills, around four miles behind them. Everyone halted and looked back, stopping where they stood.

  “No damned point in waitin’ for them,” said Crow, his voice loud in the unearthly hush. “They see us. Means they’ll come after us.”

  “Will they catch us?” asked the young officer, teeth nipping at the ragged edge of a finger-nail.

  Crow again took out the watch. “We can keep ahead until dawn.”

  “Then?”

  “Then I figure we’d do well to start lookin’ for two things.”

  “What?”

  “Good defensive place.”

  “And, what else?” asked Carter.

  Sergeant Haydon guessed the answer and laughed. “A miracle, Lieutenant, Sir. Just a fuckin’ miracle.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  All of the men in the patrol were experienced soldiers, most of them with at least ten years behind them. Seasoned veterans. They all knew how it was that the Indians were catching up so easily on them during that long night’s chase.

  The only man who didn’t know was James Carter. He hadn’t read about this kind of campaign in his military training books. Then it was always neat and orderly. Either an advance or a withdrawal to prepared positions. Not a desperate chase for life.

  But, during that bitter passage of time, he worked out what was happening.

  How four miles became three.

  Three down to two.

  As the first pale light of dawn came pinkly to the eastern sky, the gap between the Apaches and the tired Cavalry patrol was less than one mile.

  “Their horses are lighter. Little strong ponies. Not tired geldings fit only for the knacker’s yard. And the men are fresh. We’re close to exhaustion. Hungry. They want revenge. We just want to escape. On this snow they can move better. Don’t sink in. We won’t make it. Won’t make it.”

  Alone in the stillness, chin hunched deep in his up-turned collar, the young Lieutenant Carter began to weep silently.

  So very sorry for himself.

  “There.”

  Crow was leading the flagging band of blue-bellies, his stallion a good hundred paces clear of the first man. His finger pointed towards a cluster of boulders, rising up like a stone nest, just off the main trail. It didn’t look like the best defense in the history of warfare.

  But it did look better than nothing.

  There was even a ragged cheer from behind him.
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br />   Several of the men risked a quick look behind them to see how close the Chiricahua were. For Trooper Stantiford, with his injured elbow, it was disastrous. His arm slung high in the makeshift bandage he wasn’t in full control of his spent animal.

  So that, when it set a foreleg into a hole masked with rutted ice, he wasn’t quick enough to pull it up. The horse started to fall and he began to go with it. There was time for a single, drawn-out yell of: “Shiiiiiiit!!!” and then they were both over.

  In the pulp novels that thrilled the lunch-breaks of dry goods clerks in Springfield, Illinois, soldiers often fell off their horses in front of charging Indians. And one of their colleagues would always rein in and spin his horse on a dime. Galloping back, six-guns blazing, to scoop his injured comrade from the jaw of the whooping scalp-hunters.

  If only life was really like that.

  Stantiford managed to roll with the fall, but he’d heard the dry snap as his horse broke its leg. Nobody stopped for him. Nobody sacrificed their own lives to go back and try and save him. And he didn’t expect it. He’d have behaved the same.

  Crow turned in the saddle to watch the last act of that personal drama. Seeing the man stand and face the oncoming Apaches. Draw his pistol, and then throw down a heavy glove. Clearing his hand to thumb back on the hammer of the Colt. Watching the Chiricahua screaming down on him. Waiting until they were within thirty paces and then carefully putting a bullet through his own brain.

  The surviving eight soldiers joined Crow in the temporary safety of the circle of boulders. Each man jumping from his saddle, drawing the Springfield. Running to find a reasonable defensive position. Two of the troopers stood their ground in the centre of the circle of rocks, each holding the reins of four mounts. Crow had tethered his to a short spur of red-gold stone a little to the left of the position.

  “They’ve stopped, Lieutenant,” called one of the soldiers.

  “Why’ve they done that, Crow?”

  “They don’t fancy gettin’ killed for nothing, Mr. Carter,” replied the shootist. “You better get yourself used damned fast to the idea that they are as good as we are. Maybe better.”

  The Apaches had yelped their disappointment at the way that Trooper Stantiford had removed himself totally from the reach of their revenge. Now they held their ground, circling and milling around, keeping three hundred paces or so from the watching whites. Every now and again one of them would dart nearer on his pony, waving a carbine or a spear, calling defiance.

  But the soldiers weren’t rank amateurs, who’d betray their position and waste bullets by firing at targets they had little hope of hitting. Every man held his fire and waited.

  Watched.

  The cold seemed to seek out the isolated parts of the body. Across the forehead and tight over each cheekbone. Around the eyes, settling in the jaw, making the teeth taste like iron. In the fragile bones at the back of the hand. Biting in at the groin.

  Crow settled, hunched in his coat, and waited. There was no point in becoming excited. There wasn’t anywhere for any of them to go. If the Apaches wanted to they could wait for them to die of cold or thirst. If they wanted to risk losses, then Small Pony could send his warriors in and wipe them all out.

  “What d’you think, Haydon?” whispered Corporal Chandler. Both the non-coms were close to Crow.

  “Figure he’ll leave half his men, and go out to get some fires goin’. Then come after us.”

  “No. I reckon he’ll fear a patrol and maybe leave us be.”

  Crow laughed. A barely audible chuckle of genuine amusement.

  “What’s with you?” asked Chandler.

  “Didn’t figure you for such a bright-hopin’ man, Corporal, that’s all,” replied the shootist.

  “So, what’s your guess?”

  “If’n he’s as good as they say … He’ll send in some of his best young bucks. Boys after some honor. See how close they get. See how good we are. I guess we’ll hold them. Should do. Some veterans here know which end of the rifle’s which. Then he’ll hold off and wait.”

  “Not a lot of hope, is there?” asked Haydon.

  Crow shook his head, the movement shaking the long fall of black hair across his shoulders. “No. Less we get a large patrol out from Garrett.”

  “Hell. Lot of men dead for that kid.”

  “And women and kids. Old men. A whole lot of dying for a worthless white kid,” said Crow.

  “And it’s not over,” sniffed Chandler.

  Small Pony was an experienced fighting leader. He had seen the effects of the disciplined firing power of the dog-faced soldiers when he was a young boy. The way that they could cut through even the boldest charge, reducing proud men to mewling creatures, crawling through their own blood and intestines. So he held back from the circle of rocks where the soldiers hid. He had counted them at his leisure, these Cavalrymen. Knew how many there were. Recognized the three-stripe with the hair beneath his nose. The officer was young. And with them rode the tall man in black. A man that he had heard of from John Dancer, the day before the breed lost his life in. . . . Small Pony set his mind away from the dreadful scenes he had witnessed on the narrow strip of land among the waters of the little river.

  But the cold was the enemy of both sides. Even the hardy Chiricahua suffered from its numbing bite. It would have been easy to have waited the whites out.

  “They are less than two hands,” said one of the youngest of the Apaches. A squat youth called Two Moons, after a famous drinking bout when he had fought a bitter knife battle over his claim that the sky that night contained double the usual number of moons.

  “But they have the rocks at their faces and at their backs.”

  “With two hands I could ride them into the dust,” boasted Two Moons, making some of the older men look angry at his nerve in speaking out in front of those with more wisdom.

  But Small Pony merely nodded. This was what he had hoped would happen. It gave him the chance to test out the position of the white soldiers, without seeming to give an order that would risk the lives of any of his warriors.

  “Yes,” he said, finally. “You may go and try them. But take care, Two Moons. Do not ride close together, knee to knee, less one bullet slays two of you.”

  “I am not a child, Small Pony,” retorted the youth, looking round and picking his ten comrades by name. Waving them to him, and shouting his instructions in a high, excited voice.

  “Some will die, Small Pony,” said the oldest of the warriors, his face and body seamed with antique scars.

  “Aye, my uncle, but that is so,” replied Small Pony. “Yet those that do not die will be greater and wiser warriors.”

  The eleven Apaches came in at them, galloping in a ragged row, constantly switching behind and in front of each other, making it difficult for the soldiers to pick out a clear target and hold to it.

  “Nobody fire until I give the word!!” yelled Lieutenant Carter, voice cracking.

  “Boy thinks we’re damned peach-fuzz three-weekers,” moaned Chandler. “Soon as I can hit one, I’ll fire.”

  Led by Two Moons the Chiricahua kicked their ponies on fast, closing in on the soldiers. Getting within a hundred yards.

  “Fire,” screamed Carter.

  But his rifle was the only one that spat smoke. The bullet digging up a fountain of dirt ten yards in front of the leading Indian.

  Before the officer could realize what was happening the rest of his men were shooting. A jagged volley, aimed as each soldier made his own decision when he thought he could hit something.

  Four Apaches went down. Two dead, one shot through the shoulder, the fourth because his horse had caught a forty-five in the head.

  There was only time for another round, bringing down five more. The wily soldiers this time aimed for the animals, knowing that they would then buy the chance of more shots at the dismounted young warriors.

  The three survivors came on, whooping, leaping the rocks and jumping from their ponies in the middle o
f the defensive ring.

  “Get them!” called Carter.

  His voice over-shadowed by Haydon. “Leave them! Me and Chandler and Crow’ll take them. Rest of you stand fast and kill those bastards out there.”

  Two Moons was dead, hit by the first bullet from the sharp-eyed Trooper Dearman. Who proceeded to kill three more of the Chiricahua bucks with his next three bullets. Humming “The Derby Ram” to himself as he aimed and fired and reloaded and aimed and fired.

  One of the troopers was shot in the back as he fought, killed instantly. Chandler took an arrow through the side of his neck, making him yelp with pain. Spinning sideways and falling.

  The brave who’d fired the shaft jumped in with his war-axe swinging, crushing the skull of the Corporal in a single massive blow.

  Haydon shot his man with a round from the rifle, aimed quickly from the hip. Crow took out his Apache with two bullets from the pistol, keeping the scattergun for a reserve.

  But the young boy who’d killed Chandler was on the move again, heading for Carter. Who heard him coming and swung to face him.

  “Jesus Christ!! No!” he screamed. Fear freezing his fingers on his gun. Unable to draw his pistol or his saber. Simply standing there and seeing his death sprinting towards him across the cold stones. The Indian was barely fifteen, his hands and face dappled with the blood and brains of Corporal Chandler.

  Haydon didn’t have time to draw his own pistol. The Indian was too far away for Crow’s Colt.

  But Dearman had just reloaded again, ready to pick off an Apache who was cowering behind his dead pony, nursing a broken leg. He looked round at Carter’s screech of terror, seeing the Chiricahua was less than a dozen steps from the officer.

  The Kentuckian was a fine shot from a resting position, but swinging around and snapping off at a moving target from a standing position he wasn’t so good. He delayed the shot a moment two long, so that the Indian was on top of James Carter.

  Crow saw it happening and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

  Dearman snatched at his shot. Pulling on the trigger.

  Carter saw the Indian boy. The face was distorted with hate and anger. And fear. The axe was raised, dull with blood.