The 7th Western Novel

by Francis W. Hilton

  The sergeant got the men back into their saddles, the lieutenant gave his orders. “Fast trot. The sooner we overtake our men, the less ground we’ll have to backtrack on.”

  Rylan said: “Fast trot, hoooh!” and the patrol moved out.

  Half an hour later they hit lava rock and the tracks petered out. Lieutenant Beer led them back to their original line of march.

  CHAPTER VII

  Jack Romayne let the packhorse loose when they were a mile from town, winding the end of the lead rope around the hitch of the packsaddle. Once the beast made up his mind he was going to have to go, he went; a few feet behind Jack’s horse, at a steady amble that ate up miles.

  Jack said: “A hell of a thing, when all a man gets to help him is a gambler.”

  Plains dust was already soiling the gambler’s black hat. He said: “Oh, don’t thank me for coming along. There’s nothing very pure or great about it.”

  The sheriff stared at the choice of words. “Pure?” he said. “Great? You trying to make fun of me, Younge?”

  Dan Younge said: “Fun is not a thing you can expect to come out of Rock Spring anytime in the year. The water and the soil’re not right for growing it.”

  Romayne shrugged. “All Rock Spring grows is money for Sydnor.”

  Younge grunted. “I’d like to get him in a poker game. But he’s too cute.”

  Out here, this far from town, kids did not bring the milk cows and the saddle horses of Rock Spring to graze. The short thick prairie grass took a track and held it; the marks of the wagon wheels were plain to read. “Heading for reservation country,” Jack Romayne said and straightened in the saddle, no longer forced to bend down to read the trail. He gestured ahead, and the twin lines could be seen in the grass for a half mile ahead. “Let’s make a little time.”

  They put their horses to the job and moved along silently for a long spell; the sun moved well to their left, and their shadows got long on the land. Then Jack Romayne said: “There,” and pulled up. “It couldn’t have been much farther,” he said.

  Dan Younge said: “I don’t see.”

  Romayne pointed. “There was a saddle horse tied behind the wagon up to here,” he said. “This isn’t a road; it’s just open prairie. Somebody drove the wagon to here, then got out and rode back. See?” He pointed to the tracks. “They would have to bring the wagon this far, or the horses would turn back to the nearest water hole. But the wind’s from the south almost always now, and the teams would smell Rock Spring and head for it. He knew horses, whoever he was.”

  Dan Younge said: “But why? He was going to a lot of trouble to see those miners got to a town that could give them burial.”

  “Decent burial,” Jack Romayne said. “The other kind anybody with a shovel could give them.” He squinted at the sky. “Not much day left,” he said. “Couple of hours. Our friend had no shoes on his horse. Which could mean Indian.”

  “Who else?” The gambler stood in his stirrups. “I’m soft. Been in one town too long. Who else? No white man around don’t at least put shoes on the back feet.”

  “Could be someone who pulled the shoes to make it look like Indians.”

  Dan Younge shook his head. “Never knew it to fail,” he said. “Pin a star on a man, and right away he gets himself a suspicious nature.”

  They rode, and after a while they had almost ridden the sun out of the sky. They squinted at the sandhills for bearings so they could pick up their trail in the morning. Then they gave the horses their heads, and soon came to a little spring to make their camp by.

  Sage brush roots make a good fire, and there was plenty to eat on the packhorse. Dan Younge sighed and rolled himself a cigarette. “From the grub you brought along, you must be planning a long campout.”

  “No. I was just hitting at Charley Sydnor the only way you can hurt him; money. He’d sooner I took his wife than groceries out of his stock.” Romayne lit his own cigarette and added: “Pretty woman, too. Wonder how come she married old Sydnor?”

  “Woman has to marry someone,” Dan Younge said mildly. “If she likes to eat. Sydnor’s got groceries.”

  “Yeah, I guess so… Isn’t that something moving out in the brush?”

  “Coyote, prob’ly… You and that Ellen Lea see much of each other?”

  Jack Romayne said: “Well, no. Her husband was killed six months ago. You were in Rock Spring then, weren’t you?… I aim to see a lot more of her when I get back.” He paused, and at once added: “If I get back… This is no trip to the corner saloon. Those men in the wagon…” He broke off.

  Dan Younge said: “I saw them.”

  “All right. So we had a nice ride today, sunshine, fresh air, good company. But we’re out here in the middle of a reservation, no roads, nobody but us two—and either a tribe of Indians on the warpath—or somebody good enough to kill and scalp six strong men.”

  Dan Younge said: “You make it sound pleasant. A nice ride in the sun.”

  Jack Romayne chunked a couple of sage roots into the fire. Their fuzzy outer layer flared up, and then the roots themselves caught and settled down to burning, slowly. He said: “You didn’t have to come. Why did you?”

  “It was time to leave Rock Spring,” the gambler said. “It seemed safer to leave with you.”

  The sheriff’s laugh was a hard thing against the prairie night. “If safe was what you wanted, you should have put up with Rock Spring a while. You must have gotten a real hate for that town.”

  “No. It was just time to move on.”

  “That’s the itchiest foot I ever…”

  The bullet came out of the night, and that was all you could say of it. It hit the sage-root fire—it takes a good gun not to aim at a fire in the night—and scattered brands around the little camp. Dan Younge was busy knocking one off his shoulder before it burnt through his shirt; he didn’t see Jack Romayne make a sliding lunge and shove sand onto what was left of the blaze, using his boots as scrapers.

  They had picketed the packhorse, turned the other two out to graze. Now they could hear the animal fighting his picket line, rearing and whickering, and then the gun on the prairie spoke again, or maybe it was two guns this time.

  One of the bullets thudded into the sand near the piled saddles; the other one found a target somewhere along Jack Romayne’s side, and it carried enough force to roll him over, into the char-studded area of the fire.

  Then there was the thudding noise of horses going away, fast.

  Dan Younge got his feet under him, checked his belt gun to make sure it hadn’t fallen out when he hit the dirt and started running to where they’d picketed one of the horses.

  He wasn’t thinking of the odds against running the men down, it was good not to think about odds once in awhile.

  But he wasn’t twenty yards from the camp when a wail, back by the fire, stopped him.

  It hardly had words at first. Then, stopped, he could hear better; the sounds began to resolve themselves into: “Help,” and “Don’t leave me,” and “I’m hurt bad.”

  So he turned and went back. There was a little glow left to the shot-up fire; it showed him Jack Romayne, thrashing around on the sand. He knelt and struck a match. “All right, Jack. I didn’t know they got you.”

  The sheriff moaned softly.

  The match showed blood, not much but some, high on Jack Romayne’s shirt. Dan Younge used his knife to cut the cloth away, lit another match. He said: “Bullet went in, but not far, came out again under your arm there. It couldn’t have hit bone.”

  But by then the air had gotten to the hole. Jack Romayne let out a scream that was a masterpiece.

  Dan Younge said nothing. They had had a pile of chunks ready for the fire; he piled them together, lit them, and used the already torn shirt to make a tight bandage, always working silently. When he was done, he put the coffee pot—somehow it had not turned o
ver—on the flames and said: “A cup of hot coffee, and you’ll live.”

  Jack Romayne took the tin cup of coffee when it was handed to him, and swore at the heat. “We’ll have to head back for Rock Spring tomorrow. I hope we don’t run into trouble on the way; it’d all be up to you.”

  “And a gambler’s not much of a reed to lean on in a wrangle.”

  “I didn’t say that. You better see if the packhorse is still there.”

  Dan Younge stared across the fire at the sheriff. Then he shrugged and got up and walked out past the circle of light and on, blinking a little, to where they had picketed the horse. It was there.

  He came back, nodded, and started spreading his blankets for the night.

  “Hope they didn’t run off the others,” Jack Romayne said.

  “Sure, sheriff, sure.”

  “How many horses did it sound like to you, when they was going away?”

  “I couldn’t count,” Dan Younge said. “We’ll know in the morning.”

  “Maybe they couldn’t find both our horses. Or either of them… If we can find one, we can saddle the packhorse, he’s rough but pretty strong.”

  And if we can’t, Dan Younge thought, bet you count on your star and your wound to ride while I walk.

  He stretched out between the blankets, rolled on his back, looked at the stars. Jack Romayne was saying something in his grumbling voice, but Dan Younge pretended to be asleep.

  Then the streak in him that had kept him a gambler all his life came up and took over, and he found himself grinning at the sky. You paid to draw, Dan, he told himself, and you didn’t fill. This jackleg sheriff was a fine one to draw to; you’d have done a lot better to stay in Rock Spring and take your chances with the grocer and his lady.

  Then, before he slept, he thought, Those were white men that bushwhacked us. Indians—no Indians I’ve ever heard of fight at night.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The command was up an hour before dawn, with no order from Lieutenant Beer who lay, happy in his bedroll, while Sergeant Rylan got wood and water details out and working. When Lieutenant Beer finally pulled out and shoved his feet into his high boots, water was bubbling on his personal fire, there was bacon and coffee and pilot biscuit laid out for him to eat, his horse had been brought in and was being grained and curried—life on a prairie patrol was almost pleasant for him. He decided to shave. His striker held a bull’s eye for him, and they broke camp and marched out just as the first edge of the sun hit the rolling horizon.

  This was the second edge of the triangular ride he’d laid out for himself. Tonight they’d camp at Summer Waters—coordinate 64.42-31.28 on the maps Beer had made for the regiment—and then tomorrow be riding straight for home.

  If nothing happened, Lieutenant Beer said it in his mind, like knocking wood, and then said it again, in a sentence: If nothing happens, I’ll be in quarters tomorrow night, with a reading lamp and my books, and the plan for a three squadron cavalry regiment that I’m working on.

  The first heat of the day was beginning to roll across the land. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, under his neckerchief, and settled down in the saddle, slumping a little, letting his weight come down on the broad stirrups and the shock of the trot break in his shoulders.

  It was not a bad life. Every month he stayed out here, every patrol he made, would go into his personal file, part of his permanent record… The Army followed the English system, where an officer joined a regiment and stayed with it until he made general officer, if ever, instead of the files system coming into use on the Continent, but there were exceptions.

  General Staff, Department Staff, War College all drew men from the field, the regiments. A good adjutant, with plenty of troop command and field work behind him was certain to get a chance at one of the three, and later on a field record was necessary in your docket if you didn’t want to get labeled a red-tape expert.

  I’m twenty-three, Jim Beer thought. If I have to stay with troops till I’m thirty, all right. There’s plenty of time on these wilderness posts to study, and no temptation to spend your pay on anything much but books and…

  Sergeant Rylan said: “Lieutenant,” and ended his reverie.

  The sergeant was standing in his stirrups and pointing the way Lieutenant Beer had taught his men to point—arm straight out, fingers spread. The lieutenant pulled his command to a halt and sighted along Rylan’s arm and through the notch of his fingers, and so saw what the sergeant had seen at once without unnecessary talk.

  There was a column of dust rising off the prairies, and while he watched, it progressed across the space between Rylan’s middle finger and his ring finger.

  Beer squinted hard, and then brought up his field glasses. The thing at the base of the column of dust was white, and—unless they had found that rare thing, an albino buffalo—that meant a horse.

  Lieutenant Beer said: “Corporal Horne, take the two first troopers and scout. If you get into a fight, squeeze your shots off raggedly and we’ll come to your help. If it’s safe, give it three rapid rounds, and we’ll join you.”

  At once Horne and the first pair of soldiers pulled out of column and put their horses at the run. The lieutenant nodded to himself; he’d issued that order with the promptness he required of himself.

  He passed the order to Sergeant Rylan to move out, and the file took up patrol again. He made no effort to order eyes front; every man rode with his gaze on Horne and the two troopers… Rechter and Sully, their names were.

  The dust raised by the three soldiers moved fast towards the dust raised by the unknown and then the latter died down and was gone. Whoever was with the white horse had stopped, and was waiting to be met; but whether his intention—or their intention—was friendly or not remained to be seen.

  Beer said quietly: “Sergeant, the men had better check their carbines. If Horne needs us, he’ll need us fast.”

  “Yes, sir.” But instead of shouting the order, Sergeant Rylan passed it back along the line quietly; he was listening for the sound of gunfire.

  It came as the clicking of the carbines ended: three fast shots. There was too much dust to see the powder smoke.

  Lieutenant Beer said: “Column, left oblique, march. At the gallop, march.”

  Rylan relayed the orders in a booming shout, and they took off, riding hard, horses and men alike glad to be moving out of the dull trot.

  Lieutenant Beer pulled up with a dash at the group. His corporal, Horne, was down off his horse and so were Rechter and Sully, and for the moment their blue bodies kept him from seeing anything more than the white horse, nosing at the two troop mounts, trying to decide whether to make friends. The civilian animal was haltered instead of bridled, and his lead rope had been twisted to make a sort of hackamore.

  Then a man pushed through between Horne and Sully and came towards him—a thin man, about thirty, in black clothes that were now pretty dust-stained. He limped as he walked. “Lieutenant, I’m Dan Younge.” While Beer was still deciding whether to put out his hand or not, the man Younge put his own up, and they shook.

  The lieutenant said his own name and rank, and waited.

  Dan Younge said: “You’re a grateful sight, Lieutenant Beer. You and your men.” He laughed. “I’m not much for walking at its twilight best, and in this sun and with these boots…” He grinned. “I’ll give it to you straight—your corporal said to save it for you. We were bushwhacked last night, the sheriff there and I. He got himself wounded. Not bad.”

  Lieutenant Beer got down from his horse. He gestured at his canteen, but Dan Younge shook his head, flicked a thumb at the white horse’s pommel.

  The lieutenant said: “You’re aware you’re on Indian land.” It was not a question.

  Dan Younge said: “Sure. Indian Agent Miles at Rock Spring was one of the fellas sent Sheriff Romayne out here.”

  “I�
�d better talk to the sheriff himself. You may be under arrest. Civilian peace officers on Indian reservations are way off bounds.”

  Dan Younge stopped smiling. Then he said: “Take it easy, mister. Me and one wounded sheriff aren’t enough to really rile the U.S. Army, are they? Well, anyway, things were quiet and peaceful in Rock Spring, you might say, with the rich getting richer and the poor working for them, when this wagon came rolling into town…”

  He went on with the story. Lieutenant Beer listened to it quietly, but he was summing this Dan Younge up. The clothes were not those of a cowboy; in fact, only pastors and gamblers favored black in this dust covered country. It was a fair-to-middling certainty that Dan Younge was not the Reverend anything… He was finishing his story.

  Lieutenant Beer said: “I’ll talk to Romayne.” There was a good, broad chance here that Younge was somehow involved in the shooting. Nothing about professional gamblers that Jim Beer knew inspired much respect for them; but, then, what did he know? Before he had been a cavalryman he had been a cadet, and before that a kid in a Hudson valley town. He didn’t know that there had ever been a gambler in Vlietville, though the men sometimes played poker in the back of the barbershop.

  He reserved judgment. “Sheriff, I’m Lieutenant James Beer.” He named his regiment.

  Romayne said: “Well, didn’t you get the story from Dan Younge there? I’m a sick man, lieutenant, and that packhorse of mine’s a rough goer. Rough as they come and…”

  Lieutenant Beer had made his decision: “All right. We’ll take you back to where you camped last night, rescue what we can of your gear, and escort you back to Rock Spring. You can ride one of our horses. The troopers’ll have to take turns trailing from another man’s stirrup.”

  He couldn’t quite hear the groan that went up from the file. Almost, but not quite. Rylan was barking at Trooper Harris to give up his horse and be the first trailer.

  The lieutenant said: “If there are gold miners trespassing on the reservation, I’ll have to do something about it. Corporal Horne, ride for the fort. I’ll give you a note in writing.”