‘The terms of their engagement clearly state—’
‘To hell with the terms of their engagement,’ the colonel shouted. ‘If I order the advance to continue, it shall continue. Any man speaking against my orders, any man threatening to turn back will be guilty of mutiny and I know how to deal with mutineers.’
Captain Harry Brigg said quietly: ‘That’s kind of wild talk, Colonel. I guess we could have done without that being said.’
The colonel was on his feet.
‘Don’t you dare, sir …’
The major tried to cool the situation.
‘Colonel, we all admire you for your tenacity. We’re all here to fight Indians. It’s just we’re all trying to face the reality of the situation which is that if we push the men much further through this kind of weather, we ain’t going to have any men.’
‘And where will they go? I tell you, these fellows are entirely dependent on their officers. If they’re handled firmly, they will respond accordingly. We must keep them to their duty. That’s what we’re here for.’
The major said: ‘Maybe they’re entirely dependent on us, colonel, but that’s not saying so much. We’re lost and they know we’re lost.’
The colonel sat down again and glowered at them, his small eyes going balefully from one face to another.
Finally, he said, as if to convince himself as much as them: ‘We are suffering from a temporary loss of location, nothing more. You know as well as I do that this can happen in this kind of country and this kind of weather.’
The major said: ‘In this kind of country and weather it isn’t so damned temporary.’ He was astonished at his own bravery right under the colonel’s intimidating eyes.
The colonel said: ‘I have witnessed here tonight the most shameful exhibition of cowardice and irresolution that I ever thought to.’
Absolute silence met this statement. Eyes and faces were stony. For a very brief moment, the colonel looked abashed at what he had said. Then he worked up his anger again.
‘I think it best,’ he said, ‘to ignore what has been said. I never thought to be ashamed of the officers of this regiment. We’ll forget this ever happened. You’re dismissed, gentlemen.’
The officers stared at him, then they slowly rose to their feet. They started to file out of the tent. The major was in the lead. However, when he walked out into the cold, he stopped so abruptly that Captain Brigg behind him cannoned into him. The captain heard his superior say to himself in a kind of exasperation: ‘Jesus, I’m second-in-command of this outfit. I’ll be goddammed if I let him get away with it.’
The captain said: ‘Good for you, Len,’ and slapped him on the shoulder. The major seemed unaware of his presence. The faint light from the tent touched his rubicund face. His rather weak mouth was set in a determined grin of anger. He waited until the others had left the tent and then stooped to enter again.
The colonel’s back was to him. He heard the clink of bottle on glass and knew the man was pouring himself a drink.
‘Arnold,’ he said, ‘I think we should talk this thing out.’
The colonel swung around on him. Some liquor slopped from the glass. Brevington’s face was furious.
‘You think what?’
‘I think we should talk this out.’
‘Then you have another think coming to you, Newton. I do not discuss such matters with officers whose guts have run out on them.’
Newton fought to control his own outrage.
‘That is the second time that you have personally insulted me.’ he said. ‘I must ask you to apologize and retract.’
The colonel hurled the whiskey down his throat and clenched his teeth on the fire of the liquor. He gave a great gasp and shudder before he said: ‘You get the hell out of here. Don’t use my given name to me, mister. Another word out of you and I’ll put you under arrest and strip you of your rank. Do I make myself clear?’
‘I think,’ said Newton, amazed that he could outwardly stay so calm, ‘that you are losing your senses, man. The failure of this mission has been too much for you. You should be concentrating your mind on how we are going to get the regiment alive back to base. You cannot silence me. I have every right as second-in-command to offer my advice.’
The colonel sneered: ‘All right – you’ve offered your goddam advice and I have rejected it. Now clear out. I apparently have a lily-livered second-in-command and must take the total responsibility for the regiment on my own shoulders.’
‘Will you listen to me, man?’ Newton found his fury breaking out and taking control of him. ‘Don’t you realize that when we get back to civilization I shall submit my report on this whole sorry business? I am a respected member of the community. Nobody could ignore a report from me.’
‘Who will listen to a report from an officer in disgrace, brought back under arrest for mutiny and cowardice?’
‘All I ask, Brevington, is for you to remember that you hold the lives of two hundred and fifty men in your hands.’ He turned and went out of the tent into the cold night. Outside he paused, still shaking with rage and frustration. As he stumbled through the snow back to his own bivouac tent, a sense of utter foreboding came over him, not so much for himself, but for the men for whom he was responsible.
My God, he thought, I know their families, their wives and sweethearts. How can I tell a mother and father that their boy was lost because of that fool’s megalomania?
A man approached him in the gloom. He saw that it was the bulky figure of the sergeant, Ivor Drewsky. The man was a blacksmith by trade. He had seen years of service in the regular army and the volunteers.
‘Sir.’
‘What is it, Ivor?’
‘Just wondered if you heard anything, sir.’
‘Such as?’
‘Are we turning back?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We’re lost, ain’t we, Major?’
The major smiled and said: ‘The phrase is that we are suffering a temporary loss of location, Sergeant.’
‘Aw, Christ,’ said Drewsky. ‘Major, you and me both know the men can’t hold up much longer.’
The major said: ‘The way I see it, Ivor, is it’s up to men like you and me to hold ’em up.’
‘Easy said, sir.’
‘But we’ll do it, Sergeant.’
He turned away and crawled into the little tent. The cold was increasing. He took a nip from his whiskey bottle and drew his buffalo robe over him. His last thought as he dropped off into an uneasy sleep was made out loud: ‘Where in hell does this end?’
Chapter Five
Great events either grow out of small incidents, which may seem insignificant at the time, or are made up of them.
So far as McAllister was concerned, the next few days were filled with the everyday urgencies of his life as a raiser of good horses. He had so far during his first years as a horse breeder followed the local custom of leaving part of his horse-band out on the range to fend for themselves through the bitterly hard months of winter. He had never been too happy with this arrangement. He would agree that winter was a great sorter-out of weak stock. Those which survived must be tough, for during the worst weeks, the animals, no longer able to paw through the hardening snow to the poor grass beneath, were reduced to eating twigs and the bark of trees. Thus did the horse herds of the Indians make out. However, he was convinced that, in the long run, the experience of winter on the range did not do his stock any good. This winter, he was determined to have his animals nearer to hand so that he could fork them some winter feed.
Hickok and he, with young Lige to aid them, spent two hard days gathering horses and driving them towards the home place, throwing them into a large pen which lay on ground slightly sheltered against the elements by higher ground. At the end of the two days, during which the weather had turned worse and the cold increased, they retired to the warmth of the cabin with some relief, thankful to once more have a hot meal inside them and a stove to drive the cold f
rom their bones.
McAllister laughed and said: ‘Changed your mind about saving my life, Jim?’
Hickok groaned and said: ‘If I had of knowed …’ He must have noticed some subtle reservation in McAllister’s manner. ‘Something wrong, Rem?’
Flipping bacon in the pan at the stove, McAllister said: ‘Now you ask – yes. There’s a colt missing.’
‘And you don’t reckon he died on you?’
‘I reckon not. Well, it’s not likely. Younger and weaker animals than him are all right. And you know as well as I do a colt don’t go off and quit his bunch, not any time and certainly not in this kind of weather.’
‘Who’d go in for lifting horses this time of the year?’
‘Depends on the horses, Jim. This colt is a real beauty. Called him Caesar. I have his fillies all marked out in my mind for him. He’s mostly California canelo with some pure mustang and quarter horse in him. He looks good and he is good. Acceleration and plenty of bottom. A stopper and starter and an all-day horse. I ain’t really pushed him yet. I was going to do that in the spring.’
They ate their meal in silence and, while Lige washed the dishes, the two men enjoyed their pipes. Hickok was smoking some of McAllister’s black and unmentionable weed.
He said: ‘Jesus, Rem, this tastes like shredded horse shit with a mite of camel throwed in.’
McAllister said: ‘It sorts the men from the boys.’
‘More like the inhuman from the human. Rem, I been thinking about this here colt of yourn. You thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Maybe. Dom Lawson was always horse-crazy. I never knew a villain who knew horses better or who fancied other men’s more.’
‘One of your own horses would sure be certain sure bait for you.’
‘How do I track a horse in this weather?’
‘True. But I reckon old Dom knows just what you’re going to think next.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Wa-al, if you can’t track a horse what do you do?’
‘I calculate which way a horse thief would head and I go take a look there.’
‘Right. So what do you do?’
McAllister smiled. ‘You make me sound like a damn fool, Jim, but I do just that. I go look.’
‘Where at?’
‘The breaks.’
‘Let’s head that way in the morning.’
Lige swung around from his dishes. ‘You’ll need me along, boss.’
‘Like hell we’ll need you along, boy. You stay and mind the store.’
‘I hear you tell my daddy you was going to teach me all there was to know about this here horse business.’
Hickok said, grave-faced: ‘You take that kind of sass from your hands, Rem?’
McAllister grinned: ‘You’re a regular little old fire-eater, ain’t you, Lige?’
Lige was not too sure how to take that, but he said, nodding his head with some vigor: ‘I sure is, boss.’
Chapter Six
The three riders halted as the weak midday sun tried to fight its way through the lowering clouds. Then they saw the smoke from the cabin’s stone chimney. They had spotted the place on the way into the main valley a week before. They did not know the name of the man who lived there. They neither needed to nor wished to. The place was ideal for their needs. Remote. In winter, with the snow lying, nobody would come near the place for months maybe. They did not want months. A week at the outside would see their chore through, they thought.
Dom Lawson was leading the young stallion. He glanced back at it now, admiring, never more pleased with a horse. It had all the characteristics of a good canelo plus the sturdiness of a good quarter horse. Just the way it stood, you could see how alert and full of vigor he was. Dom liked a horse with some fire in its belly and this nag had plenty.
Dom himself was a strange mixture of a man. He was on the small side, wiry and tough. He was an almost unlettered man, but intelligent. He possessed so many skills that it was a puzzle to know why he did not use them legitimately. He was an expert cowman and could have earned good wages as a top hand. Nobody knew and understood horses better. If he loved anything in this world it was horses. It was certainly not his fellow humans – though nobody could have accused him of disloyalty to a partner. When his word was given, it was usually good. With horses he had that marvelous firm gentleness that is the trademark of a good horseman. He could quieten a wild horse with his presence and tame one with his hands and voice. He was, anybody who knew him would admit, a magician with horses. With women, he was not so successful, for they sensed some latent cruelty in him towards them which they feared. That he possessed those secret ingredients which convinced his fellow men of the strength of his character, not even his enemies would deny. And they were many. He did not possess the will to please. The need to arouse admiration and liking in his fellows he would have regarded as effeminate and a thing to be despised. He hated weakness of any kind, whether it was physical or mental. Dom Lawson was a hard man and he had never had to work at it.
Now, he said in that softly grating voice of his: ‘The old bastard is home. Let’s move in, boys.’
He gently urged his horse forward and the animal picked its way through the deep snow. It was a tall sorrel showing thoroughbred lines. Dom had stolen it from a wealthy rancher down in the Big Bend country. His gear was unadorned, but good, with the double rig of the Texan. But he was no Texan. He had come off an Ohio farm thirty years before. He had come very quickly because he had driven a six inch blade into the belly of a local county sheriff. He was sixteen years old at the time and, so far as crime was concerned, he had never once looked back. From there he went on to bigger and worse things.
Riding behind him, Charlie Honniger said: ‘Do we rub him out, Dom?’
Lawson replied: ‘Not till I say. I’ll size the situation up.’
As they rode towards the cabin on the hill, they came to deep drifts and were forced to dismount so that Charlie could go ahead and pack snow for the animals. Charlie did not like the job and he started cursing. They worked their way to a frozen creek which surrounded the hill like a moat and then started with some difficulty up the steep slope. Now Vince Dufay was cursing too. Lawson did not utter a sound. It was not in his nature to.
When at last they had fought their way to the top of the slope, there was old Greg Talbot outside his cabin and with his Remington rifle in his hands. He was no more than fifty paces from them and he could have picked any one of them off with case – as not one of them failed to see.
‘All right,’ Greg sang out, ‘that’ll be far enough.’
Take a short look at Greg Talbot. I have described him elsewhere, so we will not go into great detail. Let us just say that he was a life-long bachelor and it was easy to see why. No self-respecting woman would come near him. Maybe no woman who did not respect herself either. Even men shunned him – he did not have nice personal habits. He was long-haired, unclean and short on temper. There was nothing much about him that could be loved, in fact. To get downwind of him was to suffer a stench that was not easily forgotten.
Be that as it may, he had stood by McAllister more than once in a tight spot. Because, mean though he was, he never forgot what he owed and he owed McAllister. Once he had saved McAllister’s life – which somehow gave him a proprietary interest in the man. Greg was intractable, aggressive and gloomy. There was not much he feared on this earth and he was a crack shot with a rifle.
Unfortunately for one of the trio, none of them knew Talbot. It might have saved them some grief if they did. To them he was just another hill-nutty who lived on his lonesome.
To his partners, Lawson said: ‘Leave the talking to me.’
He took a few paces in front of the others and said: ‘Name’s Bill Hardy.’ Bill Hardy was a man he had killed five years before in Kansas. ‘These here are my partners – Smith and Shaw.’
‘What do you want?’
‘McAllister sent us.’
‘I don’t give a mon
key’s fornication if the archangel Gabriel sent you. I asked you what you wanted.’
‘We want to talk. We talked with McAllister and he told us you was the best man around here to talk with.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t aim to holler it at the top of my voice out here,’ Lawson said. ‘How about us coming in there?’
‘Like hell you do. And what the hell’re you doing with one of McAllister’s horses?’
‘He loaned it to me.’
‘Like hell he did. That’s a prize stud.’
Behind Lawson, Dufay said: ‘Aw, for crissake, let me rub the old fool out.’
Lawson said: ‘Go ahead. But get off to the right. Maybe he can use that gun.’
As Dufay started to edge off to the right, old Greg bellowed out: ‘You stay where you’re at, or I drop you.’
While Talbot’s eyes were on Dufay, the other man, Honniger, called: ‘There’s cash money in this for you, old man.’
Talbot flicked his gaze to Honniger and Dufay made his move. His gun was strapped on the outside of his buffalo coat, but encumbered with clothing as he was, the man was not as quick as he might be. Without apparent hurry, Talbot fired from the hip.
Dufay said: ‘Aw, my Gawd.’
His right leg seemed to fly out from under him and to whirl around like an object independent of him. He fell into the snow.
Talbot, realizing with the shock of fright that the old single-shot rifle was now empty, backed to the door of his cabin in alarm, but before he could reach the cover of the building, Lawson and Honniger had drawn their guns and fired.
The force of the two bullets drove the man backwards, slamming his spine against the jamb of the doorway. His momentum turned him around the jamb and he fell into the cabin on his face.
The horses were jumping around and acting up. The young stud nearly tore himself free from Lawson’s grasp. Lawson steadied the animal with a word and looked down at Dufay as he floundered around in the snow, his gun dropped, both hands gripping his thigh. The man’s eyes showed his shock.
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