Norton, Andre - Novel 15

by Stand to Horse (v1. 0)

  "Turn in our rations, huh?" Kristland sounded slightly shocked. " 'N who's goin' to divide 'em? Some of us have bin more savin'—"

  Herndon's remote, tired voice still held a patient note. "We're all in this together, man. If we don't share and share alike, work, food, clothing, we may not be able to make it."

  Ritchie had already pidled out the too-small bag of his own food, and now he passed it along to lie beside those Herndon, Tuttle, and Velasco had already laid down. With visible reluctance and some grumbling they all added their shares.

  There was the native corn meal, hardtack, some jerky as brown and hard as the wood it so closely resembled, and a lump of the sticky yellow mescal—the sugar-energy of the Indians. Herndon measured the small hoard with his eyes before he touched it. Then he asked a single question of the scout.

  "What about game?"

  Tuttle shook his head. ''Can't do any huntin' in a storm. Later maybe we can scare us up a mountain bird or two. But this ain't huntin' weather."

  No, it wasn't hunting weather, and it wasn't traveling weather either. As Ritchie scooped the half cave out of the snow to hold his blankets, he missed Sturgis. The Southerner's fatalistic approach to life might even be cheering tonight. He packed the wettest of his blankets at the bottom and put his saddle at the head of the makeshift bed.

  "Who's your bunkie?"

  He stopped slapping the snow from his trousers. Herndon, trailed by a small lump muffled in a blanket, stood there.

  “I’ve been with Sturgis, sir—"

  "Hmm. We're putting two men together for warmth. Three here—if you have no objection." The Sergeant dropped his own saddle to rest beside Ritchie's and began to spread his blankets with the skill of an old campaigner. As he worked, he glanced several times at the diminutive Apache.

  "Let us hope that the weather is too cold to encourage the spread of wild life," he said at last with a quirk of a smile. "There being no anthills at present to work for us in the morning—"

  "Anthills?" Ritchie could not follow this at all.

  "Anthills. When, in this country, one entertains unwelcome personal guests, the quickest way to get rid of them is to peel down and drape clothes and bedding over the nearest anthill. The ants go a-hunting and you get a thorough clean-out!"

  But Ritchie was too tired to wonder whether the cold was as good a preventative as an anthill. He was asleep as soon as he crawled in. Some hours later he awoke after a dismal dream of being imprisoned in a black box. The sky was midnight dark, and stars glittered icily over its dome. It was so cold and still a night that he might have imagined himself on a world as old and dead as the moon. Only one pinpoint of red promised life and warmth—the coals of the fire tended by the guard. It must be close to the time of his own tour of duty. With a wormlike wriggle he freed himself of the tangle of coverings trying not to awaken either of his bedmates. Tuttle grinned as he came up to the fire.

  "Have a snort of this—" The scout lifted a tin can which had been resting almost in the heart of the coals. "T'ain't nothin' but hotted water—which don't do much 'bout warmin' yo' up proper—but it's hot. If we had knowed what we was headed into, we might have brought us a proper warmer. Take Arizona whisky now—"He sighed longingly. "Arizona whisky's good as a boss liniment—'n we're gonna need a boss liniment—'n it's good as a drink too. I've tried it both ways, 'n I know!"

  "Stopped snowing anyway." Ritchie tried to reassure himself with that observation.

  "Yep. 'N it's done a right smart lot of snow-layin' while it was 'bout it, too."

  "D'you suppose we can go on tomorrow?"

  Tuttle studied those brilliant stars. "Tomorrow? You mean today, son. Yep, we can head out. Only it'll take a deal of footin' 'fore we sight Santy Fe again. I ain't smokin' Jimson weed over that!" Seeing Ritchie's bewilderment he explained. "Jimson weed in a man's pipe makes him see what ain't thar, or ain't never gonna be thar. Injuns use it for makin' medicine. Time to start the rounds, son—"

  Ritchie stamped his cold feet in the snow and set off around the camp, visiting the improvised picket line where the mules and horses stirred uneasily and then quieted as they caught his familiar scent. Beyond the immediate circle of the camp the snow was a great unbroken expanse of white. Diamond crystals in it caught the moonlight and made cold fire along the wind-carved ridges. The frost was worse than Ritchie had ever felt before.

  And the cold did not break at daylight when they dug themselves out, swallowed the few mouthfuls Herndon doled out, and started on. Within fifteen minutes they all knew only too well what back-breaking task lay before them.

  There was no firm crust on that snow, and the animals sank into it almost belly-deep, thrashing as if they were engulfed in quicksand. The men went into the only action which could fight such stuff. Three abreast they attacked the snow on foot, another three following close behind to pack it tighter. They sank to their waists and flailed out with their arms when and if an unwary step sent them off balance and floundering. It was an agonizing job, pulling the strength out of them in the unequal struggle. At first they dug in with some show of confidence; then it became a dull weary round when sometimes they fell to hands and knees trying to beat the snow down with the sheer weight of their bodies.

  You had to fasten on some landmark ahead, Ritchie discovered, and watch that, saying to yourself that you could hold out until you reached that reddish rock or snow-drowned bush. But even Velasco's wiry strength and Herndon's dogged endurance could not last through more than fifty continuous yards of such labor.

  When the lead man or men could go no farther, they flopped aside and, their places taken, they puffed and blew and beat their hands together until the animals came up and they had to crawl to their feet and shuffle on until their turn came once more to face the eternal drifts.

  The stuff was a nightmare. From apprehension and discomfort, the mood of those who fought it became red hate and flaming anger and then just a weary apathy, during which their fatigue-drugged bodies went mechanically through motions which their minds no longer reasoned. When they halted for the noon rest, Ritchie looked back. He could have moaned aloud. They were still within sight of the morning camp!

  But the worst was not yet. The clouds cleared, and the sun broke through to make a blazing mirror of the snow. They stopped and broke open cartridges, blackening their faces with powder—the only remedy they knew against snow blindness. Scarves were pulled over faces, leaving only the merest slit through which to peep. But then the fight

  for a path must begin again.

  Ritchie was almost too exhausted that night to eat. He sat staring at the portion of hardtack and the lump of mescal which had been allotted to him without really seeing it —sat there until someone shook his shoulder and ordered him sharply to eat. He obeyed as Herndon moved on to bully the next man into eating, all of them into making the beds that would save them in the cold, into hunting wood for the miserable fire that at least allowed them to warm their hands.

  It was the sight of the fire which aroused them the most. Here and there a man made himself clumsy mittens of blanket to protect his hands during the snow crawl which must begin again with the morning. They no longer looked like even part of an army. Their motley winter clothing, wet and bedraggled, covered them lumpishly. Mustaches were no longer smartly pointed cavalry style, and even Herndon showed the prickly shadow of a beard on his drawn face. The gunpowder blackening made menacing masks for the whole party.

  Wearily Ritchie dug in, and as silently the small Apache came to help. Seven or eight feet must be cleared to reach the ground, then some pine boughs broken off and trampled in the hole for a flooring of sorts. Two forked sticks set up on the snow to the windward with another across them and more boughs made the roof. It was the only shelter possible.

  On the third day the first of the mules died, and they butchered the corpse before it could freeze stiff. The coarse meat was chopped and haggled off the bones and broiled over the fire which had been lit on the scene. A
nd the tough stuff was bolted rather than chewed, in spite of the warnings of the scouts and the Sergeant. Soon after they started on, the remnants of the meat bundled up in the green hide, retribution struck with the gripping pain of cramps. Half-doubled with that torture, the men still fought the snow.

  "What's the use?" The words formed in Ritchie's brain, and he found himself repeating them over and over in time to his floundering steps. It would be so easy to give up, to just drop out of the line and let the rest pass him by. Even while he was thinking that, he tripped and fell forward. Instinctively he threw out his sore hand in an effort to save himself and struck with his full weight upon it.

  There was a flash of such pain as he had never known could exist, and he slid to the edge of a dark abyss. Someone was tugging at him, but he made no effort to respond. It was all he could do to pull his torn hand free.

  ''What's the matter, son?"

  That was Tuttle, he thought foggily, and did not answer.

  He knew that he was crying with pain, and he didn't care. He didn't care about anything but that burning throb in his hand, a throb which beat up hot and red right into the inside of his head.

  "—his hand, I think—" More words from somewhere.

  Tuttle reached, and Ritchie set his teeth on a mad scream when the scout touched his mitten, drawing off the clumsy covering and revealing a strip of stained cloth bound around puffed flesh swollen shiny red.

  "Good—!" Whoever was holding him had sucked in his breath. "I'd forgotten about that bite!"

  "Hold him!" snapped Tuttle.

  Ritchie writhed and tried to fight as steel fingers clamped down on him, viselike, while Tuttle unwound the bandage. He couldn't see what the scout had uncovered since one of the torturers who held him had humped a shoulder in the way.

  "Let me go!" He thought that he had shouted those words with force enough to reach the mountains, but he had barely shaped them with twisted lips.

  Then Herndon's face swam through the mist which was closing in over him.

  "We're going to save your hand." The chill clarity of those words struck home to him. He made a great effort and tried to come back. The mist cleared a little. He was lying on a blanket in the trampled snow track. The Sergeant had opened a small pack and was putting out strips of linen and other things. When he looked up, he spoke to Ritchie as if they two were alone there.

  "This will hurt-"

  Ritchie almost laughed—as if anything could hurt more than the throbbing which had beat through him since his fall!

  ''A Right Smart Lot of Snow"

  "Bite on this." Herndon thrust the shaft of a knife between his jaws. "All right, boys, pin him down!"

  Weights clamped across his feet, his thighs, his shoulders, and arms. He could only twist his head. When those hands tightened their hold above his sore wrist, he could have shrieked. Instead he bit down on the knife haft.

  Torture went on and on and on. Was Apache torture like this? Velasco was part Indian, and he must be one of those holding the hurt hand steady for them to work on. Maybe he was enjoying this; maybe they all were. It wasn't possible to stand pain like this. He was screaming inside his head. Why couldn't he faint—just go into the dark and never wake up again?

  The weights which held him were shifting. There was a queer sound from without the boundaries of his own private hell. The throbbing pain was still there—with new refinements added. But he found that he could just bear it. Someone jerked the knife out of his mouth. Herndon's face, powder blackened, hung above his for a moment and then was gone. Ritchie closed his eyes.

  "—put him up on Jessie—she's sure-footed—"

  "Peters!"

  "Son!"

  They were pulling him up. His hand hung in a sling across his chest. With a sigh he opened his eyes. He was sitting up in the snow, leaning back against someone's shoulder while Herndon and Tuttle led up the small gray mule belonging to the scout.

  "You'll have to ride," Herndon told him shortly. "We'll see you stick on."

  Ritchie didn't answer; it took all the strength he had left to get into the saddle. He set his teeth against the jolts which shook his whole trembling body as the mule stepped forward.

  "We're pretty good medicine men, us," said Velasco as he trotted along beside him later that day. "That hand, that was ver' bad. Not fix it with knife and fire and you would lose it—maybe lose you too. Si, the Sergeant and Tuttle, they fix it proper. Good medicine men. Apache medicine man good, too. He has to be. Let six patients die—and he is roasted over slow fire—"

  Ritchie's answer was more grimace than smile.

  "I'd like to do a little roasting over a slow fire myself."

  Velasco's grin was wider. "Aha, once more you can make the joke, no? I do not think you will be leaving us this time. You are proper dragoon—tough like saddle leather and prickly like cactus. And tonight we feast—no mule meat. See?"

  He pointed to the horse in line just before them. Tied on its saddle were several white-tailed birds, their limp heads dangling.

  "Snow birds shot this afternoon. They are good eating."

  Ritchie could not remember much about that night's camp, and the next day, too, was just a hot blur. He must have had some fever, he reckoned later. When life sharpened into reality again, he was still riding the mule. Herndon shuffled along beside him, and there seemed to be fewer animals in the line than there had been. He tried to count, and the Sergeant saw him.

  "The horses—four are gone."

  Herndon nodded stiffly, as if the action hurt. "They gave out yesterday. How are you feeling?"

  Ritchie ran his tongue over dry and cracked lips. The throb was duller, or maybe he had just become used to it.

  When he looked at the moving ground, he was slightly dizzy, but that was nothing.

  ''All right. I don't remember much about yesterday though—"

  ''Several yesterdays," amended the Sergeant. "But you're still lucky, Peters. You might have lost your hand. Should have had that bite attended to earlier."

  Ritchie's eyes dropped. So that was what they were thinking—that he had been too much of a greenhorn to look after himself? He tried to nod, and his head whirled so that he caught at the saddle horn with his good hand.

  "It was dumb," he began, hot at the thought of his own stupid carelessness.

  But Herndon had pulled out his knife and held it so that Ritchie could see clearly the half moon of deep gouges in the haft. "You don't do so badly with the teeth yourself," he commented. "I wouldn't care to have you clamp onto me like that."

  Tuttle puffed up through the snow.

  "Thar's cliff ruins ahead, Scott. Want we should hole up in 'em fur a breather?"

  Herndon studied the sky. "I don't like the look of those clouds. What do you think?"

  The scout squinted skyward. "They's nasty lookin' all right. 'Nother set of drifts over these 'n we'll be 'til June gittin' out—"

  "Let's see the ruins."

  Herndon and Tuttle quickened pace, and the mule plodded after her master. At the foot of a rock wall they all came to a halt. About a third of the way up was the dark break of a ledge and on it the softened outlines of the squat houses built by the unknown men of the far past.

  "How can we get up?"

  Tuttle answered Herndon's question by pointing to a line of holes cut into the rock.

  "Seems like we'll have a climb, Sergeant." The dragoon who made that observation was almost jovial. "But them walls look snug, don't they? 'N when the storm hits, we'll lie dry enough—"

  Herndon wallowed through the drifts to the climbing holes. He stood there, his chin cocked up, his head at an angle as he studied the ascent. Ritchie wondered how he was going to pull himself up there with only one hand. Herndon came back.

  "Pick up your stuff!" he ordered the men who had put down their bundles. "And get moving."

  But no one moved, and the man who had commented on the snugness of the ruins stared at him in open amazement.

  "What'd 'y
uh mean. Sergeant? There's a bad storm comin', yuh kin smell it! If we don't hole up, we'll be goners fur sure. 'N this is a swell place to wait it out—"

  Behind the mask of powder, growing beard, and fatigue Herndon's expression was unreadable. But his voice was patient when he answered.

  "Look at that climb, man. We couldn't get the animals up. And they'd die down here in the storm. We'd have no wood for a fire, and then we'd freeze. Our only chance is to keep moving. So let's get on—"

  But the dragoon remained where he was, his feet set stubbornly. "Git on, if yuh want to, Sergeant. Me 'n them what's wise, we'll be stayin' here. Git out in the open 'n the storm hits, 'n we'll be all through—like thet!" He snapped his fingers, and there was a murmur of approval from the hunched figures closing in behind him.

  "In two more days we'll hit the stage station." Herndon's words were dug painfully out of his weariness. "We can make that easily if we keep to our present route without any lingering."

  " 'N if we ain't bowled over by that?" Winters, the dragoon, poked a finger toward the sky.

  Herndon shrugged. "Pick up your stuff. We're moving on."

  "We ain't! 'N don't try to pull the officer on us, Herndon. We ain't no slaves of yoren—"

  Herndon half crouched as if that last sentence had been a lash laid across his face. Then he sprang. But Winters was ready for him, braced to meet the attack. And, although the force of the Sergeant's dive threw him off his feet, his fist struck home before he fell. They rolled, a tangled fighting blur in the snow, not like men but as clumsy panting animals, while the clouds swept in and the first white flakes began to fall again.

  6

  “They Brought All Their Sand—“

  The fight ended as abruptly as it had started. Herndon got to his feet, pulling away from the limp body of his opponent. He stooped and slapped Winter's face until the dragoon opened his eyes.