Border Dogs

by Ralph Cotton

  Baines nodded, thinking about it. “Aye, lad, more than you can know.” He stopped and looked at both of them. “You’ve both done well, considering this was your first time scouting. Now I want you both to report to Corporal Donnely while I move forward and keep an eye on the trail. Tell him to hurry…Zell and his men will be coming down any time.”

  “But shouldn’t one of us stay with you?”

  “No, Dubbs. I’ll be fine. The lieutenant is badly wounded, so don’t tell him anything—especially about the old man from the wagon. Hurry now, lads, and tell no one what you’ve told me except Corporal Donnely himself. I left him in command.”

  “Yes, Sergeant, right away.” Dubbs and Elerby stepped up into their stirrups. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, Dubbs, one more thing.” Baines swung onto this saddle. “I believe you have what it takes in this man’s army. Tell Donnely I’ve made you acting corporal until we get things settled here. Then we’ll see about getting you some permanent stripes.”

  “Right! Thank you, Sergeant Baines.” Dubbs beamed and flashed a salute with his dirty hand. “You heard the sergeant,” he said to Elerby, swinging his horse around, “let’s get it done.”

  Sergeant Baines kicked his horse out along the base of the hillside while the two soldiers headed in the opposite direction. By the time he’d reached the point where the wagon tracks led down from the high trail, Dubbs and Elerby had made it back to the ranks, passing the two scouts on foot, and joining the tired, ragged troops who’d stood down to rest their horses in a wide rise of dust.

  They moved past a spot where three dusty soldiers had carried Lieutenant Howell and laid him back against a turn of broken rock rising from the sand. The three stood gathered around him, one of them kneeling and pouring a trickle of water onto a yellow bandanna.

  “Who goes there? Huh? Who goes there?” Lieutenant Howell babbled, half out of his head, rising slightly as Dubbs and Elerby rode past toward Corporal Donnely at the center of the men. They glanced over and saw the crazed look on the lieutenant’s pale, drawn face. He called out to them. “I didn’t make it, boys. Hear me? Go on, save yourselves.” A long peal of pained, choking laughter came from his parched lips. “Oh, God, how it hurts! It hurts…it hurts…” His hand clutched tight at the blood-soaked bandage down low on his stomach.

  Elerby grimaced. “I can’t stand hearing this.”

  “Buck up,” Dubbs said. “You’ll stand worse than this if you soldier long enough.” He heeled his horse the few remaining yards to Corporal Donnely, Elerby following.

  “Where’s the scouts? Damn it. Where’s Baines?” Corporal Donnely stood up and met them, tying a strip of gauze around the calf of his bloody leg. He looked the horses up and down, then at the two grimy soldiers. “You two are supposed to be dead.” He looked past them. “Where the hell is Baines?”

  “We made it, Corporal,” Dubbs said, sweeping off his hat and running a hand across his wet, dirty head. “Sergeant Baines went the other way to the bottom of the trail. He sent us back to report and bring the troops forward.”

  “Then report, Private. And let’s get moving.” Donnely looked them up and down again.

  Dubbs took one step forward, leveling his shoulders. “First off, I’m not a private anymore….”

  Sergeant Baines had taken position, moving his horse back forty feet from the mouth of the trail. Behind the cusp of a low rise of sand, he laid the big army bay down on its side amid a sparse stand of mesquite brush, and laid his hat over its eyes. The horse tensed and thrashed its legs, then settled as he soothed it with a gloved hand. He took off his ammunition belt, laid it up on the horse’s side, and laid his rifle beside it.

  To the east he saw the rising column of dust as Donnely moved his men forward. Straight ahead and up the rocky trail, he saw the first sign of Zell’s men—two front scouts edging their horses down, staying close to a stretch of high boulders against the afternoon sun. “That’s it, boys, come to Papa,” Baines whispered, taking the yellow bandanna from around his neck and tying it around his sweaty forehead.

  He raised himself slightly, blew a breath on the rear rifle sights, dusting them off, then crouched down and watched as a half dozen of Zell’s men scattered across the rocky slope, forming a ragged skirmish line for the others to slip through. But to the east, he saw some of Donnely’s soldiers slipping upward themselves, scattering into the rocks and advancing along the steep slope while the main body of soldiers moved along the base of the hills. Aye, you’re learning, Corporal…

  Now pull out away from the hillside and take position, he thought. He watched the two main bodies of men moving toward one another. But he realized that Donnely had no way of knowing Zell’s men would be coming down onto the sand flats at the same time as the soldiers would reach the trail. He would fix that from here.

  Baines leaned into the rifle butt, raised it an inch from the horse’s side, and locked it to his cheek, the length of his right thumb running firm beneath his right cheekbone. He cocked the hammer, took aim, let a smooth breath in, then out, watching the sights drift on his target with each beat of his pulse. And at the end of his exhale, he cut his breath off, felt the rifle settle dead still in his hand, and squeezed the trigger.

  Here we go. Thirty yards up the steep trail through the rise of gray rifle smoke, Baines saw his target stand up and stiffen atop a round boulder. Then, as the other men scrambled for deeper cover, he watched his target melt down the side of the boulder like candle wax.

  “Where did it come from?” Bowes shouted, sliding down between two of the men who’d jerked behind a rock at the sound of Baines’s rifle shot.

  “Out of the flats,” one of the men said, rising enough to send a shot toward the stand of mesquite brush.

  “Damn it!” Bowes heard the sound of rifle fire now, coming at them from the east. “Here they come. And they’ve posted scouts out there…between us and the wagon. Hold them back, men,” he added before turning and dashing across the sandy ground.

  “No problem,” one of the men replied.

  Bowes cut across the trail and stooped low as another round from Baines’s rifle nipped up a clump of dirt at his feet. He ducked off the trail behind a high rock, snatching his horse’s reins from one of the men’s hands. “How is he?” he asked, looking down at Zell.

  “He’ll do,” a voice said.

  “Yes, I’m fit as ever,” Zell said in a strained voice, his chest covered with dried blood. “Any sign of the wagon?”

  “No, sir. The wagon must have made it through. But the soldiers have moved right along the flatlands with us. They’ve got sharpshooters out there. The rest are charging, hitting us on our left flank.”

  Sharpshooters…? Zell listened for a second, discerning Baines’s single rifle shots from within the dissonance of fire coming from the east. “There’s only one man out there, Mr. Bowes. We must break through here…get to the wagon…or we’ll be stuck in these rocks for a long time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Bowes started to turn, but then he hesitated. “Are you able to ride, sir?”

  “Prepare the men, Mr. Bowes. Whoever is out there is the same man who blew up the pass. He knows his business. Get past him before he gathers the rest of them to him.”

  But even as Zell spoke, out on the sand flats Baines saw the soldiers riding headlong for the mouth of the trail. He took aim on Corporal Donnely’s horse, then moved his sights ahead of it and lower to the ground as Donnely raced forward. Then Baines squeezed off the shot and saw Donnely’s horse veer away from the spray of stinging dust at its hooves.

  Jesus! Donnely struggled with his reins, righting the horse and catching a glimpse of Baines as he rose up amid a hail of bullets, waving his rifle, yelling at the top of his lungs. What the…? Donnely saw the sergeant duck out of sight; but he’d gotten the signal. “Turn, men!” he bellowed, cutting his bay into the onrush of confused men and veering horses. Then, seeing Donnely wave them out toward the sand flats as he cut away and swung wide
of the trail ahead, the whole column broke to the left and followed.

  Zell’s men, positioned above them among the rocks, fired down as they moved out onto the sand flats. Baines rose up again amid a hail of fire from the trail and waved them into line across the mouth of the trail. Donnely got the message, hearing the heavy fire behind him. Over a long, low rise, he slowed his horse, coming out of his saddle, turning to wave the troops in, and sending them sidelong into a wide horseshoe position around the mouth of the trail, thirty yards out.

  “It’s about damn time!” Baines yelled to him, then dropped down as a bullet kicked up dust along the cusp of sand in front of his horse lying prone before him.

  “Damn his stripe-legged, blue belly hide,” Bowes said, slamming a hand against the rock in front of him. “He’s pulled them out to him. Now we’re buttonholed for certain.” He raised a cupped hand to his cheek and called out along the slope, “Hold your fire, men.”

  “Well, hell,” said the man beside him, turning his head and spitting tobacco juice. “We’re still going through, ain’t we?”

  “I see no other way to go,” Bowes said, slumping beside him. “Only now, it’s going to cost us.” He looked at the men alongside him with a grave expression. “One thing’s for sure. They know they’ve not been fighting a bunch of common bandits.” The grave expression shifted a bit into a weary trace of a smile. Now that both sides had ceased firing, a tense silence fell about them, disturbed only by the whir of hot wind off the flatlands.

  The nearest man grinned. “Well, gracias, mi amigo!”He jerked the wide Mexican sombrero from his head and spun it out across the rock. “By God…at least I can like what I am.” He looked around. “What about you, Chance Edwards? You’re an old delta rat just like me. You gonna get shed of that funny hat and die a southern boy?”

  “Dead’s dead,” the other man replied. “I take no honor in it, however it falls.” He grinned. “But I vow, I’ll live to eat the pig that shits itself out on your grave.”

  Bowes looked from one to the other of the dirt-marked faces. “Good men, all of you,” he said. “Hold tight here until I see what the major wants us to do.”

  “Tell him it’s no hurry on our account,” one of them said as Bowes moved away from the rock. “We’ll hold them off here for as long as you say.”

  Chapter 11

  “When we get out of this, Sergeant, I’m definitely going to buy you a beer,” Corporal Donnely said, lying beside Baines on the warm ground. Crawling through the sand had loosened the bandage on his leg. He adjusted it now, leaning against the bullet-riddled body of Baines’s horse.

  “Careful what you say, Corporal, I’ll hold you to it.” Baines looked along the semicircle firing line ten yards in front of them, then at the long shadows of evening drawing across the land. “How’s the leg?”

  “Stiff, painful, but otherwise okay. The bullet went through clean enough.” He kneaded the tender flesh above the wound as he spoke. “The lieutenant is still having a terrible time, talking out of his head. Thinks we’re fighting the devil and his demons up there.”

  Baines chuckled under his breath. “He’s not so far off, from what I’ve seen of them.” He tipped back a sip of warm water from his canteen and handed it to Donnely, still gazing out across the quiet land. “If the lieutenant stays out of his head long enough, we’ll mop up out here and win him a citation.” He offered a tired, wry smile. “See? As it turns out, you didn’t have to shoot him after all.”

  Donnely looked ashamed. “I don’t know what made me say those things. Now that it looks like the lieutenant might not make it, I feel like a complete ass.”

  “Aw, don’t worry about him. He’s a young man. He’ll be fine. You hear of how these gut shots always kill a man, but it’s not always so. He’s hit low, nothing vital, or he’d already be dead.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “You hope?” Baines looked at him, again with a wry smile. “I’m always right, Corporal…that’s my job.”

  For the past three hours, Zell’s men had poured rifle fire down on them from behind rock cover—softening them up, Baines had called it—now, for the past twenty minutes, not a shot had been fired.

  “Then what’s Zell’s next move?” Donnely asked, capping the canteen and laying it beside Baines. “You really think he’ll rush our line in the dark? Coming down out of those rocks, he’s apt to lose every horse he’s got. He’d have to be crazy.”

  “Not crazy, Donnely…just desperate. What’s he got to lose? We’ve fought him to a stalemate. He knows most of our horses are dead. If his men get down to the flatlands, we’ve left them thirty yards to spread out over. I had to give him that much to keep our men out from under his rifles. They’ll come down hard, but most of them will try to spread wide of this firing line.”

  “Then we’ll push our circle forward?” Donnely asked, seeing the grave consequences in his mind. He felt relieved when the sergeant said, “No, it’ll cost us too many men and what few horses we have left. We’ll stick it out here in the sand, behind these dead animals. Make Zell pay dearly for every foot of ground they cross.”

  “But some of them are bound to get past us.”

  “Aye, they will…but we will have done what I set out to do. I meant to hold him here as long as I could. We’ve kept him off that Ranger’s back. By now the Ranger has a good start toward the wagon.”

  “This isn’t going to look very good on our report when we get back to headquarters.”

  “Damn the report. I’ve never seen a report yet that can’t say what I want it to, eh?” He chuckled. “The long march out is to prepare for the battle. The long march home is to prepare for the paperwork. I believe it was Napoleon who said that.”

  Donnely raised an eyebrow. “I think you just made that up.”

  Baines shrugged. “The main thing here has always been the hostages. Capturing the wagon would have been a fine feather in the lieutenant’s hat, but the lives of those women are more important. The Ranger will get to them now. And I’ll finish up our little waltz with Major Martin Zell.”

  “You mean…?”

  “That’s right, Corporal. When they charge through our line, I’m going with them. You’ll lead the men back to the fort. We’ve got many wounded who’ll need tending. There won’t be much left of Zell’s men after this charge. They’ll be no threat around here for a while.”

  “But I can’t go back and tell a blatant lie. They’ll want to know what happened to you.”

  “Then don’t lie. Just forget I said any of this. If I’m not here after they hit our line…” Baines let his words trail, then he added, “I expect the next time I see you, you’ll be a sergeant yourself, after taking charge here, defeating Zell’s men. Think about it.” He studied Donnely’s eyes in the gathering darkness.

  Donnely did think about it for a second. Then he let out a breath and nodded. “All right then. I don’t remember a word you’ve said.”

  Baines reached over with his gloved hand and patted Donnely on the forearm. “I knew I could make a soldier of you, given enough time.”

  “Ha.” Donnely shoved his hand away. “I was born soldiering, Baines, and you know it.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, then Donnely said in a quiet tone, “We’ve got only nine horses left. I could bring Little Randy over here for you. He’s not the biggest, but he’s fast…as strong as any horse we’ve got.”

  “Naw, it’s not necessary. You’ll need every horse you have. It’ll look bad for cavalry men to return on foot. I’ll pick up a horse from one of Zell’s men.” Baines reached down and drew a dagger from the well of his boot. “I’ve always been good at night work.” He ran a thumb along the edge of the blade, turned the big knife in his hand, and laid it on his lap. He looked around in the grainy falling light, judging it. “You best get on back to the line now. They’ll be coming down in ten minutes or so.”

  “Yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

  Baines looked at him, t
hen glanced toward the endless land bathed in the red glow of fading sunlight. “This is that time of silence every fighting man comes to know,” Baines said in a soft tone, “when a voice inside him asks why he’s here, and he realizes that he could turn at this second and flee the coming battle.” He let out a weary breath. “I’ve felt it at some point before every fight. It has a hard pull on a man.”

  “Yes, I know the feeling,” Donnely said. “Have you got enough water?”

  “Enough.”

  “Ammunition?”

  “Plenty.” Baines patted his cartridge case with his gloved hand.

  “Well.” Donnely sucked a tooth, searching for something more to say. He could think of nothing. He half turned, hesitating before leaving. “You sure you don’t want Little Randy? He’s saddled, ready to go.”

  “Get on out of here, Corporal. Take good care of the men.”

  In the thin, dark light of a quarter moon, the riders moved down from the rocks as quiet as ghosts, save for the slight click now and then of a hoof against rock. They gathered and formed abreast, then sat in silence ten yards above the spill of the trail onto the sand flats. Major Zell and Liam Bowes wove their horses forward through their ranks until they sat at the front, three yards ahead of them. Zell drew his long saber, slowly, quietly, then turned in his saddle as Bowes stepped his horse down the last few yards.

  Zell whispered back to the men with his saber raised, “At the sound of fire…” He held his words suspended until at the base of the trail, a shot from Bowes’s rifle exploded. “Charge!” Zell’s saber flashed in the grainy darkness as he kicked his horse forward.

  “Steady, men,” Corporal Donnely called out along the line, holding their fire. He rose slightly behind the body of one of the dead horses and crouched, watching the blossoms of gunfire blink in the darkness. He wanted Zell’s men to ride deep into the curve of the firing line. But Zell would have none of it. Ahead of the soldiers, a growing wedge of gunfire came forward, yet the wedge was spreading out.