by Peter Dawson
Chapter Three
Today, Clears had spent most of the morning in his bunk barn supervising the building of another dozen two-decker beds. Consequently he hadn’t heard the roll of the drums from above that had puzzled many people along the street. Now, as the noon hour approached, his appetite brought him onto the street wondering idly if Ben Qualls had anything at the Lucky Find’s eat counter besides the everlasting same offering of roast wild turkey and venison haunch. He was stepping from the crowded plank walk, about to cross over to his saloon, when he saw Caleb Ash riding toward him close ahead.
The man’s outlandish appearance told him at once where Ash had been, and with a faint exasperation he remembered as he had several other times this morning that this was no ordinary day up at the fort. He could have gone up there, perhaps should have put in an appearance. But he’d wanted to have nothing more to do with the affair. He didn’t even want to know what had happened.
He was hoping Ash wouldn’t see him. Ordinarily he and the liveryman were civil enough to each other and little more, for he had respect but little liking for the man. Yet now as he started turning away with the thought of making himself inconspicuous among the passers-by, Ash spotted him and at once reined his way.
So Clears made the best of it, smiling broadly and calling: “Where’s your Bible, Caleb? You could be brother to that sky pilot we had up here last summer. Where’d you pick up the fancy rig?”
Ash stopped the bay close alongside, his tanned face taking a deeper flush. But for once he was enjoying a joke on himself and, grinning ruefully, he growled: “Reckon I do look the fool.” Then, abruptly sobering, he asked: “Why wasn’t you up there, Mike?”
Clears sighed and shook his head. “I’m trying to forget the whole thing.”
“They did it up brown. He was like a whipped cur, tail tucked when they turned him loose.”
A faint anger stirred in Clears. “Why couldn’t they just let him go without all the damned formality?”
“Just let him go?” Ash snorted. “Why, if I’d had the doin’ of it, they’d have strung him up!” He caught the look in Clears’s eyes then. Warned by it, he shrugged, drawling in a milder tone: “Anyway, it’s done with and done proper.” He thought of something else, asking querulously: “Say, how long’s it goin’ to take Tipton to get his wagons here? Now I wish I’d hauled that hardware all that way myself. Here I’ve got the roof on the new store and nothin’ to put in it.”
“Tipton’ll be along in his own good time,” Clears said. “It’s a hard haul, this last stretch. He must be short-handed. Otherwise, that man he sent up with that word for us yesterday wouldn’t’ve turned around and gone on back.”
Ash’s scowl didn’t ease as he grunted: “I just been down the road a piece, couple miles or so, thinkin’ I might meet up with the wagons. But nothin’s in sight. Every extra day he takes sure costs me money.” He lifted rein then, and as the bay went on he called back: “Tell Qualls to save me a plate of food!”
Clears nodded and stood there watching the big man ride on, this fresh reminder of Dan Gentry bringing back that familiar sense of baffling inadequacy in even beginning to understand the findings of the courts-martial. Weeks ago, on first hearing of Gentry’s arrest, he had been shocked and hurt. He had long known Dan Gentry as a kind, warm-hearted, and generous man, honest to the core. He simply knew, without having to understand quite why, that his friend couldn’t be guilty of the things he stood accused of. Yet the court found that Gentry, attacked by Apaches, had, in direct disobedience to orders, taken his men into a cañon where they were all killed except Gentry himself and Sergeant McCune. It just didn’t make sense to Clears.
He went on into the Lucky Find now and made his way through the crowd to the back end of the bar. Ben Qualls was there, slicing breast meat from a steaming turkey carcass. He didn’t look up when Clears stepped to the counter. Yet, with his instinct for knowing exactly what was going on around him without seeming to observe it, he said as Clears put his elbows on the polished wood — “Better toss him out, Mike.” — nodding toward the front of the crowded room.
Clears looked up there, couldn’t understand. “Who?” he asked.
“Gentry.”
Clears’s glance sharpened. Abruptly he saw Gentry, not the tall uniformed shape but an unfamiliar one crowned by a gray Stetson and shrouded in a rumpled brown coat.
“When did he get here, Ben?”
“Half hour ago. Bought a quart jug right off.”
“A quart?” Clears’s eyes opened wider. “Hell, man, he’s no drinker.”
“He is today, Mike.”
The saloon man stood deliberating a moment, a strong embarrassment crowding him. Then, knowing what he must do, he made his way through the crowd between bar and poker layouts and came in behind Gentry to tap him on the shoulder.
When Gentry turned, Clears tilted his head toward the rear of the room, saying only — “Come along, Dan.” — before he started back there. And Gentry, faintly scowling at first, then as faintly smiling, followed.
Beyond the end of the bar was the door to Clears’s office. He opened it wide and stepped aside for Gentry to enter first. Following the taller man on into the room, he closed the door and leaned back against it.
“Ben says you bought a jug,” he said mildly. “How come?”
Gentry eyed him coolly a moment. Then, with a shrug, he turned across the room toward a door that let out onto the saloon’s alley platform. “You don’t have to say it, Mike,” he drawled dryly. “I’ll leave. Maybe Belle’ll let me kill time at her place.”
“Hold on!” Clears’s words stopped Gentry, made him look around. Then the saloon man said quietly: “My friend, you can’t do this. Belle’s place or mine, it makes no difference. Someone’s going to choose you before the day’s out.”
Gentry only smiled, and shortly Clears went on. “You probably wouldn’t mind a scrap. You could tear this place apart and I wouldn’t mind it, either, if you had any fun doing it. But it’s yourself you’d be breaking up, Dan. Don’t do it.”
“There’s seven hours to kill before the stage pulls out.”
“Then go up to the cave and stay out of sight. If it’s whiskey you want, help yourself. There’s plenty up there. I’ll even go up the street and buy your stage ticket so you won’t run into trouble....”
The rattle of the latch behind him cut across Clears’s words, and all at once the door swung open, catching him hard between the shoulders. He wheeled quickly around, cursing softly, growling — “Knock before you come in that....” — and going silent when he saw who stood there.
It was Tim McCune’s blocky shape that moved in through the door. He saw Gentry, stiffened by being startled, then saluted. Gentry soberly touched his hat. Then McCune, his face redder than usual and his breathing fast and plainly audible, moved aside so that a second man, a stranger, could step into the doorway.
McCune’s look had been excited; yet it seemed Gentry’s presence changed that excitement to something else. For when he spoke it was almost casually to say: “Mike, we’ve got the Apaches with us again.” He looked around at his companion, then adding: “You tell it, Shotwell.”
The other man leaned against the door frame now as though about to collapse. His thin, beard-stubbled face wore a gaunt look of utter exhaustion. His eyes were red-rimmed, his shirt was torn and darkly stained, and the hand he lifted to his face was trembling.
“They caught our wagons ten miles below, mister,” he said in a voice dry as dust: “Finished off all our people and....”
“Not Tipton’s wagons?” Clears cut in hoarsely.
“Who else’s?” Shotwell replied. “They got us all...all but me. Worst thing I ever set eyes to. We heard as how these hostiles up here never took scalps. But they sure took ’em today. God, you could hear ’em tear loose! The worst was the women. Then’s when I got sick and.
...”
“Women?” Clears echoed, his face wearing a gray look. “What women?”
“The boss’ missus and his girl. And one other young one.”
Clears turned away to step across and lean heavily against his desk, saying incredulously: “Harry Tipton dead? And not four months ago he was here, right here in this room....” His words trailed off, and, straightening with an obvious effort to get a hold on himself, he looked at McCune. “What is it you want of me, Tim?”
“There’s some freight of Ash’s and yours in the wagons, Mike,” McCune answered quietly. “A billiard table, some bales of tobacco for you. We’ve located Ash. Lieutenant Peebles is taking a detail down there right away. He thought you two’d better be along.”
“The freight be damned!” Clears burst out. Then, his look an apology, he added in a quieter tone: “No, Tim, I don’t want to see it. Go on without me.”
McCune, after a brief and hesitant glance at Gentry, stepped back through the door, asking Shotwell: “You still not coming?”
“And see that all over again? Uhn-uh!” Shotwell was eyeing Clears now and said awkwardly: “Mister, my poke’s down there in one of the wagons. Could you stake me to the loan of a dollar or two so’s I can buy a bed across the way to sleep in? I spent half the morning hid in the brush. Then hoofing it all this way got me so played out I....”
“Here,” Clears said. He had reached to a pocket as the man was speaking and now came across to hand him a double eagle.
Shotwell’s glance momentarily lost its lifeless quality as he smiled delightedly. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks muchly, friend.” And he turned and followed McCune out.
The door had barely swung shut when Gentry started for the alley once again. His hand was reaching for the knob when Clears said quietly: “Wait.”
Gentry looked around to find the saloon man eyeing him soberly, speculatively. It was a long moment before Clears said: “There goes your stage ride. Now what’ll you do?”
Gentry said evenly: “I’ll make out.”
“What will you do?” Clears insisted. “You can’t buy a horse in this town from anyone but Ash. And he’d see you crawl out of here before he sold you one.”
“Then I’ll crawl.”
Clears gave a slow shake of the head. “You’d never make it on foot.”
“Then I’ll hang around till the scare’s over.”
Again the saloon man shook his head. “That’s the one thing you can’t do.” His look held Gentry’s briefly, beseechingly almost, before he added: “Go on up to the cave and take that old Grulla. She’s wind-broke, and if you run onto trouble she won’t be much help. But if you keep out of sight and ease through that country at night, she’ll carry you as far as Sante Fe. A McClellan’s hanging right ahead of her stall. Take it, too.”
An oddly puzzled look crossed Gentry’s face. “How come you’re not hanging in with the rest, Mike?”
“I’ve never turned on a friend,” Clears stated. “I’m even wishing you luck.”
Gentry laughed softly, mockingly. “You’re alone in your sentiments.” As an afterthought he reached to the inside pocket of his coat and drew out a wallet. “How much do I owe you?”
Clears shook his head, stepping across to the alley door, and opening it. “Nothing,” he said. “The mare isn’t worth her keep, and that hull’s the hardest I ever sat. Be glad to get rid of them both.”
Gentry came on past him and out onto the platform. He paused there to drawl: “Much obliged, Mike.”
“Dan, is there...?” Clears was wordless a moment, obviously ill at ease. Then: “Is there anything you could tell me about...? Hell, it’s more than a man can take in.”
Gentry deliberated his answer, warding off his first impulse by telling himself: Keep it to yourself, it’s nearly over. He said finally: “No, there’s nothing to tell, Mike. So long.” And he went out and down the platform steps and across the alley.
He felt as alone as he ever had when shortly he heard the saloon door close behind him. Just now he wanted nothing so much as Mike Clears’s respect, and he doubted he had even that. Clears had been sympathetic, generous. That was all. He was a man whose feelings were hard to read, and it galled Gentry to have to leave without the one man above all he valued as a friend knowing the truth about him. These were his thoughts as he walked down to the plank footbridge over the creek and then up the narrow shelf road leading to the cave in the rim’s face.
The still coolness of the cave was soothing after the strong sunlight outside, and as Gentry took his time saddling the Grulla mare, most of the rancor and hurt in him quieted. Presently he could begin looking ahead to the next few days and consider rationally what the Apache outbreak might mean to him. Two years of campaigning against this particular tribe had given him more than a slight knowledge of them, and now, thinking of the leaders, he knew without the slightest doubt that Gonah-Dokoh, Sour Eye, must have led the renegades in their latest outrage.
Sour Eye was the biggest troublemaker of recent years. There was no shred of mercy in him for the white man. He refused any contact with a white, would even send one of his sons or one of his wives to the agency to claim his beef issue. He stayed on the reservation only at such times as he was gathering the malcontents about him and equipping them for his next raid. Only the ineptness and caviling of officials in Washington had prevented his capture and imprisonment.
Considering the long ride he was about to take, Gentry judged he would have at the most only half a day’s grace, till sundown today, before he would be in dangerous country. Sour Eye’s band might haunt the trails and the one road for the next day or so, counting on easy plunder. So tonight Gentry would travel as far as he could and spend the dawn hour finding a place to hide out during tomorrow’s daylight. Because of the Apaches the distance to Sante Fe had become immeasurably greater, and he would need luck to arrive there.
The Grulla saddled, Gentry led her out toward the cave mouth, past a high mound of wild hay reaching toward the rocky dome twenty feet overhead, past Clears’s new buggy and a weathered buckboard. Well back from the cave mouth was a row of whiskey barrels and in front of them some glass-fronted counters Clears had discarded when he changed over his store.
* * * * *
Gentry tied the mare below in the alley and entered the rear of a store. Some twenty minutes later he was back lugging a sack filled with grub, a Spencer carbine under one arm, a blanket and ground sheet under the other. He made a tight roll of his purchases and, after tying the roll on behind the saddle’s cantle, mounted and rode on down the alley.
At the foot of the bench road he turned and looked back. His glance scarcely touched the clutter of buildings in the cañon bed, instead lifting for a final and reluctant glimpse of Fort North. All he could see beyond the edge of the high rim was one corner of the log palisade and, farther in, a line of wash flapping in the gentle breeze behind the hutments along Laundry Row.
His eye had already swung away from that drab scene when abruptly something he had noticed took it back again. And now, beyond the line of wash, he was seeing the tip of the flagpole at the center of the parade, the colors drooping from it.
The flag was so positioned that it seemed to be hanging from the wash line with the shirts and socks and underwear fluttering there. The irony of that sight, the suggestion of that splendid and inspiring symbol hanging where it appeared to be, struck Gentry as a farewell sight eloquently in keeping with his going. And as he turned on down the road he was vastly thankful to be leaving all this behind him.
Once below the placers he had the road to himself. Word of the reservation break had evidently spread quickly, for there was neither man nor animal in sight. This tonic of being free and alone was something he had long looked forward to, and strangely, now that he was on the way out, he found most of his resentment gone. He wasn’t letting himself think back upon a single t
hing. He was trying to think ahead.
Only once over the next hour was his solitary, slow ride intruded upon. He had gone perhaps six leisurely miles when he met Peebles’s detail escorting a light spring wagon up the road. He had plenty of warning, and by the time the troopers rode into sight he was on the far side of the creek, well hidden in the timber.
He watched the column trot smartly past — big Caleb Ash in his buckskins and Peebles in his blue uniform leading the others. He was close enough to identify each man and, shortly, to make out the two even rows of blanket-wrapped shapes roped to the wagon’s sideless bed as it drew on past.
Sobered by that sight, he cut back to the road, wondering what his own luck was to be over the next three or four days in crossing that wild and unfriendly waste of country beyond the foothills.
Going on down the cañon in the thinning dust-haze of the detail’s passage, he was thinking of the ceremony that would doubtless be taking place tomorrow morning at the post cemetery. Major Fitzhugh would read the service over the graves. Or, if he wasn’t feeling up to it, Doc Spires would take his place. They both had a flair for words. And in imagining where the graves would be Gentry could too plainly see other fresh earth mounds, eighteen of them, and in that moment a bleak, chill feeling settled through him.
He had ridden another two miles when, rounding a shoulder of the cañon wall, he came upon the first wagon. It lay there on its side so closely and abruptly ahead of him that sight of it stiffened him in the saddle.
It was a Conestoga. In overturning it had disgorged a disorderly litter of bales and barrels and boxes that lay strewn across the grassy creekbank. The torn edges of its split-open tarp flapped gently in the breeze. Gentry noticed an arrow sticking in the seat’s backrest. He saw cut harness lying on the grass as he rode on.
Shortly he came upon the others, three more Conestogas, the last overturned as had been the first, its hickory top bows broken so that the canvas shrouded half the spilled contents. The wagons were strung out, all headed in the same upcañon direction, and it was at once obvious to Gentry how complete the Apache surprise had been. This stretch of the ravine was narrow, and the road closely flanked to both sides by timber. There hadn’t even been time for the luckless teamsters to begin forming a defensive circle of their big, lumbering vehicles.
