Ambush

by Short, Luke;

  He reached down to his side where the pain was deepest and his fingers touched steel, and then Captain Wolverton was beside him, kneeling, a pistol in his hand. There were other people there, too, but Brierly’s attention was not on them. He felt the steel, the shape of it, and then he knew why there was pain in his groin also.

  Wolverton said, “Easy sir, easy.” He bawled out. “Lantern here!”

  Brierly said calmly, then, “Pull it out, Wolverton. You can’t carry me with a pitchfork sticking out of me.”

  Just before dawn, where the Craig road crossed a dry wash floored with splintered red boulders, Captain Loring ordered a halt for rest and food. The far bank held enough scattered mesquite for fires, and from this point on, the tangled mesas to the east would press closer, demanding an increased alertness.

  Loring, even so, put out guards here, and the men started small fires to cook their bacon. There was the promise in the hazy dawn that the day would be blazingly hot, and Loring passed needless word to Sergeant Mack that he wanted to start with half-canteens after breakfast.

  It was a subdued bunch of troopers, the whiskey worked out of them, that sprawled on the ground; talk was sparse, and apt to be sharp, and Harcourt’s corporal driver, a downy-cheeked tee-totaler, talked with Frank Holly and smugly watched their silent suffering.

  Returning from picketing his own and Linus’ horse, Ward rounded the rear of the Daugherty wagon in time to hear Loring say to Sergeant Mack, “—if there’s a lame one report it to me. It’s apt to be a slack time, right after pay, Sergeant.”

  “That I know, Captain,” Sergeant Mack replied gravely. There was no faint hint of mockery in Mack’s tone; but in his eyes was a sardonic gleam, an able man’s protest at being told his job. Loring wheeled away and came over to the wagon, his shirt already blotting perspiration. Captain Harcourt had a precarious seat on the Daugherty wagon’s step, watching Linus pour coffee in a thick cascade into a grimed pot.

  “Easy, Linus,” Loring said. “You’ll have the stuff thick as gravy.”

  Linus eased off, poured water from his canteen into the pot, and set it in the fire. As Ward slacked down against the rear wheel, Linus glanced over at him. His young face was somber; then a faint smile touched it and he said, “You’re a hell of a looking guide. In that suit, you look like you’re going to a dance.”

  Ward drawled, “I’m here for the ride, and you don’t pay me, so damn your opinion.”

  Linus smiled briefly, and then his face was somber again, and Ward thought, It’s last night and Riordan. He doesn’t know how to say it. And then he thought irritably, I don’t believe, yet he wondered.

  Loring sank to the ground with a sigh and said, “I ate too much last night. This heat’ll be murder.” He looked at Ward, a kind of impersonality creeping into his dark eyes, his face. Loring was not, Ward knew, either forgetting or forgiving his refusal to help Ann Dunnifon. “Kinsman, what are the prospects of turning up ’Pache sign?”

  Frank Holly had strolled up to the group by how, and at Loring’s question, he too eyed Ward.

  After a moment’s thought, Ward answered. “Pretty good, maybe on the way back.”

  “How so?”

  Ward shrugged. “Diablito will figure that when Brierly pulled me off the Peak, he wanted me to work. He’ll send word to the reservation and across the border that something is about to start. That will pull in all the malcontents, and the lads who want a good fight.” He paused. “All this is maybe.”

  “It’s too damn true,” Frank Holly said.

  Linus looked at him. “You sorry about it?”

  “Sorry I get paid?” Holly asked sourly. “No, it ain’t that. I’d get paid the same amount of money to fight half as many. It’s just that a few of them are too many.”

  Harcourt, in the paymaster’s department, said smugly, “I’ll read all about it in the Santa Fe paper. ‘Army chases Apaches. Diablito is headed for security of Hellangone Mountains. Captain Loring, scion of wealthy New York family, says; “I intend to send Diablito’s hide to my boot-maker for my next pair of boots.”’”

  Loring smiled perfunctorily and said, “I’d like to, at that.”

  Ward had been watching Loring, a faint curiosity stirring in him as to why he had asked his question, and as to what sort of a man he really was. This was the man Ann Dunnifon favored, and Ward tried to remember what he had heard of him, since he arrived at Gamble in the spring and Ward had never served with him. Loring, so the talk went, was a good enough officer. He was rich in his own right, from a well-known York state family, and the envy of the garrison’s younger officers. He had, in the romantic fashion of the cavaliers, adopted arms as his profession. He was the gentleman soldier, a throwback to distant times, and therefore a curiosity to his fellow officers who were hardworking, capable, and ordinarily poor men. He was, Ward guessed, humorless, earnest, and privately aloof, but possessed of a calm self-assurance that would attract a fatherless girl like Ann Dunnifon. Above all else, Ward mused, he would be correct in all things.

  The brief breakfast of cold meat sandwiches and scalding coffee finished, the detail started off again, and now Loring put out flankers as they entered the canyon country. Off to the north, Bailey’s Peak, in the new day, towered over all this country, dominating it. Corporal Baltizar, with half the detail, drew the rear position in the dust of the Daugherty wagon; they rode with neckerchiefs across their mouths, slacked in the saddle, and only half awake and bitterly patient. Loring and Holly were in the lead, and Ward, beside Linus, saw the dark stain of perspiration begin to spread on Loring’s back at the first touch of the blasting sun.

  They rested in midmorning and changed flankers and the positions of the detail, and went on again, and Ward sat slack and somnolent in the saddle, feeling the hourly increase in heat. It was dry, savage, merciless, and he liked it. The land, of a sameness that was soporific, was a dun-colored waste of rock and sage clumps and mesquite tangles, and it was never wholly level, so that the twisting road accommodated itself to an endless upthrust of eroded mesa and slope of canyon floor. And always Bailey’s Peak was seldom out of sight, wheeling slowly on their left and scarcely diminishing in size or changing in aspect.

  Loring was driving for the noon halt, angling across a sandy arroyo that brought labor to the horses. The far bank achieved, Ward saw the tracks, and pulled out of the column. Holly, on Loring’s right, saw them the same instant and said, “Hold on,” and Loring brought the column out of the wash and then halted it.

  Loring called now from the front of the column, “How new?” and Ward dismounted. His glance raised briefly, irritably, to the flanker on the right who, riding forward, should have noticed the sign. He had lagged, however, and had reined up on the bank of the wash and was looking at the ground. Ward pointed with his chin to Holly and said indifferently, “Ask your guide.”

  Loring gave the order to dismount, then pulled his horse over to Holly. Ward followed the tracks a way in the direction in which they were headed, up the wash toward Bailey’s Peak. He heard a rider behind him, and glanced up to see Linus, hands folded on pommel, watching him. Linus said nothing, however.

  Now Ward mounted and rode up the arroyo, which began to pinch between narrowing banks as it cleft a rubble ridge. Then he saw where the bank caved for the crossing to the other side, and the gouged earth where the Apache ponies had heaved up the far slope to the ridge. He studied this a moment, of a mind to return, and, changing his mind, he put his horse into the deep sand of the wash and forced him up the steep ridge slope. Here he pulled his horse abruptly to the left, and then, still sitting his horse, he studied the ground a long minute, letting his horse blow. Carefully, then, he dismounted and began to circle this shelf, and when he saw Linus’ horse heave up over the lip, he motioned him over to his own horse.

  Linus saw him make his circle then, and once Ward knelt and carefully studied the ground and once he picked up something and examined it before he threw it away. Then he disappeared along th
e ridge behind a tangle of mesquite, and when he came back, he was mopping his face with his handkerchief.

  Linus said dryly, “Is it any hotter back there than here?”

  “It’s hot, all right,” Ward said, and he halted by his horse. He was thinking, That’s not much to go on, and then walked directly across the shelf to the spot he had examined before. His search now, on hands and knees, was thorough, and Linus watched him with a vast impatience. When Ward rose, there was a scowl on his face. He said nothing as he swung into the saddle, and put his horse down the slope to join the command.

  The detail was dismounted, most of the troopers sitting listlessly in whatever shade they could find. Holly, Loring, and Harcourt, with Sergeant Mack, stood conversing at the head of the column.

  As Linus and Ward dismounted, Loring glanced at Ward and said, “Holly says about eight. The tracks are about an hour old. Do you agree?”

  Ward nodded. “Some are older by a couple of hours.”

  Holly, gently, and with one thumb, scratched his cheekbone, above his beard, and contemplated Ward. “Some women,” he said finally.

  Again Ward nodded. “With babies. That’s why they lagged.”

  Harcourt snorted in skepticism. “You found a diaper, I suppose,” he said in good-humored mockery.

  “Same thing,” Ward murmured. “A shred of moss.”

  Loring was observing him intently, and now, ignoring Holly, he said, “What do you make of that?”

  “The bucks are in a hurry to join Diablito, and they’ll make his camp tonight. If they didn’t figure on that, they wouldn’t have let the women lag. Also, they’re not alarmed. They’ve come a hell of a ways, because their horses are tired and not in good shape. The bucks are just impatient; they’ve probably been summoned.”

  Loring considered this in silence, and Linus watched him with a mounting impatience. Finally, Linus said, “Ben, I’d like to request permission to follow and overtake them.”

  Loring’s answer, after a moment, was dry, freighted with a heavy humor, “Also permission to escort your nursery back to the post?”

  Linus grinned. “Yes, sir. Maybe they won’t all be women and children.”

  Loring turned slowly, and looked up the arroyo. Beyond it, in the middle distance, lay Bailey’s Peak. He said quietly then, “With an hour start, and our horses tired, we’d never hope to catch them before they reach Diablito. Chances are, they wouldn’t stand anyway. We don’t want the women.” He looked at Linus. “I guess not.”

  “Hell,” Linus said quietly.

  Loring said stiffly, “My orders were to keep any band from joining Diablito. It was left to my discretion.”

  “That’s too discreet, Ben,” Linus protested.

  Loring’s face altered slowly into hardness, and Ward was waiting for Linus’ rashness to be flattened. But Loring’s dark glance lifted to Ward. “However, I have never neglected the advice of a guide. Is it worth it, Kinsman?”

  “I’d go,” Ward said. “But you can ask Holly; he’s your guide.”

  “And your reasons?” Loring said, ignoring Holly.

  Ward nodded toward the ridge. “There’s no clear story there. If you want to, you can noon here and send Holly out for an hour. He’d know more when he gets back.”

  “An hour’s too long, isn’t it?”

  Ward nodded assent.

  Loring said insistently, “But your reasons?”

  “They wouldn’t be yours, Captain,” Ward murmured. “Whoever you catch, fight or not fight, could tell us more of Diablito’s plans and what he knows than we’re aware of now. Still, that’s not within orders, is it?”

  Loring said stolidly, “I have your word that we’re apt to cross Apache sign on the way back. Am I to split my command, and spend my guide on a chase for women and children, or am I to preserve it for a more likely prospect that will harm Diablito?”

  “You won’t lose your guide,” Ward said quietly. “I’ll go.”

  Surprised washed over Loring’s face, and he and Ward studied each other in silence, Loring straining to read what lay behind the offer, Ward blandly withholding any indication of his reason. Again Loring looked at Bailey’s Peak and when his glance returned, it was to Linus.

  “Very well. Linus, you will take Sergeant Mack and seven men, with Kinsman as guide. You will try to overtake this band before darkness. You are forbidden to go further than the camp you establish tonight. You will return tomorrow and proceed to Craig. Doubtless, we’ll meet you on our back trip.”

  Linus saluted generously, and turned and called, “Sergeant!” But Sergeant Mack, who had heard the conversation, was already heading for the column at a trot.

  Loring wrenched off his black hat and mopped forehead and hair with his handkerchief, and Ward’s puzzled glance lingered on the man a moment before he turned away. There was something here that he did not understand. Second lieutenants like Linus were notoriously eager for action, and were most often denied the opportunity in favor of the senior officers. Loring, in command, had quizzed his guide until he had a judgment from him of action; and then, instead of relegating his junior officer to the drudging job of escort and accepting the chance for action himself, he had declined. Declined? Ward wasn’t sure. Either it was an act of generosity or a touch of cowardice, and Ward doubted the latter.

  Sergeant Mack pulled out seven men from the detail, saw they had full canteens, and Loring got the column under way immediately, again driving for the shade of Credit Canyon, where they would rest, and leaving a cloud of bitter dust hanging in his rear.

  Linus motioned Sergeant Mack to him now, and then said to Ward, “I don’t propose anything except to overtake that band. What’s the best way to do it?”

  Ward told him of the three main ridges of Bailey’s Peak on the eastern side that reached out like the tentacles of a starfish; obviously, the band was headed up the middle valley—Calendar Canyon—and unless alarmed would keep to the known trail.

  “Then we try to overtake them?” Linus asked, gloomily. “Our horses have been on the trail around fifteen hours already.”

  “There’s another choice,” Ward said. “There’s a seep at the head of Calendar Canyon. It’s not good water, but it’s drinkable. It’s possible they’ll camp there. You could take a chance on it and aim for that.”

  “When’ll we reach it?”

  “After dark.”

  Linus was silent a long moment, weighing these considerations, and Sergeant Mack regarded him with a deep attention. The choice was plain; either Lieutenant Delaney could drive his men and their mounts with the promise that, dead spent, they would find a fight before dark, or he could take the saving, cautious other way which promised nothing and might be fruitless. It was a hard choice for a young lieutenant spoiling for a fight, but there was an iron judgment in Mack’s expression.

  Linus said then, “We’ll play it safe. We’ll aim for the seep.”

  Ward saw Mack nod imperceptibly and a ghost of a smile touch his lips before he turned away to the waiting troopers.

  The afternoon was pure hell. Ward moved the detail two ridges to the east, and after that it was a slogging, steaming climb whose speed was gauged by the weariness of their mounts and the roughness of the crosscut canyons, whose walls caromed off the stifling heat.

  They rested once and pushed on, with Linus’ promise that at sundown they would take a longer rest. They were still in rough country, but the canyons were shallower and occasional stunted cedars were struggling for footholds in the pockets of stony soil. In the close canyons the rank smell of horse and man sweat was almost a stain in the air, and the troopers, faces gray with dust and eyes puffed, were beat into silence by the heat.

  With lowering darkness came a relief from the heat, and Ward, while he could still see, climbed a ridge and took his bearings, afterward returning to swing the column on a more westerly course. The bulk of Bailey’s Peak, even in the growing darkness, filled a black and ominous half of the northern sky.

&nb
sp; Another hour of darkness passed, broken only by the sullen curses of the men or the stumbling racket of a tired horse, before Ward halted. Linus, pulling abreast him, quietly halted the troop.

  “In the valley behind that next ridge,” Ward said. He would have known without landmarks, for his horse, smelling water, lifted its head restively.

  He swung stiffly from the saddle and said, “Take a rest. I’ll have a look,” and disappeared swiftly into the darkness.

  The lift of the rocky slope brought an aching strain to his legs. He climbed swiftly, silently, once feeling his moccasin sole graze the thorns of prickly pear. At the top of the ridge he bellied down to crawl more slowly, feeling his senses sharpen, and then he halted.

  Below him in a shallow valley far less deep than the one he had left was a dying fire. He studied the ground surrounding it, and presently made out several scattered forms sleeping. Counting them and allowing for a doubtful, there were seven. The seep welled from the base of the ridge he was on, and was therefore invisible.

  While he watched, one of the figures stirred and rose. It was an old man, and he moved off up canyon. Ward listened and heard him change the positions of the horses picketed on the sparse grass up canyon. When he returned and lay down again, Ward pulled back off the ridge and returned to the detail.

  He and Linus and Mack discussed the camp; it was agreed that an attack from up canyon would alarm the horses and wake the camp, while an attack from down canyon would drive the band to their horses. Linus chose the ridge for the attack, and, after counting off horse-holders and ordering the removal of spurs, Linus called the detail around him.

  “There’ll be women and children down there. Don’t shoot them. Bucks are fair game if they fight, but remember, we want prisoners. We’ll form a skirmish line this side of the ridge and go over quietly. You’ll wait for my spoken command to fire. Ward and Sergeant Mack will be farthest right to cut off any retreat to the horses. No talk. Signal to deploy will be given by the man ahead of you touching you: you’ll touch the man behind. No talking.”