Callaghen (1972)

by L'amour, Louis

  There was a saying in the West that certain men were men to ride the river with... for crossing rivers in flood while on horseback was no job for a tenderfoot. Aunt Madge was a woman to ride the river with. She had just as much eagerness as her husband had to see the other side of the mountain, and she had infinite patience. She also had a certain quiet beauty.

  Malinda's father was a diplomat, often stationed where a young daughter without a mother could be a problem. As a result, she had spent much of her time with the McDonalds, and some of their philosophy had rubbed off on her.

  The desert sun was setting. The stage would remain here at Camp Cady overnight, and then move on to the next station. It was no trip for women. John McDonald was hardened to the West and to western ways, but sometimes he forgot that frontier traveling was not exactly simple for women, especially for ladies of good breeding.

  Callaghen swore softly. If he were free now, he could ride on with them. The trail to Las Vegas, the nearest settlement, was long and difficult, with the danger of attack from Indians. And even at Las Vegas there was no real safety.

  After the Mormons abandoned the place in 1857 it had been deserted until a rancher named Gass acquired the water rights at Vegas Springs and moved in. During the war soldiers had been stationed there at what was called Fort Baker. At present there were only a few soldiers not more than twenty or thirty men at best.

  Did he dare leave without his discharge papers? Despite the fact that his time was up, he might legally be considered a deserter if he left without them, or before he was officially released. And he had no doubt that in such a case Major Sykes's disciplinary action would be swift and harsh.

  He was cleaning his rifle when he heard footsteps. The man who stopped in front of him had polished boots that were only slightly dusty. He looked up into a sharp, angular face.

  "You're Callaghen?"

  "That's right."

  "You were with Lieutenant Allison when he died, I believe?"

  "That's right."

  "Did he say anything before he died? Make any statement?"

  Morty Callaghen ran a patch through his rifle barrel, studied it in the dim light, and then replied, "My report was completed and turned into the commanding officer. All such information is his to give out as he sees fit."

  The man, who obviously did not like it, had a gold piece in his hand. Callaghen gathered up his cleaning materials and stood up.

  "That information might be important to me," the man said. He tossed the gold piece in the air and caught it. "That, and where his personal effects are kept."

  Callaghen ignored the gold eagle. His contempt for the man was growing, and he liked him less because he was so foolish as to believe he could bribe Callaghen.

  "Allison's effects," he replied, "have been sent to his next of kin, as is usual. Also, Allison was not an army officer, but an impostor."

  He started to move away, but the man grasped his arm to spin him around. Callaghen turned swiftly. "Take your hand off my arm," he said, "or I'll break it."

  The man jerked his hand away, but his face was harsh with anger. A gun had suddenly appeared in his hand. "You try that," he said, "and I'll kill you!"

  Callaghen smiled. "My advice to you is to get out of this camp to get out and to stay out. As for killing me... if you ever try that, I'll take down your pants and give you a spanking in front of the whole camp. You aren't man enough to kill anybody who is facing you."

  The man drew himself up. "I am Kurt Wylie!" He threw the name at Callaghen like a whiplash.

  Callaghen merely looked at him. "I've heard of you," he said quietly. "Somebody said you killed a couple of drunks."

  Wylie reacted as if struck. His hand dropped, and Callaghen's right fist shot out. The punch was short, sharp, and hard. Wylie's heels flew up and he hit the dust on his shoulder blades, his gun flying from his hand to land a dozen feet away.

  Sykes's voice sounded cold and hard, as he came striding across the compound. "Callaghen! What the hell is going on over here?"

  He stopped abruptly when he saw Wylie lying in the dust. The light was dim, but there was enough for him to see the gun in the dust.

  Callaghen stood at attention. "Sir, this man is somewhat unsteady on his feet. He seems to have fallen down."

  "I see."

  Sykes stooped and picked up the gun, looking at it with distaste. "You have peculiar friends, Callaghen."

  "He is no friend of mine, sir." Then he added, with just a slight note of warning in his tone, "He claims to have been a friend to Allison."

  Wylie was trying to get up, shaking his head to clear it. He fell once, then he got up and brushed himself off.

  Sykes said to him, "When the stage leaves in the morning, be on it Until then you are confined to your quarters."

  "You can't tell me what to do! I'm not in your blasted army!"

  "Beamis!" Sykes's voice rapped out against the stillness. "You are on guard in the compound. There are Indians about. If you see anything moving in the compound, shoot. Do you understand?"

  Beamis was pleased. "Yes, sir, I understand. Shall I escort this man to his quarters, sir?"

  "If you please." When they were gone, Sykes took a step nearer to Callaghen. "Sergeant, come with me. I want to know what happened out here."

  In Sykes's quarters, Callaghen told him, without holding anything back, just what had happened. He did not like Sykes, but this was army business, army responsibility, and something was happening here that might lead to serious trouble.

  "And did Allison say anything before he died?"

  "No, sir. Only that he regretted not following the Delaware's advice, sir."

  "What do you know about this man Wylie?"

  Callaghen hesitated. "Not very much, really. I believe he's a gambler, sir, but I could not say for sure. He is reported to travel in some bad company, and he has killed three or four men in gun duels. I believe he rather fancies himself in that capacity, sir."

  "I see." Sykes looked at him sharply. "And you say he fell down?"

  "The light was bad, sir. He made as if to use a gun, and then he seemed to run into something in the dark. The next thing I knew he was lying in the dust."

  "That will be all, Callaghen."

  Callaghen turned to go, then said, "Sir?"

  "Yes?"

  "I believe from the description we were given that Kurt Wylie is the man who gave Allison his orders. The men who arrived in company with Allison might be able to say for sure."

  Mercer was on duty as a horse guard, and Callaghen went out to him, was challenged, and replied. Standing close to Mercer he asked, "Were you there when the stage arrived? And did you see the man who got off the stage? The dark man with the broken nose?"

  "Yes, sir. That's the one, Sergeant, who handed those orders to Lieutenant Allison."

  "Thanks, Mercer."

  Just before daybreak Callaghen felt somebody touch his shoulder. "Sergeant? I'm Corporal Williams. Lieutenant Sprague is taking out a patrol, and he would like you to accompany him."

  He dressed in the dark, gathered his equipment, and hurried to the corrals, where his horse was already saddled. He checked his gear. All around him in the dark, men were mounting their horses. Suddenly he felt someone close beside him. It was the Delaware, Jason Stick-Walker. "We go again," he said. "They say we show them the country, you and me."

  The patrol numbered twelve soldiers, Lieutenant Sprague, Corporal Williams, the Delaware, and himself. Sprague was an officer who had come in with Sykes's detachment, a man of forty or so, bearded, tough, and capable. They lined out in a column of twos, Callaghen riding beside Sprague.

  "We are to scout the Vegas Springs trail for ten miles," Sprague said, "then swing southeast and join the Government Road from Fort Mohave."

  Day came, and it was hot and still. Shadows were at the mouths of the canyons, retreating from the sun as it rose higher.

  They saw no tracks. There seemed to have been no movement along the trail in days; bu
t the Mohaves did not use the trail at any time, and other Indians used it seldom. They scouted right and left, looking for sign, but found nothing, Callaghen had not expected they would.

  "We are not looking for Indians," Sprague said. "I want to start breaking my men in for desert work, and to get the lay of the land myself."

  Near the trail they came on the ruins of several burned-out wagons. "That happened several years ago," said Callaghen, "when Indians ambushed a caravan of freight wagons. The freighters were game, and made a fight of it. The Indians ran off a few horses, and disappeared into the hills."

  "Any casualties?"

  "Three wounded men; half a dozen wagons were looted and burned, about twenty head of stock were lost. No one knows whether the Mohaves lost anybody or not."

  "Will the Indians attack us?"

  "No. Not unless there were five or six hundred of them, and this desert will hardly support so many. They'll watch us, and when we camp they'll stampede our stock if they can. Otherwise we won't even see them."

  He paused. "We can always recruit more men, but they can not. There are just so many Indians in each tribe, and when they suffer casualties it is a severe loss. They won't risk it."

  When they stopped to rest their mounts, Callaghen stepped down. The Delaware came up beside him. "I think Indians are here," he said. "I think they want the stage."

  Callaghen nodded toward Sprague. "He has his orders, and they are quite definite."

  Within half an hour after turning southeast they cut an Indian trail four warriors on foot, traveling northeast at a good gait. Sprague knew something of tracking, and he looked at the tracks, glanced off to the northeast, and continued on. Six miles farther along, when they were looking for a camping spot, they passed the trail of half a dozen more warriors, all going northeast at a trot.

  Sprague squatted in the sand and chewed on a piece of stick. He squinted at the sun, and looked off in the direction they were going. "How old is that trail?" he asked.

  "Two, three hours."

  "And to the stage road... how far for them?"

  "They'll be there now, somewhere along that road. At least ten of them."

  Sprague got out his map and studied it. "The stage will have an escort... part of the way, at least," he said.

  Callaghen waited. Sprague was a good man, a solid man. He knew his duty, but there was nothing in him that would keep him from exceeding it if he felt called upon to do so. Callaghen mentally hefted his canteen, estimating the water. In the desert water made men vulnerable, and the Mohaves knew that. Sixteen men and their horses require a lot of water, and the first move of the Indians would be to deny water to their enemies.

  The enlisted men of Sprague's command were armed with the Spencer.56-.50 carbine with a seven-shot magazine. Each man also carried a Blakeslee cartridge case, a wooden container covered with leather that carried ten tubes of cartridges, each one ready to be loaded through a hole in the butt plate. In addition, each man carried a Colt.44 six-shooter, worn on the right side, butt forward. Their sabers, weapons useful in the War Between the States and in European cavalry charges, but not effective against the American Indian, had been left in their quarters, to be worn on dress occasions. They were heavy, and they rattled too much; against the lances of the Indians they were generally useless.

  Callaghen wore his gun as regulations prescribed, but he carried another, as regulations did not prescribe, tucked behind his belt inside his blouse, easily available in case of need. He wanted a six-shooter where he could get it into action fast. Also, having come from another unit, he carried a Henry.44, sixteen-shot rifle. It fired a 216-grain bullet with a powder charge of 25 grains in a rim-fire cartridge.

  Heat waves shimmered across the desert, and in all that vast distance, aside from the thin column, nothing moved but a buzzard swinging in lazy circles, far above. Shortly after noon, in a canyon mouth that provided shade, Sprague halted and dismounted his men for a break. They scattered in the shade along the canyon wall, two men remaining with the horses.

  Sprague lit the stub of a cigar and squinted at the heat waves. "Damned hard to see through that," he commented, speaking around the cigar as he touched it with a match. "It distorts everything. Had much experience in the desert, Callaghen?"

  "Yes, sir. A good deal, sir."

  "Is it all like this?"

  "No, sir. There's some big dunes ahead, and a lot of cinder cones... old volcanic action."

  Sprague glanced at him. "I hear you've been an officer?"

  "Not in this army, sir."

  Sprague shrugged. "In my last command my first sergeant had been a Confederate colonel. Have you seen much action? I mean aside from out here?"

  "Yes, sir. Fourteen, fifteen years of it." He paused. "I'm getting out, and I'm leaving the service. My papers are overdue."

  Sprague dusted the ash from his cigar. "Better think it over."

  "At eighteen dollars a month? No, sir. I can do better driving stage, or mining. There's not much chance to get ahead, and a man is getting older all the time."

  "You're right about that. And there isn't any shortage of officers. The war provided plenty of them." He looked out over the desert. "A weird place, Sergeant."

  "South of here," Callaghen said, "in the Colorado desert, there's a story of a lost ship with a cargo of pearls. Much of that desert is below sea level, and a man can see the old shore line plainly. The story is that a Spanish ship came into the area when it was flooded, but the opening was closed by tidal bores up the Gulf of California, and the ship's crew could not find a way out. Another story is that that same area was the original home of the Aztecs, and that they migrated to Mexico."

  "Think there's anything to it?"

  "It's all guesswork, but old Spanish documents do tell strange stories. The Spaniards came first, after all, and they saw some things that time has erased, and of course the Indians had stories to tell.

  "The Relaciones,written by Father Zarate Salmeron, tells of a party of Spanish soldiers who came to a lonely place on the shores of the Gulf of California and found some Asiatics there. Awnings had been set up on the shore near their ships, and they were trading with the Indians. That was about 1538. They implied they had been trading there for years."

  Lieutenant Sprague stood up, and Callaghen did likewise. He said, "Deserts breed mystery, and especially such a place as this, which was not always desert."

  "You think not?"

  "Dig down, Captain, almost anywhere out there, and soon you will strike a layer of black soil decomposed vegetation. Once this was a green and lovely land, with patches of trees, perhaps even real forest. Our knowledge is like an iceberg: we know a little, but the vast amount we have yet to learn still remains hidden from us." He paused.

  "All right," Sprague said. "Mount them, Sergeant."

  They saw no Indians; there was no movement but the heat waves. They rode on, swinging farther away from the trail to Vegas Springs. Again they saw tracks... four Indians, these headed northwest.

  "What do you make of it?" Sprague asked the Delaware.

  "They know the stage comes. They will attack."

  Lieutenant Sprague drew up sharply, lifting a hand to halt the command. "You think so?"

  "Many Indians ride west by north," the Delaware said, "too many Indians. We see fourteen, fifteen... Maybe twice as many ride from elsewhere. I think they do not ride for nothing."

  "Callaghen, what's your opinion?"

  "I'd have to agree, sir. Whatever an Indian does is apt to be for a reason. We have found the tracks of three parties going northwest. The only thing in that direction is the trail to Vegas Springs to Las Vegas."

  Lieutenant Sprague considered the situation with no pleasure. His orders had been clear. He was to make a sweep through the desert, acquainting himself with the country, giving the Mohaves a show of force, and scouting to see if there was any activity. At the same time their basic mission was to protect travelers on the Government Road, whether to Fort Mohave a
nd the Colorado, or to Vegas Springs.

  They had sighted the sign of what they believed to be fourteen or fifteen Indians. Not a large number, certainly. But their number was not a consideration, for on the stage there would probably be not more than three or four men and perhaps some women. And if the Delaware and Sergeant Callaghen were correct, other Indians might also be moving to the attack.

  Sprague calculated the time the stage would take to arrive at a point where the Indians, following their present line of march, might attack. He was not eager for battle, but he was not unwilling to face it if necessary. Sprague was a soldier who believed in accomplishing the mission he set out upon; and if he could, by presenting his force in the vicinity, thus avoid a battle or prevent an attack on the stage, he would be as well pleased.

  "Where would you guess they would attempt an attack?" he asked.

  Callaghen glanced at the Delaware. "Bitter Springs?"

  "I think Bitter Springs. The stage will stop there for water. It is not very good water, but it is water, and the horses will need it."

  "How far is it?"

  "Possibly twenty-five miles closer to twenty, I think."

  After another brief rest the column turned north.

  The Mohave is high desert, 2,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level, except in the 550 square miles or so of Death Valley, where at one point it falls to 282 feet below sea level. In summer the temperature can reach 134 degrees or more; in hollows, or in the bottom of washes or canyons, it can run as much as 50 degrees higher.

  Winter is a different story. Wind sweeps the desert day in and day out; it is often bitterly cold, and there is even snowfall. The snow rarely lasts long, but winter in the Mohave can be brutal punishment.

  Vegetation is scattered, but it is of considerable variety; the most usual kinds are the Joshua tree, grease-wood, and a variety of cactus. All forms of life in the desert have worked out their own patterns of survival, and some of these are fascinating. Greasewood has a way of poisoning any other plant roots that attempt to encroach on its territory; viewed from the air a desert where greasewood grows may give the impression of an orchard, for the greasewood seems to be spaced in regular patterns.