Jack waited.
"Sloat—he told me to take the women and the kids and hide 'em in the reeds. The last I seen of him, he was in the middle of the fracas, swinging an empty gun. Then—"
Mrs. Sprankle put a comforting arm around her husband. "There now, Ben!"
"Miss Larkin," Jack said. "Did she—did she—"
Sprankle took a deep shuddering breath. "I guess they hit your diggings the same time they did our'n. They was all up and down the river. I heard screams from your place, but then it hushed up. Miss Phoebe ain't no place around. We searched both sides of the river but all we come up with was this." Fumbling in his pocket, he brought out the tiny derringer and handed it to Jack. Both barrels had been fired.
"I wanted to go after her," Sprankle said, "but the cavalry said no, said they'd take care of everything."
They stood silent together in a community of grief. Finally Sprankle said, "I guess the only one that ain't suffered from this was old Uncle Roscoe. He left here early in the morning day before yesterday. Said he was going on a little practice run to get himself in shape for a spell of prospecting in the Mazatzals. Went up that way—" He gestured toward the snow-covered peaks. "I hope them devils didn't run on him too. I dunno."
With difficulty Jack cleared his throat. "What about Charlie's family?"
Sprankle shrugged. "They must have had some kind of a pree-monition. Skedaddled—at least I didn't see no sign of them during the fighting, and they ain't around now."
"Maybe they were the wisest—to leave this place, I mean. Run away."
"They can't drive me out!" Sprankle bristled. "This is my home, home for Edie and the kids! We ain't going to leave our home!"
George Dunaway slouched from the tent, where a lantern burned in the dusk, and an officer with gold leaves pored over a map. "It's you," he said. "Drumm."
"That's right."
"I thought you were on your way back to England—Hampshire, wasn't that it?"
"I got the word at Bear Spring," Jack said. "Corporal Bagley was kind enough to share a telegraph message about a raid along the Agua Fria. He said Phoebe was apparently kidnapped by Agustín."
"Seems to be the case." Dunaway pulled aside the tent flap and introduced Jack to Major Trimble. The major, a small trim man and obviously a West Pointer, shook hands.
"It must have been a raid in force," Jack said. "All the way down from Bear Spring I saw their mirrors, signaling."
Dunaway grunted. "Not their mirrors—ours." He pulled a tripod-mounted instrument from the rear of the tent. "New Army heliograph."
Proudly Major Trimble showed Jack the polished mirror, the shutter that was depressed to send telegraph-code messages of dots and dashes of reflected sunlight. "We've needed something like this for a long time!" he enthused. "The red bastards always seem to know where our forces are, where we're headed for, when we arrive. They're smart, but now we've got a tool to outsmart them, beat them at their own game! Now we can communicate over a range of fifty miles on a clear sunny day, concentrate our forces in a few hours to wipe them out!" He smashed a fist on the desk. "Obliterate them, destroy them!" His eyes shone.
"What are you going to do about Miss Larkin?" Jack asked.
"When they come down, as they eventually will have to do—"
"When they come down? Do you mean you're just going to wait for them?"
Major Trimble stiffened. George Dunaway cleared this throat, but the major silenced him with a curt wave of the hand.
"Mr. Drumm, we're doing all we can! We have an effective battle plan mapped out, and it does certainly not include sending U.S. troops helterskelter up into the Mazatzals. That is exactly what Agustín would like—a chance to cut us up piecemeal. No, sir, we are deployed along the Agua Fria in an extensive skirmish line and there is no way out for the rascals but to come down and try to fight their way through our lines. That is when we will break them for once and for all!"
"But how long will that be?"
Major Trimble smiled a small savage smile. "When the snow up there starts getting deep, and the children are crying from cold and hunger. That is when they will come down, and we will be waiting for them with our new battery of Gatling guns."
Hopelessly Jack Drumm looked at Dunaway. Dunaway looked back, discouragement in his eyes.
"I told the major," Dunaway muttered, "I was willing to take a dozen men—including Jim Bagley, if I could get him back here from Bear Spring—and go up after her!"
Major Trimble shook his head. "I'm not going to have any dead heroes! We've already lost over a dozen men in this campaign, and General Crook himself is watching our operations with a keen eye! No, gentlemen—no heroics—just good sound tactical planning and organization."
Outside the tent, Jack and George Dunaway stood together in their discouragement.
"God damned little bastard!" George said through set teeth. "Threatened to court-martial me if I went anywhere without orders!"
Around them were pitched the shelter halves of B Company, together with a company of recently arrived infantry. Campfires glowed in the dusk, coffee boiled, Jack caught a whiff of frying bacon and remembered his hunger. Someone sang a song called "Laura Lee" in a mournful baritone, and the setting sun glinted for a moment on the polished barrels of the new Gatlings the infantry had brought.
"When the snow starts getting deep!" Jack blurted. "How long will that be?"
"Two, three weeks anyway," George said, kicking at the dust. "That little tin soldier won't move until February at the earliest."
Together they sat on a bench partly consumed by the flames.
"Do—do you think there's any possibility she's still alive?" Jack asked, his voice trembling.
Dunaway shrugged. "Who the hell knows? Sprankle and the rest can't tell us anything—they were too busy saving their own butts! But from what I know of old Agustín, he's got her up in his camp in the Mazatzals." Taking a metal flask from his pocket, he drank, then handed it to Jack Drumm. "Bourbon. Good bourbon. None of that Old Popskull they sell at the Lucky Lady."
Jack shook his head. "I didn't think you were supposed to drink when you were on duty."
Dunaway snorted. "If I didn't drink sometimes I'd go crazy!"
"Major Trimble—"
"Screw Trimble!" Dunaway wiped his mouth, put the flask back in his pocket. "Yes, Phoebe's up there all right, and it's my guess she's alive. You know, up in the Dakotas once we were having a little dustup with some Oglalas we had cornered in a canyon. One of them stood up on a rock and pulled down his pants to show us his ass. That was their way of showing off. Kidnapping Phoebe—stealing a white woman right under our noses—that's probably Agustín's way of doing the same thing."
Behind them, boots crunched in the dust and ashes of the ruined ranch. George Dunaway stared moodily ahead, not caring if it was Major Trimble himself. Jack turned.
"Gentlemen," Alonzo Meech said. "Mr. Drumm!" Taking off his broad-brimmed hat, he sat amicably beside them on the charred bench.
"I guess," he said, "we're probably all three looking for the same female person."
Chapter Eleven
The sergeant major came to summon Dunaway to the command post.
"What does Trimble want now?" George asked morosely.
The sergeant grinned. "I dunno, sir. But he was kind of snotty!"
Dunaway spat into the dust. "That's what they teach them at that mechanic's school on the Hudson—to be snotty with inferiors. It's part of the science of command."
"Are you coming, sir?"
"I'm coming." Dunaway turned to Jack Drumm.
"I guess it's pretty farfetched, but if—if you—"
He broke off.
"If I what?" Jack asked.
"Forget it." Dunaway shrugged. "It was just a wild hare of a thought." He got up and strode toward Major Trimble's lamplit tent. As he left he called to the sergeant major. "Maloy, see Mr. Drumm gets some beans and bacon and coffee, will you? He's likely hungry after that long ride."
<
br /> Ravenous, Jack spooned beans into his mouth, chewed the bacon, burned his mouth with hot coffee full of grounds. Alonzo Meech sat beside him, watching. At last, uncomfortable under scrutiny, Jack laid down the spoon and looked at the detective. "What's wrong?"
Meech reached in a pocket and brought out a silk kerchief. It was the China silk, all vivid greens and blues, that Phoebe Larkin wore that first day Jack Drumm saw her step off the Prescott coach. In the still desert air he imagined—or knew—a faint perfume.
"I figured all along," Meech said, "someone was helping them two. Otherwise they couldn't have got away so slick. In Phoenix I almost had the cuffs on 'em. In Prescott I run 'em down to Mex Town, and they got away again. By asking around and handing out greenbacks, I was told they'd been smuggled back to what you call Rancho Terco here. And when I get here, flogging that damned mare all the way—she bit me twict—I find Miss Phoebe Buckner took by the Apaches."
"Phoebe Larkin" Jack muttered, spooning up the last of the beans.
"Buckner."
"That old man treated her cruelly. From what Phoebe told me I doubt he could even consummate the marriage. There are certainly grounds for a divorce, possibly even an annulment."
Meech folded the kerchief; the perfume, unmistakable, laced the evening air.
"I don't intend to quibble, Mr. Drumm. All I got to say is that you obstructed justice, aiding and abetting them two miscreants the way you did." He looked keenly at Jack. "Where's Mrs. Glore? I got a warrant for her too."
How much did Meech know? Not a great deal, Jack decided; Alonzo Meech was not the world's shrewdest detective, as he himself admitted. Meech did deserve credit, however, for persistence.
"Mrs. Glore," he said, "also is beyond your reach."
"Well—" The detective shrugged. "It was my mistake, I guess. I never thought you'd cross me the way you did. I took you for an honest law-abiding English gentleman, and that was a mistake."
Jack looked around at the campfires sprinkling the night. Most of the soldiers were stretched out in slumber, some only in underdrawers. By morning it would be near freezing, and they would welcome blankets. Somewhere a trooper sang softly against a muted plinking of banjo. A crescent moon crept over the ragged outline of the Mazatzals.
"I guess," he admitted, "it wasn't the first time a beautiful woman addled a man's judgment."
"I'll give you that," the detective sighed. He handed the kerchief to Jack Drumm. "You might as well take this thing. I know you was in love with her—it stuck out all over you, like warts. I ain't exactly a sentimental man, but maybe—well, since you ain't never going to see her again, it could be a keepsake."
Jack was moved; there was a lump in his throat. Gently he took the kerchief, touched the glossy silk. Perhaps, at one time, Phoebe Larkin had tied it about her waist. He recalled the ballad, the one called "The Girdle," that he had sung to himself the day he drove into Prescott for supplies:
A narrow compass, and yet there dwelt All that's good and all that's fair. Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round.
"Eh?" he asked suddenly.
Meech peered at him in the gloom. "You ain't listening to me, Mr. Drumm!"
"I'm sorry! I was thinking about something else."
"I said," Meech repeated, "it don't make no difference now."
"What doesn't make any difference?"
"Her," Meech said. "Miss Larkin, whatever you want to call her. She's probably dead. In any case, I'm told I got to give up the hunt." He took off his hat, ran a hand through thin gray locks. "First customer I ever lost! Oh, some took me a little time! Howsomever, I always caught up with 'em. But the home office finally called me off. I'm person non grotto—spent too much money, too much time, got no results. The Buckner family cut off the money—said they didn't want to spend all the old man's legacy hunting down the females that robbed and shot him."
"Legacy?"
Meech nodded, put his hat back on. "Phineas Buckner died two weeks ago. Oh, his passing didn't have nothing to do with Phoebe or Mrs. Glore! The old bastard fell down a stairway and broke his neck. So it's kind of 'come see come saw.' That's French for it don't make no never mind now anyway!"
Phoebe and Mrs. Glore free from pursuit, from arraignment, from conviction! It was ironic! After all these months of playing hare and hounds, Beulah was safe in Hampshire, or soon would be, and Phoebe—
"I'm going back to Philadelphia," Meech concluded. He looked around, sniffed the night air, cast a speculative eye on the moon.
"You know, this Arizona Territory ain't a bad place! Someday, when they put me out to pasture, I might just take my savings and buy me a little shack in Tucson or Yuma. In Philadelphia the old bones aches during the winter, but out here I feel like I was forty again!"
"I thank you," Jack murmured, "for giving me her kerchief."
Meech rose, flapped his coattails. "Soon's my butt heals, I'll sell that ugly old mare to a glue factory and buy me a ticket home on the A. and P. I don't guess I'll be up to sitting for a week on the cars just yet." He shook hands with Jack Drumm. "You give me a lot of trouble, Mr. Drumm, but can we part friends?"
"We can," Jack said.
The sergeant major brought him a blanket. "Lieutenant Dunaway said you'd need this, Mr. Drumm."
Wrapping himself in the coarse wool, Jack lay down next to the wall of the ruined adobe. The moon rose higher. Slanting shafts of yellow light shone through the blackened roof beams. He lay quietly for a long time, silk kerchief wadded in his hand. After a while he slept. He dreamed, inevitably, of Phoebe—of poor lost Phoebe, poor ravished Phoebe, poor—dead Phoebe Larkin.
At dawn he awoke, disturbed by a returning cavalry patrol. George Dunaway, wrapped in a blanket beside him, stirred sleepily and called to the fresh-faced young lieutenant. "Find anything, Lucius?"
Lucius reined up and looked at them. "Didn't expect to," he grumbled. "Nothing but a lot of hoof tracks where they ran all those horses up into the mountains."
Propped on an elbow, Jack watched the young lieutenant clamber wearily from his mount and go into the tent to report.
"The Apaches eat horses, I know that," he observed. "With all that horsemeat, they may be a long time coming down."
"I don't know," Dunaway said. He sat up, wrapping his arms around his knees, and watched the dawn flush over the Mazatzals. "Maybe they're getting second thoughts about horses. They're poor horsemen—a Sioux would laugh himself silly seeing an Apache trying to get on a horse—but don't ever underestimate Agustín's smarts. I wouldn't put it past him to be planning some kind of mounted attack along the river. An Apache can go on foot all day, that's true, but it takes a lot of time. With Agustín's people on horses, good horses, the Apache problem in the Territory can balloon into something that'll take the whole damned Army of the Potomac to settle!"
Eating from a tin mess kit, Jack stared down the deserted wagon road. The news of heavy raids along the Agua Fria had once again paralyzed commerce between Phoenix and Prescott. Agustín was still in the Mazatzals, watching the road from the lofty distance. When the snow up there starts getting deep! Remembrance of Trimble's smug words stung him. He flung the uneaten food away; it was Army food, exactly as George Dunaway once described it—sour bacon and rusty beans.
"Mr. Drumm!"
Startled, he turned. Uncle Roscoe beamed at him, whiskered face split in a grin. He pumped Jack Drumm's hand.
"They told me you come back! Lord, ain't I glad to see you! Sad circumstances, I guess—the young lady that was visiting you was took off by the Apaches, I hear—but it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good, or however they say it."
"Any luck with the Gypsy Dancer Mine?" Jack asked.
The old man turned his burro loose to graze and squatted beside Jack in the shade of a smoke tree.
"I got her narrowed down," he confided. He pointed to the wrinkled slopes of the mountains. "See them twin peaks up there—kind of lookin' like a woman's tits? The Gypsy Dancer la
ys right between 'em, like a pendant around a female's neck. This time I didn't really go out for a long stay—just had me a few biscuits and a canteen of water—but when I go back up there—"
Something hit Jack Drumm hard.
"Listen," he said. He gripped the old man's skinny forearm. "Listen to me! How would you like to go up there right now?"
Uncle Roscoe's watery blue eyes blinked. He pulled away, saying plaintively, "God damn it, you're busting my arm bone!"
"I'm sorry," Jack apologized. "I didn't mean to hurt you! But I want to make you a business proposition. You know the Mazatzals better than anyone, even Major Trimble and his cavalry."
Uncle Roscoe bit off a chunk of tobacco. "When them soldiers was running around in didies," he confided, "I was climbing those mountains. Why, didn't I never tell you? Me and Agustín was blood brothers! Onct I had me an Apache wife! It was back in—"
"Never mind!" Jack said. "Not now, anyway! Do you think you could find Agustín's camp for me?"
Uncle Roscoe's jaws worked steadily.
"I'll give you five hundred dollars cash if you'll guide me into the Mazatzals and put me in the way of finding Agustín!"
The old man shook his head. "You better wrap cold cloths around your head! I think you got sunstroke!"
"Never mind that! Will you do it?"
"The mountaintop is swarming with Apaches! They'll cut out your gizzard and pass it around for horsy-doovers!"
"Are you afraid?"
Uncle Roscoe swore, kicked the dust. "Hell no—I ain't afraid! Them's my blood-brothers, and I don't take kindly to the way they been treated by the gov'mint! But Agustín ain't going to put no welcome mat out for you!" He peered keenly at Jack Drumm. "It's that female, ain't it—that red-haired Miss Larkin? I never seen her—she left Rancho Terco before you took me in—but I guess she was a looker!"
"That's neither here nor there," Jack said. "All I'm asking is whether you'll guide me up there!"
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