Rope Burn

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  At a curt nod from Olsen, one of the troopers brought his horse alongside the wagon and slammed the barrel of his rifle down on Chance’s shoulder. Chance cried out in pain and slumped back down on the bench seat built along that side of the wagon.

  “What was that man trying to say?” the major asked.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, sir,” Olsen answered without missing a beat. “You know men like that will say or do anything to get out of the proper punishment that’s coming to them.”

  “A firing squad, you mean? When we were marching through Georgia, you know, back during the war, any man who tried to desert was given a swift court-martial and executed.” The major’s pale, bushy eyebrows drew down in a glowering frown. “Sometimes, in the interest of expediency and because of battlefield conditions, the court-martial and the, ah, sentence were carried out concurrently.”

  “So I’ve heard, Major, and entirely proper under the circumstances, in my opinion. But you told me when you gave me my orders and sent me after these men that they weren’t to be killed unless it was unavoidable, as it was in the case of Private Bleeker.”

  “I did?” The major sounded puzzled, even maybe a little confused.

  “Yes, sir. These men are going to be sentenced to the work detail.”

  That answer seemed to clear up the major’s confusion. He nodded and said, “Ah, yes, the work detail. Of course. We’re engaged in a very important mission here, Lieutenant, as you well know. Nothing must jeopardize it.”

  “I’m sure nothing will, sir, as long as you’re in command.”

  In the wagon, Chance leaned closer to Ace and whispered through teeth still clenched against the pain in his shoulder, “That major’s not right in the head.”

  “I think you may be right,” Ace said. “How’s your shoulder?”

  “Not broken, I can tell that much. But when that trooper walloped me, my whole arm went numb. It’s not back to normal yet, but I think it will be.”

  Ace nodded but didn’t say anything else, because at that moment, the major gave the order for the prisoners to climb out of the wagon and line up.

  They did so, under the watchful eyes of the soldiers. Chance’s arm and shoulder were still giving him trouble, so Ace had to help him from the wagon to the ground. Chance’s independent streak meant that he didn’t like that, but he didn’t want to fall on his face, either.

  Once the nine men were lined up, the major clasped his hands together behind his back and stalked up and down in front of them as he spoke.

  “There is no greater crime in this man’s army than desertion,” he proclaimed. “To desert means that you are abandoning your fellow soldiers, the men who need you the most, the men who would never abandon you if your positions were reversed. Because desertion is a perverse abomination and a rejection of the very concepts of duty and honor, it is only right and just that a man who commits such a crime shall receive the most stringent punishment.” The major flung out an arm and pointed at the adobe wall around the outside of the compound. “Under other circumstances, I would have you men against that wall, facing a firing squad!”

  The officer’s tone and the self-righteous anger turning his beefy face an even darker shade of red reminded Ace of some hellfire-and-brimstone preachers he had seen and listened to in the past. This major was every bit as fervent as they had been.

  “But because we are engaged in a vital endeavor that will require the full effort of each and every one of us assigned to this post, you men will be spared that punishment. Instead, you will be sentenced to . . .”

  The major looked at Olsen, who said, “I believe one year would be appropriate, Major.”

  “Very well.” The major cleared his throat. “You men are hereby sentenced to one year on work detail. When not working, you will be confined to the guardhouse. That is all.”

  A couple of the prisoners groaned quietly in dismay. The major ignored the sounds.

  Instead he looked again at Olsen, as if he needed the lieutenant’s confirmation. Olsen nodded.

  Satisfied, the major said, “Carry on, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” Olsen gave him another salute, which the major returned, then the senior officer turned smartly and strode toward the building he had come out of earlier.

  “Ace, look,” Chance breathed. “At the window in that cottage beside the headquarters building.”

  Ace wasn’t sure an adobe house like that ought to be called a cottage, but he knew what his brother meant. He looked quickly at the window Chance had mentioned and caught just a glimpse of a face there before the curtain inside the window dropped back into place.

  “Was that a girl looking out at us?”

  “It was,” Chance said. “And a good-looking one, too, from what I could tell.”

  Even under these perilous circumstances, Ace wasn’t surprised. If there was a pretty girl within a hundred miles, Chance Jensen would find her. It seemed to be a law of nature. And even with the danger hanging over their heads, he would notice her, too.

  “The major’s daughter, you reckon?” Chance asked.

  “Could be. I spotted a gravestone out there in that cemetery with a woman’s name on it. More than likely, she was the major’s wife, so the gal you saw must be their daughter.”

  Chance nodded and was about to say something else, but he didn’t get the opportunity. Instead, Lieutenant Olsen undid the flap on his holster, pulled out the army revolver, and ordered the prisoners, “All right, you men! Over to the guardhouse, now! March!”

  The guardhouse was a squat adobe building with no windows except for high, slotted openings too narrow for a human being to get through. As the prisoners headed toward it, Chance said, “They’re going to lock us up in there with MacDonald and the others. That’s not going to be good, Ace. What happened to telling the commanding officer what’s really going on?”

  “You saw the major,” Ace said. “Olsen’s got him under his thumb. I don’t think he would have believed a thing we told him.”

  “Maybe we should have made a run for it, too,” Chance muttered.

  “If we had, we probably would have wound up like Private Bleeker.” Ace glanced toward the gates, which were closed now, blocking his view of the little cemetery. “And wound up in the same place he’s going, too . . .”

  CHAPTER TEN

  In addition to the nine new prisoners herded into the guardhouse at rifle point, a dozen men were already locked up there, all wearing gray trousers and shirts. The prison was just a single large room with a dirt floor and a couple of buckets in one corner for human waste. The stiflingly hot air took Ace’s breath away, and the foul stench made him gag and wish he didn’t have to breathe. The narrow windows let in very little fresh air or light.

  When the heavy wooden door closed behind the newcomers and the guards dropped the bar across it, the sound had an ominous finality, even though Ace knew that eventually they would be let out again. They couldn’t work while they were locked up in here, after all.

  The prisoners already in the guardhouse sat with their backs propped against the thick adobe walls. One of them got up and sauntered toward the newcomers. He was short, stocky, and swarthy, with thick black hair and a pugnacious jaw that he thrust out as he said, “I didn’t expect to see you back here, MacDonald. I heard the guards talking about how you and your cronies had deserted. What did you do to get caught, stop somewhere and get drunk? That seems like something you’d be stupid enough to do.”

  “Get away from me, Costello,” MacDonald snapped. “It’s bad enough I have to be locked up in here and smell your stink. I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “Well, that’s just too bad,” the prisoner called Costello said with a sneer, “because I heard what Sughrue told you. We’re all gonna be prisoners together for a long time.”

  One of the other men muttered, “We’ll all die in here, or up in those blasted hills.”

  “Yeah,” another prisoner put in. “With our brains roasting over
some Apache torture fire, more than likely.”

  Costello turned his head and said, “Shut up, Nolan. You, too, Howell. Talk like that doesn’t help anything.”

  Ace could tell that Costello was a leader of sorts here in the guardhouse. The stocky man turned toward him and Chance and asked, “Who in blazes are you two?”

  “Finally,” Chance said, “somebody willing to listen.”

  “Yeah,” MacDonald said. “Somebody who can’t do you a bit of good.”

  “I’m Chance Jensen,” Chance went on, ignoring the sergeant. “This is my brother Ace. We’re civilians. We were arrested in Packsaddle and sentenced to hang.”

  “Hang for what?” Costello wanted to know.

  Ace said, “That’s a long story, and it doesn’t really matter right now. The important thing is that we’re innocent, but that didn’t stop us from being railroaded. Then Lieutenant Olsen showed up with his detail and took us away from the sheriff. He brought us back in place of two deserters who actually got away and then told the major we were those men instead of who we really are.”

  “And Sughrue believed him, I’ll bet,” Costello said, nodding slowly.

  “That’s right, he did.”

  “That’s because Major Flint Sughrue is loco, and Olsen’s taken advantage of that.”

  “But if he’s not right in the head,” Chance said, “why is he still in command here?”

  “He’s not, not really. Olsen’s calling the shots. Sughrue’s just a figurehead. He has been ever since his mind started slipping, not long after his wife passed away from a fever. As soon as he saw his chance, Olsen wormed his way into the major’s brain. He convinced him that I was betraying him and intended to relieve him of command.”

  Chance said, “Wait a minute. You’re an officer, too?”

  “I was a lieutenant, like Olsen. Second in command here at Fort Gila, actually. But Olsen persuaded the major to have me arrested and thrown in here, and then they held a court-martial that was nothing more than a kangaroo court and busted me back down to private, as well as sentencing me to a year at hard labor on the work detail.”

  Ace said, “We know all about kangaroo courts. We were the victims of one in Packsaddle.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that, kid. But we’ve got our own problems here . . . like staying alive.”

  “What is this so-called work detail doing, anyway?”

  Costello looked at MacDonald. “You didn’t tell them anything about what’s going on here or what they’ve gotten themselves into, did you?”

  “Why should I?” MacDonald answered in a surly voice. “It’s because of them we got caught!”

  “That’s a lie,” Chance responded instantly.

  Costello held up a hand and said wearily, “You can tell me all about it later, if you want to. But to answer your . . . brother, was it? . . . To answer his question, we’re building a road.” The former lieutenant chuckled, but there was no real humor in the sound. “A road to hell, I reckon you might call it.”

  * * *

  “Like I said, it started a little over a year ago when the major’s wife died,” Costello said when they had all sat down next to the wall. Ace and Chance were beside him, while MacDonald and the other deserters had moved away as much as they could.

  MacDonald still cast murderous glares toward the Jensen brothers now and then. It was only a matter of time, Ace thought, before MacDonald tried to settle what he regarded as a score between them.

  “Actually, though, I suppose it started before that, when an old prospector stumbled across some gold in the mountains just west of here. The Prophets, they’re called. Don’t ask me why. They had the name long before the army had a post here.”

  “So there’s gold in the mountains,” Ace said. “That’s not the first time I’ve heard about gold being discovered here in Arizona Territory.”

  “Yeah, there have been several strikes. This was a small one, not enough to cause a real boom. The vein seems to begin and end on the same claim, but the thing is, it extends pretty deep. The man who owns that claim is going to get good and rich by the time it plays out.”

  “That old prospector, you mean,” Chance said.

  Costello shook his head. “No, that desert rat went down to Tucson, got drunk, and gambled the claim away to some slick Englishman. Then he got his throat cut in an alley later that same night. If you ask me, the Englishman might’ve had something to do with that, too.”

  “So now this Englishman owns the mine.”

  Costello nodded. “Eugene Howden-Smyth is the man’s name. Like I said, he’s slick. Which means he’s the perfect sort to team up with a sorry specimen like Frank Olsen.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ace said. “Olsen and this fella Howden-Smyth are partners? Are prisoners being forced to work in the mine?”

  “No, Howden-Smyth brought in his own men for that, and a pretty tough lot they are, too. The problem is that the terrain’s so rugged up there, the hardest job is getting the ore out. They have to pack it out on mules, and there’s only so much they can carry. The operation would go a lot faster and be a lot more lucrative if Howden-Smyth could use wagons to transport the gold . . . so, we’re building him a road.”

  “The army shouldn’t be used for something like that,” Ace protested.

  “That’s right. And that’s why Olsen’s a blasted crook. I don’t know all the details, of course, but I’m guessing that once Olsen saw what sort of state the major was in after his wife died and figured out that he could take over, he got in touch with Howden-Smyth and struck a deal to provide free labor to build the road. In return for a share of the mine’s profits, of course.”

  Chance said in obvious amazement, “Everybody in the fort knows about this?”

  “We didn’t at first,” Costello said. “But then more and more, Olsen started taking over, and more men wound up being thrown in here for the least little infraction of the regulations. Sometimes they were sentenced to the work detail when they hadn’t done anything wrong at all! I started asking questions, and then I suggested to Major Sughrue that he get in touch with the War Department. I even offered to take a telegram to the telegraph office in Packsaddle.” The former lieutenant shook his head. “I guess Olsen found out about it and decided that I had to be gotten out of the way. It was only a few hours later that he and some of his cronies came to arrest me.”

  “This is outrageous,” Ace said. “Surely not every soldier posted here was willing to go along with Olsen’s scheme.”

  “Yeah, and you can see what happened to those of us who weren’t.” Costello nodded to their fellow prisoners. “You might’ve noticed the cemetery just outside the fort, too. There are some pretty fresh graves in it.”

  Ace leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The situation was worse than he had ever dreamed it might be. Frank Olsen was more outlaw than soldier, and apparently he had most of the garrison at his command. Some of the troopers were bound to have figured out what was going on, but they were willing to cooperate in the hope that some of the payoff from the lieutenant’s scheme would find its way to them. Others probably knew what they were doing was wrong, but they were scared to buck Olsen—and evidently for very good reason, if what Costello had been saying was true.

  Ace lifted his head and opened his eyes. “Major Sughrue doesn’t have any idea what’s going on? Olsen’s completely fooled him?”

  “Sughrue knows we’re building a road, but Olsen has convinced him there’s a military reason for it and that the War Department has ordered us to carry out the task. He even faked some telegrams to make it look like that. And he’s the one responsible for sending all the major’s reports on the project to Washington, so for all Sughrue knows, the whole thing is legitimate. Those reports never make it any farther than the fireplace in Olsen’s quarters, of course.” Costello sighed. “It’s a shame things have come to this for the major. Flint Sughrue was a hero during the war. He served under General Sherman and had a distinguishe
d career. Somewhere along the way, though, he got crosswise with somebody and kept getting passed over for promotions. And then he was sent out here to take over this hellhole and never realized that he had the Devil himself in his command. If he had known what Olsen is really like, he might not have brought his wife and daughter with him.”

  “His daughter,” Chance repeated. “She’s the one I want to hear about.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Costello stared at Chance in apparent disbelief for several seconds, then let out a harsh bark of laughter.

  “All the trouble that you boys are in, and you’re interested in a girl?”

  “That’s my brother, Lieutenant,” Ace said with a wry, faint smile.

  “Like I told you, I’m not an officer anymore. Legal or not, I got busted down to private when they threw me in here.”

  “What’s her name?” Chance asked.

  “You’re determined, aren’t you? Her name is Evelyn. You sounded like you knew she was here, even before I mentioned her.”

  “We caught a glimpse of her looking out the window in the major’s house when we first got here,” Ace explained.

  “And from what I could tell, she’s really pretty,” Chance added.

  Costello nodded and said, “You’re right about that. Very likely the prettiest girl who’s ever set foot in this part of the territory. But that’s not going to do you any good. You’re a prisoner, and before you know it, you’ll be worn out and filthy and broken down like the rest of us. You won’t be thinking about Evelyn Sughrue anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t count on that.” Chance leaned forward. “But is there any chance she might help us? Does she know how Olsen is taking advantage of her father?”

  “I don’t see how she could help but know.”

  Ace said, “Does she want to stop him? Does she care what Olsen’s doing?”

  “Evelyn’s a good, decent girl,” Costello replied with a little heat in his voice. “Of course she cares. But she’s just one girl. What can she do against somebody like that?”