Desert Crossing

by Short, Luke;

  He decided, then, that in case they were attacked the thing to do was to order Juliana to protect herself inside one of the freight wagons. He would ask Harmon if some freight couldn’t be shifted to provide for this emergency. That, then, was settled.

  This quick decision was characteristic of Lieutenant Overman. He was five years out of West Point and had served all of them in Western posts—in Dakota Territory, in Texas, and at Fort Mohave. The son of a wealthy New Yorker, he considered himself the most unfortunate of men. His love affair with the Army had begun at the age of three, lasted through the Civil War, and would last as long as he lived, he knew. He had spurned Harvard for West Point, over the objections of his family. He had rejected all offers of his family to use influence to get him soft, safe jobs in Eastern posts or in Washington. Coming from the very lap of luxury, he made a point of living on his lieutenant’s pay. He was, in short, doing exactly what he wanted to do, with nobody’s help and with nobody’s advice.

  One bit of luck that had come his way was his promotion. It followed on the heels of the Army’s housecleaning of last year, when incompetent officers were weeded out to make way for men of promise who would build a better Army. All in all, Lieutenant Overman was a happy man—serious when he was practicing the profession of arms, and lighthearted when he was not.

  Juliana Frost, despite the fact that this was not the first trip she had made under military escort, couldn’t help but feel a quiet excitement this morning. This was the last leg of a journey that began in New York, traversed the Isthmus of Panama, to be resumed on another voyage on the open seas, and in its next-to-last stage saw her disembarkation from a schooner onto a river steamboat. It seemed to her that she had come halfway around the world so she could be again with her parents.

  It had been five years since she had seen them, years that saw her graduate from a girl’s school in New York and then teach there. They had been good years but lonely, and she had unaccountably missed the Army life which, because of her years in an Eastern school, she could only dimly remember. Now, just to listen to Army talk, to discuss men she had known once and forgotten, to share again in that friendly camaraderie peculiar to service families, was a pleasant thing. The past few days here, while miserably hot, had been enjoyable. Part of the enjoyment, she suspected, was because young Overman, starved for the companionship of women, had made her stay a gay one—he and John Thornton.

  She glanced obliquely at Thornton, who was in easy conversation with Lieutenant Overman riding beside the ambulance. She and Thornton had met in Panama while both were waiting passage on the Sprite. When they discovered they were both headed for Fort Whipple, pleasant friendship began and was still maturing. He was a city man and make no pretense of being otherwise, yet he was tolerant of the rough frontier ways and was amused by them.

  The lieutenant now dropped back to order flankers farther out as they entered broken and barren country.

  “Where are they going?” Thornton asked.

  “To watch for Indians,” Juliana said.

  “What if they find some?”

  Juliana laughed. “They’ll warn us in time so we’re prepared for them. Indians like to surprise you. They don’t like a set fight.”

  “And where did you learn all of this, Juliana?” Thornton asked, amusement in his voice.

  “A thousand hours of listening.”

  Now Thornton’s attention was diverted by the slowing of the ambulance. Neither Juliana nor Thornton had noticed they were entering a stretch of blow sand that made their sweating teams labor. The point troopers had crossed the long stretch of sand and reined up at its edge on the road ahead. When the ambulance crossed the blow sand, which sent up a stifling heat, wave after wave, Noonan raised a friendly hand to check them, and Thornton reined in.

  “Sir, I think you and the lady had better wait here for a while. The wagons will have to double-team this blow sand and I don’t think the lieutenant would like you to drive on alone.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. We’ll wait,” Thornton said.

  Noonan’s prediction proved right. The heavy loads on the wagons mired them almost hub-deep in the sand, and Dave, taking spans from the other wagons, hitched them to each wagon to pull the load through the sand. Juliana, turning in her seat, watched the first wagon through. Dave was standing on his saddle so as to reach as far as he could toward the lead team with his long whip. As the wagon cleared the sand and the laboring horses came to a halt, Dave stepped down to unhook the lead teams. When he passed them Juliana noted that his shirt was plastered to his back with perspiration. He was so engrossed in his job that he paid them no attention.

  “There’s something strange about that man, John,” she said. “You know he was a captain of cavalry before he left the service.”

  “I don’t think I’d trade an officer’s job for what he’s doing now.”

  “According to Lieutenant Overman, I don’t think he had any choice. With the sight of only one eye, the Army had to let him go.”

  Sergeant Noonan had dismounted now and was helping Dave unhitch the teams.

  “What happened to blind him?” Thornton asked.

  “Fighting the Sioux,” Dick Overman said.

  “Well, what’s strange about him, except he’s half blind?” Thornton asked drily.

  Juliana thought a moment. “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that a man with West Point training should settle for this?”

  Thornton smiled. “Come to think of it, it does seem strange. You’d think his education would qualify him to be an engineer or a lawyer. He should be in a profession.”

  “I feel sorry for him,” Juliana said.

  “I wouldn’t let him know you do,” Thornton said. “He strikes me as a man who isn’t looking for pity.”

  Now Dave, driving the extra teams back, passed them again, and again he did not look at them. Oddly, his concentration on the task at hand made Juliana feel useless and almost frivolous.

  Troopers Reardon and Adams had left the detail at the water hole after sundown. Their orders were simple. They were to travel north at night by moonlight, using Lieutenant Miller’s hand compass as a guide, and walk until they intercepted the stage road. When eventually they reached help, they were to report their compass reading so that the rescuers could locate the detail. Reardon could not read a compass nor be taught how to read one, so the task fell on young Trooper Adams.

  As darkness fell and moonlight replaced daylight, it seemed to Trooper Adams that he and Reardon were the only two men alive, and that they were traversing the face of the moon.

  After what they judged to be an hour, but was only half an hour, they rested. Reardon’s friends had polled together their tobacco so that his pocket bulged with plugs. Now he cut off a corner, lifted it to his mouth, tucked it in his jaw, then carefully licked the knife before putting it away.

  A lean man with a dark, ravaged face, Reardon had served in the Army seventeen of the forty years of his life, having re-enlisted three times under different names. Although he hated Army life and suffered its hardships grudgingly, he knew that he was doomed to remain in it until he died. There was a reason for his certain knowledge; he could not live outside the Army.

  Three times he had tried to leave it and each time he had failed, for Trooper Reardon had a love for drink that could not be appeased. Each time he had been separated from the Army with a little money, and each time he spent the money on a spree. Sick, sodden with whiskey, he was unable to find anything but the most menial work. Whatever he earned at these jobs went not for food and clothing, but for more whiskey. Eventually, barely able to drag himself to the nearest place of recruitment, he enlisted again.

  Reardon had found that with few interruptions, such as this detail, he could stay quietly drunk on an Army post. There was always the sutler’s store or the cheap saloons called “hog pens” off the post where whiskey could be bought. The Army clothed him and fed him and did not work him hard enough to bother him. The trick was to dr
ink just enough so as not to attract notice. A few times when he drank too much, he cheerfully served extra duty or time in the guardhouse, where his friends smuggled in whiskey. The Army, mercifully, was fairly tolerant of drinking by enlisted men, and it had its own control of sorts. This control consisted of paying its men so little that it was hard to afford the luxury of drink.

  Now Trooper Reardon placidly softened his chew of tobacco with the few teeth left him. He really had not minded drawing the next to shortest straw this morning. It meant that if he lived, he would be again close to whiskey far sooner than his companions. If he died, then his companions would die too. Besides, he had a secret.

  Reardon spat. “The lieutenant kept telling us to watch the country, watch the shape of it, so we’d recognize it on the trip back. You see any shape to this country, sonny?”

  “My name is Jack,” Trooper Adams said quietly.

  “All right, sonny, it’s Jack.”

  “No, I don’t see no shape to it,” Trooper Adams said.

  No seventeen-year-old has much of a history, and Trooper Adams had less than most. He was slight, barely the Army’s minimum height, and no amount of exposure to the desert sun could tan his narrow, sallow face. Left an orphan at three, he had no family of any sort. To this day he did not know who had placed him in the Ohio orphanage where he spent his first fourteen years. It had been a heartless place, and Trooper Adams’ small stature was probably due to the wretched and inadequate food of that institution.

  As far back as he could remember he had feared and disliked adults, and a good bit of his life had been dedicated to evading their orders, lying to them, stealing from them, and confusing them.

  When, at the age of fifteen, the orphanage dismissed him as of working age, there was no place for him to go. He knew no trade or occupation save that of a kitchen helper and truck gardener. His meager schooling had been careless and had been received half-heartedly by him. Joining the Army then was a natural solution, he reasoned. There he would be fed, housed, and paid. His genuine talent for avoiding work and his sharp instinct for survival would get him by.

  It had turned out just that way. His total lack of responsibility, his cunning dodging of work, his distrust of his superiors and even of his equals guaranteed that he would be disliked and never promoted. In two years the thought of desertion had never occurred to him, for in the world outside the Army, work was demanded of all if they were to eat.

  He had not been surprised when he had drawn the short stick. All his life he had been receiving some form of the short stick, so why shouldn’t it happen this time? It really didn’t matter to him, for he had a simple conviction, stemming from his youth and experience, that he would survive. This belief, coupled with his native shrewdness, his selfishness, and his tough young body actually made him an excellent, if unplanned, choice for this mission.

  Now Trooper Adams twisted one of the canteens around his belly, unscrewed the cap and took a drink of water. Reardon, observing him, reached back for one of his canteens, unscrewed the cap and took a healthy swig.

  Trooper Adams lifted his head and began to sniff. “What’s the funny smell?” he said.

  “Whiskey,” Reardon said calmly.

  Adams slowly capped his canteen by feel; he was watching Reardon almost with disbelief.

  “Where’d you get any whiskey?” he demanded.

  “Now, you’ve been with me for a week, sonny. Where do you think I got it?”

  “Brought it with you?”

  “Course I brought it with me. You never see an officer sniff a man’s canteen, do you?”

  “But what’ve you done for water?”

  “Another canteen, sonny. Haven’t you noticed a lot of the boys carry an extra?”

  Trooper Adams had no reply to this, but a feeling of uneasiness came to him. He had a premonition that this journey would require stamina and would push them to the limits of their endurance. He also knew that alcohol and the blasting desert daytime heat did not mix. He felt he should caution Reardon, but he did not want to antagonize the older trooper so early in their association.

  “You been drinking that stuff every day?” Adams asked.

  Reardon chuckled. “Oh, I’d take a nip when I was alone or on sentry duty. No use saving it now though.” He looked at Adams. “I don’t figure you’re the kind to report me.”

  “No,” Adams agreed.

  “Wouldn’t do you any good anyway. By the time we reach help, it’ll be gone.”

  “You ought to go easy on it, though,” Adams said.

  “I was living with this stuff before you were born, sonny. Just don’t try and teach your grandmother how to suck eggs.”

  “Sure,” Trooper Adams said meekly. Now he rose. “Well, the sooner we start off, the sooner we’ll get there.”

  “No denying it,” Reardon agreed. He got up, hitched up his belt, and together they marched off into the north.

  At noon next day, after a morning of blazing heat in which they had seen no living thing except an occasional high, curious vulture, the road dipped down into the barren Possos Valley to the well at Tyson. Here was blessed shade among the stunted cottonwoods and an opportunity for the train to water their teams and mounts. The troopers naturally clustered with the teamsters and away from their officer. Lieutenant Overman was helping John Thornton lay out a blanket for a picnic spread. The troopers began stolidly to eat their bacon and bread.

  Dave climbed up on a wheel of his wagon, reached in his grub box, and brought out the beef sandwiches with which he had stocked up in Ehrenburg. They were edible for only a day or so in this smothering heat, but they saved making a fire in a land that was hot enough already, and one in which a man had to carry his own fuel. Cooking would come later when he had run out of prepared provisions. He was headed for the group of teamsters and troopers when Lieutenant Overman called out, “Oh, Harmon, come join us, won’t you?”

  Dave halted, and hesitated almost too long. He did not really want to join them, and during his hesitation he wondered why this was. He supposed it was because there was a better than even chance he would be quizzed about his Army past, which he did not especially want to discuss. On the other hand, he did not wish to appear unnecessarily rude, so he veered to his right, saying, “Glad to.”

  When he approached and Juliana saw the sandwiches in his parcel, she said, “There’s more than enough here. Why don’t you save your food, Captain?”

  Here it comes, Dave thought. He removed his hat, sat down, and said pleasantly, “Not captain any more, Miss Frost. I might as well eat my food before it spoils.”

  “All ex-Army men are called by their rank, I always thought,” Juliana said.

  “I’d reckon that was a hangover from the war,” Dave said. “Nowadays there aren’t any misters except old men. All the rest are majors, captains, lieutenants, or sergeants.” He paused. “It’s a custom that takes the honor away from the rank, I think.”

  He began to eat while Juliana studied him with a faint curiosity. “I’d never thought of that,” she said slowly. “It does seem unfair to the field soldier to address him by the same title you use to a pot-bellied banker who got a Civil War commission by raising his own company.”

  “But what if the banker served his country honorably?” John Thornton put in. “Isn’t he entitled to be called by his rank?”

  “But now he’s a civilian,” Dave said. “He isn’t serving his country any more, but there are men who are. They are the ones entitled to be addressed by rank.”

  “I’ll go farther than that,” Lieutenant Overman said, and his pale eyes held a glint of humor. “Rank is for the military structure only. It’s only sensible use is to Army personnel, because it tells who’s in charge over whom. Outside of that, I can’t see any use for it, not even for cotillions. The higher your rank, the uglier girls you draw. It’s the second lieutenants who always have the prettiest girls.”

  Juliana laughed. “Just how would you like to be addressed, Lieutenan
t Overman?”

  “As Dick. It was good enough for my mother, and it should be good enough for all of you.”

  They all laughed quietly, except Thornton. Juliana turned to Dave. “Are you of Dick’s school, Mister Harmon?” At Dave’s nod of assent, she said, “Then it’s Dick, Dave, and John. That should make me Juliana to all of you.”

  “Miss Juliana,” Overman corrected her. “Women have to be addressed by rank so we men know who we’re free to kiss or to propose to.”

  Juliana chuckled, but there was a frown on Thornton’s face. Lieutenant Overman’s harmless whimsy and gallantry apparently did not amuse him, Dave noted.

  At that moment Sergeant Noonan approached the group, came to attention, and saluted. “Permission to relieve Carruthers, sir.”

  Lieutenant Overman looked up, slightly startled. “Why, Sergeant?”

  “I’ve eaten, sir. He’s still out on the flank.”

  “Permission granted,” Lieutenant Overman said. “Get somebody to relieve Malone, too. Leave your sabers and bring in theirs. They’re only a nuisance in this heat.”

  As Noonan went over to his horse, Overman said, “He looks like a good man. I wish he were in our troop.”

  “Isn’t he?” Juliana asked.

  “No, he’s at Whipple. Been on leave and is only traveling with us.”

  Dave looked off and studied Noonan as he mounted and rode out toward the bluff. “That’s a good horse, and not Army branded.”

  Lieutenant Overman nodded. “He explained that. It’s his own. Since he’s on leave and not on duty, I reckon that’s his own affair.”

  Dave only nodded, but as he watched Noonan ride out to relieve Carruthers, he wondered. A cavalry trooper’s pay, even a sergeant’s, was too meager to afford a horse as good as this one. Still, Dave remembered, a good gambler trooper who stayed sober could parlay a small stake into a sizable sum. When a trooper did, he usually deserted because he had the money to get him away from a locality where he could be apprehended. On the other hand, some good gamblers stuck with the Army for the simple reason that while paymasters on their rounds seldom visit Army posts, when they did they left a substantial sum with the troopers. If a good gambler got to the troopers before they had drunk up their back pay, he could come off a big winner. Since this sergeant was returning to his post and riding an excellent horse, the chances were he was one of the better and shrewder gamblers.