The Way Of The West

by Elmer Kelton

The ranchman’s tone was civil but not friendly. “Get down, Lieutenant, you and your men. I reckon you’re hungry. We ain’t got much, but what’s here, you’re welcome to it.”

  “That’s kind of you, sir,” said the lieutenant. “But first, we’ve got a wounded man here. We don’t have any medical supplies. We’d hoped maybe . . .”

  The old scout had taken two long steps toward the boy McGuffin. He saw the blood on the lad’s uniform and called without waiting for Overstreet to finish speaking.

  “Linda! Linda! Come out here. There’s a man needs help.”

  A girl stepped out into the patio and through the archway. Over-street blinked and stiffened in the saddle; words stuck in his throat. It was the girl from the Albuquerque hospital!

  Quickly she moved in beside the tanned scout who was her father. She looked at Sammy and said impatiently: “Don’t all you té-janos just sit there like a bundle of feed. Somebody help me get this boy inside.”

  Woodenly the lieutenant swung down from the saddle. Wheeler and another man lifted Sammy off his horse. The girl led them into the patio and through a big door to the left. Overstreet watched her, hardly conscious that his mouth was open, and that he held his hands stiffly in midair. Shaffer had to speak twice before the officer caught his words.

  “My daughter, Lieutenant.”

  Overstreet nodded and tried to force his startled mind onto something else. He let his gaze sweep over the buildings. “How many people are there here, sir?”

  “No Union troops, Lieutenant. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “How about your own people?”

  “A handful. My daughter and me. Half a dozen hands and three of their women. We just came back from up north to get the ranch fixed up. We brought a few cattle with us. The main herd won’t come till the grass is up good.” He shrugged his shoulders in the manner of one who has spent much of his life among the Mexican people. “So you see, Lieutenant, there’s not much here to plague your mind. I’ll get the cocinero to fix some beef for your men, and you can move on.”

  He led Overstreet into the bare patio and turned back just before stepping under the shady portales. He pointed his chin toward the trader Bowden, sitting his horse belligerently at the rear of the troop.

  “I don’t know why you have Bowden with you, Lieutenant. It’s none of my business. But there’s one thing I’ll ask of you. I don’t want that man to set foot under my roof.”

  Overstreet had to grin. Here was a man he was going to like, even though Shaffer was a Union supporter.

  “Bowden is our prisoner, Mister Shaffer. He tried to get us killed by Indians.”

  He was pleased by the grim look in Shaffer’s eyes that said the trader was getting what he deserved. “He ought to hang,” commented the ranchman. “He’s a Comanchero, and about as bad as the worst of them.”

  Again Overstreet looked at the closely gathered ranch buildings. “You’re a long way from help here, sir. How’ve you managed to keep your hair?”

  Shaffer turned and gazed out across the ragged spread of mountains and the valley that was beginning to show a cast of green as the spring sun had edged northward. His blue eyes were proud. “A man this far out can’t look to governments for much help, Lieutenant. He’s got to make his own treaties. But I’ve been living around Indians ever since I came West to trap beaver. That’s been thirty years ago. I’ve been making my own treaties and keeping them, even when armies weren’t able to.”

  Overstreet followed him through a thick, adobe doorway and into a parlor. It was a fair-sized room, about twenty feet square, with a big Navajo rug covering the dirt floor. Taking up most of one side of the room was a big, open fireplace upon which this morning’s coals still smoldered warmly. Overstreet ran his fingers over a solid, handmade table that must have come from Santa Fé. The other furniture was the same, crudely designed but strong and well-finished.

  Through another door he could hear voices. He stepped up to it and watched Linda Shatter and a middle-aged Mexican woman working over Sammy McGuffin, talking to each other in soft, quiet Spanish.

  Overstreet’s heart picked up as the girl’s dark eyes lifted to his briefly then dropped again to her task. The same black hair, the same slender, softly rounded form that had quickened his breath in Albuquerque and dwelt in his mind ever since. It was the same beautiful oval face, the skin smooth as fresh cream.

  The lieutenant fingered the rough brush of beard on his face and looked regretfully at the dust and grime on his frayed uniform. He wished the girl hadn’t had to see him this way.

  Presently she was finished. Freshly bandaged, Sammy McGuffin laid quietly, his eyes closed. Overstreet wondered whether he had fainted or gone to sleep. Whichever it might have been, it was merciful.

  Overstreet stood before the girl, hat crushed in his hand. “What do you think, miss?”

  She was washing her hands in a pottery bowl. “He’ll live, if you’ll let him rest a few days and get a chance to mend.”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid we can’t . . . not long. We’ve got to be moving south.”

  Her eyes met his. He knew how he looked and knew what she thought of him by the thinly veiled dislike he saw there. “If you don’t want to kill him,” she said, “you’ll have to leave him here.”

  He stared at her incredulously. “You’d let a Texas soldier stay here, and you’d doctor him?”

  “We’ll help any wounded man who needs attention. Even a Texan.”

  Overstreet wondered. But he knew from the look in her eyes that she meant it, and that her father backed her up. That made it harder to do what he had to do.

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am, miss. That’s why I hate this so much. We’ve got to search your place.”

  A thin line of anger momentarily crossed Shaffer’s wind-cracked lips. Then he nodded and said in the Mexican fashion: “My house is yours, Lieutenant.”

  Overstreet took a flashing glance at the girl. There was a flush of anger on her face, and her arms were folded tightly across her breasts.

  “Mister Shaffer,” said Overstreet, “please call all your people together outside there, in the patio.”

  Shafter stepped to the door and spoke in Spanish to the two Mexican hands. They separated and returned quickly with two other men and three women.

  “Two men are out on horseback,” said Shafter. “They’ll be back by noon.”

  Overstreet stepped in front of his men. “Now search every room of every building. You know what to look for. Bring along any guns you find. But don’t touch anything else. Do you hear me? Nothing else.”

  As the soldiers disappeared into the buildings, Overstreet turned to the angry girl. “I hope you’ll understand, Miss Shafter. In war we have to do a lot of things we hate. This is one of the things I hate most. It embarrasses me, and it humiliates you. But you’re on one side of the wall, and I’m on the other. We can’t take any chances.”

  His words did nothing to allay her resentment. So Overstreet tried to dismiss it from his mind. After all, she was a Yankee girl. But the regret stayed with him.

  By ones and twos the men straggled back. With them they brought perhaps a dozen guns of all makes and kinds. Anxiously Overstreet searched each face that approached him. But he knew without asking that the gun and ammunition cache had not been found.

  Finally all the men were back but one. The missing trooper was Hatchet. Overstreet heard a rattle in a room to his left. He remembered that he had seen Hatchet go into a door on the right.

  Fresh color washed into Linda Shaffer’s cheeks. “That’s my room he’s in,” she said sharply. “I’m telling you, Lieutenant, I will not have him prowling through my things.”

  She whirled around so fast that her skirt sailed a little and half wrapped itself around her legs as she quickly stepped forward and pushed through a door. The lieutenant heard her gasp, then shout angrily: “Put that down! It’s mine!” He heard something crash and heard her cry out in pain.

>   With two long strides Overstreet reached the room and shoved in. The slender girl was picking herself up from the floor and leaping again at Hatchet. Angry Spanish words were tumbling from her lips. She grabbed for a box Hatchet held behind him.

  He pushed her away strongly. “Get away from me, you wench, or I’ll really hurt you.”

  Overstreet barked at Hatchet in a voice sharp as a spur rowel.

  “Stand back, there, Hatchet. Whatever you’ve got in your hand, give it to that girl.”

  Hatchet whirled on the lieutenant. His wide mouth flared. “Maybe you can tell us what to do in the field, Overstreet, but this ain’t the field. What I’ve found, I’ll keep for myself.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Overstreet saw the lithe young woman reach into a slat bonnet that hung from the wall. She swung around with a gun in her hand. It was an old-fashioned horse pistol like Overstreet had used so many times as a boy. And who’d have thought to look in a bonnet hanging from a peg on the wall?

  “Now, you thieving tejano,” the girl snapped at Hatchet, “you put down that box.”

  Hatchet’s stubborn, bearded chin was low. “You ain’t got the nerve to shoot anybody. But I’d break your arm.” He turned toward her.

  “I told you to stand back, Hatchet,” Overstreet said again. “That’s an order.”

  He stepped toward Hatchet. The girl swung the pistol around to cover him, too. “You promised us, Lieutenant. I’d just as leave shoot you as any one of your sticky-fingered renegades.”

  Overstreet stopped. So did Hatchet. The lieutenant swallowed hard. One nervous twitch of her finger could kill either of them as completely as a Yankee cannonball. And fire in her dark eyes showed she would do it.

  She didn’t see Wheeler step up behind her. Like a bullwhip, his hand snaked out and jerked the pistol from her fingers. She whirled on him as if to beat against his big body with her little fists. Then she broke down and began to sob. Wheeler looked down on her in embarrassment and pity and looked as if he wanted to run.

  Overstreet snatched the box from Hatchet’s hand, put it on a table, and opened it. Inside was a string of pearl-white beads, a brooch that appeared to be of gold, and a couple of sparkling rings.

  “They were my mother’s,” the girl said.

  Overstreet handed her the box and put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her. But touching her set his blood to tingling, and he drew his hand away. “My apologies, miss. Whatever else may be wrong with us, we’re not thieves.”

  Outside, he let his anger spill in torrents. “What have I got to do To make you learn that we’re fighting Yankee soldiers, not civilians, Hatchet? Every settlement we’ve been through, you’ve tried to loot it. I almost wish you hadn’t lost your sergeant’s rating before you were sent to me. I’d like to have ripped those chevrons off your sleeve myself.” To Wheeler he said: “Hatchet’s under arrest. Disarm him. Find a good place that one man can guard and put him and Bowden in it.”

  Later Overstreet faced Shaffer and his daughter under the shady patio portals. “I wish I could repay you for the trouble we’ve caused you.”

  Linda Shaffer’s eyes still held a spark. “I wish you could just hurry up and leave.”

  The lieutenant flinched. “So do I. But first we’re going to get the Union munitions that you have hidden here.”

  Shaffer straightened and clasped his stiff arm with his good hand. The girl caught her breath quickly. Then the old scout dropped his hand and said: “Somebody’s lied to you, Lieutenant. We don’t know anything about any munitions.”

  Overstreet shook his head. “I don’t intend to get harsh now, after what you’ve done for us. But you know, and I know, that there are ten wagonloads of guns and ammunition hidden somewhere about the ranch. One way or another, we’re going to find them.”

  Shaffer folded his good arm across his chest. “Even if there were any munitions, Lieutenant, we wouldn’t tell you.”

  The lieutenant smiled. “If you did, sir, I wouldn’t respect you. But we’ll find them ourselves.”

  IV

  “Arsenal”

  He went back into the parlor and looked around. He knew his soldiers had searched every building. It appeared the cache must be somewhere out on the ranch, not in the buildings. He turned on his heel and felt the Indian rug sink into the dirt beneath his feet. A sudden hunch hit him. He stepped back, pulled up a corner, and rolled away the rug. He saw nothing but the dirt floor.

  Impatiently he shoved open a door in the thick adobe wall and went into the next room. He looked under two smaller rugs there. Nothing. But in the third he found what he sought. Half buried beneath the dirt was the knotted end of a rope. He pulled it up until the slack was gone, then began to tug on it. He could see a big block of dirt rise a little. He called for help.

  With big Tobe Wheeler and another trooper helping him, he lifted the trap door and set it back on its leather hinges. Even without looking into the musty tunnel, he knew he had found the cache. Carefully he lowered himself through the door, then dropped to the bottom. Wheeler came after him, while the other troopers waited above to help them get out.

  “An old getaway tunnel, I’d bet, sir,” Wheeler said. “Put there to give folks a chance to light out in case they had to. I’d bet a man a quart of good corn whisky that it comes up in the thicket we seen behind the house.”

  Exhilaration was in Overstreet like the warmth of Mexican wine. He stood there a moment, almost afraid to look. The dust tickled his nostrils, dust that had lain undisturbed for months, now stirred up again by troopers’ boots.

  “What I mean, sir,” Wheeler called enthusiastically from up ahead, “she’s full of powder, percussion caps, and the like. A regular little arsenal, she is.”

  Overstreet’s heart pounded as he worked through the gloom, surveying the huge cache. It was all there, rifle boxes that seemed never to have been opened—keg upon keg of powder—case after case of cartridges and percussion caps. What a battle could be fought with all that. The thought of it prickled Overstreet’s skin.

  As he stood there, memories came back to him, sobering memories of men he had known, men he had led. Many of them lay dead, way back yonder in an alien land, dead for a cause most of them probably had not even understood. Since Glorieta it had looked as if those deaths had been in vain. Now, maybe they hadn’t been.

  He knew that this, properly, should be a time for prayer. He wished once again for the faith that had meant so much to him as a boy, the simple but rock-firm faith of his father. But that faith was gone, faded behind the helpless agony of yellow fever, and the sickening glut of war-spilled blood.

  He did not bow his head, and he spoke to no one in particular. But standing there in the dusty gloom, he vowed that he would give his own life, if he had to, to insure that those deaths had not been for nothing.

  He set up guard posts at each end of the tunnel. Resignedly Shaffer watched. He kept his good arm folded across his chest, the fingers nervously tugging at the sleeve of the stiff arm. There was a thin play of anger along his face.

  “All right, Lieutenant, so you’ve found it. What can you do with it?”

  “We’ll take it with us, if we can. If we can’t, we’ll touch it off. One thing for certain, Mister Shaffer, it’ll never kill another Confederate soldier.”

  A half smile touched Shaffer’s age-nicked mouth. “You can’t pack it out of here on your backs.”

  Overstreet leaned his angular frame against an adobe wall. “It won’t hurt to tell you now, sir. A train of ten Yankee wagons is due here’most any time, to get all of this. They’ll get it all right, but they’ll be working for Jeff Davis.”

  Shaffer dropped his arm. Color splotched his face, and his blue eyes hardened.

  Linda Shaffer stepped forward, her pink lips tightened. “They won’t give up the wagons easy, Lieutenant. You know that. Men on both sides will die, fighting for them. Then, if you win, you’ll take the munitions and use them to kill more soldiers. Don’t you think ther
e’s been enough killing already?”

  Overstreet shoved away from the wall and stood straight again. He looked levelly into her pleading dark eyes. He could feel regret rising in him, and he fought it. “There’s been too much killing, miss. But it’s not right to the men who’ve died if we give up so long as there’s a thread of hope left in us.” He tipped his hat and started to walk away. He turned back, his throat tight. “I’m afraid we’ll have to keep a watch over you from now on. That is, unless you give me an oath that you won’t try to get away or send any signal.”

  The girl’s eyes were defiant. “You know we won’t do that. If we get a chance, we’ll certainly send a warning.”

  Overstreet bowed gravely. “It’s your choice. I’m sorry.”

  Walking away, he heard Shaffer say to his daughter: “He’s a soldier, Linda. Secessionist or not, he’s a soldier.”

  A dozen times in the hours that followed, Overstreet walked out to the guard stationed on a rise a few hundred yards north of the buildings. He would take the spyglass he had lent the man and use it to scan the shimmering horizon.

  “Haven’t you seen anything yet, Tilley?”

  “No, nary a sign of wagons so far.”

  Overstreet would walk back to the buildings, kicking up dirt with the toes of his boots, impatiently drumming his fist against his leg.

  Again and again his thoughts turned to the girl, and he found pleasure in them. He told himself she was with the enemy, that he was drawn to her only because it had been so long since he had been near a woman. But he felt again of his scrubby beard, and he went looking for a razor and soap.

  Later he visited Sammy McGuffin in the room where the wounded lad had been placed on a rough frame cot and a corn-husk mattress. The thin face was drawn and white. Sammy tried to rise onto one elbow as Overstreet entered.

  “Better lie down and take it easy, Sammy,” the lieutenant said.

  Sammy shook his head. “I’ll be all right, sir.” He paused, his pained face strained with worry. “About those wagons, sir. Think they’ll get here today?”