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 shoreline 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 and 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.
During the last ice age the Mohave was a land of frequent rains, and there were many streams. The bones of the giant ground sloth, the mammoth, the three-toed horse, and the camel have been found in ancient deposits. Even then men were roaming the desert, Stone Age men who did not know the bow and arrow, but hunted with clubs, spears, and the atlatl, or spear-thrower.
Relatively speaking, much of the desert floor is level, broken by dozens of small ridges of bare, serrated rock and occasional outcroppings. Volcanic action is everywhere evident. In one area there are at least two dozen cinder cones, and there are extensive lava flows, which are formidable barriers to travel by any means except on foot. The Mohaves, who know these flows, cross them easily and swiftly.
Here and there are playas, the beds of dry lakes, glaring white under the sun, crusted with alkali and salts of various kinds, and after a rain they are often flooded with water. Heat waves distort the appearance of things on the desert, and mirages are frequent, particularly over the playas.
Light rays may cause weird distortions in the atmosphere, which acts as a lens in a telescope, making far-off mountains seem close, and turning distant basins into lovely lakes that disappear as one approaches. The mirage is caused by a variation in the density of the air.
—
Weird dust devils danced across the playas in the distance, the glare of the heat on the desert floor so great that the hot air, rising quickly to let cooler air in below, sucked up dust into whirling cones that danced off across the desert, some of them small, others towering many feet in the hot air above the desert floor.
Callaghen forced himself to be wary. The heat and the miles had dulled his senses, and the men rode wearily in the saddle. Somewhere ahead were the Indians. By now there might be twenty, forty, sixty or more of them, although out here they rarely rode in large numbers because of the difficulty of finding food or water.
The desert was an old story to Callaghen. He had ridden in the Sahara against the Tuaregs, in Afghanistan when he served with Dost Mohammed; and he had experienced brutal desert heat and desert winds that honed and sharpened him for combat. Desert men had always been fighting men when they needed to fight for survival.
The American Indian was a splendid fighting man, but he found himself facing a new kind of enemy, a tough, seeking pioneer, better armed, better fed, and unwilling to surrender or retreat. Indians might kill them, but they continued to come.
The pioneer came not to raid, but to stay. He settled along the streams, built homes, fenced land. He settled at the water holes, and to the Indian it was a new pattern, one the Indian neither understood, nor liked. Many more white men were killed than Indians, but still they came.
The Indian way of fighting was to gather together, to raid, ravage, and disappear, returning to his own people with his spoils or his wounded. Indian battles were many, Indian wars were few.
—
THE DETACHMENT WAS suddenly close to shade. Sprague lifted a hand and the column halted, moving eagerly to the slender line of shade along the wall of lava on their right.
The Delaware left his horse and climbed the lava flow until his head cleared the topmost blocks. He looked around carefully. Wherever he looked, the desert seemed to be empty, but he did not trust it. He never trusted appearances—that was why he was alive.
Callaghen was waiting beside Sprague when the Delaware reported. “I see nothing, but they cannot be far. We must be careful.”
Sprague rinsed his mouth with water, holding it there for a minute before swallowing. He desperately wished for more, but he stifled the urge and capped his canteen. He sat down on a block of lava, and wondered at its coolness.
“How far, do you think?” he asked.
Callaghen shrugged. “We’ve come on well. Perhaps five to seven miles.”
The men stretched out in the cool sand. Four were on duty, watching. Sprague was wise, and he kept them watching for only half an hour, then substituted another four.
When they started again the men would march. They might need their horses more later.
Sprague closed his eyes and the lids burned against his eyeballs. What a country to soldier in! Why couldn’t he have landed in one of those cushy spots in Virginia or Maryland? Yet even as he asked the question he knew he did not want that. He wanted the frontier. He wanted the gamble, he wanted the action.
He thought he knew how the Mohaves felt. Few if any of them thought of themselves as fighting for their land. They were fighting for glory, for loot, because that was their way. Well, it was his way, too. Years ago, when there was a girl involved, he looked for any way out of being a fighting man, but he had not found one, and now he was glad of it.
He stood up and straightened his back, trying to get some of the stiffness out of it. He wiped his hatband and squinted against the glare. They might be right over there, just beyond the heat waves.
“All right,” he said, and glanced at Callaghen. “Form them up and let’s move out. We’ll march, and save the horses.”
He led off himself. Here, the sand was hard and the walking was not bad.
He considered the men behind him. Five were veterans of the War Between the States, four had fought in various commands against Indians. Three were raw recruits who had joined up when their tightened belts ran out of notches and could be tightened no longer. If they lived, they would go home before very long.
Except the Delaware. He had no place to go back to. His people had been scattered and had mixed with other tribes; many had lost their identity.
An hour they marched, then Sprague halted them again. “Callaghen, mount up and find that road for me. But be careful.”
He need not have said it, but he was sending the man on a mission where he might be killed, and he wanted Callaghen to know he cared. And he did care…for every man jack of them!
But he had to use a man who would see, would recognize what he saw, and know what to report about it. Sprague was new to this command, and so far he knew of only two men who might do that.
Callaghen stepped into the saddle, stood in the stirrups, and looked around.
“Sir, that rock formation just ahead—I’ll scout it for you. It might be a good place to halt the men.”
“Do that.”
Sprague moved the column toward the rocks as Callaghen rode away.
Callaghen touched his horse on the neck. “Take it easy, boy,” he said softly. “I’ll need your help.”
He hated being out in the open, and when he found a shallow wash he took to it. A River of Gold! Well, he could do with some of that.
Somewhere just over the horizon the stage was coming up the road, and in it was the only girl he had ever loved, the only one he had ever wanted for himself. He’d known a few, here and there, and a fine lot they had been, but this one was the one he wanted…and he had nothing to offer her—no money, no prospects. All he had was skill with guns, and a knowledge of the ways of fighting men—and a thin chance of living through the next few hours.
Suddenly he saw ahead of him a winding trail, just two wagon tracks across the desert.
And then they came out of the ground like ghosts, gray-brown ghosts, dusty from the sand in which they had been lying. An arrow struck his saddle, glanced up, and missed his face.
There were at least six of them, and they were all around him. He did not waste time in heroics, but slapped the spurs to his horse and got out of there fast.
Another arrow passed him, and a huge Mohave grabbed at his leg. Callaghen clubbed down with the barrel of his gun, saw the slash of blood across the Indian’s head, and the man let go. Then Callaghen was running his horse, all out.
Ahead of him were rocks, and he went into them, but they were there waiting for him. There were only two of them and he took them in fine style, shooting as he went in.
One took a bullet in the chest; the other grabbed him and he felt himself jerked from his horse. Most Mohaves were big men, but this one was a giant.
Callaghen hit the ground and lost his grip on his pistol. He slugged the big Mohave in the wind, but it never even slowed him down. The Indian lunged, and Callaghen stepped in with a left jab, then smashed an overhand right to the nose. The Mohave had never met a boxer before, and it stopped him in his tracks.
Callaghen’s hand went for his belt gun. Too late the Mohave saw it slide into sight. He yelled and leaped, but the gun stabbed him with flame and he stopped, eyes wide, then fell forward and Callaghen sprang aside.
He whistled for his horse and it came trotting to him, stirrups flopping. A bullet clipped a rock close to him, and he grabbed for the horse and ran beside it into the shelter of the rocks.
He could hear shots now from the south. The command had been attacked, too. Finding a space between two boulders in the shade, he led his horse into it.
“Stay there,” he said quietly. “One of us has got to get out of this.”
He slid his rifle from the carbine sling, which he h
ad been carrying looped around the pommel of his saddle, contrary to regulations. Now, with it in hand, he knelt behind the rocks, and reloaded the empty chambers of his pistols.
The spot was the one the two Indians had occupied, and it was a good one. There was no approach from the rear or from above; the undercut rock gave him both shelter and shade, and a good field of fire in three directions. Moreover, he could look right down the road along which the stage would come.
It was hot out there, and it was going to get hotter.
CHAPTER 9
* * *
NOTHING MOVED OUT there. The sky was without a cloud, the land stirred slightly, leaves moved gently.
He settled down to wait. He had water, and he knew how to be patient. Without patience no man should go into the desert. The rocks wait for the years to change them, the plants wait for the rain. The Indians, too, know how to wait.
Callaghen had learned patience in other deserts, in other lands. He sat still now, just keeping alert and waiting, ready to pick up any movement. The Indians knew where he was, and they would choose their own time. In the meantime, the command had ceased firing, and silence lay upon the desert.
The stage should be along soon, and in the stage was Malinda Colton.
Heat waves shimmered over the sand, blinding him to the near distance. He could see far off, and he could see the sand in front of him, but a few hundred yards away everything was vague and indistinct.
Though his eyes and ears were alert now, his thoughts wandered to the Suleymani Hills and Dost Mohammed. He had been an officer then, in command of a thousand wild Afghan horsemen, who were born to the saddle and were fierce fighters. They preferred the blade to the bullet, and they preferred to ride close.
In those days he had carried three hidden rubies, to buy his way out of trouble, or to build a home somewhere when the fighting was over. He had ridden a Bokharan saddle and worn a green leather belt studded with jewels. He had lost that belt in a poker game in Delhi when the fighting was over.
Callaghen (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 7