“She must have been hot around here, one time,” Ridge said, awed by the sight. “Imagine how it must’ve been when all those holes were blowin’ at once!”
“It might not have happened at one time,” Becker said. “Could have been from time to time, but even so, I’m glad I’m here now instead of then.”
They drove on, and at last the horses bumped over the last stones and pulled the stage back to the trail once more. Several miles ahead the trail again cut through a narrow pass, this time through the Marl Mountains. Though it seemed unlikely the Indians were there, they would have to chance the possibility.
It was a narrow, dangerous place, but they evidently had reached it before the Indians, and they drove through without trouble, and turned right around a point of rocks toward Marl Springs.
The redoubt at Marl Springs was only a few months old. Lieutenant Manuel Eyre, of the 14th Infantry, had directed the building of it; at the time he had been the officer commanding at Camp Cady.
The corral, twenty-four feet on each side, was built of strong cedar logs cut in Cedar Canyon not far from Rock Springs. At each of the opposite corners there was a stone house twelve feet square and just over six feet high. The largest spring issued from a tunnel between the fort and the mountain.*
The redoubt was too close under the mountain for comfort, unless a sentry was kept on the small peak as a lookout. Originally it had been planned to have a sergeant and eight men at this post, but this had rarely been done. To the best of his knowledge there were three or four men holding the position at present. There were several horses in the corral, and as they approached he caught a glimpse of a blue uniform at the gate to the corral.
Callaghen studied the area carefully as they approached, and scanned the country around. He walked his horse on ahead of the stage, a gun ready to his hand.
A man wearing sergeant’s stripes came out to greet them. “Ah, Sergeant O’Callaghan is it? Sure ’n’ when I last saw you, man, you wore something better than stripes.”
“MacBrody? I’m damned if I can believe it’s you. I thought you were dead, man—killed in the fighting at the war’s end. I saw you go down under three men.”
“And if you’d waited you’d have seen me come up with only one, and he didna last long. They were only boys, Morty, good boys but young to the fighting, and I’m afraid they did not live long enough to grow wise in their days.”
He looked past Callaghen. “And what is it you have here? A stage?”
“Bound for Vegas Springs, but there’s been trouble along that route. They’d left the trail, so I brought them here….Any word of Sprague? I’d gone on ahead of his patrol.”
“We’ve seen nobody but skulking Indians, and a-plenty of them to trouble us.” He glanced at Callaghen. “We’re shorthanded here. One man took a horse and left us in the night….I hope he made it through, although I’d not say as much in the hearing of the others.”
The stage rolled up to the gate, which was opened to allow it through.
“We can use water,” Ridge said. “The horses, and all of us.”
“There’s water here,” MacBrody said. “Although it is slow to come, it never stops—at least it never has. But you’ll have a drink, all of you, and by daylight the trough should be full again, and the canteens can be filled.”
He stopped close to Callaghen. “Is it true about Major Sykes? If it is, you’ll be having no good luck.”
“It’s true, but I’ll be paying out soon.”
Ridge was helping the women down and Callaghen went over to the stage. Becker walked up to him. “Thanks, friend,” he said. “Without you we wouldn’t have made it.”
MacBrody approached the women. “We’ve little enough for you, but we’ll do our best.”
Malinda smiled at him. “Thank you, Sergeant. Whatever you do will be appreciated, and whatever it is will be better than a dry camp out there.”
He gave her a quick glance. “Ah, ’tis of the frontier you are? Well, it is better than. The eastern ladies are lovely now, but they expect too much. I will have a couple of the boys rev it up in yonder.”
Callaghen looked around the corral. He saw that it was strong, and the water was close. Leaving here might present something of a problem, but they could face that when they came to it.
“How many men do you have?” he asked.
“Three and myself, and one of them the mail carrier, who should be riding on. They ran him into this place and he’s not very anxious to be out again for a while.”
“Let him wait. There’s nothing in that mailbag that I’d lose a man for.”
Four soldiers here…the Stick-Walker and himself, Becker, Ridge, Wylie, and his friend. The Indians would not be wise to come against them now—ten men and a good strong stockade, with plenty of water.
“How are you for rations? The usual emergency stuff?”
“No.” MacBrody spat. “The train’s overdue and we’re running short. That’s not to say we can’t manage a day or two.”
Malinda crossed the corral to Callaghen’s side. “Mort, will we be able to go on? Tomorrow, I mean?”
“No.”
“You think they will still be out there? That they will wait?”
“Why not? The desert can provide them with most of what they need. There is food out there if a man will work hard enough to gather it, and the Mohaves grow food…they grow corn, melons, beans, and a lot of other stuff on land flooded by the Colorado. But their hunting, gathering, and planting can’t give them guns that will kill at the range of ours, can’t provide them with needles as good, clothing as well made…so they ride and they raid. The stage represents more wealth to them than several seasons of planting. They will eat the horses, use the harness, trade some of the items in the stage for other things, and will keep some of them.
“When Sir Francis Drake captured a Spanish galleon loaded with gold it meant no more to Elizabethan England than a stagecoach or covered wagon does to these Indians….Drake was a hero to his people, and so will the warrior be who brings back the loot from a wagon train.”
“I think you like these people, these Indians.”
His eyes looked across the wide valley. Beyond was a range of mountains, sheer rock reaching up for a thousand feet or more. “Like them? I do not know them, but I believe I understand them to some extent. They are fighting men, and one fighting man always has some understanding of another. All down through the pages of history the warrior has been venerated. Only Solomon is respected for his wisdom. Most leaders have been respected for their skill or their success in war. It is the same with the Indian.”
“You sound as if you believed in war.”
“No…I’ve seen too much of it. But I don’t know what to believe. This is a young land, its people love freedom, and by and large they are tolerant; but we must not become tolerant of evil, simply because it exists.”
“Do you suppose we could escape at night?” Malinda asked. “Isn’t it true that some Indians do not believe in fighting by night?”
“That is true of some. They believe the soul of a man killed at night must wander forever in darkness; but there are skeptics among the Indians as well as among ourselves. I’ve never paid much attention to such generalities, and it would be just my luck to run into a non-believer with a good rifle.”
He looked again at the mountain range across the valley, feeling drawn to it by some urge he could not name. It was a rocky ridge, sharp against the sky. He tried to estimate the distance, which was difficult in such clear air. Ten miles? No…closer to twenty.
“My uncle will be worried,” Malinda said.
“Yes, I know. But one should never expect too much of time. No man who begins a journey knows how it will end. Nor when.”
* * *
* The old holes are now dry. The spring issues from a pipe at the end of the mountain, flowing into a tank cattlemen built.
CHAPTER 13
* * *
SOUTHWEST OF THE redoubt was
a small pocket in the hills where a little grass and brush grew. A trickle of water came out of a hole in the rocks and disappeared into the ground, but its subirrigation kept the grass alive. The pocket was surrounded by low rocky hills.
Under ordinary circumstances there was sufficient grazing there to handle a few horses for a short time, but supply trains brought grain for the stock. As a rule, aside from the horses of the troopers, if they happened to be cavalry, there would be no more than four to six extra horses at the post. Now there were only four besides the one belonging to the mail rider.
Callaghen was sure that the Indians were out there. Those who lurked about the post were there, and those who had followed the stage. At a rough guess, there might be anywhere from fifteen to thirty of them—probably around twenty—and that was too many.
The place was small enough to be easily guarded without undue strain on the personnel, and with the firepower they now had at the redoubt they could stand off an attack. There was water enough to keep them going, but no more than that. The spring produced water constantly, but in small quantity.
MacBrody came over to join Callaghen near the gate. Callaghen explained then, in detail, about Sprague’s command and their separation from it. He also added some comment about Wylie.
“Ever hear of the River of Gold?” he asked.
“Who hasn’t?” MacBrody said. “By the time you’ve lived out here as long as I have you’ve heard a hundred such stories—the Lost Gun-Sight Mine, the Mine With the Iron Door, the lost Ship of the Desert. And I’d lay a bet, me bye, that hundreds of men have lost their lives a-hunting for them.”
“I’m sure that’s what brings Wylie here.”
“Aye. I know the man. It is a bad one he is. I saw him a time or two around Fort Churchill, over Nevada way. He’d killed a man in Virginia City, or somewhere there, and there was a bit of talk about it. I mean he’d given the man small chance, and there was a muttering around that it was murder, but he ran with a tough crowd and nobody wanted to open the ball with them with no more reason than that, and the dead man a stranger.”
Callaghen looked around, and felt the desert as a part of him. The afternoon was drawing to a close and the distant sand dunes that banked the mountains across the valley had taken on the rose color of the sunset. The abrupt range rising opposite, lifting a mile above the valley floor, showed a glassy sheen of black under the glancing light. He felt a yearning to go out there, to cross the valley and climb those mountains and disappear into their cool distance. At close hand they would probably not be cool, but that was his impression from here.
But to do such a thing would be the solution to nothing. He was a drifter, a soldier of fortune, or to put it more truthfully, a soldier of misfortune. He had gained little of this world’s wealth in his fighting, and that little had been spent….And now there was Malinda.
There was no avoiding the issue. He could solve no problems by disappearing into the mountains; nor could he face his problems any better by re-enlisting. He had entered the army in the first place because there was little else for a young Irishman of good family but no money to do. And for him after his brief meeting with warfare in Ireland, it seemed a logical course.
He had a quick, inventive mind when it came to tactics. Under the right circumstances he might have become a general, but the wars being fought in his time were small, inconsequential ones, allowing little scope for action. He had, literally, followed the way of least resistance. In the service most decisions were made for you, and your food and quarters were supplied; you received an order and you obeyed it to the best of your ability.
He had been a good soldier, some would say an excellent soldier. Moreover, he had risen to the rank of major in two armies, he had successfully coped with the enemy on many fields. But he had never proved himself capable of making a living at any other trade.
He could, it had been suggested, become a peace officer, for until men learned to live together in peace and subdue some of their impulses so that they could live with the benefits of civilization, there must be someone to keep the peace. But that had not been his choice, and he had continued to follow the life of a fighting man.
Now he knew that such a life was not for him—not any longer. It was a dead end…it led nowhere.
He could, he supposed, study law, of which he knew a little. That might be a way out, though not a very satisfactory one, and it was one that promised success only after several years….If he could only find that River of Gold….But he realized that was just another evasion. He was like those men he had found in every land, men looking for treasure, for lost mines, men who had no other aim in life, and never ceased from looking until they were old and worn and tired out.
His thoughts went back to Sprague. Where was he? Had they found their way back, and did they believe him dead? Had they been ambushed and massacred? He doubted that Sprague was the man to lose his patrol. He was a careful officer who knew something of Indian fighting, and he was considerate of his men.
What was his own duty under the circumstances? Callaghen considered that. Their purpose for being in the desert in the first place was to protect the mail route and those who traveled over it. Well, that was what he had been doing.
Evening had come with its coolness. The stars were out, and the sky was without a cloud. Far away the serrated ridge of the mountains showed a sharp outline.
A fire was burning at the other side of the corral, and he could smell coffee being made. MacBrody came over to him. “It is glad I am that you’re here, Callaghen. My men are dead tired from the lack of sleep. You can spell us on guard.”
“Keep an eye on your horses and ours,” Callaghen advised. “I’d not be trusting Wylie and his friend.”
The glow of the campfire and the good smell of coffee and of bacon frying were pleasant, but he was uneasy. He knew the Indians were out there, though these might not be of the same band that had attacked him after he left the command.
He had no feeling of enmity for the Indians. They lived their life, a way of life thousands of years old, and he did not think of it as good or bad; it was simply the way things were. They lived according to their needs, the white man according to his—cultures of different backgrounds, cultures each with its own principles.
The philosophy of it all was not important here; here the question was simple: to live or not to live; to fight successfully, or to die. There is a vast difference between the man who contemplates such a question at home beside a warm fire with a drink in his hand or discusses it in academic halls, and the man who faces it on a dark night in a far-off lonely place, with the sweat trickling down his ribs, and savage fighting men closing in on him.
Callaghen moved restlessly around the walls of the redoubt. What would the Indians do? For them, within the walls there was a store of booty. One thing they had working for them, and this was something they had learned very soon. The white man was impatient. He felt the need to move, to be doing. The Indian had learned patience, and he could wait out there in the bleak hills, needing little food, and knowing where there were hidden cisterns of water or seeps that could be uncovered and then covered again, and he could move as he wished.
Callaghen went back to the fire and took the coffee Aunt Madge handed him; then he moved away from the firelight, his eyes blinded from the fire. Looking into the firelight is a comforting thing, conducive to dreams. But it may leave your eyes unaccustomed to darkness, and that is not a good thing in Indian country.
Aunt Madge followed him away from the fire. “You’d best eat something, Mort. I think it will be a long night.”
“They’re out there.”
“I know.” She paused. “How many do you think there are?”
“Any number is too many. We aren’t looking for a war; we just want to keep the mail route open, and to keep the freight wagons rolling.”
Somewhere out in the night darkness a pebble rattled on the rocks. An Indian? Or just a natural stirring in the night?
One by one the group around the fire left to turn in. His own eyelids were heavy and he got up, throwing out the dregs from his cup.
MacBrody was at the fire, as was Ridge.
“You want to try going on?” Ridge asked.
“We’ll wait one day at least.” Callaghen glanced at MacBrody. “Will that cut you down much on supplies?”
“We’ll work it out, Mort. By that time the freight wagons may be here, or Lieutenant Sprague may show up. And Indians are notional—they might just pull out of their own idea.”
Becker had volunteered for the first watch. Sampson, one of MacBrody’s men, was assigned to the second. “Wake me,” Callaghen said, “and I’ll stand the dawn watch myself.”
He slept as he always did, waking often, listening for a few minutes, then going back to sleep again. He had lived so long in places where to sleep too soundly might mean death that he had lost the habit. What would it be like, he wondered, to sleep a night through without worry?
The Delaware came to join him on watch. There had been no trouble, but the Indian agreed with him. “They are out there,” he said. “They will wait for us to come out.”
Together they held the watch until daybreak. Callaghen stared at the hill rising behind the spring. From the top of that hill an Indian could shoot right into the corral. Well-chosen for water and for other purposes, it was a poorly sited redoubt for defense.
After the sun was up he cleaned his rifle and his pistols, oiling them with care. Malinda came to join him, bringing coffee from the fire. “It was quiet last night,” she said.
“The Delaware thinks they will try to wait us out.”
“How long will they try that?”
He shrugged. “That is a guess for anybody. Indians are patient….They have to get close to game to make a kill, and they have learned patience. On the other hand, they might take a notion to pull out. If Sprague shows up they will just vanish, I’m sure.”
Callaghen (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 10