The Colonel's Lady

by Clifton Adams

  I went to sleep finally, and in a dream I saw Indian ponies running up and down a canyon floor, dragging bloody, shapeless hulks behind them....

  The next morning Gorgan came around again.

  “I hope you're guessing wrong,” he said wearily, “about Kohi attacking the fort.”

  He sat down on my bunk, rubbing his face. I hadn't realized before how old Gorgan really was. “There's no chance of getting the women and children out,” he said. “I tried to talk to the Colonel, but he wouldn't listen to it. He said we couldn't spare the men for escort, although I learned that we're getting reinforcements. Have you got any of that whisky left?”

  I grinned stiffly. “My striker got it. What's this about reinforcements?”

  “Two companies of infantry are being sent up from the Chiricahua reservation, because of the renegade trouble, I guess. They're on the road now, according to Operations, maybe a day or two away.”

  Two companies of infantry. I felt better after hearing that. With that many men, Kohi wouldn't have a chance of breaking the fort's defenses. Gorgan saw what I was thinking.

  “If they get here in time,” he said. “Or if Kohi doesn't find out somehow that they're on the march and cut them to ribbons before they get a chance to do us any good.”

  “How could Kohi find out? He doesn't operate in the south much.”

  Gorgan shrugged. It wasn't much of an answer. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I almost forgot. There is one other thing. Maybe the Colonel doesn't take much stock in your scout report, but something prompted him to send his own wife away from Larrymoor.”

  I must have shown my surprise, for Gorgan looked at me with interest. “What's the matter, Reardon?”

  “Nothing. It just struck me as strange. Did she go alone?”

  Gorgan grinned without humor. “Mrs. Weyland? You ought to know better than that, Reardon. She went with a cavalry escort—the men we can't spare, according to the Colonel. Going down to Tucson on a little shopping trip, so the story goes. What do you think of that?”

  “I don't know. I guess the Colonel's wife has a right to go shopping, if she takes a mind to.”

  Gorgan shrugged. “I guess so. But it seems to be stretching a coincidence, going at this particular time.”

  So Caroline was gone. Caroline was safe. That was what I had wanted, but now the thing left me empty of feeling. Let the Indians do what they would—Caroline wouldn't have to be here to face it. Something in that thought struck me as funny and I laughed abruptly.

  “Maybe you'll let me in on the joke,” Gorgan said.

  “It's nothing. I was just thinking of another time.” Now, it didn't seem so long ago. “And another place.” Three Fork Road.

  The day passed. The night passed. I lay on my bunk and thought of nothing. Let the sand run out—that was about all I could do.

  Gorgan was the only one who came to see me. Being under arrest made me poison to the others, but Gorgan didn't have anything to lose. He wasn't going anywhere in the Army anyway. We talked about a lot of things, but we didn't talk about Apache, or wonder what he was doing. Not aloud, anyway.

  Larrymoor went on the same as ever. No changes were made in the routine, and garrison life went on as monotonously as ever. What was happening to Halan and his troopers on patrol, we didn't know.

  I wondered about Halan. What kind of man was it who was your friend one minute and your enemy the next, for apparently no reason at all? I didn't have the answer to that. I didn't have the answer to anything, it seemed. I ate, and slept, and waited. Vagrant thoughts floated in and out of my mind without stopping long enough to make sense.

  I felt something pinching me. The two silver stars that Caroline had given me had worked out of my pocket and I was lying on them. I found them and flung them across the room. To hell with them.

  There was a knock on my door the next morning and I guessed that it was Gorgan again. I called, “Come in,” without bothering to get off the bunk.

  But it wasn't Gorgan this time. It was his daughter, Sarah.

  “Oh,” I said. I swung my legs off and stood up. “I'm sorry. I guess I was expecting your father.”

  She stood in the doorway, not knowing exactly, what to do. And I wasn't much help. Both of us, I guess, were thinking about that night, and our faces were burning.

  “My father has gone out on a special detail, Mr. Reardon,” she said formally. “He wanted you to know. He was afraid you would think he had forgotten you.”

  “Why, thank you, Miss Gorgan. Won't you come in?” It wasn't the thing to say, for young ladies didn't come unescorted to bachelor quarters. Then I tried to cover it up and made it worse. “I guess,” I managed finally, “I've forgotten how to talk to people. Did your father say what kind of detail it was, Miss Gorgan?”

  I noticed then that her face was sober, her eyes solemn. She was almost pretty, but I kept comparing her with Caroline, and no woman could stand up to Caroline. “Yes, Mr. Reardon,” she said. “My father wanted me to tell you. Mrs. Weyland's escort was ambushed by Apache.”

  I didn't hear the rest of it. I stood there with the words going around and around in my mind. I didn't believe it.

  I didn't understand it. Not Caroline. Nothing ever happened to Caroline.

  “I'm sorry, Mr. Reardon,” Sarah Gorgan said softly.

  “Sorry, Miss Gorgan?”

  “You were in love with her, weren't you, Mr. Reardon?” It was hardly more than a whisper.

  I went over to the bunk and sat down again, looking at the floor. It was all some kind of mistake, I kept telling myself. It would all be cleared up in a little while and they would find Caroline was all right. Nothing could happen to Caroline. Then I heard Miss Gorgan's question. “You were in love with her, weren't you, Mr. Reardon?”

  I looked up. “What makes you say that?”

  “I don't know. The way you looked just now. But I've known for some time now, somehow. I've seen you looking at her. Remember the night of the dance? I saw you looking at her that night, and I guess that was when I knew.”

  I remembered the night on Gorgan's front porch. She had known, even then. I didn't know what to say. After a long while I looked up again and she was gone.

  I heard Gorgan's detail coming in late that afternoon, but didn't get up to watch. Gorgan, Larrymoor, nothing seemed to have any meaning. Nothing seemed important enough to bother with. I sat there on the bunk, where I had sat all day.

  But I heard them. I heard Gorgan dismissing the troopers, and then the thud of boots on the packed-clay parade as the officers headed toward headquarters. Maybe a half hour passed before I heard the boots again, this time coming down the row, toward my hut.

  Gorgan didn't bother to knock, He pushed the doc open and came in.

  “Have you heard?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “They're dead,” he said hoarsely. “Joseph and Mary! I hope I never see a thing like that again. Almost two full companies, and they're all dead!”

  My head jerked up. “What are you talking about?”

  “The two companies of infantry that were supposed to reinforce us. Kohi ambushed them.”

  Things were moving too fast for me. I couldn't keep them straight in my mind. “But what about—the others?”

  “Mrs. Weyland?” he said. “She's captured, it looks like. The escort was killed, all but one trooper. He got away and made it back to Larrymoor this morning. Didn't Sarah tell you?”

  I didn't remember. I didn't remember much of anything. But Caroline captured! I had got used to the idea that Caroline was dead, but she wasn't dead at all! Then I thought of something else and I could feel the blood drain from my face.

  “If you're thinking what I think you are,” Gorgan said, “you can forget it. Apaches don't take much to rape. They leave that to the white men. Likely they're keeping her as a hostage, and if that doesn't work they'll put her to work, like they would a horse or an ox.”

  I knew then that Gorgan had finally put the pieces tog
ether. He had guessed about me and Caroline. He knew. Studying me, Gorgan took out a battered cigar and rolled it in his mouth. “Well,” he said, “you'd better start getting your things together. Get down to the quartermaster's and draw emergency ammunition and supplies. We're going to be riding before sundown.”

  I thought he was taunting me at first, but then I saw that he meant it.

  “Have you forgotten I'm still under arrest?”

  “Not any more you're not,” he said, holding a match to his cigar. “The Colonel, I guess, is the one who's crazy. He's stripping the fort naked. He's taking every man who can sit a saddle. I guess we're going to get his wife back, or die trying—which doesn't seem very unlikely at this point.” To punctuate Gorgan's words, the staccato sound of a cavalry bugle sounded “to horse.” Gorgan shot his burned-out match to the floor, turned, and walked out of my hut.

  “I almost forgot,” he said, appearing in the doorway. “The Colonel wants to see you. Right away.”

  The regiment was already forming on the parade ground as I went up the row toward headquarters. I felt like a different man. I was free—for the present, anyway. Free to walk, to ride, to fight. Free to die—even that was something. But Caroline was alive, and that was the important thing.

  I took the steps two at a time when I reached the headquarters building. The place was deserted. Even the clerks and staff officers had left the place in the excitement. But the Colonel was there, standing in front of his desk waiting for me. His face was hard, masklike, as he stared at me.

  “Mr. Reardon,” he said flatly, “do you still maintain that the scout report you submitted to this command was accurate?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you were actually at the site of Kohi's stronghold and saw it for yourself?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He fingered the flap of his revolver holster, staring past me, a thousand miles into nowhere. “Mr. Reardon,” he said hoarsely, “I want you to find my wife. I want you to bring her back. How you do it, I don't care. As long as I live I shall wish you dead, but on this single point I shall bargain with you. Bring my wife back, Mr. Reardon, and I shall drop all charges against you.”

  A dead silence fell between us. Then I said, “You believed my report all along, didn't you, sir?”

  “I am not stating my beliefs, Lieutenant. I am grasping at any last chance to get my wife back, no matter how desperate it may be.”

  I think I realized for the first time how deeply Colonel Weyland loved his wife. If he hadn't, he would have seen himself dead before bargaining with me. And why else would a career soldier marry a woman who would surely hinder his future as an officer?

  It had been obvious all the time, of course. He had been willing to juggle Army law, and even kill, to keep her, but the idea jarred me just the same. I had loved Caroline for so long—it hadn't occurred to me that it could happen to others. At that moment—buried deep somewhere in the midst of hate—I felt pity for him.

  I think he knew what I was thinking, for he smiled suddenly, bitterly. “Make no mistake, Lieutenant, this is one mission in which failure will not be tolerated. In war, Mr. Reardon, the penalty for failure is often death.” His eyes glazed. His gaze wandered past me again. “This time,” he said, “the penalty is certain.”

  I said nothing.

  “Do you understand, Mr. Reardon?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you will undertake the mission?”

  I said, “I want Caroline back as much as you do, sir.”

  He winced visibly, as if I had slapped him. He opened his mouth once, then closed it. “That will be all, Mr. Reardon,” he said tightly.

  “Am I to have freedom of movement, freedom of command, sir?”

  “That is understood.”

  “Do you still intend to take the regiment out, sir?”

  “That is also understood, Lieutenant. Isn't it obvious that I cannot sit by and do nothing as long as my wife is in the hands of savages?”

  There was no use arguing that, I knew, so I said nothing. I saluted and walked out.

  There was a brief call as the companies assembled on the parade.

  “Evidently,” the Colonel said, “Kohi has elected to make one last desperate attempt to force the white soldiers out of Arizona. The savages have asked for a fight, gentlemen, and a fight they shall have. We shall meet this uprising directly, on the savages' own ground, if they elect to fight there....” He talked on, a perfect picture of military confidence. He didn't mention Caroline. “The route of march will be screened by an independent detail under the command of Mr. Reardon....” If the Colonel felt the uneasy surprise among his officers, he did not show it. I could feel Gorgan and the others watching me, wondering.

  After officers' call I caught Gorgan as he walked toward his company.

  “Will you take the job, Gorgan?” I asked.

  “Screening with your detail?”

  “It's more than that.”

  He took soiled gauntlets from his belt and pulled them on his hands. “There's something I've got to know first,” he said, looking at me. “Before, I figured it was none of my business, but now it looks like it's everybody's business. What is it between you and the Colonel?”

  I couldn't lie to him. I couldn't dodge it.

  “It's a long story, Gorgan. And not a very pretty one.”

  “I'd like to hear it anyway.”

  So I told him, as well as I could and as briefly as I could. About Caroline, and Sweetbriar, and Three Fork Road. I didn't tell him about the day the Colonel had found us, but Gorgan could fill that in. The Lieutenant was still watching me carefully.

  “Do you still love her?” he asked abruptly.

  “God knows, Gorgan. I wish to heaven I was sure.”

  “So the detail's job isn't to screen,” he said, “it's to get Mrs. Weyland back.” He shook his head. “It can't be done, Reardon. Not this way. Maybe, in time, we could bargain with Kohi for her return, but that's the only way now. If he wants to keep her, he'll keep her, even if he has to kill her.”

  “But I've got to try, Gorgan! If she were your wife, wouldn't you try?”

  He sighed. He looked older, more tired than I had ever seen him. “All right, Reardon,” he said finally. “I'll select the detail from my company.”

  It was late that afternoon, with a blood-cast sky at our backs, when we rode out of Larrymoor with drums beating, guidons flying. The women of the fort came out to watch in silence as their men rode off to do battle. Young women, old, wind-dried and solemn-faced, they raised tiny scraps of handkerchiefs as we passed. They were dry-eyed, most of them. They would do their crying later, when the men had gone and could not see them. The skeleton force of troopers left behind lounged near the gates, spitting, scratching, joking with friends as they went by. Colonel Weyland and Major Burkhoff sat their mounts like stone figures until we had cleared the gates.

  The column stretched out on the desert, putting the fort behind it. I nodded to Gorgan and he kneed up with his detail of twelve men.

  “Are we heading straight for the stronghold?” Gorgan asked.

  “The Colonel's taking the main column that way. He's looking for a fight and there's no way to stop it. I figure Halan's patrol ought to be somewhere to the west of here. If we can pick them up before morning, maybe we can learn something about where Kohi's going to hit next.”

  “You don't figure they've gone back to the stronghold?”

  “They've just tasted blood. Kohi can't hold them back now. Anyway, he's setting out to drive the dog soldiers out of the White Mountains, and he can't do that by running to his stronghold and fighting a defensive war.”

  Gorgan spat into the dust. “It's your detail.”

  We pulled away from the column and rode at a gallop toward the dying sun.

  According to the march orders, Halan's patrol was supposed to be bivouacked that night at a place called Fire Rock, on the edge of the desert. We reached the place about an hour befor
e sunup the next morning. The patrol wasn't there.

  Gorgan and I looked at each other, thinking of the two companies of infantry. The cavalry escort that had gone with Caroline.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  Gorgan rubbed his face. “Do you know the march route Halan was to take?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we'd better start out in the direction they would be coming from.”

  We unbitted and loosened cinches and let our horses rest for a while. The early morning was dead quiet. We waited out the few minutes of blackness that always comes before the dawn, then we climbed into saddles again and headed into the foothills. I kept telling myself that lame horses could have slowed the patrol and maybe Halan had decided not to come on to Fire Rock that day. But I didn't believe it. We rode as quietly as we could, higher into the hills—the freakish, piled-up boulders called hills in that country. The eastern sky began to pale. The horizon—what we could see of it—became edged in red, and the red crawled up in the darkness, like blood spilled on a blotter.

  Gorgan reached over and held my reins. “Do you hear that?”

  I heard it. Little round balls of sound. The casual, unimportant sound of rifle fire in the distance. I looked at Gorgan and we were both thinking that dawn was Apache's favorite time to attack. Behind me, I could hear the nervous sounds of the troopers working carbines in and out of the leather boots.

  “I guess,” Gorgan said, “we know now why Halan didn't make it to Fire Rock.” We put iron to our mounts and began the steady climb in the direction the sound was coming from.

  We reached a high ledge and the sound of gunfire became suddenly louder. Below us now we could see the stringy clouds of black powder smoke drifting sluggishly across a rocky gully where the patrol had dug in for the attack. Without speaking, Gorgan and I swung down from our saddles, drawing our carbines as we hit the ground.

  “Two men for horse-holders,” Gorgan called.