by Peter Dawson
Chapter Ten
George Spires called early the next morning before Mary had quite finished preparing a tray of breakfast for the major. And presently the way the medico stepped so quietly from Fitzhugh’s room, closing the door softly, let her know that the news must be bad even before Spires shook his head and told her in a low voice: “No use in keeping it from you, Missus Fitzhugh. He’s no better, and he should be.”
“You mean he...?” She couldn’t force herself to voice the thought that struck her.
“I mean he has no strength left for fighting this. There’s more congestion, the fever’s still high. Have you been giving him liquids?”
“Yes. All he’ll take. But he...he doesn’t seem to care, Doctor. Yet he’s cheerful enough.”
Spires took his hat from the table and gave her a kindly smile. “Perhaps he really doesn’t care. He’s been a vigorous man, lived a full life. All this pain and weakness lately can’t be much inducement for him to keep on.”
“But he can’t want to die!”
The medico shrugged. “Who knows? He’s lost his son, lost him honorably. And he’s lost Dan Gentry, who was next thing to a son to him. He just might be thinking there’s nothing much left to live for.” With a baffled shake of the head the medico took his hat from the table and crossed over to the door and opened it.
He stopped there in the doorway at sight of Sam Grell turning in off the path. Grell, seeing Mary, saluted before he looked up at Spires to ask: “Any change, George?”
“Not much.”
Grell’s expression took on a deeper concern. “Will it upset him if I see him a moment?”
“Depends on what you’re seeing him about, Sam.”
“Some news has come in over the wire. Good news.”
“Then see him, by all means. He needs cheering up.”
The medico nodded his good bye to Mary and went on out the walk.
Grell was ill at ease as Mary silently led the way across the living room and opened the door to Fitzhugh’s bedchamber. But then as he looked in and saw the major lying in his bed, propped up by pillows, he forced a smile and went on in, saying in well-feigned heartiness: “Well, sir, they tell me you’re licking this thing. Glad to see you looking better.”
Fitzhugh touched his forehead wearily in reply to his adjutant’s punctilious salute. “Take a chair, Captain. Everything going well?”
Grell nodded. “Very well.” He waited a moment until he heard the door close behind him, then looked around to make sure Mary hadn’t followed him into the room. Facing the other again, he took a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and handed it across. “Here’s some medicine that’ll do you good, sir. Just came over the wire.”
Fitzhugh held the paper in a hand that trembled. As he glanced down at it, a look of pleased astonishment came to his drawn features. His eyes were shining with something other than the fever as he looked up at Grell again. “So we’ve seen the last of Sour Eye,” he said in a voice so low that Grell barely caught the words.
The captain nodded. “The only bad thing about it is that our troops weren’t the ones to finish him off.”
“Doesn’t matter, Sam. Not a whit. What does is that this country can be at peace again. Have you told anyone?”
“No, sir. You and I and the signals sergeant are the only ones who know. I’ve sworn him to secrecy, as the message requests.”
“Good. You’ll....”
A sudden racking cough made Fitzhugh choke off his words. He clutched at his chest and leaned sharply forward, and Grell, his look alarmed, stepped quickly to the table and handed the older man a glass of water. Shortly Fitzhugh managed to get down a swallow and then, his breathing rapid and rasping, he lay back once more against the pillows.
His face was darkly flushed, but he managed to get out: “None...no mention of this to anyone, Sam. I....”
After a moment’s wait Grell said quietly: “Of course not, sir. We’re all confident you’ll be back at your desk in a few more days.”
Fitzhugh smiled wanly. “Yes. I’ll be back.” Abruptly he added: “This comes at an opportune time for us, doesn’t it?”
“How do you mean, sir?”
“As concerns our animals.”
Grell nodded, understanding now. “Indeed it does. Yesterday I halfway thought of sending a foraging party out for hay.”
“I’d suggest you get as many animals as possible up to the Box there right away. Today.”
“Today?” Grell frowned. “Won’t that call for explanations, since we can’t let the word out about Sour Eye?”
“Explanations?” The major eyed Grell speculatively, asking in seeming irrelevance: “Would you say that I’d ever used my prerogative of playing the martinet, Sam?”
“Never, sir!”
“Well, now I am going to use it.” Fitzhugh smiled faintly in a way that let Grell see a spark of the spirit he had once known in the man. “If any explanations are called for, just say that my illness has evidently affected my reason. You may draw up orders for half the animals to be moved up onto pasture in the Box. Assign two good men to hold them there. Sergeant McCune would be one. Let him name the other man.”
“A sergeant to work horses, sir?”
“Why not? Might as well make my lapse of sanity look genuine.” The older man’s smile broadened. “Between the two of us we’ll have the whole post guessing.”
Grell nodded uneasily. “As you say, sir.” He thought of another thing then, continuing: “By the way, Mike Clears was waiting for me as I came on duty. He wants us to do something on behalf of this girl they found in the wagons.”
“Laura Reed? What about her?”
“Clears is convinced she’s Tipton’s daughter. To prove it he wants us to telegraph Denver and have them trace a photograph taken of Tipton’s family last year. Have them send it across here.”
Fitzhugh was scowling. “Ordinarily I’d be inclined to trust Clears’s judgment. But in this instance he’s mistaken.”
“So I told him. But he still insists he’s right and asks us to help him prove it. I thought it was a matter for you to decide.”
The major was studying Grell’s expression. “Are you of Clears’s opinion, Sam?”
“Not exactly,” Grell answered hesitantly. “But Mike seems sure of himself.”
Fitzhugh weighed the matter a long moment. Then, with a nod, he said: “Let’s prove him either right or wrong. Send the message as he suggests.”
* * * * *
By 11:00 that morning, Caleb Ash had hired his twenty-third man to muck out the rockslide. Satisfied then that he had a big enough crew, he left one of his teamsters as straw boss of the gang and walked on down, crossed the creek, and took a between-buildings passageway to the street.
He almost collided with Trooper Andrews as he stepped onto the plank walk and, reaching out to clamp a hard grip on the man’s arm, spun him around to face him.
“Damn you, Andy!” he growled menacingly. “Who sent you up to the yard after me last night?”
Andrews tried to jerk his arm away but Ash held it tight, held it with ease. “I...it was just like I said, Caleb,” the soldier said uncertainly. “I’d heard they were looking for you and....”
“Who said that?” Ash snapped.
It took Andrews only a second to decide to tell the truth. Besides, he thought, it didn’t matter now if Ash did know who it was. “Tim McCune,” he said.
Ash shoved the man away from him so fiercely that Andrews almost fell. Then Ash asked: “Where’s McCune now?”
Andrews backed away a step, thinking Ash was going to hit him. “Up...he left at ten, with a bunch of horses for the Box.”
“Geldings, not horses. A cavalryman’s supposed to know the difference between....” Ash broke off abruptly, only then realizing what Andrews had said. He asked amazedly: “The Box?”
/> Andrews nodded meekly, and Ash spoke again. “They’ve turned animals onto grass up there? With those Apaches on the loose?”
“Don’t blame you for being surprised, Caleb.” Andrews put a false heartiness in his tone as he stood rubbing his sore arm. “We’re all wondering if the Old Man’s gone loco. But it’s a fact.”
Ash’s surprise had abated somewhat. “They might get away with it if they’ve sent along a strong enough guard.”
“But that’s what’s got us all worried,” Andrews told him. “There’s only McCune and one other man up there. Johnny Ewing.”
The big man’s mouth dropped open in amazement. He shut it again, saying incredulously: “But that’s asking for it! God Amighty! Don’t they know what’s liable to happen?”
“Makes no difference, I guess. We’re short of hay and they had to do something.”
“You mean to say they’ve sent only two men up there to....” Ash was having a hard time taking it all in. “On whose orders?”
“The Old Man’s. And Grell’s.”
Ash shook his head wonderingly. “All I can say is you’re liable to be damned short on matched geldings, come tomorrow.”
All through the early afternoon that strong chance of the Army losing their animals remained foremost in Ash’s awareness. Yet it wasn’t until nearly three hours after his talk with Andrews that he was all at once jolted by seeing a startling and intriguing possibility. It came to him so suddenly and so completely in every detail that at first he mistrusted his reasoning. When finally it did dawn on him that his reasoning was sound, he was so shaken that he went to his shack, barred the street door, and took a bottle from a box under his makeshift desk.
Standing so that he could see out the window that looked over the yard and not be surprised by one of his men coming in on him, he took three long swallows from the bottle. Afterward he let his breath go in a scarcely audible whistle that was prompted more by an inner excitement than by the jolt of the whiskey.
Chapter Eleven
High up toward the head of one of the cañons to the north of Sentinel, Tim McCune and Johnny Ewing built their supper fire as the twilight deepened. The light of the blaze presently reached out far enough to touch the pole fence running from wall to wall of the deep ravine. From beyond the fence along the foot of the meadow came occasional sounds of the animals moving around through the deep grass.
This had been a confounding day for McCune. He didn’t begin to understand why they’d detailed him to this menial duty, nor the reason why they’d detailed anyone. Captain Grell’s bland reassurances that nothing would happen to him, that he wasn’t to worry, had only deepened the enigma for him. He wasn’t forgetting the encounter the month before last with Sour Eye, nor the strong likelihood that the renegade’s scouts were probably right now skulking through the country, watching developments at Fort North. In view of that, the very idea of using the Box meadow seemed in itself foolish and risky. The fact of having put out only two men as horse guards made it utterly ridiculous.
But, if McCune questioned the wisdom of the move, he was obeying his orders to the letter. Balancing the seeming absurdity of it, he did have a blind faith in his officers. Robert Fitzhugh he worshiped in the same way Gentry worshiped the man, and Captain Grell he knew to be Fitzhugh’s competent, unobtrusive shadow and counterpart. They had sent him up here, therefore it was up to him not to question their reasons.
Only one thing about the day had suited McCune. He’d been allowed to choose the second man, and without hesitation he’d named Ewing. Aside from his misgivings about their being here, he was feeling a grim satisfaction at finally having Ewing to himself. All through the afternoon as they had worked repairing and strengthening the fence he had planned for the evening, for now. Ewing had complained bitterly over being sent up here. He’d cursed Fitzhugh, Grell, the rest of the officers. Ordinarily McCune would have called him on that. He hadn’t. And he’d seen his silence first annoy Ewing, then worry him, until the trooper had finally stopped his raging and ranting and retired into a sullen silence of his own.
McCune had been waiting for the proper moment to start working on the man. It came now as Ewing, told to throw some wood on the fire, approached the blaze with an armload of split pine. Suddenly and without warning he dropped the wood, wheeled on McCune, and burst out: “What the hell’s the sense of this? Any fire at all’s bad enough! You want to build the thing up so’s they can spot us ten miles away?”
Something Ewing had said offered McCune his chance. And now he replied quite calmly, but with an edge of scorn in his voice: “If it’s coming, nothing we can do’ll stop it, Johnny boy. They probably know already we’re up here. So why not make ourselves cozy and enjoy our grub hot while we can?”
“Be damned to your hot grub!” Ewing started toward a nearby log against which lay their bedrolls and carbines. “I’m headed across there to fort up in the rocks.”
“Hold it!” McCune’s sharp words stopped the other in his tracks. “The captain said we’d be all right. So I take him at his word and....”
“What else would that bootlicker tell you?” Ewing interrupted furiously. “I claim the Old Man’s gone off his head. Grell’s just too blind to see it. We stay here and we’ll be crow bait by morning!”
“Me, maybe,” McCune drawled. “But not you, Johnny. You needn’t worry. You’re their amigo. They wouldn’t touch you.”
“Who wouldn’t?” An instant wariness settled over Ewing.
“The Apaches. Who else?” McCune asked blandly. “You did ’em a favor. They don’t forget.”
Johnny Ewing stood rigid, a look of outright guilt crossing his narrow face. He glanced quickly toward the carbines, then back to McCune again. “What the devil you trying to say, Tim?”
“That you passed the word to Ash on the remounts we were bringing from Starke. That Ash tipped off Sour Eye and his bunch.”
As he spoke, McCune was calculating the lunge he would make to block Ewing’s rush for the carbines. That was as far ahead as he was thinking. He was going to lick Ewing, going to beat the truth out of him.
He caught a rustle of sound behind him and was turning toward it when a voice back there drawled: “Now that’s right smart guessin’, Tim. Suppose you let me in on it.”
McCune swung sharply around. He saw Caleb Ash’s massive shape moving in out of the shadows and fear knifed through him. Yet, when Ash stopped several strides away, he managed to put down the fear and ask: “Good guesses, aren’t they, Caleb?”
For a moment it seemed that Ash was going to ignore the question. But then the big man smiled broadly, saying: “So long as it’s just between the three of us I reckon it won’t hurt to tell. Sure, they’re good. Couldn’t be better.”
McCune instantly read the threat behind this bland admission. He wheeled. He ran for the log.
Ash’s right hand blurred to his belt. He palmed a long-bladed knife from its sheath there without a break in his swift motion. The backswing of his arm and its whiplash forward thrust were a symphony of precise motion.
The knife’s blade glinted brightly as it arrowed across the path of the firelight. Tim McCune’s catch of breath was almost a cough. His reaching stride broke, he pitched forward off balance, and fell in a diving sprawl. His chunky frame slid against the carbines, knocking them from their rest against the log. He lay, gasping hoarsely, face down. One clawed and reaching hand closed about the grip of the nearest carbine. His head lifted, then fell back again. And his fingers loosed their grip on the rifle’s stock and went limp.
Ewing was slack-jawed, his face gone a pasty gray. And as his terror-stricken glance whipped from the knife handle showing between the shoulders of McCune’s sprawled shape, then, going to Ash, the scout said mildly: “Now, Johnny, you just forget what Tim had in mind and do like I say. You and me have always got on fine. Let’s keep it that way.”
Ewing was visibly shaking now. “But...good God, you’ve killed him, Caleb!”
“So I have.”
Ash spoke with a kind of wonderment. He came across now, reached down, and drew the knife from McCune’s back, then wiped it clean on his leggings.
* * * * *
Mike Clears left town just past 10:00 the next morning riding Ben Qualls’s sorrel mare. As he started up the bench road, he was thoroughly enjoying the balminess and brightness of the day, the absence of dust making him hope that summer’s long drought was at an end. For the dryness had meant more than a shortage of feed locally. It was, he decided, the primary reason the Apaches had broken from the reservation — for their lands were overgrazed and pitifully short of game. Asking an Indian to get along without meat was merely inviting him to go elsewhere to steal it.
High up near the rim Clears left the wheel ruts and turned off into the timber, and shortly the mare was wading the tumbling waters of Elk. Three more minutes of deliberate going brought Clears to a break in the pines where he looked across a rock-walled pocket streaked at its upper end by the bright emerald of grass fed by a spring.
He stopped there where the pines gave out, at once puzzled and disappointed. Gentry had been down at the Lucky Find last night wanting news of Fitzhugh; here was where he had said he would be this morning. Yet he wasn’t here. Clears could see only a ragged, short-cropped circle in the grass where an animal had obviously been staked out. And up near the spring was a heap of smoke-blackened rocks. These two unobtrusive signs were all that indicated any man had ever visited the spot.
Warily then he started circling the glade, keeping well back in the trees. Twice he reined in behind dense growths of oak brush to listen, both times hearing nothing but the muted roar of the creek and the gentle sighing of a light breeze through the tops of the highest lodgepoles.
Presently he was close above the spring, the spot where he was sure Gentry must have camped last night. He came aground and, leading the sorrel slowly downward, shortly stood alongside the cold ashes of a fire lying in a semicircle of rocks. A handful of coffee grounds lay in the ashes, and in the dust close alongside the rocks he noticed several tracks made by flat-heeled boots and one clear imprint of the bottom of a fry pan. It was while he was studying that small strip of ground that his eye picked out some fresh gouges in the black earth.