The fact that she was resented by the other officers’ wives on the post disturbed her not in the least, nor did the fact that they tried to look down on her because of her friendship with Mary Tall Singer.
In Stella Rybolt and Betty Considine she had friends who felt as she did about Mary as well as about much else. Stella Rybolt was a veteran of half a dozen army posts, and she knew all the tricks of making do. Long ago she had accepted the fact that her husband would never be more than a company commander, and she was unconcerned about it. Gus Rybolt was a good, steady man who loved his wife and his duty; he held to regulations, but knew when to look the other way when others did not, just as long as it did not affect the morale of his own men or the safety of the post.
Stella Rybolt had lived twenty-eight of her forty-five years on army posts, most of them on the frontier. She knew the regulations and accepted them as a fact of life, just the same as the rising and the setting of the sun; hence she had no quarrel with the army. She loved the West and its people, but had looked warily at first on Denise Paddock. Knowing Denise’s background, she had half expected her to be a snob. But the first day Denise had smiled, held out her hand, and said, “Mrs. Rybolt, I am new to this post. Don’t let me make any mistakes.”
The following morning the coffee sessions had begun, the first at Stella Rybolt’s, the second at Dr. Hanlon’s; and by the third day Denise was sufficiently settled to have them at her quarters, and the others were envious of the grace and beauty she had given them.
Denise had made the best of each situation as it came, and never was there a word of complaint from her.
Frank Paddock gnawed now at his mustache. He had never liked this country, and one of the reasons he had not liked it was because it symbolized his defeat.
Nobody had started better than he. Nobody was given a better chance to succeed. The year he graduated the betting was that he would be the first in his class to make general, and no takers. Yet here he was, at an almost forgotten post, an almost forgotten man.
But now there was a chance, the first chance in a long time, the last chance he might ever have. If he could ride out there and trap the Bannocks, if he could score a smashing defeat…
It was all he would need. He had a friend, a newspaperman who was now traveling in the West, and he was a man to make much of such a story.
There might be a promotion, there might be a recall to some eastern post. He well knew what an opportunity like that could do for a man. And the chance was here.
At this moment he wanted a drink badly. The bottle was there, nearly full, in his bottom drawer, within reach of his hand. Yet he did not reach for it.
Ambitious he might be, but he was still a soldier, and he was in command. Whatever he did must be done with the utmost skill; and he must take no chance that he could not later explain.
I Troop was gone, Colonel Webb was dead. These things he accepted as fact. Kilrone might be a renegade, but he was not willing to believe it. Nonetheless, it was a thought he must keep in mind.
Mellett would be going into bivouac by now. Trust Mellett to choose his spot well, to select a good defensive position, and to scout the country around while it was still light.
The Bannocks would not attack while he was in position, for they knew what kind of a soldier Mellett was. They would try to catch him on the move, preferably near the point of rendezvous, and until that moment they would keep out of sight. So Paddock had a little time.
He already knew that he would lead the relief force himself. His opportunity lay in victory in the field, not from a desk.
Desperately, he wished for Gus Rybolt. If Rybolt were only here he could leave him in command at the post. He was tough, dependable, every inch a soldier. But Lieutenant Rybolt had gone to Halleck with a guard of six men to escort the pay wagon, and he was not due back for three days. By that time the emergency would have passed, and all would be settled, one way or the other…
Paddock knew that for a victory, a really decisive victory, he would need every man he could get. He made up his mind then to strip the post. A man had to gamble, and he was going to gamble that the Bannocks wanted to take Mellett and M Troop, and that they would not attempt an attack on the post. Carefully he avoided thinking of the alternative. He even avoided thinking of Denise, except to think that he was doing this for her.
In the back of his mind was the thought that success meant the East, an easier life, a good post, perhaps even Washington, D.C., where a wife such as Denise would be a tremendous asset. It meant escape from all he had become, a return to all he had been.
*
BETTY CONSIDINE GOT up from the table and tiptoed to the door of the bedroom. Kilrone was asleep, so she eased quietly into the room and over to his bed, and looked down at the exhausted man.
He was strikingly good-looking, with an almost saturnine cast of countenance. Lying on the bed, he looked uncommonly long and lean, but his shoulders were broad. She had noticed when checking the bullet wound, that his body carried half a dozen scars of blade or bullet…and at least one that looked like an arrow wound.
“He is handsome, isn’t he?” Denise said.
Betty turned to glance at Denise. “Yes…yes, he is,” she said. Then she added, “I wonder why he’s up here? This is so out of the way.”
“Not for him. That’s Barnes Kilrone.”
Seeing that the name meant nothing to Betty, Denise went on, “Seven years or so ago, all you had to do was mention his name and you would hear a dozen Kilrone stories, all different.”
“You knew him?”
“It’s a long story and a painful one.” Denise turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll make some coffee.”
She took down the can from the shelf. “Were you there when he talked to Frank?” she asked.
“No.”
Denise measured the coffee, making no further comment, but Betty was curious. “What is he like?”
“Barney? To most women he was the soul of romance. He always had a touch of the dramatic about him. Wherever he was, things happened, and usually they happened to him. I think many of the men were envious of him.”
“Jealous?”
Denise paused, giving Betty a cool, thoughtful look, as if wondering if Betty was prying. “Some of them, at least,” she said finally; “although usually with less reason than they believed.
“He was twenty-five then,” she went on, “and seemed older. He had seen a bit more and done a bit more than any of the others we knew. I expect half the women who knew him were in love with him at one time or another. When we first met everyone was talking about him. He had been in Paris less than a week and had already fought a duel with a French newspaperman over some comments about a dancer Barney liked.”
“A duel? You mean a real duel?”
“Barney wanted sabers, but as the challenged party the Frenchman chose rapiers. He believed that no American would be familiar with them. He couldn’t have been more mistaken—Barney was a fine swordsman. The newspaperman went to the hospital and Barney became a celebrity.”
Denise stopped and looked up, listening. She knew Frank’s step, and Betty knew what she was listening for. She had seen Denise listening just like this many times before. But when he came in he was cold sober, and his eyes held an odd glint of resolution, an unfamiliar light in the eyes of Frank Paddock.
For the first time, then, the two women learned what had happened. He gave it to them briefly, concisely. “Denise, I Troop is gone…massacred. Colonel Webb is dead.”
They stared at him, unable to grasp the enormity of it. Tragedy was familiar to them. Both had been on other posts in Indian fighting country, each knew how quickly death could strike. But a whole troop…and Colonel Webb!
“I am in command.” There was a hard ring to his voice, a ring Betty had never heard, and one that Denise had heard rarely. “I am taking K Troop out in the morning.”
He sat down and explained the situation as it concerned Captain Mellett. He must be w
arned; and if K Troop arrived in time they might also catch the Bannocks unaware and overcome them once and for all. He would be leaving before daylight.
He said nothing of his fears that the fort itself might be attacked. Carefully, he shunted away all thought of the stores of rifles, ammunition, and food that had been laid in at the fort against a fall campaign. It was likely the Bannocks knew of those stores, and he was not sure they did not have information from within the fort itself. But he counted on a quick, decisive victory that would preclude all possibility of an attack on the fort. Besides, he would leave a token force. He avoided thinking of how inadequate that force would be if he reinforced K Troop as he planned.
Betty was appalled at the thought of I Troop gone. She knew them all, every man-jack of them, as her uncle would say. Captain Tom Whitman had been a whist-playing friend of her uncle, and was often in the house. Sergeant Bill Jordan had taught her to ride when he was a private working on his first enlistment. Hauffer was a stern, quiet man who had been an officer in the Prussian army. Nobody knew or inquired how he happened to come to the western frontier…such questions simply were not asked.
Lister had tired of trying to make it on a government claim in Kansas…Ryan had recently arrived from Ireland…Johnson, whose name had been something else back in the States…and Spinarski, a sullen Slav who talked only to the horses, with whom he was on the best of terms.
All gone…massacred!
Captain Mellett would soon be going into bivouac…M Troop’s last bivouac? Tomorrow they would ride to their rendezvous with destiny at North Fork.
Betty knew the place. She had been there once on a picnic in more peaceful times than these—a lonely, lovely place of wild, rugged beauty. To a soldier, in such a time of Indian trouble as this, it might be a death trap.
M Troop mustered forty-seven men, and at least twenty were hardened veterans, three of whom had been with Crook on the Rosebud; two had fought against Cochise in Arizona. Four had served enlistments in the battle-scarred Fifth Cavalry. Only six were raw recruits, and there was some suspicion that one of those had served previously and deserted…nobody asked that question, either.
Mellett himself was a stern, tough officer. He had fought through the Civil War, advancing to colonel, and had come west to fight Indians when the war was over, accepting the reduced rank, as so many others had. All told, he had twenty years of the hardest kind of service behind him, and looked it.
*
DENISE BROUGHT COFFEE for them. “I’d like to know where Kilrone picked up that bullet,” Paddock said, “and who treated him for it.”
“He may have friends among the Indians, Frank. You know how he was…he always had friends in odd places.”
Paddock tasted his coffee. If he did as he planned, he was thinking, who would be left behind? The sutler, who was fifty-five and fat; two farriers, who were good enough at shoeing horses and good as veterinarians if nothing serious occurred; one line sergeant on the sick list, and four teamsters. There were several cooks, and three men in the guardhouse who could, if necessary, be freed to fight.
At best, fifteen men…not nearly enough if there was an attack.
The fort, like most western forts, was not really a fort at all. It was a group of buildings around a parade ground, with gaps between the buildings. He had never given any thought to how the place might be defended, for it had never seemed that he would have this problem. Usually there were men enough so that no force of Indians would be likely to take the risk. And he was not going to think of that now.
Coolly, even coldly, he pushed the idea aside. It simply could not be…it must not be. The Bannocks would be concentrating on Mellett’s troop, and Paddock would close in with his troop. He wanted the Indians to become thoroughly involved before he attacked; then his victory would be all the more decisive.
All the troops were far under strength. There had seemed little prospect of any serious trouble, so there had been delay in bringing them up to strength. Theoretically a troop consisted of seventy-eight men, but few had as many as that. K Troop as well as M Troop consisted of forty-seven men. With others Paddock could muster, he could bring it up to sixty.
He thought of the many letters Webb had written requesting additional men. Despite the fact that literacy and citizenship requirements were nonexistent, recruiting lagged. At that, almost half their force was of foreign extraction, the largest portion being Irish. Fortunately these made excellent soldiers and superb fighting men.
Whom to leave in command? Certainly not Pryor. Lieutenant Eden Pryor had courage enough, but he lacked both judgment and experience. Moreover, he despised the Indian as a fighting man, and was eager for a fight to prove his point. Whatever action took place here must be defensive only.
His thoughts returned to Barnes Kilrone. How did he come to be here? What was he doing out here at the shaggy end of nowhere? And what had happened to his army career?
Chapter 3
*
THE EYES OF Barnes Kilrone opened on a shadowed room, lighted by a kerosene lamp, screened to keep the light from waking him. He lay still for a time, just listening, as was his habit. It was a practice developed long ago, the practice of a man who traveled much in wild country.
His mind was immediately alert, remembering how he had come here, and remembering his exhaustion. Even now he did not wish to move, although he knew he must. There was something here that remained undone.
He had reported to the commanding officer—Frank Paddock, of all people—giving him the news of the fate of I Troop and of the officer commanding the post. Which left Major Frank Bell Paddock in command.
His eyes were on the island of light on the ceiling over the lamp, which had its wick turned low. Beyond the screen he heard a faint rustle of movement, and realized somebody was there, waiting, watching over him.
Well, he did not need care—his wound was almost healed. It was the weakness it had left him with, and the driving hard ride that had made him fold up.
Paddock…how the man had changed! All the edge was gone. His face was puffy, and he had looked beaten. It was hell, what a man could do to himself…for he had done it to himself—and to Denise.
Kilrone started to sit up and the bed creaked under him. Instantly there was quick movement beyond the screen, and as he sank back a girl came around it to look down at him. It was the girl he had seen outside when he first rode in.
“What’s happened?” he asked her.
“Nothing…yet. The command is moving out in the morning.”
“Paddock? You mean he’s moving to join Mellett? He mustn’t.”
He started up again and swung his feet to the floor. “I’ve got to get up.”
“Why? Why mustn’t he?”
He seemed about to speak, but hesitated. There was no reason to frighten them. He would talk to Paddock.
Despite Betty Considine’s protests, he dressed and went to the kitchen. He looked across the room at Denise. She was as beautiful as ever, a little older, with a little less gaiety and laughter, but poised and lovely as always.
“I’ve got to see Frank,” he said.
“Have some coffee first. You’re in no condition to be walking around.”
He glanced at the clock. It was nearly midnight, but the post was awake. Men were preparing their equipment to move out at dawn, or earlier. He accepted the coffee, trying to plan what he would say. After all, he was a civilian and Paddock was in command here.
Paddock heard him speak to the sergeant, and he came out of his office. He was looking better. His face even seemed to have lost its flabbiness.
“Frank, are you planning on going after them?” Kilrone asked.
“We will have them boxed,” was the answer. “We can come in from the south when they attack Mellett.”
“What about the post?”
“No need to worry. They will be so busy with us they won’t have the time to consider attacking here.”
Barney Kilrone spoke quietly. “Do
n’t do it, Frank. It’s the post they’re after. There were at least two hundred warriors in the lot that hit I Troop, and there are a lot of Paiutes coming up from the south. My guess would be there are at least a thousand warriors on the move right now, and even that may be too low.”
“A thousand! Barney, you’re daffy. The Bannocks could never muster that many, even with the Paiutes.”
“Frank, believe me, they’ve got them.”
Paddock turned away. He did not wish to listen to such talk, nor did he want to have the feeling of guilt that rose within him. He knew he was taking a risk, but he refused to admit it, even to himself. If he sat tight, if he failed to move now, there would be no point to anything.
He might stay right here, and no one could object to his sitting still and taking care of the post, guarding it against possible attack. But the alternative was a possible victory for him, with headlines in the news and, as soon as it could be managed, recall to an eastern post. That was what he must keep in mind.
“Mellett must be given help,” he said stubbornly. “We have a chance to crush this outbreak once and for all. I shall move to join him at the moment of attack.” He looked around at Kilrone. “You’re welcome to ride along, if you feel up to it.”
“I’ll stay here,” Kilrone said quietly.
Paddock glanced at him, his eyes suddenly cold. “You do that,” he said. And then he added, “Will you be here when I get back? Or will you choose this opportunity to take Denise away?”
Anger exploded in Kilrone. “Damn it, Frank, Denise has a mind of her own! Nobody can take her anywhere! I told you before, she is in love with you. She has always been.”
He turned away and went outside. The night was cold, warning of what was to come. Kilrone stood watching the bustle of activity…undoubtedly there was an Indian somewhere not far away who was also watching, pleased with what he saw. And that Indian would be riding soon, to carry the news.
Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0) Page 2