Novel 1966 - Kilrone (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Kilrone knew he was an outsider here, practically an interloper. He no longer belonged to the Army, no longer had anything to do with this. Yet it was in him, the memory of it, the feel of it, the smells of stables, of leather, of gunsmoke. Soberly, he watched the subdued haste, the lights in the windows, knowing that hurried good-byes were being said, the women smiling bravely to hide their fears, the men being roughly casual about it all, hiding their own worries, which were rarely for themselves but rather for what would happen to their families if they did not come back.

  He had been through this at Camp Date Creek, at Fort Riley, at half a dozen other posts. Not that he had ever left anyone behind…and that was the worst of it. Some of the men here tonight would be leaving no one behind. He knew how that felt. You sat in your saddle while the women said good-bye, clung to their husbands for that last moment, reluctant to let them go. You sat straight, looking right across your horse’s ears and you knew nobody really gave a damn if you came back or not…unless it was the sergeant who kept the duty roster.

  It was going to be rough out there. If Paddock was thinking of anything at all except a quick, crushing victory, he was thinking of Egan or Buffalo Horn. Well, it would be neither of them. Egan was a peace-loving Indian who did not really want to fight; and Buffalo Horn had his head full of the reputation Chief Joseph had made, and wanted to beat it.

  Anyway, Buffalo Horn was busy up in Oregon, and this action was the inspiration of Medicine Dog, and you had to live close to the Indians to understand about Medicine Dog.

  Kilrone saw the lone horseman riding toward him, coming up through the shadows from the stables, a man who did not ride like a cavalryman. The rider drew up a dozen feet off and deliberately lit a cigarette to let Kilrone see his face.

  It was a long, horse face with a drooping mustache, and the man was a civilian in nondescript dress. The horse was a good one, a mustang, but long-legged and solidly built.

  “Howdy,” the man said. “Seen you ride in. You’re Kilrone, ain’t you? Seen you one time down to Cheyenne.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Ben Hayes. Scoutin’ for this outfit.”

  “I came in from the southeast,” Kilrone offered. “You’ve got trouble coming.”

  “I told him.”

  “You know who they’ve got with them down there?” Kilrone took a cigar from his shirt pocket. “Medicine Dog,” he said.

  Hayes stared. “You’re sure?”

  “A short, stocky Indian with bandy legs, a deep scar through his upper lip.”

  “That’s him.” Hayes swore slowly, viciously. “He’s mean…pizen mean. And smart, real smart.”

  “Tell Paddock, will you? I tried.”

  Ben Hayes was silent. After a moment he said, “The more I think on it the more I wonder. Medicine Dog would like to get Mellett…be a big feather for him.”

  Barney Kilrone spoke abruptly. “Medicine Dog is a realist, Hayes. Mellett would be an important scalp for any Indian. But Medicine Dog doesn’t want a scalp—he wants the food, the horses, most of all the ammunition.

  “Think, man,” he went on. “If the Dog takes this camp, where can Mellett go? He’s riding about a hundred rounds to the man. He’ll have a fight up on North Fork and he’ll use some of it…say half if it goes as I believe it will. The Dog will have this camp. He’ll have guns, plenty of ammunition, food. He’ll have some uniforms, too.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The Dog is only half Bannock, remember. The other half is Sioux. As a boy back in Dakota he dressed in a uniform, along with a couple dozen others, to trap and kill some scouts who thought they were joining an Army command. Using the same trick, he led a party into a stage station down Wyoming way. I think he’d try it again.”

  “I’ll talk to the Major.” Hayes sounded doubtful. “I got no use for a desk soldier,” he added.

  “Don’t take this one lightly, Hayes. I know him. He was one of the best troop commanders I ever knew when he was younger.”

  For several minutes neither man spoke, each busy with his own thoughts. The parade ground was beginning to empty, and a few lights had gone out. There was time for a couple of hours of sleep before the column moved out. With no place to go, Kilrone knew he would return to Paddock’s quarters, and he would be expected there. Yet he felt a curious reluctance to return, although if that girl was there…what was her name?

  He turned his thoughts to her seriously for the first time. She was pretty—beautiful in her own special way—but it was her quiet competence that had impressed him. He had a vague recollection of her examining his wound.

  “Hayes,” he said suddenly, “I’m new at this post. If a man had to leave here, with a party of women and children, is there any place he could go? Some place in the hills, I mean? A place a man could defend?”

  “You’d need time. You ain’t a-goin’ to have it.” Hayes looked straight at him. “You stayin’ here?”

  “They’ll need me.”

  “Good luck.”

  Ben Hayes rode across the grounds toward the stables. He would be catching some sleep himself.

  “Mr. Kilrone?” he turned his head and saw Betty Considine standing beside him. “You should be resting. You’re suffering from exhaustion and from the results of your wound.”

  “And you?”

  “I am tired.” She spoke quietly, with no plea for sympathy. “It has been a long day.”

  He started back toward Paddock’s quarters, keeping pace with her. “I often wonder who chooses the locations for these posts,” he commented. “They are always in the hottest, driest, windiest, or coldest places.”

  “I heard you tell Ben you were staying.”

  “Well, you said I need rest. This is as good a place as any for that. I always swore when I left the Army I’d find a place near an army post where reveille would wake me up…and then I’d turn over and go to sleep again.”

  She laughed. “And did you?”

  “No. I found that I missed the Army too much. There’s always the temptation to go back, you know, because it’s safe.”

  “Safe?” She sounded incredulous.

  “Of course. If you’re an enlisted man your decisions are all made for you. If you’re an officer there’s the regulations, and the fact that everything has to go through channels. If things go wrong or you make a mistake, you can always find somebody else to blame. You don’t have to worry about where you will eat or sleep, or how you’ll pay medical bills, and the margins within which you can operate, so far as behavior is concerned, are well laid out.”

  “So why did you leave the service? Or have you?”

  “Oh, I left it, all right! A situation developed with an Indian agent of whom I didn’t approve, but it seemed it was not my business to approve or disapprove, so I went to work and gathered evidence. I built a very careful case, affidavits, physical evidence…everything.

  “My commanding officer warned me that the Indian agent was a personal friend of a very important man in the War Department, and if I persisted my career was very likely at an end.”

  “You persisted?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “My carefully built case was lost somewhere in transit, and I was given the word that promotions would be nonexistent for me…at least until there was a change of administration.”

  “You resigned?”

  “Yes…and then I went to see the Indian agent. We discussed the situation, and then he resigned, too. And left for a healthier climate.”

  They stood outside the door. “And then?”

  “I went down into Mexico looking for a lost gold mine, rode as a shotgun messenger for a stage company, ramrodded a cattle drive, staked a mining claim in Colorado until I was starved out, fought through a revolution in Central America, went east guarding a gold shipment.”

  “And now?”

  “Drifting…looking for a place to light.”

  She was disappointed, alth
ough what difference it could make to her she did not know. It seemed a pointless existence. Of course, many men were doing just what Kilrone was doing, but for him it seemed wrong. He had been a young officer with a future.

  They still stood there outside Paddock’s quarters. “You’re staying with Mrs. Paddock?” he asked.

  “Only tonight. I live over there.” She indicated a house two doors away. “Dr. Hanlon is my uncle. He is the post surgeon.”

  “Carter Hanlon? Wasn’t he stationed at Fort Concho for a while?”

  “Yes. Did you know him?”

  “He plugged up a couple of holes for me, one time. He’s a good man.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully, and then said, “She’s a wonderful person, Denise Paddock is. She left a lot for him.”

  “I don’t think she has ever been sorry,” Betty said. “Sorry for him, I think, but not for herself. She has a rare quality of making a home wherever she is, and of finding the beautiful in every place.”

  She kept her eyes on his. “That was an Indian dressing on your wound,” she said.

  He was amused. “I’m not a renegade or a squaw man, if that is what you are thinking.”

  In the light from the open door he could see that she flushed. “I was thinking nothing of the kind.”

  Denise came to the door. “Unless you want to sleep, come into the kitchen. Frank has gone to bed.”

  Barney Kilrone dropped into a chair. He was tired, dead-tired, but he did not feel like sleeping. And there was something he needed to know.

  “Have there been many Indians around the post in the past few weeks?” he asked.

  “No,” Betty said, “none at all. In fact, Ben Hayes has been going around muttering because of it. He always says when you see no Indians, look out.”

  “Why do you ask?” Denise said.

  “Because Medicine Dog knows everything about this post. He knows how many men are fit for service, he knows about the store of ammunition and supplies, he knows about the extra horses. Within a short time after Major Paddock rides out with his command, he will know that too.”

  They were both looking at him now. “Do you mean there is somebody here, somebody on this post, who is giving him information?” Betty was incredulous.

  “That’s hard to believe,” Denise said.

  “It always is,” Kilrone said dryly. “That’s why it’s so easy. Nobody is ever willing to suspect someone they know, someone who sits down at the table with them. But a traitor can be anybody.”

  “Not anybody,” Denise protested.

  “The fact remains that everything is known. I must talk to Frank again, Denise, or you must. He has to realize that.”

  “What would you have him do?”

  “Try and get a messenger to Mellett, recalling him. Meanwhile, ride out from the post as he plans, but go only a few miles, then return and go into hiding near here.”

  “What about Captain Mellett?”

  “The man’s an experienced Indian fighter, and I know that unless he is surprised he can fight off any Indian attack he is apt to meet. The real attack will come here, at the post.”

  “Frank doesn’t think so,” Denise said.

  Barney Kilrone was silent. An attack by Paddock at the critical moment could well be decisive. And it would read well in dispatches, while a defensive action against Indians, no matter if successful, would be dismissed without comment either by his superiors or by the press. Major Frank Bell Paddock, who might never have another such chance, was going to take this one.

  Only the lives to be risked were those at the post—the men, women, and children who would be left behind, unprotected.

  Chapter 4

  *

  CAPTAIN CHARLES MELLETT, who knew the challenge of command, rode up the low hill in the late afternoon and halted his troop where the land fell away on all sides. Just below the hill’s highest point there was a sandy hollow. No doubt the buffalo had begun it, rolling in the sand to rid themselves of ticks or fleas, but the wind had scoured the hollow, making it wider and deeper.

  Just over the highest rise of the hill there was a staggered cluster of junipers that formed a windbreak, as well as a screen for the camp’s activity. On the south side, runoff water had cut a small ravine that joined a larger one at the base of the hill. Where the two joined there was a cluster of huge old cottonwoods. The stream itself was a few inches deep, a few feet wide. The water was clear and quite cold.

  Mellett turned in his saddle to speak to Dunivant. “Sergeant, water your stock. Let them graze for one hour, then take them to water again. After that, put your picket line close in. Establish the guard posts at once.”

  Again he checked the country around. There was a good field of fire on three sides and, except for the small ravine, no available cover for at least a hundred yards in that direction.

  “Corporal Hessler,” he directed, “when the horses have been watered for the second time, I want that brush dumped into the ravine. Arrange it so that we cannot be approached up that ravine without a disturbance being created.”

  Dr. Hanlon dismounted. “You’re expecting a fight?”

  “This is Indian country,” Mellett replied. “I always expect a fight.”

  The men of M Troop, who knew their commander, were already busy shaping the camp into a crude but effective temporary fort, dragging a fallen log into position here, throwing up a modest breastwork there.

  Mellett’s rules were few but definite. Every camp a defensive position, all cookfires out before twilight, all horses picketed close in by sundown, each camp chosen not so much for their own comfort as to deprive an enemy of cover or concealment.

  Captain Mellett had fought the Sioux and the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche, the Nez Percé, and the Apache, and he knew what an Indian was like. The Indian he knew was a wily and dangerous warrior, a first-class fighting man who had his own set of rules and his own ideas of bravery.

  As the camp was settling down for the night, Dr. Hanlon commented over coffee, “We’ve seen no Indians.”

  Mellett took out a cigar and lit it. “I never like to argue with my superiors, and Webb knows this business as well as I do, but at a time like this, with Buffalo Horn out, I think he had too small a force for a patrol.”

  “You think he’s in trouble?”

  “I doubt it, but it’s taking a chance, Cart. You know that yourself. Oh, I’m not particularly worried about Buffalo Horn. The last we heard, he’s away up north and west from here…he’s Harney’s problem. But there’s something else in the wind, and I don’t like the smell of it.

  “Jim Webb knew that when he was sent up here from Halleck. We’ve had no burned ranches, no settlers killed in this area, though there’s been a lot of it over west. That argues that somebody is keeping them from it, and the question is—why?”

  “They may be taking a spoke from Washakie’s wheel. He’s avoided any sign of trouble with the whites.”

  “I know. This is something else, because those Indians south and east of here have turned mean. Mean, but quiet, and that’s not their way. Webb’s theory is that somebody who carries a lot of weight with them is holding them back for something really big.”

  “What, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” Mellett looked at his cigar tip. “Just the same, I’m glad that K Troop is back there at the post with Paddock.”

  “A drunk.”

  “Basically a good soldier, Cart. He’s been drinking, I’ll allow, but the man knows the way of things, and when the chips are down, he knows what to do.”

  “Did you know Kilrone?”

  “Served with him. He never went by the book, but he was good. Maybe the best I ever served with, unless it was Paddock himself.

  “We used to talk about Indians, and believe me, nobody ever knew them better than Kilrone. He said something once that I’ve never forgotten. We’d been talking about the way the Mongols banded together under one man after all their tribal wars, and swept o
ver most of Asia and part of Europe.

  “Kilrone commented, ‘You can just thank the Good Lord that the Indian never developed such a man.’ His theory was that the only thing that saved us from being swept away was the fact that the tribal thinking of the Indian kept them from uniting.

  “Suppose Tecumseh—and he had the idea—had been able to weld the tribes together under some such leader as Crazy Horse or Chief Joseph? We’ve never whipped a well-armed Indian force, you know. They never had as many rifles as they needed, and never enough ammunition, and fortunately for us the Indian’s idea of war was based on a one-battle, one-war tradition. Joseph had arrived at the idea of the campaign, but he was fighting a rear-guard action with only some three hundred-odd fighting men, and all his women and children along.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way.”

  “We’ve been lucky, Cart. Genghis Khan found the Mongols split up, living a life not too different from that of the Indians, and busy with tribal warfare and tribal hatreds. He brought them all together, and look what happened.”

  “You don’t think anything like that is developing now, surely?”

  “No, I don’t. But suppose there was somebody down there in the mountains who could keep the Bannocks and the Paiutes together and disciplined. Suppose he could make a feint that would draw us away from the post? We’ve got several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition at the post now, and five hundred new rifles.”

  “You make me feel that we should turn right around and head back for the post,” Dr. Hanlon said. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. Or I think I don’t. And as for Kilrone’s theory…it’s too late now. Moreover, there isn’t an Indian anywhere who could do it.”

  “Not that we know of.”

  Mellett drew on his cigar and looked at the glowing end. “That’s right…not that we know of.”

  Down the line a few of the fires were already out. Mellett leaned over his fire and pulled back the biggest of the sticks, then scattered dirt over the small blaze. Smoke rose in the air and he tossed another handful of dirt over a glowing ember.