“Meaning?”
“Let’s wait and see what Whitestraw has to tell us.”
Except for the occasional snort and stomp of horses up and down the columns, the men were silent. The wind had picked up slightly, blowing to the backs of the savage but into their faces. It was not enough to cause them to cover up, but it would be a hindrance to the horses in a charge.
Minutes crawled like the sun itself. Whitestraw’s ivory palomino was a smudge against the darker horses of the Comanche—and the out-of-place draft horse that had been detached from the wagon. Sgt. Calvin was dismounted and standing with his rifle across the saddle of his horse. Neither he nor Keel expected trouble. But the captain did wonder where Hank Gannon was and what he might be doing or thinking. Apparently having entered the valley ahead of the Indians’ arrival, he would be in possession of additional information as well.
It was a longer-than-expected visit, after which Whitestraw came galloping back, Sgt. Calvin falling in behind him. It was a courageous move on Calvin’s part: if the Indians were going to take anyone down it would have been him, not the man bearing the message they wished to send. It was also a smart move: he was putting his life at risk to test the honor of the braves. They would have every reason for wanting to kill one of the unit’s best shots, the kind of man who would be sent with the scout.
The scout galloped in so hard he had to draw hard on the reins to stop the horse.
“Shit, Captain. They got Constance Breen.”
The answer to Nightingale’s question unfolded with horrifying clarity. Behind him, Rufus Long also swore before his chin dropped to his chest.
“Aw dear Jesus,” Long muttered.
“Our young schoolteacher,” Keel informed Nightingale before he could ask. “She was probably out here looking for Gannon. Where was she?”
“Standing behind her cart,” Whitestraw said. “One ankle tied to the axle.”
The silence that followed struck at the soul of every man present.
“What do they want?” Keel asked.
“Everything we got,” Whitestraw replied. “Boots included. Canteens, too.”
“We have to go in,” the colonel said angrily. “They’ll kill her regardless.”
“How many men will you peel off when they whip the horse to drag her off?” Keel asked. “The Comanche will kill most of them as they pass.”
“No doubt,” Whitestraw said. “They got men on the rocks t’the west already.”
“We’d start the fight with casualties who haven’t fired a shot,” Keel said.
“What do you propose?” the colonel demanded. “That we let them defile her?”
“They’ll make her scream,” Keel agreed, his voice somber. “But she’ll stay alive. Gannon will figure out what’s happening. He won’t let that go on.”
“And in the meantime? What do we do?” Nightingale asked.
“Andy, go back and tell them we’re leaving,” Keel said. “Don’t ask for the girl. We have to make like we know she’s lost but don’t want her dead.” To Nightingale he added, “We’ll go back north, turn west out of view, and come in at the other end of the valley.”
“Nightfall,” the colonel said with sudden understanding.
“Our best chance,” Keel said. “Andy can scout us a path before then.”
“What if the Comanche figure what we’re planning?” Nightingale asked, nodding without subtlety at the scout.
“Then I won’t be comin’ back,” Whitestraw said, already turning.
Sgt. Calvin’s fist was still on his rifle, his expression resolute as he wheeled round to follow his comrade-in-arms.
* * *
Constance should have been terrified from the first.
The two Comanche had come up on either side of her buckboard, one of them arresting the horse from further movement, the other riding up to her side, leaning in, and grabbing her left wrist. She hadn’t tried to run because the braves were armed. She didn’t use the buggy whip on the horse and it wasn’t in her hand; she might have used it if it were for the self-respect of it. She did not want to go docilely with these men. But that seemed, at the moment, the wisest course.
It had been told to her, by her father and others, that a generation ago it was preferable to take your own life rather than be captured by Indians. She did not know if that were true, still, but she was also a fighter. She came from strong Colonial Philadelphia stock; the Breens had defied the British in Ireland, then again in America. She would not shame that legacy.
She saw the men from Austin as they were riding west. No doubt they saw her, since the wagon was kicking up considerable dust. Upon reaching the valley, with the arroyo beyond, another brave came over, pulled her roughly from her seat, and proceeded to tie her hands behind her back and around her waist, her left leg to the wagon.
Then, she was afraid. The horse was not a runner, but even being dragged slowly across this terrain would be fatal. She stood in the hot sun, trying to stand with her head high and defiant, but shaking from the thighs down. Perhaps it was hidden by her riding outfit; she hoped so. She kept her jaw locked to keep her teeth from clattering. She felt her heart leap when the men from the Texas Special Police arrived under a flag of truce. She had no idea what they said in Comanche, but it was obvious that the man who had arrived with a white kerchief in his teeth had returned to the column to deliver a message.
Constance was hopeful, then. She could not help looking at the braves who were arrayed along the sharp-edged rocks. They were not looking at her lustfully, as they did in the magazines she confiscated from some of the boys in class. Most were watching the white men, some were moving into position along the rocks in the direction her horse was facing, and a few were looking at the valley. She was perspiring from forehead to ankle by the time the two police officers returned. Again, she did not know what had been discussed. But after a few exchanges one of the Indians came toward her with a knife. Her breathing stopped and her throat was suddenly too thick to swallow. He went behind her, his chest pressed to her back, and put the blade under her hairline.
“God, no!” she whimpered—more to the Almighty than to the brave.
One of the two men from the police column had a rifle. He turned it on the brave—
No, Constance thought with horror. On me.
Her heart was like an animal in a cage, throwing itself against the bars in a desperate effort to escape. Under her breath, she uttered the Lord’s Prayer—all she could think of—and closed her eyes. The insides of her eyelids were red. She squeezed them harder until they went black, hoping that would somehow brace her for the arrival of a swift death.
Over the thunder in her chest and throat and ears Constance heard the two Indians were talking again. It sounded as if the one from Austin was reassuring the other. He said miar. She remembered that much from what little, useful Comanche she had taught the children. It meant “I go” or “We go.” The Comanche grunted in what sounded like an assent. The blade was lowered. She opened her eyes. She did not cry and hoped that the Indians did not mistake her perspiration for tears.
When the two departed, the young brave who had been prepared to scalp her untied the rope that lashed her to the axle. Then he picked her up and threw her without ceremony or respect into the wagon, on her chest, as though she were a sack of grain. What had the police agreed to do? Leave her here? Could that be?
No, she thought. They would not.
Captain Keel knew that Gannon was out here. Perhaps Hank had signaled him, either in person or from a perch above the Comanche. He would have a plan. All she had to do was wait.
The sun was glaring down at her, and after a few minutes she called out.
“Might I have water?”
There was muted conversation and a brave came over with a deerskin. He climbed beside her, turned her face roughly, poured a little between her lips.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling.
He left without a word, taking his disinterested
expression with him. Only now did the woman consider how close she had come to dying. But she had not, and life seemed sweetly precious at that moment, even though she was helpless as a fox in a trapper’s dirt hole.
She felt a jerk. The cart was being moved. From the direction it had been facing, she knew she was being taken toward the mouth of the valley. She heard one of the braves whistle like a bird, the tone sounding shrill at first, then echoing more and more. The wagon stopped right where the man sat on horseback, still chirping.
The Comanche left the cart there.
Constance could not, at first, imagine what any of it meant until the brave looked down at her from the back of the stallion. He had a wicked look on him, not like a chickadee but like a cat.
And then, with a flash of horror, she realized that sound was intended to echo along the valley.
* * *
The activity at the mouth of the valley did not concern Gannon as long as it remained in the mouth of the valley. There was just over a mile to go, and Gannon was beginning to think the Indian wanted him to exhaust himself looking. Patience was a quality most tribes possessed that the white man did not.
He stopped and looked around. There were enough ledges that the Comanche could have used to go up or sideways without ever touching the ground. There were crags and nooks where a man could hide once the shadows were long enough. As he had half expected, this was likely to get him nowhere. The one thing he did not worry about was the Indian circling back and rejoining his fellows. This was a blood vendetta and he would want it ended, man-to-man.
The problem is, who can afford to outwait who? Gannon thought.
Unless he was on the valley floor, the Comanche would not have access to edible prey and water.
Maybe you do, too. Gannon turned and looked back. There had been a cool spot several yards back. A possible venting spot for an underground spring. Turning the horse around, he returned to the section where fallen rock had piled—
Or been piled.
He had missed that, the first time he passed. There were indentations in the ground nearby where the small slabs had been picked up and moved. He looked around to make sure the Indian wasn’t close by, then crouched and hefted the stones aside. There was an opening, about the size of a rabbit warren. Cool air rose from within along with a faint trickling. There were slightly eroded areas in the lower rock where ropes had been lowered to collect water.
Gannon wondered if an underground stream was all that was down there. These waters could have cut a channel or even a cave system. If so, the Comanche could have known about it or found a way in. He might be there now, waiting to emerge at night.
Or he might be somewhere else entirely, Gannon knew. A man could lose his mind trying to anticipate another. Passing a command tent during the war, he had overheard an officer remark, “Plan your own attack. You can be defeated by what you don’t anticipate as surely as by what you do anticipate.” The best tactic, Gannon agreed, was to do what felt right to him. And what felt right to him was to learn more about hiding places and, if necessary, other ways out of the valley.
Gannon rose and began pulling dry scrub from between the rocks on the ground and whatever hung to the ledge low on the side of the valley. He bound them like wheat using a pelt he had tanned but not added to his cloak. Then he tied the bundle to his lariat and squatted beside the opening in the foot of the wall. He struck a match, lit the brush, and lowered it into the darkness. Then he let the rope play out about two or three feet, looped his end around a rock, and stood back. Gannon watched along the rock wall. The pelt would smolder as all-hell.
Peering into the dark, where nothing but the flame was itself visible, he saw the fire and smoke swept instantly to the north. Gannon left the makeshift torch hanging there and stepped back, around the horse, so he could see the entire expanse of wall. He scanned the rock wall, looking for any kind of natural chimney. He listened while he looked, half-expecting to hear a pebble dislodged, and as he turned, see the Comanche—
And then a section of the wall vanished, sending the horse to the ground and Gannon into the air.
* * *
The north side of the valley was more of a ruin than the south side. There were no stepped rises, just a chaotic jumble of rock, much of it thrust inside, some of it scattered on the outside. It was as if a giant fist had punched a solid wall in, then spilled shards here and there as it withdrew.
That fist was water, a lot of it, sitting against the rock and causing it to crash inward. This side of the valley bore dry rills that were older than human habitation, wide and weatherworn but still showing evidence of once having flowed with life. Captain Keel also wondered, based on what he had read in Sutton’s Theory of the Earth, whether the volcanoes had caused landslides when they shook the earth. There were images from other places around the globe where that had happened. It was at times like these that Keel wished he still possessed both of his eyes, since the scale of the distribution encompassed breadth more than height.
The men from Austin had heard the explosion shortly before making the turn to the west. It was too strong to be a gunshot, lacked the rise and fall of a rockslide, and he didn’t think the Comanche had a cannon or explosives. It could have been a prospector, though he could not imagine why anyone would be blasting with Comanche at the door. The explosion could also have been methane gas, either intentionally or accidentally ignited by someone in the valley. Dust had risen in a thin, white cloud indicating the location of the blast not far from the mouth of the valley.
The day was well into dusk when the twin forces reached the opening.
Keel had his own ideas about how to deploy the men but deferred to Colonel Nightingale.
“I don’t see the point of sending anyone up there.” The officer gestured toward the mesa. “Out of effective firing range, and we’d hear the redskins coming most likely.”
Keel agreed. He also wanted every man where he could be of use, if needed.
“We should stay out of the valley, lest the enemy cut us off from those men,” Nightingale said, looking around. “I’ll put my boys, in twos, on the rocks that offer a shooting range if the Comanche come through. We should have yours in reserve in case we need to mount a charge.”
“That’s how I would have arranged it,” the captain said.
Nightingale thanked the captain for his support; it was good for the morale of the men when the officers did not disagree or have to confer in private.
“What do you propose about their captive?” Nightingale asked, as Sgt. Calvin took over the task of disbursing the men. “Do you think they will harm her?”
“Most likely,” Keel said. “Those braves get bored, a wagon wheel, a white woman, and a knife can provide amusement. Or they may test us.” He regarded Nightingale pointedly. “You’ve been around, Colonel. You know that whatever it is, we are already too late to stop it.”
Nightingale nodded unhappily and went off to survey the entrance to the valley before it was dark. Then he sat with the journalist Lee Bates, who tagged along in his civvies with a notepad that was also a sketchbook, chronicling the few facts he required to make his bigger, bolder yarns.
Calvin went about his work with quiet urgency. The men were told they could keep their blankets but were not to sleep. He had another task, which Keel had ordered silently, with just movements of his head: it was a job for Whitestraw. Despite what Keel had said when he agreed with Nightingale, the Comanche could well come around the mesa and attack from the sides. Andrew Whitestraw was to be sent to the top of the mesa to watch for just such movement. Before Calvin went to work with the men, he gave Whitestraw his orders. The scout left to find a way up; he returned with what he had seen in the fading light, an outside slope near this end of the valley, masses of fallen rock he could use to crawl to the top. He said he would leave at nightfall and signal with gunfire; Calvin instructed each team to be prepared for new orders, from him, should they be necessary.
There was no campfi
re and smoked jerky was consumed as darkness settled in. With it came the chirps, hoots, and rustling of nocturnal hunters. The men knew that any of them could be a Comanche, which is why they had been stationed in pairs. A single, stalking Indian was unlikely to take two men down at the same time.
Sgt. Richard Calvin sat on the edge of a four-foot-high rock, his Springfield rifle lying beside him on a blanket to keep the action free of dirt. The marksman spent the time chewing dinner and then tobacco. He had offered some to Captain Keel, who was marching slowly around the encampment, anxious because he could not light a cigarette. Keel was grateful but did not accept; he didn’t like the paste of it in his cheek, he explained.
Calvin understood that it was not decorous for a captain to spit. But missing several back teeth from a long-ago brawl, he tended to park the wad there. It wasn’t much of a conversation, but Calvin’s relationship with the captain was always reinforced by personal little moments like these. They were exchanges that did not cross the boundary of military propriety.
Keel leaned in toward his sergeant.
“You send Andy near or far?” Keel said quietly.
“I left it up to him,” Calvin said. “Knowing Andy, he’ll want to get as close as possible.”
“Which is probably what the Comanche will do, to see if we continued north and where we made camp.”
“It’ll be an interestin’ meetin’,” Calvin said.
Keel answered with a quiet grunt, though neither man knew how such an encounter would go. Two scouts might let each other be; or, being from historically hostile tribes, they might try to kill one another on sight.
Though the men seemed relaxed, Calvin could not help chewing hard and running the tips of his fingers across the bare, particulate rock. It kept his skin raw and sensitive, useful for dealing with horse or gun. The big man had always been easygoing—until the war. Hunting in upstate New York to provide for his folks and three sisters wasn’t the same as sitting in a tree or on a cliff or across a river, hunting Rebels. It wasn’t that he minded the killing—the secessionists had started it, after all—but he minded the when of it. He had in his power the moment to end the life of a scout, an officer, a sentry. If they were smoking or shitting, he let them finish. If they were reading, he waited for them to turn a page. If they were doing anything military, like tending a horse or helping a wounded man, they died as quick as he could fire. Nothing that furthered the war effort should be allowed to continue.
War Valley Page 10