Callaghen (1972) Page 11

MacBrody looked at him sourly. "My duty is here, and I like it that way. I'm looking for nothing out there."

  "Don't do it, Sergeant." Ridge spoke emphatically. "You'd have small chance. It would take a ghost to move among those Indians without their knowing it."

  "Then I shall be a ghost," Callaghen said.

  He squatted there while they discussed his chances, but he was scarcely thinking of their words. He knew what his chances were, but he also remembered his own narrow escape from dying of thirst out there. And he knew where the water holes were. He was no hero, and he did not think of what he was doing as heroic; it was simply that Lieutenant Sprague and his men might need help. With horses they might make it, of course. After all, they could locate the trail to Marl or Rock Springs, or even to Bitter Springs.

  Sprague and his men were already short of water when he had left them. If they had not reached a water hole by now, they were in serious trouble... and the Indians would know, just as they had known about Callaghen and the others.

  "I'll go tonight," he said, "but say nothing about it to the others."

  Ridge dug at the earth between his feet. "Damn it, man, I'd go with you, but "

  "You're not a soldier. Your job is with that stage."

  Callaghen got up and walked to the wall. For a while he moved from place to place, studying the area outside. Getting a horse out would be hardest of all, for undoubtedly the Indians would move in closer at night.

  There was a restlessness in him that did not come from their confinement here. He knew it was because of that discharge which was due, that might even now be at Camp Cady. He wanted to be free, moving out on his own, trying himself in the world outside the army.

  Men were building a country here. Although some sought merely quick wealth, others were bringing the law, bringing order, establishing homes and businesses... it was an exciting time to live. As yet there was no great wealth; men had only what they could make for themselves with their own strength, their own ingenuity. It was ability that mattered. Even as he considered that, he was thinking that even in Europe things were changing. In England most members of the House of Lords were only a generation or two away from being commoners.

  The old families who had come over with the Conqueror had declined or disappeared, and many of the conquered Anglo-Saxons were once again in positions of trust and importance. The same sort of thing could happen here, and a day might even come when Indians would hold important positions and direct affairs in the land they had once lost to an invader.

  It was such thoughts that made him restless now, and gave him that urge to be out and doing... that, and some nameless thing in the desert itself, something that whispered to him with every wind, that stirred with every grain of sand. His mind seemed to wander over such a range of mankind's doings. At this very spring, how many travelers must have stopped! Even prehistoric men who had shaped the flints or the hand axes he had seen; invaders too, who had driven them out. The only law was change, and he wanted to be a part of that change.

  Suddenly, Malinda was beside him. "Mort, what are you thinking of?"

  "I was wondering about Sprague and those men of his. They must be hunting water now, perhaps dying for it."

  "You're going out there?"

  "Yes."

  "But how can you find them in all that waste? How can you, Mort?"

  "I have to try. I'd not forgive myself if I didn't. You stay with the stage. Trust Ridge he's a good man. So is Sergeant MacBrody."

  "MacBrody was talking about your family, Mort."

  "Just like an Irishman. He can't keep his mouth shut. There's nothing about my family except that I am a O'Callaghan. In Ireland, at least in some places, that meant quite a lot, but here it only means I am another Irishman."

  "It seems as if half the army is Irish. To say nothing of the tracklayers."

  "Sure, and tomorrow they will be in politics. Leave it to them. It's the place they can do most with their talk, and the Irish love the sound of words... especially from their own tongues."

  "You can be one of them."

  "I will have to be. If a man is going to take on responsibilities he had better prepare himself to support them."

  She said nothing more, standing beside him in the evening coolness that came out from the canyons. He saw a faint movement among the rocks, a stir of something, and his hand went to his rifle.

  An Indian? It seemed unlikely here, so close to the redoubt.

  "MacBrody! Ridge!" His hoarse whisper carried across the corral and he gestured. They came quickly with their guns.

  "There's somebody out there, and I am thinking it is one of our men. If he makes a break for it, the Indians will try to kill him. We've got to have a covering fire."

  "All right," MacBrody said, and he turned and moved toward his men, speaking softly.

  Wylie, Becker, and Champion, the dark man who was Wylie's companion, moved to the walls. Callaghen went to the gate and opened it ever so slightly.

  For several minutes nothing happened, and then they saw him.

  He dropped from among some rocks, looked quickly right and left, and then began a staggering run for the walls. An arrow hit the ground near him, another flew past. Instantly the men behind the wall opened fire on the rocks, and the arrows ceased.

  The man came on, running hard now. Suddenly, when he was almost to the wall, a shot spongedin the clear air. The running man staggered and fell.

  He started up, a rifle clipped the evening air again, and several rifles from the redoubt fired at the small puff of white smoke above the rocks.

  Callaghen lunged through the gate and ran to the fallen man, catching him by one arm and swinging him over his back. Then he ran back, one futile shot smacking the wall beside the gate as he entered.

  He lowered the man to the ground, and as-he saw him more clearly, he remembered him... it was Garrick, one of Sprague's men.

  "You... we thought... you were... dead." The wounded man struggled with the words.

  "Where's Sprague?"

  "Out there." He gestured feebly. "He's... he's picked up some lead... They... they got Turner... drove off our... stock."

  "Where is he, Garrick? Where?"

  "North... maybe ten, twelve mile." He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Malinda held a cup to his lips and he swallowed, then paused, gasping. "Peak... highest... look at the foot... A lone peak... way in the open... in line with where he is. No... no water."

  Callaghen got up and walked away a little distance. He knew the place, and it could scarcely be worse. That ten or twelve miles he spoke of was all right out in the open. There was almost no cover. It would be a chancy trip, but he had to do it.

  The Delaware joined him. "You know the place?" he asked.

  "I've never been there... not up close."

  "There's water... plenty of it, if they have savvy. Three, maybe four springs within a few miles."

  "And an Indian sitting on every one of them."

  The Delaware shrugged. "I think so."

  "The water holes where would they be from that lone peak?"

  The Indian looked at him. "I go with you."

  "Like hell. You're all in. Anyway, one man alone has a better chance."

  "In open country? Nobody has a chance."

  With a small stick he spotted in the sand the locations of the springs from the lone peak. He indicated an isolated butte. "That's Wildcat. You point for that. No matter what, go uphill. The land rises all around in a great circle toward the top of the swell. The peak is at one edge of that rise, right east of it. From what Garrick said, those soldiers are within a mile of water."

  "Thanks." Callaghen got up and stretched. "I'll get some sleep." He turned to the Delaware. "Get my horse ready, will you?"

  He went into the cabin, got his blankets, and rolled up in a corner.

  Malinda watched him go. "Aunt Madge, what is he going to do?"

  "You know what he's going to do." Her aunt took up the coffeepot, filled a cup, and handed i
t to Malinda. "He's the kind of man who will always know what to do, and he will never ask anybody to do it for him."

  Chapter 15

  It was dark and still when he came out into the night. His freshly cleaned rifle, which he held in his left hand, smelled faintly of gun oil; a cup of coffee was in his right. His horse stood ready, a long-limbed black horse that had seemed the best of the lot. Aside from a small blanket roll behind the saddle he carried a small packet of food in his saddlebags and two canteens.

  Only a few stars were showing. The wind was blowing a not unusual thing in the Mohave Desert and this was good. It would disguise the small noise he might make in leaving. The outer gate had been standing open for nearly an hour, with two men watching it. The gate had been opened and ready so as to make as little movement as possible at the moment of departure. The Delaware ghosted to his side. "The wind... it will help," he said as he glanced up where, between wisps of high cloud, a part of the Milky Way was visible. "The Chiefs Road," he said. "So it is called by the Crees."

  MacBrody was there too. "They'll likely be in bad shape," he said. "You'll be needin' more grub."

  "They'll have to do with water. But you be watching for us if I find them we'll come back." He spoke in low tones. "And watch Wylie. The man's not to be trusted. He's a crook, and worse, and he's a damn fool along with it."

  "I will do that," MacBrody replied. "You be carin' for yourself now. It is not good that an O'Callaghan should die out there."

  Caliaghen handed his cup to Malinda, who had suddenly appeared beside him, and touched her arm gently. "It will be fine to come back," he said, "knowing you are here."

  Taking the reins of the horse, he walked through the gate and turned sharply along the wall, keeping close to it in the darker shadow. At the end of the wall he stopped and looked out across the first ground to be covered.

  He still had about two hours of darkness before the night was gone, but he did not like the look of the desert out beyond the corner. It was lighter there, and keen eyes might see him. He tried to judge how far an Indian could see in that semidarkness and decided that to see him moving, a man would have to be within thirty or forty yards.

  The ground here was gravel, and brush grew spottily. He stepped out softly and led his horse between two clumps of brush, close enough to them to make his outline indistinct. When he had gone fifty yards or so he glanced back. The redoubt was only a spot of blackness against the shadow of the mountain.

  He put a boot in the stirrup and swung to the saddle, leaning forward at once to make himself smaller, and then he walked the horse forward carefully.

  He saw nothing, heard nothing. Continuing to walk the horse slowly, he kept himself in line with the small isolated peak ahead of him. The ground rose gradually but steadily. He had crossed this area before, and it stirred his curiosity, arousing questions his limited knowledge of the earth sciences could not solve.

  There was here a vast dome, rising from all sides. In approximately four and a half miles the ground rose twelve hundred feet, but at the top there was no peak, not even a knoll. The huge dome was flat, and it was broken by only two or three minor outcroppings. But about a mile or so from the top of the dome there was a jagged peak about five hundred feet high.

  It was that peak toward which he was now pointing. Opposite it, near the end of a rugged range of mountains was another peak. At the base of that was where Sprague and his men were believed to be.

  He rode carefully, skirting the dome on a wide swing that kept him low enough so that he was not outlined against the sky. At intervals he hesitated, to listen. And always he watched those surest indicators of movement near by the ears of his horse.

  His rifle was slung to his pommel, his pistol ready to hand. If action came it would be at close range. He had gone a mile... and then went on another mile. He was walking his horse when suddenly of its own volition its pace quickened. Alert to every move of the horse, he sensed its fear at once. He heard nothing, but he knew there was some danger nearby.

  It was out there in the night, and his horse knew it. The animal half turned its head, and he glimpsed the whites of its eyes. It was something coming up behind them, something that made no noise in the night.

  There was no wind. He could hear only the movements of his horse, the creak of the saddle. Suddenly the horse shied, and from the ground in front of him a wraith-like figure came up. At that moment something whispered from the other side and he turned sharply.

  The turn saved his life, for a thrown club just missed his skull. At the same instant something leaped at him from the other side. He clubbed his pistol barrel over a skull, and slammed the spurs to his horse. The frightened animal, unaccustomed to such treatment, gave a great bound forward and he felt the clawing hands fall away. He swung the horse at right angles and went up the hill.

  They were all around him now, and there must have been a dozen of them. They had been running to meet him, and now they tried to close in. He swung his horse again, driving at one of them, who tried to swing aside, too late.

  The big animal charged into him and the man went down, a scream tearing from his throat as he went under the trampling hoofs. And then Callaghen was away, and running.

  He heard something it might have been an arrow but he had slipped away from them it was partly luck, but even more, it was the speed and intelligence of his horse that had saved him.

  He did not for a moment believe they would fall back. A good runner can run a horse down... all it needs is time, and the Indians had time. He was away for now, but he could not run his horse forever and they would close in those swift, deadly fighters following after him.

  Dimly against the starry sky he could see the peak toward which he was aiming. The dome up which he was now riding went steadily upgrade, and he swung his horse along the side of the slope in a vast, easy circle, going always toward the peak. He scarcely hoped he would confuse his followers he did not underestimate them, for he knew well enough that they were shrewd, relentless, and ruthless.

  He moved his horse into a trot and held it so for a good half-mile. Then he slowed down and walked it up the dome. A dun shadow appeared on his left, another on his right. They were attempting to turn him. But if he turned back, those coming up behind would close in around him.

  He drew up and stopped momentarily, listening, then he turned sharply at right angles and started his horse along the slope again at a rapid walk, turning constantly to look to all sides. By now they knew where he was going, and they had no intentions of permitting it. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and he could now distinguish the Indians from the Joshua trees... if they moved.

  Deliberately, he allowed one of them to close in, and when he turned his horse it was at an angle to cross in front of the Indians, trying to maneuver so only one of them could reach him at a time.

  The one Indian was close, and Callaghen turned his head away to give him confidence, timing the steps the Indian must make. When he could have taken three steps, Callaghen turned sharply, drew, and fired.

  His bullet was perfectly timed, and it was at point-blank range, for the Indian had just set himself to leap. The bullet struck him in the chest, and instantly Callaghen touched his horse with a spur and leaped away. The shot had been intended not simply to kill an Indian, but to alert Sprague that help was coming such as it was.

  He topped out on the dome, a wide-open area around him. He rode toward the rugged ground where the peak rose up above the surrounding country. At the edge of the rocks, he drew up.

  He doubted there were Indians here, but he listened for a long moment. Then he walked his horse along the rocks toward the northwest, and crossing the low ridge he drew up again, looking off eastward to the mountain range that edged the sky. There he waited, every sense alert. The chances were that the Indians would suspect him of having ridden right on toward Sprague and his men, and they might pass by these rocks, or signal to those surrounding the soldiers that he was coming.

&n
bsp; The night was cool. Dawn would be coming soon. The mountains over there were a good two miles off and over open ground, scattered with Joshua trees, but offering no real cover. The soldiers would have heard his shot, and would know something was happening out there in the dark. He waited, the bulk of his horse and himself merging with the towering rock beside him to leave no outline.

  He could feel the horse slowly relaxing, the tenseness leaving his muscles. He opened a canteen and took a small swallow, rinsing his mouth before he let the water trickle down his throat. He was tired. The shirt under his uniform jacket was stiff with dust and sweat. He wanted a bath, a good meal, and forty-eight hours of sleep.

  He wanted desperately to sleep, but to sleep now meant to die... and that could mean death as well for the men out there. He reloaded the empty chamber of his pistol, and stepped down from the saddle, resting a reassuring hand on the shoulder of his horse.

  He must not risk getting killed by his own outfit as he rode in, and he must get those canteens of water to them, and then lead them to the spring that lay due south from here. It was only a mile from where they were or had been but a mile in the desert is a long way, and they did not even know the spring was there.

  Callaghen scouted the rocks close to him. Already it was vaguely lighter, but he saw nothing... nobody. He sat on a flat rock, his back to the rock wall within a few feet of his horse, and tried to think the situation through.

  The Indians knew he was out here somewhere. At first they would believe he was in the rocks somewhere near the soldiers, but they would soon guess by the actions of the soldiers that he was still out here. Very soon they would figure out just about where he was. Then they would tighten their circle and come hunting for him, but they would be scattered out enough so that he must face at least some of them. They would be aiming for a kill.

  Riding through them would not be easy, and first they would be trying to kill his horse. They would want him on foot, and also they would be wanting the horse for meat. The time to start was now.

  He poured a couple of cupfuls of water into his hat and let the horse drink, just enough to freshen him a bit. He petted the animal and talked to him.