Callaghen (1972) Read online

  "Why not? If he knew what would be required of him, he would then be able to explore the desert for days or even weeks with a military escort. Communication is not good out here, sir, as you know. It is often thirty to sixty days between communications from headquarters. Knowing that, an officer could arrive, cover a good bit of country, and then disappear before anyone knew any better."

  "But why? No man in his right mind is going to ask for duty in this desert."

  "That's just it, sir. He might have been looking for something. You yourself mentioned a river of gold. You suggested prospecting."

  Hill waved a hand carelessly. "That was just talk. Of course, any such place as this is bound to produce stories, legends but they're nonsense, Callaghen, utter nonsense. This desert is a corner of hell several thousand square miles of sand, rocky ridges, and cacti, with no water at all, or bad water. A desert is a place unfit for man, and that's why they call it a desert."

  Mercer was guarding the stock when Callaghen joined him. It was a clear, lovely desert morning, not yet hot. The morning sun left shadows in the canyons, but caused the ridges to reveal themselves with a stark clarity. One really never knew mountains unless he had seen them at both sunrise and sunset.

  "Beautiful country here, Mercer... Aren't you from Minnesota?"

  "That's right. It's all very different there. The Indians are different, too. We have the Sioux, and some Chippewas."

  "You joined the unit with Lieutenant Allison, didn't you?"

  "Yes. That is, we had our orders and were waiting for the stage. He came up and joined us, and said he was going to Cady."

  "Too bad to have lost him. I think he'd have made a good officer." He paused just a moment. "I forwarded his things to his sister. I don't believe he had any other relatives."

  "He had some friends in Los Angeles, Sergeant. One, at least. He was talking to a man at the Bella Union before he spoke to us a very sharp-looking man with a broken nose."

  "Chance acquaintance, probably."

  "I don't think so. At least, he trusted him enough to let him hold his orders for him. I saw the man give him his orders at the stage. It was the same envelope Lieutenant Allison turned over to Captain Hill."

  Holding orders, or delivering them? Callaghen watched the horses, talking idly with Mercer on half a dozen topics. Then he went back to the compound and stepped suddenly into his quarters. Croker was there, and he had Callaghen's duffel bag upon a cot, open.

  "What the hell goes on here?"

  Croker turned sharply. "I was out of smokin'. Thought you might have some."

  "I don't smoke. I never have."

  Croker's smile was forced. "Say, that's right! Now, why didn't I recall that?"

  "Stay out of my gear, Croker. I won't tell you again."

  "Sure, Sarge. I'll stay out, but don't you get too pushy. Sergeant or no, I'll take some of that out of you."

  "Anytime."

  Croker pushed by him and went out. There had been nothing in the bag for anyone to look at, nothing except the usual things a soldiering man might have. But Croker was suspicious. Of what? Or was he, like Callaghen himself, merely guessing at something? He might know something, or he might simply be of a suspicious mind.

  Callaghen shaded his eyes and looked over the desert. The Indians were out there now, you could be sure of that. Captain Hill and only eight men here, with never enough ammunition or food on hand... if the Mohaves only realized it they could sweep over this station at any time.

  After bringing the horses into the corrals, Callaghen posted guards. Captain Hill seemed willing to leave matters in his hands, and he was prepared to assume whatever responsibility was given him.

  Night came suddenly, as do all desert nights. One moment the sun's rays were turning the mountain ridges scarlet and gold... and then the sun was gone and the stars were there.

  Croker and Beamis had the first guard. Beamis was a raw recruit just out from Pennsylvania. Whatever else Croker was, he was a frontiersman and a soldier. He knew what slackness meant, and he would stand for none of it. Beamis wanted only one thing to get out of the army.

  "Can't you speak to the captain, Sergeant?" he said to Callaghen. "I have no business here. I just got mad at my wife and enlisted to show her. Now I'm not mad at her any more."

  Callaghen had to smile. "Doesn't pay to move too quick, Beamis. I'm sorry, but you're in and you'll have to stay."

  "You mean I can't get out? What kind of a deal is that?"

  "You joined, and now you'll have to fill out your time. There's no two ways about it."

  "But what about my wife? She'll leave me!"

  "If she does, you're better off without her. Settle down, man. You bought your ticket, now take your ride."

  He walked back to the encampment. The moon was rising, and there was already a thin glow over the mountain. It would be a tricky night, for on such a moonlit night shadows appear to move, and one may suddenly develop a feeling that a shadow is an Indian.

  It was very still. Captain Hill came outside his quarters. "It's been a good life, Callaghen," he said, "and I shall miss it."

  "You've been a soldier all your life, sir?"

  "Not quite. Before the war I quit for four years. If I'd stayed in I might be a general now. A colonel, at least. But the peacetime army wasn't much, and I'd had enough duty at the forts on the plains. I quit and opened a store."

  "Like General Grant."

  "Yes, but I was successful. I did quite well, in fact, and then the guerillas burned me out and I lost everything. So I went back into the army. If I'd gone in a year sooner I'd have made it."

  "There are always ifs, sir."

  Hill turned his head to look at Callaghen. "You say you've met Sykes before this?"

  "Yes, sir. It was he who broke me from sergeant... both times."

  "Want to tell me about it?"

  "Well, you know how some people think about the Irish. We're despised in a lot of places, and there are even hotels where we aren't accepted, restaurants where we are refused service. Sykes was worse than most.

  "I knew nothing of that, but he was having trouble with his Chinese laundryman. He was berating the man frightfully, and seemed about to strike him. I offered my services."

  "You what?"

  "I offered to interpret, sir. I speak Chinese."

  Hill stared at him. "Chinese?You do?"

  "I speak seven languages, sir, and half a dozen dialects. Well, sir, he told me what to tell the man and I did, and managed to straighten the matter out. I saluted, and was about to leave when he called me back and told me never, under any circumstances, to interfere again."

  "And then?"

  "He was on me, sir. He found out I was Irish, although he should have guessed it before. I got all the rough duty. But it was the girl who really made the difference."

  "A girl?"

  "Yes, sir. She came to the post to visit someone she had known as a child, and I was detailed to ride escort when she went riding.

  "She kept looking at me, sir, and suddenly she said she had seen me before. She asked me again what my name was, and when I told her she recognized it. She had known me before, Captain... outside of Soochow, in China. I'd come up to an old temple with a small command. I was a major, sir, in Ward's outfit Gordon's outfit by that time. The Ever-Victorious Army, they called it. She was just a skinny kid then, and she'd been stopped near the temple. She, her mother, and a doctor had run there for shelter from some of the rebels. We fought our way out of there and took them with us."

  "And you were a major then? You've had quite a career, Callaghen."

  He shrugged. "Ward had picked up his army off the waterfronts, Captain. He had scum of the earth, and right alongside them some of the finest fighting men in the world. He enlisted men of all nationalities, and he didn't screen them. Combat did that for him, and we were in battle almost constantly. Seventy per cent of the men had served in other armies there were a couple of hundred Irishmen in the outfit. When Chinese Go
rdon took command he had a trained battle outfit. A man couldn't go wrong with them."

  "Did Sykes know about the girl's recognizing you?"

  "He saw us talking, and he was furious. I was an enlisted man and I was being too friendly. Of course, Malinda spoke up, and in the midst of it her father appeared. He'd always been grateful to me for getting his family out of that situation, so we had a long talk, and Sykes just faded out.

  "Two days later I was transferred. They were building a new outfit for frontier service, and I found myself one of the cadre that would form it."

  "And that left him with the girl?"

  "No, sir. Malinda had a mind of her own, and she was suspicious about the transfer. No, sir. I am afraid it didn't do him much good."

  Chapter 6

  Major Ephraim Sykes was a man of definite mind. Positive in his opinions, he approached every problem knowing that there could be just two possibilities: his way and the wrong way. The opinions he held had been absorbed with his mother's milk, and nothing subsequent to that time had served to alter even one of them.

  He was tall, handsome, immaculate in appearance. He was gracious, polite, and considerate to those he regarded as existing on his level. Others he ignored, or considered only with contempt. An only child, he had been brought up to believe that as an Anglo-Saxon white man of the right church, the right schools, and the right social position, any decision he made was of course the correct one.

  He had been born on the right street in a medium-size town where his father operated the largest of the town's three banks. In school he had been bright but without brilliance, capable but without imagination, and he had graduated close to the top of his class. At the beginning of the War Between the States he had been given a commission, and he had advanced rapidly to the rank of major, partly by virtue of a cavalry charge in which he smashed the enemy at a crucial moment, driving them from their position and so turning the tide of battle.

  A fact that he had conveniently forgotten was that the charge had begun when his horse ran away with him, and his men followed. Uncomfortable about the praise that came his way, he had gradually forgotten how the charge had begun, and modestly said it was nothing. He had, he said, been fortunate enough to detect a weakness in the enemy line at that point.

  The war ended too soon for him, for he had hoped to become a general or at least a colonel. Failing that, despite the surplus of officers after the war, he had hoped to be sent to a good station where he might win a smashing victory over the Indians the Plains Indians, of course, who had dash and glamour as fighting men.

  The immigrant Irish were despised by many of the "right" people, so he despised them. The only Irish with whom he had ever had contact were a group who had settled on the edge of his town to build a spur of track for the railroad. Many of them drank too much, and most of them seemed to be amused by him, and this offended his dignity. In the army he had a few Irishmen in his command, and they, too, drank too much and were amused by him. As his father's partner, he owned a part of a small shoe-manufacturing plant, as well as the bank. At the plant they hired no Irish, but that attitude was quite frequent at the time, and aroused no comment.

  He had found no girl who appealed to him for more than the moment until he met Malinda Colton. Her family was of the best. Her father was a diplomat, her uncle a general. On two or three occasions he had escorted her to dinner or to other affairs, and when he found her talking on intimate terms with Callaghen at least, both of them were laughing and seemed very friendly he had been coldly furious.

  The fact that Callaghen had once had rank equal to his own did not impress him. "Miss Colton," he told her gently, "the man is a vagabond, a soldier of fortune. He's he's Irish!"

  That Malinda did not take him seriously was irritating. She had said then, "So was General Thomas Francis Meagher, of the Irish Brigade. He married a very good friend of ours, and they have been blissfully happy."

  Sykes was wise enough to drop the subject. Besides, he was on shaky ground, for it suddenly occurred to him that his commanding officer at the time was General Sheridan, who was the son of an Irish immigrant.

  Now he found himself leading three troops of cavalry to occupy several forts in the Mohave Desert, in Indian country. The Indians were not the Sioux or the Cheyennes, but he had no doubt that he could win a victory over them.

  There was one other thing. He had in his keeping the discharge papers for one Private Morty Callaghen, a name he had cause to remember. Twice, on flimsy excuses, he had broken Callaghen from sergeant to private, once by his order, once by his influence. And there is perhaps no one hated more by a man than one to whom he has done an injustice.

  It was to the dispute over Callaghen that he laid his failure with Malinda Colton. And now he was to meet the man again. It was just his luck that Callaghen was about to be discharged.

  The thought came to him that if the discharge was not delivered it would not be in effect. It was a fine point. Was Callaghen discharged when his papers were issued, or when they were delivered to him?

  He dismissed the idea and his thoughts turned to his command. He was to garrison forts at Marl Springs, Bitter Springs, Rock Springs, and Fort Piute, as his judgment saw fit, to insure the safe passage of freight caravans and stages along the Government Road. He was to make no move against the Mohaves unless they first attacked him. His mission was to protect the road.

  Major Sykes had never before seen the desert. He had come to California by ship. He had no idea what the "forts" were that he was to garrison, nor what a campaign in the desert could be like. He had heard of desert fighting, he had talked with officers who had fought the Apaches in New Mexico and Texas. He was quite sure he could handle the situation, his only doubt being what he might be able to make of it.

  Camp Cady was on the Mohave River. He envisioned an imposing post beside a sparkling stream. There would be boating perhaps. His first sight of the desert from the top of the pass was a shock. Captain Marriott, the second in command, commented, "There's a lot of desert out there. Fourteen thousand square miles, they say, depending on whose figures you use."

  "That's impossible, Captain! That's larger than the state of Massachusetts."

  "Yes, sir. And you can add part of Connecticut for good measure. That's a lot of rugged country, sir, and there's very little water."

  Major Sykes was appalled. Never in his wildest speculations had he considered such a vast expanse of desert, and it was his job to patrol the Government Road through that wasteland with just three troops of soldiers!

  "Have you served in the desert, Marriott?"

  "No, sir, but I've traveled through it. Water is the problem. Water enough for a troop of men is hard to find."

  "How do the Indians manage?"

  "They scatter, sir. They know tiny water holes or seeps with just enough for one or two men. By the time they and their horses drink it may take hours to fill up again."

  It was sundown when they rode into Camp Cady, and Sykes's spirits hit rock bottom. There were trees offering some shade, and there was the river a mere trickle, by his standards. The huts were built of adobe or logs, and roofed with brush. Some of the soldiers actually lived in brush huts, preferring them in warm weather.

  Captain Hill awaited him. "You'll be tired, sir. I've had water heated, so if you'd like a bath "

  "You haven't formed the men?"

  'There are only eight men, sir. Three are on guard duty at present, and the others have just returned from a patrol."

  The casualness of it offended him, but he was hot and tired, and in no mood to quibble. In Hill's quarters, the captain got out his treasured bottle of whiskey. "This may help, sir. I know this place is rather a shock after the Coast, but it grows on you. There's something about the desert, sir, that gets to you."

  "I shall try very hard not to discover it," Sykes replied shortly.

  Hill reviewed for him the Indian situation. "You have two men here," he added, "who are invaluable. There's a Delaw
are Indian who has scouted for the army, served in it as he does now, and he is a master at tracking. The other one is Sergeant Morty Callaghen."

  "Sergeant?"

  "Yes, sir. I promoted him to sergeant after Lieutenant Allison was killed. He's a very able man. He knows the desert better than any white man I know, and after Allison was killed he took over and led the remnants of the patrol back out of the desert. I doubt if any other man could have done so."

  "I know the man."

  Hill spoke mildly. "Too bad you are losing him. He's the best man you have."

  "I do not intend to lose him."

  "His enlistment is up, Major. He is waiting for his papers now. Once he has them, I doubt if he'll remain long."

  Sykes dismissed the subject. "This Allison you mention. He was named in one of your reports, but nobody at headquarters knows anything about him."

  Captain Hill explained as best he could, adding some of Callaghen's speculations.

  "Gold?" Sykes stared at him. "There's gold in this desert?"

  "It's been found from time to time. It's mostly rumor, I think, but some of the rumors are quite substantial. The one that intrigues me the most is that of a River of Gold that is said to flow under the desert."

  "Under?"

  "Rivers do not last long in the desert, Major. They sink into the sand and disappear. Perhaps they just evaporate, but the story is that there's a river running deep in a cavern beneath the desert, and that its sand is mixed with gold. The Indians had stories about a River of the Golden Sands."

  "Nonsense." Even as he said it, Sykes was thoughtful. Supposing... just supposing such a story were true? He was here in the desert. He had ample time to look around, and an excellent cover for doing so. And if he found something it would, of course, belong to him.

  He dismissed the idea, and thought of more immediate things. In the morning he would go over the lists of provisions, ammunition, and weapons on hand. He would have a look at the riding stock and the pack animals, and learn just what he had to work with.

  After he had had his bath he sat and talked with Captain Hill over a drink and a cigar. "The Mohaves now," Sykes said. "Do you see them often?"