Shalako (1962) Page 4

What made her say he was uncouth? Actually, there was a strangely gentle quality in the man … it was in nothing he had said, rather his handling of his horse, and aside from his brusque way of speaking, his manner toward her.

  Yet it was he who caused her to think of herself and of Frederick. Not for a long time had she thought as she was thinking now.

  This man had come up from the desert, and now he had returned to it.

  Who was he? What was he?

  Above all, who was she?

  She had scarcely known her mother, living much in a world of men. Her father had never been content with the hunting of Wales or of Scotland. He had hunted wild boar in France as a boy, and then had gone to Africa. She herself had been to Africa and to India with him.

  Her father held an ancient title, possessed ancient wealth, but he had been a hunter.

  Never so much at home as when he was far from home and in the deep woods, the far veldt, the desert, the mountains.

  The table had been set up on a stretch of hard-packed adobe clay, swept clean of dust. Now it was spread with white linen, set with silver and glass. It seemed strangely incongruous in the midst of this desert, yet it had never seemed so before.

  Charles and Edna Dagget were already seated at the table, with Julia Paige and Laura Davis opposite them. They looked up as she approached.

  “I never knew anyone like her, Julia,” Laura said, with a teasing smile. “She rides out into an empty desert and comes back with a man.”

  “And what a man! Where is he, Irina? Don’t tell me you let him get away?”

  “Yes, he’s gone.”

  She looked around with wonderment. All this, these pleasant people at the table, the others that would soon join them, this was her world … but what was it doing here? Suddenly, with a kind of embarrassment, she realized how foolish all this must have seemed to Shalako.

  Like a group of children they had come running into this country to play, this country where everything was the utmost in reality. For there was something positive about the desert… it was stark, strong, definite. There were few shadings here, and many points of no return. The margin between life and death was infinitely narrow.

  Pete Wells … in the morning she had talked with him, a quiet, rather colorless man, yet a man, filled with life, enjoying his small pleasures. And a few hours later he was dead, shot down by men he had not even seen.

  Count Henri came up to the table and joined them. He was a tall, well set-up man with a shading of silver at the temples. He had been a soldier in the French Army, serving somewhere in the Far East, and he had written a book on China, a scholarly work which she had not read.

  “I am sorry he went away,” he said, “I liked the look of the man, and if there is trouble, he would have been a good man to have around.”

  Von Hallstatt overheard the comment. “There won’t be trouble, Henri. I was just talking with Hockett and he assures me the Apaches are all south of the border or on reservations.”

  “Mightn’t it be a good idea to pull out in the morning, Fred?” Henri watched the food being placed on the table. “I don’t like the look of things.”

  Von Hallstatt glanced at him. “Don’t tell me you’ve got the wind up? Hockett says that the Apaches rarely move in groups larger than twenty or thirty, and no party that small would be likely to attack us. We’re too many for them.”

  He paused. “No, Henri, I came down here to get a desert big horn, and I shall. And if we have a bit of a skirmish, so much the better.”

  Henri glanced across the table at von Hallstatt, a cool, measuring glance. “It is not as if we were all men,” he said. “I doubt if we have the right to subject the ladies to such risk.”

  “There is no risk.” Von Hallstatt glanced up at him. “Forget it, Henri. This man frightened Irina with some talk of Indians. I have no idea what he hoped to gain.

  Or perhaps I do. At least he rode away on our finest horse.”

  “I believed him,” Irina said quietly, “and I still believe him.”

  Von Hallstatt smiled at her. “I am afraid he impressed you too much. Did you not tell me you had read the novels of Fenimore Cooper? I am afraid you see your man from the desert as another Leather stocking.”

  Irina smiled. “And he may be. I think we could use one now.”

  The conversation took a turn away from the moment, but Irina was silent, scarcely hearing the talk that went around and across the table. She was thinking again of the man who had ridden into the night on her favorite horse … Would she see him again?

  Von Hallstatt talked easily. He was a good conversationalist, if somewhat opinionated, and not quite so easy with words as Count Henri. An inordinately proud man, he was undoubtedly brilliant. Long ago, when she first met him in London, she had been told that had he not gone into the military he might have become a brilliant mathematician.

  She looked up, feeling eyes upon her. Across the table and back at the edge of the firelight was the man called Bosky Fulton. He looked at her without smiling, but there was a boldness in his eyes that irritated her. She looked away, taking up a comment of Henri’s but her thoughts remained with Fulton.

  He made her uneasy … there was something unclean about the man that had little to do with his physical dirtiness, something that warned and repelled her. For that matter, aside from Buffalo and that other young man, the one who drove the wagon-Harding, his name was-she found little to like in any of the men Frederick hired.

  When they were outfitting none of the men recommended to them had cared to join up.

  These men were fiercely independent and they resented Frederick’s manner. He was accustomed to Germanic subservience to authority, and persisted in regarding the men he hired as servants or peasants, and no one could call these men either. Work for you they might, but they remained themselves, proud, independent, and prepared to fight to preserve their independence.

  The result had been that the men he could get were the worst, the scum, the hangers-on.

  Even Pete Wells had objected to the hiring of Rio Hockett… But when Fulton appeared Wells simply turned away and would say nothing. Like the others, Wells had been afraid of Fulton.

  She looked down at her plate, appetite suddenly gone. For the first time in days she thought of her father, and wished he was here. He had been a calm, sure man who always seemed to know what to do, and who had an unerring judgment of men.

  She looked up. “Frederick, why don’t we go back?” He took his wineglass in his fingers and turned it slowly, watching the reflection of the firelight in the wine.

  “We came for a hunt. You knew when we came how long we would be gone, and we had planned this hunt in detail. I do not wish to leave.”

  “We might do better in the mountains near Silver City,” Henri suggested. “There is a plenty of timber there.” “You, too, Henri? Don’t tell me you are afraid? I thought the French were a bold, dashing lot? Reckless, and all that?”

  Henri’s eyes chilled, but he smiled. “Dashing? Yes. But cautious also, and lovers of comfort. I believe a move to the north would offer more of both.”

  “And I do not.”

  Julia Paige lifted her large, dark eyes and looked down the table at Frederick. Irina felt a little tightening inside, knowing what Julia was going to say. Julia had made no secret of her interest in Frederick.

  “After coming all this way it would be foolish to go back empty-handed. I think we should stay. At least we should stay long enough to see if Irina’s desert man will come back again.”

  “I am perfectly prepared to stay,” Charles Dagget said. “We have only just come, and there seems no reason to be frightened. If there are Indians, I have no doubt the Army can cope with them.”

  “Yes,” Irina said as she arose. “I believe they could cope with them … if they knew where they were, and where we were.” She smiled sweetly. “You will remember, Charles, that the Army has no idea we are here.”

  She walked away, going toward the stable. She
had never been inside the building, but this was the one Shalako had suggested they could defend.

  Harding was seated near the door, but when she approached he got quickly to his feet.

  “Howdy, ma’am. Something I can do for you?”

  “Would you show me the stable, Mr. Harding? Mr. Carlin was saying it would make a fort.”

  “Sure would! I been looking it over, ma’am, and whoever built this knew a thing or two. Old, mighty old, but strong. And the portholes are placed just right to cover everything.”

  Within the barn Harding held up a lantern. It was a long room, and there had been stalls for eight horses, a storeroom for harness, and a big area where hay had been kept. There was a steep stair that led to the loft.

  “There’s a bigger room upstairs,” Harding explained.

  “They must have lived there for a time.” He led the way up the steps and showed her the room up there.

  The floors were solid, the planks well fitted. There were loopholes here also, and, from a large window, Irina could look out over the entire camp, lighted as it was by campfires.

  The wagons had been drawn into the gaps between the buildings, but there was no evidence of alertness among the men, to say nothing of those who lingered about the table.

  The sky was scattered with stars, the black serrated ridge of the mountains rimmed the sky, and there was a velvety coolness in the night.

  “Mr. Harding, have you lived long in the West?” “Yes, ma’am. Since I was eleven.

  Before that my home was Ohio. Raised on a farm, ma’am, and done a sight of hunting back there.

  “We came West and my family was wiped out by Kio was while I was from home, visitin’.

  I’ve been freighting and buffalo hunting since then. Done a mite of rough carpentering here and there.”

  “What do you think? Are we in danger of attack?” “Yes, ma’am. Where there’s Apaches there’s danger. Or most any Indians, for that matter. War is a way of life to them.

  They count wealth in horses, and a man who can steal horses better than somebody else is a big man, a mighty big man.”

  “Mr. Harding, that man … Shalako … he suggested we think of defending this place if it becomes so bad we cannot defend the circle. He thought we should have food and ammunition here, prepared ahead of time.”

  “That’s good thinking.”

  “He also suggested that we keep someone we can trust inside here, or close by. I want you to be that man, Mr. Harding.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Begging your pardon, ma’am, as long as we’re on the subject. This is a mighty poor lot of men you have here. I wouldn’t place much dependence on them, and that Fulton, ma’am, he’s a bad lot, a bad lot.”

  She turned away from the window and walked to the steps. At the head of the steps she paused again. “Mr. Harding? What do you know about Shalako?”

  Roy Harding was a lean, raw-boned young man, not tall, but muscular and fit. He paused near her. “I never saw him before, but I’d heard tell of him, ma’am. Buffalo, he knew him a long time back. Shalako grew up out here, ma’am. Someplace in California, I think, and then lived in Texas awhile. When he was eighteen or so he pulled out and it was six or eight years before he showed up around again, and then it was up in Montana.

  “Nobody knows much about him except that he’s said to be one of the best shots on the frontier. He can track better than most Indians, and can ride anything that wears hair.

  “Buffalo Harris says he’s hell-on-wheels in any kind of a fight.” Harding paused.

  “I sure wish he’d stayed with Von Hallstatt glanced around as Irina returned to the table, but offered no comment.

  A servant was filling their glasses again. “You must try this, Henri. It is one of our finest German wines.”

  “A good wine, a very good wine.”

  “Ah? I was not aware that the French ever conceded there was any good wine but French wine.”

  “On the contrary, Baron, if it has quality, no matter what it is, we French have it. We have learned how to be content with the best of everything.”

  “There is a story behind this Bernkasteler Doktor.

  It is said there was a certain bishop who had fallen ill of some confusing illness, and no matter what the doctors did for him, he continued to lose strength.

  “Finally, or so the story goes, an old soldier who was a friend of the bishop filled a keg with Bernkasteler and, in spite of the protests, wheeled it into the bishop’s room and filled a glass with it, and then another.

  “The following morning the bishop was much better, and he declared, `This wine, this fine doctor, has cured me!’ Hence, the name of the wine.”

  “It is growing cold,” Edna Dagget said. “I believe I will go in.”

  Charles arose and walked with her toward the wagon where they slept.

  “She is not fitted for this life,” von Hallstatt said. “Charles would have done well to leave her behind.” Irina glanced at him, and said, “Wives are not so easily left behind. A wife’s place is with her husband.”

  “Not at war,” von Hallstatt replied, “nor the hunt. Still, hers was a good idea.

  It grows late and tomorrow I want to try for a big horn.” He got to his feet. “Good night, my friends.”

  He turned from the table and walked away, and for a moment there was silence. Then Count Henri said, “And how about you, Julia? Are you going with us tomorrow?”

  Julia Paige smiled quickly. “Of course, I cannot leave all the hunting to Irina.”

  Laura Davis had been quiet. “You know,” she said, “I agree with you, Henri, and with Irina. I think we should leave, as quickly as possible.”

  When Julia started to object, she continued. “My father entertained General Crook one evening while I was at home, and they discussed the Apache. Some of the stories were horrible, utterly horrible! They did not know I was listening,” she added.

  Hans Kreuger shrugged. “I trust the baron,” he said. “He is a man of great judgment and discretion.”

  “It is different here,” Laura said. “I think we should go.

  “You heard what he said,” Irina replied, “and we are his guests.”

  Count Henri slowly filled his pipe. “I think we should go, Hans. There is no game here that we cannot find farther north, and under pleasanter circumstances.”

  “Except Apaches.” Hans glanced over at Henri. “I know the baron seriously wishes for a bit of fighting. I have heard him express his contempt for this American Army that chases Indians but cannot catch them.”

  “Has he had experience with guerrilla warfare, Hans?” Henri asked gently. “I have … much like this, I think, for I fought in the mountains and desert against the Arabs in North Africa.

  “Luckily, I had read Washington’s comments on Brad dock’s defeat by Indians and was cautious. Believe me, the circumstances are much different, and no tactics so far taught in Europe can prepare an army for that kind of fighting.”

  “Speaking of tactics,” Kreuger commented, “I wonder what school the man Shalako attended?”

  “School?” Henri glanced around at the young German. “I understood he had lived here all his life.”

  “Perhaps … but he mentioned Jomini, Saxe, and Vegetius. I should not expect to hear them mentioned by a buffalo hunter, or whatever he is.”

  Henri walked off toward her wagon with Julia, and Hans followed. There was a slight stir of wind that ruffled the flames. Buffalo came from the shadows and added fuel to the fire, yet he did not build the big flames.

  The bed of coals glowed a deep red, here and there a yellow tendril of flame lifting with the smoke toward the stars.

  “You liked him, didn’t you?” Laura said.

  “Him?” Irina looked up, startled. Then she laughed, knowing evasion was impossible and slightly ridiculous. “I don’t know. I never knew anyone quite like him.” “Except your father.”

  “Oh … not very much. They both like wild country. I don’t think that
makes any difference, anyway.”

  “And both of them are those big, self-contained men who do everything well. And Shalako is a handsome man, Irina.”

  “I never really looked at him … not that way. Some how it did not seem to matter.

  It was something else that impressed me. I cannot remember ever feeling so safe as I was with him.”

  There was silence between them, and she looked out over the desert, wondering. Where was he now? Was he still riding? Westward, perhaps?

  “It’s very silly,” she said suddenly, “talking this way about, well, a man like that.

  There’s no telling what he really is, and, after all, a girl just doesn’t go running off with any man who rides in out of the desert.”

  Irina remained watching the stars over the mountains long after Laura had gone to bed. The general, Baron Frederick von Hallstatt, was a man of strength and courage, an interesting man in every sense, but hard in a way that she did not like. Occasionally, and rarely to be sure, he had shown an utter disregard for the feelings of others, even including herself, that was disturbing.

  He was ruthless, that she accepted. So for that matter was this stranger, this man Shalako who had suddenly occupied so much of their thinking by merely appearing on the scene. Shalako was ruthless, she knew this at once, but his ruthlessness would be applied to enemies, not to those close to him.

  A lonely man, traveling alone and living alone, he was nevertheless far from selfish.

  That he had ridden off into the desert to leave them was, seeing it as he did, simply good sense.

  Their party had not been invited into this area, and what had begun as a sort of lark when the excitement of hunting buffalo had palled, had suddenly turned into some thing foolhardy and dangerous.

  When she had first accepted the baron’s invitation to hunt on the prairies and in the mountains it had seemed tremendously exciting. Many Europeans had come West to hunt on the plains. Hunters talked as much of hunting buffalo in America as they talked of hunting lions in Africa or tigers in India.

  The element of danger from possibly hostile tribes added spice to the idea, and yet seemed very remote. It was one thing to talk of hostile Indians in the fashionable restaurants of New York or Saratoga, and quite another thing to face the danger of attack in a remote desert.