Ambush (2 page)

He had never made a particular secret around Fort Gamble of his whereabouts; in this instance, he had even questioned old man Hance and others at the sutler's post about Rouf's abandoned workings. He had got little information and lots of advice to stay clear of it unless he enjoyed dying the way Rouf died at the hands of Diablito's band. His mistake, he knew, lay in asking quesions, in publicly betraying an interest. For Holly had remembered and told Major Briefly, and now Holly was here, pulling Diablito on them.
I'll learn sometime
, he thought with a fierce disgust.

An ant crossed his hand, tickling the hair on his knuckles. He looked at it, and then lifted his glance and saw a faint movement in a branch of stunted cedar at the base of a rock beyond. He raised his rifle and shot, and saw nothing, and Holly called, “Where?”

Ward moved to the left, not answering him, smelling the close heat and the warm oily odor of the broken greasewood. Holly shot now. Ward watched a brown figure cut between two rocks in the dusk, the figure shadowy and swift and unharmed.

Ten more minutes, he thought quietly. They might try one rush before dark, he thought, but he doubted this. After dark, they would pull back, Apache fashion, and refuse to fight again until daylight. But they were sure of their quarry, backed against the cliff edge. Tomorrow, at first light, reinforced by more of the band, probably Diablito himself, they would attack. Ward smiled faintly, thinking of it.
They'll come like a runaway wagon
, he thought.

Darkness slowly settled down, and there was a profound quiet, so complete that Ward could hear Holly scratching through his beard at his chin. The flight of a bird overhead was audible as it sailed into the warm updraft of air from the cliff and was carried aloft. There would be no shooting now, for cartridges were too precious to waste in useless boasting.

When it was full dark, Ward crawled out of the patch of greasewood, went over to his horse and took down his canteen and drank sparingly. He saw Holly approaching softly in the night, and he extended the canteen and said, “Easy on it.” They talked softly, out of sober respect for their trouble.

Holly drank and returned it, and squatted on his heels while Ward hooked the canteen to his belt.

“Got a sling on your rifle?” Ward asked then.

“What for?”

“You'll need both hands where you're going.”

“Where am I?”

“Down the Wall.”

There was an onrunning silence while Holly turned this over in his mind. “You ever been down it here?”

“Up it.”

“There's a difference.”

“Any kid who ever climbed a tree could tell you that,” Ward said dryly. “Cut a sling out of your scabbard.”

“What's the difference between fightin' it out up here and gettin' caught afoot down there?”

“One's later than the other.”

Holly rose and moved off toward his horse and now Ward, standing silently, cast back in his memory. He had the right place, he was sure. Long ago, before Diablito first broke from the reservation to make the Peak his hideout, Ward had prospected below and above the Wall. In its nine-mile length, there was not a trail he had not used and did not remember, for the desert floor was waterless, and his water had come from up here. Short cuts were precious then, and this trail had been his own discovery, possible to climb, impossible to descend with a water keg. He doubted if Diablito's men knew it, but he must take the chance.

Moving over to his horse, he removed the saddlebag. The jerky, which filled one side, he distributed in his pockets. The three pokes of dust he thoughtfully hefted, and then, untying the strings, he moved over to the closest rock and poured the contents in the crack between rock and dirt. He carelessly kicked dirt over it, knowing the Apaches would find it and leave it, since gold meant nothing to them.
I'll be back for that
, he thought calmly, and then he moved back to his horse. Removing the saddle, he tied the reins to a low scrub mesquite.

He was doing the same for Holly's horse when the old man appeared. Holly, rifle slung across his back in a crude leather sling, watched him a moment and observed sourly, “Gift from the Army to Diablito.”

“Not the first one.” Ward grunted, and moved quietly past him to the rim. He paused here long enough to tell Holly to stick close behind him until the trail began to pinch, after that, he would go ahead, and if all were clear, he would tap twice on the rock with his silver ring, which would mean to come ahead. Three taps meant Holly was to stay where he was.

Ward made two false starts before he gave Holly the signal, and then the descent, agonizingly slow, began. After that, it seemed only moments to Holly before he was poised on the sheer face of the cliff, with only a scant toehold and at times no hand hold on the sun-hot rock. The blessed darkness blotted out the gulf below him, although the wind, oven-hot and ceaseless, pushed up from below in steady pressure.

Cautiously, testing each foothold, Ward worked his way down, his mind clamped in patience. The trail crossed a stretch of scale now, that Ward could feel with his hands. Water had seeped in the cracks of the rock here and freezing, had loosened chunks of it. He crossed this stretch with utmost caution, and signaled Holly and warned him about it, and then went on, presently coming to another bay.

When Holly was beside him, and his breathing had quieted, Ward said, “Give me your rifle, Holly.”

Holly said nothing, only carefully slipped his carbine over his head and handed it to Ward.

“I'm crossing over you,” Ward said. “Careful.”

He passed close against Holly's body and went back up the trail, and Holly listened, baffled and afraid.

In a moment, Holly heard the sharp rasp of rock on rock, and he held his breath listening. For long, long moments there was no sound, and then from below him came the muffled clash of rock striking rock. It was not the sound of a falling body, Holly thought, and he waited. Presently, Ward appeared and slid past him and settled back against the wall.

“I lost your gun,” Ward said then. “I bent the barrel, so I threw it away.”

“Bent the barrel?”

“I pried a chunk of that scale loose. Nobody'll follow us.”

Holly said thinly, “Suppose this trail peters out?”

“That could happen,” Ward agreed.

They were both silent a moment and then Ward asked curiously, “What kind of trouble is Brierly expecting?”

“What?”

“What kind of trouble is Brierly expecting?”

“The hell with Brierly!”
Holly snarled. “Let's get down from here!”

It was midnight when finally Ward felt the Wall slant away under his hand. He carefully tested the slope of talus on the off side of the trails, found it not too steep, and called, “Take off here, Holly.”

Moments later he came off the slope at dead run, a shower of rock and dust chasing him, and checked his momentum deep on the flats. He waited for Holly's descent, which was a sprawling one.

“Sleep a while,” Ward said then. “I've got something to do.”

“We better find a place to fort up.”

“You sleep,” Ward repeated. He took a long look at the stars, then, and turned and struck out down the gentle slope toward the south in a long, loose-legged gait, silent in his moccasins.

Two hours later, he woke Holly and said, “Time to travel,” and watched the old man come awake.

“Find a place?” Holly asked sleepily.

“I will,” Ward said. This time they struck out in the opposite direction he had taken before, toward the north, still following the Wall.

It lacked half an hour of dawn when Ward, who was leading, said, “I'll be back,” and again vanished into the night.

Holly sat down and folded his arms across his knees and rested his forehead on his arms. He was bone-weary and shaking and hungry, and he contemplated the hours ahead of him with a gray distaste. He could see only one finish to this. No matter what sort of spot Ward chose for them in which to make their stand, the fact remained they had two canteens of water, a couple of handfuls of food, a rifle, two pistols and some ammunition, and two knives. And they were afoot.

Diablito was said to have forty-odd males in his band, superbly mounted. The arithmetic of that equation made Holly's insides shrink and quiver. By bare dawn, Diablito would have discovered their absence, and the whole band would be riding to pick up the trail at the foot of the Wall. After that, it was a matter of time, of luck, of water, of food—but the end was certain. For a brief and miserable moment, Holly wondered what insanity had induced him to accept Brierly's commission.

Ward's voice roused him, saying, “Let's move,” and Holly rose wearily. He hadn't heard him approach, and he silently cursed the weariness that could so dull his senses.

The first touch of false dawn was lighting the east when Ward, ahead of him, turned, moved a few feet to the right, and eased himself to the ground, saying, “Here's our place.”

Holly could make out the low rock against which Ward was sitting. The blurred shape of other rocks, none of them higher than a man's head, lay scattered about them. Holly said wryly, “Wasn't worth walking to.”

“The trail comes out here, the closest horse trail.”

Holly considered this a moment, then walked over and sat down beside Ward. “Forty-some Injuns. Even if you chase 'em back up, there's other trails.” He could not keep the truculence out of his voice.

“There won't be forty,” Ward said.

“Twenty, then.”

“Not twenty,” Ward said. “While you were sleeping, I traveled south for an hour along the Wall. I dug a hole in the side of an arroyo and built a smudge fire. It'll hold past daylight. About now, Diablito'll be making his rush up there. He'll turn up our tracks on the trail and send his men down. By the time they reach the gap and go back, there'll be enough light to see the smoke. He'll think it's our fire. What'll he figure?”

“We're headin' south for Gamble.”

“So he pulls his band south to the nearest horse trail down, six miles. But not all of them. He'll send some north to take this trail, the closest to where he'll find our horses.”

“How you figure?” Holly asked.

Ward didn't answer for a long moment, and then he said, “We're afoot, we're a sure kill, and we're headed south. But he wants us bad enough to make sure we don't split up. So he'll send somebody to check north.”

Holly thought hard about this, and finally said, “What's it get us? Four-five to fight now, the rest later.”

Ward said gently, “It gets us horses, Holly.”

Holly sat up, looking at Ward, in the quarter-light of coming day. For the first time since Ward had greeted him yesterday, he felt the faint stirrings of hope.

Ward said, “They'll have to come single file off the trail, but close together, because it's been slow going. You take the last 'Pache. I'll take the first, and I'll shoot first.” He rose and looked around him now, and pointed with his chin. “There's a rock with brush against it, close to the trail. You got the pistol, so stash yourself close, and don't cross the trail, and don't forget; we're after horses.”

Holly rose, and he was aware that Ward was looking at him. “Yeah,” he said mildly.

“Once you're down, stay down,” Ward said.

Holly started off and Ward said, “Holly.”

Holly halted, looking at him.

“Remember this. If one gets away, he'll make smoke. That'll fix us.”

“Sure,” Holly said irritably, and he moved away.

Ward bellied down against the rock, behind a stand of rabbit brush, facing the trail, and watched daylight blossom. This was a thin chance, although it sounded all right when he put it into words. There was no assurance that Diablito, when the foot trail was denied him, would not lose his head and lead his whole band down this trail. Only Diablito didn't lose his head; of all the Chiricahuas, he was the coolest head, the most cunning, and the most vicious.

Ward let himself speculate tiredly on what would happen if things went wrong. It would not be a pleasant death, since it would be the settlement of an old payment. The first time Diablito and his rebels had broken the reservation, Ward had guided the pursuit until, pushed and harried and starved, Diablito had surrendered. But he had never forgotten the man who guided the cavalry on that hounding trek, and in his second break Diablito had gone out of his way to burn Ward's shack, kill his partner, and pollute the spring with his mutilated body. And Ward had retaliated by guiding the troops that cornered him a second time.

Full daylight was here now, and Ward shifted softly, wondering how long the wait would be. And then, on the heel of his movement, he heard horses on the trail above, far distant. He parted the brush ahead of him and settled his gun. He tried desperately to count the number of horses from the muffled racket above, and could not, and he thought with bitter fatalism,
You've bought it, and you'll get a look at it soon
.

A long twenty minutes dragged by, and then, with a startling suddenness, the sound of trotting horses was on him.

Slowing his breathing, he laid cheek to gunstock, and presently the first Apache moved from behind the boulder into sight. He was a young man, wearing only breech-clout and long leggings, and a band of red flannel was tied across his forehead. He held a rifle in his near hand, and he was half turned on his bay pony, looking back. His right hand held the long horsehair halter, his only rein.

The Apache's deep barrel chest was square to Ward, but Ward coolly pulled his sights away. It was the horse he was after and now he sighted carefully along the horse's mane and toward the end of it. Where neck swelled into withers, his sight steadied and followed and he slowly squeezed his hand.

At his shot, the bay fell as if poleaxed, and the Apache pitched forward. Holly's shot came then, and Ward, already levering a shell into the chamber, heard the deep whump of Holly's bullet striking a body.