Ambush on the Mesa (7 page)

M
YRON
G
REER
sat in a narrow space between two buildings. It was shadowy in there, but it was still hot. He could feel the sweat running down his thin body. He ran his tongue about inside his dry mouth. But it wasn’t water he wanted; he needed something far stronger than that.

Strange thoughts went through Myron Greer’s mind. He felt as though he should get up and walk to the edge of the terrace, climb over the wall, then slide down the slope to the vast canyon floor. Somewhere out there he might find a drink.

Maybe the scout, Hugh Kinzie, had a bottle. Those men usually had one, although they didn’t drink when they worked. Too dangerous. But it was handy for cleansing wounds and easing their pain.

Above him a lizard scuttled about, dropping bits of mortar down on Greer’s bare head. He didn’t move.

Maybe the people who had built these crazy cliff dwellings had learned how to ferment corn. But these people had been gone for generations. Anything they had left would have been long dried up by now. Still, if it had been well sealed and buried in the ruins, there might be a little bit of it left, and it would have a wallop like a dose of canister.

Greer raised his head. A hammer started thudding inside his skull while an iron band seemed to tighten around the outside of it. He looked out across the canyon. He didn’t see the far wall shimmering and waving in the heat, but rather he saw a whirling, grayish mass, which seemed to form itself into a cone, like the inside of a whirlpool. It seemed as though he could run to the edge of the terrace and dive into the whirlpool to be swept away into its cool depths.

Abel Clymer walked up and down the triangular passageway behind the ruins. It was a little cooler in there, or so it seemed. His right instep throbbed where that sonofabitch Kinzie had dropped the steel-shod butt of his Sharps. Kinzie’s time would come, but Clymer wasn’t ready to get rid of him yet. Clymer wanted to get out of this hell hole and take Marion Nettleton with him. He wet his thick lips as he thought of Marion Nettleton. “Jesus,” he said softly.

If he could get her back to the Rio Grande and show up at Santa Fe with her, he’d be the biggest damned hero in the Southwest. With rapid promotions the order of the day, he, Abel Johnston Clymer, first lieutenant, United States Cavalry, could ask for anything. With Bennett behind him he might eventually get a brigade. General Clymer! That was the ticket!

Clymer stopped at the far end of the passage and wiped the sweat of heat and ambition from his broad face. Maurice Nettleton was in his way. Nettleton had money. That was why Clymer had stayed his little game until he had found a stake for himself. Well, he had it now. The next thing to do was to get Nettleton to move out of there, one way or another. With Kinzie to guide him, Clymer could break through. It might not be easy to get rid of Kinzie, but that job had to be done too. Then it would be Santa Fe, and the plaudits of the department commander. Then on to St. Louis and the firm, friendly handclasps of Boss Bennett. Despite the clinging heat, Clymer shivered a little in his ecstasy. “Captain Clymer. Major Clymer. Colonel Clymer.
General Clymer!
” he said aloud.

• • •

Dan Pearce peered through Hugh Kinzie’s field glasses. He studied the east end of the canyon. Somewhere in the haze was that damned dead mule with Nettleton’s silver still in the packs. Dan had seen the silver service back at Fort Ayres. It wouldn’t take a man long to get back to that stinking mule and cut those packs loose. He could cache the silver and come back for it some day. Maybe he and Chandler Willis could make a break for the river, but there wasn’t enough value in the silver for two to share it. The thing to do was get the silver, hide it, then talk Willis into going out of the canyon with him. Two would have a better chance than one. Three could make it without too much trouble — if the third man was Hugh Kinzie.

Darrell Phillips looked down at his Wellington boots. Made by Bascomb of London. The best boots’ in the whole department, and he had to wear them into this country. The boots were scuffed, and one of them had a slit clear through the fine leather. No amount of polishing and buffing would ever make these boots look like anything worthwhile again.

Phillips closed his eyes and leaned back against the warm wall of the little room he shared with Clymer. He wrinkled his nose a little. Abel Clymer carried an animal-like odor about with him even when he was freshly scrubbed. Clymer had given him nothing but hell from the first day he had showed up at Fort Ayres. According to regulations both Abel Clymer and Darrell Phillips were officers and gentlemen. Their commissions had made them both officers. The difference between the two of them was that Abel Clymer had reached the miraculous estate of being a gentlemen by the act of becoming an officer, while Darrell Phillips had been born a gentleman and would die as one.

Phillips thought of Katy Corse. She would have been as much out of place in his mother’s drawing room as Abel Clymer would have been, but there was something refreshing about her, despite her easy frontier manners. Somehow she had been able to ease the pain of his bitter loneliness. She was attractive and well formed…. He shuddered a little as he thought of bringing her home to his mother.

He stood up and picked up his hat. Katy was outside somewhere. He had to see her, to talk with her.

Chandler Willis slitted his eyes as he looked out over the canyon. Damned if he had seen any Apaches, but he knew as well as the big scout did, that they were there. Lying in the brush on the heights across the canyon; maybe even up on the mesa which rose above the cliff dwellings. Willis had almost made his break back there when they had found the smashed remains of Winston’s cattle-herding detail. He could have maybe made his way to the Rio Grande alone, then south to join Baylor’s Second Texas Rifles at La Mesilla. But two men had been watching him: Lieutenant Clymer and First Sergeant Hastings. Either one of them would have shot him if they had figured he was going to desert to the Confederacy.

• • •

Chandler Willis cursed his luck. He had killed a man back on the South Llano in the fall of ‘59, and had made it across
the Rio Grande the range of a rifleshot ahead of the dead man’s relatives. From there he had drifted to Fort Bliss, where he had enlisted for a winter’s feed and shelter. Hastings had tagged him with the nickname Snowbird because of that.

Willis shifted and spat again. That damned Yankee Pearce was up to something crooked. He needed Chandler Willis for something. Something for Pearce’s profit, not Willis’s. Yankees were all alike.

He wondered how loyal Hugh Kinzie was. He was tough enough to be a real Tejano. Maybe he was thinking of joining the Confederacy. The two of them together could clean out this bunch of Yankees, and ride like kings into La Mesilla with a mess of rifles and equipment, plus some damned good horse and mule flesh.

• • •

Maurice Nettleton looked down at his sleeping wife. Sweat dewed her oval face. Her soft lips were parted, showing her even white teeth. Her breasts swelled against the material of her traveling dress. Nettleton swallowed hard. A cold greenish wave of fear flowed through him as he thought of losing her.

She had made him. He had been an obscure second Lieutenant of dragoons at Jefferson Barracks when he had met her and had instantly fallen in love. He had come from a fairly well-to-do family, which made it possible for him to court her. Shelton Bennett had always said he wanted a son-in-law as tough in the rump as he was, but it wasn’t really the truth, for Shelton Bennett ruled everybody who would allow him to. And his daughter, too, for all her soft looks, was as hard as nails. She had married young Maurice Nettleton because she had thought he was the kind of a man she could mold to fit her needs. Her judgment had been faulty.

Their first years of married life had been like a dream. Living in the fine big house in St. Louis; having his promotion come through years ahead of time; getting assigned to department headquarters as a staff officer. Then Shelton Bennett had quarreled with somebody in the War Department. It had been enough to have Maurice transferred to godforsaken Arizona. The pain had been assuaged a little by his promotion to captain. Marion had looked on the affair as a gay adventure. But Maurice had been badly shaken. The country was too big and dangerous. He’d had no experience with these hard-bitten frontier soldiers. Abel Clymer, who
had run Fort Ayres before, listened to Maurice with some respect, but he still ran the post. Then the slow realization had come over Maurice that Clymer was making a strong play for Marion. He was solicitous with her, and used every opportunity to show up Maurice.

Maurice Nettleton began to fan his wife. He could hear Abel Clymer’s bull voice in the next room, where he was riding Darrell Phillips. Nettleton looked at the fine engraved Colt pistol in his holster, one of a pair presented to him by Shelton Bennett. Nettleton felt his hands tremble. He hated violence and bloodshed. All he wanted to do was get his wife to safety, then get himself assigned to a staff job where he could be beside his wife when she needed him. But if Abel Clymer stood in the way, he would see that Maurice Nettleton would fight for his own.

• • •

Matt Hastings pulled his soggy shirt up over his head and swabbed his armpits with it. He had a fresh shirt in his pommel pack, but he had been saving that for his entry into Santa Fe. In twenty years’ service he had bucked his way up through the ranks by his ability to follow orders, and always look like a soldier. There had been a time when the diamond of a top soldier was all he desired, but the rumors of war changed Matt Hasting’s ambitions. For the first time in his army career he began to think of wearing shoulder straps instead of chevrons. Instead of obeying his officers’ orders implicitly he had begun to think that perhaps he knew more than they did. He had begun to burn the midnight oil reading every military book he could lay his hands on. Matt knew them all by heart, which was a hell of a lot more than that bumbling Captain Nettleton could say, or Abel Clymer with his big mouth, or Darrell Phillips with his sensitive face and fine manners.

Matt wiped off his carbine and pistol. He’d hold this J Company outfit together if it was the last thing he ever did.

• • •

The sun had died in the west, weltering in rose and gold. Purple and black shadows mantled the mountains. A cooling wind crept out of the hills and rustled the brush.

Jonas Stevens walked along the line of thirsty horses. They had been jerking at their picket lines. Jonas touched his cracked lips with his tongue. He had saved his ration of water for that day, but there wasn’t enough, for one of the
animals. The lack of water was one of the many things he had never figured on when he had asked for duty in the Southwest. Not for himself, but for the animals. It was different back East. Plenty of good water and fine grazing for cavalry mounts. Jonas patted the nose of one of the horses. He looked down into the dim canyon. Maybe there was water down there somewhere. Kinzie hadn’t said so, but Kinzie was a secretive sort. But if there
was
water down there, Jonas Stevens would see to it that the horses and mules got to it.

• • •

Harry Roswell was standing his guard shift in the tower. He looked down at his two stripes. He wore them because he always obeyed orders without question, even those of a corporal who was senior to him. Matt Hastings had once said that seniority amongst corporals and second lieutenants was like virtue amongst whores, but Matt Hastings was a capable first sergeant worth half a dozen green officers.

Roswell touched his two stripes and then straightened his hat. He gripped his carbine and threw back his shoulders. His seniors could rely on him to carry out their orders. He dropped through the opening in the floor and felt about for the chicken ladder.

• • •

It was pitch dark in the canyon. A coyote howled. The wind moaned through the chasm, rustling the brush, and haunting the cliff-dwelling ruins with ghostly whisperings. Something moved furtively at the wall that edged the front of the terrace. A man rolled over the wall and landed softly on the slope. He lay there a while, listening to the night. Then he eased his way down the slope until he reached the brush at the bottom. Then he was gone through the brush, heading for the east end of the canyon.

• • •

Isaiah Morton sat in the darkness of a tumbledown room, with his back and head pressed against the warm wall. His Bible lay open on his lap, and one of Isaiah’s spatulate fingers rested on the page. It was too dark to read, but it really didn’t matter, for he knew the book by heart. He was sure that God had placed him in his present company for some obscure but righteous reason of His own. They were an ungodly lot. Their passions and desires were close to the surface. There was no inner peace in any of them. Some of
them laughed at Isaiah Morton, but he had taken it as part of his martyrdom, part of the task which had been given to him in a vision. For Isaiah Morton had been picked to bring Christianity to Mangus Colorado. It had been said that an old priest had tried to do so many years before. But he had failed. Some said that Father Font had been a good man, and had failed not because of anything he had done, or had not done, but rather because his own people had betrayed Mangus Colorado.

The scout, Hugh Kinzie, a hard and violent man, had said the Mimbrenos were waiting for their chance out in the darkness. When that chance came they would strike and kill. Isaiah tried to conjure up a picture of Mangus Colorado.

“He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent: his eyes are privily set against the poor.” Isaiah Morton stood up and paced back and forth. “He lieth in wait secretly as a lion in his den: he lieth in wait to catch the poor: he doth catch the poor, when he draweth him into his net.” Isaiah’s harsh voice rang out, echoing from the walls. “He croucheth, and humbleth himself, that the poor may fall by his strong ones!”