Novel 1972 - Callaghen (v5.0) (10 page)

Though his eyes and ears were alert now, his thoughts wandered to the Suleymani Hills and Dost Mohammed. He had been an officer then, in command of a thousand wild Afghan horsemen, who were born to the saddle and were fierce fighters. They preferred the blade to the bullet, and they preferred to ride close.

In those days he had carried three hidden rubies, to buy his way out of trouble, or to build a home somewhere when the fighting was over. He had ridden a Bokharan saddle and worn a green leather belt studded with jewels. He had lost that belt in a poker game in Delhi when the fighting was over.

Today he carried the scars of the years, the scars of a dozen weapons, the memories of fifty battles, a hundred skirmishes. How long could a man go on? A man needed a haven away from all the fighting, a place to live, to love, to raise sons and daughters. A place where the soil was his, where the trees were his…for the time being. For the trees and soil we take in trust, to pass along to those who follow us—better, we hope, than when we found them.

He had always realized that he might die right here; he had always been aware that the time might come at any moment. In the spinning of planets and the march of suns, in the centuries and the milleniums of time, one man is a small thing, and does not matter very much. It is how a man lives that matters, and how he dies. A man can live proudly, and he can die proudly.

Callaghen wiped the sweat from his forehead, gave a glance at his canteen, but waited.

Were the Indians still out there, he wondered. Or had they moved away, vanishing into the desert in their usual silent way?

Something suddenly moved out there, but he held his fire. He was not the man to shoot at something he did not see clearly. Even as he watched, his mind went back to Sykes.

The man disliked him, or perhaps his feeling was even stronger. Malinda might be a part of the cause, but only a part. Sykes was one of those men who must feel themselves superior, and his rank gave him that opportunity. He was not a bad officer; he had that feeling of superiority over his men, and felt secure in it.

From the moment he discovered that Callaghen had been an officer of rank equal to his own, Sykes had resented him. It was not proper, he felt, for an enlisted man to have such rank, and whenever Sykes issued a command he undoubtedly felt that Callaghen was critical of him.

He had waited for an opportunity to assert himself in some fashion, to demonstrate that he was superior, but that opportunity had not come. Moreover, the sudden reappearance of Malinda had once more made plain that she preferred, or seemed to prefer, Callaghen to Sykes. It was something Sykes could neither admit to himself nor accept.

Now Callaghen dried his palms on his shirt front and took hold of his rifle once more. He would soon be out of this; he would soon be a free man. His discharge was overdue, but mails were always late out here and he thought nothing of that. However, until that discharge was in his hands he remained a soldier, subject to Sykes’s orders. Sykes would offer him no breaks, of that he could be sure, but he needed none that Sykes could give.

The command should be coming along soon. His eyes searched the heat waves over the desert, but nothing stirred there. He listened, and heard nothing. Some time had passed since a shot had been fired. The shooting had been followed by a long silence; he had not returned, and they had not come up to him.

He was suddenly startled by a thought that came to him. Suppose he had been abandoned? Suppose they thought he was dead? If they believed that, they might ride on to Bitter Springs, hoping to intercept the stage there rather than on the trail.

In that case he was on his own. He swore softly, but he realized how likely that might be. How far had he ridden, he wondered. Three miles? Four?

The Government Road along which the stage would come was a mail route, adequate reason for keeping it open. He could see the road, but he saw no stage. Suppose it had been attacked before reaching this point?

He shifted his position, trying to see farther down the trail. At that moment a bullet clipped rock near him.

His horse was safe in a cleft in the rock that provided shelter from even ricocheting bullets. He studied the terrain before him, watching for a chance to get at least one of his enemies.

He had a hunch that this lot of Indians were not Mohaves, but Pah-Utes. They often raided in this area, attacked travelers, and made swift forays on the ranches just over the mountains to escape with stolen horses. Sometimes they were led by white men. It was an old practice to steal horses in California and sell them in Arizona or Nevada, then to steal horses there and drive them to California for sale.

He glanced at the sun. Another hour until sunset. He settled down for a rest. It was unlikely they would try to cross the desert that intervened, for they had no wish to die…they would wait for darkness.

Callaghen relaxed, his rifle beside him, pistol ready to hand. The slight overhang protected both him and his horse against attack from above. He could be approached only from the desert in front or sides. He sat facing a crescent moon of rocks, open sand beyond.

He dozed, occasionally awoke to check the desert, dozed again. He saw no movement, heard no shots, or any sound of riders or stage. He was cut off, completely at a loss as to what was happening or had happened.

As he sat, half asleep, half awake, his mind still was busy. Suppose the stage driver had some inkling of an impending attack, and had swung from his prescribed route?

There were areas of soft sand, but much of the surface was firm and the stage might make its own trail. But they would need water for the horses, which meant Bitter Spring or Marl Springs.

A good distance separated these two places, but how much distance he would have to drive would depend on where he left the regular trail. At any rate the stage seemed to have vanished, as had Lieutenant Sprague and the men.

The air became cool, darkness was coming, a star appeared. Callaghen poured half the water from his canteen into the crown of his hat and let his horse drink. He rinsed his own mouth with a tiny bit of water, and swallowed it.

There was a sandy spot where he could ride out from his shelter. At any other place the shoes of his horse striking rock would make a sharp sound that could be heard at considerable distance.

He waited until full darkness, then stepped quickly into the saddle and went out of the gap at a swift pace. He ran the horse a good fifty yards, but heard no sound.

The Indians were gone. Perhaps they had left hours ago, leaving only one man to pin him down, and now that one, too, had gone. Where?

He rode down the trail toward Camp Cady for two miles but found no tracks of wagon or stage, nor any fresh tracks except those of unshod ponies. The dim light made it almost impossible to see any wheel tracks.

He circled back in the desert toward where he had left the command, skirting a dry lake, white in the vague light of the stars. Several times he paused to listen.

It was eerie, and a haunted feeling came over him. Where was the stage? Where were the Indians? The patrol?

There was nothing anywhere…only the night, the desert, and the stars. To the north mountains loomed, the Old Dad range, with which he was totally unfamiliar.

Dark canyons opened before him, but he circled warily away, and his horse seemed pleased that he did. He could feel the spookiness in the muscles of the horse, feel its doubt, its suspicion of the night.

A clump of greasewood had gathered a hill of sand. In its shadow he drew rein, trying to puzzle it out. The stage should have passed him hours ago. The sound of a rifle shot would carry for a good distance out here—well over a mile—but he had heard none from down the trail, and he had seen no tracks to show it had gone north.

Only two possibilities remained. The stage had turned back, or it had left the trail. If it had turned off, the logical direction would be toward Marl Springs. There were three soldiers guarding the redoubt there…or there had been.

But what had become of the patrol? He had heard no shooting after the first few minutes, and there was small chance they had been wiped out. To destroy a patrol of the size of the one led by Lieutenant Sprague would not be an easy task.

Nearby the Old Dad Mountains, ragged and sprawling, seemed like mountains on the moon. They would, if he went on along the shore of the soda lake, divide him from the trail the patrol had been following, and he hesitated to ride north around them. Every foot of the way would be a risk. It might be wise to hole up until daybreak, when he could see what he was doing; but travel was usually better in the cool of the night; by day he could be seen as well as see.

He decided he would ride on, find a place somewhere in the Old Dads and wait and see what might happen. He started toward the mountains.

One thing was certain. The stage must leave tracks. It could not sprout wings and vanish. Nor could the patrol.

Chapter 10

T
HE SOUNDS OF the desert night are small sounds, sounds to which the ears must be attuned. In all men there remains much of the primitive, and after a short time in the desert a man’s senses begin to be more active. But he must listen, he must wait, he must give himself time to get the wave length of the desert, and so he becomes aware of desert things around him.

Morty Callaghen had lived in the deserts of the world, and his ears had become alert, something easier there perhaps than anywhere else.

The wind has a sound of its own, and that sound can be different among rocks, greasewood, the Joshua tree, or cacti. Small animals make only faint rustlings, but these too are soon recognized by the ear. A fall of rocks is natural; displaced by the wind or loosened by the alternating heat of the day and cold of night, a stone may fall, a trickle of sand may follow, then silence. A stone dislodged by a foot has a different sound, strange as this may seem—a sharper, more definite sound.

The mountains, too, are not still, but a mountain lives at an infinitely slow pace. It stirs, it creaks, it is growing or coming apart, but all with a slowness incredible to man.

This is a part of the wonder of the wild and empty places. The desert is always waiting. The seeds that fall on the desert and are trampled into the sand do not sprout with the first rain. There must be enough rain, and it must come at the right time; then the seeds will sprout. Some plants leaf out, bloom, and drop both blossoms and leaves in a matter of days.

The fluted shape of many cacti is due to the need to offer less surface to the sun, the spines filter sunlight as well, and most cacti have a sort of waxy surface to prevent evaporation.

Callaghen, traveler from a far, green island, had come to love the desert. He waited now in the moonlight, among the scattered rocks and desert plants, knowing that as long as he remained still he would not be seen from any distance. He waited, and he listened. Overhead a bat circled, dived, fluttering about in an endless quest for insects.

On such a night sound carries far. He listened first for sounds close to him, then for those farther out.

At first he heard nothing, nothing at all. He was about to move on when some sound came to him from far off, a regular, continuing sound. The desert normally has no sound like it. Even the sound of the wind has changes.

This was a sound of something moving…not exactly dragging, yet not unlike that. He heard it, and then there was silence.

The sound had come from the north, perhaps a little east of north. Callaghen’s horse had heard it, too. His ears were up and he was looking in that direction, nostrils flaring for scent.

“We’ll go see,” Callaghen said softly.

Callaghen’s eyes had been picking out ways to move from where he was, and now he chose one of them. He did not mount, not wanting to offer too much of a silhouette to whatever or whoever might be out there, and he did not reach for his carbine, which was slung to the pommel. He would get close enough for a hand gun, and now he unbuttoned a button of his blouse, eased the butt of the gun there toward the opening, and then went ahead.

Deliberately, he chose soft sand. The hard surface nearer by was easier walking, but it made more sound. He followed the route of a tiny desert runoff.

When he had walked perhaps a hundred steps he paused. No sound…He waited a moment, and then, scowling, he went on another short distance.…He paused again and listened. He heard the sound again, a little clearer now.

Suddenly it came to him. It was the sound of a wagon…it might be the stage. If it was the stage, Malinda was on it…or she had been. He strained his ears to get the sound of the wheels.

All wheel sounds are not alike. The weight of a wagon and the size of its wheels change the effect. A narrow rim makes a sound different from that of a wider rim; a heavy wagon rumbles. What he had first heard must have been the slide of the wheels when the driver applied brakes going into a wash or down a small slope.

Now he could hear the strike of iron-shod hoofs on stones, the creak of suspension straps. His greatest danger at present was in getting shot, either by Indians, or by somebody on the stage itself who saw him loom suddenly out of the dark.

The stage appeared, the horses climbing first out of a small gully, then the head of the driver followed by the coach. He held his horse’s nostrils and waited for the stage to pass. It was moving slowly, and a man was sitting beside the driver, rifle in hand.

When the stage had gone past, Callaghen took his hand from the nostrils of his horse. After a moment the stage reached the top of the small knoll and the driver drew up to rest his horses. Just then Callaghen’s horse whinnied.

The man with the rifle turned sharply around, and the driver called, “Who’s that?”

Callaghen spoke distinctly. “It’s the army, or part of it.”

“Come in slow. Keep your hands empty.”

Then he heard Malinda speak. “That’s Morty! It’s Morty!”

He walked up, leading his horse. “Looks to me like you’re off your trail,” he said mildly. “What happened?”