They Came To Cordura (15 page)

Before he could be stopped, Trubee raised his rifle and sighted at the target of opportunity. His bullet spitted the Mexican so that he screamed, leaped on all fours bear-like, flattened, twitched, and lay still. Shot and scream rocked back and forth between canyon walls.

“Thought I’d give ‘im a lead enema, Majer,” Trubee grinned, bolting another round into his chamber.

In another minute riders appeared high on the opposite hillcrest, dark against a sundown sky, and atop the cliff to the north. Scrape of iron and squeak of working leather sounded high behind them and bits of shale clattered down the slope.

Suddenly the canyon came alive with plunging rifle-fire directed into the jeffery pines from three sides. Bullets slammed into trunks and ricocheted through branches, showering needles. Though no more than thirty rifles were in operation, the canyon, an echo chamber, amplified the reports into a cannonade like that of artillery ordered to fell the small wood with grape-shot. Deafened, the Americans took to the center of the clump. Then, as though on signal, the Mexican cross-fire ceased. It had been a way of demonstrating to the detail how perfectly it was trapped.

Automatically Major Thorn took charge of his command. He had the animals tied to trees. He ordered Sergeant Chawk to find out who carried short-handled axes, break them out and have a large number of branches trimmed. “All right, heroes,” Chawk roared at the rest as they stood about indecisively, “snap ass and cut wood!” Renziehausen, who still sat sobbing, hugging his knees in grief, the sergeant brought to with a smart slap across the face and set to helping. The men chopped away with a will, glad to have something to do. Thorn next had the branches dragged to points at intervals around the perimeter of the wood, piled as cover, and disposed the men behind them, Chawk and Renziehausen on one flank, towards the canyon mouth, Trubee and Hetherington in the center facing west and north, twenty yards apart, and Lieutenant Fowler at the rear, to the east. He ordered them not to waste ammunition, to fire only when absolutely certain of targets. He went to various points at the edge of the clump, and from concealment observed what he could of the Mexican positions. This was not his only purpose. He had to be by himself, to think. The ambush, the fact that they were pinned down by armed enemy in this unpeopled country, seemed completely unreal to him. They should be making night camp at this hour, near water, prepared to reach
Cordura
the next day. There was no shooting now. Light ghosted rapidly out of the canyon. Peering, he could make out movement on the three heights and down at the mouth, four hundred yards distant, but figures and rock formations and bushes fused in dusk and haze of powder smoke. Men could neither scale nor descend the great slab to the north nor could horses manage the steep slopes to east and west. There was no way out of the canyon except by its mouth, and that, he was sure, had been well sealed off by the Mexicans. He had led his party into this place. It was not his fault. He did not know the country. He had not panicked. He had got them to cover with only one casualty, and that not serious. He might have hesitated when they were first fired upon, been more cautious about an escape route rather than taking them in head-long flight, but the boy had been hit, and he had obeyed his impulse to get them out of danger, anywhere. Still, anger at circumstance flickered in him and on a hunch he went into the pines. Adelaide Geary sat against a trunk calmly smoking a shuck cigarette.

“Who are they?” he demanded. “Where did they come from? I think you know.”

“I do now. I didn’t at first, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Well?”

“The one with the red band and the
Coahuila
leggings is Arreaga.”

“That’s impossible!” Arreaga and Cruz Dominiguez had commanded the force they had defeated at
Ojos
. Dominiguez they had identified among the dead.

“Have a little logic, Major,” she said, “even if you can’t afford it. When you threw them off the ranch, why should they all go south? You would only be after them again. So some of them doubled back north, where they would have clear country, and banded up. I imagine they’ve been watching us all day and waiting to trip the snare.”

It was so dark Thorn could not see her face. “Don’t sweat,” she went on. “I’m sure Arreaga didn’t know what brave men and bird-killers you have, or he’d never have picked on you. He won’t attack. When you run out of rations and surrender he’ll kill you with ceremony befitting your honors.”

The tone of her voice was such that if she had been a man he would have beaten the insolence out of her then and there.

“And what will he do to you?” he asked.

“Nothing. He was my guest, remember?” He left her. On the heights and in the canyon mouth, at the four points of the compass, fires flared. The Mexicans were settling down for the night. Saying one guard would be enough, he had Lieutenant Fowler bring in Trubee, Hetherington and Renziehausen from the perimeter to cut fuel and build a fire. He saw to the horses and found them securely tied, but so dry they were already chewing on their halter ropes. They had to have water. Just as he went back to the men they lit the fire, and as the light pushed out and up, a volley from the Mexican rifles zinged through the branches and they took shelter behind trunks until it ended. Facing them across the fire, Major Thorn told them the Mexicans were stragglers from the
Ojos
fight under Arreaga. He said he did not know how long they would be bottled up, but he was certain the Villistas had little stomach for Springfields. It was unlikely they would attack at night. He would let them know in due time what he had decided to do, but they must make the best of the situation meanwhile. He made every effort to speak calmly and to appear unconcerned. He had them check ammunition; they averaged sixty rounds apiece for the rifles and four pistol clips. He ordered them to unsaddle and give the animals half a feed of corn and a quarter hatful of water from the canteens. While this was being done he warned the Geary woman quietly to stay close to the fire at all times so that she could be kept in sight. When he asked her about provisions, she replied she had grain for her mare but no water.

“Try tequila,” he suggested as he left to care for Sheep.

When they were done with the animals Thorn saw to it that they did not overcook, and that Chawk, still on guard, was relieved to eat. The meal finished the last of the bacon, but there was still a little hard bread, flour and coffee left. Not much was said. The men were sober. To the bullets which occasionally stung through the jeffery, clipping needles and ricocheting off branches with high-pitched, crazy whines, they paid no heed. They were fired, evidently, at random intervals, a shot now, another later whenever someone thought of it, without specific aim or purpose except to remind the Americans of the Villistas’ constant, solicitous presence. It was an effective way, too, to tighten the nerves of those trapped.

Major Thorn took a brand from the fire and built his own nearby. While he made coffee and ate hard bread he worked out the guard duty in his mind. He would set what was known as a ‘running guard’, he decided, using all the men, posting them in pairs for two-hour tricks, one with a lane of fire towards the canyon mouth, the other watching the west hillside. There was no need to cover the rock wall and no one could come down the shale of the rear slope without waking the dead. He would start with the youngsters, then Chawk and Trubee, then himself and Fowler, repeating this sequence so that he and Fowler would be on again at first light. He dwelt on the mechanics of guard so that he would not have to consider the choices with which he was confronted. But the Lieutenant joined him and forced the issue. He had been thinking, he said, about the best time and way for them to pull out. The canyon mouth was, of course, their only route. They could walk the horses almost to it, mount on signal, then pour it on and ride through. As for the time, near dawn the Villistas might be least on the alert, but they would soon have light for pursuit, and he recognized the animals had little gallop left in them. So around midnight he thought the best time. Darkness would make chase difficult, and the sooner they tried, as he saw it, the greater the element of surprise.

Thorn drank coffee. “Give me a professional opinion, Lieutenant. Looking at our situation, what are the alternatives?” Fowler seemed flattered and puzzled. “I thought I’d covered them, sir. To ride out sooner or later. I expressed my preference for the former.”

“Isn’t there another?”

“Sir?”

“Not pulling out. Waiting to see what they propose to do.”

Lieutenant Fowler stared. He said formally it had never entered his mind. They could not wait. They would soon run out of food.

“We can eat horse.”

And they were down to thirds of canteens of water.

“It may rain.”

The junior officer continued to stare.

“Let’s be practical,” Thorn said. “Riding out of here in all directions whooping and hollering may be in the tradition, but consider our chances. We might get through the mouth, but in the dark we would be scattered all over hell’s half acre. We are in hostile country, evidently, and country none of us know. Separated, most of us would be dead or grandfathers before we ever got to base.” He meant to be easy about it, but having to word his thoughts whetted his tone. “Moreover, I have to think of my command responsibility, which is to these men. Riding off half-cocked I might lose one or two of you to wounds or worse. That I can’t have. This is a very special detail, Lieutenant, and I intend to keep it intact.”

He glanced deliberately at the other fire. The Geary woman was cooking for herself and, ignoring her, the men were, without being told, cleaning their weapons. Trubee had relieved Chawk on guard.

“So we will stay here tonight,” Thorn concluded. “We will see what happens tomorrow. I’m convinced they won’t attack. Our position is very defensible. When they recognize that they may pull out themselves. If they should attack, we will give them a good licking.”

Fowler got to his feet. “Sir, I must say. . . ”

“Will you send Renziehausen over?”

Fowler went. When Renziehausen appeared Thorn had him sit down and removed the bandage from his head, saying he had had to be hasty in the afternoon and wanted to apply a permanent dressing. Curious, Chawk and Hetherington came along to watch.

With the bandage off the transformation of the boy was startling. His good looks became at once ludicrous. As he searched their faces for reaction to him, Hetherington left quickly. Sergeant Chawk grinned. The boy’s fingers flew to his head. All that remained of his ear was an inch-long strip of the lobe flesh which hung loose.

“Looks like a baby’s pecker,” Chawk said.

“Shut up!” Renziehausen cried.

“Don’t gimme any mouth,” the sergeant drawled. With one hand he made a sweeping gesture. “I might yank the rest off and make a neat job.”

“That will be all, Sergeant,” Thorn said curtly.

Chawk laughed and returned to the big fire. Thorn washed the dried blood from the boy’s head with water from his canteen and applied a smaller bandage of cotton and adhesive.

Renziehausen’s eyes were tear-filled, as stricken as those of a pup whose tail has just been bobbed.

“How could it happen when I was just riding along not doing anything? Why did I have to be the one? At
Ojos
they were shooting right at me and I didn’t get a scratch. I just have to see myself. Have you got a mirror, sir?”

“No.”

“I look awful, don’t I?”

Thorn tried to reassure him. A sergeant of his in the Philippines, he said, had lost an ear to a Moro barong, and the surgeons, once he had returned to the States, made him one of rubber so life-like that the difference could not be told.

“Besides, it won’t matter,” the officer told him. “People won’t even notice.”

“Yes, they will.”

“No. They will only notice what you wear around your neck. Have you ever seen a Medal of Honor, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s the most beautiful of all the decorations, as it should be. It hangs around the neck on a blue silk ribbon dotted with white stars.’’

Renziehausen sniffed. “It does?”

“Yes. I would trade an ear for one any day. Two, in fact.”

Thorn put his hand on the private’s shoulder and accompanied him to the others. There he explained the guard duty for the night. He instructed them to fire at the slightest noise. As he spoke, a bullet ploughed through the jefferys from their rear, struck a branch and ricocheted down into the fire at his feet, scattering sparks like fireworks.

“That’s another thing,” the officer said. “Two can play at that game. When you are standing guard, throw them a round now and then, maybe two or three an hour. Sight on their fires. You won’t hit anything but it will keep them awake.”

“Ain’t we going to pull out, Major?” Chawk asked. Thorn did not reply to him. “All right, Hetherington and Renziehausen have the first trick. Lieutenant, will you and Trubee cut fuel? Come with me, Sergeant.”

He strode back to his own fire, Chawk following. While he built up the fire and found his notebook and pencil he had the non-com sit down.

“Major, how come we ain’t pulling out?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, are you feeling up to snuff again, Sergeant? Any more dizziness since yesterday?”

“Nope.”

“Fine.” He sat down opposite and located the notes he had taken the day of the
Ojos
fight. “Now, Sergeant, things happened pretty fast at
Ojos
when you started up those stairs to the roof. I have two eyewitness reports, but they differ a little and you can help me get the straight of it. A citation must be absolutely accurate.” He began to question the non-com, in the course of the next few minutes changing slightly some of his notes.

“When you going to make that bitch divvy up ‘er likker an’ smokes, Major?”

“I think that’s all I need.” Thorn closed his notebook, smiled. “You are a real engine of destruction at close quarters. By the way, what is your middle name and where do you come from?”