The sergeant stood rigidly to attention before the rumpled bed of the Major. “Gone, Sir.”
“Has the place been searched, Haydon?”
“Yes, Sir. But there’s no sign of him.”
Corporal Chandler stepped forward. “Couldn’t be hidin’, could he, Sir?”
Lovick stared at him in disbelief. “Hardly. Not even the Quaid child would do something as malign as that.”
Crow was a silent onlooker near the door. He’d been roused out with everyone else in Fort Garrett and had tagged along to the quarters of the Commanding Officer. The policy of the shootist was at all times to try and find out what was going on. And Lovick’s rooms were the best place for that.
The Major seemed to be ageing by five years every time Crow saw him. The lines had deepened around his nose and mouth and his eyes were sunken like sun-dried arroyos into their sockets. His lips were cracked and sore and he tried to moisten them with the tip of his tongue.
“You’ve searched …?”
“Everywhere. But the child has clearly gone from us.”
“Child?” said Crow, speaking for the first time.
“He is only a boy, Mr. Crow.”
“I hear he cut another of the Apache women, Major. You figure that for a child’s trick?”
“I don’t …”
The shootist carried on as though the officer hadn’t spoken. “Because I don’t and you can sure as Hell bet your pension that the Chiricahuas don’t.”
“You figure they’ve taken him?”
For a brief moment Crow paused, weighing his answer carefully.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“Lot of things, Major.”
“Hell, Crow,” interrupted Chandler. “Facts is facts, man.”
“What facts?”
The corporal ticked them off on his fingers, looking around the room at the other officers and non-coms. “One. Cyrus Quaid isn’t much liked by the Chiricahua.”
“That’s like saying I’m not partial to a dose of the clap, Corporal,” called out a young Lieutenant from the rear of the crowd, earning himself a stern look from the bed-ridden Lovick.
“Two. He’s cut the face of one of the squaws. And not for the first time, neither. Upset John Dancer and he carries some muscle with them Apaches. Three, the whole damned lot of them up and vanished during the night. One minute there. Next minute, they’ve just plain disappeared in the blackness.”
“And four, the boy’s gone too,” finished Sergeant Haydon. “Seems like damned simple adding up to me.”
“You think that they’ve gone to Small Pony?” asked Crow, looking round the crowded room. Wrinkling his nostrils at the strong scent of illness.
“Must have. Dancer was kin to the chief,” replied one of the officers.
There was a longish silence, everyone starting off glancing in the direction of Lovick, then looking away again when it became obvious that the Major wasn’t ready to make any decision.
“Big Cyrus is with his wife, Major,” said Haydon, breaking the quiet.
“They upset?”
“Does the sun rise?”
“Yeah.”
Haydon coughed to attract Lovick’s attention. “Sir. Major Lovick, Sir?”
“What … What is it, Sergeant?”
“Quaid’s talkin’ ‘bout settin’ up a posse of vigilantes and going after his son.”
“No.” The word was calm and considered.
“Strong feelings runnin’ round the place, Major,” called the young Lieutenant. Receiving yet another angry stare from his Commanding Officer.
“That would seem a possibility, Mister, considering it looks like the hostiles have fled to the hills with a young white captive. I would sort of. . . .”A coughing fit made him lie back on his bed, struggling for breath. Finally recovering a little and sitting up again. “As I was saying, I would have sort of expected anger.”
“You goin’ to seal up Fort Garrett, Major?” asked Chandler.
“Yes. By God, I will not. . . . !! Oh, this damned illness! I will not have the civilians trying to take over the role of the military.”
“Then we’ll go after “em?”
“Indeed, Sergeant. I want a patrol mounted and ready for action within … what is the time?”
“Little after six, Sir.”
“A patrol out by eight of the clock. Tell Mr. Quaid I will see him at eleven to give my condolences to him. But apart from the patrol the gates are to be shut and kept that way.”
“What if Quaid wants …?” began Captain Hewitson, the second-in-command.
“You have the orders. Nobody leaves. Any man tries then he is arrested. Any rapscallion or sturdy vagabond attempts to raise the rest of the civilians then he is to be dealt with using as much severity as his case might merit.”
“How many men?”
“Twelve.”
“Against Small Pony?” exclaimed Hewitson.
“Your bowels have been plaguing you, Captain. A touch of the yellow to them, perhaps.”
“Sir! I protest in …”
Lovick was clearly feverish. Crow found it hard to see how Hewitson hadn’t gotten together with the rest of the officers to relieve him of his command. But as an ex-officer in the Cavalry himself he knew well enough what a hazardous course of action that could prove. Like removing a Captain from the command of a ship at sea.
“Protest all you wish, Mister. It is my belief that any twelve men of my force could face up to any twelve hundred Indians.”
Crow thought he heard someone whisper that Custer hadn’t done so well against better odds, but the words were so quiet that he couldn’t be certain.
“Who will lead?”
“Lieutenant Carter.”
“But he has little experience against …”
Lovick shouted out in anger, making Hewitson jump. “Shut your damned mouth, Captain. The only way for a puppy to learn what life is about is for it to go out and damned well learn it. Carter goes. With Sergeant Haydon. Corporal Chandler. And, let me see … and ten troopers.”
“That’s thirteen, Major.”
“I can count well enough, thank you. And I am not superstitious. Provisions for ten days. Usual weapons and ammunition.”
“That all, Sir?” asked Lieutenant Carter. Crow looked at the young man, feeling a little sorry for the way that he was being dumped in at the bloody end of warfare against the Apaches.
“Yes. No. And you will take a scout with you, Lieutenant.”
“Scout, Major?”
Lovick closed his eyes in seething anger. “Is everyone suffering from some wretched illness? Now it’s deafness.”
“But, we have no scouts left.”
“What?”
Hewitson spoke up. “I’m sorry, Charley. I thought you knew.” His voice was soft, gentle. Trying to reassure the ill man. “The local Apache scouts all left at the same time as the friendly Chiricahuas.”
“All?”
Yeah. We figure that John Dancer spoke to them and they went.”
“With that poor boy,” said Lovick, shaking his head sympathetically.
“So we …”
“Mr. Crow will scout for us.”
“The Hell I will,” replied the shootist.
“You know this area well?”
“I do.”
Lovick smiled. “And they say you know the Indians well enough, Crow.”
“I’m not a scout for the Cavalry.”
“You are if I say you are.”
“No, Major.”
“And I do say you are.”
The shootist looked across the room at the invalid. He’d been long enough in the Army to know that the officer commanding a Cavalry fort came a whole lot higher than the Pope and only a few short steps below God Almighty. There wasn’t very much that Major Charles Lovick couldn’t do.
He could insist on Crow helping, determining that the situation was sufficiently grave for such action.
“I’ll not operate under duress, Major.”
“If I order Sergeant Haydon here to draw his pistol and put a ball through your damned head, Crow, then he would do it.”
“He’d try to do it. I wouldn’t want to push money on whether he’d make it.”
“But if I order it, then you are a dead man.”
“Sure. You want to bend the rules some, you can do about anything you want.”
“I want you to scout for me, Crow.”
“Ten days.”
“Ten days,” agreed Lovick.
“Money.”
“Ten dollars a day. Bonus of fifty if you find the boy alive.”
“I figure he’s alive. They’ll likely keep him a while. Then either return him or kill him.”
“What about a ransom, Crow?” asked Lieutenant Carter.
The shootist tugged at the lobe of his right ear. Thinking. “Not likely, Mister. Not the way of the Apaches. Not their way.”
Lovick was lying back again, fingers plucking at the frayed edge of his blanket. But there was a frail smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
“I want everyone out but Crow,” he said.
There was a shuffling and muttering, but the room gradually emptied, everyone filtering out. Crow caught a glimpse of the fresh morning beyond the door of the sickroom and wondered whether he should have made a more positive stand against the officer.
“You wondering what I’d have done “f you’d said you’d not scout for me?” asked Lovick, hands beneath the blanket.
“You’d have tried to force me.”
“Kind of.”
“Said I could go free after doing it and no charges against me for the fight with your soldier?”
“No.”
“Then …?”
Lovick smiled at the shootist, face peeled apart in a broad grin. And Crow realized that the Cavalryman was critically ill. Whatever kind of consumption it was that was ripping his lungs to shreds of bloodied lace had now bitten so deep into him that the fever had corrupted his mind.
The man was mad.
“I’d have used this,” Lovick said. Pulling out a heavy Dragoon pistol from beneath the blankets, easing the hammer down with an audible click. “Put a bullet through you on my own.”
“Then you’d have had no scout at all, you stupid bastard,” replied the shootist. Feeling his own rage flare at how close he’d been to getting himself cut down in a pool of blood.
“But I have, Crow. I have. I have you. You and my gallant thirteen. An officer. A Sergeant. Corporal Chandler. Ten of the finest troopers in this unit. And you. You, Mr. Crow. You.”
The patrol cantered out of the main gates of Fort Garrett at eleven minutes before eight that morning. The sky was gray and there was the taste of rain in the air. It looked like it wasn’t going to be a very nice day.