They camped a quarter mile away from where the boy’s body lay tumbled into the arroyo. The same ravine where Trooper Dearman had hidden to pluck the young Chiricahua from the back of his pony with one lethal bullet.
Carter posted a double layer of guards. Two men a hundred paces off from the camp, circling constantly around, meeting twice on each circuit. They were there for two hours each before they were relieved. And inside them the Lieutenant placed two more sentries. Doing the same thing but working on a fifty pace perimeter, under orders every now and again, at random, to change their directions to throw off anyone that might have sneaked in past the outer two guards.
It was the best they could do.
Carter had wanted to bury the body, but the two non-coms had opposed that, supported by Crow.
“Harm enough done killing the boy,” said the shootist. “Figures he could be the son of one of their leading bucks. Maybe even Small Pony’s own son. They’ll be out lookin’ for the kid sometime after dawn tomorrow. No way they won’t follow tracks. We bury him, that just makes things worse all round. Be like spittin’ in the lad’s face. Best leave him yonder. They’ll find him.”
“What should we do?” asked Carter.
Chandler suggested returning to the fort to tell Lovick things had changed. Haydon was partly for that, but felt they might press on for one further day before returning.
“We can’t go back like this,” said the young officer, voice shaking with anger. “Damned if we do.”
“May be damned if n we don’t. Mister,” said Crow, calm as ever.
“There’s a dozen of us.”
“Maybe fifty or more of them. Plenty more if they happen to have some friends around.”
“So you’d turn and run, Crow? Like a scared dog! I guess the money’s not enough for you.”
“You’re young, son,” replied the shootist. “Young and scared. What you ought to realize is that every man here’s scared. Chandler, Haydon, the troopers resting yonder. Isn’t a man not near to terror at wondering what’ll happen now we killed that boy.”
“I didn’t kill …”began Carter.
“We all did, Mister. All of us. That’s the way the Apaches’ll see it, so that’s the way it is.”
“I guess … guess that’s right. I’m sorry for the way I spoke, Mr. Crow.”
There was the hint of a smile, teeth flaring white in the darkness. “Sure, Lieutenant. You’ll learn. This patrol could be the makin’ of you.” He paused. “If we get to all live that long.”
Crow’s private inclination was to cut clear and run. He’d been forced into going with the patrol by the dying Major Lovick, and that didn’t leave him feeling any special obligation towards the soldiers. But Carter was trying hard to learn, and there was something to admire in the way that Chandler and Haydon wore their profession with a sense of honor and purpose.
It was possible that Small Pony wouldn’t want to risk losing anyone else by attacking the small unit. Knowing that he was likely to take some losses before he could overwhelm the dog-face soldiers. But if Crow ran alone, the Apaches might come down on him like winter wolves on a frail straggler.
They talked over plans late into the night, gradually pulling the whole patrol into the discussion. There was no real feeling for going back. Most men wanting to go on and
recover Cyrus Quaid and teach the impudent Apaches a lesson they’d richly earned.
“Maybe if I went ahead with a couple of troopers?” suggested Crow. “Keep in front and track on after the friendlies that ran from Fort Garrett. Can’t be that they’re far now. Probably somewheres in those foothills we saw at dusk.”
“They’re around fifteen miles off,” said Chandler. “Mess of ravines and cross-canyons. We lost men there before.”
Carter had a penciled sketch map out, trying to angle it to catch the shreds of moonlight that occasionally tore themselves clear of the veiling clouds. “Seems we think Small Pony’s fortress is here,” pointing with a gauntleted finger at a steep-sided canyon, surrounded with high cliffs.
“Maybe,” said Haydon, doubt riddling his voice. “I was with Captain Britton when he drew up that map and I don’t … beggin’ the Lieutenant’s pardon … but I don’t believe the Captain got his ass within five miles of Small Pony. Sir.” The ‘Sir’ coming as an obvious afterthought.
Carter grunted. In the poor light it was impossible to see his face but all of them felt his uncertainty. “Then that’s … Could be that’s a reason for Mr. Crow here to go with a couple of men and scout ahead for us. Just to those hills. That right, Crow?”
“Sure is, Mr. Carter.”
“Take Troopers Dale and Harris, Crow,” suggested Corporal Chandler. “Both good men. Both men you can trust if you meet trouble.”
They met trouble.
The three men rode off at first light, leaving their silent comrades behind, grouped around the line of horses. Nobody waved or even called out good wishes after them. All of them knew that Dearman’s one bullet could spell the end for all of them.
It took them close to three hours to cover what Crow figured was nearer twenty than fifteen miles. It was a gentle, easy terrain. The wind that had brought bursts of fine rain during the night had also raised the temperature a little. The sky was clearing, with the promise of some better weather on the way. But the lack of cloud was likely to make the temperatures drop again once night came.
“When do we stop, Crow?” asked the taller of the soldiers, Dale. He was a little difficult to understand, the shootist had found, owing to the trooper having paid a terminal visit to the fort’s dentist only a couple of days previous, to have every single one of his remaining teeth drawn. This had left him with a swollen jaw, a strong lisp and a foul temper.
“Soon. Don’t plan to get too damned far inside those canyons.”
“Want me to go away back for the others, Crow?” said Harris. A sturdy Texan with the kind of legs that looked lost without a horse rammed between them.
The shootist considered the question. The whole point about scouting was to get so far ahead of the main body of men that if there was trouble you’d scent it in time to get warning to the others. So far there was no real sign of any Apache trouble, but there was something about the hills around that nagged at Crow.
“Let’s wait on a whiles. Guess I …”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say. Just that it don’t set right. The tracks of that party from Garrett lead clean on into those canyons. Plain as plain. But if there’s an ambush it’ll be further in.”
“Yonder?” asked Harris, pointing with a stubby finger to where the trail vanished among the twisting walls of amber rock.
“Yeah.”
He looked up, right hand absently dropping to the polished butt of the Purdey. Feeling the wood cold to the touch. The temperature was falling fast, with the promise of a freezing night to come.
Among the foothills around them the air was a little warmer than out on the exposed plains. Far above Crow’s head he could see a hawk, wind-hovering, riding a thermal of less cold air, wings spread. Etching lazy circles against the blue. Every now and then it would fold back on the wind, swooping lower, then rising again. As though there was something in among the arroyos or the hills that kept catching its attention. Something that bothered it a little. That attracted it, then frightened it away again.
One of the basic rules of survival that Crow had learned during his time among the Indians was to watch everything. Learn everything from the animals and birds. From even the insects and the reptiles. A hint of muddiness in a stream could tell a dramatic tale if it was properly interpreted.
A hawk that behaved like this one could easily mean nothing. A hunk of tumble weed trapped in a ravine, rolling back and forth. Jackrabbits moving among shadows.
Or men?
Chiricahua warriors waiting silent and still. Like corpses. Intriguing the hunting bird. So that it kept coming to investigate. Not satisfied with what it saw so that it returned to the safety of a thousand feet in the cold air.
“You watchin’ that hawk?” asked Dale.
“Sure. Something’s lyin’ on its mind. Something in among those rocks.”
“Apaches?”
“Maybe.”
Harris spat in the dirt. “Lyin’ there for us.”
Crow whistled silently between his teeth. “I surely don’t know. They can’t be sure about the boy yet. But if they’ve seen us coming, they might want to try and take at least one of us alive to tell them. And tell them where the rest of the patrol is.”
“I’d tell them to go fuck themselves “fore I’d betray a friend,” said Dale, his words muffled by his lisp.
“Then you’re more of a damned fool than I figured you for, trooper,” said Crow, unable to keep a note of anger from his voice.
“Why?”
“All that talk is just dust in the wind, soldier. Sure, it’s easy to blow hard now. Free and easy, out in the open, with two armed men with you. Mounted and able to gallop away. Sure.”
“Hell, Crow, you know …”
“Yes, trooper, I do know. By any god you care to name, I do know.” He paused a moment, controlling himself. That silken voice unchanged. “I have seen men, brave as any, weeping. Officers and gentlemen. Naked and bound, blinded and castrated. Lie on the floor and kiss the feet of old squaws and beg for death. Really beg for it, Dale.”
“I guess that …”
The shootist ignored the interruption. “Don’t forget they have a culture way older than anything you’ve got. They hunt their own knowledge. They curse the laws and religions of the whites. In a thousand years there will still be Indians on this land, still singing their old songs. They know about surviving, soldier. And they know about courage and pain.”
Harris coughed. “You got a lot of love for them Indians, Crow.”
It was a loaded comment and the shootist turned his head and stared at the Cavalryman, locking eyes until the short Texan blinked and looked away.
“That something you want some more words on, Harris?” he asked.
“No. Just that you know a lot about ’em.”
“Yes.”
Just that. A single word of agreement that concealed far more than it revealed.
Finally, there seemed nothing to do but press on. If one of them had gone back as a galloper to the rest of the small force, he could have told them nothing of great value. It was obviously safe up to the edge of the foothills. It was what lay within that lowering mass of age-old rocks that mattered.
“We go on,” said Crow. “First sign of trouble and we all get out. Fast as we can.”
“What if anyone goes down?” asked Harris.
“He stays down,” replied the shootist.
“That’s not the way of the Cavalry,” said Dale. “We look after our own.”
“Shit,” said Crow, disgustedly. “You two can look after each other. I don’t give a sweet damn about it. But I’m looking after myself.”
It was with a chilly and unfriendly atmosphere between the three of them that they heeled their horses forwards, away from the temporary warmth of the sun, into the shadowed coolness of the high-sided trail.
Crow went first, with Dale second and Harris last. During their brief halt the tall soldier had tried to eat some dried biscuit but it had hurt his mouth. Made his sore gums start bleeding again, so that he had to keep stopping and spitting out blood, speckling the trail behind them.
It was very quiet.
So cold in the dim light that they could all see their own breath hanging frostily in the still air.
After a quarter mile they came to a wider place, where several trails wound off from the main track. Some snaked left and two went off to the right, leading towards the higher cliffs.
“Straight on, Crow?” asked Dale.
“Yeah. Keep tight in.”
“My mouth hurts like a bastard,” moaned Harris.
“Pain’ll stop soon,” said Trooper Dale.
Not knowing how right he was.
But not quite in the way that he’d meant it.
The first arrow took Harris through the centre of the chest, a second shaft feathering itself in his throat as he began to fall.