CHAPTER SIX

Ketchum Mountain is a ridge about four miles long that rises nearly three thousand feet above the flat. Its slopes are surfaced by gravelly loam that supports a thick growth of bunchgrass and cactus. The bodies of Captain Andrew Taylor and thirty-eight troopers of Company B were scattered over its eastern slope, except for a tangled knot of men, a sergeant and six privates, who’d made a stand around their officer and died with him.

Red Ryan walked among the dead, so many ash-gray faces that he remembered from his previous visits to Fort Concho.

Juan Gomez, the Mexican corporal who’d once planned on becoming a priest but had joined the cavalry instead. Bill Moorehouse, the blue-eyed Englishman that nobody ever beat at dominoes. Private Patrick O’Neill, the big, drunken Irishman who laughed easily and had been a major in the army of the Confederacy. Tom Lake . . . Bob Anderson . . . Jed Franklin . . . all first-class fighting men . . . all dead.

Captain Taylor, his gray hair stained red from a head wound, lay on his back among his men. They were huddled together, as though they’d sought solace in the nearness of each other when death came for them.

Already, fat black flies hovered over the corpses and made a low, soulful drone.

“Looks like they were taken by surprise, Red,” Buttons Muldoon said. His face was like stone.

“Seems like,” Red said. “How many Apaches?”

“Judging by the tracks I’d say at least fifty. They were mounted, and they came straight in.”

“Then it was a dusk or a dawn attack, otherwise Captain Taylor would have seen them coming from a long ways off.”

Muldoon said, “Dawn, I reckon. The Apaches will fight at night, but they don’t like it much and try to avoid it when they can.”

“How are the passengers?”

“Scared. Even that Carter feller looks scared, but he’s still lugging that carpetbag that he never lets out of his sight.”

Carter stood with Stella Morgan outside the stage, looking over at the carnage but reluctant to move closer. The two older women, their eyes averted from the scene, remained in the stage that shook with their sobbing. To look upon violent death puts a terrible burden on the soul, and Red Ryan, who’d seen more than his share, didn’t blame them.

As Red did his best to console the army wives, Buttons wandered off a distance, and when he returned he took Red aside and said, “They didn’t all die. Judging by the tracks, it looks like a patrol headed out before the attack, probably the previous day. I’d say ten, twelve men headed north.”

“I guess that’s why there’s no dead scouts,” Ryan said. “They went with the patrol.”

“Could be,” Muldoon said. “Company B would have had at least four of them.”

“Pima?”

“Probably, but I didn’t see Luke Spence or Pete Williams at the fort. They may have been with Captain Taylor and left with the patrol.”

“Ryan!”

Lucian Carter stalked toward Ryan and then belligerently got into his face. “What the hell are you going to do about this?” he demanded.

“I can’t resurrect the dead, Carter, so there’s not much I can do,” Red said.

“Yes, there is. You can climb aboard the stage right now and head for Fort Bliss.”

“That’s your advice, huh?”

“No, it’s not advice, Ryan. As a paying passenger, I’m ordering you to do what I say.”

Red Ryan’s temper, always an uncertain thing, flared and his right fist clenched. Buttons Muldoon read the signs and said, “Man’s got a point, Red. Unless his other patrols have come in, Colonel Grierson has half a troop of cavalry at Fort Concho and a few civilians. Right about now, staying with the stage is probably safer than heading back.”

Ryan thought that through and decided Buttons was correct. Ilesh had scored a great victory, and by now the young war chief was a big man among the Mescalero lodges. The capture and burning of Fort Concho would be hailed as an even greater triumph than the slaughter of Taylor’s command, and the aggressive young bucks might push him in that direction. By this time the Apaches must know just how weak Grierson’s force was, how vulnerable, and how much power and fame they could garner by its annihilation. The capture of a U.S. army post by Apaches had happened only once before, back in 1865 when Fort Buchanan was taken by seventy-five Chiricahua warriors. But that had been a mere skirmish, and the nine defenders had put up a token resistance and then fled. Fort Concho was a much more valuable prize, and its destruction could endanger the whole of West Texas. By comparison, the Patterson stage was insignificant, hardly worth the attention of a mighty warrior like Ilesh.

Red Ryan made up his mind. “All right, everybody, back in the coach,” he said.

Stella Morgan smiled and said, “Red, are we continuing our journey to Fort Bliss?”

Ryan saw the look of triumph on Carter’s face, and much as it troubled him to do it, he said, “Yes, Stella, we are.”

The woman got up on tiptoe and kissed Red on the cheek. “Thank you, Red. You’re a brave, wonderful man.”

“Thank Buttons,” Red said. “This is his idea.”

* * *

Buttons Muldoon swung the stage away from the charnel house that was the bloodstained northern slope of Ketchum Mountain. Red Ryan looked back at the scattered bodies of the troopers, tangles of blue against stone. How still they were, how quiet and uncomplaining in their endless night . . . dead men don’t bewail their cruel fate. That is a luxury reserved only for the living.

His heart heavy, Red lowered the rim of his derby against the sun and turned his attention to the trail ahead, aware of the rhythms of the horses and the creaking coach.

Four hundred miles to Fort Bliss.

He tried not to think about it.