The next morning, we noticed dried mud on the knees of the trousers of Vikers and all the white officers except for Drewbott. No doubt, in the dark of the night, the colonel had ordered someone else to scoop up his water from a hole dug by one of us. I hoped there was horse shit in it.
Though the seep water slaked our thirst, it griped our bellies. When the recruits complained about their guts cramping up, Wager told them, “That’s only the gypsum in the water. Just be thankful it wasn’t alkali water. Gyppy water’ll run you a little ragged at first, but you’ll get used to it. Alkali, though, alkali will kill a man long before he ever gets used to it.”
Wager reminded his men to fill their canteens from the seeps and then we mounted up and rode on to Sulfur Draw where we were to meet up with John Horse.
We smelled what was left of the Klatt Ranch before we saw it. That odor of smoke and ash and burned flesh reminded me of the Shenandoah Valley after Sheridan had finished with it. Difference was that back then the burned flesh had all been animal. We found Mr. Klatt’s blackened remains spread-eagled on a wagon wheel resting atop the ashes of the fire he’d died upon. His wife, naked, rested a ways off. Her back was spiked with a dozen arrows from the renegades she’d died running from. We buried the wife. Klatt, though, had fused onto the charred spokes and we had to chop the cinders of what was left of him off the wheel before we could bury his remains.
While we were filling in the grave, an officer approached quaking with rage and holding up a corn husk doll. “Look what I found over there!” he yelled, pointing south. “They took her! Those red-skinned animals took a white girl child!”
The other officers and then most of the company, black and white, fell to wrathful proclamations, cursing the heathen and vowing revenge for this defilement. Like the times back in the barracks when the men would whip themselves into the most heated frenzies as they told old tales of white girls being kidnapped and white women violated, my reaction was so cold that I worried I might have a heart as evil and unfeeling as those savages.
Just like back in the barracks, all I could think was, What about Clemmie? What about Iyaiya? And I sure didn’t see any answers in the faces twisted with rage for a corn husk doll.
The last wisps of smoke swirling over a burned sorghum field caught my eye. On second glance the wisps formed up into John Horse and his men riding forward out of the woods.
John Horse led us to a trail so broad and obvious that Drewbott brayed out, loud enough for every man in the unit to hear, “I don’t know what the army is paying those black savages for. A blind man could follow this trail. Even without the…” Here he paused, then continued, his voice throbbing with outrage. “Without the fallen plaything of an innocent girl child to guide us.”
The trail was, indeed, impossible to miss. White hoof strikes marked gray rocks, brush was trampled by what had to be close to fifty riders, long mane hairs fluttered from the thorns they’d snagged on. Drewbott was right. It was easy following the renegades’ trail as they rode south, making for refuge in Mexico. Following Wager’s map, Drewbott had us veer off the trail toward a spring we’d marked. It wasn’t running and, once again, Drewbott blamed Wager. We retook the trail and pushed hard to make the next marked source before dark.
Lips cracked in the heat. Shirts and kerchiefs hung limp. Near mid-afternoon, a recruit who’d finished all his water the day before wobbled, then toppled off his saddle. Within an hour, three more greenhorns had fallen out. Drewbott ordered the strongest to stay behind and help the weakest. That was a mistake. Our column soon stretched out near two miles.
We entered the canyon Wager and I had mapped. Again, I rode between orange cliffs that had reminded me of buttercream icing slumping off a cake on a hot day. All the seeps we’d found the first time were dry and the sound of Drewbott cursing Wager and promising to have him court-martialed echoed off the red sandstone walls until we emerged and rode south on into the desert. Wager caught my eye and shot me a look that asked why Drewbott wasn’t heading for the arroyo we had mapped. I shrugged, pretending not to know the answer.
Around four that afternoon, the column halted. A clump of men, mostly officers, along with Vikers and his cronies, were clustered around John Horse, who squatted in the dust holding an ocotillo blade long as a coach whip. To keep from disturbing the trail, Horse pointed the long branch to what appeared to be just more rocky, sandy earth punctuated here and there with clumps of prickly pear or scrub oak.
Wager glanced at me for John Horse was pointing toward the spring we had mapped, saying it was thirty miles or so to the west, hidden away in a deep arroyo.
Drewbott, hands on hips, demanded, “Why are you trying to tell me that the renegades rode west when it is as clear as if a herd of elephant passed by that they’re heading south? All the spoor and all the reports say that they’ve got their hideout across the river in Mexico. Why would they detour off?”
John Horse stood. He towered over Drewbott and let that fact speak for a few moments before he answered, “Water.” He left off the “Sir.” And the salute.
“Just how stupid do you think I am?” Drewbott hissed. “Who left this?” He went about pointing at broken twigs, snagged horse hair, and asking at each sign, “And this? And this? And all of this?” The last, piles of manure so fresh it was still formed up into nice, round apples without a bit of crumbling, was his prize exhibit. “Why, their trail is so obvious a child could follow it.”
John Horse slid his eyes to the side, away from the colonel and said nothing.
“Corporal, answer my question or I will bring you up on insubordination charges so fast, it will make your head spin and your turban unfurl.”
The officers chuckled quietly at Drewbott’s little joke, but Vikers nearly herniated himself laughing.
Finally, John Horse intoned, “Yes, I see. A trail has been left that even a child could follow. A stubborn, blind, stupid, spoiled child.”
Drewbott went red as a stewed tomato at this disrespect. Then, trembling with rage, he unfurled the water hole map that had been drawn up based on Wager’s readings and the figures I’d written down for him. Drewbott held it up in the chief’s face and, stabbing at it, hollered, “There are no water sources within three days’ ride west of here!”
Wager looked at me, questioning, and I nodded: yes. It was true. I had written down the numbers he’d told me that would reveal the location of the spring where the band of starving women and children had gathered. But I had written them down backward.
Wager spoke. “Sir.”
“Yes, what do you have to add, Corporal?” Drewbott said to Wager in a sneery tone. “Do you agree with this black Indian scout that there is a water source to the west?”
“Yes,” Wager answered. “John Horse is correct. There is a water hole west of here.”
“There is?” Drewbott asked in his snide way. “And yet you did not see fit to mark its location?”
“Sir,” I said, “I was the one didn’t mark down the coordinates of the spring that Sergeant Allbright read out to me.”
“‘Coordinates,’” he repeated, in a mocking voice that said I didn’t know what that was and couldn’t of written them down if I had. “So this ‘spring’ even has coordinates. Care to tell us what they might be?”
“I don’t recollect the exact figures,” I answered.
“That’s awfully handy, isn’t it?” Drewbott asked.
“The private’s failure is my responsibility,” Wager said.
“I know that,” Drewbott snapped. “So, Corporal, you’re saying that, though you did not see fit to mark it, there is water west of here, and we should now follow these black Indians to it?”
“Yessir, I am,” Wager answered, never once glancing Drewbott’s way. “It’s our only chance for survival. There are no marked water sources south from here to the Rio Grande.”
Drewbott lowered his head, held his hands behind his back, and paced back and forth, muttering, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” like he was considering what Wager and John Horse had said. Of a sudden, he halted, raised his head, pointed at Wager and ordered, “Lieutenant Meinzer, Captain Grundy, seize this enemy agent prisoner. Vikers, Caldwell, Greene, seize the Indians.”
Hands were laid upon Wager and the Seminoles.
“This treasonous conspiracy,” Drewbott sputtered, “must be stopped. We won’t be led by these traitors into an ambush. The prisoners are to be kept under watch at all times. During the day, their hands are to be tied in such a way that they can still ride. At night, they will be bound, hand and foot.
“As for the rest of you,” he screamed at us. “Colonel Ednar Drewbott promises that justice will be swift for traitors and deserters. There will be no questions asked and no mercy shown. Wherever you run, I will send the strongest men with the most powerful weapons to hunt you down and shoot you like the treasonous dogs you are. Take the prisoners away.”
Wager, John Horse, and the others were bound and rudely led off. Drewbott hollered after them, “Put three men on Allbright. White men. He’s the ringleader of this mutiny. He’s the dangerous one.”