Ambush on the Mesa Page 3

  “Out in this country a woman is judged for what she can do rather than from how she was bred.”

  Phillips’s dark eyes studied Hugh. “You knew her before?”

  “Yes. Last year when I was at Fort Buchanan.”

  “Good friends, I take it?”

  Hugh looked quickly at the officer. “Yes. She was engaged to Herbert Oglesby, a corporal in the dragoons.”

  “I see. She’d make a good wife for an enlisted man.”

  Hugh leaned forward. “She’d make a good wife for any man, Mr. Phillips.” He spurred his buckskin back toward the party.

  Phillips shrugged. He looked at Katy Corse. She was riding astride, like a man. Her shapely legs were exposed from the knees down, and she seemed to be perfectly at home in the saddle. For the first time since he had seen her at Fort Ayres he realized that she was a damned attractive woman.

  Hugh sat his buckskin as the enlisted men carried food and weapons behind the low wall. Marion Nettleton was seated on a rock. Her husband bustled about her, pulling her shawl about her shapely shoulders. Hugh eyed her. Her oval face had evidently been protected against the hot suns of the Southwest, for it still had a cameo quality to it. Her eyes were large, almost too large for her face. There was a petulant look about her full lips.

  “Are you all right, my dear?” asked Nettleton.

  “Maurice, do stop annoying me,” she said. “I’ll have my coffee here.”

  Nettleton looked up at Hugh and then bit his lip. “We’re not to have a fire,” he said.

  “Why? I want hot coffee. It’s such a little thing to ask.”

  Nettleton looked at Hugh. Hugh shook his head. He kneed his horse down the trail. Behind him he heard her petulant voice. “I’d like to know who is in command here, Maurice.”

  Willis was squatted on a rock above the trail. “No signs yet,” he said.

  “There will be.”

  Willis looked up the canyon. “What’s up there?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  The trooper shifted his chew. “Jesus! What a mess!”

  “I’ll go along with you on that.”

  “A man or two could get through, traveling at night, lying low by day.”

  Hugh studied the enlisted man. “I think so. But we have two women to take care of.”

  “Who? Me? I didn’t enlist to take care of no women.”

  “You’re still under orders, Willis.”

  “Yeah. But for how long? Clymer hates Nettleton’s guts. Phillips hates Clymer’s guts. Sergeant Hastings hates everybody’s guts.”

  “And you?”

  The cold pale eyes held Hugh’s. “I’m thinking about my guts.”

  Hugh looked down at his Sharps. “You’ll stick,” he said.

  Willis shifted a little. “Mebbe. Mebbe not. Don’t threaten me, Kinzie. I don’t scare easy. Besides, there’s others in this outfit as ain’t too happy about herding these officers and women through this hellhole of a country. You’ll find out in time.”

  Hugh rode back down the trail. He was a good two miles from the temporary camp when he saw the smoke drifting from a peak. It was closer than it had been yesterday. He rolled a smoke and hooked his left leg about his saddlehorn. He lit up and eyed the distant smoke. The horses were worn thin. They needed at least a day’s rest. There was a hell of a trail ahead of them.

  Hugh rode back to the camp just as the sun showed up over the eastern heights. The woman were resting on blankets. Isaiah Morton was reading a battered Bible. Corporal Roswell was up the slope with his carbine resting across his thighs. A burly private stepped in front of Hugh. “I’m Dan Pearce,” he said in a New York accent. “What’s the odds of us getting through, scout?”

  Hugh slid from his saddle. “Fair.”

  Pearce had a hard face with small green eyes. There was a furtive look about him. “You talk with Willis?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “Breaking loose to try for the Rio Grande.”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “If he goes, he goes alone. If I see him taking off, I’ll kill him.”

  Pearce raised his head. “Hardcase, eh?”

  “No. But I’ve got a job to do and I aim to do it.”

  Hugh turned his back on Pearce. Pearce stared at Hugh’s broad back for a moment, then he walked down the trail toward Willis. The two of them sat on the rock ledge, talking quietly.

  A trooper was busy picketing the horses. Hugh walked over to him. “Put them on separate picket lines,” he said.

  The trooper turned a good-humored face toward Hugh. “Can I ask why?”

  “If they’re stampeded we can save most of them. On one picket line the whole kit and caboodle would go.”

  The trooper nodded. “By God, I’da never thought of that. The name is Jonas Stevens.”

  Hugh nodded. “You’re not getting much help,” he said. He uncoiled a picket line and drove the picket deep into the soft soil. He picketed Phillips’s fine chestnut.

  Stevens looked back at the camp. “Don’t seem to be any of them who want to work together. When I enlisted at Jefferson Barracks in fifty-nine we got lectures on how the army always works as a team. Looks like I’m the only one around here that remembers it.”

  Hugh picketed another horse. “I do,” he said quietly.

  They worked together picketing the horses near a patch of grass. Hugh walked over to the pack mules. They were dead beat, for no one had thought of removing their packs. Stevens helped him remove the packs. “Poor jugheads,” he said.

  Abel Clymer came toward them. “Take it easy with those packs,” he said.

  Hugh turned and shoved one of them at the big officer.

  Clymer staggered back until he got his balance. “Damn you!” he said.

  Hugh grinned. “Pitch in,” he said.

  Clymer threw the pack on the ground at Hugh’s feet. For a moment he eyed him angrily, then he turned on a heel and strode toward his own horse. He took the saddlebags from it and placed them over his arm. He looked back at Hugh and then strode to the camp.

  “Nice fella,” said Stevens dryly.

  “Bull moose.”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t no pushover, Kinzie. Watch yourself.”

  “Were you there when Winston and his men were found?”

  Stevens shuddered. “Yes. What a mess!”

  “Any of Winston’s personal baggage found?”

  “None. Everything was stamped into the ground. Men, blankets, food … everything. Why do you ask?”

  “I thought someone might have brought his effects along. For his family, you know.”

  “Nope. Nothing. Besides, we got enough of a load with Nettleton’s personal property. Silver, liquor, clothing and such like. Practically no food, but all of Nettleton’s stuff. Hell of a note, ain’t it?”

  Hugh nodded. He picketed a mule. Stevens studied him as he worked. He rubbed his bristly jaw and then shrugged. “Personal effects,” he said dryly. “Jesus Christ!”

  Hugh walked back to the camp.

  A neat little soldier holding a tin plate came toward Hugh. He held it out. “Embalmed beef and hardtack,” he said quietly. “It isn’t much, I’ll allow, but just about all we have.”

  Hugh waved a hand. “Keep it. I’ve got my own supplies.”

  The little man nodded. “Thanks. I’m Myron Greer, orderly for the officers.”

  “Nice job,” said Hugh.

  Greer shrugged. “I was company clerk at Ay res. Mr. Clymer told me to take over as orderly to relieve Willis. He said Willis was a man, not a frightened worm.”

  Greer spoke in cultured tones. The man had been educated. He didn’t look like the type who would make a hard-riding, hell-for-leather dragoon.

  Hugh rolled a smoke. “How is it an educated man like yourself ended up as a company clerk in the dragoons, Greer?”

  Greer smiled sadly. “Liquor.”

  “I’ve heard that one before. My old squadron commander used to sa
y that when he got a clerk worth anything the man was a drunkard.”

  Greer looked up. “Kinzie, if it weren’t for whisky there wouldn’t be any clerks in the army. You wouldn’t happen to have a drink, would you?”

  Hugh shook his head. There was a bottle of mezcal in one of his saddlebags, but he knew damned well Greer wouldn’t settle for one drink. He’d need the whole bottle.

  Nettleton came over to them. “Greer!” he said pettishly. “Mrs. Nettleton wants some cold clear water.”

  Greer held out his free hand. “The canteens are full, sir.”

  “Find a spring.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hugh shook his head. “He’ll have to stay here.”

  “Afraid he’ll run off?” snapped Nettleton. “Greer? He’s scared to death right now.”

  Hugh looked south. There was still a wisp of smoke against the sky. “So am I,” he said.

  Greer shambled off toward the camp. Nettleton took out a silver cigar case, selected a cigar, clipped the end with a silver clipper which depended from a silver chain. He put the cigar into his mouth and lit it. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

  “Rest here. I doubt if they can get past us to attack from the west, east or north. Willis is on guard. I’m going to scout up the canyon.”

  “There are no Apaches there.”

  “We don’t know the country. From now on we’ll have to find a trail. It’d be too damned easy to end up in a box canyon and have to backtrack. We’d lose hours, if not days.”

  “I see. What do you think our chances are?”

  Hugh took out his tobacco pouch. “You’re the third or fourth person who has asked me that today.”

  Nettleton jerked his cigar from his mouth. “I don’t want you talking too much to these enlisted men. Keep your counsel for the officers.”

  Hugh rolled a smoke. “The enlisted men are in this too,” he said quietly.

  Nettleton’s face tightened. He looked down at the green-striped trousers Hugh wore tucked into his boots. “You were an enlisted man yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mounted Rifles?”

  Hugh nodded as he lit up.

  “They never did have much respect for an officer.”

  Hugh looked at the angry officer. “I didn’t find it so. I do recall one of our surgeons saying that the officers of the Mounted Rifles were all gentlemen, brave and generous to a fault — but the most cantankerous lot he had ever met. There wasn’t much chance for an enlisted man to be disrespectful to an officer in my regiment, Captain Nettleton.”

  Nettleton looked away. “Well, get on with your job.” He strode back toward the camp.

  Hugh walked to his horse and got his canteen and Sharps. Katy Corse came up and placed her hand on the buckskin’s nose. “You’re not taking him, are you?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think you would. He’s tired.”

  “He’s got more bottom in him than any other mount here.”

  “I believe it.”

  Katy brushed back her dark hair. “You’ve never forgiven me, have you, Hugh?”

  “You made your choice.”

  “You never gave me much hope.”

  “I didn’t fall all over you like Herbert Oglesby did.”

  “Herbert was a fine man.”

  Hugh hooked his canteen to his belt. “You would have ended up being a corporal’s wife, perhaps a sergeant’s wife, Katy.”

  “So? You were just a sergeant.”

  “I’ll get my commission.”

  She leaned against the horse. “If we get out of here.”

  “We’ve got to.”

  She studied him. “I used to think you were different from your brother, but now I think differently.”

  “How so?”

  “He was all business. Is it true he joined the Confederates?”

  “That’s what they’re saying.”

  “And you?”

  He looked up quickly. “You know I’ll stay with the Union.”

  “This war will split a lot of families.”

  “Ron and I were never very close.”

  “Maybe that’s why you want a commission, to prove to yourself you’re as good a man as he is.”

  “Katy, sometimes you talk too much.”

  She smiled. “You haven’t changed.”

  “I’m too old to change, Katy.” He unsaddled the buckskin and dropped the saddle on the ground. “Did you know Lieutenant Winston?”

  “Yes. I rode with him from Fort Buchanan to Fort Ayres, He practically ordered me to.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone giving you orders,” he said dryly.

  “Why do you ask about him?”

  “Just curious.”

  She shook her head. “There’s more to it than that. It’s about those government drafts, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked toward the camp. “I think he had them with him. They were part of your brother’s responsibility, weren’t they?”

  Hugh nodded.

  “I stayed at Fort Ayres when he went on with the beef cattle. He was sent to his death. The cattle weren’t worth the loss of all those men and especially of a man like him.”

  “What about the drafts?”

  “I’m not sure he had them, Hugh, but he was always so careful to sleep with his head on his saddlebags. He protested against having to take charge of the beef herd but Nettleton insisted. Nettleton really wanted Abel Clymer to lead the herd — just to get rid of him — but Clymer has Nettleton under his control. At least he did until you got here.”

  “So?”

  “When we reached the place where the cattle had been stampeded, Mrs. Nettleton and I were orderd to stay back so that we wouldn’t see what had happened. From what the men tell me, it was awful. But no drafts were brought back to the camp. I’m almost sure of that.”

  “Who led the men to the place where Winston was killed?”

  “All three of the officers went.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Corporal Roswell, Privates Pearce, Willis and Stevens.” She gazed at him closely. “What are you thinking about, Hugh?”

  “About going on a scout.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all,” he said shortly. He walked away from her.

  As Hugh passed the camp he heard Mrs. Nettleton call out “Katy! Do get some water and bathe my temples, like a good girl.”

  Hugh looked back as he reached the trees. Mrs. Nettleton acted as though everyone in the camp were enlisted in her personal service. There was one person who wasn’t — Hugh Kinzie.

  Chapter Five

  THE TRAIL didn’t improve as Hugh walked north from the camp. It was tough going afoot, even for a man in top physical condition. Deer eyed him from afar, seemingly unafraid of him, and he knew by that sign that they were unaccustomed to seeing humans in their country. As he went on, he occasionally saw ancient fields which had been cultivated by the Hohokam.

  It was about noon when he found the trail. It was plainly marked on the earth, trending to the northwest into a rough-walled canyon. There were no indication of wheel ruts nor hoof marks. It had been made by foot travelers, and had been well used.

  Hugh shoved back his hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He eyed the trail, following it until it was lost to sight in thickets and rock formations, beyond which he could see a humped shape rising high into the sky — a rocky mesa stippled with scrub trees and big pines. He wondered who had made that trail and where it went. He looked to the northeast. There the country was a jumbled mass of mountains, seemingly impassable. Maybe the trail led to the San Francisco, for its headwaters were to the northwest. To follow the trail would entail hard marches, forcing the party to go miles out of their way. But possibly there was a way to trend east again toward the Rio Grande. Yet he did not want to chance breaking a way through the range to the east.

  Hugh sipped water from his canteen and then began to
follow the trail. There were places where rock slides covered it. There were other places where floods had swept away all traces of the trail, like a giant broom. But he found it again after he had lost it for a time. The walls of the canyon came close together and he walked along looking high above him to see brush and graying driftwood wedged in cracks and crannies. A flash flood would fill the narrow canyon with water many feet deep, sweeping everything before it.

  Long shadows were slanting down the slopes when he climbed over a jumbled mass of rock thickly grown with thorny brush. Beyond him he could see where the canyon widened; its walls slanted back on the left below the great mesa he had seen. To the right the walls were almost sheer, seemingly awaiting a gun shot to make them crumble in an avalanche. He looked up the canyon, but the shadows were thick up there and a great shoulder of rock protruded into the canyon to block his vision. There was no way of knowing whether or not the trail continued around the rock shoulder or petered out in a chaos of rock.

  He sat on a rock and studied the canyon. There was a curious, even line of rock, high on the left wall. It rose in several tiers and seemed to be of a different color than the rest of the rock. Dark patches, curiously even, showed at regular intervals along the rock line. He felt for his field glasses and then remembered he had left them at the camp.

  He stood up and picked up his carbine, still looking at the curious rock formation. He shrugged and turned away. He wasn’t in that lonely country to study geology.

  Once he left the mouth of the canyon, he headed swiftly back toward the camp. The sun was gone behind the western heights and a cool wind blew against his back, chilling him through his sweat-soaked shirt.

  A shot flatted off as he neared the camp. The echo slammed back and forth between the heights on either side. Hugh trotted forward, cocking and capping his Sharps. Then he saw the people of the party behind the low wall where they had made their camp. Greer, the orderly, was running toward the wall with his carbine in his hands.

  Hugh came up behind the camp. Stevens turned swiftly and raised his carbine, then lowered it as he saw Hugh. Greer stumbled wearily to the wall and grounded his carbine. “Apaches,” he said in his high-pitched voice.

  Carbines were thrust over the wall. Abel Clymer took out his Colt and cocked it. He strode back and forth as though he were on the quarterdeck of a frigate going into battle.