in this campaign, and General Crook himself is watching our operations with a keen eye! No, gentlemen—no heroics—just good sound tactical planning and organization.'
Outside the tent, Jack and George Dunaway stood together in their discouragement.
'God damned little bastard!' George said through set teeth. 'Threatened to court-martial me if I went anywhere without orders!'
Around them were pitched the shelter halves of B Company, together with a company of recently arrived infantry. Campfires glowed in the dusk, coffee boiled, Jack caught a whiff of frying bacon and remembered his hunger. Someone sang a song called 'Laura Lee' in a mournful baritone, and the setting sun glinted for a moment on the polished barrels of the new Gatlings the infantry had brought.
'When the snow starts getting deep!' Jack blurted. 'How long will that be?'
'Two, three weeks anyway,' George said, kicking at the dust. 'That little tin soldier won't move until February at the earliest.'
Together they sat on a bench partly consumed by the flames.
'Do—do you think there's any possibility she's still alive?' Jack asked, his voice trembling.
Dunaway shrugged. 'Who the hell knows? Sprankle and the rest can't tell us anything—they were too busy saving their own butts! But from what I know of old Agustin, he's got her up in his camp in the Mazatzals.' Taking a metal flask from his pocket, he drank, then handed it to Jack Drumm. 'Bourbon. Good bourbon. None of that Old Popskull they sell at the Lucky Lady.'
Jack shook his head. 'I didn't think you were supposed to drink when you were on duty.'
Dunaway snorted. 'If I didn't drink sometimes I'd go crazy!'
'Major Trimble—'
'Screw Trimble!' Dunaway wiped his mouth, put the flask back in his pocket. 'Yes, Phoebe's up there all right, and it's my guess she's alive. You know, up in the Dakotas once we were having a little dustup with some Oglalas we had cornered in a canyon. One of them stood up on a rock and pulled down his pants to show us his ass. That was their way of showing off. Kidnapping Phoebe—stealing a white woman right under our noses—that's probably Agustin's way of doing the same thing.'
Behind them, boots crunched in the dust and ashes of the ruined ranch. George Dunaway stared moodily ahead, not caring if it was Major Trimble himself. Jack turned.
'Gentlemen,' Alonzo Meech said. 'Mr. Drumm!' Taking off his broad-brimmed hat, he sat amicably beside them on the charred bench.
'I guess,' he said, 'we're probably all three looking for the same female person.'
The sergeant major came to summon Dunaway to the command post.
'What does Trimble want now?' George asked morosely.
The sergeant grinned. 'I dunno, sir. But he was kind of snotty!'
Dunaway spat into the dust. 'That's what they teach them at that mechanic's school on the Hudson—to be snotty with inferiors. It's part of the science of command.'
'Are you coming, sir?'
'I'm coming.' Dunaway turned to Jack Drumm.
'I guess it's pretty farfetched, but if—if you—'
He broke off.
'If I what?' Jack asked.
'Forget it.' Dunaway shrugged. 'It was just a wild hare of a thought.' He got up and strode toward Major Trimble's lamplit tent. As he left he called to the sergeant major. 'Maloy, see Mr. Drumm gets some beans and bacon and coffee, will you? He's likely hungry after that long ride.'
Ravenous, Jack spooned beans into his mouth, chewed the bacon, burned his mouth with hot coffee full of grounds. Alonzo Meech sat beside him, watching. At last, uncomfortable under scrutiny, Jack laid down the spoon and looked at the detective. 'What's wrong?'
Meech reached in a pocket and brought out a silk kerchief. It was the China silk, all vivid greens and blues, that Phoebe Larkin wore that first day Jack Drumm saw her step off the Prescott coach. In the still desert air he imagined—or knew—a faint perfume.
'I figured all along,' Meech said, 'someone was helping them two. Otherwise they couldn't have got away so slick. In Phoenix I almost had the cuffs on 'em. In Prescott I run 'em down to Mex Town, and they got away again. By asking around and handing out greenbacks, I was told they'd been smuggled back to what you call Rancho Terco here. And when I get here, flogging that damned mare all the way—she bit me twict—I find Miss Phoebe Buckner took by the Apaches.'
'Phoebe
'Buckner.'
'That old man treated her cruelly. From what Phoebe told me I doubt he could even consummate the marriage. There are certainly grounds for a divorce, possibly even an annulment.'
Meech folded the kerchief; the perfume, unmistakable, laced the evening air.
'I don't intend to quibble, Mr. Drumm. All I got to say is that you obstructed justice, aiding and abetting them two miscreants the way you did.' He looked keenly at Jack. 'Where's Mrs. Glore? I got a warrant for her too.'
How much did Meech know? Not a great deal, Jack decided; Alonzo Meech was not the world's shrewdest detective, as he himself admitted. Meech did deserve credit, however, for persistence.
'Mrs. Glore,' he said, 'also is beyond your reach.'
'Well—' The detective shrugged. 'It was my mistake, I guess. I never thought you'd cross me the way you did. I took you for an honest law-abiding English gentleman, and that was a mistake.'
Jack looked around at the campfires sprinkling the night. Most of the soldiers were stretched out in slumber, some only in underdrawers. By morning it would be near freezing, and they would welcome blankets. Somewhere a trooper sang softly against a muted plinking of banjo. A crescent moon crept over the ragged outline of the Mazatzals.
'I guess,' he admitted, 'it wasn't the first time a beautiful woman addled a man's judgment.'
'I'll give you that,' the detective sighed. He handed the kerchief to Jack Drumm. 'You might as well take this thing. I know you was in love with her—it stuck out all over you, like warts. I ain't exactly a sentimental man, but maybe—well, since you ain't never going to see her again, it could be a keepsake.'
Jack was moved; there was a lump in his throat. Gently he took the kerchief, touched the glossy silk. Perhaps, at one time, Phoebe Larkin had tied it about her waist. He recalled the ballad, the one called 'The Girdle,' that he had sung to himself the day he drove into Prescott for supplies:
A narrow compass, and yet there dwelt All that's good and all that's fair. Give me but what this ribbon bound, Take all the rest the sun goes round.
'Eh?' he asked suddenly.
Meech peered at him in the gloom. 'You ain't listening to me, Mr. Drumm!'
'I'm sorry! I was thinking about something else.'
'I said,' Meech repeated, 'it don't make no difference now.'
'What doesn't make any difference?'
'Her,' Meech said. 'Miss Larkin, whatever you want to call her. She's probably dead. In any case, I'm told I got to give up the hunt.' He took off his hat, ran a hand through thin gray locks. 'First customer I ever lost! Oh, some took me a little time! Howsomever, I always caught up with 'em. But the home office finally called me off. I'm person non grotto—spent too much money, too much time, got no results. The Buckner family cut off the money— said they didn't want to spend all the old man's legacy hunting down the females that robbed and shot him.'
'Legacy?'
Meech nodded, put his hat back on. 'Phineas Buckner died two weeks ago. Oh, his passing didn't have nothing to do with Phoebe or Mrs. Glore! The old bastard fell down a stairway and broke his neck. So it's kind of 'come see come saw.' That's French for it don't make no never mind now anyway!'
Phoebe and Mrs. Glore free from pursuit, from arraignment, from conviction! It was ironic! After all these
