He smiled. 'Never, Mr. Sackett. The woman who would leave you would certainly not destroy her wagon or those valuable mules, and you have told me of the money ... she would have taken that.
No, what I was thinking of was something else.
'Your wife,' he went on, 'was an attractive woman, and she was alone. This is a country where there are few women, fewer beautiful women.'
'Captain, it just doesn't figure. You know how western folks feel about molesting a woman.
Nobody'd be fool enough--'
'Suppose he did not stop to think until too late?' Porter walked over to me. 'He would have been wild with panic. He would have been desperate to cover up, to remove any possibility of what he had done ever being discovered.'
'What about those men hunting me?'
'When you find them I think you will discover they were looking for you for some other reason. I think one man--someone able to command others--is responsible, and only he or they know the real reason you are to be killed.'
Of course, it made sense. Also it meant that Ange was dead, and that her death must have been ugly. Suddenly all the fury that was in me came welling up inside until I was almost blind with it.
I stood there, my head down, my whole body shaking with it. Inside me there was only one thing left, a terrible will to destroy, to kill.
After a moment I looked up. 'Captain, I got to have some rest.'
'Also Seiber will take care of you.' Porter paused. 'Sackett, this conversation is between us.
If it is ever mentioned I shall deny that it ever took place. However, in the morning you will have a horse and a mule at your disposal, and I shall speak to Mr. Seiber about the guns.'
'I have money. I can buy them.'
He nodded. 'Of course. But you will want good weapons, and I am afraid what you would find at the sutler's ... at the trading post ... would not be adequate.'
When I stepped outside, he stood in the doorway. It was dark now, and he stood there framed against the light. 'Remember, my offer holds. If you want to join up, return here.
I am sure I can arrange for your old rank, perhaps for a commission.'
After the door closed I stood there a while alone in the darkness. The stars were bright in the desert sky, the night was cold ... and Ange, my Ange, was dead.
Suddenly I knew she must be dead, and that all Captain Porter had suggested was true. The chances were her body lay somewhere not far from that wagon.
I was going back to look, to give her a decent burial. And then I was going to hunt a man.
It was a long time before I knew what happened inside that building after I left it ... a long, long time.
Captain Porter went to his table and took out a sheet of paper. He put down the place and the date, and then he wrote out a letter and addressed it, a letter that would be in the mail before I ever left the post.
And that letter was to make all the difference to me.
Whether it was to be life or death for me was decided by that cavalry captain putting pen to paper in his quiet quarters that night at Camp Verde ... but that is another story.
Chapter five.
One thing I'd learned a long time back. When traveling in enemy country, never return by the same trail you used in going out ... they may be laying for you.
Also Seiber told me of an Indian trail that left the Verde at the big bend below Fossil Creek, so I took it and rode across the top of Hardscrabble Mesa and made camp at Oak Spring.
My hands were only partly healed. I could use a rifle well enough, but would hesitate to draw a Colt against anybody. It was two weeks since I'd taken my fall, and I was still in bad shape, but I could wait no longer. Right now I was no more than two miles from Buckhead Mesa and the canyon where the ruins of my wagon lay.
Two to three miles away to the north there was a Mormon settlement--not a town, just a bunch of folks settled in there who had come down from Utah ... or so I supposed.
From all I'd heard they were God-fearing folk, and it was there I planned to go when I needed supplies, and it was also where I hoped to get information. For the present what I needed was rest, for I tired easily, and I was still in no condition for what lay ahead.
Oak Spring was a good hide-out. It lay in a canyon, and I'd seen no tracks on the Indian trail leading in here. My good treatment by Victorio, if that was who it was, would mean nothing if I met other Apaches, and the Tontos were some of the worst of the lot.
Over a hatful of fire I made coffee and a good meal, for I had a feeling the meals ahead would be few and far between. At daybreak, back in the saddle, I rode over the mesa, crossed Pine Creek above the canyon and rode back onto Buckhead Mesa.
There were plenty of tracks, most of them at best a week old, all well-shod horses like you'd find on a well- run cow outfit. Nowhere was there the slightest sign there had ever been a wagon on this mesa.
When I reached the site of the burned wagon I got a surprise. Aside from some blackened brush there was no sign there had ever been a wagon here, or a fire. Somebody had done a piece of hard work, doing away with all trace of what had happened. Even the hubs were gone, dragged off somewhere and buried, I figured.
After scouting around and finding nothing, I rode back to where the wagon had been. All the time I was riding with the rifle across my saddle-bows, and keeping a wary eye for riders. I was alone, and how many enemies I had against me I didn't know, but my life wasn't worth a plugged two-bit piece if they found me.
Sitting there by that fire, I was a mighty lonesome man, my heart a-hurting something awful for thoughts of Ange. I'd long been a lonely man before I saw her, and nobody ever had a truer, finer wife.
Being the oldest of the Sacketts, I was first out of the nest when trouble came, and off I'd gone to the war. We were Tennessee folk from the high-up hills, but we had no truck with slavery or looking down the nose at any man. Many a man in my part of the country fought for the South, but while my heart was with her, my head was not, and I rode north to join the Union.
Leaving slavery aside, it was that I was fighting for--the Union. This was my country, and like Sacketts and their kinfolk for many a year, I was ready to take up my rifle and trail it off to the fightin'. Besides, none of us Sacketts were ever much on missing out on a fight. It was just in us to step in and let fly.
So I joined the Sixth Cavalry in Ohio and rode through the war with them, and then when it was over I started west to seek out my fortune, wherever it should take me.
Tyrel and Orrin had already gone, leaving about the time of the war's end, or just after. They'd gone west seeking a home for Ma, and they found it, and meanwhile Tyrel had won him a name with his shooting and had become a lawman. Orrin, he studied law and had been elected to office.
Here I was with nothing. Ange and me, we had us a gold mine in the high-up Colorado mountains, but getting the gold out was not easy, and we'd have only a couple of months each year in which to work. I'd brought some out, but what I really wanted was a ranch of my own. With what gold I had, I bought some stock and my outfit and we headed west for the Tonto Basin. Now Ange was gone, and my outfit was wiped out, and me ... I was a hunted man, sought after by Lord only knew how many. And not a friend to side me but my Colt and Winchester.
Not that there weren't plenty of Sacketts around the country, and we were a feudin' and a fightin' family, but they were scattered wide and far, and no chance for any help to me. There was Lando, Falcon, Tyrel, Orrin, and many another of our name, and all good men.
After I'd put out my fire, I crawled into the place under the trees close to my horse, and there I stretched out my tired body and closed my eyes in sleep.
The sun was high when I rolled out and led the horse to water. Then I left him on a small patch of grass whilst I made coffee and chewed on some jerky. I had a restless, irritable feeling, and I knew what it was. Being a man slow to anger, and one who can fight his anger back for a while, I knew it was working up to a point where all hell would tear loose ... and that's no good.
That was the morning I found Ange.
It was only a few rods from where the wagon had been left, and I was scouting around when I saw that crack in the rock. For a moment I stood there, fear climbing up inside me, for all the while my feelings had been fighting against reason, telling me that Ange was still alive, that Ange had somehow gotten away, and that I'd find
