sinking feeling away with, Show the savages!
Now it was over, and he could feel himself being drawn into the black nothingness of utter exhaustion. But there was one thing more to be done.
He bent over the still form of Lacayuelo and looked at his clothing closely, at the filthy jacket and ragged pants. Then the issue belt caught his eye. It was polished, gleaming. He unbuckled it and drew it off. The first thing he saw was the name on the inside Byerlein. That was all. He drew his arm back and brought the barrel of the revolving pistol down upon the Indian's skull. And as he staggered down the line of unconscious figures, he brought the weapon down again and again against the heads of the Apaches. When it was finished, he felt better.
It was forty miles back to Thomas. Forty blister ing, dry miles through the furnace that was central Arizona. Miles that cramped legs and jolted heads already racked by the aftereffects of Apache corn beer. And there were nine Chiricahua hostiles who had to be watched, watched with a sharp eye; though their feet were lashed beneath pony bellies and their skulls throbbed with a brutal pain.
Just before sunset, the riders, caked with alkali dust and heads bowed, rode across the parade at Fort Thomas. Colonel Darck stepped to the front of the ramada before his quarters to receive the lieutenant who had wheeled off toward him.
'You lost some men, Lieutenant.' The colonel volunteered only this observation. It could mean anything. His opinion would come later when Towner made his official report. This meeting was simply a courtesy. 'You look all in, Mr. Towner.
Not used to the weather yet, eh? What do you say to a whiskey before cleaning up?'
The colonel spoke about it for years after. Of course he was polite about it, but it was the idea.
The young lieutenant was the only officer Darck ever knew to refuse a whiskey punch after finishing a blistering four day patrol.
The Last Shot
From the shade of the pines, looking across the draw, he watched the single file of cavalrymen come out of the timber onto the open bench. The first rider raised his arm and they moved at a slower pace down the slope, through the green tinged brush. The sun made small flashes on the visors of their kepis and a clinking sound drifted faintly across the draw.
He had come down the same way a few minutes before and now he was certain that they would stay on his trail. Watching them, he sat his sorrel mare unmoving, his young face sun darkened and cleanlined and glistening with perspiration, though the air was cool. A Sharps lay across his lap and he gripped it hard, then looked about quickly as if searching for a place to hide it. Instead he swung the stock against the sorrel's rump and guided her away from the rim, breaking into a run as they crossed a meadow of bear grass toward the darkness of a pine stand. And as he drew near, a rider, watching him closely, came out of the pines.
Lou Walker, the young man, swung his mount close to the other rider and pushed the rifle toward him.
'Give me your carbine, Risdon!'
'What happened?' the man said. Ed Risdon was close to fifty. He sat heavily in his saddle and his round, leathery face studied Walker calmly.
'I missed him.'
'How could you miss? All you had to do was aim at his beard.'
'His horse spooked as I fired. It reared up and I hit it in the withers.'
'They see you?'
'I was up in the rocks and when I missed they took out after me. Give me the carbine. If I get caught they'll see it hasn't been fired.'
'What if I get caught?' Risdon said.
'You won't if you scat.'
Risdon drew the short rifle from its saddle scabbard and handed it to Lou Walker, exchanging it for Walker's Sharps. 'Maybe,' he said, 'I'd better stay with you.'
'Get home and tell Beckwith what happened and get that gun out of here.'
Risdon hesitated. 'What'll I tell Barbara?'
Walker stared at him. 'I don't like it any more than you do.'
'I think maybe it's getting senseless,' Risdon answered.
'Think what you want just get the hell out of here.'
Walker nudged the mare with his knee and rode away from Risdon, back toward the rim. As he neared it he looked around, across the meadow, to make certain Risdon was gone. He could hear the cavalrymen below him now, the clinking sound of their approach sharp in the crisp air, and waited until they could see him up through the trees before he started off, following the rim. There was a shout, then another, and when the carbine shot rang behind him he knew they had reached the crest. He swung from the high ground then, zigzagging down through the scattered pinons, guiding the reins loosely.
A quarter of the way from the bottom the dwarf pines gave up to brush and hard rock. Walker spurred toward the open slope, glancing over his shoulder, seeing the flashes of blue uniforms up through the trees. He heard the carbine report and the whine as the bullet glanced off rock. Then another. A third kicked up sand a few yards in front of the mare and she swerved suddenly on the slope.
He tried to hold her in, but the mare was already side slipping on the loose shale. Suddenly she was falling and Walker went out of the saddle. He tried to twist his body in the air then he struck the slope and rolled. . . .
There was a stable smell of leather and damp horsehide. Again his body slammed against the ground and the shock of it brought open his eyes.
They had carried him draped across a saddle and when they reached the others, a trooper threw his legs over the horse and he landed on his back.
He heard a voice say, 'Sergeant!' close over him.
He looked up and the trooper spat to the side.
'He's awake.'
Now there were other faces that looked down at him and they were all the same shapeless kepis, tired, curious eyes, dirt in crease lines, and two or three day beards. Though there were some faces without the stubble, they were boys with the expressions of men. The blue uniforms were covered with fine dust and the jackets seemed ill fitting, with buttons missing, and from the shoulders hung the oblong, leather covered, wooden cases that hold seven cartridge tubes for a Spencer carbine.
And then another uniform was standing over him. Alkali dust made the Union blue seem faded, but the jacket held firmly to chest and shoulders and a full, red beard reached to the second button.
The red beard moved.
'Mister, we owe you an apology, though I don't imagine it makes your head feel any better.'
Walker relaxed slowly, sitting up, then came to his feet and stood in front of the red beard which was even with his own chin. But his leg buckled under him and he sat down again, feeling the stabbing in his right knee. He winced, but kept his eyes on the officer. He had imagined McGrail to be a much taller man and now he was surprised. Stories make a man taller than he is. . . . Then he felt better because Major McGrail was not unusually tall. Still, he was uneasy. Perhaps because he had tried to kill him not a half hour before.
'Your knee?' McGrail said.
Walker nodded, then said, 'Where's my horse?'
'It was past saving.'
'You didn't have a right to fire on me.'
McGrail smiled faintly. 'I'm told you had a damn uncommon guilty way of running when ordered to halt.'
'I didn't hear anything.'
'Perhaps you weren't listening.'
'I don't wear a uniform.'
'Did you ever?'
