Ambush Read online

  Diablito was said to have forty-odd males in his band, superbly mounted. The arithmetic of that equation made Holly’s insides shrink and quiver. By bare dawn, Diablito would have discovered their absence, and the whole band would be riding to pick up the trail at the foot of the Wall. After that, it was a matter of time, of luck, of water, of food—but the end was certain. For a brief and miserable moment, Holly wondered what insanity had induced him to accept Brierly’s commission.

  Ward’s voice roused him, saying, “Let’s move,” and Holly rose wearily. He hadn’t heard him approach, and he silently cursed the weariness that could so dull his senses.

  The first touch of false dawn was lighting the east when Ward, ahead of him, turned, moved a few feet to the right, and eased himself to the ground, saying, “Here’s our place.”

  Holly could make out the low rock against which Ward was sitting. The blurred shape of other rocks, none of them higher than a man’s head, lay scattered about them. Holly said wryly, “Wasn’t worth walking to.”

  “The trail comes out here, the closest horse trail.”

  Holly considered this a moment, then walked over and sat down beside Ward. “Forty-some Injuns. Even if you chase ’em back up, there’s other trails.” He could not keep the truculence out of his voice.

  “There won’t be forty,” Ward said.

  “Twenty, then.”

  “Not twenty,” Ward said. “While you were sleeping, I traveled south for an hour along the Wall. I dug a hole in the side of an arroyo and built a smudge fire. It’ll hold past daylight. About now, Diablito’ll be making his rush up there. He’ll turn up our tracks on the trail and send his men down. By the time they reach the gap and go back, there’ll be enough light to see the smoke. He’ll think it’s our fire. What’ll he figure?”

  “We’re headin’ south for Gamble.”

  “So he pulls his band south to the nearest horse trail down, six miles. But not all of them. He’ll send some north to take this trail, the closest to where he’ll find our horses.”

  “How you figure?” Holly asked.

  Ward didn’t answer for a long moment, and then he said, “We’re afoot, we’re a sure kill, and we’re headed south. But he wants us bad enough to make sure we don’t split up. So he’ll send somebody to check north.”

  Holly thought hard about this, and finally said, “What’s it get us? Four-five to fight now, the rest later.”

  Ward said gently, “It gets us horses, Holly.”

  Holly sat up, looking at Ward, in the quarter-light of coming day. For the first time since Ward had greeted him yesterday, he felt the faint stirrings of hope.

  Ward said, “They’ll have to come single file off the trail, but close together, because it’s been slow going. You take the last ’Pache. I’ll take the first, and I’ll shoot first.” He rose and looked around him now, and pointed with his chin. “There’s a rock with brush against it, close to the trail. You got the pistol, so stash yourself close, and don’t cross the trail, and don’t forget; we’re after horses.”

  Holly rose, and he was aware that Ward was looking at him. “Yeah,” he said mildly.

  “Once you’re down, stay down,” Ward said.

  Holly started off and Ward said, “Holly.”

  Holly halted, looking at him.

  “Remember this. If one gets away, he’ll make smoke. That’ll fix us.”

  “Sure,” Holly said irritably, and he moved away.

  Ward bellied down against the rock, behind a stand of rabbit brush, facing the trail, and watched daylight blossom. This was a thin chance, although it sounded all right when he put it into words. There was no assurance that Diablito, when the foot trail was denied him, would not lose his head and lead his whole band down this trail. Only Diablito didn’t lose his head; of all the Chiricahuas, he was the coolest head, the most cunning, and the most vicious.

  Ward let himself speculate tiredly on what would happen if things went wrong. It would not be a pleasant death, since it would be the settlement of an old payment. The first time Diablito and his rebels had broken the reservation, Ward had guided the pursuit until, pushed and harried and starved, Diablito had surrendered. But he had never forgotten the man who guided the cavalry on that hounding trek, and in his second break Diablito had gone out of his way to burn Ward’s shack, kill his partner, and pollute the spring with his mutilated body. And Ward had retaliated by guiding the troops that cornered him a second time.

  Full daylight was here now, and Ward shifted softly, wondering how long the wait would be. And then, on the heel of his movement, he heard horses on the trail above, far distant. He parted the brush ahead of him and settled his gun. He tried desperately to count the number of horses from the muffled racket above, and could not, and he thought with bitter fatalism, You’ve bought it, and you’ll get a look at it soon.

  A long twenty minutes dragged by, and then, with a startling suddenness, the sound of trotting horses was on him.

  Slowing his breathing, he laid cheek to gunstock, and presently the first Apache moved from behind the boulder into sight. He was a young man, wearing only breech-clout and long leggings, and a band of red flannel was tied across his forehead. He held a rifle in his near hand, and he was half turned on his bay pony, looking back. His right hand held the long horsehair halter, his only rein.

  The Apache’s deep barrel chest was square to Ward, but Ward coolly pulled his sights away. It was the horse he was after and now he sighted carefully along the horse’s mane and toward the end of it. Where neck swelled into withers, his sight steadied and followed and he slowly squeezed his hand.

  At his shot, the bay fell as if poleaxed, and the Apache pitched forward. Holly’s shot came then, and Ward, already levering a shell into the chamber, heard the deep whump of Holly’s bullet striking a body.

  The Apache lit on all fours and was driven to the ground by his momentum. He rolled over twice in a moil of dust and came half erect, whirling, raising his gun. Ward shot again. A loose horse galloped between them, and Ward waited the second it took for the horse to pass. Then he saw the Apache on the ground, on his back, one knee raised, and he levered a shell into the chamber and only then raised up, just as Holly’s pistol shot twice, rapidly.

  Ward looked beyond the rock and saw the remaining Indian. He had whirled his chestnut horse back up the trail, and he was flattened on the horse’s back, his head hidden by the withers. But the lift of the trail exposed his back, and Ward, sighting, pulled down ahead of the horse, and when the horse moved into his sights, Ward waited until his straight neck traveled up out of the sight and the mane ended, and then he squeezed. Holly’s shot was simultaneous with his, and the Indian was driven over the horse onto the trail.

  The chestnut stopped immediately, and now Ward broke from shelter. He ran swiftly toward the downed bay horse in front of him. The bay, momentarily stunned by the bullet, was now thrashing to regain its feet. Ward made a dive for its trailing rope and caught it as the horse lunged erect and reared.

  “Whoa, now, whoa!” Ward growled. He glanced at Holly and saw him gingerly approaching the trembling chestnut. His own horse settled down now, tugging warily at the halter. Holly came up to the chestnut, and Ward saw him reach for the hair rope. Then drawing his knife, he knelt. Ward heard the knife fall twice and afterwards Holly pulled the horse and came down the trail, sheathing his knife and skirting the body of the middle Apache lying in the trail.

  There was an excitement in Holly’s bloodshot eyes as he came up. He said uneasily, “We’re crowdin’ our luck, son. Let’s pull out.”

  “Where?” Ward asked dryly.

  Holly swung up onto the bare back of the chesnut and said fretfully, “Hell! North or west. We got a start on ’em, even if they heard us, and they never.”

  “Turn him around, Holly,” Ward said quietly.

  “Around?” Holly stared at him, then looked over his shoulder at the Wall. “Up the trail?”

  Ward swung onto the bay pon
y and said, “Right back up it, Holly.”

  For a stunned second Holly looked at him, his jaw sagging, and then he found his voice. “You’re out of it!” he yelled. “You want to ride back into it again?”

  Ward said grimly, “I’m going to ride a hundred and thirty miles to make Gamble, Holly. Diablito’s pulled his whole bunch south, and soon he’ll be off the Wall. That’s when I’m going to climb it, and cut straight east across the base of the Peak, and put it between me and him. You got a horse. Go where you like.”

  Holly only stared at him. He lifted his glance briefly to the Wall, and then to the trail, and then back to Ward, and he groaned softly.

  The corner of Ward’s mouth lifted faintly. He said, “It’s a long ride, Holly, for ten dollars, a long, long, ride.”

  In the wretched, still afternoon heat of his quarters, young Lieutenant Linus Delaney was writing a letter, trying halfheartedly to make this evening’s post, which, once the heat of the day was gone, would leave Fort Gamble for Santa Fe with the mail. He was stripped to the waist, and had draped a towel around his neck. At intervals, he sponged his neck and chest with the towel.

  Pausing in his writing now, he raised his left hand toward the huge calabash he was smoking. The paper on which he was writing stuck to his hand, and he shook it loose with a gesture of disgust and rose.

  He was a young man of medium height, lithe and straight. His close-cropped curly hair, the color of ripe grain, was dark with perspiration. He swabbed his head carelessly with the towel, wiped his neck, and then carefully tried to puff his pipe alight and failed.

  Removing it from his mouth, he looked around the room. A small grin of deviltry touched his wide mouth, wrinkling the skin at the corner of his eyes, touching them with a dry and fleeting merriment.

  The room was a large one, running the width of the building. Besides the big clothespress in the middle of the back wall, there was a bed, a table, and chair on either side of the door. Ben Loring, captain and therefore his senior, had the choice half of the room fronting on the parade ground. His own looked out on the bakery, and the distant quartermaster sheds.

  Lieutenant Delaney picked up a match from his desk and carefully loosened the dottle in his pipe as he strolled across the room. On Loring’s side of the clothes-press, against its side and reposing in military neatness, stood a pair of almost new, custom-made cavalry boots.

  Linus dumped his pipe ashes into the right boot and shook the boot to distribute them evenly, afterward coming back and seating himself at the desk. It was his theory, unproven so far, that the ashes, once dampened by perspiration, would form a lye that would be highly uncomfortable to the wearer of the boot. And anything that added to the discomfort of that sober aristocrat, Captain Loring, was in Lieutenant Delaney’s opinion very much worth doing.

  He was writing again when he heard the knock on the frame of his door, which was open. He called, without looking up from his writing, “Anyone crazy enough to come in this steambath may enter.”

  “Your laundry, Lieutenant,” a woman’s voice said.

  Linus came out of his chair with a leap, and wheeled to regard the door. He started to reach for his shirt on the back of his chair, and then his hand paused.

  A young woman stood in the doorway, clean laundry folded over her arm. She was dressed in sober gray, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. Her face was full and rounded, made curiously childlike by the mass of dark hair which was carelessly pinned off her neck atop her head. But what held Lieutenant Delaney motionless was the sight of her face: the right eye was swollen shut, discolored a red purple, and there was a bruise of matching color on the opposite cheekbone.

  The woman’s glance touched him, and fell away, and Linus said automatically, formally, “Come in, Mrs. Riordan.”

  The young woman stepped into the room and turned to Captain Loring’s bed. From the top of the pile of freshly ironed laundry over her arm, she began selecting clothes and laying them on the bed.

  Linus crossed the room swiftly and closed the door, and then said quietly, “Look at me, Martha.”

  The woman straightened and turned to regard him.

  A slow flush of anger crawled from Linus’ neck into his face, and he said softly, “Tom again?”

  The woman nodded.

  “That drunken dog,” Linus said bitterly. “What was it this time?”

  “It’s never anything special,” Martha Riordan said quietly. “This one started out over money.”

  Linus looked at her, anger, bafflement, and a gentle pleading in his eyes. “Please, Martha, why don’t you go? I’ve got the money here. Now. Will you take it?”

  Martha Riordan shook her head, and Linus said swiftly, “I can get him on field duty. I can ask for field duty myself and request him and keep him away a month. You could be home by then. Will you let me?”

  The girl shook her head slowly. “You’re too fair. You wouldn’t do that even if I said ‘yes,’ would you?”

  “I—guess not,” Linus said bitterly. “I couldn’t trust myself. If I got him in my command, I’d see he was killed.”

  The girl smiled faintly and turned back to her work, and Linus watched her, the anger fading from his face and leaving only a watchful tenderness. He moved over to her and awkwardly touched her elbow, and then she straightened; he looked down at her. “Isn’t there some place we could meet, where we could talk, and I would help you straighten this out?”

  The girl shook her head. “Nowhere. And I would not meet you again anyway.”

  “If we could settle it, if we could think of—”

  Martha Riordan was shaking her head in negation. “It’s already settled. I am married to him, Linus. You are an officer. If you were seen meeting an enlisted man’s wife, you would be cashiered. And what would that get us both?”

  There was no answer to that, and Linus knew it, and while he was considering it and, by implication, the whole rigid caste system of the Army, the door opened. It bumped him, and he stepped away and Captain Loring entered the room.

  Loring halted inside the door, and looked briefly at Mrs. Riordan and then at Linus, his brown eyes widening faintly at the sight of Linus’ bare upper body.

  He said stiffly, “Sorry, Linus,” and tramped toward the clothespress. He was a big man, solid and slow moving; perspiration stained his gray-blue shirt in great damp spots that looped under his armpits. His meaty fist held a sodden black campaign hat, and his neck above his shirt was brick red. The ends of his full dark mustaches were beaded with sweat, and he glanced obliquely at Mrs. Riordan as he moved into the room.

  “Your laundry, Captain,” Mrs. Riordan said. “I’m sorry it’s late, but Shallet is in hospital.” She added, almost defensively, “I have the officer of the day’s permission to enter quarters.”

  “All right,” Loring said mildly. “Now skeddadle, will you?”

  Mrs. Riordan deposited the remainder of the laundry on Linus’ bed and went out, and Linus, avoiding Loring’s glance, strolled back to his chair. Loring sank down on his bed with a whistling sigh and trailed his hands between his knees. He Was, Linus knew, ready to make, or receive, a comment on the hellish weather, and Linus forestalled him. “Better like it. You’ll get enough of it starting tomorrow.”

  He sat down again to his letter, and Loring only groaned.

  Linus was reaching for his pen when Loring said mildly, “You’re not a very careful man, are you, Linus?”

  Linus turned, a look of mockery on his face, “I keep trying hard, Master.” He paused. “What gravels you now?”

  “Regulations say no women in bachelor officers’ quarters, except at stated times.’”

  Linus said, “You heard her.”

  “I’d report it to Brierly. That’s not up to the officer of the day’s discretion, whether our orderly is sick or not.” He paused now. “Also a closed door. Also, half dressed.”

  Linus felt his pent-up wrath uncoil; he came slowly to his feet and walked stiff-legged across the
room to confront Loring. “Are you trying to say something around that meal in your mouth, Ben Boy?”

  “I’m saying a married laundress in an officer’s room with the door closed violates both regulations and propriety.”

  “Nothing more?” Linus asked softly.

  “What more is there?”

  “Not any,” Linus said wickedly, “but if you think so and care to state it, I’ll argue it out with you with sabers at the rifle butts.”

  Loring looked up at him, and his mouth slacked open in amazement. His broad, pleasant face held genuine surprise. He closed his eyes and said mildly, “Good God, what a thought! Is the heat eating into your brain?”

  Linus stared at him uncertainly, and then a grin began and finally broadened; he sheepishly scratched his head and sighed and said, “I think it is,” and turned back to his chair. He picked up the towel, rubbed his chest with it, and wadded it up and threw it on his bed. A wicked restlessness, compounded of anger at himself, at Loring, at the heat, and at the foul realities of just plain living, pushed him into motion. Loring was lying across the bed now, hands over his eyes. Linus prowled past him and glanced at him, uncertain if his own anger had given Loring cause to really wonder at Mrs. Riordan’s presence. He’d have to smooth it over, make the whole thing seem unimportant.

  Toeing the chair out of the way, he hauled up at the window and looked out at the sun-baked parade ground. Across it a handful of enlisted men, in the deep shade of the barracks veranda, were talking. A dog angled swiftly across the hard-packed clay, picking up his feet swiftly; his tongue was hanging out of his mouth and his tail was between his legs.

  Linus wheeled away from the window, glancing again at Loring. He asked with elaborate politeness, “Miss Dunnifon enjoy her ride?”

  “It’s funny. I think she did,” Loring answered.

  “Did you?” Linus asked idly.

  “It’s not my time of day.”