Norton, Andre - Novel 15 Page 18

  "Smoke!" He sniffed the air hound-fashion, his head up, his beaky nose pointing straight for the green slash. “That's fire-"

  Ritchie could smell nothing, but he unslung his carbine, checking its loading. Herndon was doing the same with the rifle.

  "Take cover—over there!" The Sergeant indicated a pinnacle which was almost mushroom-shaped.

  Tuttle, herding the loose horses before him, was already in motion. Ritchie tagged along behind, trying to keep the whole countryside under observation, suspicious of any move from the patch of green. Herndon had melted into the rough ground. They reached the shelter of the outcrop without any shots or arrows to speed them. The scout was shaving an infinitesimal bit from his palm-sized block of trade tobacco as Ritchie threw himself belly-down between two rocks that gave him command of the only path Herndon could have taken.

  Then out of that green a black bird arose sluggishly with a croaking scream of rage—to be followed by two more. They lit on a shelf, reluctant to venture farther away. And Herndon appeared on his feet, waving his companions on to join him.

  16

  “Reckon I’ll Cross Over”

  Ritchie clung to the twisted trunk of the desert-warped cedar and retched violently. He had managed to hold out as long as he was needed, but now he had crept away to lose the scanty meal he had eaten a few hours before. He would probably never be able to forget the grisly business he had just been engaged in. He had heard all the horrible barracks stories of Apache handiwork, but this was the first time he had actually witnessed its result. And he had discovered that his most vivid imaginings could not measure up to actuality. His stomach muscles knotted, and he swayed against the rough bark of the tree.

  "Peters!"

  He lifted his head but did not dare to turn it as he answered, "Yes—"

  "We'll have to move on."

  He wiped his shaking hands down his thighs. He hadn't actually touched anything, of course, but— Resolutely he tried to put it out of his mind. He stood away from the tree and walked back.

  "It was Diego's men, all right," Tuttle said as he came up. "Dog hairs on that piece of blanket."

  "How long—"

  "Wal, that watch was still tickin', warn't it? Beats me how they came to overlook that! 'N them birds hadn't been here long enough to clean up any. Say maybe an hour— maybe a mite more. They must've jumped him early this mornin'. 'N they had their fun with him for quite a spell."

  Ritchie fumbled with his carbine. He had never liked Birke; the man had been a stupid bully and coward. But he hadn't deserved to end like this—no human being did.

  "We know one thing," Tuttle continued. "They ain't hangin' round here. If they were, we'd be laid out right now. Either they don't know we're about, or they're back-trackin' to find our camp—"

  "Birke might have told them about us," Herndon agreed. "They'll be on our trail if they cross our sign—"

  " 'N that leaves us one thing to do." The scout scratched at the roughness of beard on his forward-thrusting chin. "We got to skedaddle along 'n find us a good place to hole in. Git fixed up proper 'fore they catch up with us."

  So they headed away from that gruesome slash of greenery, back into the sun-baked reds and blues and purples of the rocklands. The breaks closed about them, and they trudged again through stone that echoed back the ghostly sound of their passing.

  Ritchie, scouting ahead, found the first sign of other life, a track stamped heavily into soft earth. Mountain lion— and a big one, too. It was fresh—even as he found it a bit of earth toppled from the edge into the center of the deepest depression. Surely the big cat would not range far from water. He pointed out his find to the others.

  Tuttle studied it from the saddle. "Cat—'n a big one. Yeah," he answered Ritchie's hopeful suggestion. "It might jus' lead us to water if it don't take it into its head to go straight up the wall someplace like that Big Gray of Charlie's. Anyway, it's goin' our way, so we can follow it easy-like."

  What the cat did lead them to in time was its kill. Under the edge of a rock, with dirt and stones scratched over it, they found the carcass of a small deer. Herndon hacked off what he could, and they tried to pack it on the horses, only to find the animals made unmanageable by the combined scent of lion and blood. At last Tuttle took up the major portion before him, and they traveled on to shelter in a rock pocket and, not daring to light a fire, fed on raw meat.

  Tuttle had been unable to dismount without help. And when they had lowered him to the ground, he had doubled up in a fit of coughing that seemed to tear him apart. Tears of pain ran from the corners of his faded blue eyes, and even when the worst was over, he still crouched as if he were afraid to straighten up. He did no more than taste his portion of the meat, but he drank too eagerly when Herndon passed one of the canteens.

  That night was made up of sodden, nightmare-ridden sleep and then guard duty, with the added torture of memory to goad the mind. It was so easy to be mistaken about the shape of a shadow in the moonlight, so easy to see things move when they did not. So it might be just as easy to overlook real danger crawling belly-down toward them through the night. And they dared not waste a single cartridge or bullet. The extra supplies and guns which Birke had stolen now armed their enemies.

  Of all the hallucinations born of the night the worst, Ritchie decided, was the one that he could hear, somewhere not too far away, the constant drip of water. He tried not to listen to that regular rhythm, but he found himself straining to catch the faint sound. And once he almost woke the Sergeant to suggest that they try to trace it down. Only the fact that Herndon must have heard it while taking his tour and had not thought it worth investigating kept him from doing so.

  There was the lion. Had the creature returned to its cache to find the deer gone? And would it trail them in return? He had never heard of the lions attacking men. But a beast as big and wily as Big Gray would make a formidable opponent if it decided to hunt men as carefully and guilefully as it hunted deer. There was that one which had killed Tuttle's mule on the winter march—it had taken fire to drive that one away. And tonight they had no fire.

  Tuttle was mumbling, a steady sound, too low for listeners to distinguish words—yet it rasped the nerves. The scout had never allowed Herndon to examine his injuries. And the knock over the head Birke had given him after that smashup on the rocks hadn't done him any good—

  Birke! Ritchie's mind shied frantically away from any thought of Birke. He was afraid that he would never remember him except as he had seen him last. And to think of that was madness!

  It must be time to inspect their improvised picket line. He walked softly to the semi-corral they had thrown up of stones and cactus. It was safe. Neither cat nor Apache was near if he knew horses. The scent of either enemy would have made them restless. The harsh brilliant light of the moon was cold. He shivered as he shuffled back to their cave.

  Something was wrong. For a moment he didn't realize what was missing, and then he knew! Tuttle no longer lay there, and the faint sound of his mumble was still. Ritchie shook Herndon into wakefulness.

  "Went out to see the horses," Ritchie sputtered. "Came back—found Tuttle gone!"

  The Sergeant's hand was already on the rifle.

  "All right. If you didn't see him, then he went up, not down past you. And he can't have gone far. Probably he's off his head and hunting water."

  As they started along the only path Tuttle could have taken, Ritchie wondered if the scout had been aware of that odd dripping noise and had gone off to trace its source. Tuttle was trail-wise enough to do that even when he was half out of his head.

  At almost the same instant they sighted him and their exclamations of relief came as one. He was on his hands and knees, like some sort of shaggy animal, clawing his way over the ground.

  But before either of the others could move, a sinuous black shadow detached itself from a ledge, flowed across a rock, drew together for a second, and sprang, striking Tuttle crushingly on the shoulders. The s
cream of the man was echoed by a snarl from the cat as it lashed out vicious claws. Afraid to shoot, Ritchie clubbed his carbine and ran, but Herndon used the rifle.

  A second scream of rage and pain burst as Ritchie reached the thrashing tangle of man and beast. He saw the outline of a flat-skulled feline head and brought the butt of his carbine down on it, feeling bone crunch under the force of the blow. Herndon's knife flashed in the moon as he struck twice. Then Ritchie hooked his fingers in the coarse fur and yanked the heavy body off its victim.

  They had to have a fire now. Ritchie got a few sticks lighted while the Sergeant straightened the limp figure they had carried back. When the thin flames blazed up, they saw the worst. Great raking red wounds laced white flesh. They worked feverishly to stop the pumping blood. But they had already lost the battle; Ritchie could guess that without being told. They could only make Tuttle as easy as possible and hope that for him the end would come soon.

  During what was left of the night he talked, but not to them. He was at old fur rendezvous smoking pipes with Sioux warriors, sweating out battles of the Mexican War, walking again the valleys of the smoking spring country, marveling at what he saw, bathing in the Pacific where he had gone to spend the gold he had found in unknown mountain streams—

  “Flour gold—" His words rippled on. "That's what the boys called it. Fine as dust—but, Lordy, a man could spend it—same as money. I had me ten days in Frisco as I won't ever fergit. Busted me, but it was worth it—sure—" His poor ripped face was smiling.

  For a while he was quiet, and when he spoke again, he was back to here and now.

  "What got me, son?"

  "Lion. You were crawling along—"

  "Yeah. Guess the critter thought I was a deer. Lion—" His voice trailed off, but he was making a visible effort to hold to consciousness and them. "Watch out for Injuns, sons—"

  "We will, Jesse!"

  But he was already lost to them again. "Boys"—his tone was stronger, almost happy—"thar's the river now; see it, fellers? 'N it's beautiful over thar, ain't it? That thar grass so green 'n all. Water—cool—jus' ripplin' 'long easy like. I'm tired of marchin'. I reckon I'll cross over 'n go into camp—"

  Herndon pulled away abruptly as if the hand he had been holding had turned red hot. He was gone into the dark, but Ritchie sat where he was. The fire sputtered out, and wind swept down the canyon with a faint, far-off sobbing note.

  At the first break of gray dawn they buried Tuttle as they had Sturgis, walling up his shrunken body with the stoutest rocks they could pick. But when they came to the horses, only Bess was still on her feet. Herndon's face was a stone mask, and neither he nor Ritchie spoke through that morning.

  But when everything was done and they broke camp, having to pull Bess by main force past the stiff body of the lion, he stooped and picked up something from between two stones.

  "A legacy which we can use." His words were bitter and as chipped as ice. In his hand was the piece of tobacco Tuttle had treasured. He shaved off two pieces. One he forced upon Ritchie, and the other he mouthed himself.

  ''Chew," he ordered. "It'll keep you going—"

  Ritchie chewed. It didn't much matter, he thought dazedly, what they did now. In the end it would all be the same. Either the Apaches would catch up with them or thirst and hunger would knock them out.

  They prodded on into a basin where the sandstone walls opened out in a series of long jagged points, like the fangs of a trap waiting to close on them for all time. Herndon stopped and caught Ritchie's arm.

  "Look!" Dust and thirst had made his voice a croak, but the ring of command was still in it.

  Ritchie obediently raised his head and looked.

  On the top of one of the rock fangs was a tower—not a crumbling ruin of adobe such as they had seen before, but a real tower of squared stones, sturdy against wind and weather.

  Slowly he turned his head. Now that he had sighted the first, he could see the others where they stood on the tops of the pinnacles close to the encircling cliffs, outlined against the solid rock of the natural walls behind them. Some were alone and others clustered together. There were more towers than he could count.

  "The land of the Torreones," Herndon said softly. "The valley of many towers—"

  "But where are the people?" Ritchie searched those flanking cliffs with restless eyes. There seemed to be no life within those patiently erected walls, unless it was the life of bird, snake, or lizard. It was a valley of the dead, sucked clean of movement and life.

  "Gone. There are the lines of their fields. But how long has it been since water ran in those irrigation ditches? This may have been ancient and deserted before the first European dreamed of the western world. Lost and forgotten—"

  "Dead." Ritchie struck at the black flies. Bess stamped weakly and whinnied. Herndon urged her toward the cliff side. Getting up on the saddle, he was able to scramble to a higher vantage point. His lookout duties took some minutes. Ritchie flopped down behind a screen of low growing cactus, his carbine to hand. But the country through which they had come seemed as barren as the waste of the tower land. Herndon came down with a jarring thud.

  "There's an old river bed down the center of the basin.

  If we use that for a guide, there's a chance it will lead us to the Chama—"

  "Yes?" Ritchie pulled himself up again with an effort. "You mean it will if we can keep going—which we can't. Diego's Apaches are probably beating up our back trail right now—"

  But Herndon had more attention for the towers than for what his companion was saying. "I wonder if Apaches would come here? Most primitive peoples are superstitious, and some tribes avoid the cliff ruins for fear of spirits. These towers seem so untouched—this whole section might well be forbidden territory. We can get down that river-follow it—"

  "And something is following us!" Ritchie had glanced over the Sergeant's shoulder, and now with a push he sent Herndon sprawling into cover as he himself went to one knee and steadied the carbine across a rock.

  A large dun-colored creature was coming at a deliberate pace down the basin. For a moment Ritchie just stared at it, and then he began to laugh weakly as the Sergeant sat up spitting gravel and hot words. It was the "mule" camel, a whisp of spiky desert stuff protruding from its working jaws at almost the same angle as that of a Mexican cigarrillo its dignified tread that of a pompous man of affairs on his way to his appointed place of business.

  Herndon made for the lariat which had been hung over the horn of Bess's saddle. The mare was rolling her eyes in the direction of the camel, trying to pull free and go far, far away.

  Looping the lariat, Herndon jerked out an order to Ritchie. "Circle to the left and see if you can force him over in this direction. I'll try to get him with the rope—"

  Ritchie circled. The camel was watching him. When he came within ten yards or so, it removed itself—to the right as they had hoped. Breathlessly Ritchie went on in a direction which he trusted would drive it toward the waiting Sergeant. Why the beast had continued to follow them, yet refused to let them get near it, was a mystery they could not solve—not knowing the tricks of the camel mind. But there was a good chance that if they once managed to get a rope over its ungainly head, it would allow itself to be mastered.

  The circling continued. Herndon scrambled up to the top of a boulder and spread the rope in the way the cow-herders did. The camel proceeded to drift at a slow, unhurried pace.

  And at that moment Bess at last broke free. With a neigh of pure terror she streaked away from the monster she saw bearing down upon her. Ritchie could not suppress a cry as she went. The camel stopped, making an uneasy sound not unlike a snort.

  Herndon threw the lariat. But, either by sheer luck or with an intelligence Ritchie did not believe it possessed, the camel swung its head aside at the same moment. And before the Sergeant could try again, it trotted off at a speed they could not match without the aid of the vanished Bess.

  Ritchie walked up to the
boulder, and Herndon greeted him with a grimace which had no hint of humor in it.

  "My skill does not seem equal to this, does it?" With the coil of lariat in one hand and Tuttle's rifle in the other, he jumped down to follow the mare's track. "At least we can be thankful she kept going in the right direction when she bolted."

  "What's the big hurry?"

  "Hasn't it occurred to you yet that the spare canteens are strapped to her saddle?"

  It was like taking an uppercut on an already aching chin. No, he had forgotten that fact. He matched Herndon stride for stride through a fine sand that shifted and slid underfoot until their progress was that of drunken men. They had no eyes now for the silent towers they passed.

  A combination of chance, hate, and overeagerness saved them from the death that padded at their heels. The sharp crack of a shot broke, and they dropped, each as if that bullet had plowed between his bony shoulders.

  "Apaches!" Herndon's lips shaped the word rather than spoke it aloud.

  Save for that warning shot, they could not have guessed what menace lay behind. They could see nothing. But who had ever sighted a rock-lizard Apache when he wanted to pass unnoticed?

  The Sergeant's fingers dug into Ritchie's upper arm, pulling him back. On their stomachs they made a worm's progress between rocks and stunted bushes, Herndon leading the way. He brought them up against a small break in the cliff wall, a fault like a narrow chimney vent.

  "Up!" Herndon pushed his companion toward that impossible stair. "I'll cover you. When you reach the top, bark like a coyote and then cover me."

  Up—up where? But with a blind faith in the Sergeant, Ritchie slung his carbine and climbed. With torn nails and bleeding fingers he crawled out at last on a ledge at the base of one of the mysterious towers—this one not quite so well preserved as some of its neighbors. He barked sharply twice, his eyes watchful, finger on his trigger.

  It seemed a year of days before the Sergeant heaved his longer body out beside him and lay panting a few seconds before he crept into cover, his rifle ready to fire.