Stand to Horse Page 2

  "When they didn't come back, Ramon came up to the Colonel. He was only a kid then, but he said he was riding alone to hunt his brother if we wouldn't help. So the dragoons went out again. They found what was left of the first gang and were picking them up for burial when"—Sturgis made a quick gesture with his hands—"the world blew up. The Apaches had set a trap—set it with the bait of the bodies of their first victims. If one buck hadn't been just a little too eager and shot a second too soon, they would have had a full bag the second time, too. As it was, about ten escaped. Ramon came back, his face hanging in shreds, with the memory of how his brother looked after the Apaches had amused themselves in their usual fashion. It was a little too much for his mind. So now he can't remember Pedro's death, and he waits here for him. Five years he's been waiting. Finished eating? Let's see some action."

  Jose, who had been hovering beyond the table, now pounced, assembling a pile of dishes in a lingering way. Sturgis grinned.

  "Birke was right, y'know. Months since the paymaster hit these parts. Can you spare a little of the needful?"

  Ritchie spun a coin across to the waiter. "And what if I keep accounts?"

  Sturgis shot him a single glance. For a moment there was a hint of something less than laughter about his mobile mouth. But when he answered, his words were light enough.

  "As you wish, sir, as you wish. Now for the action—"

  He threaded his way through the maze of crowded tables with the ease of long familiarity, and Ritchie followed. Sturgis' grim tale of Apache warfare had been unsettling. One read of such things back home, and there was always tall talk in the barracks, but Ramon's story now— And sometimes under the surface of casual good nature that cloaked Sturgis, there appeared to hide another person entirely. But the older dragoon was the nearest companion to those of the old days that Ritchie had yet found; he was a link with that past which Ritchie had thrown away on a hot dreary day in July when he had turned his back on his old life with what he hoped was firm courage.

  They fetched up beside the faro table and for a few minutes stood watching the play, Ritchie with the interest of a newcomer and Sturgis with the narrowed, intent eyes of one to whom this was an absorbing business.

  Besides the scout, Tuttle, there was a full circle of other players. Every seat was filled, and onlookers crowded two and three deep behind their shoulders. About half were Spanish-New Mexicans, but among them was a buckskin-shirted frontiersman, three soldiers, and the dealer, a small, whitehanded man whose linen was immaculate and whose frock coat was of the latest fashionable cut.

  Pomaded curls were low across the forehead of his almost boyish face, and there was the sheen of pearls in the ruffles of his shirt front. Now and again he looked up from the cards and shot a swift, measuring glance around the circle of players and the men who watched. And all the time his hands moved with the quick precision of one engaged in a delicate art.

  Ritchie nudged Sturgis.

  "Who is he?"

  "Who? Oh, you mean Quinn? He's a gambler. They say he owns half interest in this place. Used to be in the Mounted Rifles during the Mexican War. Invalided out with a game leg and stayed on. He's straight, though. Straight and tough. And the deadliest shot in town. Ha, Currillo's cleaned out—"

  One of the New Mexicans, a dignified gentleman whose puce velvet coat was stiff with silver embroidery, had pushed back his chair. Sturgis edged forward. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes at Ritchie.

  "Care to try your luck?"

  Ritchie shook his head firmly. Quinn had paused in the game to speak a few courteous words of Spanish to the retiring player. Now he got to his feet, reaching as he did so for an ivory-headed cane. Another dark-coated man, not quite so perfect of linen or polished of manner, slid into his place. Quinn, leaning heavily on the cane, stumped past Ritchie and Sturgis, then stopped and turned back with a half nod to Sturgis, who answered with what seemed to Ritchie real reluctance.

  "Good evening." The gambler's voice was an emotionless monotone.

  Sturgis muttered. His squared shoulders had the look of defiance.

  "The paymaster did not come in, I believe," Quinn continued.

  A dull red flush spread across Sturgis' cheekbones, and it did not come, Ritchie guessed, from the heat of the overcrowded room.

  "He did not," the dragoon answered shortly.

  Quinn's thin lips stretched in what might or might not have been intended for a smile of social good manners. "A pity. He is sadly overdue, is he not? Good evening, gentlemen." This time he plainly; spoke in dismissal and swung away in a slow hobble headed for the back door of the room.

  Sturgis watched him go, the dark flush still staining his tanned skin. Then he turned and strode away, his spurs clicking on the flooring. Ritchie tagged along a little uncertainly.

  They fetched up against the bar. Sturgis had already ordered and was pouring most of that order down his throat. He flicked a finger at the bartender, who slid another glass along to Ritchie. The younger dragoon pushed it back. Sturgis laughed, and something in that sound tightened Ritchie's mouth and made him wary.

  "Don't gamble, don't drink, and you call yourself a dragoon!" Sturgis held his drawl down so that it couldn't carry beyond their own ears. "Johnny Green—maybe you are a little too green for us!"

  Ritchie's chin went up. "Maybe I am!"

  But Sturgis didn't meet the challenge. He laughed again, and this time all the taunt had gone out of it. "The Lord forbid that I should set your young feet on the path of evil. But neither will I waste a good drink." He reached for Ritchie's glass. "Let Sam give you a glass of tiswin, and we'll call it square. It'd take a barrel of that stuff to make your virtuous head go round."

  Ritchie was doubtful of the drink the bartender had pushed in his direction. It tasted vile, but he downed it, since it didn't smell like anything stronger than Sturgis had said it was. There was no afterbite in the throat, and a gentle warmth spread out in his middle section. He was sorry for his suspicions. After all Sturgis was only trying to show him a good time frontier fashion.

  The second glass of tiswin went even better. But the heat grew inside him, and he was very grateful for a glass of water which had appeared out of nowhere at his hand. He swallowed a good half of it before he discovered that the contents were anything but water.

  "What brought you into the army, Johnny Raw?" Out of the golden fog someone asked the question.

  He looked down at his hands resting on the polished wood before him. They were grimy about the knuckles, and there was a scar or two where reins had cut and a spur scratch had become infected.

  "We lost our money in the crash," he replied simply. "My father was a heavy investor in railroads, and he went under. He died of a heart attack last June. There was just enough left to keep the girls for a while—they went to live with Aunt Emma. I thought if I could get west and learn something about ranching or mining—"

  "You could make a new start." There was an angry edge to the answer. "Well, you weren't the first, even in this year of 1859. Travel at the army's expense, serve your five years, save your pay, and make a new start. Is that it?"

  "Yes." Ritchie caught at the edge of the bar. All of a sudden the floor had swayed. At the same time he felt other embarrassing symptoms which he had known once or twice before in his life. He shook his head miserably trying to clear it of the dizzy fog which wrapped him in.

  "Time to go, Johnny Raw—"

  A firm hand clamped on his elbow and steered him through a wild haze of noise and color and smells which added to the churning in his middle. But he reached the street in time.

  Having been thoroughly and miserably sick, Ritchie still clutched at his companion and allowed himself to be towed along. He stumbled in the dark but managed to keep his feet. And, although his guide snorted his impatience and seemed none too sure of his own footing, they fetched up in time at a door Ritchie dimly recognized as being that of the barracks.

  But there was someone there before them.
A lantern made them blink owlishly, and a voice, metallic hard and cutting, snapped them to wavering attention.

  "A case of the drunk leading the drunk, is that it, Sturgis? Who's the cub with you?"

  Ritchie faced the questioner; the voice had scraped raw what pride he had left.

  "Private Ritchie Peters, Company K, sir." Just his luck to be caught up now by an officer—

  The lantern swung. Through its beam Ritchie caught a glimpse of a smooth chin square set. ''Peters, eh? A little young for this, aren't you? And don't call me sir! Any more of this sort of thing, Sturgis, and you'll be up for a non-com's court."

  The lantern and the man who had held it turned away abruptly and swung off across the yard. Sturgis cleared his throat noisily.

  ''The mighty Herndon!" But the sneer was only halfhearted.

  Ritchie raised his hands to his whirling head and felt a return of the miserable sickness. There was something else clawing at him, too, a feeling that he had lost something, something precious that he had not known he possessed until it had slipped through his fingers. It was almost as if that slender, erect shadow had taken it away with him.

  2

  “Company K Has Style”

  Reveille split the wintry dark of the Sunday morning. Ritchie tried to banish the taste in his mouth by wriggling his tongue vigorously, found that impossible, and crawled gingerly out of his cocoon of blankets. His head was all one pounding ache, and he nursed it between his two hands for a long moment. Then, setting his teeth against the pain and the faint reminiscent heaving in his mid-section, he pulled on his clothes.

  The stables were dreary, and the light of the lanterns made little headway against the general gloom. Ritchie and his assigned mount, a thin-legged gray mare, eyed each other with mutual disfavor and disgust. He started in wielding the currycomb in a wary fashion.

  "You have Bess I see—"

  Ritchie swiped the back of his hand across his itching nose and stared sourly over the gray's back at the speaker.

  It was Sergeant Herndon who stood there, hands on hips and a critical gleam in his eyes as he watched Private Peters' performance.

  "And you needn't be so chary of doing your duty about the hindquarters. She doesn't kick, do you, old lady?" The latter part of the speech was made in a softer tone than the former, and the mare nickered and stretched out her head toward her questioner.

  "Doesn't she?" was all Ritchie found to say, stupidly enough. His headache was now a permanent fixture, and privately he though that even a good kick upon the seat of that pain might improve matters some.

  But he was not so sunk in his bog of misery as to ignore Scott Herndon. And, he decided, the Troop Sergeant was not a man to be overlooked in any company he might desire to frequent.

  Taller than Sturgis, the Sergeant moved with some of the Southerner's instinctive grace, but his shoulders never relaxed, and his voice had a crisp crack to it which brought hearers to attention. In that company of bearded men his smooth cheeks seemed youthful until one noted the square jaw, the firm straightness of his thin lips, and the cold tiredness of his eyes.

  Now he stepped forward and ran his right hand, encased to Ritchie's amazement in a white glove, along the flank of the mare. He held up smudged fingers, and Ritchie flushed.

  Doggedly the boy set to work again, expecting the Sergeant to make himself scarce after that unvoiced reproof-to try his method of inspection elsewhere down the line. But, instead, Herndon held out a grayish sack.

  "When you saddle up, put this gunny sack under your blanket. Keeps a horse from getting a sore back. In this country a man's life depends upon the health of his mount —a dead horse may mean a dead dragoon."

  "Thank you, sir." Ritchie stretched the coarse stuff between his hands.

  "Don't call me sir." The voice was chill, remote. And he heard the stamp of departing boot heels.

  "High-n-mighty been on your neck?" Sturgis, his blue eyes dark rimmed and bloodshot, his face a trifle puffy in the wavering light, peered in from the next half stall.

  Ritchie was trying out the gunny sack on Bess, smoothing out the stuff so that no pucker or wrinkle remained. Sturgis emerged an inch or two further.

  "I see he has—presenting you with his little invention for the comfort of these four-legged instruments of torture. Company K has style; so it has, so it has." The Southerner was evidently repeating some oft-heard quotation. "We can't give up and drop in our tracks after riding full gallop after the Apaches, so we can't! We just leap from our saddles, deploy in about five acres of saw-toothed rocks, and wipe 'em out! Ha! Let me tell you this, son—straight words from one who knows—it's hard work, this snatching the laurels from the fair brow of fame. And it's stiff-backed bell sharps like Herndon who make it all the harder." He spat a length of straw out of his mouth and went back to work.

  But the shrill notes of the bugle echoing across the parade ground brought him out again.

  "Sick call," he identified unnecessarily. "Lord, I feel dead, but I doubt if Doc would agree with me on that diagnosis. You don't look so spruce yourself."

  Ritchie tried to grin. But the wan stretch of skin he achieved was almost too much for his face.

  "I thought you said that tiswin was harmless," he began.

  Sturgis waved a hand. "Well, if you will mix gin with it, what do you expect? And wasn't our worthy sergeant aroused to see one of his new lambs in such a state? Now what is the matter, babe? You needn't ball those fists at me. If you can't take a joke and learn to hold your drinks, you're in for a tough time in this army."

  Ritchie quickened his pace. He knew now the trick Sturgis had played on him. A wink to the bartender had put up the gin, and safely stupefied by it, he would have been the free and easy spender Sturgis wanted as an evening's companion. He'd been a green Johnny Raw all right. Funny that the Southerner hadn't gone through with the whole plan instead of getting him back to the barracks. But let Sturgis or anyone else try to catch him like that a second time!

  A little righteous anger, he discovered, is the right prescription to relieve bodily misery. He was able to get through parade without disgracing himself. Since it was Sunday, they were treated to a discourse from the Colonel, during which Ritchie's mind roamed freely and none too happily. But there was no drill, and he was able to eat all the bean soup and have that hot liquid settle his stomach in its proper place once more.

  He kicked across the yard later, wishing that he could take Bess, in spite of her forbidding attitude, and ride off into the hills. But a mounted pass was more than a recruit could hope for. With a sigh he tramped back to the barracks and improved the hour by putting a super-shine on every piece of equipment that would take polish. Several card games were in progress, but since the last payday was so far in the past, only the most hardened gamblers clung to the stakes they chiseled by vast proficiency out of one another. Ritchie dropped his carbine in the rack and went exploring.

  Sturgis, when Ritchie had refused a second invitation to do the town, had slammed off on his own, and the newcomer felt rather alone as he toured the barracks room looking at the trophies and loot assembled by Company K during its campaigning. The veterans of the troop held aloof from the recruits. They inhabited a world of their own with incomprehensible jokes and allusions to past events as its language, shutting out those who could not understand.

  But the room itself was worth close inspection. Above, a ceiling of strips of canvas kept the centipedes and other summer livestock from falling on one's head. Round-bellied, brightly patterned clay jars hung on twisted cords from the beams, ready to cool water in the heavy midsummer heat. A row of baskets so tightly woven from grass and roots that they could be used for washbasins—and were— sat on a bench in the middle of the room.

  The walls were a lace work of spears tipped with beautifully chipped obsidian points, quivers of coyote and mountain lion skin, some still holding arrows, and bows of wood and horn. Ritchie was guessing at the history of an oddly shaped pair of savagely ro
weled spurs, which dangled, rusty and useless, from one nail, when a man thrust his head in at the outer door.

  "Hey, fellas!" His voice carried down the room. "Diego is here with that thar performin' dog o' hissen—!"

  There was a concentrated rush for the door in which Ritchie was borne along. And a few seconds later he found himself one of a tight circle on the parade ground where a mushroom-hatted Mexican stood bowing to the company.

  A small white rough-coated dog sat quietly at his feet. Its forelegs and shoulders had been forced into a blue military jacket, and aslant on its head was a miniature copy of the broad-brimmed dragoon hat. At a hissed word of command it arose to its hind feet, holding between its fore-paws a small carbine whittled out of wood.

  Following Diego's orders the dog went through the manual of arms. Its whiskered face showed an expression of boredom, but it came to life when some of the men tossed it bits of pork filched from the kitchen.

  "Smart dog, Diego. Give yo' a double-eagle fur him!" came out of the audience.

  Diego showed yellow-white teeth in a discreet grin.

  "Thees dog are ver' ver' smart, si, senores. An' where does thees senor geet heem one double-eegal?"

  "Yeah, Benny, where?" demanded several of the would-be-buyer's friends. "Bin a-holdin' out on yore pals?"

  "Robbed the paymaster, Benny?" inquired someone else. "Maybe that's why he ain't bin around, boys!"

  "Ah—Diego would trust me—" began Benny.

  But the Mexican showman shook his head firmly. "Diego trusts no man, senor. That ees why he ees still frien's weeth many. Perro," he spoke to the dog. "Where ees Apache'— you fin'!"

  The dog dropped its toy gun and ran in widening circles through the crowd—the men edging out to let it through. Finally it stopped short before a man on the very outskirts of the circle and began to bark sharply.