The patrol numbered twelve soldiers, Lieutenant Sprague, Corporal Williams, the Delaware, and himself. Sprague was an officer who had come in with Sykes’s detachment, a man of forty or so, bearded, tough, and capable. They lined out in a column of twos, Callaghen riding beside Sprague.
“We are to scout the Vegas Springs trail for ten miles,” Sprague said, “then swing southeast and join the Government Road from Fort Mohave.”
Day came, and it was hot and still. Shadows were at the mouths of the canyons, retreating from the sun as it rose higher.
They saw no tracks. There seemed to have been no movement along the trail in days; but the Mohaves did not use the trail at any time, and other Indians used it seldom. They scouted right and left, looking for sign, but found nothing, Callaghen had not expected they would.
“We are not looking for Indians,” Sprague said. “I want to start breaking my men in for desert work, and to get the lay of the land myself.”
Near the trail they came on the ruins of several burned-out wagons. “That happened several years ago,” said Callaghen, “when Indians ambushed a caravan of freight wagons. The freighters were game, and made a fight of it. The Indians ran off a few horses, and disappeared into the hills.”
“Any casualties?”
“Three wounded men; half a dozen wagons were looted and burned, about twenty head of stock were lost. No one knows whether the Mohaves lost anybody or not.”
“Will the Indians attack us?”
“No. Not unless there were five or six hundred of them, and this desert will hardly support so many. They’ll watch us, and when we camp they’ll stampede our stock if they can. Otherwise we won’t even see them.”
He paused. “We can always recruit more men, but they can not. There are just so many Indians in each tribe, and when they suffer casualties it is a severe loss. They won’t risk it.”
When they stopped to rest their mounts, Callaghen stepped down. The Delaware came up beside him. “I think Indians are here,” he said. “I think they want the stage.”
Callaghen nodded toward Sprague. “He has his orders, and they are quite definite.”
Within half an hour after turning southeast they cut an Indian trail four warriors on foot, traveling northeast at a good gait. Sprague knew something of tracking, and he looked at the tracks, glanced off to the northeast, and continued on. Six miles farther along, when they were looking for a camping spot, they passed the trail of half a dozen more warriors, all going northeast at a trot.
Sprague squatted in the sand and chewed on a piece of stick. He squinted at the sun, and looked off in the direction they were going. “How old is that trail?” he asked.
“Two, three hours.”
“And to the stage road… how far for them?”
“They’ll be there now, somewhere along that road. At least ten of them.”
Sprague got out his map and studied it. “The stage will have an escort… part of the way, at least,” he said.
Callaghen waited. Sprague was a good man, a solid man. He knew his duty, but there was nothing in him that would keep him from exceeding it if he felt called upon to do so. Callaghen mentally hefted his canteen, estimating the water. In the desert water made men vulnerable, and the Mohaves knew that. Sixteen men and their horses require a lot of water, and the first move of the Indians would be to deny water to their enemies.
The enlisted men of Sprague’s command were armed with the Spencer.56-.50 carbine with a seven-shot magazine. Each man also carried a Blakeslee cartridge case, a wooden container covered with leather that carried ten tubes of cartridges, each one ready to be loaded through a hole in the butt plate. In addition, each man carried a Colt.44 six-shooter, worn on the right side, butt forward. Their sabers, weapons useful in the War Between the States and in European cavalry charges, but not effective against the American Indian, had been left in their quarters, to be worn on dress occasions. They were heavy, and they rattled too much; against the lances of the Indians they were generally useless.
Callaghen wore his gun as regulations prescribed, but he carried another, as regulations did not prescribe, tucked behind his belt inside his blouse, easily available in case of need. He wanted a six-shooter where he could get it into action fast. Also, having come from another unit, he carried a Henry.44, sixteen-shot rifle. It fired a 216-grain bullet with a powder charge of 25 grains in a rim-fire cartridge.
Heat waves shimmered across the desert, and in all that vast distance, aside from the thin column, nothing moved but a buzzard swinging in lazy circles, far above. Shortly after noon, in a canyon mouth that provided shade, Sprague halted and dismounted his men for a break. They scattered in the shade along the canyon wall, two men remaining with the horses.
Sprague lit the stub of a cigar and squinted at the heat waves. “Damned hard to see through that,” he commented, speaking around the cigar as he touched it with a match. “It distorts everything. Had much experience in the desert, Callaghen?”
“Yes, sir. A good deal, sir.”
“Is it all like this?”
“No, sir. There’s some big dunes ahead, and a lot of cinder cones… old volcanic action.”
Sprague glanced at him. “I hear you’ve been an officer?”
“Not in this army, sir.”
Sprague shrugged. “In my last command my first sergeant had been a Confederate colonel. Have you seen much action? I mean aside from out here?”
“Yes, sir. Fourteen, fifteen years of it.” He paused. “I’m getting out, and I’m leaving the service. My papers are overdue.”
Sprague dusted the ash from his cigar. “Better think it over.”
“At eighteen dollars a month? No, sir. I can do better driving stage, or mining. There’s not much chance to get ahead, and a man is getting older all the time.”
“You’re right about that. And there isn’t any shortage of officers. The war provided plenty of them.” He looked out over the desert. “A weird place, Sergeant.”
“South of here,” Callaghen said, “in the Colorado desert, there’s a story of a lost ship with a cargo of pearls. Much of that desert is below sea level, and a man can see the old shore line plainly. The story is that a Spanish ship came into the area when it was flooded, but the opening was closed by tidal bores up the Gulf of California, and the ship’s crew could not find a way out. Another story is that that same area was the original home of the Aztecs, and that they migrated to Mexico.”
“Think there’s anything to it?”
“It’s all guesswork, but old Spanish documents do tell strange stories. The Spaniards came first, after all, and they saw some things that time has erased, and of course the Indians had stories to tell.
“The Relaciones,written by Father Zarate Salmeron, tells of a party of Spanish soldiers who came to a lonely place on the shores of the Gulf of California and found some Asiatics there. Awnings had been set up on the shore near their ships, and they were trading with the Indians. That was about 1538. They implied they had been trading there for years.”
Lieutenant Sprague stood up, and Callaghen did likewise. He said, “Deserts breed mystery, and especially such a place as this, which was not always desert.”
“You think not?”
“Dig down, Captain, almost anywhere out there, and soon you will strike a layer of black soil decomposed vegetation. Once this was a green and lovely land, with patches of trees, perhaps even real forest. Our knowledge is like an iceberg: we know a little, but the vast amount we have yet to learn still remains hidden from us.” He paused.
“All right,” Sprague said. “Mount them, Sergeant.”
They saw no Indians; there was no movement but the heat waves. They rode on, swinging farther away from the trail to Vegas Springs. Again they saw tracks… four Indians, these headed northwest.
“What do you make of it?” Sprague asked the Delaware.
“They know the stage comes. They will attack.”
Lieutenant Sprague drew up sharply, lifting a hand to halt the command. “You think so?”
“Many Indians ride west by north,” the Delaware said, “too many Indians. We see fourteen, fifteen… Maybe twice as many ride from elsewhere. I think they do not ride for nothing.”
“Callaghen, what’s your opinion?”
“I’d have to agree, sir. Whatever an Indian does is apt to be for a reason. We have found the tracks of three parties going northwest. The only thing in that direction is the trail to Vegas Springs to Las Vegas.”
Lieutenant Sprague considered the situation with no pleasure. His orders had been clear. He was to make a sweep through the desert, acquainting himself with the country, giving the Mohaves a show of force, and scouting to see if there was any activity. At the same time their basic mission was to protect travelers on the Government Road, whether to Fort Mohave and the Colorado, or to Vegas Springs.