The Government Road along which the stage would come was a mail route, adequate reason for keeping it open. He could see the road, but he saw no stage. Suppose it had been attacked before reaching this point?
He shifted his position, trying to see farther down the trail. At that moment a bullet clipped rock near him.
His horse was safe in a cleft in the rock that provided shelter from even ricocheting bullets. He studied the terrain before him, watching for a chance to get at least one of his enemies. He had a hunch that this lot of Indians were not Mohaves, but Pah-Utes. They often raided in this area, attacked travelers, and made swift forays on the ranches just over the mountains to escape with stolen horses. Sometimes they were led by white men. It was an old practice to steal horses in California and sell them in Arizona or Nevada, then to steal horses there and drive them to California for sale.
He glanced at the sun. Another hour until sunset. He settled down for a rest. It was unlikely they would try to cross the desert that intervened, for they had no wish to die… they would wait for darkness.
Callaghen relaxed, his rifle beside him, pistol ready to hand. The slight overhang protected both him and his horse against attack from above. He could be approached only from the desert in front or sides. He sat facing a crescent moon of rocks, open sand beyond.
He dozed, occasionally awoke to check the desert, dozed again. He saw no movement, heard no shots, or any sound of riders or stage. He was cut off, completely at a loss as to what was happening or had happened. As he sat, half asleep, half awake, his mind still was busy. Suppose the stage driver had some inkling of an impending attack, and had swung from his prescribed route?
There were areas of soft sand, but much of the surface was firm and the stage might make its own trail. But they would need water for the horses, which meant Bitter Spring or Marl Springs.
A good distance separated these two places, but how much distance he would have to drive would depend on where he left the regular trail. At any rate the stage seemed to have vanished, as had Lieutenant Sprague and the men.
The air became cool, darkness was coming, a star appeared. Callaghen poured half the water from his canteen into the crown of his hat and let his horse drink. He rinsed his own mouth with a tiny bit of water, and swallowed it.
There was a sandy spot where he could ride out from his shelter. At any other place the shoes of his horse striking rock would make a sharp sound that could be heard at considerable distance. He waited until full darkness, then stepped quickly into the saddle and went out of the gap at a swift pace. He ran the horse a good fifty yards, but heard no sound.
The Indians were gone. Perhaps they had left hours ago, leaving only one man to pin him down, and now that one, too, had gone. Where?
He rode down the trail toward Camp Cady for two miles but found no tracks of wagon or stage, nor any fresh tracks except those of unshod ponies. The dull light made it almost impossible to see any wheel tracks. He circled back in the desert toward where he had left the command, skirting a dry lake, white in the vague light of the stars. Several times he paused to listen.
It was eerie, and a haunted feeling came over him. Where was the stage? Where were the Indians? The patrol?
There was nothing anywhere… only the night, the desert, and the stars. To the north mountains loomed, the Old Dad range, with which he was totally unfamiliar.
Dark canyons opened before him, but he circled warily away, and his horse seemed pleased that he did. He could feel the spookiness in the muscles of the horse, feel its doubt, its suspicion of the night. A clump of greasewood had gathered a hill of sand. In its shadow he drew rein, trying to puzzle it out. The stage should have passed him hours ago. The sound of a rifle shot would carry for a good distance out here well over a mile but he had heard none from down the trail, and he had seen no tracks to show it had gone north.
Only two possibilities remained. The stage had turned back, or it had left the trail. If it had turned off, the logical direction would be toward Marl Springs. There were three soldiers guarding the redoubt there… or there had been.
But what had become of the patrol? He had heard no shooting after the first few minutes, and there was small chance they had been wiped out. To destroy a patrol of the size of the one led by Lieutenant Sprague would not be an easy task.
Nearby the Old Dad Mountains, ragged and sprawling, seemed like mountains on the moon. They would, if he went on along the shore of the soda lake, divide him from the trail the patrol had been following, and he hesitated to ride north around them. Every foot of the way would be a risk. It might be wise to hole up until daybreak, when he could see what he was doing; but travel was usually better in the cool of the night; by day he could be seen as well as see.
He decided he would ride on, find a place somewhere in the Old Dads and wait and see what might happen. He started toward the mountains. One thing was certain. The stage must leave tracks. It could not sprout wings and vanish. Nor could the patrol
CHAPTER 10
The sounds of the desert night are small sounds, sounds to which the ears must be attuned. In all men there remains much of the primitive, and after a short time in the desert a man’s senses begin to be more active. But he must listen, he must wait, he must give himself time to get the wavelength of the desert, and so he becomes aware of desert things around him.
Morty Callaghen had lived in the deserts of the world, and his ears had become alert, something easier there perhaps than anywhere else. The wind has a sound of its own, and that sound can be different among rocks, greasewood, the Joshua tree, or cacti. Small animals make only faint rustlings, but these too are soon recognized by the ear. A fall of rocks is natural; displaced by the wind or loosened by the alternating heat of the day and cold of night, a stone may fall, a trickle of sand may follow, then silence. A stone dislodged by a foot has a different sound, strange as this may seem a sharper, more definite sound.
The mountains, too, are not still, but a mountain lives at an infinitely slow pace. It stirs, it creaks, it is growing or coming apart, but all with a slowness incredible to man. This is a part of the wonder of the wild and empty places. The desert is always waiting. The seeds that fall on the desert and are trampled into the sand do not sprout with the first rain. There must be enough rain, and it must come at the right time; then the seeds will sprout. Some plants leaf out, bloom, and drop both blossoms and leaves in a matter of days. The fluted shape of many cacti is due to the need to offer less surface to the sun, the spines filter sunlight as well, and most cacti have a sort of waxy surface to prevent evaporation.
Callaghen, traveler from a far, green island, had come to love the desert. He waited now in the moonlight, among the scattered rocks and desert plants, knowing that as long as he remained still he would not be seen from any distance. He waited, and he listened. Overhead a bat circled, dived, fluttering about in an endless quest for insects.
On such a night sound carries far. He listened first for sounds close to him, then for those farther out.
At first he heard nothing, nothing at all. He was about to move on when some sound came to him from far off, a regular, continuing sound. The desert normally has no sound like it. Even the sound of the wind has changes.
This was a sound of something moving… not exactly dragging, yet not unlike that. He heard it, and then there was silence.
The sound had come from the north, perhaps a little east of north. Callaghen’s horse had heard it, too. His ears were up and he was looking in that direction, nostrils flaring for scent.
“We’ll go see,” Callaghen said softly. Callaghen’s eyes had been picking out ways to move from where he was, and now he chose one of them. He did not mount, not wanting to offer too much of a silhouette to whatever or whoever might be out there, and he did not reach for his carbine, which was slung to the pommel. He would get close enough for a handgun, and now he unbuttoned a button of his blouse, eased the butt of the gun there toward the opening, and then went ahead.