“Ever hear of the River of Gold?” he asked.
“Who hasn’t?” MacBrody said. “By the time you’ve lived out here as long as I have you’ve heard a hundred such stories the Lost Gun-Sight Mine, the Mine With the Iron Door, the lost Ship of the Desert. And I’d lay a bet, me boy, that hundreds of men have lost their lives a-hunting for them.”
“I’m sure that’s what brings Wylie here.”
“Aye. I know the man. It is a bad one he is. I saw him a time or two around Fort Churchill, over Nevada way. He’d killed a man in Virginia City, or somewhere there, and there was a bit of talk about it. I mean he’d given the man small chance, and there was a muttering around that it was murder, but he ran with a tough crowd and nobody wanted to open the ball with them with no more reason than that, and the dead man a stranger.”
Callaghen looked around, and felt the desert as a part of him. The afternoon was drawing to a close and the distant sand dunes that banked the mountains across the valley had taken on the rose color of the sunset. The abrupt range rising opposite, lifting a mile above the valley floor, showed a glassy sheen of black under the glancing light. He felt a yearning to go out there, to cross the valley and climb those mountains and disappear into their cool distance. At close hand they would probably not be cool, but that was his impression from here.
But to do such a thing would be the solution to nothing. He was a drifter, a soldier of fortune, or to put it more truthfully, a soldier of misfortune. He had gained little of this world’s wealth in his fighting, and that little had been spent… And now there was Malinda.
There was no avoiding the issue. He could solve no problems by disappearing into the mountains; nor could he face his problems any better by re-enlisting. He had entered the army in the first place because there was little else for a young Irishman of good family but no money to do. And for him after his brief meeting with warfare in Ireland, it seemed a logical course.
He had a quick, inventive mind when it came to tactics. Under the right circumstances he might have become a general, but the wars being fought in his time were small, inconsequential ones, allowing little scope for action. He had, literally, followed the way of least resistance. In the service most decisions were made for you, and your food and quarters were supplied; you received an order and you obeyed it to the best of your ability.
He had been a good soldier, some would say an excellent soldier. Moreover, he had risen to the rank of major in two armies, he had successfully coped with the enemy on many fields. But he had never proved himself capable of making a living at any other trade.
He could, it had been suggested, become a peace officer, for until men learned to live together in peace and subdue some of their impulses so that they could live with the benefits of civilization, there must be someone to keep the peace. But that had not been his choice, and he had continued to follow the life of a fighting man.
Now he knew that such a life was not for him not any longer. It was a dead end… it led nowhere.
He could, he supposed, study law, of which he knew a little. That might be a way out, though not a very satisfactory one, and it was one that promised success only after several years… If he could only find that River of Gold… But he realized that was just another evasion. He was like those men he had found in every land, men looking for treasure, for lost mines, men who had no other aim in life, and never ceased from looking until they were old and worn and tired out.
His thoughts went back to Sprague. Where was he? Had they found their way back, and did they believe him dead? Had they been ambushed and massacred? He doubted that Sprague was the man to lose his patrol. He was a careful officer who knew something of Indian fighting, and he was considerate of his men.
What was his own duty under the circumstances? Callaghen considered that. Their purpose for being in the desert in the first place was to protect the mail route and those who traveled over it. Well, that was what he had been doing.
Evening had come with its coolness. The stars were out, and the sky was without a cloud. Far away the serrated ridge of the mountains showed a sharp outline.
A fire was burning at the other side of the corral, and he could smell coffee being made. MacBrody came over to him. “It is glad I am that you’re here, Callaghen. My men are dead tired from the lack of sleep. You van spell us on guard.”
“Keep an eye on your horses and ours,” Callaghen advised. “I’d not be trusting Wylie and his friend.”
The glow of the campfire and the good smell of coffee and of bacon frying were pleasant, but he was uneasy. He knew the Indians were out there, though these might not be of the same band that had attacked him after he left the command.
He had no feeling of enmity for the Indians. They lived their life, a way of life thousands of years old, and he did not think of it as good or bad; it was simply the way things were. They lived according to their needs, the white man according to his cultures of different backgrounds, cultures each with its own principles.
The philosophy of it all was not important here; here the question was simple: to live or not to live; to fight successfully, or to die. There is a vast difference between the man who contemplates such a question at home beside a warm fire with a drink in his hand or discusses it in academic halls, and the man who faces it on a dark night in a far-off lonely place, with the sweat trickling down his ribs, and savage fighting men closing in on him.
Callaghen moved restlessly around the walls of the redoubt What would the Indians do? For them, within the walls there was a store of booty. One thing they had working for them, and this was something they had learned very soon. The white man was impatient. He felt the need to move, to be doing. The Indian had learned patience, and he could wait out there in the bleak bills, needing little food, and knowing where there were hidden cisterns of water or seeps that could be uncovered and then covered again, and he could move as he wished. Callaghen went back to the fire and took the coffee Aunt Madge handed him; then he moved away from the firelight, his eyes blinded from the fire. Looking into the firelight is a comforting thing, conducive to dreams. But it may leave your eyes unaccustomed to darkness, and that is not a good thing in Indian country.
Aunt Madge followed him away from the fire. “You’d best eat something, Mort. I think it will be a long night.”
“They’re out there.”
“I know.” She paused. “How many do you think there are?”
“Any number is too many. We aren’t looking for a war; we just want to keep the mail route open, and to keep the freight wagons rolling.”
Somewhere out in the night darkness a pebble rattled on the rocks. An Indian? Or just a natural stirring in the night?
Aunt Madge went back to the fire. Callaghen walked to a dark corner of the corral and sat down on the tongue of the stagecoach. He sipped his coffee slowly, listening to the sounds from outside the wall they were few.
One by one the group around the fire left to turn in. His own eyelids were heavy and he got up, throwing out the dregs from his cup. MacBrody was at the fire, as was Ridge.
“You want to try going on?” Ridge asked.
“We’ll wait one day at least.” Callaghen glanced at MacBrody. “Will that cut you down much on supplies?”
“We’ll work it out, Mort. By that time the freight wagons may be here, or Lieutenant Sprague may show up. And Indians are notional they might just pull out of their own idea.”
Becker had volunteered for the first watch. Sampson, one of MacBrody’s men, was assigned to the second. “Wake me,” Callaghen said, “and I’ll stand the dawn watch myself.”
He slept as he always did, waking often, listening for a few minutes, then going back to sleep again. He had lived so long in places where to sleep too soundly might mean death that he had lost the habit. What would it be like, he wondered, to sleep a night through without worry?