“Studying a way out,” Callaghen replied. He nodded toward the east. “We can see quite a bit of the road to Fort Mohave yonder. Once around that mountain, there’s a long stretch of open country. After the horses are rested we might make it across there… if there aren’t some Indians waiting for us in Cedar Canyon.”
The trail was not only visible from the redoubt, but from nearby they could see the rarely used trail from Marl Springs. The trail over which they had come was hidden behind the mountains and they could see nothing in that direction.
“I think we should pull out now,” Wylie said. “I’m going to talk to the stage driver. We could stay holed up here the rest of our lives.”
“We could,” Callaghen agreed mildly. “But I think the first thing is to rest our horses.”
Where was Sprague?That question kept bothering him.
Suppose the Indians had stampeded their horses? Who was with them who knew the water holes as he had known them when he led his small command out of the desert? Sprague might have a map, but Callaghen knew well enough how unreliable maps can be. Somewhere out there Sprague might be dying of thirst.
Callaghen folded the map and walked over to where MacBrody sat talking to Ridge. “I’ve got to find Sprague,” he said, squatting on his heels beside them. “It just dawned on me that he doesn’t have one man who knows this country.”
“How would you find them in all that?” Ridge asked, gesturing with his right hand.
“You’d never pass the first mile,” MacBrody said. “Not even an O’Callaghan could do that.”
“Sprague’s outfit might give me a lead through their tracks. I can go back where I left them, and trail from there.”
MacBrody looked at him sourly. “My duty is here, and I like it that way. I’m looking for nothing out there.”
“Don’t do it, Sergeant.” Ridge spoke emphatically. “You’d have small chance. It would take a ghost to move among those Indians without their knowing it.”
“Then I shall be a ghost,” Callaghen said.
He squatted there while they discussed his chances, but he was scarcely thinking of their words. He knew what his chances were, but he also remembered his own narrow escape from dying of thirst out there. And he knew where the water holes were. He was no hero, and he did not think of what he was doing as heroic; it was simply that Lieutenant Sprague and his men might need help. With horses they might make it, of course. After all, they could locate the trail to Marl or Rock Springs, or even to Bitter Springs.
Sprague and his men were already short of water when he had left them. If they had not reached a water hole by now, they were in serious trouble… and the Indians would know, just as they had known about Callaghen and the others.
“I’ll go tonight,” he said, “but say nothing about it to the others.”
Ridge dug at the earth between his feet. “Damn it, man, I’d go with you, but ”
“You’re not a soldier. Your job is with that stage.”
Callaghen got up and walked to the wall. For a while he moved from place to place, studying the area outside. Getting a horse out would be hardest of all, for undoubtedly the Indians would move in closer at night.
There was a restlessness in him that did not come from their confinement here. He knew it was because of that discharge which was due, that might even now be at Camp Cady. He wanted to be free, moving out on his own, trying himself in the world outside the army.
Men were building a country here. Although some sought merely quick wealth, others were bringing the law, bringing order, establishing homes and businesses… it was an exciting time to live. As yet there was no great wealth; men had only what they could make for themselves with their own strength, their own ingenuity. It was ability that mattered. Even as he considered that, he was thinking that even in Europe things were changing. In England most members of the House of Lords were only a generation or two away from being commoners.
The old families who had come over with the Conqueror had declined or disappeared, and many of the conquered Anglo-Saxons were once again in positions of trust and importance. The same sort of thing could happen here, and a day might even come when Indians would hold important positions and direct affairs in the land they had once lost to an invader.
It was such thoughts that made him restless now, and gave him that urge to be out and doing… that, and some nameless thing in the desert itself, something that whispered to him with every wind, that stirred with every grain of sand. His mind seemed to wander over such a range of mankind’s doings. At this very spring, how many travelers must have stopped! Even prehistoric men who had shaped the flints or the hand axes he had seen; invaders too, who had driven them out. The only law was change, and he wanted to be a part of that change.
Suddenly, Malinda was beside him. “Mort, what are you thinking of?”
“I was wondering about Sprague and those men of his. They must be hunting water now, perhaps dying for it.”
“You’re going out there?”
“Yes.”
“But how can you find them in all that waste? How can you, Mort?”
“I have to try. I’d not forgive myself if I didn’t. You stay with the stage. Trust Ridge he’s a good man. So is Sergeant MacBrody.”
“MacBrody was talking about your family, Mort.”
“Just like an Irishman. He can’t keep his mouth shut. There’s nothing about my family except that I am a O’Callaghan. In Ireland, at least in some places, that meant quite a lot, but here it only means I am another Irishman.”
“It seems as if half the army is Irish. To say nothing of the tracklayers.”
“Sure, and tomorrow they will be in politics. Leave it to them. It’s the place they can do most with their talk, and the Irish love the sound of words… especially from their own tongues.”
“You can be one of them.”
“I will have to be. If a man is going to take on responsibilities he had better prepare himself to support them.”
She said nothing more, standing beside him in the evening coolness that came out from the canyons. He saw a faint movement among the rocks, a stir of something, and his hand went to his rifle.
An Indian? It seemed unlikely here, so close to the redoubt.
“MacBrody! Ridge!” His hoarse whisper carried across the corral and he gestured. They came quickly with their guns.
“There’s somebody out there, and I am thinking it is one of our men. If he makes a break for it, the Indians will try to kill him. We’ve got to have a covering fire.”
“All right,” MacBrody said, and he turned and moved toward his men, speaking softly.
Wylie, Becker, and Champion, the dark man who was Wylie’s companion, moved to the walls. Callaghen went to the gate and opened it ever so slightly.
For several minutes nothing happened, and then they saw him.
He dropped from among some rocks, looked quickly right and left, and then began a staggering run for the walls. An arrow hit the ground near him, another flew past. Instantly the men behind the wall opened fire on the rocks, and the arrows ceased.
The man came on, running hard now. Suddenly, when he was almost to the wall, a shot spongedin the clear air. The running man staggered and fell.
He started up, a rifle clipped the evening air again, and several rifles from the redoubt fired at the small puff of white smoke above the rocks.
Callaghen lunged through the gate and ran to the fallen man, catching him by one arm and swinging him over his back. Then he ran back, one futile shot smacking the wall beside the gate as he entered.
He lowered the man to the ground, and as-he saw him more clearly, he remembered him… it was Garrick, one of Sprague’s men.
“You… we thought… you were… dead.” The wounded man struggled with the words.
“Where’s Sprague?”
“Out there.” He gestured feebly. “He’s… he’s picked up some lead… They… they got Turner… drove off our… stock.”
“Where is he, Garrick? Where?”
“North… maybe ten, twelve mile.” He closed his eyes, breathing heavily. Malinda held a cup to his lips and he swallowed, then paused, gasping. “Peak… highest… look at the foot… A lone peak… way in the open… in line with where he is. No… no water.”
Callaghen got up and walked away a little distance. He knew the place, and it could scarcely be worse. That ten or twelve miles he spoke of was all right out in the open. There was almost no cover. It would be a chancy trip, but he had to do it.