With a sharp turn he avoided two Indians rising from the ground and went racing toward the rocks. Shots sounded behind him, and then two Indians came up from the rocks right where he had believed Sprague might be. But even as they raised up, gunfire came from the rocks and one Indian fell. The other scrambled away, but then lunged for him. Instead of trying to evade him, Callaghen turned his horse and rode him down, the man screaming.
Then he was up among the rocks and he saw a spot of blue in front of him. He leaped the horse over a last circle of rocks and pulled up short in the little cul-de-sac where the soldiers were.
He dropped from the saddle. One quick glance showed him he had come none too soon.
Sprague was propped up against the rocks, his face gray with pain and exhaustion. Three of the others were wounded. One had his head wrapped in a bloody improvised bandage, another had splints on one leg. All were in desperate shape.
Callaghen glanced back at the desert. The Indians were gone. One body lay out there on the sand. The others had vanished as if they had never been there.
He took a canteen from his horse. “Figured you boys might like a drink,” he said.
He held the canteen first for Sprague, whose hands were shaking as he reached out for it. He drank only a swallow. “The rest is for the men,” he said hoarsely.
Slowly the canteen went from man to man. “Take it easy,” Callaghen said. “Too much of this now is as bad as none.”
After all had had a drink Callaghen sat down and asked, “How long has it been?”
“We been out of water two days and two nights,” a man said. “They done stole our horses and pinned us down. You sure came when needed.”
“We’ve got to move. More of them will be coming now.”
“We’re in no shape,” Sprague said.
“There’s a water hole a mile or so south. We’ll have another drink of this, wait a bit, and have another. Then if it’s all right with you, sir, we’ll move out.”
“Any word from Major Sykes?” Sprague asked.
“No, sir. I doubt if he knows any of this is happening, for he’s had no word.” He explained about the stage, and his own actions. “The Delaware is at the Marl Springs redoubt,” he added, “and so is your man Garrick.”
He passed the canteen around again and each man took a careful swallow. One by one they began tightening belts, pulling on boots, getting ready for the move. None of them looked forward to it, but none of them wanted to stay here.
Crouched down, Callaghen drew a diagram in the sand. “Here’s where we are,” he said, pointing. “There’s a water hole about here, something like a mile. We should head for that and refill our canteens. Then southwest of there is Cut Spring another two miles. I think we can make that all right. And we’ll have to fight.”
“That’s the pinch, Sergeant,” Sprague said. “We’re running short of ammunition.”
“I’m carrying a hundred rounds,” Callaghen said, “but mine won’t fit your guns. I did stick some of your ammunition in my gear, but it won’t come to more than five rounds per man.”
“That’s more than we have,” Sprague said. “Two of our men have nothing left. I doubt if there’s thirty rounds in the lot of us… for rifles, at least.”
He sat up. “Beamis, you and Wilmot and Isbel are the best shots. I want each of you to have ten rounds apiece.”
“Mercer’s as good a shot as me, maybe better,” Beamis suggested. “He done some fighting up Minnesota way.”
“All right Mercer too. The rest of you divide up their packs and carry them so you can be free to shoot.” Sprague looked around at Callaghen. “Sergeant, we’ll need your horse. Will he carry double?”
“He will, sir.”
“We have two men who can’t walk, so they’ll ride. How soon should we move, Sergeant?”
“Right away, sir. It’s still cool. I think we can make that first spring before it warms up, and with luck the second. We’d better hole up there through the heat of the day we can build shade with our coats, sir.”
Callaghen led the way, rifle in hand, with Beamis and Mercer behind him. Then the wounded men riding the black, the pack bearers next, and Wilmot and Isbel as rearguard. Sprague marched beside Callaghen, limping from a braised foot. They saw no Indians on the way.
At the water hole they found no one, although there were fresh moccasin tracks, and here they refilled their canteens. An hour later they started out once more, marching slowly. Again, all the way to Cut Spring, they saw no one. By the time they arrived there the Indians had gone, and it was a good thing.
Callaghen, looking around him, decided he had never seen such a bedraggled lot of soldiers. “We’ll keep the horse right close to us,” he suggested to Sprague. “If they get him, we’ll have played out our hand.”
The night was clear after the hot afternoon was gone. The stars were very bright; the desert was still. After a brief fire to make hot soup and coffee, they let the small flame die down and all of them rested.
The spring was among low granite knobs that provided a certain amount of protection. There was another spring some distance off, separated from them by a low hill. Callaghen slept a little, and when he woke he checked the two sentries, and permitted one of them to turn in. He touched the coffeepot that sat beside the coals. It was still hot.
He filled a cup, moved back to one of the rocks, and settled his back against it. “Heard anything?” he asked Mercer, sitting close by.
“No… I surely ain’t, but I’ve got a feelin’ they’re out there.”
“They are.” Callaghen agreed, and he sipped his coffee. “What did you do in Minnesota, Mercer?”
“Worked in a mill, as a boy. Then I kept store. I was doin’ fair to middlin’ when the massacre came. Little Crow, he went to church in the mornin’, all duded up in white man’s clothes, then he went home an’ put on his paint, an’ those Sioux, they turned to an’ kilt most ever’body around.
“They wiped me out, Sergeant. They taken whatever I had an’ set fire to the place. Lucky, me an’ the wife had stopped by the Larsons’ after church, or they’d surely have had us.”
“Your wife in Minnesota now?”
“No, she ain’t. Those injuns scared her. She taken off back east where she came from, an’ I joined up with the army. That was a few years back. I ain’t seen or heard from her since.”
“Tough.”
“Not the way I figure it. A woman should stick by a man, an’ up there most of ’em did. Trouble was, I married me a girl who’d never been far from her mama, an’ she wasn’t up to it, livin’ on the frontier, like. I don’t blame her, not none at all. I’d taken her to the wrong kind of world. Me, I’d been fetched up on the frontier in Illinois an’ Missouri, an’ I never knowed anything else.”
After a while he went on, “I’d like to go back. I’d like to cut loose from the army an’ find me some of this gold they talk about. I’d like to go back there an’ show her what I could do. She was forever holdin’ up her fancy friends to me. Well, I never had much, but I figure I can make as big tracks as any man.
“I wonder how some of them would have done, raised on sowbelly an’ beans the way I was. I had me a nice little store when those Injuns broke out. We always seemed to get along with ’em I’d of swore they cottoned to me. I’d have bet they wouldn’t burn me out.”
“When the young bucks get on the warpath they don’t stop to think,” Callaghen said.
He moved away to keep himself in the shadow. Mercer was a good man, he was thinking, and a good soldier, but like all of them, himself included, he was thinking of gold. Something seemed to click in his mind at that moment and he was seeing the map clearly. He was seeing a couple of crosses that could mean an isolated peak, and a series of them that could mean a range. He took a hasty swallow of coffee.
He was on the location of the map right this minute, he was sure. This spot was one of the indicated places; somewhere close by was the River of Golden Sands.
Not much was shown on his map, but in the morning… yes, when morning came he would look around. He had no clear idea why he felt so sure, but suddenly he knew… knew he was right where that map had been drawn.