He stepped to the door, and lifted the flap of canvas that did duty for a door. He studied the ground outside carefully, but there were too many footprints to determine anything. Any one of the men might have come here, searching for money or whatever else they could find of value.
He went next door to the captain’s quarters, where he reported to Captain Hill. Hill went back with him and stared around Allison’s quarters. “Thieves! As if we didn’t have trouble enough out here without having blasted thieves among us! Eight men, and how do we know which one it was?”
“Seven men, sir. I came here on the captain’s orders, and I would have had no reason for this.”
Carefully, Callaghen gathered together the things that had belonged to the lieutenant. Allison had been a neat, meticulous sort of man. His uniforms were new, showing no wear. Allhis clothes were new. This was an unusual thing for a man who has seen much duty.
Puzzled, Callaghen examined them again. At least one uniform, he was sure, had never been worn. At least one pair of boots had not been worn. The cavalry saber, bright and shining, that hung from a nail in the corner could also have been new.
One by one he checked and listed the articles, and when he had finished, he sat down on the bed. Everything Lieutenant Allison had possessed was new; and whatever else he had planned, he had not planned to stay. He had none of those things an officer brings to a new, desert station, those little things that can make one’s camp life more pleasant. No pictures, no papers, no books. Not even extra soap… nothing. And he had yet to look at the things Allison had carried on his person.
These he now put down on the table before him. There were a ring with three keys, a few odd coins, and in a small leather poke, ten gold eagles a good sum for an army officer to be carrying. There was also a letter, and a receipt for storage of a trunk, which had been left at a hotel in Los Angeles. And last of all, put inside the poke in such a way that it seemed merely another thickness… a rectangular piece of doeskin, and on it some arrows, circles, and rows of XX’s.
It was a map of the Mohave Desert, the XX’s indicating mountain ranges; the circles were waterholes. Death Valley was not shown; the Colorado River, however, was drawn with great care. The west coast and the mountains separating the desert from the sea were not shown. To one who did not know the desert, the map would mean little, and there was no indication of what it might be meant to show.
Whoever had drawn it had no exact knowledge of the desert. Several small mountain ranges were left out, by accident or on purpose. The only section drawn with any detail, was of a rugged range of mountains that lay to the east of where they had ridden on patrol, and of the route that led to it from the Colorado River.
After a moment’s thought, Callaghen put the map inside his shirt, and carefully packed everything else, and carried the duffel bag and saber to Captain Hill’s quarters.
Hill glanced at the things. “You take charge of them. There will be a rider leaving for San Bernardino tomorrow. Send it with him.”
Callaghen walked back to his shelter. Croker looked up as he entered. He looked at the duffel bag. “You fixin’ up Allison’s gear? Too bad about him.”
“He was a good man. I think he would have made it.”
“You got to learn fast out here. When it comes to Injuns, if you flunk the course you lose your hair.”
Croker studied the duffel bag. “He didn’t carry much, did he? You’d figure a man of family, like he was, would carry more stuff to make things easy. Last post I was on, when a young officer came in he brought all sorts of extra grub, and other things.”
“I know nothing about Allison’s family. He did leave an address a sister, or something. I am sending his stuff to her.”
“Yeah? Hill sure depends on you. What you got on him?”
“Nothing,” Callaghen said. “He needs help, that’s all. With Allison gone, he has no one to help.”
He did not like Croker, and wanted to avoid his questions, but did not want to make an issue of it. The man was tough. He had a bad flesh wound, but once it was bound up he had come through the long march in better shape than Walsh, who was unhurt. Good or bad, the man was a stayer, and he was the kind the frontier needed. Callaghen’s mind was busy with the curious map. He thought that whoever had gone through Allison’s stuff had been looking for it… but it might have been somebody just hoping to find a bottle of whiskey.
The map now… it was obviously old. Whoever had made it had worked from the Colorado River westward and northward, and apparently knew nothing at all of the country that lay between this camp and the coast.
Nor did the mountain ranges lie as they should. The mapmaker had probably had no compass, and had not been able to locate himself in relation to the cardinal points. The skin was beautifully tanned, probably by an Indian.
But why a map at all? And how had Allison come into possession of it?
He considered Captain Hill. A good man, but a tired one. Nearing fifty years of age, without influence and probably without anything spectacular in his record, he would be shunted from post to post now, with no hope of promotion. A good man lost in the shuffle. He would be nearing retirement, a patient man who did his duty from day to day, just one of the men who help to make the whole machine work.
As he cleaned his rifle and the pistol he had acquired from the lieutenant, Callaghen considered all the aspects of the situation. Gradually, he got his gear in shape, and with the Delaware, he led the horses to fresh pasture, where the Indian remained on guard.
Starting back, he saw something move in the brush ahead. He walked on, but as he passed that particular clump of brush he glanced down. Boot tracks in the earth… it was Croker, then. He had seen those tracks often enough on their long march. Croker was watching him… why?
Croker must suspect that he had found something in the lieutenant’s equipment, and Croker was a greedy man. Did he know more than he himself did? Of was the man just hoping for anything of value? Come to think of it, Croker had arrived in camp in Allison’s company, together with that easterner and the kid from Minnesota.
It was hot and still outside. Off across the sandy plain a dust devil danced briefly, then lost itself somewhere among the greasewood. It was a miserable, God-forsaken place in which to serve one’s time, and yet he squinted his eyes against the glare and looked at the far-off hills, lost in the blue it was a good country… for those who did not fight it.
That was the secret of the desert. One had to accommodate one’s self to it. To the vast loneliness, the distances, the far-off hazy mountains, to the shadows they took on at dawn or at sunset. There was harshness in this land, but there was beauty too. It was a country a man could grow to love. He fought the Indians out here because they fought him, but in a way he understood them, too. At least, he believed he did.
His time here was short only a few days longer. He had forgotten to sew on his stripes, forgotten to mention them. Well, no matter. In a few days he would be free of the army, and he could go wherever he wished.
But where?Back to Ireland? Back to Boston? What was there for him in either place? Boston was just a city where he had stopped for a time… and there had been so many other cities, other places. He was used to the army way, and it had been a long time since there had been any other, except for short periods.
Like so many others, he had been running when he joined the army, escaping from the past, trying to lose himself in its routine. His career had been little different from that of many another Irish soldier of fortune. His name had been O’Callaghan in Ireland, an ancient and honored name, but after the ill-fated rebellion of 1848 he had fled the country, by the first ship he could get on, which was one to Canada.
The gold rush was on, and he crossed Canada and went down the west coast to California, where he panned gold on the Trinity, and from the first pan had found color. Finally he went to San Francisco, where he was shanghaied, and when he again realized where he was he found himself at sea, his gold gone.