The Colonel's Lady Read online

  Steuber lunged drunkenly at Morgan, the bottle in front of him.

  “Drink!” Skiborsky commanded.

  “Go to hell!” Morgan snarled.

  “Drink!”

  I uncorked Skiborsky's bottle and poured some of the pale liquid fire down my throat. Steuber was waiting patiently for Morgan either to drink or hand the bottle back. Angrily, Morgan jerked the cork out with his teeth and threw it across the barracks. He turned the bottle up and drank almost a quarter of it before taking it from his mouth. Skiborsky stumbled and fell across my bunk, convulsed with idiotic laughter.

  “Don't drink it all,” the Dutchman complained to Morgan.

  “You go to hell, too!”

  They began wrestling for the bottle.

  “Here, take some of this, Steuber,” I said. Steuber fell off the bunk and lay on his back on the floor, grinning stupidly. Skiborsky, giggling, took his own bottle, held it out at arm's length, and splashed whisky in the Dutchman's face.

  “There you are, you goddamn Dutchman! There's a drink for you!” Steuber opened his mouth wide, trying to catch the whisky dribbling from the bottle. Skiborsky became convulsed with laughter again and had to sit down.

  “What the hell is this?” Morgan demanded, looking at me.

  “What does it look like?” Skiborsky said. “Drink up, Morgan. That's apt to be the last whisky you'll ever get out of me.”

  “I didn't ask for your whisky.”

  “Drink!”

  I had a drink. I passed the bottle to Skiborsky and he had a drink. Steuber was snoring on the floor, his mouth still open. Skiborsky sloshed some more whisky into the Dutchman's mouth and almost strangled with laughter as Steuber spewed and sputtered and rolled under the bunk.

  I was seeing a side of Skiborsky that I had never known existed, had never even guessed at. Skiborsky the drunken clown. It stunned Morgan even more than it did me.

  “What is this?” a voice from the barracks doorway wanted to know. It was Roff, the first sergeant, looking like Abraham Lincoln in a blue cavalry uniform.

  “We're gettin' drunk,” Skiborsky yelled at him. “Me and Reardon and Morgan and that goddamned Dutchman, we're gettin' good and drunk.”

  “Couldn't you be a little quieter about it?”

  “Sure we could, but we ain't. Have a drink.”

  “I've got work to do. The Captain's in the orderly room, he can hear you. They can hear you clean out to the sutler's store.”

  “Maybe Kohi'll hear me. What do you think about that, Sergeant? Maybe Kohi'll think we've got a whole damn regiment here at Larrymoor for a change. Maybe I'll scare his goddamn filthy breechclout off of him, what do you think of that?”

  “Kohi'll probably think the whole post is drunk and stage a raid,” Roff said.

  “Let him raid! Tell the Captain to have a drink.”

  “The Captain's busy. Just be a little quieter or you might find yourself a common trooper again, Skiborsky.”

  Skiborsky snorted indignantly. “Skiborsky a common trooper? Then where'd this goddamn company be? Where would you find another noncom to take my place?”

  Roff shrugged and smiled wearily. “Just be a little quieter. C Company's patrol came in just a little while ago.”

  “The hell with C Company.”

  “Three men were dead,” Roff said quietly.

  Something happened to Skiborsky's eyes. “Who?” he asked, this time in a normal voice.

  “Wilson, McCambridge, and Lieutenant Stuart.”

  Skiborsky sat quietly for a moment, letting the information roll around his mind. Then he doubled one big fist and punched the bunk lightly three times. “Goddamn, goddamn. All right, Roff, we'll quiet down.”

  The First Sergeant nodded and went back to the orderly room, leaving the barracks in sudden uneasy silence.

  “Did you know them?” I asked, to break the silence.

  “I soldiered with Wilson and McCambridge in Indian Territory. The Lieutenant was a pup, just out of the Point.”

  Skiborsky had a drink and silence took over again. There were other troopers in the barracks who hadn't paid any attention to the uproar. Probably they were used to scenes like this after Skiborsky had finished “schooling” a man. Now they seemed to be watching, waiting for something to happen.

  Morgan, who had been listening vaguely with glazed eyes, was quite drunk by now. “What we ought to do,” he said in a measured, cool voice, “is mount this damn cavalry and go after the redsticks. Teach 'em a damn good lesson, that's what we ought to do.” He shook his bottle, studied its-, contents, and had another drink. “Teach the redsticks a lesson,” he said, nodding ponderously. “That's the thing to do.”

  Skiborsky, apparently sober now, studied him pityingly. “Trooper,” he said softly, “there are a lot of things I can't teach you, and about redsticks is one of them. But you'll learn. You'll learn.”

  “Sure,” Morgan said, grinning crookedly. He seemed to have forgotten that he hated Skiborsky. “Have a drink.”

  “Thanks,” the Sergeant said dryly, accepting his own whisky from Morgan. The bottle went around. Steuber snored.

  “When will we be getting patrol duty?” I asked, mostly to break the silence, which was becoming uncomfortable.

  Skiborsky shrugged. “Pretty soon. Don't be eager, trooper, you'll get your gut full of it.”

  “I want to see this Kohi,” Morgan said dreamily.

  “And you,” Skiborsky said soberly, “don't be gettin' any wrong ideas about Kohi. Where you came from maybe you had a reputation as a hardcase, maybe you were fast with a gun and had people afraid of you—I don't know about that. Kohi won't know about it either. And he won't care.”

  “A redstick,” Morgan sneered.

  “And a damn smart one,” Skiborsky said patiently. “He's outgeneraled every officer Washington has sent north of the Gila.”

  The other troopers in the barracks went back to whatever they had been doing—shining boots, brushing uniforms, playing poker, or just thinking their own private, unknowable thoughts. It seemed strange, when I thought of it, that only a few hours ago Skiborsky and I had been fighting like savages. He wasn't a bad one, and I had an idea that the Dutchman had been right in his estimation of the Sergeant. More than likely he was a damn good soldier.

  The whisky had dulled Morgan's mind, as well as his hatred, and I listened to his rambling, aimless talk go on and on. But he never talked of himself. He would never get drunk enough for that.

  The whisky had gone full cycle with Skiborsky. He was right back where he started, sober and weary and full of disgust. He was beginning to regret the money he had spent on the whisky. No doubt he was also regretting the fact that he had let us see that he was human after all. Familiarity breeds contempt, the officers say. And Skiborsky was an officer—a noncommissioned one, but still an officer of sorts, with authority. I could see him turning the idea over in his mind. For a moment he grinned that old fierce grin of his and I knew that it was over. He stood up abruptly and snatched what was left of his whisky from Morgan's lax hand.

  “That's all you get, trooper,” he snarled. “From here on out you can buy your own goddamn whisky.”

  Morgan blinked, puzzled. I could see him trying to figure out what had happened, but his numb brain was not capable of coping with anything that complex. Skiborsky jutted his chin out. The old Skiborsky again. He grinned that grin at us and stalked out of the barracks.

  “Now what happened to him?” Morgan started to ask, and then he forgot all about it and lay back on the bunk and kicked his boots into the aisle down the center of the barracks. “You know,” he said lazily, “that Skiborsky's not so bad. I hate his guts—don't misunderstand me—and someday I'll probably kill the sonofabitch... but he's not so bad.”

  “You won't think so tomorrow,” I said. “If I know Skiborsky, he's already thinking up ways to make us start hating him all over again. He wouldn't be happy if everybody didn't hate him.”

  “I don't hate him.”
Whisky had a strangle hold on Morgan's brain, squeezing the life out of it.

  “Wait until tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow....”

  The troopers began getting ready for bed, and one by one the candles and coal-oil lamps were blown out, and the night was laced with a bright ribbon of sound as the regimental bugler sounded extinguish lights. Steuber was still snoring under my bunk and I wondered if I ought to get up and try to put him in his own bunk. I thought about it for a while, but it didn't help the Dutchman. He stayed where he was and I stayed where I was, and the barracks was plunged into darkness as the last notes of the bugle died in the night.

  The whisky was warm inside me and I lay there, not moving, not even getting out of my uniform. I knew that tomorrow I would start hating Skiborsky all over again, and that one of these days maybe Morgan would make good his threat and kill him. If I didn't beat him to it. But tonight wasn't tomorrow. Tonight I didn't hate anybody. Not even Caroline.

  Chapter Four

  I HAD GUESSED right about Skiborsky.

  Steuber and Morgan and myself were put on stable detail the first thing the next morning. We forked the droppings into small piles outside the stables, and then we swept the stables and scoured them, and after a while a wagon came along and we forked the piles into the wagon and hauled it outside the fort a half mile away and forked it out of the wagon again.

  “The sonofabitch,” Morgan muttered over and over, heaving the piles of filth.

  “You thought he was all right last night,” I reminded him.

  “The sonofabitch.”

  Steuber forked away like a well-oiled machine, not seeming to mind the blazing sun or the filth or the stinging sweat that dripped into our eyes and plastered our shirts to our backs.

  When we straightened to get our breath or to wipe the sweat from our faces, there was a corporal in the front of the wagon to remind us to keep working.

  “We got to finish the stables before recall,” he insisted. “That's what Skiborsky said.”

  “To hell with Skiborsky,” Morgan grated.

  “Keep working, trooper, or you'll be carryin' the log again.”

  Toward noon we saw the horses appear on the desert horizon. Four horses, weary-looking, stumbling clumsily over the rocks of the desert in their exhaustion. We stopped working, watching them in the distance, trying to make out the riders.

  “My God,” we heard the corporal say softly. “It's the Boulders patrol.”

  “The what?” Morgan asked.

  “The Boulders patrol. What's left of it, rather. Twelve men rode out on it four days ago; they were supposed to meet the Star Creek patrol and then circle through the mountains and come back to Larrymoor. But,” he said, as if he didn't quite believe his own words, “they were supposed to be gone eight, nine days.”

  Morgan studied the approaching figures quietly. His eyes had that steely look again.

  “Get the stuff forked out,” the corporal said. “We'll go back to the fort and see what happened.”

  We knew what happened. Everybody knew, but we had to hear somebody say it. We forked the wagon clean and got back to the fort about five minutes after the patrol arrived.

  Skiborsky had the word, and Sergeant Roff, and Captain Halan too, although he didn't talk about it. Ten good tough troopers dead, that was the word.

  “What is it?” we asked Skiborsky.

  “Apache's dancin', that's what it is,” the Sergeant snarled. “Every goddamn redstick in the White Mountains is dancin'. Kohi's bringin' all the Coyotero clans together, and some Chiricahuas and Mimbrenos too, so the story goes. God knows how he's doin' it, but he's doin' it, and there's goin' to be hell to pay in Arizona, you can bet your enlistment pay on that.” He grinned evilly. “We'll see now what you troopers use for guts. We'll see....”

  Sergeant Roff, speaking for Captain Halan, said, “There will be no change in post routine until we find out what Kohi's up to. His braves are assembling off the reservation. The Boulders patrol had a stiff brush with them, but headquarters isn't sure yet if the Apaches were acting on Kohi's orders or if they were just some outlaw Indians doing some raiding on their own. Until we find out, reviews and fatigue and drills will go on as usual. Patrols will be strengthened to fourteen men and they will skirt Kohi's old stamping grounds and try to find out what the devil's up to. Maybe,” he sighed, “it will cool off.”

  It wouldn't cool off. I knew it and the others knew it. Kohi's people had been pushed as far as they were going to be pushed. The great white fathers in Washington had made big peace medicine, putting their fine promises down on stiff white official parchment, and affixing their signatures with great piousness. And then they figuratively tore the treaties into a million bits and pieces and let them flutter with the wind.

  After all, they were only Indians, weren't they? What did Indians understand about such things? Anyway, what could scattered bands of savages do against the might of the United States Cavalry? Let the settlers move on into the Indian lands. Let the cavalry take care of the savages if they didn't like it. Our “manifest destiny,” they called it, our great white fathers.

  But they weren't in the frontier cavalry. And, probably, they had never even heard of the White Mountain Apache general... Kohi.

  “Were you a carpenter on the outside, Reardon?” Captain Halan looked puzzled as he asked the question. I must have looked puzzled, too, wondering why Roff had called me to the orderly room directly after the noon mess.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  Halan rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I thought...” he started, and then he let the words trail off. “Well, it doesn't matter, I suppose. I have a special detail for you. You're to go over to Colonel Weyland's quarters and repair the steps on his back porch.”

  The Captain must have seen the surprise in my eyes. “You can do the job, can't you?”

  “Yes, sir. I guess so. Did the Colonel ask for me, sir? I mean, did he pick me out especially for the job?”

  “Why, I suppose so. Someone asked for you, either the Colonel or Mrs. Weyland. Probably a mix-up with the records at headquarters. Somebody got you mixed up with an ex-carpenter.” He sighed wearily, his mind more on Kohi than on the minor problem at hand. “Of course,” he said, “we could get the thing straightened out at headquarters and get the right man on the job. But if you think you can do it, it would save trouble all around.”

  It was Caroline, I knew. She couldn't stand it any longer, knowing I was on the post and not knowing why. She had ordered me to come, the way she would order a houseboy to bring in more wood for the fireplace, and she had known all along that I would come.

  “I can fix whatever's wrong, sir,” I said, and Halan looked relieved.

  “Then get to it, Reardon. And when you've finished, get your field gear together. I have you down for patrol in the morning.”

  I got a carpenter's kit from the quartermaster's and walked across the parade toward Officers' Row. The post was unnaturally quiet, even quieter than usual after a noon mess. I had a feeling that Larrymoor should be working with feverish activity, that every man should be working around the clock at strengthening the fortifications. I was the only man on the parade. The bachelor officers were still at mess, the married officers were eating leisurely in the privacy of their adobe huts on Officers' Row, or perhaps smoking a noontime cigar, or napping. The troopers were in their barracks, or in the sorry little knock-up shacks reserved for married noncommissioned officers, near the stables, thinking about the ten men who had died that day, probably.

  Somehow I couldn't bring myself to believe that the men were actually dead. Their names would appear on the morning report as “from duty to killed in action,” even as the dead horses would be reported in the horse book. The next of kin would be notified, whenever another supply train headed south with the mail. None of it concerned me.

  I hadn't known them. The American flag—the Yankee flag, as Morgan would call it—still flew high from its flagpole in the center of t
he parade. There was no grave detail working in the cemetery outside the post, no metallic clang of picks and shovels striking the sun-baked clay earth. The bodies hadn't been brought back.

  I wondered vaguely if there were other bodies out there now, from other patrols, and what it would be like out there. Would it be as bad as Gettysburg, or Antietam... or Three Fork Road? Or would it be more like the skirmishing of pickets, or the harassing action of screening cavalry before an army? There was no way of knowing. The men who had seen it wouldn't say; the men who hadn't seen it couldn't know.

  I kept Caroline out of my mind as long as I could, but there are limits to how long you can keep a woman like that locked in the back of your brain. And besides, I had reached the Colonel's quarters.

  The post commander's house stood at the end of Officers' Row, next to the headquarters buildings, a squat, sturdy affair of cottonwood logs and adobe bricks, slightly larger than the other houses on the row. Usually the post commander has his house outside the fort's walls, but not at Larrymoor, so deep in the enemy's own country. I want around to the back door. Colonel Weyland was just coming out.

  He glanced at me without interest, returned my salute absently, as though he had something else on his mind. “You're the carpenter?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I expect you'll have to ask Mrs. Weyland what she wants done. It's the step, I think.” He glanced vaguely at the steps, without seeing them.

  “Yes, sir,” I said again. It was the first time I had seen Weyland up close, but my first impression of him didn't change. He was just an ordinary man, cast in the same rigid mold that turned out cavalry officers by the hundreds. He looked tired, the way a man looks when he hasn't slept well for a long while. He looked as weak or as strong as the next man; he never would be the kind to lean to the extreme in anything, I thought. He nodded absently and walked off toward headquarters, straight as a ramrod, his uniform and high dragoon boots immaculate.