Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (10 page)

 
          
 
On the third day the first of the mules died,
and they butchered the corpse before it could freeze stiff. The coarse meat was
chopped and haggled off the bones and broiled over the fire which had been lit
on the scene. And the tough stuff was bolted rather than chewed, in spite of
the warnings of the scouts and the Sergeant. Soon after they started on, the
remnants of the meat bundled up in the green hide, retribution struck with the
gripping pain of cramps. Half-doubled with that torture, the men still fought
the snow.

 
          
 
"What's the use?" The words formed
in Ritchie's brain, and he found himself repeating them over and over in time
to his floundering steps. It would be so easy to give up, to just drop out of
the line and let the rest pass him by. Even while he was thinking that, he
tripped and fell forward. Instinctively he threw out his sore hand in an effort
to save himself and struck with his full weight upon it.

 
          
 
There was a flash of such pain as he had never
known could exist, and he slid to the edge of a dark abyss. Someone was tugging
at him, but he made no effort to respond. It was all he could do to pull his
torn hand free.

 
          
 
''What's the matter, son?"

 
          
 
That was Tuttle, he thought foggily, and did
not answer.

           
 
He knew that he was crying with pain, and he
didn't care. He didn't care about anything but that burning throb in his hand,
a throb which beat up hot and red right into the inside of his head.

 
          
 
"—his hand, I think—" More words
from somewhere.

 
          
 
Tuttle reached, and Ritchie set his teeth on a
mad scream when the scout touched his mitten, drawing off the clumsy covering
and revealing a strip of stained cloth bound around puffed flesh swollen shiny
red.

 
          
 
"Good—!" Whoever was holding him had
sucked in his breath. "I'd forgotten about that bite!"

 
          
 
"Hold him!" snapped Tuttle.

 
          
 
Ritchie writhed and tried to fight as steel
fingers clamped down on him, viselike, while Tuttle unwound the bandage. He
couldn't see what the scout had uncovered since one of the torturers who held
him had humped a shoulder in the way.

 
          
 
"Let me go!" He thought that he had
shouted those words with force enough to reach the mountains, but he had barely
shaped them with twisted lips.

 
          
 
Then Herndon's face swam through the mist
which was closing in over him.

 
          
 
"We're going to save your hand." The
chill clarity of those words struck home to him. He made a great effort and
tried to come back. The mist cleared a little. He was lying on a blanket in the
trampled snow track. The Sergeant had opened a small pack and was putting out
strips of linen and other things. When he looked up, he spoke to Ritchie as if
they two were alone there.

 
          
 
"This will
hurt-"

 
          
 
Ritchie almost laughed—as if anything could
hurt more than the throbbing which had beat through him since his fall!

 
          
 
''A Right Smart
Lot
of Snow"

 
          
 
"Bite on this." Herndon thrust the
shaft of a knife between his jaws. "All right, boys, pin him down!"

 
          
 
Weights clamped across his feet, his thighs,
his shoulders, and arms. He could only twist his head. When those hands
tightened their hold above his sore wrist, he could have shrieked. Instead he
bit down on the knife haft.

 
          
 
Torture went on and on and on. Was Apache
torture like this? Velasco was part Indian, and he must be one of those holding
the hurt hand steady for them to work on. Maybe he was enjoying this; maybe they
all were. It wasn't possible to stand pain like this. He was screaming inside
his head. Why couldn't he faint—just go into the dark and never wake up again?

 
          
 
The weights which held him were shifting.
There was a queer sound from without the boundaries of
his
own
private hell. The throbbing pain was still there—with new
refinements added. But he found that he could just bear it. Someone jerked the
knife out of his mouth. Herndon's face, powder blackened, hung above his for a
moment and then was gone. Ritchie closed his eyes.

 
          
 
"—put him up on Jessie—she's
sure-footed—"

 
          
 
"Peters!"

 
          
 
"Son!"

 
          
 
They were pulling him up. His hand hung in a
sling across his chest. With a sigh he opened his eyes. He was sitting up in
the snow, leaning back against someone's shoulder while Herndon and Tuttle led
up the small gray mule belonging to the scout.

 
          
 
"You'll have to ride," Herndon told
him shortly. "We'll see you stick on."

 
          
 
Ritchie didn't answer; it took all the
strength he had left to get into the saddle. He set his teeth against the jolts
which shook his whole trembling body as the mule stepped forward.

 
          
 
"We're pretty good medicine men,
us," said Velasco as he trotted along beside him later that day.
"That hand, that was ver' bad. Not fix it with knife and fire and you
would lose it—maybe lose you too. Si, the Sergeant and Tuttle, they fix it
proper. Good medicine men. Apache medicine man good, too. He has to be. Let six
patients die—and he is roasted over slow fire—"

 
          
 
Ritchie's answer was more grimace than smile.

 
          
 
"I'd like to do a little roasting over a
slow fire myself."

 
          
 
Velasco's grin was wider. "Aha, once more
you can make the joke, no? I do not think you will be leaving us this time. You
are proper dragoon—tough like saddle leather and prickly like cactus. And
tonight we feast—no mule meat. See?"

 
          
 
He pointed to the horse in line just before
them. Tied on its saddle were several white-tailed birds, their limp heads
dangling.

 
          
 
"Snow birds shot this afternoon. They are
good eating."

 
          
 
Ritchie could not remember much about that
night's camp, and the next day, too, was just a hot blur. He must have had some
fever, he reckoned later. When life sharpened into reality again, he was still
riding the mule. Herndon shuffled along beside him, and there seemed to be fewer
animals in the line than there had been. He tried to count, and the Sergeant
saw him.

 
          
 
"The horses—four are gone."

 
          
 
Herndon nodded stiffly, as if the action hurt.
"They gave out yesterday. How are you feeling?"

 
          
 
Ritchie ran his tongue over dry and cracked
lips. The throb was duller, or maybe he had just become used to it.

           
 
When he looked at the moving ground, he was
slightly dizzy, but that was nothing.

 
          
 
''All right.
I don't
remember much about yesterday though—"

 
          
 
''Several yesterdays," amended the
Sergeant. "But you're still lucky, Peters. You might have lost your hand.
Should have had that bite attended to earlier."

 
          
 
Ritchie's eyes dropped. So that was what they
were thinking—that he had been too much of a greenhorn to look after himself?
He tried to nod, and his head whirled so that he caught at the saddle horn with
his good hand.

 
          
 
"It was dumb," he began, hot at the
thought of his own stupid carelessness.

 
          
 
But Herndon had pulled out his knife and held
it so that Ritchie could see clearly the half moon of deep gouges in the haft.
"You don't do so badly with the teeth yourself," he commented.
"I wouldn't care to have you clamp onto me like that."

 
          
 
Tuttle puffed up through the snow.

 
          
 
"Thar's cliff ruins ahead, Scott. Want we
should hole up in 'em fur a breather?"

 
          
 
Herndon studied the sky. "I don't like
the look of those clouds. What do you think?"

 
          
 
The scout squinted skyward. "They's nasty
lookin' all right
. '
Nother set of drifts over these 'n
we'll be 'til June gittin' out—"

 
          
 
"Let's see the ruins."

 
          
 
Herndon and Tuttle quickened pace, and the
mule plodded after her master. At the foot of a rock wall they all came to a
halt. About a third of the way up was the dark break of a ledge and on it the
softened outlines of the squat houses built by the unknown men of the far past.

           
 
"How can we get up?"

 
          
 
Tuttle answered Herndon's question by pointing
to a line of holes cut into the rock.

 
          
 
"Seems like we'll have
a climb, Sergeant."
The dragoon who made that observation was
almost jovial. "But them walls look snug, don't they
? '
N
when the storm hits, we'll lie dry enough—"

 
          
 
Herndon wallowed through the drifts to the
climbing holes. He stood there, his chin cocked up, his head at an angle as he
studied the ascent. Ritchie wondered how he was going to pull himself up there
with only one hand. Herndon came back.

 
          
 
"Pick up your stuff!" he ordered the
men who had put down their bundles. "And get moving."

 
          
 
But no one moved, and the man who had
commented on the snugness of the ruins stared at him in open amazement.

 
          
 
"What'd 'yuh
mean.
Sergeant?
There's a bad storm comin', yuh kin smell
it! If we don't hole up, we'll be
goners
fur sure. 'N
this is a swell place to wait it out—"

 
          
 
Behind the mask of powder, growing beard, and
fatigue Herndon's expression was unreadable. But his voice was patient when he
answered.

 
          
 
"Look at that climb, man. We couldn't get
the animals up. And they'd die down here in the storm. We'd have no wood for a
fire, and then we'd freeze. Our only chance is to keep moving. So let's get
on—"

 
          
 
But the dragoon remained where he was, his
feet set stubbornly. "Git on, if yuh want to, Sergeant. Me 'n them what's
wise, we'll be stayin' here. Git out in the open 'n the storm hits, 'n we'll be
all through—like thet!" He snapped his fingers, and there was a murmur of
approval from the hunched figures closing in behind him.

 
          
 
"In two more days we'll hit the stage
station." Herndon's words were dug painfully out of his weariness.
"We can make that easily if we keep to our present route without any
lingering."