Norton, Andre - Novel 15 (12 page)

 
          
 
"Frostbite."
Tuttle joined Ritchie. He was carrying the small case of medical supplies
Herndon had guarded so carefully all through that nightmare journey.
" 'N
he didn't have sense enough to sing out when it
started! Now Hern-don'll blame hisself for this, too—" He opened the case.

 
          
 
Ritchie, with no pleasant anticipation
himself, slipped his hand out of the sling and braced himself for his nightly
period of torture.

 
          
 
"Why'll Herndon blame himself?" He
wondered if
Winters
' remedy of a mitten between the
teeth would work for him, too.

 
          
 
"That stupid pig's stubbornness kept him
goin' when he should have reported. Herndon's near out on his own feet, 'n
he'll work hisself silly tryin' to git that cussed fool out of his own
mess!"

 
          
 
For several moments then Ritchie forgot
Winters
and Herndon, being very much occupied with certain
sensations of his own. But, when he was free to slip his freshly dressed hand
back into hiding again, he saw that the dragoons were still working on
Winters
with snow.

 
          
 
"Man—?" The Apache tugged at
Ritchie's coat and pointed to the group of men who were rubbing. Ritchie
explained as best he could, and the boy nodded solemnly.

 
          
 
"Keep on with that snow," Herndon
advised Kristland who had taken over from Velasco.
"Velasco—?"

 
          
 
The tough little scout arose in one lithe
movement.

 
          
 
"Star has carried double all day. Could
you take the roan —maybe after about three hours' rest?"

           
 
Velasco studied his own crude snow map.
"As long as I follow the canyon, it will be easy.
After
I strike the plain— who knows?"
He shrugged. "I have seen
drifts there that have grown like the mountains. However, what can one do but
try? The roan, si, it is the best except Star. I shall try, my frien'."

 
          
 
Herndon forced his own portion of the scanty
food into Velasco's hands, and perhaps in the package he fastened to the saddle
was his rations for the next day. Velasco, after a cheery look around their
fire and an almost flippant wave of the hand, rode his reluctant horse away
from the circle of dried grass, thudding off into the dark. It was clear and
cutting cold, and all but the finger tips of the searching-wind were cut off by
the natural walls around them. And they huddled together for warmth and for
something else that they did not put into words—the companionship of shared
misery.

 
          
 
Winters cried out now with the agony of
returning circulation, the tears tracking through the grime above his great
bush of beard. He pleaded with them to leave him alone, to stop, but they still
worked over him. Now it was necessary to go some distance for the snow they
must use.

 
          
 
Suddenly out of the blackness beyond the fire
rim came a sound which brought fear into the open, a raking scream as if from
the throat of a woman bound to the stake. Ritchie stumbled to his feet,
expecting to hear the patter of arrows or the roar of the Indians'
muzzle-loaders. But Tuttle only laughed.

 
          
 
"Old Man Lion missed him a kill 'n is
gonna tell the world 'bout it.
Must be mighty thin huntin'
round these parts nowadays."

 
          
 
Ritchie stared into the shadows, and Tuttle
laughed again. ''Don't imagine things, son. He ain't a-slinkin' round out that
now—"

 
          
 
But Tuttle was wrong. Another shrill scream,
this time from the lungs of a fear-maddened horse, tore the air. What was left
of their mounts stampeded across the edge of the fire-lit circle, heading down
canyon.

 
          
 
For one stunned moment they stayed still. But
a second pain-filled scream, cut off in mid-note, brought them into action.
Tuttle leaped for the fire, seized a piece of burning wood, and whirled it
around his head as he bounded out into the dark.

 
          
 
The flames darting out of the wood struck
answering green fire in the night. Across the broken body of Jessie, limbs
taut, jaws dripping and agape, was a hissing gray cat, its ears flattened to
the skull, a snarl lifting its lip from the fringe of fangs. For a single
second it faced the fire; then it was gone in a long arching bound which
carried it beyond the farthest reaches of their light. It was too late to shoot.

 
          
 
They went back to the fire. And for the first
time Tuttle had nothing to say. He dropped cross-legged in the range of the
heat and drew his knife from its sheath. With infinite care he set about honing
the blade on the sole of his moccasin. When Ritchie drifted off to sleep, he
was still there, still at work, now and again lifting his head to listen to the
sounds from beyond the firelight.

 
          
 
The missing horses had not gone far. They had
been too exhausted to really lose themselves, and the canyon walls had held
them from scattering. By midmorning the next day, even moving at the snail's
pace they were now reduced to, the dragoons had come up with all but one of the
truants.

 
          
 
But it was when they hit the plain that the
worst blow fell. A scrap of brown protruding out of a drift, which appeared
disturbed at the top, drew Herndon out of the line of
march
.
It did not need more than a few scoops of snow dug out by hand to reveal the
stiff body of the roan Velasco had ridden out of their last camp. Neatly
through the white star between its wide, glazed eyes a bullet had been fired.
One leg was snapped, the bone thrust through the thin hide of the shin.

 
          
 
Across the body of the roan Herndon faced
Tuttle. Kristland came up, looked blankly at the horse, and began to laugh, a
low sound growing into a wild peal that made Ritchie want to cover his ears.

 
          
 
"Lots of luck, boys," sputtered the
trumpeter between gasps of insane laughter, "lots of luck—'n all of it
bad!"

 
          
 
There was the smack of flesh meeting flesh,
and the trumpeter rocked back on his heels. Herndon flipped his hand across his
coat with a wiping motion. Kristland had stopped laughing, but his eyes on the
Sergeant's back were bright and hard.

 
          
 
"Velasco"—Herndon's voice still had
all its
hard, assured ring—"is a veteran scout. He
knows this country, and there is no reason to believe that he cannot reach the
stage station, even on foot. It is up to us to push on as fast as we can to
meet the relief force he may have already started toward us. This horse is
frozen; the accident must have taken place hours ago, maybe soon after he
left."

 
          
 
"Sure," muttered the man next to
Ritchie. "March on 'n die in our tracks 'n they'll find us when the thaw
comes in the spring. Join the army 'n freeze it out! On yore feet, kid."
He turned to Ritchie and put out a hand to pull him up. "Where's the Injun
brat?"

 
          
 
"Up on Star. Hope he's light enough so
that horse won't give out too—"

 
          
 
"Ain't more'n a bag of bones,"
commented the dragoon critically. "But none of us are exactly fatties now
. '
N we won't make pretty corpses—'nough to scare the guts
outta the fellas as will find us."

 
          
 
No one answered that sally. They had come
again to a place of drifts through which they had to beat their way as they had
on the first dismal days of their march. Only this time the heart was almost
gone out of them; their last hope had flickered and died with the discovery of
Velasco's horse.

 
          
 
It was Tuttle and the Sergeant who kept them
on their feet and moving. Men who fell were pulled, even beaten up again,
pommeled
until they escaped punishment by crawling forward a
step or two. Half-dead horses and mules which could barely drag their hooves
were brought up and bodies thrown across them, the same bodies stung into
wakefulness by constant slaps and punches. Toward the end Herndon stripped off
his belt and was using it with grim energy to keep them going.

 
          
 
And when help came, they simply didn't believe
in it. There was some sort of noise up ahead which meant nothing to their
dulled ears. They did not even look up from the trampled snow—that snow which
must be eternally beaten down and down.

 
          
 
Ritchie stumbled into the man who had been in
front of him. Mechanically the boy began to edge around him, thinking that he
had given out from trail-making. But the man caught at him as he brushed by.

 
          
 
"Look—" His voice quavered, and he
blinked rapidly. "Can yo' see them, too?"

 
          
 
Ritchie tried to shake free. Then he heard
something— a confused shouting. And above it rang the call of a bugle. Across the
drifts, coasting up and down like a ship beset by a rising sea, came a sled
pulled by a four-ox team. But spurring ahead of this plodding bulk was a knot
of mounted men, the snow dashing up like foam around the stamping hooves of
their horses.

 
          
 
As if something had pulled all the stiffening
out of him, Ritchie dropped where he stood. He could not wink his eyes free of
a swimming film which blurred the world, and salt burned across his cracked
lips. He heard a voice from far off saying with emphasis:

 
          
 
''They sure brought all their sand with
'em!"

 
          
 
It was heaven to lie flat in the ox sled, even
if his head and shoulders were supported by another uneasy body and someone's
long legs crowded his. He drifted off into a shadow world which had little
connection with reality and never remembered their arrival at the stage station
or the second journey on to the fort.

 
          
 
A stab of familiar pain brought him back at
last. Overhead was a roof of strips of dusty canvas. He lay on a hard cot, and
working on his hand was the post surgeon who tut-tutted sharply at what he had
found beneath the bandages. Turning to reach for an instrument he encountered
Ritchie's open eyes.

 
          
 
''Awake are you?"

 
          
 
Ritchie muttered assent.

 
          
 
"Well, you're a lucky young man, I can
tell you. You'll bear a nasty scar for the rest of your life. But thanks to
those mates of yours and their treatment, you'll still have your hand—which is
more than poor
Winters
— And Velasco will have his
feet, too—even if he'll have to favor them awhile—"

 
          
 
He broke off abruptly and hurried through his
job, as if to avoid questions.

 
          
 
Ritchie struggled to one elbow when his hand
was released. "What's the matter with
Winters
?"

           
 
"Frostbite!"
The surgeon picked up his kit and was gone before Ritchie could ask another
question.

 
          
 
"Yeh, tough on
Winters
."
From the next cot came Kristland's voice.

 
          
 
"What happened?"

 
          
 
"Ain't happened yet, but it's goin' to.
They're gonna take off his feet—gangrene. If he's lucky, he'll die. Wonder how
Herndon feels— Winters won't be forgettin' him!"