The Colonel's Lady (19 page)

I went cold inside without knowing exactly why. “What do you mean, Caroline? You told them what?”

“About the infantry,” she said hoarsely, her voice again edged in wildness. “I had to tell them, Matt. Heaven knows what they would have done to me if I hadn't.”

There was a long silence. I was glad that Juan had gone back to the ridge. I was glad that there was no one else to hear.

“You bargained with Kohi?” I said woodenly. “You told him about the reinforcements and he let you go. Is that the way it was?”

“I had to, Matt! I had to!”

She had to. And the awful thing about it was that she was telling the truth. She had betrayed her country and me at Three Fork Road—because she had to. She had married Weyland, not because she loved him but because she had to. It was Caroline's explanation for all the things she did, and, for her, it was the truth.

But what I heard was the pound of horses running up and down a canyon floor, and I remembered the bloody hulks that had once been two good Indian scouts. I thought of the reinforcements. Two whole companies of good tough infantry, and they were dead now. I couldn't blame Caroline for trying to save herself, but I couldn't get these visions out of my mind. As I held her, Caroline seemed to lose all her warmth. Her softness became hard. It was like holding a stone statue, without feeling, without warmth or life.

“You don't blame me, do you, Matt? You
can't
blame me!”

There didn't seem to be anything to say to that. “Don't hate me, Matt. I couldn't stand it if you hated me.”

I saw Caroline then as clearly as I would ever see her. As a little girl who never grew up—who never learned that she was not necessarily the center of the universe, the core of all life. “I don't hate you, Caroline. I'll never hate you.”

The Colonel's dead, Caroline. And so is Halan. But I couldn't say it then. And those two scouts, and two companies of infantry. Are you worth all that, Caroline?

My head swam and my arm throbbed. I released Caroline as gently as I could. I stood back and her eyes widened. I don't hate you, Caroline, I thought. But I don't love you either. And she could see what I was thinking.

I walked a pace or two away and sat down on a rock. The mountains tilted again and that was the last I saw.

“I guess we've got you to thank for that,” Gorgan said. “Maybe Larrymoor would be in ashes now if you hadn't found that second entrance to the stronghold.”

I didn't want to be thanked. I wanted to forget. Kohi was dead—a man I had never even seen—and so were Weyland, and Halan, and a Texan named Morgan. I wondered who was the winner.

In a few days they turned me out of the single crowded hospital room and I went back to my hut at the end of Officers' Row. Gorgan came there to see me when he wasn't on duty. And Skiborsky came once to tell me that the telegraph lines were up again, and about the first thing to come over them was an order for Morgan's arrest. He thought it was a good joke that the Texan had fooled them by getting himself killed. Maybe it was. The Dutchman, Skiborsky said, was in the guardhouse for taking scalps on the battleground. There was talk again of getting more reinforcements.

The regiment, the patrols, the routine went on the same as it always had and probably always would in the Army. The ranks were thinner. The post cemetery was larger. That was about all.

Toward the end of the week I learned that Caroline was leaving Larrymoor.

I hadn't seen her since the day of the battle, and I didn't want to see her now. With no duty to pull, I lay on my bunk day after day and did nothing, thought nothing, and that seemed to be an end in itself. From my window I watched the big escort wagons back up to the front of the commanding officer's house. I watched the troopers load the furniture and the paintings and the fine silver tea service.... Caroline, dressed all in black, and very beautiful, supervised the job expertly.

Good-by, Caroline, I thought. But they were only words.

Where would she go? What would she do? I wondered. But there was no use worrying about Caroline. Somewhere there would be more Reardons, and more Halans and Weylands. And she had never liked Larrymoor anyway.

Gorgan came around again that afternoon.

“There's a mail stage coming through from Tucson,” he said. “Due tomorrow morning, according to the telegraph operator.”

The news would cause great excitement in some quarters—to the people who were expecting mail. I nodded.

“The Colonel's widow will be going back with the stage,” he said.

I nodded again.

“What are
you
going to do, Reardon?”

I didn't know. I hadn't thought about it. “I guess I'll stay here at Larrymoor,” I said. “Until my hitch runs out, anyway.”

“And after that?” No more mention of Caroline.

I looked at him. “Where else is there to go? You said yourself that a man gets used to this country, and then he's not fit for civilization.”

Gorgan grinned. He sat back and stretched his legs, a look of self-content in his faded eyes. “I thought maybe this country would get you,” he said. “It gets a lot of us, men and women too....”

But not Caroline.

“Supper tonight, Reardon? My wife says to invite you, if you feel like coming.”

His wife or Sarah? Outside, I could hear the escort wagons pulling away from Caroline's house. They would be on the road the first thing in the morning. Everything at Larrymoor that was Caroline's would be gone.

“All right,” I heard myself saying. “I'll be there.”

Major Burkhoff dropped the charges against me after he took over the regiment, and my striker was more cooperative after that. He drew some water for me and set it in the sun to warm, and that afternoon I bathed as well as I could with a bandaged arm. Toward nightfall I heard a commotion on the parade and the striker came around to say that the mail stage had arrived early. It would be heading back to Tucson, he said, the first thing the next morning.

I didn't bother to see if I had any mail. I waited in the hut until well after dark thinking that Caroline might have some last word to say before she left. But I guess she knew as well as I did that whatever had been between us was dead now. I had my striker help me into my dress jacket, and I went up the row to Gorgan's.

“My husband tells me you're in a way of being a hero, Mr. Reardon.” Gorgan's wife smiled.

“I don't believe so, ma'am,” I said. “There were some heroes out there, but they didn't come back.”

I saw that I had said the wrong thing. The women of Larrymoor didn't talk about the men who didn't come back. They thought about them, maybe, and cried about them, maybe. But they didn't talk about them, and the men never knew—or pretended that they never knew. For the women of Larrymoor it was a fearful game of waiting, and praying, and hoping. And keeping silent and not showing what they felt. I began to understand that it took a special kind of woman to be an Army wife in a place like this.

Gorgan, it turned out, had a reason for throwing this little party of his. Major Burkhoff, he said, was putting him in for captain. If he was aware that he would probably be the oldest captain on the frontier, he didn't show it. Grinning, he filled our glasses with Monongahela whisky that he had gone in debt for at the sutler's store.

“What shall we drink to, Reardon?”

“The twin silver bars you'll soon be wearing?”

He shook his head. “It's too small a thing for a country as big as this. Let's drink to Arizona Territory—the last outpost.”

After supper Gorgan was still feeling good—so good that he decided to go down to the sutler's store and go in debt some more for a bottle of New Orleans brandy that had lately been shipped in.

“I'll go with you,” I said.

But Gorgan was afraid I would want to pay for something, and the party was his. I went to the porch with him and waited there in the darkness, listening to the small sounds of a fort getting ready to go to sleep. I sat on the railing and looked up the row toward Caroline's house. It was dark. Tomorrow Caroline would be gone, and Major Burkhoff and his family would move in, and a big part of my life would be a void. I wondered if Caroline felt that way about it.

After a while the screen door opened and Sarah Gorgan stood framed in the lighted square of the doorway. Ever since that night we had been very formal: Yes, Mr. Reardon. Thank you, Miss Gorgan....

I could see now that she was remembering too. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, as if she were afraid to step into the darkness. Afraid to be alone with me.

“Mr. Reardon.”

I straightened in the deep shadows of the porch. “Yes, Miss Gorgan.”

She came out then. She closed the screen door carefully and came toward me, but not too close. “There... there's something I thought you would want to know,” she said quietly.

I waited. She didn't seem to know how to go on. At last she said, “I was out in the lean-to a while ago. I saw someone go into your hut, by the back door.”

“It must have been my striker, Miss Gorgan.”

“It was Mrs. Weyland,” she said.

I didn't move. I could only think: Caroline's Waiting for me. She wants to see me. And for a moment the old passion rose up burning and almost choked me. But it was a brief thing. It burned itself out and left me empty and without feeling.

I still didn't move, and I knew that I wasn't going to move. I said, “Sarah, I think you've got a right to know something. You were right that day when you told me I loved her. Ever since I can remember, almost, I've loved her. But the thing finally burned itself out of its own heat and violence. Do you understand that?”

She said nothing. I wasn't sure why I was telling these things to Sarah Gorgan, but it suddenly seemed important that she should understand.

“Do you understand that, Sarah?” I said.

“Yes. I think so.”

Then it was almost that first night all over again. I almost reached out to take her shoulders and pull her against me. I could look at her now and not see Caroline. I could kiss her, if I wanted to, and never think of Caroline. And I suddenly wanted to, but I didn't.

I sat on the railing again and looked out at the night. It was a strange feeling, having control of my own thoughts again, and it would take some time to get used to it. The wind was soft and the stars were out in great numbers. The night was very quiet.

She said, “I'll go inside now.”

I looked at her and began to understand that I liked having her there. I said, “You said once that the desert had beauty. Maybe you'll stay a while and tell me about it. There are a lot of things, I guess, that I don't know.”

I saw a light flare in the window of Caroline's house. Caroline had given up. After a while the light went out. I half listened to what Sarah Gorgan said, and I felt comfortable and the world seemed all right for a change.

Let the old fire die, I thought, and then start again, slowly. Sarah Gorgan seemed to understand that. It takes longer than a day to change the world. Or a man. It takes time to adjust yourself to a comfortable warmth when you've been used to white heat for so long.

We saw Gorgan coming across the dark parade with the brandy. “Is that you, Reardon?” he called. “Sarah?”

“Yes,” I said. “We're just beginning to get acquainted.”