The Pride of Hannah Wade (35 page)

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Delancy for that. I didn’t make them.”

“You never have done much cooking, have you, my dear?” The colonel’s wife took a delicate sip of her tea.

“Not in the past, although I do make a very good tortilla now. And I learned to cook a very tasty thick stew by filling a deer’s stomach with blood, chili peppers, and wild onions.” Hannah, saw the shock and revulsion on their faces and didn’t care. It was what they had come to hear.

“You didn’t eat it?” Grace Digby’s ladyfinger was laid aside, only one bite taken.

“Of course. And the next time you have rabbit, you should try partially roasting it before skinning and gutting it.” She deliberately gave them all the worst examples, not leaving out a single lurid detail.

Later, Hannah watched them leave. They were barely out the door before their heads were together and their tongues were wagging, but she found no satisfaction in the sight. Sighing, Hannah turned away, fighting depression and loneliness.

Stephen’s return did not bring any improvement to their troubled marriage. He went through the motions, pretending that everything was fine, but he never touched her or mentioned the past year. Not that they were together very much; but when they were he rarely looked at her, and when he did, Hannah saw what he was thinking and remembering.

His return coincided with a step-up of Apache activity in the area. Their favorite targets were the ore trains, the twelve and fourteen-horse teams hauling wagons loaded with silver ore from the mining camps in the Mogollons. Fort Bayard was in a constant state of flux, responding to reports of ambush or near-ambush.

One evening just before retreat, a wounded outrider from an ore train reached the fort. A mounted detachment was dispatched to the scene. Hannah wasn’t surprised to see Stephen at the head of it. It was becoming clear to her that Stephen was obsessed with settling what he considered his private score with the Apache.

It was pitch black, shadows pressing in from all sides as the column of riders walked their blowing and winded horses along the gravel track up a high canyon. Other than the striking of metal horseshoes on rough stone, the only sound was the far-off yip of a coyote crying to the lonely sliver of moon. All else was quiet, a mountain chill breathing down on them.

Hooker leaned forward in his McClellan, calling in a low voice to advise Major Wade, “The rider said the Apaches hit ’em along that spot in the road where the fallen chimney rock is. That’d be less than a quarter of a mile.”

“It’s quiet.” Lieutenant Digby rode beside Wade, his anxious gaze darting into the lurking shadows. “What do you think, Major?”

“The Apaches might have broken contact. They seldom fight at night.” Stephen turned in his saddle and looked back down the double line of riders. “Stay alert.”

Word passed among the troopers that they were approaching the ambush site. Stephen wished that they had more than a ghosting of light from the moon to alleviate this utter blackness before them. He strained to hear any misplaced sound, to catch the smell of smoke or gunpowder.

About four hundred yards farther down the path, his chestnut pricked its ears at an object ahead of them. Stephen could make out little in the trail. His horse
snorted, disliking something, and he reined in, stopping the column with an upraised hand. A large and long black shape loomed before them, its dark outline vaguely showing against the lighter-colored ground. He lifted the flap on his holster and loosened his gun.

“Hello, the wagon!” Stephen called in a low, strong voice across the intervening distance. For a long span of seconds, there was only silence. Stephen kicked his horse forward while pulling out his service revolver.

The wagon had been overturned, lying on its side and blocking the trail. From the well of darkness behind it came a low moan. Stephen directed his horse toward the sound as he continued to scan the dark tumble of rocks and brush. The rest of the column advanced behind him.

The closer to the wagon he came, the more he could make out. A horse lay dead in the harness, its teammate obviously having been cut free, and the wagon had half a dozen arrows projecting from it. Stephen dismounted, catching the acrid odor of powder smoke lingering in the air, and passed the reins of his horse to Digby. Another moan, louder than the first, came from the other side of the wagon, near the front wheels. Stephen found the man propped against the undercarriage, half-conscious.

“I’ve found one of them—alive,” he called in that same low but clear voice. “Check around, Sergeant.”

While the troopers fanned out under Hooker’s direction to comb the surrounding area, Stephen crouched beside the wounded man. The faint moonlight glistened on the barrel of a carbine, lying across the man’s legs.

“Where are you hurt, mister?” Stephen picked up the carbine, and felt the man’s weak attempt to resist slacken at his words.

The man’s head lolled, his mouth slack, his eyes opening, white-ringed. “Curly . . . made it.” His
breathy laugh became a cough. “Arrow in my. . . shoulder.” From the frothy sound of his breath, Stephen suspected that it had pierced a lung. “Bullet in . . . leg. My ribs, maybe. Don’t. . . know.”

The arrow was still lodged in his left shoulder, the feathered end of the shaft broken off. Stephen left it alone and searched for the leg wound, hampered by the darkness and the deep shadows. “What happened? Where are the others?” Warm, sticky blood oozed from a hole in the man’s right thigh. Stephen used his kerchief to make a tourniquet.

“Hit us. Came out of . . . the rocks. Five, maybe six of ’em.” Pain and weakness took the man’s breath, turning his voice hoarse and making it waver. “Gillis in first wagon ... got it right away. The ‘paches jumped on horses . . . stole wagon. Irish and Shaughnessy took cover in . . . rocks when wagon turned ... on me. Held ’em off.”

“Take it easy.” Stephen came to his feet and moved away, his own weapon and the man’s carbine in his hands. Lieutenant Digby still sat his horse nearby. “Have someone see to this man.”

“Two mo’ men over here, suh,” a trooper called from the vicinity of the boulder tumble. “Both is dead, suh.”

Chunks of ore from the overturned wagon littered the ground, ready to trip the unwary. Stephen picked his way through the jumble, past the dead and bloating horse to the top of the mine road, where Hooker joined him. Stephen looked into the night with a brooding restlessness. They were always too late on the scene, arriving long after the battle; they were never able to catch the bastards.

The impatient edge was in his voice when he spoke. “Get that wagon righted. We’ll use it to transport the wounded driver to the fort. And send half a dozen of
your men ahead to see if they can locate the second wagon and the body of its driver. In this rough country, the Apaches couldn’t have driven it far. They were after the horses. Somewhere up ahead they must have cut them loose and left the wagon.”

“Yes, suh. Suh, do you want me to pick up the trail of the ‘paches an’ send a detail in pursuit?”

“It’s a waste of time, Sergeant.” Stephen was curt. “You can’t follow their trail until daylight. By then they’ll have a six-hour lead. No, sergeant, we won’t pursue.”

“Yes, suh.” Hooker saluted and swung away.

Sound carried a long way on the night air of the dry mountain desert. From some distance away in the canyon reaches came the whinny of a horse. The sound caused both the white officer and the colored sergeant to pause.

“From the north, suh, maybe two, three miles as the crow flies,” Hooker guessed. “It could be one of the team of horses runnin’ loose.”

“It could,” Stephen agreed. His head was cocked at a listening angle for a second longer; then he stirred. “Leave five men here and mount the rest, Sergeant.”

An hour later, the patrol still wound its way through the rough canyon country, always riding as much as possible in the direction of the horse’s neigh, though their way was often blocked by dead-end canyons or unscalable cliffs. Like a signal beacon, the horse had given out its frightened call at irregular intervals. Its shrill whinny again shattered the stillness. This time it was very close, only yards ahead. No spoken command, only an upraised hand, brought the double-file column to a halt. Leather creaked under the shifting weights of the troopers in their saddles as Stephen stared into the darkness, listening and trying to gauge the situation.

Digby gave him an anxious glance. “That horse has
been in the same place the whole time.” His subdued tone was just louder than a whisper.

From behind them. Sergeant Hooker advised, “It could be the bait in an Apache trap.”

“Send two men ahead,” Stephen ordered.

Hooker turned in his saddle to look down the line of black troopers. “Henry. Beaufort.” His hand motioned them forward.

A shuffling of hooves, munching of bridle bits, and groaning of leather filtered through the night as the column shifted, giving up two of its number. With weapons drawn and at the ready, the advance detail rode forward and the shadows soon swallowed them; only the muffled plod of their horses’ hooves marking their presence.

The seconds of waiting seemed interminable, the silence and the stillness magnifying them. Then a single horse trotted back toward the column, its rider halting it within view of the patrol. “All clear, suh.”

They moved forward, Stephen holding his horse and the column to a walk, wisely wary for all his restless urgings. The reporting trooper waited for them.

“The horse is still hitched to the supply wagon—what’s left of it,” he explained, sotto voce. “Wheel broke an’ the box got wedged in some rocks.”

They came upon the missing second wagon, its contents scattered by the Apaches. The ground was strewn with silver ore rock and ransacked bedrolls. This time Stephen sat on his horse while he surveyed the shadowed scene. His instincts had been right, but it was like chasing the wind. They were always ahead of him.

The gravel of impatience and frustration was in his voice, along with fatigue. “Look for the body of the driver.”

In the darkness, a trooper stumbled over something on the ground and the object rolled with a glassy rattle
over the stony soil. The soldier’s shadowy form bent to the ground as he picked it up. When he straightened, he had a bottle in his hand.

“Whiskey. Ya might know de Apaches got it fuhst,” he complained as he turned it upside down.

“Unhitch the horse from the wagon,” Stephen ordered.

“It’s strange that the Apaches didn’t take the horse with them—or kill it,” Lieutenant Digby remarked.

“I know.” It bothered Stephen, too; but the Apaches were seldom predictable in their actions.

“Major.” Hooker walked his horse over to them, a troubled frown on his face. “I smell smoke.”

The chill mountain air was sweet and fresh with the scent of pine and aromatic shrubs when Stephen tested it. Yet faintly there was the smell of burning, the smokeless kind of fire that the Apaches made.

“They built a fire around here somewhere, Sergeant. Find it.” And Stephen suspected, that they’d find the wagon driver, too. It seemed likely now that he hadn’t been killed in the first assault, only wounded, enough of him alive for the Apaches to torture.

The search had barely started when scouts found the Apache camp not fifty yards away in an arroyo pocket. The fire was a dull red eye on the ground; long, dark shapes lay around it, motionless. Stephen ordered his men to fan out, distrusting the situation but playing it as he found it. The longer he stared at the seemingly sleeping figures on the ground, the steadier his nerves grew. The hard metal butt of his revolver comfortably fitted his hand, the joint of his thumb heavy on the hammer and his forefinger curving hard against the trigger. An icy run of calm sliced wickedly through him.

He gave the order to attack and they hit the sleeping camp, everyone doubting that they were actually taking the Apaches by surprise. But in the first barrage of
shouts and gunfire, it was all explained as the Apaches staggered to their feet, reeling drunkenly and quickly abandoning any attempt at defense in order to flee, the smashing of bullets around them having a sobering effect.

The soldiers charged through the camp, giving chase to two warriors who were attempting to escape on foot. Stephen stopped at the fire circle and reloaded the empty chambers of his revolver, gunpowder an acrid scent in the air and on his hands. Crumpled along the edge of the fire circle were the bodies of two dead Apaches who had tried to make, a stand, and that of a third Apache, badly wounded, his fingers digging into the dirt.

“Sweet Jesus,” someone cursed in a voice sickened with revulsion; then it steadied, and Stephen recognized Hooker’s voice. “Major. Yore wagon driver is here.”

Stephen backed away from the dead Apaches and crossed to the high shape of a tree and the black form Hooker made against it. The smell was bad, cooked hair and flesh making a malodorous combination. Hooker struck a sulfur match and Stephen saw the flame’s orange light flare over the wagoner’s body, which was hanging upside down over the hidden coals of a second fire. Stephen’s stomach heaved violently as he swung away from the revolting sight, a sick sweat breaking out across his face.

The match was shaken out. “They roasted his brains.” Hooker’s voice was sick and flat, hard with the effort to keep emotion out of it.

“Cut him down.” The low order was almost inaudible. Then anger vibrated through his voice, giving it vehemence. “Dammit, I said cut him down!”

“Yes, suh,” John T. Hooker responded. It wasn’t something he had to be told. “Cooper. Johnson. Over
here.” He summoned two of his men as he watched Wade stalk to the Apaches’ fire.

Someone had tossed wood on it, and a bright blaze burned. John T. left the two soldiers to see to the driver’s body and followed the major. The sounds of pursuit, of running boots and rattling brush, could still be heard in the broken terrain around the camp. Empty whiskey bottles from the supply wagon rolled around the fire, evidence of the reason they had been able to slip up on the Apaches. They’d passed out.

“Hey, Sarge.” Trooper Moseby was bent over the wounded Apache, cautiously peering at the bloodied bullet holes torn in his copper flesh. “We’d better do somethin’ for this one. He’s bleedin’ bad.”