The Vanquished (14 page)

Late afternoon. Sun in his face, turning it crimson, Captain David McDowell stood in the triangular opening of the tent, holding its flap back and waiting for the others to come up. McDowell's red beard was turned to livid flame by the low sun. He saw Sus Ainsa, dressed in black and looking very lean and supple, cruising the company street. Shortly a man came along, Freeman McKinney, captain of C Company, a tall man with a bald head that rose to a kind of point. McKinney, never a talkative soul, nodded briefly to McDowell and stooped to go into the tent. McDowell stayed where he was and saw the bottom rim of the sun flatten against the horizon. A long lance of bright pastel vermilion shot forward from the setting orb.

Presently Norval Douglas came along, dressed in mountain buckskins. McDowell took note of the yellow glitter of Douglas's eyes; it had never failed to unnerve him. Douglas also leaned and entered the tent, and when the sun had dropped another degree and the sheet of pastel hues had spread across the entire western quarter of the sky, with reds and yellows the color of brilliant limestone cliffs, then Bob Holliday came swinging down the path with long-legged, easy strides. Holliday was handsome and clean-shaven; he had an amiable smile and presented an elongated, raw-boned figure in the strange rose light of the dying day.

Holliday was in command of B Company, and McDowell's lips pinched together tautly when Holliday grinned lazily, said, “Evenin', Dave,” and curled inside the tent like a long uncoiling snake. McDowell bit his lip and stooped to go inside, letting the flap fall behind him so that it became suddenly dark within the tent, and almost simultaneously, Freeman McKinney said, “Hey, somebody got a candle?” and Norval Douglas lighted the wick of a whale-oil lantern. That little incident impressed on McDowell the different ways of thinking of Douglas and McKinney.

“Pin the flap back, Dave,” Douglas said in his quiet drawl. “Let's have some light in here.”

McDowell turned around and folded the tent-flap back. On the rim of the earth, the sun was an overturned bowl angry in hue. Long shadows zigzagged along the ground. McDowell sat down Indian fashion, cross-legged, in the triangle of the opening, and swept his companions' faces.

“What's the trouble, Dave?” Freeman McKinney said.

“I thought we ought to have a little talk between us,” McDowell said, “before we get too far out in the desert.”

“What about?”

“The general,” McDowell said, referring to Crabb.

There was a brief interval of silence, with red sundown light painting their faces before him, and Bob Holliday said in his casual tone, “What's wrong with the general?”

“I'm worried,” McDowell answered. “About him and about us.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, I don't like the way he waited until we were twenty miles out in the desert before he told us what he'd found out from Mexico. He may not have said so, but it seems clear to me that the turn of things down there throws a whole new light on what we're doing.”

“What you mean is,” Holliday suggested, “you don't trust Pesquiera.”

“No,” McDowell agreed. “I don't. He doesn't need us any more. His troops don't have anybody to fight—they're free to fight off the Apaches themselves. What does he need us for?”

“I'm sure,” said Freeman McKinney, “that the general's thought about that. He knows what he's doing.”

“Does he?” McDowell said quickly. “He's a politician, not a soldier.”

“What of it?” Holliday said.

“When the time comes for military decisions,” McDowell said, “do we leave them up to Crabb?”

“You always were a worrier,” Holliday observed, and stretched his lanky legs along the tent's grass floor. He was leaning back, propped up on his elbows, and his eyes were sleepy.

“Another thing,” McDowell added. “We've got to decide whether we're going to act like a bunch of colonists or a regiment of soldiers. You can't have it both ways. But the general keeps seesawing—from one minute to the next I can't tell if he aims to immigrate or invade. I think we ought to take it up to him. Frankly, I want a clear answer before we go any farther.”

Holliday's half-lidded eyes rose. “The trouble with you West Point boys is you never know what to do until somebody gives you an order. Hell, Dave, why not go over to his tent and ask him?”

McDowell ignored the man's amiable insult; he answered, “Because we haven't agreed among ourselves yet.”

“What's there to agree on?”

McDowell looked around. The dying sun cast softer shadows. In the corner, Norval Douglas sat silent, a man to whom stillness was important. McKinney's bald head gleamed and he frowned at his hands. Holliday looked mild and unconcerned. “Are we game for anything at all?” McDowell asked.

McKinney's frown turned toward him. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean,” McDowell said in precisely pronounced words, “are we all willing to stand behind the general no matter what happens?”

“I still don't follow you,” McKinney said.

“Crabb's playing politics,” McDowell said. “He's trying to play Pesquiera off against Gandara. But it won't work, because Gandara doesn't have a thimbleful of supporters left. Crabb was hoping that they'd weaken each other enough so that we could step in against nothing more than token opposition. But it didn't work out that way. Damn it, when we started this thing I knew what was up. I expected all along that we'd find ourselves trying to boost Henry Crabb into the Governor's Palace at Ures, or maybe the U. S. Senate from Sonora. It was a risky thing then, but it's a fool's play now. Pesquiera isn't half so weak as we thought he'd be. But Crabb goes right on ahead as if nothing had happened. I don't think he's fooling anybody—and I want to know if all of you are willing to take the risks.”

“Are you?” McKinney countered.

Holliday's drawl broke in between them. “If you gents haven't got the guts for it, what are you doing here in the first place?”

“I just want to know how far out I'm going to have to stick my neck—and how many men I can count on to stand with me,” McDowell said. “Does that make me a coward?”

It was Norval Douglas who answered. “You're the only one who can answer that, Dave. But it seems to me that if you signed up to follow Crabb, then you're duty-bound to follow him wherever he heads.”

“Is that the way you feel about it, Norval?”

“It is. I took a job. I intend to fulfill my end of the contract.”

McDowell turned his troubled gaze out from the tent, across the brush-studded desert toward the westward peaks across which they had come. Ahead, southeast, lay the salt flats, the sand dunes that led finally to the banks of the Rio Colorado. The sun was down and indigo shadows spread thick along the ground. He thought of these men, his fellow officers. McKinney was an ex-member of the California legislature, one of Crabb's fellow politicians. He would probably follow Crabb's lead—or would he? Bob Holliday was a man of varied backgrounds; he had been a scout with Cooke's Mormon Battalion and he had fought with Frémont in California, but essentially he did not own the military mind. Of the other officers, not gathered here, he thought he might be able to count on Will Allen, his lieutenant and friend, and perhaps on Quarles and Porter, who were Holliday's lieutenants. Of the others he was not so sure. John Henry, from Mariposa, was McKinney's lieutenant and also an ex-member of the state legislature, as was the surgeon, Dr. Oxley. Colonel W. H. McCoun, whom Crabb saw fit to call his Commissary General, was likewise a former legislator, and had at one time stood tall in the state house. He would no doubt follow Crabb to the shores of the Styx if he had to. Other officers—Tozer and Bob Wood and Nat Wood and Ted Johns—were present at Crabb's suffrage. McDowell thus felt in the minority. He said as much: “The general's got himself surrounded by friends. But I don't want to be the sacrifice of a fool's mission.”

“What do you want to do about it?” countered Holliday.

“I wish I knew.”

“Why don't you sleep on it?” McKinney said. That was McKinney's answer to a good many things.

“I've slept with it for weeks,” McDowell told him. “I'm at the point where I don't like it. I think we ought to find out exactly what the general has in mind before we go any farther.”

“As I said before,” Holliday drawled, “why don't you ask him?”

McDowell made no reply. The trouble was, he was afraid of what Crabb's answer might be—and he did not wish to be the only man in the party in disagreement with the general. He did not want events to make him out a coward; it was that simple. If at this point he refused to follow Crabb further, it would be akin to mutiny. If, thereafter, Crabb proved successful, McDowell would be behind, a castaway; and if Crabb proved unsuccessful, McDowell would be a scapegoat. He feared both consequences. He pounded his fist into an open palm. “Isn't anybody else interested in what we're headed for?”

“Maybe you should have thought all that out before you came along, Dave,” said McKinney. “The rest of us did.”

McDowell rolled out of the tent opening and stood up. In the east, over the desert flats, the moon was coming up with a soft ring of dust around it. He felt the pressure of time. Along the tent streets fires glittered, red gleams like eyes winking at him. Soft laughter swept across the evening and somewhere down the row a harmonica made sad melodies. Norval Douglas came out of the tent and put his light eyes on him; Douglas said, “Whatever you decide to do, Dave, don't let public opinion push you around.” Then he swung away, a buckskinned figure moving through the night with a cougar's grace. The moonlit plain glimmered silver. When Bob Holliday appeared at the front of the tent, he merely showed a bleak expression, saying nothing, disappearing toward his own tent. Finally McKinney came out, moonlight glancing off the dome of his head, and stood with a musing pucker to his lips while he packed his pipe. “Dave.”

“What?”

“It's likely to be a rough road. I suggest you make up your mind.”

“I see,” McDowell said slowly. “You don't trust me.”

McKinney, for a politician, was blunt enough. “That's right,” he said without malice. “If we ride into trouble, I want to know that the man who commands the left flank isn't occupied with trying to balance his own skin against the company's. Maybe you ought to figure out where your loyalties lie before we hit the Mexican line. I think you ought to do that, Dave.”

“Thanks,” he said drily.

McKinney made no reply. He put a match to the bowl of his pipe and when it was going to his satisfaction, he walked away.

CHAPTER 12

At the gray break of dawn the column moved out. Past Warner's Ranch and Sackel's Well now, they pushed southeastward toward Jeager's Ferry at the Yuma Crossing. Horsemen rode in a column of twos; out ahead of the regiment rode a single buckskin-clad man: Norval Douglas, trail scout. In the midst of the column plodded five Studebaker wagons, each drawn by eight spans of mules, with the driver riding the off wheel animal. On these laden wagons rode bedrolls, clothes, horse feed, tools, kegs of gunpowder, surgeon's supplies, water barrels, spare wheels and axles, flour barrels and salt pork and food to provision a hundred men for two months less the fortnight they had already traveled, and planks—many stout planks lashed beneath the wagons. When Charley had asked the meaning of these planks he had learned that they were to be used as rails for the wagons when they reached the forty-mile stretch of the soft sand-dune country. January—and the desert was smoky with ninety-degree heat. It was unseasonable and dismal; not a cloud appeared anywhere on the topaz expanse of the sky. Catclaw, greasewood, prickly pear, jointed cholla, barrel cacti—these seemed the only vegetation studding the gentle undulations of the land. “The land that God forgot,” muttered Jim Woods, riding at Charley's stirrup. Dust, kicked up by the column of horses ahead, filled his nostrils and caked his skin and formed a salty grit against his eyelids and tongue. There was the muffled tramp of hoofs, the creak of saddle leather, now and then a soft jingle of bit chains, the scrape of big wagon wheels and the listless flap of canvas.

The earth, tan-gray and rocky, became steadily softer underfoot as they moved into the rising sun morning after morning. Dull heat smothered the plain from midmorning to sundown. Mica particles in the ground flashed painfully against the eye. Seldom was there any wind; now and then came a sluggish current of air to scorch dry skin. Powerful sunlight burned their hands and faces and shoulders. Once, some distance back, Charley caught sight of Bill Randolph and Chuck Parker. Parker rode the tailgate of a wagon; Randolph, alongside, rode with his shirt off, his massive brown torso gleaming with brown sweat.

On the nineteenth they hit the dunes.

Wagon wheels sank almost hub-deep in the soft sand. The column halted. From the head of the line came commands, relayed back man to man. Charley found himself detailed with a small group of men near the second wagon. He stepped down and handed the reins of his horse to old John Edmonson, who scraped the back of his hand across a sweating weathered brow and attempted a smile. Leaving his rifle in the saddle boot, Charley plodded forward through the sand while it sucked at his boots.

Lieutenant Will Allen came up, a trim little man who twisted the points of his brown droopy mustache and said, “All right. Untie those planks under the wagon bed.”

He had to crawl under the wagon to undo some of the knots. There was not much space between the wagon's floor and the tops of the sand dunes; the wagon had sunk practically to its axles. He had to dig his way in. His fingers were clumsy with the knots. He heard Lieutenant Allen's impatient voice: “Hurry it up, can't you?”

“Yes, sir,” he muttered, and presently the ropes came loose. The planks almost dropped on his upturned face. He scrambled out from under the wagon and pulled the planks out, seeing another youth—Carl Chapin—doing the other side of the wagon.