Ambush (11 page)

In midmorning, they saw the distant flag of dust rising from behind a low butte that proclaimed Loring's column on the return trip.

They met in the close file of a canyon, Loring's flankers first passing them, saluting Linus and then exchanging short greetings with the troopers of Linus' detail as they passed.

Loring and Holly reined in, and Linus dismounted and tramped stiffly over to Loring's horse. He saluted and said informally, “It was a good scout, Ben. We overtook and engaged a band of seven at Calendar Springs after dark. No casualties on our side, two men on theirs. The rest scattered into the night, but we have three of them. Kinsman has talked to the girl, and determined that Mary Carlyle was with the warriors who traveled ahead of this band. She is in good health, the woman says.”

Loring's broad face showed a complete astonishment as his glance lifted to Ward. “Mrs. Carlyle was in this band?”

Ward nodded, and Loring said, “Fine, fine. Wonderful work, Kinsman. We are all in your debt.” He glanced down at Linus. “Good job, Linus.” He turned now to Corporal Ames and called, “When we're clear of this canyon, we'll take a break, Corporal.”

It was then that Linus looked over the column and afterward stepped aside for a better view. He said, in surprise, “Storrow, where'd you join us?”

It was Loring who answered. “Storrow's news from Gamble couldn't be worse, Linus. A few hours after we left the post, Trooper Riordan attacked Major Brierly with a pitchfork. The Major's in grave condition, with a punctured lung and side.”

Ward saw Linus' face go pale under its sun flush, and he said slowly, “Trooper Riordan, you say?”

“Yes. The man Kinsman struck. Storrow shot him and wounded him in the leg.”

Storrow said mildly, “You are addressing our new commanding officer, Linus.”

Linus looked from Storrow to Loring and back again, and then said, “Of course. Senior Captain. My congratulations, Ben, although I'm sorry as you are for the circumstance.”

Loring said, “Thank you, Linus,” and now he glanced at Ward. “I'd be happy to send a detail with you to Craig, Kinsman, if you're still determined to leave us.”

In a single fleeting moment, Ward read the consequences of Brierly's accident. Loring would be in command in the field, directing the pursuit and capture of Diablito. With Brierly in command, Ward had known that it would be a soldierly, smart, and tenacious campaign; with Loring in command, he did not know what it would be.

Linus glanced at him now, pure misery in his eyes, and he said nothing. Ward tipped back his hat and felt the decision forming, and then said, almost surprised at his own words, “Why, Gamble suits me as well as Craig, Captain. I might as well return with you.”

Chapter IV

From the doorway of the commanding officer's quarters, Ann saw the weary column file onto the parade ground. Both her attention and curiosity sharpened at once when she saw Kinsman pull his horse out of column, and she wondered at the stirring excitement within her. Ben Loring's voice as he dismissed the detail shuttled her attention to him. He dismounted, conferred briefly with Lieutenant Storrow, and then gave over his reins to Sergeant Mack, and headed directly for her.

He walked heavily, she saw, as if he were tired. Even at this distance, she could see that his shirt of faded blue was less gray with dust than those of the others, and she thought,
Of course, he led
. He would lead from now on, in another sense, and she found herself wondering fleetingly what his men would think of it. She had observed enough on the escort from Santa Fe to know that his men were easy around him, and that told her he was a fair man. But he was not just another capable captain now; he was their commanding officer.

When he saw her, he waved, and as he hit the walk, he took off his hat. The stripe of skin between the line of his dark hair and where his hat rode was startlingly pale in contrast to his heat-flushed face. His mustaches were faintly silvered with dust.

He said, “Ann, how can you look so fresh in this heat?”

Ann knew she didn't look fresh; knew that, as part of the comfortable charm of the man, he said this mechanically, and knew that his real concern was with Major Brierly. Nevertheless, it pleased her, and she was faintly irritated that it did.

“It was a good scout, wasn't it, Ben? I've accounted for every man in the detail, and prisoners.”

“It was, thanks to Linus and Kinsman,” Loring said generously. He looked at her with brief open pleasure, and then asked gravely, “How is Major Brierly?”

“Not well, Doctor Horton says. If you see him, Ben, will you make it very, very brief?”

“Yes. Come with me, Ann.”

Ann led the way into the house, through the living room that was a comfortable bachelor hodge-podge of furniture borrowed or inherited from past tenants, and into the bedroom on the right of the corridor to the kitchen.

The shades were pulled against the glare of the sun, and the room was stifling with a close, sick heat. Major Brierly lay on his back in the iron bed in the far corner, and Loring walked over to him and saluted.

“How are you, sir?”

Brierly's hand rose in a slow movement of negation, dismissing the question, and then he said in a dim voice, “Horton says I can't talk much. Did you make a scout?”

Loring told him of Linus' scout, of the skirmish with the Apache band and the capture of the two women and the man. Then, interrupting himself, he turned to Ann, who was standing in the doorway. “Ann, this is the news we wanted. Kinsman learned by talking with one of the captured women that Mary was only an hour ahead of this band, on her way to Diablito.”

Ann felt an almost painful exultation as Loring continued, “Mary is well, although she is being worked hard. She has not been taken as a wife, or otherwise harmed.”

A swift, almost overwhelming pity for her sister touched Ann, and then, unaccountably, the thought came to her,
Why didn't he tell me when he first saw me?
and with it an odd resentment. It was only fleeting, and Ann thought,
I'm irritable; I need sleep
. Ben was again talking to Major Brierly; his voice was gentle, concise, respectful, and Ann was ashamed of her thought.
He's a soldier first. I've got to remember that
, she thought.

Now Brierly spoke. “I'm tired, Loring. You will telegraph this information to Headquarters, and await further orders. It's your command, now.”

“And I'm sorry for that, sir,” Ben said. He was about to add something, but instead, came to attention and saluted and said, “I think you'd better rest, sir.”

On the porch again, Ben leaned against the veranda rail, and he looked briefly over the parade ground, saw it deserted save for the Apaches who were being led to the guardhouse over by the bakery.
That'll be an oven
, he thought.
I'd better feed them, pry what information I can from them, and then return them to the reservation
. But at the moment, he just wanted to look at Ann, to be with her, and he turned to her. “You've been nurse, haven't you? I'll ask Mrs. Wolverton or one of the enlisted men's wives to spell you while you get some rest.”

Ann said, “They've all helped, Ben.” Her green eyes were dark and troubled. “Oh, it was such a stupid accident. It needn't have happened to anyone at all, much less to Major Brierly.”

“I know. What's Horton's opinion?”

“It's serious. Oddly enough, there's danger of pneumonia, he says.”

Loring grimaced. “What about Riordan?”

“A simple gunshot wound in the leg. He's in hospital under guard.”

“A pity Kinsman didn't hit him harder,” Ben said. He rose now, and said, “I'd better get acquainted with my new job. Now rest, will you, Ann?”

Ann nodded. Loring smiled briefly and went down the steps, taking the gravel walk toward his quarters. Mention of Kinsman prompted another thought now: Why had Kinsman changed his mind about going to Craig? Of course, the man was footloose, and to his shiftless kind, one post was as good as another, just so long as he was fed and could find company. But, even if by accident, he had helped them tremendously on this scout, yet there was something about the man, his belief in his own infallibility or in his luck, combined with his aimless, irresponsible way of life, that Loring deeply resented. Nevertheless, as Loring stepped up on the veranda he came to his decision. It didn't matter whether or not he approved of Kinsman, he was going to ask him again to serve as scout when they took the field against Diablito. It might be wise, too, to enlist Linus' help in persuading him.

As he stepped into the long corridor which ran the width of the building, he heard a splashing in the bath shed to the rear. He walked through the corridor and outside; he peered in the shed. Kinsman turned as he heard the door open; he stood naked under the shower, soaping his chest, his lean body a startling white in contrast to the deep brown of his neck and face and hands. Loring saw, with a sort of shock of surprise, a long pale scar that started at his right shoulder and crossed his back to his left hip.

Loring said good-naturedly, “You lucky hound, that's where I'd like to be. Is Linus around?”

“He said something about picking up his laundry.” Kinsman didn't smile; he was polite, faintly distant, and Loring felt the touch of embarrassment and resentment that comes when friendship is rejected.

He said, “Mind stepping over to the office when you're finished?”

Kinsman only nodded assent.

Loring withdrew and tramped back into his room. He noted a pair of wrinkled shirts on Linus' bed, and then, remembering Linus' errand, he hauled up abruptly. Staring at the shirts now, the old suspicion returned, the suspicion that he had kept to himself ever since the night the detail left. He tried again to remember the exact words of the drunken Riordan that night, and again he could not. But he had been certain then, as now, that Riordan had said, “Wife-stealer,” not “horse-stealer,” as Kinsman reported. To whom Riordan spoke, he wasn't sure and he never would be sure. But now he was remembering the afternoon he had blundered into Linus and Mrs. Riordan behind the closed door of this room; he remembered, too, Linus' sudden wrath when he had objected to the propriety of the thing. Lastly, he remembered Linus' face after Kinsman had struck Riordan. And now, with the dust scarcely settled from the detail's return, Linus was calling for his laundry.
Calling on Mrs. Riordan, of course
, Loring thought.

Slowly, then, he sank to the edge of his bed, laced his fingers together, put elbows on knees, and rested his chin on his hands. His suspicion, which was gradually hardening into conviction, was a distasteful thing to him. And even more distasteful was the implication that Linus, an Academy graduate, an officer and a gentleman, was having an affair with the wife of an enlisted man. It not only violated his own personal code of honor, but it filled Loring with a deep, angry disgust. It was sordid and shabby, an officer stepping out of his own class to consort with the trollop wife of a brutish and common trooper. It was the sort of thing that no gentleman, much less an officer, ever did. It could result in the cashiering of Linus, with no extenuating circumstance. And it had, he saw very clearly now, resulted in the accident which had nearly cost Major Brierly his life. For if Riordan hadn't tried to attack Linus—not Kinsman—he would never have been arrested. If he had never been arrested, he would not have tried to escape. If he had—

And then the thought came to him with the impact of a blow, and he came to his feet. Hadn't Storrow reported that Riordan was hiding on the veranda of officer's quarters? Of course he had, and now the reason was plain as print; Riordan, berserk drunk, had been preparing to attack Linus in his own room when Brierly discovered him. That was the last link in the chain of evidence.

The thought appalled him, and for a moment he stared at the soiled shirts with blank unseeing eyes. Gradually, then, his mind began to function, and he saw with bitter clarity what lay before him. Because of Brierly's accident, he was commanding officer, and it was the duty of a commanding officer to regulate the conduct of the men, officers and troopers alike, under him. Formerly, as a fellow officer of Linus' he would have held his peace concerning what he knew, as any gentleman would, preferring to let time and gossip expose the affair. But now, with the morale of his command at stake, he could not ignore it. Linus' conduct was a disgrace to the uniform, and could not be tolerated. His duty was clear—and yet, knowing it, a faint wave of compassion for Linus touched him, and was gone.

He wheeled and tramped out of his room, as if to lose in physical action the thoughts that bothered him. On the veranda, he hauled up and thought,
Look here, you have other duties, all of them important, and they come first
.

He cut across the parade ground and entered Headquarters building. Lieutenant McKevett, as officer of the day, was seated at his desk; he came to attention and saluted, as did Corporals Wells and Samson, clerks.

Loring returned their salutes and said, “Hullo, Mac. I'd like the morning report. Corporal Wells, I'll have a message for the signal officer in a couple of minutes.”

He went into Brierly's office—his office now—and closed the door behind him. The room was stifling, but now privacy seemed more important than fresh air. Seating himself in Brierly's chair, he read over the late dispatches from Headquarters. Mostly, they concerned acknowledgment of receipt of dispatches informing Headquarters of Brierly's accident and condition. There was one dispatch confirming his own appointment as commanding officer. Corporal Wells came in and left the morning report. Now Loring composed his dispatch to Headquarters concerning information on Mary Carlyle. When it was finished, and Corporal Wells was on his way to the signal officer, Loring read the morning report. He noted that there was only one patient in hospital, which would be Riordan. That meant Shallet, their orderly, was out of hospital and on duty again, which gave Linus no excuse whatsoever for calling on Mrs. Riordan for his laundry.