Ambush (13 page)

“I had wanted you to help persuade Kinsman to go along with us, Mr. Delaney. However, he's already consented.” Loring's face was stern; he shifted some papers from the right of his desk to the left, and then looked at Linus.

“There's another matter, though, Mr. Delaney. I have not spoken of it before because it was not my place to. But with Major Brierly in hospital, I have been ordered to assume command, and it becomes my place.”

Linus felt a slow coiling of apprehension inside him. Loring's face, already flushed with the heat, assumed a look of doggedness.

“I don't relish bringing this up any more than you relish having me,” Loring began, and then he plunged. “I suspect that you are having an affair with the wife of an enlisted man, Mr. Delaney. Are my suspicions correct?”

Linus knew his face was stiff with anger, and he answered promptly, “Your suspicions are not correct, sir.”

Loring was silent a long moment as they regarded each other, and then Loring said, “Ordinarily, the word of an officer is sufficient, Mr. Delaney. However, there have been some events which happened before my own eyes whose implications I wish explained. I assume you are willing to explain them.”

“If I can, sir.”

“First,” Loring said, “I believe Kinsman lied about what Riordan said the night the detail left. You remember it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because I heard it, I know that Riordan said, ‘Wife-stealer,' not ‘horse-stealer.'” He paused. “To whom was he speaking, Mr. Delaney?”

Linus felt a dismal wash of fear in him, and he hesitated only a moment and then said, “To me, sir.”

“Why did he call you that, Mr. Delaney?”

Linus felt a drop of perspiration running down his temple and cheek; he made no move to wipe it off. He said levelly, “I had taken some laundry to Mrs. Riordan at her house because our orderly was in hospital, as you know. Riordan, dead drunk, came in as I was leaving. I assume he resented it.”

Loring looked at him in polite derision. He said now, in an impersonal voice, “Mr. Delaney, have you ever enjoyed Mrs. Riordan's favors?”

“Most certainly not!” Linus said angrily.

“But you have been more friendly with her than with the wives of other enlisted men?”

Linus leaned forward in his chair, and he was unable to keep the anger from his voice. “I have the deepest sympathy for Mrs. Riordan, as any observant man has. She is badly mistreated by her husband. When he beat her in one of his drinking bouts, I offered to pay her way back to her family so she could get away from him. I think she is a fine woman, and I would like to help her.”

Loring regarded him coldly, as he might regard a stranger, before he said, “Mr. Delaney, there has always been a sharp distinction between the officer class and the enlisted men. Aside from the very good reasons that there are differences in breeding, ability, training, and character that separate them, there is another reason—the necessity for discipline.” He paused, isolating this. “I consider that your relations with the wife of an enlisted man, however innocent, have jeopardized the discipline of this command. If the men of these two troops believe that their womenfolk are being molested by officers, or are submitting to their advances, they will neither obey us, nor respect us. It will result in desertions, in fights, in retaliations—in short, in anarchy. Do you believe that, Mr. Delaney?”

“If they are given cause to believe so, sir,” Linus said, still angrily.

Loring raised a heavy hand and pointed his index finger at Linus. “The only reason they do not believe so this minute is because Kinsman was quick-witted enough to assume the blame for your actions.”

Linus was silent—furious, embarrassed, and shamed.

Loring leaned forward and folded his hands on the desk. “Now, Mr. Delaney, here is what I propose; if barracks gossip continues to link Mrs. Riordan's name with Kinsman, and not with you, the matter will be dropped. But if it comes out Riordan suspects you of improper relations with his wife, I will make a suggestion. It's that you immediately thereafter request a transfer to another post on grounds of a mild physical ailment, like a catarrhal condition. Horton will certify, and I will approve.”

“And if I decline to accept your suggestion?”

“Then I will request you be transferred from my command.”

Linus said wrathfully, “If you do, I'll ask a court-martial to clear me.”

“Clear you, Mr. Delaney?” Loring asked with a deceptive gentleness. “No court in the Army would clear you of the charge of conduct highly detrimental to the morale and discipline of this command.”

Linus stared curiously at him a long moment, then asked softly, “Are you out to get me, Ben?”

Loring held his gaze and said quietly, emphatically, “Linus, I have never sat in judgment on a man's morals or his taste. But until the day I die, I will sit in judgment on his qualifications to wear the uniform you are now wearing.” He leaned back and said politely, “That's all, Mr. Delaney.”

Linus rose, came to attention, saluted, about-faced, and stalked to the door.

“One more thing, Mr. Delaney.”

Loring's voice hauled him around.

“I, personally, believe your conduct with Mrs. Riordan was directly responsible for Trooper Riordan's attack on Major Brierly. I can't prove it, and I wouldn't attempt to if I could. But I believe you should ponder it.”

“May I answer that, sir?” Linus asked angrily.

“You may not, Mr. Delaney. That's all.”

Back in his room, Linus closed the door and sank down on the bed, shaking with fury. Only minutes later was he aware that he still held his hat in his hand. Rising with a wild restlessness, he pitched the hat toward a chair and began to pace the room. Was he guilty of causing Riordan's attack on Brierly? No. Martha had told him Riordan's suspicion was only a hook to peg his anger on, that any other officer he found in his house would have provoked the same events. What had angered him was the fact that she defended herself from being beaten.
But you were the officer
, the voice of conscience nagged;
you didn't have to be there. You were there to see the woman you love
.

He groaned softly and fisted his hands in his hip pockets, and then he heard the door open.

Ward stepped in. The look of profound misery on Linus' face made him hesitate in the doorway. He remembered that Linus had been summoned by Loring, and he wondered what had passed between them. His first impulse was to leave, but Linus waved him in, and Ward closed the door behind him saying, “You look like you'd just been made adjutant and confined to post.”

Linus managed a faint smile and gestured to a chair. Then he wheeled and walked to the window on the parade side of the room. For a long moment, he stared out of it, then said, over his shoulder, “Loring's nosed it out about me and Martha.”

When Ward said nothing, Linus came across the room and halted in front of him. In a bitter, tired voice, he told Ward of the interview, and of Loring's veiled ultimatum.

When he finished, he looked at Ward with a stark misery in his eyes. “I hate a coward, and I am one,” he said wretchedly. “If I had spoken up after you hit Riordan, if I had explained it to Brierly, this would never have happened.”

“Two ‘ifs,'” Ward said quietly, watching him.

A fleeting touch of wry humor came into Linus' eyes then. “I know. Never look back.” And then the humor died. “But what's ahead? I've covered Martha with this slime, and covered you, too. And my future hangs on the imaginings of a surly, drunken beast.”

Ward was silent, watching the gray misery in his face. He said gently then, “What hurts, Linus, is that Riordan spoke the truth by accident. What hurts more is that Loring is right. Isn't that so?”

Linus looked searchingly at him. “Yes, that's right. And in God's name, what do I do?”

“Pay up,” Ward said mildly. “Whatever it costs, pay up.”

Linus held his gaze a moment longer, and then he shifted his glance to the window. He only nodded slowly; it was assent to his fate, to whatever the future held, and Ward rose and left the room.

He drifted out the post's east sentry gate and headed across the flat. Nothing was stirring in the sun, not even a dog, for this, the early evening, was the hottest part of the hot day. He headed for the sutler's house and climbed to the dark, steaming cubbyhole of a room at Mrs. Hance's that he shared with an unknown tenant's saddle and saddlebags. Stripping off his shirt, he lay on the cot, laced his fingers behind his neck, and stared at the unceilinged room. He thought of Linus then. Linus had made a mistake, one that any man, young and thoughtless and too confident, might have made. But he made it under the wrong man, and he had violated the rules of an implacable system, with no forgiveness in it. It could break him and throw him out without a thought.
And that's a pity
, Ward thought,
because he's the best soldier of them all
.

He put his mind to this, and presently it came to him what he should do. And now, wanting sleep, he discovered himself thinking of Loring. In three different ways today he had come upon the shadow of Loring; none of them mattered much, but the aggregate weight was impressive and disturbing.
I better get used to him
, he thought lazily, and afterward he slept.

He awakened at seven in the evening, feeling a raw hunger, but he put it aside, knowing this was time he must use. Shrugging into his shirt, he left the sutler's house and walked easily in the dusk toward the post.

Passed by the sentry, and through the gate, he turned right into Headquarters. Stepping into the lamplit room, saw the tow head of Lieutenant Tremaine bent over a signal book. Tremaine looked up, already rising out of habit, but when he saw Ward he relaxed.

“Evening, Lieutenant,” Ward said pleasantly. “You officer of the day?”

“McKevett's at supper. He's the officer of the hottest day in the year,” Tremaine said, and he gave Ward a friendly grin.

Ward put a leg on his desk and they chatted a moment, Ward answering questions about the Apache captives who, except for Tana, had been sent on their way that afternoon. Presently, Ward said, “I've got a little business with a prisoner of yours, Lieutenant—a matter of a horse of mine that he turned out and I can't account for. Do I wait until he's tried and freed, or shot, or can I see him now?”

“Riordan, you mean. He's in hospital under guard.” Tremaine frowned. “He was allowed a visitor today. I don't see why you can't talk to him.”

He reached for a pad and scribbled out a pass and said, “Give that to the guard as you go in.”

Ward thanked him and left. He had been right on his time, guessing that Loring, new to his job, would work late, but not very late, since he was trail-weary and tired.

At the post hospital, housed in an adobe building whose other half was the post bakery, he stepped inside. Tilted against the front wall was an armed trooper sitting in a chair, who took his pass. There were eight beds in the narrow room, and in one at the far corner, where he was farthest from any window, lay Tom Riordan. A lamp was lighted on the wall by the foot of his bed. He lay naked under a single sheet, and the sweat glistened on his massive chest and arms.

Ward came up to him and they regarded each other, neither speaking. Riordan had shaved today. There was a handsomeness in his surly face that couldn't be denied, and his red hair was almost made kinky by the perspiration.

Ward toed a chair between the beds, and glanced back at the incurious guard, who was out of earshot. Sitting down then he put an arm over the back of the chair and asked mildly, “How much of that drunk do you remember, Riordan?”

“I remember you,” Riordan said sullenly. “If you hadn't yelled, it never would've happened.”

“Were you waiting for me?”

“You're the lad that said you were coming back for your horse. I wanted to see what you'd do when you didn't find it.”

Ward smiled faintly. “Well, you found out. Do you remember what you called me, though?”

Riordan looked at him disdainfully, “Whatever it was, I'll name it again when I'm out of here.”

“I don't deny you're not afraid to call a man anything,” Ward said gravely. “Still, I doubt if you'd call me that name a second time, once you know what it was.”

Riordan scowled. “What was it?”

“Wife-stealer.”

Riordan looked searchingly at him, and Ward said mildly, “That name makes something less than a bucko lad out of you. I'm wondering what you meant by it, since I've never stolen anybody's wife, most especially yours—if you have one.”

“I was drunk,” Riordan said sullenly.

Ward's attention sharpened; the man didn't remember. Ward said easily, “You were, at that. You've got a wife?”

“I have.”

Ward shook his head in wonder. “Man, if you aim to keep her, I'd set that right. The escort heard you; so did the stable detail. You've been in the Army long enough to know what the men will make of that.”

Riordan's glance gained its old truculence, and his big hand fisted unconsciously.

“Aye,” he said grimly. “I'll mash the mouth of the man I hear speak of it.” He scrubbed a big palm over his face and said wonderingly. “There's little I remember, for the whiskey. I remember winning at poker. I remember Lieutenant Delaney stopping by to leave his laundry, and it made me mad, him being an officer in my house that I swore I'd never let an officer see inside of. And then we quarreled—me and my wife, and she hit me with something that dose to broke my hands. Then I got more to drink, I remember.”

“Do you remember who was standing beside me when I hit you?”

“No, who?”

Ward evaded the question. “I thought it might be that man you were naming.”

Riordan's temper, never far buried, flared again. “Nobody's stole my wife, I tell you! And who are you to be asking? As for names, I'll call you anything I like to lay my tongue to. And now you can—”