Barcroft, stood a moment chewing his lip, looking northward into the dusk, a wish in his black eyes. “Someday,” he murmured. “Someday ⦔
He finally turned back to his men. “We'll move out of this brush while we can still see. First light of day, we'll start again, following tracks. If there's an encampment up yonder, and it's not too big for us to handle, we'll kill us some more Indians.”
Soto frowned.
“Mi capitán,
maybeso it is too big. Then what we do?”
Barcroft said evenly, “You men will do what I tell you. And I'll do whatever looks best at the time.”
The company stopped at the edge of the brush to build fires and make coffee. Some of the men had dried beef to eat, and some broiled bacon on sticks. After supper they would move on, camping for the night in another spot well away from the glow of dying embers, the possible scrutiny of Comanche eyes.
Captain Barcroft never really relaxed. While the other men prepared their supper, he strode restlessly among them, looking them over, searching for no-one-knew-what. Finally a man named Elkin motioned to him, and Barcroft went to Elkin's fire, where Elkin had prepared a little supper for the two of them.
Cloud took Elkin to be Barcroft's second-in-command, although nothing had been said about it. Elkin was a quiet, blocky man well into his forties, a man who went about his business with a quiet competence. Here was a man, Cloud thought, who knew what he was doing and didn't seem to feel he had to prove it to anybody. Elkin had stayed right up front in the running skirmish. A time or two when Barcroft was at some distance, Cloud had seen Elkin give signal commands to some of the other troopers, and they had taken them.
Barcroft quickly ate his beef and drank his black coffee, as if eating was a chore to be disposed of as hurriedly as possible. That done, he stretched his long legs out in the curing grass and took from his pocket the letter Cloud had given him. He held it down close to Elkin's small mesquite-wood fire and read it in the flickering flame light. With a nod of his head he motioned Cloud to come to him and sit down.
“Letter says you know this country, Cloud.”
Cloud shook his head. “Not very well, but I've been over part of it. Had me some cows in the country a little east of here. Comanches ran most of them off, and I rode over a lot of this area here huntin' for 'em.”
“Find them?”
“No, sir. About all I found was experience. It just about finished me in the cow business.”
Barcroft's chin pointed to the letter. “The colonel says here you can track, read signs and know something about Indians. He thinks you'd make a scout if the company needed you for that.”
Cloud said, “I didn't read the letter.”
“Miguel could use some help, all right. We had another scout but lost him in an ambush. Indian rose up out of the tall grass and put an arrow so deep into the scout's belly that the point came out of his back. Do you want the job?”
Don't sound like there's much of a future to it
, Cloud thought. But this day in time a man didn't get a lot of choice. “You're the captain.”
Barcroft had a stern gaze that made a man fidgety, made him want to get out from under it. “You've worried me a little, Cloud. I watched you in action today, and you made a good account of yourself. You didn't strike me as a glory hunter, or as a shirker either. It doesn't take long to tell the counterfeits. I gathered you're not here because
you're afraid to fight the Yankees. Then you must be here because you don't
want
to fight them. I'd like to know your politics, mister. Are you a damned Unionist?”
Uncomfortable, Cloud studied a moment before he tried to answer. “I'm a Texican, Captain. I was born here in â36, durin' the Runaway Scrape. My ma, she had to drop out of a bunch of refugees on account of me, and I was born just a few miles ahead of old Santa Anna and his Mexican troops. My folks always thought of themselves as Americans, and they were tickled to death when Texas was annexed. That's the way I was brought up.
“Sure, I'm a Southerner, and I think the Yankees have done us a heap of wrong. I think we got some scores to settle with them. But war ain't no proper way to go about it. You boil it down, Captain, they're white folks same as us. They're Americans, and so are weâwhatever we might be callin' ourselves right now. I got to agree with old General Sam Houston, that secession was one mighty bad mistake. There must've been a better way out than goin' to war against our own people.
“If there's fightin' to be done, I won't shirk my share of it. But I'll do mine here, at the edge of the settlements, where there's an enemy I can recognize as one.”
Cloud could see anger in the captain's face. “A lot of people in Texas seem to feel the way you do. Some have even slipped off and joined the Union Army.”
Cloud shook his head. “That'd be even worse. Far as I'm concerned, this war is a mistake for both sides. I don't want none of it, either way.”
Barcroft said, “If the yellow-leg Yankee cavalry had ever done to you what it did to me, you'd think differently. I'd be up yonder fighting them now, except that they need somebody to do this, and I hate Comanches even more than Yankees.”
He stood up, and Cloud followed suit. Gravely Barcroft
said: “Normally, a man's entitled to think as he pleases, Cloud. But this is wartime, and in wartime a man has to forgo a lot of rights. There are several in this command who have the same Unionist ideas you do. If you and the others weren't so badly needed here, you'd probably be hanged. So just remember this: you're in the Confederacy, like it or not. Keep your ideas to yourself and we'll get along. But I'll allow no traitorous talk in this command!”
He turned away and said to Elkin, “Let's move!”
Â
By the time first sunlight spilled out across the dry prairie, the company had eaten its meager breakfast and was a-horseback again. Barcroft motioned to Cloud and pointed forward.
“You go up with Miguel and help him scout.”
Cloud nodded and spurred his horse into a lope, overtaking the Mexican well forward of the command. Miguel Soto looked him over as he rode up. “The man who steals horses so good,” Soto said, a trace of a smile about him. The Mexican was short and wiry and all muscle. He was not an old man, but Cloud could not make even a wild guess at his age. He rather thought Soto was young, although his face was weathered. A long scar down one cheek helped give him the appearance of age.
Cloud had watched the Mexican with some wonder last night. The other Texans had treated Soto as one of themselves. There had been no sign of resentment or dislike. Most Texans of that day cared little for Mexicans, for they had been enemies in two wars and countless border skirmishes, and even a Texas-born Mexican was likely to be regarded as an alien. That the group here so readily accepted Soto indicated he had already proved himself.
“Maybeso the
capitán,
he don't like you,” Soto commented with a grin. “Maybeso he send you up here to get kill, eh?”
Cloud saw little to grin about, but he tried it anyway. “Don't look to me like you're in any place to smile. You're up here too.”
Soto shrugged. “Long time now the Comanche, he has try to kill Miguel. But I have live with the Comanche. I know how he thinks, what he's gonna do. This Mexican, he gonna die in bed, a long time from now.”
The sun was still low in the east, and a cool morning breeze searched across the rolling prairie as if seeking a place of refuge from the coming heat. Cloud and Soto passed the spot where they had fixed supper the night before, the burned-out campfires only spots of gray ash amid the carpet of short grass. They cut the trail left by themselves and by the Indians in yesterday's running fight. Here and there lay a stiffened horse, a dead Indian. Cloud shuddered. This was something a man never got used to.
Soto stepped down to recover a bow and a quiver of arrows.
“You don't look to me like a souvenir hunter,” Cloud remarked.
Soto shook his head. “I already got my Comanche souvenir,” he said, pointing to the long scar on his face. “But maybeso we come to a place where we got to kill quiet, and don' want no gun. The arrow, she don't make much noise.”
Suddenly Cloud reined up and pointed. “Miguel, look yonder.”
An Indian woman was dragging herself along in the grass, trying to crawl away from them. A hundred feet behind her lay a blanket and a blood-splotched patch of ground where she had fallen in the skirmish.
“Must've laid there all night,” Cloud said.
They rode up to her carefully. Cloud held his pistol ready. It wasn't likely the squaw would have a gun, but
it was foolish to take chances. Miguel unstrapped his canteen and stepped down. He spoke to the woman in the Comanche tongue. She stopped crawling and turned over on her side. Hatred shone through the pain in her dark eyes.
Cloud put the pistol away and swung to the ground. The woman was young. It might have been the squaw who was sitting beside the buck he had shot yesterday, at the horse herd.
Miguel held his canteen out to her. She refused it at first. Miguel took the lid off and let a little of the water trickle out into the grass. The woman's reserve broke. She clutched at the canteen. Talking quietly to her, Miguel held it for her while she drank thirstily.
Cloud dropped to one knee and looked at the shoulder wound that had brought her down. He gritted his teeth and turned away.
Afraid she was drinking too rapidly, Miguel withheld the canteen a moment. She begged for it, and he let her drink again. Fever, Cloud thought. She's all dried out.
The rest of the company caught up to them, Captain Barcroft in the lead. He asked no foolish questions. He stared at the woman without either hatred or pity.
Cloud said, “Looks like this complicates things, Captain. Was we just to leave her here like this, she'd die.”
The captain said, “She's obviously in no condition to go anywhere, either afoot or on horseback. We couldn't take her with us.”
“We could leave a man to take care of her till we come back.”
“Leave a man out here alone, with other Indians possibly about? Besides, Cloud, we can't spare anyoneânot even one man. We don't know what we'll run into up yonder.”
Cloud nodded. “Sir, this is a woman. I don't see any other way out.”
Evenly Barcroft said, “There's a way out, Cloud. A very simple way.”
Cloud froze in shocked disbelief as Barcroft drew his pistol and leveled it at the woman. He saw terror in the squaw's brown eyes, and he shouted, “Don't!”
The pistol flashed and the woman fell back. Cloud dropped to one knee beside her. But he knew at a glance that she was dead. Trembling in rage, he slowly pushed to his feet and turned to face the captain. He felt a strong impulse to drag the man out of the saddle, but he knew that could get him shot. He struggled for words, and they wouldn't come.
Barcroft said, “Don't say anything that'll get you in trouble, Cloud. When you think about it a little, you'll know it was the best way out for her and for us. Now go on, you and Miguel. Take up your positions again.”
Cloud glared at him through a red haze, his fists doubled.
“Cloud!” Barcroft spoke again, a sharpness in his voice this time. “Don't ask for trouble. You heard my order.”
Miguel tugged at Cloud's sleeve. “You better do what he says, my friend.”
Cloud lingered a moment more, his eyes still burning on the captain. But the quick blaze of anger died down in him, leaving a smoldering coal that would turn into hatred. He pivoted on one heel and swung into the saddle. He spurred out in a lope.
A
S THE SUN CLIMBED, THE SUMMER HEAT BORE DOWN unmercifully. Cloud sweated hard, his shirt sticking to his back. The wind itself turned warm, but now and again it felt pleasant as it made the wet shirt cool against his skin. In this country there was nearly always a little wind through the daytime. Without it, the sun would be almost unbearable.
The surviving Indians had ridden far into the night. Finally, they had paused to rest a little while, starting again by daylight. At first they had made no effort to conceal their tracks. Now their panic was subsiding. Judgment was getting the upper hand. They were covering their trail.
Cloud was a good tracker. As a boy he had developed the art from trailing lost cattle and horses, and he had learned to watch for Indian signs. But now and again he would lose the Comanches' trail. Miguel Soto always found something to set the pair of scouts right again.
“You follow them like another Indian,” Cloud observed in admiration.
“I was an Indian. The Comanches, they make me one.”
“How's that?”
“Long time ago, when I was a boy in Chihuahua, the Comanches come. I am eight, maybeso ten years old. They kill my mother and father and my big brothers, strike them down with their lances and their arrows. With these two eyes, I see them take the scalps. The two sisters I have, the young warriors carry them away. My baby brother and me, some others take us along. The baby, he cry all the time, so they smash his head on a rock. Me, I am strong and healthy, and they keep me to work.
“It is a hard life, I tell you. They beat me all the time. Even now, I have on my back the many scars. But I don' cry. Sometimes when they beat me I fight, and they like that. All the time I work hard, so they don' kill me, and I tell myself someday I get my chance. Someday I will get even with them for what they do to me, to all my people.
“Finally they decide I make pretty good Comanche myself, and they don' beat me no more. They raise me like Comanche boy, teach me what they teach all Comanche boys. They think I forget all the bad things, but I don' forget. I all the time remember, and I tell myselfâwait, one day the time will come.
“Sure enough, when I get to the age, we go on big raid against the
Tejanos.
This is my chance. The old warrior who always beat me the most, he is there. I get him alone, and I cut his throat.” Soto made the sign with his finger, and grinned with a grim satisfaction as he did so. “I laugh at him and .I spit on him while he is lie there, lookin' up at me and dyin'. Then I take coup. I still have the scalp.”
He reached back into his saddlebag and drew forth a piece of rolled-up oilskin. He unrolled it and showed
Cloud a scalp, tanned to keep. “This,” said Miguel, “I keep with me always, so I don' never forget. Here, feel of it. Good piece of work, eh?”
Face twisting, Cloud shook his head. “I'll take your word for it.”
Miguel rolled the scalp back into the oilskin. “Sometimes when I go into battle against the Comanche, I think of some of the boys who were good to me, and I begin to feel sorry. Then I look at this scalp and remember all the bad things, and I don't feel sorry no more. I got plenty to hate for.”
He frowned then, looking back over his shoulder at Barcroft's company, far behind them. “My friend, there is much you don' know about the
capitán.
You think he is a bad man, and maybeso he is, a little bit. But it is not because he wants to be. He is like meâhe has much to hate for.
Quién sabe?
Maybeso one day you understand.”
Cloud said sharply, “Some things, there ain't no understandin'.”
Â
All that day they rode without once sighting an Indian. But they came across Indian signs, tracks headed north. There were the hoofprints of many horses, even the trail of travois. No longer was there any apparent effort by the Comanches to hide their tracks. This was farther than
Tejano
pursuit usually came. Ahead, for the Indians, lay unviolated sanctuary.
Only once all day did the company come across a waterhole. Barcroft and Elkin saw to it that every canteen was filled before the horses were allowed to move in and water.
“Every man should drink up good while he's here,” Barcroft said, wiping the sweat from his face. “Conserve that canteen water as long as you can. No telling how long before we find more.”
Grudgingly, Cloud admitted to himself that the captain's order was a wise one. Men had ridden out horseback on searches into the open Indian country, only to drag back to the settlements on hands and knees, tongues swollen, lips parched, begging for water.
Through the heat of the afternoon they rode on, but slowly now, for Barcroft was trying to save the horses. These mounts would have to get them to wherever they were going and carry them home again. From here on, there was likely to be no chance for a change.
Late in the day they came upon a dry creekbed lined by a scrubby growth of brush and dying grass. Cloud dismounted and poked around, shoving his ramrod deep into the bed and drawing it out. He felt the rod and found mud clinging to the end of it. “Been water here,” he said. “I expect if we was to dig holes in it, we could water the horses by mornin' from what seeps in.”
Spotting a cottontail rabbit, the Mexican took down the bow he had picked up earlier. The captain had given orders against gunfire. With the first arrow, Soto pinned the rabbit to the ground. Cloud whistled. “They sure taught you good.”
“Supper,” said Soto, holding up the rabbit. “We share it, you and me.”
The company scattered up and down the dry creekbed, building tiny fires behind the banks to hide them from searching eyes. Some of the men already were complaining that they were out of meat, that it was time to turn back. Those who still had food left shared it with those whose supplies had run out.
Cloud was grateful for the rabbit, though he was still a little hungry when he finished his half of it. Cottontails didn't grow very big.
The rusty-haired young man named Quade Guffey had sat down beside Cloud to chew on a piece of cold jerky.
He enviously eyed the rabbit, cooking over a small bank of coals, but he refused Cloud's offer to split his share with him.
“Ain't hardly enough there for
you
,” Guffey said. “Man in this outfit gets used to the lank days anyhow. Trouble with this Indian-huntin' ain't so much the danger you run into once in a while. It's the meals you miss and all the times you go thirsty because the waterhole you counted on was dried up, or it wasn't where you thought it was after all. Feller learns after a while to do like the Indian doesâstuff your gut when you can get it, and don't go complainin' when you can't.”
Guffey had such a happy-go-lucky attitude about it all that Cloud was curious. “How'd you come to join this outfit, Guffey?”
“Been wonderin' myself.” He grinned. “The call went out, and I asked myself what the hell. Spent my whole life workin' for the other feller anyhow, ridin' the other man's horse, plowin' the other man's field. Figured here was a chance to get a little fresh air, be where the noise was bein' made, maybe shoot me an Indian. And git paid for it too.”
The grin faded. “There was somethin' else. I knew that pretty soon they'd come callin' for me to go fight them Yankees. I had the same feelin's on that score that you did.” To Cloud's questioning glance, Guffey explained, “I heard what you told the captain last night. I was curious about you, so I plopped myself down where I could listen. I don't want to shoot no Yankees. Far as I'm concerned, this is a rich man's war, only they want the poor man to do all the fightin'. My folks never had nothin'. I never owned a slave and never will, so it ain't no skin off my nose if Abe Lincoln wants to take the slaves away. Might even make a poor white man's wages better. But these rich plantation folks, they want us to fight and keep
their slaves for them. Way I see it, if they want to fight, let 'em do it theirselves.”
Cloud looked about to see if the captain was within earshot. He wasn't. “Guffey, there's a sight more to it than just slaves.”
“Not as far as I'm concerned there ain't. They make a heap of fine talk about other things I don't even understand, but all I see in it is slaves.”
That's the way it is these days,
Cloud thought
. Most people look at it head-on and make up their minds one way or the other. Secession or union. Slave or free. White or black, and no compromise between.
He wished it could be that simple for him. He had pondered over it a long time before he had made his choice. Even after he chose, he continued to worry about it, wondering if he was right. He still wondered, sometimes.
Without knowing why, he wanted to argue with Guffy now, and he realized his argument would be in favor of the Confederacy.
Who can say what's right and wrong
, he asked himself,
when there's so much argument to make for either side?
Morning, and restlessness stirred the company. The water that had seeped into the holes dug in the creekbed was so muddy the men couldn't drink it, and most of the horses wouldn't either. Some of the canteens were nearly empty, and many men were out of food. A few of the horses picked up in the brush at Moseley's had not proved out.
The company had discipline enough that the men would take orders from Barcroft. But it was not so strongly disciplined that they wouldn't give him their advice. These were free men. A majority had lived on the frontier, or not far back from it. They thought for themselves and said what they thought. Barcroft listened patiently enough to
their complaints, but gave no sign that he was convinced. He walked up to Miguel Soto.
“What do you think, Miguel? Are we close to an Indian camp?”
Miguel frowned. “Who can say? By the signs, I think maybeso.”
“How big would you say it might be?”
“That,
mi capitán,
I cannot say at all. The sign say pretty soon now the Indians come together. Maybe many, maybe not so very many. We see when we see.”
That didn't satisfy the captain, but it was all he could get. He glanced a moment at Cloud as if expecting Cloud to offer advice too. All he got from Cloud was a half-hostile stare. Barcroft turned back to his graying lieutenant, Elkin.
“We've gone this far. It's wasted unless we go a little farther.”
“What will we gain, Captain?”
“We can kill some more Indians.”
Elkin said, “There may not be any water ahead, and there's little chance of food. It'll be a long, dry, hungry trip back out.”
Barcroft replied, “Any man who thinks this is too hard on him can ask to join the Confederate Army instead. Maybe he'll like Virginia better.”
He gave the signal for mounting up, then motioned for Cloud and Soto to ride out first.
This was a hotter day than yesterday. Even early, the sun began to blister. Cloud nursed his half canteen of water carefully, afraid it might have to last a long time. He tipped it up, taking just enough water to wet his lips and tongue. Later he put a pebble in his mouth and kept it there. It helped, some.
Looking behind him at the company, he could see it straggling out.
“Captain's goin' to lose half the command if he don't make 'em close it up,” he said to Soto. “Better still, he ought to call a halt.”
“He is a stubborn man.”
“Stubbornness won't take the place of food and water and fresh horses.”
Earnestly, Soto said, “Stubbornness takes the place of many things.”
Cloud's eyebrows lifted. “Every time I say somethin' about him, you take up for him. You really believe in the captain, don't you?”
“Up to now, the
capitán
he never disappoint me. Until he disappoint me, I believe in him.”
The noon stop was made on schedule, but it was more for rest than anything else. Little food was left among the Rifles. Those who still had it shared it among the others. The captain gave all of his own food away, not eating anything. He roamed around looking at his men, surveying their horses. His dark eyes were restless, his face sad beneath a covering of dust, a growth of black beard.
Studying Barcroft, Cloud sensed a driving urgency about the man. There was a devil in him someplace, a black torment that would not leave him be.
Elkin finished the little he had to eat, then stepped up beside Barcroft. “I'm afraid the company's about finished, Captain.” He said it with the gentle manner of an older man trying to give advice to a younger one without being insistent. “There's not another day left in them.”
Barcroft looked off to the north. “Perhaps not a day. Then
half
a day. Surely we can get that much out of them.”
“We've got to save something for the trip back.”