Читать книгу The Border Trumpet - Ernest Haycox - Страница 4

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A WOMAN came slowly forward beneath the black shadows cast by the ramada. Major Warren spoke with a quick courtesy. "Eleanor, this is Harriet, Mr. Mixler's wife. She has been the only white woman at the post."

Harriet Mixler's eyes were wide and round and unhappiness lay tightly across her face. She said in a low voice: "It is nice to have you here, Eleanor."

"If you will show Eleanor her quarters," said Major Warren and, by old habit, he stepped out to inspect the returned detail. The two women turned through the low door of the major's quarters into a room's stale, dense heat. Lamplight showed a rammed-earth floor and the flimsy partitions separating other small rooms. Harriet Mixler led the way into one of these and stood still. Her hand described a weary gesture toward an iron cot, a chair and a wardrobe made of packing-box boards. Two pieces of fresh chintz hung beside a single narrow window. "Your father wished me to make this presentable, Eleanor. It is the best I could contrive."

"You must remember," said Eleanor Warren, "I was born and raised in places like this one. I love it."

"I hate it," said Harriet Mixler. Her accent was softly Southern. She had been a slim and black-haired girl with sharp, responsive features, obviously the daughter of some old-line plantation owner; once lively and very gay and very quick- tempered. All this, Eleanor Warren saw, in profound pity, was gone. "George is out on a scout detail. I think you know him."

"Yes," said Eleanor. "He was at Stanton before I left, and quite an eligible bachelor." She smiled at Harriet. "I think he was one of my first secret attachments."

Harriet Mixler touched Eleanor's traveling dress. Her mouth sagged at the corners. Her expression displayed bitterness. "That is such lovely material. In Norfolk I used to dance all night. We'd ride home by first daylight and eat johnnycake and oyster fries. Didn't you just die when you had to leave the East?"

"No. I counted every day until I could come. You'll like it here. You really will."

"Never," said Harriet Mixler, doggedly resisting the thought. "I hate everything about the army. I shall be an old woman with a leather skin and a ruined complexion in one more year. I sit in that unbearable hovel down the line and hate the sight of myself. I should have left here. Now it is too late. It is fifty-five miles to Tucson, and nothing there but mud huts. It is more than a hundred miles to Fort Apache, which is no better than here. It is like being buried alive." She stared at Eleanor Warren with those great, dark eyes so full of unhappiness. "Do you know what I fear most? Doctor Shiraz is gone three quarters of the time with the troops. When my baby's time comes he will be gone again. I shall die without him. My mother died with me. Even the Indians treat their women better than the Government treats its officers' ladies." Suddenly she put both her arms against Eleanor Warren and dropped her head. Her body trembled and she cried in a choked whisper, "It's a blessed thing to have you here. I'm so afraid—so afraid."

Eleanor Warren placed her arms around this girl. She murmured, "Nothing will happen, Harriet." Men's voices ran through the still, deep night and boots tramped the hard earth. Harriet Mixler pulled back, smoothing her hair. She said in despair, "I'm such a sight," and turned into the main room with Eleanor. Major Warren came in with Captain Harrison of I troop. Harrison was a raw-boned man with a long red nose and a black beard cropped close. His taciturn eyes lighted up, which was rare for him. He said: "Dammit, Eleanor, maybe we'll have some fun around here now."

A voice in the other corner of the room spoke up. "We got beef croquettes, Miss Eleanor."

"Cowen!"

Cowen wore a black broadcloth suit and a white starched shirt. On his vest the huge links of his watch chain gently moved. His hair was carefully greased down against his head, his mustaches were shined and his face showed the nearest approach to pleasure its grave woodenness permitted. Cowen, the Warren's cook since '63, took unto himself most of the credit for raising Eleanor through the stage of long legs and bad grammar. Cowen shook her hand with the precise formality which was his idea of good manners in public. "I have things to tell you about this regiment," he said under his breath and left the room. The other officers of the two companies were coming in, Ray Lankerwell, Howell Ford, and Doctor Shiraz, who wore a set of flame-red burnsides. Shiraz said, "You're still an army child, Eleanor," and claimed his kiss. He turned at once to Harriet Mixler, gently pulling her to a chair. "Harriet, I want you to take some wine tonight."

She held to the cloth of his coat sleeve. "Are you sure to be here during the next two or three weeks?"

He had a deep, patient voice. "I'll be here. Right here." Cowen brought in the supper and the group sat up to the table. Major Warren's face was round and ruddy and cheerful as he raised his wine glass, and for a moment all of them felt the emotion lying behind his silence. He tipped the glass at his daughter and said, "To a lady."

"To a lady," repeated Shiraz.

"And," said Major Warren with a gentler tone, "to Harriet."

They drank on that and suddenly the conversation was strong and pleasant even though dull heat smothered the room. Shiraz rapped on the table and pointed a finger at Eleanor.

"Let's see now how much you remember. The column is in fours, approaching a narrow defile. What do you do?"

"The command is by twos, march. Numbers one and two of first fours continue on. Number three and four oblique to right and follow in. Other sets repeat."

"Who carries the guidon?"

"Ranking corporal, sir. His place is left file of first platoon."

"Very good," said Shiraz. "Tomorrow I shall try you on a horse."

"Docter," said Eleanor sweetly, "do you remember falling off the big roan, at Stanton?"

The other officers except Castleton let out a tremendous hoot and even Harriet Mixler smiled. Eleanor noticed that Castleton watched her and seemed untouched by the burst of amusement. He sat to the table with his shoulders straight, though the other men were slouched and easy, as though even then he could not quite let go, as though his fiery energy held him in a strict and dark and impatient mood. The campaign had thinned him and blackened him but it had made no change on the sharp, half- handsome detail of his features. He was as he had been at Stanton, a strict and ambitious officer who drove his men hard and himself harder.

"I hope," said Shiraz, "you don't learn the subsequent catastrophes I've had with horses."

"Cowen," said Eleanor, "will tell me all about it tomorrow."

"Ah," groaned Shiraz, "you always knew more about the regiment than anybody else."

She said: "Will you ride the hills with me in the morning?"

Major Warren put down his knife and spoke plainly. "This is not Stanton, Eleanor. That's the first thing you must know. Nobody leaves this post at any time except under escort. There are Apaches within ten feet of the sentries this minute. Tomorrow when you look beyond the picket line and see a clump of yucca it is exactly an even chance that there's an Apache's head underneath it. We lost a teamster two days ago. He only went forty yards beyond the stables. We found him with an arrow through his chest. No riding, Eleanor."

Castleton's searching glance brought Eleanor Warren's attention to him. There was a question on his face, plain and demanding. The yellow lamplight showed strong, sudden color on her cheeks. She dropped her eyes, hearing him say in a voice brushed by excitement: "Major Warren, I should like—"

Out in the darkness a sentry's challenge rode the night and a slow sleepy answer came forward. The sentry called: "Corpr'l of the guard, post number one!" Major Warren excused himself and left the room, and on the parade was the arrival scuff of horses. There was a little silence, with the other officers curiously watching Phil Castleton. "What was that?" asked Captain Harrison in his blunt way.

"I think I should wait for Major Warren's return," said Castleton.

Quiet and quick-eyed, Eleanor Warren noticed the way they watched Castleton. With interest, but with reserve, as though something held them off. He had so little of their loose-muscled comfort, he had so strong a will to get on in his profession. It was an impetuous quality, it was his strength. Yet—and this she thought slowly and with a certain reluctant admission—it was a weakness too. Garrison life was a close- knit society; there had to be a good deal of give and take. She thought, "I shall have to warn him of that."

Her father's voice was hearty and cheerful in the yonder dark. Somebody spoke to him in soft-sprawling words; the dismissed troopers moved across the parade. Major Warren returned to the room with the long-legged lieutenant she had seen the previous night in the hills.

"Eleanor," said Warren, "I present Mr. Benteen of I troop. My daughter Eleanor, Mr. Benteen."

Benteen pulled his hat from a head of sandy-red hair. He was taller than any officer in the room. A day's growth of red- glinting whiskers covered his face, chalked with alkali dust and the dry stain of sweat tracks. His eyes showed weariness clear down to the gray depths and his shoulders showed it, lying slack beneath the gray campaign shirt. He had heavy cheekbones, with a small scar making its white cut on the right side, and long lips that came definitely together.

Eleanor Warren put out her hand. "I'm glad you're in the regiment. Mr. Benteen."

Shiraz said to Benteen: "I give you warning, Tom. She's been in this army a long time and knows the regulations better than most officers."

His hand was extremely wide and heavy at the knuckles. There was a deliberateness about him and she knew, as the silence ran, on that he took his time about all things. This was the way he stood, steadily considering her, as though he meant to have his good look and find out what she was like; and for some odd reason she had the feeling that, behind those gray and indolent eyes, he was placing her against other women he had known and making comparison. In a way it put her on the defensive, it disturbed her. When he smiled, his lips spread back from heavy white teeth. His voice was effortlessly slow.

"You have been mentioned many times. I wish I had been at Stanton. As it is, I'm getting a late start."

It was a polite man's reply and yet the casual inflections of his voice stirred her strong curiosity.

Captain Harrison said: "Did you cut Antone's tracks?"

"He's eighty miles back in the Pinal Range by now. But I know something about his habits which will be useful on the next chase." He moved over to Harriet Mixler, his long body bending a little. Eleanor saw his expression turn gentle. There was a definite affection in his voice. "I passed George's detail yesterday. He'll be back tomorrow."

She noticed the little glow of pleasure this man brought to Harriet Mixler's face. It was a way he had, it was some knowledge he possessed of women. Phil Castleton, she noticed at once, was seemingly disinterested in this scene. His glance touched Benteen and came away; and she realized again that he didn't like Benteen. It was a knowledge that strangely troubled her. Phil Castleton turned to her, the question again in his eyes; he moved beside her.

"Major Warren," he said with a kind of curt nervousness in his talk, "Eleanor and I wish your consent."

Warren had a black Mexican cigar in his mouth. The tip of it flew upward and he reached for it and withdrew it, sincerely astonished. Doctor Shiraz breathed a long "Well, I'm damned." and then this silence grew quite strange. Eleanor Warren took Castleton's arm, embarrassed by the combined scrutiny of these people. She felt the rigidness of Castleton's body, as though it resisted the room, as though he were prepared for trouble. Something here was very odd, something in the silence. Benteen moved around the group, his head riding over all of them. His glance drew her attention and again, as before, she knew he took her somewhere into his deep-lying thoughts.

Her father said in reflective tone: "It is a nice thing to know. Of course you have my consent." He offered his hand to Castleton and he looked at the younger officer in a way she never forgot—in a way she was never able to describe to herself. Harriet Mixler came over. "Eleanor," she said. "Eleanor."

A sentry challenged across the darkness and a call ran back along the line for the corporal of the guard; boots trotted over the parade. She didn't realize until that moment how highly keyed this post was to the black mystery crowding down from the hills. All the men stirred, as though catching the scent of trouble. Howell Ford slipped from the door, but was soon back. "Nachee is here with something."

Warren turned out, followed at once by the other officers. Eleanor Warren started to go along, to be held back by Harriet Mixler's sudden-reaching arm. She was visibly shaking. "Don't go!" she said. "Stay here!"

From the doorway both women watched the forming scene on the parade ground. A man ran up with a lantern, holding it high. By this light Eleanor saw the Apache Indian half surrounded by officers. He was small and wiry, dressed in a shirt, breechclout and moccasins whose leggings were folded down. A headband held back jet hair, and his eyes, struck by the lantern light, had a distinct gleaming. He carried a sack over his back.

Her father called: "Where's Manuel Dura?"

A civilian brushed through the shadows of the parade and came to the group. Her father said: "Find out what he wants, Manuel."

Manuel Dura spoke in a soft, sliding, twisted tone, moving a finger back and forth in front of the Apache. The Apache's face was impassive, unstirred. He answered swiftly.

Manuel Dura said: "He won't talk unless Nantan with the Long Legs comes. He knows Mr. Benteen best."

Eleanor hadn't noticed until now that Benteen was at the corner of the house, well away from the parley. He stepped forward.

The Indian talked, Manuel Dura interpreting. "Major, he say you want the Indian that keel the teamster. Nachee is good Indian but the other wan was bad. So Nachee bring you the bad wan."

Benteen said something in the Apache tongue. The Apache lifted his chin and grunted "Enju," and threw the bag from his shoulder. Some object dully struck the earth, whereupon Castleton swiftly stepped forward, to hide it from the women, But he had not been quite quick enough. Eleanor wheeled against Harriet Mixler, turned cold and sick, trying to block Harriet's view. Out of the sack had rolled the severed head of an Apache.

"Dammit," grunted Warren, an involuntary break in his voice.

"What was it?" whispered Harriet Mixler.

"I didn't see," answered Eleanor. The Indian slipped into the darkness without another sound. Doctor Shiraz reached down, pushed the head into the sack and took up the sack. He said, coolly, "Very good specimen," and went along the parade toward his quarters. The other officers broke away. Major Warren returned with a most wry expression on his lips. He looked at Harriet Mixler and at once lied: "Brought me a broken jug. That's the Indian sign for punishment to one of its people." He went on into the room and poured a drink of wine. Castleton stood at the doorway, watching Eleanor a moment, He said, "I'll see you tomorrow," and cut across the parade.

"Walk back to my dobe with me," said Harriet Mixler,

They turned along the officers' row. Tattoo call broke the heated dark, each note cutting a clear long echo over the parade, over the adjoining valley. Sentries were passing the hour call from post to post, that ritual running from number one at the guardhouse all the way out to lonely number ten in the tangle of sage brush at the mouth of Aravaipa Creek. Along the right side of the walk, on the parade, lay the silhouette of officers' iron cots. Lights winked from the windows of the irregular quadrangle, and somebody in the barracks sang out: "Canreen—Canreen."

Harriet Mixler stopped by her door, supporting herself against the frame with an arm. She said: "I wish George would come back. It is such a cruel country. When the baby is born—as soon as it is able to stand traveling—I'm going East. I'll never return to the army."

"How long have you been in the army, Harriet?"

"A year."

"Wait another year, and you'll never like another kind of life."

"Not me," said Harriet Mixler in that same dead, resisting voice. "I won't stay. Goodnight."

She walked uncertainly into the house. Eleanor strolled on, her shoes striking quick echoes through the increasing quiet. Directly in the east lay the black bulk of the Galiuro Mountains, their summits high and vague against the sky's grayer black. There was no wind and scarcely any lessening in the heat of this smoldering air. Lights died here and there along the quadrangle. The smell of dust and nearby stables, of sage and of newly baked bread, or leather, of canvas—all these old familiar odors of an army post were here, comforting to her, sinking into her consciousness, welcoming her home.

She had turned the corner of officers' row when she heard Captain Harrison's disgusted voice drift through the doorway of the last dobe house. "Three aces—and you catch a flush. Someday, Benteen, you'll break your neck trying to fill those damned things."

Benteen's tone was as it had been earlier in the evening, drowsy and let down: "An agreeable way to die."

She turned and watched them a moment, through the doorway. Harrison and Shiraz and Benteen and Howell Ford and a civilian sat around a small table, half obscured by the heavy drift of tobacco smoke. It was Benteen she found herself watching, with a definite curiosity again rising. He lay back in his chair with a complete looseness, as though no single muscle were alive. His feet sprawled beneath the table and his long arms lay on it, one hand touching a glass of whisky. A black Mexican cigar slanted from a corner of his long mouth. She had a partial view of his face, again noting that though he wasn't smiling, the hint of some smiling knowledge lay below. She guessed that he was not more than twenty-five or twenty-six, which made it odd that he should have a kind of seasoned completeness about him, and the suggestion of so much mature feeling behind the faint skepticism of his solid features.

Captain Harrison said: "What are you going to do with that damned grisly head, Shiraz?"

Doctor Shiraz spoke: "Let the dry air mummify it. I think I shall send it to the Smithsonian. It's a rare piece."

"Only an army doctor would have such a hellish interest," commented Harrison. "I'll take three cards."

Eleanor turned back, walking faster, and saw a dark shape waiting near her father's quarters. Her heart quickened a little when Castleton spoke.

"Eleanor," he said and came to her. There was a swiftness in his words sweet to hear, sweet and yet strange. "Eleanor, God knows I'm glad you're here. I've been lonely." In this darkness his constraint was gone. He took her and kissed her and for a little while she thought of nothing else; after three years of waiting this was the way she had wanted it, this was the way it ought to be.

She stepped back from him, breathless and close to laughter. "Why should you be lonely, Phil?"

He said: "I'm not the poker-playing kind, Eleanor."

She recognized the indirect comment on the game at the end of officers' row. Some of this man's opinions, she admitted, were shaded by an envy or a narrowness which sprang from the intense pride she so much admired. He had never permitted himself the luxury of being idle or foolish in the manner of the average officer. She was an army girl, completely understanding these vigorous and open-handed and extremely simple men who rode through the desert dust; and she knew the solace they found in a cigar, in a drink of whisky, in a game of poker after the routine and the hard work was done. It was, she thought to herself, something she would have to make Phil Castleton see before the unrelieved tension of frontier garrison life turned him sour. She said gently: "It would be good for you, Phil. Why don't you join them?"

In one short phrase, he told her why—though he didn't realize it: "I have not been asked to join them."

She said, "Oh, my dear man!" But she said it under her breath, It was a revelation that shocked her and roused her protectiveness and drew her nearer him. Some act or some phrase or some manner of his had created their quiet dislike, and this was a terribly serious thing in so compact a family as the regiment, Men could be cruel in their judgment of other men; cruel and realistic and sometimes unforgiving. Whatever he had done to turn them against him had to be undone. She had to find the cause and make it clear to him. "You must put it in their way to ask you," she said.

His short answer showed his freshening resentment. "I have no time to learn post politics, Eleanor."

"You will be handling men all your life. It isn't politics. It is your career." But she was thinking, "I shall have to manage it better than this." He was a square, tense shape in the darkness; he was silent, involved in his own grievances. She put her hand on his shoulder, lightly reassuring him. "Wait until we're married, Mr. Castleton. I've been in the army a long time and I know the fine print at the bottom of the regulations."

He said, "It has been a long wait, Eleanor," and pulled her to him again, This was when all trouble dissolved, leaving her hopeful and excited. Yet it was strange that one part of her mind remained cool and critical. Even as he held her he was not, she felt, thinking of her. He was locked up in himself, involved in his own reasoning. She stepped back, murmuring, "Good night, Phil," and watched him swing down officers' row to his own boxlike dobe, She went directly to her father's quarters and found him waiting.

He had something on his mind. "It occurs to me," he said, quite carefully "that perhaps I didn't express myself very well when Castleton broke the news. It took the wind out of an old man, daughter. But you know how I feel. It is a damned nice thing to know you'll be in the regiment—"

She said: "How did Mr. Benteen come to us?"

He looked at her a puzzled moment, trying to fathom the question. "Well," he said, "Benteen worked up as a private in the Civil War and took a presidential appointment to West Point. He had quite a war record. They assigned him to the engineer corps but he liked our arm best and got a transfer. The man's a soldier down to the marrow."

"Does he rank Phil?"

"Yes."

She said, "Why do the officers—" and killed the question, knowing she would never get help from her father. He wasn't the man to favor one officer over another, or to express opinions about them. So she turned into her own room, hearing him say, "Up to your neck in post gossip already."

She undressed, threw on a robe and pattered out to her bed on the parade. Lying there with her face turned to the far, cloudy starlight she listened to the fading sounds of the camp. Presently her father moved through the darkness and dropped on his cot with a long, contented sigh. Coolness at last faintly cut the edge of the heat, tremendously relieving. In the distant corner of the parade a trumpeter tentatively breathed sound into his instrument and then blew taps, those sad strong notes carrying far through the shadows. Lights died around the quadrangle and the muffled tramping of the sentries ran around her. Lying there, buoyed up by her return to all these familiar things, Eleanor thought, "I shall have to find out why they dislike him," and then was remembering the manner in which Benteen's steady eyes had watched her and absorbed her into his memory. Thus she fell asleep.

A voice said "Major Warren!" in hard-breathing excitement and she woke, bolt upright. Shadows raced over the parade. Someone called: "The Summerton wagon train—down in the canyon!" A trumpet blasted out its call To Horse and lights broke the shadows and men were shouting all along the barrack and picket line. "I got through," said the exhausted voice. "The rest—I do not know—"

She could not mistake Lieutenant Benteen's long, solid voice. It called: "McSween, rout out the men."