Apache Ambush. Will Cook

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      He built a fire in the sheetiron stove and stood with his back to it, toasting his hands. His eyes roved around the room, once bare with a Capuchin drabness as most army quarters were. But it was no longer so. The planked walls were covered with bright serapes and Indian blankets. Here, a shirt worn by Mangus Colorado, the great Apache chief. There, the colors of a long-dead cavalry patrol, the standard re-wrested from the bands of Contreras and Choya.

      Crossed knives, crudely made but deadly in Apache hands, decorated one wall. A half dozen war lances were stacked in one corner next to a long-barreled needle rifle. Aside from the pine dresser, the one chair, table and bunk, this could have been an Apache trophy room, filled with hard-won items. The accumulation of his lifetime on the frontier.

      Over his bunk were the mementos of his youth. A never-to-be forgotten youth in a Coyotero wickiup with Contreras and Choya as older brothers. Hanging by the head board was a buffalo-bone bow with elkhide quiver still half-filled with arrows; this had replaced the red wagon and sled of other boys his age. His own Apache knife was there. How different from the jack knife in some denim pocket. The clothes he had been wearing when he had been picked up were there, breeches without front or back, the way Apaches cut them. Too small now, but at twelve they had fit him.

      Seven years an Apache. More than seven, for he found that the fetters in his mind were not put aside easily. Apache lessons were always long remembered.

      O’Hagen moved to his desk and rummaged for a cigar. He took his light from the lamp and sat down in the lone chair, his eyes veiled and meditative. He was not a happy man; small mannerisms revealed this. He was an officer in the United States Army, class of ’63, yet he was not of this army. He knew too much about Apaches, and as he had discovered, knowing too much could be worse than not knowing enough. The language, their thinking, their rituals—he knew them all. And he knew what no other white man knew, the secret of their signals flashed on polished silver disks!

      Timothy O’Hagen was a white Apache midst an army of green officers who bungled along, outrun, outfought. He did not belong to this group. Misery loved company, he found out, and because he did not have the misery of defeat to share, he, found himself on the outside looking in.

      After carrying water into his quarters, O’Hagen drew the curtains and stripped for his bath. He had that ‘patrol’ smell, the unwashed rancidity of four weeks without water. Now he had the guardhouse smell. He decided that one was as bad as the other.

      He could dimly recall his father saying that a man never missed what he never had, yet Timothy O’Hagen felt a sharp lack. A woman could do that to a man. A woman like Rosalia Sickles. She had never been his and yet he missed her. He wondered what it added up to. She wasn’t like Libby Malloy. Libby rode a horse like a man and he had heard her swear. Yet Libby had been real where Rosalia was not. All he had left was the memory of polite conversation, a forgotten rose pressed between the pages of Philip St. George Cooke’s Cavalry Tactics—and a three year romance that had never really bloomed had ended.

      O’Hagen dressed. Looking back he could see the impossibility of his dreams. He had the Apache stink about him; Rosalia could trace her family back to Cortez. Add to this his Irish impetuousness, his aggravation at her ever-present duenna—a female watchdog to see that her chastity was preserved, and the odds of courtship became almost hopeless.

      He pulled himself away from further speculation.

      Knuckles rattled his door and he crossed the room. Sergeant Herlihy stepped inside, a grizzled man with each troubled year of his life etched into his face. He wore a walrus mustache, gray-shot, but his hair was darkly kinky.

      “Glad to see he let you out, sor,” he said. “Th’ back of me hand to th’ lot of ’em, meanin’ no disrespect, sor.” He looked around the room. “Would you be havin’ any drinkin’ whiskey about?”

      “You already smell like a hot mince pie,” O’Hagen said. “Under my shirts in the dresser.”

      Herlihy crossed the room and found the bottle. His spurs raked across the rug, sounding like dollars in a coat pocket. He sprung the cork, upended the bottle, then gasped.

      “Tiswin! Jasus, sor, an Irishman can’t drink that Apache slop!” He wiped his watering eyes and put the bottle away. “Th’ rumor’s out that Crook’s due in.”

      “Yes,” O’Hagen said. “He’ll let Sickles off and it’s too bad. I thought I had him this time.”

      “Not on th’ strength of th’ raid, sor. He’s got a ready out if it gets tough for him. He’ll say you were right and make a fool of you.”

      “I made a fool of myself,” O’Hagen said. “Dammit, Mike, I got mad because—” He waved his hand and turned to the wall.

      “Seein’ as how I’ve been sort of a father,” Herlihy said, “there is a thing or two I’d like to say. Ivver since you seen that Spanish colleen you’ve been actin’ like a fool. Sickles hates you, lad. And he won’t sleep until he gets you. An’ he’ll get you through the Spanish girl because he knows a man who thinks he’s in love is a fool.”

      O’Hagen blew out a long breath and jammed his hands deep in his pockets. “I ought to resign my commission. Then I could get Sickles. I ran those mountain trails for seven years, Sergeant. Seven years with a breech clout and a filthy sweat-band around my head. I can make it so miserable he’ll hate the sound of the wind!”

      “That’s not th’ way to do it!” Herlihy said quickly. He turned to the door and paused there. “Don’t quit th’ army, sor.”

      O’Hagen smiled. “Now you’re talking like Libby.”

      “The girl makes sense,” Herlihy said and went out.

      O’Hagen emptied his bath water and hung the wooden tub against the outside wall. The post was quiet and he stood in the shadows, watching. From the far end of the long porch he heard the light tapping of heels and saw someone flitting across the lamplight thrown from the spaced windows. He waited for a moment, then recognized Libby Malloy. She stopped to give him a glance then went into his quarters without invitation. O’Hagen followed her.

      After closing the door, he said, “Do you want to get me in trouble?”

      She turned to look at him, the lamplight building shadows around her eyes. “You’re in trouble now. A little more won’t hurt.”

      “Herlihy know you’re here?”

      “I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t tell you, did he? I thought he’d lose his nerve.”

      “Tell me what?”

      “Rosalia wants to see you. She’s at Herlihy’s place now.”

      O’Hagen looked at her and Libby turned away from him. Finally he said, “I can’t go to her, Libby. You know that.”

      “But you will go to her,” she said. “You’re that much of a fool.” He moved deeper into the small room so he could see her face. She sat down at the table and laced her fingers together, gripping them tightly. “I know you, Tim. Better than anyone else. I’ve watched you volunteer to take patrols to Tucson just as an excuse to see her. Just to sit in her fancy parlor and—” She raised a hand and brushed her forehead. “Oh, why don’t I shut my mouth?”

      O’Hagen put his hands on her СКАЧАТЬ