Read Norton, Andre - Novel 15 for Free Online Page A

Ritchie pulled
his scarf up to cover his mouth. When the wind puffed snow into his face, it
was hard to catch a full breath.
                   Night had closed in by the time they reached
the scene of the ambush, a rock-strewn, narrow slash in the foothills. The
carcass of a mule lay in a pool of bloody slush, hacked so that the bare white
bones protruded from the shredded flesh. Mule meat was an Apache delicacy.
                   As the sound of their advance echoed up the
passage, black shadows drifted back into the cover of the rocks. Ritchie caught
a glimpse of yellow eyes. Already the wolves were out. For the first time he
was glad he rode fourth in line and was assigned as horse-holder. It was better
to stamp around in the snow holding the reins of four bored and impatient
mounts than to be up ahead making the necessary grim search. He kicked at a
round object half-hidden by a stone. A canteen slithered across the rock, the
round eye of a bullet hole in its side.
                   The next horse-holder edged closer, saw the
nature of the find, and cleared his throat.
                   "Let's hope they was all lucky," he said flatly.
                   Ritchie glanced again at the bullet hole.
"Lucky!"
                   "Yeah. The lucky
ones git it quick, head or heart. The unlucky ones— they's still breathin' when them red devils git to 'em. Always keep one shot fer
yoreself, soljer. That's what I do."
                   Ritchie swallowed and pulled at the reins he
held bunched in his hand. Bess snorted and rolled her eyes at him warningly.
The business ahead was taking a long time. He tried to keep from thinking why.
                   But now Herndon came tramping out of the
darkness.
                  "Emmett, Harkness,
Grimsall, Worth, and Robbins. You will escort the bodies back—under the
command of Sergeant Woldemar."
                   There was a confused milling as the troop
sorted into two parties. Ritchie was hurriedly relieved of his three charges
and dropped into the single file of men and horses going on. It was too dark to
see much, for which he was grateful, but he did not look around until they were
out of that horrible pocket of stones and death.
                   Still dismounted, they went on, each blindly
following the man just ahead until the order to halt was passed along. A
sheltering outcrop of rocks and some pinons gave protection against the wind
and driving snow. Ritchie stripped the mare and dropped his saddle beside
Sturgis'. Later, numb with cold and half-blind with staring into the dark after
a tour of guard duty, he crept into the cave of blankets and boughs that
Sturgis, an old campaigner, had designed and slept heavily but not without
dreams.
                   Reveille brought him up at daybreak with a
wildly beating heart. His hands were stiff with cold as he rubbed down the
mare, putting his driest blankets next to her hide and the snow-wet one under
the saddle. The crack of side arms and the sharp ping of carbine fire brought
the snow sliding down branch and rock as the dragoons tested their arms against
the damp and reloaded.
                   "What a bivouac!" Sturgis held his
steaming cup of coffee under his chin to warm his face before he sipped the
scalding liquid. "Let us piously hope that the scuts we are after had a
worse one." His tin cup rattled against his teeth as he drank.
"And—to add to all our pleasure—we may only be running about in circles
now."
                   Ritchie struggled with a mouthful of
bitter-tasting bacon and iron hardtack crumbs. He jerked toward where Gil-more,
Tuttle, and Herndon made a tight little group. The more picturesque Velasco had
disappeared.
                   "They must have something to go on—"
he mumbled after a valiant swallow.
                   "Oh, sure. They