Law of the Land by Elmer Kelton

Author:Elmer Kelton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

APACHE PATROL

Sunrise promised a typical peaceful desert day, with the early morning cool and pleasant before a blazing sun would beat the desert into fevered submission and cloud the distant mountains with devilish, dancing heat waves.

But the sun was hardly an hour high before Apache hoofbeats drummed destruction, Apache knives dripped red, and curling brown smoke told of sudden death.

The first signal the military had of disaster was when an Apache scout the white men called Charlie Longknife spurred through the front gate and cut arrow-straight across the bare parade ground toward the headquarters building. His heaving bay horse was flecked with sweat foam and caked alkali.

Out in the G Troop corral, twenty blue-clad troopers saddled and packed horses in preparation for patrol. Only Corporal Hadley watched the scout’s arrival, and his interest soon turned back to the troop’s officer. The lieutenant sat alone on a stool in the shade of G Troop stable.

“Looks like the Apache fever’s working on the lieutenant again,” he remarked quietly.

Big Sergeant John Bell leaned against the corral fence, absently riffling with his thumb the well-worn deck of cards he always carried.

“Yeah, he’s been eating his heart out for the last six months,” he said in a long Southern drawl. “Ever since the day old One-Ear’s band cut us up over on Massacre Creek.”

He looked intently at the corporal, and in his eyes was a warning to keep quiet about it. “But by Jasper he’s still the best officer you’ll ever see, boy.”

To a casual passerby Lieutenant Monte Fowler might have been asleep. But a careful look would reveal the pinched, quivering lines at the corners of the closed eyes, the hard set of the mouth that almost hid its youth, and the fists clenched so tightly that the knuckles showed white.

It had been like this for Monte every time he’d started a new patrol the last six months. His eyes closed tightly, he could see again the screaming Apache band sweeping down on his undermanned troop along the dry creek bed, covered by a murderous hail of snarling bullets from above. Again Monte could feel the painful, nose-pinching smell of gunsmoke. He was hearing the triumphant shouts of the savages as they broke through and overran part of the troop.

There were belching guns, flashing knives, the desperate cries of wounded and doomed men. Most of all there was the blinding red haze, the choking in his throat, the crazy desperation that had made him jump into the fray, swinging his jammed carbine by the barrel and crushing the brown ribs of Apache horsemen until something had crashed down upon his skull and dropped him into merciful oblivion.

Then he was remembering the terrible quiet that followed. He almost thought he could feel again big, graying Sergeant Bell wiping his face with a wet, dirty handkerchief, trying to bring him to. He remembered the sickening sight of half his troop sprawled in horrible death along the creek bed.

His fault! His men slaughtered because he had forgotten caution.

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