Mouth of Hell (The Law Wranglers Book 2) by Schwab Ron

Author:Schwab, Ron [Schwab, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Poor Coyote Press
Published: 2016-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

25

Tabitha Rivers had stacked a few larger stones to form a rough seat and now sat drowsily next to a sputtering, dying campfire. White Wolf sat across the fire from her, a haze of smoke drifting upward and nearly screening off his face from her view.

They were bivouacked with a force of some two hundred fifty mixed cavalry and infantry troops somewhere on the southern edge of the Staked Plains. It had been nearly three weeks since she covered the aftermath of Adobe Walls, and there had been no further encounters with hostiles. The New Mexican was forced to make do these days with little features about the sixty-year old sergeant who had been serving in one army or another for forty-four years or the boy-soldier who was one of thirteen brothers--a baker's dozen--to serve in the U.S Army. Tabby itched for a real story, and she vowed she would ferret one out soon.

Since the near-massacre, White Wolf had never been far from her side when he was in camp. He would go out on his scouting forays when ordered, but when he returned, he remained within easy calling distance. At night he spread his bedroll at a discreet distance but near enough to remain within her line of sight. She supposed he saw himself as her protector, and while she felt no particular fear, she could not deny she took some comfort from his presence.

Several evenings she had invited him to join her with some of the male reporters at her fire. The others did not protest because White Wolf usually gathered the firewood, which was scarce out on these plains, and brought in game to supplement the boring, if not disgusting, army rations. After the others drug their weary bodies to their blankets, Tabby had tried to engage in trivial conversation with White Wolf but with nominal success. She knew that he was fluent in her language, but he never initiated conversation, and his answers to her queries were unfailing brief and without emotion. She had yet to see him smile or hear him laugh. He was irritatingly calm and unexcitable whatever the seeming crisis. He had taken stoicism to a high art form, she thought.

She speculated White Wolf carried a story worth retelling, but she was going to have to extricate it like a skilled surgeon. She had no doubt that, sooner or later, she would. That was the foundation of her writing skills. A lot of people could put interesting words to paper. But the key was finding the story.

She looked across the smoldering embers. "Isn't this a strange place to camp?" she asked. "It's so flat you can see for miles. The Comanche can't miss seeing us."

"We can see them, too, if they approach. It would be foolish, with a force this size, to think the Comanche don't know where we are at every minute."

"Then why do we use such a huge force? Wouldn't it make sense to break up into a number of smaller units?"

"That is not for me to say.

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