The Long-Knives 6 by Patrick E. Andrews

Author:Patrick E. Andrews [Andrews, Patrick E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: us cavalry, apache indians, pony soldiers, patrick e andrews, western pulp fiction ebook, colts and sabers
Publisher: Piccadilly Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

Sagebrush and yucca flowers perfumed the air on the top of Dog Leg Butte. Men stripped to the waist scurried here and there in the midmorning heat. Two days of backbreaking labor had gone into the effort so far. Most of the tents to house the observers, and the permanent wooden platforms for the meteorological equipment, had been erected. Likewise, all but a few of the delicate recording instruments that were fed by the spinning cups of the anemometer and other gadgets had been put in place. It remained all too complex for O’Callan to understand. It didn’t keep him from cracking the whip over the work force.

“If ye’re gonna stop moving, Carson, ye might as well lay down. An’ if’n ye lay down, we’ll think ye dead an’ bury the remains. Ye’re up here to work ... so do it!”

O’Callan’s troops had been called on to aid in this difficult work, and over much grumbling and shifts in patrol schedules, he had complied. Albeit with a sour will. The weather station could now be defined by a large Sibley tent and four rows of smaller two-man shelters, called pup tents, used by the soldiers and sailors. Later, once the army took over permanently, adobe bricks would be made and cured for more stable accommodations.

“Nothin’ but a fancy way to waste an honest so’jer’s time,” O’Callan grumbled to Lance Corporal Charlie Bradley.

“But Sergeant O’Callan,” the young probationary NCO protested, “it’s all very scientifical. And once it’s operating all right, it will be run by the army.”

“That’s what I mean. Wastin’ a man’s time when he should have his arse in the saddle, chasin’ after hostile Injuns.”

O’Callan observed nothing the next morning to change his mind. As ropy tendrils of white cloud scudded across the pale blue sky to gather in scattered places and form into small, fat-bellied cumulonimbus hammers, O’Callan urged each man assigned to patrol duty across the flat-topped mesa to take along his rain gear.

“’Tis gonna rain, I can feel it in me bones,” he cautioned.

“I’ll wait and see what the weather man has to say,” Charlie Bradley replied flippantly.

“An’ ye’ll be a slick-sleeve trooper again, Bradley,” Terry O’Callan warned ominously. “I says take yer rain gear an’ I mean take yer rain gear. The orders of a troop sergeant ain’t open fer argument by a lance carp’ril who thinks he knows more about weather predictin’ than the bones of an Irishman. Now git ye off an’ keep a sharp eye.”

“Coffee, Sergeant O’Callan?” Lieutenant (j.g.) Johnston called from the door of the main weather station.

“That’s music to me ears, sor. I’ll be right over.” By noon, great masses of thunderheads swelled on the horizon. Chill blasts of wind alternated with the usual gush of hot air rising from the desert floor below. Lieutenant (j.g.) Johnston and his party hemmed and hawed while they bent over a large plotting table. Intently, the scientists scribbled notes under the undulating sides and top of the Sibley-tent weather station. The sky darkened immediately overhead within fifteen minutes.

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