Until Shadows Fall (A Saga of Texas) by Will Cook

Author:Will Cook [Cook, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Westerns
Amazon: B00FAY1QPY
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2004-12-01T23:00:00+00:00

Colonel Frazer was in a towering rage. He paced back and forth in his office and occasionally glared at the four officers standing poker-stiff, their eyes locked front and center. Lieutenant Gary had a swollen upper lip and one eye was discolored and puffed. The three other officers bore more vivid marks, and Lieutenant O’Flynn’s breath bubbled through the smashed cartilage of his nose.

“Utterly disgraceful!” Frazer roared. “Fighting!” He wheeled about and faced Gary. “What do you intend to do, Mister Gary? Trounce every bachelor on the post?”

“Yes, sir. There’s Muldoon, Riggs, Cunningham, Shea, Parkinson, and Dunlop left, sir.”

Frazer shook his finger inches from Gary’s nose. “If I hear of you even going near the rifle butts again, I’ll have you court-martialed! Now clear out of here. And have the contract surgeon take a look at you.”

They saluted and did an about-face, Academy-perfect.

“Not you, Gary! The rest of you may go.” When the door had closed, Frazer gave Gary the order to about-face again, but left him standing, at attention. “Mister Gary, with unbelieving eyes I read your report, not once, but five times. You have failed miserably, sir! Miserably.”

“Yes, sir. I believe McCabe warned you of that possibility….”

“Damn McCabe! I don’t want to hear his name mentioned!” He sat down behind his desk and drummed his fingers. “Gary, do you understand that I have but little time left? You act as though I were going to be in the Army for another ten years, that I have the time to smooth out your incompetent mistakes.”

“No, sir.”

“I send you on a routine task, difficult to be sure but not impossible, and you bungle it. Gary, you’re not putting your heart into this duty, and I’ll so note it on your record. That captaincy is flying out the window, or don’t you care about that?”

“Yes, sir.” He licked his lips. “Colonel, I think it’s a mistake to go further with this. I noted that in my report and….”

“I read the damned thing! Get it through your head that we cannot abandon this. Why, Washington would make a shambles of the Army. Where do you think our appropriations come from? Heaven? Taxpayers have spoken, Gary, and now we jump. I’ve talked to Senator Tremain about this, and he endorses my view completely. Now I want an accurate appraisal of our possibilities. We have no choice but to continue.”

Gary thought of changing that a little, for it was Frazer who wouldn’t accept the choice of passing this on to his successor and not making brigadier on retirement. But a junior officer has to keep his mouth closed. Gary was in enough trouble as it was.

“Well, sir, I think a peaceful negotiation with Iron Hand is now out of the question. Besides, the civilians are ready to drop this and go….”

Frazer waved his hands. “I’m not concerned now with what they want or what’s good for them. They set the wheels in motion, and now it’s too late for them to change their minds.”

“We just run over them, eh, sir?”

“If it has to be done,” Frazer answered.

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