War Valley by Lancaster Hill

Author:Lancaster Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-12-14T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

October 20, 1871

“Either the girl’s dead or she’s safe,” Garcia said to the two men standing across from him.

The Tejano and Officer Aloysius Pepper stood with Sgt. Calvin, who had a rock in his palm, running his fingertips across it, looking at the faint yellow-orange glow that gilt the top of the mesa. It was followed by the distant pops of gunfire. The camp came instantly alert.

“That fire says that someone tried, anyway,” Pepper said.

“Do you think it could be Gannon?” asked Garcia.

“It was his lady out there,” Calvin said.

Garcia shifted uneasily. “Sarge, he may need help.”

“We’re out here for Austin, not Officer Gannon,” he said. “Where we are is a defensible position. We start peeling men off—”

“We bring Gannon here, we are back up a man,” Garcia said.

Calvin’s mouth twisted. There was no disputing that logic—assuming it was Gannon and he had survived, uninjured. One was likely, the other less so.

“If it is Gannon, he’ll make his way here,” Calvin said. “We hold our positions for now.”

The decision sat in the sergeant’s gut like warm, flat ale. Command filled him with nothing he wanted inside: caution and an outward impression of cowardice, for one. A divided sense of loyalty, for another—the good of many men versus the needs of one. And there was a new one he really did not like: what would Keel do? Calvin could defend staying put, if Keel or someone higher up asked. He could not defend risking a man or two on the same kind of reconnoitering that had cost them Whitestraw and, as a result, Nightingale and possibly Captain Keel.

There is nothing good about this, nothing at all, Calvin thought. Not if you want to continue being a man and having a clear sense of right and wrong.

As the men watched, the rainbow of fire quieted and finally vanished. There had been no sounds after the initial shooting. The quiet around the valley suddenly seemed deeper than before.

“The night varmints have all left,” Pepper observed.

“They’re smarter than people,” Garcia observed. “That’ll make it tough for Injuns to signal by imitating ’em.”

Calvin had just been considering that same point. A people who built their lives and culture in and around the land lived and died with that land. It was why they were fighting so hard for the Comancheria.

Problem for them is, no people on this continent love their land more than Texicans, he thought. Even misguided agents of federal policy could not change that.

The men listened for something to break the silence, other than their own breathing. Smoking had been forbidden, and some of those breaths were fast, anxious. Chewing tobacco was all that was allowed, but the men had gone through those supplies early in the evening.

“If they’d caught him alive, there’d be a party,” Pepper suggested. His voice seemed to carry for a mile.

“I wonder if Gannon killed Miss Breen,” Garcia said solemnly. “Maybe those were the shots we heard. If it was me, that’s what I’d’ve done. Just came up and shot her.

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