Ambush on the Mesa Read Online Free Page A

us long. Come from Fort Buchanan on special duty, or so I heard tell.”
    “What kind of special duty?”
    Willis eyed Hugh. “How should I know?” All I know is that Nettleton wouldn’t send Phillips out with them steers,and Clymer wouldn’t go. So Nettleton orders Winston. He
had
to go.”
    Hugh nodded. “Did they find Winston’s body?”
    “Yep. Only way we could tell him was by his uniform.”
    Hugh looked west. Maybe the drafts had been trampled into the dirt along with the bodies of the troopers. Maybe the Apaches had found them and thrown them away, not knowing their value. There wasn’t a chance now of clearing Ron. He shrugged, then looked up the column. He could see Katy Corse riding beside Marion Nettleton. Now and then she steadied the captain’s wife in the saddle when they hit rough spots on the trail. Hugh wondered if he could finish the second part of his task. Chances looked slim on that too.
    Hugh looked back down the dim trail. Below them he could see an eye of fire winking in the darkness. The wind had fanned an ember into life. These greenhorns had left a trail as easy to follow as the Oregon Trail across the plains of Kansas.
    Willis looked back. “You think them ‘Paches are back there somewheres?”
    “I know it, Willis.”
    They went on through the darkness with fear riding close behind them.

Chapter Four
    C APTAIN N ETTLETON called a halt just when the false dawn showed over the eastern heights. Hugh spurred forward, leaving Chandler Willis as rear guard. Nettleton was close beside his wife, holding her in her saddle. “We’ll stop here and make a fire,” he said to Hugh.
    “No fires,” said Hugh shortly.
    Able Clymer stood up in his stirrups. “Captain Nettleton is in command, Kinzie.”
    Hugh looked at the belligerent bull moose of a man. “We’ll have cold tack,” he said quietly.
    Darrell Phillips rode forward and then turned his horse. “There’s some kind of an old wall here,” he said. “It might serve as a defensive position.”
    Clymer spat. “Listen to the soldier,” he said.
    Hugh kneed his buckskin past Clymer. He rode up to Phillips. Someone, long ago, had built a wall in front of a steep slope of rock. “It’ll do,” said Hugh.
    Clymer was arguing with Nettleton about something. His voice was too low for Hugh to hear what he was saying.
    Nettleton straightened himself in his saddle. “We’ll do as the scout says, Mr. Clymer. We must trust him.”
    Darrell Phillips’s handsome face darkened. “Clymer is a bully,” he said.
    Hugh nodded. “He’s still obeying orders though.”
    Phillips nodded. “Yes, but for how long? If he had his way we’d all be under his filthy thumb.” He looked at Marion Nettleton. “She’s exhausted,” he said.
    “Katy is holding up.”
    “There’s a difference. Marion is gentle bred.”
    “Out in this country a woman is judged for what she can do rather than from how she was bred.”
    Phillips’s dark eyes studied Hugh. “You knew her before?”
    “Yes. Last year when I was at Fort Buchanan.”
    “Good friends, I take it?”
    Hugh looked quickly at the officer. “Yes. She was engaged to Herbert Oglesby, a corporal in the dragoons.”
    “I see. She’d make a good wife for an enlisted man.”
    Hugh leaned forward. “She’d make a good wife for
any
man, Mr. Phillips.” He spurred his buckskin back toward the party.
    Phillips shrugged. He looked at Katy Corse. She was riding astride, like a man. Her shapely legs were exposed from the knees down, and she seemed to be perfectly at home in the saddle. For the first time since he had seen her at Fort Ayres he realized that she was a damned attractive woman.
    Hugh sat his buckskin as the enlisted men carried food and weapons behind the low wall. Marion Nettleton was seated on a rock. Her husband bustled about her, pulling her shawl about her shapely shoulders. Hugh eyed her. Her oval face had evidently been protected against the hot suns of the Southwest, for it