Novel 1972 - Callaghen (v5.0) Read Online Free Page A

squatted on his heels where he could watch the approach from under the brush. “Do you know Ibex Spring?” he asked.
    “I have heard of it. I have not been there.”
    “Can you do twelve miles?”
    “Yes, I think so. With water, we can go as far as you wish.” He brought his head into position. “You are a good man with a gun, Callaghen, and you are a good leader. You knew about mesquite and salt grass as indicators of water. What else do you know?”
    “That I am tired, and it is your turn to go on watch.”
    The Delaware got up and stretched. The water in the hole was clearing as the silt settled to the bottom, and he drank long and deep, then drank once again.
    When he got up, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I think the lieutenant should have talked to you,” he said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Did you not know that he questioned everybody about the desert? He was a very young man, and he wanted to know a great deal.”
    “He was a shrewd young man, then. That’s one way of learning.” Callaghen paused. “When one is to travel in a new area, one had better learn all he can.”
    The Delaware smiled. “I suppose so, but that did not account for all of his questions.”
    The Indian left him, and after Callaghen drank again he lay down on the sand. Night would soon be here. He thought of his feet. He should bathe them, but he was afraid if he took his boots off he would never get them on again, for his feet would swell. They were blistered, he knew, and it must be the same with the feet of all the others.
    What had the Delaware meant about the questions the lieutenant had asked, he wondered. It was natural for a man who was new to a country to ask questions.
    They moved out into the desert when the stars were out, and a cool wind blew low across the earth. Scarcely a leaf stirred, the wind was soft and easy, and the only sound was the whisper of their footsteps in the sand. Their canteens were full.
    The night was long before them. Callaghen set an easy pace, moving along as if his feet did not hurt and as if he had only a few miles to go. When they had walked an hour, they stopped for ten minutes.
    The Delaware walked out into the desert to sit down, and when they started again he joined them and said, “I do not think we are followed, but that means nothing.”
    The mountains were on their right, raw, hard-edged mountains of rock thrust up from the desert floor, neither friendly or unfriendly, only indifferent.
    Callaghen had traveled many walking miles, or miles on horse or camel, and he could judge distance fairly well. In the first hour they made about two and a half miles. They would do as well in the second. In the third it would be perhaps two miles, for the men would be getting tired and there was a narrow ridge to cross.
    The lieutenant had taken them farther north than Callaghen had at first believed—too far north. As he walked Callaghen began for the first time to think about that young lieutenant, suddenly puzzled by incongruities.
    It was the Delaware’s comment that had started his curiosity, but now he found more and more to puzzle about. So many things had indicated the lieutenant was new to the West and to the desert, and yet he had obviously guided their march by certain landmarks. These might have been given him by their commanding officer except that he, too, was new to this country.
    Callaghen did not know the orders for the patrol. Only the lieutenant and the C.O. had known their mission. All the men had been told was that they were to familiarize themselves with the country, and to see if any Mohaves were in the area.
    They had done that. They had scouted north, farther north than seemed necessary when one considered that the desert troops were to protect freighters and stages along the Government Road. But they had located the Indians…or had been located by them.
    Now the lieutenant was dead, so one would never know exactly what he was trying to