Free Ambush on the Mesa by Gordon D. Shirreffs Page B

to ease the pain of his bitter loneliness. She was attractive and well formed…. He shuddered a little as he thought of bringing her home to his mother.
    He stood up and picked up his hat. Katy was outside somewhere. He had to see her, to talk with her.
    Chandler Willis slitted his eyes as he looked out over the canyon. Damned if he had seen any Apaches, but he knew as well as the big scout did, that they were there. Lying in the brush on the heights across the canyon; maybe even up on the mesa which rose above the cliff dwellings. Willis had almost made his break back there when they had found the smashed remains of Winston’s cattle-herding detail. He could have maybe made his way to the Rio Grande alone, then south to join Baylor’s Second Texas Rifles at La Mesilla. But two men had been watching him: Lieutenant Clymer and First Sergeant Hastings. Either one of them would have shot him if they had figured he was going to desert to the Confederacy.
    • • •
    Chandler Willis cursed his luck. He had killed a man back on the South Llano in the fall of ‘59, and had made it acrossthe Rio Grande the range of a rifleshot ahead of the dead man’s relatives. From there he had drifted to Fort Bliss, where he had enlisted for a winter’s feed and shelter. Hastings had tagged him with the nickname Snowbird because of that.
    Willis shifted and spat again. That damned Yankee Pearce was up to something crooked. He needed Chandler Willis for something. Something for Pearce’s profit, not Willis’s. Yankees were all alike.
    He wondered how loyal Hugh Kinzie was. He was tough enough to be a real Tejano. Maybe he was thinking of joining the Confederacy. The two of them together could clean out this bunch of Yankees, and ride like kings into La Mesilla with a mess of rifles and equipment, plus some damned good horse and mule flesh.
    • • •
    Maurice Nettleton looked down at his sleeping wife. Sweat dewed her oval face. Her soft lips were parted, showing her even white teeth. Her breasts swelled against the material of her traveling dress. Nettleton swallowed hard. A cold greenish wave of fear flowed through him as he thought of losing her.
    She had made him. He had been an obscure second Lieutenant of dragoons at Jefferson Barracks when he had met her and had instantly fallen in love. He had come from a fairly well-to-do family, which made it possible for him to court her. Shelton Bennett had always said he wanted a son-in-law as tough in the rump as he was, but it wasn’t really the truth, for Shelton Bennett ruled everybody who would allow him to. And his daughter, too, for all her soft looks, was as hard as nails. She had married young Maurice Nettleton because she had thought he was the kind of a man she could mold to fit her needs. Her judgment had been faulty.
    Their first years of married life had been like a dream. Living in the fine big house in St. Louis; having his promotion come through years ahead of time; getting assigned to department headquarters as a staff officer. Then Shelton Bennett had quarreled with somebody in the War Department. It had been enough to have Maurice transferred to godforsaken Arizona. The pain had been assuaged a little by his promotion to captain. Marion had looked on the affair as a gay adventure. But Maurice had been badly shaken. The country was too big and dangerous. He’d had no experience with these hard-bitten frontier soldiers. Abel Clymer, whohad run Fort Ayres before, listened to Maurice with some respect, but he still ran the post. Then the slow realization had come over Maurice that Clymer was making a strong play for Marion. He was solicitous with her, and used every opportunity to show up Maurice.
    Maurice Nettleton began to fan his wife. He could hear Abel Clymer’s bull voice in the next room, where he was riding Darrell Phillips. Nettleton looked at the fine engraved Colt pistol in his holster, one of a pair presented to him by Shelton Bennett. Nettleton felt his hands