Free Novel 1972 - Callaghen (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour Page A

we camp they’ll stampede our stock if they can. Otherwise we won’t even see them.”
    He paused. “We can always recruit more men, but they can not. There are just so many Indians in each tribe, and when they suffer casualties it is a severe loss. They won’t risk it.”
    When they stopped to rest their mounts, Callaghen stepped down. The Delaware came up beside him. “I think Indians are here,” he said. “I think they want the stage.”
    Callaghen nodded toward Sprague. “He has his orders, and they are quite definite.”
    Within half an hour after turning southeast they cut an Indian trail—four warriors on foot, traveling northeast at a good gait. Sprague knew something of tracking, and he looked at the tracks, glanced off to the northeast, and continued on. Six miles farther along, when they were looking for a camping spot, they passed the trail of half a dozen more warriors, all going northeast at a trot.
    Sprague squatted in the sand and chewed on a piece of stick. He squinted at the sun, and looked off in the direction they were going. “How old is that trail?” he asked.
    “Two, three hours.”
    “And to the stage road…how far for them?”
    “They’ll be there now, somewhere along that road. At least ten of them.”
    Sprague got out his map and studied it. “The stage will have an escort…part of the way, at least,” he said.
    Callaghen waited. Sprague was a good man, a solid man. He knew his duty, but there was nothing in him that would keep him from exceeding it if he felt called upon to do so. Callaghen mentally hefted his canteen, estimating the water.
    In the desert water made men vulnerable, and the Mohaves knew that. Sixteen men and their horses require a lot of water, and the first move of the Indians would be to deny water to their enemies.
    The enlisted men of Sprague’s command were armed with the Spencer .56–.50 carbine with a seven-shot magazine. Each man also carried a Blakeslee cartridge case, a wooden container covered with leather that carried ten tubes of cartridges, each one ready to be loaded through a hole in the butt plate.
    In addition, each man carried a Colt .44 six-shooter, worn on the right side, butt forward. Their sabers, weapons useful in the War Between the States and in European cavalry charges, but not effective against the American Indian, had been left in their quarters, to be worn on dress occasions. They were heavy, and they rattled too much; against the lances of the Indians they were generally useless.
    Callaghen wore his gun as regulations prescribed, but he carried another, as regulations did not prescribe, tucked behind his belt inside his blouse, easily available in case of need. He wanted a six-shooter where he could get it into action fast. Also, having come from another unit, he carried a Henry .44, sixteen-shot rifle. It fired a 216-grain bullet with a powder charge of 25 grains in a rim-fire cartridge.
    Heat waves shimmered across the desert, and in all that vast distance, aside from the thin column, nothing moved but a buzzard swinging in lazy circles, far above.
    Shortly after noon, in a canyon mouth that provided shade, Sprague halted and dismounted his men for a break. They scattered in the shade along the canyon wall, two men remaining with the horses.
    Sprague lit the stub of a cigar and squinted at the heat waves. “Damned hard to see through that,” he commented, speaking around the cigar as he touched it with a match. “It distorts everything. Had much experience in the desert, Callaghen?”
    “Yes, sir. A good deal, sir.”
    “Is it all like this?”
    “No, sir. There’s some big dunes ahead, and a lot of cinder cones…old volcanic action.”
    Sprague glanced at him. “I hear you’ve been an officer?”
    “Not in this army, sir.”
    Sprague shrugged. “In my last command my first sergeant had been a Confederate colonel. Have you seen much action? I mean aside from out here?”
    “Yes, sir. Fourteen, fifteen years of it.”