• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The fourth man saw the suspicion.

“Wanted to use your backhouse,” he explained. “Afore I came in and had to go right out again,” and he ended the words with a meaningless laugh.

He joined the others at the bar and stood next to Kleecan, who lounged against the bar with his back half turned to the four men. The fourth one slapped the two troopers on the shoulders and told them to pour a drink. The troopers were younger than the two civilians. Big, rawboned men, they wore their uniforms slovenly and didn’t seem to care. The man who had come in the back way did most of the talking and most of the drinking.

They had been at the bar for almost fifteen minutes when the lull finally came. They had been talking continually during that time. Talking about uninteresting things in loud voices. There were a few words, then prolonged laughter, and after that silence. The four men lifted their glasses to their lips. It was a way of filling the lull while they thought of something else.

Kleecan turned his head slightly in their direction. “Hear about the paymaster gettin’ held up?”

When he said it four drinks were still mouth high. There was the clatter of a shot glass hitting the bar. And the strangled coughing as a drink caught halfway down a throat, and the continued coughing as the liquor hung there and burned. But after the coughing there was silence. Kleecan wasn’t paying any attention to them.

The fourth man had his coat open and his right hand was on the pistol butt at his hip. The two troopers glanced at each other and then at Kleecan, who had turned his head in their direction, but they dropped the glance to somewhere in front of them. Only the other civilian was completely composed. He hadn’t moved a muscle. He was about Kleecan’s age, older than the other three, and wore long dragoon mustaches similar to the scout’s.

He looked at Kleecan. “No, mister. Tell us about it. Happen near here?” The man’s voice was even, and carried a note of curiosity.

“Happened south of Fort Apache,” Kleecan said. “That right, Art?”

McLeverty said, “That’s right. The major was coming up from Fort Thomas when these—uh—Indians jumped the train and took five scalps and the pay.”

“You don’t say,” the civilian said. “We’ve just come from Fort Mc-Dowell. Left yesterday and been riding ever since. That’s why we haven’t heard anything, I guess.” He smiled, but not with nervousness.

Kleecan didn’t smile. He nodded to the troopers. “You soldiers from Whipple?”

“Yes, they’re both from Whipple Barracks.” The civilian answered before either trooper could say anything. “You see, my partner and I are to join the survey party on the upper Chevelon, and these two gentlemen”—he pointed to the two troopers with a sweep of his arm—“are our guides.”

“You could use another guide,” Kleecan said. “You’re fifteen miles east of Chevelon.”

The civilian looked dumbfounded. He pushed his hat back from his forehead. “No! Why I thought it was due north of here!” There was surprise in his voice. “Well, it’s a good thing we stopped in here,” he said. “You say we have to go back fifteen miles?”

Kleecan didn’t answer. He was staring at the troopers, looking at the regiment number on their collars. And as he looked he couldn’t help the feeling that was coming over him. “I didn’t know the Fifth was over at McDowell,” he said.

The civilian shrugged his shoulders. “You know how the Army moves regiments around.”

“I ought to,” Kleecan said slowly. “I guide for them.”

The silence was heavy in the narrow room. Heavy and oppressing, and because no one spoke the silence acted to strip naked the thoughts of the two men who stood at the bar staring into each other’s eyes. The civilian knew his pretense was at an end and he shrugged his shoulders again, but looked in Kleecan’s face.

Kleecan stared back at him, and all of a sudden there was a god- awful hate in him and he wanted to yell something, swear, and go for his gun—because the Fifth was at Fort Thomas, and the paywagon guards would be men of the Fifth, but they wouldn’t wear their forage caps like