The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [49]
Langmade dismounted, but Simon Street, the civilian scout, rode up to the dead driver before throwing off. He walked upstream another hundred yards and then came back, approaching the officer from around the coach. The troopers sat still in their saddles, half-asleep, half-ready to throw up a carbine. Habit.
Langmade said, “I don’t know if I want to find her inside the coach or not. If she’s there, she’s dead.”
Street’s eyes moved slowly over the scene. “You won’t find her,” he said. “There’s a little heel print over on the bank. They went upstream. That’s sure. If they went down they’d wind up in the open near Rindo’s.”
Langmade boosted himself onto the side of the stage and came down almost in the same motion. He nodded his head to the scout and kept it moving in an arc along the top of the near ridge.
“Bet they laid up there waiting,” Langmade said. “A month’s pay they were Apaches.”
Street followed his gaze to the ridge. He just glanced at the officer, his face creased-bronze and old beyond its years, crow’s feet where eye met temple, his hat tilted low on his forehead, his eyes in shadow. “You’re throwin’ your money away, soldier,” he said. “Apache.”
Langmade looked at him quickly. “Only one?”
“That’s all the sign says.” Street pointed to the butchered horse. “A war party don’t cut just one steak.”
He turned his attention back to the ridge. He was looking at the exact spot from which the Apache had fired. Then his gaze fell slowly to sweep across the road to Banderas Creek. And he squinted against the glare as his eyes followed the course of the creek to the bend into the pines.
Langmade pushed his field hat back from his forehead, releasing the hot-steel grip of the sweatband, and watched the scout curiously. Langmade was young, in his mid-twenties, but he was good for a second lieutenant. He didn’t talk much and he watched. He watched and he learned. And he knew he was learning from one of the best. But the tension was building inside his stomach, and it wasn’t just the aftereffects of a twenty-day patrol.
There were three dead men in the road and a woman missing and it had happened because he had failed to bring the patrol in to Rindo’s on time. The report would include an account of the brush with Nachee, and that would absolve him of blame. But it wouldn’t make it easier for him to face Colonel Darck.
You didn’t just look at a stone near your boot toe and say “sorry” to a man whose wife has been carried off by a blood-drunk Apache—even if you weren’t to blame.
There it was. Langmade stood motionless, watching the scout. Lang- made was in command, a commissioned officer in the United States Army, but he was tired. His bones ached and his mind dragged, weary of fighting the savage country and the elusive Apache who was a part of that country, and always there was so little time.
Learning to fight doesn’t come easy with most men. Learning to fight the Apache doesn’t come easy with anyone. You watch the veteran until your face takes on the same mask of impassiveness, then you make decisions.
He waited patiently for Street to say something, to give him a lead. He remembered forty troopers who watched the thin gold bars on his shoulders, and he tried to forget his helplessness.
Langmade said, “The colonel was coming from Thomas to meet Mrs. Darck at Inspiration.” The scout was aware of this, he knew, but he had to say something. He had to fill the gap until something happened.
Simon Street looked at the officer and a half smile broke the thin line of his mouth. “We’ll find her, soldier. It wasn’t your fault. People get killed by Apaches every day.”
As the words came out, he realized he had said the wrong thing and added, quickly, “Know who this looks like to me?” and then went on when Langmade looked but didn’t speak.
“Looks like that bronco Apache we been chasin’ on and off for five years. Nochalbestinay. Though the