Chapter 4 Spies
"Cavalry's coming," said Bret, a renewed interest in his own situation filling his breast at that moment.
"You're right, Bret! Bluebellies!" Hank ran to mount his horse, Irene, its reins trailing on the ground where he had jumped off to get the steer. He slapped its rump with his hat.
"Where're you goin'?" Maverick called.
"Why, to warn the others."
"I guess you'd better," Maverick said, distractedly. The other 'boys' in the canyons and draws east of there were far enough away to give him time to make contact with the troopers on his own terms.
Galloping hard, Hank turned and yelled something almost out of earshot, but the gambler, untying the dallying rope from his saddle horn and coiling it, ignored him. Hank Rollins turned back in his saddle again and kept riding towards where Travers and the other men would be this time of day.
Maverick, however, mounted Ollie, who he tried to keep close by him at all times now, and rode out seeking the bluebellies, or U.S. troops, wanting to have a 'confab' with them. An ol' Johnny Reb from Texas, he never thought he'd welcome seeing Union blue.
But just before the war ended, he'd worn it himself as a 'galvanized' Yankee. Rather than come to a slow end in Point Lookout, a huge Union-run camp for Confederate prisoners of war on an isolated peninsula in Maryland, he had re-enlisted as a Union soldier. For a three-year hitch, the bluebellies had sent him to help man a garrison in Missouri. Now they had a good fighting man where they wanted him.
He slowly approached the troopers, figuring in these brush-covered hills that they must have been trigger-happy. If this didn't work, he thought, if he got caught out somehow in his ruse, there'd be hell to pay with Travers, but he no longer wished to be a part of even Travers' legit round-up. The troopers, he hoped, could take care of that.
"Ho!" he called, raising his right hand as he drew abreast of the standing group of 'bluebellies.'
"What d'you want?" asked a grizzled lieutenant, a defeated-looking man who had been in the army for donkey's years—and too long without captain's bars.
"To ride back to the fort with you."
"McDowell?"
"The same."
"Why do you want to do that?"
"I can't go into that now."
The lieutenant's baggy eyes pivoted around and landed on a bunch of steers. "You like army life better'n punchin' cows?"
"Fightin' Indians, or bad-tempered cows—makes no difference to me," said Maverick, and really, just then, it didn't.
This could work.
"You want to join up?" After Maverick nodded, untruthfully, for his fightin' days were well in the past now, the lieutenant said, "Ride along, then. We'll be here a while, though."
Maverick liked the prospect of tagging along with the troopers. About sixty miles or so south in the company of soldiers. To Fort McDowell. Safety. Just then though, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Travers riding up with his own men, somewhat in a hurry. If their riding had been some kind of a dance, it would've been called a 'quick-step.'
When Travers and his men caught up, the trooper, in his dark wool kepi with its crossed swords emblem on the front of the crown, offered his hand across the saddle, and said, "Lt. Crandall, of the 8th Cavalry."
"Dale Travers, Lieutenant."
"This fellow says he wants to leave your outfit and join up."
Travers looked over at Maverick with a bemused smile, raising a quizzical eyebrow. What a cocksure thing to do! Ride up to the troopers and try to join up!
He was glad to put a stop to this charade before it went too far. An outsider himself, a cultured man, he clung to an acquaintance of sorts with Maverick, an acquaintance he couldn't seem to make with silent-faced brutes like Texas Pete. Knowing him had opened Travers up a bit.
He didn't want Maverick dead, but he wasn't afraid to kill him. He'd seen his operation up close and could be a liability if he fell in with the U.S. Army.
"He did, did he?" His laugh was a bit forced. "My brother saw service in the late war, Lieutenant. A wild Minié ball knocked him in the head at Cold Harbor. He's addle-brained. Thinks he's twenty-five again, or somethin' like that. He can sure get up to somethin'!"
"I-I—" Maverick stammered, but Travers took over again.
"He hasn't been the same since." Tapping his forehead significantly, he said, "He has these ideas sometimes."
Crandall smirked. "Crazy, huh? He'd have to be, to want to join up now. This man's army ain't the same since the war. Too many men, too few promotions."
"But I want to go with you."
"Son," said the older man, scratching his handlebar moustache, "take my word for it. You're safer where you are, if it's as your brother says about the Minié ball."
"He's not my brother, and I'm not crazy."
Crandall smirked again, wagging his head. He dismissed Maverick with a wave of his hand and turned to Travers again. "I have some questions for you, Mr. Travers."
"Such as?" asked the innocent-playing cattleman.
"Lookin' for two men. Came this way, deserters from Fort McDowell. One's about twenty-four, the other maybe a year or two younger. The first, brown hair and eyes, regular features and build. T'other a trifle taller, darker. Both dangerous. You seen anything of them in these parts? We had word this'd be where they'd hole up."
Dale Travers rubbed his whiskery chin, thinking about it. The army was on to him, that was clear. How they figured it out wasn't so clear, though. No one in his outfit would have gone to the fort and ratted on him. His men knew which side their bread was buttered on. If he was guilty, then so were they. The crossbeam of a gallows could swing ten men as much as one.
He did have an ace in the hole, though, in those two troopers he'd captured.
Claiming to be just cowpokes, the two men—perfect descriptions, by the way—came to Travers and optioned a job. Travers never turned down able-bodies and let them join his outfit. One night out by their horses, they stood talking. He had followed them and his ears perked up when they mentioned Fort McDowell. From what little else they said, he gathered, rightly, that they were army spies.
Next morning, he had them waylaid, bruised a bit, but otherwise unhurt, if a bit hungry, and put into a cave he had fashioned as a lockup. He hadn't killed them, but he held their fates in limbo, deciding to leverage them in some way, someday, should necessity provide a cause.
"Come on, Bret," he said to his wayward 'brother.' "It's quitting time. Maybe the lieutenant would like to eat up at the house?"
The potbellied lieutenant nodded at Travers, practically licking his lips. "Real grub again? You bet!"
"Follow us. About three miles along the river."
The party set off, Maverick feeling slighted at best. Once he heard about the missing men, he had decided to stop pleading for himself. Could these be the 'two others' mentioned the other day by Texas Pete? He didn't want to be a snitch, out of respect for Bessie and her unborn child, but if he had to tell the officer about the rustling to save the two troopers' lives, or his own, he'd do it.
But he wouldn't get the chance, not right away.
Lt. Crandall and his patrol went out on recon the next day, scouring the area for his lost men, looking for tattered uniforms and bleached bones more than anything. He had no idea where they were. Lizards and salamanders weren't confessing, either.
Maverick faced another fate than drifting cattle on the dry, wind-scoured sands. Bound at the wrists, he was escorted up Fossil Creek to a cave in a steep, limestone wall, where he had to duck to go through the brush-covered entrance. Once inside, he could stand, all six foot three inches of him.
Travers had come on this jaunt, too, bringing a lantern. He struck a match on a side wall and lit it, then he, Maverick, and his two cowboys walked down a path supported by wooden beams to a large iron door, stitched together with huge rivets, hinges and straps of hard iron. A true dungeon door.
Taking a break at some point from cattle-thieving, it looked like Travers must have robbed it from some medieval castle.
"I put this in specially," he said, proudly. "Makes a tidy cell."
It was more of a vault, like a bank's. Under his bidding, Maverick stepped inside, where his bindings were removed. Travers gave his arm a slight push and he stumbled a couple of steps into the empty room. He didn't know he'd very shortly have company.
He turned, his tone fierce. "You might as well kill me now, Travers, as smother me in a dark hole."
"No, you won't die, Bret. Not by suffocation." Travers continued to use his first name. Maverick still called him, 'Travers.'
A cowboy rifled through Bret's pocket, took out two or three matches and then the two men exited. Travers came closer, swinging up the light.
"I blasted this cave into two rooms. That boulder over there," he said, pointing, "is the midway point. There's an air vent above it, but there's not enough room to slip over it."
Maverick looked at the rock, about five and a half feet high and the size of a tun of wine, which could hold up to 250 gallons. The air vent between it and the ceiling, hardly man-sized, was an opening of about twelve or fifteen inches.
"This is silly," he said, in a confessional tone now. "I won't go near the soldiers again. I was just lookin' for a chance. You would, too."
"Yeah, I would," said Travers, thoughtfully. "But I don't want you tryin' nothin' again like that. I'd have to kill you. That's fair, isn't it?"
Maverick sighed. "How long will I be here?"
"Just until the troopers leave. I'll fetch you out when they're gone."
"That could be a week or more!"
"Drink sparingly."
Travers stepped out of the cave and with him went the light. One of the 'boys stepped back in and dropped Bret's saddlebags on the ground with a thud, handing him a canteen. Then he too went out. The iron door closed, slamming home, and what sounded like an iron plank was dropped into place. After that, all become silent except for a tiny trickle of water somewhere on the walls.
Now it was a totally dark room of stone. Maverick took in a sharp breath and called, "At least leave me the lantern!" No answer.
He couldn't see. A dark envelope had swallowed the room and it might have been mailed away for all he could see of it. He'd been in caves before, but never without so much as a match or a torch to light it up. From the room beyond the boulder, no light came through Travers' air vent.
Maybe this was a convenient way for him to die. A cave under tons of rock overlooking a wild stream—Fossil Creek—its open end covered with brush, might do the trick. A sandwich of Carla's, a canteen, and an airless hole in the middle of nowhere, that was his entire fortune in all the world now.
He felt his way to the far wall beside the boulder and sat down. Strange to see nothing. Not even his five fingers in front of his face. Gazing, fruitlessly, at the door, not seeing it but knowing it was there, he scratched his head, resting an arm on his drawn-up knee while his mind roamed to Travers.
He could see why Travers had put him in here. With what Bret knew about him, the army'd have enough evidence to haul Travers away to a jury and a rope.
He sloshed his canteen around and found it was half-full. Unscrewing the cap, he stopped before taking a swig, alert now to the plop-plop. Water trickled down a wall close by. Scooting over, he raised his fingers to it, drew them to his mouth, and tasted it. Greenish. But when his canteen was empty, those drops could fill it again.
Startled at hearing tortured breathing and moans, a few whispered words, in one corner of the cell, but not seeing anyone, he listened.
Two men, by the sound of their voices. Both had heard the ruckus at the door and were perplexed by it. "I thought they was bringin' food," said one man, still groggy from sleep. Another answered him.
"That's not for a while, Holmes. I wonder what they were doin' here, though."
"Who are you!" Maverick called, though he thought he already knew the answer. The missing deserters. Or maybe army spies?
"You first. Who are you?" asked the groggy first man.
"Dreamin' again, Holmes," said the second man with a calmer, more authoritative voice. "You ain't ate enough to keep a sick pigeon alive, maybe it's that."
"I'm tellin' you, I heard somethin'. Over there!"
Slithering across the floor, barking his knees on rocks and pebbles, reaching the area of the voices, he stretched out and grasped a foot, startling its owner before he pulled his hand back.
Both men cried out loud together, "Who are you?"
Swallowing dryly and sitting back, he said, "Bret Maverick. Sorry I scared you." He wasn't sure why he was whispering, maybe it was the dark. "Who are you?"
That calm voice answered, the second man's. "Cpl. Anders and Pvt. Holmes, of the Arizona 8th Cavalry out of Fort McDowell."
That was a mouthful for a starving man.
Unable to see either man in the pitch, Bret asked, "Are you Anders or Holmes? I wouldn't know you if I could see you."
"I'm Anders." Anders moved his legs. "It's so dang dark in here, I can't see you, either." He wondered who he was talking to in the dark, friend or foe. "What're you doin' here?" he asked.
"I was watering my horse in Fossil Creek." Maverick paused a minute, sucking in a breath. It was hard speaking in the dark. He didn't know where to direct his voice. "Dale Travers' men brought me in for trespassing, or spying. I've been here about three weeks. You're the two deserters Lt. Crandall's looking for?"
"Two army spies. Travers knows all about us. He heard us talking one night."
"Are you both okay?"
"Pvt. Holmes hasn't been his old self for a while now. He's got a fever."
Realizing that they'd been sitting in the dark for three weeks while he dined at Travers' table, Maverick reached out and grasped an arm he thought belonged to Pvt. Holmes. Holmes had taken off his coat in the heat of the cave and rolled up his shirt sleeve, so it was bare. It was also quite hot.
"He's burning up. He needs help. I'm going to try to get the door open."
Anders shifted his position and emitted a painful outcry. What injury or injuries was he himself hiding? "I'll help you."
"No, rest," said Maverick as he eased off into the ink-dark room.
Standing, he located the door by feel, but a thorough going-over of it revealed no way he could budge it open. He attempted to rattle it around in its frame but, bolted to the walls, it didn't move an inch. Stout, solid, unshakeable—like Travers. He stood back, winded, and thought how hungry those two men must be, because he knew he was.
Shoving off into the dark again, he headed back to his old sitting spot directly across the from the door and grabbed Carla's sandwich out of his saddlebag, then crawled back on hands and knees to the troopers. Taking care to call out this time, he broke the sandwich in half and put the two halves in their hands.
"Why're you helpin' us, friend?" asked Anders, wolfing down the sandwich and then wiping his mouth of crumbs and sucking them off his fingers.
"I just can't let you lie here and die," Maverick shot back, sitting beside Holmes and helping him sit up to eat, thinking to himself that, horrible as this situation was, at least he had companions for the long dark hours to come.