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

lot you could do.”
    He looked at her, only half believing. He had never been able to decide what to do, once he left the service. He knew a little of too many things, not enough of anything.
    “Sarge?” It was Ridge. “Somebody’s comin’!”
    Chapter 11

I NSTANTLY THERE WAS silence. Overhead the stars hung bright in the black sky, and around them the mountain seemed to crouch, waiting.
    Callaghen stepped from the firelight into the darkness, and stood still, listening.
    Ridge moved close to him. “I surely heard something out yonder,” he said softly. “Heard it clear.”
    Callaghen heard nothing. Ridge was not a tenderfoot. If he believed he had heard something, that was the way to bet.
    They moved farther away from the fire, into the darkness. “Stay close, Ridge. I’ll scout around.” He hesitated, then added, “Keep an eye on Wylie and his partner. I don’t trust them.”
    “Heard you had a run-in with Wylie.”
    “So did Major Sykes. He’s got something going, but I don’t know what it is.”
    The night was cool. Away from the fire, he saw at once how good their choice for a camp had been. At a distance of perhaps sixty steps only a faint glow was visible, and as he moved away that diminished, then disappeared.
    The camp was in a cul-de-sac, a break that notched the wall of the mountain, and was screened by a slight bend in the notch as well as by rocks and brush. It was a spot such as might be found at fifty places within as many square miles, no more unusual than any of the others.
    He paused when well out toward the open desert. That sound could well have come from up on the mountain itself. A sure-footed man could cross any part of it, although there would be difficulties here and there.
    He expected Indians, and that was the trouble, for the mind must be always open and alert, excluding no possibility.
    A curious deer or mountain sheep will not move as does a prowling mountain lion or coyote, and the movements of men are different, too. A white man wears shoes or boots; the hard leather tends to scuff upon rock, to bear down too heavily on dead grass or leaves, in a way which the Indian’s soft moccasin does not, and a white man’s clothing is likely to make rustling noises in his movements, or against rocks and brush.
    Callaghen thought of none of this. He simply listened. He had stopped, as he always did, where his body made no outline against the night, merging with a tall greasewood and a clump of staghorn cactus.
    Suddenly, standing alone at the edge of the desert moonlight, silent in the stillness, Callaghen knew it was here he was going to stay. How, he did not know, for around him was desolation, yet a desolation that spoke to him in the softness of the wind, in the bareness of the mountains. But he knew at that moment that he would not leave the desert…or leaving, he would return.
    He had known deserts before, but somehow it was to this particular desert he wanted to return. Here he wished to stay. Wind stirred the sand out there on the timeless dunes.
    He heard it then, some slight sound in the sand…then silence. He held himself still, hardly breathing for fear that might blot out a sound he was listening for.
    Again it came! Somebody or something was out there. Then he heard a low, shuddering moan, and he left the shadow of the brush with a quick stride.
    He saw the man lying on the sand before he reached him, and was still half a dozen yards away when he realized who it was…the Delaware! It was The Stick-Walker.
    He went to him quickly, stooped and lifted him from the sand, and carried him back to the fire.
    “Water,” he said to Aunt Madge. “Water first.”
    There was no sign of a wound, but there was evidence that the Delaware had walked for miles—his shoes were in frightful shape.
    Wylie stared at them. “Why would a man go into the desert with shoes like that?”
    “His shoes weren’t like that,” Callaghen replied shortly. “He was riding with me only a short