Apache Canyon

"He rode off post about twenty minutes ago, sir?"

Harris said "Thanks, trooper." He peered forward in the dark. "Phillips?"

"Yes, sir, that's me."

"Didn't recognize you," Harris said. "How's your wife coming along?"

"Pretty good, thanks, sir. The baby's due any day, the doc says."

"Good enough," Harris said. "Carry on, PhilHps." He went forward along the road, tramping the worn wagon ruts.

Presently he mounted the four cracked wooden steps to the saloon door and pushed his way inside. Smoke lay low and heavy. The room was filled with its usual crowd, lethargic, gambling, talking and smoking; little conversations rippled around the room. Here and there, a girl with crudely apphed rouge and forced smiles talked with a soldier or a dusty civilian. Two bartenders sweated busily behind the long plank bar.

Restless, uncertain, Harris stood swaying on the balls of his feet, looking the room over-and spotted, alone at a corner table, the gaunt and carrot-topped familiar shape of Emmett Tucker, his company sergeant.

In no mood to drink or think alone, Harris pushed his way through the crowd to that corner and stood near Tucker's shoulder. "Mind if I buy into your bottle. Sergeant?"

Tucker looked up. There was a faraway, dismal quahty in his glance. "Suit yourself. Captain," he drawled, and poured Harris's glass full of whisky. Tucker tilted the bottle to his lips.

Harris sat, coiling his fingers around the glass. When he spoke it was more tolerantly than before: "Going over it all again, Emmett?"

Tucker's bleak eyes slid across Harris's, and dropped once more. "Leave it be, Captain. Leave it be."

"All right." Harris hooked an elbow over the back of his chair and swung half around to regard the goodnatured crowd. But here sat Tucker, back in a comer cooled by his own bitter memories. After a while Harris, turning back and planting his elbows on the table, said to the rawboned sergeant, "You've been fighting this ever since I met you, Emmett. Maybe the odds would even up a little if two of us were doing the fighting together."

Tucker's glance flashed up again. "Why not?" "Spit it out, then."

"A lot of things, Captain. A woman, a brother. A man carries memories around on his back." Tucker frowned into the bottle. "Why all the interest?"

"You're too good a man to get corked up in a bottle."

Tucker laughed shortly. "Yeah. I thought the same thing once, myself.''

"What happened to change it?"

"The War Department Act of 'Sixty-six."

"I don't know that one," Harris said.

"I reckon you're a little young to recollect it, Captain. But it's this: No ex-Confederate officer can hold a commission in the army of these here United States," Tucker said.

"You were an officer, then?"

"Brevet Captain at Chancellorsville. At your service, sir." Tucker looked up a moment, curled his Ups into a wry smile. Then he lifted the bottle.

"A man shouldn't let a thing like that ruin his Hfe," Harris said. "Why dwell on it?"

"I'm as high as I can go, right now," Tucker said. "That's kind of hard on an ambitious man. Captain." His hand was steady on the bottle. "And I'm not handy at anything else. I'm army. Been army all my Hfe. Too old, too stubborn to change. I don't figure to see myself handlin' a pick or a lasso or a plow, or clerking."

"Maybe," Harris suggested softly, "you ought to take pride in a job well done, instead of worrying after a job you can't get. You're a good topkick, Em-mett—the best. Why be ashamed of that?"

"I ain't," Tucker admitted. "Only from here it looks like a blind canyon, you see? Nowhere to go from here, except maybe get my head shot oflF by some howling Coyotero. Or spend the rest of my life drilling troops on the parade ground, and finally get put out to pasture in a supply office somewhere."

Harris shrugged. "We ail get killed or put out to .pasture sooner or later, Emmett. You've got a bad case of feeling sorry for yourself, that's all."

Tucker grunted. "I'll tell you something, Captain. I was a good officer. I don't look like it now, but I came out of West Point. Class of 'Sixty-one."

Harris's eyebrows lifted. He sat a little lower in his chair, sipping his drink, and for a while joined Tucker in Tucker's private dark and silent country. And when he got up to leave, he had nothing to say.

Brady wasn't exactly sure whether he was an important part of events or merely a bystander. What he did know was that things were threatening to come to a head pretty quickly. He had seen Sadie Rand this morning and knew of her difficulties with Hai-ris, which had made him curse inwardly. Last night, well past midnight, he had observed the return of Captain George Sutherland on his horse, and had seen the grim set of Sutherland's features when Sutherland went past the lantern on the hospital door.

Not long after that, he had met Emmett Tucker, walking with the precariousness of a very drunk, very sad man. Tucker had merely grunted to him and gone home. And this morning he had seen Justin Harris fall in his company onto the dust-covered compound and berate them for sloppy driUing. Which was something Harris seldom did.

The major had come out on his office porch and spoken a few words of smprise and caution to Brady who had taken all these small things into his head. Brady was now in the barber's chair, trying to sort them out.

After a shave and a haircut, he went across the weed-and greasewood-strewn lot to Chet Rand's store, where he consumed a lunch consisting of ca

The only thing he could see plainly was that everything, all these entanglements and angers, revolved around the central figure of Eleanor Sutherland. Eleanor's dark beauty had drawn them all into a web of hatreds and deceptions. How long that web would last was anybody's guess. It seemed pretty obvious that when the web did collapse, it would dump them into an uncomfortable pit of conflict that might destroy all of them.

"I'll see you later," he said to Chet Rand, and left the sutler's. For the next five days he was bound to the army by contract; after that-he had not decided. A lot of it depended on Eleanor. In some ways she frightened him as much as she attracted him. He knew he wanted her, but he was not at all sure that he was capable of making her happy. Up to now his own life had run through drifting paths. And he was half-afraid that it was his very irresponsibility, in contrast with Sutherland's regimented conduct, that appealed to Eleanor. If that was true, he knew there was no chance of making any kind of a mutually happy future with her. If, on the other hand-

The answers simply were not available. He found himself cm-sing the whole morass, while he walked slowly across the parade ground. Down at the far end. Tucker was drilling his platoon with sharp, clear commands— "Right, march! Pick up your feet, dammit—you're raising enough dust for a brigade." The dry bite in Tucker's voice was something no one could miss.

Brady paused in front of the guardhouse, nodding to the sentiy. He peered in thi-ough the small barred opening of the door, made out the wiry form of Tonio far in the dimness.

"How's it going, Tonio?"

Tonio moved forward. There was, Brady noticed, a new respect in the Apache youth's eyes. Tonio spoke carefully, Agency School talk. "What am I being kept here for, Brady? What have I done?"

"I'm not quite sure," Brady said. "I'll ask the major. I don't run this place, Tonio--I just work here. Anything I can get for you?"