Ambush on the Mesa by Gordon D. Shirreffs

tremble. He hated violence and bloodshed. All he wanted to do was get his wife to safety, then get himself assigned to a staff job where he could be beside his wife when she needed him. But if Abel Clymer stood in the way, he would see that Maurice Nettleton would fight for his own.
    • • •
    Matt Hastings pulled his soggy shirt up over his head and swabbed his armpits with it. He had a fresh shirt in his pommel pack, but he had been saving that for his entry into Santa Fe. In twenty years’ service he had bucked his way up through the ranks by his ability to follow orders, and always look like a soldier. There had been a time when the diamond of a top soldier was all he desired, but the rumors of war changed Matt Hasting’s ambitions. For the first time in his army career he began to think of wearing shoulder straps instead of chevrons. Instead of obeying his officers’ orders implicitly he had begun to think that perhaps he knew more than they did. He had begun to burn the midnight oil reading every military book he could lay his hands on. Matt knew them all by heart, which was a hell of a lot more than that bumbling Captain Nettleton could say, or Abel Clymer with his big mouth, or Darrell Phillips with his sensitive face and fine manners.
    Matt wiped off his carbine and pistol. He’d hold this J Company outfit together if it was the last thing he ever did.
    • • •
    The sun had died in the west, weltering in rose and gold. Purple and black shadows mantled the mountains. A cooling wind crept out of the hills and rustled the brush.
    Jonas Stevens walked along the line of thirsty horses. They had been jerking at their picket lines. Jonas touched his cracked lips with his tongue. He had saved his ration of water for that day, but there wasn’t enough, for one of theanimals. The lack of water was one of the many things he had never figured on when he had asked for duty in the Southwest. Not for himself, but for the animals. It was different back East. Plenty of good water and fine grazing for cavalry mounts. Jonas patted the nose of one of the horses. He looked down into the dim canyon. Maybe there was water down there somewhere. Kinzie hadn’t said so, but Kinzie was a secretive sort. But if there
was
water down there, Jonas Stevens would see to it that the horses and mules got to it.
    • • •
    Harry Roswell was standing his guard shift in the tower. He looked down at his two stripes. He wore them because he always obeyed orders without question, even those of a corporal who was senior to him. Matt Hastings had once said that seniority amongst corporals and second lieutenants was like virtue amongst whores, but Matt Hastings was a capable first sergeant worth half a dozen green officers.
    Roswell touched his two stripes and then straightened his hat. He gripped his carbine and threw back his shoulders. His seniors could rely on him to carry out their orders. He dropped through the opening in the floor and felt about for the chicken ladder.
    • • •
    It was pitch dark in the canyon. A coyote howled. The wind moaned through the chasm, rustling the brush, and haunting the cliff-dwelling ruins with ghostly whisperings. Something moved furtively at the wall that edged the front of the terrace. A man rolled over the wall and landed softly on the slope. He lay there a while, listening to the night. Then he eased his way down the slope until he reached the brush at the bottom. Then he was gone through the brush, heading for the east end of the canyon.
    • • •
    Isaiah Morton sat in the darkness of a tumbledown room, with his back and head pressed against the warm wall. His Bible lay open on his lap, and one of Isaiah’s spatulate fingers rested on the page. It was too dark to read, but it really didn’t matter, for he knew the book by heart. He was sure that God had placed him in his present company for some obscure but righteous reason of His own. They were an ungodly lot. Their passions and desires were