Ambush on the Mesa by Gordon D. Shirreffs Page B

none of those things would matter if a screaming horde of bloodthirsty Apaches came down on them and ripped Marion’s clothes from her, and ripped the ivory citadel of her shapely body with greasy hands.
    Marion sat up and slowly fixed her hair. She had once thought Abel Clymer was the man to save her. At first she had hated the scout, Hugh Kinzie, with his sharp orders and bitter eyes. But Hugh Kinzie could save her if anyone could. Marion stood up and brushed her clothing. There would be a moon that night. He had once promised to stay close to her on the trail. This night she would give him his chance. Not too much, just enough to set the hook in tightly.
    • • •
    There was a faint suggestion of the moon in the eastern sky. Dan Pearce looked back over his shoulder. He could just make out the cliff dwellings up on the slope behind him. Noone had followed him. It would be quite some time before that three-striped bastard Sergeant Hastings missed him. By that time Dan would have the silver service and any other loot from the mule packs, cached away.
    Dan padded through the brush. It was almost like the old days back at Five Points when he had prowled the streets looking for drunks to smash and pluck. He looked up at the high walls of the canyon. It was almost like walking through a narrow street in New York, between rows of sagging tenements. Dan Pearce would make it all right. He had the luck and the guts.
    Katy Corse slowly hooked up the front of her dress. The heat of the day was long gone and a cool wind whispered up the canyon. She wanted a bath and clean clothing, but she cast the thought from her mind. There was hardly enough water for drinking purposes, and the only women’s clothing available belonged to Marion Nettleton. She hadn’t offered Katy the use of any of it.
    Katy walked out onto the dim terrace. There was a brooding quiet about the canyon. She could feel, rather than see, the men of the little party, staring out into the dimness and listening to every night sound. She had been through experiences like this before. At Tubac she had lived through an attack when she had been fifteen years old. Her mother had been killed in that one. In 1858 her father had been the sutler at Fort Buchanan, and Katy had helped him. Two years later he had been killed by Apaches while bringing in supplies. Katy had turned over the sutler’s store to Cass Wilkerson. Cass had kept her on as his clerk. It was then she had met Hugh Kinzie.
    Katy felt the breeze cool her warm flesh. She had fallen hard for Hugh Kinzie, probably because he hadn’t paid much attention to her on a post where every trooper, one way or another, honestly or dishonestly, had tried to gain her favor. Hugh Kinzie was a great deal like his brother Ronald. Strangely enough, Katy had been interested in Captain Kinzie, but he had paid no more attention to her than he had to his horse or dog. Hugh seemed to have been a little more human, but still had that Kinzie aloofness about him.
    Herbert Oglesby had played up his suit vigorously to Katy about the same time Hugh had seemed to be a little interested. Katy liked Herbert and had used him to place alittle jealousy in Hugh Kinzie, to see what he’d do. Katy had overplayed her hand, for Hugh had shied away like a badly broken horse. In common with most of the men on the post, he had assumed she was Herbert’s woman. Nothing she could do, within reason, had changed Hugh’s coldness toward her. Herbert had proposed. She had accepted, hoping Hugh at last would do something. He hadn’t. One day he was there; the next day he was gone into the hazy mountains. A month later Herbert Oglesby had died with a flint arrowhead buried in his chest.
    Katy walked to the edge of the terrace. Somehow, every time she tried to be nice to Hugh, she put her foot into it. Hugh was feisty, and had to be handled with a fine touch, and Katy Corse seemed to lack that touch.
    A man came up behind Katy. She turned quickly, hoping it