The Colonel's Lady by Clifton Adams Page A

do you mean?”
    “I figure the law's after him. Government law, probably. He knows his days are numbered, because sooner or later that telegraph will go up again and we'll have a connection with the outside world.”
    “I didn't think civilian law bothered men in an outpost like Larrymoor.”
    “It depends on what the crime is.”
    We sat there for a while, saying nothing. Skiborsky, it seemed, could be as changeable as a chameleon. He could be an iron-hard sergeant, or a drunken clown, or, on rare occasions, he could be the way he was now, easy to talk to and thoughtful and human. Right now I had a feeling that Skiborsky was actually worrying about Morgan and what was going to happen to him. But tomorrow, I knew, the feeling would be gone.
    I watched Juan as he finished rubbing his pony down with his blanket. He was a pretty good size for a Papago, slightly larger than most Apaches but not as thick or big as a Comanche. He wore regulation cavalry pants—without cutting the front and seat out of them, the way Apaches did—and soft buckskin moccasins and a leather vest. His heavy, long-muscled arms were weighted with silver bands and bangles, and around his neck was a sacred necklace of elk's teeth. A battered cavalry campaign hat sat square on his head. Quietly he replaced the blanket on the pony's back, swung up gracefully, and rode away from the springs.
    “Where's he going?”
    “I never ask Juan where he's going,” Skiborsky said. “If it's important he'll tell somebody.”
    After a while we began to hear the complicated sounds of loose steel and screeching saddle leather and stumbling hoofs and we knew that the patrol was nearing the springs.
    “Where's Juan?” Halan asked, after he had dismissed the column and given instructions for setting up the camp.
    “He rode off, sir. He didn't say where.”
    “Any Indian sign around here?”
    “Not a thing, sir. I guess Kohi's goin' to stay in his stronghold after all.”
    But Halan shook his head, looking vaguely worried. “I don't know. We saw some more smoke. They're worked up about something. I wish I knew what it was and what Kohi was going to do about it.”
    The men began building squad fires and putting on the spiders to cook their supper before the sun went down. The horses were put on a picket line and Halan called to Lieutenant Loveridge. “Mr. Loveridge, will you take evening stables?”
    “Yes, sir.” The Lieutenant began checking the mounts for cuts and bruises and fatigue and the hundreds of other subtle but fatal illnesses that horses are heir to. The men began taking heavy bags of forage from behind their saddles for feeding. The sun was still high, I noticed, as I worked beside Morgan. I dreaded to see night come, for night is the time for thinking, and Caroline was there in the back of my mind, waiting to come out.
    “There's Juan now, sir,” Skiborsky said to Captain Halan. “Up there on the ridge. You can just see him.” We all looked up, seeing the small figure silhouetted on the ridge against the fading sky. He rode his pony in a small tight circle. He completed the circle three times.
    “He's spotted something,” Skiborsky said.
    Halan nodded. “It looks like it. Take the men you had before, Sergeant, and we'll go up and have a look.”
    So we got our horses from the picket line and saddled up again and rode up to where the Papago scout was waiting. We had no trouble spotting the thing that was bothering Juan. Down the rocky grade, on the other side of the ridge, a swarm of vultures glided sluggishly, heavy-winged, around and around. Halan took off his hat and wiped his face with his yellow handkerchief.
    “I guess we'd better go down,” he said quietly.
    We kneed down the grade carefully, keeping wary eyes on the high ground around us. Most of us, after finishing the schooling at Larrymoor, had learned something about Indians, and especially about Kohi and his Coyoteros. The subject of Indians was brought up in all conversations