The Red Hills by James Marvin Read Free Book Online Page B

though I'm sure you'd be happier back with my wife at the camp.'
    With that parting shot he dismissed them, the Sergeant walking off with Crow, barely able to contain his anger, stalking stiff-legged like a puma looking for a fight.
    'Why didn't you bust the son of a bitch in the mouth, Sir?' he asked, as soon as they were out of earshot of Menges. 'I'd have backed your word. Or simply gunned him down. Nobody would have spoken against you, except maybe some of the ass-lickers like Simpson. We could have settled with him at the same time.'
    Crow shook his head. 'I heard someone say lately about there bein' a time to love and a time to kill. Somethin' like that. I'm a patient man, Sergeant.'
    'Seems to me that it goes beyond patience...' said McLaglen, turning his back deliberately.
    Crow didn't raise his voice. 'You act like that with me, Sergeant, and when the time comes, and it will, then you'll be up there for an accountin' like the Captain.'
    McLaglen turned again, hand dropping to his pistol in its covered holster. 'I don't take to that kind of threat,
Sir.'
    The Sergeant didn't see quite how it happened but there was a blur of movement and the sawn-down scatter-gun was in Crow's right hand, the hammers clicking back.
    Both barrels gaping at him like twin railroad tunnels.
    The veteran had faced death a few times in his long career in the Cavalry. A drunk had sliced through his neck with a broken bottle back in Fort Reno, just missing the pulsing arteries under the ear. There had been a Shoshone war-lance back in 'fifty-four. A whore in Dallas who'd shot him in the top of the leg with an over-and-under derringer, aiming at his groin and just missing him. Lots of brushes with the wings of the angel of death.
    But he knew that this was about as close as he'd ever stood to having the toes of his boots hanging over the edge of his grave. He felt very cold in the afternoon heat.
    'Jesus, Crow,' he breathed, letting his fingers move from the butt of his own gun. 'I didn't mean nothin' by it...'
    Crow shook his head, eyes chips of obsidian in the hollows of his face. 'There's cemeteries all across this land peopled by men who didn't mean nothin' by it,' he said, thumbing back on the hammers, sliding the gun back into the greased holster.
    The column rode on a few minutes later, leaving Crow with Stotter and Baxter. And two other Troopers, call Cantwell and Clynes. Sitting their mounts and watching the dust move on across the grasslands, heading north to where Menges said he'd seen the camp of the Indians. There was nothing to do but sit and wait. Crow ordered the men to dismount and then personally checked all of their rifles and pistols, getting Clynes and Stotter to clean their handguns while they sat in the shade of some bushes.
    Waiting.
    A thousand feet above them there was a dot circling in the sky. Crow lay back, feeling the warmth of the grass striking through the clammy cold of his damp shirt, deciding that the bird was an eagle, flying southwards from the Canadian winter. He watched it as it rose and fell, great wings stretched out, riding a current of warm air.
    Crow envied it the freedom, wondering whether maybe life in the Cavalry wasn't the answer to the problems that tore at his mind, creeping into his waking hours and sliding unbidden into his sleep. There had to be a solution to what he should do with his life. For years it had been Crow's thought that the Cavalry was the best way of using his strange skills and murderous moods. Channeling them into a kind of usefulness.
    But lately it hadn't felt that way anymore. The angers rose in him, despite his attempts to deny them. It would only be a matter of time before it all happened again.
    And it would start.
    The running.
    Hiding.
    Killing.
    No friends.
    No enemies.
    Alive.
    They heard the first sound of shooting some seventy minutes after Menges and the sixteen men with him had vanished out of sight over the heat-shimmering horizon.
    Crow sat up and took out the