Joe Millard - The Good the Bad and the Ugly

THE GOOD THE BAD

AND THE UGLY

Joe Millard

CHAPTER 1

THE soldier in the Union blue uniform closed his telescope with a snap. He bellied carefully back from his high rocky perch, slid and scrambled down the sheer rock wall of the pass. In the deep shadows at its base he broke into a circle of lounging Union troops.

A bearded lieutenant rose to his feet.

“Company coming?”

“A detail of Johnny Rebs is beading for the pass—a troop of cavalry escorting a single open army wagon.”

The lieutenant stroked his beard thoughtfully.

“Sounds like a Confederate paywagon. Tomorrow being the fast of March and the Texans occupying Sante Fe—Fort Craig will be figuring on a payday.” He grinned. “They’ll be a lot of mighty disappointed cantiña girls in Santa Fe tomorrow night. Take your places, men, and keep low. Let them get well inside the pass, then hit ’em from both sides hard.”

The Confederate detail had inched north and west-ward across the savage land for endless days. The men had been hammered by the relentless sun and strangled by the clouds of fine adobe dust that smoked up from the wagon wheels and from the hoofs of the mules that drew it. The vultures had followed the detail, wheeling in tireless circles against the brassy sky. They seemed to know that soon their patience would be rewarded.

The wagon was an open army buckboard. Stencilled on its side was the legend: 4TH CAVALRY—C.S.A.—Confederate States of America. The wagon bed was nearly filled by a rough pine chest, about the size and proportions of a military coffin. An older man named Baker sat on the chest, facing backward, a long rifle cradled in his arms.

The driver was a swarthy Texican named Mondrega. On the seat beside him sat a guard named Jackson, his rifle across his lap. The men’s Confederate grey uniforms were thick with dust and blotched with dark patches of sweat. Their cavalry escort rode in a wide circle, completely surrounding the wagon. Two more troopers rode a mile or no ahead as scouts.

The guard, Jackson, tilted his canteen, choked and cursed wrathfully as the sun-heated water burned his blistered lips.

“Damn the goddam sun and the goddam dust and the goddam army. As a kid I used to wonder what hell was like. Now that I’ve seen New Mexico, my curiosity’s satisfied.”

Mondrega grinned.

“If you think this is hot in February, you should ride across it in July, señor .”

The old man, Baker, growled over his shoulder, “I’m damned if I’d ride through it again, even if I was froze in a cake of ice. Nobody but a knot-head general or a politician would be dumb enough to fight over a hunk of desert and mountains.”

“AM but our General Sibley is not dumb, señor ,” Mondrega said. “He knows that under those mountains, and out west in California, lie the great fields of gold. The Yankees will have no more money to pay for the war if we can capture these.”

The cavalry escort had been closing in around the wagon, adding the dust from their mounts to the cloud that never lifted. Jackson was the fast to become aware of the tightening circle.

He coughed and raised his voice. “Hey, dammit, Sarge. Wasn’t we choking to death fast enough on our own dust to suit you? Get back a ways with yours.”

The leather-faced sergeant reined his horse closer to the wagon.

“Which would you rather have in your face, soldier—a cloud of dust or a cloud of Minie balls from Yankee rifles?” He pointed ahead, “Them’s the Sangre de Cristo mountains. On the other side of ’em is Sante Fe. To get through, we got to take Glorietta Pass and Apache Canyon, the best spots in the Territory for a Yankee ambush.”

“Aw, hell,” Baker growled. “Why would Yankees waste good lead on a flea-bitten handful like us?”

The sergeant’s jaw dropped. “Hell, man—don’t you know what’s inside that chest your backside is planted on, soldier?”

“They never told us,” Baker said. “They never tell a foot soldier nothing except to do what he’s ordered on the double.”

“Man, that chest is full of gold dollars—two hundred thousand of ’em. That’s the whole pay and forage funds of the Fourth Cavalry, plus a sight more they aim to spread around to buy us some important friends. So you guard that chest, soldier. You guard it real damn good.”

The abrupt transition from blazing sunlight to the deep gloom of the pass left the detail momentarily blinded. Jackson, who had been riding with his eyes squeezed to thin slits against the glare, was the first to recover his vision. His gaze roved across the forbidding rock walls and caught the barest flicker of movement. Brief as it was, he caught the unmistakable blue of a Yankee uniform sleeve.

He yelled in wordless alarm and flung himself back off the seat into the wagon bed. He was still falling when the walls erupted smoke and flame and the deafening thunder of gunfire. A searing pain streaked along his ribs. Above the racketing of guns rose wild yelling and the scream of a wounded horse.

Mondrega toppled, landed heavily on Jackson and lay still Baker rolled off the end of the chest and slammed down on the two of them, squirming and uttering liquid, choking sounds.

Jackson felt the wagon lurch and leap ahead as the terrified mules bolted. The echoing tumult fell away behind and rapidly faded. When he could no longer hear any sound of battle Jackson dragged himself out from under the inert figures of his comrades.

The mules, nearing exhaustion from their blind dash, were slowing down. He managed to catch the flying reins and whipsaw the team to a panting halt. He saw that the run had taken them out of the narrow pass and into a broad valley. For the moment he could detect no sound or sign of pursuit.

He scrambled back into the wagon bed to examine his companions. Mondrega was unconscious from a bullet crease across his skull and bled from a flesh wound in one arm. Baker was in bad shape. A rifle ball had gone through one lung and he was coughing up a steady froth of blood. He needed medical aid—and fast.

Jackson’s own wound proved no more than a painful crease in which the blood was already congealing. He got to his feet, using the chest for support, and suddenly full awareness of its contents hit him. Two hundred thousand dollars in gold...

His mouth dried out and a choking sensation caught his throat. If no one else survived the ambush—no one else could know what became of that fortune. He began to shake.

Abruptly he became aware of the background. To the right the entire slope was covered by the most immense cemetery he had ever seen. The slope was crowded with graves as far as the eye could reach. Each grave was marked by a plain wooden headboard. This could only be Sad Hill Cemetery, the military burying ground begun during the Mexican War, augmented by the Indian troubles and now being swollen by the fruits of the War Between the States.

Partway up the slope gaped the raw scar of a newly dug grave, not yet occupied. Jackson lunged up to the wagon seat and used the ends of the reins to lash the mules into movement.

Beside the open grave he sprang down and lowered the tailgate of the wagon. He caught hold of the rope handle an the end of the chest and hauled with all his might, ignoring the pain that knifed along his ribs as his wound reopened. The massive chest moved slowly—but it moved.

In the wagon bed the wounded Baker opened shock-dimmed eyes. He stared at the empty space where the chest had rested. Then slowly, agonizingly, he rolled his head far enough to see past the back of the wagon to endless rows of marked graves.

He became dimly aware of the sound of frenzied scraping and the hollow thump of pebbles and earth on wood. It was coming from somewhere close by but the sideboard of the wagon blocked his line of sight. He tried to raise himself up enough to see but the effort proved too much. With a low, gurgling moan he fell back into unconsciousness.