“We’ll rotate duty at this base camp,” the captain explained. “Two different squads will move out every morning. The first to make a wide sweep to the west, nosing around to the north, then east before coming back in here just after nightfall. And the other will begin their sweep heading east, moving around to the south, then up into the west before reporting in by sundown.”
“And the next day the other two squads will make the same patrols?” asked Coffee.
Lockhart nodded. “Those of us remaining in camp will keep the country both north and south glassed throughout the day, laying low and resting the stock. I want this unit to be in fighting trim when it will be required of us. Not if—
“Them bloody fornicators will show up, Captain,” Johns cheered.
“I’m counting on it, Deacon,” Lockhart replied, easing over toward Jonah. “I’m sure Mr. Hook is counting on it as well.”
“I am, Cap’n.”
Lockhart turned away, his hands laced behind him as he paced before those two squads chosen for the first day’s scout. Continuing, he told them, “We may not see anything for a few days, perhaps a week or better. But you will cut sign. Keep your eyes moving when you’re out. This is naked, open country. Each squad will stand out like a four-bit whore in church—excuse me, Deacon … but so will a Comanche war party.”
“We’ll keep our eyes on the horizon, Captain,” Coffee promised.
“Very well, Sergeant,” he said, eyeing the east. “Let’s get squads one and three out before the sun comes up.”
The rest of the men of Company C lay about him as dawn came up slow as winter’s own pull, Rangers cocooned in blankets around their fire pits like obsidian chips at the floor of a dark stream in the cold moonlight. He had hardly slept that night before their first patrol, his back against the wide bulk of the Shoshone who rarely left Hook’s shadow. The two ate, slept, and now would again ride together with Second Sergeant Clyde Yoakam’s squad. After gulping down the scalding coffee that would serve as his breakfast, Jonah saddled the horse, then returned to the fire pits dug deep to smother the flames’ tattling glow, where he stood and waited, rocking boot to boot anxiously.
After standing his squad to inspection, Yoakam settled down between the high wishbone pommel and rounded cantle upon the open-slot seat of his McClellan saddle and moved them out. Most of those riders turned to look back at least once before their camp disappeared from view in that broken land of bare, buzzard-bone ridges streaked red, yellow, and white, waving at those friends and compatriots they were leaving in camp, those who would recoup and rest: repairing saddles, bridles, even reshoeing if necessary. All the while Lockhart would debrief yesterday’s squad leaders and those men most familiar with this ground. No man wanted to know more about this country and where the Comanche might turn up than Lamar Lockhart.
No man, besides Jonah Hook.
Especially after that first long day in the saddle, riding back at nightfall empty-handed and with nothing of import to tell Lockhart. No trails crossed. No smoke seen. Even the small, normally unobserved things: they had spotted ample game throughout the day; the water holes and springs remained untrammeled. Only the crusty snow atop the flaky ground betrayed the passing of yesterday’s scout.
The Rangers moved in and out and around that country for the better part of the next ten days, on into the first week of February. Camp became a familiar haven with its odors of gun oil and soaped leather, the pungent aroma of men and animals about this business of waiting for war. What few decks of cards they had packed along grew dogeared as those decks were passed from squad to squad to squad, the men funning themselves playing seven-up or rowdy games of monte. A few precious sets of checkers also served to break up some of the camp monotony, played on limber game boards of gingham-checked cloth a man could roll up around the scuffed black and red checker pieces, then stuff the whole of it away into a saddlebag.
Former barber Enoch Harmony gave a trim to all those who desired a haircut. Slade Rule, a brands inspector, gave every horse a good going-over at least once every third day to determine if the pounding of their patrols was wearing down the company’s stock. And Lockhart himself held the outgoing squads to inspection every morning: their outfits, belt guns and carbines, in addition to each individual’s saddle and tack.
“When it comes time for this company to fight,” the captain preached with regularity, “the success of the whole must not be hampered by the failure of the one to see to the readiness of his outfit.”
“A worn cinch strap, a shoddy stirrup latch, maybe even a loose bit chain—anything,” explained Sergeant Coffee, “sure as tarnal sin it could mean the difference between life and death when we finally run down these Comanch’.”
