Burden of Duty
by P. Garrett Weiler

The news that Victorio was back in New Mexico was brought by a vaquero. He came across two butchered mules just north of the border. The terrified Mexican frantically whipped his horse every one of the twenty miles along the Butterfield road to Fort Cummings.

Sergeant Hern Brewster watched the horse stagger in with its wide-eyed rider.

"Big bunch Apaches," the Mexican stammered. "Eat mules . . . many tracks go north."

Brewster pointed towards post headquarters. "Tell the captain."

Automatically his mind shifted from day-to-day garrison drudgery to what needed done in preparation for field duty. Horses to check, ammunition allotment, supplies for men and horses; all the familiar issues he'd dealt with a hundred times before.

Low clouds hung over Cooke's Range when Captain Moore issued his orders.

"Lieutenant Grewel, you'll take most of the troop north along the mountains to cut Victorio's trail if he turns east. Sergeant Brewster, you'll also trail north, but up along the Mimbres River in case he doubles back."

"How many men, sir?" Brewster asked.

"Fifteen should be enough, Sergeant."

Brewster hoped he was right.

"Ammunition and food for five days," Moore said.

Brewster alerted the quartermaster then stopped in the barracks to assemble his patrol. The low-ceilinged room accented his tall, slouched frame. Adobe walls absorbed dim light from an oil lamp hung above a rough table. Too many greenhorns in fresh blue uniforms, too few veterans in homespun and woolsey. The best mix he could come up with was half and half. He made his choices and ordered them to be ready to march at first light.

He slept fitfully on his lumpy cotton mattress. All the things he must deal with tumbled and fretted in his head. He reminded himself how senseless the turmoil was; after all, he wasn't some peach-faced rookie on his first field patrol.

A couple of hours before dawn the smell of rain wafted in heavy with wet sagebrush, creosote, and ancient sands.

It wasn't so much the details of setting up a patrol that niggled at him. His thoughts drifted back to the battle at Fort Hindman. Twenty-five years ago the only thing he knew about the Army was to be scared when folks started shooting at him – and that his sergeant didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. Just enough to somehow always have a bottle at hand, and to get most of the squad killed, maimed, or captured. And so Private Hern Brewster had found himself in Andersonville. There he learned that it took more than a few stripes on a man's arm to make a leader. He'd gone into Andersonville a buttercup private and came out filled with an unrelenting determination: he'd never let troops down.

In the morning he stepped from the barracks into grey drizzle. Over near headquarters his patrol waited. Woody Carlson joined him.

"Heard you're musterin' out," the scout said. "Reckon the Army can git along without ya?"

Brewster shrugged into his slicker. "Army will be just fine long as it's got you around to keep things on an even keel."

"Must be the pay that tempts me." Carlson was all gangly legs and arms and totally oblivious to the drizzle.

Brewster studied the patrol. His pace was slow and easy as he approached them. There was no hint of the quiet turmoil within. The troopers stood hunched and miserable in the rain.

"Thought it didn't rain in the desert," Private Gaines complained.

Brewster faced the man. Abruptly the young soldier looked taller and the slouch was gone.

"Relax, Gaines. You ain't gonna melt." He spoke mildly but with a certain tension cutting the words. "But them corroded cartridges in your belt can get you dead pretty quick." His tone was casual and mild, but without another word Private Gaines trotted off to the quartermaster building.

Brewster led a mare he called Gilda, appreciating that she had a smooth gait made for old bones. He strolled along the line, then turned to tug at the saddle on a hammer-headed roan gelding. "How come this saddle's loose?"

The trooper shuffled uneasily. "I done cinched it tight, Sarge."

"This here's Jiggs," Brewster said evenly. "Jiggs blows himself up when he feels the cinch." A hard knee into the horse's midsection and a tug on the braided cinch eliminated the slack.

He threw the flap on the next man's saddle pack and dug inside. "You ain't got no dry clothes here, Barnes." The youngster scurried towards the barracks. "Anybody else ain't got no dry clothes, get them now."

He set the order of march: column of twos, each rookie riding next to a veteran. Leather creaked as the troopers swung up. One of the new men tried to mount from the right side. His horse skittered sideways in a tight left-turning circle. The rider skipped along awkwardly to keep up.

Brewster leveled a hard stare at the man. He bit down on a chuckle. "Seems to me that horse is smarter than you, Edmunds."

The troopers in their ponchos looked like mounted tents as they moved westward across the wet desert. The Butterfield road led towards a low pass through Cooke's Range where grey clouds hung low.

Brewster twisted in his saddle. "Outriders!" Two of the veterans loped ahead, one to the right, the other left. Brewster's gaze searched ahead, but his thoughts turned inward. What have I overlooked? What detail? He knew full well there was nothing; he'd done this too long to stumble now. Yet he couldn't completely rid himself of a tiny seed of apprehension.

Woody rode up. "Meet up with you where them dead mules is." He kicked his horse into a reaching lope.

Brewster called after him. "Save us a steak or two."

The road angled and curved gently into the mountains where scattered juniper and pinon crowded out lowland greasewood. Brewster slowed his horse. He studied them as they rode by. The new men sat erect and alert, a couple of them with rifles out and resting on pommels. The veterans rode slumped and relaxed. One of them grinned at Brewster, then yawned.

He sensed their trust. They knew he'd be there for them if or when the time came. What was it going to be like without that trust hanging around his neck all the time? Retirement was less than a week away, so where was the anticipation he should be feeling?

One of the old hands shifted in his saddle as Brewster came up. "What you gonna do after retirement, Sarge?"

"An uncle left me a parcel of land back in Missouri," Brewster answered. "Reckon I'll head back there and see what kind of farmer I'll make."

The trooper fixed him with a puzzled look. "You got a place all your own and stayed in the Army?" He shook his head slowly. "Been me, I'd been out and gone long ago."

Woody met them at the mule carcasses. The drizzle had ended. Blue sky filled rifts in the thinning overcast.

"Thirty minutes," Brewster announced. "Loosen cinches and grab a bite to eat."

Woody strolled up. "Maybe eighty or so," he said. "Some on foot. Women and kids with 'em." He took off his broad-brimmed hat and scratched his head. "Couple of miles north they split up, but the general direction's north."

Brewster pondered that. "Dog Canyon?"

"Could well be. Mescalero country. Victorio probably hopes to pick up a few of their bucks. I'll be up ahead a few miles." He swung into his saddle and trotted off along the shallow wash of the river. Brewster made a quick check of his men then led them northward.

By late afternoon the clouds swept southward, driven by a chill north wind. Where the land rose into low sand hills along the Mimbres, Brewster put his men into night camp. When no one was watching he eased slowly down from the saddle. He heard and felt bones protesting in his back but still managed to stride vigorously among his men for another quick inspection.

"First thing you do is look to your horses," he told them. "We go all together over to the river – ought to be enough water. Then rub down your mount – four handfuls of oats." He grinned wryly. "Once the important things are done, look to yourself. Dry pants and shirts. No fires."

Woody Carlson rode in just after full dark. Brewster rose stiffly from his seat on a rock. Tight muscles protested and joints popped.

Carlson grinned. "All them bones snappin' and creakin' is going to tell every 'Pache in five miles we're here."

"Damnation," Brewster snorted. "I'm just trying to make it so you don't have to find 'em for us."

The scout tongued a lump of tobacco around for a few seconds. "Tracks still headin' north," he said, then more thoughtfully, "I'm thinkin' Victorio doesn't much like us back here. Could be he wants to hold up a spell to put more distance between his bunch and Lieutenant Grewel, then slip around behind him."

"And he can't do that with us comin' up on his tail." Brewster looked directly into Carlson's eyes. "He goin' to fight us?"

"Not head-on he won't."

"I'm thinkin' round about thirty or so fighters."

Carlson squirted tobacco juice then crammed his hat back on. "Yep," he grunted.

Dawn was barely a rose-tinted line squeezed above a ragged stretch of dark mountains. A trooper followed Brewster with matches so he could check rifles. Men chewed hardtack and grumbled about no coffee as they went to saddle. Woody Carlson was already an hour gone.

There'd be a fight today. Brewster knew it as sure as he knew the sun was coming up. Not head on either, like Carlson had said. That was one of the few things you could count on about Apaches. Could his men handle it though? He studied them, above all those who'd never scrapped with Indians. He rode slowly down the line of soldiers.

"You greenhorns stick close to the old hands," he said, careful to keep even a hint of apprehension from his words. "They say jump, you jump."

They were as ready as they'd ever be. He'd trained them himself. Now, though, he'd have to lead them.

Sparse lines of tamarisk and salt cedar bordered the sandy wash of the Mimbres. To the right of their line of march a few crags of jumbled black rock spotted the landscape. Brewster's gaze relentlessly arced left and right, near then far, the pattern an extension of instincts sharpened to a fine edge over the years. He studied a deep arroyo slanted down to the river on their left. Then his attention returned to the tangle of rocks, caught by something. Everywhere around the patrol the land was still darkened by last night's rain. Everywhere but for several lighter splotches between those rocks.

His mare snorted, ears rigid, head turned towards the rocks.

"Pull your carbines!" he shouted. "Look to your right!"

As if by magic, four Apaches suddenly erupted from the ground between the rocks.

"Fire at will!"

Horses crow-hopped and bucked at the explosions. Three men almost fell from their frenzied mounts. Brewster fought the mare around and spurred it towards the Apaches.

"Follow me!"

The Indians dropped to shelter behind the rocks. There was only one gun between them. Its owner fired blindly at the charging soldiers while the others rapidly loosed arrows.

Above the rush of wind and pounding hooves Brewster heard his men shouting madly. They were all around him, racing towards the rocks, each man energized by some common vitality that had risen like a sudden storm.

Too easy. The thought leaped into his mind. Only four . . . too easy. He slowed and turned in the saddle.

Mounted Apaches charged out of the tributary arroyo behind them.

"Keep goin'!" He waved his men on. "Keep goin', boys! Git!"

He wheeled the mare about and spurred towards the oncoming Indians. "Hope you don't end up like them mules," he shouted to the horse.

His revolver clicked on empty. He viciously reined in and dismounted, Spencer in his right hand, saber in left. A sledgehammer impact pounded his chest. Vague forms swept closer. His carbine and saber swung through weakening arcs. Another blow took the last of his strength and he went to his knees. He looked over a shoulder. His men had disappeared. He smiled. I'd never have made much of a farmer anyways.

They gathered up the soldier's weapons and ammunition. A Mimbreno caught the white man's horse. Others attended to the dead and wounded who had distracted the soldiers in the rocks.

Ancient Nana, eighty summers old and bent with arthritis, joined Victorio. They looked down at the soldier leader.

"He fought well," Nana said.

"Yes," Victorio agreed. "The others would not have escaped if this one had not broken our charge."

A young man unbuttoned the blue tunic and began tugging it off the still form. Victorio stopped him with a gesture.

Nana looked up. "What say you? Perhaps this one is worthy of Apache honor."

Victorio said nothing. He stooped over the crumpled soldier. Carefully he straightened the arms and legs and cleaned dirt from the face.

Later they would bury the white-eyes together with the Mimbreno dead in some high, secret place.