Stamping Ground by Loren D. Estleman Page B

inventory of Pere Jac. Then he returned to Hudspeth.
    â€œYou owe the U.S. Government the price of a new Springfield rifle, Marshal.”
    â€œTell them to take it out of my taxes.”
    I stifled a grin. Either the lawman had qualities I hadn’t suspected or a little of me was beginning to rub off on him. I was starting to enjoy my subordinate role in this thing.
    He wasn’t finished. “I told you who we are. It’s polite to introduce yourself back, ain’t it, Lieutenant?”
    â€œIt’s Major,” snapped the other. “Major Quincy Harms, acting commanding officer at Fort Ransom until Washington City appoints a permanent replacement for Colonel Broderick. I’m sorry, Marshal, for all the inconvenience, but you must understand that the situation here is tense. We can trust no one.” There was no apology in his tone.
    â€œSo you shoot everyone on sight?”
    â€œTrooper Gordon will be reprimanded for his lapse injudgment. I believe you mentioned a letter from Judge Flood.” He held out a hand.
    The marshal drew out the paper Flood had given him the morning of our departure and handed it over. Harms unfolded it and read. The muscles in his jaw twitched. Then he thrust the letter inside his tunic.
    â€œSergeant Burdett, relieve Trooper Gordon of his duties and place him under house arrest until further orders.”
    An infantryman, the private had no side arm to be taken from him. The man in the forage cap merely leaned down, screwed the muzzle of his rifle into the other’s collar, and began walking his horse forward. Rather than be trampled, the trooper let himself be prodded along like a stray calf. Somehow I got the impression that he was going to be punished not so much for firing a premature shot as for allowing himself to be overpowered by a civilian.
    â€œCome with me, please, all of you. Bring your horses.” The major reined his black around and splashed through the water toward the fort entrance. The third rider, a middle-aged corporal with a plug of tobacco bulging beneath his lower lip, followed him.
    â€œDamn tin soldiers,” muttered Hudspeth as he mounted the subdued buckskin.
    One half of the huge double slat gate swung inward to allow us entrance, then was pushed shut by two troopers and secured with a timber bar that must have been shipped, like the logs of which the fort’s framework was constructed, downriver from Montana or by rail from Minnesota. From there we rode past crowds of hard-eyed men in uniform who watched us with hands clasped tightly around their Springfields and Spencers. They had the desperate look of animals left too long at the ends of their tethers. Before the post livery a company of troopers was dismounting wearily, their horses, faces and uniforms covered with a mud of sweat and dust. Among them was a pair of empty mounts bearing the army’s brand.
    From the porch overhang of a long adobe building swung a sign that identified it as the garrison commander’s office.The major and corporal left their saddles in exhausted unison, their square-topped boots double-crunching on the carted-in gravel. Jac and Hudspeth and I dismounted more earthily and hitched up at the watering trough, where the horses wet their noses eagerly. Harms handed his reins to the corporal.
    â€œThe right front needs reshoeing. And see to it that our guests’ mounts are rubbed down and fed. They’re dead on their feet.”
    The corporal saluted and led off his and the major’s mounts.
    The office smelled of coffee and stale tobacco. The walls were bare adobe reinforced by wooden timbers, and the floor was made of pine planks eight inches wide and scrubbed white as bears’ teeth by some miserable trooper on punishment detail with a scouring pad and a toothbrush for the cracks. The desk was battered, scarred in numerous places where matches had been struck against its scaly surface, and covered by a large-scale map of