"Embarrassing to try and fight a battle without it," agreed Major Sellers, who had a sardonic cast of mind. "We almost found that out, to our cost, at Tombstone. If the Yankees had had a couple of companies of Regulars there along with the Tombstone Rangers, we might have found ourselves biting down hard on a cherry pit."
"That's so." Of itself, Stuart's tongue ran over a broken tooth on the left side of his lower jaw. He hadn't done it on a cherry pit, but on a bit of chicken bone. The comparison struck a nerve even so. He went on, "We've taught the Yankees a lesson, though. Since we licked them in that last fight, they haven't even tried moving soldiers into the stretch of their own country we overran, let alone down into Sonora."
But counting on the United States to stay quiet was a mistake, as Stuart learned that afternoon when a half-dead Confederate cavalry trooper rode a foundering horse into Cananea. A bucket of water poured over his head, another poured down him, and a tumbler of mescal poured after it did wonders to revive the soldier. "Drench me again," he said, whether seeking more water on him or more mescal in him Stuart did not know.
"What news?" the commander of the Trans-Mississippi demanded.
"Sir, the damnyankees bushwhacked our wagon train, maybe twenty miles west of this Janos place," the trooper answered. "Wasn't like they came ridin' down on us, neither. They was waitin' there, right in the road, like they got there a while ago and they was a-fixin' to stay."
"Oh, they were, were they?" Stuart's eyes lit up. "That's what they think. How many men have they?"
"Looked like a couple troops of cavalry, mebbe some infantry with 'em," the soldier answered. "I was ridin' rear guard, but I reckoned you needed to know what they was up to worse'n the folks back in El Paso, so I went wide around the ambuscade and managed to get on by them bastards without 'em spottin' me. They was too busy foragin' 'mongst the wagons to pay much heed to one rider off on his lonesome. You reckon my horse'll live, sir? That's powerful dry country I rode him over, and I didn't do much in the way of stoppin', you know what I mean?"
"Yes," Stuart said. "I don't know about your horse." He did know about foraging in a captured wagon train; he'd done plenty of that during the War of Secession. He also knew the trooper was right about how dry the land between Cananea and Janos was. If he galloped out at the head of a column of horsemen, he'd get to the Yankees a day and a half later with all the mounts at death's door, as this trooper's was now. The U.S. cavalrymen would ride rings around him.
If he galloped out at the head of a column of horsemen…
He hunted up Colonel Calhoun Ruggles, commander of the Fifth Cavalry, and outlined his difficulty. "Oh, yes, sir, we can do that," Colonel Ruggles said confidently. "Those Yankee sons of bitches won't reckon we can drop on 'em anywhere near so quick as we'll do it."
"That's what I hoped I'd hear you say," Stuart answered. "Get your regiment in order, Colonel; we leave as soon as may be."
Colonel Ruggles erected one of his bushy eyebrows like a signal flag. " 'We,' sir?" he asked. "Are you certain?"
"Good heavens, yes," Stuart answered. "Did you think I'd miss the chance to ride with the Fifth Camelry if it ever came up? Or do you deny that a threat to our supply line is business important enough to demand the attention of the army commander in person?"
"No, sir, and no, sir, again. It's only that-" Ruggles' eyes took on a wicked gleam. "It's only that, if you ride a camel the way you dance a quadrille, sir, you'll be yanking cactus spines out of your backside with pliers before we've made a mile. Meaning no disrespect, of course."
"Oh, of course. Heaven forbid you should mean disrespect," Stuart said. Both officers laughed. Stuart went on, "I have been aboard the mangy critters your regiment fancies, Colonel, but I've never seen them in this kind of action, striking across the desert from a distance horses can't hope to match."
"That's what they're for, sir," Ruggles said. "We've hit the Co-manches a few licks over the years that they never expected to get, after they raided west Texas from out of New Mexico. And now we can hit the Yankees who paid 'em to do it. This'll be purely a pleasure, sir. We'll be ready to ride in an hour at the outside."
He proved as good as his word. Stuart spent most of that hour convincing Major Horatio Sellers that he wasn't just indulging himself by riding off with the Fifth Camelry. He was indulging himself, and he knew it. But a U.S. force athwart his supply line was serious business, too. "This is what we were talking about before the trooper rode in, if you'll recollect," he said. After he'd said it several times, Major Sellers, both outranked and outargued, threw his hands in the air and gave up.
Despite what Stuart had said to Colonel Ruggles, he hadn't ridden a camel in several years. He quickly discovered several things he'd forgotten: the rank smell of the beast, the strange feel of the saddle under him and the even stranger grip his legs had on the animal, and how high up he was when it reluctantly rose after reluctantly kneeling to let him mount.
Its gait was strange, too, when it set out east across the desert with the rest of the Fifth Confederate Cavalry. It had much more side-to-side sway than a good, honest horse did. Stuart began to suspect they called camels ships of the desert not only because they could travel long distances on little water but also because a man might easily get seasick atop one.
Despite that sway, in another way the camel's trot was smoother than a horse's. Along with the hard hooves on the ends of its toes, it also struck the ground with padded feet. No jolts flowed up its legs to him. Its strides were slow, but they were so much longer than a horse's that Stuart found himself astonished when he realized how quickly the barren countryside was flowing past to his left and right.
And, while the countryside might have seemed barren to him, the camels reckoned it flowing with milk and honey-or at least with cacti and thorn bushes, which they found an adequate substitute. Whenever Colonel Ruggles halted the regiment to let men and animals rest, the camels would forage. Thorns seemed to bother them not in the least. Some of the cacti they bit into dripped with juice, so they were getting something in the way of water to go along with their food.
The sun dropped toward the horizon behind the Fifth Camelry.
Colonel Ruggles called out to Stuart: "I presume we go on through the night, sir?"
"I should say so." Stuart pointed ahead, where a fat, nearly full moon hung low in the southeast. "That'll light our way. We won't go so fast as we would in daylight, but we'll get some good work done- and we've done amazingly good work so far, if anyone wants to know. We should come down on the Yankees before noon tomorrow, wouldn't you say?"
"You'd best believe it, sir," Ruggles answered. "When you want to get somewhere a long way away in a hurry, camels are the best thing this side of a railroad."
They were also the noisiest things this side of a railroad. They moaned and complained when they started up, they moaned and complained when they stopped, and they moaned and complained in between times to keep from getting bored. Stuart began to see why it took a special sort of trooper to want to have anything to do with them: they were easier to hate than to love. But how their long strides ate up the ground!
On through the night the Fifth Camelry rode. Maybe some of the troopers, long used to their beasts, were able to sleep in the saddle. By the time the sun turned the eastern horizon gray and the moon sank behind Stuart in the west, he was yawning, but he and the rest of the men kept on. As dawn stretched the distance a man could see, Colonel Ruggles sent scouts out ahead of the main body of the regiment to search out the Yankee position.