It was addressed to the commanding officer at Fort Apache. It reported, in four flat sentences, that at a quarter to seven on the evening of the fourteenth of October, Captain Asa Whitcombe had struck Corporal Otis Klemm in the face with his closed fist before the men, that the corporal's provocation was no defense, and that Captain Whitcombe placed himself at the disposal of the department for trial. Below it was a longer report on the canyon, and at the bottom, a line in a different hand, larger and more careful, as though it had been dictated slowly.
The people of Cibecue had no part in this. Write that down so that it is read. —Nalté, B-14.
"He asked for that line," Asa said. "I'd have left it out. I'd not have thought of it."
"I know," said Iona.
"That's the trouble," said Asa. "Neither would I, until tonight."
V.
The moon came up late and lopsided over the eastern range, and by its light the eleven riders went out of Ojo Prieto at a walk, single file, with no lantern and no talk. The scrub threw short black shadows. The air smelled of dust and creosote and, faintly, of rain that had fallen somewhere else. Nalté rode at the front with his left arm strapped across his chest in a sling Birch had made from a flour sack. He held the reins in his right hand and rode as though the horse were thinking for both of them.
Iona rode the gray mare behind Asa. The star was in the breast pocket of her blouse, buttoned in. Every so often she put her hand over it, the way she had once, as a girl, put her hand over a robin's egg she was carrying home in her pinafore.
After an hour Asa dropped back beside her. For a long while he said nothing, and she let him.
"I said stand," he said at last. "At the gate."
"I heard you."
"Do you know who I said it to?"
"To him. To Nalté. I thought it was the coldest thing I'd ever heard you say."
"It was." Asa looked ahead at the scout's straight back. "I came through that gate, and I saw him in the dirt, and I saw the men watching me to see what the Captain would do. And for three breaths, Iona—I counted them afterward—for three breaths I stood there and thought about what they would say if I ran to an Apache scout like he was one of ours. I thought about the regimental mess and the colonel's wife and a hundred stupid things. And then I said stand, because it was the only word I had that didn't commit me to anything." He was silent. "I said it to myself as much as him. It was the wrong word."