by Tony Roberts
The Tuckers went on further east but Casey had had enough. “This isn’t the life for us,” he said to Helen. “We need a home and money.”
“So how are we going to get that?”
“Only one way,” Casey said, thinking of how he always looked for work at times like this. “The army. They’re looking for recruits all the time. Plenty of places and people to protect out here.”
“And where is it you think you can find this army?” Helen asked. If she was honest with herself, she was tired of this harsh existence. Being with her man was well enough, but there was only so much making love and sharing a tent together she could handle.
“There’s a fort a few miles down the trail; I asked someone yesterday. “Come on, let’s pack our things and go. This isn’t a place that’s going places,” he looked at the collection of tents and temporary sheds with disgust.
And so they came to Fort Hall. It was one of a similar type Casey had seen before, a wooden stockade in a large square with guard towers at each corner and a gatehouse in the middle of one side. Inside there were stables, a smithy, a guardhouse, a jail and the bunkhouses against the insides of the walls and opposite the gateway at the other end were the commander’s quarters and the admin block.
Casey was shown into the office in this block. A burly unshaven sergeant sat behind a desk and asked him some questions. Casey answered as honestly as he could without getting into awkward areas about his immortality.
“Fought for the Confederacy in the civil war,” he said. “Got to sergeant in the Army of Northern Virginia.”
“Lee’s boys,” the sergeant said, a spark of interest flickering in his eyes. “You were at Appomattox?”
“Yeah, not a place I want to remember.”
“I was there, Union Army of the Potomac.”
“So we might have passed one another as we threw down our arms.” Casey remembered the terribly sad moment when their flag was thrown onto the pile of surrendered colors. Young Billy had been their flag bearer.
“Yep. So you’re looking for a job with the army now? Not sore at fighting alongside those who beat you?”
“Hell, no point in bearing grudges against folks only doing their duty; we were, you were, I ain’t hating you for that! Soldier to soldier, we respect each other and that’s all there is to it. Leave the hating to those who never fought the war, or who end up in politics.”
“Wise words, Long. Well, here’s the thing; we ain’t got a place yet for regular soldiers, although the way things go places come up all the time. Tell you what, if you hang about at the fort I’m willing to bet a place comes up for you pretty soon.”
Casey shrugged. He had little choice. He got a small place just outside the fort and got a temporary job as a bouncer at the local bar. There was a small town growing outside, people finding the fort a comfort and a place of protection, and confidence built more houses and bars.
The bar was a pokey little hole but pretty well frequented. Some people had little else to do other than drink, and some of these tended to veer on the violent side of discussions. The barkeep, a tired looking man with a world-weary expression called Mac – Casey never knew his proper name – wanted Casey to rid his place of these people.
“Sure thing, Mac, but these guys are armed. I can’t persuade them with my wit. I’ll need a gun to back up my arguments and authority.”
Mac sighed and opened a drawer under the counter. He put a colt .45 down on the top with a heavy thud. A frayed box of bullets followed. “Now, Long, this was mine back in the day when I was full of piss and vinegar. No call for me to use it these days since I’m too old to see much further than my arm and I got the shakes, see.” He held out a hand and it shook uncontrollably. “So I can’t even lift the thing and shoot with any hope of hittin’ a barn door, let alone one of these low-lives. Now you do that and the gun’s yours.”
Casey got himself a belt and fitted the colt in the holster. It felt good to be armed again. It made him feel complete. He walked across the room, round tables occupied by happy drinkers and headed for the table in the corner with four troublemakers.
“You ain’t welcome here no more,” Casey said by way of an introduction. “Now get your sorry hides outta here before I go breaking some.”
The four looked at him, then at his gun. The biggest one, a dark-haired man with brown eyes, sneered. “And how you gonna do that with a hole through your guts, bud?” He got to his feet, hand reaching for the handle of his own pistol.
Casey was ready for such a move. He’d already done such work on the railroads in California before setting out across the Pacific, so he had a fair idea of what was going to happen. He was no more than ten feet from the man and his first bullet crashed into his rib cage, exploding out and lifting him off his feet. Soft-nosed bullets had that effect.
Even as the man was being pitched against the plank wall with a spray of blood, Casey was turning half left, his colt swinging to point at the next man who had got his own halfway up. For the second time Casey’s colt crashed, blowing the second man around, his right side caved in. He struck the wooden pillar holding up the ceiling hard and fell bonelessly to the wooden floor.
The other two had their guns out and were aiming for Casey so the Eternal Mercenary threw himself to the floor, onto his left shoulder. Two loud reports above his head told him the two had fired and missed.
The rest of the patrons had thrown themselves to the floor under the tables or behind the bar. Casey fired twice, teeth gritted. One of his opponents took the second shot in the guts and he went down screaming in agony. The last fired again and again in a blind panic. The floorboards shattered behind Casey who rolled to his knees and coolly aimed before sending the last one to hell, his chest smashed in.
The smell of cordite was heavy in the air, and the silence was deafening in the wake of the roar of the colts. Casey slowly got to his feet, his eyes warily surveying the four. Three were dead beyond doubt. The one with the ruined guts was in a fetal ball whimpering. He would have a couple of hours of pure agony left before he joined them.
Casey clicked the hammer back and slid his gun home. “S’ok, folks,” he said, “entertainment’s over.”
The relieved patrons got back up and sat down once more, resuming their stories or discussions. This was the hard way of life out here, and death was never far away.
Mac looked grateful. “Good work, Long. Go get the lawmen; there’s a sheriff across the road. Need a doc too, by the looks of things. Those bodies need to be disposed of.”
Casey nodded. As long as Mac was paying he didn’t mind doing these errands. The sheriff looked at Casey with a long-suffering expression. “I s’pose you just shot these fellahs down as they sat there?”
“Nope. They were reaching for their guns so I blew them away. When someone goes for their gun in these parts, I reckon they mean business.”
“You killed all four?”
“Three. One is on the way.”
The sheriff shook his head in disbelief. “How come they missed you then? Duds?”
“Sheer bad shots. Guess they were shaking with fear too much.”
The lawman grunted. “You make me laugh, Long. You some kinda dead-shot guy? Shit, I can do without this kinda mess in my town. You joined the army with that skill?”
“Nope, not yet. Tried to but they got no places.”
“That’s shit. They lost ten to the mines the other week.”
“The mines?” Casey frowned.
“Yep. There’s gold mines nearby. Soldiers don’t get decent pay and they get shot at by Injuns. Safer mining under a mountain and the rewards are greater.”
Casey returned home with that thought. Helen was waiting for him, concern on her face. She’d heard about the shootout. In a town that small those kind of things soon got about. “I’m fine,” he reassured her. “Took out four troublemakers, that’s all. Mac was pleased enough to give me a bonus,” he held up a handful of dollars. Helen looked pleased.
> “Well as long as you don’t get killed.”
“I don’t plan on that. So what about going down to that store we’ve seen and getting you that dress you liked?”
Helen grabbed him and the next few hours were a little confused. Casey didn’t mind and she was pretty enthusiastic. The next day they got her the dress which she tried on and noted where the alterations had to be made. She was adept at being a seamstress and set about making it suitable for her to wear.
Casey was pleased with himself.
The following week he went to the fort again and asked about recruiting into the cavalry. He didn’t particularly like horses but he was pragmatic enough to know without them there was little prospect of getting about, especially with the huge distances involved to patrol. The sergeant this time accepted him into the regiment.
Helen was relieved her man was now in a better more secure job, and Mac resigned himself to losing the one decent bouncer he’d had since opening the bar. He and Casey drank themselves senseless on his last night there.
He nearly missed getting to the fort on time the next morning. As it was he had a hangover like someone was trying to smash his head in with a hammer. He appeared slightly worse for wear, unshaven, red-eyed, with that aroma of stale alcohol known so well.
“This is the army, son,” the recruiting sergeant said with a scowl as he caught sight of Casey standing at the end of the line of new recruits. There were six, all to replace men who had quit the past three weeks. The lure of the mines was too much for some people. “So I expect you to smarten yourself up and look the part, rather than being some hobo taking refuge from bar tabs.”
The others grinned. Good to have someone picked on other than themselves on the first morning. Casey drew in a deep breath. He’d been there before and so knew what the game was to play. “Sergeant.”
Sergeant Amos Cuff stood before the broad-chested, scarred new recruit and slowly looked him over. “So why join the army?”
“Sergeant. I’m a man of action. I know how to fight. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember. Army is what I know best.”
“Apart from drinking, eh?”
Casey grinned faintly. “Sergeant.”
Cuff thought for a moment, then looked along the line of the others. “This goes for all of you, not just this sorry looking piece of shit here. You’re going to be in a disciplined outfit, not some joke gang that breaks up the minute it gets cold or rains. You’ll be shot at, shouted at, rained on, snowed on. You’ll be given tough jobs to do, you’ll be asked to care for your horse. Any of you not capable of doing this can just turn about and go out that gate right now.”
The six remained standing, although one or two looked at one another to see what the general reaction was.
“Very well,” Cuff said walking back slowly to the center of the line. “You’ll be barracked over there,” he jerked his thumb at the big wooden building behind him. “You’ll be shown the general procedures by a corporal. I’ll handle your training and any matters of discipline. You’ll spend today getting kitted up and trained in the normal day-to-day issues here in the fort. Tomorrow we’ll introduce you to the horses and you’ll ride here in the yard. By the end of the week we’ll be off on an outside foray. You’ll practice shooting, riding, parade discipline and hand-to-hand combat as well as knife fighting. Got it?”
The men replied, stood in a loose line. Cuff shook his head and sent the men to the quartermaster to get fitted out.
Carrying their kit, they were then marched to the barracks, were shown a bunk, and told to get dressed in their uniform. Casey knew the drill and quickly did so, finding the uniform reasonably comfortable.
He soon learned the names of the other five recruits. Two were Germans, Lars Schiffner and Gerd Hummels. Two were Anglos, Ben Hucknall and Jim Broad, while the other was an eastern European called Tadeusz. His surname was long and complex so everyone was soon calling him Tad. Casey reckoned he was from Poland. Poland was just a general term; it was no longer a country in its own right, but shared between three European powers, Prussia, Russia and Austria. Prussia was flexing its muscles at that moment, having defeated Austria and Denmark in separate wars, and had the previous year taken on France and beaten her, increasing its power and influence over much of the German states.
Tad said he came from Silesia which was Prussian but had plenty of Poles living there. He’d emigrated as he said that opportunities for Poles were few and far between. If things were bad in Prussia or Austria, then they were far worse in Russia. Many were coming over from there to escape the Tsarist progroms.
Schiffner and Hummels were Bavarian; they had come separately from near the Munich area and had met in America and were fast friends. Both had decided to join up at the same time. Casey asked about why they had left Bavaria. The story was the same; Prussian influence, dominance and the arrogance shown had been too much. They saw the militarization of Germany coming and wanted to go somewhere away from the rigid rule of the army.
Joining the US Cavalry may seem an odd thing, but the two said they’d tried their hands at various jobs but in the end decided being in the wide-ranging cavalry was as free as they could get, and besides, it guaranteed pay and a roof over their head, and a full belly.
Hucknall was from Derby in the Midlands area of England while Broad was from further east, near a place called Lincoln. Casey remembered Lincoln, then called Lindum by the Romans. The ninth legion had been based here before it had marched south to confront Boudicca and had been smashed. That was before Casey had gone to the Roman province, but he knew it had been an important town during the rule of the Caesars.
Derby was not that well known, but from the name Casey guessed it had been originally a Viking town, as the -by ending always flagged that as being a Viking town. Casey grinned at the memories of being a Viking back in the days. That had been a wild time, raiding the soft Christian coastlines with his pagan friends. He always enjoyed the freer-thinking peoples to those regimented by religion or politics. It always drained a people of vitality and individually and made them duller.
In some ways he sympathized with the natives here, but he couldn’t see how their way of life or their culture could survive. The numbers were against them; technology was against them. Their way of life was coming to an end and against a determined, ruthless culture that could only survive by destroying what was there already, they had little hope of remaining free to roam at will. Their lands would be taken if anything there was of use to the immigrants and only the deserts and wastelands would remain.
In some ways it was like what had happened to the Aztecs. Casey sat mindlessly polishing his buckles and leather. He’d been one of Cortes’ conquistadors, but had been different in that he wasn’t there for the gold and plunder, or to convert them to Christianity. No, he’d been there to see whether they had been worth saving. Ultimately he’d decided a society that sacrificed hundreds of victims to their bloodthirsty gods was not worth it and had allowed the Spaniards to wreak havoc.
Here, he had little hope of influencing any outcome. He was too small a cog in the big wheel of progress, and there were too many now in the Americas who were just as native as the natives. The white population was growing, the red declining. He whistled as he cleaned his equipment. To him, he was merely doing a job. If it came to a fight, then he’d fight. He wasn’t into massacring women and children; that wasn’t his style. If he saw that happen, he might try to stop it. Although he wondered whether that might end up with him being put under arrest and court martialed.
He arranged for Helen to take up quarters in the fort. There were some small rooms for married men’s wives and he was permitted one as there were free places. He was to sleep in the barracks when on duty though, and only allowed time off when he was off duty which would be once every five or six days. Helen was happy enough and began to turn their quarters into a comfortable little haven.
The first time they went out on horseback they were taken on a lo
ng circular route along the Oregon Trail and then across stony land north, then east. The land fell away in a series of terraces to a wide, stony valley punctuated with scrub and a few stunted trees. Much of the land was plains, and in the distance some animals moved, grazing.
“We’re to patrol the area to the east,” Cuff said, leaving forward in the saddle. “Seems word has gone out that the natives over there are getting restless. We’re to combine with another regiment and go pacify the Indians.”
Casey looked at his colleagues. “Even us raw recruits, Sarge?”
“Yep, even you lot. So let’s not let the regiment down, shall we? Tomorrow we’re to ride out, which is why I’ve taken you out today to get used to your animals and the feel of riding cross country. You’ll be in the reserve pool with me, and I don’t expect you’ll see action, but just in case,” he shrugged. “You’ll practice shooting when we get back.”
Casey had time to pass a quick word to Helen that he would be gone for a few days with the rest, and the next morning they left in their units, a slow walk at first then they spread out and began trotting eastwards. Casey was with Hucknall and Schiffner under a corporal called Pickton, a thin, sour-faced man with a permanent grudge against mankind, or so it seemed to Casey.
They stopped and fed and watered some miles from the fort, then resumed at noon. It was towards mid-afternoon that they came upon another regiment gathered by a stand of trees by the roadside. The officers had a conference and were clearly discussing what to do with the defiant natives that seemed to be over the hill ahead of them.
Pickton kept an eye on his three charges. He wasn’t pleased to be looking after three new recruits; he was clearly itching to get at the Injuns, as he called them. “Best thing is to wipe them all out,” he muttered. “Stupid damned people. They’re a blight on mankind.”
Casey said nothing, but decided he’d best keep an eye on the corporal. He seemed a little too eager to kill for the sake of it.