“Do you know anything about this business?” Peterson asked.
“I do not, sir,” the major replied.
The doctor nodded. “I will write out the message. It is important that the general receive this as soon as possible.”
“Those were my instructions,” Howard said. “May I ask, though, why you didn’t take it yourself? The fort is east, you came from the east—”
“This place is much, much closer,” Peterson said. “And it is imperative that I return before sunup.”
Peterson wrote down the events of the day and the plans he had heard.
“You have patients?” Howard asked. The major was standing several steps in front of Peterson, making a point of not looking down as he wrote.
“How did you—?” Peterson began, then noticed his own medical bag covered with the dirt of the road and the red dust of the mine. In the old days, when he was still a respected member of a community, he always kept the leather polished. “Yes,” he answered as he wrote. “I do.”
“May I ask, out of concern for my men, is there some illness about that I should be aware of?”
Peterson snorted. “Not a fever that you have to worry about. It’s more in the nature of a mental derangement.”
“Lunacy?”
“More like bureaucracy, which is the same thing,” Peterson said with a crooked smile.
“I don’t understand,” the major admitted.
“Oh, people in Washington have one way of doing things,” Peterson said. “We out here have a different way.”
The medic was being purposely evasive, almost like an Indian, Howard thought. He guessed that the doctor was referring to some kind of ore strike, something that made men crazy. Something that might bring an influx of settlers to the region and cause more strife with the Indians.
That had to be it, Howard thought. And it might well be on Apache or Pechanga land, which would cause additional troubles.
But why would that be kept secret, especially from a commander in the field?
Howard had an explanation for that, too. General Guilford knew that upon hearing about a precious metal strike, troopers might desert. The major was a patriot but not everyone in his command felt the same deep love for the United States of America. Some, he suspected, may even have been Confederate sympathizers. They would desert in a moment for the chance to pan for gold or dig for silver, hard money that would allow them to go home wealthy. Especially if their family fortunes had suffered during the War. So enriched, they could even buy their way out of a court-martial.
“May I ask another question?” the major said, surprised by his own boldness.
“No such thing as a stupid question,” the doctor replied.
“I have been coming out here for weeks. Are you the gentleman who was due each time?”
“I am,” he said. “And not so much ‘due’ as ‘hoped for.’”
“Are you in the military, sir?”
“Not now, not ever,” Peterson replied. “I mean no insult, Major—it just was not the path I took.”
“Then, at the risk of imposing on your patience, what is your connection to the general?”
Peterson snickered. “Our paths crossed when I heard of the illness of his wife at Fort Yuma.”
“The grippe epidemic,” the major said.
“Not quite that, but yes,” Peterson said. “About, oh, a third of the complement had influenza. The general and I—we had a lot of time to talk.”
The medic was finished writing, put his pencil in the bag, and folded the paper in quarters.
The major went to an unlit candle in a holder near his bedroll. “Would you care to wax a seal?”
“Not necessary,” Peterson said. His expression was pained as he rose creakily. “Anyone who reads it will not understand what it’s about. You can look, if you want.”
The major hesitated. As a military man he prized honor and information equally. Since he had been invited, he unfolded the document.
Objective missed, party back on road, night pursuit.
Whip Station and Indians now involved. Man killed, another injured. Will inform upon their return.
Gus
“Your assessment was quite accurate,” the major said with a wry smile. He refolded the paper and called for a rider. “Whatever your business with the general, I wish you great success. He is a great leader and a good man. If you are in league with him, then I wish you Godspeed and a safe journey—to wherever you are headed.”
“Most gracious,” Peterson said in earnest. He regarded Howard for a moment.
“Does everyone feel the way you do, about the general?” the doctor asked.
“He is the reason many of us remain out here when we could transfer out,” Howard replied.
The medic smiled. “I feel the same way.”
A different young man arrived, armed with a canteen, a sidearm, and an eager expression. Peterson knew, from having been with the Union Army, that couriers were a breed apart from ordinary soldiers. They thrived on what one of them told him were the three R’s: the ride, the responsibility, and the risk. To that, Peterson had added one more: rest. These soldiers grabbed it when they could, since they often rode great distances to deliver both message and response.
Those qualities were present in this young man’s eager brown eyes and sharply snapped salute. Major Howard handed him the message, which he tucked in his vest pocket.
“Hand-deliver to General Guilford at Fort Yuma. No one else.”
Howard looked to Peterson for confirmation of that last part. The medic nodded once.
The courier saluted again and eased quickly through the flaps of the tent. Peterson finished his coffee.
“I’ll hand it off when I leave,” the doctor said, indicating the cup.
“Would you like a plate of supper before you go?”
Peterson shook his head. “Thank you, Major. But my services are needed elsewhere.”
The men made their way to where Peterson had left his horse. It was grazing contentedly and protested, slightly, the doctor untying the reins. Peterson regarded the major before mounting.
“I suspect this will be your last time out here waiting for me, Major,” Peterson said.
Howard regarded the man’s face in the light, half campfire on one side, half white moonlight on the other.
“Will it, I wonder, be the last time I see you, Doctor?” the major asked directly.
Peterson climbed into the saddle. “Do you know, Major Howard, why men think so much about the past?”
“A variety of reasons, I suspect.”
“There’s just one,” Peterson said. “It’s easier to remember things than to predict them.”
With that, the medic walked his horse into the night and was soon gone, save for the sounds of the hooves and then even they were gone.
Major Howard stood in reflection for several minutes after his departure. He wasn’t thinking about the message. Not exactly. He was thinking about whatever might come because of that message.
A good officer might not be nosy, but he develops instincts. Like leaves in a stream, those instincts circle a man’s inborn sense of duty. If he doesn’t have one, he doesn’t belong in uniform. Together, that partnership helps a man rise from green private. They grow strong together until instinct and duty are inseparable.
Right now, the major had a standing order. All right. He and his company were to stay put until ordered either back to the barracks or on a mission. That did not, however, preclude a night patrol. Something was afoot and he would rather have his best men on horseback than sitting here, indistinguishable from the scenery.
“Lieutenant Levey!” he called out.
Everyone in camp came alert. They knew the major’s tone. A tall, beefy man came running through the maze of men and tents and saluted.
“Sir!”
“You’re in command here,” Howard told the young, rosy-cheeked man.
“Yes, sir.”
“I wa
nt Sergeant Wayne along with Cooper, Horton, Gonzalez, Locke, Zachary, Flint, and Two Hats ready to ride out in five minutes,” Howard said. “Patrol, provisions for two days.”
“Sir!” Levey said, snapping out a salute and hustling away.
Howard returned to his tent where his aide was already gathering what the major would need. The officer got the leather portfolio containing the regimental maps. He only needed one and he took it, folding it into his pocket.
The Indians were quiet, and he would have heard from other officers if there was any threat of an uprising. Except for infrequent war parties, even the Apaches stayed on their reservation. They had seen the influx of uniformed men after the War and did not seem keen to face battle-hardened soldiers. Unlike most white men, the Indians had patience.
The Mexicans were also content to stay where they were. They had fought their internal Reform War and now able-bodied patriots were busy fighting the opportunistic French. Seems Europe wasn’t happy having lost their foothold on the continent, save for Canada. And they weren’t any kind of threat.
So Howard had to wonder what might be a flashpoint.
The only thing he could think of was gold or silver. And the only way that would involve the U.S. Cavalry was to secure a claim for some big outfit, well-connected in Washington. There was talk that railroads and surveyors had been out here. Maybe they found something? Except for that, the biggest concerns out here were the shipping companies, whose interests were only on the coastline. General Guilford would not have pulled Major Howard inland to tend to their interests.
That left Butterfield. His coaches carried the mail and that was the kind of thing that got you leverage with presidents. Did one of their scouts find something? Or were they thinking of expanding service and needed protection?
Howard did not have enough information to do more than guess. But whatever it was, he was likely to get more information riding north, observing, than sitting here.
The eight men were mounted and riding out within the allotted time. Whatever was going on, Howard felt strong in his saddle, in front of his men.
He was ready and eager to see if his instincts were as righteous as his sense of duty.
CHAPTER 12
Slash O’Malley never told his grandfather about skin-walking. It was an Indian practice. On principle alone, Joe would have rejected it. But just now, in this place, the old Pechanga Chicon would have been a very helpful passenger.
The young man had tried the Indian mystic art a little over a year before, when his father had sent him to collect Gert from the Pechanga camp four or so miles due south. It was late winter and darkness came early—too early for Gert to come back alone, and Jackson O’Malley did not want his daughter remaining among them.
“She is young and easily impressed,” Jackson had said.
The man’s tone, his worried expression, said more than his words. He did not want to be the grandfather of a Pechanga child.
So Slash went, holding no deep personal opinion on the matter but not wanting to see his father or mother upset. Or Joe heading into the settlement with a shotgun. Out here, mongrel children, however born of love and loved themselves, made outcasts of the parents from all races.
He found his sister at the wide river, deep and surging with melted snows. She was standing alone among a spread of daisies grown tall and colorful in their damp soil. The passage of birds had further enriched the earth with their droppings as they passed overhead.
“Pa’s mad at you for overstaying your visit,” Slash had said to her.
“I wasn’t in any danger,” his sister had replied, her shoulders back with indignation. “Just the opposite.”
He had looked around. “What are you even doing here? Just standing around when there are chores?”
“I’m watching.”
“What?”
“A transformation.”
Slash was puzzled and she had taken his hand, coaxing him toward an area, near the river where an aged medicine man sat unseen in the shadow of a tall, ancient oak. Able to see deeper into the shadow now, Slash was no longer sure where the tree ended or the man began, its bark as rippled as the skin on the old man’s bones. His eyes were closed and his hands hovered before him as if resting on the air itself.
But that was not the most unusual thing about the tableau. The wizened man was huddled in a cloak of feathers that rested on his shoulders and were tied, by leather strips, about his wrists. His gray hair was tied back. Two talons hung from the deerskin ribbon that bound it. His thin, pale lips were shut and there was a slight upward tilt of his long, beak-like nose.
The siblings had approached quietly. Slash felt that even if they had tromped in, the elderly man would not have heard them.
“This is Chicon,” she had said quietly. “He is on the wind.”
“‘On the wind,’” Slash had repeated with confusion.
“Flying,” Gert had clarified.
Slash thought the statement, and his sister, were silly. Until she handed him a pelt that was lying nearby.
“Rabbit,” Slash had said.
“Sit beside him, put it on your head.”
Slash protested the game but Gert insisted and it was easier to do it than to argue. She was a woman with a mind like the western winds: they decided when to stop, one did not order it.
He draped the skin on his head, sat where he had been told—close enough to smell pungent tobacco clinging to the shaman’s clothes—and closed his eyes as Gert also instructed.
“Breathe deeply,” she had told him. “Like when you were a baby.”
It turned out to be a trick on Gert’s part. He tried to remember what it was like to breathe as a baby. He started remembering things from that time: the cradle with his sister snuggled beside him. His parents looking down. Joe, much younger. Grandma Dolley. The cabin where they lived. The sire of their current collies.
And then he wasn’t a baby anymore. He was—something else, something low beside the splashing waters of the river. It was night and he was moving quickly in the grasses. He was trying to get somewhere—a warren. His home. He saw it ahead. He heard a surge of wind above him, darted to one side, tumbled, then was suddenly righted and running toward the opening, into it, safe in the darkness . . .
Slash’s eyes had shot open. He sat for a moment, breathing rapidly.
Gert was standing a respectful distance from the shaman, who was still in his trance. But she was not so far that her twin couldn’t see the look of deep gratification on her face.
Remembering the pelt, Slash snatched it from his head. He rose and shook it at his sister.
“What did you powder this with?” he had asked.
“Shhhh,” she had replied, motioning him away from the shaman.
Slash padded toward her, glancing back at the tree. It did not appear as if the medicine man’s creased, leathery hands or face had moved. Though there was no breeze, just the rush and splash of beaded water, the feathers seemed to stir.
“What is the trick?” he had repeated.
“There is none,” she had said. “You were skin-walking.”
“An Indian myth, a trick,” he had hissed dismissively.
Gert had pointed back at the shaman. “He is aloft. That is why his feathers are moving. They are his spirit wings.”
Slash clutched the fur, put it to his nose. He had expected to detect the odor or effects of a plant or mushroom. There was nothing but the slightly musty smell of cured rabbit skin. His arm fell to his side. He circled wide around the tree. Nothing had been burned there, no dream-inducing leaves. Slash returned to his sister and looked back at the pelt.
“If I put this on my head, would I—would I be a rabbit again?”
“You might,” she said. “The air around Chicon is like the thunderclouds. But instead of lightning, there is a menagerie—”
“A what?”
“A garden of animals, of their spirits,” Gert had patiently explained. “When the shaman is an eagle
, soaring, all that he sees is nearby.”
The pelt had suddenly seemed neither innocent nor as dead as it had first appeared. The fingers clutching it tingled. Slowly, carefully, and with greater respect, he had handed it back to Gert.
“This is yours?”
She had nodded.
“An eagle.” Slash had glanced back at the medicine man. “I felt as though he would have killed me. I was afraid.”
“That is because you were new in your skin,” she had told him. “In time, you would have learned that there is no lord in the abode of the spirits. The rabbit can see and smell what the eagle cannot. The wisdom he learns from the earth, about the earth, becomes part of the Great Knowledge.”
Gert moved both hands as if to encompass the sky. Her brother might have thought that she had lost her mind—had he not just lost it with her.
They went home, but after that day he came often when she was in the Pechanga camp. He listened to the shaman when he spoke to the young of the Great Knowledge. He and Gert always sat off to the side, where she could quietly translate his words—though the expressive hands and expressions of Chicon often told the story without need of a spoken language.
Slash did not skin-walk again after that day. Even Gert admitted that she rarely partook in the magic art, because she found it increasingly difficult to leave that world of tranquility and beauty. A world, Chicon assured his people, that awaited them upon the death of their bodies.
The O’Malley boy felt he could wait until then to find out more about this Eden. Right now, his life and the survival of Whip Station depended too much on his being alert and fit and able to carry a hunt to the place where the animals lived. He did not want to become brother to the fox and pig. They were prey. Like this afternoon, with the wild turkey.
Was that just a few hours ago? Slash thought incredulously.
All of that passed quickly through the young man’s mind, like a stagecoach made of memories. But it brought him to a surprising station. One in which he thought how useful it would be, just now, to become a spirit eagle and fly high over the terrain so he could see the place to which they were headed—and those who might already be in pursuit, trying to stop them.
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