I already knocked but she ain’t said nothing like, “Yes?” or “Come in!” and I know white folks is real particular about such things. But I figured I’d risk going in uninvited because if she was being raped or murdered the Captain wouldn’t be none too pleased if I just been standing there doing nothing. I give the door a push and go on in and it takes a second or two for my eyes to adjust to the dark in there and before they do I hear Mrs Smith screeching, “Get out! Get out, you disgusting creature!”
I’m kinda surprised, but I turn to go. Then I realize I can’t see her, and if I can’t see her, she can’t see me. That voice is coming from the other room. So I go on through, figuring I’d better save her from whatever is giving her trouble.
What I see is this. There’s Mrs Smith, hands raised in claws looking like she’s gonna pounce. Her girl is clinging to her skirts, wailing her heart out but Mrs Smith ain’t paying no attention. Because across the room there’s this little Indian woman who’s wandered off the prairie and into the house. Her hair is mussed up, full of sticks and leaves and crawling with cooties. She’s about half the size of Mrs Smith. You never did see a less frightening figure. So why was a respectable lady like Mrs Smith about to scratch her face off? The answer was lying right there in that Indian woman’s arms: she was holding Mrs Smith’s baby boy. Just holding him. Holding him, and looking into his face like she was starving for something more than food. She was drinking in that baby’s softness. Sucking up the infant smell. And the baby was gurgling away, quite happy, so I knew she hadn’t harmed him none.
Well, Mrs Smith couldn’t go attacking her in case the Indian dropped the baby. The Indian couldn’t put the baby down in case Mrs Smith attacked her. Figured it was up to me to break the stalemate, so I walk over to the Indian real slow and careful and says as soft as I can, “Won’t you give me the child, ma’am?”
It’s a good few seconds before she can drag her eyes off the baby’s face. And when she finally look at me it’s like she been swimming up from someplace real deep. I see something in that face of hers that turns me right over. It’s like someone’s taken my heart in their hand and squeezed it tight. I seen that look before. I seen it on Bent Back’s face. And I seen it on Cookie’s when we was walking behind the Yankee army. What had she said? If you take away what somebody cares for most … well, then, they don’t have no fight left in them. I hadn’t known what she’d been talking about. But now the answer is right here in front of me.
What a woman cares for most is her baby.
It hit me like a punch in the face. Cookie must have had a child sometime, before I knew her. Must have been taken away. Sold. That was what Amos knew and I didn’t. The wound been so deep she ain’t never spoke of it. Leastways not to me.
And Bent Back? I can’t be sure. But I’m guessing that maybe that wasn’t the first time his folks been attacked by the army. He’d likely lost a child sometime. One, maybe. Maybe more. No wonder he’d looked at Sherman like that.
It takes an age for that little Indian woman to hand over that baby because she just can’t get her arms to agree with the orders her head’s giving them. At last they move, just a fraction, and I hear this cracking sound. Must have been in my head. You can’t really hear a woman’s heart breaking, can you?
She can’t do no more. I got one hand on the baby but I got to slide the other round against her chest to fetch him away.
I look at that Indian and I’m not sure what to do next. Chase her out? Tell the Captain? Arrest her? While I’m wondering, she look at Mrs Smith real pitiful and she hold her hand up. I see the smallest finger been cut off right there at the second joint. Hadn’t been long ago, neither. Hadn’t healed yet.
Mrs Smith’s mouth drop open. She says, “Who did that? Who hurt you?”
That woman shake her head. She put her hand on her own chest.
“You did it? You did it to yourself?” I can see what Mrs Smith’s thinking as clear as if she’d writ it in letters right across the wall. Savage! Taking a knife to her own hand? “Whatever made you do that?”
The Indian sink to the floor, a small sad heap and she let out this sound that split my heart wide open.
“What is it?” Mrs Smith turn to me. “What’s she doing?”
“I think maybe she lost her baby, ma’am.”
“Oh! The poor creature!” Mrs Smith – who been ready to kill that Indian with her bare hands – sits right down on the floor next to her, and she pull that woman up by the shoulders. She stretches her arms out to me for the baby and I give it her. The back of her hand slides over the bandages I got wrapped tight around my chest.
The Captain’s little girl stop crying and drop down on the floor next to her mother. Mrs Smith lay her baby down in that Indian woman’s lap so she can take some comfort from a living, breathing child. And then they sit there for a while and the baby’s smiling and laughing and not at all scared of the wild scene that’s been going on around him. And finally the Indian woman hand the baby back, get to her feet, slip on out of the door and vanish into the prairie.
I watch her go and for a moment or two I’m thinking, Thank the Lord, that’s one grief I been spared from. I ain’t never gonna have no child taken from me. I ain’t never gonna have to watch my baby die.
Then I recall the feel of that little boy lying there, looking up at me.
I ain’t never gonna hold my baby in my arms. Ain’t never gonna have no family.
For the life of me, I don’t know which is worse.
28.
We’d done what we was told and built a new fort, and the Indians had come in from the wilderness onto the reservation, so they’d done what they was told so we was both behaving real well. But them fine gentlemen in Washington wasn’t. Supplies was always late coming and when they did arrive they was the kinda stuff you wouldn’t want to feed your hogs let alone your children. I felt shamed every ration day. All I could do was keep my head down, get on with my job, be the best soldier I could be. But I didn’t find it entirely surprising when some of them warriors took off hunting and thieving again. Was all they could do to keep their families from starving.
Company W wasn’t troubled with rounding them up though, not that particular summer. That year the Indian fighting was General Michaels’ job.
What kept us busy was a bunch of trashy white men that kept running off the army cattle. To begin with it wasn’t too many – a couple of head here, three there, then maybe a half a dozen some other place. Each time it happen we was sent looking for them but it wasn’t no easy task. See, when General Michaels’ men had ridden out their horses, they was given fresh ones. All we was given was their broken-winded, lame, worn-out mounts and it ain’t easy persuading an animal in that condition to gallop off in pursuit of rustlers. Some of them was so old and tired they just give out and it feels real bad pushing a broke animal so hard it ups and dies right under you. My horse gone that way early in the spring. I’d ridden two more to dropping since.
As the weeks went on them thieves got a whole lot bolder. Was like they was watching us, laughing at our pitiful efforts to catch up with them. So one fine morning we wake up to find they driven off one hundred and forty-seven cattle and fifteen mules.
Tracking them was gonna be the easy part. That many hooves make a big impression in the dirt. They was heading south, plain as day. They had maybe twelve hours’ start on us but they wasn’t moving fast because you can’t take off at a lick when you’re driving a herd that big.
And there was something them rustlers hadn’t taken into account this time. Like I said, our animals was wrecks when they come to us and some of them didn’t survive. But Elijah was real good with the ones we got left. A couple of months with him seeing to them had made a whole bunch of difference. They was fed, watered, and tended real well – them things you do with any horse was done by all of us – but there was more to it than that. I don’t know how Elijah done it. That man just about lost the ability to speak to us since his wife and child b
een killed. But he could talk to them horses. Somehow that man whispered in their ears and put the heart back into them.
So when five of us rode off after them thieves we was on mounts that took off so fast and furious seemed like we was on a race track. Them men got a whole lot more than they bargained for.
We was two days out before we caught up with them. We could see a cloud of dust from way across the prairie but by the time we was almost on them the land had done that strange thing of rising up either side of you like a pair of waves. They go right ahead into a ravine.
Captain Smith look at me and I look at him and I know we’re both thinking the same thing: if we do this the Indian way then maybe we’ll stand a chance of catching them thieves. We ride back aways until the land flatten out again. Then he give the order for us to split up. I take Elijah and Isaiah to the left; the Captain and a private by the name of Jefferson go to the right. Instead of heading down along the trough between the waves we’re riding the crests either side. When we get maybe within a hundred yards of the edge of them we hobble our horses and go the rest of the way on foot, because we can’t risk them men seeing us coming. We keep low and walk real careful but army boots ain’t as quiet as moccasins. It’s lucky for us that the cows are bellowing so loud they ain’t aware of us coming up on them.
The ravine they gone into runs to a dead end. There ain’t no way out but the way they come in. But before it stops it opens out into a wide corral-shaped valley. If you was gonna go stealing cattle it’s the perfect place to hide them. They only need to have one man watching the entrance to it – that herd can’t go wandering nowhere.
What happened next was more or less up to me. The Captain had said I was to use my judgement and give orders and fire or not as I saw fit. And I saw fit after I been watching them rustlers for about half an hour.
The Captain and Jefferson had come up the other side. I could see their dark uniforms moving through the rocks.
I says to Elijah, “You and Isaiah go back on down. Cut off their escape route if they try to run.”
They don’t argue. They move quick and when they’re gone I keep on watching.
It’s easy as eating cherry pie to figure out who the leader is. He’s yelling loud as Miss Louellen and his men are running in all directions, doing his bidding. There’s a cloud of dirt thrown up by all them hooves so I can’t get a good view of him for a while. But soon enough them cattle realize they ain’t going nowhere and they settle down to grazing. And that man figures he’s done a real fine job, but Lordy, ain’t rustling cattle thirsty work and don’t he deserve to have himself a drink? He’s cracking open the whisky, settling himself for a pleasant rest on a rock, which happens to be under an overhang directly below where the Captain and Jefferson are hunkered down.
They can’t get a clear shot at him.
But I can.
Mr Cody’s rifle is purring with pleasure in my hands at the prospect. I didn’t want to kill him, not outright. The idea was that when we caught up with them we’d bring them in. Show them what American justice meant. I had to fix him so he could still ride, but couldn’t run. I aimed for his leg, halfway along his thigh.
But he was one heck of a long way off and I was out of practice. I caught him bang on the knee. He screams. Falls off that rock.
His men was awful yellow. Soon as he done that the rest of them got their hands up in the air and they down on their knees begging for their lives.
“Take the cattle! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
They couldn’t see any of us from where they was – I guess they thought we was an Indian war party gonna skin them alive. I ain’t never seen no one squirm so much.
Across the chasm Captain Smith waves to get my attention. He point. Gesture. There’s a thin trail that zigzag down into that place and he’s gonna take it. So I keep him covered while him and Jefferson start climbing down to arrest them.
When they see it’s the army coming one of them men decides he’s gonna fight back. Quick as a flash he pull his gun and shoot Jefferson bang in the chest. Jefferson fall off the rock. Lands in amongst the cattle. Starts them running in rings again. But not before I’ve put a bullet right through the head of the man who killed him. Guess I ain’t lost my touch after all.
Captain Smith’s near busting his lungs with yelling at them. “You’re surrounded. I’ve a hundred men up there. A hundred rifles, trained on you. Surrender now, if you want to live.”
Three of them have got their hands in the air. They’re ready to roll over like puppy dogs and submit. But one of them – a whiskery, weasely fella – is looking up to where I am. I’m pretty well hidden but that ain’t what’s interesting him. “Both shots come from that rock,” he says. “I reckon you only got one man up there.”
The Captain stop. There ain’t nowhere for him to go. If any of them cut up rough now he’s an easy target. He try to brave it out. “You want me to prove it?”
“Yeah. I reckon I do.”
I’m cussing myself for having sent Elijah and Isaiah back down along to the entrance of that ravine. At least the three of us would have stood a chance of keeping him covered. I’m a fine shot, but how in the hell am I gonna make out like I’m a hundred troopers? I’ve reloaded, and I’m taking aim at the weasely fella thinking at least I can take him down.
Then gunshots start ringing out. They coming from way along the ravine but them rustlers haven’t figured that out. They think they’re under attack.
The weasely fella has his hands up in a second, but I shoot him just the same. Catch him through the shoulder so he drop his weapon.
Captain Smith don’t even need to ask them others to surrender. They throw down their guns and let him tie their wrists, meek as lambs.
At which point another hundred or so head of cattle come running in, followed by maybe a dozen mules. I’m wondering what the heck’s going on when I see Elijah and Isaiah riding in after them leading a pair of horses with two more captives tied across their saddles.
Turns out they’re all part of the same outfit. They gone off to raid the herd from a different fort and this is where they’d all arranged to meet. Elijah and Isaiah had a little shoot-out with them when they come along the gulley.
So without too much trouble, and the loss of only one man, we capture the whole darned gang. And when we ride back to the fort we got ourselves seven prisoners and nigh on three hundred head of cattle and all them damned mules – looking like Yeller and acting just the same – which I’d have preferred to leave in that ravine if I’d have had the choice.
For bringing them animals safe back we gets commended and I get me promoted all the way to Sergeant, which I’m sure don’t please Private Creech none but which please the heck out of me. I earned this one. I’m a good soldier. The best that I can be. Ain’t that something to be proud of? And now, finally, finally, finally, the General hands over his ten bucks to Captain Smith. We won the Captain his bet.
Sure wish Reuben had of been around to see that.
29.
Soon after I made Sergeant word come in that yet another bunch of goddamned Indians was attacking yet another goddamned wagon train. Most all of General Michaels’ men was already out in the field so he give the order that a detachment of twenty men from Company W was to go after them.
When we got to where they been attacked them warriors was long gone. Most of them settlers was long gone too – they managed to run away because it wasn’t no big war party that been going at them. But there was seven of them dead and I never did get used to seeing folks scalped.
We followed the Indians’ trail but we didn’t find none of them and eventually it give out so we headed back to the fort and the reservation.
Now we didn’t have no notion of who had attacked that wagon train and we wouldn’t have never found out if Red Barrel Chest had of kept his mouth shut. But he didn’t.
By that time Washington had sent out a civilian agent to the reservation. He was in charge of giving out the
m Indians’ supplies. Come ration day I been detailed to help him so I was there when Red Barrel Chest come riding in to get his provisions.
The agent was the God-fearing, respectable kind and he used to speak to them Indians real polite. Things is going fine but then he says to Red Barrel Chest, “Know anything about the raid on that wagon train a couple of weeks back?”
Well, I figure he was only making conversation to be civil, but the effect was like walking up to a hornets’ nest and giving it a big old kick. Red Barrel Chest swell, and he was large enough anyhow, and I was half expecting iron hoops to come busting off his ribs. He pull himself up to his full height, and I was reminded of the way a rattler looks just before it strikes. I take a step back, out of his reach.
As he swell, the agent shrink. Every scrap of colour fade from the white man’s face and that was before that chief even open his mouth and this angry voice come roaring out, damned near powerful enough to blow the agent’s hair back like he was caught in a storm.
Red Barrel Chest start shouting about how he’s kept asking for all them things the government promised but they ain’t come, so he done take his best warriors off raiding, one of whom has come riding in with him. He’s a skinny little fella with a moustache and that’s the first moustache I ever seen on an Indian and I kind of fix on that one little detail. I’m watching it twitch up and down while Red Barrel Chest is yelling. And I’m thinking, Shut the hell up! Hush your goddamned mouth. Just stop. Stop. Because I can see if he goes on they’re all gonna end up dead and I don’t much care about any of them but who knows how many of us are going to end up dead right alongside? But he don’t. That savage ain’t got the sense he was born with! Hell and goddammit, that man’s naming names, listing them warriors that was on that raid like he’s proud of it, like it was an honour, and he don’t realize how much trouble he’s bringing down on all of their heads.
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