by Derek Catron
As much as Caleb enjoyed the attention, he couldn’t tell another part of the story, about a conversation with Josey Angel before they knew help was on the way. It was a story he knew none of the emigrants would believe.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Josey found a deck of old Union cards in the hospital tent. Instead of spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds, they were adorned with eagles, shields, stars and flags. When the Colonel awoke, Josey sat beside him, idly shuffling. The Colonel’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “You hate cards.”
Josey continued shuffling. “You want water?”
The Colonel nodded. Josey set aside the cards and helped the old man lean forward and drink from a cup. The Colonel fell back heavily against the pine wood–frame cot, wincing as his head came against the tick suspended on the woven rope netting. Josey dealt, leaving six cards facedown on the Colonel’s chest. He moved to show the Colonel the cards.
“I can do it.” He tried to sound gruff but didn’t have the breath for it as he shifted to a sitting position. Keeping four cards, he put the others facedown on the blanket that covered his legs and Josey did the same. “How are we going to keep score?”
Josey glanced around for paper and pencil but saw none. “I’ll keep it in my head.”
They both laughed at his joke. “You can’t remember what game we’re playing, most times.”
“I can cheat this way,” Josey said. He flipped over the starter card.
Before they finished the first play, the Colonel turned his gaze to the tent opening. It was mid-morning, and the camp throbbed with activity, a rhythm of sound from hammers and saws, shouted commands and responses. With the Indians so active, no one could rest until the fort stood strong.
“Do you want to sleep?”
“I want—” the Colonel smiled “—to not feel tired.”
“The doctor says you should feel better soon. He thinks the swelling is gone, which is too bad. A bigger brain might make you smart enough to win this game.”
“Smart enough not to kneel before a charging Indian?”
Josey winced. Doc must have told him. They had not spoken of the attack, probably never would. Josey still wasn’t sure what to make of his encounter with the Indian warrior. He had expected to die. In the moment, thinking the Colonel already dead, the prospect relieved him. Now he wanted only to forget it. He had never failed the Colonel. His guilt squeezed like a chain bound so tight around his chest he struggled to breathe.
The old man reached for Josey’s hand and squeezed, his grip surprisingly strong.
“I won’t be ready to go with you.”
“I’m not going without you.”
“Don’t be foolish. You have to lead these people to Virginia City. They can’t wait for me.”
“I can’t leave you here. I owe it to you.”
“What you owe me is to see this through.” There was steel in the Colonel’s voice and his eyes were clearer than they had been since his injury. “I gave these people my word. You must keep it for me.”
Josey nodded, knowing he wouldn’t win the argument. You got what you wanted. Now you must keep your vow.
Josey had gone to check on the Colonel the night he’d been wounded. He found Rutledge’s teamster seated beside him. Caleb looked like he had lost a quarter of his weight, his thick features turned gaunt, but at least he was alert. Josey motioned to the Colonel.
“Has he woken yet?”
Caleb didn’t bother to look at Josey. “He’s the same.”
The Southerner had never liked him. Josey found some comfort in that disdain now. He dropped beside Caleb. “You feel better?”
“Still drawing breath.” Caleb wasn’t exactly welcoming, but Josey felt too tired to rise and wanted to be near the Colonel. “The water helped,” Caleb said after a spell.
Not that I was any help with that.
“What’s that?”
Josey hadn’t meant to speak aloud, wasn’t sure he had. “I wasn’t any help,” he said. “With the water.”
“You made sure those Indians didn’t wind up in the corral. I’d call that a help.” For the first time since Josey sat down, Caleb looked at him, glassy-eyed but focused.
“It should have been me who went for the water. Not Wands. The Colonel wouldn’t be lying here if I’d gone for the water.”
“You’re right. It should have been you.”
Josey nearly laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “You have a strange way of comforting a man.”
“You want comfort, go to one of the women,” Caleb said, his voice even. “You wouldn’t have run out of bullets. Once your rifle was done, you would have pulled those pistols, I expect.” Josey had thought the same thing. “Why didn’t you go?”
The answer wasn’t clear to Josey. He’d hesitated a moment, just long enough to consider the consequences. A delay no soldier could afford.
“I didn’t want to die.”
Caleb snorted. “Can’t blame a man for that. Dying’s not high on my list right now, either. Too much to live for.”
Josey nodded. Since the war, he’d been drifting through his days, pausing only when the wind slackened and never for long. Those were his good days, when the darkness of what he’d seen and done didn’t make him wish for a quick end. The thought of taking root somewhere seemed as unlikely as surviving the war once had.
Things were different now. He fell so easily into the daydream of the Montana ranch. As Josey rode, his imagination covered the valley with cattle, a barn and a grand ranch house on a knoll overlooking the stream. He filled the house with comfortable furniture and kitchen things a woman would use. What a fool I’ve been.
He had dreamed of a future he knew he couldn’t have. He had been wrong thinking he wouldn’t outlive the war, but that didn’t mean he could go back to being the man he once imagined he would be. The Greeks called that hubris, and the gods always punished a man for it. The Colonel paid for his hubris, just as Annabelle would pay for it if he didn’t stay away from her.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked Caleb.
If the question surprised Caleb, he didn’t show it. He shifted his weight from one side to the other. Stroked the whiskers across his jaw. “I don’t,” he said. “A god would punish the guilty, not the innocent.”
“What if living is the punishment?”
“Then you should be thankful your colonel may find his peace. You don’t look happy for him.”
“Why should I? He doesn’t deserve peace any more than I do.” Both men laughed.
The Colonel did look at peace. His lips were chapped and ringed white, his face red from the day’s sun. That much color was probably a good sign, but Josey wondered how much longer the old man could sleep before it harmed him.
He spoke a vow to himself. Some might have called it a prayer. Josey still believed in God, not with the blind faith of a child but with even greater certainty. That man was made in God’s image he had learned to be true, for only God was so fearsome as man at war. There was nothing else in nature like it. A man doesn’t ask mercy of such a god. Instead of asking anything, Josey offered himself for the task he knew God had given him.
God had made Josey an instrument of war, and the moment he turned his back on what he was, he put everyone around him in danger. Didn’t I learn that lesson in Kansas? Wasn’t her death enough? Josey wouldn’t make that mistake again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
He left the woman’s farmhouse in the morning. After a night with her, leaving was the last thing Josey wanted, but he couldn’t betray the Colonel’s trust by going AWOL. He promised he would return.
“You don’t owe me anything.” She wore the flower-patterned white dress from the night before, had somehow found time to freshen herself. In the bright light of morning, the lines around her eyes and mouth were more distinct, but when she smiled she glowed from within. He started to promise something that would make the moment easier, but she stopped him with a finger to his lips.
> “Don’t say anything you’ll regret later.”
He didn’t understand, not at the time, but before he asked her meaning, she swatted his horse, and it lurched forward. By the time he looked back, she’d disappeared inside.
The hours couldn’t pass swiftly enough that day. Josey avoided the Colonel and anybody else who might have asked where he’d been the previous night. He sneaked a sack of flour and a few other provisions from the cook wagons. It wasn’t much, but it might help her after the soldiers moved on. He couldn’t get away again until evening.
In the gathering dusk, he smelled the smoke before he saw it through the trees. He rode hard.
Flames licked at the roof, and smoke poured from the open door. Josey ran inside. Smoke overcame him within moments. He couldn’t see anything. He fell to his knees, coughing, fighting for air. He crawled to the back of the house, into the bedroom. A leg dangled over the edge of the bed. The white dress had been torn, fully exposing the lifeless body. Her vacant eyes stared toward the door as if at the last she had been looking for his return. He flung her over his shoulder and ran from the room, eyes and lungs burning.
He collapsed outside, his weight falling heavily on her body. For a minute, maybe two, he couldn’t breathe. Air came in sips, like breathing through a knotted straw. The tattered dress clung to her back. Once he could breathe and see again, he arranged the material to cover her. He closed her eyes and took her hand in his, wishing to ask forgiveness but not allowing it for himself. The silver band was gone. Josey covered her body with a horse blanket he found in the barn. He mounted and rode to camp. Darkness had fallen by the time he arrived.
The bummers were infantry, their camp separate from the cavalry. Josey left his horse and rifle at his tent. Once among the infantry, he followed the lights of the cook fires. He nearly bumped into one of the bummers as he walked back from the latrine. He was even younger than Josey, a towhead with an overly large nose. Josey recognized him as the man who’d held the squawking chicken.
“Been busy?”
The man’s eyes widened. Before he moved, Josey bull-rushed him, pinned him against a tree, his Bowie knife to the boy’s neck.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Be quiet.” Josey pushed the knife against his skin, drawing a trickle of blood. “Quietly, tell me what happened.”
“It was the sergeant. He killed her.”
“You didn’t take a turn?”
The boy shook his head, so violently he almost slit his own throat against Josey’s knife.
“Was it the four of you again?”
The man nodded. “But it was the sergeant that did it.”
“What did he do?”
“You know . . .” The boy feared speaking it aloud with a knife to his throat. He swallowed hard and winced. “She screamed so much, he started choking her. To make her quiet.”
“And then what?”
The boy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was calmer. “The sergeant told us to fire the place, so no one would know.”
“She had a ring. The sergeant take that?”
The boy shrugged. “He must have. No one else was with her.”
“Where’s the sergeant?”
He looked to his left, in the direction of a fire.
“The others with him?”
He nodded.
“Anyone else with you.”
“No. I’ll show you,” he said. “If you let me go, I won’t say anything.”
“Like you didn’t say anything when he killed her?”
The boy closed his eyes again.
“I—”
Josey drew the knife across his throat with a violent jerk. He didn’t care to hear the rest.
The other three were seated around the fire, just as the boy had said. One of the men crouched over the fire, pouring a cup of black. The sergeant already had his. He reclined against a tree, his boots off, legs stretched toward the fire so his toes glowed pink in the light through torn socks. Josey moved straight to him.
“Jesus, Shelton, you were gone long enough to shit a horse.”
The sergeant had just enough time to realize his mistake before Josey fell on him and the knife was out and it was done. The other two sat dumbstruck. Josey whirled on them in a bloody frenzy of slashing. Only the last man had time to rouse himself. He reached for a revolver and Josey cut him. They struggled for the knife. The other man outweighed him by a few stone, but the life slowly drained from him. Josey held him down and waited, watching his eyes as fury gave way to fear, then to surrender, then to sorrow, a sinner’s final penitence.
Josey rummaged through the sergeant’s pockets and found the ring. He rode back to the farmhouse in the dark. The house had burned itself out. The stone fireplace remained, along with a few smoking timbers at the foundation.
After replacing the ring, Josey dug a grave under a tree behind the house. He found some leather strips and a pair of stakes in the barn to construct a cross. Then he kneeled beside her resting place. A day earlier he might have prayed. Instead, he cursed the men who killed her. He cursed himself for not returning sooner. He cursed a god so bloodthirsty the thousands sacrificed in battle couldn’t satisfy him. Dawn cast a pink glow across the sky by the time Josey returned to camp. The Colonel waited on the path before the sentry pickets.
“We need to go.”
Josey heard the sounds of camp, louder than usual for so early in the day. Amid the usual noise, he heard shouted commands as if the soldiers were readying for battle. “Where are we going?”
“Georgia.”
Josey nodded. If the Colonel trusted him enough not to ask why they had to leave, Josey wouldn’t ask why they were going to Georgia.
“I’m ready.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Colonel Henry Carrington looked more like the lawyer and man of letters he’d been before the war than an infantry officer commanding a frontier post. A stooped, thin man with a high forehead and soft dark eyes that looked sad even when he smiled, he found Josey at the Colonel’s bedside in the hospital tent. They’d given up on cards.
“I understand from the doctor you are in no condition to travel,” Carrington said to the Colonel after exchanging introductions. “While the circumstances are regretful, it would be foolish of me not to make use of what providence has delivered. We have need for scouts with your—” he looked to Josey as he considered his words “—martial skills. The Indians are not so pacified as Washington would believe.”
“Yes, we had cause to see,” the Colonel said. His hand moved to the back of his head.
Carrington’s lack of field experience had been a frequent topic among the men headed to serve under him. The grousing stopped once the Indians attacked. Action was always the best tonic for camp gossip. So it was at Fort Phil Kearny, where Josey found the men were too busy to complain. Maybe Carrington wasn’t much of a fighter, but he knew how to put his men to effective use with saw and shovel.
“Do you have plans to attack?” the Colonel asked.
“Not until we’re ready. The fort must be completed first,” Carrington said. He paced before the Colonel’s cot, the movement apparently helping him focus his thoughts. Though not an old man, maybe forty, his deep-set eyes made him appear older. “We still must scout the territory more thoroughly. We have no firsthand knowledge of their numbers or position.”
Carrington came to a stop, his gaze shifting between the two men. “That is why I need you.” He resumed his pacing. “I know many of my men dismiss them as untrained heathens, but it is a mistake to underestimate the Sioux. Two-thirds of my mounted infantry didn’t even know how to ride when we left Nebraska. I don’t yet have enough officers to train them. My hope is we’ll have time to drill once the fort is completed.”
“You should start with target practice,” Josey offered. “It’s a different matter shooting from the back of a horse than it is standing in a line, especially with those long rifles.”
Carrington dropped his he
ad, mumbling something Josey didn’t hear.
The Colonel looked to Josey, not sure he believed what he heard. “Did you say you don’t have the ammunition?”
“It’s true,” Carrington said, speaking more softly. “We were promised one hundred thousand rounds at Laramie, but there was nothing for the arms we carried. We don’t even have enough to shoot at the wolves that gather around the fort at night. Most of what we have are old Springfields.” He looked at Josey. “If I could arm every soldier with a rifle like yours, I would take the fight to the Indians.”
“Why don’t they get you repeaters or at least breech-loaders?” the Colonel asked. “Carbines would be better for fighting from horseback.”
“The war department claims the single-shot rifles cut down on wasted ammunition,” Carrington said. His dark-ringed eyes looked even sadder.
The Colonel scoffed. “Sounds like somebody in the war department is getting paid extra by Mr. Springfield.”
Carrington brightened. “You see how great my need is. Can I count on you?”
“I’m afraid I won’t be much help to you, Colonel Carrington, and Josey will be needed to see these settlers through to Virginia City.” He looked to Josey as he said the next part. “We gave them our word.”
Carrington responded with a stiff bow of his head. “I respect your decision, but our priorities are not in opposition. Winter is the best time to seek out hostile Indians, when they are encamped for the season.” He looked to Josey. “You could complete your mission and return by then. The fort should be done by Christmas. We’ll begin our campaign with the new year.”
I hope the Indians aren’t ready before he is. Josey kept his doubts to himself.
An awkward silence fell over them until Carrington cleared his throat. “I see I have given you much to think about. I won’t expect an immediate answer, at least not to this request.” He placed his hand on Josey’s shoulder. “I have one more thing to ask, and I’m afraid you will not be permitted to refuse.”