“You want to know what I think,” Paulson said. “I think we’re worn out, and I think the horses are worn out. We’re in enemy territory, but we’re in a defensible position in enemy territory with the bulk of the Indians to the east and heading north by all signs. We have two days to link up with the Seventh at a location that’s a day’s ride away. I think we should take an hour or two to collect ourselves. Then we can reevaluate riding on at dusk.” He turned to Grant, his face inscrutable. “What do you think?”
Grant knew Paulson was finding a middle ground to keep the peace. Still, it wouldn’t do to weaken one’s authority by acknowledging it.
“We need to round up the horses,” Grant ordered. The animals had wandered a short distance away to graze on wild alfalfa. Grant knew if he sent Breckenridge and Webster to wrangle their mounts, they’d talk about him behind his back. “Paulson and Breckenridge, you got the duty. Webster and I will take care of Jack and keep a lookout.”
“Fair enough.” Paulson led Breckenridge down the rocks.
Grant set about tossing pieces of Jack over the side. The summit wouldn’t be so bad if they could get rid of the larger chunks. The blood would quickly dry up in the heat. Grant knew Webster watched him and measured him, so he showed no ill effects even as his stomach churned. He tried to think of the parts as nothing more than firewood. That helped a little. He pointed out a leg.
“You want to get that, Webster?”
“I ain’t touching it.”
“Afraid you’ll get kicked?”
The lines of Webster’s face grew taut as the indignation of having his manhood insulted outweighed his disgust. He picked up Jack’s leg and threw it over the side. He wiped his hands on the seat of his pants while he watched flies pursue the discarded limb.
“It looks like the back of a hospital tent up here,” Webster spat.
Grant found the comparison apt. Doctors loved their amputations. Amputations for frost-bite; amputations for gunshot wounds; amputations for fractures; and amputations for dislocations. Grant remembered one man getting shot in the hip during a skirmish. The company had to transport him one hundred miles back to civilization. In agony, the man begged to be killed the whole way, only to end up getting his wish when the surgeon, unsurprisingly, treated him with an amputation.
Webster’s next observation came out toneless and sudden.“Breckenridge is gone.”
Grant straightened up. “What are you talking about?”
Webster pointed at the grass below. There, Paulson – and nobody but Paulson – led the horses to the base of the stones.
“Where’s Breckenridge?” Grant yelled.
“Behind—” Paulson turned and stopped when he saw that he was alone. He drew his pistol and tried to look everywhere at once.
Grant’s bad feeling returned. “Get those horses squared away!” Without their mounts, their position would become even more precarious. Grant rushed down from the summit. The east end of the rock formation ended in a pincher shape. There, Grant waited for Paulson to lead the horses into this natural corral and secure their reins to outcroppings.
Webster joined them. “Breckenridge!” he called.
“Quiet!” Grant snapped. “Can’t you see the man’s gone?”
“If we wouldn’t have stopped, he wouldn’t be gone!” Webster glared, the line of his shoulders bull-like.
“Get down, both of you!” Paulson growled. “I’m going to fire into the grass. If anything pops up, you guys hit it. Ready?”
Grant and Webster gave grudging assent.
Paulson’s gunshots blasted across the prairie. The horses perked up at the noise but were too used to gunfire to panic. No Indians revealed themselves. The grass continued to sway. Cloud shadows chased each other across distant hills, and sweat dripped from the brows of the three men, the only precipitation the rocks had seen in sometime. The silence became as stifling as a muddy sheet. The Indians wouldn’t have to speak, Grant knew. Despite the many different tribes of the plains, all of them shared a common sign language. Plus, Grant heard tales of how much Indians valued silence anyway. If Cheyenne babies cried once their needs were met, the mothers would hang them on a bush, alone, until they cried themselves out. The babies quickly learned that excess noise accomplished nothing.
Webster shouted, “What are you waiting for, you chicken shits?” His eyes roved over the grass like drops of water across a hot skillet.
Paulson pulled fresh cartridges from a pouch and pushed them into his rifle. “They’re waiting for us to crack, which you’re doing.”
Webster’s tongue stopped flapping, but his cheeks started twitching.
“They can’t get to us without crossing open ground,” Paulson reminded him. “If there were enough to take us in a stand-up fight, they would have charged already. Understand?”
Webster nodded, controlling his nerves with a shaky breath.
“I want you up top,” Paulson said. “Gary Owen, right?”
A rueful smirk crossed Webster’s features at the mention of the cavalry’s anthem. “We are the boys who take delight, in smashing limerick lamps at night, and through the streets like sportsters fight, tearing all before us,” Webster recited a verse. He rose to his feet and headed for the summit in a crouch. “Just don’t leave without me…”
Grant admired Paulson’s tact even as he resented Paulson for usurping his command. Now was not the time to seek retribution, however. To everything there was a season, and Grant could practice tact, as well. “Why haven’t the Indians shot at us? You think they don’t have guns?”
“They all have guns,” Paulson said. His jaw muscles tightened and released. “We take their hunting grounds, and the Indian Bureau gives them guns so they can better hunt the land they got left. Then we take that land, too, and they kill us with the guns we gave them.”
“You sound like a sympathizer.”
Paulson shook his head. “The Indians get cheated on what they’re promised, and traders and political hacks make profits. Accepting the fact they fight back isn’t sympathy. It’s recognizing human nature.”
“Some say Indians aren’t human.”
“Hell,” Paulson scoffed. “A man’s a man.”
Above, Webster continued to sing Gary Owen to himself.
“Instead of spa, we’ll drink brown ale, and pay the reckoning on the nail, no man for debt shall go to jail—”
The song broke off into a scream.
“Webster!” Paulson scrambled for the rock formation’s summit.
Grant didn’t want to expose himself, but if the Indians were up top, he was as good as dead. Fighting offered the best chance to survive whether he liked it or not. He followed Paulson. Webster’s screams, meanwhile, took on an odd dwindling quality. Grant started up the cleft, pebbles from Paulson’s assent bouncing off his hat. He kept his finger off his rifle’s trigger so he didn’t accidentally shoot himself. That wouldn’t improve his odds any. Grant reached the summit at Paulson’s heels.
The top of the rock formation stood deserted.
Webster may as well have disappeared into thin air.
“Where the hell is he?” Incredulous, Grant rushed to the edge of the rock formation and peeked over the side. He had the sudden impression of an Indian lurking below with an arrow notched and pointed straight up, ready to perforate his skull from chin to crown.
“Anything?” Paulson asked.
“Nothing,” Grant replied. The imagined Indian was gone, a mirage born of anxiety. Only bits of Jack lay below, now black with flies. Grant turned to Paulson. “How could they have gotten up these walls? They’re sheer. And how’d they get Webster down so fast?”
Paulson’s face creased in thought, drawing his mouth into a grimace. “I don’t know, but it’ll be dark soon. We stay up here, back-to-back.”
* * *
The sun set; the stain of night spread across the sky, and a quarter moon rose to hold sway over all. The prairie took on an eldritch cast. It might have been a sea
and the rock formation an island. Stars glittered indifferently overhead. Despite the heat of the day, the night took on a surprising chill that pushed comfort just beyond reach. The men knew cold. On some winter campaigns, they’d awake frozen to the ground. That didn’t make this night any more bearable, however. Cold always had teeth.
Grant and Paulson sat cross-legged, wrapped in Grant’s blanket. They held their rifles across their knees and their pistols in their hands. Grant wondered if the Indians would start lobbing arrows at them, but such a thing did not occur. They saw nothing moving in the dim moonlight, and the only sound was the wind.
Grant thought about Jack’s remains. Had Breckenridge and Webster been reduced to the same? One minute men, the next minute parts…
Grant grew thirstier and regretted finishing his canteen earlier that day. Remembering the sensation of gulping it empty increased his craving. One wasn’t supposed to gulp water, of course. A cavalry health pamphlet recommended swishing and spitting only. Apparently, one could die from drinking too much on the trail. Grant didn’t believe it, however. He had seen men follow that advice, taking along only a little water to stave off temptation, and ending up opening veins in their own arms to wet parched lips. Grant wasn’t to that point yet, but the desire to go down to the horses and grab a canteen was maddening. Such a thing would be foolhardy, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about that itch in the back of his throat. He tried to concentrate on something else, but the only other thing that filled his thoughts was finding Jack.
“If the afterlife’s real,” Grant asked, trying to keep his tone light. “You think Jack went into it cut up?”
“People have perfect bodies in heaven,” Paulson said. “But even if people did go to heaven maimed, that’s still better than hell.”
Granted shrugged. “I don’t believe in heaven or hell. I believe this is all there is, so you better get while you can.”
“There’s a Bible verse for that outlook. ‘What does it profit a man if he gains the world and loses his soul?’”
Grant waved a dismissive hand.
“You can be wrong a long time, and God will give you chances to wise up,” Paulson said. “It’s not smart to let those chances run out.”
“Neither is believing in things that aren’t real—”
“Quiet!” Paulson cut Grant off. “You hear that?”
Before Grant could respond, Paulson crawled to the edge of the rock formation. Suddenly sweating, Grant followed with his heart thudding in his ears. If he believed in anything, he might have prayed to keep hearing it thud. He crept up beside Paulson and looked out into the murk. Now, stealthy sound reached his ears as a shape moved through the taller grass thirty yards away. Neither Grant nor Paulson could make out details, but the shape appeared to be of human height.
Paulson counted to three, and flames flashed from their Spencers. The shape collapsed as gun blasts dwindled to echoes.
“We got him!” Grant exclaimed.
An ungodly cry split the night, and the noise raised the hair on the back of Grant’s neck. He recognized the sound but couldn’t immediately place it. Surely, it was too inhuman to come from a man, and then Grant realized what the cry was and why it was familiar. Back at Fort Fetterman, two soldiers decided to have a horse race the month before. They took off outside the camp in a burst of hoof beats. A short distance later, one of the horses stepped in a gopher hole and broke its leg…
“It’s Jack’s horse!” Paulson beat Grant to the realization. The animal must have continued to plod along after the rest of them took off for the rock formation. It took all day to cover the distance, perhaps stopping to graze, but now it had finally caught up to them.
The horse continued to scream.
“Damn it!” Grant cursed. He put his rifle back to his shoulder and could just make out the patch of thrashing grass in the moonlight. He emptied the rest of his rounds into the area, and the horse fell silent.
* * *
Both men dozed off sometime after the incident with Jack’s mount.
Grant dreamed of the Button Game. He played by himself within a cloud. Every time he opened his hand it contained a wooden button with a petroglyph animal carved into it: a buffalo, a deer, a fish, a thunderbird, a rabbit, and a wolf. Grant placed them into groups, but he kept rearranging them because the groups didn’t fit together. The buffalo, deer, rabbit, and wolf seemed to match because they all had four legs, but that left the fish and the thunderbird by themselves. The fish lived in the sea. The thunderbird wasn’t real. Grant tried again. He put the deer, fish and rabbit together because they weren’t a danger to man, but that left the buffalo and wolf together and the thunderbird alone once more. Grant found himself growing frustrated with the strange logic of dreams. The carvings had to fit together. Next, he put the buffalo, deer, fish, rabbit and wolf together. That felt right at least. Shrugging, Grant put the thunderbird with them, which felt exactly right. It wasn’t a satisfying feeling, however. It frightened him.
When Grant awoke, the sun was an hour into the sky. He rubbed his face and grimaced at the gummy slime that had collected at the corners of his mouth. Thirst burned in his throat and turning around to check on Paulson awoke a deep ache in his back.
Paulson was gone.
Grant wobbled to his feet, his pistol drawn and his hand on his saber.
“Relax. I’m over here.”
Grant spun on newborn-colt legs. Paulson sat with his feet dangling into the cleft that descended from the rock formation’s summit.
“I was waiting for you to wake up,” Paulson said. “I’m going down to get food and water. You all right to cover me?”
Grant tried to speak, but his throat was too dry. He nodded instead.
“Back in a minute.” Paulson lowered himself out of sight.
Grant holstered his pistol. His mouth started to water at the thought of food, which loosened his shriveled tongue. He willed Paulson to be quick. The idea of gulping from a canteen was joy, peace and celestial choirs. He scanned the surrounding area and saw no signs of danger. The sun’s morning light was tranquil rather than torture. The horses still stood in their makeshift corral, waiting. The whole world stood there, waiting.
It’s going to be all right, Grant told himself.
They could reach the Yellowstone by dusk, and if they made it through the night, they could make it through the day. Below, Paulson reached the horses. He moved with quick, furtive movements, grabbed his canteen and food pouch and heading back the way he had come.
Grant kept his eyes peeled for the enemy, and movement arrested his attention. It took him a moment to realize what he saw – thirty yards away, black feathers flitted above the surface of the grass.
Feathers! Headdresses! Indians!
Grant raised his rifle and stopped himself from pulling the trigger.
It wasn’t Indians. Rather, buzzards fed on Jack’s horse. Faint sounds of tearing flesh reached Grant’s ears. A familiar dizziness spiraled up from the base of Grant’s skull, like when they discovered Jack, and he looked up into the sky and saw a bird disappear…
A buzzard hopped out of the tallest grass. Its legs, bald head and beady eyes appeared more reptilian than avian. It ruffled its feathers and shook a piece of dangling meat from its beak. It cocked its head, as if hearing something. A moment later it exploded into the air with a squawk that sounded afraid. Five of its mates followed.
Just like that, gone.
Jack gone…Breckenridge gone…Webster gone…
Torn meat on a beak…
Jack was torn apart…
Compelled by instinct, a subconscious urge and the fear of the buzzards, Grant looked up and realized why the thunderbird button of his dream belonged with the “real” animals. The bird he had seen flying through the air when they discovered Jack was no hallucination. It only appeared to fly low due to its huge size. The bird was actually high enough to fly behind the clouds, making it look like it disappeared.
Now the thund
erbird dove for Grant, a creature with a wingspan of at least twenty-five feet – white, leathery and with a tail. A horn grew out of the back of the creature’s skull. The wind whistled over its wings as they pivoted at muscular shoulder joints, and an overpowering smell of carrion and snake brought tears to Grant’s eyes.
“Paulson—!”
The thunderbird snatched Grant’s arm in a reptilian talon, lifting him airborne. The sun shone through its wings, revealing bony structures. A broken-off arrow stuck out of the creature’s ribs, showing it had been a man eater for some time. The bird cocked its head and measured Grant with a slit-pupil gaze. Its beak clicked open and shut hungrily.
“No!” Grant shrieked, imagining that beak picking him apart the way it had Jack, Breckenridge and Webster.
Gunshots crashed from below, and Grant felt the thunderbird shudder as bullets slammed into its flesh.
Earth and sky switched places.
Grant’s stomach flip-flopped.
Sight became a spinning blur.
Crashing impact.
Bouncing off rubbery flesh.
Bitter mouthful of grass.
Crawling.
Paulson ran toward Grant and drew his revolver.
Wounded and grounded, the thunderbird still continued the hunt. It folded its wings and scurried after Grant. Six-inch talons perforated the soil. A cross between a roar and a squawk emitted from its throat, and its beak went before it like a knight’s lance.
“Look out!” Paulson cried and fired his Colt.
Blood burst from the thunderbird’s breast, and a third nostril appeared in its beak.
Grant tried to run, but his feet entangled. He screamed as the thunderbird lunged toward him like an egret going after a fish.
SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror Page 29