The Red Hills

by James Marvin

  When he was quite naked Angelina rubbed her own body against him, running her fingers over his broad shoulders, surprising in such a slender man. His stomach, flat and hard as a board. The knots of tight muscle in his arms and thighs. Stroking him until he suddenly doubted whether he would be able to control himself. It had been a long time.

  Normally, times without women didn't worry Crow unduly.

  He had schooled himself years back to do with the minimum of food and water. Of comforts. And of affection and love.

  But, it had still been a long time.

  Three months ago in a whore-house in Albuquerque. A half-breed girl who had a good trick with a short piece of knotted string. Crow remembered her. He had a fine memory.

  'Will you undress me, my grenadier?' she asked him.

  'Would you like me to?'

  'Oh yes,' nearly fainting away in his arms as he began to peel off her dress, the confined canvas room filling with the rutting, muskish scent of her body.

  'Oh, yes,' she gasped again, raising her arms to assist him.

  The summer heat in the Dakotas meant that few women wore any kind of under-pinnings, and Angelina Menges was no exception to that. Apart from a pair of brief cotton drawers, she was naked under the flowered dress. Her breasts dug into his chest as she hung on him, arms locked around his shoulders, finger-nails gouging patterns into his flesh while her mouth sucked on his lips, kissing him with a fury that bordered on anger.

  'Take me dearest! Oh, your body is so young and so firm and so strong. Silas is such an old man. His body is not formed as yours is, my dear Crow. Now...!!!'

  She sprawled backwards on the narrow bed, spreading her thighs to receive him, moaning as he fell on her, impaling her. Thrusting himself down at her, feeling her hips grind against his as she rose to meet each drive, bringing her legs up around him, ankles locking in the small of his back to keep him close.

  'Harder!!!'

  Once again Crow was worried by her rising voice as he clamped his hand across her jaws, digging his fingers into her soft cheeks like iron claws, making her writhe under him for breath.

  'Keep quiet, you damned bitch,' he gasped, feeling his own passion carrying him along.

  She nodded and he could see the whites of her eyes in the dim hill-light, feel her tongue rubbing at the palm of his hand, pushing its way between his fingers.

  Without even being conscious of it, Crow pounded his way closer and closer to his own climax, using his knees and feet to give him greater leverage to thrust harder and deeper into the woman. Keeping his hand over her mouth to hold her quiet. Feeling the fluttering of her stomach muscles that he knew meant she was nearing her own culmination.

  He began to pant in unison with his thrusts, his breath ruffling the curly hair that framed her face, staring intently into the beautiful, empty pools of her eyes. Just able to see her features in the dimness, aware of the creaking of the small bed. Grimly smiling to himself at the thought of Captain Silas Menges out in the hostile night tracking down the Oglala Sioux while his wife was being well-ploughed by Crow. It was an irony that he appreciated, though he doubted whether the Captain would enjoy it.

  With a great panting rush both of them gasped through the finishing tapes together, holding on to each other like drowning animals. As far as Crow was concerned, the enjoyment and sexual release of Angelina was a matter of utterly no interest to him. Women were simply receptacles where he could spend himself when he needed to.

  She had wanted him and in a way he was pleased for her that she'd got what she desired. But if he had finished first that would have been that. She could go away and weep, or touch herself if that was what she wished. But Crow would have done nothing more to help her or to love her.

  Love wasn't a word that had much meaning in the vocabulary of the man called Crow.

  * * *

  It over before midnight.

  Crow had no wish to be caught by the premature return of Captain Menges and he had dressed quickly, buckling on the belt with the trailing saber, looking down without speaking at the woman who still lay naked across the bed, face turned up to him, a pale blur in the semi-darkness. He didn't bother to smile at Angelina, knowing that she was far too short-sighted to appreciate it.

  'That was wonderful, Crow, my dear,' she sighed to him, keeping her voice low. He noticed that she had sobered up remarkably quickly and that her self-control was back. Wondering whether it had all been some sort of an act to entertain herself and add a spice to the illicit performance between them. Deciding that he didn't care, anyway.

  'Good. Now I have to go to my quarters.'

  'Of course. Perhaps some other night when Silas is out on one of his damned patrols?'

  'Perhaps.'

  Crow looked down at her. Seeing the jutting breasts, their nipples still tipped with fire. The shadowed curve of her stomach and then the tangled curls above the junction of her thighs. Menges had been right about that in his drunken boasting. Angelina had a wonderful body, with the longest, curliest, pubic hair that Crow had ever seen on any woman. Now it was matted and tangled with their love-making. He felt his lust again, tugging at his loins, and he wondered whether she might be worth the risk on some other night.

  'It was so wonderful, my dearest lover.'

  'Yes.' The monosyllable was flat, utterly lacking many kind of emotion.

  If she was hurt by it, Angelina managed to hide it, stretching like a cat, and letting her fingers dangle across her nude body to touch herself, stroking her breasts and then letting her fingers roam on much lower.

  'I shall treasure this feeling, my hero. To be filled by a real man is to take away for a few precious moments the hatred I feel for Silas with his mean ways and drunken gropings. Your fiery passion had left me quite spent.'

  Crow grinned in the darkness. If she thought that he had showed fiery passion then that was all right with him.

  Showed what Abe said was right about fooling some of the people all the time.

  'I got to go. Thanks, Ma'am,' he said, and ducked to leave the tent, eyes flicking at the night to make sure he wasn't going to be observed. There was nobody in sight.

  Behind him he heard the woman whispering after him.

  'Farewell, Crow. It was marvelous. But now you must go. There is truly a time to love and a time to kill.'

  Crow nodded and left.

  Unaware that by noon on the following day the second part of what she said was going to be coming true.

  Chapter Five

  Menges returned just before dawn, bright-eyed with his own success.

  'I seen 'em, gentlemen,' he told Kemp and Crow as they snatched a hasty breakfast of corn dodgers and fried buffalo steaks. 'Seen 'em and we can take 'em.'

  'I thought you were aimin' to wait and let them come at us, then hit them on the run, Sir,' said the Scottish Lieutenant, hesitantly, wiping his plate of the greasy gravy, swilling it down with a cup of the camp's best coffee. Hot enough to scold the devil's tongue and strong enough to float a horse-shoe.

  'Then you thought wrong, Mister Kemp,' snapped the Captain, spitting a spray of crumbs across the table, turning to yell for the Sergeant. 'Get a patrol of twenty men, McLaglen! And be damned quick about it!'

  'Full equipment, Sir?' asked Crow, standing from the meal, bowing his head as the tent wasn't quite tall enough to accommodate his great height.

  Menges hesitated. 'Camp's only half a day from here. Maybe a touch more. Could be we'll have to chase the bastards. Yes, go and give out that order.' He paused, sneering at the Lieutenant. 'That is if you happen to know what full field equipment is, Mister Crow?'

  Without altering a muscle in his face, keeping his voice pitched low and even, Crow ran through the details.

  'Rifle, with or without bayonet!'

  'With! Sons of bitches can't stand a touch of cold steel, Mister Crow.'

  'Sir. Blanket and ground cloth. Ammunition belt and sixty rounds per man. One canteen, with a quart of clean water. Rations for five d
ays per man.'

  'What's that, Mister?' asked Menges, trying to catch Crow out on a detail.

  'One pound hard-tack and three quarter pounds of meat per day. Extra clothes and overcoat, though I respectfully submit that in this heat there will be no call for either item.'

  'I agree. Therefore, total weight carried per man will be... will be what?'

  'About thirty-four pounds, Sir,' replied Crow.

  'Well... I guess that's about right, Mister Crow. Glad to see that you know something about something.'

  Thank you, Sir,' he replied.

  Menges's eyes narrowed. 'You tryin' to make me look a fool, Crow?'

  'Wouldn't be for me to do that, Sir. I'm not in the line of improvin' on nature, Sir.'

  'What?' The Captain had only half heard the comment and failed to pick up on its meaning.

  'Nothing, Captain Menges. Permission to go and issue the order to the men?'

  He walked out of the stuffy tent, glad to be breathing clean air. Even that early in the morning, after being out on patrol all night, Menges's breath still reeked of the fumes of cheap whisky. It didn't make a very good omen for a chase after the Sioux.

  * * *

  They rode out in column of twos, with Menges at the head, then McLaglen, then the twenty Troopers. Crow brought up the rear, eating everyone's dust. Though he resented it, he figured he'd have done the same. You needed an officer out back, just like you needed one out front. Kemp was left behind in command of the camp.

  As they walked out, Crow saw Angelina Menges standing near her tent, wearing the same cotton dress that he'd pulled off her the night before. She waved a white 'kerchief to her husband. At least it appeared to everyone that she was waving to her husband. But Crow knew better.

  Because she'd told him that morning.

  Snatching a moment as they passed after breakfast. 'My burning eagle,' she'd whispered, and he'd immediately and instinctively looked around. But there was nobody close enough to hear her. 'I shall wave to you. Oh, those fools, including Silas, will think I wave to him. But they will be wrong. My love and my body are yours, dear Crow. My breasts are for you to touch and caress and my loins for you alone to enter. Take care, my Adonis.'

  Menges had walked past as they talked and he'd paused, seeing them together. Then marched on as though he'd thought better of it. But Crow knew that they'd been seen.

  He decided there and then that Angelina was someone to keep clear of. That she was tainted with failure and perhaps with death.

  'Farewell, Angelina,' he'd said quietly as he too walked on.

  Crow had made only one attempt to warn Menges that he could be riding into a trap. That the Oglala were not usually so careless that they permitted raiding parties to come on their camp at night without even knowing they were there.

  'If your backbone is showing yellow, Mister Crow, then I will take along that half-wit Kemp and leave you behind to help my wife. Perhaps you would like that. There would be officerly duties like cleaning her shoes and washing her small-clothes for her. Safer than risking your life with these brave men.'

  All delivered in the sort of voice that was designed to be heard by the Troopers.

  Crow didn't say anything.

  There wasn't any point.

  Menges was quite capable of having him arrested if he stepped out of line. Even having him killed. He held all of the cards and he was doing the dealing. He was even the man who made up the rules of the game. Odds like that meant having to wait.

  That reminded Crow of something else that Jed Herne had once said to him. 'Living is just the mistakes that you don't make.'

  Crow hadn't forgotten that.

  It would wait.

  Revenge was a pleasant dish when you ate it hot and simmering with hatred. But it was also worth waiting for.

  Worth supping cold with the pleasant flavor of something well done and done in the fullness of time.

  Crow took the tongue-lashing and then saluted and marched out. If Menges was going to try and lead them all to their deaths, then that would be fine with Crow. He would bide his time and keep eyes and ears open.

  So the Third rode out to lick the Indians. There were no bands playing like there were for Custer and the Seventh as he went out on the Black Hills expedition. No 'Garryowen' for the men to sing along with. Menges wasn't that sort of man at all.

  Crow hummed the tune to himself as they moved at the trot across the rolling grassland, kicking up a trail of dust that the Sioux must have been able to see for a dozen miles.

  'Around her neck, she wears a yellow ribbon,

  She wears it in the Spring-time and in the month of May.

  And if you ask her, why the Hell she wears it,

  She wears it for her lover in the U.S. Cavalry:

  Then the chorus:

  'Cavalry, Cavalry, she wears it for her lover in the U.S. Cavalry!

  Crow wondered about Angelina Menges and the white neckerchief around her neck.

  By the middle of the day the column had covered about eight miles. Crow suspected that their sensible progress owed more to the cunning of old Sergeant McLaglen than to Menges having any skill in planning a march. The motto of the Cavalry was 'Forty Miles A Day On Beans And Hay,' but that was under ideal conditions. The Dakota Territory in late Spring wasn't that easy to get around in.

  Not with hostile Indians threatening every mile.

  Everywhere Crow looked he could see places for an ambush. The hills rolled about in every direction. None of them high enough to merit calling mountains, but all of them high enough to hide a thousand warriors and their ponies. The grassland was intersected with deep ravines, sometimes plunging unexpectedly in front of the horses.

  And over it all was the dust.

  After the bitter winter the spring had brought the relief of warmth and green life. But that had passed. The weather in the Dakotas was notorious. Folks said that when you weren't freezing to death you were roasting instead.

  'Column... Halt!!!' yelled Menges, holding up a gauntleted fist for the signal. Crow had noticed that there wasn't much talking. Normally a Cavalry patrol like this would have been singing and joking. Joking that the officers either tactfully ignored or joined in with. But not here. For nearly the whole journey they had ridden on in total silence. Crow had spurred his stallion forwards and talked briefly with the tail pair of Troopers, Stotter and Baxter. Trying to find out how things were. But they didn't talk much to him. Answering his questions with a yes or a no. All the time keeping their heads turned to the front to watch and make sure that Menges wasn't about to come galloping down on them from out of a pillar of dust.

  'You men don't say much,' Crow commented.

  'Sir?' said Stotter, the younger of the two.

  'Keep your mouths shut, don't you? Like all the men in this unit.'

  'Guess so, Sir,' muttered Baxter. 'Captain says that gossip gives us away to Indians.'

  'Jesus,' grinned Crow, wiping away the mask of sand from his mouth and eyes. 'Comin' in like this he might as well have bands and bugles and drums. Every Sioux for fifty miles around'll know where we're goin' and what we aim to do there.'

  'Don't that make the plan kind of .?..' Stotter's mouth closed and the words ran away into the heat of the day.

  'Dangerous? Yes, I figure you could say that, Trooper. But maybe the Captain knows something we don't.'

  Both men finally turned from the front to look at him, their eyes rimmed with dust, sweat staining the armpits and bellies of their blue shirts.

  Neither of them framed the question that hung on both their lips and Crow shook his head in disgust. 'Yeah, maybe,' he said quietly, letting the stallion ease its way back to the rear of the patrol.

  At a little after three Menges halted the column again and called Crow forwards with Sergeant McLaglen, both men joining him where he lay stretched out in the shade of a clump of bushes, his shirt open to the navel, panting in the warm sun.

  'Nearly there,' he said, motioning for them to si
t down.

  'The camp, Sir?' asked McLaglen, taking a swig of water from his canteen and spitting it out where it puddle the dust into mud for a moment until it vanished back into dust again.

  'Right, Sergeant. We're goin' to hit those red bastards where it really hurts. Should be mainly women and brats there. We can wipe them out. In and out, fast.' He drew his forty-five caliber Colt and stabbed at the air with it in illustration. 'In... and... out...'

  'All of us, Sir?' asked Crow.

  'I'm not a fool, Mister, and don't try to make me so in front of the Sergeant. Of course there'll be back-up. And you will be it. Take four troopers.'

  'Four?' Crow wasn't able to hide his surprise. Four men was worse than useless.

  There was a long silence and Crow knew that he'd said the wrong thing: A small lizard darted forwards and scampered into the shade of his left boot, nestling for a moment in the coolness. His face without expression Crow shifted his foot bringing down the heel on the frail little creature, crushing it. Snapping the thin bones and pulping it into the dirt.

  Menges spoke slowly, face flushed, eyes flicking from side to side, not looking directly at Crow.

  'You questionin' my order, Mister?'

  'No Sir. Just checkin' to make sure I heard you right when you said you wanted the back-up to be just me and four Troopers. That was what you said, Sir?'

  McLaglen coughed nervously and picked up a couple of pebbles tossing them from hand to hand. The Captain lay back and stared up at the blue bowl of the sky rolling on over them. Crow noticed that Menges's fingers were working and knotting, right hand against left. As though they were fighting against each other.

  Tour, Mister Crow?'

  'That's what you said, Captain.'

  'Then that's what I meant. You agree?' Crow didn't answer. Menges shifted his gaze to McLaglen who also looked away. 'Well, I guess you don't disagree. You stay here with four men. Rear four of the column. I'm goin' in with the rest and we're goin' to hit that camp with just about everythin' we got.'