Murder at Medicine Lodge

by Mardi Oakley Medawar

  I was more than a bit disconcerted that the dead man’s name had been said out loud, a thing forbidden in our culture. To speak the name of the dead was to summon up ghosts. Sensing my unease, Billy jumped right in, warned Little Jonas not to say Buug-lah’s name again. After an indifferent shrug, Little Jonas continued on.

  “Anyway, the dead man starts telling me that if I don’t give him money, he’s gonna tell on me, see me sent back to Louisiana to get hung. I don’t know how he knew about me stealing that mule, but he did, so instead of saving my money to buy a farm someday, I was giving him all of what I had, and every penny of my monthly pay. But even that wasn’t enough. I had to do work for him too. I guess you could say, I was his slave.” Little Jonas’s hands, resting against his thighs, became fists. Hot anger flowed out of that man.

  Needing to hurry this along, I said, “Now I want to know about your uniform, why your jacket was found far out on the prairie.”

  Little Jonas flinched as Hawwy applied stinging medicine to the tender eye area. His teeth clenched as he tried to hold in the pain, and in almost a whisper he said, “It was stolen. I went quick to Captain Mac, told him myself that someone took my best jacket, the one I never wore because I was saving it for good. A soldier’s got to have one dress-up jacket for when he wants to feel fine. That jacket was my dress-up clothes, the one I kept real clean and brushed. Made me mad that somebody stole it.

  Captain Mac said he’d take care of it and that was the last I heard. Since then, I’ve been on patrol with all of you and now here I sit in chains. If you want to know what Captain Mac was doing about finding my jacket, you got to ask him. I don’t believe the man was doing very much, because he seemed to have had a real serious memory lapse. When the general accused me of killing that no-good, and all account of my jacket, Captain Mac just stood there looking like it was the first time my missing jacket had been mentioned. I tried to jog his memory, but I wasn’t making too much sense, what with getting whipped an’ all. Little hard to talk an’ scream all at the same time. Maybe if you talk to him…”

  I stopped listening. Actually hadn’t been concentrating all that much once that name was mentioned, bringing with the mention an unpleasant memory. Captain Mac did not like me. Hadn’t since the day he’d found me near death. He hadn’t wanted to save me, but he’d had no choice. The treaty allowing the army to establish a camp in the Wichita Mountains (Fort Sill), had still been a warm handshake on Little Bluff and Colonel Leavenworth’s hand when I had been ambushed and left for dead. If Captain Mac had simply left me to die where he found me and the Kiowas somehow found out, their little camp would have been wiped out. So, feeling there was nothing else he could do, Captain Mac dragged me to the army camp. That was the first time I met Hawwy. That was when he nursed me back to health.

  An army scout had been sent to tell White Bear where I was, and he quickly formed a party to ride to my rescue. The army was unprepared for so many Kiowas, and having the upper hand, White Bear had taken delight in bullying the Blue Jackets. I’m told that in that moment, Captain Mac seriously regretted saving me. If he had it all to do over again, I would be nothing more than a few white bones littering the bank of Rainy Mountain Creek. So, hearing that name again, knowing just how he felt about me, how could I not help but anticipate the unbridled joy of our chance reunion?

  * * *

  “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  Captain Mac, a tall, dark, brooding man, had something of a scooped face. His brow and chin were so prominent that his profile put me in mind of a quarter moon wearing a droopy moustache and muttonchop sideburns. He was afflicted with a noticeable limp, the result of a wound received during the Civil War. According to Hawwy, the bullet had only grazed the lower leg bone, but unfortunately took out a large portion of calf muscle as the lead ball made its exit. The doctors had been able to save the leg (because Captain Mac was an officer and doctors didn’t perform amputations on officers quite as readily as they did on ordinary soldiers), but Captain Mac would be forced to favor that leg for the rest of his life. I suppose all this “favoring” was responsible for Captain Mac being such an excellent horseman. He could ride almost as well as an Indian, and when he was in the saddle, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. But now, seeing me in his private tent, the one place he was free to relax in his long white underwear and socks, Captain Mac was so agitated that he was limping all over the small amount of walking space of the tent’s interior while raging at my unwelcome presence.

  “That damn Red Stick is nothing but trouble,” he yelled to Hawwy, Billy whispering every word in my ear. Captain Mac stopped his hobbling pace, looked wildly about. “Where’s my gun?”

  “You cannot shoot him,” Hawwy said dryly.

  Captain Mac’s answer was a disagreeable noise in the back of his throat. Eventually relenting to Hawwy’s urging, Captain Mac took the only chair. He sat there, bad leg thrust out, glaring at me with snapping dark eyes, elbows propped on narrow armrests, steepled fingers pressed against a tight mouth the whole time he listened to Hawwy.

  “Yes,” Captain Mac said in answer to Hawwy’s question. “Little Jonas did say something to me about his jacket and I filed a report. General Gettis said he never saw the report. But I know I submitted it, for I remember doing it on the same day that Private William Brooks came to me, saying his new trousers were missing. He accused Little Jonas of being the thief.”

  “Did you file that report?”

  “No,” Captain Mac snarled. “By then I was a bit too busy to entertain myself with writing up a report about missing trousers. The Kiowas were kicking up rough, as Kiowas are prone to do. The result of the kicking was Major Elliot and others being placed under guard,” he jabbed his chest with the tip of his thumb, “which left Muggins here to take on their responsibilities. As I was otherwise entirely occupied, I left it with the two soldiers to sort out their squabble all by themselves.”

  “And did they?” Hawwy quizzed.

  Hands gripping the armrests he thundered, “Well one would assume so! They certainly didn’t plague me further.”

  * * *

  It was getting late when we left Captain Mac’s tent. As there was no longer a bugler to signal the day’s close, a lone rifleman fired off two shots. As the close gunfire was wholly unexpected, I all but leapt into Billy’s arms.

  “That’s lights out,” Billy chuckled.

  Gathering my dignity I asked, “And that means?”

  “Everyone must go to sleep.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if not everyone is sleepy?”

  “That’s too bad.”

  I mulled this as candles stuck into bayonets stabbed into the ground just outside the small two man tents were quickly extinguished. Ordinary soldiers lived too close to one another and as we walked down a row of these tents, I noticed that they slept too close, too. But the oddest thing was that inside each tent, on one side I could see a pair of feet, while on the other, the top of a head. I pointed this out to Billy.

  “The army,” he said, “believes it’s unhealthy for soldiers to smell each other’s breath.”

  “But it’s all right to smell feet?”

  Billy nodded and chuckled. I shivered. This was yet another thoroughly unappealing aspect of army life. Then a terrible thought struck.

  “I won’t have to sleep smelling your feet, will I?”

  Billy hurriedly translated this to Hawwy. Both shared a laugh at my expense.

  * * *

  Sleeping in an army cot is horrible. An extra cot was set up for me inside Hawwy’s sleeping quarters. Billy already had a cot in there and our three cots formed a three-quarter square. I was given a slip of a pillow that did absolutely nothing for my head and neck and one thin itchy blanket that smelled bad. Yet these were comforts when compared to being trapped alive in that cot. Evidently the canvas body had seen better days for, by the time it came to me, there was no body left in the rough m
aterial and it sagged under my weight, leaving me to hang suspended between the frame. I lay there too terrified to move, even more terrified that I would never get out of that thing. I spent a sleepless night worrying my fate while listening to my two tent partners snoring so loudly they rattled the tent walls.

  As I was doomed to live through the night fully awake, my busy mind reviewed what little I had learned during my enforced stay, mixing all of that up with what I already knew. Then I remembered the occasion of my meeting William, gradually shifting to the physical differences between William and Little Jonas. Both were good-sized men, but Little Jonas carried solid weight throughout the whole of his body whereas William was slender, most especially in his legs. What if a third party, seeking to fit himself adequately in a uniform different from his own, had intentionally chosen a jacket and trousers to match his body type? Meaning that Little Jonas’s jacket would fit but his trousers would be too large. The thief would then need to go for a second man’s spare uniform.

  William’s.

  Despite the blurry haze of fatigue, irritation at my tent partners, increasing dread of the cot, in those moments the murderer’s temperament became apparent. I lay in that terrible cocoon, indescribable noise rattling the tent walls, seeing this man for what he was. Patient. Determined. Ferociously intelligent. A man who, for his own reasons, was able to destroy another human being without qualm. He was also a man who would have to know—

  Trying to turn on my side in that idiot bed caused its noisy collapse, waking Billy and Hawwy with a start. Hawwy lit the lantern and then he and Billy were looking at me lying on the ground tangled in that hideous contraption. I didn’t mind that so much anymore as I looked up at them and yelled, “Hawwy! Tell me what was concerning you when Little Jonas was telling us his story.”

  Hawwy glanced at Billy who stood on the opposite side of my ruined bed. After Billy translated, Hawwy’s expression became sheepish. “It struck me wrong.”

  I managed to get loose of that bed and stand to my feet. Hands on my hips I demanded, “Why!”

  Looking embarrassed, he turned his face to the side. “I—I just wondered how it was that ex-slaves had managed to read and write letters.”

  “I don’t understand,” I snapped.

  Hawwy looked me fully in the face. He spoke, drawing out each word. “In some places, it’s against the law to teach slaves to read and write.”

  “Is this Louis-anna one of those places?”

  “Yes.”

  “So being from this Louis-anna, Little Jonas would not have been allowed the knowledge to understand medicine marks on pay-paas?”

  Hawwy nodded. “That’s right. And neither would his mother. Others would have to read and write for them.”

  Someone else, I mused, remembering the events of just this morning as well as the things Skywalker had said before The Cheyenne Robber and Hears The Wolf had set out, then coming back with the uniform.

  “I would like to speak to Little Jonas again.”

  “You can’t,” Billy said. “We are not allowed to move outside this tent until morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Rules.”

  Throwing my arms wide I shouted, “How can human beings live like this!”

  Billy laughed delightedly. “There are no humans in the army. Only soldiers.”

  * * *

  I was still awake, this time standing in the tent’s smaller first room, looking out through the parted door-flap, watching the sky slowly change from black to gray, then become a smear of pale blue with streaks of pink when three shots were fired, the signal to rouse the camp awake. Taking this as permission to step out of the tent and stand under the awning, I listened to the muffled groans of the soldiers as they stirred inside their little two-man tents. Then I heard Hawwy coughing. After spending so much time with him, I would have known that cough anywhere. He always made that hacking sound whenever he woke up. Why, I never knew. He just did. Returning to the sleeping chamber, I waited impatiently while Billy and Hawwy shuffled around, Hawwy still hacking while he and Billy dressed. As soon as he was clothed and coherent, I sent Hawwy off in one direction while Billy and I made for the prison tent, Billy complaining about having to go at a trot to keep up with me.

  We hit a stall when the guards refused us entrance. This time, without Hawwy to persuade them, the guards were churlish and would not be swayed. One guard blithely smoked a pipe while the other relieved himself. Ever resourceful, Billy did the next best thing to a face-to-face interview with the prisoner.

  He yelled.

  The guards didn’t much like it that, one way or another, we would speak to Little Jonas, but as there were no rules concerning visitors yelling their lungs loose, they decided to take a more proper stance. The first soldier put his pipe away while the second, after buttoning up his trousers, retrieved their guns, handing one over to the first guard. Looking official now, they stood there, rifles resting across their chests, while Billy yelled my string of questions.

  “How did your mother make a letter for you?”

  “She asked Mrs. Mayhew, the new lady she maids for, to do the writing.”

  “And who read her letter to you?”

  “Lieutenant Danny.”

  “You shared your mother’s letter with no one else?”

  “No.”

  I stood there lost in thought, trying to work out how a man like Buug-lah had come to know the information about the stolen mule when the answer came to me in a very unexpected way.

  Mrs. Adams stuck her head out of her tent and did some yelling too.

  “What is all this noise out here? Don’t you understand that a very important woman is still asleep?”

  She had more to say, mostly in regard to offensive Kiowa manners, and as she ranted, she rattled pay-paas, using them in a shooing fashion, the way one would shoo off pesky flies. Then it hit me like a bolt. Her shaking those pay-paas reminded me that Skywalker had said that pay-paas were important. Now, he could have meant only letters, but seeing what she had in her hand, I couldn’t take the chance these were the only kinds of pay-paas he’d visualized. With Skywalker’s cryptic visions, it’s always better to be safe. Without pausing for further thought, I irritated Mrs. Adams further by ambling her way.

  Well, that certainly put her in a snit. She set to telling me that it wasn’t fit for a strange man to see her while she was in her sleeping dress and with her hair tied up. Actually, I thought she looked better than I’d ever seen her, but she kept insisting she, “wasn’t decent.” I didn’t have time to argue. Lone Wolf would be coming back to the Blue Jackets’ camp bright and early the next morning to close this situation one way or the other. As what he ultimately decided largely depended on what I could or could not tell him, out of necessity I cut straight through Mrs. Adams’ persistent babble.

  “I see you have pay-paas there. I would like to know what kind they are.”

  This direct question set her back, her eyes bulging, mouth open as she gaped at me. Finding at last her well-honed tongue she replied, “They are information pay-paas. Newwwws-pay-paas,” she said, drawing out the last words as if speaking to a slow-witted child.

  “And you can read the marks on those pay-paas?”

  Her mouth snapped shut and held a frown as she looked at me, one brow arched high, as if I had just delivered a terrible insult. “Well, of course I can read them. I am an educated person.”

  “Could you read them to me?”

  Both eyes flared. She studied me as she considered at length, then said, “Only if you fetch me a cup of coffee mixed with milk and sugar.”

  Billy and I darted off.

  * * *

  Mrs. Adams truly was an educated person. When we returned with the coffee, she was more properly attired, but her hair was still tied up and a pair of clear glasses were perched on the end of her nose as she sat in her chair, reading the newsprint aloud between sips of her coffee.

  I listened with rapt attention. In those pay-paa
s the white people gossiped about one another, and from all over their recognized country. Mrs. Adams could tell me from those pay-paas what was going on in places called, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

  “Is there any news from a place called, Louis-anna?” I asked.

  “What?” she barked. Then seeing that I was perfectly serious, she set her coffee cup down on the side table and began energetically rattling those pay-paas in her search through each and every page.

  Finally she found something. “There’s only a small note,” she said in a musing tone. Then she read: “‘Mr. T. Babcock, landowner in La Salle Parish, is offering a reward for the return or any information on the whereabouts of a blaze-faced mule. Said mule was taken from his property during the dead of night and made off with. A subsequent search of the surrounding area and share-crop shanties has not proved fruitful. Mr. Babcock has said that this has become a matter of principal far beyond the worth of the missing animal. Mr. Babcock announced that every effort will be used to secure its return. He has put any and all Rebel miscreants known to be loitering with intent anywhere near the region of La Salle Parish, on notice that their thievery will not be tolerated. Sheriff’s inquiries remain pending.”

  The pay-paas made a racket as her arms crushed them against her lap and she looked at me in a confused and irritated fashion. “Is that what you needed to know?”

  “Yes,” I said excitedly.

  “Well, I certainly don’t understand,” she shrieked. “What has a carpetbagger’s missing mule to do with Kiowas?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She leaned forward in the chair. I became captivated by her mouth as her lips seemed to form each sound of the strange word, the way her eyes, when seen through those glasses on the end of her nose seemed as large as an owl’s. “Car-pet-bag-ger!”

  The more she leaned forward, the farther I sat back, in a feeble attempt to get away from her, my knees drawn up to my chest, arms hugging my legs. Once she’d finished this odd word, she retreated and I was able to sit properly.