9
November 30, 1866—Bozeman Trail, Dakota Territory
DARKNESS SETTLES AND WITH IT COLD. A MILLION stars and a half moon and the low licking flames of their fire. Molloy and Rawson are drunk. Jonathan may be but it is difficult for Kohn to tell because he has not spoken a word since returning from watering the horses. Kohn takes a sip of whiskey, limiting himself. He will take first guard. He has coffee warming in a tin pot in the ashes at the side of the fire.
Molloy sings a snatch of a Galway song and then stops. His heart is not in it. His mind wanders, his thoughts disconnected and unwilled. How did I get here? A campfire with a Jew and a Pawnee and a fool of a Virginian thief in the wastes of America. No place for a Galway man at all. He thinks of his mother and curses Kohn. What could I say to her in any letter? I kill children, Mother. I have killed . . . I kill. Killer. No better than the savages we revile. No better than Jonathan there across the fire.
He sings another snatch of song. “She wore a bonnet with a ribbon on it, and around her shoulders was a Galway shawl . . .” Again, he lets the song die and he pulls the buffalo coat tighter around his shoulders. He hands his pipe and tobacco to the Pawnee. “Fill that for me, Jonathan, would you? I fear I am unable . . . Take a draw yourself. Go on.”
The Indian packs Molloy’s pipe and lights it with an ember from the fire. He inhales the smoke and lets it seep from his nostrils, pulling again from it before passing it to Molloy. They are generous with their whiskey and tobacco, he thinks. Not like some. Some soldiers would have him at his own fire or standing picket all night while they slept. The lieutenant is a weak man and this is why he allows it. He wants others to share in his poison. But it makes the journey go quicker, and this is a good thing. Money for old rope, he has heard the bluecoats say, meaning easy work. This journey is money for old rope.
Kohn hands the scout the bottle. “Where did you come by your English, Jonathan? Did you learn from the soldiers you scouted for?”
The Pawnee appears displeased at being asked to speak. He takes a pull of whiskey and some moments later, almost when Kohn has given up on an answer, says, “My father. He was scout for the bluecoats. It is not hard to learn.”
Molloy says, “It’s hard for the likes of Rawson, it is.”
Rawson smiles. “My daddy learned me English too, goddamn it, sir. Even if I don’t be a educated man, I speak as good as any dog fucking Injun.”
The Pawnee ignores Rawson. Kohn says, “And do you have sons, Jonathan?”
Again, Jonathan frowns. Might as well be putting the thumbscrews to him, Kohn thinks, determined to ask him more questions, knowing now his distaste for answering.
“Four sons,” the Pawnee says.
“And will they scout for us as well, Jonathan?” Molloy says, his speech so slurred that Kohn repeats the question.
“Quite right, quite right,” Molloy says, taking a long drink from the bottle before handing it to Kohn. Kohn passes it to the Indian without drinking.
“So would you have them scouting for us bluecoats as well, Jonathan?” Kohn asks.
Jonathan drinks and hands the bottle to Molloy, deliberately passing Rawson. He does not think the private worthy of the whiskey. He should be sitting outside the light of the fire. Though he stole the eggs, he remembers, and they had been fine to eat with flourcakes. I will give him the bottle the next time, because he took the eggs from the travelers.
He says, “They will scout for the bluecoats if they want to do it. It is good sometimes. You can buy fine things with the greenbacks of a soldier’s pay. But maybe the Sioux are all dead when they are of the age to scout. And when the Sioux are gone, and the Cheyenne, then the Pawnee will have no need to scout for you.”
“The enemy of my enemy becomes my closest friend,” Kohn says and Jonathan does not respond.
“You hold your liquor well, Jonathan,” Molloy says. His voice is loud and Kohn wonders can the pilgrims hear him in the ring of wagons a mile away. So what if they can? He hopes it keeps them from sleep, the unneighborly sons of bitches.
Molloy continues, gesturing with the bottle, and Kohn pities him. “I have been given to think that you Indians do not hold your liquor quite so well and you appear to disprove this.” Molloy again raises the bottle in a toast. Kohn shakes his head.
Jonathan takes the bottle back from the officer. “And I have been told that white soldiers do not hold their liquor well. The lieutenant does not disprove this.” He takes a long drink and passes the bottle to Rawson and for the first time since his harassment of the Sioux women and children, Jonathan smiles.
Kohn smiles back at him. Molloy has closed his eyes.
Just when Kohn thinks he is asleep, Molloy smiles and says, “Well done, Jonathan. Quite right, quite right.”
Moments later the officer is snoring. Kohn reaches over and takes Molloy’s pipe from his hand, taps the ashes from it into the fire and puts it in his own tunic pocket for when Molloy awakes and searches for it. They ran out of the cheroots he likes some days ago.
“I’ll take first guard, Rawson. I’ll wake you when it’s your turn. Jonathan, you’ll take over from Rawson.”
The scout nods.
“I think we’ll once again be without Captain Molloy’s company standing picket this evening.”
THE SOUND OF HOOVES in the dirt wakes Kohn and he sees only the black silhouette of the Pawnee riding out of their camp. The fire is burned down to dim orange embers. A faint line of dawn light scores the eastern horizon. Near on six, Kohn thinks. Where is Jonathan going? His ears prick at a sound out of place on the plains, out of place in the dawn’s fading darkness. The morning is cold and still, a dusting of frost on his blankets, his breath a thick, warm fog about his face. There, again, the sound. A woman screaming. And the howling, whooping shouts recalling the Confederate rebel yell but different.
He throws off his blankets, sleeping as he is in his buffalo coat and hat.
“Sir,” he shakes Molloy and hears the officer groan. “Sir! The pilgrims, sir. There is something happening with them. Jonathan has gone.”
Rawson wakes now. “What’s that?” He leaps up and in terror looks left, right. His rifle is beside the tent canvas he has used for a pillow and he grabs it and this time no one tells him to put it away. The horses have been left loosely saddled but with their reins picketed to stakes in the ground.
“Lift up the pickets on the horses, Rawson, and tighten the saddles. Sir, wake up, sir.” He shakes Molloy and the officer wakes. “Sir, there is something wrong with the pilgrims. I can hear shouting. A woman.”
Molloy stares at Kohn. He understands the urgency in Kohn’s voice but cannot make sense of the soldier’s words. In his mind, in his dream, he is at home and speaking Irish to a woman he knows is his sister. His mother is scolding them for speaking Irish instead of English but in his dream he cannot speak anything else and he wakes to this. He tries to stand and crumbles back into his bedroll, his body locked in cramp. Cold, Jesus in heaven, cold. Bile rises in his throat and he tries to swallow it but cannot and spews some sour whiskey into the ashes of the fire.
“The horses, Rawson . . .” Kohn says,
“They’re ready, goddamn it all.” Rawson holds the reins to the three mounts.
“Come on, sir,” Kohn says, but decides then that he will leave him. He will be no good to them.
“Fuck. Christ, I am coming, let me rise, for the love of God Almighty.” He begins to rant in Irish as Kohn has heard him do when he is not fully awake.
He manages to get to his feet and stumbles to his mount. Even at his drunkest, on the blackest night, he can always find her. Rawson hands Molloy the reins and intertwines his hands as a bootstep for the officer. It takes two attempts for Molloy to put his boot into the private’s hands. When he does, Rawson heaves upwards and Molloy swings his free leg back and kicks the private in the jaw, causing him to release the officer before he has landed in his saddle.
Kohn is lifting his rifle
from beside their bedrolls when he sees, from the corner of his eye, Molloy go tumbling over the horse’s back. The sound of his landing is that of a heavy barrel dropped from a wagon. Kohn knows it is a broken leg before Molloy starts swearing. “Mother of Jesus my cocksucking leg, Jesus in heaven.”
Rawson is bellowing, “My jaw, my goddamn fuckin’ jaw, goddammit.”
Kohn decides quickly. “Rawson, get him his whiskey from the mule. Give him the bottle and wait with him till I’m back. Get one of the dogs up and put the captain inside and under all the blankets we have, is that clear?”
“Here? Wait here with him? By my lonesome?”
Kohn brings his fist back to strike Rawson but for some reason stops himself. He mounts his horse. “Do exactly what I say, Rawson. Shoot anything that moves that isn’t one of us. Is that clear?” And the way he says it so frightens Rawson that the private begins to act without questioning the order. “And picket the horses again, you shit brain, or you’ll be walking the rest of the way.”
Kohn spurs his mount and rides hard for the pilgrims’ camp.
THE INDIANS HAVE LEFT before he gets there and there is no sign of Jonathan. He rides a circuit of the loose collection of wagons. They are no longer circled, as they are routinely arranged at night for protection and as a pen for the animals. One of the wagons has its oxen yoked and harnessed while the others are in disarray, traces cut and tangled, yokes askew in the grass. Other than two tethered oxen, there is no sign of the twenty-odd animals he saw the day before. Kohn realizes the party must have begun to break camp when it was raided.
He meets the young man whom he spoke to the day before jogging out of camp with an ancient musket. He has not thought they might have a gun with them, being pacifists, but assumes it is probably a bird gun. Little good it will do him.
“What happened here? Where are you going?” He speaks in German.
“The Indians came. The older boys, from yesterday. They have taken our beasts. I must get them back. Ich muz.”
“I think you should stay with the others. Do you have a horse? If you had a horse we could search . . .” Kohn thinks better of this. Instead, “Is there anyone hurt?”
“Ja, my father is struck on the head but he will be all right. I must go.”
“No.” Kohn dismounts and stands beside the man. He has his Spencer carbine in his hand and he places it back in its scabbard. “Your family needs you here. It’s not safe for you to go after them. Not safe. You have never fired that at a man before, have you?”
He reaches for the musket and the pilgrim hands it over. It is only now that Kohn realizes how young he must be. Eighteen at the most, with a wife and children. And I am thirty, and father only to one drunken officer. Mother to him. He remembers what has befallen Molloy and wants to get back to him. He checks the musket and sees it is not loaded.
“Have you got balls and powder? Cartridges?”
The young man looks away. He opens his hand to show a muddle of wadding and card and loose rounds of birdshot. Kohn thinks that the man, the boy, might cry. “We must have back our beasts. We will be stranded here. Winter is coming . . .”
Kohn hears weeping from behind the wagons, shrill voices raised in fear and anger. Der Winter ist da, mein Freund. “Are they all right?”
“Yes. They are vexed. We cannot make Montana without our beasts.”
The old man, as if summoned by the doubt shown by his son, comes over to them from the wagons. He has a bandage around his head and blood seeps down his cheek from underneath it. Kohn notes a trail of clothing and goods from the back of one of the wagons strewn out on the ground, and thinks perhaps the Indians made to steal the goods as a distraction while their brothers cut through the traces and stampeded the mule and ox teams.
“Jacob, come and help your family,” the old man says.
“I will, Father.” He takes the gun back from Kohn, pocketing the small parcels of birdshot. He looks ashamed.
The father notices the musket in his son’s hand. “What were you going to do with that? You know the teachings. And you would be killed. Do you want to die and to die in sin? Pride, Jacob, pride. You are a fool for it.”
Kohn understands some of this. He understands the words “die” and “sin” and “pride” but the rest is clear enough. The old man wipes at the blood on his cheek and checks his hand. Dawn light is leaking over the plains and Kohn can see frosted buffalo grass running east, the undulating land like rolling waves of the sea. These Murphy wagons, prairie schooners folk call them, like lost, demasted ships, Kohn thinks, having seen storm-damaged barques limp back up the Cuyahoga every winter as a boy. He considers the pilgrims’ chances. One team of oxen left. They will be all right but will be going no farther, only back.
“Sir, was our Indian here?” Kohn asks, as if to distract the father from his tirade. Kohn pities the son. Sees himself in him. Sees his own father in this bearded Mennonite.
“Savages, savages, damned savages,” the younger man says in English, as if he has heard it said before and liked it.
“There were many and it was dark,” the old man says.
Kohn looks west. The land rises away from the riverbank and he can just now make out the trail up into the bluffs the raiders would have taken. Jonathan too. He decides he will make his way back to Molloy and Rawson in camp.
“Will I load the gun for you?” he asks the young man. “I can give you some balls you can melt and shape for shot. You will need a heavier load than the one you have there if you are to do any good with—”
“We do not need your help,” the old man says.
Kohn looks at him and rage rises in his gullet. Pride. Pride? The old fucker, the son of a bitch. Let the Sioux have his scalp. Let them rape and kill every goddamn one of them. Kohn thinks that he may be all used up with pity. Fathers. Every son’s curse to have one.
“Suit yourselves.” He ignores the old man and speaks to the youth in English. “If you can’t find your animals, pack as much as you can from the other wagons into one of them and head back for Laramie. You’ll have to winter there. It’s too late in the season to restock and try again until spring.”
“I will try to tell them this. My father, the others, but they will not listen. They say it is the Lord’s will and He protects us. Where is His protecting now I ask you?”
The old man says something sharp to his son, a rebuke, as if he has understood his son’s words.
“Well, good luck,” Kohn says. “I’m sorry we could not be of more help to you.”
He rides slowly out of the jam of wagons to the sound of the old man scolding his son, of women weeping and a woman shouting, hysterical with rage. A child crying. They’ll be all right, Kohn thinks. They’ll be fine once they make it to Laramie.
Halfway back to camp and he can no longer hear the pilgrims and their lamentations. Instead, he hears gunshots. Two or three, perhaps one with an echo, from somewhere in the hills west of the trail. He stops and listens and some moments later hears screaming again. This time he is certain it is not a young woman but a boy.
BACK IN CAMP, just over an hour later, Kohn is about to set Molloy’s leg when Jonathan rides into camp. His buffalo coat is open to the cold. Winter sunlight on hoar-frosted grass, steam rising from his pony’s back. Under his open cavalry tunic the Indian wears a bright red shirt Kohn has seen before. The scout’s leggings are smeared red with blood. It takes Kohn a moment to recall where he has seen the garment, his attention drawn from Molloy’s injury to the brilliant red of the jersey. Yesterday. The stout Indian boy was wearing it, the one who grabbed the toddler up from the ground from horseback.
Jonathan dismounts. Two raw, fresh pelts of skin and black hair are stretched with sapling sticks and lashed to a branch that rises up from his saddle like a grim cavalry guidon. Kohn cannot look at him.
“Did you get their animals back?” Kohn asks.
“No. The Sioux killed the animals when I came to them. And I killed the Sioux. Two of th
em. Two others I did not see.”
“They were only . . .” Kohn sees that Molloy’s eyes are open and he is watching them. There is no way that he can know what has happened, what Jonathan has done, but there is terror in his eyes nonetheless.
Kohn says, “The lieutenant’s leg is broke.” He thinks both bones are broken but cannot be sure. The jagged shinbone has cut through the skin and Molloy screams each time Kohn attempts to examine it. It will need to be set, Kohn knows, and cleaned up and plastered or gangrene and the saw will have it. Jonathan has told them they are four days’ riding from the fort. Four days from a surgeon of any sort, even an army surgeon.
“He ain’t gonna be riding no horse,” Rawson says, taking a draft from the captain’s bottle.
“Give me that bottle, Rawson.” And to Molloy, Kohn says, “It’s all right, Captain. It’s all right, now. Take a drink. Take a drink.”
Jonathan squats on his haunches in the open mouth of the tent and lifts back the blankets and buffalo hide. Molloy’s leg is white and frail-looking and the skin around his shin is beginning to discolor where the jagged bone has torn through.
“Do not move him,” the Pawnee says, rising and mounting his horse.
“We won’t be going no goddamn place today,” Rawson says, eyeing the bottle.
“Shut up, Rawson,” Kohn says. “Shut your mouth before I shut it for you.”
THE SUN HAS RISEN to its highest point in the winter sky and Kohn believes it is near noon when the Pawnee returns to camp. Tied to and dragging behind his horse are several trunks of sapling trees shorn of branches. Lodgepoles, Kohn has heard them called. For making tipis. He wonders at their purpose.
Molloy is in a fitful sleep, starting awake now and again with pain or nightmares. His forehead burns with fever and Kohn mops it with a damp kerchief, feeding him whiskey with a mess spoon. Rawson adds buffalo chips to the fire and watches as Jonathan dismounts and takes a leather satchel from his saddlebag. The scout crouches in the tent mouth again.
Wolves of Eden Page 7