“Jesus in heaven, no, Kohn. You are full to the brim with terrible ideas today. Hang this man at once. Visit the goat-buggering colonel. Visit a colonel, Kohn, of our own free will? Can you hear yourself at all when you talk such balls?”
“No sir, only I thought—”
“Stop thinking, Daniel. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
They exit the fort at the main, north-facing gate. Sentries stand picket on the palisade and a sergeant and several men glass the hills from a raised bastion in anticipation of the returning woodtrain. Beside them, an artillery crew loads and chocks the mountain howitzer.
A worn path takes them from the front of the fort along its western palisade, past the steam-powered sawmill and to the collection of tipis on the Little Piney River that is the fort’s source of water. The ground is frozen in places, thawing mud in others, and is hard going for Molloy on his crutches. As they make their way toward the loafer camp, Kohn scans the hills and grazing fields, the woods at the riverside. He does not like being exposed, outside the fort with the captain in his state of limited mobility. It is odd, he thinks. He feels exposed and diminished without his horse in the way another man might without his clothes.
Coming to the loafer camp, Kohn stops at a tipi somewhat removed from the others. A large dog lounges in front of the dwelling and opens its eyes at their approach but does not rise. The tipi flap is closed but opens as if their approach has been observed from a distance and Jonathan steps out into the cold.
“Brave scout, my left leg has come to thank you, sir,” Molloy says.
Jonathan nods.
“We are in need of your services, Jonathan. Come with us, good man.”
Again, Jonathan nods. He turns and reenters the tipi, speaks to someone inside, then steps out to rejoin them.
“And who is that, my Pawnee friend? A visitor perhaps?” Molloy says, winking at the scout. He smells the whiskey on Jonathan’s breath and his stomach knots with yearning.
“My woman,” Jonathan says, walking ahead of Kohn and Molloy, passing the tipis of the few friendly Northern Cheyenne families wintering in the shadow of the fort. Dogs bark and nip at their heels and Molloy swings a crutch good-naturedly at one.
“Your wife has joined you? What luck,” he says.
“It’s not his proper wife, sir. It’s his ‘winter wife’ he calls her,” Kohn says.
“Ah yes, if only we foolish Christians were allowed such an option, the sum of our marital happiness would be greatly increased. Jews, Daniel, I believe to be similarly proscribed in their preference for seasonal wives?”
“Yessir,” Kohn says. Then, “Jonathan, we need to speak Indian to the whore . . . the squaw, Two Doves. Can you speak her tongue?”
Jonathan nods and continues walking. They reach the end of the small collection of Cheyenne tipis and follow the narrow river, sheened with a thin layer of ice, around a bend that takes them from view of the fort. Some fifty yards around the bend, in a rough clearing littered with the detritus of past floods, is a solitary tipi. It is smaller than the others they have passed, its buffalo hide coverings dulled gray with age, rotting and fire-scorched and holed in places. In front of the tipi, extending out from its entry flap, an awning constructed of lodgepoles and more tattered hides provides meager shelter from the elements for those outside the tipi. A fire smolders under the awning, a rusting, battered pot half-buried in its ashes. Next to this fire, on a pile of thick buffalo rugs, sits a woman staring into the fire, her eyes watering with the cold or the smoke.
“Two Doves?” Kohn says as they step under the awning. “Are you Miss Two Doves?”
Jonathan says something to her and gestures with his hands. Kohn knows there is a universal sign language that the disparate Indian tribes use to communicate and that there are common words to many of the tribes, much in the way of French and Italian or German and Yiddish.
To nobody she says, “My cookpot is here because the bluecoats no like sniff of dog stew when they in tipi. Two Doves cook out in the cold.”
Jonathan squats on his haunches close to the woman and gestures at Molloy and Kohn. He speaks to her, slowly, clearly, while signing with his hands, but the woman does not—will not—look at him.
Staring into the fire, she is silent for a long moment. When it comes, her English is broken but clear. “I no speak to Pawnee snake. I speak to bluecoats or anybody but no Pawnee. Pawnee snakes kill my baby kids, girl and boy. Kill my man and my people. Kill my life, all my life, so Two Doves is whore now. I no speak to Pawnee snake.”
The woman spits into the fire. Her bare feet are cracked and filthy. She wears a matted buffalo rug about her shoulders and a blue gingham skirt. Her hair is black and braided. There are the last vestiges of her pride in the care she has taken with her hair, Molloy thinks. She must once have been a beauty. She smokes a clay pipe and the pipe smoke and her breath mingle with smoke from the fire. Her eyes are small cuts in a drink-swollen face and in them Molloy sees great sadness. He wonders has she whiskey for the sadness. It is one certain cure for it. Death is another. He can smell it on the woman. Whiskey. Death. He has a flashing memory of a mother in Tennessee, wailing over the bloodied body of her son.
He says, “May I sit with you, ma’am?”
“Pay money or pay something to eat, to drink. Then sit with Two Doves. One dollar for fucking. One hand of coffee for Two Dove mouth. Fresh bean. One—”
“Kohn, pay the woman,” Molloy says, lowering himself onto the buffalo hides and setting his crutches to the side. He pats the woman’s arm. “Just talking, missus. Just some easy words between us.”
Kohn begins to rummage under his greatcoat for his purse but before he can find it Jonathan hands Molloy a bottle of amber liquid. “I will go back now,” the scout says.
Molloy says, “Jonathan, you are a fine man. As fine a man as any I’ve met on my travels. The good lady will be much inclined to forgive the depredations served upon her people by yours, in exchange for what is behind the glass of this bottle, God bless you.”
“Sir—” Kohn says.
“—whisht, Daniel.” Molloy hands the bottle of whiskey to the woman. “I’ll have a small chat with the woman while you wait over there by the river. Stand picket so that we are not bushwhacked by her cousins, for the love of Christ. Make yourself useful.”
Kohn watches Jonathan return the way they came. “Sir, I’m begging you, sir.”
Molloy whispers something to Two Doves and the woman laughs.
“It will be dark soon, sir,” Kohn says. He stalks over to the river’s edge, the bank a steep drop of several feet. Across the narrow, winter-sparse waters, across the grazing land that ends in the nearby hills, he can see the procession of horses, men and wagons that comprise the woodtrain. From behind him he can hear voices. In the woman’s voice is laughter, occasionally, and the give and take of conversation, and Kohn wonders idly on the impression that Molloy has upon all those who meet him. From the most depraved and desperate of whores and alcoholics to generals and lawyers and men of means, all take to the captain. All laugh with him, dip their heads to him in confidence. It is a gift he has.
The cloud cover thins briefly, as if in anticipation of night, and over the distant Big Horns the sky flares orange and pink, the clouds painted and washed with dying sunlight, and Kohn watches them. It will be dark soon. They should not be this far from the fort without horses, so lightly armed and immobile.
“Daniel,” Molloy calls over to him. “Come help me up, please. I cannot manage on my own steam.”
Kohn hears the Indian woman laugh as he turns around and walks to the awning. He lifts Molloy to his feet and hands him his crutches. Molloy stinks of whiskey but Kohn notes that Two Doves is holding the bottle and it is two-thirds full. It does not matter, he thinks. One drop is enough to start him.
“You may thank Miss Two Doves, Kohn,” Molloy says, more heat in his jesting now, in his bonhomie. “She has been a most
helpful witness. There is little a bottle won’t buy a man in this life, Kohn. Very little. You’d do well to remember that.”
As they begin to walk, gingerly, over the half-buried river stones to the path, Kohn says, “Well, was Private O’Driscoll there that night? Was he there when the sutler was killed?”
“She didn’t know. She does not know the names of the men she meets, and I can understand that as well as anybody,” Molloy says, merrily. “But she did know a man who will know a man . . .”
“Goddammit, sir, will you tell me what she told you or not?” Kohn says, stopping as they reach the bend in the river in sight of the loafer camp.
Molloy smiles. “Now now Daniel, there is no need to be vexed. You are sad I’ve taken a sup and well you should be. But I am not sad, by fuck. I am happy and I mean to continue this evening. In the morning, dear heart, we will go see the ‘man who makes pictures.’ You have seen his work already I believe.”
“Yes, but what does he have to do with anything? I already—”
“He was there, good Daniel. The night when the blades flashed and blood spilled and all was lost for the Secretary of the Treasury’s brother-in-law and his wife and the other poor bastard who happened to be present. The photographer was there. By God he might as well have photographed the murders, according to my good friend Miss Two Doves. So let us celebrate, Danny boy. There are few enough things in this life worth celebrating.”
“Yessir,” Kohn says, walking on ahead of Molloy, almost beyond caring whether or not he follows.
III
CITY OF LOGS
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
—NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE,
THE SCARLET LETTER
29
A BAD SPOT FOR A FORT
—December 20, 1866—WELL IN MID JULY WE DID AT LAST haul up & end our march in this Valley but Mr. Bridger & a few of the others (the old hand scouts & Indian fighters in buckskin & the like) well they did not like at all this spot Carrington finally chose to build his fort.
At the time we did think this objection queer but we are just lowly Bills & not much are we in the way of strategising or tactical thinking. We are paid from the neck down is the saying & there is truth to it. But to look at this place in summer it does appear a grand fine spot for building. It is as pretty as a painted picture on the banks of a creek or river called the Little Piney which is a small branch of the Powder River that gives this Valley its name. There are miles of buffalo grass meadows about it which rise up to hills that become the mighty Big Horns which are said to be 15 odd miles away. As well there is ample forests of timber nearby for constructing this grand stockade we now call Ft. Phil Kearny & from where it sits there is a fair view some miles each way of the Bozeman Trail to be defended.
I am told this is the A–No. 1 reason for us being here. It is to build an outpost of civilisation in the wilderness so that we may protect them headed up the Bozeman for the gold fields of Montana. This is a strange thing of course because our arrival here in the Valley has spurred the Sioux & Cheyanne to take a sterner line altogether with the pilgrims. Where before it is said that they would leave the pilgrims pass through & even aid them betimes on their journeys or trade goods & game with them well now they harry & molest & collect pilgrim scalps. No man or beast on that trail is safe from Chief Red Cloud’s predations.
But we did not know or much fear the Indian then at all & our commander Col. Henry Carrington chose to build his Ft. in the very heart of the Sioux’s home in this Valley surrounded by its grassy sloping hills so that Mr. Lo may peer down upon our every action.
I tell you Sir the savage does know everything about us. He knows when we leave the Ft. & when we return to it. He knows how far we must travel for timber & how many men we need for to guard the wagons to carry it. This is the reason why this spot is no good at all for a Ft. It is only 5 miles to the timber we need for building & though we ran a road over the hills out to the stand of trees we call the Piney Island we must come down from the hilltop road in the end for a long flat stretch & this is where they descend upon us every day to harry our woodtrain so that every day we lose men & mules & horses & wagons.
So I say to you Sir as I sit here in this bitter hell of a freezing winter Guardhouse that this is a cursed spot to spite its beauty. Bridger & the scouts knew it well from the start & now Carrington The Carpenter must know it too but we have come too far for turning.
That very 1st evening we set up camp here in this Valley you would not believe it but on the grassy rise we now call Pilot Hill 2 or 3 Indians on horseback set up watching us as we did corral the wagons & picket the horses & roll out the canvas under which we would live until we raised up proper barracks of logs. Well them Indians just sat there watching us stake a claim to the fine long grass where their buffalo once grazed & they were like harbingers of death coming I tell you. Betimes I wonder now did we seem harbingers of something terrible for them too our band of wandering white faces like the first fat drops of rain to the fore of a coming storm.
But mostly I do think now that if Col. Carrington was a more bloody minded type of up & at them officer & had of loaded up the Mountain Howizter that 1st night & fired a hell of canister at them Indians on Pilot Hill well maybe Red Cloud & his Braves would imagine us to be a hot & terrible consort of soldiery & think to keep a safe distance from us. They maybe would of thought us not worth the loss of Indian blood for a mere patch of land or safe passage on a trail. But Carrington is not such a man & still has no notion of our true business here in the Valley at all & for this indecision the common soldier Bill does suffer greatly. Is it to protect the Bozeman Trail for travellers to the gold fields in Virginia City he wonders as he frets over his building plans? Establish a forceful presence in the territory we hear other officers say? Pacify the savages? Distract the Indians while the railroad is rammed through farther South? All this is thought by the soldiers but I wonder could even Carrington tell you the truth. He could not tell you is my best guess.
The one thing Carrington did know is that he was to build his great Ft. in the wilderness his City Of Logs as the Sioux call it & start this we did the very day after arriving. For to be fair to him a finer man for getting forts built you will not meet. He is a great man for the planning & building & constructing of things but he is just not a fighting man when a fighting man is what is needed for a War such as we do find ourselves in.
So we set to building our home in this Valley. Well I do not need to tell you it was fatigue details from the cock crow. It was clearing & levelling the ground & chambermaiding the horses & livestock & standing picket over them for though the Indians did nothing as yet their reputation for coveting beef cattle & horse flesh did well proceed them.
And we did scout some Tom & myself (which does be another fine advantage to being a horse soldier) even riding out with Jim Bridger once or twice. Though he is a reknowned man I will say that we saw him to be some fierce kind of a blowhard & canard spinner as we rode the valleys & forests at the foothills of the Big Horns at his side. Up & down the Tongue River we rode too searching for sign of Indian camps or war parties in our cabbage patch. We found none of this though later we would do when it was too late to be any good to us which did not much recommend Mr. Bridger as a scout. But Lord Save Us that fellow could talk the meat from a chicken bone he could. A blatherer I tell you though not a bad sort he was more clown than cat as is the saying but what he did tell rings true enough now so maybe he is less a fool than I thought him.
For he did regale us from horseback as we rode with tall tales that do not seem so tall now. He yarned of savages taking the scalps of men still alive them victims surviving to walk about the place with their skulls shining in the sun like billiard balls. Stories of men
standing talking to you one moment & gagging on an arrow to the throat the next. Stories made for to scare a man into vigilance I see now but I did think them only nonsense then. Such is the way of soldiers everywhere I reckon. They learn nothing until blood is spilt.
And learn we did because of Carrington choosing such a rum spot for to build his City of Logs. For though in summer it may appear to be Eden itself it is a rum & cursed place I tell you Sir & I pray you will leave it as soon as your business here with me is done.
For the ground is now too hard for grave digging & the bodies be stacked like cord wood in the Q.M.’s cold cellar & soon that cellar will be full I reckon full up altogether with the bodies of men who did not see Mr. Lo coming with his hatchets bared & arrows strung & knives out for all of us who would choose to build a mighty Ft. in the heart of his Valley.
30
December 17, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
MOLLOY IS NOT IN HIS SICKBED AND KOHN IS NOT SURPRISED.
“Never came back,” says one of the surgeon’s orderlies. “Found what he been looking for I reckon, Sergeant. You might try the junior officers’ kip. There was a time had there last night or so the scuttle says.”
Kohn sighs.
He crosses the parade ground and knocks at the door to the junior officers’ barracks and waits some time for his knock to be answered. The morning air is sharp and still and numbing cold under an almost turquoise tub of sky. A man can see that the sky is a round, bowled thing out here in the empty expanses, Kohn thinks. He has heard it is the same at sea. He waits for another minute and knocks again until the door is opened by a bleary-eyed man in his undershirt, unshaven, snarling.
“What in God’s goddamn name—”
“I’m looking for Captain Molloy, sir,” Kohn says, knowing how to broach a drunk and angry officer. It is his lot in life, his cross, Molloy would say, to bear. “The colonel wants a word. Colonel Carrington.” Kohn also knows to invoke higher powers when negotiating higher powers than himself. In truth he has neither seen nor heard from Carrington since his original meeting with the man.
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