Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  To the west, clouds gather in their winter masses about the peaks of the Big Horns. In the dips between hills there is week-​old snow. Jonathan pulls up his horse and points down into a small valley, to the banks of a creek that runs through it.

  “Sioux,” he says, and it takes Kohn some moments before he sees them, three, no, four, their horses dipping their heads to drink from the stream. The North Piney Creek he has heard it called. The Indians see them too, silhouettes against the gray skies above them, and wave for them to come down and fight, calling out challenges lost to the wind and distance.

  “There will be more about, I imagine,” Kohn says.

  Jonathan nods and digs his heels into his horse. “More,” the scout says.

  They come down out of the hills and follow the trail across a vast meadow of winter grass. Beyond this is a stand of pine forest where the fort’s timber is cut. Several hundred yards away a herd of antelope turn their heads to the pair and then bound away. Approaching the stand of forest known as the Pinery, they are stopped by sentries on picket at a circle of upturned wagon boxes acting as a corral for the woodtrain’s grazing mules and oxen.

  “Ain’t no Indians ’llowed in the cut, Sergeant,” one of the sentries says.

  “He is with me, Private, as a scout.”

  “Suit yourself, Sergeant, but I aim to tell you they get mighty spooked in them woods on seeing Mr. Lo. They’s like to shoot him first and ask you later who the hell he is.”

  “I would not like to be the man to take a shot at Jonathan here,” Kohn says.

  “Well, I wouldn’t neither but that’s the way it goes, Sergeant.”

  “There are hostiles on the other side of that ridgeline, Private.”

  “Oh, there be hostiles every-​damn-​where. Hell, we had a picket out yonder, out in a dug-​in post just a hunnert, two hunnert yards that ways, there. But he ain’t there now. A little bit of his blood and hair is all they left of him and not a one a us seen nor heard a damn thing. We abandon that picket post and graze the beasts hereabouts now though the grass ain’t no good. Hell, you ain’t telling us nothing we don’t know. They everywhere, the hostiles and there ain’t no goddamn fucking thing we can do about it nohow.”

  “Look alive then, Private,” Kohn says, scanning the plain, the grass caressed by the cold wind. In the distance, at the foot of the hills leading west to the Big Horns, the antelope have reassembled.

  “Better than looking dead, Sergeant, I tell you what.”

  Kohn spurs his mount and Jonathan this time follows him. If the Pawnee has understood the sentry’s words he gives no indication and soon they enter the stand of forest. The high whine of the horse-​driven sawmill can be heard over the hack of axes, the rasp of handsaws. All around are the stumps of cut trees. The trail is mud and there is dirty snow on the denuded, north-​facing side of the hill rising up from the creek that runs through the stand of forest.

  They are met by a young lieutenant on a hungry piebald, the officer’s filthy greatcoat hanging open, two Navy special revolvers in his belt, a cavalry carbine in an open scabbard on what appears to be a civilian’s saddle. There is stubble on his jaw, his eyes are bloodshot. The officers of this posting, Kohn thinks, are some of the worst he has seen in his time in the army. To a man, they are slovenly and drunk. He has experience in such matters. Even during the thick of the bloodletting between the states, most officers at least attempted to appear in command of their faculties. Many couldn’t manage it but in this place it is as if, much like Captain Molloy, they have given themselves up to ruination. Their men, Kohn knows, are only happy to join them in this. He salutes the lieutenant.

  “Sir,” he says, handing the officer the oilskin wallet containing Molloy’s orders from General Cooke. “I am under orders from General Cooke and have the run of the fort and its surrounds, sir, by orders of Colonel Carrington. I am here to arrest two men from C Company, sir. Privates Thomas and Michael O’Driscoll.”

  The lieutenant stares at Kohn and Jonathan with dead eyes. “Who’s the Indian?”

  “He’s our scout, sir, out of Omaha. He’s Pawnee. Friendly, sir. Hates the Sioux as much as we do, if not more.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s possible. We do fairly hate them here.”

  “The two men, sir. Where can I find them?”

  The lieutenant shakes his head as if coming out of a dream. “Arrest them? What men are these?” He opens the oilskin and removes the paper orders, glancing at them before shoving them back into the wallet. “You mean to arrest these men, for what, Sergeant, goddamn it all? You are a cavalry man, I can see from your boots and the way you hold yourself in the saddle like God gave you the buggered earth and a horse for you to survey it from, damn your eyes, and look down on us poor, haversack-​humping infantrymen, but I cannot have . . . ​who did you say you wanted to arrest again?”

  The lieutenant blinks and blinks again as if attempting to focus.

  “Privates Thomas and Michael O’Driscoll, sir.”

  “You and this goddamn, son-​of-​a-​bitch Injun?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Well, fuck your sister, Sergeant, but we haven’t enough men here to fight off this stinking savage’s wife and children let alone a war party. They took our picket from his post and we have still not found his body. Yesterday. Or today I cannot remember. I don’t imagine Captain Brown will allow—​”

  “Where can I find Captain Brown, sir?”

  “Why he is in the blockhouse, you blockhead. Where else would you expect the man to be?”

  Kohn does not answer but moves on, his horse’s hooves sucking in the cold mud. Sawing and chopping men, civilian and army alike, stop their work to watch Kohn and the Pawnee.

  “Sergeant!” the lieutenant shouts after him and Kohn pulls up and turns his mount to face him.

  “You salute an officer when you depart his company, goddamn your soreass heart.”

  Jonathan does not turn his horse but waits, baiting the watching sawyers and soldiers to hold his eyes for more than a second. Kohn salutes, crisply.

  “That will be all,” the lieutenant says, as if he has lost interest in them already.

  Several hundred yards away, following a muddy trail through the wreckage of stumps, passing more soldiers and timbermen who stop their work to watch them, they come to the sawmill on the stream. Beside it is a fortified blockhouse, a long, deep pit dug four feet into the earth with walls of stacked stones rising several feet up from the banks of the pit. One half of the pit is roofed over with logs, thick mud and moss covering, for insulation and protection from fire. A chimney pipe rises up from this roof and there is a fire roaring in the long, open end of the pit around which are seated several men drinking from steaming tin mugs. Muskets rest against the walls, and crates of cartridges are stacked at convenient locations in the pit. Kohn notices loopholes built into the dry stone fortifications from which the men in the blockhouse can direct fire. A formidable defense, Kohn thinks, if they can access the stream for water. A half-​company of men could hold out for days here if they had the ammunition.

  From his horse, he calls down to the men around the open fire. The whine from the sawmill and the hack of axes force him to shout. “Captain Brown—​is he here?”

  All the men stare—​with hatred, and some fear, Kohn thinks—​at Jonathan, and Jonathan stares back. Kohn rests his hand on the butt of his revolver under his buffalo coat and repeats his question. One of the men looks over to him and nods to the roofed end of the blockhouse.

  “That fucking redskin stays where he is,” the private says, looking back to Jonathan now. “He climbs down we’re likely to gut and skin him, like his friend in there . . .” Smoke from cook fires and wood dust from the mill hangs dense and low in the air, enshrouding the few remaining trees around the mill and stream bank.

  Kohn says, “This Indian is a scout serving the United States Army, under command of General Cooke. If he is bothered in any way, there will be broken
bones here. Is that understood?”

  The men around the fire cough and go back to their mugs, taking their eyes from the Pawnee and ignoring Kohn, who climbs down a ladder into the blockhouse pit before crossing to the rough pine door of the shelter.

  He knocks and calls out. Some moments later, he is given leave to enter. Inside, his eyes wince from the heavy smoke of tallow candles and an orange-​glowing woodstove and he must duck his head under the low, log beams of the roof. Moss and earth hang between the logs and Kohn brushes them away from his face.

  Two privates lounge on cut log stools in front of the woodstove. They are smoking pipes and drinking from tin mugs like the men outside, though no steam rises from their mugs and there is a smell of strong spirits in the cramped bunker. As Kohn’s eyes adjust, he notices an Indian lying on the earthen floor, his hands and feet hogtied behind his back. The captive’s eyes are closed, whether in sleep or death or swollen injury, Kohn does not know. The Indian wears no shirt and his torso is coated in something dark and dried that Kohn knows is blood. Even inside this smoke-​filled shelter, the temperature is not far above freezing. He would be surprised if the Indian’s eyes ever opened again. At a table of offcut boards sits an officer.

  “Captain Brown?” Kohn says, saluting. “Sergeant Kohn, 7th Cavalry, we have met once before.” Above the seated officer is a line of twine festooned with scragged, black swatches, some with feathers in, others without. It takes Kohn a moment to recognize them as scalps.

  The captain smiles at Kohn and he is missing several teeth, his own face swollen, a patchwork of scarring on his forehead, a black eye, fresh stitches across his cheek thick as bootlaces.

  “I know who I am and I know who you are, Sergeant. You have come to arrest my boys. Boys,” Brown says to the seated soldiers, “this fine fellow is here to arrest you.”

  Kohn turns to the men, his hand on the butt of his gun. He feels as if he has had it there since he entered the logging camp. He says, “You are the O’Driscoll brothers, aren’t you? We have also met before. You were with the captain when I met him about our horses and you were at the hog ranch when the sutler and his wife were done in. You will come with me and answer my questions or I will have you up for their murders.”

  The brothers say nothing but look to the officer.

  “Those are scurrilous accusations, Sergeant.” There is amusement in the captain’s voice.

  “They are backed by witnesses, sir.”

  “Witnesses? Who would that be? Witnesses? Have you been out interviewing the Sioux and the Cheyenne?”

  “I am not at liberty to say who at the moment, sir. But I will question these two men. I have orders giving me the power—​”

  “Show them to me again and I’ll piss on them. General Cooke and his ‘investigations’ may rot in hell for all I care. I’ll be dead and so most likely will you, long before he or any other bastard stands in front of any court martial or hanging judge. Do you see that red fucker on the ground there?” the captain says, rising now from the table.

  He crosses the short space in front of the woodstove to the Indian and kicks him in the ribs. The Indian grunts but does not open his eyes. “This red bastard is your murderer, Sergeant. You may tell that to General Cooke. This mutilator, this savage”—​he kicks the Indian twice more—​“you may string him up when we return to the fort if it pleases you, but you will not arrest any of my men.”

  Kohn is silent for a moment. He turns his eyes to the seated men, who look from the captain to Kohn and back again. The silence of guilty men, Kohn thinks. Or dumb beasts. “You men were there. I know you were there and I know one of you or both of you killed the sutler and his wife and the other fellow who was with them.”

  “You know damn all about anything, Sergeant,” Brown says. “Now get out of my camp before I have you shot for . . . ​for something, I don’t need a goddamn reason. You and that red beast waiting outside. Pawnee or Crow I will still have his guts hung in the branches.”

  “You are refusing me leave to arrest these men, sir?”

  “Get on your horse, Sergeant,” the captain says, drawing a pistol from his belt and pointing it at Kohn.

  38

  THE BAWD OF THE HOG RANCH SHOWS HER TRUE COLOURS

  I DID ONLY GO WITH MY BROTHER 1 MORE TIME TO THE hog ranch before the night you want to hear of. We will come to that night Sir as I promised but only when I am ready to write of it.

  After we took our September wages it was & our blood was hot that is the reason I went I think. A mob of Red Cloud’s Braves were after taking a clatter of beef cattle from the far grazing & well we did have a lively chase lasting near a whole day & a fair dust up at the end of it with none of ours hurt & none or maybe 1 of theirs hurt but most of the cattle got back & so on returning well out the livestock gate wicket we went under Pvt. Daly’s watch a dollar in his trousers for his troubles.

  And though it does not make for pretty reading I will write of this for maybe it is on this night that some of the things to come was decided concerning the Madam of that rough house who was wife to the Sutler of course. For you could say that she was married to a rum & evil man but that she was as bad if not worse herself.

  It is this I will try to show you though you will not want to read it for it is a terrible thing done by a terrible woman altogether. I tell you Sir since the War I am not oft shocked by things in this life but I was shocked by what I saw that night by the cruelty of it. Such shame I felt I tell you Sir that Ridgeway not only bared witness to it but it was he who had to stop it & maybe only he who could. It does shock my memory to recall it.

  I say it was perhaps only that lovely Quaker boy who could bring peace to that house because he knew that whore kip better than we did in a fashion. For he did pass his time there by day making photographs of the whores & I do not know why but he did also make photographs of the Sutler’s wife but this does be neither here nor there.

  You should not think the worse of Ridgeway for this Sir because I did see the pictures he made of them whores & they are full of beauty & well composed though you might not think it possible. He made them look like ladies every one of them & less like whores altogether. He put them in finery & dresses like ladies & not just in shifts & corsets like in picture cards you see of whores now & again. These dresses he put the whores in he bought from the Sutler’s store himself & gave them as gifts to the whores after so you can see why Kinney & his wife could tolerate him loafing about the place with his apparatus & keeping the girls awake by day for to make pictures of them. They did great business selling the dresses & such to Ridgeway.

  And Ridgeway was a gentle soul who did not vex the girls for gratis pokes so that they let him make his pictures happily & did treat him like a fond relation when he came with us to the shebeen in the evenings. He paid them money to pose for him as well which is always a help in getting a whore to do your bidding but in Ridgeway there was no badness or no lustful intentions I may tell you truthfully. Perhaps he had a sweetheart back at home but if he did he did not speak of her.

  He even made a picture of Tom’s sweetheart too & this I could not imagine until I saw it for she did cloak her face with a shawl or blanket whenever she could & you would not think she would show her terrible injuries to a photographer but she did & this picture she then gave to Tom for a gift. Well this nigh moved my brother to tears & I had to look away when she gave it to him for his love for her at that moment did be like the sun. You could not look directly at it for the harm it would do you.

  But that night I did not know that Ridgeway had the lay of the land in the shebeen or that he was no stranger to its ways. It was much the same sort of night as any in such a place with drink & some songs though with the Madam of the house there tending instead of her husband things were maybe a mite more quiet in truth. But we were in fine spirits altogether laughing at one thing or another & jibbed up on the edge of wildness in the way that men who live in fear can be betimes.

  All the bloody b
usiness of the Army was forgotten with the whiskey. Tom had his girl on his lap & I played Pontoon with Henrik the Swede but even I could see the sour gob on the woman of the house. She did scowl when asked for more drink & would leave it on the bar for a fellow or the whores to collect rather than bring it down & serve it up like a proper landlady might. But this meant nothing to me at all til the poor fat girleen who sat on Metzger’s lap rose up for to use the jakes out of doors. That girl had a jug of Trade Sap in her guts already & she was unsteady on her feet & I do not know how it came to be or why she did it but before the Devil could say Boo! that whore did have her skirts up & was soon pissing into the fire steam hissing up from the logs & souring the air. Well 1/2 way to finished with her piss she did tumble from her hunkers with it running down her legs & great farting winds came from her arse & being soldiers we set to laughing. Like yipping coyotes we did sound & she was laughing too her face squeezed tight with joy for there was something of the clowning harlequin about it all & even with a gallon or more inside her she could see it. In truth we thought her a harmless simple creature. Even the mostly silent muleskinner smiled from his stool in the corner & all of us were thinking Oh what a wild jape! But that wife of the Sutler well she was a demon if you did ever see one walking.

  For when she saw this she came belting round the bar & took up one of the iron fire pokers herself the whole time roaring, “You filthy bitch who do think you are? Who do you think you are doing that? What kind of establishment do you think this is you filthy whore you filthy sloughing whore!”

  Well we did laugh harder at this for what sort of establishment did the Madam herself think it was? But the laughing soon stopped short as Mrs. Kinney took the poker to the girl in wild reefing swings knocking bark from the roof beams every time she swung it while that poor whore was not able rise to her feet & only covered her head wailing & pleading in her Indian tongue. I do not think any of us knew rightly what to do for we were so shocked by the suddenness of it & only when blood begun to leap from the poker with each blow did we see that something needed doing or the girl would perish under that witch’s battering. But before this thought passed from one end of my drunken mind to the other Ridgeway was on his feet to catch the poker in his hand as the terrible slut brung it back for another swipe & our brave Quaker friend then snatched it from her. Ridgeway was soft & quick at the same time & before you knew it he had an arm round the Sutler’s wife leading her away from the poor girl who now the other whores tended to.