Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  The creature, a fox, Tom decides, screeches again, yips. A coyote maybe. Later he will hear wolves but he does not fear them. There is nothing left to fear but a hard death. If wolves come, he will take one or two of them with him same as if they were Indians. Poor Michael, he thinks. Poor, poor Michael, will I ever see you again? Another man too soft for this world in the end, Tom thinks, with his notions of a farm or becoming a picture-​maker like Ridgeway. There is no farm of land or pretty pictures in a poor man’s future. Only sweat or blood or the rope. Tom spits into the dead fire. There is no luck for the poor man in this world at all.

  He stands to take himself into the blockhouse and as he does he hears footsteps, the frozen mud sucking and crunching in turn and Tom lifts his Springfield, then sets it down and takes from its sheath his Bowie knife, pressing his back against the wall, using the shadows there. He cranes his neck to peer out of a loophole in the stone wall but through it sees only darkness. The footsteps stop some feet down the pit from where Tom waits in shadow and then there is the sound of scrabbling and a figure comes over the stonework, feet feeling among the set stones for purchase. A leap then of several feet and the figure is in the pit eight feet from Tom and Tom comes from the shadows with his knife drawn back. He swings the knife.

  “Tom.”

  The knife is a foot from the throat of the figure when it stops.

  “Thomas?”

  “Sarah?” Tom says, a shudder running through him. “Sarah?” His voice is loud and thick in the darkness, as if he has shouted. Joy and terror surge through him. He has a desire to roar into the darkness and the joy and terror lodge in his throat as a sob and he knows that for a moment he will not be able to speak. He fumbles his knife back into its sheath in the darkness and steps forward to take the girl into his arms. The girl pulls away.

  “I have horse. We go now,” she says.

  He swallows and the sob dies in his throat and joy wells in its place. It is the first time she has ever called him by his name.

  “Come now. We must go,” she says.

  “But it’s no good, girl. The Sioux will be out. We will be got by the Indians, Sarah.”

  Sarah turns and begins climbing back up the stone bulwark. “No Indians tonight,” she says. “Indians fight the morrow. We must go now.”

  Tom grabs his rifle and meagre supplies. He is smiling as he follows his woman up the stonework. The wind has stilled itself and the stars above the Pinery are sharp and clear in the night black sky.

  47

  December 21, 1866—​Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory

  AT THE TABLE IN FRONT OF THE GUARDHOUSE WOODSTOVE, Molloy sits with Michael O’Driscoll. In front of him is a quartermaster’s ledger, its pages thick and swollen with damp.

  “I’m told it is true that your brother has run to the hills, Private, and he has taken his Sarah with him and the colonel’s missus is without a parlormaid this morning.”

  The prisoner smiles. “I am only sorry I am not with him but one of us free is better than none all the same, God go with them. I have made my choices in this life.”

  “You chose this guardhouse, didn’t you? There was no call for it. There is little enough in the way of evidence, Private, little enough to point to your guilt.”

  “There is enough of it inside me, sir.”

  “Guilt is a hard thing on a man. I know it. But you overestimate the choices you have in life, Private, I imagine.”

  After some moments of silence, Michael O’Driscoll says to Molloy, “We met, sir, once in the war. You did save the brother and myself and we are in your debt.”

  “Kohn has told me this but I am ashamed to say, Míceál, that I do not remember it.” Molloy pronounces Michael as an Irish speaker would and the prisoner smiles.

  “I did write of it in this.” The prisoner gently pushes the ledger across the table in front of the captain.

  “Of course you did.”

  “I am no scholar, sir.”

  “You are wise enough to know the truth, Míceál, I can see it in you.”

  “I have tried to know it and to write it, sir. My story, and Tom’s, well, it is there as best as I could put it. What happened to them in the shebeen—​”

  “What your brother did, perhaps, Míceál?”

  “It’s not my brother,” Michael says. “He—​I did tell you all of it in them pages in front of you.”

  “You’ve told me some of it, Private, but not the whole of it.”

  “Sure, when does any man get the whole of any story? We take what we do get and use what we need and go on about things from there, sure. There does be no whole story, sir, only the one we do choose to tell.”

  “And you have chosen to tell me that you are guilty of the killings in the tavern.”

  “It is there on the page, sir. You may hang me now and be done with it but the truth is that them three are dead but so is Ridgeway and the guilt I feel is for that. He was my friend and I did fail him and my neck will fit the noose for it, I tell you.”

  “Whisht, Míceál,” Molloy says. “Whisht and fetch me a light from the stove for this cheroot.”

  Michael returns from the stove with the lit cigar and hands it to Molloy, who puffs the tip to burning orange. “Tell me this, Míceál. Your friend, the picture-​maker. Would he see you hanged for what you claim you did? For what your brother did?”

  “For what I did, sir.”

  “Would he see you hanged? A friend?”

  The prisoner is silent for a long moment. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “And if the situation were reversed? If you were dead and some blame could be attached to the action or inaction of a friend in its cause, would you have your friend hanged for it?”

  “I would not. Of course not, sir. But there is what I want and what is right in the eyes of God and—​”

  “God’s eyes are not on this place, Private. He is looking the other way if He’s not blinded altogether by what we get up to down here.”

  The guardhouse door opens and a breathless private enters. “The woodtrain is under a big attack, sir, bigger than any before, and Colonel Carrington has ordered all men here released to defend it, sir.”

  The private carries a ring of keys and begins to unlock the large cell at the far end of the room where seven men are held for various offenses.

  “All men here, Private?”

  “Yessir, but he didn’t say nothing about your prisoner. I don’t know what that means you is to do with him. I’m only a dog private, sir. Uncle don’t pay me for what’s ’bove my shoulders, sir.”

  “Nor does he any of us, Private. Think not another moment about it but go about your business,” Molloy says, pulling on his cheroot. The racking cough recommences and when it stops Molloy wipes a ribbon of blood and spittle from his chin with his coat sleeve. He then takes a bottle from under his coat and pours out two measures into tin coffee mugs on the table.

  “You will share a sup with me before you go, Míceál? Céard a déarfá le deoch an dorais?”

  Michael O’Driscoll says back to him, “An dorais, sir?”

  “The woodtrain is under attack, Private. All hands are needed. Any man who can hold a gun. You can hold a gun I have been told.”

  “But sir—​”

  “I have made a choice, Private. It is time for you to make yours. Deoch an dorais, Míceál?”

  Michael O’Driscoll watches as the men from the cell emerge blinking into the light of the open guardhouse door. One or two of them are refusing to leave the cell and the private remonstrates with them in the cell’s doorway, a winter’s incarceration preferable to what awaits them outside the palisade.

  “Thank you, sir. Deoch an dorais.” A drink for the door. O’Driscoll raises his mug to the officer. “For friends dead before us.”

  “And those soon to be dead,” says Brevet Captain Martin Molloy, raising the tin mug to his lips. He pauses before drinking. “And take your story with you when you go. I know well what is in it alre
ady.”

  48

  December 21, 1866—​Fort Phil Kearny—Sullivant Hill—​Lodge Trail Ridge

  THERE IS THE SOUND OF HOOVES ON FROZEN MUD AND the rough footsteps of hurrying men and Kohn thinks to wake but sleep binds him. He has sat up watching his prisoner draft his confessions for the past several nights, and now he turns and hugs himself under his buffalo coat, the grass ticking in the mattress holding him in its warm embrace.

  Molloy is dying and even in sleep Kohn’s body is thick and slow with the sadness of it. He dreams of the captain smiling. Or perhaps it is not a dream but a memory from a long time ago.

  Private Rawson bursts into the visiting NCO quarters where Kohn sleeps and Kohn reaches for the pistol under his pillow.

  “All up,” Rawson shouts, as Kohn’s hand reaches the walnut grip of the gun. “Colonel’s orders. All up to defend the woodtrain or stand picket. Every man who can hold a rifle. I got your horse saddled and ready outside. Hup, hup, Sergeant Kohn. Rise and shine, sweetheart.”

  Kohn relaxes at the sound of Rawson’s voice and rolls over.

  “All up and fall out, goddammit, Sergeant,” Rawson shouts, relishing his opportunity to let roar at Kohn, to rouse him from his sleep. “This attack ain’t like others. Bigger, fuckin’ big as they come’s the word. All hands to guns. Every damn body on post from chaplain to Guardhouse Charlie, says the colonel, and that means you too, Sergeant, so you may get your ass outta that rack and—​”

  One word sears through Kohn’s stupor and he throws off the weight of buffalo coat and blankets. Guardhouse. He jerks on his boots, shoves his pistols into his belt and holster. His gloves, his cutlass, the Spencer repeater he takes up from the corner beside his bunk.

  “You tell me, Rawson, you tell me that guardhouse still has my prisoner in it.”

  “Hell, Sergeant, I can’t tell you that but every man in the fort is called to defend it or the woodtrain so—​”

  “Where’s Captain Molloy?”

  “Well how in a month of fucking Sundays could I know that, Sergeant?”

  Kohn leaves the barracks and mounts his horse. He gallops her halfway to the guardhouse and stops on the parade ground, not needing to proceed farther. Molloy is standing in the guardhouse doorway.

  “I was only following orders, Daniel,” Molloy shouts and Kohn has to strain to hear him over the commotion of horses, clattering kit on running men, barked orders and men mounting the sentry stands around the palisade. Molloy is smiling as he shouts and then begins to cough, a deep and malignant hacking that Kohn can hear clearly above the mounting din of readiness around him. God damn you, Kohn thinks. God damn you to hell, Captain. He turns his mount for the main gate and assembling troops without looking back at Molloy. He is not sure he could face the man if he had to.

  HORSES DRAG AT REINS, nipping those around them, riders jerking them to order with gloved fists as the main gates to the fort are hauled open with a shriek of frozen hinges, the popping of winter-​solid pine sap, and Kohn scans the horse soldiers gathered and waiting to leave the fort. Over the noise he can hear the faint crackle of rifle fire from some distance away but this is not what concerns him. He scans briefly the orderly files of the newly arrived company of cavalry out of Fort Laramie and disregards them, focusing on the loose rabble of mounted infantry, many in scarves and buffalo hats, several in buffalo coats that Kohn knows will make any fighting that may need to be done difficult and unwieldy. As he notes this, he sees him, one of the coated men. No hat but the heavy hide coat and a blanket roll strapped to the back of his saddle. God damn him! Kohn barges his mount through the rabble as the mass of horsemen begin to move out the gates. Somewhere behind him he hears an officer say to somebody that they are not to pursue the Indians, under no circumstances are they to pursue them.

  “You will be back in that cell by day’s end, Private. Do you hear me?” Kohn says, coming as close as he can to O’Driscoll amid the mass of horseflesh and riders.

  There are four men around O’Driscoll and they close ranks about him. Hard men. Scarred faces. Wide-​eyed mounts keyed for the chase. One of the men speaks in German to him, blond hair spilling from under his kepi, a bugle on a strap around his shoulders, short in the saddle. “You will do better to stay here, Sergeant. No one knows where a ball will find its home once it is fired.”

  Kohn says back to the bugler, in English, “I know mine will find a home in your head if you so much as look cross-​eyed at me, Private.”

  Someone shouts, “Heeya, move out.” O’Driscoll and the men around them spur their mounts and tug reins and they are away at a gallop out the gates. Keeping one eye on O’Driscoll, Kohn follows the pack of riders out onto the plain of winter-​dead meadows that lead from the fort to the foothills from where the snapping of muskets has become so rapid that it sounds like a fire catching in dry grass.

  MICHAEL O’DRISCOLL RIDES alongside Metzger and Daly and several others from C Company and these men form a phalanx around him. They will not see him taken by the terrible Jew but O’Driscoll knows as he rides that the cavalryman is behind him. He can feel the weight of his eyes on his shoulders, the burn of them, and he knows that if not the Jew cavalryman it will be someone else. Always someone behind him as it has been since his brother felled and killed that boy on the Kilorglin Road back in Ireland. The hot breath of the hunter, the guilt rousing him from sleep ever onward. He shakes these thoughts away. The gallows rope would have ended all this for him. Better the rope maybe, than living with one eye forever cast behind you. They crest Sullivant Hill, the thundering of several dozens of horses, and all such thoughts are banished by what Michael sees before him.

  The woodtrain has halted some fifty yards over the lip of the hill, gunsmoke smearing the air around it, and a number of Indians charge the train, loosing arrows, one or two firing rifles, before taking their mounts down the slope of the hill and around a stand of trees at the bottom, as if making for open country. Michael and the pack of mounted infantry climb the trail, closing on the woodtrain, and as they do the Indians appear to see them and flee from their muster point at the top of the road above the train and at this the mounted infantry steer their mounts down the hill in pursuit.

  Michael turns down the hill with the other riders, leaning back in his saddle as they descend, focusing on the frozen ground under the grass, the hidden furrows and rabbit holes that will shatter a horse’s leg and kill you on a hill like this as quick as a minié ball or arrow.

  They reach the bottom and the ground levels out by a stream in the crux of two hills. Here the air is clear of gunsmoke and Michael can see the first of the fort’s contingent of cavalrymen under Captain Fetterman rounding the stand of trees to their right. A half company of infantry soldiers on foot come down into the streambed next at a jog, never having made it to the top of Sullivant Hill, and they too round the stand of trees, a winding blue snake against the snow-​clad ground, and Michael and the other mounted infantry follow. Around this stand of trees there is a beaten path leading to Lodge Trail Ridge and then the undulating open plains where the Indians will lose them. He spurs his mount and pulls away from Metzger and his friends. Better to hunt than be hunted.

  KOHN FOLLOWS O’DRISCOLL DOWN the hillside into the creekbed, riding alongside mounted infantry sloppy in their saddles, civilians, timbermen equally awkward in theirs, some of these carrying modern repeater rifles like his own. All hands to the guns. He notes arrows now, flashing from the tree line in stinging flurries, and sees a rider ahead of him fall. An arrow passes between him and another rider. The sound of musket fire again now from around the stand of trees and Kohn senses what is coming even as he knows he will not stop despite it, will not cease until he once again has Michael O’Driscoll in irons or sees him bleeding out on the frozen ground.

  Kohn sweats under his tunic despite the bitter cold and he rounds the stand of trees and splashes through the shallows of another stream, the ground rising up from it on the other side to form a small ridge
line. It is more gully than valley here and in the tight suck of streambed between the tree line and rising ground uniformed riders have broken ranks and are riding in a chaos of directions. A rider with terror in his eyes barrels back across the stream and Kohn is forced up the bank to avoid a collision with him. As he does this, his mount slipping and clawing at the frozen mud of the bank for purchase, he loses sight of O’Driscoll, clamps his thighs around his mount as he senses her tense beneath him to leap up from the streambed onto flatter ground.

  Kohn’s horse lands and skips awkwardly and Kohn thinks she has broken something or slipped a shoe and as he looks down to check there is a raking pain across the back of his neck, an arrow snagging at his skin and lashing his scarf out behind him in its lethal flight. If I hadn’t looked down, he thinks, then looks up and he hears it now, above the smattering of gunfire and through the gathering smoke in the gully where they have followed the Indians; where, as he sensed and now knows, the Indians wanted them to follow all along.

  The sound is high-​pitched and terrible, goose pimples washing up Kohn’s back as they did in the war when he heard a similar noise coming from rebel lines. Howling, yipping, barking, laughing. Like the rebel yell but not like it. Kohn forgets about his horse’s leg and spurs her up the incline toward the top, following any number of others who have done the same as Indians pour from the tree line, splashing through the stream, firing arrows, hacking, stabbing, howling. Kohn spurs his mount harder and can feel her fear beneath him as she can feel his. Still he searches for his prisoner.