by Tony Masero
The last soldier left alive tried to run. He lurched away and Nathan saw that he was wounded, his staggering body pierced by arrows, the shafts sticking awkwardly from him at odd angles as if they were the spines on a porcupine. The breath was sobbing in the man’s chest as the Indians slowly surrounded him and closed in with silent menace. Nathan lowered his forehead to the ground as he heard the last pitiful screams coming from the man.
Then he was grabbed by the hair and dragged forcefully from the cover of the wagon bed. His body was cuffed and kicked, as he was pulled free. The braves beyond the wagon were whooping and crying out in blood curdling calls of victory as they moved amongst the dead soldiers.
The Indian who had dragged him out was half naked and painted, his face bisected by black bands at forehead and chin and he studied Nathan for a long moment. Crouching and sniffing at him, the Comanche jerked his head from side to side in a rapid evaluation. He snatched the pistol away and Nathan suddenly realized he had forgotten he held it. Then the Indian began to tear at his high collared mock-cadet coatee jacket, pulling at the front as if he did not understand the concept of buttons.
This close, Nathan could smell the invasive stink of the man, musty grease and sweat intermingled in an alien animal odor like nothing he had smelt before.
The Indian jerked his head upwards several times and Nathan understood he wanted him to unfasten the jacket. He did as the Comanche requested and even before he could free himself from the sleeves the Indian was pulling the jacket away.
Once in his grasp, the Indian swung up his war hatchet in a wild swipe and struck Nathan a blow on the side of the head with the flat of the blade and Nathan fell to the ground stunned and only semi-conscious.
Dazedly, he watched as the Comanche tried to force the jacket over his brawny arms, he was lean and muscular and way too big for the coat but it did not deter him. He hacked at the tailcoat with his hatchet and split the material up the back widening it until he could drape it around himself. Then he commenced to cry out loudly and dance in a little shuffling step, proudly demonstrating his looted gains.
Nathan was barely conscious and moved in and out of awareness in dark loops and with only spells of clarity. He heard high-pitched wailing and somebody shrieking his name. Through the dizziness and blooming clouds of blackness he saw Elizabeth being dragged by the ankle along the ground and over towards the grouped Indians. Her white stockings were torn down and dirty, her fragile skirts lifted as she was pulled along and her undergarments exposed.
Sluggishly, Nathan tried to pull himself upright and only then did he realize that Oban, Butler and the sobbing Samantha were close by him where he lay. All of them were hanging on to him as if he were their last hope of sanctuary.
Mercifully, unconsciousness finally overcame him and he slumped down into a dark hole alleviated only by spirals of red that wormed like blood through a darkness blacker than night.
Chapter Two
Britt Marley still felt unsure of his situation.
He was forty-five years old and as he guided the lead-colored gray pony, that he had named Pencil for its coloring, up the climb of the slope he pondered on his state. After fifteen years as Chief of Scouts for the military, ending his career at Fort Rosebud had been no real hardship but it left him with something of a void. Even so, it had been a long and difficult haul as Indian fighter and he reckoned he would be glad of the rest.
An upright man, straight backed, and looking younger than his years although his dark beard and sideburns were singed by gray hair. He had been ruggedly fashioned by his environment; his leathered face was seamed by long days of squinting into the sun and searching far horizons. For so many years had that savage star beat on him that it appeared to have leached all color from the pale eyes that were the one bright spot in his bronzed skin. He sat the McClellan saddle comfortably, as easily as if fashioned by the leather itself and his seat molded him to the pony like a centaur of old.
Abstractedly, he raised a gloved hand and reverently felt the envelope resting under his shirt, the paper crackling at his touch. The wrist below the glove was encompassed by a turquoise encrusted silver bracelet that had been a departure gift from his company of Navajo scouts, he saw the silver shine in the sunlight and his eyes softened at the memory of all their loyalty and friendship. He knew he would miss their company most of all.
The envelope at his breast was a glowing letter of recommendation from the fort commander, Colonel Dewilde. It was all he had been offered on leaving the military, no more than that, a handshake and the saddle he sat on and a small poke of back pay. There was no pension offered to the scout, the service pay he had received throughout his tenure being considered repayment enough. And yet that letter counted for something to him. A small thing in many eyes but as a relatively humble man the words of praise from an officer who knew their true significance had made their mark and touched him deeply and he was glad to receive them.
He set aside the valued words for a moment and considered that now he would be able to take his time and leisure, and with such thoughts in mind he took out his pipe and filled it from a sack of tobacco and sat to gaze at the group of striated and wind sculpted sandstone hoodoo pillars around him that were enlivened by the yellow glow of the setting sun. The prospect of studying on them as things of beauty rather than hiding places for those wishing him harm would come as a pleasant alternative.
On his departure he had told them back at the fort that he was heading south to see a Mexican lady that he had promised to go visit some years years before. In truth he doubted she would still be around or even remember him. It was a face saving exercise in reality, something he had to let those at the fort know merely to cover the fact that his time in service had left him with little in the way of friendship or company outside the army.
His wife, Martha, had died five years ago. She had presented him with a daughter in the early days of their marriage but the girl had run off with a drummer when of an age and never been heard of since. Britt realized he had never been much of a husband or father to them, not being available for any family crisis or celebration as his duties had often carried him away for many months, sometimes years, at a time. He had held a closer relationship with his Navajo scouts than he had ever had with his own kin.
He lit his pipe and sat Pencil on the ridgeline puffing contentedly and looking out at the distant skyline lost in haze and enlivened by the ball of setting sun. He found it a beautiful country, raw and wild, desolate to some but for him who had strode its paths for many years it still held attraction.
He was paused so when he heard the distant sound of a voice calling.
Light and frail it came to him across the still air. He looked around searching for the origin and saw, behind and below him, a swirl of dust moving fast across the cracked surface of the plain he had just left.
The coming rider was swathed in dust and unrecognizable. Maybe half a mile out and riding fast, howling like a banshee as he came.
Britt knocked out the pipe dottle on his boot heel, slipping it into his boot top before turning Pencil side-on to the coming veil of dust. He lifted his carbine from the scabbard, resting it over the saddle pommel as he tried to determine whether it was friend or foe that approached. Pencil stood stock still, legs planted firmly on the ground; he was trained to do so. He would not move at the first shot and would hold position unmoving until his owner had fired a second time.
Britt had fought against Apache and Mexican raiders, had captured rustlers and slain outlaws and renegades both and he was unmoved by any fear of the approaching stranger. He had seen crazy Indians do such things, come after him to kill or count coup. To have the honor of taking his scalp back to their lodge and be praised by their tribe for killing the white scout, the one that the Apache called ‘Cassadore – The Hunter’. So far none had succeeded, although he still held the scars that showed some had come close.
At the foot of the rise, Britt recognized Kilchii, his first scout
amongst the Navajo. The Indian did not falter and charged straight up the hillside, his arm raised high with a fluttering piece of paper held in the wind of his passage.
‘Ho! Scout!’ he called, dragging his sweating pony to a skidding halt.
‘I see you, Navajo,’ Britt replied, dropping his rifle back in its scabbard.
The horseman rode backwards and forwards for a few paces in front of Britt as he regained his breath. Kilchii was a thirty-year-old Indian. A strong featured man with headband-bound shoulder length black hair, steady eyes and a lean figure as lithe and slender as a girl’s. He wore beads at his neck and a colorful shirt overlaid by a cartridge gun belt and holstered pistol.
‘I have message,’ he said, holding out the piece of paper.
Britt looked from him to the offered paper hovering between them without taking it.
‘Do I want this?’ he asked.
‘Who can say, Scout? I am come and bring as I was told to do so.’
Ruefully, Britt chewed his lip, looking irritably at the paper as he considered the permutations.
‘Aw, hell!’ he said finally and snatched the offered sheet.
‘Imperative you return to fort. Matter of utmost importance,’ the Colonel had written.
‘You know what this is about?’
Kilchii shook his head negatively, ‘Many people come to fort. Rich white people I think.’
‘Goddamn!’ spat Britt, the pleasant vision of an idyllic retirement fast dissipating. He kept his eyes on the slip of paper but his thoughts were far away. The old persona was already slipping into place; the hard and steeled edged self fell over his shoulders like a cloak. It was a weight, he realized, and not a thing he had been conscious of for his entire career up until now. But, awkward as it was, it fit him well and he raised his eyes up to meet those of the Navajo.
‘Let’s go,’ he said.
Chapter Three
Nathan was carrying the eight-year-old Butler Royce on his back.
They were walking in single file along a narrow spine of rock whilst the fifteen braves of the Comanche war band split their number and rode in front and behind. The Indians were silent and watchful, mindful of the stumbling row of children.
Nathan was tired and the weight of Butler grew heavier with each step. He moved in a daze, unsure of what to think or do. All of his youthful training and the talk of battlefields he had heard from his father did nothing to prepare him for this. The General may indeed been a hero of the Civil War where the fighting was carried out by great armies across open fields as artillery pounded and men marched in regimented files their bayonetted rifles held before them. There had been bands playing and flags flying and, as it was told to him, only gallantry displayed when brave men fell rather neatly and died with cries of patriotism on their lips.
Nothing had readied him neither for the swift and utter defeat he had witnessed nor to the savage brutality that followed. It was all a stunning blow and now to be force-marched with no word of kindness or single instance of succor drained him of reason.
He was dry throated and his sweating skin was coated with a gritty veil of dust, his head pounded from the sun’s heat and the blow he had received, his whole body ached.
The Indians had chattered eagerly at the beginning of their departure from the valley, obviously excited by their success. Each of them was ridiculously garbed in some captured item, a cap or hat too large or small, a badly fitting jacket and colorful neck scarf. They had buried their own dead and then wildly mutilated the soldier’s corpses with obvious hatred before leaving. The longest time had been taken rummaging through the dead men’s saddlebags, taking any item of interest they found and jabbering with glee at a particularly valued find. But now they had quieted, their faces taking on a stony and expressionless coldness.
Behind Nathan, Elizabeth staggered blindly, shoulders hunched and bunched fists pressed between her thighs, and her white dress was torn and stained with blood. She had said nothing and her eyes held a glazed and vacant stare. Nathan worried about her state of mind after the terrible assault she had suffered, it had shocked him to see the girl attacked so openly and treated with such indifference. As a properly brought up young man he knew next to nothing of the sexual act and to have such a blatant exposure to it in such a manner was like a stomach blow that he had not yet recovered from. Only, Oban Reese, who walked before him seemed the least upset by events. He strode on steadily, his head held high and alert as if unmoved by all he had witnessed.
Butler’s sweaty head meanwhile, lay sleepily on Nathan’s shoulder next to his ear and he could hear the child breathing heavily as he dozed. Behind at the rear, the little Samantha Childs, came tearfully. She had tried to take Elizabeth’s hand for comfort but the fingers had hung limp in her grasp and all the little girl could do now was weep and ask constantly when they would be getting home.
The leader who had a few words of English had told Nathan proudly that it was he, Esacona, who had slain all the white men and that they were to come with him back to his people. They would walk as befitted captives and they would not falter or they too would be slain.
So they had set out with the hot sun beating down, limply following the commanding Indians. The shock was absolute to the children and they obeyed without any thought. Suddenly their known world had been stripped away from them by these alien creatures, a band of ferocious warriors that behaved apparently with complete insanity in their murderous intent. It was nothing any of the youngsters could rationalize and all the fanciful magazine stories they had read about the red men of the frontier bore no resemblance to the reality of the merciless raid they had experienced.
Samantha’s continual wailing and whimpering obviously troubled the chief and he sent his second-in-command, Kowa, back along the line to silence the child. They came to a halt as the Indian brushed past them on the narrow trail, one side of it walled off by jagged peaks of rock like a row of rotten teeth, the other a sheer drop down to the plain far below.
Kowa stopped alongside Samantha and stared down at her. He barked a few words in his tongue and the child let out a cry of alarm and backed fearfully away. Kowa shouted at her again, a single sharp order. Samantha looked up at him, her dirty tear stained face full of confusion and distress.
‘I want to go home,’ she bleated. ‘I want my Mama.’
The frowning Indian, leaned over and Samantha thinking he was generously reaching out to lift her aboard the pony automatically raised her arms to him. But in a swift movement, Kowa dropped low down the pony’s side and grabbed the small child by the ankle. He swung himself upright, dragging the hanging infant with him and brusquely spun the horse around. At the gallop he raced back along the trail, swinging the screaming Samantha in a loop like a rag doll as he went. With one thrust he slammed the child’s head against a pillar of rock and the golden head exploded into a bloody mess, there was a sudden silence as he tossed the body aside and rode on indifferently.
‘No!’ breathed Nathan in horror. ‘Oh, my God! No!’
Butler at his shoulder stirred and mumbled blurrily before resting back down again.
The horseman behind urged his pony forward and breasted Elizabeth in the back urging her on, she stumbled forward into Nathan and they were on the move again.
Not a word was spoken and Nathan’s face crumpled as they walked on past the little body lying in a small heap at the foot of the rock. Silent tears streaked down his dirty, dust stained face and he felt as if all feeling and hope had been drained from him.
He understood fully then how little they meant to these Indians. Their lives were like dust to the warriors and he grasped the fact that if they were to survive they must adapt accordingly. He knew his father and doubtless the rest of the parents would not rest once their capture was discovered. There was hope in that and Nathan was sure that his father with all his military connections would see to it that help would be forthcoming. All they had to do was hang on until that day arrived.
Chapter Four
Orderlies had pushed two long mess tables together in the hall and a number of neatly attired men and women sat silent along each side.
Britt and Kilchii entered and as Britt brushed off the trail dust with his hat he surreptitiously studied the gathering.
The colonel sat at the far end at the head of the two tables alongside a general in full military dress and at each side in neat rows sat rather tense looking couples. They were expensively dressed and all the women held themselves tight lipped and erect and staring straight ahead, the men who were obviously more indifferent to appearances all turned to watch the scout’s entrance with curiosity.
‘You wanted me?’ asked Britt, his voice loud and hollow sounding in the tense silence that filled the otherwise empty hall.
‘Yes,’ said Colonel Dewilde. ‘Thank you for coming, Mister Marley. The Indian scout may leave, thank you,’ he waved a dismissive hand and without a word Kilchii faded silently from the room.
Despite being mid-morning it was a dark room, badly lit from small, widely spaced and highly placed windows. Above them was a triangular lattice of black roof-beams supporting the shadows of the peaked ceiling roof. There was the fried smell of cooked food still prevalent from the breakfast not long over and somewhere out back metal dishes were being clattered together in a washtub. The mood of sadness and concern was not enhanced by the bleak and gloomy nature of the hall and it only added to the severity of the matter waiting to be dealt with.
‘A crisis has arisen, Mister Marley. As I’m sure you will appreciate, I wouldn’t have called you back from your trip unless it was a most desperate incident.’
‘That I guessed,’ said Britt, coming forward hat in hand and standing at the end of the table.