Ride to Valor

by David Robbins

The main course included thick beef steaks as well as the potatoes, macaroni, long sauce, and bread. To drink there was coffee for him and tea for her. For dessert she had prepared one of his favorites: sweet-potato pie.

  James ate heartily. This would be his last home cooking for a while. He looked at her over the flickering candles and felt an intense welling of affection. Peg was as fine a woman as any man could ask for. That she had chosen him out of all the men in the world never failed to stir him. He smiled and forked more sweet-potato pie into his mouth.

  Peg gave a little cough. “Did you enjoy your meal?”

  “Do birds have wings?”

  “I’m glad you’re happy. I’m happy, too, but for a whole other reason. Can you guess what it is?”

  James was terrible at guessing her thoughts and moods, but he tried to please her. “Your mother is coming for a visit?”

  “No.”

  “Your sister is coming for a visit?”

  “No again.”

  “You bought a new dress.”

  “Keep trying.”

  “You bought a new hat?”

  “No.”

  “New shoes.”

  “Silly goose.”

  James drummed his fingers. “This is pointless. I’ll never guess. Why don’t you come right out and tell me?”

  Peg sipped her tea and delicately placed the china cup on the china saucer. “Very well. But I want you to take the news with an open mind. I know we talked about waiting a while, but sometimes it’s not up to us.”

  “What are you—” James stopped. “No,” he blurted.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not—”

  Peg smiled and nodded. “Yes. I am. I’m pregnant, James. We’re going to have our first baby.”

  James pushed his chair back and came around the table. She rose, and they embraced. He felt the softness of her skin and smelled the lilac in her hair and imagined the new life taking shape inside her. “How long have you known?”

  “I was only sure this very day.” Peg’s smile lit her whole face. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She gripped his shoulders. “You must promise me to take extra care of yourself from here on out. Don’t take risks unless you absolutely have to. Agreed?”

  “About that,” James said.

  “I won’t take no for an answer. Your baby and I need you, James Marion Doyle. A woman alone is at a great disadvantage in this world.”

  James was reminded of his mother, and he almost couldn’t bring himself to say, “There’s something you should know. I go out on patrol tomorrow.”

  “You’re a cavalryman. That’s what you do.” Peg looked him in the eye. “It’s no different from any other patrol, is it? The element of danger isn’t any greater because of that awful Custer business?”

  “No,” James lied. “It’s not.”

  39

  The colonel called it a “get acquainted hour.” All the married officers and their wives were on hand in Maxton’s quarters to informally welcome James and Peg to Fort Sisseton.

  Peg thought it wonderful of the colonel to be so considerate.

  James worried that the subject of the impending patrol would come up. He’d spare her the anxiety if he could.

  Colonel Maxton brought James and Peg over to a corner where a square-jawed captain and a petite woman with a wealth of curls were enjoying glasses of brandy. James had already met the captain, briefly, but now he was given cause to study the man in earnest.

  “Captain Stoneman, Mrs. Harriet Stoneman,” the colonel said. “I trust you know Lieutenant Doyle and his lovely wife, Margaret? The four of you should become fast friends, especially as the captain and the lieutenant are going out on patrol together.”

  Mrs. Stoneman clasped Peg’s hand and said, “Oh, how delightful. Yes, let’s you and me have tea together every day until our men return.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “And don’t you worry about your handsome husband,” Harriet assured her. “He’s in good hands with my Bryce.”

  “I’m not worried,” Peg said.

  “Come now,” Harriet responded. “No need to pretend around any of the ladies here. We’re army wives, young lady. All of us live with fear every day. It’s the burden we bear for falling in love with soldiers.”

  James could have kicked her.

  “I have every confidence in my man,” Peg said. “He knows I want him to come back to me.”

  Mrs. Stoneman adopted a maternal manner. “That’s well and good but it’s not very realistic. I have long been of the opinion that a wife should prepare herself for the very worst. It makes us that much happier when it doesn’t come to pass.”

  “Always keeping the worst in mind would depress me,” Peg said.

  “That’s why it behooves us to keep busy. Busy bees, we should be, the better to take our minds off the perils our men face.”

  “I think you’re upsetting her, my dear,” Captain Stoneman said.

  “Nonsense. And even if that’s so, she must learn to cope. Otherwise the long periods of being alone we must endure would be unbearable.”

  “I can endure them,” Peg said.

  “How brave of you to say so,” Harriet said. “But with the danger so much greater after that terrible massacre, we need all the support we can get. Which is why I want you to know I’m always here for you, any hour of the day or night.”

  “So much greater?” Peg said.

  “Surely your husband told you? My Bryce would never dream of keeping anything from me. Our marriage has lasted as long as it has because we are always completely open with each other. I recommend that you and your husband do the same.”

  “So much greater?” Peg said again, with a meaningful glance at James.

  “Honestly, dear. How can it not be? The northern tribes won a great victory, as they see it. It has emboldened them to go on the warpath all along the frontier.”

  “Have there been reports of hostiles in this area?” Peg inquired.

  “We’re on the frontier, aren’t we?” Harriet rejoined. “The very edge of it, in point of fact. Nowhere is the danger greater, in my estimation.”

  James was grateful when Captain Stoneman said, “That will be enough. You’re scaring the poor girl needlessly. I haven’t lost a patrol yet and I don’t intend to start.”

  “There’s always a first time,” Harriet, incredibly, said.

  The rest of the evening was small talk about matters of little consequence. James hoped that his wife had forgotten about Harriet’s remarks, but as they strolled under the stars back to their quarters she abruptly stopped.

  “Don’t ever lie to me again.”

  “I didn’t—”

  Peg held up a hand. “I’m not a child and I won’t be treated as such. I asked you if you were in more danger than usual and you told me you weren’t. You lied, James. Why? Give me one good reason.”

  “I love you,” James said. “Is that reason enough?”

  Peg looked away. When she spoke next her voice was husky with emotion. “You wanted to spare my feelings. I appreciate that. But in the future I want the truth and nothing but the truth.”

  “If that’s what you really want.”

  “Would I say so if I didn’t?” Peg hooked her arm in his and leaned her cheek on his shoulder. “The life of an army wife is hard enough. Harriet was right about the absences. They tear at the heartstrings. More so if you play false with me. I deserve better.”

  James embraced her and kissed her brow. “You are everything to me. I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. From now on it will be the truth and only the truth.”

  “So let me hear again from your own lips how dangerous this patrol will be.”

  “It will be dangerous as can be,” James said.

  40

  Captain Stoneman was at the head of the column, James at his side.

  Families and friends turned out to see them off. Peg and Harriet were together. Peg smiled bravely and waved, her other hand on her belly.
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  The troopers were the usual mix. Most were young and half were immigrants: German, Italian, Irish and one Swiss. Several had been farmers, one a blacksmith, another a cook, yet another a teacher. None had held a firearm before they enlisted. Most were middling riders.

  Under James was Sergeant Strake, a third-generation American. His grandfather had come from England to visit the former Colonies and liked them so much he stayed. Strake despised slavery so intensely that when the war broke out, he enlisted. He was at Gettysburg. When the war ended he elected to stay in the army. He was the most competent soldier at Fort Sisseton and James considered it fortunate to have him with their patrol.

  The first several days were routine. They saw no trace of Indians, hostile or otherwise. On the fifth day they spied a herd of buffalo, which caused some excitement.

  That night around the campfire, Private Plover from New York remarked that he wished the herd had been larger. “I read about some that were a million strong. Wouldn’t that be a sight?”

  “I reckon only a Yankee would think so,” replied Private Howell. He was from Tennessee and one of several at the fort who had served in the Confederate army. “Killin’ those critters is the smartest thing we could do.”

  Plover tilted his head like a bird that had seen a snake. “How can you say such a thing? Buffalo are magnificent.”

  “Magnificent?” Private Howell said, and snorted. “That’s what too much book learnin’ will do. Buffalo are nothin’ but hairy cows with bigger horns.”

  Some of the men laughed.

  “It’s a shame, I say,” Private Plover insisted. “We’re killing them off just like we’re doing to the passenger pigeon and before that the beaver.”

  “That’s the whole point, Yank,” Private Howell said.

  “I must have missed it.”

  “We want the buffs killed off. In case you ain’t heard, Injuns depend on the buffalo like we do cows. The meat is their food. The hides are their robes and their shirts and their lodges and their parfleches. Hell, they even use the bones for awls and hoes and such.” He nodded sagely to his fellow troopers. “We wipe out those hairy cows, we wipe out the redskins.” To Plover he said, “Why do you think we’ve been killin’ ’em off wholesale?”

  James was a few feet away, listening and drinking coffee, and Private Plover spotted him.

  “Is that true, sir?”

  “General Sheridan and General Sherman think so,” James said.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Private Plover said.

  Private Howell snorted. “There ain’t no right and wrong in war. I learned that back in ’sixty-five. Only winnin’ counts.”

  Their route brought them to rolling hills. They were traveling north when, late on a cloudy morning, wisps of smoke betrayed a campfire.

  Captain Stoneman sent Sergeant Strake and two troopers to investigate and they were back in half an hour. “What did you find?” he demanded as they came to a stop.

  “They used to be hide hunters, sir,” Sergeant Strake said.

  “Used to be?”

  “You’ll have to see for yourself, sir.”

  James had an inkling of what they would find, but it still didn’t prepare him.

  First they came on two wagons of the sort hide hunters used. Both were empty. But from the bloodstains and the hairs, they had recently been laden with hides. Their teams were missing. Not so their owners. Four white blobs marked where they had met their horrid ends. Their corpses had bloated and swarmed with flies and not a few maggots. All four had been savaged. Tomahawks and knives had rent their torsos and opened their thighs from hip to knee. Their bellies had been slit from sternum to navel. Each corpse had an arrow jutting obscenely from its crotch. All had been scalped.

  “God in heaven,” one of the younger troopers bleated, and was sick.

  James picked a burial detail and oversaw the digging. Plover and Howell were part of it and he happened to be near when they went at it again.

  “I’ll have nightmares about this for the rest of my life,” Private Plover said as he gathered what few rocks there were to cover the shallow graves.

  “What do you think of your precious redskins now, Yank?” Private Howell asked.

  “I never said they were precious,” Plover said. “All I said was that killing off the buffalo is a shame.” He gestured at one of the grisly testaments to man’s viciousness. “The Indians do terrible things, I grant you. But so do we.”

  “I agree that we do ’em,” Howell said, “but I don’t agree they’re terrible.”

  “How can you not?”

  “Killin’ comes natural. Ain’t you ever heard about Cain and Abel?”

  “Whatever the excuse, you don’t call that terrible?”

  “No,” Private Howell said. “I call that normal.”

  As he had done before, Private Plover appealed to James.

  “How about you, Lieutenant Doyle? Do you think it’s normal for men to murder each other?”

  James remembered one of his instructors at West Point saying that if it wasn’t for the human urge to kill, there wouldn’t be any need for the military and West Point wouldn’t exist. “Normal or not, it happens a lot,” he said noncommittally.

  “That it does, sir,” Private Howell declared. “And there’s one thing you can be sure of.”

  “What’s that?” Private Plover asked.

  “There’s goin’ to be a whole heap more of it before these Injun wars are done.”

  41

  More days went by. They were deep in the interior, in country few whites had ever set foot in, and of those who did, few made it out again. In country where the red man had lived for untold ages and resented being told by the white man that he couldn’t live there anymore. In country where a father-to-be was rightfully anxious about living long enough to be a father.

  James tried to keep that thought out of his head, but he wasn’t entirely successful. It ate at him although not to where it affected his duties. He was, as Sergeant Heston would say, a good soldier, and he wouldn’t let anything interfere with that. He liked being a good soldier.

  It surprised him a little although he supposed it shouldn’t. After all, he had gone from being a Blue Shirt to a bluecoat, and was it that much of a difference? The gang had worn their own sort of uniform and protected their territory in Five Points from all others. The cavalry had its uniform and protected the territory of the United States from any and all enemies. The gang was about loyalty to one another and to the gang as a whole. A cavalryman was all about loyalty to the men who were serving with him and to the army as a whole. But most of all the Blue Shirts had been a band of brothers, and what was the cavalry if not the same?

  On a bright and sunny morning, they came on a nameless small stream and followed its winding course. It brought them to a rise overlooking a wooded lowland and as they sat letting their horses rest, the sound of an axe biting into wood came sharp to their ears on the clear morning air.

  “Surely not,” Captain Stoneman said, more to himself than to James. “Take four men and go see. And be careful. We’ve been seeing a lot of sign.”

  That they had. Mostly in the form of tracks made by unshod horses.

  James picked Plover and Howell and two others and advanced along to a break that hid them as they descended and moved into the timber. The woods were thick and dark with shadow. Usually small game was everywhere, but James saw none, a clue that someone had been doing a lot of hunting.

  The ring of the axe grew louder.

  “Keep your carbines at the ready, men,” James advised. He drew his Colt. They made little noise and presently reached a bend in the stream. The trees stopped short of it. Half a dozen horses were hobbled on the bank. Three men were in the water up to their knees, one using a pan and the other two working a small sluice. A fourth man had felled a sapling and was chopping it for firewood.

  “They’re white, sir,” Private Plover whispered, as if James couldn’t see that for himself.
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br />   “Doesn’t mean they’ll be friendly,” James responded. “When I give a nod, cover them. Don’t shoot unless I say to but be ready.”

  “Shoot a white man, Lieutenant?” Private Plover said.

  Private Howell grinned. “You can count on me, sir. I’ll shoot anybody.”

  James gigged his mount out of the woods, and nodded. The axe wielder was the first to see them and froze with the axe in midair. James rode up to him. “Lieutenant James Doyle, United States Army,” he said by way of introduction. “Who are you men and what are you doing here?”

  The man was scrawny and scruffy and wore homespun faded by long use. His belt was a piece of rope and one of his shoes had a hole in it. “Howdy,” he said.

  “You can lower the axe,” James said.

  The man looked at it as if he’d forgotten he was holding it, and did so. “What are you soldier boys doing so far from anywhere?”

  “I’ll ask the questions, and I already asked one,” James said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” The man nervously shuffled his feet. “I’m Thaddeus Melleck. Those there are my friends. We’re prospecting.”

  “In the middle of Sioux country?”

  “We ain’t scared of no redskins,” Melleck said. “We got us repeaters and we’re damn good shots.”

  “Call them over,” James said.

  Melleck turned and hollered and the three men stopped working and looked up. They were as taken aback as he had been. As they climbed over the bank, they picked up their rifles, all Winchesters. The biggest of them had shoulders like a bull and no neck to speak of and beady eyes that glittered with annoyance.

  “What’s this about?” he demanded. “Why are your men pointing their carbines at us?”

  “Name,” James said.

  “Eh? Clinton Burr, as if it’s any of your business.”

  “Are you aware, Mr. Burr, of the recent Indian uprising and the death of General Custer?”

  “What’s he got to do with us?” Burr said. “As for the savages, we got as much right to be here as they do.”

  “Technically, yes—” James began.