by Will Cook
“How can I help it?” she said quietly. “We’re civilized, Jim, because we have the courage to fly in the face of Providence. Can you forget how it was when you brought me back?” She looked at Jane. “You remember. It took courage for you to stand up to them, Jim. It was an unpopular thing for you to do. But you did it, and you were a big man because of it. I don’t want to be married to a little man, Jim.”
“Janice, give this some time. Will you do that?” He reached out and patted her hand, then got up to answer a knock at his front door.
Lieutenant Flanders was there. “Sorry to interrupt your evening, sir, but General Caswell is on the post. He is waiting in your office.”
“For God’s sake!” Gary said, and went back to excuse himself. He went along the walk to his office where Caswell was slumped in a chair, his uniform soiled with dust. He had helped himself to a whisky and one of Gary’s cigars.
“I had no idea you were coming, General,” Gary said.
“Frankly I had no idea myself,” Caswell said. “You might say that I got lonesome, and a train ride looked good to me.” He straightened in his chair and poured another drink. “I trust Beeman wired you that the trial has commenced.” Gary nodded, and Caswell smiled. “Damn it, I like that boy. Oh, they squeezed him, Maybank and Butler. They put the screws on him and bore down, and he told them to kiss his ass. By God, there’s a soldier, and, if they lean on him, I’ll make him my aide-de-camp and promote him to captain.”
“General, you don’t know how proud this makes me to hear you say that about Mister Beeman.” He went behind his desk and turned up the lamp a little. “Will he get convictions?”
“I don’t see how he can miss,” Caswell said. “Milo Lovering will testify to protect himself. The cowboys will probably get a suspended sentence, but I think Bert Danniel will go to jail. That really doesn’t matter. The newspaper people are there, and they’ve already started to carve the pieces.” He took several folded papers from his hip pocket and tossed them on Gary’s desk. “Cries of outrage and fraud.” He laughed without humor. “What does Senator Ivers think of it?”
“I’ve disappointed the senator.”
“Hmm,” Caswell said, arching his brows. “A blessing to one man is a curse to another. As chairman of the Indian Affairs committee, the senator’s position is rather sensitive. Here you were, doing just dandy, recovering those poor lost people. Then you found a little something wrong at the agency, stepped in there, and POW! He smacked his hands together. “The senator, I’m sure, is disappointed. Knowing you, Jim, I’m sure you did not co-operate in a manner he thought best.”
“No, sir, I did not.”
Steps came across the porch, and Jason Ivers walked in without knocking. He nodded to Jim Gary, then said: “General, I overheard two soldiers talking. That’s how I knew you were here.” His glance went again to Gary. “If I’m intruding, forgive me, but under the circumstances….”
“Pull up a chair, Jason,” Gary suggested. “Care for a drink?” He took a clean glass from his desk drawer and poured for Ivers. “I was just telling the general how I’d disappointed you.”
“Oh, Jim, I wish we wouldn’t butt heads over this. I know you feel that there’s a principle involved here, and I understand your reluctance to go against it, but this work you’re doing here is more important than pressing this agency issue.”
“What the senator is trying to say,” Caswell said, “is that, if you carry on with this, he’s going to withdraw his support and cut you off without a dime.”
Ivers colored. “Damn it, General, that’s pretty blunt.”
“I call it honest. But he’s right, Jim.”
“Did you come here to smooth this over, General?” Gary asked.
“Yes. I think I can do it. Jim, I want Lovering to withdraw his testimony. If he does, the case will be thrown out. But…” —he looked directly at Ivers—“Lovering is to be transferred back to Washington, and Danniel is to be kicked out of the Indian Service. I want honest men to replace them. Agreed, Senator?”
“I would find that agreeable,” Ivers admitted. “Jim?”
“There will be no prejudice against Beeman?”
“None,” Caswell said. “As a matter of fact, I’ll personally write him up for promotion. Jim, he’ll have done his job, won’t he? He’s cleaned up the mess, hasn’t he? Does it really matter how it’s been done?”
Gary thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. All right, gentlemen. We agree. Lovering and Danniel are out.” He raised his finger and pointed it at Ivers. “Honest men, sir. That has to be clear.”
“God, Jim, I want honest men, but sometimes I have to take what I can get.” He laughed uncomfortably and took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. “You drive a mighty tough bargain.”
“If I didn’t, Senator, you wouldn’t be married now to your wife.”
“A point I’m not likely to overlook,” Ivers said. “Jim, it might be to everyone’s advantage if Mister Beeman and his detail remained at the reservation, in charge, until appropriate people can be sent out. May I use your telegraph facilities?”
“Of course, Senator.”
Jason Ivers hurried out, eager to get that telegram off to Clive Maybank. After the door closed, General Caswell said: “Didn’t hurt too much, did it, Jim?”
“No, sir, but it was a bargain I could never have made. He would have felt that I was pinching him.”
“That’s why I came down. We’ve got to get along, Jim. This isn’t a lesson for you, but it’s something you should remember.” He sighed and got up, stretching to unknot the kinks in his back. “Well, I’m going to turn in. McCabe and I are going fishing in the morning.”
“I suppose he claims he knows where they’re biting.”
Caswell smiled. “McCabe knows everything. Don’t you know that?”
“He knows where there’s a couple of Indian kids, too, but he’s been keeping his mouth shut about it,” Gary said. “I know definitely that there’s a family down in Uvalde County who raised an Arapaho girl. I’ve written McCabe to send a man down there for her, but he keeps ignoring my letters. You know, General, returning an Indian child is our job, too.”
“Maybe the subject will come up.”
“Be your usual persuasive self, sir.”
Caswell said: “What the hell does that mean, Major Gary?”
“Oh, nothing, sir. It’s just that you have charm and poise, sir… the ability to meet people on their own terms. I noticed that right off, sir.”
“Are you comparing me to a snake oil salesman, Jim?” Then he laughed heartily. “Listen, I was stealing horses when McCabe was messing his didies.” He winked, and went on out.
Gary waited a moment, then blew out the lamps, and followed. The guard was marching his measured post, and, as he passed in front, Gary said: “Good night, Reilly.”
The guard was surprised, but he said: “Good night, sir. All’s quiet, sir.”
“Yes, and we want to keep it that way.” He walked on, past a row of dark quarters. There was a lamp on in Lieutenant Flanders’s parlor, but Beeman’s quarters were dark, and Gary was surprised to find Julia Beeman standing by her door.
He stopped, and she came to the walk. “Major, forgive me, but I have to ask. I’ve heard rumors and talk a n d. . . . Is Carl all right? Is he in trouble?”
Gary felt suddenly ashamed for, from her tone, he knew how much she had worried, and he had forgotten her, forgotten what it was for an Army wife to wait and wonder. “Missus Beeman, I want you to know that I am proud of Carl. General Caswell is very impressed. He’ll be coming home soon, and, unless I’m sadly mistaken, he’ll be advanced over others on the promotion list. General Caswell is that delighted with his work.”
“You’re not just saying … no, I can see that you’re not. Thank you. It’s what Carl always wanted, to have someone proud of him.” Then she suddenly reached up and kissed his cheek and dashed for her door.
He w
aited until she went in. Then he walked on, whistling softly.
Chapter Six
Senator Ivers wanted to make a tour of the reservation. Although Jim Gary didn’t want to interrupt his schedule, he knew that this was an opportunity to mend fences with Ivers and, at the same time, give Captain Dan Conrad a tour of the reservation.
Gary wanted to bring Lieutenant Beeman back, and he wanted Conrad to take active command of a company in the field. So he gave Conrad his orders, and the company, with equipment and horses, boarded the next northbound train at Morgan Tanks.
There was some delay at Morgan Tanks because of a trestle washout to the south. Gary, Conrad, and the senator put up at the small inn. It had once served as a stage stop, but, with the coming of the railroad, it had been enlarged. There were three wings now, sprawling log and adobe with a plank floor, and a lively saloon occupied one corner. There was a small store across the way where travelers stopped to replenish supplies. A blacksmith had a place farther down. The railroad tracks ran through this nubbin of a town.
One long table and benches served for the dining room, and the meal was whatever Panhandle Wiggins chose to cook. That was generally stew, a culinary medium for disguising leftovers. The two officers and the senator ate one meal there and thereafter walked out to where the company was camped and took Army fare.
All during the first day of their stay Jim Gary noticed a man who seemed abnormally curious. Wherever Gary went, he could feel the man’s eyes on him, and, when he had had enough of it, he went over to him.
“What is it with you, friend? You’ve been watching me ever since I got here.”
“No offense intended, Major,” the man said, hitching up his overalls and quickly whipping off his hat. “Been wondering how to talk to you.” He pawed the floor with one foot. “My name’s George Schneider, from New Mexico way, and….”
“In the name of God, man, I thought you’d been hung! Or were in jail, at the least. Anna Carpenter . . . or Frieda Schneider… was asking about you. I sent a wire and….” He took Schneider by the arm. “How long have you been here?”
“Four days now.”
“Then may I suggest that you ride to the post with the mail orderly when he arrives? Man, you’ve left that girl in the air. You’ve got to straighten that out, understand? You just can’t raise a girl like that and then get yourself in trouble and…. How come they let you out of jail?”
“Llano Vale didn’t die,” Schneider said. “And Vale swears he tried to pull his gun on me first. That ain’t so, and I tried to tell ’em that, but they just laughed at me.” He raised his hand as though to touch Gary but thought better of it. “She’s all right, ain’t she? My little…. What’d you say her name was? Anna . . . Anna Carpenter. She’s with her brother now?”
Gary nodded.
“Then I’ve lost her,” Schneider said dismally.
“Oh, for God’s sake, man, buck up!” Gary said roughly. “Now you get to the post, understand? You do it, or I’ll have a squad and the sheriff after you.”
It was nonsense. Gary wouldn’t have wasted the time, but he suspected that George Schneider responded well to authority and a little threat.
Schneider stiffened a little and nodded his head. “I’ll do that, sir. Yes, sir, I surely will.”
Gary’s manner softened. “She’ll be glad to see you, Schneider. You can’t wash away those years, man. You’ll see.”
“I’ve been afraid,” Schneider said. “Most of my life, I guess.”
He turned away, and Gary went back to where Ivers and Captain Conrad waited. The captain wouldn’t ask any questions, but Ivers had nothing against it. “What was his complaint?”
“He wanted to know the way to the post.”
Ivers frowned. “Anyone here could have told him that.”
Dan Conrad’s blunt face showed nothing, but he was embarrassed, and it showed in his eyes. He said: “I don’t think, Senator, that he asked anyone here.”
Jason Ivers looked at him quickly, on the verge of taking this further, but Conrad was half turned away, busy making a one-handed cigarette, clearly out of it.
Their train arrived in the early evening, and they boarded it. Conrad left them to see that the troopers and horses got aboard, then he came back to their coach and sat across from them. The train was a combination of flatcars, boxcars, and cattle cars, with two coaches hooked ahead of the caboose. After the engine had taken a drink of water, they lurched out of the station with a rattle of couplings and swayed up the roadbed, slowly picking up speed on the long, shallow grade.
All that night and the next day they remained on the train. Jim Gary could never bring himself to like this means of travel. The idleness bothered him, and the noise, and the worn-in aroma of railway coaches bothered him, and the people he was forced into contact with on trains bothered him. He hoped that he was not a stuffed shirt. He liked to think that he was not, but his rather solitary life had instilled in him a distrust of people he did not know, and he disliked being pressed together with them. He would be glad when they got there.
The train pulled into Fort Reno six hours late, which put the time at about one in the morning. There was not much stirring at this hour. Conrad went forward to supervise the unloading of the horses. Gary and Jason Ivers walked around the cinder platform, trying to stomp some use into their stiff legs.
Conrad came back and said: “Major, the men have dozed and catnapped. With your permission we could push on and reach the reservation headquarters by eight o’clock.”
Ivers seemed shocked. “Hell, Jim, I’ve been thinking of a bath and a bed at the hotel.”
“There are excellent accommodations at the reservation, Jason.” He nodded to Dan Conrad. “Form the company, Captain. Have our horses saddled.” Conrad went away to attend to this, and Gary busied himself with lighting a cigar.
Ivers was put out. “This isn’t a campaign, you know. What the hell’s the hurry?”
He got no answer, and he understood that Gary wasn’t going to debate it with him. He jammed his hands deeply in his coat pockets and walked a little way down the platform to be alone.
There was a deep chill in the air, and they could see their breath clearly. The horses were full of pep and were giving the troopers a time of it, just holding them still. From the town side of the tracks two men came out of the darkness and into the light of the depot, and the badges pinned to their Mackinaws immediately identified them. They carried sawed-off shotguns and came up to Conrad first, but he pointed to Jim Gary, and they walked over to him.
One was tall, one short. The short one said: “I’m Hutchins, deputy marshal. This is Will Speer, the same. You’re Major Gary?” He stripped off his glove and offered his hand. “Good to see you.” He glanced at the troopers. “Is that all you brung? Well, what the hell, two of us have been holdin’ the lid on this damned town for three days now. But I’ll tell you, Major, you’d better keep them damned Indians on the reservation where they belong. They start runnin’ wild, and they’ll get shot sure as hell.”
Some of this talk fell on Ivers farther down the platform, and he came back, the question in his eyes and in the way he looked from Gary to the marshals and back again.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about,” Gary said. “We’ve been two days and two nights out of Camp Verde, and….”
“Then you didn’t get my wire,” Hutchins said. He brushed his mustache with a finger. “Some senator wired the commissioner from Camp Verde. An hour later Milo Lovering walked out of the hotel, and somebody cut him down from that high roof over the feed store. Speer and I was farther up the street, and, by the time we got there, Lovering was dead. I guess he died instantly, ’cause he was shot through the head.” He looked curiously at Ivers. “Are you die guy who sent the wire to the commissioner?”
“Never mind that now,” Gary said sharply. “What about the man who killed him?”
“He got away,” Speer said, his manner casual.
�
��And you didn’t go after him?” Gary’s tone was biting.
“Well, hell, the commissioner was yellin’ at us, demandin’ protection, so what could we do? A U.S. commissioner gives us orders, remember?” He rubbed his face with a gloved hand. “But he was seen and described . . . a big man, long hair, carryin’ himself a little stiffly on the port side. He rode out to the south onto the reservation. That was the last we seen of him.”
“We got a name to hang on him,” Hutchins said. “Llano Vale. He was seen around town the afternoon before the shootin’. Came in on the southbound and put up at the Drover’s. The town marshal wanted to run him out of town, but with the jail full and all . . .”—he shrugged—“he just never got around to it.”
“Excuse me a moment,” Gary said, and took Jason Ivers firmly by the arm and drew him down the platform until they were out of earshot of the marshals. “Now I’m going to ask you what you said in that wire to the commissioner, Jason, and, if you even hinted that the number one witness should be shut up, I’m going to see that you never run again for public office, not even for dog-catcher.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jim, I wouldn’t….”
“I’m not interested in your denials, Jason. Just the truth.”
Ivers’s face grew stern. “Jim, I told him to persuade Lovering not to testify, to drop the case, and then leave the disposition of the principals to me. That is absolutely all, and in those words as near as I can recall.” He looked straight at Gary. “And I don’t like your insinuations at all.”
“That’s too damned bad,” Gary said, and he went back to where the two marshals waited. “Where is the commissioner?”
“At this hour? In bed. Where else?”
“He can wait,” Gary said, and turned to Conrad. “Let’s mount up and get on to reservation headquarters. We’ve got a man to hunt down.” He started to turn away, then spun back. “Speer, you tell the commissioner to be here when I come back, or I’ll come after him. Llano Vale always got paid well for his work, and I damned sure want to ask some questions about this.”