by Sarah Bird
“I guess not all white officers are chickenshit colorphobes,” I said. “Appears we just got stuck with a bad apple.”
“‘Apple’?” Horse whooped. “Drewbott’s a whole barrel of stinking turds is what he is. You need to put in for a transfer to our unit.”
“To scout?” Wager asked.
“Sure. Why not? I’ll get Bullis to request you. Don’t appear Colonel Turd’ll object.”
“And the private?” Wager asked, nodding toward me.
“Oh, sure, the ‘private,’” Horse echoed, winking at the other scouts. “The ‘private,’ sure, I’ll put in for ‘him,’ too.”
“We’d like that,” Wager said.
“And Lem, too?” I asked.
John Horse agreed. The other scouts laughed, apparently delighted that the three of us were, in our various ways, pulling one over on the army. Taking this jolliness as a sign that the Seminole accepted his brand of love, Lem grinned.
This plan, this answer to our prayer, made me half-witted with happiness. As for Wager, the corners of his mouth turned up, which was like him doing handsprings and jumping for joy. I saw us together, settled in beside Blackberry Creek, finishing out our hitches with friends on either side. I wanted badly to take his hand and squeeze it. But though at this campfire we were among friends, I never forgot that enemies were always watching.
At the center of camp, in front of a fire bigger than it needed to be, was Drewbott. Hearing our laughter and being thin-skinned as a dewberry, he believed we were having sport at his expense. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared in agitation as he studied us. Off in the distance a coyote howled and, startled by the sound, Drewbott jerked up so fast the cup of coffee he held splashed down the leg of his pants. He shook his head and glared our way as though, on top of all the other miseries of his life, this, too, was our fault. Was Wager’s fault. His sour expression reminded me so much of Old Mister that a cold bolt of fear lodged beneath my breastbone. I pledged that that shoulder-strapped carbuncle would die before he ever raised a hand to Wager. And that I would do the deadening.
Chapter 76
Nothing of much account happened during our first few days in the field except that we drank the water wagon dry. Drewbott sent word down that water would not be a concern as he possessed a map of the savages’ water sources. He meant the map that had been drawn up from the locations Wager and I had scouted a year ago. We camped that night beside the first water we’d found, and mapped on that last trip. It had been a creek back then but was now barely a trickle.
On the morning of the fifth day, John Horse and his men left out before dawn, headed to the Klatt Ranch on Sulfur Draw, seventy miles away, where the last reported renegade attack had taken place. The scouts would cut for sign and pick up the trail from there. Drewbott and Carter studied the water map and sent down word that we were making for Playa del Oro, thirty miles south. We splashed the slurry of coffee and grounds left at the bottom of our cups into the embers of our breakfast fires and Wager passed among his men reminding them, “Fill up your canteens. All of you. No man leaves without a full canteen.”
Before they could obey, Drewbott, with Carter and Grundy flanking him and Vikers and his boys bringing up the rear, marched over. The bolt of fear lodged in my chest twisted tighter. Drewbott stopped a ways from our campsite and bellowed, “Allbright!”
With a quick glance at me, Wager strode over, snapped off a salute, and waited at attention.
“First Sergeant Allbright!” Drewbott rumbled out, loud enough for everyone to hear. The men halted what they were doing. Saddles were held out frozen in front of them, one man’s carbine hung open, waiting to be loaded, a mule danced about at the end of a rein waiting to be harnessed, and the men going to fill canteens halted.
When everyone’s attention was on him, Drewbott announced, “First Sergeant Allbright, you are hereby relieved of your command and demoted to corporal. I am brevetting Corporal Vikers to the rank of first sergeant. He will assume your duties, effective immediately.”
“What are the charges?” Wager asked, not a speck of the shock that had gripped me and the rest of the detachment showing on his face or in his voice.
Vikers stepped forward with Wager’s sextant and spyglass and Drewbott announced, “These were found in your saddlebag.”
“Of course they were,” Wager answered calmly. “They’re always in my saddlebag. How else am I supposed to map and navigate?”
“That’s about enough of your smart lip, boy,” Drewbott snapped. “You’re not on this expedition to do either one. We have a white officer, Grundy, to do that. So, since you clearly knew that there would be no mapping, why would you bring these instruments along?”
Wager said nothing.
“Admit it,” Drewbott thundered with such force and suddenness that the officers beside him widened their eyes. That was when I saw that Drewbott had the red-eyed gauntness of a man who wasn’t sleeping right. “You are searching for your confederates out there!” He held a trembling finger out toward the vast emptiness.
For the first time, I saw worry wrinkle Wager’s face.
“First Sergeant Vikers,” Drewbott ordered. “The command is yours.”
Vikers, chest puffed out, stepped up and ordered, “Boots and saddles, men! Boots and saddles! Get a move on! Colonel expects us to make forty miles today! He wants to be splashing about in Playa del Oro by nightfall! Are we going to do it for the colonel?” he yelled out.
We all recognized Vikers’s toadying up to the master for the sign of the bad overseer that it was, and Greene and Caldwell were the only ones to hurrah him back. So Vikers, staring threats, asked again. This time everyone except me, Wager, and Lem yelled agreement.
As we rode off, Wager betrayed no more emotion than a statue carved from marble. Only I saw how his jaw bunched from the rage he was swallowing down. He separated himself from us and I knew to let him be.
The sun rose and, as the dry miles got dryer and hotter, it came out that many of the men, rushed by Vikers to saddle up, had not filled their canteens at the creek we’d camped next to. Worse, Vikers was not enforcing water discipline. He hadn’t made the men nurse along what water they did have, the way Wager would of. By noon, a fair number of the men, mostly the new recruits, had already drained what little water they had. They didn’t worry overly much, though, for we were making for a marked water hole, the large shallow lake called Playa del Oro that we had mapped spring before last.
I told Lem about how Wager and I had seen more different kinds of animals gathered at Playa del Oro than Noah had on his Ark. Skittish pronghorn, snorty wild horses, braying burros, a flock of spindly-legged cranes, skunk, lizards, javelina. I told him how flocks of white wing dove rose and settled upon the broad, shallow lake thick as leaves whirled by an autumn wind. We’d even seen the prints of puma, wolves, and the long-nailed track of a bear pressed into the mud around the banks of the shallow lake.
In anticipation of this vast watering hole, Lem made free with his water, gulping down what he had.
“Wait,” I told him. “Best if you ration what you got. Save some for tomorrow.”
“Why?” he asked. “Tomorrow we be splashing with the cranes.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Look.” I pointed to the sky.
“What? Nothing up there. Not even a cloud to give us a bit of shade.”
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about. Last time we were here, sky was full of white wing dove flocking this way. And, have you seen a single pronghorn? They’ve left, Lem. That’s a bad sign. I’m telling you, slow down.”
Lem stoppered his canteen and we rode on.
Playa del Oro sat atop a high mesa. The climb was steep and the footing unsteady. The sound of men panting and the clatter of horse hooves unloosing torrents of loose rock filled the hot, dry air. Full dark was coming on by the time we approached the mesa. The parched men pushed hard to reach the top where the broad water hole waited.
The first ones to reach t
he peak stopped dead. We gathered up next to them and gazed out on a vast dry depression scaled with curls of crisp gray dirt.
Drewbott made a great show of unfurling Wager’s map and calling out, “Either Allbright got these coordinates wrong or this ‘playa’ he reported never existed in the first place.”
I watched the muscles of Wager’s jaw work, grinding so hard I could hear the sound, but he did not utter a word. Not at that and not when Drewbott sent out a couple of his officers to scout the area, ordering them, “Find the water that Corporal Allbright says is supposed to be here.” I wanted to scream at Drewbott that only an idiot would expect water to always be where it had been in a desert.
Without a word, Wager pulled an entrenching spade off of one of the supply mules and walked out across the Playa. I followed. The disks of sun-baked dirt crunched beneath our boots. Near the center of the shallow basin, we commenced to dig. Wager with the spade. Me with my saber. When we got down far enough, water seeped slowly into the hole. Sad that I had to dirty it, I flattened the kerchief Wager had given me down into the puddle to filter out the mud, sank my cup into it, then held it up and called out, “Who’s thirsty?”
Soon all of the recruits and most of the men were digging. Drewbott and his officers, along with Vikers and his bunch, stood away and pretended to be amused at us “wallowing like pigs in the muck.” When all the men were done, we led the horses out to drink at the seeps.
That night, Lem, Wager, and I made camp as far from the others as we could go without officially deserting. Stars spangled the sky from one edge of the mesa to the other. Even when the three of us were alone, Wager didn’t speak, just studied the sky like he’d find an answer to this ultimate betrayal of all he had once believed in up there. When I heard Lem snoring, I moved my bedroll next to Wager. He took no notice of me. He was too occupied in parsing out how his grand ideas and noble thoughts had let him down. He was finding his way to knowing what I knew: the time for noble thoughts had passed. We were captives and we had to escape.
The moon went down and the stars settled around us, so close and radiant it seemed like I could flap my arms, swim up through them, and lead Wager and Lem to freedom.
Chapter 77
The next morning, we noticed dried mud on the knees of the trousers of Vikers and all the white officers except for Drewbott. No doubt, in the dark of the night, the colonel had ordered someone else to scoop up his water from a hole dug by one of us. I hoped there was horse shit in it.
Though the seep water slaked our thirst, it griped our bellies. When the recruits complained about their guts cramping up, Wager told them, “That’s only the gypsum in the water. Just be thankful it wasn’t alkali water. Gyppy water’ll run you a little ragged at first, but you’ll get used to it. Alkali, though, alkali will kill a man long before he ever gets used to it.”
Wager reminded his men to fill their canteens from the seeps and then we mounted up and rode on to Sulfur Draw where we were to meet up with John Horse.
We smelled what was left of the Klatt Ranch before we saw it. That odor of smoke and ash and burned flesh reminded me of the Shenandoah Valley after Sheridan had finished with it. Difference was that back then the burned flesh had all been animal. We found Mr. Klatt’s blackened remains spread-eagled on a wagon wheel resting atop the ashes of the fire he’d died upon. His wife, naked, rested a ways off. Her back was spiked with a dozen arrows from the renegades she’d died running from. We buried the wife. Klatt, though, had fused onto the charred spokes and we had to chop the cinders of what was left of him off the wheel before we could bury his remains.
While we were filling in the grave, an officer approached quaking with rage and holding up a corn husk doll. “Look what I found over there!” he yelled, pointing south. “They took her! Those red-skinned animals took a white girl child!”
The other officers and then most of the company, black and white, fell to wrathful proclamations, cursing the heathen and vowing revenge for this defilement. Like the times back in the barracks when the men would whip themselves into the most heated frenzies as they told old tales of white girls being kidnapped and white women violated, my reaction was so cold that I worried I might have a heart as evil and unfeeling as those savages.
Just like back in the barracks, all I could think was, What about Clemmie? What about Iyaiya? And I sure didn’t see any answers in the faces twisted with rage for a corn husk doll.
The last wisps of smoke swirling over a burned sorghum field caught my eye. On second glance the wisps formed up into John Horse and his men riding forward out of the woods.
John Horse led us to a trail so broad and obvious that Drewbott brayed out, loud enough for every man in the unit to hear, “I don’t know what the army is paying those black savages for. A blind man could follow this trail. Even without the…” Here he paused, then continued, his voice throbbing with outrage. “Without the fallen plaything of an innocent girl child to guide us.”
The trail was, indeed, impossible to miss. White hoof strikes marked gray rocks, brush was trampled by what had to be close to fifty riders, long mane hairs fluttered from the thorns they’d snagged on. Drewbott was right. It was easy following the renegades’ trail as they rode south, making for refuge in Mexico. Following Wager’s map, Drewbott had us veer off the trail toward a spring we’d marked. It wasn’t running and, once again, Drewbott blamed Wager. We retook the trail and pushed hard to make the next marked source before dark.
Lips cracked in the heat. Shirts and kerchiefs hung limp. Near mid-afternoon, a recruit who’d finished all his water the day before wobbled, then toppled off his saddle. Within an hour, three more greenhorns had fallen out. Drewbott ordered the strongest to stay behind and help the weakest. That was a mistake. Our column soon stretched out near two miles.
We entered the canyon Wager and I had mapped. Again, I rode between orange cliffs that had reminded me of buttercream icing slumping off a cake on a hot day. All the seeps we’d found the first time were dry and the sound of Drewbott cursing Wager and promising to have him court-martialed echoed off the red sandstone walls until we emerged and rode south on into the desert. Wager caught my eye and shot me a look that asked why Drewbott wasn’t heading for the arroyo we had mapped. I shrugged, pretending not to know the answer.
Around four that afternoon, the column halted. A clump of men, mostly officers, along with Vikers and his cronies, were clustered around John Horse, who squatted in the dust holding an ocotillo blade long as a coach whip. To keep from disturbing the trail, Horse pointed the long branch to what appeared to be just more rocky, sandy earth punctuated here and there with clumps of prickly pear or scrub oak.
Wager glanced at me for John Horse was pointing toward the spring we had mapped, saying it was thirty miles or so to the west, hidden away in a deep arroyo.
Drewbott, hands on hips, demanded, “Why are you trying to tell me that the renegades rode west when it is as clear as if a herd of elephant passed by that they’re heading south? All the spoor and all the reports say that they’ve got their hideout across the river in Mexico. Why would they detour off?”
John Horse stood. He towered over Drewbott and let that fact speak for a few moments before he answered, “Water.” He left off the “Sir.” And the salute.
“Just how stupid do you think I am?” Drewbott hissed. “Who left this?” He went about pointing at broken twigs, snagged horse hair, and asking at each sign, “And this? And this? And all of this?” The last, piles of manure so fresh it was still formed up into nice, round apples without a bit of crumbling, was his prize exhibit. “Why, their trail is so obvious a child could follow it.”
John Horse slid his eyes to the side, away from the colonel and said nothing.
“Corporal, answer my question or I will bring you up on insubordination charges so fast, it will make your head spin and your turban unfurl.”
The officers chuckled quietly at Drewbott’s little joke, but Vikers nearly herniated himself laughin
g.
Finally, John Horse intoned, “Yes, I see. A trail has been left that even a child could follow. A stubborn, blind, stupid, spoiled child.”
Drewbott went red as a stewed tomato at this disrespect. Then, trembling with rage, he unfurled the water hole map that had been drawn up based on Wager’s readings and the figures I’d written down for him. Drewbott held it up in the chief’s face and, stabbing at it, hollered, “There are no water sources within three days’ ride west of here!”
Wager looked at me, questioning, and I nodded: yes. It was true. I had written down the numbers he’d told me that would reveal the location of the spring where the band of starving women and children had gathered. But I had written them down backward.
Wager spoke. “Sir.”
“Yes, what do you have to add, Corporal?” Drewbott said to Wager in a sneery tone. “Do you agree with this black Indian scout that there is a water source to the west?”
“Yes,” Wager answered. “John Horse is correct. There is a water hole west of here.”
“There is?” Drewbott asked in his snide way. “And yet you did not see fit to mark its location?”
“Sir,” I said, “I was the one didn’t mark down the coordinates of the spring that Sergeant Allbright read out to me.”
“‘Coordinates,’” he repeated, in a mocking voice that said I didn’t know what that was and couldn’t of written them down if I had. “So this ‘spring’ even has coordinates. Care to tell us what they might be?”
“I don’t recollect the exact figures,” I answered.
“That’s awfully handy, isn’t it?” Drewbott asked.
“The private’s failure is my responsibility,” Wager said.
“I know that,” Drewbott snapped. “So, Corporal, you’re saying that, though you did not see fit to mark it, there is water west of here, and we should now follow these black Indians to it?”