by John Jakes
She concentrated on folding her napkin. “Never the latter. But the former—I don’t know. My patience grows very thin sometimes. I refuse to deny everything I believe just to please Charles.”
“Charles is strong, like you. Right or wrong, he won’t abandon this vendetta against the Indians.”
“And I hate it. I hate it for what it is, and for what it does to him.” She paused. “I’m almost afraid to see him at Ellsworth.”
The old soldier reached out and closed his thick-knuckled hand over hers. She turned away, overcome with embarrassing tears. The squeeze of his powerful fingers said he understood her fear. His eyes said she had some cause for it.
Charles’s detachment came in the night before the performance. He found Ike Barnes with Floyd Hook, discussing details of a C Company club modeled after the International Order of Good Templars, a society to promote temperance. There were chapters at many Western posts. As the old man explained, the epidemic Army problem of drunkenness hadn’t spread into his troop, and the club would help insure that it wouldn’t. First Sergeant Star Eyes Williams would be responsible for calling the initial meeting.
Tense about seeing Willa again, yet eager too, Charles shaved and spruced up in a clean uniform with big yellow bandanna and regulation hat. Since he’d stabled Satan to rest him, he took another company horse for the five-mile ride along the north bank of the Smoky Hill to what was officially called the Addition to Ellsworth. As he rode, he whistled the music Willa had written out. His Carolina music, he called it.
Much of the original site platted by the Ellsworth Town Company had been destroyed in June when the normally placid Smoky Hill overflowed its banks and washed away flimsy cottages and stores. Scarcely had they disappeared when the town promoters bought new land, on higher ground to the northwest. They filed a new plat in Salina to create the Addition, which showed every sign of becoming the real town of Ellsworth. It already had its own depot to supplement the one at Fort Marker; the first passenger train had rolled in from the east July 1.
The town also had cattle pens and chutes, testifying to the developers’ faith that Ellsworth could become a shipping point for the trail herds pushing up Chisholm’s Trail from Texas. Ellsworth boosters derided Abilene, about sixty miles east, and its promoter, Joe McCoy, even though McCoy had received his first big herd in September.
The November evening was clear and bitter. Charles was bundled in his thigh-length double-breasted buffalo coat. Weaving through wagon and horse traffic on the Addition’s rutted main street, he saw half a dozen wagons approaching in a line. Red-stained tarpaulins mounded over the bed of each. Broad swipes of dried blood marked the wagon sides. Riding ahead of the wagons was a young man Charles recognized. The horseman next to the young man recognized Charles.
“Howdy. You’re Main. We met at the Golden Rule House.”
Charles wasn’t accustomed to hearing his right name, but he didn’t let on. “I remember. You’re Griffenstein.” He peeled off his gauntlet and leaned over to shake hands.
“This here’s my boss, Mr. Cody.”
Charles shook hands with the young man too. “Griffenstein said you wouldn’t stay in the hotel business. Are you two hunters for the railroad?” He’d recognized the blood smell pervading the air.
Cody said, “For Goddard Brothers, the railroad’s meat contractor. They pay five hundred a month, and me and my boys guarantee them all the buffalo meat they need to feed their crews. We knock ’em down fast, which makes it a profitable trade.”
Charles studied the wagons, their reeking cargoes silhouetted against twilight stars in a rosy sky shading up to deep blue. Dutch Henry Griffenstein was amused by something. “You don’t know the meanin’ of fast till you watch Buffalo Bill work. He knocks down eleven, twelve bison in the time it takes most of us to load a Winchester.”
“Mighty boring, though,” Cody said. “Wouldn’t mind scouting again. We’d better hustle, boys. It’s almost dark.”
He waved the wagons ahead and rode on. Dutch Henry grinned inside his huge chest-length beard. “You ever get tired of soldiering, Main, look us up. We can always use another good shot.”
After Dutch Henry trotted off, Charles looked at both sides of the street, to see if there was anyone who might have overheard his name.
“Our revels now are ended These our actors are melted into air, into thin air.”
With flamboyant gestures, Sam Trump boomed Prospero’s farewell to the audience. This portion had been purloined from the end of the Act IV masque. Trump was confident no one would detect the theft.
A half circle of chimneyed lamps lit the improvised stage. Blankets hung on rope served as side curtains. The theater was the dining room of the unfinished Drovertown Hotel, a room heavy with the smell of new pine lumber.
Charles had arrived too late for a seat on the benches brought in for the evening. He stood at the back, among some other bachelor officers from the fort. Seated in front of him were officers, their wives, and plainly dressed townspeople, but not a single black soldier.
Over the heads of the audience, Willa spied him only moments after he came in. She immediately fumbled one of Juliet’s lines from the balcony scene. She was playing against Tramp’s giggle-inducing Romeo. Not only was Trump paunchy and too old, but he slapped his heart with both hands at any reference pertaining to romance.
The audience, however, starved for entertainment, clearly loved the Shakespearean excerpts, and listened attentively for two hours. During that time only one tipsy teamster had to be removed.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on … and our little life is ended with a sleep.” With but a breath between, he jumped to the epilogue of The Tempest, squeezing every syllable of the text for its juice. “…or else my project fails, which was to please …” Charles fidgeted from foot to foot, while the actor fairly begged the audience for applause. “As you from crimes would pardoned be … let your indulgence set me free.”
Trump’s last line was spoken as he swooped into a low bow, anticipating his ovation. He got it. Willa, Trueblood, and the stocky character woman dashed from behind the blankets. All linked hands and bowed. Ike Barnes’s wife jumped up and yelled, “Bravo, bravo,” which prompted Trump to step forward for a solo bow. He knocked over a lamp. A soldier in the front row stamped on the leaking oil as it flamed, preventing a disaster. Trump paid no attention.
Each time Willa bowed, her eyes remained on Charles. He held his hands high so she could see him clapping. Lord, how pretty she was, and how he warmed at the sight of her. For a moment he felt peaceful; free of spite, the past—all his pain.
As the audience broke up, he joined others moving forward to congratulate the company. “Dear boy,” Trump cried, spying Charles and lunging out to have his hand shaken. “How splendid to have you here. I’m glad you saw us this evening. This tour is a triumph. I’m sure they’re already hearing of it in the East. When they send for us, I’ll have to cancel the rest of the itinerary.” And off he went to another admirer.
Charles strode to Willa, took hold of her arms, and kissed her forehead. “You were wonderful.”
She slipped a hand behind his back and hugged him. “And you’re very bad for my acting. Will you take me out of here?”
“Right now,” he said, clasping her hand.
“I’d like to walk,” she said. He reminded her about the cold. “I have an old wool coat, very heavy, and a muff.”
So they set out, walking away from the unfinished two-story Drovertown Hotel. Suddenly they were facing a rolling black prairie with white and yellow stars sparkling above it.
“Don’t you want supper?” he asked. “Aren’t you starved after all that work?”
“Later. I want to hear about you.” She fairly blushed. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.” She linked arms with him. He commended her for refusing to play Fort Harker. “Sam told me the tour’s been a triumph. You can tell me the truth.”
She laughed. “Fort Riley was fa
ir. The audience was off somehow, or we were. I caught Sam trying to sneak to the sutler’s just before curtain.”
“Did you play Leavenworth?”
“Yes. The audience there was fine.”
“Did you have a chance to see my boy?”
“I did. He’s wonderful, Charles. Very smart. The brigadier said he’d trained himself with the chamber pot before he was eighteen months old.” Charles cleared his throat. She laughed a second time. “Oh, that’s right, proper females don’t mention such things to gentlemen. The looseness of my profession is showing again.”
Amused, he said, “I knew about the chamber pot.”
“I should have guessed. The brigadier did say it’s difficult for him to handle Gus, because he adores the boy, and spoils him even though he doesn’t intend it. He shows him your photograph constantly. Gus knows who you are. He missed you.” Another squeeze of his arm. “I miss you, too. Buy me supper and ply me with a little wine and I’ll show you how much.”
She turned, directly in his path. She flung up an arm, hand around his neck, and pulled him into a kiss. He put both arms around her waist and felt her cold mouth warm quickly. They held one another in silence. Then something in Charles began to push away, distancing him from her.
“Oh, I have missed you. I love you, Charles. I can’t help it.” She didn’t pause, the conventional signal that she expected him to say it in reply. She didn’t want to push him. “Perhaps you’ll get to see more of Gus now. There seems to be peace on the Plains.”
They resumed their walk, going up a small round hill on crackling frost-killed grass. At the summit they stopped, awed by the gigantic canopy of stars.
At length he answered her. “It’s always peaceful in the winter.”
“Yes. But what I mean is, now there’s the Medicine Lodge Treaty. That should promote—”
“Willa, let’s not start. You know that the subject of Indians always causes a muss between us.” Did he want that? Was that why he put a certain testiness into his tone?
She heard it; it irked her. “Why should we not discuss it, Charles? It’s a meaningful treaty.”
“Come on. No treaty is meaningful, and Medicine Lodge was worse because only a few chiefs touched the pen. Did you read the dispatches Mr. Stanley wrote for the New York Tribune? The stupid commissioners didn’t even read the entire treaty to Black Kettle and the rest. The chiefs wanted to accommodate the commissioners, they wanted the goods and guns, so they signed.” By this point she’d separated her arm from his. “As soon as they realize what they gave away, they’ll repudiate the treaty. If the Dog Society men don’t kill them first.”
“And that’s what you want, I suppose?” She faced him, her face dim in the starlight. Her breath was a white cloud that spread and disappeared.
“I want the men who killed my friends. I wish you wouldn’t bring it up.”
“I bring it up because I care about you.”
“Oh, hell.” He pivoted away.
“You want the treaty to fail.” She was losing control, something unusual for her; he heard it in the unsteadiness of her voice.
“Willa, I told you what I want. As for the rest of it, you’re still on stage. Dreaming! The Cheyennes won’t quit until they’re penned up or killed. That may not be pretty, that may not please you or your Quaker friends who bleed their hearts out for a bunch of savages they never have to deal with, but that’s how it is, and you ought to wake up.”
“I’m awake, thank you. I thought you might have changed a little. You won’t give the treaty a chance.”
“Because that’s useless, goddamn it. Henry Stanley said it. General Sherman has been saying it for two years.”
“And what all of you prophesy eventually comes true? Why don’t you prophesy peace for a change?”
“By God, you’re the most blind, unrealistic—”
“You’re the one who’s blind, Charles. Blind to what you’re becoming. Some sort of—of hate-filled creature who lives to kill. I don’t want a man like that.”
“Don’t worry, you haven’t got one—even though you chase damn hard.”
He was shouting. She cried out, “Bastard!” and struck at him with her open hand. He deflected it and stepped back. He was altogether stunned when he realized that even as she cursed him, she was crying.
He stood like a dolt under the autumn stars, watching her flying figure race back toward the lamps of the Addition. “Willa, wait. It isn’t safe for a woman to be by herself—”
“You be quiet!” she yelled over her shoulder. She stopped and faced him. “You don’t know how to behave like a decent human being. You drive everyone away. The war did it, Duncan says. The war, the war—I’m sick of the war and I’m sick of you.”
She turned and ran on. He heard her weeping. The sound faded slowly, and then he lost her running figure against the black shapes of the flimsy buildings of the new town.
He walked slowly along the side of the Drovertown Hotel to the rail in front where he’d tied his mount. He was lining his boot to the stirrup when someone lurched out of the heavy shadow. The man had been concealed there, waiting. Charles jumped back, panicky because he’d left his sidearm at the fort. The moment the attacker stepped into the light from a saloon next door, Charles saw the chrysanthemum on his lapel, and smelled the gin.
“You damned, base cad!” Sam Trump’s face was blotched by anger. His temples were stained by hair dye that had run. He raised his fist, intending to strike Charles’s head. Charles took hold of his forearm and with no trouble kept it away. Trump twisted and struggled.
“Let go, damn you, Main. I’m going to give you what I promised you for hurting that fine young woman.”
“I didn’t hurt her. We just had an argument.”
“You did more than argue. She ran in sobbing. She has iron courage, and I have never seen her so devastated.” He tried to lift a knee and kick Charles’s groin through the furry overcoat. Charles easily threw him off balance. The actor cried out and landed on his rump.
Trump’s breathing was strident. He moved tentatively on the ground, as if he’d twisted something. “It must give you satisfaction to injure persons weaker than yourself. You’re no better than those savages you purport to hate. Take yourself out of my sight.”
Charles hauled his boot back, ready to kick the old fool. Then reason took hold. He mounted the troop horse and quickly trotted away up the street, shaking with anger and self-loathing. If there had been anything at all left between him and Willa Parker, it was gone now.
MADELINE’S JOURNAL
November, 1867. Impossible to do business at the Gettys store. His rates remain a usurious 70%, and a share of the crop. Those are his terms for whites. Black men are turned away.
… People somewhat mollified by appointment of Gen. Edw. Canby to command the military district. A Kentuckian; not as harsh as old Sickles. Gen. Scott, in charge of the state Bureau, is said to have ambitions to be the next gov. Very odd for a man who first arrived in Carolina as a war prisoner. Opinion of him is divided. Some say he is a trimmer. Does he want to govern the state in order to loot it? …
We continue to flirt with ruin. A late-season storm brought salt tides flooding far up the Ashley. Our rice crop was killed. The old stream-driven saw I saved so hard to buy for the mill broke during the second day of operation. Repairs are dear. To pay, I will have to short Dawkins’s next bank installment. He will not be happy.
But there are crumbs of good news. Brett wrote at last. Her little boy, G. W., grows and thrives in the San Francisco climate. After a year’s hardship, Billy’s engineering firm has won a contract for the water, gas, and elevator systems in a new hotel.
Hearing of successes like theirs, I am sometimes tempted to abandon this place and start over myself. Only what I promised you, Orry—the dream of rebuilding—keeps me here. But every day seems to push the realization of the dream further into the distance …
… Special election soon, to decide whether we sh
all have a constitutional convention. The Army continues to register males to vote. If they are black, the new U. L. club instructs them on how to exercise that right …
In the autumn dusk, Andy Sherman hurried through the hamlet of Summerton. A soldier, one of the registrars, was hauling down the American flag hung outside the abandoned cabin taken over by the military. Nearby, a corporal chatted with a barefoot white girl winding a strand of her hair round and round her finger. Andy marveled. In some ways, the war might never have happened at all.
In other ways it remained a hard reality. On the dark porch of the store, someone in a rocker watched him go by, following his progress by turning his head. Dying light flashed off the glass ovals of spectacles. Andy could fairly smell the hostility.
After walking a mile more, he turned off the river road onto a narrow track fringed by palmetto and prickly pear. The moon hung above the trees now, a brilliant white circle. A black boy with bad teeth guarded the road with an old squirrel rifle. Andy nodded and started by. The boy barred him with the rifle, sheepishly. “Passwords, Sherman.”
Passwords, a secret grip—Andy found it childish and insulting. Unfortunately most of the club members enjoyed such things.
“Liberty,” he said. “Lincoln. League.”
“God bless General Grant. Pass on, brother.”
He entered the cabin after being inspected by Wesley, a bullet-headed black man with a pistol in his belt. Wesley assisted the club’s organizer and was suited to the task; he was a bully.
A look of dislike passed between them. Andy slipped to a back bench, noting about twenty others present, young and old. The organizer nodded a greeting from the end of the cabin where he stood before a framed portrait of Lincoln swagged with a piece of dirty bunting.
Nothing about Lyman Klawdell impressed Andy. Not his shabby clothes and jutting teeth, not his whining Yankee voice or tied-down Colt revolver. Klawdell called for a lantern to be blown out, which left a single candle burning on a crate near the portrait. The candle lighted Klawdell’s chin and long nose from beneath. His eyes gleamed in the black hollows of the sockets. The eerie effect produced some nervous shivers and grins.