Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  Wands started to follow them down the stairs but Carrington stopped him. “Lieutenant, stay here on the lookout, monitor the action. Harry, remain with Wands, run messages to me as needed.”

  Carrington and the others clattered down the stairs, leaving Harry and Wands alone on the platform. The wind had teeth and they had no protection from its bite. The warm morning sun was a distant memory. “I’ve got a bad feeling, Harry,” Wands said. Harry nodded.

  Ten Eyck assembled a relief party quickly. Carrington inspected their arms and ammunition, then ordered the corporal of the guard to open the mill gates. Harry counted seventy-five men marching away on the double-quick, following the route taken earlier by Fetterman and Grummond. Only Ten Eyck and Sample were on horseback. The others advanced on foot, clumsy in greatcoats and buffalo boots.

  Once across the Big Piney the men took to the road, as Fetterman and Grummond had done, moving toward the sound of the shooting, which had tapered off to a few scattered shots. What did that mean, Harry wondered. Had the Indians retreated or was it something else? His skin crawled as he watched Ten Eyck’s men labor up the road toward the top of Lodge Trail Ridge, ragged and spiny as the backbone of a starving horse. What would they find on the far side?

  A third party of forty men, mostly civilian employees of the post quartermaster, were preparing to follow them. Harry saw Daniel Dixon and Jack Gregory with this group, which also included an ambulance and three wagons loaded with ammunition. They left hurriedly, with Dixon driving the ambulance and Gregory beside him on the bench, his Spencer rifle across his knees and his Appaloosa stallion tied to the rear.

  The post was still. There were no men’s voices, no braying mules, no buzzing sawmills or ringing hammers, just the wind and the crack of the garrison flag. Though it was only half past noon, the sky was dark as dusk with a low ceiling of slate-colored clouds. Lamps were lit in the cabins of officers’ row where the women and children were waiting.

  “With all those men gone how many are left here?” Harry said.

  Wands shook his head, surveying the vacant post. “I’ve been trying to work that out,” he said. “Seventy, maybe.”

  Harry did not respond. If Red Cloud’s warriors struck the post, how would they defend it?

  Chapter Forty-two

  Dixon’s ambulance led the ragtag column. Only a few of the men had horses; most rode in the wagons sitting on boxes of ammunition. The silence from the far side of the ridge made every quotidian noise that much louder; the creak of the wagon wheels, the leathery rattle of the harness, the clop, clop, clop of hooves on the rocky road.

  “It’s worse than the shooting, ain’t it?” Gregory said. “Leaves more to imagine.”

  Dixon said nothing but urged the mules forward, sensing death’s bony hand just over his shoulder.

  “Look there.” Gregory pointed to the east, about a mile distant, where a lone horseman raced toward the post. Dixon stopped the team and raised his field glasses. The rider was Carrington’s orderly, Private Sample, on the colonel’s horse, a large, powerful gray.

  “He’s carrying a message from Ten Eyck,” Gregory said, “and by the way he’s pushing that horse, it ain’t good.”

  Dixon restarted the team, hunching his shoulders deeper into his overcoat and cursing the idiots in the Quartermaster’s Department who fussed over frog buttons and black silk braid instead of a fabric’s practicality and warmth. The north wind penetrated the worsted wool like water through cheesecloth. He cursed an army that would deploy its soldiers on worn-out horses and expect them to fight the finest light cavalry the world had ever known, an army that equipped its men with clumsy, square-toed boots that blistered the feet, with obsolete, muzzle-loading weapons that discharged one bullet for every ten arrows fired by skilled Indian archers. He thought of Rose and wished for a daguerreotype or other mechanical likeness of her face, something to look at in his final moments, should they come. He tried not to think about what would happen if Indians doubled back to attack the fort in their absence. Before leaving, he had put the question to Carrington.

  “Can you defend the post?” he said.

  Carrington nodded. “I’ve got seventy-five men and I’ve recalled the wood train. That should be sufficient. But if it isn’t, if it appears the day is lost, the savages will not take our women and children alive. You may rely on it.”

  Dixon did not need to ask what Carrington meant.

  Following Ten Eyck’s route, they kept to the road, which was free of ice and snow though muddy and deeply scored by the feet of men and horses. Near the top of Lodge Trail Ridge, Ten Eyck’s trail veered off the road toward a peak that commanded a view of the Peno Valley. Dixon would have followed Ten Eyck’s trail but his heavily loaded wagons made this impossible. He had no choice but to follow the road over the crest of the ridge, even though it would take them through a defile that presented a perfect spot for an ambush. This, he knew, was why Ten Eyck had altered his route. Dixon’s nerves were tight as fiddle strings as they topped the ridge. The scene below confirmed his worst fears.

  “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary,” Gregory said.

  The Peno Valley was alive with Indians in full war paint, mounted and on foot, swarming over the road and up the hillsides on the valley’s far side. It was a nightmarish sight, as if every warrior north of the Powder River had joined Red Cloud to fight on this day. Frightening though it was, Dixon also felt relief. The presence of so many Indians meant they were not at the nearly defenseless fort.

  Ten Eyck’s men were to the east on a high point along the ridge but he saw no sign of Fetterman’s infantry and Grummond’s cavalry. Directly ahead, a group of about one hundred warriors blocked the road that led down into the valley. Some were on horseback, others were climbing over an outcrop of broken rock. Two Indians bared their buttocks at the soldiers and shouted insults in English.

  “Sons of bitches!” they shouted. “Come fight us! Come fight, sons of bitches!”

  Dixon’s eye was drawn to one small, slender warrior sitting on his pony apart from the others. His complexion was so fair he could almost be taken for a white man. Despite the cold he was nude but for a breechcloth and leggings. His body and that of his pony were covered with spots of white paint. A marksman from Ten Eyck’s command fired at him but he did not flinch. The bullet fell short.

  By now the rest of the wagons were cresting the ridge behind Dixon, the mules staggering with exhaustion. The Indians blocking the road saw their arrival and began to withdraw.

  Gregory gave a short laugh. “They think we’ve got artillery in the wagons,” he said. “That may save us.”

  The warriors blocking the road moved down the slope to join those in the valley below. Only when they left could Dixon see what had occupied them: the naked bodies of soldiers lay on the rocks and along the road, their legs and torsos white as alabaster in stark contrast to their sun-darkened forearms, necks, and faces. The bodies were too many and too tumbled together to count. Dixon thought he was looking at twenty-five to thirty men. All were completely still. The only moving thing on the rocky ridge was a wounded cavalry horse, struggling to get to its feet.

  Ten Eyck rode alone along the ridge to join them. His face fell when he saw the boxes of ammunition in the wagon beds. Like the Indians, he thought they held something else. “Where’s the howitzer I requested?” he said. “Didn’t Colonel Carrington get my message?”

  “I don’t know anything about a howitzer,” Dixon said. “What we’ve got is ammunition, three thousand rounds. Where are the others?”

  Ten Eyck shook his head. “I don’t know. I wish I did. We’ve been here nearly an hour and I haven’t seen anyone other than those poor fellows. They were finishing them off when we got here.”

  They looked at the bodies, stiffening in the cold.

  “I’ll tell you where the others are,” Gregory said. “They’re down the road a piece and in the same condition as these.”

  An angry wind raked over them, as if affirmi
ng Gregory’s prediction. Below, Indians raced their ponies across the bottomlands, urging the white soldiers to come down into the valley and fight. Hundreds of additional warriors watched from the far slopes and hilltops.

  “How many, would you say?” Ten Eyck said.

  Gregory answered: “Fifteen hundred, maybe two thousand.”

  “We should go to them.” Dixon gestured toward the bodies on the rocks and road. “Someone might be alive.”

  Ten Eyck looked at him, his good eye opened wide. “No one’s alive in there—just look at them. No, I’m in command here and I forbid you or anyone else to go forward. We’ll wait for the howitzer.”

  “It’s not coming,” Dixon said. “There’s not a fit mule left to pull it.”

  Ten Eyck shook his head. “I sent Sample to the post with a report. The colonel knows my circumstances here—he wouldn’t leave me in this position. No, we wait. Meantime, we’ll join forces. Move your wagons along the ridge. We’ll meet you halfway.”

  Dixon could do nothing but follow Ten Eyck’s command. The cold and wind were merciless and time seemed to stand still. They waited for what seemed an eternity. When at last a rider from the fort appeared, it was Sample, alone, with a note for Ten Eyck. Despite the cold, the paper was damp with Sample’s sweat. Ten Eyck read aloud:

  “‘Captain, forty well-armed men with three thousand rounds, ambulances, etc. left before your courier came in.’ That would be you, Dixon. ‘You must unite with Fetterman; fire slowly and keep men in hand; you would have saved two miles toward the scene of action if you had taken Lodge Trail Ridge. I order the wood train in, which will give fifty more men to spare.’”

  Ten Eyck turned to Sample. “What about the artillery I requested?”

  “There aren’t any animals to pull the wagon,” Sample said, still breathless. “Besides, the colonel said no one with your outfit knows how to handle the piece anyhow.”

  Ten Eyck made a sound of indignation. “How dare he criticize—”

  “Forget it,” Dixon said. “Look, we’ve been freezing our butts off up here long enough. We’ve got to get back to the post and I’m taking those men with me. I’ll need help loading them.”

  “What about the Indians?” Ten Eyck said.

  “If they were going to attack us they’d have done it by now,” Dixon said. “I’m more worried about them striking the fort. We need to take care of business here and get back there.”

  Ten Eyck considered briefly, then raised his arm to move his shivering, frightened men forward. They kept to the road, advancing warily, watching the Indians for the first sign of attack. When finally they reached the bodies, not even the most battle-hardened veteran was prepared for the horror that met him. Some of the men were sick, producing steaming pools of vomit that froze quickly on the ground.

  “My God,” Ten Eyck said. “It’s a scene from Dante.”

  Dixon walked silently through the field of corpses. Never had he seen such a violent display of hatred. Faces were unrecognizable, smashed by heavy Sioux war clubs to a meaty mix of brains, bone, and hair. The ground was slippery with frozen entrails. One man’s guts encircled his neck like the devil’s twine. A pair of eyeballs watched Dixon from a rock; beside them was a severed nose. Several bodies were sliced open from thorax to pubis, the empty cavity stuffed with dry grass and set aflame. Deep gashes scored marble-white thighs.

  “Let’s go back, Captain Ten Eyck,” a young soldier shouted, his face contorted with fear. “We can’t do nothin’ for them—they’re past caring what happens to them now. Let’s go back before the Injuns kill us all.”

  Others voiced support for this idea, but Ten Eyck shook his head. “We won’t leave them,” he said. “Put the bodies in the wagons.”

  Dixon stopped at one particularly muscular corpse and found himself looking down on the remains of Fred Brown. His penis and testicles had been severed and stuffed in his mouth. A frozen trickle of black blood ran from a bullet hole in his left temple.

  Fetterman’s body was close by. Dixon studied it, trying to make sense of what he saw. Then he understood: his throat was cut from ear to ear and his tongue pulled through the slit. His broken jaw hung open in a lopsided grin. Dixon was stunned by such inventive cruelty, awed by the hatred that inspired it.

  “Dixon! Ten Eyck!” Gregory stood on the driver’s bench of the ambulance. “The Indians—they’re leaving.”

  Down in the valley the warriors were moving en masse toward the southeast. Were they returning to their lodges, Dixon wondered, sated with killing and eager to celebrate their victory? Or were they headed to the fort, knowing that most of its defenders were here, on this wind-blasted ridge?

  Ten Eyck had the same thought. “Hurry, men!” he shouted.

  Some bodies were frozen to the ground in pools of blood and had to be pried loose with rifle barrels. Once free, they were stacked without dignity, head to heels, in the wagon beds.

  “What about the bits and pieces, Captain?” one man said, lifting a muscular arm.

  “Throw it in,” Ten Eyck said.

  In a gesture of respect to fellow officers, Ten Eyck ordered that Fetterman and Brown be placed not in the open wagon but the ambulance.

  At last the hellish work was done and the freezing men started the four-mile trek back to Fort Phil Kearny. Along the way, Indian pickets on the hilltops monitored their progress but offered no resistance. Dixon’s anxiety mounted with each step until, as they neared the post, it was almost unbearable. He thought of Rose, saw her face, heard her voice. Did a new, unimaginable horror await him? He shook his head, trying to keep the terrible images at bay.

  Finally the advance riders crested the ridge, gaining a view of the post. They cheered and raised their hats. It was secure. Dixon released a long sigh and realized he had been holding his breath. When the struggling mules pulled the ambulance to the top, Dixon looked down on the fort and, for the first time, thought it beautiful. Cheery yellow lights shone in the windows of officers’ row and in the regimental offices. The wind was less now. Gray plumes of smoke rose heavenward from the chimneys of the barracks and cabins. The quartermaster’s gates swung open and Ten Eyck’s advance riders entered.

  “Thank God,” Dixon said.

  “The night’s not over,” Gregory said.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Dixon climbed down from the ambulance and almost fell. His legs were wooden with cold and he could not feel his feet. All around him, bundled men shuffled silently through the gray half light, lifting the stiffened remains of friends and bunkmates from the wagons and carrying them to a makeshift morgue in the hospital. Occasionally the stillness was broken by a curse or a cry as a man recognized a face or, if the face was unknowable, a tattoo. Dixon looked to the distant black hills, lit from behind by a rising moon, and felt the presence of an enemy, ancient and primordial, rallying his forces against them. On this occasion, the Indians and the elements seemed to be allies. Was survival against such a combination of foes possible?

  “Doctor Dixon?” A small man approached. “It’s Fessenden, sir. They say you’ve got Captain Fetterman in there.”

  Frank Fessenden was a young musician whose wife had given birth to a daughter at Fort Sedgwick. Fetterman was charmed by the fat, happy baby and was often seen holding her in his arms, smiling down at her and talking nonsense.

  “Yes,” Dixon said. “Captain Brown too.”

  Fessenden removed his hat, as if he had entered a church. “I’d be honored if you’d let me help you with the remains. Captain Fetterman was a good friend to me and my family.”

  “Are you sure?” Dixon said. “Wouldn’t you rather remember him as he was?”

  “Thank you, sir, but I’d like to help.”

  “All right then.”

  Dixon led him to the rear of the ambulance, where Hines was waiting with a lantern. The door groaned on its leather hinges as Dixon pulled it open. The lamplight fell on two bodies. Fetterman lay on the bench nearest the door. Only the soles
of his square-toed boots were visible, the left turned inward toward its mate at an unnatural angle. Dixon and Fessenden climbed in. The young man gasped but did not falter when he saw Fetterman’s ghastly, grinning wound. The protruding tongue was beginning to blacken.

  They put the body on a stretcher and carried it to the hospital. Hines and Gregory followed with Brown. Sam Horton directed the arrangement of corpses on the earthen floor of the ward room, with its open windows and canvas roof. Maybe it was a good thing the hospital was unfinished after all, Dixon thought. At least the bodies wouldn’t rot as fast.

  “My God,” Horton said, his face haggard in the guttering candlelight. “Is that Fetterman?”

  “It is,” Dixon said. “Where do you want him?”

  Horton waved them to a dark corner where four planed boards lay across a pair of sawhorses. “Our officers won’t lie on the ground,” he said. Only when the two men were lying side by side did Dixon notice the powder-singed flesh on Brown’s left temple. “Are more coming?” Horton said.

  “These are the last,” Dixon said, “for tonight anyhow.”

  “Forty-nine men,” Horton said, glassy-eyed. “I can’t believe it. Most were bludgeoned to death, did you notice?”

  “Most,” Dixon said. “I believe some killed themselves. Brown, for example.”

  “Brown took his own life?” Carrington had entered the room unnoticed.

  “It looks that way,” Dixon said. He walked to the captain’s body and pointed to the wound on his temple. “He died of a single shot to the head fired at close range.”

  Carrington stared down at the officers’ bodies. “Tell me where you found them,” he said. “Tell me exactly where Fetterman was in relation to Brown and the others.”

  “Didn’t Ten Eyck give you that?” Dixon said.

  “I’d like to hear it from you.”