The four arrived at Fort Lincoln and ascended the bluffs into the city, eschewing the cable car for the path up the cliffs. Even Harris seemed reinvigorated, perhaps by the sea air. They moved into the city, at Stanton's suggestion found the post office and inquired as to the location of the residence of a Mr. George Thomas. At first the clerk was resistant, but his palm was graced with some of Bleeker's largesse, and he coughed up the desired information with a minimum of fuss. Scant minutes later, the four were in a rented carriage and on their way.
Apparently, Thomas lived well outside of town, which made the prospect of seeing him and returning to Fort Lincoln Station in one day a dubious one. Bleeker would hear nothing of turning back, and oddly enough, neither would Harris. The entire ride out was a confused blur, with Bleeker babbling excitedly the entire way. Mayfield and Stanton exchanged a silent look of resignation, then settled in for the rest of the ride. The journey would be over soon enough. There was no need to ruin things now.
***
"Begging your pardon, Mr. Thomas sir, but there are four men at the door wanting to see you. They say they knew you Back East, and they're asking for the General. Shall I send them away like I did the others?" Polly poked her head around the corner to where Thomas sat, writing, and gasped. Instead of his usual attire, he wore his dress blues, which hadn't been out of Thomas' massive cedar chest since the move west.
He sat at his work table with ponderous dignity, almost luminous in the morning sun. "Send them back here, Polly. I've been expecting these men, or men like them, for quite some time." The servant turned, and Thomas called after her. "Oh, and Polly? Once you've shown them in, why don't you and Mrs. Thomas go into town for the day? I expect these gentlemen will be here a while, and I won't lack for company"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," the girl said with a curtsey, and rushed off.
A clatter of boots on hard-packed soil announced the arrival of the visitors. There were, as Polly said, four men, all of whom carried themselves like veterans. They were mostly nondescript, though one had gone to fat and another had the tearing cough of the consumptive. Thomas tried to remember them and found that he could, vaguely; one he recalled as Mayhew or Mayfield, a staff officer in the weeks before calamity. He smiled when he saw that they'd instinctively formed a line and stood more or less at attention once they saw him. The old habits died hard. The old discipline was strong.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he rumbled. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"
They fidgeted for a moment, then the chubby man spoke. "General Thomas. Sir. We served under you, sir, and well, it had been many years, and we felt like...perhaps...after this time..."
"We had some unfinished business, sir," interjected the tallest man smoothly. "And we felt it best to see you, and resolve matters."
"Ahem. I see. Thomas crossed his arms and leaned forward on the table. "And what might those matters be?"
It was the fat man who spoke again. "Sir. We all served under you, at Nashville and Chattanooga—"
"And Chickamauga?" He said the name quietly.
"Yessir. And Chickamauga. And we saw the way the papers treated you. Unfairly, it seemed to us. So mostly, I—we wanted to come out here and tell you that it was a pleasure and an honor to have served under you." He snapped off a salute that was crisp and clean.
Thomas harrumphed. "Does that hold for all of you, then?" The fat man nodded, still holding his salute. The one next to him, with long mustachios and a tired look in his eyes, also saluted. Next to him, the tall one stood and nodded, his hand at his hat brim.
It was the fourth one, the lunger, who was doing something different. With a roar, he leapt for the table and the man behind it, a bloody foam trailing from his lips. His eyes were mad and his skin horribly pale.
"No, sir. I've got something to add."
"Yes?" Thomas found himself straining to remember where he'd seen this soldier before, when he'd spoken to him. It had been on the field, he was sure....
"General Thomas sir, I was one of the men you sent to fetch reinforcements at Chickamauga. It was my message that convinced headquarters to pull Wood's Division out of line, sir. It was my message that opened the hole for Longstreet. I was directly behind the gap in the line when the Rebs came charging through, general. They weren't in the mood to take prisoners."
Thomas blinked, once. "I'm not sure I understand what you're telling me, soldier." Slowly, he eased his chair back but made no other move.
"What I am telling you, sir, is that I died that day, and many good men died as well because of the message I carried, and I have waited very patiently to take the matter up with you." Harris grinned horribly, his teeth stained by blood and other, worse things. "I think I need to make a reckoning."
And with that and a whoop that might have been a rebel yell, he leaped for the general.
The tall man acted before Thomas could, reaching out and snagging the tail of the attacker's coat at the last possible second. The consumptive snarled and fell short of the table, then turned and kicked the offending hand away before scrabbling to his feet. There was a sickening crunch of bone as he did so.
"Harris! What are you doing?" shouted the fat man.
"Returning the favor to the man who got me killed, Aaron." Harris glowered at his companions, "Come all this way just to thank him for ordering us to our deaths? Good God, you're pathetic." Stanton rushed forward, his left hand hanging at a horrible angle, and Harris uncorked a wild swing with his cane that leveled the taller man. Bleeker stood, horrified, as Mayfield jumped on Harris' back. The man roared and flung him off, and there was the unmistakable snap of breaking bones as the former captain landed. Then it was Stanton's turn, his nose mashed flat but no blood running down his face, to try again. Harris kicked him in the knee and the bone at the point of impact snapped. Stanton howled once and went over. The last shook Bleeker out of his paralysis. He reached inside his coat for a small, pearl-handled revolver and pointed it at Harris. The latter stood, grinning like a madman with his thin, drawn face a mask of blood. "Stop it, Harris. Stop it right now, or I'll have to shoot. For the love of God, man. Stop!"
Harris advanced a slow step. "Stop? Whyever for? I've been dead a dozen years, Aaron, dead ever since Chickamauga. You can't hurt me with that toy. I don't even think you can pull the trigger. Go ahead. Try it." He dropped the cane and put his hands behind his head in mock surrender. "You wouldn't shoot a friend, would you, Aaron?"
Behind him, Mayfield whimpered in pain. Stanton kicked and scrabbled in the dust like a broken toy. Bleeker looked left, looked right, swallowed hard, and then tightened his finger on the trigger.
The resultant blast was entirely too loud to have come from Bleeker's minuscule Colt. He looked up and saw Harris turning with shock and amazement to face Thomas, who still sat at his table. However, he had a heavy revolver in his fist and a grimmer than usual expression on his face. "That will be quite enough, Private Harris," he said. "Now step away from him. Immediately."
Harris finished turning, and Bleeker could see the bloody hole in his back. White bone shone through. "My quarrel's not with him, anyway, General." He threw a sketchy salute and stepped forward.
Thomas pulled the trigger five more times in rapid succession. The first shot caught Harris in the throat, the second in the forehead. He stumbled, and the next three shots took him in the right leg. With a curse, Harris toppled into the dust. Unbelievably, he continued crawling forward, spitting curses.
Thomas stood up and looked over the table. "Excuse me for a moment." With infinite deliberation, he got up, walked around the table and thoughtfully brought a heavy boot down on Harris' head. It made a satisfying squishing sound. The corpse twitched once, twice, a horrifying third time, and then lay still.
"Well," he said. "That's that, more or less. Aaron, if that's your name, see to your friends." Bleeker, ashen faced and trembling, scurried over to where Mayfield lay moaning.
"No need," said Stanton, hobbling to his fee
t. In his left hand he held Harris' cane, which supported him.
"Ah," said Thomas. "I should have known. Another one? What business are you about?"
"Just what Bleeker said, sir. Killed about five minutes after Harris was. Been waiting to see you for nigh on fourteen years and tell you that." He grimaced and leaned on the cane. "Incidentally, sir, he was a corporal."
Thomas stroked his beard. "Indeed. So why now?"
"Because Harris was coming, sir, and I knew that he didn't feel quite the same way I did. I was thinking that I could stop him, resolve my business, and wrap everything up neatly-like." He laughed. "I guess I was wrong."
"You did well, soldier," Thomas said softly. "At ease."
Stanton straightened with painful dignity and saluted. "Thank you, sir," he said, and collapsed. Bleeker gazed at the scene, wide-eyed with horror. Mayfield just whimpered with pain. For an eternal moment, no one said a thing. The wind that blew across the tableau, however, was fresh and cool, and bore with it the faintest scent of magnolias.
"I'll take two," James Carter said. "From the top of the deck, this time."
Clarence Anderson slid the cards off the deck, tossed them onto the trunk they used as a table. Another place, those would have been fighting words, and he'd have drawn the Derringer he used to carry. But this wasn't one of the gambling boats floating on the Mississippi, or that saloon in Deadwood where he plied his trade for a spell. This was a Union Army tent, deep in Oklahoma, forty miles behind enemy lines - Coyote Confederation land. You didn't discharge a piece unless you were willing to back it up - and you'd answer to your fellow troopers before the Indians or Confederates got you.
This was a dark camp, and quiet. No fires, no loud noises. The shuffling of cards sounded like gunshots to the four in the tent. The patrol was thirty men, mounted, scouting a route that cut across Oklahoma and into Texas. If this patrol could find a safe way to reach San Antonio, they'd raid the city and points between, striking a bloody blow to the starving garrisons along the lower Mississippi.
That was the plan, anyway.
Carter looked at his cards, disgust plain on his face, and dropped them onto the trunk. "I'm out."
The other two men in the game were Avery Lightman and John Brower. All four were Corporals in the Union Army. Three of them had enlisted after the war had upended their civilian lives. The Army was full of men in the same boat. Only Brower, gray-haired and mustachioed, had been in for years, and he was still a corporal because he kept making sergeant and then getting busted down for making trouble and raising Hell.
Lightman put a nickel down.
"Raise ya," he said.
"I'll see that," Brower said, dropping his own nickel.
Anderson examined his cards, then fished two coins out of his pocket. A nickel and a dime. "Seen, and raised."
Brower folded. "Too rich," he said.
Lightman looked at the money, at his cards, back at the money. "I'm out too," he said, tossing his cards face-up on the trunk. Three queens.
Anderson scooped the money into his palm, smiling.
"What'd you have?" Brower asked.
Anderson scraped the cards together, started shuffling. "Don't suppose that's anybody's never mind now, is it?"
"He bluffed you," Carter said.
"Mebbe," Lightman said.
"Gentlemen, the secret to success at cards, as in life," Anderson said, "is to never show fear."
"That's God's own truth," Carter said.
"Hell, I ain't ashamed of bein' afraid," Lightman said. "I'm scared now, bein' so few of us in Coyote country." Anderson talked the way he did, Lightman knew, because he'd been a gambler and a dude, and could get away with it. Well, that and being named Clarence. Name like that'd make anyone talk funny.
"What's to be afraid of?" Anderson asked. "Worst that could happen, you could get killed."
"That sounds bad enough to me," Brower said.
"Naw," Anderson said. "To me, worst that could happen is to keep on living, but poor." Anderson still looked like a dude, too - his thin, delicate face was topped with slicked-down black hair, and he was always clean and smelling like bay rum even when the troop had been slogging through mud or over miles of dry dirt.
"That'll never happen to you, Clarence," Brower said. "You and your fine seegars, your fancy drinks, your high-steppin' women..."
"Exactly the things I hope never to give up," Anderson said. "But it's hard to maintain the level of spending I require while employed by this man's army. The outflow is exceeded by the income, if you know what I mean."
"Almost never do," Lightman said.
"I get it," Carter said. "And I might could have a way to test ol' Clarence's bravery, at that."
"How's that?" Brower asked.
Carter leaned forward, so that his head was almost squarely at the center of the tent. "We ain't but a few miles from Round Mountain," he said, keeping his voice low. The others had to strain to hear. "You know what's at Round Mountain?"
No one did.
"Treasure," Carter said. He let the word hang there, in the still close air of the tent, for a moment before he continued. "I heard about it years ago, from an ol' drunk man in a saloon. Heard whispers about it now and ag'in since. Gold."
Brower laughed. "They's always stories of such things, but ain't one of 'em ever turned out to be true. They was any such of a treasure 'round here, Johnny Reb spent it years ago on bullets and bacon."
"Not this one," Carter said. "It's protected by Indian ha'nts. I asked that Indian scout, Two Heads or whatever his name is—"
"Two Faces," Lightman said.
"Anyways, he said he wouldn't go near Round Mountain for nothin':"
"That's good enough for me," Anderson said.
"If it's protected by Injun spirits, what makes ya think we can get it?" Lightman asked.
Carter reached under his blue tunic, drew out a chain at the end of which hung a stone or jewel that looked like a cat's eyeball with a wire strung through it. "Won this in a card game, back to Abilene once," he said. "Feller lost it to me swore it was the only thing's kept him alive. Said it keeps the wearer safe from spirits, ha'nts, manitous and what have you. Day after I won it, he was run down in the street by runaway horses pullin' a stage."
"You think it'll protect all of us?" Brower asked. "I ain't got but a couple of years to retirement."
"You got any money set aside for to retire on?" Carter asked.
Brower tugged at his mustache. "Not really."
"Then what've you to lose?" Anderson asked. "I'm in. Carter."
"Reckon I am too, then," Brower said.
They all looked at Lightman. "When you want to do this?" he asked.
"We ain't never gonna be closer than we are right now," Carter said.
"I'm on sentry duty tonight," Lightman said. "I can't be gone."
"That's why it's perfect," Carter said. "When it's your turn to stand guard, we slip out. Time the next sentry comes on, we'll be back here — and rich!"
Lightman looked at his friends. Anderson, the gambler. Old Brower, counting the days to a penniless retirement. And Carter, who believed he couldn't be hurt. His three best friends in the troop. The United States Army had given him a life, taken him away from a hard-luck existence in the poor mountains of Pennsylvania. He felt loyalty to it, but even more so to these three men.
"I'm in," he said.
***
Following Carter's plan, the four of them left the camp shortly after Lightman's turn on sentry duty commenced. They walked their horses for a mile or so, then mounted up and rode under a bright moon the rest of the way. On the trail, Carter told the story of the Round Mountain treasure as he had heard it.
Fifteen years ago or more, a U.S. Army troop had been escorting a wagon carrying boxes of gold bullion from San Francisco to Kansas City. They'd run into a band of Arapaho in the process of escaping with a herd of horses stolen from a Kansas settlement. The soldiers had refused to give chase, causing the Arapaho to t
hink they must be guarding something very important indeed. So the Arapaho came back, dogging the troop for miles. It turned into a running battle, during which both sides lost many warriors. Finally, the soldiers, running out of men and ammunition, circled up for their last stand at the foot of Round Mountain. The Arapaho attacked, time and again, but each time they were held off.
Finally, the last of the soldiers fell to Arapaho weapons, and the Indians approached the wagon, almost fearful of what they might find there. When the wagon proved to contain only bars of yellow rock, they were disgusted. But they recognized that the rock must have some power, else the whites would not have fought so bravely for it. So many Arapaho lives were lost to win it that they decided it had some worth, and they hid it in a cave on the flank of Round Mountain, facing West, from whence it had come. To guard it, they had called on the spirits of all the Arapaho warriors who had died in its pursuit.
***
The cave wasn't hard to find. They knew it faced West, and the mountain wasn't that big to begin with, being a mountain by Kansas standards but not by those of anybody else. It was low on the side of the mountain, just where it started to rise up above a river bed. In the moonlight its black maw was unmistakable.
"Cave's yonder," Carter said.
"Reckon so," Brower said. "See any guards? Or spirits?" he half-laughed.
"Nary a one," Carter said.
"Surely there would be guards of some kind posted," Anderson said.
"Less'n they count on the curse to protect it," Lightman pointed out.
"That could be," Brower smiled. "You got a hundred dead injuns guardin' your treasure, why you need humans?"
None of the men cared to discuss the existence of spirits further. The darkness of the cave made the possibility seem all too real.
They tied their horses loosely to willows at the side of the shallow river and started up the slope. It was an easy climb, and within minutes they stood at the cave's jagged mouth.
A Fist Full O' Dead Guys Page 16