Call to Arms

by Frederick Nolan

  ‘We rode out one cool morning in August,’ he began slowly. ‘It was just after dawn. I remember there was mist along the sides of the Blue Mountains and the way the skylarks came up out of the grass singing into the sky.’

  After four days they crossed the Snake River. The country was summer dry, the sky as yellow as brass. Hawks circled looking for prey.

  ‘Mid-morning on the first of September we got to Rock Lake,’ he said. ‘It was a Wednesday, I remember. We came out of the woods on to an open plain, and all of a sudden, there they were. Indians. Hundreds of them.’ They made a fine, brave, doomed sight, he told her. They were mounted on hardy-looking ponies, their lances glinting in the sunlight. They swayed backwards and forwards, and brandished their weapons. Their atonal chanting had a strange rhythm to it, hey-a-hn-a-hey-a-hey-a, hey-a-hn-a-hey-a-hey-a. He asked one of the Nez Perce scouts what it was.

  ‘War song,’ Man Who Looks told him, showing teeth that looked like bad cheese. ‘They sing “Only the earth lasts forever, today is good day to die”.’

  Only the earth lasts forever, Andrew thought; you did not expect poetry. Not from painted savages. Their bodies were daubed with gaudy paint and their clothing was adorned with trinkets, bits of mirror, beads and brooches. Their horses were painted, too: the whites with crimson figures and patterns, the darker horses with white clay. Beads and fringes hung from their rope bridles. Their long manes and tails fluttered in the gentle, breeze. They were awesome and childlike, frightening and yet oddly endearing. And they never had a chance.

  ‘We unlimbered the howitzers, six-pounders on the right, twelve-pounders on the left,’ Andrew said. ‘We blew them to pieces. They didn’t know where to run. They were so stupidly brave, so pointlessly brave.’ The infantry went down the hill and into the burning woods, Andrew at their head. Here and there in the smoldering undergrowth, wounded Indians lay groaning, their painted finery now somehow childlike and pathetic. The troops finished them off as they came upon them. The ground was thrown up in huge chunks where howitzer shells had landed; it smelled of sulphur. Andrew kneed his horse forward, and as he did so, a big Indian on a gray horse erupted out of the trees on his right and came at him like a thunderbolt. He had no chance to do anything. The Indian simply rode his horse right into and over Andrew’s, and Andrew went over the back of his animal and hit the hard earth with a lung-emptying thump. The Indian had already wheeled his horse in the little clearing and was coming back with his lance tip down and death in his eyes. Andrew saw the whole scene as clearly as if he were looking at a painting, the sharp steel tip of the lance, the black-ended feather tied to it, the red paint on the horse’s shoulder. He seemed to have all the time in the world to think about what to do. He rolled aside frantically as the horse crashed past above him, scrambling awkwardly to his feet as the Indian yanked the horse around for another try. This time, however, Andrew had the saber back in his hand. He whacked the lance sideways and to the right and in a continuation of the movement, brought the saber up and over and down in a slicing arc that smashed the Indian off his horse, a terrible wound in the side of his neck gouting blood in a macabre fountain. The Indian rolled over, pain-blind, and made a noise like a sick animal.

  I can’t, Andrew thought with sudden certainty. I can’t kill him.

  The Indian got to his knees, coughing blood. He raised his head and looked at Andrew. There was something in his eyes. A plea? A curse?

  Then all at once there was a sharp crack and the Indian went over sideways as if he had been hit with a two-by-four. A young soldier with a smoke-smeared face ran past grinning.

  ‘Got the divil for yez, sor!’ he panted, and was gone. Andrew looked down at the broken thing in its blood stained frippery. It was just a dead body now. It had no importance any more. If it had been him, the same would have been true. It seemed tragically pointless to die for nothing in a glade in an unnamed wood.

  There was shouting on the plain now and Andrew gathered up the reins of his horse and remounted, pushing the animal towards the edge of the woods. The dragoons had been waiting for the Indians as they were driven out of the shelter of the trees by the infantry, and were cutting them to pieces. The Indians broke and ran and the infantry behind them raised a ragged cheer. The howitzers thundered again and again and then again, and great clouds of earth leaped into the sky as the shells burst among the fleeing Indians. Horses brought down by shrapnel lay kicking and screaming on the smoldering grass. The smoke of the grass fire the Indians had set to slow down their pursuers coiled upwards, the flames invisible in the sunlight.

  Bugles sounded the recall, and the rolls were quickly shouted. Up at the front of the column Andrew heard the cheering start. It came towards them like a wave, reached them, and went on down the line. No casualties, was the news, not a single man killed or even wounded.

  That night in camp, Colonel Wright informed his officers that they would resume the march on the morrow. The Indians were to be allowed no surcease.

  Four days later they caught up with Indians on flat ground between Clear Lake and the Spokane River. Again the Indians took cover in the woods, setting on fire the grass in front of it. Again the howitzers blasted them out of the trees, while the dragoons charged at them through the smoldering stubble. The infantry followed up, driving the entire Indian force before them like a broom sweeping an empty floor.

  The running battle went on for three more days, three days of engagement and disengagement, three days of attrition. The Indians tried to draw the infantry forward so that they could get between them and the big guns, but Wright was too smart to let them do that. He alternated infantry and dragoons in a disciplined pursuit of some twenty-five miles until, their backs against the roaring Spokane River, the Indians could run no more. They fought like demons until the dragoons captured their herd of horses, eight hundred head or more. Then, all at once, the heart went out of them and they surrendered.

  Wright gave orders that all troopers needing remounts should take their pick from the Indian herd. When this was done there were six hundred and twenty animals left. Captain Ord requested instructions as to their disposition.

  ‘Kill them!’ Wright ordered.

  Together with Captain Erasmus Keyes, Ord detailed a team of officers to carry out the commanding officer’s orders. One of them was Andrew Strong.

  ‘Get your men to build a corral, lieutenant,’ Ord said. ‘I want twenty men to cut out the animals. Two loaders, two to shoot. The farriers can do that.’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ Andrew said. He hesitated and Ord looked up. ‘What is it, lieutenant?’ he asked.

  ‘Is this absolutely necessary, sir?’

  Ord frowned. He was a good officer, a considerate human being. There was a regimental legend to the effect that he was the illegitimate grandson of King George IV.

  ‘I know what you must be thinking, lieutenant,’ Ord said, his voice soft with the cadences of Maryland. ‘But take my word for it, it’s the only way to fight Indians. I’ve been out here since ’fifty-one, an’ I know what I’m talking about. Look.’ He held up a hand and ticked off his points on the fingers. ‘One: we can’t take them along with us. Too much trouble, they’d slow us up, and anyway we can’t use them. Two: if we leave them here, the Indians’ll gather them up again, an’ we’ll be right back where we started. Have to come up here an’ whup these Indians all over again. No point to that, is there?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Andrew admitted.

  ‘Then go and kill the blasted horses, lieutenant!’

  Andrew did not say that his father bred horses. He did not tell Ord that killing even a horse badly wounded in battle wrenched his heart. He was sickened by the prospect of what lay ahead and disgusted by the actuality.

  The unfortunate beasts were lassoed one by one, dragged away from the others and dispatched with a single shot. Their colts were simply knocked on the head with a pistol. After twenty or thirty minutes, the corral was like a dusty hell, in which grimed, sweating, cursing men kil
led kicking animal after bucking beast, while the rest of the herd milled nervously, eyes rolling, snorting, dust rising constantly beneath their shifting feet. The copper-stink of death hung over the area like a cloud. Flies came in hordes. Carrion birds waited in the nearby trees. And the Indians watched the killing go on and on, their faces haggard with shame. Hour dragged after endless hour and still the executions went on, until Andrew fancied he could see in the faces of the animals a mute appeal for a mercy he could not offer. Darkness fell. All night long the distressed cries of mares whose young had been slain kept the camp from sleep. The sullen captive Indians huddled together beneath the watchful eyes of a strong guard, howitzers trained upon them.

  It took all the next day to finish killing the horses. When it was finally over, the camp was struck immediately. The carcasses, already beginning to bloat in the heat, were left to rot where they had fallen. The Indians were marched past the mountains of dead horses to complete their humiliation.

  ‘Rub their noses in it!’ Wright commanded. ‘Let the sonsofbitches know that the United States Army fights for keeps!’

  From the encampment he led the column to the Indian village and put it to the torch. All the lodges were burned, and the storehouses full of corn, everything. One man in twenty was taken as hostage for the good behavior of the tribes, and the rest, disarmed, were turned loose to fend for themselves. The ones adjudged to have committed the murders were later hanged in public. How many of the ones left behind starved, nobody ever knew or cared.

  That October, peace assured, the army threw open the region to settlement. Andrew was not there when the first settlers and miners came through on their way to the gold camps at Colfax and Patalia the following spring. He had resigned his commission and returned East.

  ‘I want no part of an army that achieves peace by turning a country into a graveyard,’ he said.

  ‘I think I understand,’ Ruth said. ‘What do thou think it was that stayed thy hand, and stopped thee from killing?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Andrew mused.

  ‘Perhaps, dear Andrew, the Light is in thee, also.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Andrew said, doubting it. If that was what she wanted, he wanted it to be that way for her. He had no feeling about religion at all. The Indians believed that they were a small part of the bigger pattern, in which everything had its place: trees, rocks, rivers, animals, men. Different tribes had different names for this all-pervading spirit. Wakan Tanka, the Everywhere One. He thought that might be as good a way to believe as any.

  ‘It was then thee met my father?’

  ‘We were introduced by a friend of my uncle Sam’s,’ Andrew said. ‘His name is James Laurie. He is a member of the Society of American Civil Engineers.’ He smiled. ‘You know what your father asked me?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He asked me why I didn’t want to breed horses, like my father.’

  ‘And what did thee say?’

  ‘I said I wanted to build things. Bridges, roads, railways.’

  ‘Thee will, Andrew,’ Ruth said, warmly. ‘Thee will.’

  ‘I will if I have you there to help me,’ Andrew said.

  Ruth was silent for a moment, then touched his lips gently with her fingertips. ‘Thee must not ask that yet,’ she said softly. ‘There will be a time, but it is not yet.’

  ‘I want you, Ruth.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’

  He took her in his arms. Her kiss welcomed his male strength, met it with hotness of her own. She was as eager as he, her desire as great. She was not as surprised by that as he was at first, for Ruth knew that she was a passionate woman, and his need fueled her own.

  ‘Thee can have me, Andrew,’ she whispered. ‘Take me, if thee will.’ They were damp-hot with passion. He kissed her bared breasts beneath the unbuttoned blouse and then laid his cheek against them.

  ‘I want to,’ he said, his voice muffled by the softness of her. She felt the movement of his lips against her skin and her heart swelled.

  ‘Take me, then,’ she whispered. ‘What difference, now or later?’

  ‘It’s knowing that which stays me, Ruth,’ he said. He lifted his head and looked into her loving eyes. ‘You are already mine. So what difference, now or later?’

  She loved him for the giving back of her gift; somehow his words made it all the more valuable. She thought a little of God and wondered how anything so spontaneously generated by love could ever be considered taboo. So their loving was passionate to the brink of sin; upon that brink they trembled many times, savoring the terrible delight of going over.

  Andrew spoke to Ruth’s father that same evening. Jacob Chalfont regarded him soberly over the rims of his spectacles. His eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, although his smile instantly dispelled the wary look they gave to his face.

  ‘What do thee know about we Quakers, Andrew?’ Andrew frowned. ‘Not a great deal, sir. Ruth has told me a little, obviously. I know the movement was founded by a man named George Fox, in the seventeenth century—’

  ‘He began testifying around 1649,’ Jacob said. ‘Go on’

  ‘I know that Quakers believe in simplicity in dress and speech. They do not believe in taking oaths. They are pacifist on religious grounds.’

  ‘Not pacifists, Andrew,’ Chalfont said. ‘We oppose war. We abjure it, and all preparation for it. We’re not the Quakers of a century ago. We move with the times, like everyone else. We are fighting vigorously for abolition, believing slavery to be evil. The movement may have been founded in the seventeenth century, but we are aware that we are living in the nineteenth.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Andrew said. ‘About Ruth?’

  ‘I’ve heard there is some talk of permitting marrying out,’ Jacob said slowly. ‘Although I am not sure whether I wholly approve of it. Not at all sure.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Andrew said, his heart sinking.

  ‘You love her, boy?’ Jacob asked. ‘You truly love her?’

  ‘Better than life itself, sir,’ Andrew answered.

  ‘You’d protect her, watch over her. Bring up your children with a true fear of Almighty God?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I will seek guidance at the next meeting,’ Jacob said. ‘If I feel easy in my heart, I will speak with thee again.’

  So it came about that Ruth Chalfont and Andrew Strong spoke their intention to marry at the meeting house in Washington. There might have been two people more in love in the capital city; but neither of them believed it.

  Five – The Story of David Strong

  December 1860

  ‘Easy, boy,’ David Strong said as the horse flinched. His stable manager, Cyrus Kendall, stuck out his lips ruefully. Clarion was one of their finest stallions. A whole strain of hunters sold to buyers all over Virginia and even as far south as Charleston, testified to his value. But right now Clarion was a very sick animal. He stood in a crouching position, his fore-feet extended in front of his body, the hind legs brought forward beneath his belly to sustain the weight of which the fore-legs had been relieved. When they tried to move him, his action was jerky and obviously painful. His feet were hot.

  ‘What do you think, Mr. David?’ Kendall asked, his face betraying his concern. The condition of the horses on Washington Farm was Kendall’s responsibility and he took it very seriously. If Clarion’s sickness had come about because of his oversight, he would consider it his employer’s right to dismiss him on the spot. The horse was worth considerably more money than Cyrus Kendall would earn in a decade and he was not a poorly paid man.

  David Strong shook his head and continued his check-up of the big horse. Clarion’s expression was anxious, his breathing hurried. He was restless and nervy. The membranes of his nose and eyes were deep red and his mouth was clammy and hot.

  ‘Temperature?’ he asked Kendall.

  ‘Aye,’ Kendall said. ‘He’s constipated, too.’

  David took a rubber hammer with a thin wooden handle from the vet bag
and tapped Clarion’s hoof with it, very gently. The horse winced visibly.

  ‘Laminitis,’ David said.

  ‘That’s my thinkin’, Mr. David,’ Kendall said. ‘It come on real fast.’

  ‘It can do that,’ David said.

  Laminitis was an inflammation of the layer of skin between the horse’s hoof and foot bone. It was a disease fairly prevalent among heavier breeds of horse, particularly stallions during the early part of the season when their services were first called for.

  ‘Any idea what might have brought it on?’

  ‘He’s got wide feet, Mr. David,’ Kendall said. ‘You’ve not fed him new wheat?’

  ‘Heavens, no, sir!’ Kendall said. ‘Nor barley nor beans, not at this time of the season.’

  ‘He hasn’t been ridden hard?’

  ‘No harder than any of the others.’

  ‘Just poor luck, then?’

  ‘That’s my thinkin’, Mr. David,’ Kendall nodded, it can come on for no more reason than that a horse has had a dose of physic.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he’s going to get now, Cyrus,’ David Strong said. ‘And a full dose! I want his bowels unloaded. We might even bleed him a little. Anyway, get a bed made up for him, peat moss with straw on top. Plenty of straw, so he won’t hurt his head if he struggles. Get the smith over here to take his shoes off, right away. And make up some hot bran poultices for those feet as soon as he’s done it.’

  ‘Aye, Mr. David,’ Kendall said.

  ‘I want someone in here with him around the clock, Cyrus. Those poultices must be changed the moment they start to cool.’ David rubbed his chin. ‘I wonder whether we ought to give him some morphia?’