Wylie only shrugged and made a face in response. He figured it would profit him little to point out that Bogart had been the one who assured Major Potter that the Sioux and Cheyenne were running like scared rabbits. It had only enforced a general belief most of the army officers already held, and it led to a major portion of General Crook’s forces getting caught with their pants down while they stopped to rest and let their horses graze beside Rosebud Creek. Had it not been for the vigilance of the two hundred and sixty Crow and Shoshoni warriors that had come to fight with Crook’s forces, and their firm belief that Crazy Horse would stand and fight, Crook’s army might have been massacred. The Crows’ and Shoshonis’ counterattack gave Crook time to collect his forces to stop Crazy Horse’s advance. And now Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had moved on toward the Big Horn, while the soldiers had withdrawn to Goose Creek to await reinforcements. “I reckon he jumped on your ass pretty hard at that,” Wylie finally commented.
“Threatened to fire me, he did,” Bogart fumed. “The son of a bitch, he better not be standin’ anywhere close to me the next time we get caught in a hot battle with them Injuns. He just might get unlucky enough to catch a stray bullet.” He started to say more, but realized that it might not be the kind of talk to bandy about casually. It wouldn’t do for the wrong person to overhear him, so he changed his tune. “I expect he needn’t worry ’bout firin’ me. I just might quit.” It was no more than boastful talk, for he would hang on as long as the army would pay him. “Hell, I’m tired of talkin’ about the bastard. I’m gonna turn in,” he told Wylie, and got up to leave.
With a bladder filled with coffee, he walked down toward the officers’ latrine to relieve himself. Enlisted men and scouts were not permitted to use the latrine, but Bogart customarily did his business in the bushes behind the tent. Ordinarily, he would relieve himself wherever he happened to be standing, but he was warned against that practice, and instructed to retreat a respectable distance from the common camp. It irritated him to do so, but he complied reluctantly. It was just one more thing that added to his dislike for officers. There they were, camped out along Goose Creek, and they dug a hole in the ground and built a wooden seat over it, so the officers wouldn’t have to stand out in the open to answer nature’s call.
He encountered one officer on his way to the latrine. By unfortunate coincidence, it happened to be Major Potter. “Son of a bitch,” Bogart muttered under his breath. Then with an attempt to remove the scowl from his face, said, “Evenin’, Major,” and paused to let the major pass in front of him.
Potter halted abruptly when he saw who it was. “Oh, Bogart,” he said. “I was going to send for you in the morning. This will save us both the trouble. Your services as a scout will no longer be required. You can pick up any pay you’ve got coming at the end of the month.”
“Fired!” Bogart sputtered. “You’re firin’ me?”
“You’re not the only one,” Potter replied unemotionally. “We’re letting a few other scouts go as well. That partner of yours, George Wylie, is one of them.”
“You can’t fire me,” Bogart stormed. “I’m the best damn scout you’ve got!”
“No use to make it hard on yourself,” Potter said, his voice still calm. “It’s already done.”
“Why, you prissy-ass son of a bitch, I oughta stomp your ass in the ground. You got no call to fire me.”
“Now you’ve gone too far,” Potter threatened, heating up and drawing his frail statue up in indignation. “You’re going to find yourself in irons if you don’t close your mouth and get out of my way.”
With fists clenched and every muscle in his body tensed to the breaking point, Bogart could barely restrain himself. The urge to strike out at the major was overwhelming, and the knowledge that there were too many people around for him to get away with it left the oversized bully sputtering helplessly while Potter continued on his way to the latrine. Still fuming, Bogart walked after the major, but went around behind the tent as was his original intention. But instead of relieving his bladder, he edged up to the back corner of the tent to listen for voices inside. When he heard none, he drew his bowie knife and slit the corner of the canvas, large enough for him to peek inside. Potter was alone. The picture of the diminutive officer seated on the wooden structure was sufficient inducement to squash him like a bug. His desire to take out his anger on the unsuspecting officer was too strong to ignore, and the time was right. He didn’t expect to be presented with another opportunity to catch Potter alone and vulnerable. He would worry about the consequences later.
Leaving the back corner of the tent, Bogart inched his way to the front while watching the open space between the latrine and the cavalry encampment. It was dark enough at this point that even his bulky figure would hardly be noticed, but he knew he had to hurry before one of the other privileged few authorized to use the facility might feel the urge. With his knife still in hand, he pushed the tent flap aside and entered.
“What in hell are you doing in here?” Potter demanded, trying to maintain his indignant aplomb while his trousers were still down around his ankles.
“I came to see if you needed anybody to wipe your scrawny little ass for you,” Bogart snarled, his face a mask of evil delight, his knife concealed behind his leg. “And I wanted to see if there was anythin’ between your legs that proved you was a man.”
Only half-finished with the business he had come to do, Potter leaped up from his wooden throne, while frantically trying to pull his trousers up. In the process, he did not take notice of the bowie knife in Bogart’s hand. “By God, I’ll have you hanged for this intrusion,” he managed to spit out before Bogart stepped up close and thrust his knife to the hilt up under his breastbone. The force of the blow was so powerful that the slender officer was lifted off his feet to drop back across the toilet, gasping for breath.
Far too lost in the moment of triumph to be concerned with being caught, Bogart took his time to enjoy the execution. “Who you gonna hang now, you little bastard?” he taunted the dying man. “I’m fixin’ to scalp you, and when they find you, they’ll think an Injun done it.” Then ignoring the futile efforts of the stricken officer to protect himself, Bogart clamped both hands over Potter’s face, shutting off air to his nose and mouth, muffling his screams of agony, while the dying man flailed frantically for his life. After a couple of minutes, Potter’s body relaxed into death. The bug was squashed. To make sure, Bogart continued to hold his hands over his face until positively certain his victim was dead. Then he yanked the knife out of Potter’s body and proceeded to lift the scalp from his head.
Once the savage ritual was accomplished, a sense of urgency returned, and he went at once to the tent flap to see if anyone was approaching. There was still no one close by, so he returned to stand over the pitiful remains of the major who had cost him his job, and he favored the body with a grin of satisfaction. He glanced down at his knife as he was about to replace it in its sheath. Seeing the blood on the blade, he wiped it on Potter’s shirt before putting it away. He turned then to leave before anyone showed up to use the latrine. It was at that moment that a sense of urgency of another kind came to remind him that he had never rid himself of the coffee he had consumed, and the reason he had happened to bump into Potter in the first place. Now that his body was no longer locked in a sense of passion, the urgency to empty his bladder took preference once more. Hurrying to the tent flap again for another quick look just to make sure, he then returned to empty the complaining bladder on the still corpse lying across the rough toilet seat. Content with himself, he slipped out of the tent and disappeared into the night.
* * *
“Where you been so long?” George Wylie asked when Bogart joined him at the makeshift camp they shared close to the horse herd.
“I told you I had to take a leak,” Bogart replied.
“Musta been a helluva one,” Wylie said with a chuckle.
“Yep, it was mighty satisfyin’. I ran into our favorite officer, Major Potter, and we had a little talk.” He looked down at Wylie and grinned. “Now, this oughta tickle you real good. Me and you ain’t got no jobs no more.” This captured Wylie’s attention immediately.
“What are you talkin’ about?” Wylie asked, not understanding. “Startin’ when?”
“Startin’ right now,” Bogart said. “He told me we wasn’t needed no more.”
“Damn!” Wylie swore. “Just you and me? Any of the other scouts cut loose?”
“Well, he said there was some of the others let go, but he didn’t say who or how many, but I figure there ain’t no use to hang around here. Hell, I’m ready to head outta here right now.”
“Damn,” Wylie swore again softly. He hadn’t expected anything this drastic to happen. He knew Bogart wasn’t on the major’s list of favorites, but he figured Potter was just riding him. He wasn’t really planning to fire him. And he sure didn’t think he was in any trouble. “You know, that ain’t right. I’m thinkin’ we oughta go talk to Ben Clarke about this . . .” He paused. “Or Potter.”
“You might could talk to Ben about it, but Potter ain’t gonna be talkin’ to nobody about nothin’ no more. And like I said, I’m figurin’ on ridin’ outta here tonight. You goin’ with me?”
“Damn,” Wylie swore once more. He knew Bogart well enough to recognize a hint of mischief in his tone. “I was just fixin’ to crawl under my blanket. Can’t you wait till mornin’?”
“I reckon I could, but I ain’t,” Bogart replied, already in the process of packing up his gear. “I ain’t fond of hangin’ around where I ain’t appreciated. You goin’ or not?”
“What’d you do?” Wylie pressed, certain now that his big friend had somehow gotten into trouble. “You didn’t step on ol’ Potter’s toes, did you?”
“I did worse than that, so that’s why I’m leavin’ tonight,” Bogart said. “I don’t plan to be around here when they start askin’ questions in the mornin’.”
“Anybody see you jump on him?” Wylie wanted to know. He was trying to make up his mind whether to go with Bogart or not. If it was true that he no longer had a job, there was no use in remaining there at Goose Creek. If Bogart was set on getting away from there right away, he must have done some serious work on the major, and there might be an army detachment on his tail by morning. On the other hand, if nobody saw him do whatever he did to Potter, then they might think they just left camp to get a start somewhere else. Wylie knew that he needed a strong friend like Bogart, and that’s why he had jumped right up to take Sonny Pickens’s place when Luke Sunday shot Sonny. He wasn’t confident on his own, and Bogart had taken to him right away.
“Ain’t nobody seen me,” Bogart answered him.
Wylie hoped that was true. “Well, I reckon I’d best be gettin’ my things together, if we’re gonna get outta here tonight,” he said, and started rolling up his blanket. He paused while tying the rawhide cords and asked, “How bad did you hurt ol’ Potter?”
Without saying a word, Bogart grinned, reached into his pocket, and pulled out an object rolled up in a bandana. He unrolled the bandana and held the gruesome object up for Wylie to see. It took a moment, but then Wylie suddenly realized it was a scalp. In that moment he was aware that he had no choice but to go with Bogart. He now knew too much.
Bogart picked up his saddle and rifle. “Let’s get our horses saddled and cut outta here before somebody finds that little bastard,” he said. “We need to put a little territory between us and Goose Creek.”
“Right,” Wylie replied, and picked up his saddle. “Where are we goin’?”
“Let’s just get away from here first. Then we’ll decide what part of the territory suits us best—somewhere we can make a helluva lot more money than what the army pays scouts.”
No one seemed to notice, or care, that the two scouts were saddling their horses and riding out of camp in the early evening. Not even the picket they passed as they headed across the open prairie was interested enough to question them. Bogart smiled to himself as the campfires faded away in the darkness behind them, knowing he had gotten away with the brutal murder. They’ll play hell trying to track me down, he thought, confident in his ability to hide his tracks. It was not the first murder he had gotten away with, and as he rode on into the night, he was reminded of the time a deputy marshal had attempted to question him about a bank holdup in Oklahoma Territory six years before. He actually had nothing to do with the holdup. He just didn’t like the deputy marshal. He despised lawmen as much as he hated army officers. He had to chuckle when he thought about it, because they never knew for sure who shot that deputy in the back, although they had a pretty good idea. Didn’t make any difference, anyway, ’cause he was long gone when that posse came after him.
They continued on until the horses began showing signs of tiring, so when they came upon a creek that emptied into the Tongue River, they camped there for the rest of the night. Secure in the belief that no one was on their tail, they slept past sunup the next morning until Wylie rolled out of his blanket and rekindled the fire. Owing to their hasty departure the night before, there had been no opportunity to acquire any extra supplies, but between them they had some coffee and a small amount of salt pork, which Wylie soon had over the fire. “One of the first things we got to do is go huntin’,” Bogart commented when Wylie offered him a couple of strips of bacon. “I’m a big man and I need a helluva lot more than this to eat.”
“This oughta hold us till we run up on some deer or antelope, though,” Wylie said. “Where you figure we oughta head? Back toward Cheyenne?” When they had left the army encampment, they had ridden out to the north, for no particular reason other than it seemed the quickest way to put the various battalion and company camps behind them.
“Don’t seem like the smartest thing to do, does it? Goin’ back to Cheyenne? There’s liable to be some questions asked about us leavin’ right after they found that little bastard’s body.” He took a long look at the simple man who had taken Sonny Pickens’s place as his partner. So far Wylie had proven to be little more than a toady, striving to make himself useful in Bogart’s eyes. Well, I’ve got a use for someone like that, he thought. But all the same, he missed Sonny’s fearlessness when it came to a barroom brawl, or a throat that needed slitting. His musing brought another to mind, the man who had killed Sonny. The thought caused him to grunt irritably, “Huh.” He reached over and speared another slice of bacon on the tip of his bowie knife. “I’ve been thinkin’ about where I wanna go, and the more I think about it, the more I’m satisfied that we need to head out for the Yellowstone.”
“Why?” Wylie wondered. “What’s up there?”
“Well,” Bogart replied with a devilish grin, “there’s a couple of things. You remember that wagon that came up from Medicine Bow with them folks that was hurtin’ so bad to get to some new town on the Yellowstone? I expect you remember that fine-lookin’ wife that feller had.” Wylie nodded. “Captain Findley said them folks was tryin’ to get up there ’cause some of their family had struck it rich and was lookin’ to buy up a whole lotta land up on the Yellowstone.” He paused to wipe the bacon grease on the sleeve of his shirt. “You know who they took to guide ’em?”
Again, Wylie nodded, then said, “Luke Sunday.”
“That’s right, Luke Sunday. And that murderin’ Injun lover ain’t the kind to do nobody no favors unless there’s somethin’ in it for him. So that says to me that he knows somethin’ he don’t feel like talkin’ about, and I don’t think he’s got a right to whatever it is any more than we do. If somebody’s got some gold they’re lookin’ to spend, then we need to be up there and see if we can help ’em get rid of it.”
“Well, that sounds all right to me,” Wylie said. “Whatever you think is best.”
Bogart was silent for
a long moment, a deep furrow etched across his brow. He held his knife up before his face and tested the sharpness of the blade with his thumb. “I’ve got somethin’ to settle with Mr. Luke Sunday, and the sooner, the better.”
Chapter 9
A chilling rain had set in right after they left Pumpkin Creek and Luke unrolled the canvas he had removed from Mary Beth’s wagon. Half of it was used as a tent for her when they camped. The other half he had cut into two pieces. With one, he fashioned a raincoat to drape over her head and shoulders. The other was secured over the packs on the extra horse. For his own protection against the rain, he always carried a cloak made out of deer hide. The rain never let up throughout the morning as they continued on a northwest course, and it was close to noon before it began to taper off. By the time they reached the east bank of the Tongue River, horses and riders were both ready to stop and rest.
After Luke took a good look around them, he picked a spot on the west bank, and they crossed over. Mary Beth was bone-weary, but after Luke got a fire going, she rallied to take on the chore of fixing something for them to eat while he removed the packs and the saddle from their horses. “We’ll stop here for a spell and give you a chance to rest up,” he told her. His demeanor also told her that he was no longer worried about being followed by the two Sioux warriors. Enough time had passed since their flight from the Powder to suggest that they had left that danger behind them. Added to that was the possibility that the morning rain had helped to obliterate their tracks. In spite of the improvement in their situation, Mary Beth was still unable to discard the feeling of tension that had remained with her ever since David’s death—for she was still a woman alone with a man as close to a wild savage as she had ever met in her entire life. Now that imminent danger was no longer upon them, would he attempt to take advantage of her as a savage might? As if intercepting her thoughts, he turned at that moment to gaze at her. After a lengthy pause, he said, “You look like you need some extra time to rest. We’ll stay an extra night here.”
A Man Called Sunday Page 14