by John Jakes
With deceptive friendliness, Munro said, “It’s my duty to inform you that the small hand press kept at your Dixie Store for printing your newspaper has been confiscated. You are no longer in the business of disseminating hatred, Mr. Gettys.”
Gettys waited, certain there was worse to come.
“I would take a horsewhip to you if that were permissible. I’d do it despite your wound, because I find you and all your kind richly deserving of it. You’re like the doomed Bourbons of France—kings too filled with arrogance to forget the past, and too stupid to learn from it.”
Munro drew a long breath, forcing restraint on himself. “However, the recourse I mentioned is denied me. I suppose that’s best. Using a horsewhip would pull me down to your level. Let me instead pose a question.” Something hard, even a bit sadistic, showed in his eyes. “Do you know of the Dry Tortu-gas?”
“Small islands, aren’t they? Off the Floridas.”
“Quite right. The government now sends Carolina prisoners to the Dry Tortugas. A godforsaken spot, especially in the summer months. Blistering heat. Insects and rats and vermin. Wardens only a little less depraved than the inmate population.” Munro smoothed his gauntlets, which he’d laid on his knee. He smiled. “New prisoners are subjected to certain—initiations, while the wardens look the other way. Without steady nerves and a strong constitution, a prisoner sometimes fails to survive the ordeal, which I understand can be savage. After all, when men are penned up together, without women—”
“My God, what has it all to do with me? I’m a gentleman.”
“You’re nevertheless going to the Dry Tortugas, for the murder of the freedman Sherman and the teacher Prudence Chaffee.”
“I didn’t kill them,” Gettys exclaimed, his voice rising toward shrillness. “You can’t send me to some—some bestial place like that.”
“We can and we will. If you didn’t actually commit the crimes, you belonged to the unlawful combination bearing responsibility.”
Gettys’s hand shot to the braided sleeve, clutching. “I’ll give you the names of those in our klavern. Every last one.”
“Well.” Munro cleared his throat. “That might put a different coloration on it, being a cooperative witness.” He concealed his amusement. He had expected a quick capitulation. He had inquired extensively about the character of Randall Gettys.
Gettys’s pink face sweated. “If you keep me out of prison, I’ll give you something else useful.”
Colonel Munro was nonplussed. Cautiously, he said, “Yes?”
“I’ll tell you about the Dixie Stores. People think it’s a Southern company. Some old rebs hiding behind a name and committing usury. Well—”
Gettys hitched higher against the pillow, practically babbling in his haste to save himself. “It isn’t that at all. The owner, the people bleeding this state, may be some of the very people who pose as high-minded Yankee reformers. My store and all the others like it are owned by a firm called Mercantile Enterprises. I don’t send my receipts and reports to Memphis or Atlanta, I send them to a Yankee lawyer in Washington, D.C. I’ll give you his name and address. I’ll turn over the records. Is that enough to keep me from the Dry Tortugas?”
From the end of the ward a young man’s delirious voice called for his Nancy, and water. Colonel Orpha C. Munro recovered his composure. “I think it may be, Mr. Gettys. I do indeed think so.”
Munro here briefly. All the remaining den members are arrested. M. hinted that he has also discovered some scandal involving this district and persons from the North. He would not say more. Cannot imagine what he means.
63
BENT SAID, “YOU DON’T understand what you’re doing.”
Charles and Magee ignored him. Charles held the bridle he’d put on one of the mules from the corral. Magee, astride the frisky chestnut, pulled on the rope to test it. The rope was tied to the branch of the pecan tree hanging over Vermilion Creek. A few brilliant white clouds floated in the blue northwest. The day was sweet and summerlike.
“Lean your head down,” Magee said.
Bent refused. Tears rolled down into the stubble on his cheeks. “To do this is criminal.”
Charles was weary of the man’s ranting. He glanced at Magee, who knocked Bent’s plug hat off. It landed in the creek and sat upside down in the purling water. Magee yanked Bent’s head down by the hair and slipped the noose over. He snugged the noose with one pull.
Blood still leaked from Bent’s torn earlobe. His wound was soaking his left pant leg. He cried now, spewing wrath and self-pity. “You’re trash, ignorant trash. You’re robbing the nation of its greatest military genius, you and this lowlife nigger.”
“God above,” Magee said. He was too astounded to be mad.
Bent shook his head violently, as if he could get rid of the rope that way. “You can’t do it. You can’t deprive the world of the new Bonaparte.” His voice was so loud that redbirds along the creek flew up in alarm.
Charles brought his Colt from his hip, cocked it, and held the muzzle an inch from Bent’s mouth. “Shut up.” He looked in the direction of the whiskey ranch, not wanting the outcries to carry. His son and the Cheyenne girl had had enough. Bent saw the determined eyes behind the revolver and struggled to control himself. He bit his lip; but the tears kept rolling from the corners of his eyes.
The pecan limb cast a dark shadow over Charles’s face. He didn’t want to go through with this. He was sick of killing. He reminded himself that Bent represented an obligation that was more than personal. He owed this to Orry and George; especially to George, for his wife. He owned it to Green Grass Woman and God knew how many others Bent had wronged over the past twenty-five years.
Charles stepped back from the mule.
“You can’t! Military genius is a rare gift—”
Charles slid the Army Colt into the holster and flexed the fingers of his right hand, brushing the tips over his palm in a cleansing motion. A male and female cardinal flew frantically round and round above the creek, frightened by the shouting.
“You’re killing Bonaparte!”
He positioned his hand to slap the mule. A final look at Bent, to be sure he was real—then his arm and hand moved in a blur. The sound of the slap was loud. The chestnut tossed his head and Magee reined him hard as the mule bolted. The rope hummed taut and Bent’s weight made the pecan limb creak.
Bent seemed to glare down at Charles. But his neck was already broken. The shadow of his body moved slowly back and forth across Charles’s face before he turned away, unable to stand the sight.
“I’ll catch the mule.”
“Let me,” Magee said softly. “You go back to your boy.”
In the sundown’s dusty orange afterglow, Charles sat on a nail keg, watching the creek. He drank the last of some coffee Magee had brewed. The soldier had killed and cleaned and hearth-broiled one of the chickens but Charles had no appetite for it. Instead of the creek, flawed black glass streaked with colored highlights, he kept seeing Bent’s eyes just before the rope sang its last low note. Bent’s eyes became a mirror of his own life. In the vengeful Bent he recognized himself, a humiliating image. He was no better. He spilled the bitter-tasting coffee on the ground and went inside.
He crossed the main room, lifted the red blanket screening the doorway, saw his boy sleeping on the old straw-filled mattress in the bedroom. He walked to the bed. Even asleep, Gus had a pinched, anxious look. Charles touched the oozing cut on his left cheek. The boy moaned and turned. Pierced by guilt, Charles drew his hand back. He walked out and let the red blanket drop in place.
Gray Owl sat at a table, enveloped in his blanket, his eyes fixed on some infinity beneath the scarred wood. Magee rested in one chair with his boots on another. He munched some hardtack, his practice deck of cards fanned out in front of him. Green Grass Woman sat on a nail keg with hands clasped and eyes downcast. She looked old, worn, full of despair. Coming in from outside, Charles had found her with a bar bottle. He’d taken it out
of her hand and emptied it outside, then done the same with the others.
Now he walked over to her. She raised her head and he saw a flickering image of the young, fresh girl who’d listened to Scar’s courting flute with a saucy confidence that the world was hers, along with any man in it that she chose. He remembered the lovelorn looks she gave him that winter in Black Kettle’s village. Somehow the memory hurt.
He spoke in Cheyenne. “How did you get here?”
She shook her head and started to cry.
“Tell me, Green Grass Woman.”
“I listened to promises. A white man’s lies and promises. I tasted the strong drink he gave me and I wanted more.”
“This was Bent?”
“Mister Glyn. Bent killed him.”
He had a dim recollection of a seedy trader named Glyn. He’d met him when he rode with the Jacksons. No doubt it was the same man.
“Let me look at the dressing.”
There was an echo of girlish shyness in the way she drew up the deerskin skirt just far enough. The bandage showed staining but it would do until morning. Green Grass Woman could walk on the slashed leg, though probably not without plenty of pain. That focused Charles’s mind on a responsibility that became more inevitable the longer he thought about it.
“I need to take you back to the People.”
Gray Owl straightened up, alert, anxious. The girl’s eyes showed fright. “No. They would scorn me. What I did was too shameful.”
Charles shook his head. “There isn’t a man or woman on God’s earth who isn’t in need of forgiveness for something. The nearest village is Red Bear’s. I’ll take you there and talk to him.”
She started to protest, but she didn’t. Gray Owl didn’t protest either. Evidently the idea was reasonable.
Magee scooped up his deck and squared it. “Glad we’re going to get out of here. Something bad about this place.”
“Gray Owl and I will take her,” Charles said to him. “I want you to put Gus on one of those mules and ride straight through to Brigadier Jack Duncan at Fort Leavenworth. Will you do that?”
Magee frowned. “I dunno, Charlie. I hate to send you back to those Indians without your wizard. That Whistling Snake, he’s probably still burning.”
“There won’t be any more trouble.” It was a declaration, not a certainty. The prospect of returning to the Cheyennes did bother him, but the duty seemed unavoidable. “We’ll ride in and out in an hour. Now listen. At Leavenworth, I’d like you to send a telegraph message for me. I saw some paper in the other room. I’ll write it out.”
“All right,” Magee said.
The burned-out feeling consumed Charles. He strode to the door, flung it open, stared at thousands of stars gleaming more brightly than usual in the clear air. He thought of the Hanging Road. He’d nearly traveled it this year. He was so tired. “God, I wish I had a cigar,” he said.
In the morning he wrote the telegraph message and saw it safely stowed in Magee’s saddlebag along with the flintlock pistol, powder bag, and box of fake ammunition. Charles pulled the nails from the corners of the oil portrait and rolled it up. It was dry and brittle. A corner broke off. He tied the painting carefully with a strip of rawhide.
From a blanket he’d washed and hung over the corral rail to dry, he cut a large square which he slit with his knife, making a small poncho for Gus much like his own gypsy robe. He lifted the boy onto the horse blanket he’d tied to the mule with braided rope; there was no spare horse furniture in the stable.
Gus looked like a little old man, scarred and pale. “Hug your pa,” Charles said. The boy took a long, deep breath. He was wary. The hurt flickered in his eyes.
Charles hugged him instead. “I’ll make it all right, Gus. I’ll come to Uncle Jack’s soon and it will be all right.”
He wasn’t sure, though. It would take months, perhaps years, of attention and love. The hidden scars might never heal. He hugged the boy fiercely, arms around his waist.
Gus laid one hand on the top of his father’s head. After a moment he drew it away. His face was sober, without emotion. Well, the touch was a start.
To Magee he said, “Take care of him.”
“Count on it,” he answered.
Charles and Gray Owl watched until the soldier and the boy vanished on the hazy horizon to the northeast.
The tracker helped Charles pull down two corral rails and shorten them with a rusty axe. They rigged a travois for Green Grass Woman. It was another sunny day, with a light breeze. The Cheyenne girl said nothing as the two men carried her to the travois.
Charles had already saddled Satan; they’d brought the horses back late yesterday. Passing Bent’s corpse was unavoidable. The buzzards had already feasted on the American Bonaparte, and plucked his clothes to bloody rags.
“This is an evil place,” Gray Owl said, seated on his. pony. “I am glad to go.”
“Take the travois a little way down the creek, to those post oaks. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Gray Owl moved out, leading the mule. Green Grass Woman exclaimed softly as the travois bumped over a sharp stone. Gray Owl looked apologetic. His pony plodded on. The Cheyenne girl held her bandaged leg and watched the sky.
Charles carried the rusty axe inside. He kicked over a nail keg and chopped it apart. Next he demolished a table and two chairs. He struck with hard blows, letting pain jolt through the handle and up his arms.
He piled up the wood and set fire to it with one of his last matches. He left the whiskey ranch burning behind him.
They reached Red Bear’s village on the Sweet Water in pouring rain. No one threatened Charles, and those few people who peeked out to watch the arrival hung back, properly awed because they remembered the bearded white man who commanded a black wizard. The black wizard wasn’t with him, but surely his medicine was.
Of Whistling Snake they saw nothing. Charles turned Green Grass Woman over to the care of Red Bear’s stout and toothless wife. Green Grass Woman was not of Red Bear’s village, but the chief knew about her.
“She will go with us to the white fort,” Red Bear said in his tipi. Seated by the fire, Charles used a bone spoon to eat some stew. He no longer worried about the origin of the stew meat.
“You’re going to give up to the soldiers?”
“Yes. I have decided it after much thought and consultation with others. If we do not give up we will starve or be shot. All in the village have agreed to go except for eight of the Dog Men, who refuse to quit. I said I would not lead grandfathers and infants to death just to preserve the honor of the Dog Men. It wounds my pride to go to the soldiers. I was brave once too. But I have learned that bravery and wisdom sometimes cannot walk together. Life is more precious than pride.”
Charles wiped stew from the corner of his mouth. He said nothing.
He hadn’t slept in twenty-four hours. But he wanted to be on his way. Red Bear endorsed that. “The Dog Men know you are here. They are angry.”
Then the wise thing was to hurry out of the village. Ceremoniously, he thanked Red Bear’s kindly wife and the chief for welcoming them. He said he would like to say goodbye to Green Grass Woman. The chief’s wife led him to a nearby tipi where she’d made the girl comfortable. Beside a small fire, bundled in a buffalo robe, Green Grass Woman lay with her head and shoulders elevated by a woven backrest. Charles took her hand.
“You’ll be all right now.”
The puffy eyes welled with new tears. “No man will ever have me. I love you so. I wish you had lain with me once.”
“So do I.” He leaned down, holding his beard aside as he kissed her mouth lightly. She cried in silence; he could feel her shaking. He caressed her face, then stood and slipped through the oval hole into the slackening rain.
Stars began to shine through translucent clouds blowing across the sky. Red Bear saw them to the edge of the camp, then turned back. The freshening wind tossed Charles’s beard. He patted Satan, watched the clearing sky, began to hum the litt
le melody that reminded him of home. Beside him, Gray Owl trotted his pony and observed his friend cautiously. What the Indian saw brought a fleeting smile.
They spied a lone horseman motionless on a low rise ahead and thought nothing of it. Some boy on duty with the horses, Charles assumed. He angled the piebald toward the stream to avoid passing too near the sentinel. The Indian suddenly loped down off the rise to intercept them.
“What’s this?” Charles wondered aloud. Then his mouth dried. The Cheyenne was speeding toward them, booting his pony. In one hand he carried a lance, in the other a carbine with long feathers tied to the muzzle. Something about the rider’s head and torso reminded him of—
Gray Owl reined in, despair in his eyes.
“Man-Ready-for-War,” he said.
And so it was. Older now, but still handsome, though there was a famished, fugitive look about him. He wore his regalia and full paint. Around his neck hung his wing-bone whistle and the stolen silver cross. From shoulder to hip ran a wide sash painted yellow and red and heavily quilled and feathered. When Charles saw the sash he remembered Scar had been chosen a Dog-String Wearer.
In the light of the clearing sky, the huge white scar fish-hooking from the tip of the brow down around the jawbone was quite visible. Satan snorted nervously, smelling the Cheyenne pony as it trotted up.
“Others told me you were here,” Scar said.
“We have no quarrel anymore, Scar.”
“Yes. We do.”
“Damn you, I don’t want to fight you.”
Wind fluttered the golden eagle feathers tied to the barrel of the carbine. Scar rammed his lance point in the muddy earth. “I have waited for you many winters. I remember how the old one tore away my manhood.”
“And I remember how you repaid him. Let it go, Scar.”
“No. I will pin my sash to the earth here. You will not pass by unless it is to walk the Hanging Road.”