These Violent Times

by C. Courtney Joyner

  “Your schematics,” Terry said with understanding.

  “I was the easy, obvious target. The penny dreadfuls had me killing indiscriminately. It stood to reason that I had lost my mind, continued my own research, turned what were supposed to be means of curing into methods of mass murder.”

  “Doctor, we had better ride to the old mine, and quickly.”

  Bishop regarded him. “With whom? Your men may be infected. You ride out, half of them may fall over. You’ll have to peel off men to escort them back. Weiber-Krauss was a soldier. He saw how troops were deployed to conquer and defend, as I did. Only he was probably paying better attention to that, if he already had this scheme in mind.”

  “Your gun,” Terry suggested.

  Bishop snorted unhappily. “I’m thinking of all the things we had talked about packing into glass grenades,” he said. “Toxins were not one of them, but poison gas? Acid? Angry wasps? We considered a great many applications. I am guessing that he is well stocked with several if not all of them. He has surely had the time.”

  “Well, we have to do something,” Terry said.

  “What would you do, armed like that and bent on conquest?” Bishop asked.

  Terry shrugged. “I’d conquer.”

  “Exactly. He will ride out, especially if—as he likely knows by now—his attempts to blame me and murder me have failed.”

  “Sentry!” Terry shouted.

  The ranking noncom on the wall turned. “Sir?”

  “Watch for torches,” he said. “Listen. You hear anything larger than a pack of coyotes in the brush, I want to know about it.”

  “Yessir!”

  Bishop was thinking hard and fast, pulling together the new pieces. He ducked back into the infirmary to get his gun-arm and a pair of surgical masks, then started at a run toward the small, two-cell jail.

  “What is it?” Terry asked.

  “I have to wake Firecrow,” Bishop called back. “I will need four horses,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we will be riding hard and I won’t have time to rest the horses,” he told Major Terry.

  “Dr. Bishop, what is this all about?” the officer demanded.

  “A damned loose end,” Bishop said hotly as he reached the jail and roused the slumbering Cheyenne. “Come,” was all he said, and Firecrow was immediately on his feet, walking beside him.

  The brave did not understand, nor did Major Terry, why Bishop was cursing himself as they ran toward the stable. The horses were saddled quickly and the men left with what they carried, the weapons Firecrow had brought and the gun-arm, which Bishop attached in the minute it took to ready the horses. A trooper handed Firecrow a torch, and he held that and the reins of the two spare animals in one hand as they rode through the opening gate into the night.

  Bishop was still cursing. Cursing the overconfident, underestimating fool he had been for having allowed Walter G. Dent to ride on.

  * * *

  The line of Muddy Linens made their deliberate way through the plain, through a sandstone canyon, across a river—a river Weiber-Krauss felt he owned, given the role it had played in this project. They approached the Cheyenne settlement without haste. And when they arrived there would be no deployment. As Weiber-Krauss had seen or heard of in battle after battle, a single line of cavalry offered less of a target than an array of galloping soldiers who could not return fire coming from a trench or some natural formation that served as fortification. He remembered the white-haired, leather-cheeked advisor in a fresh new uniform telling Colonel Zebulon Francis how, as a young man, he had been part of George Washington’s “crossfire detail” that set up roadside ambushes to pick off redcoats. The greatness of the military mind was its history of tactics; the limitation of the military mind was also its history of tactics. They were predictable. In that respect, the Cheyenne were more interesting. Riding into the sleeping settlement, Weiber-Krauss did not at all know what to expect. Braves might charge or women might attack from tepees. The books about these peoples were full of surprises.

  So was he.

  The night was still deep when they arrived. As they came closer, Cavanaugh spotted a few curious Indians and rode back along the line to inform Weiber-Krauss.

  “I noticed them,” the German said to the face in the wind-blown torch. “Three, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. Ride back and pick one. Inform him that I wish to see the squaw White Fox.”

  “If she doesn’t come?”

  “Shoot the one you asked and ask again,” Weiber-Krauss said, as if he were asking the apothecary for his familiar tobacco.

  “If they don’t understand?”

  “Keep shooting Cheyenne until someone does.”

  The Confederate threw off an informal salute and wheeled ’round. “Cavanaugh!”

  The man halted and turned in his saddle. “Doctor?”

  “If we are forced to move out, tell the men to follow my lead. Pass that back.”

  Cavanaugh nodded and continued on.

  The German noted the direction of the wind. That was important. If he did not get what he wanted, they must be sure to ride into it. There was another settlement and there was a fort, all within a day’s ride. This would not end here.

  Laying the reins over the dash rail of the buggy, Weiber-Krauss bent and carefully opened his carpetbag. Carefully lowering his right hand through the masses of cotton, he selected a glass bulb. This one was filled with smallpox of his own creation, airborne and fatal within a day. There was no cure. The effective range was, he had calculated, at least a mile. He shut the bag with his left hand, cupped the sphere in his right, and lightly rested the back of his wrist on the velvet-covered arm rail. The globe reflected the distant torches, like fireflies buzzing to escape.

  “Soon,” he murmured.

  Cavanaugh had reached the front of the line. He said something to the first of the Muddy Linens, who turned and told the next and so on down the line. Meanwhile, the Confederate stopped beside Smith who raised rifle to shoulder. The bullwhip was coiled around the other arm; Weiber-Krauss was not surprised to discover that the bloody man slept with it.

  “Who speaks English?” the Confederate demanded.

  “A little,” answered a small man, thumping his chest.

  “What is your name?”

  “Knob Pipe,” the man answered proudly.

  “Listen carefully, Knob,” the Confederate said. “We want to see the woman named White Fox. Go. Bring her here.”

  “She ill.”

  Cavanaugh hesitated. “Then carry her. My chief wants to see her.” He jerked a thumb toward the dark buggy.

  “She too ill,” the man replied.

  “I won’t ask again,” Cavanaugh said through his teeth.

  “Good,” Knob Pipe replied amiably.

  Smith put a bullet through the man’s heart. He flopped back, arms splayed, a pipe jumping from his pocket and landing at the feet of the brave beside him. Cavanaugh looked at that man. “You speak English?”

  The man shook his head.

  “White Fox,” the Confederate said. “Squaw. Get. Now!”

  The man understood that. Turning into the darkness, he motioned for the other Cheyenne to come with him.

  Cavanaugh, Smith, and the Muddy Linens remained on alert, weapons raised, in the event that Cheyenne decided to attack. They did not. There might not be a sufficient number of healthy braves to do so. Or maybe they were being smart, for once. Contrary to the popular conception in the East, Indians did not ride stupidly to their destruction. Winning that day simply was not important enough. The wise brave knew that there would always be another opportunity, but only if he were alive.

  The two men walked back carrying a bundle between them. They held it carefully, also looking away as they did. Weiber-Krauss grinned. This White Fox was ill. Someone had told them not to breathe near her. Damned Bishop. It could only have been he. The son of a devil meddled with everything.


  Being diseased, we will have to keep her separate, he thought. The men can hold her. He looked to his left and right, saw a spot downwind by a large rock.

  The two men reached the point where they had been standing before.

  “Bring her out here,” Cavanaugh said, underscoring that with a wave of his free hand.

  “Cavanaugh!” Weiber-Krauss shouted.

  “Sir?” the Confederate shouted back.

  Careful not to move the hand with the globe, he reached across with his left arm, under the lantern hanging from the roof top nut. “The rock!”

  “The rock!” Cavanaugh repeated and sent the men in that direction.

  “Áahtaotsé’tov!” a voice cried out from the camp. “Stop and listen!”

  Weiber-Krauss had no idea what had just been said, other than that it had been a sharp command probably telling the men to go nowhere. Because, a moment later, they stopped moving.

  “Cavanaugh!” Weiber-Krauss shouted.

  “Sir?”

  “Shoot the men if they do not move.”

  The Confederate turned. He held the torch. He opened his hand beside it. “Five fingers.” He lowered one. “Four fingers.” He lowered another. “Three fingers. You die in”—he lowered another—“two fingers—”

  “And you die before they do,” a voice cracked from the dark.

  Cavanaugh stopped counting. Smith turned, lowering his rifle, peering into the dark beyond the Confederate. The voice had come from behind them. They looked there, seeing nothing.

  Weiber-Krauss turned to his right, looked over the deadly globe toward the lethal shadow hovering in the dark. A shadow with a very distinctive three-quarter profile, most of which was facing the front of the line. But the speaker was only about twenty yards from the back of the line, near the buggy.

  “Bishop,” the German said, making it sound very much like an oath.

  * * *

  The man with the gun-arm rode toward the lantern. Though he came toward Weiber-Krauss, the gun-arm remained turned toward the line of Muddy Linens. He noted the formality of his homburg, his clean black duster with leather lapels and gold buttons. Custom-made, the arrogant European aristocrat. This was a near-religious moment for the man. Bishop also noted the globe in the German’s hand. He noted the familiar, smug, Teutonic smile on the smooth face of the onetime medic.

  “Thought of everything, didn’t you?” Bishop said, inclining his forehead toward the globe.

  “I believe so,” Weiber-Krauss replied. “I don’t suppose there is anything to be gained by my asking you to join me.”

  “Only that waste of breath,” Bishop answered.

  “Sad. You know you cannot shoot me. That you and everyone here will die. This is something I call Great Pox. There is nothing small about it.”

  “I saw the test infections,” Bishop said.

  “Nothing, compared to this,” the German informed him. “Your U.S. Army medical supplies have no cure for it.”

  “If for no other reason, that’s your death sentence,” Bishop said. “Unless you care to put it down.”

  “I know you would die to stop me, but what about them?” He threw his free hand toward the camp. “They are downwind. They will all die.”

  “You have to be stopped.”

  Weiber-Krauss shook his head. “You were the only one I admired here. And hated. And feared.”

  “That is a conflict,” Bishop observed. “Maybe we can resolve it before you hang.”

  “That is one thing I will most certainly not do. Hang,” Weiber-Krauss told him. “I will triumph here or we will all die here. But you dare not kill me.” He raised the globe menacingly.

  Bishop smirked dismissively. “I remember asking that scum Walter G. Dent if he was prepared to die on that wagon full of medical supplies. He wasn’t. You are?”

  Bishop noticed the man’s left hand drift to the reins. There it was. The lunatic did not intend to die. He intended to drop the sphere and flee, and Bishop knew in which direction.

  A blast broke the night and the head of the horse attached to the buggy vanished in a wave of red. Up and down the line, horses shied and reared. The dead animal dropped with a fleshy thump. Weiber-Krauss seemed genuinely surprised. He turned to Bishop.

  “Well that... that was different,” the German said, mild shock in his face.

  “So now you’re here to stay,” the gun-armed man went on as if nothing had happened. “Again. Are you here to die?”

  The German drew himself up in the bucket seat of the buggy. “One way or another, if you try and take me, many will die. Great Pox, gunfire. Many.”

  “You’re right,” Bishop said. “But you will be the first.”

  He moved the gun-arm ominously back and forth, just a little, to remind the men in the line how vulnerable they were. His eyes remained on Weiber-Krauss as he listened carefully for the click of a hammer, for movement in the saddle, the whinny of a horse. Nothing.

  And then the German had had enough.

  “Kill him!” he shouted, swinging from the opposite side of the buggy and ducking behind the big rear wheel.

  Now Bishop heard clicks but they were drowned in the perforating blasts of his shotgun. As Bishop turned to grab a little shelter behind the carriage and keep his eye on Weiber-Krauss, Muddy Linens fell left and right, back to forward along the line. They broke ranks, panicked, a few firing but no one firing straight in the predawn light.

  The two men up front were not Muddy Linens, however. Unshouldering his bullwhip, Smith turned his horse toward the left side of the crumbling line, Cavanaugh to the right.

  Both men had failed to think beyond Bishop, who stopped firing.

  “Rebel soldier!” a voice cried from the settlement.

  Cavanaugh spun the horse back around to face a brave in war paint and full headdress riding from the settlement, charging down on him with lance extended. The Confederate swept his rifle around, fired, but Firecrow ducked to the opposite side without losing his seat or breaking stride. The large, sharpened stone tip ran through the appendix of the rider, cut through his stomach, and emerged from the other side. He cried out and fell over, writhing on the ground as Firecrow released the weapon. Wheeling ’round, the brave pulled the knife from his belt and dismounted.

  Riding down on the Indian, the snarling Smith switched the rifle to his left hand, uncoiled his bullwhip with his right. He did not get to snap it. A bowie knife went through his left thigh, causing him to scream out and drop the rifle. He listed hard to that side but did not fall. That gave White Fox a chance to pick up the rifle, squat, brace it on her knee, and shoot upward through his jaw and out the top of his skull. The dead man somersaulted backward from his horse.

  Bishop was on the other side of the buggy, staring down at Weiber-Krauss. The German was squatting, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the globe. Bishop threw a leg over his horse and dismounted without taking his gun-arm off his quarry.

  “You want to kill us both?” Bishop asked. “Now’s the time.”

  “We could have owned this country,” the German hissed.

  “Don’t want it,” Bishop told him. “But I will bargain.”

  “How?”

  “I’m still a doctor first and above all. You’ve a brilliant mind. We need cures. Put the globe down and we will talk.”

  “About my surrender? Life imprisonment? Test tubes and beakers and a microscope—do you think any prison will give me that?”

  “I’m not the law. Not even a lawman.”

  “They won’t,” Weiber-Krauss said. “That is why I have done all this, because those who lead us are stupid. Shortsighted. They are not visionaries.”

  Bishop did not know what to say to that.

  “Here is what I propose,” the German told him. “Let me go. I will leave everything in the buggy with you. Destroy it, study it, do what you wish . . . other than give it to the army. My fortune is intact. I will—I will go someplace and we can work together on these cures, if you like. T
ogether. Two great inventors. Isn’t that better than this?” He thrust his unimposing chin at the shotgun.

  “Put the globe down first. That’s ragweed,” he pointed at a patch with the toe of his boot. “I don’t want you to sneeze yourself and me to death.”

  Weiber-Krauss looked over at the clump of flowers. The bastard was right. He tittered. Then he laughed. Carefully, the German set the globe on the ground.

  “Now back away from me, from the buggy,” Bishop said.

  “I will not harm you, anyone,” Weiber-Krauss reassured him but did as he was told. Bishop crouched slowly and recovered the fragile glass sphere. Then he rose. And shot Weiber-Krauss once through the throat with force that carried him away from the sphere. The man lived long enough to register shock and throw his hand toward the massive wound until he fell to his side pumping his life into the earth and watering the ragweed.

  Bishop looked down on him. “I didn’t want you to sneeze to death because I wanted to be the one to finish you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Beautiful and the Bad

  Firecrow had already lifted White Fox from the ground when Bishop arrived. He was holding her in his powerful arms, a bold silhouette before the rising sun. Around him, braves from the camp—having stayed, as he had instructed when he rode in from the south—were coming out to check the Muddy Linens. All were dead. Fortunately for them. The women would have castrated any of them who were still alive and served the body parts to the dogs.

  “Foolish to leave them in one line,” a brave remarked who had witnessed the carnage.

  White Fox was awake and smiling up at Bishop. He had replaced the globe in the carpetbag and motioned for no one to come near. Pulling on the surgical mask as he hurried forward, he caressed the woman’s cheek with a gentle touch.

  “You are a Great White Fox,” he said to her.

  She tried to smile, but the loss of Knob Pipe was too great. Bishop could also see the pain in the eyes of Firecrow, the red highlighted by the whiteness of the mask that he also wore. Already the man’s sobbing widow, the sister of Firecrow, had come over to embrace her fallen husband.