Prairie Nocturne

by Ivan Doig

  Mose galloped off ahead of the column, toward the next flat-topped ridge to the north. Black Jack’s handling me with a loose rein, that’s interesting. Couldn’t always be sure with this lieutenant. That had actually been pretty funny from him, picking up the troopers’ lingo for opportune beef the way he did; but he was a stiff looker for good reason. Mose gave thought again to the day of departure from where they had been holding the Crees, when Pershing went on foot through the entire camp of crying women and wailing babies and sullen braves, patient as paint while he tried to sort out the pandemonium. In the hubbub none of the soldiers noticed one of the Cree men, said to be wanted for something in Canada, emerge from his tent with a rifle, sit down, pull the barrel end to himself, and jam his big toe against the trigger. Blooey, and the slug tore on through him and just missed Pershing about a dozen feet behind him. When Mose and his men came rushing over, the lieutenant said, as if to himself, “That very nearly canceled out West Point.”

  Mose laughed harshly at the memory. It took a fairly hard hide to shrug off a close call like that. Pershing was not an easy one to figure, but he seemed inclined to give a man room to operate, and that was all Mose ever asked.

  As the sergeant topped the ridge now, the first sight that met him was the snowcapped line of the Rockies, on a march of their own, extending on and on into what had to be Canada. He pulled up and simply stared. By damn, you could see from here to Judgment Day in this bench country. With a practiced eye he studied the lay of the land, the swales of grass in the creek basin to the west and the dark droplets that had to be cattle, no more buffalo in these parts. He spotted the provisioner’s supply wagons down ahead there where a road led off to ranch buildings quite a ways in the distance; a place with some real size from the looks of it. The saddlehorses and little cluster of people by the wagons must mean the cattleman and the provisioner were in the midst of dickering over the price for slaughter-beef. What he had to put his main attention to, however, was the thick ribbon of willows and cottonwoods that wound out of the ranch and across the prairie ahead. Another damned one of those already, a grimace coming with the thought. At each of these creek crossings, Indians who had been taking prairie squats all their natural lives suddenly were overcome with the need to go modestly in the brush. And when they go, they keep on going; the grim humor of it did little to lighten Mose’s disposition where brushy creeks were involved.

  He put his pony into a prancy trot as he headed down to the wagons. Never hurt to show people like these that a real rider was heading their way. When he reined up in front of them, the provisioner paid him all the attention he could have asked for, and as far as that went, so did the blocky man wearing specs who stood next to the provisioner, and the pair of highly interested boys next to the man they resembled down to their well-made boots. Mose noticed the older one, maybe eleven, watching him more gravely than the grownups were, while the younger brother simply looked like he was itching to get his hands on Mose’s horse. The little misters of that ranch, he would have bet his month’s pay.

  Greetings were exchanged, and to Mose’s total surprise here came a white mitt of a hand up to shake his. “How do, Sergeant,” the voice that arrived with it was as chesty as the rest of the cattleman, “I’m Warren Williamson. It’s a pleasure to see a man who knows how to sit on a horse. I wish more of my lazy crew did. Phil Sheridan always drilled it into my old outfit—put some spiff into your riding even when you’re only on review to yourself.” He indicated to the youngsters hanging back, trying to stay out of adult range but not miss anything. “These are my boys, Wes and Whit—I only get a crack at them when they’re not in boarding school, but they’re picking up on their riding. They know they’d better.”

  Mose guardedly took in the unexpected conversationalist down there by his stirrups. Every once in a while he came across a white man of this sort, slightly better disposed toward him than most because they had both straddled a cavalry saddle. Williamson’s eyeglasses rode high on one ear, maybe giving him a cockeyed view of the world. On the other hand, the man evidently owned this spread where cattle were grazing halfway to the horizon, and that must have taken some fairly clever sighting in on. Forthcoming as the man was, Mose figured there was no harm in a bit of conversation.

  “I have me one of my own,” he nodded in the direction of the boys, “little stinker back at the post. Keep a fellow hopping, don’t they.” He gave the young gentlemen a solemn salute, his dark brows mischievously pulled down in a parade-ground glower; then provided a broad smile to lighten things back up. The younger one grinned back, the older one still studied him.

  “That lieutenant of yours,” the provisioner was heard from now, “is he gonna march these right on up through Blackfeet country or take the branch over to the Whoop-up Trail to keep from mixing Indians with Indians? Makes a couple days’ difference in figuring out how much beef Mister Williamson here gets to hold me up for.”

  Rather needlessly, it seemed to Mose, he had to admit that the commanding officer did not spell out his every intention to him. The provisioner nodded in disgust as if he’d expected that, and muttered that he’d better find out the lieutenant’s thinking for himself. “I’ll try talk him into the long way. Help out my wallet and yours too, Mister Williamson, if we can put that much more beef into these so-called wards of the government.”

  “I don’t care about that,” the ranch owner retorted, ice in his voice all of a sudden. Both boys went quite still. “Just so the cavalry operates the way it’s supposed to and clears them out of this country so they don’t get to build their shacks and pony corrals in every damn coulee anymore. Good riddance.” There was a great deal more boss in his gaze than there had been when he looked over at Mose now. “Sergeant, how long before the column will be at the creek crossing?”

  “Close onto noon, I’d say, sir”—it never hurt to add that, Mose had found, even to a civilian.

  “Gives me time to get these boys home and working on their suitcases for stagecoach time,” the rancher said crisply. “Don’t pull such a long face, Whit, the rest of us didn’t rate any Easter break.” The men laughed at that. “I’ll fetch up with you there at the creek,” Williamson told the provisioner, simultaneously nodding an offhand goodbye in Mose’s direction. “Wouldn’t miss seeing this parade.”

  * * *

  “Sergeant! I want that man’s name!”

  Bovard. Mose knew it before he could even swing around in his saddle and put the best face on the situation for the lieutenant. He and several half-drenched troopers were trying to use lariats to tow out a grievously overloaded wagon which had bogged in the axle-deep water, and he had posted Bovard on the south bank meanwhile to push the Crees farther downstream where the creek crossing wasn’t so jammed up; that should have been simple enough. But Mose had to look twice to even spot the beset young trooper in the mess of people and Indian ponies and what-all crammed on the bank now. Amid it all, Cree women and kids and apparently even their dogs were setting up a fuss about not being allowed to take a squat in the bushes. Mose swore under his breath. Either in spite of Bovard or because of him, the whole procession had tangled to a halt there next to the brush. And here came Pershing like his stirrups were on fire.

  The lieutenant’s shout had come from the far bank where the beef dickering was still going on, but to Mose’s dismay the officer and his horse were amphibious now, Pershing parting the water in uncaring sprays in order to corner him there in mid-stream. “Have you gone blind, Sergeant? They’re taking to the brush again. After them.”

  Mose was burning with indignation that this had to happen here, in front of that rancher and the provisioner and the rest of the troop and for that matter the damnable Indians. “Yes, sir, right away. I’ll detach Tinsley and send him—”

  “By now you ought to know an order when you hear one, Sergeant. Am I going to have to put you on report along with that fool trooper of yours? Gather up that squad and chase those runaways down yourself, grasp that? I w
ant the point made to these Indians they can’t just take to the brush and expect to get away with it.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll fetch them, sir.”

  Strenuously ordering his other soldiers to take up the slack at the creek crossing, Pershing watched the sergeant and the corporal and seven troopers, dark as shadows under their jaunty hats, peel away from the column and fan out west along the creek. The sergeant was jawing hard at them, he was glad to see. Old stripers like Rathbun could grow lackadaisical because of those comfortable chevrons, and that’s why you had to light a fire under them every so often. By now the lieutenant knew that this particular one was not averse to fiddling with a duty roster or a supply consignment if there was a bit of side money to be made from it, but he also had been a decorated platoon leader piling into the Comanches on the Rio Grande before John J. Pershing was even a plebe at West Point. Skin or otherwise, the lieutenant had nothing against Rathbun and nothing for him: it was merely a matter of rank. All he cared was that the man made sure to do his job on horseback.

  * * *

  The Crees did not have much head start, Mose was sure, but in the brushy bottomland it did not take much. He was mightily upset at the turn things were taking. All of a sudden even the time of year was against him, the cottonwoods and willows leafed out fully so that he and his men could hardly see an inch into the thicket.

  He deployed Tinsley and half the squad to the opposite side of the creek, and took the rest to scour the near side. Everybody assiduously crashed through the brush. Even so, it must have taken an hour before a shout came from Tinsley’s direction. Mose and his troopers fought through the brush toward there and waded their horses up to a muddy patch of bank near where the Crees had been found hiding. Damnation, he thought as soon as he saw them. Only a woman and two children. This all we’re gonna have to show for it? He shook his head, letting his troopers know what he thought of their ability at pursuit.

  “This don’t sit right. Where’s the mister?”

  “These are all we seen any sign of,” Tinsley managed to protest and sound subdued at the same time. He pointed down at the batch of hoofmarks in the mud along the creekbank. “Tracks are a hellish mess, can’t make anything of those. Could all be theirs, Sergeant.”

  “Or could be the man of the bunch rode into the water here.” Mose on his horse pushed in close to the Cree woman on hers. “Your husband. Your man. Where is he?”

  “No man.”

  “Like hell.” Mose had been through something like this before, the Crees making a sort of game of it: the man sneaking back to camp later to create a disturbance by spooking the horse herd and spiriting his family away again. He spun around to the squad. “Tinsley, you and Squint and Roscoe take these back. Bovard, you’re coming with me. The rest of you, start sifting through this brush. Two on each side of the creek and what I mean, give that brush a looking. He’s in there somewhere.”

  Mose applied the spurs to his horse and headed up onto the nearest rise to where he could take in more of the creekline ahead, Bovard barely managing to keep up. From the height of the benchland, Noon Creek could be seen winding into the foothills a few miles off, jackpines joining brush there for the Indian to hide in, and between here and there beaver dams complicated nearly every course of search along the creek channel. Not too far ahead, though, there was an oxbow bend, and a wide-open stretch of water beyond that. Mose somehow knew. “C’mon, knothead,” he growled to Bovard, “he’s holed up in that clump by the bend.”

  The Cree had seen them coming. He sat motionless on his pony until the two soldiers forged through the willows to the stand of cottonwoods that grew large in the bow of the bend. Then, looking straight at them, he swung off his horse in a tired way and went over and sat crosslegged by the trunk of the biggest tree.

  The sergeant and the private stared. Maybe the Indian was played out, maybe he had given up on it all, maybe any number of things, but it was plain they would have to handle the man like a side of beef, truss him up and sling him on his horse, to get him back to the line of march. Glaring at him sitting planted there, Mose had the awful supposition that he had more than likely rounded up this particular Indian three or four times before, and if the Indian was everlastingly sick of it, he was, too. He did not even think about what he did next. He slid his carbine from his saddle scabbard, drew down on the Cree, and shot him in the center of the chest.

  Bovard surprised Mose by having the presence of mind to grab the reins of the Indian pony while the sound of the single shot still echoed off. The horse would have to go back with them as proof to show to Black Jack. Not necessarily the deceased over there, though, Mose decided in a hurry. He wasn’t about to ride back into several hundred Indians, even Indians as whipped as these, leading a horse with a dead brave draped across it. Be just my luck he’s some kind of Indian Jesus.

  He started instructing Bovard. “Let’s tuck him under the brush back of that beaver dam, best we can do.” He had no doubt that Bovard, already in enough trouble, could be made to go blind and dumb about this. He knew how to handle it with Pershing, too. “Must’ve been another one of those wanted ones, Lieutenant. Took care of himself, same way as that one pulled the trigger in front of you, sir.” And that would be that.

  BY THE second month after Mose mustered out, there were times when Angeline sang as if wondering to high heaven where he had vanished off to now.

  “Sometimes I feel like a feather in the air,

  A long ways from home.”

  Standing there ironing her way through the summer—taffeta floated to the top of the officers’ wives’ laundry this hot time of year—she wondered how long she dared let this go on, a husband jangling loose in the world. At first Mose had crowed about being quit of the cavalry and its stand-to reviews on perfectly fine mornings for going grouse hunting. It did not take long, however, before he was under the steady inspection of her eyes. Without saying much, she added him to the rest of her chores, let him roughhouse with Montgomery probably more than was good for either of them, tried to make allowances for the fact that he still seemed more at home with his horse than his family. She could tell he had not liked the move to servants’ quarters here in back of the hospital, not that she could see it was any step down from married men’s quarters over by the barracks; quieter here. She was much relieved when he latched on with the fort’s horse contractor as a wrangler. But being bossed in the breaking corral by men he had once been over did not sit well. Angeline had real cause to fret when he tossed over that job and began to spend a good deal of time at the roadhouse, a mile from the fort and handy to the thirsts and other wants of the cavalrymen. Doing odd jobs there, he described it as. She did not want to hear how odd.

  “Sometimes I think I’m neither here nor there,

  A long ways from home.”

  Switching a cooled iron for a heated one, by habit she used the brief trip to the stove to peek in on Montgomery in the next room where he was absorbed with his little zoo of tin toys. When Papa coming home? the boy kept pestering her with and she didn’t have the heart to scold the question out of him. Lord knew, she asked herself it a hundred times a day. Ever since he took his discharge, Mose did not let her in on his thinking, just as he wouldn’t say scat about that whole long last march to pitch those Crees back into Canada.

  Something about that bothered at her. All his other times in the field, he came home with stories that would not quit. Now it would take an advanced mind-reader to get anything out of him. Off in hunt of work, was as much as he told her this time when he saddled up, tickled Montgomery into a frenzy, kissed her that way, then rode around the back of the stables before heading out the west gate of the fort. That had been a week ago. She’d had an uneasy feeling, watching him avoid the road along the parade ground and past the barracks where any of Troop D might have been encountered.

  “PAPA!”

  Angeline nearly dropped her flat-iron in startlement as Montgomery flung past her knees and sent the screendoor wha
mming open. “Papa, what that?!”

  How Mose could ride a horse up to a house that quietly she never would understand, but here he was, practically on the front stoop, down out of the stirrups and unkinking himself by the time she could rush to the doorway. Montgomery had bounced to a halt and was turning into a solid fidget of excitement as he gazed up at his father.

  “There’s my Monty-tana!” came Mose’s parade-ground boom. “C’mere, son. Brought you a persuader.” He knelt and outfitted Montgomery with the miniature horsehair quirt. “Put the loop over your wrist, then hold it, so. Now you can give your stick pony what for, make him go as fast as you want. Off you go.”

  As the boy cantered away, quirt whizzing, Mose rose to his feet and swatted dust off himself as if in Angeline’s honor, standing there akimbo the fresh way he did when he first came courting her. He all but had canary feathers on his lips, she saw.

  “Found us work, Angel. Over in the Two Medicine country. Working for somebody rich. Goodbye, Fort Ass-in-a-Bone.”

  “Hush with that!” She looked past him for little ears, but Montgomery was busy rampaging in and out among the clotheslines in search of further air to be whipped. Besides, this was no time to let herself be scandalized, an improved mood around here was worth taking any amount of her husband’s teasing. She smiled her best and said gently: “Mose, that’s good, about the work. But you look done in. You need food?”

  “I could handle some.”

  “It’ll be ready by the time you put your horse up.”

  Hotcakes and sidepork, his favorite any time of day, sizzled on the griddle when he came slamming back into the house. He slapped Angeline on the hip and sat down to address himself to the food. Angeline served it up, then watchfully moved over to her mountain of ironing. She had to figure he would tell her the rest of it in his own good time, whatever calendar that was.