Well, I gotta say, said Trooper Pearl. I be thinking well of Indians now.
The sergeant looking at him with a wolf ’s eyes.
I gotta say, thinking well of them, Pearl says again.
The sergeant gets up in a big huff for himself and goes off a piece and sits by himself on a grassy mound.
It got to be accounted a happy day.
We were four or five days from the frontier, we reckoned, just a bit of a ride now to Missouri and what we called home, when a storm came in over us. It was one of those bleak ice storms, everything it touched freezing, including the bits of our bodies showing. I never rode in anything so cold. We had nowhere to shelter and so were obliged to push on. After the first day the storm decided to go worse. It made the world into a perpetual night but when the real night came the temperature maybe was down to forty minus, we didn’t know exactly. Our blood said bottom of the scale. It’s a queer wild feeling, that freezing. We laid neckerchiefs across our mouths and chins but after a while little good it did. Our gloves froze and soon our fingers were fixed fast around the reins like our hands had deceased and gone to their reward. Couldn’t feel them which was maybe just as well. The wind was all icy blades and might have shaved the beards and whiskers of the men but that they had already froze to metal. We all went white, frosted from our crowns to our toes, and the black, the grey, and brown horses were all turned white now. The blankets of chill white rheum over everything was not warming. Picture us, two hundred men riding into that wind. The grasses themselves crackling under the hooves. Above in the black sky torn and rent by invisible violence just now and then fleetingly the burning white orb of the moon went flying. We feared to open our mouths for one second or the moisture would freeze them ajar. The storm had a lot of prairie to cross and all the days of the world to do it. It must have been as wide as two countries. It passed over us and through us. But for the Indian victuals we would of died in the second day. It was just enough belly fuel to carry us out the other side. Then we saw other trouble. Big sunlight followed the storm, and our clothes seemed half-melted, like unravelling felt. Many of the men were in atrocious pain just as soon as the ice melted off them. Trooper Watchorn’s face was as red as radishes and when he pulled off his boots we could see his feet were no good either. Next day his nose was black as soot. It was like he was wearing something on it, burning dark and sore. He couldn’t put his boots back on for any money and he wasn’t the only one in travail. There were dozens in a bad way. Soon we come to the river that marked the frontier in that part and we push the column forward into the shallow waters. The river was two miles wide and about a foot deep all the way. The horses threw up the water and soon we were drenched. That didn’t do Trooper Watchorn much good, howling now. There was pain in him like no man could bear. There was others as bad but Watchorn had headed further in his brain somehow and when we reached the far bank the major was required to pull him from the horse and get him trussed up somehow, because he wasn’t no human creature now exactly, Watchorn. We were spooked as hell. That howling man, and pain so painful we seemed to feel it too somehow. Then they trussed him up because he was banging his face with his hands and he had to suffer the indignity of being lashed belly down to his mount. Then in a strange mercy he sank into a stupor, and in that condition we reached our destination much bedraggled and harassed. In the fort hospital in the coming months men lost toes and fingers. Frostbite the doctor called it, frost carnage more like. Trooper Watchorn and two others didn’t live past the summer. Gangrene got in and that’s a dancing partner no trooper chooses. And then they were in the funeral parlour like I told, all decked out in spare uniforms, and additions made to their losses, Watchorn with a wax nose and shaved clean as a stone courtesy of that embalmer. But looking dandy enough. It sure took the proverbial cake.
I guess poor Trooper Pearl had the worse fate. The major hadn’t forgotten after all. Court martial and even though the officers presiding had no real notion of what his offence might have been given that Trooper Pearl was a victor in an Indian engagement something about the major’s high moral tone got into proceedings and then Pearl’s goose was cooked. It was me and five other troopers were gave the job of dispatching him. He made a noble end of things. Looking a bit like Jehovah now because he had grown a long black beard in captivity all down his breast. We shot him through the beard to reach his heart. Joe Pearl went down. His father came in from Massachusetts where they was from and took the body home.
John Cole said he might have enough of Indian fighting just presently but we got to serve out our term agreed and we were content to do that because we got to be. We sure getting poorer and uglier in the army but better than be shot, he said.
CHAPTER SIX
YOU CAN BE TIRED all you like of something I guess but the Fates say you got to go back out and rub your nose in it. How come we left cosy Jefferson again to traipse back just next and nigh the way we had come with so much hardship might have been a question. That just the army way. Well we had got three months in barracks and that was a fine endowment. Wise old hands brought their bearskins. They weren’t going to freeze again like the late Trooper Watchorn. Army had no good clothes to give us for the cold. Meant to give us wool jobs but we never seen them. First bloody Sergeant Wellington said we was cunts deserved to die of frostbite. Every man Jack got a printed sheet showing us the saving outfits which was supposed to arrive at barracks instanter. Never damn did. Can’t wear a picture, says John Cole, my beau.
But now was the season for all those hopeful hearts going out to pick up gold nuggets as they thought from the ground of forsaken places. This year more than was seen before. If you ever set eyes on three thousand lily-faced white boys and their families you’ll know what I mean. Was like they was going to a picnic but the meadow was six weeks off and death guaranteed for many. We was told in St Louis to take a northern route because every blade of grass was eaten between Missouri and Fort Laramie. Them thousand thousand horses, cattle, oxen, and mules. Lots of new boys in the 6th, lots of forlorn Irish, usual big dark boys. Joking, all that teasing Irish do, but somewhere behind it the dark wolves staring, the hunger wolves under the hunger moons. We were to augment the military presence in Fort Laramie because there was to be a great gathering of Indians out there on the plains. The major and the colonel is going to ask them to stop killing the goddamn emigrants.
The colonel sends out messengers to every tribe he knows of ever set foot on the whiteman’s trail. Thousands come, driven in by want and hunger. The whole thing is set up a few miles north of the fort in a place called Horse Creek. The colonel puts the army on the lower bank of the river. Up go our rows of tents. The summer sun leans down on everything and bakes the canvas and if you can sleep at night you must be deceased. Nice easy-going river there and not much bother to cross it, and the colonel he ranges the government men and the quick-chance traders over a ways and across the water itself he requests the tribes to be establishing their wigwams. Now there was maybe three four thousand pointed dwellings bedecked in painted skins and banners. The famed Shoshone, the lofty Sioux boys both Teton and Oglala, the Arapaho, the Assiniboine come down from Canada, blazed out in the midday heat in all their finery. Major knows the Oglala because it’s the same crowd fed us in our time of trial. That same chief ’s here, Caught-His-Horse-First. And the noise that come up from the whole lot of them is a tremendous music in itself. A special awning is erected and the officers in their best bibs assemble there on chairs. At length the cloaked backs of the chiefs was seen ranged darkly in the shadows and the sunred faces of the officers sort of bleakly looking out from under hatbrims, everyone starching theyselves up into a mighty fit of seriousness. Big speeches is made, while the mounted infantry and the cavalry respectfully stood off at a distance, and on the other bank the tribes seat themselves in a silence such as you might know just before a thunderstorm, when the land draws in its chest and holds a limitless breath, and across the valley drifts the voice of the colonel. Ann
uities and food supplies is offered in exchange for the emigrants to be let through. The interpreters do their work and agreement is reached. The colonel looks mighty pleased. We were all thinking that a new day was dawning on the plains, and we was happy to think it might be so. Them Indians is wore out from slaughter and so are we.
Starling Carlton, one of the fellas in our company, says there’s so much hot air in the colonel it’s a wonder he don’t float off. But soldiers like to take the dim view. It cheers them up. I won’t say what the sergeant said of all this, the only truly unhappy man.
Empurpled rapturous hills I guess and the long day brushstroke by brushstroke enfeebling into darkness and then the fires blooming on the pitch plains. In the beautiful blue night there was plenty of visiting and the braves was proud and ready to offer a lonesome soldier a squaw for the duration of his passion. John Cole and me sought out a hollow away from prying eyes. Then with the ease of men who have rid themselves of worry we strolled among the Indian tents and heard the sleeping babies breathing and spied out the wondrous kind called by the Indians winkte or by white men berdache, braves dressed in the finery of squaws. John Cole gazes on them but he don’t like to let his eyes linger too long in case he gives offence. But he’s like the plough-horse that got the whins. All woken in a way I don’t see before. The berdache puts on men’s garb when he goes to war, this I know. Then war over it’s back to the bright dress. We move on and he’s just shaking like a cold child. Two soldiers walking under the bright nails of the stars. John Cole’s long face, long stride. The moonlight not able to flatter him because he was already beautiful.
Next morning was a final gift-giving to the Indians. A man called Titian Finch had arrived with a daguerreotype machine to make a record of these clement days. The tribes is photographed in great assemblies and the major has his picture done with Caught-His-Horse-First like they was old friends. A sunlight as white as a maiden’s bosom floods the country. They have to move real close. A naked Indian and a braided major. They stand beside each other in casual earnestness, the Indian’s right hand gripping the major’s silver-threaded sleeve, as if to alert him to some danger, or guard him from it. Titian Finch bids them both hold still as stones, and for one eternal moment they are there, the very picture of human equanimity and gratitude.
Then these friendly acts were done and the Indians dispersed and we was returned to ordinary days. Nathan Noland, Starling Carlton, Lige Magan the sharpshooter, these was boys of the regiment that came close to us in that time, me and John Cole. Because it was now that John Cole started to show the illness that afflicted him. He was obliged to lie quiet for days because there weren’t one cup of steam in him. Doc had no name for it. A rattlesnake could of trailed across his breast and he couldn’t a done nothing about it. The boys abovementioned was the ones that shown regard for John Cole in his extremity. Handsome John Cole they called him. Got the cooks to make him broth and so forth. Bringing it in to him like he was a emperor. Not to say that Lige Magan and the rest weren’t broken-backed moaning clap-ridden drunken loons betimes. Man they was. Lige Magan I liked best I can say. Elijah was his full name so I guess he was a wonder worker. Nice ox-faced boy of some forty-five years out of Tennessee. His people had hogs there till the bottom fell out of hogs. The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see. So it was with the world, restless, kind of brutal. Always going on. Not waiting for no man. Then John Cole would wax good again and it was like nothing had ailed him. Then down again. Then up again. We was dizzy.
Now it was inching into autumn and those treaty Indians had to make way in their villages for that old murderer called Famine. That filthy dark-hearted scrawny creature that wants the ransom of lives. Because government food that was promised was late or never coming. The major was looking vexed and tormented. His honest heart had made promises, that how he saw it.
It was in the time of noisy weather that the first trouble came. We rode forth to meet it. Thunderstorms busted open the air and threw heaven-cast pails of light over that landscape that had no walls, no ends. God in his farmer’s apron, scattering the great seeds of yellow brightness. The hinterlands beyond the mountains breathing a fiery white breath. Nathan Noland with his tender ears already ruined by years of musket-fire deaf for three days after. Riding in a bruised becalmed gap between that ravenous display and the coming clatter of the rain. Then rain flattening the grasses like bear grease flattens a squaw’s hair. Sergeant Wellington was happy now because Sioux from some village westward had fallen on some strayed emigrants and ripped them from hopeful life. So the colonel had gave him fifty men and said to put a stop to that. Seems it was those Oglala friends of the major but that didn’t stop the order.
First Lieutenant puts us into two companies and he takes twenty men and goes sharp westward by his compass and us and the sergeant set off scouring out a little river ravine where he reckons that village might lie. The watercourse runs for ten miles north-east looks like. The whole country has started to steam because the sunlight is roasting off the rain. The grasses start to sit up again almost naked to the eye. A giant rousing. Three thousand bears throwing off the winter looks like. The stream itself mad as goaded bulls tearing down between its drenched rocks. Meadowlarks larking everywhere looking pleased with themselves and the skeeters in wholesale flocks everywhere. We ain’t feeling cheerful because rocks above you favours the enemy. That’s in all history. We were expecting to see the sergeant’s savages any moment popping up. But we went on all that day and further up the country where there were no streams only the baking silence of the plains. Then the sergeant disgruntled gives the order to retrace our steps and he is cursing that he let the new Pawnee scouts go with the lieutenant. These are very elegant boys in good uniforms better than what I had. But the lieutenant took them.
White men just no good for tracking cross country like this, he said, surprising us. Sounded like praise.
We camped up where our paths had furcated and we slept as best we could in our nightcaps of skeeters. We was happy men to climb out of blankets at earliest dawn. We washed our weary faces in the stream now calmed by the hours passed between. Rains in it must have passed on towards the Platte river and soon enough pour down into the Missouri. Strange to think of all that as we tried to shave our cheeks with blunted razors in the sparkling waters. Handsome John Cole whistling a waltz still residing in him out of New England.
Then we’re just poking about the place there waiting for the lieutenant to come back. Sergeant tells us to dry the lurking rain off our sabres or they will rust for sure. Then we fodder the horses best we can. Ain’t a trooper alive don’t love his horses. Spavined brute is loved. Nothing much to do then. Lige shows his skill at cards again and cleans out Starling Carlton. But we’re only playing for blades of grass, we ain’t got no money till the end of the month, if it comes then. Pawnee scouts were nearly going off last month because their pay didn’t come and then they seen we had nothing either so they calm down. Sometimes when you’re far from the sweet bells of town nothing comes out to you. Feels like they forget you. The goddamned boys in blue.
So the sergeant tells us to mount up and then we ready the horses and then we ride out along the way the lieutenant went, following the hoofprints best we could after the big rubber of the rain. Rain likes to keep things discreet, not show the way. But we go like that, Sergeant cursing all the while. Sergeant has a big hard stomach these days, says it’s his liver. Way he drinks whisky it might be. Youth has gone out of him anyhow and he looks like a old man. Like we got ten faces to wear in our lives and we wear them one by one.
Two miles on we got the shackles of the heat lying on us again, so hot the country begins to shimmer like the desert. We had the sun half behind us to the south which was some mercy. Wasn’t a man among hadn’t had his nose skinned off a hundred times. Bear grease is good for that but it stinks like an arsehole and anyhow we ain’t seen bears for a long time.
Jeez Christ, says Starling
Carlton, if this ain’t hot.
So then it got hotter. You can feel your back begin to cook. Pinch of salt and a few sprigs of rosemary and you got a dinner. God Almighty, the heat. My horse don’t like it much and is beginning to stumble along. Sergeant is riding a nice mule he got in St Louis because he says mules is best and he ain’t wrong. We’re just going along while the sun hammers on us without anyone able to stop it. You could arrest sunlight for attempted murder out on the plains. God damn it. Then Starling Carlton just falls off his horse. If he knew when he was born and had a paper it wouldn’t show too many years. Falls clean off his saddle and strikes the powdery earth. So the sergeant and another trooper push him back up and give him water from the bottle and he looks all startled and ashamed like a girl farting in chapel. But we’re too hot to mock him. On we go. Then off in the distance Sergeant thinks he sees something. Truth to tell Sergeant is as good as a scout for seeing things but we don’t like to tell him that. So now we dismount and are leading our mounts and we are keeping best we can to a low line of scrub and other rubbishy rocks that happily snakes off towards whatever the sergeant seen. Feet swole in the boots and now every inch sweating including feels like the very eyeballs.
Quarter mile off the sergeant stops and makes a reckoning. He can’t see nothing moving he says but he sees plenty wigwams there and we can see them too, black shapes pointing up to the stupendous white acres of the sky. He don’t like what he sees. Then he barks a quick order and we’re into the saddles again and we don’t feel no heat now. Sergeant puts us into a double line and then by God he gives the order to charge. Out there in the silent prairie with only the perpetual wind for music and he tells us to charge. Ain’t there an old story about a windmill? But we spur the flanks till we draw little scratches of beaded blood. Horses wake up out of their stupor and catch the atmosphere. Sergeant shouts draw sabres so he does and now we show our thirty swords to the sunlight and the sunlight ravishes every inch of them. Sergeant never has given that order in all our time because you might as well light a fire as draw a sabre in the brightness as far as signals go. But something has the wind up him. Suddenly an old sense of life we haven’t remembered floods back into us. The air of manhood fills our skins. Some can’t help hollering and the sergeant screams at us to keep the line. We wonder what he is thinking. Soon we are at the fringes of the tent town, we tear through in a second, like riders in an old storybook, sweeping in. Suddenly we reach the centre. Suddenly we rein in mighty fast. Horses are flighty, excited, snorting, they’re spinning round so it’s hard to keep a bead on what’s to be seen. What’s to be seen is our twenty other troopers all dead looks like. They’re all dead lying about in the centre of the camp, clumped up, looks like shot really sudden, so that most of the heads are pointing nigh in the same direction. Lieutenant’s head in addition cut from his body. Hats gone, belts, guns, sabres, shoes, and scalps. Nathan Noland with his copper-coloured beard and eyes open to the sun. Tall wiry man from Nova Scotia, R.I.P. Halo of black blood. There’s only two Indians there, dead as dollars. We’re surprised the Indians didn’t take their dead with them. Must be a story there. Otherwise the camp is clean empty. You see the pole marks where the Indians left. Had to go so quick they didn’t pack the wigwams. Kettles still, here and there, with fires under them still. Sergeant dismounts and lets his mule walk off. Walk to Jericho for all he cared. He takes off his campaign cap and scratches his bald pate with his right hand. Tears in his eyes. God have mercy.