It was nearly midnight when the night visitors rode into the compound: twelve men in the uniform of the United States Cavalry and, riding handcuffed between the two columns of six, a prisoner. All were death’s-head gray with dust and moonlight. The leader of the troop called a halt, and with a creaking of saddle leather the soldiers reined in. One of the horses reared and turned for the spring. There was a brief flurry of hooves and curses before its rider had whipped it into line.
Imogene, wrapped in a thick woolen shawl, stepped out onto the porch to greet them, Karl and David behind her. The captain barked orders to dismount and the soldiers slid gratefully to the ground, only the man in manacles remaining mounted. Imogene saw his face clearly and stopped breathing. She shrank back into the shadow of the porch and laid her hand on Karl’s arm. “See to them for me, would you? I’ll be inside. That man”-she pointed to the prisoner-“needn’t come inside. He can be put in the icehouse.” Her voice was so low that Karl had to lean close, like a fellow conspirator, to hear. “The icehouse is warmer than the barn this time of year, and he can be locked in. See that he’s given blankets.” With that, she went back into the house.
The soldiers were glad of the warmth and welcome. Imogene and Sarah brought out cold venison, bread, and a pitcher of hot coffee. An enlisted man was dispatched to the icehouse with a plate for the prisoner. After they’d eaten, Imogene sent Sarah to the kitchen for a fresh pot of coffee, and as soon as the door swung shut behind the younger woman, she asked who the prisoner was.
“Man named Fox. Danny Fox,” the captain replied. He was a ruddy-faced man with a ginger mustache waxed into splendid handlebars. His voice was deep and rich. “Deserter. Up near Fort Roop, there in the Honey Lake Valley just west of here. Some years back, before I was stationed there, he and four others were on patrol. Fox deserted during his watch, and the other four were killed in their sleep. Massacred. We think it was some of Chief Winnemucca’s people. We found Fox in New Orleans.”
“Dan Fox?” Imogene said half to herself. “Did somebody recognize him?”
“Indirectly. The widow of one of the men who was killed went back to New Orleans after it happened. Guess she fell on bad times. She was…well, she’d…”
“Go on,” Imogene insisted.
“Well, she’s a widow woman without any means, which don’t excuse it, but she’d taken to the street. She all but admitted her dealings with Fox were of a…professional nature. Ferguson. That was it-Cora Ferguson.” He snapped his fingers. “She was going through his pockets-he was out drunk-and took his wallet. There was papers in it saying he was this Danny Fox. She’d remembered the name and the description Fort Roop had put out after her husband was killed-said it was burned into her brain, was how she put it. Darned if she didn’t tie him up with a black stocking and go to the police. They turned Fox over to us.”
“What will happen to him?”
“Court-martial. It’s been a while, like I say, and there’s nobody at Fort Roop much remembers him; most never even saw him. Fox had been at the post less’n a week when he deserted, and I guess he kept to himself.”
“The aay-ledged Fox,” one of the soldiers interjected and the others laughed.
“Alleged?” Imogene repeated.
“When Fox was brought in, the officer in charge said they’d got his wallet from the whore-the widow,” the captain corrected himself, “and asked was he Dan Fox. He swore to Christ he was, then turned around and swore to Christ he wasn’t as soon as they clapped him in jail for deserting. They kept him there in New Orleans for a while, but nobody came forward to identify him as being anybody else.”
“What will happen to him?” Imogene asked again.
“Firing squad,” another soldier answered.
“That’s enough, Jack,” the captain said quietly. “He’ll be tried, ma’am.”
Long after everyone had bedded down for the night, Imogene lay staring into the darkness. Finally she heaved an exasperated sigh and sat up. Dark hair, shot with gray, tumbled around her shoulders, and she caught it back away from her face and stuffed it down the neck of her nightgown. Beside her, Sarah still slept soundly.
The head of the bed was pushed against the outside wall under the room’s one window; she pulled aside the curtains. The night was perfectly still and cold, and her breath fogged the glass in an instant.
Sliding her feet into slippers, she pulled on her wrapper. Soundlessly she padded through the bar area and let herself out the front door. Across the coach road, beyond the pond, the icehouse stood stolid and dark. Railroad ties mortared together with sod and iron spikes formed a blunt, rectangular building. Tufts of grass grew out of the roof like the eyebrows of an old man. Half of the building was below ground; ice was stored there in summer, and goods that couldn’t endure freezing were kept safe below the frost in winter.
Imogene crossed the packed dirt of the yard and skirted the spring. Shrunken to a silver disk the size of a dime, the moon was sinking toward the horizon. Its light fell on Imogene, picking out the white streaks at her temples and leaching the color from her face and robe. Immobile as a statue, she stood in the cold, staring at the black, square window of the icehouse. There was a stirring inside; the prisoner was awake. A face appeared in the window, a pale mask in the darkness of the icehouse. Shadows marked the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes of a haggard, frightened man. He gasped and let out a little groan of fear as his eyes lit on the apparition, and he shrank back into the shadow.
Unmoving, Imogene watched.
“You real?” he called at last, in a high voice.
She said nothing.
“Oh God, oh God,” he moaned. Too frightened not to look, he returned to the window. “Get away from me!” he whispered, thrusting his face forward as far as the small opening would permit. “Get away, banshee.”
“I’m not a ghost, Mr. Aiken.”
Openmouthed, he stared at her, recognition dawning slowly. “Imogene Grelznik.”
“Imogene Grelznik.”
“Oh, thank God!” he laughed a little hysterically. “Imogene Grelznik.” He laughed again and put an arm out through the window. There wasn’t enough space for his arm and his face, and he quickly withdrew it. “Christ, am I glad to see you. Imogene Grelznik. It’s me, Darrel Aiken, you know me. They were going to have me killed. I ain’t no Dan Fox or anybody else. Jesus Christ, they’d’ve had me shot. Them boys let me know pretty clear what kind of trial I’d be getting. Everybody what knew Fox is dead or mustered out. Jesus Christ!” he said again. “Im-o-gene Grelznik.”
There was a long pause and the laughter drained from his face. “You’re going to tell them who I am, ain’t you?”
“How did you come to have Dan Fox’s wallet?”
“I found it. Swear to Christ.”
Imogene turned and started to walk away.
“Wait! We were playing poker, I was losing bad. I put a knockout in his drink, and when he went under, I took his wallet.”
Imogene stopped and looked back.
“You’re going to tell them who I am, ain’t you?” he pleaded, his breath clouding the frosty air. “They’re set on killing me.”
She turned from him and hurried back to the house.
“You gotta tell them!” The cry followed her.
From high in the foothills behind the house, screened from sight by the twisted arms of the bitterbrush, Imogene watched Round Hole come to life. Men and horses looked like toy figures below. Trails of smoke from the chimneys streaked the sky a shade just darker than the dawn. Tiny figures, erect in military blue, poured out of the house, and horses, spouting steam like teakettles, were brought from the stable and saddled. Two men broke away from the group and went to the icehouse at a trot.
Imogene tensed, her shoulders hunched and her hands clasped tight in front of her. The soldiers emerged from behind the blocklike building in a few minutes, marching their prisoner between them. He was agitated, talking and moving his hands animatedly. One of the men in blue called out, and a third soldier, the captain, came to join them. There was a long exchange, then the captain reentered the house. Moments later, Sarah Mary emerged, and the two of them began calling Imogene’s name. All that carried up the hill was sound without definition. At length they gave up and the captain shouted an order to his men.