There was nothing to eat.
He walked fifty yards across open, bare ground to the edge of the bluff on which Fort Sedgewick was built and stared down at the quiet stream winding noiselessly a hundred feet below. A coating of miscellaneous trash lined its banks, and even without benefit of an updraft, the rank odor of human waste wafted into the captain’s nostrils. Human waste mixed with whatever else was rotting down there.
The captain’s gaze swept down the gentle incline of the bluff just as two men emerged from one of the twenty or so sleeping holes carved into the slope like pockmarks. The filthy pair stood blinking in the bright sunshine. They stared sullenly up at the captain but made no sign of acknowledgment. And neither did Cargill. The soldiers ducked back into their hole as if the sight of their commander had forced them back in, leaving the captain standing alone on top of the bluff.
He thought of the little deputation his men had sent to the sod hut eight days ago. Their appeal had been reasonable. In fact, it had been necessary. But the captain had decided against a ruling. He still hoped for a wagon. He had felt it was his duty to hope for a wagon.
In the eight days since, no one had spoken to him, not a single word. Except for the afternoon hunting trips, the men had stayed close by their holes, not communicating, rarely being seen.
Captain Cargill started back for his goddamn quarters, but he halted halfway there. He stood in the middle of the yard staring at the tops of his peeling boots. After a few moments of reflection, he muttered, “Now,” and marched back the way he had come. There was more spring in his step as he gained the edge of the bluff.
Three times he called down for Corporal Guest before there was movement in front of one of the holes. A set of bony shoulders draped in a sleeveless jacket appeared, and then a dreary face looked back up at the bank. The soldier was suddenly paralyzed with a coughing fit, and Cargill waited for it to die down before he spoke.
“Assemble the men in front of my goddamn quarters in five minutes. Everybody, even those unfit for duty.”
The soldier tipped his fingers dully against the side of his head and disappeared back into the hole.
Twenty minutes later the men of Fort Sedgewick, who looked more like a band of hideously abused prisoners than they did soldiers, had assembled on the flat, open space in front of Cargill’s awful hut.
There were eighteen of them. Eighteen out of an original fifty-eight. Thirty-three men had gone over the hill, chancing whatever waited for them on the prairie. Cargill had sent a mounted patrol of seven men after the biggest batch of deserters. Maybe they were dead or maybe they had deserted too. They had never come back.
Now just eighteen wretched men.
Captain Cargill cleared his throat.
“I’m proud of you all for staying,” he began.
The little assembly of zombies said nothing.
“Gather up your weapons and anything else you care to take out of here. As soon as you’re ready we will march back to Fort Hays.”
The eighteen were moving before he finished the sentence, stampeding like drunkards for their sleeping holes below the bluff, as if afraid the captain might change his mind if they didn’t hurry.
It was all over in less than fifteen minutes. Captain Cargill and his ghostly command staggered quickly onto the prairie and charted an easterly route for the 150 miles back to Hays.
The stillness around the failed army monument was complete when they were gone. Within five minutes a solitary wolf appeared on the bank across the stream from Fort Sedgewick and paused to sniff the breeze blowing toward him. Deciding this dead place was better left alone, he trotted on.
And so the abandonment of the army’s most remote outpost, the spearhead of a grand scheme to drive civilization deep into the heart of the frontier, became complete. The army would regard it as merely a setback, a postponement of expansion that might have to wait until the Civil War had run its course, until the proper resources could be marshaled to supply a whole string of forts. They would come back to it, of course, but for now the recorded history of Fort Sedgewick had come to a dismal halt. The lost chapter in Fort Sedgewick’s history, and the only one that could ever pretend to glory, was all set to begin.
Day broke eagerly for Lieutenant Dunbar. He was already thinking about Fort Sedgewick as he blinked himself awake, gazing half-focused at the wooden slats of the wagon a couple of feet above his head. He was wondering about Captain Cargill and the men and the lay of the place and what his first patrol would be like and a thousand other things that ran excitedly through his head.
This was the day he would finally reach his post, thus realizing a long-standing dream of serving on the frontier.
He tossed aside his bedding and rolled out from underneath the wagon. Shivering in the early light, he pulled on his boots and stomped around impatiently.
“Timmons,” he whispered, bending under the wagon.
The smelly driver was sleeping deeply. The lieutenant nudged him with the toe of a boot.
“Timmons.”
“Yeah, what?” the driver blubbered, sitting up in alarm.
“Let’s get going.”
Captain Cargill’s column had made progress, just under ten miles by early afternoon.
A certain progress of the spirit had been made as well. The men were singing, proud songs from buoyed hearts, as they straggled across the prairie. The sounds of this lifted Captain Cargill’s spirits as much as anyone’s. The singing gave him a great resolve. The army could put him in front of a firing squad if it wanted, and he would still smoke his last cigarette with a smile. He’d made the right decision. No one could dissuade him of that.
And as he tramped across the open grassland, he felt a long-lost satisfaction rushing back to him. The satisfaction of command. He was thinking like a commander again. He wished for a real march, one with a mounted column of troops.
I’d have flankers out right now, he mused. I’d have them out a solid mile to the north and south.
He actually looked to the south as the thought of flankers passed through his mind.
Then Cargill turned away, never knowing that if flankers had been probing a mile south at that very moment, they would have found something.
They would have discovered two travelers who had paused in their trek to poke around a burned-out wreck of a wagon lying in a shallow gully. One would carry a foul odor about him, and the other, a severely handsome young man, would be in uniform.
But there were no flankers, so none of this was discovered.
Captain Cargill’s column marched resolutely on, singing their way east toward Fort Hays.
And after their brief pause, the young lieutenant and the teamster were back on their wagon, pressing west for For Sedgewick.
CHAPTER II
On the second day out Captain Cargill’s men shot a fat buffalo cow from a small herd of about a dozen and laid over a few hours to feast Indian-style on the delicious meat. The men insisted on roasting a slab of hump for their captain, and the commander’s eyes welled with joy as he sank in his remaining teeth and let the heavenly meat melt in his mouth.
The luck of the column held, and around noon on the fourth day out they bumped into a large army surveying party. The major in charge could see the full story of their ordeal in the condition of Cargill’s men, and his sympathy was instant.