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. Annuities 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.