The sergeant was silent all through, he just sat on a two-legged brace stool and glowered at the ground like he couldn’t wait to hear the end of this deposition and get out there and do what we came to do. What that was seemed to comprise of finishing what the militia had begun. Henryson said they wanted the country cleared and the major said nothing then. He just nodded in his quiet way and his face looked sorta handsome and good, especially against the face of Henryson, which looked quite queer and black, like he had bitten off too many powder caps in his time. Then the townsmen gave the troopers a keg and we drank that into the small hours and played cards and there was those brief fights that you’d expect and men were ill as poisoned dogs.
Me and John Cole, staggering back to the hard bunks but knowing whisky would be our pillow, paused at the designated pissing spot by the boundary wall. There was a picket on the top of the wall, and all we saw was the hump of his dark back. He could have been sleeping for all the back said. The major was just finishing, pulling the strings of his flies tight again.
Goodnight, Major, sir, I said, to his own dark shoulders. He looked back at us. I saluted him as I was bound to do. In his whisky-sodden state his head weren’t quite as moored as usual on his neck. He seemed to be in a sort of fury. He saluted chaotically and shook his head and then turned it upward to the stars.
Are you alright, Major, sir? I said.
It’s a long way to come for a stolen mule, he said, ferociously, like an actor on the stage.
Then he was muttering, I heard the name Henryson, and something about letters to the colonel, and depredations, and murders of settlers, and damn lies. But this speech seemed to be directed at the wall. He was moving about awkwardly, trying to keep his feet on the sodden ground. Three hundred men make quite a bit of mud. And the stench was ferocious, it was a wonder the picket stood it.
It’s a long way to come for a stolen mule, and a whupping, he said, with an emphasis on the last word, like it was something he might like to administer to Henryson.
We helped him back to his quarters and then steered our own way back to ours.
He’s a good man, that major, said John Cole, with all the definiteness of the drunken man.
And then we quietly fucked and then we slept.
Next morning bright early despite the depredations to our bodies we saddled up. It was cold as dark dreams because now it was late in the year and the sun wasn’t just as keen as it had been previously. There was a frost across all that ground and we could see great shrouds of frost hanging in the redwoods that grew thereabouts. Long low hills waved with grasses where the trees had failed or been felled, we didn’t know. We were told we had about fourteen hours’ riding ahead. The scouts seemed to know the way after the instructions of the militia the night before. We were told the militia had rode ahead in the darkness, which vexed the major hugely. He shook his head and cursed civilians. Well our muskets were primed and we had food in our bellies and we were inclined to think well of the enterprise. The sore backs of the long journey west seemed less to the fore of our minds. All that riding grinds down your backbone till I believe you gain for yourself a little store of bone dust in your buttocks. That’s what it felt like. Every rut, every slip of your horse is a jolt of pain. But my horse that time was a sleek grey creature that you couldn’t feel displeasure with. John Cole was mounted on a broken-hearted nightmare right enough. He had to pull the mouth off of her to get his way. The mare had snapped her martingale somewhere in the desert so she was free to saw her head up and down just as she liked. But he put up with it. The horse was black as a crow and John Cole liked that.
The breath of three hundred horses makes a curling twisting mist in the cold November air. Their warm bodies were steaming from their exertions. We were obliged to try and keep formation but the ancient redwoods didn’t care about that. They were parting us and cutting us as if they were moving themselves. You could have tethered fifty horses to the girth of some of them. The curious birds of America were calling among the trees and from the far heights dropped the myriad speckles of frost. Now and then something cracked in the forest like musket-fire. There wasn’t any sense the trees needed us there. They were about their own business certainly. We made a racket of harness, spurs, equipment, things knocking and shrugging from movement, and hooves skittering and clacking on the earth, but the troopers barely spoke a word and for the most part we rode in silence as if by prior agreement. But it was the trees that pressed the silence on us. The major issued his orders with his arms and hands, and these were replicated down the line. Something was going on ahead, we sensed it before we saw it. Suddenly a huge nervousness invaded us, and you could almost hear the bones in our bodies tightening, closing, and our hearts seemed captive in our chests and desirous to escape. Men coughed to clear the spit of fright from their throats. We could hear a great sound of burning up ahead, as if ten thousand starlings were massing there, and through the trees we saw violent yellow and red flames, and a great pulse of black and white smoke everywhere. We came out of the trees at last. The fire was burning at the bottom of a wide meadow. There were four or five big lodges made of logs of redwood, and only one of these was burning, creating the storm of flames and smoke all on its own. The major spread us out across the meadow, as if he might be intending to charge against this conflagration. Then we were told to trot down slowly, our muskets at the ready. The townsmen were everywhere it seemed, running along the length of the Indian encampment, shouting at each other, and soon I saw the figure of Henryson, holding a big firebrand aloft. They were as busy as lawyers whatever was the work. Soon we were close and Henryson came back to talk to the major, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then we were broken into sections and we were told there were Indians down in the copses to the right. We spurred on our horses and what with the steep decline felt like we were fleeing down the slope. Troopers Pearl and Watchorn were near me as normal, and then the thickness of the smaller trees obliged us to dismount, and a few dozen pushed on into the copse on foot. Then there was screaming and calling, and shrieking cries. We fixed bayonets to our muskets and now rushed forward, trying to avoid the springing undergrowth. Down from the burning lodge the smoke had plundered everywhere, into the copses, into every cranny, so that it was nigh impossible to see and our eyes smarted horribly. We saw the shapes of Indians and stabbed them with our bayonets. We worked back and forth through the milling bodies and tried to kill everything that moved in the murk. Two, three, four fell to my thrusts, and I was astonished not to be fired on, astonished at the speed and the horror of the task, and the exhilaration of it, my heart now not racing but burning in my breast like a huge coal. I stabbed and I stabbed. I saw John Cole stabbing, I heard him grunting and cursing. We wanted the enemy stilled and destroyed so that we could live ourselves. Every second I thought I would feel the famous tomahawk split my Irish skull, or the molten bullet pierce my chest. But nothing seemed to happen except our savage grunting and thrusting. We were a-feared to fire our muskets in case of murdering each other. Then all the work seemed done and all we heard then was the crying of survivors, the terrible groaning of the wounded. The smoke cleared and we saw at last something of our battlefield. Then my heart shrank in its nest of ribs. It was just women and children all around us. Not a brave among them. We had torn into the little hiding place of the squaws, where they had tried to take refuge from the burning and the killing. I was affrighted and strangely affronted, but mostly at myself, because I knew I had taken strange pleasure from the attack. It was as if I had drank six whiskies in a row. Watchorn and Pearl were dragging a woman from the ground and into the trees. I knew they were going to take their pleasure from her. I knew well. Babies that had spilled from their mothers’ arms were now stabbed and killed with the rest. The troopers worked until I believe their arms could do no more. Watchorn and Pearl rutting and shouting, then ruthlessly killing again. Till in runs the major shouting the loudest of all, with true horror in his face, shouting his orders, wild to bring a stop to things. Then we were all of us standing there panting, our cold sweat pouring down exhausted faces, our eyes glittering, our legs trembling, just like you would see dogs do after they have been killing lambs.