After the storm the sky cleared, leaving him huddled in a cold breeze under brilliant stars. Shivering, he opened Wooden Foot's parfleche. He found the paint pots and the rolled-up winter count. He untied the thong and spread it at his feet.
Although he couldn't explain the reason, something compelled him to try to finish it. He opened the pot of black, moistened the brush, dipped it in, and poised it over the pictograph history of the Jackson Trading Company's final year.
He studied the various figures Wooden Foot had painted, including the three of them in the sanctuary of the Buffalo Hat tipi. How he had misunderstood that incident. It had fooled him into believing the Cheyennes were capable of compassion. They weren't. Only the sanctity of the object, the hat, had saved the traders. The Cheyennes hated all whites, and never mind if they had reasons. They had no reasons good enough to justify the barbarity he had seen. They simply hated whites. The same way he now hated every last one of them.
His bleak face reflecting the campfire, he laboriously painted three exceedingly crude stick figures, a dog and two men. The second figure was to the right and slightly above the first, and the third similarly elevated above the second, as though all stood on an invisible stair.
Trying to conceive a way to picture the Hanging Road above the figures, he faltered. Should he paint wavy lines for the Milky Way? No. Five-pointed stars. He did one, corrected two of the points, then two others, and found himself with a solid blob instead of an open star figure.
He flung the brush into the fire, then the paints. He held the edges of the pictograph and studied each image in turn, finally purged of any impulse to cry. He still grieved, but the grief had hardened. His own life, which he'd tried so hard to reconstruct over the past winter, had been destroyed as quickly and surely as the grass in the path of the prairie fire.
Sharpsburg all over again —
Northern Virginia all over again —
Nothing changes.
Christ!
He laid the winter count on the fire and watched it burn. They want killing, I'll give them killing, he thought. I know more about it than they do. I had five hundred thousand expert teachers.
The figures on the pictograph blackened and burned while he watched, seeking to remember every fiery image.
BOOK THREE
BANDITTI
I have just returned from Fort Wallace, over the line of the Union Pacific Railway, ED. The Indians along the whole line are engaged in their savage warfare. On Saturday three of our men were killed and scalped within twenty miles of Fort Harker ... What can be done to end these atrocities?
The Chiefs have signed it merely as a matter of form. Not one word of the treaty was read to them ... If war is ... thus commenced, who are to blame? The commissioners.
The people of the frontier universally declare the Indians to be at war, and the Indian commissioners and agents pronounce them at peace, leaving us in the gap to be abused by both parties.
Annual Report of
24
A thunderstorm swept the sky and shook the earth. On the flooded road from Leavenworth City, a horseman galloped out of the dark.
The weary sentry stepped into the rain, forcing the rider to halt. A lightning bolt etched the horseman in white. His mustache drooped and his full, tangled beard needed trimming. A poncho-style garment resembling a patchwork quilt hung from his shoulders. He clenched a cold cigar stub in his teeth.
Rain dripped from the bill of the boyish sentry's cap. "State your name and business on the post."
"Get out of my way."
"Mister, I order you to state your name and —"
Seemingly in an eyeblink, the man's hand filled with an Army Colt. With a single flowing motion he cocked and aimed it at the sentry's forehead. Another glitter of lightning revealed the man's eyes under his hat brim. The sentry saw hell in them.
Terrified, the sentry retreated against the guard box. The crotch of his long underwear felt damp suddenly. He waved. "Pass on."
The horseman was already beyond him, at the gallop.
The rain beat on the roof. Jack Duncan poured brandy. Charles accepted his drink without a word. The brigadier didn't like that, or the surprise visitor's filthy appearance, or the haunted fatigue shadows ringing his eyes. Charles had stunned Duncan first by arriving at half past one in the morning, second by announcing that he wanted to join the Army.
"I thought you'd had enough."
"No." Charles flung his head back and swallowed all the brandy.
"Well, Charles Main can't enlist. Neither can Charles May, late of Jefferson Barracks."
"I'll use another name."
"Charles, calm down. You're almost raving. What brought this on?"
He slammed his empty glass on a packing box that served as a table. "Adolphus Jackson pulled me through one of the worst years of my life. He taught me more plains craft than I could quote to you in a week. I'm going to punish the bastards who butchered him."
Duncan's face, puffy with tiredness, showed his disapproval. He pulled his old dressing gown together and retied the sash, pacing past the sheet-iron stove, cold now. "I don't blame you for bearing a grudge for what the Cheyennes did. But I don't think it's an ideal motive for —"
"It's how I feel," Charles interrupted. "Just tell me if I have a chance."
His loud voice roused Maureen. From behind the door of her room she made a sleepy inquiry. With the gentleness of an attentive spouse, the brigadier said, "Go to sleep. Nothing's wrong." Charles stared at the closed door, reminded of Willa's staying here.
"A slim chance, no more," Duncan said in answer to his question. "Do you know the name Grierson?"
"I know Grierson's Sixth Illinois Cavalry. They rode six hundred miles in sixteen days inside the Confederacy to pull Pemberton away while Grant crossed the Mississippi below Vicksburg. That ride was worthy of Jeb Stuart or Wade Hampton: If it's the same Grierson, he was good enough to be on our side."
It pleased Duncan to see Charles show a trace of sardonic humor. "It's the same Grierson. He turned into a damn fine cavalryman for a small-town music teacher scared of horses."
"Scared of —?" Charles couldn't believe it.
"True. A pony kicked him when he was eight. He still bears the scar." Duncan touched his right cheek. "Grierson arrived day before yesterday, to await his recruits for his new regiment. It's one of those that Congress authorized in July. Grierson's desperate for good officers who can teach and lead, but nobody wants to serve in the Tenth Cavalry. The men are being recruited in New York, Philadelphia, Boston — the dregs of the urban poor. Mostly illiterate."
"The Army's full of illiterates''
"Not like these. Grierson's men will all be black."
That gave Charles pause. He helped himself to more brandy, thinking hard.
Duncan explained that a Ninth Cavalry Regiment was being raised in Phil Sheridan's Division of the Gulf; Sherman's division would get the Tenth. "Grierson told me the recruiters have been able to sign up only one private so far. The War Department insists on white officers, well qualified, but Union veterans who want a commission don't want one in the Tenth. You know George Custer?"