"You read, do you?"
"Yes, sir, General."
"I'm a lieutenant."
"Yes, sir, sorry. I write, too. And I can do sums." The recruit had a jolly, breezy air, undaunted by criticism. His fast talk and bright smile were probably defenses against the abuse he'd mentioned. "The newspaper piece said, young men of color, put on Army blue —" Magee startled Charles by snatching the black hanky from his pocket. He pushed the silk into his left fist with his right index finger. "So I said, Magee, that sounds good, don't it?" Quickly, the silk disappeared. "Change your whole life. Black to blue." He picked at the other side of his fist and pulled out a long twist of silk. Bright blue.
Charles laughed. Delighted, Magee waved the hanky up and down with his right hand while displaying his pale left palm, empty. "Black to blue," he repeated, grinning that wondrous grin. "Whole new life, and glad of it." He pocketed the silk.
"Do you know more tricks like that?"
"Oh, yes, sir, General. I learned my first ones from a barkeep soon after I started work, 'round age nine. Picked up plenty more over the years. Coins, cards, cups, and balls. I read about tricks, too. They had conjurers back when knights rode around in armor, did you know that? The Chinee had 'em a couple thousand years ago. Sort of gives a man a sense of being part of a fine old family." Another grin. "Know what I mean?"
Charles thought of Hickok and his pistols. He said, "You must practice a lot."
"Every day. I get lots of good out of magic. I'd do tricks for some of those mean bast — gents who hung 'round the saloon and they'd tip me a coin or two, 'stead of kickin' the shit out of me 'cause I'm colored." Though the smile stayed fixed, a hurt revealed itself for a moment.
"Can you ride a horse?"
"Afraid not, General. But I'm going to learn. I'm mighty proud to be a U.S. soldier, and I mean to be a good one."
"I expect you will be." Charles extended his hand for the customary greeting. "Welcome to the Tenth Cavalry, Magee."
The regiment found the new man good company, a studious pupil at drill, and unfailingly entertaining. On Magee's third day with the regiment, Grierson showed up for 9:00 p.m. tattoo and roll call at the barracks, solely to watch Magee perform. When the colonel asked for a trick, Magee produced a piece of string.
"Works better with rope, but who can afford rope on a porter' pay?"
"You won't afford it on a private's pay either," Sergeant Star Eyes Williams said. The circle of men laughed.
Magee looped the string in one hand and cut the midpoint of the loop with his pocket knife. He then put the pieces back together and tied the cut ends in a knot. He displayed the string full length, snapping out the ends over his head to show the knot in the middle. He wound the string round and round his left fist, tapped it, then snapped it out again. The string was unbroken, the knot gone.
Grierson applauded. "That's very good, Private. How do you do it?"
"Why, General, if I told you that, they wouldn't be calling me Magic Magee much longer, would they?"
"That's already his nickname?" Floyd Hook whispered to Charles, who whispered back, "What else did you expect?"
Puddles of melted snow and an occasional balmy day promised the end of winter. The Tenth grew and continued to train. Barnes, Hook, and Charles drilled their troopers, broke up fights, staged night raids on barracks gambling games and confiscated the dice or decks of cards, wrote letters for the men, listened to romantic or family problems, and prayed for the day they'd ride west for field duty. C Company was nearly up to strength. Departure couldn't come too soon for Charles.
Couriers brought reports of Hancock's campaign to Department headquarters. Hancock had marched southwest to Fort Lamed on the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas and encamped there with fourteen hundred men from the Seventh Cavalry, Thirty-seventh Infantry, and Fourth Artillery. He sent Lieutenant Colonel Edward Wynkoop, former commander at Fort Lyon and now the Interior Department's man in charge of the Southern Agency, to bring the Indians to hear his warning. These were Cheyennes and some Oglala Sioux living together in a big village thirty-five miles up the Pawnee Fork. The outcome of the parlay would be in the next reports.
Barnes said that since the company would leave soon, Charles should pay a brief visit to St. Louis, if he wished. As April grew warmer, Charles took a Missouri boat. He and Willa made love ardently when he arrived, late one afternoon, before her evening performance as Ophelia.
"I'll never remember my lines now," she said, laughing, as she pinned up the silver-pale hair their lovemaking had undone. "At least I'm sufficiently unstrung to play the mad scene." She kissed his mouth. "And thank you for remembering my birthday. I mean at all."
He spanked her bare bottom lightly and they fell out of bed, laughing and tickling each other.
She promised they'd take supper with some other members of the company after the show. The five acts of Hamlet seemed interminable to Charles. Sam Trump ranted and stomped through the Prince's quiet soliloquies and grew so excited in the final duel that he fell down twice, generating hoots.
Rubbing a bruised knee, Trump begged off from supper. That left Charles with Willa, the young prompter-stage manager Finley, and Trueblood, who could be the juvenile only with the help of generous amounts of face powder and rouge. Finley arrived late at the outdoor beer garden; the others were cheerily drinking from mugs of dark German beer. Finley threw a pall on things by showing the day's Missouri Gazette.
"Hancock burned an Indian town."
"What?" Willa's pale eyes lost their merriment.
"Right there." Finley tapped the headlined column. "The chiefs wouldn't come in to powwow. Maybe Hancock's threats scared them, because they ran away and took all their women and children with them. Custer took off after them and found a stage station burned, so Hancock burned down the empty lodges — two hundred fifty of them. It's all there," he said, sitting down and signaling the waiter.
"When did it happen?" Trueblood asked, indignant.
Willa smoothed the paper. "On the nineteenth. My God, nearly a thousand robes destroyed, cooking implements, all of the goods they left behind. How heartless. How outrageous!"
Charles said, "Hancock went out to demonstrate to the chiefs that they'd better keep the peace this summer."
"And now he's guaranteed they won't." She thrust the paper at him. "Read for yourself. Absolutely no connection between the village that Hancock destroyed and the burning of the stagecoach station."
"No connection except that it's all part of the same problem. The chiefs should have come in to talk."
"When General Hancock was so imperious beforehand? I read his statements, Charles. Bombastic. Belligerent."
"Look, I'm tired of listening to this. You know how I lost my partner to the Cheyennes. A fine man who was their friend, who never hurt anyone if they left him alone —"
"And so that's why the Army should be equally brutal? Brutality only begets more of the same, Charles. It lowers the Army to the level of those few Indians who act violently."
"There are more than a few —" he began.
"Well, Washington will hear from the society about this," Trueblood declared. He snatched the paper and snorted as he reread the dispatch.
Charles said, "Every Indian's a potential murderer, Willa. It's their way of life. Like carving up their victims afterward."
Scathingly, she said, "Please." She pushed her plate away. Under the hanging paper lanterns of the beer garden, her eyes flashed with reflected light. The April wind fluttered a wisp of her hair. She stared at Charles with dislike, then stood up. "I'm finished."