“You want to get that, Webster?”
“I ain’t touching it.”
“Afraid you’ll get kicked?”
The lines of Webster’s face grew taut as the indignation of having his manhood insulted outweighed his disgust. He picked up Jack’s leg and threw it over the side. He wiped his hands on the seat of his pants while he watched flies pursue the discarded limb.
“It looks like the back of a hospital tent up here,” Webster spat.
Grant found the comparison apt. Doctors loved their amputations. Amputations for frost-bite; amputations for gunshot wounds; amputations for fractures; and amputations for dislocations. Grant remembered one man getting shot in the hip during a skirmish. The company had to transport him one hundred miles back to civilization. In agony, the man begged to be killed the whole way, only to end up getting his wish when the surgeon, unsurprisingly, treated him with an amputation.
Webster’s next observation came out toneless and sudden.“Breckenridge is gone.”
Grant straightened up. “What are you talking about?”
Webster pointed at the grass below. There, Paulson — and nobody but Paulson — led the horses to the base of the stones.
“Where’s Breckenridge?” Grant yelled.
“Behind—” Paulson turned and stopped when he saw that he was alone. He drew his pistol and tried to look everywhere at once.
Grant’s bad feeling returned. “Get those horses squared away!” Without their mounts, their position would become even more precarious. Grant rushed down from the summit. The east end of the rock formation ended in a pincher shape. There, Grant waited for Paulson to lead the horses into this natural corral and secure their reins to outcroppings.
Webster joined them. “Breckenridge!” he called.
“Quiet!” Grant snapped. “Can’t you see the man’s gone?”
“If we wouldn’t have stopped, he wouldn’t be gone!” Webster glared, the line of his shoulders bull-like.
“Get down, both of you!” Paulson growled. “I’m going to fire into the grass. If anything pops up, you guys hit it. Ready?”
Grant and Webster gave grudging assent.
Paulson’s gunshots blasted across the prairie. The horses perked up at the noise but were too used to gunfire to panic. No Indians revealed themselves. The grass continued to sway. Cloud shadows chased each other across distant hills, and sweat dripped from the brows of the three men, the only precipitation the rocks had seen in sometime. The silence became as stifling as a muddy sheet. The Indians wouldn’t have to speak, Grant knew. Despite the many different tribes of the plains, all of them shared a common sign language. Plus, Grant heard tales of how much Indians valued silence anyway. If Cheyenne babies cried once their needs were met, the mothers would hang them on a bush, alone, until they cried themselves out. The babies quickly learned that excess noise accomplished nothing.
Webster shouted, “What are you waiting for, you chicken shits?” His eyes roved over the grass like drops of water across a hot skillet.
Paulson pulled fresh cartridges from a pouch and pushed them into his rifle. “They’re waiting for us to crack, which you’re doing.”
Webster’s tongue stopped flapping, but his cheeks started twitching.
“They can’t get to us without crossing open ground,” Paulson reminded him. “If there were enough to take us in a stand-up fight, they would have charged already. Understand?”
Webster nodded, controlling his nerves with a shaky breath.
“I want you up top,” Paulson said. “Gary Owen, right?”
A rueful smirk crossed Webster’s features at the mention of the cavalry’s anthem. “We are the boys who take delight, in smashing limerick lamps at night, and through the streets like sportsters fight, tearing all before us,” Webster recited a verse. He rose to his feet and headed for the summit in a crouch. “Just don’t leave without me…”
Grant admired Paulson’s tact even as he resented Paulson for usurping his command. Now was not the time to seek retribution, however. To everything there was a season, and Grant could practice tact, as well. “Why haven’t the Indians shot at us? You think they don’t have guns?”
“They all have guns,” Paulson said. His jaw muscles tightened and released. “We take their hunting grounds, and the Indian Bureau gives them guns so they can better hunt the land they got left. Then we take that land, too, and they kill us with the guns we gave them.”
“You sound like a sympathizer.”
Paulson shook his head. “The Indians get cheated on what they’re promised, and traders and political hacks make profits. Accepting the fact they fight back isn’t sympathy. It’s recognizing human nature.”
“Some say Indians aren’t human.”
“Hell,” Paulson scoffed. “A man’s a man.”
Above, Webster continued to sing Gary Owen to himself.
“Instead of spa, we’ll drink brown ale, and pay the reckoning on the nail, no man for debt shall go to jail—”
The song broke off into a scream.
“Webster!” Paulson scrambled for the rock formation’s summit.
Grant didn’t want to expose himself, but if the Indians were up top, he was as good as dead. Fighting offered the best chance to survive whether he liked it or not. He followed Paulson. Webster’s screams, meanwhile, took on an odd dwindling quality. Grant started up the cleft, pebbles from Paulson’s assent bouncing off his hat. He kept his finger off his rifle’s trigger so he didn’t accidentally shoot himself. That wouldn’t improve his odds any. Grant reached the summit at Paulson’s heels.
The top of the rock formation stood deserted.
Webster may as well have disappeared into thin air.
“Where the hell is he?” Incredulous, Grant rushed to the edge of the rock formation and peeked over the side. He had the sudden impression of an Indian lurking below with an arrow notched and pointed straight up, ready to perforate his skull from chin to crown.
“Anything?” Paulson asked.
“Nothing,” Grant replied. The imagined Indian was gone, a mirage born of anxiety. Only bits of Jack lay below, now black with flies. Grant turned to Paulson. “How could they have gotten up these walls? They’re sheer. And how’d they get Webster down so fast?”
Paulson’s face creased in thought, drawing his mouth into a grimace. “I don’t know, but it’ll be dark soon. We stay up here, back-to-back.”
The sun set; the stain of night spread across the sky, and a quarter moon rose to hold sway over all. The prairie took on an eldritch cast. It might have been a sea and the rock formation an island. Stars glittered indifferently overhead. Despite the heat of the day, the night took on a surprising chill that pushed comfort just beyond reach. The men knew cold. On some winter campaigns, they’d awake frozen to the ground. That didn’t make this night any more bearable, however. Cold always had teeth.
Grant and Paulson sat cross-legged, wrapped in Grant’s blanket. They held their rifles across their knees and their pistols in their hands. Grant wondered if the Indians would start lobbing arrows at them, but such a thing did not occur. They saw nothing moving in the dim moonlight, and the only sound was the wind.
Grant thought about Jack’s remains. Had Breckenridge and Webster been reduced to the same? One minute men, the next minute parts…
Grant grew thirstier and regretted finishing his canteen earlier that day. Remembering the sensation of gulping it empty increased his craving. One wasn’t supposed to gulp water, of course. A cavalry health pamphlet recommended swishing and spitting only. Apparently, one could die from drinking too much on the trail. Grant didn’t believe it, however. He had seen men follow that advice, taking along only a little water to stave off temptation, and ending up opening veins in their own arms to wet parched lips. Grant wasn’t to that point yet, but the desire to go down to the horses and grab a canteen was maddening. Such a thing would be foolhardy, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about that itch in the back of his throat. He tried to concentrate on something else, but the only other thing that filled his thoughts was finding Jack.