Dances With Wolves

CHAPTER I

Lieutenant Dunbar wasn’t really swallowed. But that was the first word that stuck in his head.

Everything was immense. The great, cloudless sky. The rolling ocean of grass. Nothing else, no matter where he put his eyes. No road. No trace of ruts for the big wagon to follow. Just sheer, empty space.

He was adrift. It made his heart jump in a strange and profound way.

As he sat on the flat, open seat, letting his body roll along with the prairie, Lieutenant Dunbar’s thoughts focused on his jumping heart. He was thrilled. And yet, his blood wasn’t racing. His body was quiet. The confusion of this kept his mind working in a delightful way. Words turned constantly in his head as he tried to conjure sentences or phrases that would describe what he felt. It was hard to pinpoint.

On their third day out the voice in his head spoke the words “This is religious,” and that sentence seemed the rightest yet. But Lieutenant Dunbar had never been a religious man, so even though the sentence seemed right, he didn’t quite know what to make of it.

If he hadn’t been so carried away, Lieutenant Dunbar probably would have come up with the explanation, but in his reverie, he jumped right over it.

Lieutenant Dunbar had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting. His spirit had received a promotion and his heart was jumping. Perhaps this was why the sharply handsome cavalry lieutenant had thought of religion.

From the corner of his eye he saw Timmons duck his head to one side and spit for the thousandth time into the waist-high buffalo grass. As it so often did, the spittle came out in an uneven stream that caused the wagon driver to swipe at his mouth. Dunbar didn’t say anything, but Timmons’s incessant spitting made him recoil inwardly.

It was a harmless act, but it irritated him nonetheless, like forever having to watch someone pick his nose.

They’d been sitting side by side all morning. But only because the wind was right. Though they were but a couple of feet apart, the stiff, little breeze was right, and Lieutenant Dunbar could not smell Timmons. In his less than thirty years he’d smelled plenty of death, and nothing was so bad as that. But death was always being hauled off or buried or sidestepped, and none of these things could be done with Timmons. When the air currents shifted, the stench of him covered Lieutenant Dunbar like a foul, unseen cloud.

So when the breeze was wrong, the lieutenant would slide off the seat and climb onto the mountain of provisions piled in the wagon’s bed. Sometimes he would ride up there for hours. Sometimes he would jump down into the tall grass, untie Cisco, and scout ahead a mile or two.

He looked back at Cisco now, plodding along behind the wagon, his nose buried contentedly in his feed bag, his buckskin coat gleaming in the sunshine. Dunbar smiled at the sight of his horse and wished briefly that horses could live as long as men. With luck, Cisco would be around for ten or twelve more years. Other horses would follow, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime animal. There would be no replacing him once he was gone. As Lieutenant Dunbar watched, the smallish buckskin suddenly lifted his amber eyes over the lip of his feed bag as if to see where the lieutenant was and, satisfied with a glance, went back to nibbling at his grain.

Dunbar squared himself on the seat and slid a hand inside his tunic, drawing out a folded piece of paper. He was worried about this sheet of army paper because his orders were written down here. He had run his dark, pupilless eyes across this paper half a dozen times since he left Fort Hays, but no amount of study could make him feel any better. His name was misspelled twice. The liquor-breathed major who had signed the paper had clumsily dragged a sleeve over the ink before it dried, and the official signature was badly smeared. The order had not been dated, so Lieutenant Dunbar had written it in himself once they were on the trail. But he had written with a pencil, and the lead clashed with the major’s pen scratchings and the standard printing on the form.

Lieutenant Dunbar sighed at the official paper. It didn’t look like an army order. It looked like trash.

Looking at the order reminded him of how it came to be, and that troubled him even more. That weird interview with the liquor-breathed major.

In his eagerness to be posted he’d gone straight from the train depot to headquarters. The major was the first and only person he’d spoken to between the time he’d arrived and the time later that afternoon when he’d clambered up on the wagon to take his seat next to the stinking Timmons. The major’s bloodshot eyes had held him for a long time. When he finally spoke, the tone was baldly sarcastic.

“Indian fighter, huh?”

Lieutenant Dunbar had never seen an Indian, much less fought one.

“Well, not at this moment, sir. I suppose I could be. I can fight.”

“A fighter, huh?”

Lieutenant Dunbar had not replied to this. They stared silently at one another for what seemed a long time before the major began to write. He wrote furiously, ignorant of the sweat cascading down his temples. Dunbar could see more oily drops sitting in formation on top of the nearly bald head. Greasy strips of the major’s remaining hair were plastered along his skull. It was a style that reminded Lieutenant Dunbar of something unhealthy.

The major paused in his scribbling only once. He coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat it into an ugly pail at the side of the desk. At that moment Lieutenant Dunbar wished the encounter to be over. Everything about this man made him think of sickness.

Lieutenant Dunbar had it pegged better than he knew, because the major had, for some time, clung to sanity by the slenderest thread, and the thread had finally snapped ten minutes before Lieutenant Dunbar walked into the office. The major had sat calmly at his desk, hands clasped neatly in front of him, and forgotten his entire life. It had been a powerless life, fueled by the pitiful handouts that come to those who serve obediently but make no mark. But all the years of being passed over, all the years of lonely bachelorhood, all the years of struggle with the bottle, had vanished as if by magic. The bitter grind of Major Fambrough’s existence had been supplanted by an imminent and lovely event. He would be crowned king of Fort Hays some time before supper.

The major finished writing and handed the paper up.

“I’m posting you at Fort Sedgewick; you report directly to Captain Cargill.”

Lieutenant Dunbar stared down at the messy form.

“Yes, sir. How will I be getting there, sir?”

“You don’t think I know?” the major said sharply.

“No, sir, not at all. It’s just that I don’t know.”

The major leaned back in his chair, shoved both hands down the front of his pants, and smiled smugly.

“I’m in a generous mood and I will grant your boon. A wagon loaded with goods of the realm leaves shortly. Find the peasant who calls himself Timmons and ride with him.” Now he pointed at the sheet of paper in Lieutenant Dunbar’s hand. “My seal will guarantee your safe conduct through one hundred and fifty miles of heathen territory.”

From the beginning of his career Lieutenant Dunbar had known not to question the eccentricities of field-grade officers. He had saluted smartly, said, “Yes, sir,” and turned on his heel. He had located Timmons, dashed back to the train to pick up Cisco, and had been riding out of Fort Hays within half an hour.

And now, as he stared at the orders after a hundred miles on the trail, he thought, I suppose everything will work out.

He felt the wagon slowing. Timmons was watching something in the buffalo grass close by as they came to a halt.

“Look yonder.”

A splash of white was lying in the grass not twenty feet from the wagon, and both men climbed down to investigate.

It was a human skeleton, the bones bleached bright white, the skull staring up at the sky.

Lieutenant Dunbar knelt next to the bones. Grass was growing through the rib cage. And arrows, a score or more, sticking out like pins on a cushion. Dunbar pulled one out of the earth and rolled it around in his hands.

As he ran his fingers along the shaft, Timmons cackled over his shoulder.

“Somebody back east is wonderin’, ‘Why don’t he write?’”

That evening it rained buckets. But the downpour came in shifts as summer storms are wont to do, somehow seeming not so damp as other times of the year, and the two travelers slept snugly under the tarp-draped wagon.

The fourth day passed much the same as the others, without event. And the fifth and the sixth. Lieutenant Dunbar was disappointed about the lack of buffalo. He had not seen a single animal. Timmons said the big herds sometimes disappeared altogether. He also said not to worry about it because they’d be thick as locusts when they did show up.

They’d not seen a single Indian either, and Timmons had no explanation for this. He did say that if he ever saw another Indian, it would be too soon, and that they were much better off not being hounded by thieves and beggars.

By the seventh day, Dunbar was only half listening to Timmons.

As they ate up the last miles he was thinking more and more about arriving at his post.

Captain Cargill felt around inside his mouth, his eyes staring up as he concentrated. A light of realization, followed quickly by a frown.

Another loose one, he thought. Goddammit.

In a woebegone way the captain looked first at one wall, then another in his dank sod quarters. There was absolutely nothing to see. It was like a cell.

Quarters, he thought sarcastically. Goddamn quarters.

Everyone had been using that term for more than a month, even the captain. He used it unashamedly, right in front of his men. And they in front of him. But it wasn’t an inside thing, a lighthearted jest among comrades. It was a true curse.

And it was a bad time.

Captain Cargill had let his hand fall away from his mouth. He sat alone in the gloom of his goddamn quarters and listened. It was quiet outside, and the quiet broke Cargill’s heart. Under normal circumstances the air outside would be filled with the sounds of men going about their duties. But there had been no duties for many days. Even busywork had fallen by the wayside. And there was nothing the captain could do about it. That’s what hurt him.

As he listened to the terrible silence of the place he knew that he could wait no longer. Today he would have to take the action he had been dreading. Even if it meant disgrace. Or the ruin of his career. Or worse.

He shoved the “or worse” out of his mind and rose heavily to his feet. Making for the door, he fumbled for a moment with a loose button on his tunic. The button fell away from its thread and bounced across the floor. He didn’t bother to pick it up. There was nothing to sew it back on with.

As he stepped into the bright sunshine, Captain Cargill allowed himself to imagine one last time that a wagon from Fort Hays would be standing there in the yard.

But there was no wagon. Just this dismal place, this sore on the land that didn’t deserve a name.

Fort Sedgewick.

Captain Cargill looked hung over as he stood in the doorway of his sod cell. He was hatless and washed-out, and he was taking stock one last time. There were no horses in the flimsy corral that not so long ago was home to fifty. In two and a half months the horses were stolen, replaced, and stolen again. The Comanches had helped themselves to every one.

His eyes drifted to the supply house just across the way. Aside from his own goddamn quarters, it was the only other standing structure at Fort Sedgewick. It had been a bad job from the start. No one knew how to build with sod, and two weeks after it went up, a good part of the roof had caved in. One of the walls was sagging so badly that it seemed impossible for it to stand at all. Surely it would collapse soon.

It doesn’t matter, Captain Cargill thought, stifling a yawn.

The supply house was empty. It had been empty now for the better part of a month. They had been living on what was left of the hard crackers and what they could shoot on the prairie, mostly rabbits and guinea fowl. He had wished so hard for the buffalo to come back. Even now his taste buds sat up at the thought of a hump steak. Cargill pursed his lips and fought back a sudden tearing in his eyes.

There was nothing to eat.

He walked fifty yards across open, bare ground to the edge of the bluff on which Fort Sedgewick was built and stared down at the quiet stream winding noiselessly a hundred feet below. A coating of miscellaneous trash lined its banks, and even without benefit of an updraft, the rank odor of human waste wafted into the captain’s nostrils. Human waste mixed with whatever else was rotting down there.

The captain’s gaze swept down the gentle incline of the bluff just as two men emerged from one of the twenty or so sleeping holes carved into the slope like pockmarks. The filthy pair stood blinking in the bright sunshine. They stared sullenly up at the captain but made no sign of acknowledgment. And neither did Cargill. The soldiers ducked back into their hole as if the sight of their commander had forced them back in, leaving the captain standing alone on top of the bluff.

He thought of the little deputation his men had sent to the sod hut eight days ago. Their appeal had been reasonable. In fact, it had been necessary. But the captain had decided against a ruling. He still hoped for a wagon. He had felt it was his duty to hope for a wagon.

In the eight days since, no one had spoken to him, not a single word. Except for the afternoon hunting trips, the men had stayed close by their holes, not communicating, rarely being seen.

Captain Cargill started back for his goddamn quarters, but he halted halfway there. He stood in the middle of the yard staring at the tops of his peeling boots. After a few moments of reflection, he muttered, “Now,” and marched back the way he had come. There was more spring in his step as he gained the edge of the bluff.

Three times he called down for Corporal Guest before there was movement in front of one of the holes. A set of bony shoulders draped in a sleeveless jacket appeared, and then a dreary face looked back up at the bank. The soldier was suddenly paralyzed with a coughing fit, and Cargill waited for it to die down before he spoke.

“Assemble the men in front of my goddamn quarters in five minutes. Everybody, even those unfit for duty.”

The soldier tipped his fingers dully against the side of his head and disappeared back into the hole.

Twenty minutes later the men of Fort Sedgewick, who looked more like a band of hideously abused prisoners than they did soldiers, had assembled on the flat, open space in front of Cargill’s awful hut.

There were eighteen of them. Eighteen out of an original fifty-eight. Thirty-three men had gone over the hill, chancing whatever waited for them on the prairie. Cargill had sent a mounted patrol of seven men after the biggest batch of deserters. Maybe they were dead or maybe they had deserted too. They had never come back.

Now just eighteen wretched men.

Captain Cargill cleared his throat.

“I’m proud of you all for staying,” he began.

The little assembly of zombies said nothing.

“Gather up your weapons and anything else you care to take out of here. As soon as you’re ready we will march back to Fort Hays.”

The eighteen were moving before he finished the sentence, stampeding like drunkards for their sleeping holes below the bluff, as if afraid the captain might change his mind if they didn’t hurry.

It was all over in less than fifteen minutes. Captain Cargill and his ghostly command staggered quickly onto the prairie and charted an easterly route for the 150 miles back to Hays.

The stillness around the failed army monument was complete when they were gone. Within five minutes a solitary wolf appeared on the bank across the stream from Fort Sedgewick and paused to sniff the breeze blowing toward him. Deciding this dead place was better left alone, he trotted on.

And so the abandonment of the army’s most remote outpost, the spearhead of a grand scheme to drive civilization deep into the heart of the frontier, became complete. The army would regard it as merely a setback, a postponement of expansion that might have to wait until the Civil War had run its course, until the proper resources could be marshaled to supply a whole string of forts. They would come back to it, of course, but for now the recorded history of Fort Sedgewick had come to a dismal halt. The lost chapter in Fort Sedgewick’s history, and the only one that could ever pretend to glory, was all set to begin.

Day broke eagerly for Lieutenant Dunbar. He was already thinking about Fort Sedgewick as he blinked himself awake, gazing half-focused at the wooden slats of the wagon a couple of feet above his head. He was wondering about Captain Cargill and the men and the lay of the place and what his first patrol would be like and a thousand other things that ran excitedly through his head.

This was the day he would finally reach his post, thus realizing a long-standing dream of serving on the frontier.

He tossed aside his bedding and rolled out from underneath the wagon. Shivering in the early light, he pulled on his boots and stomped around impatiently.

“Timmons,” he whispered, bending under the wagon.

The smelly driver was sleeping deeply. The lieutenant nudged him with the toe of a boot.

“Timmons.”

“Yeah, what?” the driver blubbered, sitting up in alarm.

“Let’s get going.”

Captain Cargill’s column had made progress, just under ten miles by early afternoon.

A certain progress of the spirit had been made as well. The men were singing, proud songs from buoyed hearts, as they straggled across the prairie. The sounds of this lifted Captain Cargill’s spirits as much as anyone’s. The singing gave him a great resolve. The army could put him in front of a firing squad if it wanted, and he would still smoke his last cigarette with a smile. He’d made the right decision. No one could dissuade him of that.

And as he tramped across the open grassland, he felt a long-lost satisfaction rushing back to him. The satisfaction of command. He was thinking like a commander again. He wished for a real march, one with a mounted column of troops.

I’d have flankers out right now, he mused. I’d have them out a solid mile to the north and south.

He actually looked to the south as the thought of flankers passed through his mind.

Then Cargill turned away, never knowing that if flankers had been probing a mile south at that very moment, they would have found something.

They would have discovered two travelers who had paused in their trek to poke around a burned-out wreck of a wagon lying in a shallow gully. One would carry a foul odor about him, and the other, a severely handsome young man, would be in uniform.

But there were no flankers, so none of this was discovered.

Captain Cargill’s column marched resolutely on, singing their way east toward Fort Hays.

And after their brief pause, the young lieutenant and the teamster were back on their wagon, pressing west for For Sedgewick.