Days Without End

CHAPTER NINE

BUT DEATH WERE COMING too for the sergeant. He laid up in the infirmary where John Cole thawed out in his time and you could go in and see him. At first he wouldn’t say much but little by little he seemed to want to say more. The hospital steward which was all we had for a doctor that time did his damnedest but there wasn’t much to be done asides from mopping up. All the tubes in his stomach were rotting and sometimes he had shit coming out of his mouth, like it had lost its sense of direction on the plains of the sergeant’s body. He was still the sergeant, you couldn’t just say anything to him, you had to tread carefully for fear of a savaging. Grizzled old bastard like him don’t go providing death-bed transformations. But at the end what he said to me was, he didn’t know what life was for. He just said that. He said it seemed very short looking back even though it had seemed long enough when he was getting through it. He said he had a brother in Detroit village but it was probably no earthly use writing to him because he couldn’t read. Actually this exchange of words took place one evening late in the fall when the last of the year’s heat was trying to hang on with failing fingers in the wind. The steward had just closed the window but nevertheless the breath of outside lingered on in the wooden room. The cold spaces of the yards between the buildings. The sergeant was now more bones than man. He looked like an old saint carved in a church but he still talked like the foul soul he was. I don’t mean that unkindly. He was a queer sort of a man alright. Mostly cruel and thoughtless but there was the seam of something else unnamed. I was just alone with him looking at his shrunken face in the half-light. The thin eyes glittering yet. His disease had blacked up his face. He spoke about Caught-His-Horse-First and how he hoped we’d get him eventually. I said we sure would keep a weather eye out. I was thinking maybe now our accounts were balanced but I didn’t say that. Then the sergeant seemed to go wandering in his mind a little back to the Detroit of his youth when his brother was beginning to come good in business and then he killed a man. Missed the noose by a mere shadow of words because there wasn’t witnesses. Fell into melancholy, was what the sergeant said. He seemed a different man talking about his brother. Said his mother was a hard old woman and his father were killed in 1813 fighting Injuns along the frontier of those times, Kentucky. Said his only regret was he married a woman that didn’t like him and that he never divorced the harridan and tried for a second Mrs Wellington. The sergeant! Well all this surprised me, let me tell you. But a dying man can just say what he likes. It don’t have to be true.

Then he dies. At least we don’t have to listen to his singing no more, says Lige Magan.

Also at this time Mrs Neale had took in the captured Indian bairns into her school. Turns out Caught-His-Horse-First’s daughter was called Winona which in the Sioux language means First-born Girl according to Mr Graham the interpreter. She might have been six or seven then but who could tell because their record keeping was about as good as my own crowd in Ireland.

Well I weren’t the only soul thinking maybe the books was balanced between the chief and the blessed army. The sergeant weren’t too long in his humble grave before Mr Graham received some sort of communication and we was told that Caught-His-Horse-First was wishing to give us a visit. The colonel and the major went into confab about it and it was decided to entertain this visit as maybe it might lead to better times between us and the tribes. Everything was awful stirred up and the colonel feared an out-and-out war on the plains, that’s what he said. And the major maybe had his mind back in the time when the chief had saved us on our hungry march and although he was putting the massacre into the mix he was also mindful of the work of the late sergeant in slaughtering the chief ’s wives and son. The major in his heart always strove for justice I do believe and as he had a properly low opinion of man in the main he could allow a great margin of leeway when it was indicated. Troopers theyselves often when about the world were given to sprees and drinking, and there was oftentimes violent upflares even in camp that resulted in more than bruises and uproar. But just as the drear Black Hills were said to be speckled with gold, he believed that man was likewise. Also he had the mighty civilising medicine of Mrs Neale, a woman who might have been a preacher had she not been cloven. The mixture of beauty and religion in her could make troopers faint with what can only be reckoned love. Maybe lust too.

If the sergeant had been still overground it’s not likely he would have stood for this occasion. But the sergeant were now tendering his name I should think with trembling hand at the Pearly Gates.

The day appointed was cold, sere, and dark. The river before our fort looked dank and sad, what John Cole called the ‘hairless’ ground all about us worried by stray smears of ice and snow. A goodly number of buildings had sprung up outside the protection of the fort. There was a saddlery premises painted in a dying green, and the office of the Indian agent was stuck up beside the fort wall like a piece of poetry amid the plain story of everywhere else. Plasterers and carpenters had come up all the way from Galveston, Texas for some reason to fit out that little palace. As for our fort it were fairly falling down in places but the colonel kept it shipshape as funds would let him. The big gates with its old arch of lodgepole trees seemed to hark back to forgotten times. First thing we knew, our much depleted cavalry troop was ranged in front of the major’s quarters that is to say on the back end of the parade ground. We had our muskets primed but we was told to keep them slung on our sashes easy fashion. Boethius was told to set his two cannon behind the stable block to be brung up just in case but I do not believe the major for a moment thought this would be necessary. No, sir. Major believed he had read the soul of his man like an open book and could count on his interpretation of that fanciful bible. First thing was, the pickets on the wall above the gates called out their sighting of the Sioux horsemen, coming up slow and gentle in the distance and now stopping it would appear about half a mile off. Now Mr Graham was ordered to go out on horseback to them and see what was what and Mr Graham he mounts up and goes with two slightly trembling troopers through the opened gates. I noticed it was Starling Carlton held the gates for them and closed them tight behind them. On off they rode like chaps expecting Death sooner than Christmas. The far ground where the Sioux waited was just high enough for us to spot them there. There wasn’t a man wanted to have goed with Mr Graham and his escort. Mr Graham was a bald little man so he was hardly a threat to anyone. The two troopers with him were black-eyed Spanish-looking men from Texas that no one would miss if they was murdered. Or so I was thinking. I guess I was amusing myself in the tension. So then Mr Graham duly reaches the band of Sioux and he must be yapping, as John Cole calls it, and the yapping goes on for a while, and then Mr Graham comes back as stately as a little king and the look of relief on the face of the troopers was a priceless sight. The chief wants to come in alone, he says, as a proof of his good intentions, and talk to the major. I hear then some of the troopers laughing because they’re thinking maybe we can just shoot the desperado then. But they don’t know the major and maybe Caught-His-Horse-First knows the book of the major just as well as the major knows his. It’s the sort of arrangement stirs the heart rather. You got to admire a man that will ride forward from his armed comrades and come on to the gates of a whiteman’s fort. Starling Carlton has left the gates wide after admitting Mr Graham and we can all see the chief approaching. In the distance we especially note the exuberant beauty of his head-dress and his flowing clothing. He wears a metal breastplate made of whiteman’s alloy doubtless but you feel he wears it like a great jewel rather than as armour. Now he coming closer and I see something else. Given that it is dank winter and game is so scarce as to be only rumour I am hardly surprised to see his face gaunt and perished as the goddess of winter herself. His legs are only queer sticks about his pony and the animal itself is bone-struck and ill. Famine has come into the heart of this man. At the gates he dismounts neatly despite his lack of stirrups and hands over his gun and his knife to Starling Carlton. Then with one hand he smooths down his face and strides forward onto the bleak parade ground. A little flurry of snow has come from the river and a nasty wind snakes into the fort and makes a whine between the buildings. The major for his part goes forward also unarmed with Mr Graham who any blessed person can see is overborne with worry and dismay. His wretched little face is sweating like a cold wall. The chief sets out his stall and Mr Graham translates the lengthy speech. Seemingly what it all boils down to is the chief wants his daughter. Mrs Neale as it happens is standing in the porch of the school with all the faces of the Indian children ranged at the dark windows within like so many moons. The chief talks again in his highflown way and things are referred to like love and dignity and war. Indians always talk like Romans for sure. The major answers again and it looks to me like he is inclined to give him the girl. There must be a bargain brewing and it ain’t nothing to the troopers either way. They got to see how thin the chief is, he don’t look much like a fighting man anyhow. It’s all kinda sad, I am thinking. I reckon it’s sad. We know cold brutal war and how it be waged there on the plains because we been waging it. There’s no soldier don’t have a queer little spot in his wretched heart for his enemy, that’s just a fact. Maybe only on account of him being alive in the same place and the same time and we are all just customers of the same three-card trickster. Well, who knows the truth of it all. The major turns his head and calls to his wife and tells her to let the little girl out of the schoolhouse. Mrs Neale bangs her hands on her legs but she clumps back and does what he bids pronto. The little girl comes out like a piece of brown fire and darts across the compound and stops beside the chief. He is very quiet and stoops to her and then lifts her up onto his right hip. Major Neale concludes the meeting as they say, and starts to come back towards us and the chief and his burden starts to go the other way. Starling Carlton he’s standing there with the musket and the knife like the Negro doorman at the old saloon in Daggsville. The snow storm is just a thing of threadbare veils, we can see everything. We are tensed up like we should be shooting but there ain’t no reason. It’s just a solitary Indian with nothing to shoot back with. We may be black-hearted men when our turn comes but there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete. Caught-His-Horse-First goes back to Starling Carlton and Starling Carlton says something to him. Of course the chief ain’t got no idea what he is saying so Starling repeats it louder. He is saying something like, that a better gun than mine, maybe you could give it to me. What the hell is he saying, says John Cole. Says the chief got a better gun, I say. What the hell, says John Cole. Then Starling seems to calm down a little and the major sets out towards them maybe to settle the matter but he stops when he sees Starling hand over the gun. The chief takes it in his left hand and rests it up along his upper arm because he got no choice with the girl in the way of his other hand. Then just in that instant Starling Carlton unsheaths the old Indian knife and runs at the chief. There’s no force on earth could withstand Starling Carlton running at you because he’s the weight of a buffalo calf. By Jesus he just drives the knife into the chief ’s side. The little girl screams and falls from her father. The gun just seems to go off then and Starling Carlton is hopping around and roaring because the bullet has struck his foot. He will limp on that foot for the rest of his born days, I reckoned. With the knife still wagging in its wound like a Mexican bull in the bullring the chief gathers his daughter back up and throws her and himself onto his pony, and dragging the animal’s head around, kicks like the devil and rides away in a frantic gallop. You can see the pony is as surprised as we are. A couple of troopers think to fire after him but I guess the chief ain’t in the business of being hit so easy and anyhow the troopers are firing through the gap of the gates. Starling Carlton is hollering out for them to stop. He already got a bullet in the foot, ain’t that enough? In the distance you can see the Sioux braves churning about on their horses like so much butter. Then our sharpshooter Lige Magan runs up the parade ground and up the nearest ladder and onto the wall and draws a slow bead on the galloping Sioux. The major is shouting for Lige to desist but maybe suddenly Lige don’t speak English. You know in your heart he has no chance to hit nothing. Then the strange thing happens. Caught-His-Horse-First seems to stop in mid gallop and turns his pony half-beam to our sight. Something’s been hit alright but it ain’t the chief or the pony. Mrs Neale screams and starts to run out towards the gates and the major goes sideways at her to catch her waist and detain her dash. It’s as if all time stops and the storm is stilled and nothing will go forward. Forever more the major’s wife will be caught in her run and the chief will turn his horse side on and look back at us holding the dead body of his child. Forever more Starling Carlton will keep hollering like a fool in pain and Mrs Neale be wailing and forever more the black clouds of evening will be stilled in the firmament and God yet again retreat from us.

What breaks the spell is Boethius running round from the back alleyway to see did he miss his cue.

Major seems to decide to let the question of what the hell Starling Carlton was doing lie and he acknowledges next morning on parade that nothing much good could of come of that plan anyhow. He sees that now, too late. Snow falling like bread of heaven that won’t feed no Israelite. Maybe the major is feeling that old days are dying and new days are coming. Lige says he was only trying to get a shot in for Caleb Booth and he didn’t mean to kill no girl. Everyone understood that. Major seems intent on leaving it then. But that don’t stop John Cole asking Starling Carlton a few nights after in barracks what in hell he was doing. Starling Carlton is a friend so he must feel obliged to answer. He says when he seen that the chief ’s gun was one of them new Spencer carbeens he just got a choler in his head like a storm. He was sudden mad as a brushfire. He couldn’t see how he had to tote his goddamn musket in his goddamn sash and this Indian go about the place with gun royalty. That’s what he said, gun royalty. And so on. So, why’d you go stabbing him, says John Cole. Weren’t it obvious. Goddamn it, didn’t John Cole see the chief raise his carbeen to him? Goddamn, did he not shoot him with it? What you saying? Ain’t it a fact, Handsome John Cole, that you got Indian in you somewhere? I guess you feeling sorrow for your own kind, goddamn it. Then John Cole is confused for a moment and so am I. I can’t remember if the shot came before the stabbing or after. I am trying to get back to the vision of it in my head. I reckon it was after but my mind’s not so sure. Oh Jesus. Then John Cole is looking like Starling Carlton stabbed him too and then Starling Carlton comes over close and says, look see, I ain’t angry with you, John Cole, don’t you be angry with me. Alright, says John Cole, and only myself can see his eyes are damp. John Cole will cry if you do right by him. Then Starling Carlton puts him in a kind of bear hug. I’m thinking, I bet John Cole can smell the stink of that man now. It don’t last long but it happens. Then I guess we think we can be going on from there as usual.