Days Without End

CHAPTER TWENTY

THERE’S OLD SORROW in your blood like second nature and new sorrow that maddens the halls of sense. Causes an uproar there. I’m leaving Winona. I can never see John Cole again, I’m thinking. How would I find words to tell the story? A man that only got noughts to count can’t get 1 for an answer. That night our journey back’s half done and the officers’ tent is pitched and soon it’s full of lamplight. The plains stretch black and cold about and the pickets sing their songs in low voices as if hushed by the soaring night of blotted and unblotted stars. The companies bed down and seem content as human men. A great thing’s been done, the rescue of their major’s heart. I can see the major scribbling on maps with his daughter at his side. There’s a glass of wine on his campaign table and the light slips through it so it looks like a hovering jewel. Now and then he looks at her. I am glad to witness that. But in my head there’s riots.

Two days back in the fort and the major sended his daughter the hundred miles south to the new railroad town. She got a young lieutenant and two privates for an escort. They’re going to bring her all the route to Boston so she can be in the protection of her mother’s people. It’s rumour now that the major will resign his commission and return to his wardrobe of civvies. Guess he’s wearied of the desecrated vegetables. What in the Sam Hill I’m going to do I can’t tell. I send a telegraph message with the young lieutenant for dispatching to John Cole. Held Up Stop More Soon Stop Winona Safe Stop. That was three lies for seventy-five cents.

Starling Carlton a high-up officer so it ain’t as easy to snag him now. There’s a lad called Poulson is a corporal like me from Jackson. He were one of them scalawags they talk about, fought for the Union. Nice boy with a bush of red hair on top so that his cap has trouble perching. Not an elegant boy but a decent one. Captain Silas Sowell has an easy way with subalterns. He’s a pious man and don’t like swearing so it ain’t all plain sailing talking to him. Just trying to see my path ahead. Feel my way. Major Neale got a burning face and the troopers say he often shot in the head from whisky. Guess he’s looking for his medicine there. He got his daughter but he still got two graves that assault his will. Fort’s much bigger these times. Wives and camp whores, broke-down Indians abound. Thousands of horses and the lads to tend them. Crows still working as army wolves and they’re top-notch boys. That night I try drinking in their camp because I want to know if they know something. They’re good easy men. All they do all night is make fancy jokes. Big streeling long-tailed jokes. Half in Crow and half in English. Can’t follow much of it. But they don’t know nothing about Winona.

A day later and I’m stumbling ’bout like this and there’s something happening. Whole four regiments being raised and readied. Right from reveille every man is mustered. All the companies drawn up and the horses stamping and snorting. The major is to lead this force because the colonel’s away in San Francisco. That’s what Poulson says. But where we going? I say. No one knows, he says, we’re to get orders later. Just one regiment left to hold the fort. Otherwise we all pour out the gates. Line after line of cavalry men. A blue snake an eighth of a mile long. We got five new Gatling guns and a whole battery of Napoleon twelve-pounders. But it’s no weather for campaigning. The ground is hard and bare and even out on the plains there won’t be grass. Must be a quick sortie out and then return. No one seems to know. Worse still that ratlike German Henry Sarjohn’s with us. He don’t look happy and he’s riding with downcast eyes. Poulson says the major don’t like him and I’d say even his mother found it hard. We’re heading exactly the same trail was took before and I don’t know to be pleased or a-feared. Looks like we’re heading back to the pines and the birch trees in that arroyo where we was before. Night falls but the major pushes us on. Under cold starlight we pursue our way. I’m trying to get sense from Poulson but he knows nothing. I got to try Starling again. I rides up to him. Hey, Starling, where we headed? He don’t say a word. Just looks ahead though he can’t help a tiny glance from flickering towards me. A mealy-mouthed moon half rises and dimly burns. Like a lamp going low on oil. Just after the first fingers of sunrise we come to the same V-shaped valley. A pass at the top lets us through. Beyond is a slope of grey stone and speckled snow. A creek in the middle distance tries to pick up the light of the sun. Caught-His-Horse-First’s tent village lies all below. What in the name of the suffering God?

Caught-His-Horse-First must be readying for his treaty because he’s flying the Yankee flag. It’s stuck up on top of the biggest teepee right in the centre of the village. Big coiling and uncoiling movement from our men. Batteries set up and the Gatling guns placed swiftly. We’re not two hundred yards away and if they fire a gun they can’t miss for tarnation. Winona, Winona! Guessing she’s down there in that damn tent. The major has issued orders and now the captains take hold of their companies and everyone getting into place. You see the Indians moving about and the early morning fires in the care of the squaws. Some of them standing up now and looking at us across the gap. Seem mighty surprised as I am myself. Must be about five hundred souls to judge by the spread of wickiups and teepees. The creek behind softly smoking with mist. Then the ground rising to the fringes of a forest and the dark green acres then and then heaped up high the black mountains and the haircuts of snow on top. There’s a silence now spread across our troops and a silence across the village and across the forest and across the mountains. All creation is puzzled and don’t know to say a thing. Now Poulson is at my side and he gives me a glance. Here’s Major Neale riding along the line. To every section of fifty men he shouting his orders. As he speaks there’s about twenty braves running up from the village. They ain’t even carrying arms. Just running towards us. Caught-His-Horse-First at the front. He’s took down his flag and is running with it. He’s waving it like it could be a word. Now Major Neale reaches our section. You’re to fall on them, men, and leave nothing alive. Not a blade of grass standing. Kill them all. These ain’t words that the major knows. Now Captain Sowell rides over and takes issue with his superior. That’s a terrible sight for a soldier. Battle is an ill without officers shouting too. All the eyes of the men, four thousand or so, look on with shock. Caught-His-Horse-First gets to the fringe of the army. He’s shouting too, and the major’s shouting at Captain Sowell. We can’t hear what the captain’s saying back.

The whole body of the troopers seems to shudder with intent. We see other braves now running through the village with rifles. We see the women and the children starting to leave from the back. A great smoulder and ruckus of squaws. A screeching and shouting crosses over to us. Captain Sowell can do no other thing but to rejoin his company. The Gatling guns start to fire at the distant women. We can see them falling like they belonged in a different world. The Napoleons open fire with another tone of screeching and a dozen shells erupt in the village. Now the men going to do what they got to. Someone orders mayhem they got to deliver it. Otherwise likely they die instead. Now Caught-His-Horse-First has hesitated. He waves back his braves and starts to run. He runs just as good as a young ’un. His legs powering through the sagebrush. The major lifts his Enfield, steadies, and fires. The great Caught-His-Horse-First goes down, killed by his puzzlement. Leave nothing alive, cries the major again. Kill them all. And down we all surge like that huge river flood of old.

Who will tell you the reason of that day? Not Thomas Mc-Nulty. Guess what’s savage in men was in our men that morning. Men I knew from aforetime and the new men I knew just days. Rushing down on the village like an army of coyotes. Braves fetch their guns and come bursting back out of their wigwams. Women crying and calling. The soldiers hollering like demons. Firing and firing. I see Starling Carlton at the head of his company, his sabre pointing against the foe. His face red as a wound. His corpulence balanced and dangerous. Poised like a murdering dancer. And everywhere strength and power and terror. Even in the heart of every trooper. Terror of dying and being second with a shot. Bullet in your soft body. Kill them all. An order we never known. I rush on with them and when I get to the teepees I drop down from my horse. I ain’t got one notion what to do only push on to the middle. I am praying to the soul of Handsome John Cole that Winona might be there. If she ain’t there it’s perdition. As I run through the teepees I get a queer sense of lightness. Like I got speed I don’t got. I reach the many-coloured wigwam of the chief and plunge in through the opening. It’s bigger than it looked and the first chill light of morning swims there. Then I got a body wrapped against me. There’s a dozen squaws there but the limpet on me is Winona. Merciful God, I say, stay near me. We got to get out of here. Thomas, she says, please save me. I going to do all I can. I don’t even look at these other ladies. I ain’t going to be no help to them. They just staring at me with the open blank faces of emergency. All around us the pocking of guns and the whining and cursing of bullets. There’s bullets passing through the wigwam and out another side. Even in the two seconds I am with them two or three of the squaws is knocked. These are Winona’s people and my brain is now aflame. What chokes my throat is love. I ain’t saying love for them but for her. I don’t care if she ain’t my daughter but all I know is the fiery feeling.

Back out I push, keeping Winona sheltered. But where in God’s hell do I go? Maybe make for the bluff again. Get her back up with the Gatlings. Fortunately for me she’s still in her army garb. That surprises me but I’ll take help from God or devil all the one. Two drummer boys was with us on their ponies but I didn’t see them come down. It’s not like a proper charge. But maybe the uniform is something to save us. Even if the flag weren’t. God knows a trooper don’t like to shoot blue. We’re nearly out of the village and the fight is fierce and loud. As many bodies now as living maybe. I’m not looking as such but I see everything around me like I had a hundred eyes. Men have swept through on their mounts slashing with their swords and firing freely. I don’t see one trooper on the ground killed or wounded. Now many have slipped from their horses and are killing with pistols and sabres. Why haven’t the braves fired back? Maybe they ain’t got no damn bullets left. Maybe they ain’t got nothing. I curse at my heart and plead this be my last battle. If I can only get Winona away. Now here’s big Starling Carlton and he’s standing five feet off. Captain, I say, can you help us, please help us. This is John Cole’s daughter. That ain’t his daughter, roars Starling. Starling, it is, and I beg you, stand one side of her and help me. Don’t you understand, Thomas McNulty? Everything changed now. We’re to do what was said. We’re to kill them all and leave nothing alive. But this is Winona, you know Winona. That ain’t nothing but a squaw. Don’t you know, corporal? These the killers of Mrs Neale. These the killers of his daughter. Stand aside, Thomas, and I going to quench her life. We got our orders and by damn we going to do them. His body looks huge and puffed out. He like an adder going to strike. Sweat like the Deluge in the Bible. Hey, Noah, where your ark? Old Starling Carlton going to drown the world. I do love this man. We been through a thousand slaughters. Now he’s lifting his pride, a shining Smith and Wesson pistol. In his belt he drags a beautiful Spencer rifle. Looks like he got his heart’s desire. Starling Carlton, ain’t nothing and is all the world. Every soul God’s fashioning. He lifting the handsome gun. He going to shoot. I can see it. By Jesus I pull on my sabre like a doctor draws a thorn and it moves across the brief space of three feet and one half of the blade meets with Starling’s big face and cuts in and cuts in till I see his eyes bursting and he don’t even have time to fire and down he is felled, my old crazy friend. And I push on past him and I don’t look back only crazy like him looking round to see any other snake or killing man might take Winona.

We keep running as best we can through the wigwams and out onto the frozen grasses. I’m looking about for my horse but she must have got the hell out of there and I didn’t blame her. Got to make the higher ground behind the batteries. That the only place will seem like home. I got Winona by the hand now and we two soldiers running. Truth to tell she not much smaller than me. If there’s bullets coming after us it’s only a hive of strays. Ain’t no Indians firing now. Not a one. And as we reach the line of Gatling guns we pass Caught-His-Horse-First lying dead. The murderer of Mrs Neale and Hephzibah and here now the incredible price. What grace in this or God I could not say. Not much.

Seems like it were all the devil that day. Kill them all. Leave nothing alive. Everything was killed. Nothing left to tell the tale. Four hundred and seventy. And when the men were done killing they started to cut. They cut out the cunts of the women and stretched them on their hats. They took the little ball sacks of the boys to be dried into baccy pouches. They severed heads and hacked off limbs so they was not going to no heavenly hunting ground. The troopers came back up the hill lathered in blood and gore. Spattered with tendrils of veins. Happy as demons in the commission of demon’s work. Exultant and shouting to each other. Drenched in a slaughterhouse of glory. Never heard such strange laughter. Big hill-high sky-wide laughter. Clapping of backs. Words so black they were blacker than dried blood. Remorse not a whit. Delight and life perfected. Slaughter most desirable. Vigour and life. Strength and heart’s desire. Culmination of soldiering. Day of righteous reckoning.

And yet in the days going back across the plains there was just deep exhaustion and queer silence. The mules drawing the guns with earnest intent. The mule-skinners herding them on. Troopers who had gathered back their mounts wearily submitting. A gopher-hole tripping up a horse enough to send a trooper falling like a greenhorn. Can’t even eat their grub on the middle stop. Can’t even remember their private prayers. Killing hurts the heart and soils the soul. And Captain Sowell looking as angry as old Zeus and as sick as a poisoned dog. He don’t talk to no one and no one talking to him.

The other silent creature be Winona. I keeping her stuck close to me. I don’t trust anyone. What we walked through was the strike-out of her kindred. Scrubbed off with a metal brush like the dirt and dried blood on a soldier’s jacket. Metal brush of strange and implacable hatred. Even the major. Same would be if soldiers fell on my family in Sligo and cut out our parts. When that old ancient Cromwell come to Ireland he said he would leave nothing alive. Said the Irish were vermin and devils. Clean out the country for good people to step into. Make a paradise. Now we make this American paradise I guess. Guess it be strange so many Irish boys doing this work. Ain’t that the way of the world. No such item as a virtuous people. Winona the only soul not thrown on the bonefire. She seen the worst now and seen it before. It makes her silent, so silent the silence of winter is like a clattering. No words in her now. I got to keep her close. Got to get back to John Cole and keep her close. I ask her plain what she wants me to do. I ask her three times and get no answer. Try a fourth time. Tennessee, Tennessee, she says.