The black hills, p.15
The Black Hills, page 15
As they moved higher into the mountains, the heat grew less until, at dusk, it began to get chilly and the flies fell back and left them alone. As dark began to take over, Keogh ordered the column to halt and they made camp, with a fire in the middle to roast one of the yearling does, tender eating with no need to hang the meat. Soon the men were sitting round telling tales and singing songs of home. Keogh and O’Riordan made a formidable duo and Grand whispered to Batchelor that they were a loss to the Halls. Up here, the tensions of the fort didn’t seem to exist, and if any cliques were represented around the campfire, they were impossible to distinguish. The coffee pot went round and round, followed by the whiskey bottle and, before long, men wandered off to find a place to lay their head, tucked into the gnarled roots of a tree clinging to the hillside or, failing that, in the lee of a log. Soon, the only sound to be heard was soft snoring and the occasional passing of wind. Two guards patrolled in silence, patting their sleeves to keep warm. After all, this was potentially hostile territory. It wouldn’t do to be careless.
James Batchelor was not keen on sleeping outdoors. Where he came from, it meant that you hadn’t anywhere better to lay your head and didn’t have so much as fourpence for a doss. But here, it seemed, it was just another place to be, the same as a room or a house or a mansion. Custer bedded down the same as the men. In fact, Batchelor could see him now in the dying light of the fire, back to back with the faithful Reilly.
Grand could see that Batchelor was unwilling to bite the bullet and find somewhere to sleep. He unrolled his blanket and tapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘Custer and Reilly have it right. We’ll sleep back to back over there and we’ll keep each other warm. No draughts when you have someone with you.’
Batchelor looked doubtful. ‘Does sleeping back to back stop scorpions, snakes, things of that nature?’
Grand shrugged. ‘Too cold up here at night for that,’ he said. ‘Nothing dangerous except what you see.’ He waved a hand.
‘What?’ Batchelor scanned his surroundings by the light of the embers. ‘What? All I can see is the men.’
‘And they’re all that’s dangerous. I’d rather face a rattler than Bloody Knife with some whiskey in him. So let’s bed down. Tomorrow night, you’ll be sleeping in your own bed back at the fort. Just keep that in mind and you’ll sleep like a baby. Look, here we are, a nice scoop in the dirt. Someone’s slept here before, I reckon.’
Batchelor made a note to himself to check when they would be setting off for home. When Grand started to get homespun, it was time to get him back within the sound of Big Ben.
Like everyone who didn’t sleep outside on a regular basis, Batchelor tossed and turned for a while before getting the knack of it. He tucked his saddlebag tight under his chin rather than trying to use it like a feather pillow, crossed his ankles and bent his knees, tilted his pelvis into the ground and, just as he was feeling surprised that it was so comfortable, he drifted off. The snores and explosions of wind got further and further away and he felt he was in a little boat on a fathomless sea, under a starry sky, rocking gently into the unknown. He smiled to himself and let his mind go, deep into sleep, the residual warmth and faint light from the campfire the last thing he remembered.
He woke some time later in the cold and dark and it took him a while to work out where he was. It wasn’t his bed, of that much he was certain. It was pitch dark; there were stars in the sky but the branches of the pines overhead more than blocked them out. Slowly, Batchelor remembered he was in the Black Hills, on the ground under a blanket. He reached a cautious hand behind him and encountered a leg, clad in serviceable denim and leather. It had all come back to him now. He was lying back to back with Matthew Grand, in a scrape in the ground. Somewhere in the dark were men of the Seventh Cavalry, the Wild I. If he wasn’t safe here, where would he be safe?
Although still by no means comfortable, he started to drift off to sleep again. Grand shifted in his sleep and muttered. The snores and wind reached a crescendo and then, as suddenly as if he had gone deaf, Batchelor could hear nothing but the beat of his heart. Then nothing at all except a footfall, regular and soft, which began somewhere up the hillside and came on down, not disturbing so much as a pebble, just pace, pace, pace, as if a guardsman was parading in carpet slippers. But the guards were yards away, below the bluffs with the horses. He heard it go out of earshot down the hill and realized he was holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and pinched himself to make sure he was awake. Then it came again, as regular as a clock, the unmistakeable sound of someone in soft shoes, pacing heel to toe down the slope and away beyond the bluff below the camp.
On the third repeat, Batchelor could stand it no longer and poked Grand in the thigh with a trembling finger.
‘Wha—?’ Grand sat up with commendable speed, his hand on his gun.
‘Hush, Matthew,’ Batchelor hissed. ‘There’s someone in the camp.’
‘Of course,’ Grand began, but got an elbow in the ribs for his pains.
Batchelor put his mouth close to his ear. ‘I don’t mean one of us. I mean, someone else. Listen.’
Both men froze and strained their ears so they could almost hear the click of rocks cooling in the night air. Then, just as Batchelor was beginning to fear he had imagined it, the footfalls came again, soft as a thought, down the hill and away around the bluff.
Grand and Batchelor sat silently, shoulder to shoulder, not speaking. Finally, Grand broke the silence.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘You’re asking me? I thought you were the seasoned camper-out? I don’t even go for a walk in the park after dark, so I am probably the last man alive you should ask.’ Batchelor was now cold and tetchy as well as frightened out of his wits.
‘It must be … a hostile, I suppose. But why would he just walk through the camp like that? They go for horses, if anything. And in fact, it can’t be just one, can it? How would he get back up the hill so fast? How many of these have you heard?’ Grand was beginning to think practically.
Batchelor thought. ‘I don’t know. Five?’
‘In that case …’ Grand stopped to listen as the footsteps went past again. He interrupted himself. ‘Did you notice anything?’
Batchelor turned in the dark to look at his colleague. ‘Apart from the footsteps sneaking through the camp, do you mean?’ he hissed.
‘Yes, I mean apart from that. No breathing. No creak of leather, clothes rustling. Just the footsteps. That’s weird.’
‘Do you fellers mind shutting the hell up?’ The voice in their ears made the enquiry agents jump. ‘Some of us’re trying to sleep here.’
The blast of whiskey made them pretty certain it was Bloody Knife.
‘It’s … it’s the footsteps,’ Batchelor began.
‘Consarn it,’ the scout said, sliding back into the darkness almost as silently as he had appeared. ‘If’n you can’t sleep for the Nightwalkers, then you shouldn’t’a come on a hunt. They’re just watching the sacred places, is all. Go to sleep and if you can’t sleep, shut the hell up, like I says.’
The two men sat back to back for a while, like bookends. Then, by common consent, they slid down into sleeping positions and stayed like that, wide-eyed, until dawn.
He could see them clearly now through the sights he’d had fitted to his Sharps buffalo gun; two men out for a ride on the High Plains. From time to time, they stopped to swig from their canteens; one of them bent in the saddle to pick flowers.
Charley Reynolds clicked his teeth and shook his head. Lambs to the slaughter. He slid down the rock to where his mount chewed the long grass and swung into the saddle, spurring westwards behind the mountain ridge. His pinto knew this ground as well as his rider, and when Lonesome Charley wanted to, he could ride for miles, making no sound at all. He knew the pair would reach the bluffs and, long before they did, he was waiting for them, rifle in hand, hammer cocked.
‘Hello, boys.’
The cavalrymen pulled up sharp, one of them all but dropping his canteen in surprise.
‘Easy, now,’ the scout said. ‘I could have picked you assholes off at any point along the ridge, but chose not to. Don’t make me plug you now. Might spook the horses.’
‘Come on, Charley,’ the younger trooper said, wiping his mouth, ‘Give us a break. We was just out for the ride.’
The scout looked at the pair. Tomlinson was in Benteen’s company, a blond, gangly, awkward boy who looked too young for this man’s army. His fellow-deserter was the Prussian cuss, the one from Schwabmünchen whose name Reynolds couldn’t pronounce.
‘Out for a ride?’ the scout smiled. ‘Well, ain’t that nice? Turn your mounts around, boys. We’re going back.’
‘Nein,’ the Prussian said. ‘You have no authority over us, Herr Reynolds; you are only a scout.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Reynolds said, ‘but this is a Sharps rifle that’ll blow a hole in you the size of a bull buffalo’s pizzle, so that sort of gives me authority, don’t it? Now, very gently, I want you to lift those side irons out of your holsters and drop them on the ground.’
The pair looked at each other. Tomlinson had known Reynolds for a couple of years. He knew him to be a fair man, but not one to cross if the wind was in a certain direction. Baumgartner didn’t know him at all, but he knew what a buffalo gun could do at close quarters. Gingerly, they eased their Remingtons out of the leather and threw them on to the grass.
‘Now the carbines.’
The rifles followed suit.
‘Now, let’s see how much drill you soldier-boys have mastered during your time with the Seventh. Twos right!’
The horses’ heads and ears pricked up and Tomlinson half-turned, taking his mount with him to wheel in formation. Baumgartner hadn’t moved, however, and merely sat there, folding his arms.
‘Nein,’ he said again.
‘Well, ain’t you a stubborn son of a bitch?’ Reynolds muttered, and blasted a shot with the Sharps. The bullet whizzed high over Baumgartner’s head, but it served its purpose and the Prussian somersaulted over his horse’s rump in surprise, landing in the tall grass with the air knocked out of him.
‘You too, Tomlinson.’ Reynolds had recocked his weapon. ‘Dismount.’
For a moment, the trooper hesitated, then, seeing the cold light in Reynolds’s eyes, obeyed the command. The scout swung into his own saddle and trotted forward, bending to pick up the reins of the troopers’ animals. He began to lead them away.
‘Hey!’ Tomlinson shouted. Baumgartner was still fighting for breath. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Do what?’ Reynolds called back over his shoulder.
‘Take our horses,’ Tomlinson said. ‘We’ll be sitting ducks for hostiles out here on foot.’
Reynolds swung his horse around to face the deserters. ‘You stupid little shit,’ he hissed. ‘You’re sitting ducks for hostiles whether you’re on foot or in the saddle. Like I said, I could have picked you off at any time in the last half-hour. So could a Lakota. Anyhow, I’m doing you cusses a favour. Deserting from the United States cavalry is one thing. Stealing government-branded horses is altogether another – they’d hang you for that. And I have left you your guns, given you an even chance against hostiles. Oh, sure, an Oglala or Hunkpapa warrior can loose three arrows before you’ve so much as cocked your rifle, but, hey, that’s life, ain’t it?’
‘No, no,’ Tomlinson shuffled forward.
‘Nein,’ Baumgartner had found his voice too. ‘What will they do to us?’ he asked Reynolds, ‘if we go back?’
‘A lot less than they’ll do to you if you don’t,’ Reynolds pointed to the rocky horizon.
Both soldiers followed his fingers but saw nothing.
‘Who?’ Tomlinson asked. ‘I can’t see nobody.’
Reynolds chuckled, ‘My point exactly,’ he said. ‘Mount up, boys. It’s a long ride back.’
‘Good morning, good morning, good morning!’ George Custer was up and about and making sure everyone knew it. He had slept like a log and was bright eyed and bushy tailed. ‘You look tired, Mr Batchelor. Bad night?’ He didn’t mean to poke fun at the Limey but really – he had never visited London but was pretty sure that if he did, he would sleep soundly.
Batchelor hugged his coffee mug and looked up. ‘A bit disturbed,’ he muttered. ‘Footsteps, you know …’
‘Footsteps?’ Custer roared. ‘Fetch me the outposts!’ Two troopers appeared as though by magic. ‘Footsteps, the man says. Did we have intruders in the night?’
The guards snickered. ‘No, sir!’ they chorused.
‘Then … dreaming, eh?’ Custer was suddenly avuncular.
‘Nah, Custer.’ Bloody Knife wandered past, a hunk of cold meat in his hand. ‘Just the Nightwalkers is all.’
Custer looked doubtful. ‘Nightwalkers, here? How so? I haven’t heard of them this far north.’
Bloody Knife shrugged. ‘You dog-faces keep disturbing Lakota land, the Nightwalkers will have more ground to protect.’
Reilly stepped out from behind a thorn bush, pulling up his braces and hitching the crotch of his britches. ‘I heard ’em,’ he said. ‘Went past a time or two.’
Custer was crestfallen. ‘I wish you’d woken me, Reilly,’ he said. ‘I haven’t heard a Nightwalker in years.’
Batchelor followed the conversation with goggling eyes. ‘You mean … ghosts?’
Reilly laughed. ‘Not like you think of them, Mr Batchelor, no. They don’t rattle no chains, nor have their heads under their arms. You can’t see ’em. They’re the spirits of the place, looking out for their own. They won’t hurt you.’
‘You’ll just have to let this one go, James,’ Grand said from the edge of the campfire. ‘I doubt any of us will ever understand this place.’
Reilly started kicking sand over the fire. ‘If you’s all have finished drinking and eating,’ he bellowed, ‘Captain Keogh wants all men saddled in five minutes.’
Captain Keogh had had no such intention. He was content to let the morning sun warm the night chill from his bones, but he could tell an order filtered down from the General when he heard one and tipped the remains of his coffee on to the ground. ‘Yo, men,’ he called. ‘Let’s get your asses in those saddles and we’re off in five.’
From a crowd of men all dressed the same and lolling round a smouldering fire, the hunting party was suddenly transformed into a unit of crack fighting men. Still more used to the uniforms of the British army, Batchelor suddenly saw the cavalrymen with new eyes. Despite the apparent casual attitude to soldiering, in fact they could whip any fighting force that could be thrown at them; there was a true camaraderie there. It made him proud to be an adoptive American, even just for a while.
A trooper brought his horse to him and he even remembered to get on from the right side. This cavalry thing must be catching.
The company wound its way through the foothills, heading down all the way but taking a circuitous route. Keogh had some new men with him and this was an opportunity to get some training under their belt that they would never have had at Jefferson Barracks on the Missouri. There was nothing quite like on-the-spot action and, as they meandered through the scrub and brush, clinging to life between the towering rocks, he rode up and down the column, pointing out places where hostiles could be lurking, hidden clefts in the rock which could open out into a space where a complete raiding party could lurk in ambush.
‘Smoke ahead!’ One of the outriders had spotted a faint plume against the unbroken blue of the sky.
‘Now,’ Keogh said to his men, ‘we all know that this is probably just a prospectors’ campfire, but it might not be. O’Riordan? How should we proceed?’
‘Dismount, sir. Split into groups, circle round and check. If it’s hostiles, clean them up. If it’s prospectors, say howdy and move on.’
A wave of laughter rippled down the rank and Custer made a mental note to watch this man, who was a bit too clever by half.
Keogh nodded and raised an arm. ‘What he said.’ He spoke low but his voice carried, ricocheting off the rocks. ‘Quiet now.’ He backed down the line and spoke to Grand and Batchelor. ‘It probably is prospectors,’ he said, ‘but if you gents would rather …’ he wasn’t sure how to word the next bit. He knew Grand had some cavalry miles under his saddle, but the Limey was a civilian, through and through.
Batchelor spoke for them both. ‘If we won’t be in your way, Captain Keogh, we’ll come along.’ He had learned already that safety lay in numbers. Waiting behind a rock while the rest of the company moved off was the best way of getting an arrow in your back, or worse.
‘Then if you would follow Sergeant Reilly, gentlemen,’ and Keogh rode off to check the rest of his men.
Leaving the horses hobbled in the narrow cut between the rocks, the men swarmed over the hot boulders in all directions. To a Lakota they would have sounded like a herd of buffalo playing war horns, but for a cavalry regiment they moved like snakes. Soon, they had the source of the smoke surrounded and yes, the first thoughts were the right ones; it was a prospectors’ fire. What no one had predicted, though, was that the prospectors in question – three of them, though from a distance it was hard to tell – would be lying dead and bloody, surrounded by clouds of flies. One had a turkey vulture pecking in a desultory fashion at his chest but it looked at first glance as if the best pickings had already been had.
Keogh pointed silently at three of his most hardened men. This was no scene for the new recruits. Keogh was finding it hard not to throw up – he didn’t need men incapacitated for the ride home. And he would need a burial party. He pointed to six more. The men climbed down the rocks into the little dried-out gully. It was clear that the prospectors were greenhorns. No one with even a day’s experience would have camped there. A storm like they had had the other night would have washed them and their camp away, to dash them on the rocks on their way down to the Rosebud river.
