A forgotten evil, p.11
A Forgotten Evil, page 11
Once the kindling was blazing, Caleb knocked the snow from the sticks of wood, adding them with care so as not to douse his fire. While his coffee was simmering, he brushed the snow from the backs of the mules and rubbed them down with a flour sack. He doubled their feed once again to keep up their strength, talking to them as he fit their collars and harnesses and lines.
After breakfast, he loaded the wood, a prime load of walnut and pecan, and struck out for the railhead camp. The going was slow under the pull of the drifts. He drew up on several occasions to let the mules blow and to walk the stiffness from his own frozen feet.
Two hours later, he smelled the rail camp fires, the unmistakable drift of smoke on the wind, and waited as Fitz rode out to meet him.
“ ’Lo, Woodcutter,” Fitz said, hooking his reins over his saddle horn and stuffing his hands into the depths of his pockets. “Reckon it’s a load you’re bringing?”
“That it is, Fitz, hardwood and hot enough for driving the winter out of your bones.”
Fitz’s horse snorted and shook his head against the delay.
“Well, them girlies can use it, delicate what they are,” Fitz said. “All sniffly and cold, ain’t they. Stack it over there by the cook shack, and put Monnet’s at the end of his car, just there by the coupling. Be careful you don’t track things up, ’cause he’s mighty particular about woodcutters mucking up his mansion, and it’s likely to get me wrote up, although a stay in the guardhouse might be a relief after the backside of this here frozen horse.”
“Thanks, Fitz.”
Fitz pulled his hands from his pockets and held them against his face.
“Indians ain’t big on fighting in the winter,” he said, picking up his reins, “ ’cause it’s cold, ain’t it, and they got no fodder for them starved-out ponies of theirs, but there ain’t nothing they like better than odds, such as a woodcutter wandering about like a jackrabbit in a snowbank.”
“Once I get this wood delivered, I figure to hole up, Fitz. Take a grown badger to dig me out.”
“See that you do,” he said, bringing his horse about with a wave of his hand.
Tossing back the best pieces for Monnet, Caleb stacked the wood near the cook shack as Fitz had said. Even the railroad had surrendered to the sway of nature, the immense mule teams idled and left to their boundless feed of oats, the men freed to curse the cold and the misery of their camp as they played cards or dominoes about the fire.
He knocked on the door of Monnet’s car and checked his feet for mud. Some time passed before the girl opened the door a crack.
“Yes?”
“Miss Monnet?” he asked, holding his hand to his eyes against the glare of the snow.
“What is it?”
“I’m the woodcutter here with a load of wood.”
“Papa’s gone on the work train,” she said. “I suppose he’s been delayed because of the snow.”
“Yes, Miss, but I have a load of good hardwood what needs unloaded. You wouldn’t want to be caught up short in this kind of weather.”
“Oh, maybe you should,” she said, pushing open the door. “The box is just there on the landing. Goodness, you’re half frozen, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Miss,” he said, loading up his arms, stepping past and into her world, the smell of her perfume like an embrace in the crisp winter air. “It’s fair open to the north pole, I reckon.”
As he filled the box, she watched him, her presence a heat against him, and when he was finished, he brushed the snow away from the floor with his hat, so that Fitz wouldn’t have to go to the guardhouse.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding her arms about her against the draft, “but I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Caleb Justin, Miss.”
“Do I owe you something, Mr. Justin, for the wood?”
Emerald eyes pulled him in, weakened his knees, swept him into their depths, and he put his hand against the side of the car.
“No, Miss. Your pa arranged pay.”
“Oh, yes, I remember now. Then you must come in,” she said, pushing the hair back from her face, a black sheen against the white of her skin, “for some tea and to warm up for a moment.”
“Oh, no, Miss,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I ain’t fit for coming in.”
“Mr. Justin,” she said, propping her hands onto her waist, “I insist, and I’m freezing out here. Now, you stoke my fire while I put on some tea.”
He brushed the snow from the tops of his shoulders and checked his boots once more.
“Yes, Miss. I’ll bring in some pecan. It’s the hottest of all for a day like this.”
The stove was small, its door of cast iron and silver, and took but a few sticks of wood. Backing up to it, he took in the room while she prepared tea. Scarlet drapes hung in folds about the window, the same as he’d seen that day at the siding, then again from the wagon as he rode off to Riley, sumptuous and rich, as he knew they must be, to hold at bay the discourteous world. A tucked and pleated leather couch sat under the window, a book opened over its arm, abandoned there at the woodcutter’s knock, and all about was the opulence of carved mahogany, of brass lanterns, of marble stands and leather-bound documents. At the end of the car hung a picture of a steam engine, smoke churning from its stack as it labored up a mountain, and there to the side, a curtained berth, her lair and place of sleep, her warmth beneath the comforters, and the robes, and the crackle of her fire.
“It will be but a minute,” she said. “You must take off your coat, or the heat will drive in the cold.”
“Yes, Miss.”
She sat down on the couch and placed a marker in the book before setting it aside.
“Now, Mr. Justin, tell me about yourself.”
“There’s sad little to tell, Miss.”
“Well, then, I’ll just have to wait, won’t I, because I haven’t had anyone to talk to for the longest time, and if someone doesn’t talk to me soon, I’ll surely go mad.”
“I’m from Kentucky,” he said.
“I see. Is that all?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“Mr. Justin?”
“Yes, Miss?”
“Must you be so formal?”
“No, Miss.”
“Good, then,” she said, rising, pouring from the kettle with great care, as if in it were all that one might ever need. “And here’s your tea.”
Reaching for the cup, he sipped at its thin and delicate lip, its taste as exotic as the hand from which it had come.
“And you, Miss?”
“Me?”
“What brings you to a place such as this?”
She glanced up, her eyes pooling liquid green, and there was in them a wisdom he’d not noticed before. “Well,” she said, sipping on her tea as she looked out the window, driblets of melted snow racing its surface, “I came out here to meet my fiancé, but things have not worked out. It seems Quartermaster Officer Forgan at Fort Larned died of a bursted appendix, a horrible death they said, and then they had no one who knew how things were to be done, so they commandeered my fiancé until a new officer could be assigned. It was just the worst luck.”
“Suppose Officer Forgan would agree with that,” Caleb said.
“So when Lieutenant Gillian returns, he’s to put in for a transfer to Fort Leavenworth, and we will live there in the officer’s quarters. They are quite adequate you know, and it’s very important to one’s career to be at Leavenworth, they say.”
“I didn’t know that, Miss,” he said, taking another sip of the tea.
“Well, because that’s where the most important people are, you know, for promotions, socializing, and the like. They say it’s just extraordinary and with just everything provided.”
“It’s been hard for you then, the waiting and all?”
“Yes,” she said, sighing. “I wouldn’t have come all the way out here if Papa wasn’t going to be here anyway, and it just seemed like a good plan. Then, of course, the army left me stranded here in the middle of nowhere. It’s just been the most lonesome time, and Papa’s always so busy.” Taking another sip of tea, she set her cup down. “I don’t suppose it matters that much, if we go to Leavenworth I mean, because Lieutenant Gillian will have an important job waiting for him on the railroad if he decides to get out. That’s what Papa says.”
Finishing his tea, Caleb set the cup down and slipped on his old coat.
“Thank you, Miss. I’m much warmer than I was.”
She clasped her hands in front of her and smiled. “I’m sorry I talked so much, Mr. Justin, but it’s just been so long, and it just came pouring out.”
“I enjoyed the company, Miss, and the tea, too.”
“Mr. Justin, do you read?”
“Just what’s on hand, Miss. I got a whole stack of Harper’s Weekly magazines back at the camp. They put me to bed near every night.”
“Oh, dear, that won’t do. Here, take this. It’s a copy of Bleak House, and just everyone’s reading it.”
“I’d like that fine, Miss, but a book like this is in some danger in a camp like mine.”
“Oh, Papa would never know, would he?”
“Thank you, Miss. I’ll have another load of pecan soon enough if the weather doesn’t drive me in.”
Holding open the door, she handed him his hat. “Well, good-bye then, Mr. Justin.”
“Good-bye, Miss,” he said.
He stopped at the paymaster on his way out and collected his three dollars. The cash money felt good as he tucked it away into his pocket. First chance, he was going to the sutler’s store to buy some of that strawberry jam.
After securing the book in a flour sack, he climbed up on the wagon and pulled his hat down over the sting in his ears. Fitz stood at the fire with the rail crew and tipped a salute as Caleb drove off into the frozen prairie.
Home bound and with an empty wagon, the mules picked up their pace, and the rail camp soon disappeared behind. But as the sun drew down, the sky cleared, the cold deepened, and the wagon wheels squeaked on the powdery snow. The orange light of sunset soon spilled across the frigid tundra, the absence of warmth in its retreat.
Pulling up the collar of Jim’s sack coat, he barricaded himself against the cold and the emptiness within him. To have seen the girl in her world, to have stood at the divide, at that great chasm between them, had set him adrift and despondent.
He rode into the prairie dog town just north of his camp at sunset. “Whoa,” he said, pulling up the team. It was impossible to see the mounds under the snow cover, and holes were dangerous for an unsuspecting animal. A broken leg could not be mended. He searched in vain for his friends, the little priests with their wisdom and cheer, but none was to be seen, none to greet him on his return trip home. It was a city emptied of life.
Turning about, he listened to the silence, to its vastness and measure. At first, he overlooked the streak of blood, so close was it to his feet, a smear of crimson across the snow.
“Whoa,” he said to Mule One, who was prancing in anticipation of oats. “There’s something here.”
A buffalo carcass lay just in the shadows, its eyes frosted and dead. Both tongue and hump were cut away, as were steaks from the flank and rump. The large bones of the leg were crushed and splintered and picked clean of their marrow, sprinkles of pink still scattered about in the ice and snow. The buffalo had been taken in a hurry by someone hungry and cautious.
Mule One’s eyes whitened as he peered around his blinders at the thing in the shadows, caught the gamy smell of death. Caleb reached for his Spencer and listened again, stared into the shadows for signs of movement. Dropping onto a knee, he studied the horses’ tracks, small and unshod where they’d circled the prey, and then, there in the snow, the shaft of an arrow, splintered under the collapsed buffalo.
His hair tingled on the nape of his neck. A few hours earlier and it could have been him, butchered under the frenzied attack, dismembered and strewn and left for eternity.
He climbed onto his wagon and snapped the reins, pulling away, looking over his shoulder with trepidation, because this much he knew for certain, knew it with the certainty and finality of death: he was no longer alone.
Chapter 10
The winds ceased as night fell across Caleb’s camp. By the time he’d fed the mules and lay in kindling for the morning, snow had fallen once more, great white flakes that gathered and stacked and muffled away the sounds of the night. Too weary to build a fire, he lit a candle and ate a cold supper under its wavering light.
Afterward, he cleaned his boots of snow, turning them upside down over sticks of kindling in the hope that by morning, they’d be dry. Checking the Spencer, he lay it at the head of his bed and leaned his axe against the cellar wall. It was not a night for visitors, not of man, or of beast, or for uninvited reveries, not in the heart of a Kansas blizzard.
But then this was not a rational time but a time of Lee Horns, of shameless men with brazen hearts, men who lived and died without reflection, men like the deserters, with nothing to lose, no rules or conscience to follow as they roamed unheeded through others’ lives.
Once in bed, he shook the images away and opened Bleak House, to read under the yellow light of the candle, the smell of Joan Monnet’s perfume still lingering in the pages of the book, and he read of the death of the sun, and of the streets of mud, and of the petulant England fog, and he knew that books such as these were of her world and not of his. Into the night he read, even into his weariness, and it was not until the candle quivered and died in a molten pool that he lay the book aside.
For two days it snowed without stop, so during the light, he fed oats to his mules, clearing the snow from under their bellies, leading them to the stream where he broke ice with his axe so that they could water. He cooked a pot of hot soup from the remaining salt pork, baked cornbread with lard and meal, and wished for eggs, for the comforting cluck of his chickens, now so far away.
When night came, he climbed into his bed once more to read under the pale light, until his eyes burned with fatigue, until the candles drowned away, until the book was finished and there was no more.
The next day, Jim Ferric waved from atop the hill, his huge profile unmistakable in the newborn sun. Caleb waved his hat and walked out to meet him, delighted to see him once more.
“Come to dig you out,” Jim said, sliding down from his horse.
“Coffee’s on,” Caleb said, shaking his big hand.
“Coffee will do,” he said.
Back at camp, Caleb poured coffee and pulled up a stump across from Jim.
“So,” he said, “I hear you’ve been to Fort Riley?”
Jim sipped at his cup and let the steam warm his face before answering.
“They had to chip me off the wagon seat with a pickaxe when I got back. Course, I got a little time off for it, which accounts for my being here drinking your coffee and answering questions about where I been.”
Looking out onto the prairie, Caleb shook his head.
“I never knew it could snow like this on the prairie, Jim.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” he said, “but it ain’t but a picnic compared to summer heat. Just the thought of it makes me want to dig into one of these here snowbanks and never come up again.”
“Well, maybe so, but it’s a misery for a man needing to cut wood, I tell you. I’m running far behind as it is, what with the rail camp, and then with Wins cutting my load every chance he gets.”
“Glad to hear you got the railroad work, Caleb.”
“It’s cash money, just like you thought, Jim, and mighty welcome.”
Jim tossed the dregs from his cup into the snow and cut himself a chew, loading his jaw.
“Wins is a son of a bitch and not to be trusted if you ask me,” he said. Spitting into the fire, he looked over at Caleb. “Every time someone holds him to bear, that lieutenant of his steps in to save his bacon.”
“Lieutenant Gillian?”
Jim sharpened a stick into the fire with his pocketknife, the curls of wood twisting away in the coals.
“A son of a bitch in his own right,” he said.
Rising, Caleb poured himself another cup of coffee, setting the pot out of the fire to cool.
“I’ve met his girl over at the rail camp,” he said.
“A right pretty one, I hear tell,” Jim said, working at the opposite end of his stick, “and with a rich daddy to boot.”
“Right pretty,” Caleb said. “She’s figuring on going back to Leavenworth when they marry so’s they can socialize and make promotion faster that way.”
Tossing his stick into the fire, Jim closed his knife and rose to look down on the garden now buried beneath snowdrifts.
“The Indians have a hard time getting their horses through the winter, Caleb. It’s the one time of the year they ain’t up for a fight. The rumor at Fort Riley is that Sheridan’s planning a big campaign for next winter, to drive the Indians south into the Territory. It’s the last push and the end of the line for them if he pulls it off.”
“You figure it’s true, Jim?”
“I ain’t but a ignorant blacksmith, but I do know that nothing stops the railroad. This army will do whatever it takes to keep it going, and it ain’t likely Lieutenant Gillian or anyone else is going back to Leavenworth so’s they can smooch up a general.”
The sun broke, falling warm across Caleb’s shoulders.
“I saw signs when I was riding in from the rail camp, Jim.”
Turning, Jim studied him. “What kind of signs?”
“A kilt buffalo, hump and tongue cut out and with his bones all cracked up.”
“Could have been them deserters,” Jim said. “They’ve been tearing up the country. Stole a wagon right off a ox train, kilt two oxen in the doing, dragging the wagon master halfway to Fort Wallace with him screaming full of pear cactus the whole of the way.”
