A forgotten evil, p.22
A Forgotten Evil, page 22
“It looks to be a fair walk,” he said.
Shading her eyes, Joan stared into the haze. “It’s a walk we can make, Caleb.”
They tramped for hours through the hills, Caleb leading the pinto, Joan trailing behind. One hill was as another, to swell and to dip and to swell again, and the mind-numbing monotony of dried grass, yellowed with fall, and the lizards with their arrogant stares, and the hoppers, stupefied with cold and impending death. When they were too tired to go on, Caleb would dig a rock from the ground and set it on the pinto’s reins while they rested. But soon the silence, and the discouraging lack of progress, would drive them once more on their journey.
As evening fell, the sky flared with the orange of sunset, and the winds retreated for dawn. Caleb waited as Joan worked her way down the hill.
“Let’s camp here,” he said.
“It’s so in the open, Caleb.”
“Over this hill, there’s another one just like this,” he said, “and another and another right into eternity; besides, the grass is good here for the pinto, and I’ve seen a few buffalo chips about for making a fire.”
“All right, Caleb, I’ll get out our things.”
“Maybe you could graze the horse while I gather up some chips? He’ll weaken on us without proper time to graze.”
“Caleb,” she said, wrapping her arms about herself, “do you think we’re lost?”
Caleb looked into the sky. “We’re headed south,” he said, “certain as certain. Anyway, we can check the stars again tonight. Now, I’ll tie this rabbit pelt onto a arrow and stick it on top of that hill. Won’t be any missing you then, will there?”
“No,” she said, smiling.
Caleb set the arrow at the top of the hill and waved to Joan, who was leading the pinto into the draw. For an hour he walked, keeping the arrow in view to his right. The chips were few and light as paper, but there would be enough for heating water and cooking up a little meat.
It was in the first shadows of nightfall, as he was approaching camp with his arms stacked with chips, that he spotted something at the base of a hill, a deer carcass, or a buffalo perhaps, or a Cheyenne pony run to death in some brutal chase. But as he came closer, he could see the burned-out army wagon and a human body crumpled into the grass. Setting the chips down, he took a deep breath and clenched his jaw against the dread within him.
He parted the grass, and black flies swarmed in a disgruntled hum. Caleb’s stomach lurched with the stench of carnage and spoil. A naked body lay contorted in death, his head back, his mouth agape in a final and agonizing scream. Eyes stared from the dusk, the fear still in them, burned there forever in those final and terrifying moments. A scalp lock had been hacked away, a vengeful wound running from the bridge of the nose to the nape of the neck, and the blackened stumps that were once his legs, the disquieting smell of burned meat, and the shin bones like ivory canes in the ash.
U.S. 7TH CAVALRY, FORT HARKER QUARTERMASTER DIVISION was still decipherable on the half-burned side boards of the freight wagon. Nearby, a forage cap hung over a dried sunflower stalk, the crossed swords of the cavalry insignia untouched on its crown. A single steel-tipped arrow lay next to the body, dropped away with evisceration.
With one of the side boards, Caleb pushed the pitiful carcass from the ash, a chill racing through him at the sight of the army carbine shoved to the trigger guard between the buttocks of the hapless soldier, its stalk splintered away in that violent and final humiliation.
“Caleb, what is it?” Joan asked from behind him.
“Joan, don’t come over here.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, covering her face with her hands.
“Joan, please, go back to the camp.”
She leaned into him, taking hold of his arm, her face stricken at the tangled and mutilated corpse. “It’s John, Caleb.”
“Who?”
“Lieutenant Gillian,” she said, her voice singular and trembling, like a bell in the prairie night.
Chapter 20
Silent in her grief, Joan turned her back and looked into the darkness. Once, Caleb thought to tell her how sorry he was, how dreadful for her to see the dead and mutilated body of her fiancé. He thought to take her in his arms, to console her, to hold her against the shock and horror of the moment. He thought all these things, but in the end, he stood mute and powerless, with his hands shoved into the depths of his pockets.
“What you said about him was true, then?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Joan.”
“I guess I don’t understand why.”
“No,” he said.
“I couldn’t see beyond the idea of marriage. I never saw what he was.”
“Greed is a powerful and ugly call,” he said. “Once it takes hold of a man, he loses all that matters in the end.”
“What do we do now?”
“There’s no shovel for digging, so a cross will have to do, I suppose.”
“Yes,” she said, “a cross then.”
As a cold moon eased into the blackness, they built Lieutenant Gillian a cross from the side boards, tying them together with the last of the buffalo rawhide. Caleb drove it into the ground with his axe. He took Joan’s hand, and for a moment they stood in silence. When the pearl moonlight washed overhead, Joan gripped his fingers until they ached, and her green eyes were wet and shimmering.
“It’s a lonesome death, Caleb,” she said.
“Anybody finds him, ought see the markings on these side boards,” he said. “We best be on to camp. There’s a hard journey ahead and no more we can do here.”
“Well, then,” she said, straightening her shoulders, “I’ll help with the carrying.”
There were just enough chips for hot water and for toasting out the raw smell of their pemmican. Joan nibbled at her food without enthusiasm, offering Caleb the last of it.
“I’ve had a harvest share already,” he said, tucking her piece back into the parfleche.
“It’s all so strange,” she said, holding her hands in front of her. “I’ve lived a hundred years in this land, a hundred years. It’s like I’ve never lived anywhere else.”
Rolling out the robe, Caleb lay down, pulling in close to the blue flame of the chip fire.
“Couldn’t have been no more than fifty years to my count,” he said. “Course, I been busy what with mule hobbling and fighting Cheyenne every which way, so guess time might have slipped by.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing the tangle of hair back from her face. “I didn’t mean to complain.”
“Takes more than a few days on the trail to change the likes of a lady, Joan, a real lady like yourself, and it don’t matter a whit whether she’s living in a fine railcar and smelling of honeysuckle, or sitting around a chip fire eating half-raw pemmican with a woodcutter. Don’t make no difference in the breeding, I’d say.”
“I thought I had everything figured out, Caleb, knew where I was headed, had picked the right man, had my future packaged, wrapped, and tied up in a bow.” Pulling her knees into her arms, she looked at him through the smoke. “Everything I planned is changed. Now, I don’t even know if I’ll eat tomorrow, or if I’ll be alive, or dead, or,” she paused, “wish that I was dead. It’s like the world I knew has just vanished forever.”
“It was a right proper life, too,” he said, “and coming off green grass is the hardest of all, and then losing someone you loved. I’m right sorry.” He hooked his chin in his hand and said, “It don’t take much for an ole woodcutter like me, long as I got wood to cut and a dry place for laying down my head. Course, I admit to a dislike for mule hobbles, and Cheyenne revenge parties, and the Beer Bucket Inn. Aside from that, where I am ain’t that much different from where I been. But for you, a lady like you, sleeping in a fine bed, and drinking tea, and reading books morning to night, well that’s different, ain’t it. That makes you special, you see, the way you stand up to this land, taking on what gets in your way, giving back what’s dealt and the matter be damned. That makes you strong and fine in a place you never intended to be. That makes me right proud to be in your company.”
Joan adjusted the pins in her hair and looked away. Even in the waning firelight, he could see the red scrapes under her arms, scoured there from the stiffness and ill fit of her buckskin coat, and her ankles were cut and swollen from the infuriating drag of dried weeds and grass. A streak raced across her neck where the pinto had swatted her with his tail full of cockleburs. To top it off, not a hundred yards from where they sit lay the body of the man she’d intended to marry.
When she looked at him again, her eyes shone with tears. “Just shut up, Caleb,” she said.
“I was just trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do, and you can stop now. Things are no harder for me than they are for you, so you can just stop with all that.”
He rolled onto his back and looked for the north star. Figuring out women was proving to be more difficult than he’d thought. He guessed a man could live too long in the woods with nothing but mules for conversation.
“I didn’t mean no harm, Joan.”
“I’m sorry to have yelled at you, Caleb, but I’m not some fragile lady whom you have to pamper. Fact is, I lost my mother when I was young, and I’ve learned to take care of myself quite well, thank you.”
“What happened?” he asked, sitting up.
“She died during childbirth, my birth, if you must know.”
“My ma’s died, too,” he said. “Seems an empty spot right there in the pit of my stomach ever since.”
“My papa met her in Paris. He claimed that she was the most beautiful girl in all of France. This was her necklace, her fleur-de-lis,” she said, holding it to the firelight for Caleb to see. “This was hers, and I’ve worn it all my life. I think it’s beautiful, don’t you?”
“I’ve admired it from the beginning. Makes me think of faraway places,” he said.
“My papa never got over her death, not to this day, and he did what most men do when they can’t face the realities and emptiness of their lives. He turned to his work, leaving all else behind, including me. I went off to boarding school, and he went off to build railroads somewhere.”
“Seems a sad thing for a child,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “at first, but even children can learn to cope with life. I was a good student, you see, and I found my way in books. It can be a seductive world. In any case, it sustained me through a rather forgettable childhood.”
“I worked with my pa every day of my life,” Caleb said, “and it’s a thing I hold on to, like you hold on to that necklace of yours.”
“When I graduated, I went to Fort Leavenworth to stake claim on him,” she said. “He was there to build the railroad west. As it turned out, he got his railroad, and I got Lieutenant Gillian.”
Somewhere from down the draw, a coyote yipped as it slid through the night.
“I best bring the pinto in close tonight,” he said.
“Oh, damn this hair,” she said, pulling the pins, first from one side and then the other, shaking her head, letting it spill black and beautiful down her back. “It needs braiding or cut.”
Caleb worked at the fire with a stick, orange sparks racing up the column of heat. “Don’t cut it, Joan. I can braid a horse hair halter. My pa taught me how.”
“You want to braid my hair into a halter?”
“No, no,” he said, “but I can braid a tail, the same as them Cheyenne squaws wear, ’cause I seen them do it plenty of times.”
“Well, then, do mine.”
“You mean now?”
She loosened her hair with her fingers and swept it to the side.
“I’m worn out trying to keep it stacked on top of my head in this endless wind.”
“But my hands,” he said, holding them up for her to see the dirt and grime.
Turning around, she leaned forward, her hair a cascade down her back. “Braid it,” she said.
Caleb sat down and crossed his legs, gathering up the strands, winding them into a braid, taking care to shape and round each of the loops as he brought it about. In the firelight, the sassy curls lay like sleeping kittens against the white of her neck. Her breathing steadied under his touch, and she fell silent.
“I’m sorry about the lieutenant,” he said. “I can’t figure a man to give up so much for so little.”
“I could never forgive him for what he did to those men, or what he did to us,” she said, “but I could never wish him to die. I could never wish anyone to die like that.”
He brought the braid down and drew the strands snug with his fingers. “It’s a cruel thing, I know, but for the Cheyenne it’s different. Most of that’s done after the enemy is dead, you see, a way for a warrior to mark up his bravery for the others. They don’t think about it the same way as you and me.”
“Well, it’s horrid, nonetheless.”
“There,” he said. “Now, give me the knife, I’ll cut off a piece from your coat to tie it off.”
“Here,” she said, “take all you want. Take this from under my arms, or you could enlarge this hole across my stomach.”
He tied off the braid and sat back on his heels. “I believe that’s the finest halter I ever braided.”
She turned to face him, her eyes lit in the dying flames, a girl again with her braid down her back. “It feels wonderful.”
“Looks that way, too,” he said, standing.
“Caleb, I want you to know something.”
“Know what, Joan?”
“I want you to know that, if I had to be stranded out here with anyone, in these circumstances I mean—well, what I’m trying to say is that I’m glad it’s with you.”
Heat rose into Caleb’s face. “We’re going to get through this, you and me. We’re going to make it,” he said.
“You better bring in the pinto, Caleb,” she said. “I’m going to rest now.”
By the time he got back, the fire had died away. Joan lay with her arm outstretched, her breathing even and certain in sleep. He eased the pinto into camp and tied him off to a sagebrush that grew out from under a rock. Pulling an arrow from the quiver, he studied the sky, arranging the point to the north star. It was a foolish hope, he knew, the direction accurate but for a short time at best, but it gave him hope, and there was little enough of that to spare.
He took his place on the robe and curled against the evening chill. The smell of damp and fog drifted over the hills and settled about them. Somewhere a coyote bayed its lonely vigil. What Joan said tonight had filled him with joy. With the tips of his fingers, he touched her braid, ivory moonlight casting in the white of her skin. Back there in that other world, they were separated by money, power, the advantage of education and breeding. Out here they were but two souls on the prairie, each reliant on the other in a cruel and unforgiving place. There, he was a woodcutter, ignorant and small. Here, he was full measure and worthy in her eyes.
Once, he thought he heard something in the grass below, perchance the legless corpse, scorched and sanctified under its makeshift cross, or a Cheyenne warrior with black eyes shining in the moonlight. He turned his ear into the night and listened again, and nothing came.
Perhaps it was his conscience, his heart of blackness, his lie of regret upon the early death of Lieutenant Gillian, that disturbed him the most.
Chapter 21
With no fuel for the fire, Caleb’s teeth chattered as he packed their belongings onto the pinto. Joan rolled up the buffalo robe and secured it with rawhide and handed it to him.
“Each day is colder,” she said.
He brought the pinto around and checked the direction of the arrow he’d placed the night before. “But each day we’re closer to Fort Dodge,” he said, “and all we have to do is keep one step ahead of old man winter, I’m thinking.”
“I hope we come into trees by night, Caleb. I want a hot fire and hot food.”
“If we can make it to a creek somewhere, there will be trees enough all right.”
“A roaring fire, that’s what I want.”
“Surely would be nice,” he said, “and that’s a fine braid you’re sporting, if I do say so.”
“Thanks,” she said, lifting it from her shoulder. “I rather like it myself.”
As they climbed out of the draw, neither spoke of what lay in the grass beyond, the still and frost-covered body of Lieutenant Gillian, but as the miles widened behind them, their spirits rose. Back there was an end to treachery and lies. Ahead was hope and beginnings, and they both sensed the possibilities.
Even in their short time together, a routine had been established, him taking the lead, Joan following behind, her head down against his steady and unbroken pace. They spoke little in these moments, intent on the trail, on the hope of civilization somewhere on the horizon. Ever mindful of her plight, Caleb adjusted his pace, or stopped to secure their supplies, or to gauge their direction anew, whenever she fell behind.
They rose onto a plateau, and he pulled up to wait as she climbed the last few feet.
“Oh,” she said, taking his hand, “that was a hard one.”
“Better let the pinto take a breather,” he said. “He’s hard-pressed for a feed of grain, and his disposition is going sour.”
Turning about, Joan took in the distances, her breathing labored yet from the climb. There was the smell of fall in the air, of decay and ebbing life.
“There’s no end to it,” she said, “and there’s not a tree for a thousand miles.”
“I ain’t up to a thousand miles just now,” he said, “so we got to find another way. You see the swell to these hills?”
“I feel their tug,” she said, “like an ocean tide.”
