Far as the Eye Can See (5 page)

“Or Yanks,” said another. From what I could see, most of them was too young or too old to be talking about the war. A lot of them drunk too much and staggered back toward the fort like weak-kneed fawns. To a man they hated Indians.

But they was all good drinkers and talkers.

One night I was sitting by the fire with Preston and Joe Crane, sipping some more of my whiskey. Preston chewed his tobacco and spit it into the fire and Joe Crane puffed on a short stump of a cigar. There was a young fellow with us named Treat. He come from Chicago on another train that had lately arrived. A big bearded trapper named Roman Turley strode out to our campfire and announced he was raising a militia to go fight Indians in Dakota Territory. The idea of being in a militia excited Treat. He said he’d missed the whole damn war because he was too young, and now that he was seventeen he thought he might be ready for a military career. He was traveling with his sister and her husband, and he said nobody had a hold on him. “I can go anyplace I want,” he said. “Where’s the Dakota Territory?”

“Up north a ways,” Turley said. “The Black Hills, Sioux country.” He had long, light-brown hair that he wore in braids, with leather thongs and single feathers hanging down each side of his face. The beard was full and darker than his hair. He wore a skunk skin hat and carried a long rifle, and his moccasins was knee-high. He had blue army trousers on and a checkered long-sleeved shirt. “We intend to protect folks in the country up that way,” he said. “There ain’t enough cavalry to do it without we help them some. You want war, I can give it to you.”

“You don’t want no part of no kind of war,” I said.

“I can fight Indians,” Treat said. “I heard they run away when you shoot at ’em half the time.”

“Well, they have to be dressed for it,” Turley said. “They don’t like to fight if’n they don’t have the right garments and such.”

“You know what a coupstick is?” Preston asked.

“No,” Treat said.

“It looks like a lance, but it’s usually decorated with feathers and the tip ain’t that sharp. Sometimes it’s curved like a shepherd’s stick.”

“So?”

“What them folks try to do is count coup. Every time a brave touches somebody with the tip of that lance, he scores coup for himself and makes good medicine for his people.” Preston turned to me. “That’s what that brave was doing in that skirmish we had a few weeks ago—until you shot him in the face.”

“That good medicine got him killed,” I said.

“It’s crazy,” Preston said. “But a lot of them do it. The Cheyenne especially.”

“That fellow tapped me with that lance pretty damn hard,” I said. “They don’t tap easy.”

“What I wanted to say to you,” Preston said to Treat, “is the Lakota Sioux don’t often just count coup. They’re more of the direct-attack variety. Some of ’em got rifles and they’re the best cavalrymen you ever saw.”

“They sure run away the other night,” I said. “One volley and they turned tail.” I really was kind of unimpressed at the time.

“You never heard of a retreat?” Preston said. “Ain’t none of them cowards. You don’t want to fight them if you can avoid it.”

Treat was determined, though. He said he was going to join the militia even if it wasn’t really part of the army. The Ninth Cavalry manned Fort Riley and I think they pretty much disapproved of the militia. Roman Turley looked more like a renegade than a soldier. He was missing his front teeth but it didn’t matter much, because he didn’t smile so often. He spit tobacco juice through that hole in his teeth and set by the fire and talked about the trek north and what he was planning against the Northern Cheyenne and Sioux. And Treat got more and more excited about it. “I can shoot. I learned to shoot when I was just a kid.” His sister had come over to get him for supper, and she was standing right there in front of the fire. Treat looked up at her and said, “Ain’t that so?” She owned that he could. “I wish it wasn’t so,” she said, “but he’s sure good with a gun, I’ll give him that.”

The next day I was sipping coffee with Preston, Joe Crane, and Treat when Roman Turley come by looking for Treat. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll swear you in with some others I recruited this morning.”

Joe Crane and Preston went along just to watch, but when they come back they was both swore in too. We was sitting at the back of Theo’s wagon, watching his children play in the dirt, when they come prancing back. Preston wore a wide-brimmed hat with a long eagle feather in the band. The militia didn’t have uniforms or even guns or horses half the time. What they had was the freedom to go anywhere they wanted to. They didn’t have families, nor land, nor nothing to keep them.

“Looks like we’re in the militia,” Preston said. He was kind of sheepish.

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “I thought you was headed for California.”

“I was,” he said. “I changed my mind.”

“You know how Indians fight,” Theo said. “You’re telling Treat he don’t want no part of them, and then you go and join yourself. You know what you’re getting into.”

“I been among them,” Preston said. “I know they ain’t going to be easy.”

“We’ll see,” Joe Crane said. “Maybe when we get there we won’t have to fight nobody.”

“The militia give you that hat?” Theo asked.

“Nah,” Joe Crane said. “He bought it in the post store. I seen it first but he had to flip a gold piece over it.”

“And you lost.”

“Inkpaduta will sure like taking those feathers for himself,” said Theo.

“Inkpaduta? Who’s Inkpaduta?” Joe Crane said.

“Red Top.”

“And that’s why we joined the militia,” Preston said. “There’s gold in the Black Hills. If I’m going there, I want to do it with a lot of fellows with guns.”

“So it’s the gold,” Theo said. “You think you’ll have time to look for it?”

“I ain’t no Indian fighter,” Preston said. “I just want to see if it’s like they say. Gold everywhere as far as the eye can see.”

The Black Hills was sacred ground for the Sioux. It’s where they buried their dead. That’s what Theo said. “Those people won’t like a lot of white folks poking around up there, digging holes and such.”

“We’ll take care of them,” Joe Crane said.

The Indians around the fort was mostly just as fine as they could be. They was near all of them of the Crow tribe, but there was a few Arikaras, and even some Sioux. They was polite to folks and seemed to enjoy their children as much as anybody. I didn’t like their chanting much, but at least they was quiet of a Sunday morning. Them folks in the wagon and at the fort got to singing early, and a mite loud.

“You going to keep that wagon and them horses?” Theo asked.

“I’ll take it with me,” Preston said. “Horses too. We’re lighting out in a few days.”

The night before they left I was feeling kind of rootless and solitary. I might of gone with them, but I didn’t want to fight nobody. Still, they seemed kind of happy to be headed for some kind of adventure. What if there really was gold up that way?

We was sitting around a campfire behind Preston’s wagon. It was me, Theo, Preston, and Joe Crane. I’d sipped a little bit of more whiskey. I shared some too. I got to be kind of curious and talkative. I wanted to know how Preston and Joe Crane come to be traveling together.

“Started out from East Tennessee,” Joe Crane said. “We was both with Colonel Broward there.”

“You was Confederate?”

He nodded.

Preston said, “One or two skirmishes can make brothers out of some folks.”

“We fought together,” Joe Crane said. “And after the war decided to pool our money and come on out this way.”

“We was fur trappers for a while,” Preston said. “Up and down the Missouri River. All the way north to where it bends to the west and heads out here. Never had such fun. We was just playing is all, trapping otter and beaver and selling the skins. Did that for half a decade, then decided to sell everything, buy the wagon and go on further west. Get some gold, maybe.”

“I was all the way in California when I was a boy,” Joe Crane said. He sat right across from me, his legs crossed in front of him. His round belly almost covered his boots. The fire seemed to glisten off his bald head. “My daddy went and took us out there in ’49. He was looking for gold too. But he never found none. He went to work for the railroad and got hisself killed in a train wreck. I was fifteen and holding my momma up for a while before the war.”

“What happened to her?” I said.

“We come back to Kansas, and then I went and joined the Confederate army and I ain’t seen her since.”

“You never went back?”

“Oh, I looked for her and all. One day her letters stopped coming, and then she was just gone.”

“Died probably,” Preston said.

“I like to think she married some rich fellow and moved to a bright, big house in Chicago, or St. Louis.”

“And she wouldn’t want to write you nor nothing after doing that?” I said.

“How would she know where to write me? It’s what I like to think,” he said. “It’s better than a picture in my mind of her face rotting in the dirt someplace.” He cleared his throat and looked away. Preston put his hand on his shoulder just briefly, but Joe Crane didn’t say nothing. He stared at the fire for a spell, took a sip of my whiskey. He looked almost misty-eyed, but then he suddenly reached up and tried to grab the hat off Preston’s head, but Preston was ready for him and jumped to his feet. “Nice try at it,” he said.

“I ought to have that hat. It looks better on me, and it don’t fit you worth nothing at all.”

“It fits just fine.”

“You look like a squaw with that thing on.”

“It ain’t so. Anyway, I don’t care how I look.”

“The hell you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Gimme the feather, then.”

“What for?”

“Just let me have it. If you don’t care how you look, what do you need the blasted feather for?”

“It’s just part of the hat.”

“Because you like how it looks, am I right?”

“You two ought to get married,” Theo said.

Preston come around the fire and sat next to me. It got quiet for a spell, then I said, “You know, my ma died and my daddy couldn’t abide it. He took off.”

“And just left you?” Preston said.

“I must of reminded him of her.”

“She have red hair like yours?” Joe Crane said.

“I stayed with my aunt,” I said. “But she never liked me much, neither.”

“Well, me and Joe was going to get rich after the war, but all we got is them two horses and that ’ere wagon.”

“You got that hat too,” Joe Crane said.

“A lot of folks wish they had a wagon like that,” I said. “I seen them on this trip.”

Theo said, “It ain’t that good.”

“Look,” Preston said. “Theo had to set a axe handle in the thing for one of its spokes. The wheels creek and wobble. The damn thing’s falling apart.”

“It’s a good wagon,” said, Joe Crane. “It sure keeps us dry of a cold winter night.”

We talked a long time. I begun to realize I’d miss laughing at them two fellows when they was gone. It amazed me how easy it was to talk to some folks and get to feeling like you known them all along. I was thinking I made a couple of good friends that I might see again someday and I drifted off to sleep a-hoping for just that.

Sometime in the middle of the night, a little while after I’d fell asleep, I heard what I thought was Indians circling around the camp and hollering to beat all. I jumped up quick and grabbed my carbine. The fire had banked pretty much, and I couldn’t find nobody in the dark that resembled Theo, nor nobody else, neither. I think I could hear my heart a-beating like hell. Dark shadows run by me, and one of them nearly knocked me down.

I raised my carbine and got ready to shoot one of the shadows, when I heard Preston’s voice coming from it. “Damn it all.”

Joe Crane wasn’t as much whooping as he was laughing. I seen him crouching forward when he run by the embers of the fire, and he was holding Preston’s hat on his head. Preston was right behind him trying to get his hands on it. Leaning forward as he was, Joe Crane made it near impossible for Preston to get even a grab at the feather that stuck out of the band on the side.

They disappeared around behind Theo’s wagon, then come out the other side, still howling and hollering. I think they both was laughing.

Theo poked his head out the back of his wagon. “What in hellfire is going on?” he said. He had his own rifle in his hands, and it looked like he was about to shoot the first shadow he seen and he didn’t care none what he might hit, neither.

“It’s Preston and Joe Crane,” I said.

He pointed his rifle at me. I realized he didn’t know I was standing so close to the back of his wagon and I scared him considerable.

“I almost put a bullet in your brain,” he said.

Joe Crane come running back our way. Preston finally grabbed him around the waist and pulled him down. They wrastled to beat all, still laughing. Preston got the hat and held it up, trying to roll away.

“Is this my hat or not?” he said.