Heaven and Hell (46 page)

Charles clapped. Wallis whistled. Incredulous, Gray Owl took the jack of diamonds and examined both sides. He bit it lightly with his front teeth. He bent it, waved it, flicked it with a nail. Magee waited.

Gray Owl handed the card back.

And smiled.

A trooper brought more buffalo chips to fling on the fire. Gray Owl's reticence seemed to melt in the heat of a fascination with Magee.

"The shamans of my people would honor you."

"Shamans?" Magee didn't know the term. "Do you mean there are Indians who practice hocuspocus?"

Gray Owl didn't know hocus-pocus. "Magic? Yes. They have strong medicine. I have seen them change white feathers to white stones. I have seen a shaman's body travel invisibly from one tipi to another, fifty steps away."

Magee screwed up his face. "Tunnel," he announced. "They got
Page 312

to be using a tunnel somehow--"

"And even chop a man's head off and put it back. Among the Cheyenne who work miracles, you would be a great man. Honored.

Feared."

Magee cast a speculative eye on his deck. Charles said to him.

"Keep that in mind if you ever need to save your hair."

Banditti 293

During the week spent at Harker reprovisioning and repairing horse gear, Charles daily expected--wished, anyway--that the mail would bring a letter from Willa. None came. He started two of them himself, disliked the apologetic tone that crept in and tore them up. He dispatched a note to Brigadier Duncan instead, enclosing an eagle feather

for little Gus.

The detachment rode out again. The warrior societies kept roving, attacking. The war spirit on the Plains burned as hot as the July sun.

Gray Owl talked to Charles now. Even smiled once in a while.

They got along. The tracker was expert, far superior to Big Arm, and followed orders without question. Still, Charles wasn't any closer to the secret of Gray Owl's abandonment of his people. Until he understood that, he couldn't confidently manage or entirely trust the Cheyenne.

Three wandering Rees crossed their line of march. The bad-tempered trio" complained about a new whiskey ranch that had opened up half a day's ride south. The proprietors, half-breed brothers, sold guns and unbranded whiskey. One of the Rees had nearly died from too much of the whiskey.

Charles decided the story was true, so the detachment veered away southward. Whiskey ranches were simply saloons out in the wilderness, set up by unscrupulous men to make a profit on arming the Indians and getting them drunk. The soldiers found the ranch amid some sand hills, overran it by firing a few rounds and took the owners into custody without difficulty.

The firearms the half-breeds sold from their place of business-- perhaps it had been a homestead once--were rusty short-barrel, big

bore Hawkens, from that family's works in St. Louis. From the condition of the pieces, Charles guessed they might date from the early manufacturing runs of the 1820s. The whiskey for sale was a dark brown fluid, probably grain alcohol laced with red pepper, tobacco juice, and similar hellish ingredients. Even a pilgrim dying of thirst in a desert would think twice about drinking it. '

Page 313

The two ratty traders also sold the favors of a sad, pudgy Comanche woman, who told Gray Owl she'd been abducted from her husband's lodge in Texas.

When Charles said he intended to send the traders back to Fort Harker and let the Indian Bureau deal with them, the older brother suddenly burst out with a harangue about his fear of jails. Abruptly, he thrust his right hand under his coat. Charles put a bullet through each of his legs before the hand reappeared.

Magee knelt, gingerly lifted the man's lapel and pried something 294 " HEAVEN AND HELL

from the limp fingers; the man had fainted. Magee held up a roll of bank notes.

Charles examined them. "A bribe. With Confederate bills, the damn fool." He flung the paper money in the air. The prairie wind shot it upward and whirled it in clouds of worthless wealth. His eye on the bleeding man, he said, "You can never be sure of what a man's carrying under his coat."

Later that night, upset, Wallis whispered to Magee: "He didn't have to shoot that there trader."

"Yes he did," Magee said, not excusing it, just acknowledging it.

Charles released the woman and sent the brothers back to Harker guarded by a two-man detail. The soldiers burned down the whiskey ranch buildings on July 28, the same day the Army arrested George A.

Custer for desertion of duty at Fort Wallace.

The war fires on the Southern Plains spread, and ignited the north, too. On August 1, in a hayfield near Fort C. F. Smith on the Bozeman's Trail, thirty-two soldiers and civilians successfully fought off an attack by several hundred Cheyennes. Next day, in a separate incident later called the "Wagon Box Fight," a small group from Fort Phil Kearny drove off a band of Sioux under Red Cloud.

With understandable pride, the Army soon exaggerated the number of Cheyenne attackers to eight hundred, the number of Sioux to a thousand.

The incidents inspired a new confidence. The Plains tribes were not invincible. They'd only seemed invincible because rule-book soldiers couldn't adjust to the Indian style of guerrilla war. When the tribes had to stand and face concentrated Army fire power, they were annihilated.

Back

Page 314

at Fort Harker once more, Charles heard all this and cursed his bad luck at being in the wrong outfit at the wrong time.

The day of the Hayfield Fight turned out to be a day of even greater significance for the Tenth. Captain Armes and thirty-two men of F Company had chased some Cheyennes up the Saline, caught them, then had to shoot their way out in a fifteen-mile running fight. Bill Christy, a popular little man who'd once farmed in Pennsylvania, took a fatal round in the head. Lovetta Barnes snipped up a large cloth dyed black, the old man passed out the strips, and each officer and enlisted man in C Company tied one around his left sleeve. Other companies followed suit. The Tenth mourned the first of its own to fall in combat.

Somewhat better news was that of the impending move of Grier Banditti 295

son's headquarters to Fort Riley. He and his men would escape the bigoted General Hoffman at last.

Although the raids on the rail line, the stage road and isolated homesteads continued, Charles soon saw opportunity slipping away. The Olive Branchers had prevailed in Washington: a peace commission had been formed, and a huge treaty expedition was scheduled for the fall.

Once again he prepared to lead his detachment out, hungering for his chance.

"Better come back for this," Barnes said on the morning of the detachment's departure. He gave Charles a handbill printed in circus type on lavender paper.

SPECIAL & ONLY WESTERN

TOUR THIS SEASON!

Mr. SAM'L. H. TRUMP, Esq.

"America's Ace of Players"

In a Full Evening's Presentation

of Amusing & Stirring

SCENES FROM SHAKESPEARE

("The Bard at His Best")

Page 315

ably assisted by Mrs. Parker

& other members of his world-renowned

St. Louis theatrical troupe

ADMISSION 500--

Program Entirely Suitable for Females

& Children

Charles recalled some remarks of Willa's about a tour. And for a moment he was amused. The type in which Sam Trump's name was set was twice the size of Mr. Shakespeare's. A magnifying glass would have helped him read the line containing Mrs. Parker.

"That is her, ain't it?" the old man asked. "The one you talked about a while back?"

"It is," Charles said, his smile fading.

"Well, you got my permission to bring the detachment in the night tefore, 'less you're in a jam." Inked on the bottom of the handbill were foe words Ft. Harker Nov. 3.--Ellsworth City Nov. 4.

So he rode out that morning with the knowledge that he could see "ilia again, and the feeling that he wanted to see her. He wondered

296 " HEAVEN AND HELL

what a reunion would be like. Happy? Explosive? Would it give him a worse dose of the pain that had been with him like a toothache ever since he rode away from her in St. Louis?

Come November, he'd certainly find out.

MADELINE S JOURNAL

August, 1867. Gen. D. Sickles has become the most hated man in the state. He interferes with civil law--puts Negroes on juries and into public conveyances. But worse than that (so runs the argument), he is registering freedmen to vote in the iog precincts into which S.C. is now divided. Sickles may not last. It's said that Andrew J. feels him too radical.

. . . Another Yankee invader! A man named Klawdell has come to the district to start a Union or Loyal League. In the North during the war, I am told, the Union League was formed for patriotic
Page 316

support of Lincoln and his generals. Patriotism is now replaced by politics. The new leagues are to be clubs to educate the blacks in matters of government, the vote, etc. On the face of it, a worthy purpose--but will freedmen be told about the Democratic as well as the Republican Party? I doubt it.

Andy asked what I thought of his attending a meeting. Reminded him that he did not need my permission, but warned him that the white riffraff will be pushed that much closer to renewed violence by this latest instance of Radical intrusion. . . .

Randall Gettys's reaction to news of a political organizer in the district was exactly what Madeline anticipated. Fury. He could barely concentrate on the monthly report of profits from his Dixie Store. The report was mailed to an address in Washington, D.C., as were similar reports from all forty-three Dixie Stores now operating in South Carolina.

The

firm to which Gettys sent his reports, his orders for goods and twice-yearly bank drafts--the store's enormous profits--was called Mercantile Enterprises. He knew nothing about the people behind it.

Whoever the Yankee owners might be, they stayed well hidden. On two occasions they'd communicated instructions through an attorney who signed himself J. Dills, Esq.

Gettys finished the report and glanced at a poorly printed wall calendar bearing the escutcheon of the reorganized Charleston & Savannah Rail-Road. Today was Saturday. He could anticipate a brisk sale 01

corn whiskey to Captain Jolly and some of the other whites in the dis HP

Banditti 297

trict--perhaps even some lively fun should a darky foolishly venture to the Summerton crossroads on this, the recognized day of the week for the white man to enjoy himself.

On the bottom of the calendar Gettys had written Des due out Oct. /. First thing he'd do when his friend was released was tell him about

this new outrage, the club for niggers. Meanwhile, he had other correspondence accumulated from the past couple of weeks. There was a pathetic request from a cousin who needed a loan for an eye operation; Gettys tore it up. Two tatty circulars from German-run junk shops in Charleston advertised the finest goods and the complete libraries of leading Carolina families at sacrifice prices. Gettys threw them out.

At the bottom of the pile he found a wallpaper envelope bearing
Page 317

the address of Sitwell Gettys, another cousin. Sitwell was a schoolmaster, and a loyal Democrat, up in York County, perhaps the most ardently Southern part of the state. Sitwell had enclosed a yellowing clipping from the Pulaski, Tenn.

Citizen which you may find of interest.

Indeed he did. The brief paragraphs described a white men's social or sporting club formed some months ago in Pulaski by several war veterans. What intrigued Gettys was the fact that the members went roving at night in fantastic costumes that concealed their faces. They visited freedmen considered uppity, claiming to be Confederate dead risen to life, and evidently succeeded in terrifying them.

The club had a curious name. If Randall remembered his schooling in the classics, the word kuklos meant circle, and the name of the organization had obviously been derived from that. He re-read the clipping with mounting excitement, then speared it on a nail he used as a wall spindle. When Des got out of jail, he must be told about the new Kuklux Klan. It offered an amazingly simple solution to their very own problem, anonymity. With Des's approval, he would try to get more details.

To Charleston. Judith home. Marie-Louise was away for a day and from her studies at Mrs. Allwick's Female Academy, one of dozens of such academies that have opened in the state to offer young ladies and gentlemen a proper Southern education among their (white only) peers. M-L went with her father to inspect the Charleston & Savannah Rail-Road. Cooper is one of a group of investors who have bought the second-mortgage bonds of the insolvent line. Even at $30,000, it is not a bargain. The line remains : in ruins, the track runs about 60 mis.

down to Coosawhatchie,

and at the Charleston end, a ferry crossing is required; the Ashley River trestle is not yet rebuilt.

Nor is much of the lovely old city, I discovered. Windowless 298 HEAVEN AND HELL

gutted buildings still abound. Ragged Negroes idle everywhere, and white men loafing outside Hibernian Hall spit tobacco and lewdly accost women. I slapped one's face. Had he known of my

"racial status," I would have been in serious trouble.

Tradd Street remains an island of cleanliness and calm, though even in Judith's kitchen the ripe stench of the night-soil wagons penetrates. We discussed Sickles, prompting Judith to say that she now utterly despairs of Cooper's political rigidity . . .

Page 318

The bell clanged. Under dark gray clouds, in air heavy with dampness, Cooper helped Marie-Louise up the dented metal steps of the single passenger car.

He hated going back in the car. The journey down had been bad enough. Half the car's seats were gone, and every window glass. The car had been almost empty on its slow chugging journey south to Coosawhatchie Station, but now, from the rear of the car, Cooper saw that every seat was filled with civilian or military passengers.

At the car's head end, standing beneath one of several huge holes in the roof, an immense black woman with a bundle in hand timidly studied the seats. That damn Sickles had made it permissible for her to board a car with white passengers. But not one man rose to offer his seat.