Power in the Blood (46 page)

“Think she’ll get away with it, Bones?” asked Taynton, a lanky New Englander.

“She’d have a chance if they let women on juries; then it wouldn’t matter if they believed her or not. If she killed her husband for running around with other women and drinking too much, they’d find her not guilty, because some time or other most women want to do exactly the same to their own man. Someday they’ll put women on juries, and that’s what’ll happen to husband-killers.”

“That’s stupid,” Osgood said, cramming as much scorn as he could muster into his words. “Think a judge’d let some bunch of women let a murderer go free? It won’t happen, not in this life.”

“It could,” Drew countered. “I once heard of a case where the accused was a spittoon emptier, just the lowest dog in town, and he killed a man worth plenty of money, because that man spat on him intentionally when he was trying to take the spittoon away for emptying at the same moment the rich man felt the need to expectorate. The low dog came up with the spittoon in his hands and whanged the rich man so hard on the head he died on the spot. Outright murder, committed in front of dozens of witnesses, but they couldn’t find a jury that would convict him, because every poor man wants to kill a rich man sometime, to balance the universal order of things, what you might call natural redress of fiscal imbalance, or just the plain old poor man’s revenge.”

“Sounds about right,” agreed Taynton, who despised Osgood and Fannin for their weaselly ways and high opinion of themselves. He didn’t believe a word of Bones’s story, but that wasn’t the point. The tale of the spittoon emptier and the rich man had set everyone in the room thinking, whereas Osgood’s words generally fell like blankets over his audience, unconsciously freeing them from any obligation to ponder the news, since Osgood had already instructed them on what it all meant. Bones was a queer duck, as out of place in the army as a teacher in a stokehole. Taynton decided he would be Bones’s friend from then on, just to poke a stick in Osgood’s eye.

Drew applied himself to the newspaper again. “Here’s something that concerns us,” he said. “Listen: ‘On Wednesday last, while being transferred from the jail at Magdalena to the jurisdiction of federal marshals, the notorious Apache fiends Panther Stalking and Kills With a Smile managed to slip free of their bonds and make good an escape which Marshals Willis Beecher and Lee Hoyt had called “impossible.” While placed under guard in the center of town and surrounded by several score of citizens eager for a glimpse of the murderous duo, both Indians suddenly threw down their handcuffs, which apparently had been opened on the sly, and sprang onto horses nearby. Several shots were fired, the marshals’ aim being hampered by the presence of so many innocents, and in a trice the two Apache desperadoes were gone without blood being spilt. The stolen horses were located within the hour by a heavily armed posse, but no trace at all was found to indicate in which direction the wily murderers chose to vanish.’”

“Shoot,” said someone. “They oughtn’t to have gotten away that easy.”

Drew continued: “‘These slayers in the night have proved once again they are too slippery for such forces as the federal law authorities are capable of mustering against them, and it is to be hoped that the oft-heard rumors concerning an all-out hunt by the army will at last be made real. Nothing less than a fully equipped company must be despatched to track down these red hellions and rid the southwest territories of their presence once and for all. It is reliably calculated they have tortured and killed fifty-one persons, including seventeen women and nine children, since their bloody reign of terror began last year. It is beyond understanding why they have been able to evade capture—and wriggle free again when finally caught—for this length of time. Outraged white folk and even Mexicans are demanding action that will bring surcease to this shocking episode which, if not stopped, may well inspire Apaches of lesser nerve to rise up in numbers to do even more harm than their kind already has. This editor calls upon the government to do what it must, or be answerable for the bloodbath that will surely follow.’”

“Won’t happen,” Osgood assured the barracks. “We’re so undermanned we can’t even do drill every day like we’re supposed to. This outfit couldn’t find them two redskins if we looked for a year.”

For once, Drew was inclined to agree with Osgood. His arrival at Fort Mobley nine days before had been a shock. The “fort” was without fortifications of any kind, lacking even a row of stones to mark the perimeter. There were a dozen adobe buildings scattered about a dusty parade ground, a flag-less flagpole and a view in all directions that could be described as either magnificent or hell on earth, depending upon the inclination of the viewer. On his arrival, Drew had tended to the former description, but now he understood the average trooper’s firm declaration of the latter. The mountains surrounding Fort Mobley held heat like a crucible, making life in the bottom of the desert bowl around the fort the equivalent, Drew thought, of one of Dante’s hellish circles.

A roster of living things at the fort included two officers, one officer’s wife, one noncommissioned officer, one cook, thirty-eight troopers, forty-one mules, two dogs, one cat, a rooster and seven chickens. The scorpions and flies were beyond counting. Drew regretted having held true to his promise to Judge Craven; the judge could have had no idea army life could be as pointless and soul-destroying as duty at Fort Mobley clearly was. There hung in the tortured air of the place a kind of silent shrieking, a cry from the collective heart of every human posted there. Its name in the barracks, Drew learned, was Fort Hellhole. The temperature often climbed to one hundred eighteen degrees Fahrenheit in the afternoon, and the adobe dwellings retained much of this heat through the night, making each building an oven of baked clay, slowly roasting the unfortunates within. The night air was considerably cooler, but it was forbidden to sleep outside the barracks, in case of Indian attack. Men risked death by marauder and punishment by officers anyway, simply to find relief from the heat in a few hours of oblivion. Fort Stanton, where Drew had enlisted and received his training over the winter months, was a paradise, a whitewashed monument to the saving graces of civilization; by comparison, Fort Mobley sat like the ruins from a forgotten age.

Taynton formed the habit of cultivating Drew’s company over the breakfast table. The same miserable fare was made available in variations on a culinary theme, and served up for all three meals. Salted beef was the staple, bread dried to a bricklike consistency the dessert, and coarse coffee rendered the communal throat moist enough to pass it down for queasy digestion. Sharing his opinion of the food was an easy way to approach the newcomer. Others had made a casual effort to pry into Bones’s life before he’d come to Hellhole, but had been rebuffed with just enough friendliness to prevent bad feeling. Taynton wanted to find out what others could not. He had an innate curiosity concerning mankind, and saw in Bones a suitable target for investigation. Slowly at first, then with more determination, he began to assemble a notion of who John Bones might be.

“There’s men here,” he said, “that murdered and ran, and changed their names when they signed up. Me, I think it makes sense. Anyone does wrong, they should be put in the army and punished for it.”

Drew accepted the overture without responding. Taynton took his silence for encouragement, and continued. “See Corwin over there? Did his own sister back in Chicago.”

“Killed her?”

“No,
did
her. Put it to her, you know.”

“Why would he tell you a thing like that?”

“Most of these fellers, they’re ashamed of what they did, but not Corwin, he brags on it, says she was the best piece of tail he ever had. A man that talks about his own sister like that, he’s the lowest kind of scum, in my opinion.”

“Have you shared your opinion with Corwin?”

“No, that’d just get my head stove in, and Corwin, he’d still be the same kind of scum, so why bother.”

“That’s practical. Who are the murderers?”

“Well, there’s Benton, the one with the walleye. He’s known to have killed a man in New York City, someone he owed money to, they say.”

Drew was aware of Taynton’s probing, but had little fear that he might be found out. He had grown a short beard before enlisting, and had seen a poster with his former unshaven self on it directly outside the recruiting office. The beard was ample disguise, and he appreciated the fact that it made his boyish features at least five years older.

“Did you kill anyone, Taynton?”

“Me, no, I’d like to sometime, though. There’s some men need killing, I reckon. Captain Mayles, for one, and maybe old Shrike for two.”

Mayles had been in command of the fort since his superior officer died suddenly of a burst appendix. Word of the incident had been dispatched to the outside world, but had not brought any response. Dispatches from Mobley often tended to vanish into the shimmering desert air. The arrival of Drew was in response, it was assumed, to a request for several dozen men, made five months earlier. Mayles himself seemed to relish the power that was thrust upon him, and had begun to swagger when he walked, a pose that did not suit his girth. No one understood how it was that Mayles and his wife were able to maintain their corpulence when everyone else grew thin on their poor rations. Mayles seldom spoke with anyone but Lieutenant Dobson, and Dobson was not about to ask. It was rumored that Dobson was waiting for Mayles to contract some fatal affliction, whereupon he could assume control of the fort, and of Mayles’s wife, who was often seen tipping Dobson the glad eye from deep within the folds of her sunbonnet. Despite her unattractive physical appearance, it was clear why Dora Mayles had won Dobson’s heart: she was the only female in a hundred miles.

Conveying an occasional order from the officers to the men was the task of Sergeant Shrike, a dour individual unfit for the work, since his presence aroused in the ranks not a jot of fear or respect. Shrike was known to have given orders that were coolly ignored, and during one momentous confrontation he had screeched an order over and over again at the top of his voice, earning for himself the sobriquet Shriek. The men obeyed him if an officer was nearby, but at no other time. Shrike had a small room to himself, and spent a great deal of time inside it. Some said he prayed alone, others swore he was hatching plots against the troop for their humiliating indifference to his rank, and others said he was either playing with himself to pass the time behind his closed door, or else sleeping.

Taynton was convinced there was a mystery to Bones that time and an easy manner would penetrate. Bones had not rejected him as a companion, and seemed to listen with attention when Taynton spoke. He had given nothing away, though, and Taynton was beginning to wonder if he was merely being tolerated by Bones, rather than cultivated. It was a mildly frustrating exercise, getting behind the mask of the new trooper, but Taynton persevered, because there was nothing else of interest to do.

While they curried their mules in the stables’ blistering shade one morning, Taynton informed Drew there was trouble brewing.

“What kind?” Drew asked.

“The worst kind—woman trouble.”

This could only mean Captain Mayles’s wife.

“What about it?”

“What about it? Bones, in this man’s army, you don’t mess with the post commander’s missus, even if she wants you to. It can’t be got away with, not in a place small as this. Dobson got seen last night peeking in her window, and the captain caught him red-handed. Wilson saw the whole thing, had the shitbox door open and could see clear across to the captain’s house with the moonlight and all, and heard every word too. Dobson got called a poltroon. You know what that is, Bones?”

“I believe it’s someone who sniffs the soiled undergarments of females.”

“Is that right? Dobson won’t have liked that one little bit, especially coming from the captain. Those two never have hit it off. I expect it was because of the wife going all fluttery-eyed when Dobson came here last year. Everyone saw it, and now finally the captain sees it too. I bet there’ll be a court-martial.”

“Because he peeked in her window?”

“Sure, why else is he in the guardhouse right this minute—because he likes to be?”

Nothing of this had been discussed at breakfast, so Dobson’s arrest must have been recent. “Taynton, how do you know so much about what happens around here before anyone else does?”

“I keep my eyes open and my nose to the wind. It was Wilson again. Him and Rafferty got the job to put Dobson in there, captain’s orders.”

“They can’t hold a court-martial without a court. Mayles and Dobson are the only officers here.”

“I know it, and that’s why Dobson’ll likely stay where he’s at till there’s more officers arrive, or it rains yellow roses at midnight, whichever one comes first.”

“Taynton, why are you here—I mean, in the army? I’m genuinely curious to know the answer.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, if you’ll tell me the selfsame thing.”

“You first.”

“I run off from my wife. She was a mean woman, Bones. I mean to tell you that woman could skin a man alive at a considerable distance, just with her eyes alone, that’s how powerful of a woman she was, but her biggest crime, as I see it, and I was her husband, her biggest crime was to whale the tar out’n me whenever she’s drunk. Now, most men I wouldn’t tell that to, Bones, but I like you, and I can see you’re a notch or two above the average specimen around these parts, so now I’d appreciate an answer just as honest from you, if you don’t mind.”

“I got the daughter of the governor of Texas pregnant. He would’ve let us marry, just to hush up the scandal, but I ran, because I wasn’t in love with the girl. She was a redhead, Taynton, and a conjure woman one time in New Orleans told me a redheaded woman would be the death of me.”

“Why, that’s practically the same story. Women, that’s what brung us both here.”

“It was indeed.”

“You know, that kind of makes us like brothers, don’t you think?”