The Color of Lightning (35 page)

sergeant at the other. On the opposite side were detached houses for the officers and out of one of them came Colonel Grierson. He was pulling on his uniform coat and in a hurry for he had heard nothing from his family for several months.

The adjutant’s hands were full of envelopes and the squared and folded packets of the eastern papers. Samuel took up a letter from Dr. Reed of the Indian Committee and another from his supervisor in Fort Leavenworth and a copy of the
Chicago Tribune.
He flipped the newspaper open and stood reading the front page.

“Samuel, there you are,” said Grierson. He took the packet handed to him by the adjutant. “Come and eat with me. Mail day. My cook makes a pudding with dates in it on every mail day. It’s like some kind of paste with little dead things in it.”

Samuel looked up from the front page. “Thank you, I will. Here I see one of your colored sergeants has been awarded the Medal of Honor. A man of the Ninth.”

“Oh, is it in the papers? Good Lord!” Grierson avidly read the covers of two letters and then shoved them in his blouse front. “We’re having the ceremony tomorrow. It was Sergeant Emmanuel Stance. How did they get hold of the news?” Grierson came to stand and read over his shoulder. “Well, they went to the War Department for news, of course.” He stared at the illustration where colored men charged forward on horses that had all four feet stretched out front and back and their guidons rippling. In- dians f led in every direction. They fell from their horses and lay facedown on a rocky earth. “I do believe the illustration is quite accurate. You see there, I swear that is Two Hatchet. Look at the receding chin.”

Samuel nodded. The illustration was so lifelike he too recog- nized the face of Two Hatchet; the tall bony warrior who had held the little boy on his lap at his first meeting with the Comanche and Kiowa. The little boy with the toilet seat around his neck. “Yes, I know him. That is him. But there seems to be some problem with the uniforms.”

“I think you are right.” The colonel took the paper from Samuel’s

hand and looked closely at the engraving. “They have the chevrons on upside down. Well. Come and have dinner with me.”

They sat across from one another at Grierson’s dining table, si- lently reading their mail. The cook brought in plates of green beans and a sort of beef hash. She stood briefly behind Samuel with a glass of water suspended in her hand and he turned and wondered what she wanted him to do with the water, held there in the air. He saw she was intent on the illustration in the
Tribune.

“Yes, sir, I was just looking at the picture.” She set the glass

down in front of his plate.

“Well, that is Sergeant Stance,” said Samuel.

“A picture of him in the newspapers from back east,” said the cook.

“Yes,” said Samuel. “I think this one is him.” He put his finger on the charging figure on the left. The cook said nothing but stood fixed and intent and then shook her head.

“In a newspaper from back east,” she said. “I never.”

“I will make sure Sergeant Stance gets the illustration,” said Grierson. He turned to Samuel. “He’s her brother.”

“They got his chevrons on upside down,” said the cook. She gathered up the bread basket and the butter plates. “But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.” She walked in a dignified way back to the kitchen but then from behind the closed doors came the sound of several voices in subdued and joyful screaming.

Grierson read his letters silently and Samuel unfolded his own. The letter from Dr. Reed concerned the efforts of the Friends’ Indian Committee to see that supplies were delivered on time from Fort Leavenworth but he, Samuel, must remember that fishes and loaves were only a small part of the effort to be expended in bring- ing the red men to the light of Christ. Samuel forged on through the lines of small handwriting. Dr. Reed once again pointed out the futility of using military force to keep the Indians on their reserva- tions. The reports of Custer’s dreadful behavior at the battle of the Washita last year were becoming clear now that there was an inves- tigation into the matter and it is evident that women and children

were killed and no one could be sure that Mrs. Blinn and her son, the captives, were not hit by errant gunfire.

“But the boy’s head was smashed in,” Samuel said to himself. “Excuse me?” Colonel Grierson looked up.

“Oh, just talking to myself,” said Samuel. “Always happens on mail day.”

Thus force always brings about unintended consequences, but a contrite heart brings great blessings. Samuel glanced up briefly as Grierson read the
Tribune
report of the action at Kickapoo Springs, and from time to time the colonel snorted. Samuel went back to his letter. Dr. Reed wished to remind Samuel of the centurion who begged Christ to heal his servant.
For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh.
And yet he humbled himself before Jesus Christ our Lord with a contrite heart. Samuel shifted in his chair and turned the page for a better light. He hoped Dr. Reed was not enjoining him to attempt to bear witness to military com- manders.

“Here is more coffee, Samuel.” “Thank you.”

He read on. Dr. Reed commended him for refusing guards. It illustrated both personal bravery and good judgment. Their confi- dence in him was unabated and he sent greetings from the entire committee and from Henry Morgan as well. Samuel folded the letter.

“And they recovered the captives?” he said.

Grierson said, “One. One boy. Sergeant Stance took after a group of Apache who were bearing down on a train of freight wagons there at Kickapoo Springs, and ran them off. Then they were attacked and Stance charged, overran them, and killed the leader. Went on and broke up their camp. Apparently they had the boys with them, but the youngest one fell off a horse and went wandering around. Willie Lehmann. He was picked up by one of the freighters.”

“Where is he now?” “The boy?”

“Yes.”

“The freighter arranged for him to go home. Now, the other boy, Herman, they still have him.”

Samuel folded Dr. Reed’s letter into a small packet. “New Mex- ico Apaches or Kiowa-Apaches?”

“Kiowa-Apache.” Grierson drank off his water. “Stance is deter- mined to run the rest of them down. He is an outstanding soldier.” Samuel nodded. “The Medal of Honor is an amazing distinc-

tion,” he said. “The men of the Ninth must be quite proud.”

“They are indeed.” Grierson sat back as the cook laid the soup plates with the date pudding in front of them. “They have every rea- son to be. Proof that colored troops do very well. And the Indians were beyond the limits of the reservation, you know.”

“Yes, Kickapoo Springs is certainly south of the Red.”

And all his efforts of kindness and understanding, of gifts, long speeches, rations and rewards for bringing in captives, had come to little. A feeling of shame washed over him; very raw, very hot. And grief for the children. The white captive children and Indian children who might have been in the camp that was overrun. He drank his coffee and again bent to the illustration in the newspaper. “I believe the reason this illustration is so accurate is that the artist is James Deaver. He has spent quite a lot of time among the Indians.” “Oh, is that him?” Grierson read the reporter’s name, Simon- ton, and then the artist’s signature. “Indeed it is. James Deaver.

Well, he could have got the damn chevrons right. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Samuel did not stay overnight to see the ceremony the next day. He could not bear it. But from the agency he could hear the regi- mental band and the shouting, borne down on the ceaseless wind.

Chapter 29
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W

O

n c e w h e n br i t t
was traveling on horseback between Fort Belknap and the Red River on a mission of his own, he came

upon the Medicine Hat paint.

He had gone alone and quietly into the woven, shifting grass of the summer plains to find a route that would take him to the Indian Agency with his wagons. To the Indian Agency and then beyond to the new Fort Sill. He wanted a route that would carry him from one defensible position to another. From timber in the Brazos River Valley with its easy crossings, to the Stone Houses, where he and his teamsters could fort up if they were attacked. Beyond the Stone Houses he intended to look for ravines, bluffs, any cover that they could easily get into and none farther than a few miles apart. Places where he could put the horses into a full gallop and reach cover before any of them were killed or disabled. How strange this land had appeared to him five years ago. Alien, unknown. How quickly he had learned.

He rode along in the light summer winds, in the early morning, and noted the grass. It was a good year. The Comanche and Kiowa would not have to range very far to find grass for their horses.

The day wore on and late in the afternoon he came to one of those low, slow rises that would stop at a short ridge no higher than fifteen or twenty feet, and anyone to the north would see him sky- lighted when he reached the top of it, so Britt swung down from Cajun and walked the last quarter mile of the easy rise. When he neared the top and could see beyond to the far horizon he wrenched up a large flat stone and tied Cajun’s reins to it, and then went on bent over. At the top of the rise he lay flat on his stomach and un- slipped the neat brass sleeves of the spyglass.

He trusted his own sight at first. He searched each quadrant of this grassy, blowing world, one after another. It was June, and the sun standing at its farthest south, and so the light came from behind him. It made cactus pads in the land below bright as round metal cutouts, and the tissue of grass f lowed in a glittering sili- cate river under the wind. A few hundred yards distant a stand of twisted post oaks in a creek valley tossed their coarse, rimed leaves. They were like an island in a sea. Then he saw among the short trees a bright whiplash of some silky stuff f ly up into the air and then subside.

A horse’s tail. Britt narrowed his eyes and lifted his chin slightly and watched with a deep and abiding interest. It flashed again, a horse whipping its tail like a hurricane against the summer flies. It was by itself. Which meant there was a man with it, otherwise the horse would have gone wandering off to join up with a band of mustangs. Horses did not remain alone of their own free will. It was either tied or hobbled.

Somebody was laid up down there, sleeping during the day and traveling at night. He pulled out his large bandana and wrapped the spyglass in it to hide the shining brass.

He put it to his right eye and watched. The horse slowly moved out of the screening post oaks with short steps. Hobbled. The red and white splashes of the Medicine Hat paint came into the round gelatinous lens, a blue edge trembling around it. The horse grazed busily, its ears turning, picking up every sound. The wind was com- ing from the north, so it would not smell Cajun. However it was

possible that Cajun would smell the paint and would call out a long- ing and quavering welcome. But they had had a hard day’s ride. Cajun was willing to stand downslope tied to a rock and rest. He was probably asleep. Britt watched a few more minutes; he was sure it was Tissoyo’s Medicine Hat. The perfect shield of red on its chest, the red cap and ears on the white face.

Britt wanted the horse very badly. He wanted him to give back to Tissoyo. Britt lay quietly, willing to watch all day if need be.

After a space of time during which Britt lay with the spyglass held steadily in his long hands, the sun burning his back and sweat running in crawling small streams down his ribs, something moved behind the screen of the trees. A man came clear in a space between two post oaks and looked around himself. He walked to the Medicine Hat and stroked his neck. He had his black hair cut short on the right side, and two long braids. Kiowa. Britt noticed a quick, jerky movement as he tossed his braids back. A black fig- ure of some kind tattooed on his chin. A cold feeling came over Britt. This was one of the men who had laid hands on Mary. He had smashed her head in with a rock, perhaps he had shot his son. Britt’s heart slowed down to an even and deliberate beat. He felt very still. He did not know if he could bring the man down with the Spencer at this distance or if he could get a clear shot. He guessed the distance at nearly three hundred yards, which was the limit of the Spencer’s effective range. If the wind would lay and not deflect his bullet he might do it.

He lowered the glass for a moment. He could try to take the Indian there where he was, or wait until he picked up and moved on. Which would probably be during the night. It was coming on to evening, and so Britt would have to make up his mind very soon. If he shot and missed there would be a running fight in the darkness. The Kiowa knew the land better than Britt would ever know it. The sun poured down the sky in a shimmering furnace heat, setting into some very high, thin clouds to the north of west so that now the angle of reflection would not so readily reveal the spyglass or the rifle barrel to the Kiowa. If he waited until the sun was on the

horizon it would not reveal any reflection at all. Then he would have about ten minutes to take his shot.

The man would be busy with preparations to move. He would unhobble the Medicine Hat and beat out his saddle blankets and knock the grass and dirt from his saddle fleecing. Pack his saddle- bags. Eat something.

Britt backed downhill on his stomach and then walked unhur- riedly toward Cajun and patted him on the neck. He pulled out the halter and slipped off Cajun’s bridle and put the halter on and re- tied him. Britt slid the Spencer out of the scabbard and checked his loads, made sure that there was one up the pipe. He left the spyglass in his saddlebags.

When he returned to the edge of the ridge he slid forward on his stomach. He laid his hat down beside him. He sifted dust over the barrel just in case. The sun melted into the northwestern horizon and had lost its shape in the dusty atmosphere until it was an egg of creamy, violent red. Britt put his right eye to the barrel and the V of the sights on the post oaks, so much smaller now and more distant than when he had seen them through the spyglass, and the shadows of the short trees fell in a pouring dark stain for a long way out onto the grass. The slashing tail of the Medicine Hat flew in a silky red banner and tiny biting insects became glowing points of light in the sun’s last rays.