The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  At one in the morning great clouds swept over the Beartooth Range and the temperature began to drop. The men round both campfires shivered and wrapped themselves tighter in their blankets, but it was no use. Soon they were all awake, hurling more wood onto the fires, but still the temperature fell.

  Both the Cheyenne and white men had wintered in the fierce Dakotas and knew what midwinter could do, but this was the last day of October. Too early. Yet the temperature fell. At two o’clock the snow began to fall like a white wall. In the camp of the cavalry the Crow scouts rose.

  ‘We would go,’ they said to the officer. He was in pain from his ankle but knew the bounty and the capture would transform his life in the army.

  ‘It is cold, but dawn will soon come,’ he told them.

  ‘This is no ordinary cold,’ they said. ‘This is the Cold of the Long Sleep. No robe is proof against it. The wasichu you seek is already dead. Or he will die before the sun.’

  ‘Then leave,’ said the officer. There was no more tracking to be done. His quarry was on the mountain he had seen shimmering in the moonlight before the snow came.

  The Crow mounted up and left, heading back across the Silver Run Plateau and down the slopes to the valley. As they left, one gave the harsh call of a night bird.

  The Cheyenne heard it and looked at each other. It was a warning cry. They too mounted up, threw snow on the fire and left, taking the girl with them. And still the temperature fell.

  It was about four in the morning when the avalanche came. It fell from the mountains and moved a thick blanket of snow across the plateau. The advancing wall hissed as it slid towards Lake Fork, and when it fell into the ravine it took all before it. The remaining men and horses could not move; the cold had pinned them where they lay and stood. And the snow filled the creek until only the tops of the pines showed.

  In the morning the clouds cleared and the sun returned. The landscape was a uniform white. In a million holes the animals of the mountain and forest knew that winter had come, and they should hibernate until the spring.

  In his high cave, rolled in his buffalo robe, the frontiersman slept.

  When he awoke he could not, as sometimes happens, recall where he was. In the village of Tall Elk? But he heard no sounds of the squaws preparing the morning meal. He opened his eyes and peered out from the folds of the buffalo fur. He took in the rough walls of the cave and the memories came back in a rush. He sat up and tried to clear his head of the last mists of sleep.

  Outside he could see a white shelf of rock dusted with snow and it glittered in the sun. He emerged bare-chested and sucked in the morning air. It felt good.

  Rosebud, still hobbled at the forelegs as he had left her, had come out of the cave and was nibbling at some young pine shoots at the edge of the shelf. The morning sun was to his right hand; he was staring north towards the distant plains of Montana.

  He walked to the forward edge of the shelf, dropped to the ground and peered down towards Hellroaring Plateau. There were no signs of woodsmoke coming from Lake Fork. His pursuers seemed to have gone.

  He returned to the cave, dressed in his buckskin suit and belt. Taking his bowie knife he went back to Rosebud and freed her front legs. She whinnied softly and nuzzled his shoulder with her velvet muzzle. Then he noticed something strange.

  The soft green shoots upon which she fed were those of spring. He looked around. The last few hardy pines which survived this high were each pushing out pale green buds towards the sun. With a start of shock he realized that, like a creature of the wild, he must have hibernated through the bitter cold of winter.

  He had heard it could be done. Old Donaldson had once mentioned a trapper who overwintered in a bear cave and did not die, but slept like the cubs beside him until winter passed.

  In his saddlebags he found a last portion of wind-dried meat. It was hard to chew but he forced it down. For moisture he took a handful of powder snow, crushed it between his palms till it was water, then licked his hands dry. He knew better than to eat raw snow.

  The bags also contained his round trapper hat of warm fox fur, and he pulled this onto his head. When he had saddled Rosebud he checked his Sharps rifle and the twenty cartridges that remained to him, slipped it into its sheath and prepared to leave. Heavy though it was, he rolled the buffalo robe that had saved his life and lashed it behind the saddle. When there was nothing left in the cave he took Rosebud’s bridle and began to walk her down the track to the plateau.

  He was not quite decided what to do, but he knew there would be plenty of game in the lower forests. With traps alone a man could live well down there.

  He crossed the first plateau at a slow walk, waiting for a sign of movement or even a ranging shot from the edge of the crevasse. None came. When he reached the cleft there was no sign of his pursuers returning to continue the hunt for him. He could not know that the Crow had reported that all the bluecoat soldiers were lost in the blizzard and their quarry also must have died.

  He found again the track down into Lake Fork and up the other side. The sun rose higher as he walked across the Silver Run until it was a full thirty degrees above the horizon. He began to feel warm.

  He went down through the pine forests until the broadleaf trees began and there he made his first camp. It was noon. With springy twigs and a yard of twine from his saddlebag he made a rabbit snare. It took an hour until the first unsuspecting rodent came out of its hole. He killed and skinned it, used his small box of tinder and flint to make a fire and enjoyed the roasted meat.

  He spent a week camping at the edge of the forest and recovering his strength. Fresh meat was plentiful, he could tickle trout from the numerous creeks and water was all he needed to drink.

  By the end of the week he decided he would leave for the plains, travelling by moonlight, hiding up in the day, and return to the Pryors, where he could build a shack and make a home. Then he could ask where the Cheyenne had gone and wait for Whispering Wind to be free. He had no doubt it would happen, for so it had been spoken.

  On the eighth night he saddled up and left the forest. By the stars he headed north. It was the time of the high moon and the land was bathed in pale white light. After walking through the first night he camped by day in a dry creek where no-one would see him. He lit no more fires and ate meat he had smoked in the forest.

  On the next night he turned to the east, where the Pryors lay, and soon crossed a long strip of hard black rock that ran away on each side. Just before dawn he crossed another one, but after that no more. Then he entered the badlands, hard country to ride but easy to hide in.

  Once he saw cattle standing silently in the moonlight and wondered at the stupidity of the settler who had left his herd untended. The Crow would feast well if they found them.

  It was on the fourth morning of his trek that he saw the fort. He had camped on a knoll and as the sun rose he saw the fort in the foothills of the West Pryor Mountain. He studied it for an hour, alert for signs of life, the blare of a bugle on the wind, the smoke rising from the troopers’ chow house. But there was no sign. As the sun rose he withdrew into the shade of a clump of bush and slept.

  Over his evening meal he thought what he should do. This was still wild country and a man travelling alone was in constant danger. Clearly the fort was newly built. It had not been there the previous autumn. So the army was extending its control of the tribal lands of the Crow people. A year earlier the nearest forts had been Fort Smith to the east on the Bighorn River and Fort Ellis to the north-west on the Bozeman Trail. To the latter he could not go; they would recognize him there.

  But if the new fort was not occupied by the Seventh, or men of Gibbon’s command, there was no reason anyone would know him by sight, and if he gave a false name . . . He saddled Rosebud and decided to scout the new fort during the night and remain unseen.

  He reached it in the moonlight. No unit flag flew from its pole, no chink of light came from within, no sound of human habitation. Made bolder by the si
lence, he rode to the front gate. Above it were two words. He recognized the first as ‘Fort’ because he had seen it before and knew its shape. The second word he could not recall. It began with a letter made of two vertical poles with a sort of crossbar. On the outside of the high double gates was a chain and padlock to keep them closed.

  He walked Rosebud round the twelve-foot-high stockade walls. Why would the army build a fort and leave it? Had it been attacked and gutted? Were all inside dead? But if so, why the padlock? At midnight he stood on Rosebud’s saddle, reached up and locked fingers over the palisades. Seconds later he was on the walkway five feet below the parapet and seven feet above the ground inside. He looked down.

  He could make out the quarters for the officers and the troopers, the livery stable and kitchens, the armoury and water barrel, the trade goods store and the forge. It was all there, but it was abandoned.

  He came soft-footed down the steps inside, rifle at the ready, and began to explore. It was new, all right. He could tell by the joinery and the freshness of the sawcuts across the beams. The post commander’s office was locked, but everything else seemed to be open to the touch. There was a bunkhouse for the soldiers and another for travellers. He could find no earth latrines, which was odd. Against the back wall, away from the main gate, was a small chapel and beside it in the main wall a door secured on the inside with a timber bar.

  He removed this, stepped outside, walked round the walls and led Rosebud inside. Then he rebarred the door. He knew he could never defend the fort alone. If a war party attacked, the braves would come over the walls with the same ease as he. But it would serve as a base for a while, until he could discover where the clan of Tall Elk had gone.

  In daylight he explored the livery stable. There were stalls for twenty horses, all the tack and feed a man could need and fresh water in the trough outside. He unsaddled Rosebud and gave her a brisk rub with a stiff brush while she feasted off a bin of oats.

  In the forge he found a tin of grease and cleaned his rifle until the metal and wooden stock shone. The trade store yielded hunter’s traps and blankets. With the latter he made a comfortable niche in the corner bunk of the cabin set aside for passing travellers. The only thing he was short of was food. But in the trade store he eventually found a jar of candies, so he ate them for his evening meal.

  The first week seemed to fly by. In the mornings he rode out to trap and hunt, and in the afternoons he prepared the skins of the animals for future trade. He had all the fresh meat he needed and knew of several plants in the wilderness whose leaves made a nourishing soup.

  He found a bar of soap in the store and bathed naked in the nearby creek, whose water, though icy, was refreshing. There was fresh grass for his horse. In the chow kitchen he found bowls and tin plates. He brought in dry fallen winter-wood for his fire and boiled water in which to shave. One of the things he had taken from Donaldson’s cabin was his old cut-throat razor, which he kept in a slim steel case. With soap and hot water he was amazed at how easy it was. In the wilderness or on the march with the army he had perforce used cold water and no soap.

  The spring turned to early summer and still no-one came. He began to wonder where he should turn to ask where the Cheyenne had gone and where they had taken Whispering Wind. Only then could he follow. But he feared to ride east to Fort Smith or north-west to Fort Ellis, where he would surely be recognized. If he learned the army still wanted to hang him, he would take the name of Donaldson and hope to pass unknown.

  He had been there a month when the visitors came, but he was away in the mountains trapping. There were eight in the party and they came in three long steel tubes that rolled on spinning black discs with silver centres but were drawn by no horses.

  One of the men was their guide and the other seven were his guests. The guide was Professor John Ingles, head of the faculty of Western History at the University of Montana at Bozeman. His chief guest was the junior senator for the state, all the way from Washington. There were three legislators from the Capitol at Helena and three officials from the Department of Education. Professor Ingles unlocked the padlock and the party entered on foot, staring about them with curiosity and interest.

  ‘Senator, gentlemen, let me welcome you to Fort Heritage,’ said the professor. He beamed with pleasure. He was one of those lucky men to possess limitless good humour and to be hopelessly in love with the very activity from which he made his living. His work was his lifelong obsession, a study of the Old West and the detailing of its history. He was steeped in knowledge of Montana in the old days, of the War of the Plains, of the native American tribes who had warred and hunted here. Fort Heritage was a dream he had nursed for a decade and coaxed through a hundred committee meetings. This day was the crowning moment of that decade.

  ‘This fort and trading post is an exact replica, to the last and tiniest detail, of what such a place would have been at the time of the immortal General Custer. I have supervised every detail personally and can vouch for them all.’

  As he led the party round the timber cabins and facilities he explained how the project had had its birth in his original application to the Montana Historical Society and the Cultural Trust; how funds had been found in the dormant Coal Taxes fund held by the Trust and allocated after much persuasion.

  He told them the design was inch-perfect, made from local forest timber as it would have been, and how, in his pursuit of perfection, even the nails were of original type and steel screws banned.

  His enthusiasm overflowing and infecting his guests, he told them: ‘Fort Heritage will be an involving and deeply meaningful educational experience for children and young people not only from Montana but, I expect, from the surrounding states. Tour bus parties have already booked from as far away as Wyoming and South Dakota.

  ‘At the very edge of the Crow Reservation, we have twenty acres of paddocks outside the walls for the horses and we will take a hay crop in due season to feed them. Experts will scythe the hay in the old-fashioned way. Visitors will see what life used to be like on the frontier a hundred years ago. I assure you this is unique in all America.’

  ‘I like it, I like it a lot,’ said the senator. ‘Now, how will you staff it?’

  ‘That is the crowning glory, Senator. This is no museum but a functioning, working 1870s fort. The funds run to the employment of up to sixty young people throughout the summer, right through all the main national holidays and above all the school vacations. The staff will be mainly young, and drawn from the various schools of drama in the principal cities of Montana. The response from the students wishing to work through the summer break and fulfil a worthwhile task at the same time has been impressive.

  ‘We have our sixty volunteers. I myself will be Major Ingles of the Second Cavalry, commanding the post. I will have a sergeant, corporal and eight troopers, all students who know how to ride. Mounts have been loaned by friendly ranchers.

  ‘Then there will be some young women, pretending to be cooks and laundresses. The mode of dress will be exactly as it was then. Other drama students will play the roles of trappers in from the mountains, scouts from the plains, settlers moving west to cross the Rockies.

  ‘A real blacksmith has agreed to join us, so the visitors will see horses being shod with new shoes. I will take services in the post chapel over there and we will sing the hymns of those days. The girls will of course have their own dormitory and a group chaperon in the form of my faculty assistant, Charlotte Bevin. The soldiers will have one bunkhouse, the civilians the other. I assure you, no detail has been overlooked.’

  ‘Surely there have to be some things that modern young people cannot do without. How about personal hygiene, fresh fruit and vegetables?’ said a congressman from Helena.

  ‘Absolutely right,’ beamed the professor. ‘There are in fact three areas of subterfuge. I will not be having any loaded firearms on the post. All handguns and rifles will be replicas, save a few that fire blanks and only under supervision.

 
‘As to hygiene, you see the armoury over there? It has racks of replica Springfields, but behind a false wall is a real bathhouse with hot running water, toilets, faucets and basins and showers. And the giant butt for rainwater? We have underground piped water. The butt has a secret entrance at the back. Inside is a gas-operated refrigeration unit for steaks, chops, vegetables, fruit. Bottled gas. But that’s it. No electricity. Candles and oil lamps only.’

  They were at the door of the travellers’ bunkhouse. One of the officials peered inside.

  ‘It seems you have had a squatter,’ he remarked. They all stared at the blanketed bunk in the corner. Then they found other traces. Horse dung in the stable, the embers of a fire. The senator roared with laughter.

  ‘Seems some of your visitors can’t wait,’ he said. ‘Maybe you have a real frontiersman in residence.’

  They all laughed at that.

  ‘Seriously, Professor, it’s a great job. I’m sure we all agree. You are to be congratulated. An asset to our state.’

  With that they left. The professor locked the front gate behind him, still wondering about the bunk and the horse dung. The three vehicles ground down the rough tracks to the long strip of black rock, Highway 310, and turned north for Billings and the airport.

  Ben Craig returned from his trapping two hours later. The first clue that his solitude had been disturbed was that the door in the main wall near the chapel had been barred from the inside. He knew he had left it closed but wedged. Whoever had done it had either left by the main gate or was still inside.

  He checked the big gates but they were still locked. There were strange tracks outside which he could not understand, as if made by wagon wheels but wider with zigzag patterns in them.

  Rifle in hand, he went over the wall, but after an hour of checking he was satisfied there was no-one else there. He unbarred his door, led Rosebud inside, saw her stabled and fed, then re-examined the footmarks in the main parade ground. There were marks of shoes and heavy hiking boots, and more of the zigzag tracks, but no marks of hoofs. And there were no shoe-marks outside the gate. It was all very odd.