The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  Two weeks later the resident staff party arrived. Once again Craig was out tending his traps in the foothills of the Pryors.

  It was quite a column. There were three buses, four cars with spare drivers to take them away and twenty horses in big silver trailers. When they were all unloaded the vehicles drove away.

  The staff had changed back in Billings into the costumes appropriate for their roles. Each had a backpack of changes of clothing and personal effects. The professor had checked everything and insisted that nothing ‘modern’ be brought along. Nothing electrical or battery-operated was allowed. For some it had been a wrench parting with their transistor radios, but it went with the contract. Not even books published in the twentieth century were allowed. Professor Ingles insisted that a complete change by one entire century was vital, both from the point of total authenticity and from a psychological angle.

  ‘With time you really will get to believe you are what you are, frontier people living in a crucial time in Montana’s history,’ he told them.

  For several hours the drama students, having volunteered not only for a summer job that beat waiting tables but also for an educational experience that would help with their careers, explored their new environment with growing enthusiasm.

  The cavalry troopers stabled their horses and fixed their sleeping quarters in the military bunkhouse. Two pin-ups, of Raquel Welsh and Ursula Andress, were tacked up and immediately confiscated. There was high good humour and a growing sense of excitement.

  The civilian workers, the farrier, traders, cooks, scouts and settlers from back east, occupied the second large bunkhouse. The eight girls were marshalled to their own dormitory by Miss Bevin. Two covered wagons, prairie schooners, covered in white canvas and drawn by heavy draught horses, arrived and were parked near the main gate. They would prove a focal attraction for future visitors.

  It was late afternoon when Ben Craig reined in Rosebud half a mile away and studied the fort with a rising sense of alarm. The gates were wide open. Scouting from that distance, he could make out two prairie schooners parked inside and people crossing the parade ground. The flag of the Union fluttered from the pole above the gate. He made out two blue uniforms. He had waited weeks to be able to ask someone where the Cheyenne had gone or been taken, but now he was not so sure.

  After deliberating for half an hour, he rode in. He came through the gate as two troopers were about to close it. They glanced at him curiously but said nothing. He dismounted and began to lead Rosebud to the stable. Halfway there he was intercepted.

  Miss Charlotte Bevin was a nice person, good-natured and welcoming in the American way, blonde, earnest and wholesome with a freckled nose and a wide grin. She gave Ben Craig the latter.

  ‘Well, hallo there.’

  It was too hot to be wearing a hat, so the scout bobbed his head.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Are you one of our party?’

  As the professor’s assistant and herself a postgraduate student, she had been involved in the project from the outset and had been present at the numerous interviews leading to the final selection. But this young man she had never seen.

  ‘I guess so, ma’am,’ said the stranger.

  ‘You mean, you’d like to be?’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘Well, this is a bit irregular, you not being on the staff. But it’s getting late to spend the night on the prairie. We can offer you a bed for the night. So stable your horse and I’ll talk with Major Ingles. Would you come to the command post in half an hour?’

  She crossed the parade ground to the command post and tapped on the door. The professor, in full uniform of a major of the Second, was at his desk immersed in administrative papers.

  ‘Sit down, Charlie. Are the young people all settled in?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, and we have an extra one.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A young man on a horse. Early to mid-twenties. Just rode in off the prairie. Looks like a local late volunteer. Would like to join us.’

  ‘I’m not sure we can take any more on. We have our complement.’

  ‘Well, to be fair, he has brought all his own equipment. Horse, buckskin suit, pretty soiled, saddle. Even had five animal pelts rolled behind his saddle. He’s obviously made the effort.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Stabling the horse. I told him to report here in half an hour. Thought you might at least take a look at him.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’

  Craig did not have a watch, so he judged by the fall of the sun, but he was accurate to five minutes. When he knocked he was bidden to enter. John Ingles had buttoned up his jacket and was behind his desk. Charlie Bevin stood to one side.

  ‘You wanted to see me, Major?’

  The professor was at once struck by the authenticity of the young man before him. He clutched a round fox-fur hat. An open, honest-looking nut-brown face with steady blue eyes. Chestnut hair that had not been trimmed for many weeks was held back by a leather thong in a ponytail, and beside it hung a single eagle feather. The buckskin suit even had the straggling hand-stitching he had seen before on the real thing.

  ‘Well now, young man, Charlie here tells me you would like to join us, stay a while?’

  ‘Yes, Major, I surely would.’

  The professor made a decision. There was a bit of slack in the operating fund for the occasional ‘contingency’. He judged this young man to be a contingency. He pulled a long form towards him, took a steel-nibbed pen and dipped it in the inkwell.

  ‘All right, let us have a few details. Name?’

  Craig hesitated. There had been not a hint of recognition so far but his name might ring a bell. But the major was plump and somewhat pale. He looked as if he had just come out to the frontier. Perhaps back east there had been no mention of the events of the previous summer.

  ‘Craig, sir. Ben Craig.’

  He waited. Not a hint that the name meant anything at all. The plump hand wrote in clerkish script: Benjamin Craig.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Where do you live, son? Where do you come from?’

  ‘Out there, sir.’

  ‘Out there is the prairie and then the wilderness.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Born and raised in the mountains, Major.’

  ‘Good Lord.’ The professor had heard of families who lived in tar-paper shacks deep in the wilderness, but this was usually in the forests of the Rockies, in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho. He carefully wrote ‘No Fixed Abode’.

  ‘Parents’ names?’

  ‘Both dead, sir.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Gone these fifteen years.’

  ‘So who raised you?’

  ‘Mr Donaldson, sir.’

  ‘Ah, and he lives . . .?’

  ‘Also dead. A bear got him.’

  The professor put down his pen. He had heard of no fatalities due to a bear attack, though some tourists could be remarkably careless with their picnic garbage. It was all a question of knowing the wild. Anyway, this handsome young man was clearly without family.

  ‘No next of kin?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Who should we contact in the event of . . . anything happening to you?’

  ‘No-one, sir. No-one to tell.’

  ‘I see. Date of birth?’

  ‘’Fifty-two. End of December, I think.’

  ‘So you would be nearly twenty-five years old?’

  ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Right. Social Security number?’

  Craig stared. The professor sighed.

  ‘My, you do seem to have slipped through the net. Very well. Sign here.’

  He turned the form around, pushed it across the desk and offered the pen. Craig took it. He could not read the words ‘signature of applicant’ but the space was clear enough. He stooped and made his mark. The professor retrieved the paper and stared in disbelief.

  ‘My dear boy, my dear d
ear boy . . .’ He turned the paper so Charlie could see it. She looked at the inky cross in the space.

  ‘Charlie, as an educator I think you have a small extra task this summer.’

  She flashed her wide grin.

  ‘Yes, Major, I think I do.’

  She was thirty-five years old, had been married once, not well, and had never had babies. She thought the young man from the wilderness was like a boy-child, naïve, innocent, vulnerable. He would need her protection.

  ‘Right,’ said Professor Ingles, ‘Ben, go and get yourself settled in, if you are not already, and join us all at the trestle tables for the evening meal.’

  It was good food, the scout thought, and plenty of it. It came on enamelled tin plates. He ate with the help of his bowie knife, a spoon and a wad of bread. There were several half-hidden grins around the table, but he missed them.

  Theyoung menheshared thebunkhouse with were friendly. They all seemed to be from towns and cities he had not heard of and presumed to be back east. But it had been a tiring day, and there was no light save candles to read by, so these were quickly blown out and they fell asleep.

  Ben Craig had never been taught to be curious about his fellow man but he noticed the young men around him were strange in many ways. They purported to be scouts, horse-breakers and trappers, but seemed to know very little about their skills. But he recalled the raw recruits led by Custer and how little they too had known of horses, guns and the Indians of the Great Plains. He supposed nothing much had changed in the year he had lived with the Cheyenne or alone.

  There were to be two weeks of settling in and rehearsals in the schedule before the visitor parties began to arrive, and this time was dedicated to getting the fort in perfect order, practising routines and lectures by Major Ingles, mainly held in the open air.

  Craig knew none of this and prepared to go out hunting again. He was crossing the parade ground, heading for the main gate which stood wide open each day, when a young wrangler called Brad hailed him.

  ‘What you got there, Ben?’ He pointed to the sheepskin sheath hanging forward of Craig’s left knee in front of the saddle.

  ‘Rifle,’ said Craig.

  ‘Can I see? I’m way into guns.’

  Craig eased his Sharps out of the sheath and handed it down. Brad was ecstatic.

  ‘Wow, that is a beauty. A real antique. What is it?’

  ‘Sharps fifty-two.’

  ‘That’s incredible. I didn’t know they made replicas of this.’

  Brad sighted the rifle on the bell in the frame above the main gate. It was the bell that would be rung with vigour if any hostiles were spotted or their presence reported, and would warn outside working parties to hurry back. Then he pulled the trigger.

  He was about to say ‘Bang’ but the Sharps did it for him. Then he was knocked back by the recoil. If the heavy bullet had hit the bell square on, it would have shattered it. Instead it hit at an angle and screamed off into space. But the bell still emitted a clang that stopped all activity in the fort. The professor came tumbling out of his office.

  ‘What on earth was that?’ he called, then saw Brad sitting on the ground clutching the heavy rifle. ‘Brad, what do you think you’re doing?’

  Brad clambered to his feet and explained. Ingles looked sorrowfully at Craig.

  ‘Ben, maybe I forgot to tell you, but there is a no-firearm rule on this base. I’ll have to lock this up in the armoury.’

  ‘No guns, Major?’

  ‘No guns. At least not real ones.’

  ‘But what about the Sioux?’

  ‘The Sioux? So far as I know they are on the reservations in North and South Dakota.’

  ‘But, Major, they might come back.’

  Then the professor saw the humour. He gave an indulgent beam.

  ‘Of course, they might come back. But not this summer, I think. And until they do, this goes behind a chain in the armoury.’

  The fourth day was a Sunday and the staff all attended morning service in the chapel. There was no chaplain, so Major Ingles officiated. In mid-service he moved to the lectern and prepared to read the lesson. The big Bible was opened at the appropriate page with a marker.

  ‘Our lesson today comes from the Book of Isaiah, chapter eleven, starting at verse six. Here the prophet deals with the time when God’s peace shall come upon our earth.

  ‘“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. And a little child shall lead them.

  ‘“And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion . . .”’

  At this point he turned the page, but two of the ricepaper sheets had stuck together and he stopped, as the text made no sense. As he wrestled with his confusion a young voice spoke from the middle of the third row in front of him.

  ‘“And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”’

  There was silence as the congregation stared open-mouthed at the figure in the stained buckskin suit with the eagle feather dangling from the back of his head. John Ingles discovered the remainder of the passage.

  ‘Yes, precisely. Here endeth the first lesson.’

  ‘I really do not understand that young man,’ he said to Charlie in his office after lunch. ‘He cannot read or write but can recite passages from the Bible that he learned as a child. Is he weird or am I?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I think I have figured it out,’ she said. ‘He really was born to a couple who chose to live in isolation in the wilderness. When they died he really was adopted, unofficially and probably illegally, by a single man, much older, and raised as the old man’s son. So he really does have no formal education. But he has a huge knowledge of three things: the Bible that his mother taught him, the ways of the last remaining wilderness and the history of the Old West.’

  ‘Where did he get that from?’

  ‘The old man, presumably. After all, if a man died at age, say, eighty, only three years ago, he would have been born before the end of the last century. Things were pretty basic around here back then. He must have told the boy what he recalled or was himself told about the frontier days by survivors.’

  ‘So why does the young man play the role so well? Could he be dangerous?’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie, ‘none of that. He is just fantasizing. He believes he has a right to trap and hunt at will, like they used to in the old days.’

  ‘Role-playing?’

  ‘Yes, but then, aren’t we all?’

  The professor roared with laughter and slapped his thighs.

  ‘Of course, that is what we’re all doing. He just does it brilliantly well.’

  She rose.

  ‘Because he believes in it. The best actor of them all. You leave him to me. I’ll see he comes to no harm. Incidentally, two of the girls are already makingsheep’seyesathim.’

  In the bunkhouse Ben Craig still found it odd that his companions, when they undressed for the night, stripped right down to brief shorts made of cotton, while he preferred to sleep in the usual ankle-length white underwear. After a week this led to a problem and some of the young men spoke to Charlie.

  She found Craig after log-hauling detail, swinging a long-handled axe as he reduced the cords of pine to splits for the kitchen range.

  ‘Ben, could I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure, ma’am.’

  ‘And call me Charlie.’

  ‘All right, Charlie, ma’am.’

  ‘Ben, do you ever bathe?’

  ‘Bathe?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Strip right down and wash the body, all of it, not just the hands and face?’

  ‘Why sure, ma’am. Regular.’

  ‘Well, that’s nice to hear,
Ben. When did you last do that?’

  He thought. Old Donaldson had taught him that regular bathing was necessary, but in creeks of melted snow there was no need to become addicted.

  ‘Why, as recently as last month.’

  ‘That’s what I suspected. Do you think you could do that again? Now?’

  Ten minutes later she found him leading Rosebud, fully saddled, out of the stable.

  ‘Where are you going, Ben?’

  ‘To bathe, Charlie, ma’am. Like you said.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘In the creek. Where else?’

  Every day he had wandered out into the long-grassed prairie to perform the usual bodily functions. He washed face, arms and hands in the horse-trough. His teeth were kept white by an hour with the splay-ended willow twig, but he could do that as he rode.

  ‘Tether the horse and come with me.’

  She led him to the armoury, unlocked it with a key on her belt and took him inside. Beyond the racks of chained Springfields was the back wall. Here she found a pressure-operated release in a knothole and swung open the hidden door. There was a further room equipped with basins and bathtubs.

  Craig had seen hot tubs before, during his two years at Fort Ellis, but they had been made of wooden staves. These were of enamelled iron. He knew tubs had to be filled by relays of buckets of hot water from the kitchen range, but Charlie turned a strange knob at one end and steaming water flowed out.

  ‘Ben, I’m going to come back in two minutes and I want to find all your clothes, except the buckskin, which needs dry-cleaning, outside the door.

  ‘Then I want you to get in with the brush and soap and scrub yourself. All over. Then I want you to take this and wash your hair with it.’

  She handed him a flask with a green liquid that smelled of pine buds.

  ‘Finally I want you to dress again from any underclothes and shirts you find in those shelves over there. When you are done, come back out. OK?’

  He did as he was bid. He had never been in a hot bath before and found that it was pleasant, though he had trouble finding out how the faucets operated and nearly flooded the floor. When he had done, and shampooed his hair, the water was a dull grey. He found the plug at the bottom and watched it drain away.