Buffalo Soldier

by Tanya Landman

  Come the dawn, I was still sitting there in the blood and the dirt when Jonas Beecher come strolling out from the fort.

  He call me a coward and says I’m damned lucky not to get myself stood before a firing squad and shot for deserting my post. Because there sure as hell couldn’t be any other explanation for the fact that I didn’t have so much as a scratch on me.

  He had me banged up in the guardhouse.

  Solitary confinement. It’s small and cramped and dark. Made of mud bricks. A solid wood door at the front and the only light coming from a tiny little hole at the back which ain’t even big enough to stick a hand through. I can’t see the sky and it’s like being in that yam cellar for days and nights that just go on and on. I want to holler and bang on the door and beg to be let out, but I don’t. I want to scream and tear at my flesh with my teeth, cut my own finger off, but I don’t.

  I don’t because Jim come by at night. I’m lying on the floor and my thoughts is bleak as they come. If guilt and shame can kill you, I’m dying.

  I didn’t hear him. Was too busy beating my brains out with my own misery. But there’s this tiny movement at the back. Something’s swinging from side to side like the pendulum on a clock. When I get up I see it’s his belt. He’s taken it off and poked the buckle through that little hole. I take it in my hand and give it a tug.

  He hangs onto the other end. It’s pulled tight between us. I lean against that wall knowing he’s there on the other side, doing the same. We stay like that until the sun come up.

  That’s all there is to it. Can’t neither of us speak: there’s a guard on the door and Jim sure as hell shouldn’t be associating with me.

  Probably couldn’t find words in any case. But he come, night after night, the whole time I was in there. He was the only thing that kept me from going crazy.

  After two weeks, when I was finally let out, we was at war all over again. I was so sick and tired of it I felt close to shooting my own head off. With Elijah and Isaiah killed, all the men I signed up with was dead and gone. Company W was a whole different outfit. There was strangers’ faces all around me – young and fresh and ignorant as hog shit. I just didn’t have the strength to speak to any of them. Then there was Jim, who was ready to be leaned on. Who I wanted to lean on. I wanted to lean on so bad I could hardly stand it. I wanted to rest my head on his chest, have him wrap his arms about me, take all that load off my shoulders.

  But the moment I did that – the moment I give into it – was the moment I’d have to let them know who I was. The second they knew I was a woman I’d be out on my ass. In the middle of Apache territory. In the middle of a war. Where every settler I seen looked on us like we wasn’t no different to the heathen savages we was clearing off the land for them. Where men like Bill Hickey could go raping a woman and taking his knife, cut a trophy off of her, fix it to his saddle, and no one think twice about it.

  Broke my heart, but I had to hold myself together, keep myself apart. There wasn’t nothing else I could do.

  38.

  Things happened the way I figured they would. Groups of Apaches kept running off that reservation. Different families, in different directions. Then they changed their minds and come back in, or they was caught and dragged back in. Either way, they’d sit tight for a few weeks and then they’d do it all over again. Warriors got themselves killed, and the kids couldn’t grow up fast enough to take their places. Each time there was less and less of them. Soon it would all be over, like it was back on the prairie. What would happen to me and the rest of Company W then was anybody’s guess. I didn’t like to think too far ahead.

  But then a medicine man started having a heap of visions and that changed everything, leastways for a time.

  The first we heard of it was when Company W was given our marching orders and we was sent back to that godforsaken hellhole of a reservation that we’d dumped all them Apaches on.

  Seems to me the one thing white folks find more troubling than a dark skin is a religion that’s different to their own. Mr Delaney been raised a Catholic and when he was fired up on drink he’d take to roaring and raving about Protestants and how hellfire was way too good for the whole damned lot of them.

  If you put them two things together – dark skin, heathen religion – you got something that gets whiteys jumpier than a jackrabbit.

  When we get to the reservation we find Gobbling Turkey ain’t in charge there no more. Don’t know where he’d gone; never found out. Maybe one of “his” Indians lost patience and stuck a knife in him. Wouldn’t have blamed them. But the agent he been replaced by was even worse.

  We happen to ride in on ration day so all them Indians is lined up, waiting. The man that come out to meet us is the shiftiest-looking piece of white trash I ever did see. The word “Asshole” is writ across the sky above his head in letters about a mile high. You can tell just by looking at him that he’s running all kinds of tricks, cheating them Indians out of what they’re due. Cutting flour with sand would be the least of it.

  But he come towards the Captain bleating about how he’s concerned for the Apaches’ safety. He want us to save them from themselves because a medicine man is whipping them up into a frenzy, and he thinks any second they’re all going to break out, every single one of them.

  And maybe he’s right, because when I look about me the place is still a stinking hellhole only it ain’t miserable the way it was when I first seen it. Them folks in line isn’t hunched and dejected. They standing tall. Looking proud.

  Now I seen how Elijah could take a broke, beat-down horse and make it want to live again. Seemed that medicine man was doing the same thing. Somehow he was putting the heart back into them folks – you could feel it beating hard and strong. No wonder the agent was shook up.

  Our orders is to keep the peace. That’s all. So at night – when them folks start to drift together from all the corners of the reservation to meet up with the medicine man – we’re told to watch. Just stand. Just watch. Nothing more.

  It’s late by then and it’s getting dark. Jonas is tucked up nice and cosy in his tent. Me and Jim is up on a ridge with a couple of others. Bill Hickey’s down to the left with five troopers. The rest of Company W is strung out along this shallow valley.

  We’re all on the skittish side, not knowing what to expect. Sometimes Indians would go on a drunk and get so crazy they took to killing each other. When that happened you never could tell who might get caught in the crossfire.

  But these folks was stone-cold sober. They start arranging themselves, dozens of them standing in lines, like the spokes coming out from a wagon wheel. I can feel Jim beside me and he’s wound tighter than a spring. But we ain’t alone, so I can’t go asking what’s bothering him.

  When them Indians have taken their positions the medicine man come along.

  I was expecting some savage-looking fella, with rolling eyes and teeth bared and a belt bristling with scalps. What I see is a little white-haired man, almost bent double. He ain’t no kind of threat. There ain’t nothing remotely impressive about him. And yet Jim look like one of the shepherds at Christmas time staring at the angel Gabriel.

  The medicine man start sprinkling all them Indians with something yellow.

  “What’s that?” I says. But Jim don’t answer. He’s closed himself off. And I feel that belt that binds us is loosening off. Slackening. I’m so scared I start to shake.

  That medicine man start chanting and the sound is haunting as a death song. And together – moving like they one being – them folks shuffle along in this slow, solemn dance. It goes on and on and it last all the hours of darkness. Two steps forward, one step back, one to the left, one to the right and it ain’t what you might call pretty but it’s powerful hypnotic to watch even if only because there was so many of them concentrating so hard on it. And the reason they’re concentrating so hard is because that little old holy man is singing and I don’t understand the words but Jim does. When I grab him by the arm – because I can
’t stand to watch and not understand nothing – he come out of himself for just long enough to tell me that the medicine man is saying that all the dead warriors is coming back to life and they gonna fight and get the white men off the land so they can live free again.

  “And Company W?” I says. “What about us?”

  Jim don’t reply. He don’t even look at me. It’s like I ain’t spoken.

  Just before dawn that dancing stops. And that medicine man give a great shout and all them dancers take two, three paces back, which clear a path for him to walk through and he goes to the ridge – the one opposite to where I’m standing. The sun’s beginning to rise over it and there are the first rays breaking through the mist so it’s clear as clear to see what happens next. He lift his arms and he call out something that can’t be anything but a prayer because it sound so sad and desperate and hopeful all at the same time. Them dancers raise up their hands and give a yell of joy that underlines just precisely how deep in despair they been until that moment.

  And then, while I’m watching, I see three men – three ghosts – rise up out of the ground on that ridge, and if that wasn’t strange enough to make me almost soil my pants one of them turn his face and look right at me.

  Or maybe he’s looking at Jim.

  Because Jim give a cry that just about tears me apart. His hand goes out but the ghost melts back into mist and air.

  I don’t have no idea what any of it means. But it’s like Jim’s gone into a different room. I can hear the door between us slamming tight shut.

  39.

  Well, them ghosts didn’t hang around for more than a few heartbeats and most of Company W had their backs to them. All they saw was a bunch of Indians getting themselves stirred up. The troopers with Bill Hickey was too far away and the two with me and Jim had fallen asleep.

  If I’d have had any sense I’d have kept my big mouth shut, but sense don’t seem to be a quality I possess much of. So when Jonas wake up and call me down I tell him all about it and he look at me like I’ve surely lost my mind and for a while I was thinking I’d get myself shut in the guardhouse again. But then Jim back me up. He says the medicine man raised the dead. And those are the last words I hear him speak for one hell of a long time.

  Jonas gets real fidgety and I can’t say I entirely blame him – I was feeling mighty twitchy myself. Mostly it was on account of Jim but it was also on account of the notion that fighting a living, breathing warrior is one thing but fighting one that’s risen from the dead is an entirely different matter, and I’m thinking can you kill a man twice?

  Now half the settlers in the territory was laughing at them superstitious heathen savages and the other half was filling their britches for fear of what they might do and even the half that was laughing was doing it real nervous. So there ain’t no way that medicine man can be allowed to carry on putting hope into them people. Jonas wires the General and the order come back loud and clear: he got to be arrested.

  And we got to bring him in.

  That little old white-haired medicine man been told to report to the agent’s office but he don’t do it. We sit from sunup to sundown and there ain’t no sign of him. It’s the same the following day. And the one after that. When he ain’t shown after five, maybe six days Jonas Beecher’s patience is all wore-out. So he take along the whole of Company W to fetch him in. We had about twenty scouts with us too, and Jim was one of them, and I ain’t never seen him so jumpy. He was in the army – he got to follow orders, same as the rest of us – but more than a hundred men going along to bring in one little holy fella? This was pushing him way too far. Looked like he was gonna snap. Looked like all them Indian scouts was. We was sitting on a powder keg and Jonas was about to light the fuse.

  It wasn’t a very happy ride across the reservation to that man’s camp and when we get there he’s sitting outside his shelter and he’s looking peaceable enough but the fifty or so Indian warriors surrounding him ain’t and the air is so thick with raging feelings you could slice it open with a knife.

  Jonas tell him he got to come along to the agency and the medicine man smile and nod and says he’s got to eat first and that’s what he does, only he does it real slow and all the time he’s chewing the tension is cranking itself up and up.

  Finally that medicine man take his last swallow and he set down his bowl and get up and off we go, heading back down the creek. Them warriors is following right along with us and we ain’t gonna make it back to the agency before nightfall because he’s taken so long with his eating. So Jonas decide we got to make camp. He want me to put up his damned tent. And that’s just what I’m doing, only them warriors come crowding in too and soon there ain’t enough room for it. There’s more and more Apaches coming in and I don’t know where all them folks is coming from because pretty soon everywhere you turn your head there’s Indians. The women and the kids is all rushing in and every single one of them is mighty angry about what in the hell the United States Army is planning to do to that medicine man who been filling their hearts with hope. They’re scared too. And scared folks is mostly always dangerous.

  Jonas start flapping his arms at them like they a herd of beef he want moving and he’s yelling at them to go back, but the sound of him screaming don’t do nothing to cool feelings down, no – they building up a whole head of steam by now and are ready to blow and there ain’t no stopping what happens next.

  I’m right in the middle of that crush of folks and they all looking so wild I’m scared they’re gonna tear me apart with their nails, rip me into pieces with their teeth, peel off my hide, spill my guts.

  A shot ring out. Just one. I don’t know who fired it. Indian? Trooper? I ain’t got no idea. But the second that bullet hits the air it kills all them Apaches’ dreams and visions stone dead.

  “Kill the medicine man!” Jonas screams and Bill Hickey obliges, but he don’t do it clean.

  First he shoot him in the legs and that little fella tries crawling off, so Bill Hickey take his pistol and he shoot him in the head, only he still don’t die, so Bill bring his rifle butt down, over and over, and I can hear the splitting of that man’s skull but Bill Hickey goes right on until his head is a scarlet mess of bloody pulp and he don’t move no more. And I see all that from where I am because I’m hunkered down next to a rock but I ain’t shooting because the light’s going. Everyone’s running every which way and Indians is mixed up with troopers and there are little children all over the place and I don’t want to go hitting none of the wrong folks by mistake. I’m feeling sick to the pit of my stomach.

  Then this Indian woman come riding bareback on a pony, hair streaming out behind her, and she done run off our horses. So we’re stuck there and all we have to do is wait for them to finish us off and I figure this is the end because the scouts who been working so hard for Company W have turned against us. The killing of a holy man is just too much for them to take. Jim’s there, right in the middle of them. He’s changed sides, just like Reuben. I can’t tear my eyes off him. He’s leaving me, like everyone else done.

  But seems them Indians changed their minds about wiping us out just then. They decide to run instead. Off the reservation and out into the night.

  Jim ain’t following. Not yet. He’s looking for something. Someone. He’s looking for me.

  His eyes catch mine. I’m still hunkered down there by that rock and he ride straight at me. His hand comes down, like he gonna sweep me up and onto the back of that horse. My hand’s up, reaching for him. Only there’s Bill Hickey, with his rifle raised, pointing it right at Jim’s head.

  So I don’t take his hand. I throw myself at Bill Hickey’s back instead. And the rifle goes off and Jim’s horse rears right up, then bolts after the others. My heart’s screaming. I’m being ripped in two. He’s trying and trying. But Jim can’t turn that horse.

  I was lucky, I guess. Bill Hickey didn’t know what had hit him. There was so much going on along that creek he never thought it was anything but an accid
ent. What was left of us limped back to the agency.

  The next day some of them scouts had second thoughts about running off and come back in, voluntary, to surrender themselves. Jim wasn’t one of them. At the time I was mad. But soon I was glad he’d stayed away. Because them scouts found out all about American justice.

  Some got sent to prison for desertion. Some got themselves hanged for it. Bill Hickey said they was good Indians now. Hadn’t the noose seen to that? He near split his sides over it.

  Well, by now the whole territory was in swooning hysterics, settlers screaming that the army wasn’t doing enough to save them from the wild, murdering Apaches. Some citizens banded together and went out looking for hostiles to round up and kill. Only they couldn’t find no hostiles, so they killed the ones that was living peaceable on their reservation instead. More and more soldiers was brought into the territory and we was all running every which way and getting nowhere real fast.

  When I seen some of the things them warriors done I guess it wasn’t surprising folks was scared witless. Them Apaches been backed into a corner and they turned ugly. We saw plenty of settlers killed, carved up like sides of beef. Saw plenty of soldiers that way too. Them Indians was leaving a long trail of destruction but we didn’t see none of them, excepting once.

  We was out in the field, chasing after hostiles same as always. We’d made camp right by a spring when a bunch of them come by. What was strange was that we could see them, clear as day.

  Now Jonas Beecher had done as much listening to Bill Hickey’s tales as the rest of us. He squint at them and says, “I thought you said we wouldn’t ever meet them face to face.”