North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Magee looped the string in one hand and cut the midpoint of the loop with his pocket knife. He then put the pieces back together and tied the cut ends in a knot. He displayed the string full length, snapping out the ends over his head to show the knot in the middle. He wound the string round and round his left fist, tapped it, then snapped it out again. The string was unbroken, the knot gone.

  Grierson applauded. “That’s very good, Private. How do you do it?”

  “Why, General, if I told you that, they wouldn’t be calling me Magic Magee much longer, would they?”

  “That’s already his nickname?” Floyd Hook whispered to Charles, who whispered back, “What else did you expect?”

  Puddles of melted snow and an occasional balmy day promised the end of winter. The Tenth grew and continued to train. Barnes, Hook, and Charles drilled their troopers, broke up fights, staged night raids on barracks gambling games and confiscated the dice or decks of cards, wrote letters for the men, listened to romantic or family problems, and prayed for the day they’d ride west for field duty. C Company was nearly up to strength. Departure couldn’t come too soon for Charles.

  Couriers brought reports of Hancock’s campaign to Department headquarters. Hancock had marched southwest to Fort Larned on the Pawnee Fork of the Arkansas and encamped there with fourteen hundred men from the Seventh Cavalry, Thirty-seventh Infantry, and Fourth Artillery. He sent Lieutenant Colonel Edward Wynkoop, former commander at Fort Lyon and now the Interior Department’s man in charge of the Southern Agency, to bring the Indians to hear his warning. These were Cheyennes and some Oglala Sioux living together in a big village thirty-five miles up the Pawnee Fork. The outcome of the parlay would be in the next reports.

  Barnes said that since the company would leave soon, Charles should pay a brief visit to St. Louis, if he wished. As April grew warmer, Charles took a Missouri boat. He and Willa made love ardently when he arrived, late one afternoon, before her evening performance as Ophelia.

  “I’ll never remember my lines now,” she said, laughing, as she pinned up the silver-pale hair their lovemaking had undone. “At least I’m sufficiently unstrung to play the mad scene.” She kissed his mouth. “And thank you for remembering my birthday. I mean at all.”

  He spanked her bare bottom lightly and they fell out of bed, laughing and tickling each other.

  She promised they’d take supper with some other members of the company after the show. The five acts of Hamlet seemed interminable to Charles. Sam Trump ranted and stomped through the Prince’s quiet soliloquies and grew so excited in the final duel that he fell down twice, generating hoots.

  Rubbing a bruised knee, Trump begged off from supper. That left Charles with Willa, the young prompter-stage manager Finley, and Trueblood, who could be the juvenile only with the help of generous amounts of face powder and rouge. Finley arrived late at the outdoor beer garden; the others were cheerily drinking from mugs of dark German beer. Finley threw a pall on things by showing the day’s Missouri Gazette.

  “Hancock burned an Indian town.”

  “What?” Willa’s pale eyes lost their merriment.

  “Right there.” Finley tapped the headlined column. “The chiefs wouldn’t come in to powwow. Maybe Hancock’s threats scared them, because they ran away and took all their women and children with them. Custer took off after them and found a stage station burned, so Hancock burned down the empty lodges—two hundred fifty of them. It’s all there,” he said, sitting down and signaling the waiter.

  “When did it happen?” Trueblood asked, indignant.

  Willa smoothed the paper. “On the nineteenth. My God, nearly a thousand robes destroyed, cooking implements, all of the goods they left behind. How heartless. How outrageous!”

  Charles said, “Hancock went out to demonstrate to the chiefs that they’d better keep the peace this summer.”

  “And now he’s guaranteed they won’t.” She thrust the paper at him. “Read for yourself. Absolutely no connection between the village that Hancock destroyed and the burning of the stagecoach station.”

  “No connection except that it’s all part of the same problem. The chiefs should have come in to talk.”

  “When General Hancock was so imperious beforehand? I read his statements, Charles. Bombastic. Belligerent.”

  “Look, I’m tired of listening to this. You know how I lost my partner to the Cheyennes. A fine man who was their friend, who never hurt anyone if they left him alone—”

  “And so that’s why the Army should be equally brutal? Brutality only begets more of the same, Charles. It lowers the Army to the level of those few Indians who act violently.”

  “There are more than a few—” he began.

  “Well, Washington will hear from the society about this,” Trueblood declared. He snatched the paper and snorted as he reread the dispatch.

  Charles said, ”Every Indian’s a potential murderer, Willa. It’s their way of life. Like carving up their victims afterward.”

  Scathingly, she said, “Please.” She pushed her plate away. Under the hanging paper lanterns of the beer garden, her eyes flashed with reflected light. The April wind fluttered a wisp of her hair. She stared at Charles with dislike, then stood up. “I’m finished.”

  They left an embarrassed Finley and a preoccupied Trueblood. Charles took her arm. She drew away. On the walk to the hotel, he repeatedly tried to start a conversation. Each time she shook her head, or said no, or once, “Please don’t. I’m sick to death of your bloodthirsty talk.”

  In bed they neither made love nor touched after a perfunctory goodnight kiss. Charles slept poorly. In the morning both apologized for bad temper, though neither apologized for anything else. He felt resentful about the need to apologize at all.

  His river packet left at five. After a late-morning rehearsal, Willa pleaded a headache and wanted to return to the hotel. Charles drew her to a quiet corner backstage. “This might be the last time we meet for a while. Grierson’s sending C Company into the field.”

  Angry tears welling, she said, “I hope you find every ounce of blood you’re looking for—though why you’re looking at all after four years of war, God knows.”

  “Willa, I’ve explained.”

  “Never mind. Just never mind, Charles. It’s probably good that you’re leaving your little boy for a time. He’s too young to be taught how to hate.”

  Charles seized her wrist. “There is very good reason for my—”

  “There is never a good reason for barbarity.” She backed up, struggling, wrenching, until he released her. “Not for the barbarity of the men who killed your friends, nor for yours either. Goodbye, Charles.”

  Stunned, he watched her whirl and leave. He heard the loud slam of the door to Olive Street.

  Turbulent anger mixed with his remorse. He was raking a match on the sole of his boot when Trump waddled from the dark, a stained towel over his bare, pale shoulder.

  “I heard a bit of the quarrel. The Indian question again.”

  “She absolutely doesn’t understand—”

  “She understands her own position, and she’s very serious about it. You’ve known that for many months. You pushed her too far and forced a choice. Got the one you didn’t expect, eh?” The old actor wiped a dab of powder from his cheek. “At least I’m spared the necessity of knocking you down. You hurt her, but you got your punishment.”

  “Don’t talk like a damn fool, Sam. I love her.”

  “Is that right? Then why do you drive her away?”

  He sent a searching look at Charles, and then he walked off.

  Charles leaned on the packet’s rail, watching the lamps of St. Louis recede in the spring dusk. Water cascaded noisily over the stern paddles.

  He had done what Trump said, hadn’t he? Driven her away deliberately.

  Why? Was it because he feared a greater hurt if the relationship went on? Or was it really because she hated his obsession with the Cheyennes? Hell, he didn’t know. Though they
were distinct reasons, he kept mixing them up somehow.

  He thought of her eyes and hair. Of her passion and her tenderness. Of her wit and her idealism, so energetic and still unmarred by time and reality. She was as fine in her own way as Augusta Barclay, whom he’d also driven off. He saw himself repeating the pattern, scored himself, then tried to deaden the guilt with memories of Wooden Foot, Boy, Fen.

  I’m right, God damn it She isn’t a realist. Never will be.

  And yet, gazing at a far sparkling constellation overhead, something in him grieved.

  _____

  Hancock set a watch on the village. Shortly after nine o’clock … it was discovered that the Indians were abandoning it … Custer was ordered to take his command—about six hundred men of the Seventh Cavalry—and surround the village, but not to enter it, or attack the Indians. The surrounding was effected with great celerity; no noise whatever could be heard in the village; and closer examination revealed … that the Indians had abandoned it and moved northward toward the Smoky Hill … Custer was ordered to have his command ready to move at daylight, for the purpose of overtaking the Indians and forcing them to return. He moved with the greatest rapidity, and reached Lookout Station on the Smoky Hill while the station was still burning. There he discovered the half-consumed bodies of the station-men among a pile of ashes. He at once dispatched a messenger to Hancock stating these facts… Upon the receipt of the intelligence, Hancock ordered Smith to burn the Indian village. …

  Theodore Davis, “A Summer on the Plains”

  Harper’s Magazine, 1868

  _____

  29

  “SON OF A BITCH,” SAID Ike Barnes, stomping in.

  “Me?” Charles asked, sliding the February Harper’s Monthly into the desk. It had been passed all over Leavenworth because of a G.W. Nichols article about Hickok. Nichols had chronicled Hickok’s exploits as a scout for General Sam Curtis in the Southwest, as a Union soldier at Wilson’s Creek and Pea Ridge, and as a pistol artist without peer. He credited “Wild Bill,” as he called him, with slaying at least ten men. Although no one seemed to know where Hickok got his nickname, Charles had no doubt after reading the article that it would soon be known all over America.

  “No, not you, don’t try to be funny,” Barnes said. “The son of a bitch I’m referring to is that son of a bitch Hoffman. When we leave for Riley tomorrow, we can’t take our laundresses.”

  That roused Floyd Hook from a doze; he was a fastidious dresser. “Why the hell not, Captain?”

  “Hoffman said so, that’s why not. The women are ordered not to leave the post in the wagons of C Company.”

  Charles scratched his chin, reflecting. “Well, if that’s the order, let’s obey it. Let’s ask the ladies to meet us outside the gate.”

  The old man blinked. “Damn. Charlie, you’ve been mean as a mad dog since you came back from St. Louis. But I’m glad I kept you around.”

  Charles spent the evening with Brigadier Duncan and little Gus. He romped and wrestled with his son, who giggled with delight and then gave his father a long hug before he turned over to go to sleep.

  Duncan asked about Willa. “You haven’t mentioned her once.”

  “She’s fine. Busy with a new cause.” There, unexplained, he dropped it.

  The next day dawned clear and perfect. The seventy-two men, three officers, and two wives of C Company prepared to leave the Fort Leavenworth reservation. Grierson shook each officer’s hand in turn. “I’m proud of this company and this regiment. I just want to last long enough to lead you men in the field. If I don’t get out from under Hoffman by autumn, I’ll take the Grand Bounce myself.”

  “Don’t do that, sir,” Hook said. “We’ll send Lieutenant August to shoot Hoffman for you. He’s eager to shoot somebody. Anybody.”

  Feeling mean as a wolf, Charles didn’t dispute it.

  The company started to move out. Standing with Satan, patting him, Charles watched the troopers walk their horses past in column of fours. They’d heeded the old man’s lecture on a field uniform. Charles saw a variety of shirts of faded gray cotton, yellow kersey, green silk. He saw cavalry pants, jeans pants, Indian leggings. He saw kepis, fur hats, straw hats, even a Mexican sombrero. And he saw many new bowie knives and hand guns.

  Charles himself was comfortably dressed in yellow-and-black striped trousers and a soft deerskin shirt. He’d jammed his Army blues into his travel trunk along with his gypsy robe and a new sheepskin-lined winter coat. To get the coat and his new flat-crowned black hat with yellow cord, he’d traded away his caped overcoat.

  Magic Magee rode by wearing a black derby with a wild turkey feather in the band. He saw Charles and whipped off a smart salute. The second his hand touched his forehead, the queen of diamonds snapped out between his index and middle fingers. He shoved the card under his left arm, where it disappeared. He rode on, flashing that wonderful smile.

  A horseman appeared in the dust cloud billowing behind the wagon carrying Lovetta Barnes, Floyd Hook’s haggard young wife, Dolores, and the Hooks’ small daughter. Charles tensed, slipping his hand to his Spencer in the saddle scabbard.

  Waldo Krug reined in. “Where’s Barnes?”

  “Head of the column. Sir.”

  “Well, you tell him that his trickery came to my attention. General Hoffman’s putting it into the regiment’s permanent record.”

  Charles pretended innocence. “Trickery, sir?”

  “Don’t give me that goddamn phony tone. You know the laundresses were expressly ordered not to leave the post with C Company.”

  “They didn’t. It’s my understanding that they left an hour ago. Do you mean to say the Army would object if we happened to meet them down the road and did the courteous, gentlemanly thing and offered them a ride?”

  “All the way to fucking Fort Riley?” Krug’s cheeks boiled with color. “You’ll answer to me yet, you bastard.”

  “Look, Krug. I’m a soldier, exactly like—”

  “Bullshit. You’re a traitor. You’re a disgrace to the uniform you refuse to wear. If Grierson didn’t coddle you, I’d have you up for that. You and those niggers, too. Look at them—scruffy as a bunch of Sicilian banditti.”

  Charles stepped up in the stirrup. “Goodbye. General.”

  In Leavenworth City, C Company took the laundresses into a wagon. Beyond the town they passed through a belt of farms whose rich black soil already showed green shoots. The whitewashed houses and outbuildings had an air of age and permanence, though probably not one was over ten years old.

  By choice, the company veered away from the railroad and the parallel line of telegraph poles. A wind rose, whipping the branches of the budding hickories and buttonwoods, willows and elms. Across soft hills hidden by thousands of swaying sunflowers, through gleaming creeks where the wild strawberry grew, sheltered by a cathedral of sky, cleaving an ocean of grass, colors and guidon streaming, C Company rode west.

  Charles carried a score of memories of Willa—and a hurt. He hummed the little tune she’d written down for him. He’d packed the music carefully in the folds of his gypsy robe. This morning he found the melody inexplicably sad, so he stopped humming and rode in silence for a while.

  The invigorating air and the sunlit country gradually eased his melancholy. In a baritone voice not much better than a monotone, he sang to himself, one of the sweet sad songs he’d first heard when he lazed outside the Mont Royal praise house, the slave chapel, of a Sunday when he was small and trouble-prone and didn’t understand the world around him, or the suffering the song expressed.

  “I’m rollin’, I’m rollin’,

  I’m a-rollin’ through this unfriendly world …”

  Hook cantered up beside him.

  “I’m rollin’, I’m rollin’

  Through this unfriendly world.”

  “Where’d you learn coon songs, Charlie?”

  “It isn’t a coon song, it’s a hymn. A slave hymn.”

  “You surely give it a chee
rful lilt. Glad to see you feeling good for a change.”

  Charles smiled and kept his thoughts to himself.

  _____

  The heel of military dictatorship crushes our prostrate state. Its bayonets enforce the new gospel of lust and racial mingling. … Among us there come the blue-clad missionaries of wrath, with vast new powers to kindle hate and sow the seeds of damnation. … Waving their Bible spotted with sin, and their Constitution stained with crime and political chicanery, they preach but one sermon, Radicalism. … Better that we should welcome the Anti-Christ himself than these emissaries of Hell.

  Editorial in The Ashley Thunderbolt

  SPRING 1867

  MADELINE’S JOURNAL

  April, 1867. The Congress has seized control. Last month’s Reconstruction Act carved the 10 unrepentant states into 5 military districts. The two Carolinas comprise the Second District. Stanton appoints the military governors. Ours at Charleston is miserable old Gen. Sickles. We shall not be part of the Union again until there is a new convention of black as well as white voters, a new state gov’t assuring black suffrage, and passage of the 14th Amend. The Thunderbolt and even the better Democratic papers are shrill, not to say violent, denouncing all of it.

  Such events seem removed from the day-to-day affairs of Mont Royal. Two sizable rice crops last year brought a slim profit, almost all of which I paid to Dawkins’s bank to reduce our debt. Bank now absolutely rigid about late payments. They are not tolerated.

  … Yankee speculators are descending like the Biblical locusts. They float bond issues for railroad lines that will never be built, snap up land on sale day at 8 cents on the dollar, start new businesses in the wreckage of bankrupt ones that once gave livelihoods to local people. An unexpected letter from Cooper, very brief and curt, warned me against investing in such schemes, as he suspects most are crooked. In this case I will heed what he says. I can’t tell the honest Yankee from the vulture.

  … Today the freedman Steven said that he will leave, taking his wife and 3 children. Saddening; he is a dependable, steady worker. But the emigration agent whose wagon is parked at Gettys’s store swayed him with a promise of $12/mo., guaranteed, plus a cabin, garden plot, and a weekly ration of a peck of meal, 2 lbs. bacon, one pt. molasses, and firewood—all this to be delivered to him somewhere in Florida. We have a second plague in these emigration men from other states. They come here knowing our freedmen have never gotten over the falsity of the cruel rumor of “40 acres & a mule” in ’65. When I asked Steven to stay, he replied with a fair question—could I pay him real wages, instead of merely marking down sums to his credit in my ledger?