McAllister 4

by Matt Chisholm

  Dawn found him stiff and miserable. He made hot coffee and enlivened it with a little whiskey. This gave him a lift for a short while. Oscar seemed fit. The snow was still hanging about in the dark sky above, but at least it was not falling, for which fact McAllister gave thanks.

  The morning travel was haunted by his uncertainty of where he was. He had never travelled this way during snow and it made possibly familiar landmarks unrecognizable objects. He crossed a frozen creek and failed to identify it. This made him doubly nervous that he might be going in the wrong direction. Snow fell steadily to noon when it held off, but he could get no glimpse of the sun and so make a rough estimate of his location. The wind was his only guide. He assumed that it was still blowing from the north. If he was right, at least he was going south.

  For long periods now drifts were so frequent and so deep that Oscar would progress for as much as an hour in great leaps to get over them. McAllister knew the horse, however strong he might be, could not keep that kind of travel up for long. Where it was possible, McAllister went ahead and broke trail for the animal.

  Towards dusk, with the snow still holding off, McAllister thought he recognized the small valley he was in and after dark he saw a small light flickering. He headed towards this, fell into a deep drift with Oscar and took about an hour to get out, using his hands as shovels to move the snow. Once out, he found that the light had disappeared and wondered if he had imagined it. He went in the direction of where he calculated it had been and stumbled on to the surface of frozen water. In front of him was a sudden rise in the land. He thought he must be at Greg Talbot’s place. He bellowed for Greg at the top of his lungs and after about fifteen minutes saw the moving light of a lantern. After a while, he saw that it was Greg Talbot who greeted him with some round and hearty curses for bringing a man out on a night like this.

  ‘Go around by the trail,’ Greg told him, ‘and I’ll meet you.’

  An hour later, McAllister was warm from the hot stew Greg ladled into him. That night he thankfully slept snug and was up by first light to press on. He rode down through the breaks to the spot where the Indians had been camped, riding through a crisp and clear morning, clouds gone and a weak but cheering sun shining. He found the Indian encampment gone, all tracks covered by a white mantle of snow.

  A number of thoughts came into his head and he did not like one of them. There was nothing he could do for the moment. White Bull had made his decision or his young men had made it for him and he had moved camp. Maybe he had gone out against the soldiers and maybe he hadn’t. Whichever way, he might meet the same fate wherever he was. McAllister turned for home. Oscar knew exactly where he was and he perked up a good deal. The valley trail was not easy to travel along and soon McAllister was forced to walk and break trail for the horse. But the snow held off, which was a blessing. However, McAllister did not sight his own place until well past noon.

  Lige Copley was busy clearing the snow between the house and the barn. He looked pretty happy at seeing McAllister again.

  ‘Boss, I sure thought you was snowed in at the fort or somethin’. I am sure glad to see you.’

  McAllister laughed and said: ‘I’m pretty damn glad to see you too, Lige. How’ve you made out?’

  ‘I made out all right, boss.’

  In the barn, he said: ‘Give Oscar a good rub down, Lige. Make a mash for him out of corn. He earned it.’

  McAllister unsaddled and slung his gear over his shoulder. Lige said: ‘That man were here again, boss.’

  McAllister turned and looked at Lige. The boy looked as if he held a memory of a scare.

  ‘Did he tell you where he was heading?’

  ‘Sure. He headed for the house, boss.’

  ‘The house?’

  ‘He plumb took possession.’

  McAllister walked to the house. As he opened the door, the delicious smell of cooking hit him right in the nose and he loved it. He kicked the door shut with a heel and stood looking at the man who had his back to him. He was standing at the stove, stirring a pot with a wooden spoon. When the man heard the door slam, he turned.

  He was just as the boy had described him, only the boy had not mentioned the tired eyes.

  McAllister said: ‘The boy described you, but just the same I didn’t think it was you.’

  The man said: ‘It’s been a few years, Rem.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Ten or thereabouts.’

  McAllister laid his gear down on the floor and took three paces across the room. The two of them shook hands. Then they stood and smiled a little at each other. McAllister said: ‘I smell you can still cook.’

  The other laughed. ‘I ate just one of Lige’s meals and that was more’n enough.’

  ‘I know what you mean. Can a man ask what you’re doing in this neck of the woods?’

  ‘It’s no great secret. Leastwise not from you.’ McAllister peeled off his buffalo coat. ‘You’re the reason. Not just for old time’s sake. Well, yes, maybe it is for old time’s sake. I followed a man from Arizona.’

  ‘Do you have a warrant?’

  ‘No, sir. This is private – between you and me and the other feller.’

  ‘What other fellow?’

  ‘Dom Lawson.’

  McAllister reached down for his saddlepockets, opened one and produced his flask of whiskey. He offered it to the other who shook his head and said: ‘I don’t use it much, remember?’

  McAllister smiled and said, ‘I thought maybe you had become corrupted.’ As the other was not drinking, he put the flask on a shelf.

  ‘So Dom is looking for me?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘You came a long trail for an old friend, Jim.’

  ‘You’d do the same for me.’

  ‘Goes without saying.’

  He turned back to the stove and continued to stir the pot placidly. He said: ‘Holler for that boy of yours. Chow’s just about ready.’

  McAllister went to the door and bellowed: ‘Lige – come and get it or we throw it away.’

  A few minutes later an eager Lige appeared, rubbing his hands together and grinning widely. McAllister expected him to drool at any minute. McAllister said: ‘Lige, I want you to meet James Hickok.’

  That pinned the boy’s feet to the floor. His eyes were wide. ‘Boss, you mean this here …? Wild Bill Hickok?’ Lige had never come face-to-face with living history before. ‘I was askin’ myself why he didn’t never take his guns off.’

  Hickok shook with laughter. He said: ‘There’s one or two occasions, Lige.’

  When they sat at table, they concentrated on their eating. The stew was perfection. There were even dumplings in it. McAllister saw that both he and Lige were overeating disgustingly. He let his thoughts drift back to the time when he had first met Hickok, both of them young and just out of the war. Both war-weary, Hickok had been a strong Union man, and McAllister was a Texas boy who had gone into his first battle at the age of fourteen. There had been some trouble in the Kansas City area. But that was a long time ago. Most men would have forgotten, but not Hickok. He had the pride of a simple man and it made a code of behavior for him. A man with a code was, in McAllister’s book, a rung or two higher up the scale than a man without one. What McAllister had done to help him had, in his opinion, been trivial enough. But not trivial enough for Hickok to have forgotten it. There were times when men called Hickok’s pride vanity and maybe sometimes it was, but his vanity was that of a man who did what he thought was right.

  Lige did not take his eyes from Hickok all through the meal.

  Afterwards, Lige washed the dishes while the two men sat around the stove and talked. Hickok had always liked talk. His speech was rough at times and his list of words was not a long one, but he spoke with a marvelous ease, making his stories come to vivid life for his listeners. When the dishes were done, Lige lay in his bunk, listening. After a while, he fell asleep and they could hear his snores.

  Hickok said:
‘I could have wrote, Rem, but it didn’t seem quite the same. I didn’t have nothin’ on, so I thought I’d come up here an’ have a look at the high country. The snow come a mite quicker than I reckoned on.’

  ‘And Dom – where do you reckon he’s at right now?’

  ‘No idee, boy. Around here someplace, that’s for sure. But I didn’t see him in a month or more.’

  McAllister smoked his pipe, Hickok puffed at a cigar. Hickok still wore his hair long. It had been fine hair and many a woman had envied it. It was one of his vanities and it was said that he took great care of it. He didn’t mind his friends ribbing him about it, but he had been known to draw a gun on a man he didn’t care for joshing him on the subject. Now its fine auburn color was fading and the grey was showing in it. McAllister noticed that he frowned deeply whenever he focused his eyes on an object, and knew that he was still having trouble with his sight. This must have been deeply worrying for a man in Hickok’s position, a known gunfighter who had a reputation to defend. If he failed to defend it, he was as good as dead. There was always some fool around who wanted to gain that reputation for himself. A man like Hickok, McAllister thought, needed eyes in the back of his head. Maybe a man like himself wanted them there, too.

  Hickok’s own thoughts were on his sight. He said out of the blue: ‘Maybe me coming here to warn you wasn’t all thought for you, Rem. Some of it was pure selfishness. My eyes ain’t been too good again lately. It could put a few years on my life getting out of circulation for a while.’

  McAllister laughed. ‘In that case, you’d best keep away from me, Jim.’

  Hickok smiled. ‘You can point the feller out you want shot, boy.’ He put another couple of logs into the stove and shut its door with a clang. ‘This goddam snow ain’t helpin’, I can tell you.’

  ‘You know we could be snowed in here for a good few months, Jim.’

  ‘Sure. I been snowed in before.’

  ‘How’re you for cash?’

  ‘Played a couple of games of poker in Black Horse and made me a few dollars.’

  ‘I could use a hand around here. I could pay you forty a month.’

  ‘Can you hell,’ said Hickok. ‘This is winter. Why should you need a man in winter? You and the boy’re enough for this place.’

  ‘Do you know how many horses I have?’

  Hickok grinned. ‘Sure, I know. I counted ’em.’

  ‘Did you count ’em out on the range?’

  ‘No, I never thought of that.’

  ‘Forty a month.’

  Hickok said: ‘Can you bear it?’

  McAllister said: ‘I’ve seen you with horses, Jim. You’re a top hand. So it’s settled.’

  ‘Wa-al, I won’t say I couldn’t use the money.’

  When it came time to turn in, Hickok took the top bunk and McAllister the lower. The cold was already starting to creep into the house, so all they took off was their coats and boots. They put their buffalo coats over their blankets. McAllister said: ‘Do you still talk in your sleep, Jim?’

  ‘So the ladies tell me.’

  McAllister blew out the light. Lige’s snores still filled the place and Hickok said: ‘That kid snores the finest tenor I ever heard. Do the horses ever complain?’ There was a long silence and McAllister thought his old friend had fallen asleep, but softly Hickok said: ‘Maybe I made it sound simple, Rem. About Dom Lawson, I mean. It ain’t quite that simple. You see he has Charlie Honniger and Vince Dufay along with him.’

  McAllister was impressed. Unpleasantly so. He said: ‘That sure complicates things, Jim,’

  ‘It do at that. Still, sufficient unto the day an’ all that. Night, Rem.’

  ‘Night, Jim.’

  Honniger and Dufay. Both of them executioners. But for Hickok, he would be as good as dead.

  Chapter Four

  Over one hundred miles away to the east, camped in the snow, were two hundred and fifty soldiers under the command of one Colonel Arnold Brevington. They were volunteers to a man: store clerks, farmers’ sons, cowhands – think of any trade or profession to which a young man could belong and it was represented. All of them ninety-day volunteers.

  ‘Ninety days, gentlemen,’ said the colonel, ‘which means that we do not have too many left before we can attain glory, before we can fulfil our own personal manifest destiny.’

  He sat on his camp chair behind his camp table. His officers sat on the ground, bent forwards to the slope of the tent walls, all cramped and uncomfortable, but all grateful to be out of the chilling wind of the high country winter. Most of them thought the colonel must be out of his head not to turn back. More of them would die out here from the accursed cold than would fall to an Indian arrow or bullet.

  For a fruitless week now they had been following the band of Sioux which the colonel claimed was under the command of the up-and-coming chief Running Horse. This man had refused to come in at the command of the United States army and retire to the relative safety of the reservation, but had chosen the almost hopeless alternative of continuing the fight against the white invader. One point was in his favor. He had no women and children with him and he travelled light and fast; too fast for a regiment of volunteer cavalry.

  Colonel Brevington, like a good hound, had sniffed at Running Horse’s trail and, once having done so, was reluctant to give up the hunt. The thought of returning to base without killing a single Indian filled him with uneasiness and shame.

  Major Leonard Newton said: ‘Colonel, I would sure like to hear from you something concerning the men.’

  Newton was second-in-command of the volunteers. In appearance, he was curiously like his commanding officer – medium height, stout and red-faced, getting just a little too old for the game he was engaged in. He had risen to the rank of lieutenant in an infantry regiment of the Union army in the latter part of the Civil War. He had liked the idea of being a soldier, but he had not been greatly enamored of the facts of the soldier’s life. He was, he knew and hated to admit the fact to himself, too damned sensitive for so bloody and violent a profession. Yet he was a man who did not like to fail himself nor to fail to live up to his wife’s opinion of him. If civilization on the frontier was threatened by the savages, it was his duty to defend his own kind. If necessary, he should be willing to lay down his life while doing so. At this moment, he was physically very tired and wondering how much longer he could suffer the increasing cold and the unaccustomed hardship of staying in the saddle hour after hour and day after day. He was becoming increasingly fearful that he was on the brink of total failure.

  Now he saw the colonel’s angry eyes turn to him. He knew why the colonel was angry and he knew that the man despised and even disliked him. He was more than a little afraid of his superior, and was getting near to the time when he would admit the fact to himself.

  The colonel said: ‘Something concerning the men, huh? I’m sure you would, Major. I have a pretty clear recollection of touching on the subject yesterday. You mean you don’t recollect that, Major?’

  ‘I recollect it, Colonel.’

  ‘Then you will also recollect that at the time I said that we would discuss the subject some other time. I give you the same answer now.’

  Newton steeled himself. He could feel that every officer there was watching him.

  ‘Maybe we could consider this to be some other time, sir.’

  The colonel bridled. He would have come back with some smart remark, but the ageing captain, Harry Brigg, said: ‘We sure have to discuss the men, Colonel, and that’s a fact. The whole of this enterprise depends on the men, don’t it?’

  Brevington twisted his thick neck to glare at Brigg. This veteran ex-regular commanded more respect in him than his second-in-command, so he quickly switched his attention back to the major. If he could wither him, he might shut the captain up.

  ‘I have nothing further to say about the men, major,’ he said, ‘except that from here on in we shall have to tighten discipline. I have noticed too much familiarity bet
ween officers and men. This must stop instant, gentlemen. I do not intend to command a sloppy regiment. Do I make myself clear?’

  Captain Brigg said: ‘That ain’t a regular unit, Colonel, and no amount of talk will make it so. Every man and officer knows each other as civilians.’

  ‘That being so,’ said young Lieutenant James Lawrence, ‘us officers hear a lot of truths regular army officers would never here. Which, to my mind, can only be good.’

  The colonel snapped: ‘Nobody is very interested in what a junior lieutenant has to say, mister. I suggest you sit still and listen to your superiors and learn a thing or two.’

  In civilian life young Lawrence’s father owned the bank. He also had large cattle interests, and his bank was owed a good deal of money by the colonel. Young Lawrence was a boy of some confidence and he had not been brought up to truckle to superior officers.

  ‘You call us here for a council, Mr Brevington … ah … Colonel ... I guess us junior officers have as much a stake in this affair as anybody. Maybe the major and the captain don’t have a notion to talk plain, but I do, sir. Every damn one of us knows—’

  The colonel half-rose in his chair, threateningly. ‘You speak when you’re spoken to, mister. I’ll have discipline here.’

  Major Newton screwed up his courage, shamed by young Lawrence’s frankness.

  ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘the boy’s right.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘What every one of us knows is that the men don’t have more than another day in them. You can’t push volunteers like we’re pushing these boys.’

  ‘I can’t? Who in God’s name are you telling he can’t? We have come out to fight Indians, sir, and I shall not return to base until I have fought some. What has happened to the manhood of this nation?’