The Red Hills

by James Marvin

  So the killing had to be quicker than he wanted.

  But that didn't mean Menges wasn't going to suffer.

  Indians laughed at the way the white man would load down his prisoners with heavy chains and locks, binding them with great lengths of rope. All that was needed to totally immobilize a man was a couple of short strips of strong rawhide, each of them about eight inches long.

  At Crow's orders Menges stretched himself out, facedown, in the dirt, putting his hands obediently behind his back. It wasn't even necessary to draw a gun to reinforce the words. The Captain was so terrified that he would have done anything Crow told him to, just to hang on to life for a little while longer.

  Menges was a civilized man and he made the mistake of believing that Crow would treat him as such. The binding and humiliation was just part of the revenge. He understood that. What he didn't realize at first was the depths of his enemy's bitterness and anger.

  Once the thumbs and toes were securely tied, Crow stood up again, looking down on his naked, helpless victim. The rawhide thongs had been pulled so tight that they almost vanished into the swollen flesh and dark blood seeped out from under the nails.

  'Now,' said Crow, gently, dusting his hands together like a store-keeper preparing to fill a customer's order.

  'What are you .?..' began Menges, straining his face round to look up at Crow. Making it easier for the lean man to kick him hard in the side of the head. Hard enough to roll him half on his side, eyes shutting, a grunt of pain forcing its way between his puffy lips.

  'On your back, Menges,' Crow said, smiling down at him. Following up the words with another kick. Brutally short, but packed with sinewy power. The toe of Crow's boot jabbing at Menges's ribs, just to the right of his breast-bone. There was the crack of a bone breaking and a purple bruise sprang up oil the soft skin.

  'Aaaarrgghh!! Jesus that...'

  'Over,' repeated Crow, stabbing out a third time with his foot, cracking another rib. There was a strangled cry from the helpless man and he rolled on his back, dust mingling with sweat, matting his thin hair.

  'Better. Much better. Now we can get on with it.'

  Unhurriedly, he moved to stand by the side of the naked figure, looking down at Menges. Black eyes without any expression, seeing the fear in Menges's face. Suddenly lifting his foot again, the naked man too slow and too securely tied to evade the blow. This time it was the heel and not the toe that ground into the flesh. Flush on the genitals, tearing the skin, pulping the soft organs against the cutting edge of the pubic bone.

  Menges screamed. A thin, reedy noise oddly out of proportion to the agony he was suffering. He doubled up, arms straightening behind him as he struggled to break the rawhide thongs. And vomited, a thin string of bile following the gushing stream of whisky from his open mouth, muddying the sands and stones around him.

  'That's the beginning Menges. Only the beginning.'

  Crow looked down contemplatively at Menges, and kicked him again in the groin, feeling the jar of the impact run up the muscles of his leg.

  When the Captain recovered consciousness from that kick nothing had changed. The sun still hung in the blue sky and the day was warm. The Yellowstone still thundered hundreds of feet below them. And Crow still stood looking down at him, hands by his sides.

  Patiently waiting.

  'Back with us, Mister Menges. Excellent. Don't think this is some kind of revenge for the way you let your wife get herself butchered. It's not. Revenge for anyone else is a futile and time-wasting feeling. I don't give a damn for her. Or for anyone else, Menges. But you hurt me. You and Simpson with your damned cowardly lies.' All of that delivered in the same calm voice, without any anger or feeling.

  Menges began to scream. Loud as he could. Letting it rip in case there was anyone near who might spare him from this cold-faced madman.

  Crow wondered for a moment whether to let him scream.

  The sound was pleasant to his ears, letting him know how Menges was suffering. But there was always the danger of someone hearing. Perhaps it might be better to take the honed-down saber and use it to slice out Menges's tongue. The danger there was that he might choke to a speedy death on his own blood.

  'Going to have to gag you, Captain,' he said, picking up a sizeable rock in his left hand. A grey, pitted stone, about the size of a woman's fist. Kneeling down by Silas Menges and pausing, swatting away a fly that buzzed around his face.

  'That'll never go in my mouth, Crow,' said Menges, voice trembling with fear.

  'Will with a mite of help,' was the quiet reply.

  Working with a steady efficiency Crow ground the stone several times into Menges's mouth, knocking out the remaining teeth, splintering them into shards of white bone. Snapping them off level with the bleeding gums.

  Cutting and bruising the red lips that had lied so glibly to the court martial.

  Finally jamming the bloodied rock hard in the open mouth, shutting off the scream like slamming a door on bedlam. Tying the stone in place with a strip torn off the discarded blue shirt.

  Menges's eyes popped from his skull and he rolled his head backwards and forwards, utterly helpless and mute.

  Blood and spittle gargled in his throat and frothed around the gag.

  'There, Captain. Now we can go on without any kind of interruption from anyone,' Crow said, conversationally.

  Glancing around. The whole land about them was empty of life, except for a couple of buzzards, circling above them on leathery wings, scenting blood.

  For the next half hour Crow worked quickly and efficiently on the naked body of Menges with the knife. Cutting here, and slicing away a little flesh there. Working faster than he would have wished to enjoy the revenge to the full. Constantly aware that Menges's original plan had been made for him to die. Just as his plan was for the Captain to die.

  Twice Menges passed out, eyes rolling white in their sockets, but each time Crow revived him with a little water from his canteen. Dabbing it on the pale temples. Wiping away some of the worst of the blood from face and groin and from the fingers and toes. Tidying up the ragged ends of severed tendons and muscles where they'd trailed in the hot sand as Menges rolled and tossed, locked in a timeless Hell created just for him and for him alone.

  But the sun was sinking and Crow wished to be away.

  West towards the Big Horn after Trooper Simpson and Autie Custer for the last course of his vengeance.

  He'd looked around for what he wanted. A low cave, invisible from the trail. Any strangled mutterings that Menges might be able to make through the brutally efficient gag would be inaudible above the sound of the misty pounding waters far below.

  There was a jagged spur of rock immediately over the opening of the small cavern, about eight feet high.

  While Menges lay moaning faintly through the blood and spit, Crow walked to the cave and threw a loop of rope over the rock, letting it dangle down to a little below head height. With expert skill the tall man fashioned a noose in the end of the rope.

  Although Crow had delicately removed the eyelids from the injured man, Menges was unable to see through the mask of dried blood that spread thick and brown across his face. Crow again wiped him clean, wanting him to appreciate and understand exactly what was happening to him.

  And what was about to happen.

  Menges tried to speak. Mumbled what might have been: 'Stop it.'

  With effortless ease Crow lifted him and carried him to the cave, carefully avoiding becoming splattered with blood. "I'll stop it very soon,' he whispered in the man's ear as he laid him down in the sand beneath the shadow of the dangling noose.

  In the Montana summer heat most of the blood was already congealing, attracting hordes of flies that battled among the peeled flesh. Menges had given up any kind of struggle, his mind locked away into a world where there was only white pain and endless night.

  Crow stood over him, smiling down at him as fond as a mother with a new baby. He didn't give a damn about what Reveren
ds and soft Easterners might preach about forgiveness.

  There was no dish as satisfying as revenge.

  Menges had robbed him of the life he'd chosen, and tried to kill him as well. That meant there was nothing wrong about paying back Menges with interest.

  'Turn the other cheek and you get it branded,' he muttered to nobody in particular.

  At his feet Menges wriggled, turning his head away from the swinging loop of hemp. Crow wiped away a trickle of sweat from his upper lip. 'Don't worry about the hangin' bein' a good one, Captain,' he said. 'I seen more hangings than you had hot dinners. Even saw Billy Duly up in Mankato, way back... Must be twelve or more years back when I was a shaver. Saw old Billy set thirty eight Sioux all a'danglin' from the same gallows.' He laughed softly. 'Hell, I can recall that was the day after Christmas. Cold as charity up in Minnesota there. Day after Christmas. Filled folks there with a fine seasonal spirit.'

  Despite his lean build, Crow was a man of enormous strength and he lifted Menges up and propped him against the side of the cave, in a patch of shadow. His victim's eyes watered constantly, washing a stream of pink through the blood. With the eye-lids gone, blindness would come very quickly if he was left in the sun.

  Working fast, Crow built a small pyramid of stones, standing on the top of it to make sure it was stable. Glancing up to check it was positioned directly under the noose.

  Lifting Menges on to it, adjusting the loop of the lariat around his neck. Taking great care that the knot of the rope was placed at the back of the head. If he'd put it beneath either ear then Menges could have tried to hop off the stones and quickly broken his neck. Crow didn't want it quick. This way, if — or when — Menges finally slipped and lost his balance, the end would be a slow strangling.

  The rope barely held Menges upright, and he teetered for balance on his precarious perch, knees wobbling while he fought for a kind of safety.

  'That's good, Captain. Keep that up. You never know. Just maybe there's goin' to be a patrol out this way sometime today or tomorrow. You keep in there and don't slip or fall and you could even be alive when they get here to save you. Keep that thought in mind.' He paused and began to walk away. Stopping. Turning back. Menges had found a point of equilibrium. Mutilated and desperately wounded, he had managed to reach a position on the shaking mound of stones where he wouldn't fall.

  Not for a very long time.

  His body was rigid with the effort of hanging on to the last, lingering threads of life and hope, face turned away from Crow towards the dark recesses of the cave. For a moment Crow wondered what was going on inside the man's failing brain. What he was thinking.

  But he didn't really care.

  There was no point in bothering about a dead man.

  And Menges was dead. Even though there was still a heart pumping blood round the body and breath that rasped in tortured lungs. Despite that, Captain Silas Menges of the United States Cavalry was dead.

  Had been dead ever since Crow decided that he would have to kill him and Trooper Simpson.

  Simpson was still walking around somewhere in that Montana sun. Out with Custer to the west.

  But he was dead too. Breathing counted breaths. Like a clock running down. Inexorably.

  Finally.

  Crow clambered away from the cave, up the steep slope into the warmth of the sun. Taking a last look back at the helpless form of Menges.

  Some men might have felt pity at that moment. Perhaps even taken out a gun and given their enemy the mercy of a final quick passing.

  It was an idea that never occurred for a moment to the man called Crow. Why waste ammunition on a man who you knew was already dead?

  He reached his horse and mounted it, heeling it away from the gorge of the Yellowstone River towards the west.

  Behind him Silas Menges held on to what was left of his life until sometime in the early hours of the next morning when he slipped from the stones and strangled to death.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Crow finally caught up with Trooper Edward Simpson several days later. A couple of hundred miles south and west of the rotting corpse of Silas Menges.

  Custer and his patrol of the Seventh had left Fort Abraham Lincoln in the middle of May and Trooper Edward Simpson had been sent to join the unit shortly after the court-martial. It was the only part of the debt that remained before Crow could begin to think about what he was going to do for whatever portion of his life was left.

  It was hard going.

  Crow had never seen signs of so many Indians as he saw that early summer in Montana. There were camps, deserted, with clear evidence of hundreds upon hundreds of lodges. Thousands even. He wondered as he rode whether Custer had any idea of the swelling numbers of the Plains Indians preparing to take the field against the pony soldiers for one last great battle before the sun dance ended and the final buffalo was slaughtered.

  He'd met Autie Custer. Young boy wonder. Longhaired hero with his fiercely protective and striking wife, Libbie. There was something doomed about Custer, and Crow had never been able to quite put his finger to what it was.

  There were also strange links with Crazy Horse. Both men were roughly of an age — neither yet forty. And both men had risen rapidly to become famed leaders of their own people. Yet there the similarities ended and the differences began.

  Custer was flamboyant with his flowing hair and exotic uniforms. Always the leader, cutting a dash at the front of every charge. Proud and desperately ambitious for greater honors.

  Crazy Horse was also to be seen at the front of every charge, but he wore no bright paint. No eagle-feather headdress.

  The higher he rose among the Sioux, the more humble and modest he became.

  While Custer was interested only in racing forwards, Crazy Horse wished only to be allowed to remain motionless.

  Now Crow could see that destiny was bringing them together.

  By June twenty-fifth Crow had tracked Custer's column to close by the Big Horn River. Near to its tributary, the Little Big Horn. Indian signs were so clear that he simply couldn't believe that Custer was going on at the speed he was. Any man in his right mind would have paused and allowed his men time to rest. To gather strength for an attack upon the Sioux and their allies at a time and place of his own choosing. But the grasslands of Montana make any distant observation difficult. You can ride over a bluff and find an army hidden there.

  Crow knew well enough that the favorite tactic of Crazy Horse was to lead an enemy along until it was time to close the jaws of the cunning trap.

  He was tempted to push his black stallion along faster to try and warn Custer of the possible danger. But he was certain that Autie wouldn't have listened to him. A brother officer had once said about Custer that he would even have queried a command from God Almighty on the Day of Judgment.

  But Simpson was there. The last link in the broken chain.

  He set spurs to his horse and moved it on through the June evening, trying to catch the fast moving column.

  Crow was too late.

  It was all very simple.

  The Indians were there in a mighty sprawling village away to the west.

  Custer came in from the east having further weakened his tired command by splitting it into three, giving part to Reno and part to Benteen. Keeping the main part for himself.

  Crow had circled around the tail of the Dakota column of soldiers and managed to get to the bluffs on the south side of the river. Far enough away to be safe.

  Close enough to witness.

  He saw Reno's men pursue a small number of Indians along the valley at about three in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth. He'd checked the time with his gold hunter watch. Lying flat in the dry grass and staring intently across at the drama.

  Outnumbered, the blue-coats straggled their way up across the river and seemed to hold a defensive position on the bluffs, well up-river.

  But where was Custer?

  Crow watched, his eyes keener than any white man, and realiz
ed like a shock of cold water that the General simply didn't know where the main body of the Sioux were. A vast dust cloud hovered away over the hills, showing the village was on the move. God knows there had been enough warning of the numbers of the Indians. But Custer seemed as if he was going on alone.

  Along the flank of the low hills opposite. Crow saw the line of men, galloping to the left, kicking up their own curtain of dust. Then there was shooting.

  A bugle. Sounding once in the heat of the afternoon.

  Gunfire. Crackling across the plains. Puffs of white powder smoke dotting the grass across the valley of the Little Big Horn.

  It was over. The smoke and dust obscured what was happening, but Crow knew it was over. Unless Custer managed to reach the top of that steep slope with a reasonable number of his men alive, then it was finished. That was the only chance. Autie had just enough dash and personal courage to attempt it.

  Crow wondered whether Crazy Horse had enough cunning to anticipate it.

  There was a swirl of action near the rim of the bluff, and a burst of violent shooting.

  And after that there was nothing. Silence.

  Custer had been first attacked by the Sioux at around four in the afternoon. By five o'clock on the gold hunter, it was over.

  There was still shooting at spasmodic intervals over to the right where Crow guessed Reno and possibly Benteen were holding out on the top of the hill.

  And then darkness came.

  At first light on the morning of June twenty-seventh, Crow walked his stallion down the flat grasslands, and forded the Little Big Horn, out of sight of the soldiers high above him to the far right. The valley was deserted except for scattered corpses. Before the light failed on the previous evening, Crow had watched the Indians withdrawing in the direction of Big Horn Mountains to the west. Leaving the besieged pony soldiers some four miles up-stream.