Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  Says I to Tom as we did clop a lazy pace behind them wagons, “There is nothing wrong with being a mounted soldier if you do not mind the dust Tom I tell you.”

  “There is worse things in the world than riding picket on wagons full of whiskey one end & doxies the other,” he said back to me.

  “Far worse brother,” says I.

  But you know well Sir as an Officer & Veteran Fighting Man that in the War a wagonload of painted dolls privately owned would not of been given the privilege of a mounted guard such as us to protect it but there is so much different in this new Army of ours most of it not any good at all.

  The driver of that queer vessel full of Indian doxies well that driver did look to my eye part Indian himself the other part something else & in truth he did not look to be any kind of proper muleteer at all but a whore skinner more like. We came to know him later as the boy to speak Indian to the whores & collect coin off them & keep their furrows running straight but as well to knock about the heads of soldier Bills who might chance a poke with no money in their purses or who got too full of lip when the Sutler’s wife lowered herself to come calling to her husband’s hog ranch off the post.

  As you may of guessed Sir it was the very same blackleg Sutler Kinney from Columbus who was the owner of the doxie wagon we rode guard upon. Yes that same rum swindler who would sell a fool of a raw Depot recruit 2 cleaning kits when 1 does be plenty in connivance with the swindling training Sgts. of the Depot but more in truth with the connivance of the Generals & Politicians & other high hats. For to have a Sutler’s contract at a training Depot in a town where goods can be sold for a fair price outside the gates & thus drive down your own you must be the brother of some mere State Senator or Party Boss. But to get your doxie wagon & wares latched onto Carrington’s 18th Infantry parade to the most faraway outpost in all Creation where you may charge very well what you f_____ like for anything from stockings to sourmash? Well it is said that you may be the brother to Christ the Lord himself but if you are not the brother to a Washington Senator at least well you will never sell your goods as a Sutler on a Western Army post. Holy Jesus & all His Disciples could not purchase you such a licence to print money but a brother or cousin in Congress could once his Party is in power. And you would think it would be enough for a man & his grasping bitch of a wife to have the sole licence to hock liquor & beer & tobacco to poor soldiers a fair million miles from his nearest rival at prices you would not charge a leper for a sup from your canteen. You would think it would be enough but not for him. Because I tell you Sir that filthy nuck did have the notion that alongside his peppermint sticks & breeches & bolts of cloth well what else would soldier Bills a million miles from home be in want of but a few whores on his off post hog ranch?

  Mind you even Little White Chief Carrington (which is what the Indians call him) well even he might note a stew house within the walls of his blessed stockade & throw a conniption but outside of the Ft. belongs to nobody but the man or woman fool enough to brave the Indians without a wall of sharpened logs around them.

  And so that b______ of a Sutler did transport his whore wagons in Carrington’s circus parade while we did mind them & the whiskey under orders from some Officer who along with every other man up the chain of command did be in that Sutler’s pocket. A blind eye here a blind eye there & a few bob in your purse for to see nothing & the Sutler’s Indian whores ride in the Col.’s parade with Uncle Sam’s horse soldiers to guard them from attack by their Indian brothers. I tell you it is a strange f______  world we live in all the same & I think my brother fits into it just grand for it is stranger he gets by the day since his eye caught a stray smile from that cutnose whore that is no word of a lie. And yet betimes I wonder am I the only one in the camp who notices it for all here are taken with a kind of madness a queer ticking strangeness that comes from living with the fear of death always on you.

  BUT HOW DID HE meet her I did not tell you that did I? For we did hardly lay eyes on the whores at all mostly. They travelled the days under Murphy wagon canvas while our Company was most nights camped some distance away from them with our time upon stopping for bivouac much taken with picket duties & tending the horses.

  Well it was a week or so into the march & a squad of us was detailed (yes proper detailed if you will believe it!) to ride guard on them wagons up along the East bank of the Platte River a worthless alkaline torrent that in spate as it is then in late May from a long & heavy winter in the mountains does rush like milk from a tipped churn. Even up front with the wagon we choked on dust from the troops & wagons before us & we wore kerchiefs over our faces against it like highway men & if our eyes were not so thick with dust 1 of us might of seen some yds. ahead of the doxie cart the sidewinding shape of a rattler crossing the trail between wagons at the feet of that cart’s lead mule.

  Well I was a good way back & packing my pipe with tobacco when it happened so would not of seen the snake anyway but who would of thought a snake such a fool as to wind its way between the hoofs & wheels of 1000 odd beasts & wagons for it is said that snakes be fierce shy of any sound that comes as a drumbeat through the earth to them. Oh we are told stay clear of shadowy rocks or clumps of brush & most particular the overhanging banks of rivers where they lie in shelter when the sun beats down from the heavens. But there is no counting for the work of the Devil no more than the ways of Man & that snake had in its mind to cross in front of the whore wagon’s mules & cross he did sending them mules into a holy terror I tell you bucking & raring up in their traces & raising panic in more than 1 of our mounts nearby as well though my horse at that time was as steady & stupid as myself & she did only raise her head & wonder at the carry on around her.

  My brother’s gelding though did buck & shy a bit & let out a whinny but Tom hauled him in & spoke his muddle of imprecations & threats at him in the Gaelic & English (which he did sometimes use telling me that not all American horses could understand the Irish). Tom pulled his horse out of the column to settle him more & as he did he saw at the same time that snake make its blessed way into the shade of a tipped boulder while all hell let rip around them because the whore wagon’s bucking mules chose just that moment to bolt all 4 of them together like the finest team of prancers pulling a Princess’s barouche jerking the wagon up out of the wheel ruts in the trail with a shot & throwing back onto his arse their driver & heading at a clatter for the banks of the spring swollen Platte.

  Now if I tell you the drop off the bank into that rushing torrent of a river is 10 ft. at least I tell you no word of a lie. It is high enough for the drop alone to kill man & horse never mind the rushing water for to drown them & remember this was 4 mules & a ton weight of wagon whores & driver thundering madlike over rock & brush across 200 yds. (no more than that) of sage & scrub racing toward that drop of a riverbank & pure death with goods & sundries spilling out the back while the whores screamed from inside the poor creatures clinging on for their dear lives. I tell you there was foam at the mules’ mouths & eyeballs bulging behind their blinders.

  200 yds. in seconds they did hurtle towards death Sutler Kinney’s whores while 12 horse soldiers including myself settled spooked mounts & watched on like fools. Only 1 of us thought to dig his spurs in & reef his reins towards the river & set off after the runaway wagon. Only 1 of us & that was Tom true as God his horse skipping away from the trail its tail up for the chase. It was a sight to see that gelding’s barrelling hind pumping as it rushed over the scrub for the wagon.

  And that wagon to my eye was doomed I tell you Sir & heading straight for the river. But did I act? I did not but only looked on as 1 of the poor whores leapt from the back of the wagon to bounce & tumble off the hard ground her neck snapping in the fall God Rest Her In Heaven & causing Tom to veer his speeding mount around her bouncing body to close on that mule team while the other whores & their skinner was thrown about in the back of the wagon under canvas like dice in a cup I tell you as 100 yds. became 50 then 40 then 30.

  Says one
of the boys beside me, “He won’t G___  D_____  catch em no way Johnnycakes.”

  “He G___  D____  will,” says another.

  I could not answer as my heart stuck in my throat & I watched as Tom closed his mount on the foaming blind rushing mules pressing his horse close in til it was crowding the beasts pushing them with its side away ever so little bit away from their course towards the river. I watched as Tom did reach out & grab fast to the lead mule’s ear guiding his mount away now still at speed though slowing with that mule’s ear tight in his fist so that she followed & the team followed her & they all turned together to bounce along in line with the edge of the bank instead of off it til he did finally bring the team to a halt to great rounds of cheering from every man & woman who seen it. Tom then dismounted himself & hobbled the mules with a stretch of rope before walking to the back of the wagon to inquire on them inside.

  It was now that he 1st lay eye on that girl & I do curse that moment I tell you. Out she came from behind the canvas stepping down from that wagon like a Queen & my brother held out his hand to aid her like some Gallant Knight of olden days. But for fate it could of been any of the whores who came out the back of the wagon 1st to take his hand for by the Grace Of God none of them who stayed inside the wagon had much more than lumps & bruises for their troubles.

  I tell you any one of them girls could of took Tom’s hand & seen him smile at her. His smile is a terrible sight surely him with a face that would make a funeral turn from a main road but it must not of been terrible to this whore who perhaps like many a Veteran Bill has lain eyes on many horrible things & must betimes scare her very self at the looking glass.

  I wonder now did she see something in Tom’s smile to make her fond of him at that very moment or perhaps she has no fond feelings for him at all beyond what any hardhearted whore might have for any soldier boy who brings fistfuls of prairie flowers & gifts of half drunk jugs of trade whiskey to her when he has the coin to call for a f___. Or perhaps her fondness for him is but her thanks to him for saving her body from the terrible watery wreckage of wagon & mule but whatever it is she did smile back at him that poor cutnose Indian whore.

  A whore’s smile of gratitude is all you may think it was Sir & you would be right but for Tom well how long was it since a girl had given him the tilt of her lips in a smile? How long I ask you? There was the Mexican Gal at Leavenworth though she would hardly count or maybe she would but I reckon for Tom it must of seemed a lifetime as even whores did mostly recoil from the sight of his face. To be sure they oft came around & smiled at him when they seen what he had in his purse (when he had anything!) but a true blue smile I ask you how long was it? Well God himself could only tell you for it was rare enough it happened even to me but since Chickamauga you could tick it off on 1 hand the smiles or small kindnesses paid by a woman to my brother. You did see for yourself Sir the terrible state of his mug & also you must of seen the fierce far away gleam of madness in his eyes & this too does drive women & men both across the path to pass him by. (Yes I will call it madness for there is no sense at all in calling it anything else this late in the day.)

  And all this is more of a pity for you must remember what a fine handsome fellow my brother was before he ate that ball of lead in Tennessee. He was a boy well used to the girleens & their fond attentions. There was once kindness in him too & this was returned most times though it could be said that even before his wounding Tom could fly to anger quicker than most I suppose. But he was not damaged Sir. He was not back then what you would call truly mad.

  But here was the sweet Indian pet with her nose cut down to the bone but a fine strapping girl all the same smiling at him & it did twist his heart. Mr. Bridger the Scout did later tell us it was a custom for the Sioux Brave to carve the nose of his woman if she lay down with another man much like a white man might give his wife a thump or 2 should she be in need of it. But Mr. Bridger did say to me also that he never seen such a terrible scarring as this one with nothing but two holes left in her face her visage now indeed as flat as a ploughed field. Altogether it is a fierce savage price for a strayed wife to pay & altogether too much in my eyes to do that on any woman no matter her sins. Sure no civilised man or woman would begrudge a husband a harsh word or the rare slap upon catching his woman with her heels tipped at the Devil with another boy astride her. But that? There is many the strange custom in the world but some I cannot ponder on much at all.

  So maybe too theirs is a love founded on the wounds they share & who am I to say the cutnose girl did not (or does not) share some true love for my brother in the same manner that he does love her?

  I do not know & do not reckon I ever will but all I can say to you now is that my life & my brother’s have come to this pass perhaps on the back of nothing more than a smile from a whore & whore’s smiles are bought far less dearly than we are paying now with me in this Guardhouse cell & Tom Only God Knows Where.

  22

  December 14, 1866—​Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory

  KOHN IS DOZING ON HIS BUNK IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, eight days after arriving at Fort Phil Kearny, when he senses something shift in the quality of the lantern light; something blocking its dim purchase on the silent barracks room. Someone, not something, he knows in his half-​lucid state, coming to consciousness but keeping his eyes closed and his breathing regular as if he is still sleeping. He makes to roll over so that he may reach the Remington New Model he sleeps with under the rolled blanket he uses for a pillow.

  “You will have a ball in your brain before you reach that iron, Sergeant, so leave it be. You may open your eyes or leave them shut, it makes no mind to us.”

  More than one man. Eyes still closed he thinks to make a move for the pistol, to take his chances. One man he may kill or at least take with him but two men will have the better of the odds, positioned above him as they are. He wonders where the other men in the barracks have gone and resigns himself. If he is to die today, he will go out fighting. He tenses to spring and senses the men above him do the same. He hesitates, which is unlike him. If they had come to kill him, he thinks, it would’ve been easier done to slit his throat or smother him in his sleep already. Something else they want? Kohn opens his eyes.

  Standing over his bunk are two men in knee-​length buffalo coats and tall hats fashioned from a buffalo’s hump. Around their faces they have tied blue muffler scarves of the type sanctioned for uniform wear and sold to soldiers in sutlers’ stores across America. Woollen mittens with fingers cut away. Only their eyes are exposed, though in the dim lantern light Kohn cannot determine their color. They are like bears standing above him in their thick furs, their human features obscured. Or the Golem, Kohn thinks, remembering how as a boy he was so frightened of one day meeting him. But that beast who once stalked his dreams is not these men.

  One of them holds a Springfield carbine and the other a kindling hatchet. Kohn drops his eyes to their boots. One is wearing standard issue artillery boots but the other, holding the hatchet, wears dragoon boots with the knee flaps turned down to reveal well-​balled red leather. The man is proud of the boots. He is no dragoon, Kohn reckons, or he would be holding a Colt instead of a hatchet like a wife in search of a chicken’s neck. Won the boots in a card game or took them from a dead man. You will be easy to find, bub, Kohn thinks, if I live long enough to do it.

  So not beasts, but not parlor soldiers either. The barrel of the Springfield is not altogether steady but is steady enough to be fatal and neither of the men appears frightened. The speaker’s voice has been calm, reasonable almost. Take the rail to the next station, Kohn decides. See what happens. He says, “I asked to be woken for supper, boys. I did not need two of you for that.”

  One of the men laughs. “You are a fine, jesting Jew fucker, all right. I heard what you done to the boys with that chair in Hapworth’s store. A right jester, surely.”

  Irish, again. One of the men from the sutler’s store? Does not matter.

  “I wasn’
t jesting then and I am not jesting now. I’m the dog robber in this barracks tonight and the boys will be sore if I don’t have their vittles up promptly.”

  “Them boys will be back and ready to ate when I tell them and no sooner, so listen you now if you know what’s good for you.”

  “All right,” Kohn says. “Can I sit up?”

  “No you may not sit up, by fuck,” the soldier with the hatchet says. “Listen and don’t spake.” He says something in the Irish language to the soldier with the Springfield who replies with a calming gesture.

  “My pal says we should shoot your bothersome self as a Jew spy. Investigators, agitators and touts. As fair Fenian boys we do not abide them, we don’t. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand you don’t like them. But I’m no English agent come to spoil your revolution. I had high hopes for the Fenians and their invasion of British Canada.” Kohn smiles.

  “I’ll split your head wide open, you—​”

  Springfield carbine again makes a calming gesture with his free hand and says, “We know why you’re here which is why you’re drawing breath still.”

  “Good. So what is your purpose for waking me?”

  Again, the hatchet man says something to Springfield in Irish and the man answers him, impatience in his voice this time. His eyes do not leave Kohn’s. He knows his business or Kohn would have been upon him by now.

  The first man says, “Them ledger books belonging the sutler, Mr. Kinney, the whoremaster. ’Tis true you offer fifteen bucks for them, is it?”

  Kohn makes to sit up, no desire to gut or shoot these men now. Dragoon boots raises the hatchet with menace and he lies back.

  “It’s true. Do you have them?”