Wolves of Eden

by Kevin McCarthy

  For the first time, the soldier with the Springfield looks to his partner. Kohn cannot see the color in his eyes but he can see the doubt in them. Uncertainty on the verge of action. “We don’t. But we know who has them.” He looks back to Kohn. “And we will tell you this for ten dollars reward and the man who has them be fucked.”

  Kohn smiles. “I thought you could not abide informers.”

  The soldier with the hatchet says, “You curly whore’s pox. I’ll stuff your bashed Jew skull with salt pork—​”

  Springfield carbine says, “Go easy, Ow . . .” He is about to say the man’s name but stops himself. “Go easy, for the love of God. We are here to do business with the bastard.”

  “You hold a gun on a man and then ask him for ten dollars? That is robbery and not business, Bill,” Kohn says but he is still smiling.

  “You cannot be trusted, I was told.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You don’t need to know but it does be nearly all who meet you. Now do we have a bargain, soreass?”

  “I am going to sit up and discuss it with you but if your pal waves his hatchet at me again I’m going to take it from him and chop his cock off with it, do you understand that?”

  Hatchet says something in Irish and takes a step toward the bed. His friend stops him with an arm across the chest and more words in the same language. Kohn does not speak the language but knows without doubt that Springfield has asked his friend if he wants his cut of the reward or not. He sits up on the bed and takes a cheroot from a packet on the crate beside his bunk that serves as a makeshift locker. He asks Springfield carbine for a light and he nods to his friend who grudgingly tosses a tin box of matches to Kohn, who takes his time lighting the small cigar.

  Kohn punctuates his words with exhaled smoke. “So tell me who has the books.”

  “The money first,” hatchet says.

  “You holding that axe does not make me a fool. If you care to try to take the money from me, then take it and skedaddle as thieves but if you care to bargain, you prove to me you have what you say you have. I will then give you a dollar. When you tell me the rest, what I need to know, I will give you five more.”

  “Six skins?” hatchet says. “I may sooner kill you and take it from you, boy.”

  “You may try.” Kohn puffs on his cheroot and blows a stream of smoke up at the men.

  “Eight,” says the soldier with the carbine.

  “A reasonable man. Seven and we shake on it, Bill,” Kohn says.

  Springfield nods and gestures spitting on his left hand, holding the carbine in his right, and mimes a handshake. “Done. Struck like a Jewman. Show me the dollar and I will tell you that there are three books in all with over two thousand odd dollars owing within. I will tell you a fellow here on post has them and is making good use of them and when you give me the other six bucks, I will tell you who he is.”

  Kohn mummers the spitting on his hand and the handshake. “I am reaching into my pocket for my wallet.”

  “Go ahead, Bill.”

  Kohn takes a two-​dollar note from the wallet and holds it out to the man with the carbine but the man indicates to the hatchet man to take the money. He switches the hatchet to his left hand and snatches the greenback with his right. Kohn then removes a five-​dollar note and folds it around his fingers.

  “Now speak up while I check that pot for coffee,” Kohn says, rising from the bed and passing between the two men, forcing them to step aside. He crosses the rough board barracks floor to the stove and lifts the boiler pot. He takes a tin mug from a shelf above the stove and pours coffee for himself, sitting down at the barracks’ long table. “There’s coffee enough for two in the pot boys but I won’t vouch for its quality.”

  “We won’t be needing it,” Springfield says, taking a seat across from Kohn at the table. His friend crosses to warm himself at the stove but remains standing. “We will be going shortly. But I will tell you that them books you seek are held by a E Company boy who dogs as the fort’s smith and farrier. Never hardly been off-​post nor fired no shot in anger for his work is valued highly by the brass, so he is left at it to smithy while we fight and die and do picket.”

  Kohn remembers passing the smith’s, one of the larger structures at the southern end of the post within the quartermaster’s stockade and somewhat removed from the other barracks and stables for fear of fire. He cannot recall meeting the blacksmith but he ordered Rawson to have the horses reshod only yesterday. “What is his name?”

  “He is called Ezekiel Sweetman, or that is the name he goes by. He’s a corporal, and a bull of a man as you would expect of a blacksmith. Sure, you may have met him if you’ve your horses shod since coming or p’raps you did refuse to pay his going, for he is a mean bastard who will shoe Uncle Sam’s horses all right as he is paid for it but will ask a king’s ransom for to shoe a civvie’s beast or a private-​owned mount. So ’tis not like he needs the money as he’s his wages and a smithy’s special duty pay atop them, but there he is all the same with them ledger books and putting them to ill use for ill gain, the fucker.”

  “How is he putting them to use?” Kohn asks, sipping his coffee and puffing his cheroot. He has a fair idea but is open to correction.

  “Well the bastard is collecting what is owed at a half-​rate before blacking a fellow’s name from the pages when he is paid up. Sure what else would he be doing with them?”

  “Half-​rate? How kind of him . . . ​and are the men paying up?”

  “They are, for half is better than the full whack by far, and the smithy has given his word to burn them books once all owed is paid up so the whole of them owing have a bargain made with the devil at half-​rate,” Springfield says, setting the butt of the carbine on the floor beside him. “And them owing can pay it by-​the-​by so ’tis never a hardship for them like when they owed the sutler hisself who did dock their wages as owing Uncle Sam.”

  “That sounds fair enough but why do they pay him at all?”

  “Well, he could sell the books back to the new sutler and they would owe the full whack then, surely. For the love of Christ, what kind of a Jew are you at all?”

  “Not the kind who would pay another Bill for the privilege of halving debts I do not owe him. Are there any soldiers on this post or only wives with pearl shell combs in hock—​”

  “—​to the Jewman,” hatchet says.

  “If the Irish could reckon the arithmetic, they would own pawn stores instead of pubs,” Kohn says, without looking at him. “So tell me why don’t the men with their names in the books get the ledgers back themselves, or have they even tried to yet? Have you?”

  Springfield looks away now. “No, we haven’t at all.”

  “But you are asking me to get them. And what would you have me do with them if I succeed?”

  The man looks back and Kohn can see the smile behind his muffler. “Why, burn the bastard books, to fuck. Once you’ve had your look at them.”

  “But you haven’t answered me. Why haven’t you tried to take them yourselves already? Or why has not one Bill in the whole camp gone to his company first sergeant and told him what’s become of the books?”

  “Tell a company first shirt and have him go to the brass about it? That would be a fool thing to do when all would then have to pay full whack if the books was given back to the new sutler and he had the power to dock wages for the whole amount each boy owes to Uncle as listed in them books. Sure, touting the bugger to the bosses would only cost you more money than you’ve to pay now, so that makes no sense at all.”

  He looks at Kohn, as if the cavalryman has understood nothing of what he has said, before continuing. “As of now we pay half, see, though we don’t like that for Mr. Kinney’s death should benefit all of us who did owe him, much in the way as if a storm did blow them books away or a fire burn them. ’Twas an act of God—​which no man should profit from, even by half—​that thieving Mr. Kinney getting his throat cut. So there’s fair�
�s fair to consider. Them debts should die with the man who held them and not be run on by another no matter who he does think he is.”

  “You still have not told me why you have not banded together, you fine Fenian boys, and taken them back.”

  There is some shame in the man’s eyes now. Not as much the stag as Kohn had thought.

  “Well, you would have to know the boy you would be taking them from to see that. For he is a bad fellow, a terrible bad egg altogether I’m telling you. A Nativist fucker, a hater of all foreign born soldiers. And he’s men about him who are the same, a fair number of American boys who is Protestant and Masons even, ’tis said, but all of them veteran Bills, hard men who do not leave his side for so much as a piss. And ’tis said . . .” The man leans across the table to Kohn and lowers his voice. “. . . ’tis said that Sweetman is a Missoura reb. One of Quantrill’s raiders joined up under a bluff moniker because he did be too cruel even for them slaughtering Ozark boys. And as I did say he and all his boys are fierce wild men who do revile the like of us Irish or you Jews. They do hate all followers of the Roman Catholic Church, whether they is Dutchies or Eye-​talians or Portugee. And they specially cannot abide freed niggers but they are not alone in that.”

  “They galvanized Yankees?” Kohn asks, referring to Confederate prisoners who switched sides during the war and enlisted in the Union army.

  “Some is, I imagine. They are all sorts but they are rough and they would have the whole of America, God bless her, full of hale, Protestant, American-​born boys and the U.S. army the same, I tell you.”

  “That would make for a small army,” Kohn says, and the two men chuckle under their mufflers, knowing this for truth.

  Kohn thinks it unlikely that this Sweetman is a former Missouri bushwhacker but considers only that the man has numbers who support him. He has heard there are factions in this new, regular army who despise immigrants—​particularly the Catholic Irish and Germans but Jews and the emancipated blacks as well. And he himself, in his occupation posting with the 7th Cavalry in Louisiana and Texas, rode down on white-​robed raiders and unrepentant rebels who thought the way to undermine Republican order in the South was to lynch freed black men and those thought to be land-​grabbers and profiteers—​who all assumed to be Jews, though they were as likely to be Ohio Lutherans as anything else. He decides he will enjoy paying Ezekiel Sweetman a visit.

  “You’d do well to mind yourself around him, Bill,” Springfield says to Kohn now.

  “Corporal Sweetman may be the one who needs minding if he does not present the ledgers to me when I ask him.”

  “Oh Jesus, I would like to see it, I would,” hatchet says, his eyes gleaming.

  “Well you are a fine man, for a Jew, I have to say it,” says Springfield. “A fine fucking man altogether.”

  “A fine man for one man,” hatchet says. And then to Springfield carbine he says, “Why do you not ask him, sure, ask him why don’t you, boy?”

  Kohn smiles, knowing what is coming. He hands the five-​dollar note across the table to Springfield who takes it and tips his fingers to his buffalo hat.

  “Ask me what?” Kohn says.

  “More business, p’raps,” says Springfield. “Twenty leaves easy, we could muster up from the men, for you to kill that Ezekiel Sweetman bastard and burn them books. Twenty-​five even. Once you’ve your read of them of course.”

  Kohn shakes his head. “Four hundred blood-​and-​guts Indian fighters here on post and not one to be found to kill a man but a wandering Jew looking for a set of account ledgers?”

  “Well, things is hard, Bill, and I’d not risk a rope for the small sum I do owe. Others might, sure . . .”

  “No one had better try it until I get a look at those books or I’m coming looking for my seven bucks back, never mind your twenty.”

  “Sure, you will have your work made up to see them, but now you know where to look.”

  “I am going back to my bunk boys. You will see yourselves out.”

  “We will, Bill. May God go with you.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  “Well, whichever watches over a body best, I s’pose,” says the soldier, standing and lifting his Springfield.

  Kohn takes another look at the hatchet man’s boots so he will remember them if he sees them again. All in all, he thinks, he has done a fine bit of business this afternoon.

  23

  A WARNING FROM THE MULESKINNER

  AS I TOLD YOU SIR IT WAS THE SMILE THAT DID FOR Tom. A single smile was all it took & in the days after he 1st met her my brother would visit that girl at the doxie wagon every night. After we grubbed & done our duties Tom would stroll to where the muleskinner made their camp. (For the whole of the march North we saw nothing of that Sutler or his missus they were likely at the front of the procession with the other bigwigs.) Each time Tom went visiting he brung her small offerings of salt pork & beans or a tin of oysters or once the grounds of our drunk coffee all these things in lieu of money for none of us had been paid for several weeks & there was nothing in Tom’s pockets but dirt from the road.

  Now take heed Sir when I tell you he did not then be tupping her when he called on the wagon them nights with his gifts. No it was like he was courting a farmer’s daughter with his offerings & doffed cap & shy looks.

  You will hardly believe it but one evening some days after the runaway wagon incident when I did go fetch him from her company for to stand picket I found him sitting with her on the buckboard of the wagon him holding her hand like 2 summer sweethearts. Now God Himself did only know how far they could go in the way of talking for she is part or wholly Indian & does have but few words of English & though my brother does have fine Bearla in his head it rolls now off the ruins of his tongue like another language altogether. But there they sat him mumbling soft words to her there in the prairie dusk. A dry crackling fire burned & the other whores sat around it with their sinister muleskinner standing just outside that firelight & watching over it all neither in favour nor disfavour of it but taking it all in that boy seeing every D___ thing going on about him. That bucko boy knew the score he did & I will say that even as early as that night on the plain that bucko knew the ill that would come to us all in the end.

  And maybe I am something like that 1/2 breed bucko too because though it did all seem fine & calm to the eye that prairie eve round the whore wagon’s campfire I thought to myself, “No good will come of this.” I cannot say why the feeling came on me & I cannot claim foreknowledge of later events the ones which sent you here to us Sir but that is how I felt.

  I made that muleskinner one to watch I tell you & only a day later who did pay a visit to our bivouac at Mad Woman’s Creek (where we stopped for several days more while the wagon wheels were retreaded) but that buck whore tender himself. He came up behind me silent as the plague as I staked out our mounts for grazing nearly scaring the very piss from me when I turned to see him standing there like something cut from a tombstone.

  Now I do not be an easy sort to get the jump on the War having done me some service there making me start to every crackle of branch or scuff of boot & nor do I shy from any other man though betimes I know when my hand needs be folded like any Bill with his wits about him. I know when to fight & I know when to flicker but this fellow well he put the skin of my back to crawling he did.

  I swallowed before speaking so he would not hear the fear in my voice. “You are not to be among the horses by the Colonel’s orders,” says I.

  At this the boy did show a smile his teeth very white in his gob against the tanned hide of his skin. He wore a muleskinner’s set of clothes & could pass for a Mex surely with the long plait of black hair that fell from his black stovepipe hat though he spoke like any American fellow you might pass in the road but slow & more carefully as if his mind did gander a peek at each word before they passed his lips. Again I did say to myself, “Watch this boy he is no more a common muleteer than you are.”

  After some momen
ts of silence says he, “You can tell your brother he ain’t to be among the whores anymore. When we gets where we going then he can pay up for a poke like any other soldier. Them is orders too.” He shown his white teeth in a smile again & though the fellow did be no older than me there appeared something ancient in it like it was 1000 years since any gentle feeling was in that smile.

  I cast a look over my shoulder at the camp. The boys from my Company were there fixing up supper or gathering buffalo chips for a fire & they were but 50 yds. away though it did seem much further. I swallowed again & said to the b______, “You are giving orders to serving soldiers now are you?”

  “Boss’s orders not mine,” says he.

  “And who is the boss when he is at home?” I let my eyes drop for a second to the knife on his belt. 1 second I tell you but he caught it & again gave that grin with no warmth at all in it. The knife at his belt was bigger than Tom’s D Bar a fair cutlass it was & I could nearly smell the blood of past murders on it.

  “You know rightly who is the Boss & who is the sonofabitch.” He set a hand on the butt of that knife.

  I did know it but would not let on.

  Says I, “My brother does not take kindly to being drove about by any old bucko walking into camp with a songbook full of orders. I would reckon on that if I was you.”

  “It aint any old bucko doing the ordering. So you just tell him we are obliged for him hauling up the wagon when it got away but he aint to be buzzing about the whores til we all get where we going. You will tell him that if you are smart.”

  Something in how he spoke made me think this was the most words he used at one time in a long while & that he was not much used to conversing with his fellow man in the ditch.

  “I will tell him but promise nothing to you. The brother does what he wants & there is few who will tell him otherwise,” says I wanting to be away from him altogether but not wanting to show fear to him neither.

  The dusk took on a fierce chill then & the horses moved away from the muleskinner straining at the ends of their ropes. They bunched together their eyes balled & vexed making a clear wide space about us there in the prairie grass.