This page is wet with my tears thinking that if we just left him be he would be still with us walking the Earth & making his lovely pictures. But soldiers never leave a thing alone that can be messed up or mocked or may offer something new & rare to cut through the drudge that does be a soldier’s life & poor Ridgeway was just such a rare thing as to draw our attention.
We had a fire up & smoking & the dog robber brewing coffee & fixing his pot for grub some few days after we left the talks at Laramie (a day or 2 after laying eyes on Chief Spotted Tail’s dead daughter on her funeral frame with the carrion birds about her) & one of the boys spied Ridgeway a short piece away from us lighting down from his mule.
Franzy Hegland I think it was who spotted Ridgeway. Poor Franzy who lays under the hard ground now his body 1/2 ate by wolves before we claimed what was left of him after the wood train was ambushed back in October. A fine lug of an Ohio German boy we do miss him. Dutch we called him as we did many Germans in the same way the Germans call us Mick or Pat.
Well when he spied the Picture Maker he said, “Looky boys at the fair doll on the malty.” Turning to one of his Dutchy pals he did say something else in their language & though none but the German lads could understand it we all took his meaning as the fair doll was at the time bent down afixing one of the straps on his box of tricks. Well we did all giggle like soldiers are wont & one of the boys grabbed hold of his mate by the shoulders for to show us all what he would do to that yellow haired pet who of course we all did recognise to be a fellow with fine long fair hair & no woman at all. But the locks on him could throw a lonely soldier in the wrong direction I suppose. In truth I hardly ever did see hair like it on any girl & this was likely Ridgeway’s curse in the end. There is not a single savage in the whole of the Dakotas who would not of coveted such locks hanging from his shield or saddle. But that does come later.
Aside from his hair well Ridgeway’s face did be as plain as any fellow’s as you did see yourself neither handsome nor ugly but normal though it was different from a regular soldier’s mug for you could spy the innocence in it or in his blue eyes maybe.
Of course innocence to a soldier is oft like a red rag to a bull as you know Sir but such was the picture maker’s manner that when he became better known to the boys of our Company well the boys did scarcely rag or ruse him at all & were altogether fond of him & considerate of his needs as a maker of photographic pictures & fine gentleman to have around the fire. This was the case until the end when the boys did catch him speaking to you & your terrible Jew. They did shun him then as an informer. I heard they did though I was not there to see it & I do not blame you Sir for this but only blame myself who should of done better by him & Tom who—
Well I will write no more of this now but will do it later God Help Me.
But that first evening Ridgeway set his camp up fair near C Company bivouack he surely must of heard our laughing at his expense & he did finally look over to us seeing with his own eyes the sight of Sandy Abe making a show of riding young Gianni Naps or Napoli John as we did call him. Well Ridgeway saw all this & surely did know it was he inspired it but did he curse us or wave his angry fist at the implication that because he had such a handsome head of locks he must be some queer kind of fore & after? No he did not & this does show his innocence for he only stood up & smiled & waved Howdy. He was pure innocent I tell you & it is them who life creases first & not the rum b______ the blaggards & hardshaws & jackanape f______ from the front of the saloon. No for God in his wisdom sees fit to take from us the kind & good & the makers of beautiful things instead of the bad articles. He takes boys like Ridgeway who seek to show the world a prettier place than it is in truth. God takes them as if there is not enough of them in Heaven already.
I tell you Sir it would be better we shunned him like a leper & he might still be walking the Earth & fabricating his pictures of mountains & old tame Indians & serious soldier Bills who think for the time it takes to expose a picture that they are Grant or Sherman for the day instead of some worthless body sent to die in the wilds of the Dakotas with no hair on his head nor nuts tween his legs. It shames me that we did not shun him when we could of but how could we know then what we know now? Only God Himself could know it & in His wisdom He did nothing to stop what was coming.
So we did not shun him when he took to riding with us the next morning Ridgeway afraid maybe his mules would again give up the ghost & leave him adrift & sucking the dust of the march in Sioux country though I never once heard him say one word agin the savages from the 1st day we met. It was trotting beside us that we came to know the boy & over time brung him tight into our fold. He came to be like a member of C Company which is a thing hard to do for a civilian lad & he did it in no time at all.
It is strange & wonderful how we came to speak to him as we rode the parched trail along the banks of the North Platte. There was 103 degrees of heat & dust upon us with him following close by us all morning stopping when we stopped & riding when we rode & I did say in Gaelic to Tom, “That fellow with his mules is like little Eoin Tom God Rest Him. Do you remember Tom? How he was ever following in our wake little Eoin?”
Says Tom, “Bound to make a priest that boy.”
Just low chat like that in the language of home low & melancholy talk of past days we will never see again of memories of that small beloved boy who we did not dote upon 1/2 enough when he lived our poor mite of a brother taken from us by the famine fever that took our father as well.
“Like a pup,” says I a hard knot raising up in my throat right there in the baking desert heat a sadness coming on me from nowhere as it does betimes. I think it is a pining for a place & for faces you will never see again in this world & likely not in the next for the faces you mourn will likely be in the One Place while Tom & myself well we will likely be in Another.
But I tell you of this because it is then that Ridgeway the innocent Quaker Picture Maker clopping with his mules behind did pipe right up & break into chat with us. Says he, “A brother of yours boys?”
“He was,” says I. “Not 4 years of age when God did take him from us—”
I did stop then & watched Tom twist round in his saddle to stare back at the Quaker boy.
“Where did you get your Irish Sir?” asks my brother & only then did I catch it. Ridgeway the son of Pennsylvania Quakers people of wealth & fine manners was after understanding & speaking the Gaelic of our home country. I did open a space between my brother & myself for the Picture Maker & his mules.
Says he in Irish that was cracked & ill fitting & childish but no matter because it was Irish says he, “My nurse from a baby was from the hills of Achill. She was like a mother to me. She does work still for my family minding my sister’s children in Philadelphia alongside her own. I—” He did say the word imagine in English as he did not know the word in our language. Says he, “I imagine she scolds my nephews in the Gaelic as she did me.”
I could hear the Mayo in his words now the Connacht Irish in them which is only a small bit different than the Irish of Munster that we speak. His was much like the Galway Irish you speak Sir if you would speak it to me.
Says I in English back to him, “Well don’t that just beat the Dutch. I did not mean to call you a puppy Sir. It was our small brother God Rest Him who I meant.”
“Of course I never took it another way Sir. You must forgive me as well. I have forgotten most of my Irish but can understand some still. I have trouble understanding yourself Tom please forgive me.” He seemed happy to talk now in English as it was easier for him of course.
Says Tom, “And I am better in Irish than English Sir!” And he laughed.
Says Ridgeway in his innocent way which allowed him to speak of Tom’s damaged face & his muddy words when no one else dared to, “But I will try my best to understand you Tom because I do love to hear Irish spoken & think you have many fine things to say.”
“I will try to speak as clearly as my mouth allows me Sir,” says Tom.
“Call me Ridgeway please. Ridgeway Glover of Philadelphia Pennsylvania,” says he again in the Gaelic. “My friends call me Ridgeway & I pray we may now call ourselves friends?”
“We may of course,” says Tom holding out his hand. “And I pray you will ride with us when we are not riding to orders & we will see you right talking the old talk all the while.”
“That would be just fine boys I thank you,” says he. “At least we may then ensure the forward motion of my mules for they have taken a shine to your mounts. They think they are after joining a cavalry troop! Would you like a smoke boys?”
He was like that dear Ridgeway innocent & never taking offence at things always free & generous with anything he owned. In truth he was the sort of fellow who would make yourself more innocent & kindly just by being with him. He did this for me & how did I repay it?
I will tell you again Sir that it is not the crime you accuse me of that I feel any guilt for but only for how poor Ridgeway did get caught up in it. That poor boy was like a fly in a spider’s web & it was Tom & myself the creeping black spiders to weave that web. My heart breaks to think of it.
I am sorry but I cannot write more now for if I do I think I will die here in this cell from the shame & guilt of what came to befall that boy.
God Forgive Us. (But I do not think He will.)
28
December 16, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
KOHN SITS IN A CHAIR AT MOLLOY’S BEDSIDE AND hands him a packet of cheroots and the ledger book. He strikes a match and lights the captain’s smoke.
“How are you feeling today, sir?”
“Grand as a pasha, Kohn. Fit as a fatted calf. My leg, the good surgeon has reassured me, shall remain attached to my body. I’ll be riding again in no time . . .”
Molloy winks and Kohn smiles.
“That is capital, sir. I’m glad to hear it and so will be the ladies of the Mountain District, I’m certain.”
Molloy examines the ledger, front and back. “So, good Daniel, were you compelled to kill the poor bastard in possession of this book before you took it?”
Kohn smiles. “I didn’t have to kill a single soul, sir. Though, as you said yourself, some may have deserved it. And I destroyed the other ledgers, the ones with the debts listed from the post sutler’s store.”
“You have taken bread from Uncle Sam’s gob, Daniel, shame on you. Render unto God what is His; unto Uncle give nothing.”
“It has done marvelous things for my standing with the men of the fort. I am a hail fellow well met.”
“Father Christmas with a snipped prick.”
“A present of a bottle of whiskey was left for me in my quarters with a note reading only ‘Thanks a bunch Soreass.’ And I believe it was not poisoned.”
Molloy’s nostrils flare as if scenting the sourmash and Kohn wishes he hadn’t mentioned it.
“No better way to express one’s gratitude than a bottle,” Molloy says. “Did you bring it?”
“Here.” Kohn takes the ledger back from the officer, ignoring his question. “Let me show you what I’ve found.”
He flicks through the pages and waits for Molloy’s disappointment to fade.
“You see here,” Kohn says. “O’Driscoll, Thomas. Private, C Company.”
Molloy scans down the columns to where Kohn indicates with his finger, the whiskey forgotten. “Twenty-nine dollars.”
“Yes. More than twice what the man with the next highest debt owes. And that is a civilian timberman. A sawyer, it says, owing . . . fourteen dollars twenty cents. And I’ve discovered that those boys, most of them, the civilian contractors, they’re on near a dollar a day, making that fellow’s debt smaller again.”
“You’ve been busy, Kohn. Why in God’s name did you take on with the army for if you planned on working for a living?”
Kohn laughs and lights a cigar. “My mother always said that if you’re going to eat pork, let it be good and fat, sir.”
Molloy traces his fingers over the entries and smokes his cheroot. After some moments he says, “Most of the debt appears to be for assignations”—he smiles at Kohn—“with one Sarah. Or Sara as it is sometimes spelled. The same girl, I would imagine. Herself a bargain, this Sarah, at three bucks per hour or one dollar and seventy-five cents for fifteen minutes. There is a fine lot a man can accomplish in the company of a good woman in fifteen minutes. And here,” Molloy says, pointing with his cheroot. “Five dollars for ‘rest of the night.’ There is true love underlying these raw sums, Daniel.”
“Three dollars and a quarter for whiskey and tobacco and all the rest of it on this ‘Sarah.’ ” The name again sparks in Kohn’s memory, as it did the first time he saw it, but just as quickly is extinguished.
“And here,” Kohn says, dragging his finger down the page to another name. “Michael O’Driscoll, Private, also of C Company. His brother, this Thomas, do you think, sir?”
“Could be, Dan, though it is a common enough name in Cork and parts of Waterford. Not unusual. Eight dollars he owes, for time passed with one ‘Two Doves’ and the rest for whiskey. A man after my own heart, this Michael O’Driscoll. A countryman surely.”
“Yessir,” Kohn says. “I’ve been told Two Doves still plies. In a tipi just outside the stockade. Near the loafer Indians but apart from them.”
“A whore in a tipi. I have heard everything now, Daniel, I have.”
“Of the other whores who worked the hog ranch, there is no sign. Though . . .” And now he remembers. Sarah. The maidservant he met hanging the colonel’s laundry.
“Sir, I know who Sarah is. She is the girl working for the Colonel.”
Molloy smiles. “Well done, Kohn. You are a true, stinking Pinkerton.”
“We should arrest him, sir, this Thomas O’Driscoll. We can report to Colonel Carrington and get him to provide us with an escort. O’Driscoll is an Irish name, no offense, sir, and C Company a strongly Irish company. We will need men with us to arrest him without violence, sir.”
“Arrest him? Without violence?” Molloy says, handing the ledger back to Kohn and smoothing his bedclothes. “For what, pray tell me?”
“He has a clear motive for killing Mr. Kinney, sir. His affections for the girl and the amount he owed the man.”
“Both of which can be seen clearly in this ledger of yours?”
“Yessir.”
“Making him the one who killed the sutler, robbing bastard that he was, and his poor lady wife?”
“Of course, sir.”
“We can prove this? With this list of sums owed for bottles drunk and whores fucked in a murdered man’s kip?”
“It’s clear as day, sir. Everyone in the camp knows that it was not Indians who killed the sutler and his wife. It has to be this O’Driscoll, sir. The guilt is there in ink on the page.”
“Guilt? Many’s the thing written in ink by scoundrels of innocent men, Daniel. You as a Jew should know this. Do you not suppose that the presumption of innocence applies to the man?”
For once, Kohn can detect no cynicism in the captain’s voice. No wheedling facetiousness.
“This is the army, sir. I don’t imagine the same rules apply as do in the world outside.”
“A place that will accept the likes of yourself and myself in its ranks is surely a place where all civil standards have been abandoned but that does not make this O’Driscoll fellow guilty of a crime. Not without the weight of an accumulation of evidence to back the claim. Or a witness. A witness would help our cause, Kohn, if our cause is to have a man hanged who did all in camp a great service by gutting the sutler.” Molloy smiles. “May he rest at the right hand of God in Paradise, of course.”
There, Kohn thinks, Molloy is returned to himself again. “Sir, no man in this camp is without guilt for something.”
“That may be true, dear Daniel, but there is every possibility that no man in this camp is guilty of carving up the sutler and his wife.”
“Sir, the
sooner we have a man in irons, the sooner we can select a new regiment. The sooner we can be away from this place.”
Molloy shakes his head. “Kohn, you realize you are condemning any man you arrest to the rope, don’t you? Cooke wants a man for it, whether he is guilty of the crime or not. I, for one, will not supply the good general with an innocent one.”
“Sir—”
“Help me up, for the love of God. I am sick to my teeth of this bed and that queer surgeon and his drams and potions and soft talk. Help me up, by God, and we shall go and pay a visit to Miss Two Doves and see what she can tell us.”
“Sir, you shouldn’t—”
“Should and shouldn’t be damned, Kohn. You shouldn’t be so eager to see your fellow soldiers hang for your own convenience. We will talk to your whore in her tipi and if she can place young O’Driscoll in the hog ranch when its owner and his mistress met their demise, well, then we will have a quiet word with him,” Molloy says.
Kohn is stung but does not show this. He helps Molloy to his feet and into his uniform, his muffler scarf and his buffalo coat. He props the crutches under Molloy’s arms and leads him to the door of the hospital barracks.
“Are you sure you are fit for this, sir? It is bitter cold.”
“Damn you, Kohn, if I didn’t think you were so dangerous to your fellow man, I would have stayed in bed. Stop fussing for the love of God.”
“Yessir.”
They pass through the camp, crossing the parade ground in front of the headquarters barracks. The sky is a leaden roil of snow-bloated cloud. A cutting wind swipes down from the north. Late afternoon and the light of day is slowly dying.
“Will we pay our respects to the colonel, sir? You haven’t met him.”
Wolves of Eden Page 21
