by Rusty Davis
It was the fifth of September. Sherman would be leaving in a day or so. He was not asking. He was telling. Kane thought back. It was barely three months since he had sat in Sherman’s office wondering what Wyoming might hold. He had found out.
“Rachel?” Kane had drifted off and missed what she said.
“Pay attention for once.” Jones almost stifled a snicker. Kane saw two heads in the doorway listening.
“We might as well see him, Kane. Otherwise, we will be waiting for him to show up here, if I understand him correctly, and I do not want the army paying a visit.”
The special train puffed almost as much as the man it carried.
General William Tecumseh Sherman inspected Kane while holding a fat envelope Kane had managed to slip him. Pulled his coat tighter. Puffed. Mid-September winds get cold in Wyoming, especially when a man not accustomed to being told what he must do is being lectured.
Tillie Witherspoon, as mayor of Rakeheart or whatever she decided to call herself, was welcoming the general while demanding the army pay for every last bit of damage that took place. She had a list. A long one. She was gesticulating with energy. Kane enjoyed the show. Nothing set Sherman aback like an angry woman. Kane figured Sherman would promise enough wood to build three towns if it got him away from her.
Kane had used the time between knowing Sherman was coming and the train’s arrival to write a report explaining everything he had done and why. He knew Sherman was itching to open the envelope and read.
“Won’t that make him angry?” Rachel had asked Kane.
“Had enough lies,” he had told her.
After telling something that made Tillie Witherspoon respond, “Well I should think so!” and leave the train platform with her head held high, Sherman walked over to where Kane, Rachel, and the children were waiting.
He began to read every word of the report while he sent forth a volley of words about the punishments meted out to the guilty and the inattentive.
In between gulps of reading and puffs of noxious smoke he examined Rachel intently and not very discreetly over the top of the papers.
“Can I tell him it’s not polite to stare?” she said in one whispered aside to Kane.
“You can tell him. Won’t matter, but you can tell him.”
Sherman eyed them as though they were disobedient privates.
“Last thing we need out here is war,” he said to them while scanning. “Army has to keep order. Sounds like you two waged your own war without informing anyone. Told you to stay in communication.”
“I could have sent a smoke signal,” Rachel loudly muttered in a tone the wind fortunately swallowed along with her words. Sherman caught some of it and looked at her sharply.
“It worked, General; wasn’t that what you told him to do?” she said, refusing to back down. “And if you told him how to do it, you know he would have disobeyed you, because that’s how the man is.”
Sherman’s eyes—as best they were visible behind more clouds of cigar smoke—reflected both mirth and respect after her outburst.
Rachel had been uncertain about meeting the general, but he was charm itself. Kane was certain there was a giggle he had never heard before after one Sherman remark about handwriting aimed at Kane, whose early departure from school was reflected every time he put words on paper.
Jeremiah, whom the general kept calling “Sherman,” and Libby, who found that the general wanted to hear all about how she made her dress and said she should have a metal flute that he would send her from St. Louis, were delighted with the man who had decided—no, demanded—they should call him “Uncle Billy,” the words by which thousands of soldiers knew him.
Sherman and Jeremiah drew a horse together in the dirt with sticks the boy had sharpened and argued over the name until Jeremiah won. Sherman told the boy and his sister to see if there was anything in the train they might want to eat. Rachel left with them, casting a look over her shoulder at Kane as she stepped into the general’s private car.
The men were left alone on the windswept platform.
“Now what?” barked Sherman.
“Not sure,” replied Kane. “Not goin’ back to Texas. Might stay here a while.”
Sherman handed him a piece of paper.
“Good. Hired. Territory has no law. Montana, Dakota. No different. Army should be the law. Hear rumblings about the Sioux. Black Hills. Fools started a gold rush. Looks bad. Powder keg. Need stability. You do, also.”
Sherman. Always the optimist.
“Army needs a detective. Not a Pinkerton man. Useless. Always want more money. Always. Someone I trust. You. Got a family; I see that. Married when?”
“We haven’t . . .”
“Life doesn’t wait. Good woman. Comanche? Good choice. Stood by a man who wasn’t worthy of her. Don’t like being fooled, Kane. General has to have faith in his men. Not all of them deserve it. Wedding present.” Sherman handed him a thick envelope. “Back pay since the war. Tired of hanging on to it. Not sure why I had to deal with it, but since you were not going to . . . well, it had to be done. Army will pay you to be sheriff as well as whatever I need you to do. And keep that Witherspoon woman happy! I don’t want to hear from her again. She don’t like something, fix it until she does. They will know at the fort. Order out here. Order. Must have order. The army has to uphold order. Hear that? Now take this. Tired of carrying it across the country.”
Sherman could never do a good deed without grumbling to prevent any accidental eruption of thanks and refused to let Kane even try to say the word, changing subjects and firing off orders.
“Got to get telegraph strung here. Stay in touch. No more private wars. Black Hills are trouble. No trouble here, Kane. Fix it.” He bellowed to an aide and barked out that the telegraph line must be extended to Rakeheart before the snow fell.
Rachel and the children left the car, the children still chewing something. Sherman took his hat off to her. She could see the men were talking and waited by the depot.
“Keep me informed.” Sherman turned to leave.
“General. What if I don’t want the job?”
A full belch of smoke emerged at that remark. Sherman moved to within inches of Kane’s face.
“Want it? Kane, none of us want this job. It’s the job we have to do. A world full of fools and drunks. That’s the real West, Kane! Look who comes out here, Kane, along with all the decent people who want to grow a family. Every card sharp, robber, thief, murderer, and loafer hoping for an easy way out. Don’t take ’em long to turn wild like wolves. Then the army has to save them when the Indians could do the world a favor and rid the world of a few of them. Sometimes, Kane, and say it I will deny it, I wish there had been an ocean no one could cross to protect the Indians. Great fighters. Men try to rob them blind and kill them when they get caught. Wish we could pack them off to some safe place or enlist them, but it don’t hold. It don’t work. Most of ’em would rather die than lose the land, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Sad. Dregs of the East drift out here. Someone has to control it. My job.” Multiple puffs. “Your job, now.”
The cigar wagged as Sherman talked.
“Sioux. Comanche. Had them in the army, we would have whipped Lee in a month. Their day is done, though. Can’t expect them to accept it. But we need order. Red, white, they break the law, shoot ’em. Whatever disturbs the peace, fix it, stop it, fight it, kill it if you have to.” He looked at the raw wood of the new store under construction. “Guess you know that already.”
Sherman looked out at the hills. Puffed a cloud.
“Settlers killing each other, whatever it is, we have to stop it before it gets out of hand, like this did. A territory without the law is not good, Kane. Report to me. Job is what it is, Kane. West needs law. Indians and whites alike. Justice. Job is yours. Pay’s better than you were getting, so no more objections. Think that girl wants a piano? Boy’s a little small, but when he’s ready for a good horse tell me.”
Kane w
as quiet so long that Sherman eventually stopped watching Rachel and the children and looked at him. “Well? What is it, Kane? Pay is what it is, Kane.”
“Wonderin’. Does this mean I have to salute?”
The lines in Sherman’s craggy face erupted in wrinkles as he grinned.
“Why start now?” Sherman gripped Kane’s hand hard enough to break it, pumped it as though drawing water from the deepest well in creation, reminded Kane to tell him when he should send a wedding gift, and then turned away, calling to an aide for coffee and cigars. He darted past Kane to tip his hat to Rachel and talk to the children one last time. Soon the special train—two locomotives sandwiching one car—was gone.
Rachel waited for it to puff its way out of sight, then came over to Kane. She laid her left hand on his right arm.
“What did your general say?”
“I get to stay here and work for him,” Kane said flatly.
“No.”
Kane frowned. “No?”
“Do you think a general in St. Louis is the boss you will listen to or a Comanche in Wyoming who makes you coffee?” she said with a laugh. “That is, if you have come to realize that Comanches are very particular about being married, and terrible things happen to men who take advantage of poor, defenseless young women. Anyhow, with winter coming on, the crew needs the bunkhouse, and I hear you are the king of slobs, and there would not be room enough for them and you. And as for the barn . . .”
“Horse never complains.”
“To you. The rest of us hear it all day long.”
“So that leaves the house, and that means . . .”
She mimicked him perfectly.
“ ’Zackly.”
Even Kane had to laugh.
“Your general has given you a gift, Kane,” she said. “The gift of a new life. Think about it.”
He was. He watched the train puff until its smoke was a distant tiny wisp of a cloud. He could feel Sherman taking the old life with him. Might not have been much of one, but he knew the rules. It fit him like an old boot. This new life? It was the life at which Wilkins failed. Most men failed. He probably would, too.
Then a small hand touched his. Libby.
“Mama says it is time to go home, Kane. Aren’t you coming?”
The past was now out of sight. The future was in the eyes of a girl who could look past the dust of her yesterdays and find hope in tomorrow, a boy with no father, a woman who defied the world every day, and a rock-hard frontier where only the strong could survive.
It was time. He squeezed her hand.
“Let’s go.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rusty Davis is a Spur Award–nominated writer who writes about the rugged individualists of the West as they fight for freedom against the corrupting influences of power and wealth. He draws his inspiration from the conflicts that raged across the towns and ranches of the High Plains in a time when men and women who wanted to fight for what was theirs needed to pick up a gun—and risk their lives—to do so. Davis is the author of two other westerns, Wyoming Showdown and Black Wind Pass, both published by Five Star. His next book, Spirit Walker: A Cheyenne Saga, which looks at the Cheyenne exodus from a different perspective, will also be published by Five Star. Davis can be reached by email at [email protected].
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