Ride to Valor

by David Robbins

  “This doesn’t have anything to do with Custer, does it, sir?” As James recollected, Stoneman was a great admirer of the colorful officer and had taken the news of Custer’s death particularly hard.

  “What’s wrong with wanting a little revenge?” Stoneman rejoined. “They’ve brought it down on their own heads. Are you with me or not?”

  “So long as it doesn’t put the men in more danger than we can handle,” James said.

  “Oh. You’re one of those.”

  “Sir?”

  “It used to be, the army molded hard men for a hard land. These days we mollycoddle recruits and hold their hands for them.”

  “I don’t mollycoddle anyone, sir.”

  “I’m not finished. So we train them barely enough to get by and send them out in the field where they’re barely more than useless. Because of that, certain officers think it best not to expose them to too much danger. I take it you’re one of those.”

  “If they’re as useless as you say,” James defended himself, “it’s up to us to ensure that their shortcomings don’t get them killed.”

  “That’s your view. Mine is that by pitting them against the enemy every chance we get, we mold them into the hard men they’re supposed to be.”

  “And a lot of them die in the process, sir.”

  Captain Stoneman shrugged. “You can’t cook eggs without breaking the shells.”

  “These are men, not eggs.”

  “Boys, is more apt. And they’ll stay that way unless we stop protecting them from becoming men.”

  James had met other officers who shared Stoneman’s view but few so passionate about it. “I repeat, sir,” he said. “I’ll back whatever you do so long as the men aren’t sacrificed.”

  Stoneman stared at him. “Very well. To the ends of the earth, but daintily.” He shook his head. “I mistakenly thought a West Point man would have more fire in his veins.”

  “I was a soldier before I was accepted at the academy, sir,” James said. “One of those mollycoddled recruits who was next to useless.”

  “Ah. So you feel you share a special bond with the misfits, is that it?”

  “I just don’t want them killed if we can help it, sir. Is that really so bad?”

  “No,” Captain Stoneman said, but he didn’t sound entirely sincere.

  For the rest of that day they only spoke to each other when they had to. James wrestled with his new insight into his fellow officer and how it might impact the patrol. He considered talking to Sergeant Strake, but Strake might tell Stoneman and Stoneman might resent it. So he kept his worries to himself.

  On the fourth day after the skirmish, the hostiles bore to the southwest.

  “Bound for the Black Hills would be my guess,” Captain Stoneman said.

  The Black Hills were the heart of Sioux country until recently. Gold had been found, and the government decided to open the Black Hills to settlement and move the Sioux elsewhere. The Sioux didn’t want to go.

  James spied a score of buzzards in their line of travel. So did Captain Stoneman.

  “Maybe the hostiles slaughtered some buffalo and left the remains.”

  It wasn’t buffalo. Two white men had been stripped and tortured. The things done to them reminded James of Kansas. The worst was their faces. Their flesh and their eyes and their noses had been literally scraped away, leaving hideously grinning skulls.

  Stoneman encouraged the men to dismount and inspect the bodies. “So you’ll appreciate what we’re up against,” he told them. He nudged a leg with his boot. “I wonder who they were.”

  “I can answer that,” Chester Gilliam said. Squatting, he indicated the tattoo of a ship’s anchor on a shoulder. “This here was Treywick, so that heavyset blob must be all that’s left of Clinton Burr.”

  “You’re positive?” Captain Stoneman asked.

  “Treywick was a sailor in his younger days,” Chester said. “He liked to tell sailin’ yarns around the fire and showed us that there tattoo more than once.” Chester laughed.

  “You find the deaths of your friends amusing?”

  “Hell. Friends is too strong. They run off when they should have stuck, so I’d say they got what they damn well deserved.”

  “You’re a hard man,” Captain Stoneman remarked, and grinned. “I like that.”

  “It’s a hard world,” Chester said.

  44

  Four days later the patrol came on wagon tracks.

  “Whoever it is,” James said as they examined the ruts, “they shouldn’t be here.”

  “They struck off on their own instead of sticking to the usual trails,” Captain Stoneman speculated. “The fools.”

  “You know how settlers are, sir,” Sergeant Strake said. “The grass is always greener where no one else has been.”

  James gazed to the north where the ruts disappeared into the heat haze and the vast heart of hostile country. “I’m not much of a tracker, but I’d say it’s a small wagon train. Ten to twenty wagons, no more.”

  “I agree, sir,” Sergeant Strake said.

  Paralleling the tracks were the unshod hoofprints of the war party they were pursuing.

  “Our duty is clear,” Captain Stoneman said. “We have to save them from themselves. We’ll go after them and escort them to the fort and hope to high heaven the hostiles don’t attack before we reach them.”

  Word was passed down the line. With lives at stake, a new grimness came over the troopers. James felt it, himself. The lives of innocent men, women, and children were at stake. They should have known better than to strike off on their own, but the prospect of a new and better life impelled them to put their lives at hazard. Thirst, starvation, hostiles, all took a high toll. Hopes and dreams were crashed to ruin on the jagged rocks of reality.

  The patrol rode hard, always mindful of their mounts. Frequent brief rests were called for.

  Fortunately there were only about twenty warriors in the war party. They wouldn’t go swooping down on the wagon train the moment they saw it. They’d wait to catch the settlers off their guard.

  The sun was relentless. Water became a concern. They needed to find some in the next several days or they and their animals would suffer.

  Chester Gilliam had taken to riding by James’s side, and one afternoon he grinned and said, “So, this is how you blue bellies earn your livin’? Ridin’ and fightin’.”

  “Pretty much,” James said. He didn’t mention the endless hours of drill and the thousand and one petty jobs around the fort when they weren’t out in the field.

  “That Howell is right. This army beats all. I could get used to this life right quick.”

  “It’s not all roses,” James said drily.

  “What life ever is?” The Southerner then related, “Me, I come from poor stock. We never had more than the clothes on our backs. Ma and Pa were powerful fond of one another, so we had us a big family. Eleven kids, and them, livin’ in a small cabin in a clearin’ in the backwoods.” His face lit at the memories. “I miss those days.”

  “Why’d you leave?”

  “Promise not to tell?”

  James nodded.

  “I got into a lick of trouble and had to light a shuck. There was this feller who wouldn’t leave my sister be, so I had to learn him not to.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “I’m not rightly sure. Ma and Pa were afeared I had, so they told me to make myself scarce. The sheriff of our county was big on hemp socials.” Chester looked at him. “You sure you won’t blab?”

  “I was in trouble a time or two in my younger days,” James said.

  “Yet here you are. You reckon the army will take me, then?”

  “The army isn’t all that particular about who enlists, and even less about what the recruits did before they signed up.”

  “Awful nice of them.”

  James laughed. “Nice” had nothing to do with it. There was always a shortage of men and officers, and enlistment quotas had to be filled.
>
  That evening the patrol made camp, as usual. After the sun was down, James looked for flickering points of light that would show they were getting close. The empty blackness was unrelieved.

  Captain Stoneman came up. “We can’t be that far behind. A day or two at the most.”

  “I could take two men and go on ahead,” James proposed. “Ride the whole night through if need be.”

  “To what end? Three men can’t hold the hostiles at bay.”

  “I could warn the settlers the hostiles are shadowing them,” James said. “I doubt they know.”

  Stoneman pursed his lips in thought. “I doubt they do, either. Very well. Pick your men. Ride your horses into the ground if you have to, but get to them.”

  James turned.

  “And, Doyle,” Stoneman said.

  “Sir?”

  “Try not to be scalped. Your coddling of the men aside, you’re a damn good officer.”

  45

  The prairie at night was a different world.

  James and the three men with him were ripples of motion in a sea of black. From out of it the wind bore the yips of coyotes and the occasional howls of wolves, and now and then a bleat or a sharp cry told of a meat-eater that would fill its belly.

  James rode at gallop despite the perils. Prairie dog towns were common, their burrows treacherous. A horse could easily break a leg and need to be put down.

  Every couple of hours James stopped. At their second rest, as he was peering in vain to the north, Private Plover cleared his throat.

  “Mind if I ask you a question, Lieutenant?”

  “Ask away,” James said.

  “Why me, sir?”

  “Pardon?” James was intent on spotting campfires.

  “Why did you pick me for this when you had your choice of any of the men?”

  “You show promise, Private,” James said.

  “Me, sir? Are you sure you don’t have me confused with someone else? What have I ever done that’s shown promise?”

  “You did well in the skirmish at the stream.”

  “Sir, I was scared silly.”

  “But you held your ground and did what you had to,” James praised him.

  “It’s the only fight I’ve ever been in.”

  “And that’s one more than most of the men. A couple more and you’ll be an old hand at it.”

  Plover laughed without mirth. “Don’t take me wrong, sir, but I could do without the experience.”

  “This is what that uniform you wear is all about,” James said. “You requited yourself well and I’ll say so in my report. Keep up as you are and you’ll make corporal before the year is out.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Private Plover said, although he didn’t sound grateful.

  Private Howell had been listening to their exchange.

  “That’s why you brought him along, Lieutenant, but why’d you bring me?”

  “You like to fight.”

  Howell grinned. “Like you say, it comes with the uniform. And you’re right, by God. If there’s anything I like more than a good scrape, I’ve yet to find it.”

  “Never been with a woman, have you?” Chester Gilliam teased.

  “You shouldn’t even be here,” Private Howell said. “You’re not a soldier, so why’d you come?”

  “We’re pards, ain’t we?” Chester replied. “It was right kind of the captain to let me tag along.”

  “The condition was,” James thought it prudent to remind him, “that you follow my orders at all times. I trust you’ll be as good as your word?”

  “Hell, Yank,” Chester said. “A man who doesn’t do as he says he will ain’t no man at all.”

  By midnight James was shrugging off fatigue. By two a.m. a brisk wind had picked up and to the west the sky flared with vivid flashes.

  “Lightning, sir,” Private Howell said. “There’s a storm headin’ our way.”

  No, it was an isolated thunderhead, common on the plains at that time of year, and it passed well to the north of them.

  A little later James’s horse snorted and bobbed its head, and he drew rein.

  The others did the same.

  Ahead loomed a vague bulk. James’s first thought was that it must be a buffalo and he unlimbered his carbine. Warily, he gigged his horse forward.

  The bulk didn’t move or make a sound.

  “Why, it’s a wagon,” Chester Gilliam declared.

  The sharp-eyed Southerner was right. A prairie schooner, canted at an angle owing to a busted rear wheel, a spare wheel lying on the ground next to it. A jack had been placed under the axle, but the owner got no further. The man lay naked and spread eagle, his scalp and his genitals missing, his eyes empty sockets. The contents of the wagon were scattered about, much of it broken. The canvas top had been cut to ribbons. James almost missed spying a woman on her side on the seat, curled as if in sleep, a broken arrow jutting from her bosom. The Indians hadn’t torn off her homespun dress or mutilated her in any way.

  “Why didn’t the other settlers bury the bodies?” Private Plover wondered.

  “Could be they’d gone on ahead,” Chester Gilliam said. “Could be this’n here told them to after his wheel broke. Probably didn’t want to slow them any and reckoned he’d catch up quick.”

  That was James’s assessment, as well. “The hostiles saw their chance and took it. Keep your carbines handy, men.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the stillness was shattered by war cries and a shot.

  “At a trot,” James commanded.

  They hadn’t gone fifty yards when another shot and a chorus of savage whoops were punctuated by a hideous shriek, followed by an ominous silence.

  James changed his mind. He slowed to a walk before they were heard.

  From up ahead came a commotion followed by a flurry of retreating hoofbeats and then more silence.

  “What do you make of it, sir?” Private Plover whispered.

  “Not another word,” James said.

  They went a quarter of a mile and might have ridden past the body if not for Chester Gilliam, who had eyes like a cat. “Over here, Lieutenant,” he said, and reined to the right.

  The man was dressed in overalls. His long beard was stained with the blood that had gushed from a hole the size of James’s fist. He had been scalped.

  “Looks to be a farmer, sir,” Private Howell said.

  “What was he doing here?” Plover asked.

  “Sent to see what was keeping the wagon with the broken wheel,” was James’s hunch. “He blundered into the hostiles and there’s the result.”

  “That could be us if we’re not careful,” Chester said.

  “Don’t say things like that,” Private Plover criticized. “It’s bad luck.”

  “Spare me your superstitions, Yank. I never was one for rabbit’s feet and four-leaf clovers. My pappy swore by ’em, but he never had any great luck nohow.”

  “Cover me.” James dismounted and went through the farmer’s pockets. All he found were a few coins, a folding knife, and a small ball of twine. He put them in his saddlebags, saying, “I’ll give these to his relatives if he has any.” His saddle creaked as he climbed on. “From here on, no talking unless I say. Understood?”

  The dark seemed alive with shadows. Twice James nearly drew rein because he thought he saw someone on horseback. But it was a trick of the pale starlight and his imagination.

  By James’s reckoning dawn was an hour off when he raised his tired eyes to the north and beheld a shimmering orange finger.

  “We’ve found them,” he announced, and drew rein.

  Private Plover forgot James’s earlier order and asked, “Why did we stop, sir?”

  “We’ll dismount and lead our horses and be as quiet as we can be,” James explained. “The hostiles are no doubt watching the camp and we want to sneak in without them knowing.”

  “And we got to be careful those settlers don’t shoot us by mistake,” Chester said.

&nb
sp; “There’s that,” James agreed.

  46

  The seventeen wagons were in a circle, aligned rear to tongue. Horses and oxen were picketed inside the ring to prevent their being run off. James was pleased to see they had taken the precaution but not so pleased that only one man was standing guard. Or, rather, sitting guard, since he was cross-legged by the fire, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, a rifle across his lap.

  Frontier protocol called for James to hail the camp, but if he did he’d wake everyone. The old man didn’t hear him walk up to the fire and gave a start when he shook him.

  “Are you a soldier or am I dreaming?”

  “Touch my arm,” James said. “I’m real enough.”

  “Where did you come from? Did you drop out of the sky or sneak up on me like an Injun?”

  “Do you see any wings on my back?” James said. “Wake up, old fellow. Your situation is serious.”

  Shaking himself, the old man stiffly rose. “I’m awake. What do you mean by serious? And who are you? I’m Ezekiel Smith.” He rattled on without taking a breath. “My pa and his pa before him were all from Maryland and I was, too, until my son took it into his head to come west and I tagged along to lend him a hand and have someone to talk to since my Martha passed away nigh seven years now.”

  James held up a hand. “Save your family history. I’d rather hear how it is with this train in a minute.”

  “Sure thing.” Ezekiel yawned and scratched himself.

  James posted the troopers and Gilliam as sentries. “Keep a sharp eye. It’s a wonder, given how careless these people are, that the hostiles haven’t struck before now.”

  “When do we get to sleep, sir?” Private Plower asked.

  “When I say so. I wouldn’t advise doing it while you’re keeping watch or you might have your throat slit.”

  James returned to the fire. The old man had sat back down and added a log.

  “Wait until the captain sees you,” Ezekiel said. “He’ll be happy you came along.”

  “Captain?” James said.

  “Oh, he’s not a real captain like you.”

  “I’m a lieutenant.”

  “We call him captain on account of he’s the wagon boss and that’s what some call their wagon bosses. Captain Guttman. We paid him good money to bring us to Oregon Country.”