Until Darkness Disappears (A Saga of Texas)

by Will Cook

  “A few heads are going to come off, Ben.”

  “That a promise?”

  “Yes,” Gary said. “As good as I can make right now.”

  Ben Stagg nodded. “I guess I will have one of those cigars, if the offer’s still open.” He leaned forward for his light and sagged against the wall, puffing gently.

  The cook, for such short notice, did a good job. He had some roast beef and potatoes, with pan gravy reheated, and some peach pie. Gary didn’t go into the mess building with General Caswell and McCabe. As soon as Stagg had eaten, he came out and walked across the compound to the barn where he spread out his bedding.

  Gary remained in his office, while Captain Conrad along with Carl Beeman made sure that the Indians were being properly entertained. They were making a frightful racket. They always did when they were having a good time. As long as they whooped it up, Gary knew that they were happy.

  He heard the shot, although it was muffled by the walls of the building, and he got up and went outside to the porch. The dancing and drum beating went on undiminished. Caswell poked his head out of the mess door and said: “What was that? I thought I heard a shot.”

  Jim Gary said: “General, I’m afraid that was Jason Ivers resigning.”

  Caswell threw his napkin down. “What the hell’s that? What are you talking about?”

  “General, I wish you’d step inside and talk with me,” Gary said. He saw Conrad coming at a trot and made a motion with his hand, and Conrad veered, moving toward the quarters Jason Ivers occupied. General Caswell came down the walk and went inside Gary’s quarters with him. Gary motioned him to a chair.

  Before he could speak, Conrad came in, nodded once, and said: “Right through the heart, Major. I guess it was the only way out he knew.”

  Caswell’s eyes darted from man to man. “Suicide? That fine man? By God, somebody had better explain this and fast, too.” Then he looked at Jim Gary’s expression, and he knew that he was going to get an explanation he wasn’t going to like.

  Lieutenant Carl Beeman was given the honor of calling on Commissioner Elwood Butler and Clive Maybank. All the way in to Fort Reno, Beeman had been turning over in his mind exactly how he intended to handle it. When he decided, he measured the risks and found them substantial, but he was no longer afraid of risks, and he could hardly remember what it felt like not to have confidence.

  He found the two deputy marshals, Hutchins and Speer, in their office, for the jail was still crowded, and after the shooting no one had ordered the prisoners released. The judge was waiting word from Major Gary concerning the pursuit and capture of Llano Vale. Carl Beeman took care not to tell the marshals that Vale was dead.

  Butler and Maybank were still at the Drover’s, and neither seemed glad to see Carl Beeman, which was understandable. They were even less pleased to see that Beeman had the two deputy marshals with him.

  “I’m happy to have caught you two gentlemen in,” Beeman said, smiling in his most agreeable manner. “I say that because it is more convenient to make an arrest here than to pursue you singly about the country. Wouldn’t you agree, Marshal Speer?”

  “It does beat chasin’ ’em,” Speer said dryly.

  “Arrest?” Maybank said. “On what charge?”

  “Of paying Llano Vale twenty dollars to kill Lovering,” Beeman said. “Was that all he was worth?” He looked from one to the other, and shook his head. He made a clucking noise and polished his glasses.

  “Wait until Senator Ivers hears of this,” Butler snapped. “You won’t be in the Army long.”

  “I’m afraid there won’t be any recourse there,” Beeman said. “You see, Major Gary confronted the senator at Fort Reno. Before he killed himself, he made a clean breast of it, and….” Mr. Beeman paused.

  Maybank was in a rage. He walked around the room, his temper in charge, swearing and accusing, and Butler was trying to shut him up. But the bung had been knocked out of the barrel; everything just spilled out until there wasn’t any more. The marshals produced their handcuffs, and, only when they clicked around Maybank’s wrists, did he stop talking. He tried to kick Mr. Beeman, lost his balance, and fell. The marshals hauled him up and out of there. Butler was brought along, but he was quieter and gave up more easily.

  After it was over, Beeman walked over to the saloon and sided Sergeant Geer, who had the detail lined up. They were cutting a great thirst. There was some time before the southbound was due, and Beeman toyed with the idea of getting drunk but decided it just wasn’t the thing to do.

  A man down along the bar sidled up, and at first Beeman didn’t recognize him. Then he remembered him—Gunderson, one of the ranchers he’d helped out—it seemed like ten years ago.

  “I want to buy you a drink, Lieutenant,” Gunderson said, and motioned for the bartender to move their way. With the glasses filled, Gunderson raised his. “I like to do business with a tomcat. Here’s to clean air and quick hangings.”

  “Treat the Indians right so I won’t have to come back,” Beeman suggested. “I like it here, but….” He smiled and left the rest in the air, sure that Gunderson would understand.

  By train time, the troopers were in a singing mood, but Geer had not allowed them to drink so much that they turned disorderly. They loaded their horses and their badly used gear, and Geer formed them into ranks. He got them into one of the passenger coaches, and the civilians stood around and watched, not quite sure how they felt about the Army, but certainly aware that they had caused a stir.

  Mr. Beeman had consumed enough whisky to brighten his eyes and bring color to his cheeks, just enough to elevate his optimism to a high plateau. He rocked back and forth on his heels, a cigar jauntily clamped between his teeth, and surveyed his surroundings which he was sure were definitely beneath his station. He was thinking of Camp Verde and his wife and child, and of how much he had missed them, and within him was a determination to romp a bit with the child, and then.. . .

  A slight commotion disturbed his speculation. He looked down the platform where an Indian woman and a small child were being jostled by a civilian. The accumulated wrath of every down-trodden person since the beginning of time rose in Beeman, and he dashed there and grabbed the man by the collar. He bounced him heavily against the steel side of the coach and put a great lump on his head. The man lost his hat and his belligerence, and he sat down in the cinders and moaned and held his head. Beeman bowed to the Indian woman.

  Then he saw the reddish-brown hair and the surprised blue eyes, and he knew that she was not an Indian. The child was part Indian, and everything became plain to Beeman.

  He said: “Madam, I’m sure you would be more comfortable in the other coach.” He offered his arm, and, after a brief hesitation, she took it. A pigeon-faced elderly woman with a prune mouth said—“Well, I certainly never!”—and flounced onto the train, her sensitivity mortally wounded.

  The crowd parted, and Beeman picked up the child to carry him. The woman would have walked behind him, Indian-style, but he would not permit that.

  Sergeant Geer, wondering what had happened to Beeman, came to the vestibule step, looked out, and saw them. He grinned and said—“Here, now, little bugger.”—and took the boy, handling him gently.

  They got in the coach, and the conductor waved the train under way. Beeman and the woman took the seat Geer had been saving. Beeman introduced himself and the sergeant. The woman said: “I’ve seen you on the reservation, and I waited.” She looked at Geer, grizzled, unshaven, with his kind brown eyes and tobacco-stained smile. “My man was not good, but he was not bad, either. To go back … well, I couldn’t make a mistake.”

  “What’s your name?” Beeman asked.

  “Elsie Breedon. I was ten then. That was nine years ago.” She put her arm around the boy; he was three, with large brown eyes and dark hair. “There were two others, older. They died. He’s all I have.”

  “My dear,” Beeman said gently, “life will be easier for you now.”

  “There
are others,” Elsie Breedon said. “They’re afraid to leave. You must help them.”

  “We will,” Beeman said. “Believe me, we will. We will never give up. Isn’t that right, Sergeant?”

  “It sure is, Mister Beeman.”

  In the hour before dawn, General Tremain Caswell left his bed, dressed, and walked the short distance from his quarters to the headquarters building. A fire burned in the fireplace, casting an irregular, reddish light into the room, and through the front window he could see Gary sitting there, a cigar between his fingers and a half-empty bottle by his elbow.

  Caswell went in and said: “I couldn’t sleep worth a damn. You either?” He backed to the fire and let it warm him. “Feels like snow in the air. An early winter, I suppose.”

  Gary looked at him. He had been drinking some but he was not drunk. “General, some years ago I had to tell her that her father was dead and that her fiance had married another woman. Now I have got to tell her that her husband killed himself? Don’t I ever bring her anything but grief?” He stared at the floor for a time.

  “What the hell else can you tell her?” Caswell said gruffly. “Who likes it, Jim? I sure don’t.” He laughed without humor. “Beeman sure slammed the door on Maybank and Butler, didn’t he?” He fished through his pockets for a cigar, then bent to the fire, and used a glowing piece of wood for his light.

  Gary got up and went over to the desk and brought back a piece of paper. “This is my report, General. I’d like your endorsement so I can forward it.”

  Taking it, Caswell turned so that the firelight fell upon it. He read a bit, then raised his eyes sharply to Gary who was watching with a neutral expression. “Jim, you can’t.. . .”

  He closed his mouth and read on. When he had finished, he stood there, saying nothing. Then he moved to the desk, scratched a match to light the lamp, dipped the pen into the ink pot, and scrawled his signature.

  He left the report on the desk and turned back to the fire. “Captain Conrad . . . ?”

  “Captain Conrad is in complete agreement with me as to how it happened,” Gary said quickly. “An accidental discharge of his firearm while cleaning it.”

  “And Beeman?”

  “General, a bright young officer destined to make captain soon surely wouldn’t question the report of his commanding officer.”

  “I see,” Caswell said. “Jim, I hope you get away with it.” He drew on his cigar. “Are you going to take him back on the train?”

  “No,” Gary said. “We’ll bury him here. Full military honors. If at a later date the government wants to move him….” He shrugged and let it remain a speculation. “Or whatever they do with heroes.”

  “There’ll be stories.”

  “They’ll be lies.”

  “Butler and Maybank will talk, Jim.”

  “Their word against an official report endorsed by you, sir.”

  Caswell gnawed his lower lip. “Well, I suppose we can weather it out.” He shied his cigar into the fireplace. “There are times when I’ve sat at my desk and looked out my office window and wondered if anything would ever really come out right. Do you ever get that feeling, Jim?”

  “Often, General.”

  Caswell drew a chair around and sat down in front of Gary, with the warmth of the fire between them. To the east the palest blush of dawn was turning the sky light along the edge, and it slowly marched up and over the far hills. Then a bugle broke the silence, clear and sharp in the cold air, and the Army began another day.

  Caswell got up and said: “I’ll catch the train out of here, Jim. There’s no need for me to go back.” He smiled warmly. “There’ll be paperwork six inches high on my desk, and you’ll have problems of your own when you get back.”

  “General,” Jim Gary said, “I’ve got problems I’ve never even heard of.” He put away the whisky bottle and blew out the lamp. His depression was gone now. He flung open the door and let in the cold air and breathed deeply, filling himself with the biting freshness. He let it chase the staleness out of the room and out of his mind. Then he saw Captain Conrad approaching and went to meet him.

  Yesterday was the past now. This was a new sun coming up, a new sun and yesterday’s shadows died with the darkness. The world was born afresh each day.

  PART TWO

  1905

  Chapter Eight

  A child stick-balling a tin can down the street woke Martin Hinshaw, and, before he opened his eyes, he knew how the day was going to be—bad, just as every day had been for the last three months. Yesterday had been the worst of all for Martin Hinshaw. In the bucking horse contest, he had mounted a mean animal and got pitched badly. Later, in the bull-riding event, he had drawn one that had been sired by Satan and acted as though he had a belly full of hot chili peppers. When it came to the calf-roping event, his luck had deserted him completely for the little critter hooked his pony and gave him the worst fall of the day. An hour later a Louisiana sheriff had served papers on the rodeo owner and attached all the assets that weren’t much to begin with. All of which left Martin Hinshaw sore in body, battered in spirit, and completely mangled in the pocketbook.

  A fly began a droning dance on the dirty ceiling, and he gave up and opened his eyes. Carefully, so as not to excite strained muscles, he swung his bare feet to the floor. His room was small, one of the cheapest he could find on Bourbon Street, and he knew he’d spent his last night in it.

  Hinshaw was twenty-five, a rather small man with a wiry, compact body. His face was broad and angular, and there was a bulldog bluntness to his features, a rough, unfinished look about him. He sat on the edge of his bed, clad only in the bottom half of his underwear. On the cracked marble top of the dresser he had laid out for easy counting a silver dollar, a quarter, two nickels, and six pennies. This was the end of the money, the end of the three-year-long thoughtless run that had led him to Canada and New York and all points in between. It represented to him the last hammered-home bit of bitter knowledge that he’d done his foolish things, hurt all the people a man had to hurt before he grew up, ignored all the advice, indulged his headstrong ways.

  The street below began to grow noisy with peddlers, and he knew it was time to get out. He stood up, went to the washstand, and splashed water on his face, then got out his shaving gear. While he bladed his cheeks clean, he thought of his Texas again, and he could close his eyes and smell the eternal dust of the plains and then the sea breeze sweeping in the flavors of the Gulf, and the longing to quit this useless life was so strong that it knotted his stomach.

  Finished with his shave, he dressed, picked up his small suitcase and silver-mounted saddle, and quit the hotel by tossing his key and a dollar on the clerk’s counter as he passed through the lobby.

  A pawnbroker gave him thirty dollars for the saddle, although the silver alone was worth three hundred. Martin Hinshaw offered no argument at all. He pocketed the money and turned toward the nearest streetcar tracks and took one to the railroad station. He bought his ticket, declined to check his suitcase through, and went over to a vacant bench and sat down to wait for his train. He thought it strange that he should be going back in almost the same manner in which he had left—broke. Quite by accident he had passed through Laredo several years back, but he had remained aboard the train while it took on coal and water, and afterward he had cursed himself for being a coward. Yet his shame had been so acute that he couldn’t leave his seat. And all the time he had kept telling himself that his father was dead, and it was done, and he could never change it. Yet he knew he had run out and left him alone to die, and it made a sickness in his stomach just thinking about it.

  The depot was a busy place. People were rushing here and there and all talking until there wasn’t much of a distinguishable sound, just a babble, a foreign tongue made up of words all run together. A child stopped before him and stared curiously at his high hat and spike-heeled Mexican boots, then the mother came along and scoldingly towed him away. Martin Hinshaw remembered that his mother had
done that, and he’d always hoped the day would come when she’d stop it. Finally she did, but something else came along and towed him. He guessed a man would always be pulled by something.

  Near the depot entrance, a crowd formed and moved along like bees around a hive. His attention was drawn there by the sudden run of Spanish, a language he had learned along with English. In the center of this throng he saw a high Texas hat with a high Texas man under it, an old man who limped along in spite of the crowd, making his way relentlessly toward the tiers of waiting-room benches.

  Amid the noise and confusion, the tall Texan was a pinnacle of calm as he forced his way to one of the benches. It was then that Hinshaw saw that he had another man in tow, a young Mexican dressed in velvet and silver. An entourage of young girls swarmed about the Mexican, laughing and shoving one another to kiss him, and on the tall Texan’s face there was no expression at all.

  There was a year’s bucking-horse prize money in silver on the Mexican’s clothes, and it angered Hinshaw, raised again in him his Texas dislike for the race. Then he saw the handcuff on the Mexican’s wrist, and, when the Texan brushed his coat aside, Hinshaw caught the glint of a familiar badge and the polished walnut butt of a pistol, and he felt better about it. The Mexican was the Texas Ranger’s prisoner, something that seemed a natural relationship to Hinshaw.

  The Texan was a tower of a man, gray at the temples and lined of face. He was crowding sixty, Hinshaw supposed, yet he was a solid man with a fierce, angular face. In his left hand he carried a heavy walking stick and used it to favor his left leg.

  The two men, captor and prisoner, sat on the bench until train time, and the women made love to the Mexican while men brought food and wine and the women fed it to him. All the time the Mexican laughed and joked as though this captivity was merely a temporary thing.

  Through it all the tall Texan sat like a stone image, a monument of patience, alive only in his eyes which darted about constantly as though he was determined not to be taken unaware. Occasionally he glanced at his watch to mark the passage of time. Then the caller announced the train, and the entourage set up a wail as the Texan forced his prisoner to his feet and made him walk slightly ahead through the wrought-iron boarding gates. Hinshaw left his place, for he was taking the same train, and he trailed the Texan through the crowd.