Winter Rain

by Terry C. Johnston

  The growing commotion outside the lodge drew their attention once more.

  As did most of the others in that circle, Tall Bull turned to the two young boys running up to the council lodge at full speed. He asked them, “What is this?”

  “Our scouts!” huffed one of the two, out of breath. “They ride back on the run.”

  “On the run?” Tall Bull asked.

  “They bring word of the white man.”

  “I think we will attack soon!” Wolf Friend cried in happiness.

  Tall Bull grabbed one of the boys by his shoulders. “What is this news of the white man? Where?”

  “Pile of Bones saw marching soldiers.”

  “Soldiers?” White Horse asked, crowding close upon the boy now.

  His young head bobbed as he caught his breath from his run. “Pile of Bones saw them. Many. He says there are ten-times-ten for each finger on one hand.”

  White Horse looked around the circle of warriors. “Surely these are the same soldiers who have dogged our trail for more than a moon.”

  Bull grinned, spreading his arms wide as he roared joyously, “It is good, my friends! These swallows follow the hawk too closely. Now the hawk will turn and destroy the sparrows in one bite!”

  “Attack!” shouted White Horse.

  “Aiyeee! We kill them all!” Tall Bull roared.

  Giddy with blood lust, Bull growled, “Swallow every last one of the sparrows and spit out their bones!”

  17

  Early July 1869

  GRITTA STARED AT the water crock, unsure that her prayers had really been answered. Not quite ready to believe the Negro had turned his back on the crock and left the tent without it.

  Yet there it stood on the table, next to the tin bowl that he filled with warm water for her every morning. Beside the bowl lay the dingy scrap of coarse linen and a sliver of black soap she was expected to use in bathing herself. By itself the heat of this land was enough to make a person stink, not to mention the stench left on her skin by the grunting beast who had dressed and left only minutes ago. Almost immediately the Negro had come in with the steaming crock, poured some hot water in the tin bowl, set out the linen and soap, then hurried off without taking the crock.

  Outside she could hear the big man’s voice booming in laughter, hear the clatter of fork and knife on his plate as he went about his breakfast. This same ritual he practiced every morning, seated at his table in the shade of the tent awning after he had completed his foul business with her. Such a creature of habit, this one.

  She stared at the crock.

  Somewhere inside, a small voice echoed, dimly calling out to her in a voice Gritta did not recognize. Not at first. Yet it was the voice of a woman calling to her, a voice somehow familiar. Tantalizing her with the promise of release from woe: a means to leave behind this mortal, earthly veil.

  “Don’t wait. You can’t afford to tarry a minute longer.”

  Whirling about, Gritta expected to find someone chiding her. But found no one there in the tent with her.

  Loud noises swallowed up the small voice and invaded her small, private world. Horses whinnied and stamped out there, just beyond these tent walls. Something deep within her, something that clung on to the familiar routine of each day now reminded Gritta that the men would be breaking camp shortly.

  “You must act now—if you are going to act at all,” scolded the tiny voice inside her head.

  She glanced over her shoulder again, found no one there, and shuddered to think it was her disembodied soul speaking to her. Ordering. Demanding.

  “The crock. Go to the crock.”

  Glancing one last time at the gap in the tent flaps, Gritta willfully stepped over to them and straightened the canvas so that they overlapped, just as she did whenever she sponged herself of the mornings before leaving the tent and boarding the ambulance to ride out the day. She went back to the table where the bowl and crock sat, then stared down at her hands. They had gone soft, not feeling like her hands at all. Marveling at their smooth texture, she ran one over the other, then pushed up the loose sleeve on the left arm and gripped that wrist tightly in the vise of her right hand. The white skin slowly bulged as the blood trapped in the veins, gone bluish beneath her skin—so pale now after so, so long without the sun. They did not look as if they were her hands.

  Perhaps it would not hurt her—since these were not her hands any longer.

  “The crock. Take the crock.”

  “Yes,” aloud she answered obediently, releasing her wrist and seizing the tall crock between her trembling hands.

  “Break it!”

  Bringing it over her head, she flung it down against the edge of the table, clenching her eyes at the explosion as shards and slivers rained across her, warm water splattered, steamy, drenching the front of her open dressing gown. The sudden flush of moist heat felt welcome, reassuring as she fell to her knees in the muddy puddle there beneath the tiny table and found what she was instructed to find.

  “A big one. Do it right the first time!”

  Savagely dragging the gleaming shard of crockery across her wrist once, she gazed down at the sundered flesh beading with the bright red blood.

  “Again! Cut it—you must hurry! Cut it—again, again!”

  Once more, twice, then three times more she raked the shard across her inner wrist. Shiny, gleaming, warm liquid made her swoon as she crouched there on her knees, drenched with crimson as the clamor suddenly ballooned around her.

  Hands seized her, yanking Gritta’s left arm away from her body, other hands grappling with her right hand, prying the sharp sliver of crockery locked in her fingers. Gritta felt far more pain in those fingers the others bent backward than she felt in that welcome, reassuring warmth in the wrist.

  “Damn you! Damn you, George!”

  “I’m sorry. So sorry, Colonel Usher!”

  “Get her feet!” Usher ordered as Gritta began kicking to free herself: lashing out, flailing about at those rescuing her.

  There were more than two of them on her now. The fog of faces, smells, cursing voices all tumbled together as they pinned her legs, lifted her.

  “Get the wrist, dammit!” Usher growled. “Stop that bleeding.”

  “She’s fighting too much, Colonel! Goddamn—it’s just spraying all over me!”

  “George—by God! Get something and wrap her wrist!”

  “Yessir!”

  As they threw her down on the mattress, yanking her arms out from her body and pinning her legs atop the rumpled blankets, Gritta began to sense the first rise of pain in the wrist. The warmth was seeping out of her—replaced by spidering slivers of a cold so icy, she knew she had done some damage.

  In the struggle an arm crossed in front of her eyes, and she snapped for it, feeling the taut flesh give beneath her teeth.

  “Eeeeiks! The bitch … she’s got a holt of me! Get her off! Get the goddamned bitch off me!”

  Someone pulled her hair, yanking her head back brutally. Gritta felt some of her hair come loose as she struggled against them, at the same time sensing some of the flesh tear loose from the man’s arm still locked between her teeth. His blood felt warm and thick on her tongue as the pain grew across her scalp.

  “Jesus damned Christ! Lookit this, Colonel! The bitch gone and took a hunk outta my arm.”

  “Damn you, woman!” Usher bellowed.

  She saw his arm swinging toward her, his balled fist at the end of it like a blur, and unflinchingly met it with the side of her face, staring up at him with a smile on her lips. Her head lolled crazily to the side. Usher swung at her again, backhanding her across the other cheek. Still she looked up at him with real triumph lighting those cloudy blue eyes of hers.

  Usher glared at her, his eyes wide with disgust, starting to pummel her again.

  Gritta glanced over at the wounded man gripping his bloody arm, dark fluid oozing between his fingers where he held himself. Then she looked back at Usher and spat her tormentor’s bloody
flesh right into Usher’s face.

  His left hand swiped the bloody gore from one eye, some of it trickling down into the black mustache and beard, his face twisting into something of unmitigated terror. Usher struck her with an open palm, again and again and again until she sensed the bile burning the back of her throat.

  Coughing it back, choking down on her own vomit, Gritta was powerless to move against the hold they had on her as she convulsed on the hot, stinging fluid trapping her lungs. She felt herself slipping away.

  Blessed, blessed death—come take the one who is ready.

  “You got that wrist now?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Simes!”

  “Colonel?”

  “You and Hampton take George outside.”

  “Sir?”

  “Take the nigger outside and tie him to that cottonwood by the fire.”

  “Tie him—”

  “Yes, by damn! George will be punished for this.”

  “Colonel—I’m terrible sorry for—”

  “Get the nigger out of here! Now!”

  The commotion quieted somewhat after that, allowing Gritta to turn her head, to roll it slightly to the side and spit out the blood from the wounded man, spit out her own blood from the tongue she had cut on her teeth, spewing free the sour, stinging bile trapped at the back of her throat where it had gagged her.

  Convulsing for a moment, Gritta knew she was going to die as Usher dragged her head back so she would have to stare directly into his face, her chin clamped painfully in the palm of his hand.

  She winced as his other hand brushed some of her hair out of her eyes, his fingers then tracing down the side of her cheek, where she flinched with pain, sensing, that her flesh was already puffing in hot protest to the beating. In the end his fingers stopped at her throat, where they slowly, agonizingly tightened.

  She had no will to fight him. As her eyes rolled back in her head she thought she saw other faces behind his. But they only watched in fascination as Usher tightened his grip all the more. No one held her now. Her arms felt light and free: she could grab his hand, pull it away from her throat if she had wanted. But Gritta did not try to stop him. She wanted him to kill her.

  Though she could not speak with her lips, her eyes told him what to do. In silent triumph they roared out at Usher.

  “Kill me! Yes go ahead and kill me!”

  The warmth trickled from the corners of her eyes as he released his crushing grip on her windpipe. Gritta’s body betrayed her, savagely drawing in that first hungry draught of air.

  “Don’t — you — ever — try — something — like — this — again,” he said each word singly, menacingly, almost at a whisper so that she felt stung by the hot breath of each syllable flung against her face.

  Usher leaned back from her, drawing out one of his long-barreled pistols, and placed the muzzle against her temple.

  “This would be too damned easy, woman.”

  He drew the hammer back, his face working around those glowing eyes, contorting as it twisted one way, then another, before a sinister smile finally eased the contours of the face above hers. Usher slowly dragged the pistol’s muzzle down her swollen cheek, down the bruised flesh of her neck, circling one breast, then tracing its way down to her groin. He jammed the muzzle hard against her pubic bone.

  Again she betrayed herself, and tears flowed with the pain he caused her, working the pistol barrel inside her.

  “Here. This is where you hate me most, isn’t it?”

  She only stared, silently weeping, beginning to hurt across every inch of her body. Shame hurt her most of all.

  He slapped her again, hard enough that she felt the flesh of her cheek tear against her teeth. Still, she forced herself to stare up at the taunting, smiling face hovering in the heat above hers. Usher drove a fist into her cheek again, then pressed the pistol barrel deeper into the most private part of her—where he had defiled her time and again across the eternity she had suffered with him.

  “You’d like me to kill you—wouldn’t you, woman?”

  He released the hammer slowly, then cocked it again, over and over as he rubbed his crotch luridly with a left hand, then suddenly turned to the others in the tent.

  “Tie her to the bed. Tight. I don’t want her getting loose while I’m outside seeing to the nigger.”

  Usher wheeled about, ramming the pistol back in its holster at the front of his hip, and tore through the tent flaps.

  “Wagon master!”

  “Colonel?”

  “Bring me your whip!”

  As two men began lashing her to the rough-hewn posts of the prairie bed, she heard George begin to whim per, begging Usher to stay his hand. In the utter stillness of that morning George begged for his master to grant him mercy—

  Then came the first crack and the Negro’s shrill cry. Almost inhuman. Like the soul-grating screams of the women Usher’s men used up before they were killed.

  Again and again the whip snarled against flesh, until George’s cries softened into the blubbering whimpers of an infant, sobbing incoherently.

  “Pull him down!” Usher ordered beyond the tent flaps. “Throw him in one of the wagons and let’s be moving—I want to put forty miles behind us today—put this piece of country far behind me!”

  Gritta listened as the men who had tied her stood at the flaps, holding them aside and staring out.

  “He opened that nigger up like a gutted hog,” one of them whispered.

  “Never’d want him to take a whip to me, not that one.”

  Her sundered wrist was bound with a thick strip of her dressing gown, around which they had looped the rope. Her scalp burned where the hair had been torn loose, her eyes grown as puffy as her lips, the blood’s ooze slowing.

  Gritta cried bitter, slow tears, cursing herself as she listened to George’s blubbering fading in the distance as they dragged him down, hauling him off to a wagon.

  She cursed the voice that had driven her to this. Not that she regretted the pain she had brought upon herself. Instead, the woman cursed herself for the selfishness that had brought such evil down upon the Negro.

  She vowed when she next tried to kill herself that she would not put another living soul in the path of Jubilee Usher’s wrath.

  18

  Early July 1869

  SHAD FELT SORRY for the young soldiers that Monday morning as the column was breaking camp. The day before had been the Fourth of July—and because of it Carr had kept a tight rein on his troops. He ordered all guns kept silent, with no wastage of ammunition. It hadn’t been much of an Independence Day, most grumbled that morning as orders came down to saddle up: not much fun singing songs of flag and country, without firing off a round or two in celebration.

  Flag and country—these sentiments seemed about as far away for these youngsters at this moment as the Oriental silk trade would seem to an old Rocky Mountain beaver trapper.

  As he finished saddling and dropped the stirrup over the cinch, Shad Sweete heard his name called out and turned to find Cody reining his big buckskin to a halt.

  “Where we riding off to today, Bill?” he asked, gazing up at the young scout.

  “Ain’t we, not this morning, Shad,” Cody answered, crossing his wrists over the saddle horn. “You’re riding out with Lieutenant Becher’s Pawnee patrol.”

  “The German?”

  Cody nodded.

  “Sounds like Carr’s got different work lined out for you.”

  “Wants me to keep this column’s nose pointed north. Figures that’s where the Cheyenne are.” Cody gazed off into the distance. “They’re out there somewhere.”

  Shad stuffed a moccasin in a stirrup and lifted his immense frame into the saddle. “We’ll find them, Bill. That, or them Injuns find us first.”

  “Either way—Carr will get his fight.”

  “I see it through the same keyhole as you, Bill,” Shad agreed. “Carr wants a fight of it—to show what this outfit’s made of.”<
br />
  “Can’t blame the man—especially after Custer’s had him all the opportunity to write his own name in glory.”

  “Keep your eyes on the skyline today, Cody,” Shad said, nudging heels into his mount and easing away. “I smell Injuns on the wind.”

  A Nebraska resident like the North brothers, Gustavus W. Becher had come to America from Germany less than nine years before. He had immediately joined the Union Army and proved himself a capable leader. In his late thirties, Becher was now one of Major Frank North’s white officers, commissioned as a lieutenant and assigned immediate command over fifty of the Pawnee battalion. He and the gray-headed plainsman in greasy buckskins would be the only white men riding along with the Pawnee on this important probe into the country west of Carr’s line of march.

  “Goot mornin’, Mr. Sweete,” Becher called out in his thick accent. “Glad to have you along.” He turned to the Pawnee sergeant nearby, telling him in his inimitable German-clipped Pawnee tongue to mount the troops.

  Becher turned back to the plainsman. “You care to ride vit’ me, Mr. Sweete?”

  “Be a pleasure. Lieutenant.”

  The German’s smile formed little more than a straight line at his lips. “Let’s go find some Injians for General Carr, vat say?”

  It wasn’t long before the rising sun made its full and glorious presence known at the horizon. As it climbed higher into the heavens, the heat bubbled around them and the ground radiated like a glowing skillet beneath the riders feeling their way up Rock Creek from the Republican River, probing north by west through that morning as the distance shimmered in mirage.

  “Man can boil in his own juices out here, Lieutenant,” Shad said.

  “This country is like a frying pan, yes.”

  “Maybeso like a griddle.”

  “Fry you from the bottom and the top.”

  After a short rest at midmorning to water their horses and let the animals blow, Becher ordered the Pawnee back into the saddle until noon, when the lieutenant signaled another halt to rest both men and animals. Here they were still miles from the next creek to cross, so each man had to settle for jerky, washing it down with what he still had in his canteen.