by Len Levinson
The stream came closer, his pace quickened. He breathed deeply, felt strength returning, outlasted pneumonia, survived a robbery, fought coyotes. He came to the edge of the stream, looked toward the ground, saw no tracks. Once he’d stumbled onto a bear beside a stream, never do it again. He wished he had bullets for his gun. The deserter would pay with his life, if they ever met again.
It was cool in the willows, the stream ten feet wide, clear as crystal. Stone held his bayonet ready for anything. If only he had one measly bullet. The grass inclined toward the water. Lobos moaned and drooled behind him. They wondered whether to search for a more promising meal. Something moved on the ground ahead, they stopped in their tracks, twitched noses nervously.
Stone didn’t notice their retreat, his eyes on the cold clear water rippling past on its way to the great mother Mississippi. He dropped to his knees in the soft wet mud, lowered his head, drank.
He felt better immediately, would get sick if he overdid it. He threw the campaign hat to the side, scooped water in his hands, splashed it over his face. Quick sound behind him, he turned, something whacked his head. He lost his balance, was jostled, thrown onto his back, a knife streaked toward his throat. An injun with a feather in his hair held the knife, two other injuns pinned his arms. He sucked wind as the tip of the knife touched his neck, broke the skin. A drop of blood appeared.
The injun with the knife smiled. He wore a blue bead necklace. “Ready to die, blue-belly?”
Stone tried to break loose, they held him in powerful muscular arms, knife point digging into striated muscle beneath his Adam’s apple. “A blue-belly stole my clothes!” he protested. “You can see this uniform doesn’t fit me!”
The injuns scrutinized him. They were mid-twenties, dressed in buckskin, armed to the teeth. Stone’s sleeves and pants too short, buttons burst on the fly, fabric stretched to the limit, seams coming undone. He blurted the first words that came to mind. “I’m not a blue-belly—I fought a damned war against blue-bellies. You want to kill a blue-belly, you’d better look someplace else. To hell with the blue-bellies, that’s what I say.”
Stone smiled in a friendly manner, but the injuns observed him dispassionately. The knife remained at his throat, they were going to kill him, no question about it.
“I used to be a warrior too,” he said, and went into a paroxysm of coughing. “At least give me a fighting chance. How’d you like to get your throat cut like a chicken? Let me die like a man.”
The injuns looked at each other. One of them said something, they let him go. Stone rose to his feet, while lobos watched eagerly from the distance. Looked like another meal in the offing.
Stone reached for his bayonet, but the injuns already had taken it and his empty gun. He raised his fists and bent his legs. The injuns stared at the bedraggled teetering white man covered with scars, blood, fresh coyote bites, wearing ridiculous clothing. He could barely hold himself erect.
“Come on, you devils!” Stone hollered, brandishing his fists. He charged one of the injuns, who dodged to the side. Stone faced the wide-open prairie. The injun’s chortled behind his back.
He spun around, grit his teeth, held up his fists. “You can laugh all you want, but just let me get my hands on you!”
He rushed them, one stuck out his foot, Stone sprawled nose first into the stream. He rolled over, coughing and sputtering, while the injuns roared with mirth.
“You don’t have the guts to stand up to a real man!” Stone said hoarsely. He snarled and rushed another warrior, who didn’t run away. Stone threw a punch at the injun’s face, but the injun made a strange fast move. Stone was thrown to the ground before he knew what hit him.
The injun looked at him. “I can see you have a warrior’s heart. I will not kill you this day.”
Stone’s eyes were like saucers. The injun who’d spoken pulled Stone’s gun out of his belt, handed it back.
Stone took it. The injun scooped bullets out of a leather pouch, dropped six into the palm of Stone’s hand. Then he handed back the bayonet. Stone thought he was dreaming. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. His wet scalp should be hanging from the injuns belt right now.
“I’d like to know your name,” Stone said.
“I am Black Wing. That is Yellow Bear, and here is Many Horses.”
“I’m John Stone. You speak good English. You’ve been to one of our schools?”
“I had the white man’s education, but the white man preaches one thing and does another.”
“I don’t preach anything,” Stone replied, “because I don’t know anything.” He put on the campaign hat, it was too small and perched comically atop his head.
Black Wing opened the leather pouch on his belt, took out a chunk of jerked buffalo meat. “Want to eat, John Stone?”
Stone gnawed the meat ravenously. They sat in a circle on the ground. Yellow Beaver tossed Stone a U.S. Cavalry canteen, probably taken from a dead trooper. Stone looked at the savages smeared with war paint, and wanted to ask why they mutilated enemies, but it wouldn’t be the best diplomatic move. He wondered how they lived, what were their hopes and dreams. He’d spent a few days with Apaches, but not long enough to learn much. The warriors offered him another chunk of jerked meat.
Black Wing stiffened suddenly. Yellow Bear looked toward the east. Many Horses rose to his feet. “Somebody coming.”
~*~
Tomahawk trudged across the prairie, head hanging low. He’d been following John Stone’s trail since the middle of the night, and found the spot where Stone fought the lobos, while buzzards feasted merrily on the dead. Tomahawk studied Stone’s footprint, and saw the times he’d faltered. But he kept going. Tomahawk had seen Stone survive gunfights, injun attacks, shootouts, showdowns, knife wars, and every other conceivable type of violence and mayhem. The man attracted trouble as a whirlpool pulls fallen leaves into its swirling vortex.
Tomahawk saw the stream from afar, pulled toward it steadily. Good to be without a saddle, like a colt again, moving free instead of at the bidding of a man drunk most of the time. They’d been in scrapes where both had nearly been killed due to Stone’s drunkenness.
Cautiously, Tomahawk approached the stream. He knew that other men would want him, but couldn’t get caught. He sniffed faint trace of jerked buffalo. He stopped and pricked up his ears, scanned the area with big brown eyes, but saw no strange shapes, everything was still. He advanced stealthily, a proud beast with large hooves, lines of a plow horse, plenty of bottom. Stone’s trail led to the water, followed by the lobos, who now watched from afar, hoping someone would get slaughtered.
Grass lay flat straight ahead, and Tomahawk slowed. What had done that? He smelled men’s sweat. Stone’s trail became confused. What had happened here?
The grass burst forth in multiple explosions, Tomahawk reared backward. Three injuns and John Stone jumped out of the ground! Tomahawk ran away.
“Hey, Tomahawk!” Stone shouted. “It’s me!”
Tomahawk looked back over his shoulder. It was the boss, all right.
“It’s okay! C’mere!”
Tomahawk stared at them laughing. It was an astonishing spectacle. Tomahawk whinnied nervously as he walked toward John Stone.
“This is Tomahawk,” Stone said. “Best damn horse I ever owned.”
Tomahawk’s chest swelled with pride. The injuns looked him over approvingly.
“I will make you a hackamore,” Black Wing said. He removed a ball of rawhide from a U.S. Army regulation haversack stolen from a disemboweled trooper, measured it against Tomahawk’s head, made knots, adjusted the hackamore into place, handed Stone the reins.
Stone led Tomahawk to the stream and let him drink. Black Wing gave Stone a handful of jerked buffalo meat and a U.S. Army canteen. Stone stuffed the jerky between his skin and the shirt, draped the canteen strap over his shoulder.
“You are welcome to return with us, to our tents,” Black Wing said.
“Can’t,” Stone replied. “There�
��s a woman—”
“There is always a woman.”
Stone shook their hands. “Perhaps another time—”
“Ask for Black Wing among the Sioux. They all know the son of Elk Thunder.”
Stone had heard the name. Elk Thunder was a fighting chief of the Lakota tribe. The three warriors weren’t ordinary run-of-the-mill wild bucks, but the injun aristocracy. They helped Stone onto Tomahawk’s bare back, and Stone pointed the animal toward Fort Hays. The three warriors watched him ride away in his tight, too-short uniform, hat hanging perilously atop his head.
“He is a holy fool,” Black Wing said. “The Great Spirit will surely take care of him.”
~*~
Slipchuck entered the orderly room. Sergeant Major Gillespie sat behind his desk, reading morning reports. He didn’t glance up as Slipchuck approached nervously.
“I was a-wonderin’ if that feller John Stone showed up here yet,” Slipchuck said, fingering the brim of his hat.
The sergeant continued his perusal of morning reports. “Ain’t been here.”
Slipchuck retreated from the orderly room. The sun was high in the sky. Soldiers drilled on the parade ground. Other soldiers dug holes, repaired buildings, painted, swept, washed, and cleaned. Typical morning at a fort, Slipchuck had seen a million of them.
He sat on a bench nestled against the wall of the orderly room, wondered what to do. What happened to John Stone? Had he followed Marie, leaving his pard behind? Did he blow his brains out in a barn? Maybe he was drunk in an alley.
Slipchuck couldn’t wait indefinitely. At some point he’d have to get a job, not a simple prospect for an older man. If push came to shove, he’d go back to the Triangle Spur Ranch in Texas.
A group of men and women riders entered the front gate of the fort. At their front, atop a sideways-prancing black horse, sat a man in a fringed buckskin jacket and pants, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat, long gold curls falling to his shoulders. Slipchuck got to his feet. It was Custer.
The riders drew closer. Custer was tall and erect on his horse, head high, the great conquering hero of the Union Army who had led the crucial cavalry charge at Gettysburg. Beside him rode his woman, pretty, with voluminous skirts, campaign hat low over her eyes.
Behind them came officers and wives returning from a morning ride on the prairie, with an armed escort. Slipchuck stared at Custer bouncing up and down atop his horse. So that was him. The great man himself. From the rear, with his long golden hair, he looked almost like a woman.
~*~
Hardscrabble farm in the middle of the prairie, dugout house with roof built onto the ground. A woman in a dirty dress and bonnet came out the front door, shielding her eyes from the sun with gnarled hands.
“Howdy,” Stone said, climbing down from Tomahawk. “You got some water for my canteen?”
The woman looked at him suspiciously. “Spring’s in back.”
Stone led Tomahawk to the rear of the house, found the spring next to a pole with a bucket, tin cup hanging from a nail. Stone filled the bucket for Tomahawk, then kneeled beside the spring and dipped in the cup.
The water was cold and clear, he could see all the way to the bottom, white sand dancing. He raised the cup to his lips, water sweet and pure dribbled down his throat.
“Hold it right thar, deserter!” said a voice behind him.
Stone turned around. A man in ragged clothes and tattered hat stood with his legs spread apart, shotgun aimed at Stone’s belly. “I’m not a deserter,” Stone said. “I’m a civilian. Deserter stole my clothes.”
“Tell it to the judge. Git his gun, Sally Mae.”
The woman pulled the Colt out of Stone’s army holster.
“Git back on yer horse, deserter,” the man said. “You an’ me—we’re a-takin’ a leetle ride.”
~*~
Slipchuck entered the Tumbleweed Saloon, nearly deserted in the early afternoon. He ordered a whiskey, carried it to a table against the wall, sat, pushed his hat back on his head.
John Stone surely would’ve left a message if he’d passed on. Something must’ve happened to him. Slipchuck wondered whether to backtrack, see if he could find him.
An old whore dropped into the chair next to him, wearing a low-cut dress that revealed a substantial portion of her pudgy, wrinkled anatomy. “Buy me a drink?” she asked hopefully.
“What’s yer pleasure?”
“Whiskey.”
Slipchuck called the waitress, gave the order, then returned to the whore. “How long you been in Hays City?”
“Two years.”
“Know Marie Scanlon?”
“Wouldn’t zactly say she was a friend of mine, but I knew who she was.”
“My pard was supposed to marry her.”
“If there’s any woman who ain’t the marryin’ kind, it’s Marie Scanlon. I’d tell him find somebody else, I was you.”
“Heard she run off with Derek Canfield the gambler. You ever meet him?”
“Came here all the time. Smart feller, had a smile fer everybody, but I wouldn’t mess with him. Marie Scanlon was a regular little spitfire. Cheated on her husband with Lieutenant Forrest too, and they say she even crawled onto the bedspread with Custer hisself.”
~*~
Stone rode through the gates of Fort Hays, lights glowed in the barracks. His arms were bound behind his back, Amos Tillet rode beside him, shotgun cradled in his arms.
Stone was sure he could straighten the matter out soon as he spoke with the man in charge. The worst part was nearly over, the sodbuster with the shotgun hadn’t blown his head off by mistake on the ride to the fort.
He looked at officers’ row, the command post, armory, barracks. He’d been an officer five years, but spent most of his service in the field, sleeping in tents when lucky, usually making a bed on the ground. The guardhouse was a squat building with barred windows behind the stable, fragrance of manure heavy in the air. Amos Tillet climbed down from his horse, threw the reins over the rail, pointed his shotgun at Stone. “Git down.”
Stone swung his leg over Tomahawk’s back, and jumped to the ground.
“Walk toward that door. Make one wrong move, I’ll blow yer fuckin’ head off.”
“Easy on that trigger,” Stone replied calmly, so as not to rile him.
Tomahawk watched them approach the door. Stone hadn’t bothered to tie the hackamore to the rail, and Amos Tillet hadn’t noticed. Tomahawk could slip the hackamore easily and run away. It was night, no one would see him. Tomahawk didn’t want any part of the U.S. Cavalry. The door to the guardhouse opened, Stone and Tillet went inside.
Tomahawk lowered his head, tangled reins in his hooves, yanked back his neck. The hackamore fell to the ground. Tomahawk moved into the shadows and headed toward the open prairie.
Inside the guardhouse, Corporal Warwick looked Stone over sternly in the light of the lantern on his desk. “What outfit were you with, deserter?”
“I’m a civilian. A deserter robbed me, took my clothes, left his. I finally made it to this farmer’s spread, and he brought me here. Can’t you see this uniform is too small?”
Corporal Warwick wrote on his report: Denies all charges. “Find the blacksmith,” he said to Amos Tillet. “Tell ’im we need another ball and chain.”
“How’s about me bounty?”
“See the sergeant major in the mornin’.”
Amos Tillet left for the blacksmith’s shop. Stone turned to Corporal Warwick. “You follow up what I told you, you’ll find out I’m telling the truth. I’m not a soldier.”
“You’re wearin’ an army uniform, you’re a deserter. Any complaints, tell Sergeant Buford. One wrong move, you’re a dead son of a bitch. Get my drift?”
“You’re making a mistake. I’m an old friend of General Custer’s.”
“And I’m the King of Araby.” Corporal Warwick was a string bean in blue, with a yellow bandanna around his throat, long drooping mustaches. He filled out his report. Stone’s arms were bo
und, the corporal’s pistol lay on the desk beside his right hand. Stone wanted to dive out the window, but he’d never make it. He’d straighten everything out in the morning when he talked to the guardhouse sergeant.
“Get goin’,” Corporal Warwick said, aiming his revolver at Stone.
Stone left the guardhouse, heard soldiers singing to the music of a banjo in the distance. Lights flickered around the small army post. Women in long dresses could be seen in the officers’ area. Stone was tempted to call Fannies name, but the corporal might shoot him. The blacksmith occupied a shack near the guardhouse, the forge going full blast when Stone and Corporal Warwick entered. The blacksmith had huge rounded shoulders, wore a leather apron and no shirt, his hairy body covered with soot and sweat.
“Sit down and put yer leg on this here anvil,” the blacksmith said.
Stone hesitated, Corporal Warwick aimed his gun at him. “I’m not a-goin’ to tell you again.”
Stone sat on the wooden chair, placed his leg on the anvil.
The blacksmith clasped an iron cuff around his ankle, caught the rivet in the end of the tongs, plunged it into tongues of flames. Light and shadow danced on the blacksmith’s thick-bearded face. “What fort you run from?” he asked.
“I told you—I’m a civilian.”
“And I’m General Custer.”
“You tell General Custer that John Stone is here, I’ll give you ten dollars.”
The blacksmith looked at Corporal Warwick, they both burst into laughter. “Son of a bitch is crazy on top of everything else,” the blacksmith said. “You sure you’re not General Sheridan, or maybe Prince Albert?”
Stone pinched his lips together. The blacksmith pulled the white-hot rivet out of the flames, inserted it into the shackle, hairs singed on Stone’s leg as the blacksmith raised his big steel hammer. Stone closed his eyes, the hammer whistled through the air and slammed the rivet. The shock wave jolted Stone’s body; he felt an instant of sharp pain in his spine. When he opened his eyes, the cuff encircled his ankle.
