by Len Levinson
Major Scanlon went for his gun, so did Sergeant Buford. The door opened, Private Klappenbach and Private Delancy carried the prisoner into the orderly room. Stone was out cold, head lolling lifelessly to the side, mouth hanging open. The prisoner had been beaten, his uniform didn’t fit, white as a sheet.
“He’s not a deserter from this post,” Major Scanlon said.
“Prob’ly Fort Dodge,” Sergeant Buford replied.
“What did he say when you charged him.”
“Said he weren’t no deserter.”
Commonest alibi of all, Major Scanlon reflected. They’d send his description to posts in the department, a few would ask for him, he’d make the rounds, if nobody could identify him he’d be set free. Could take a year or more. The slow grinding process of justice in the frontier army.
Klappenbach and Delancy carried Stone to the cell block, the door closed behind them.
Major Scanlon slurred, “We should settle this disagreement off post, on our own time.”
“Tell me where and when, sir. I’ll be there.”
“How about tomorrow at midnight, the Wakhatchie River crossing?”
“I can see horns growin’ out of yer head, that woman cheated on you so much, you damned fool.”
“My gun will respond to that remark, and your other insults, tomorrow night at the Wakhatchie River crossing.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Major Scanlon walked toward the door, regulation spurs jangling, yellow stripes on his pants crooked, shirt half unbuttoned. Sergeant Buford gazed at him with contempt. Scanlon was a hero of the Civil War, but Buford served in that conflict too, and knew for a fact that many inflated reputations came out of it; Scanlon was probably just another of them. You son of a bitch, you go to that Wakhatchie crossing, it be the last place you see.
~*~
Stone felt something cool and wet against his lips. He opened his eyes, saw a tin cup full of water, somebody was raising his head, he sipped the water, dank and foul, but it moistened his mouth.
“How you feel?” asked a voice.
Stone looked up, saw tiny teeth, shifty furtive manner.
“Kind of weak,” Stone replied.
“What’s your name?”
“John Stone.”
“I’m Anthony Antonelli. What fort you run from?”
“I’m not army ... but nobody believes me.”
“I’m a civilian too, or leastways I was a few months ago. Should never’ve joined up. Biggest mistake of my life.” He glanced around suspiciously. “They wake you in the middle of the night to fight injuns, and when you’re not doin’ that, it’s pig work ‘round the fort. All I did was spit in Captain Benteen’s face. We’ll go to Fort Leavenworth for a few years. They can’t kill men like us.”
“I’m not a deserter,” Stone replied. “They’ll never put me in Fort Leavenworth.”
The water revived him, a louse crawled into his left armpit, he scratched. Against the far wall sat Weaver and Ritterman, and Stone looked at his boots on Ritterman’s feet. Stone tried to get up, but his muscles weren’t functioning properly.
“When you’re stronger,” Antonelli said, “you’ll get him. I’ll watch your back. We stick together, we’ll get through all right.”
“Is there a way I can get a message to General Custer? He and I are old friends.”
Antonelli looked at him sadly. “You poor son of a bitch, they broke your mind.”
“Is there somebody we can bribe to carry a message to Custer?”
“Bribe with what?”
Stone narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “How do you know I have no money?”
Antonelli shrugged. “Them two buzzards went through your pockets pretty good. Maybe you can see General Custer at the drumming out in the mornin’.”
Stone gazed at Antonelli with new interest. “You been on this post long?”
“ ’bout a month.”
“You must know who Marie Scanlon is.”
“Woman caused more trouble on this post than a hive of bees.”
“What’s she done?”
“All the ladies was a-fightin’ with her, but she’s gone now.”
“Where to?”
“Didn’t stop at the guardhouse to say good-bye. What’s she to you?”
“Friend of mine.” Stone reached for the picture of Marie he usually carried in his shirt pocket, it had disappeared. He gazed across the room at Weaver and Ritterman. “When’d she leave?”
“About a week ago.”
“What about her husband?”
“Ain’t been sober since.”
“She go alone?”
“Left with a gambler.”
“Get his name?”
Antonelli shook his head. Stone rose wobbly to his feet, held the bars of a small window, looked at the prairie. What the hell happened? Madness welled up, he reared back his fist, heaved a punch at the wall, but held back an inch before impact. Calm down. Get out of the guardhouse, find out where she went. He felt sick and demoralized, and his feet hurt. He glanced across the cell at Ritterman.
“Come git ’em.” Ritterman reached into his pocket, pulled out a blade. “I’ll carve you like the Christmas turkey.”
Stone felt a wave of dizziness. His head cleared, rush of wind through his ears. He still wasn’t recovered, needed a good hot meal. Then maybe he could do something.
Something rustled next to him, Antonelli holding something in his hand. “Take it.”
Stone reached down, a knife with a three-inch blade made from a spoon dropped into his hand. He slipped the knife into his boot. “When do we eat?”
“They’ll bring the slops soon, but I don’t know if you can eat it. Takes practice to beat the smell.”
~*~
General Custer walked past officers’ row, slapping his riding crop against his leg. Always something to worry about. His men were the dregs of seven continents. They called him Iron Butt, General Custard, and a lot of other unflattering epithets, while the Michigan Wolverines had idolized him, would follow him anywhere, even copied his eccentric uniforms.
Pen pushers and hacks in Washington exiled him to the middle of nowhere, where he’d be forgotten. Libbie was restless, he couldn’t blame her. A million ridiculous details bedeviled him. Everywhere he turned, something required his attention.
He approached Major Scanlon’s house, the front door slightly ajar. General Custer’s hunting dogs yipped and danced behind him. One poked the door with his nose, it creaked wider.
General Custer pushed the door wide open, debris everywhere. A dark form lay on the sofa. The stench of whiskey and vomit lay heavy in the air, broken glass crunched beneath General Custer’s boots.
The figure on the sofa stirred. Stained and wrinkled uniform, buttons undone, belt loosened, Major Scanlon drunk again. He struggled to reach his feet, threw a sloppy salute.
“... reporting for duty … sir.”
General Custer returned the salute. “Have a seat, Scanlon. We’ve got to talk.”
Major Scanlon remained at attention. “Sir, before you say … anything … I take full responsibility for … for …” He wondered what he’d done wrong, besides being drunk. His alcohol-drenched mind gave him a dim image of the guardhouse. Had he done something wrong in the guardhouse? He honestly didn’t know, and stood befuddled, eyes at half mast, shirt blotched with his last meal.
“I said, have a seat.”
Major Scanlon dropped to the sofa. Custer saw chicken bones on the floor, broken bottles, and furniture. The provost marshal had busted his home apart after learning his wife had left him.
“Major Scanlon, can you hear me?”
“Perfectly clear, sir.”
“I can’t keep covering for you. You’ve got to get the hell out of here. I don’t care if you resign, fly to the moon, whatever, but you’ve got one week to do it, or I’ll have to apply the Articles of War. We can have no more spectacles such as you presented this afternoon on the pa
rade ground. You’re confined to quarters until further notice. You’ve got to pull yourself together.”
It was silent a few moments, then Major Scanlon dropped his face into his hands. “She … left me,” he said in a faint whisper, as though he couldn’t believe it.
“Don’t throw your career away. One of these days we’ll go to war against the injuns, and I’ll need good officers behind me. Don’t let me down. We’ve been through too much together.”
Major Scanlon’s head hung low. “Can’t live … without her.” His body was wracked with sobs.
General Custer scrutinized him carefully. Hard to believe this rough cavalry officer could be hurt so deeply. He cried like a hurt little boy. General Custer placed his hand on Major Scanlon’s shoulder. “You’re an old regular army man, you came up from the ranks. Don’t make me do something that might cause both of us pain. It’s never bad as you think. If you came through the war, you can get through this.” General Custer shook Major Scanlon’s shoulder. “You’re an officer.”
Major Scanlon heard General Custer and his dogs receding into the distance. He gazed at the rubble of the home he’d shared with his wife. The emptiness in his heart was unbearable. Friends warned him not to marry her, too many years separated them, she was moody and wild, threatened to leave many times, finally did, now he was alone, part of him dead and the rest in torment. The foul taste grew strong in his mouth. He reached for the bottle of whiskey, to wash it away.
~*~
Someone touched Stone’s shoulder. He opened his eyes. Antonelli’s face was suspended above him. “It’s time.”
Stone raised his head. On the other side of the cell, in the dimness, Ritterman rose to his feet, shaking dirt and straw from his clothes. Cool and dark in the guardhouse, a few slim rays of light entered through cracks in the shutters.
Ritterman held his knife in his right hand, the blade gleamed as he advanced toward Stone, blanket wrapped around his left hand, wrist, and forearm. Stone got to his feet, cramped and pinched in Ritterman’s boots. He pulled out the knife with the three-inch blade, not nearly as good as his old Apache knife, but it’d have to do.
Antonelli handed him the blanket. “Go for his belly.”
The boots impeded Stone’s movement, he’d be better off in his bare feet. He sat again, pulled off the boots, cold floor against the soles of his feet. Ritterman pulled out the picture of Marie. “This a real silver frame?” he asked.
“You won’t have it long,” Stone replied.
Ritterman snored derisively. “I’m a-gonna carve you a new asshole.”
Stone rolled his shoulders, loosened up. His heartbeat was a steady tom-tom, he felt eighty percent of normal, had to get his boots back, and the picture of Marie.
“Who is she?” Ritterman asked, holding the picture up to a ray of light. “Looks like Major Scanlon’s former wife, biggest whore in Kansas.” Ritterman laughed, rubbed the picture against his pants.
Stone’s blood curdled in his veins. Ritterman placed the picture of Marie in his back pocket. “I like to see a man’s face when I stick the knife in.”
Stone’s legs didn’t have their usual spring. Can’t try anything fancy, hunker down and go for his gut. Antonelli walked beside Stone, stiff as a board, arms straight down his side, knife in his hand pointing at the ground. His pose reminded Stone of a fighting cock’s strut.
Weaver accompanied Ritterman to the center of the guardhouse floor, chains clanging in the darkness. Other prisoners watched from the sidelines. Stone looked into Ritterman’s eyes, saw two cold blue chips of ice, no human warmth in those diabolical orbs.
“Want these boots?” Ritterman asked Stone, flashing his knife through the air. “You know what you got to do.”
Antonelli and Weaver stepped to the side, eyes never leaving each other. The main event was Stone and Ritterman, facing each other in the middle of the floor. Ritterman was four inches shorter than Stone, sturdily built, dressed in his blue army uniform, knife blade up in his fist.
“Never did like deserters,” Ritterman said. “Deserters are lower’n skunks, in my book.”
Stone went into his knife-fighter’s crouch, and circled to the left, dragging his ball and chain. Ritterman got low. Stone was flatfooted, inching closer, both men hampered by shackles.
“I had a sister like Marie Scanlon,” Ritterman said, a goad in his voice, “I’d plug her hole with a cork, but she’d think of some other way, a whore like that.”
Stone wanted to skin and bone him alive, but forced himself to concentrate on the basics. He glanced at his boots on Ritterman’s feet. A man can’t survive without good boots. The iron cuff chafed his leg as he came to a stop in front of Ritterman. They bobbed and weaved, searching for angles through which to push their blades.
Raised in the back alleys of Milwaukee, Ritterman believed in the all-out aggressive charge, especially effective against an opponent with poor maneuverability. Growling like a longhorn bull, he lowered his head and pushed the blanket toward Stone’s face, while jabbing the knife in his other hand toward Stone’s midsection.
Stone ducked underneath Ritterman’s blanket, slammed his own blanket into Ritterman’s knife. Ritterman was wide open for a split second, Stone drove his blade toward Ritterman’s belly. Ritterman shrieked as Stone pushed the knife in all the way, ripped to the side. Ritterman’s guts spilled out like a nest of angry rattlesnakes.
Ritterman fell at Stone’s feet, gurgling in his throat. One jugular thrust from Stone’s knife put an end to the death rattle. Ritterman lay still on the floor. Antonelli and Weaver faced each other tensely, a nervous tremor on Weaver’s face, while Antonelli was braced and poised.
Stone dropped to his knees, pulled the boots off Ritterman’s feet. A foul stench filled the guardhouse. Stone donned the boots. Weaver stepped backward, lowered his knife. Antonelli watched him carefully through slitted eyes. Weaver retreated to the shadows, the fight gone out of him. Stone rolled Ritterman and pulled Marie’s picture from his back pocket. Marie was streaked with blood, Stone wiped it off on Ritterman’s pants. He arose, dragged his ball and chain to the far wall.
“You and me ought to team up, bust out of here,” Antonelli said. “All we need is a gun.”
“Don’t need a gun,” Stone said. “General Custer is an old friend of mine.”
Antonelli grinned, showing tiny pointed teeth. “Sure, and then you’ll walk on water like Jesus Christ, right?”
Stone inserted the makeshift knife into his boot. After he got out of the guardhouse, Sergeant Buford would be next on his list. The iron cuffs cut into his skin, inflaming fresh sores, as he tried to make himself comfortable on the cold dank floor.
~*~
Slipchuck sat in a corner of the Tumbleweed Saloon, drinking whiskey. A substantial portion of his wages was gone. Time to be prudent. No more whores unless bargain rates were offered. Watch the passing show and stay out of trouble.
A portly man in his fifties, wearing a dude suit and a derby, strode out of the thick cigarette and cigar smoke. “I was talking to a soldier at the bar, and he said you’re Ray Slipchuck, zat so?”
Slipchuck looked him over, no gun showing, probably a derringer in his frock-coat pocket. “What of it?”
“You the same Ray Slipchuck who shot Frank Quarternight in Sundust a few days back?” The man sat down, heavy jowls shaking like jelly covered with sideburns. “Heard it was an elderly gentleman, such as yerself, beard and all. Don’t worry, I won’t say nothin’.”
“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Slipchuck said, turning away, but it was true. He’d killed the famous Texas gun-fighter with a lucky shot in a bizarre showdown.
“Buy you a drink?” the man asked.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
“Waitress—a bottle of whiskey if you please!”
Slipchuck appraised his benefactor, just the kind of man he wished he was, fancy duds, plenty of coins, all the women he wants. The gambler pulled the cork and filled
Slipchuck’s glass to the rim. “My name’s Daugherty. Drink up.”
Daugherty pulled out a gold cigar case. Slipchuck’s eyes widened at the sight of stogies laid out like evil dark turds. He selected one, bit off the end, spit it at the cuspidor, missed, another gob of gunk on a floor covered with whiskey stains, cigarette butts, an old sock, half a man’s shirt, dabs of dried blood left over from the last brawl, a few steak bones.
Slipchuck hollowed his gray-bearded cheeks, sucked in the mellow smoke, his head disappeared in a blue cloud. Aged in brandy casks, the stogies were the best money could buy. Slipchuck leaned back in his chair, glass of whiskey in his other hand. “You know the gambler what ran off with that officer’s wife a while back?”
“Derek Canfield was a friend of mine.”
“What was he like?”
“Smooth line of shit. He somethin’ to you?”
“My pard knew the Scanlon woman.”
“That was one pretty filly. Sashayed around this town like she owned it. Didn’t care what anybody thought when she shacked with Canfield at the hotel. Never turn your back on that woman, that’s my advice to you. I’m a ramblin’ gamblin’ man, never claimed to be nothin’ else, and when I make a bet, it ain’t no idle notion. I’ll give you three to one odds she’s dead within a year.”
~*~
Light flickered in the windows of the sutler’s store as General Custer passed. Guttural laughter emanated from the squat ramshackle building, someone plunked a guitar. If Custer had his way, he’d tear the stinkhouse down, but the men wouldn’t stand for it. Custer didn’t need a full-scale rebellion on his service record. You could only push men so far.
He passed the sutler’s store, boots crunching gravel, hunting dogs leaping and tossing around him, serenading the fort with their choruses of yelps and barks, probably keeping somebody awake, but Custer loved them. A man would betray you, never your dogs.
