Suddenly, Guido Lazardo broke out into chuckles, then outright laughter, his eyes watering with emotion. When he finally regained control, he said, “I just recalled the many times when I stood with my back against a wall. With nothing to lose, I became brazen and clever. Thus, I won everything. I respected you from the way you fooled us with that false trail after freeing our prisoners. You are clever. I should never have pushed you against a wall.”
“Enough talk!” Douglas barked. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The column, with their prisoner, rode north. In less than a half hour, they could see a hazy image of Nadezhda dancing in the early morning haze on the horizon. As they drew closer, the dragoons waved and hollered. Within moments they could hear the shouts of the Russians coming back at them.
When they rode up to the barricades, Count Valenko looked at them in happy astonishment. He climbed over the defenses and rushed out, slapping the dragoons on the legs in greeting.
“My friends! My friends! You are not desertink us! You vill fight vith us!” he yelled.
“There will be no more fight,” Gavin said. “The Comancheros have left, but we have their leader.”
Valenko looked up at Lazardo and spit on him. When Lazardo spit back, the Russian dragged him out of the saddle and flung him to the ground and began kicking him. Valenko, with tears now streaming down his face, bellowed in rage as he continued booting the squirming Comanchero.
Finally, Gavin slipped from his horse and pulled the count away. “We have won. Let the United States government punish him.” He looked carefully at the old nobleman. “Why are you weeping, Your Grace?”
“I cry like a baby in both happiness and sadness,” Valenko said. “I am happy because the bad men have gone avay. I am sad because Basil Karshchov has died.”
“Basil died?” Gavin asked in astonishment. “But he had only a shoulder wound that wasn’t too serious.”
“He bled to death in the night,” Valenko explained.
“Ve lost him vhile he slept. The bullet did not come out. It vent down into his body and caused much damage vhen it slipped around vhen he moved. But he vas not knowink nothink as his life ended. He vent to God in his sleep.”
Gavin left his horse with Douglas, hurrying over to the barricades. He climbed the defenses, leaping down the other side to rush into the main building. He found Natalia kneeling beside Karshchov’s corpse.
Gavin sank down and looked into the pale, cold face of his friend. “Oh, Basil!” he exclaimed. He reached out and laid his hand on the dead man’s face.
Natalia spoke in a soft voice. “Last night, before he went to sleep, he said that you would be back.”
Gavin, grateful for the Russian’s faith, fought back the tears. In a quaking voice, he said, “I am so glad that he believed in me.”
Natalia smiled sadly. “You were the best friend that Basil ever had, Lieutenant. He loved you like a brother.”
Gavin looked at the woman. “Nadezhda is safe.”
“I know,” she replied. “I was standing at the window while you spoke with my father. Thank you, Lieutenant MacRoss. We owe you so much.”
“I’ve lost a dear friend,” Gavin said.
“We will bury Basil shortly. Will you stay for the services? We are attending to our other dead as well.”
“Of course,” Gavin said, getting to his feet. “Afterward, I must return to Fort Leavenworth.”
A couple of Russian men appeared. They laid out a blanket and placed Basil’s body on it. After wrapping him up, they carried the dead man outside.
The funeral for Basil Karshchov and the others was brief since no priest was available. Gavin read from a Bible belonging to Carlson, and prayers were offered for the souls of the dead.
When the ceremony was over, the lieutenant mournfully left the gravesite, pausing for a brief handshake with Valenko and some of the other men before rejoining his small command.
“Form up in columns of twos!” Gavin ordered. “For’d, ho! Gallop, ho!”
The detachment rode away from the settlement, heading east across the Kansas prairie toward Fort Leavenworth.
Twenty-Two
When Lieutenant Gavin MacRoss led his raggedy, tired detachment of dragoons and their prisoner into Fort Leavenworth on that spring day of 1855, the physical danger he had faced was over, but that was certainly not the complete end of the ordeal.
The post judge advocate, who represented military law; the regimental adjutant, keeper of administrative records; and the regimental quartermaster, who maintained all government property and records thereof, all waited to pounce on him with their administrative requirements and demands.
The first was the judge advocate. Before anything else took place, Gavin had to turn in Guido Lazardo and charge him with murder, kidnapping, sedition, and robbery. This involved identifying him. At first the prisoner refused to give his name or any other information about himself, but an evening with Sergeant Ian Douglas and corporals Steeple and Murphy convinced him of the wisdom of disclosing all facts about himself and answering any other questions that might be put to him in a proper trial. In the end, he even gave a truthful account of the deaths of the two deserters Jack McRyan and Dennis Costello.
Although Sergeant Douglas certainly harbored no fondness for the two petty criminals, he thought the way their deaths had been arranged was a low-down, cowardly act. He demonstrated his opinion by administering a sound beating to Lazardo as the final touch on the Comanchero’s interrogation.
While that went on, Gavin had to turn in to the adjutant a mountain of paperwork on the loss of the five other men. Three died as deserters while privates Anderson and Belken went to their deaths in the line of duty. A full accounting, in triplicate, of the what, where, and why of the men’s deaths had to be laboriously written out and reviewed. Any pay coming, or forfeited, had to be taken care of as did the notification of next of kin where such information existed.
The most complicated area was covering the loss of equipment with the quartermaster. Two of the horses had been killed as a result of hostile fire during the siege of Nadezhda. In the confusion of events, their saddles and other equipment had been misplaced by the Russians somehow. Gavin came very close to having to pay for the losses out of his own pocket, but managed to find an obscure paragraph in the regulations pertaining to losses under fire. Once more requests in triplicate were called for, and numerous endorsements from the commanders of the company, squadron, and regiment to which Gavin belonged had to be placed in the proper place on the documents.
It took a full five days of great effort before the administrative side of the operation was completed and the angry lieutenant had finally justified how a two-week assignment had doubled itself.
After that, the wheels of military justice began to turn at a rapid speed. The Comanchero chief was put on trial in a procedure that lasted but one afternoon. In spite of facing capital punishment, Lazardo enjoyed being the center of attention. He particularly relished the way the ladies in the courtroom gasped during the reading of the charges against him. Loving the impression he made on them, the Comanchero truthfully answered questions pertaining to his crimes in the Kansas Territory committed against the Russian pioneers, but he pleaded special circumstances.
At that point, Lazardo began to lie and reinvent his life, being most creative with his past. The outlaw told of an affair in his native Sicily with a girl named Liliana Bonabella. Lazardo claimed he and the girl loved each other madly and she had accepted his proposal of marriage. But a wealthy old man, who paid money to her father, had received permission to marry her. He and the girl had run away to the mountains, but she had been murdered by hired assassins sent after them by the vengeful, elderly suitor. Lazardo, of course, told everyone he had killed the man and been forced to flee Sicily to escape the vengeance of an enormous gang of the dead fellow’s clan.
Next he told sea stories about fighting off pirates, saving a ship during a raging storm while the capt
ain and crew cowered below decks, and went on about his adventures of rescuing young damsels from a life of prostitution in France. A Corsican gang, in that case, had chased after him. Then once more to the life of a sailor and finally becoming a Comanchero.
That latter part of his life was something he couldn’t lie about as Lieutenant Gavin MacRoss and Sergeant Ian Douglas told of the raid on Nadezhda and of Lazardo’s plan to sell the prisoners into slavery in Mexico and Texas.
Lazardo pleaded that only past cruelties and bad luck had brought him into such a life. He begged for mercy, saying that he would change his ways and lead a decent life.
The presiding officer of the court-martial, a portly member of the judge advocate’s department, was neither believing nor forgiving. He very happily sentenced the Sicilian to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.
Three days later, Lazardo went bravely to his death, cursing the hangman and the United States Dragoons with equal fervor. After Lazardo’s execution, Fort Leavenworth fell into its regular summer routine. Gavin escorted several wagon trains, chased after Indians, made endless patrols, and conducted various duties in garrison as were required of him. His former good humor had gone away, and he truly mourned the loss of his friend Basil Karshchov.
The Russian intellectual, with his large, sensitive eyes and gentle manner, had proven himself a brave and dedicated man. Though no roughneck by any means, he had courageously displayed his willingness to fight—and die—making him as brave a man as Gavin ever knew in the blue-and-gold ranks of the dragoons.
As more people began to move onto the prairie, the safety of the Russian settlement was assured. A few Americans joined the settlement, giving them a blacksmith, a couple more farmers, and a shopkeeper who opened a general store a few steps away from the main building.
Paddy O’Hearn was promoted to corporal and put his bugle away for the final time as he settled in to seriously pursue his career as a professional noncommissioned officer of the United States Army. Corporal Steeple made sergeant that following August and Corporal Murphy was broken to the rank of private for being drunk on duty. Fenlay was elevated to take his place, but didn’t do much better, losing his stripes for a brawl in the town of Leavenworth.
Sergeant Ian Douglas became the company’s first sergeant, when that individual deserted taking the unit’s funds with him. Using his influence with both Lieutenant Gavin MacRoss and Captain Francis Hanover, he managed to get Corporal O’Hearn advanced once again, this time to sergeant, and saw to it that young Private Olaf Carlson was made a corporal.
There was no more Comanchero activity in that part of the country. Thanks to the small, gutsy detachment of dragoons, that particular brand of criminal stayed south in the Indian territories and Texas. But that didn’t mean all was tranquil. Bandits, hostile Indians, whiskey and gunrunners, and other lawbreakers kept the dragoons busy.
The fall season moved in slowly, bringing beautiful colors to the stands of trees out on the prairie country and those growing within the confines of the garrison. The weather grew crisper and finally downright cold when the first northers swept down to begin the frigid climate that marked winter in the open landscape of Kansas Territory.
Sergeants and corporals moved their bunks closer to the stoves, and the Indians went to the warmth of their lodges as once again the yearly cycle brought around the peace and quiet of what the Indians called the Moons of Snow.
Lieutenant Gavin MacRoss, unsettled and unhappy, spent many lonely and sleepless nights in his quarters, remembering a good friend named Basil, and a beautiful young woman called Natalia. He rarely went into town and turned down invitations to visit the homes of attractive young women as he withdrew more and more into himself. His devotion to duty was complete, and he even turned down a chance for furlough to visit his hometown back in Pennsylvania.
The coming spring and summer promised more pioneering groups to move into Kansas Territory. People already spoke of how it would soon be settled enough to apply for statehood and within a few years the area would be filled with towns and farms.
But to a few dragoons, no matter how civilized the plains became, the area would always be known to them as the Comanchero Prairie.
Epilogue
The coming of the spring of 1856 gave Mary Hanover, the wife of Captain Francis Hanover, another grand opportunity to display her skills at organizing grand festivities to celebrate special social events.
The marriage of First Lieutenant Gavin MacRoss of the United States Dragoons with Lady Natalia Valenko was an event in which Mary Hanover outdid even herself. Only the cream of the most socially prominent citizens of the area along with ranking army people were invited to attend the elaborate ceremony, which included an arch of sabers held up by dragoon officers for the couple to walk under after leaving the post chapel.
Count Valenko, dressed in his finest formal clothing, sported the medals and decorations of the Russian imperial nobility. He gave his daughter away, then turned to his favorite pastime of downing as much alcohol as possible while lesser drinkers faltered and fell away as the evening passed into night.
Afterward, a grand reception with plenty of food and drink further celebrated the event as the crowd danced to the regimental band. The musicians, following a program set up by the hostess, played long into the wee hours.
Gavin and Natalia made an escape just before midnight. He requested the furlough he’d turned down earlier, to take his bride on a honeymoon and give her a chance to meet his family. They departed on the eastbound stage at dawn, seen off by their closest friends.
Later that summer, in a less socially ranked ceremony, Sergeant Paddy O’Hearn married Miss Irena Yakubovski at Fort Leavenworth’s chapel. First Sergeant Ian Douglas gave the bride away while Corporal Olaf Carlson acted as the groom’s best man.
Douglas wryly noted that during O’Hearn’s patrol duties that took him through Nadezhda, the sergeant, like Lieutenant MacRoss, certainly didn’t waste his time.
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