Savage Frontier

by Len Levinson

  She took his arm, and like bride and groom they walked to the back of the alley. After a few steps, he realized she was limping. So that's why she's younger than the others, he realized. She's a cripple. He'd never killed a cripple before and thought it might be fun.

  They crossed the backyard and entered another alley, this one deserted. “How about here?” he asked.

  “I thought you had a room.”

  “You're so pretty—I can't wait. Turn around.”

  She smiled alluringly as she faced the wall. “One of them, eh, soldier?”

  He reached into his pocket, where his fingers closed around the cord. “Not exactly.”

  On the reservation, many People were drunk, stumbling about the campsite, with children running wild and dogs barking. Victorio and his warriors watched grim-faced from their fire. “They have become like the White Eyes,” commented Geronimo, the twenty-eight-year-old Bedonko warrior and di-yin medicine man.

  “I have seen the truth with my own eyes,” replied Victorio. “The People will destroy themselves if they surrender the holy Lifeway. Tomaso!” he called out. “I want to speak with you.”

  Tomaso walked with great dignity toward Victorio. Chief of the camp, Tomaso could never hold such a position among People who ran free, but at least he was sober. “What would you like to know?” he asked Victorio.

  “Where do your farmers get money for firewater, if they don't have seeds and implements to grow crops.”

  Tomaso looked away as if he didn't want to respond, and it was as Victorio imagined. Some of them were raiding secretly, and naturally all the People would be blamed.

  As if to echo his thoughts, a fight broke out on the far side of the campsite. Tomaso, Victorio, and his warriors gathered around to see two enraged drunken middle-aged warriors trying to slice each other to ribbons.

  Victorio watched coldly as they made wild swipes at each other, sometimes drawing blood, but usually missing their marks. They grunted like bears with murderous glints in their eyes as they tried to rip each other. Finally Victorio could tolerate the disgusting display no longer. He glanced at his warriors, they moved in, grabbing fistfuls of flesh and hair, dragging the opponents apart.

  “Let me go!” screamed one of them. “I will kill you . . .”

  His voice stuck in his throat as he saw Victorio standing before him. Victorio could hold back his rage no longer as he glowered at the two combatants. “The White Eyes hold the People in contempt because of warriors like you!” he declared. “You are sickening, not for the compromises you have made with the White Eyes, but for your inability to control your passions. You are no longer warriors of the People, you are not entitled to our protection, and we are leaving this place right now.”

  Victorio turned abruptly and walked toward the war ponies. He didn't look back once. Farming on reservations is not the solution for the People, he decided. The future of warriors can be determined only by war.

  Maria Dolores sat at her favorite table in the Silver Palace Saloon, slicing a strip of steak. She'd worked late not because she had things to do, but was afraid of facing her husband.

  An ugly argument was on the way. Based on past experience, they'd lose their tempers and say things they'd apologize for in the weeks, months, and years to come. He wouldn't give up the Army and she wasn't going back to Fort Union. She wasn't even sure she still loved him.

  Surreptitiously she cast a glance at Cole Bannon, new manager of the Silver Palace Saloon, who sat at his favorite table on the other side of the room, having supper and reading a newspaper. There was something remote and untouchable about him. Sometimes she thought she was in love with him in a silly schoolgirlish way. She was married with two small children, but Cole Bannon made her forget inconvenient facts. Maybe I got married too soon, she reflected.

  A short cowboy approached Cole Bannon and whispered something into his ear. Cole appeared worried as the messenger receded. What's that all about? wondered Maria Dolores. Cole ate a few more bites of food, looked both ways, then walked across the saloon, headed directly for the boss lady.

  She hoped her hair was neat and she hadn't dropped gravy on the white collar of her maroon dress. Most of all, as a decent married lady, she couldn't let him know of her shameful interest. He came to a halt at the edge of the table and sat without an invitation.

  Looking both ways, he said, “A prostitute has been found strangled in one of the alleys off the Calle de la Muralla. The killer is still out there, and maybe you'd better let me walk you home.”

  She drew her Colt and lay it on the table. “I can take care of myself.”

  “This is the second prostitute found strangled within the past month.”

  She wondered what would happen if she let him walk her home. Should I invite him in for a cup of tea? But her husband was in town, and how could she think such trash? “Thank you for warning me, but I can take care of myself.”

  He shrugged, about to leave the table when Maria Dolores spotted her frowning husband heading toward her through the crowd. Uh-oh, she thought. Cole Bannon, unmindful of the drama into which he'd dropped, reached his full height as Lieutenant Nathanial Barrington, First Dragoons, arrived at the table.

  “Why haven't you come home?” he demanded of his wife.

  “I was busy.”

  Nathanial glanced at Cole. “So I see.”

  Nathanial wanted to punch Cole through the wall, but Nathanial was a sophisticated New Yorker who abhorred public displays of emotion, if possible.

  Maria Dolores also preferred to avoid public scandal. “I shall be home in a half hour,” she replied.

  Nathanial's face turned purple as he replied in a barely controlled voice, “You'd damned well better be.”

  He turned abruptly and limped toward the door, leaning upon his cane. No one paid attention to him in the sea of cardplayers, wastrels, drunkards, and soldiers. Maria Dolores's hand shook as she lay down her fork, her appetite extinguished.

  Cole tried to make light of the family disaster. “What's wrong with his leg?”

  “He probably fell off a bar stool,” said Maria Dolores.

  Doakes approached the gate of Fort Marcy as nonchalantly as any soldier returning from a night in town.

  “Evenin’, Private Doakes,” said one of the guards.

  “Evenin’,” replied Doakes as he shivered with ecstasy. In his mind, he kept reliving the thrilling murder. He crossed the parade ground, recalling the final tightening of the cord, the sweet sensation of her throat snapping in his very hands.

  The demons had departed and now he could sleep. Behind the barracks, he washed his hands and face in a basin of water, then dried himself with the common towel. Lord, wash me of my iniquity and cleanse me of my sins.

  He entered the darkened barracks, soldiers snoring in long rows. He undressed, crawled into his bunk, and closed his eyes. The night's events crowded his mind and he saw himself as a hero swaggering through the alley, making his selection and seducing her with clever conversation.

  He touched himself, as he recalled her thrashing against the wall. Nothing was more exciting for Fletcher Doakes than to watch someone die. He experienced not a smidgeon of remorse, and indeed smiled contentedly as he lay in his bed of power.

  Nathanial waited impatiently in the parlor as his wife opened the front door. Then he rose and stumbled toward the stairs, where he met her on the way to her room. He grabbed her shoulder and stared deeply into her eyes. “You don't think you're fooling me, do you?” he inquired loudly.

  “Take your hand off me.”

  She shrugged him away and climbed the stairs. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back down with him. They faced each other as a gust of wind whistled over the roof. “Let me go,” she insisted.

  “Have you been unfaithful to me?” he asked.

  Her eyes flashed angrily. “I will not dignify that question with an answer.”

  “I can't understand why a woman would rather be in a saloon than with her children
.”

  “I am sure there is much you do not understand, otherwise you would never have become a soldier.”

  “What's so superior about selling whiskey to every vagabond and criminal with a few coins in his pocket?”

  “In other words, someone like you?" she asked haughtily.

  If she were a man, he would've smacked her long ago. But since she was a fragile female, and he'd been taught from infancy never under any circumstances to lay his hands on women, he turned her loose. “My duty station is Fort Union. I take it you're not coming back with me?”

  “My business is in Santa Fe. I take it you .prefer the Army to your family?”

  Both knew they were entering dangerous territory, but years of marital discord forced them onward, and neither felt the least bit conciliatory. “I shall return in the morning to say good-bye to the children,” he said, “and then I'm off to Fort Union.”

  “As you wish,” she replied.

  She turned and climbed the staircase as he watched her ascend to the bedroom where they'd shared happy hours. But he was tired of fighting with her and there was something emasculating about seeing his wife in apparently intimate conversation with a strange man.

  To hell with her, replied Nathanial as he headed for the door. I'm not giving in to any damned woman.

  Maria Dolores sat on the chair next to her window and gazed at the Jemez Mountains in the distance. She was crying softly, for it appeared her marriage was over. She viewed Nathanial as her jailer, the man who'd made her live at that pesthole, Fort Union.

  Now she was in control of her destiny once more, and her husband could visit the children whenever he pleased, which she hoped wasn't often. She didn't need his money, thank God, otherwise she'd be forced to follow him to Fort Union.

  She was free, but at the same time felt rejected by her husband, although she'd rejected him equally. We were in love and now can barely speak civilly to each other, she reminded herself. It would be fine with me if I never saw him again.

  * * *

  Nathanial was so mad, he was ready to tear into the first person he saw. Unfortunately, he could barely move his left arm, while his right leg was stiff as a board. He soon found himself in Santa Fe's saloon district, and across the street sat the Silver Palace Saloon.

  He should return to Fort Marcy and take a room in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. Then, if he was truly intelligent, he'd get on the next stagecoach to Fort Union. But he wasn't intelligent on the night his marriage had come to an end. He didn't want Maria Dolores to think she was pulling the wool over his eyes.

  The little voice in his ear told him he was making a mistake, but he didn't listen as he headed for the front door of the Silver Palace Saloon. It opened and three shifty-eyed miners stepped outside, as if someone wanted to steal their gold, but Nathanial shuffled past them, entering his wife's saloon.

  Where is the son of a bitch? thought Nathanial as he searched for the man whom he suspected of planking his wife. The new manager of the Silver Palace Saloon was standing at the end of the bar, talking with a prominent Santa Fe lawyer whom Nathanial also knew.

  Nathanial stepped into the shadows and examined his adversary carefully. Cole Bannon was no fop in a frilly shirt, but a solid-looking fellow whom women of small intellect might consider attractive.

  By God, I'm going to let him have it, decided Nathanial. He navigated behind his cane as he crossed the crowded floor, passing gamblers, newspaper readers, drinkers, and the merry whirl of a chuck-a-luck wheel. “Round and round she goes, and where she stops—nobody knows!” called the croupier.

  Cole Bannon glanced up sharply as the vengeful husband approached. “Your wife's gone home, Lieutenant Barrington,” he said before Nathanial could open his mouth.

  “I want to talk to you, Mr. Fancy Man.”

  Bannon's lips became a thin line, because a fancy man was a pimp. “What's on your mind?”

  Nathanial wanted to draw his gun and shoot his rival's lights out, but then his mind flashed on a gallows, with himself hanging by the neck until dead. “So you're the weasel who's been fooling with my wife.”

  Bannon's eyes widened. “Lieutenant Barrington, I barely know your wife. I just work here, that's all.”

  Nathanial leaned closer. “Don't give me that horse-shit, Bannon. I know how the game is played.”

  “I'm playing no game,” said Cole, although the accusation was true in a way. “Now I know why your wife is unhappy. With a husband like you, what can we expect?”

  Only one response was possible. Nathanial intoned, “My second shall visit you in the morning.”

  Cole Bannon laughed, as he hooked his thumbs in his belt. “I don't want to kill a crippled army officer, but you come back here after you get healed—I'll give you play.”

  “You fucking coward!” growled Nathanial as he went for his service revolver.

  To his surprise, he saw a Colt Dragoon looking between his eyes. “Settle down, Lieutenant Barrington,” said Cole Bannon. “Otherwise somebody's liable to blow your stupid head off.”

  Nathanial was so humiliated he didn't even care. “Go ahead—I dare you.”

  “Don't ever dare me,” replied Cole Bannon. “You don't appreciate your wife because you're an idiot. Next time I see you, you'd better step lightly.”

  Cole holstered his gun, the saloon was silent, and all eyes focused on the end of the bar. Cole walked away calmly, showing his back to Nathanial, who realized that he, the West Pointer, had come off second best.

  Nathanial headed for the door, and everyone made way for the wobbling shot-up officer. On the sidewalk, he took a deep draft of air, then crossed the street and entered the first cantina. He made his way to the bar and said, “Mescal.”

  “Sí, senor.” The bartender poured a glass, Nathanial raised it to his lips, paused a moment, then tossed it down like a seasoned old drunkard. My wife's lover nearly killed me a minute ago, he reflected as the familiar firestorm started up his throat. It's been one helluva day.

  Chapter Seven

  For Maria Dolores, the departure of her husband had been like a blessing from God. Hereafter, I'll live where I please, she told herself one morning as she entered the Silver Palace Saloon.

  She spotted Cole Bannon sitting at his customary table, puffing a cigar and reading a newspaper. His eyes were on her as she crossed toward her office, and she knew he desired her as she desired him, but neither had the courage to make the first move.

  Then a ruddy-faced red-bearded soldier of medium height advanced into her vision, a big smile on his face. “Howdy, Mrs. Barrington—remember me?”

  She stared at her husband's former first sergeant as memories of her life at Fort Union drifted back. “Of course I remember, Sergeant Duffy,” she said with a smile. “What brings you to Santa Fe?”

  “Stagecoach escort.” Sergeant Duffy appeared uncomfortable as he averted his eyes. “I was sorry to hear about you and the lieutenant breakin’ up, ma'am.”

  “It was very sad,” she admitted. “But necessary.”

  “The lieutenant really loved you, Mrs. Barrington. Used to talk about you all the time.” Sergeant Duffy removed his hat and scratched his balding skull. “Wa'al, he's gone back to New York City, but he ain't fully recovered yet.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps he should not fall off bar stools, or whatever happened to him.”

  Sergeant Duffy looked at her curiously. “He didn't fall off no barstool, Mrs. Barrington. Don't you know what happened? He and about sixty others was ambushed in the Embuda Mountains, and only a handful got out alive.”

  Back in her office, Maria Dolores pondered what Sergeant Duffy had told her. Naturally Nathanial wouldn't say anything about it, because he was so damned proud. How many times, she wondered, will he be at death's door before he realizes that soldiering is the wrong profession?

  At eight o'clock in the evening, she walked home through busy downtown Santa Fe. Love and fury mingled in her heart whenever she thought of her hus
band. It was dark and fewer pedestrians were about after she left the center of town. She rested her hand on the butt of her gun, as she peered into a shadowy alley. No one aimed a rifle at her, but something moved on the bench to her right. “Good evening, Maria Dolores,” said Cole Bannon. “May I tell you a secret, as I walk you home?” He lowered his voice as he drew closer. “What would you say if I told you I was a Texas Ranger?”

  “I'd ask why you're working at the Silver Palace Saloon.”

  “I don't want anybody to know who I am, because I'm looking for that feller I told you about, the one who murdered two prostitutes. He's also killed about five in Texas, as far as I know, maybe more.”

  “I always figured you were more than a drifter, but you sure know how to run a saloon.”

  “It's hardly surprising since I've spent so much of my life in them.”

  “Why is he killing so many prostitutes?”

  “He's the strangest critter I ever heard of, but I'm going to catch him one of these days.”

  They turned onto the street where she lived, a lamp burning in her parlor window. She was tempted to invite him in for a drink, but she was a married lady.

  “Thank you for walking me home,” she said.

  He paused, and it appeared he wanted to say something, but instead turned abruptly and walked away. She examined his square shoulders, narrow waist, the way his cowboy hat slanted forward on his head, gun gleaming evilly on his hip. Experienced in certain pastimes, and feeling lonely now that her husband had abandoned her, she wondered what it was like to make love with such a man.

  At the beginning of the season called Heavy with Fruit, the great chief Mangas Coloradas and a selected band of warriors journeyed west to the remote land of the Chiricahua People for a council meeting. A feast was held to commemorate the event, with dancing and the drinking of sacred tizwin. The Mimbreno and Chiricahua leaders gathered around their fire, to discuss ways to cope with the White Eyes.

  Mangas Coloradas reported the facts to the Chiricahuas. “The Jicarillas have been brought to their knees,” he told the gathering, “and now the Mescaleros are under attack. Next, the bluecoat soldiers will come for us, and then the Chiricahuas. But if we join together, we can stop them.”