The west wall was lined by barracks for the enlisted men, and a mess hall shared by officers and enlistees.
The administrative building had been trashed, ransacked, vandalized. Windows were all broken, with barely a shard of glass remaining in the frames.
Files lay strewn about in haphazard disorder. Papers—documents, heaping double armfuls of them—had been tossed out the windows, littering the barracks square. They’d been torn, shredded, and trampled under many hooves.
An attempt had been made to burn the building but it had been a flop. Ground-floor offices were burned out, gaping windows outlined by smeary soot and scorch marks. But the flames had failed to take hold and the structure remained relatively undamaged.
On a low mound bordered by a circle of paving stones was a flag stand. The flagpole was broken off near the base. The flag was torn, trampled, and partly burned, all but a tattered scrap of white stars on a blue field and red and white stripes.
Sam dismounted and picked it up, folding it and stashing it inside his shirt for safekeeping. He continued his observation on foot.
To one side stood a wellhead, a surface-level vent for the artesian well. The circular stone wellhead was topped by a peaked roof supported by four upright pillars. The rope attached to turn handles at one end and a bucket at the other had been cut. Sam peered into the well. The upper part of a dead man stood floating vertically upright in the water.
Shocking as the number of dead was, it could have been far worse. Sam judged that the complement of soldiers was way understrength, one-third or even a fourth of its usual complement of between 150 and 175 troops.
All the troopers showed signs of having died hard. Death was rarely pretty, violent death less so.
The bodies showed a strange divide. Some had died by conventional means—shot, mostly, with a few stabbings and bludgeonings. Most had died without a mark on them, yet paradoxically died hard. Those bodies lay twisted and contorted, their hands like claws, their faces agonized masks. Some showed streaks of dried blood that had run from mouth and nose or discolored foam covering nostrils and mouths. Heaps of vomit pooled everywhere.
Those corpses, which were in the vast majority, showed no marks of violence—no bullet holes or stab wounds. Nothing. Nada.
A mystery, a sinister mystery. Sam’s nerves were rock steady, but the macabre scene of mass death was starting to get to him.
The buzzards—ah yes, the buzzards. Their presence, such as it was, added to the mystery.
Sam sensed they made up a significant piece of the puzzle. He looked up and noticed more had joined the party. It appeared there were scavenger birds airborne, circling their wheels without number, ever-alert for carrion. Predators they were not. They took no live prey. They never killed. They fed on table scraps of carcasses killed by others. They were specialists, eating only dead things, a needful part of the wasteland’s self-cleansing cycle.
Most folks thought the birds found their carrion by sense of smell, but that was a misconception. Their famously keen eyesight was the secret of their success. They could spot a dead desert mouse from a quarter mile or more straight up.
Seeing dead bodies in the fort, the buzzard flock had no doubt eagerly swooped down for the feast. The forerunners, the first in line, set about their grisly task of scavenging. Taloned claws ripped and tore, wickedly sharp beaks pierced and shredded. Something went wrong then.
The seemingly bountiful banquet had proved fatal to them.
A number of buzzards lay strewn about the dirt of the sandy courtyard of the quad. Their forms were weirdly contorted, stiff-legged. Dead.
Other still-more opportunistic buzzards had attempted to feed on their fallen fellows. They, too, had succumbed.
Somewhere along the way, the buzzards had gotten the idea that the dead of Fort Pardee were bad medicine—tainted—their flesh lethal to taste. So the remainder left them alone, shunning them. That patrol wheeling ceaselessly overhead in the sky kept vigil, but they had ruled Fort Pardee off-limits.
Sam tried to put the pieces together. What could have done it? Plague? But no epidemic was that virulent, acting with such speed as to take out so many all at once.
Also to consider was the evidence of violent death, looting, vandalism, and pillaging. A number of dead soldiers lay barefoot, their boots having been stolen. Men sick or dying of plague don’t do that.
Poison?
That seemed the most likely solution. It fit the facts, the evidence of twisted unmarked bodies, and the greenish froth surrounding noses and mouths of so many dead.
Yes, poison would explain much. Who had administered the fatal dose?
Not the Comanches. Mass poisoning wasn’t their style. Under exceptional circumstances such as relentless hot pursuit, they might poison a waterhole to halt a cavalry patrol, but never at this level.
While Sam was deep in thought, the sky began bleaching, losing its blue hue. Shadows grew, darkening. He went into the enlisted men’s barracks. Only a few dead there and all by violence—shot.
Any familiar faces among them? Friends, comrades? He tried not to look. He didn’t want to know. Later, yes, but not now. It was a sore trial for him to keep going, but did he owe the dead any less?
The quarters had been hastily looted, plundered. Soldiers’ wooden chests were shattered into scraps and splinters to get at their contents. Blankets were stripped and stolen from beds, mattresses overturned and slashed, stuffing ripped out like spilled entrails.
Anyone who knew the army must know that the enlisted barracks would provide mighty slim pickings and the officer’s quarters little better. Army pay was little enough to start with, barely a pittance. Most troopers drank up, whored, or gambled away their pay almost as soon as they had it.
Sam went out, glad to be quitting the barracks. He caught sight of the mess hall standing beside it, a long low single-story shed-like building with a long wall at the front. The kitchen was in an annex on the right-hand side to minimize heat of cooking in the eating hall during hot weather.
Here lay the height of horror, the black heart of the whole deadly business.
A handful of bodies lay in a fan-shaped display outside the mess hall’s front entrance. They all lay with their heads farthermost from the entryway as though they had been fleeing the building when the poison took them.
A hazy miasma hung floating about the open door and windows. Sam stood in the doorway looking in, a sign of how unsettled he was. Trail craft had long schooled him in the folly of standing outlined in a doorway where a man made a particularly inviting target.
But he was rooted to the spot.
About three dozen dead men were heaped on the mess hall floor. Tables and benches lay overturned amid piles of corpses. Plates, tableware, and spilled food were strewn about everywhere.
“An unholy mess,” he mumbled.
The stench was a physical thing, a yellowish haze that stung Sam’s eyes, making them burn. The bandanna covering his nose and mouth might as well not have been there for all the good it did.
Unholy mess.
Luckily he was holding his breath; in the shock of revelation he had forgotten for a moment to breathe. Bile rose in the back of his throat, his gorge rising.
Unholy.
Sam had seen enough, too much. He had seen all he needed to see, all he needed to know:
The men had been poisoned at their meal!
He stepped back, stumbling, coughing, and choking. By accident, he stepped on a dead man’s limb, nearly losing his footing. He staggered a dozen paces away, gasping for breath. Tearing away the bandanna, he sucked great heaving breaths of air.
Blessed relief. Bad as the air was in the fort, it was far better than that of the miasmic mess hall.
Sam swore aloud, cursing the race of poisoners, damning them to eternity—
A voice came then, a weak shout. Had he imagined it?
No, there it was again!
“Help! . . . Help!”
A voice crying
for help in the fortress of the dead.
EIGHTEEN
The voice crying out for help was raw, weak, and cracking with strain. It came from behind Sam. He turned and looked around, scanning for the source of the sound.
A flicker of motion showed on the far side of the square, in a small barred window of the guardhouse.
Sam made his way to it, glad to quit the hell of the mess hall. His rifle was held hip-high, leveled and ready for trouble. The cries increased in volume and frequency as he neared the army jail.
Discipline must be maintained on post. Infractions of the rules brought about forfeited pay, fines, punishment work details, and forced marches. More serious violations put the offender behind the bars of a detention cell in the guardhouse. Major crimes resulted in the offender being sentenced to a period of hard labor at such military prisons as the one at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
The motion which had caught Sam’s eye was that of an arm waving through the bars of a small window in the upper left-hand corner of the guardhouse. It was a squat, stubby, flat-roofed, single-story blockhouse set in the northwest corner of the rampart walls. It was made of stone quarried from the foothills of the Breaks, timber being rare on the plains and too expensive to cart overland, especially with all that potential free labor of the garrison troops on tap. The gray-brown limestone blocks were dressed, fitted, and held together by mortar at the joins.
The guardhouse wasn’t big on windows, held to be a security risk. Their use was limited to the minimum needed for health and hygiene of guards and secondarily, prisoners. There were enough windows to let in sunlight and fresh air. Cell windows were small square slits placed high in the walls, with iron bars set in the casements.
The guardhouse door gaped open and uninviting. Sam entered, stepping into a large space. The interior was damp, dank, and gloomy, heavily shadowed at the hour of near-dusk.
The front space was taken up by a small office area with a desk, chair, and several filing cabinets. A wall rack with rows of hooks held forbidding-looking sets of restraints—fetters, manacles, handcuffs, and suchlike devices. It held, too, whips, quirts, and truncheons.
A dead man lay on the office floor beside an overturned wooden stool. His uniform identified him as a guard. He was a soldier, big, solid, and stolid with a squat thug-like face. Prison guards needed to be tough and army prison guards that much more so.
A black leather belt four inches wide circled the dead man’s waist. Fastened to it were a leather club the size of a belaying pin, a set of handcuffs, an oversized ring of keys, and a holstered gun.
Details of the scene told a tale, revealing the great hidden in the small.
On the floor near the guard lay a metal cafeteria-style tray and an overturned wooden bowl containing some stew-like mess of meat and liquid, most of it spilled. Beside a puddle of the slop lay a dead rat. It lay on its back, glazed beady eyes sightless and staring. Its four legs stuck out stiffly from its body at right angles, twisted claw-like paws clutching empty air.
The stuff in the bowl—some stew-like concoction from the look of it—was poisoned.
The toxin must be strong stuff. The mass puddled on the floor, showing that the guard hadn’t taken more than a few bites before being struck down dead. His paw-like hand still held a tablespoon, clutching it in a death grip.
The dead soldier’s face held an expression of outrage, as though indignant at being slain by poison rather than by some more martial means.
Sam reckoned that the rat must have come out of hiding to sample the spilled chow, and the poison killed it. “So much for the dead guard, dead rat, and poisoned meal,” he told himself, moving on to the survivor.
Apart from the central office area, the rest of the space was partitioned off into cells. Six in all, they were minimal cage-like affairs made of gridded iron bars with inset hinged locking doors. Each cell came furnished with a crude wooden bed, thin mattress pallet, and a wooden bucket for sanitary necessities.
All of the cells but one were empty, untenanted. It held a prisoner, a live one. Sam found it somehow heartening to find another living being in the fort of death. He went to the cell for a closer look at the caged wonder man.
The prisoner was big, hulking, built like a circus strongman. He was a no-neck monster with a head perched atop broad slab shoulders. He wore a red flannel shirt and blue cavalryman’s pants with yellow stripes running down the sides.
He was bald, his shaved skull looking like a melon rind, so scored was it with scars, creases, dents, and lines. He sported a big black mustache under an eagle-beak nose and above a lantern jaw.
The prisoner seemed somewhat out of sorts, judging by his appearance. His eyes bulged and veins stood out like baby snakes writhing atop his hairless skull dome. He was sweat-soaked, gnashing his teeth. The wooden frame bed in his cell had been smashed to pieces.
His distress was understandable, considering the circumstances.
“Let me out of here, friend,” the prisoner rasped, voice coarse and husky, the result perhaps of having shouted for help until his throat was raw.
“Friend?” Was he friend, or foe? Sam wondered, thinking the prisoner looked familiar. He might have seen him around the fort on previous visits. Recognition tugged, nagging Sam with a sense of familiarity. The prisoner was a distinct type, not easily forgotten once seen.
“When I first saw you, I wasn’t sure if you was one of them or not,” the inmate said. “But when I heard you come out of the mess hall cussing a blue streak, calling down hell’s fire on the ones who did this, I knew you were okay.
“I thought I was never going to get out of here. I had some crazy idea of using the bedframe as a battering ram to bust the bars out of the window,” he went on, looking sheepish. “All I did was bust the bed into splinters.”
“You never would have fit out the window anyway,” Sam said.
“Maybe not, but I sure would have tried,” the prisoner said, showing signs of agitation. “Come on, mister, let me out of here!”
“The keys?” Sam asked.
“On a ring hanging on a hook on the wall near the door.”
“Be right back.” Sam turned and went back into the office. He found the key ring where the prisoner had said, an oversized metal hoop as wide across as a cake plate. It held a long solid blue steel key that seemed made for opening cell door locks, and a lot of little lesser keys.
Sam took it and returned to the cell. “A word of advice. I’m not the trusting type. What I’ve seen here in the fort so far sets my teeth on edge. So don’t make any sudden or suspicious moves. I might shoot. I’m the nervous type.”
“You look it,” the prisoner said sarcastically. “Do what you like, but for Pete’s sake let me out of here. I’ve been going crazy since dinnertime last night when the troops started screaming and dropping like flies—” He fell silent, shuddering.
Sam handed him the key ring. “Here, let yourself out,” Sam said, stepping back a few paces. He held the rifle level at hip height, pointing not at the prisoner but in his general direction.
The prisoner gripped the key, reaching through and around the bars to fit it into the keyhole of the cell door lock. He turned it, metal squeaking as tumblers turned and the bolt slid back. He opened the door and stepped out of the cage, shambling down the aisle into the front office.
He paused, looking down at the dead guard, studying on him. “Thanks, Fritz,” he said at last. “You dirty, rotten, no-good son of a—!”
“He’s dead, soldier,” Sam Heller said dryly.
The trooper looked up with a crooked, broken-toothed, jack-o’-lantern grin. “Fritz here was having some fun with me last night, making me wait for my dinner while he ate his first. Turned out, he saved my life. He took a couple spoonfuls of that chili, then jumped up like he’d been struck by lightning. He grabbed his throat, let out a holler, and dropped to the floor like a poleaxed steer, dead.”
The cavalryman took a close look as if seeing Sam for the first time
. He frowned furiously, ridged brow furrowing, thick black brows knitting in concentration. Some of the fierceness faded as dawning recognition flickered in his eyes. “Hey, I know you.”
“Do you?” Sam said.
“Yes, I do—you’re the bounty killer, a friend of Captain Harrison’s,” the trooper said. “The one who cleaned up on the Harbin bunch. I’ve seen you come in to the fort a couple times.”
“That’s right,” Sam said, seeing no harm and some possible benefit in admitting the obvious truth.
“I knew it!” the trooper crowed. “Thought I recognized you before like I said. Figured I’d take a chance you wasn’t one of them. I was going crazy in here, scared nobody would come to let me out.” His voice was thick with emotion.
“I’ve seen you around here,” Sam said, certain now. “You’re a corporal.”
“Private now. I got busted down in rank for drinking on duty,” the trooper said. “That’s why I’m in here, doing a stretch in the calaboose. Hell, I used to be a sergeant, but I lost my stripes for brawling.” He wasn’t bragging exactly but not ashamed, either. “I’m Berg, Otto Berg—Private First Class Otto Berg now. What’s your handle?”
“The name’s Heller, Sam Heller.”
“Glad to know you, Heller, I owe you for getting me out of that cell,” Otto Berg said, thrusting out an oversized hand. “Shake!”
Sam decided to take a chance, shifting his rifle to the other hand and reaching out to the trooper. Otto had big strong hands, a powerful grip. Sam tightened his own grip. If this was to be a test of strength, he’d be damned if he’d come out second best.
It was and he didn’t. Sam stepped up the pressure, causing Otto Berg to break off the handshake first.
“That’s a strong grip you’ve got there, brother,” the trooper said, trying not to wince.
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed,” Sam said nonchalantly, smiling to himself a moment later when he saw Otto surreptitiously trying to massage some feeling back into his hand.
“Got any water?” Otto asked. “I’m parched. The last of my waters ran out this morning and I ain’t had a drink all day.”
Rebel Yell Page 18
