Twenty minutes later the men of Fort Sedgewick, who looked more like a band of hideously abused prisoners than they did soldiers, had assembled on the flat, open space in front of Cargill’s awful hut.
There were eighteen of them. Eighteen out of an original fifty-eight. Thirty-three men had gone over the hill, chancing whatever waited for them on the prairie. Cargill had sent a mounted patrol of seven men after the biggest batch of deserters. Maybe they were dead or maybe they had deserted too. They had never come back.
Now just eighteen wretched men.
Captain Cargill cleared his throat.
“I’m proud of you all for staying,” he began.
The little assembly of zombies said nothing.
“Gather up your weapons and anything else you care to take out of here. As soon as you’re ready we will march back to Fort Hays.”
The eighteen were moving before he finished the sentence, stampeding like drunkards for their sleeping holes below the bluff, as if afraid the captain might change his mind if they didn’t hurry.
It was all over in less than fifteen minutes. Captain Cargill and his ghostly command staggered quickly onto the prairie and charted an easterly route for the 150 miles back to Hays.
The stillness around the failed army monument was complete when they were gone. Within five minutes a solitary wolf appeared on the bank across the stream from Fort Sedgewick and paused to sniff the breeze blowing toward him. Deciding this dead place was better left alone, he trotted on.
And so the abandonment of the army’s most remote outpost, the spearhead of a grand scheme to drive civilization deep into the heart of the frontier, became complete. The army would regard it as merely a setback, a postponement of expansion that might have to wait until the Civil War had run its course, until the proper resources could be marshaled to supply a whole string of forts. They would come back to it, of course, but for now the recorded history of Fort Sedgewick had come to a dismal halt. The lost chapter in Fort Sedgewick’s history, and the only one that could ever pretend to glory, was all set to begin.
four
Day broke eagerly for Lieutenant Dunbar. He was already thinking about Fort Sedgewick as he blinked himself awake, gazing half-focused at the wooden slats of the wagon a couple of feet above his head. He was wondering about Captain Cargill and the men and the lay of the place and what his first patrol would be like and a thousand other things that ran excitedly through his head.
This was the day he would finally reach his post, thus realizing a long-standing dream of serving on the frontier.
He tossed aside his bedding and rolled out from underneath the wagon. Shivering in the early light, he pulled on his boots and stomped around impatiently.
“Timmons,” he whispered, bending under the wagon.
The smelly driver was sleeping deeply. The lieutenant nudged him with the toe of a boot.
“Timmons.”
“Yeah, what?” the driver blubbered, sitting up in alarm.
“Let’s get going.”
five
Captain Cargill’s column had made progress, just under ten miles by early afternoon.
A certain progress of the spirit had been made as well. The men were singing, proud songs from buoyed hearts, as they straggled across the prairie. The sounds of this lifted Captain Cargill’s spirits as much as anyone’s. The singing gave him a great resolve. The army could put him in front of a firing squad if it wanted, and he would still smoke his last cigarette with a smile. He’d made the right decision. No one could dissuade him of that.
And as he tramped across the open grassland, he felt a long-lost satisfaction rushing back to him. The satisfaction of command. He was thinking like a commander again. He wished for a real march, one with a mounted column of troops.
I’d have flankers out right now, he mused. I’d have them out a solid mile to the north and south.
He actually looked to the south as the thought of flankers passed through his mind.
Then Cargill turned away, never knowing that if flankers had been probing a mile south at that very moment, they would have found something.
They would have discovered two travelers who had paused in their trek to poke around a burned-out wreck of a wagon lying in a shallow gully. One would carry a foul odor about him, and the other, a severely handsome young man, would be in uniform.
But there were no flankers, so none of this was discovered.
Captain Cargill’s column marched resolutely on, singing their way east toward Fort Hays.
And after their brief pause, the young lieutenant and the teamster were back on their wagon, pressing west for For Sedgewick.
CHAPTER II
one
On the second day out Captain Cargill’s men shot a fat buffalo cow from a small herd of about a dozen and laid over a few hours to feast Indian-style on the delicious meat. The men insisted on roasting a slab of hump for their captain, and the commander’s eyes welled with joy as he sank in his remaining teeth and let the heavenly meat melt in his mouth.
The luck of the column held, and around noon on the fourth day out they bumped into a large army surveying party. The major in charge could see the full story of their ordeal in the condition of Cargill’s men, and his sympathy was instant.
With the loan of half a dozen horses and a wagon for the sick, Captain Cargill’s column made excellent time, arriving at Fort Hays four days later.
two
It happens sometimes that those things we fear the most turn out to harm us the least, and so it was for Captain Cargill. He was not arrested for abandoning Fort Sedgewick, far from it. His men, who a few days before were dangerously close to overthrowing him, told the story of their privations at Fort Sedgewick, and not a single soldier failed to single out Captain Cargill as a leader in whom they had complete confidence. To a man, they testified that, without Captain Cargill, none of them would have made it through.
The army of the frontier, its resources and morale frayed to the point of breaking, listened to all this testimony with joy.
Two steps were taken immediately. The post commandant relayed the full story of Fort Sedgewick’s demise to General Tide at regional headquarters in St. Louis, ending his report with the recommendation that Fort Sedgewick be permanently abandoned, at least until further notice. General Tide was inclined to agree wholeheartedly, and within days Fort Sedgewick ceased to be connected with the United States government. It became a nonplace.
The second step concerned Captain Cargill. He was elevated to full hero status, receiving in rapid succession the Medal of Valor and a promotion to major. A “victory dinner” was organized on his behalf at the officers’ mess.
It was at this dinner, over drinks after the meal, that Cargill heard from a friend the curious little story that had fueled most of the talk around the post just prior to his triumphant arrival.
Old Major Fambrough, a midlevel administrator with a lackluster record, had gone off his rocker. He had stood one afternoon in the middle of the parade ground, jabbering incoherently about his kingdom and asking over and over for his crown. The poor fellow had been shipped east just a few days ago.
As the captain listened to the details of this weird event, he, of course, had no idea that Major Fambrough’s sad departure had also carried away all trace of Lieutenant Dunbar. Officially, the young officer existed only in the addled recesses of Major Fambrough’s cracked brain.
Cargill also learned that, ironically, a wagonload of provisions had finally been dispatched by the same unfortunate major, a wagon bound for Fort Sedgewick. They must have passed each other on the march back. Captain Cargill and his acquaintance had a good laugh as they imagined the driver pulling up to that awful place and wondering what on earth had happened. They went so far as to speculate humorlessly about what the driver would do and decided that if he was smart, he would continue west, selling off the provisions at various trading posts along the way. Cargill staggered half-drunk to his quarters in the w
ee hours, and his head hit the pillow with the wonderful thought that Fort Sedgewick was now only a memory.
So it came to be that only one person on earth was left with any notion as to the whereabouts or even the existence of Lieutenant Dunbar.
And that person was a poorly groomed bachelor civilian who mattered very little to anyone.
Timmons.
CHAPTER III
one
The only sign of life was the ragged piece of canvas flapping gently in the doorway of the collapsed supply house. The late afternoon breeze was up, but the only thing that moved was the shred of canvas.
Had it not been for the lettering, crudely gouged in the beam over Captain Cargill’s late residence, Lieutenant Dunbar could not have believed this was the place. But it was spelled out clearly.
“Fort Sedgewick.”
The men sat silently on the wagon seat, staring about at the skimpy ruin that had turned out to be their final destination.
At last Lieutenant Dunbar hopped down and stepped cautiously through Cargill’s doorway. Seconds later he emerged and glanced at Timmons, who was still in the wagon.
“Not what you’d call a goin’ concern,” Timmons shouted down.
But the lieutenant didn’t answer. He walked to the supply house, pulled the canvas flap aside, and leaned in. There was nothing to see, and in a moment he was walking back to the wagon.
Timmons stared down at him and started to shake his head.
“May as well unload,” the lieutenant said matter-of-factly.
“What for, Lieutenant?”
“Because we’ve arrived.”
Timmons squirmed on the seat. “There ain’t nothin’ here,” he croaked.
Lieutenant Dunbar glanced around at his post.
“Not at the moment, no.”
A silence passed between them, a silence that carried the tension of a standoff. Dunbar’s arms hung at his sides while Timmons fingered the team’s reins. He spat over the side of the wagon.
“Everybody’s run off . . . or got kilt.” He was glaring hard at the lieutenant, as if he wasn’t going to have any more of this nonsense. “We might jus’ as well turn ‘round and get started back.”
But Lieutenant Dunbar had no intention of going back. What had happened to Fort Sedgewick was something for finding out. Perhaps everyone had run off and perhaps they were all dead. Perhaps there were survivors, only an hour away, struggling to reach the fort.
And there was a deeper reason for his staying, something beyond his sharp sense of duty. There are times when a person wants something so badly that price or condition cease to be obstacles. Lieutenant Dunbar had wanted the frontier most of all. And now he was here. What Fort Sedgewick looked like or what its circumstances were didn’t matter to him. His heart was set.
So his eyes never wavered as he spoke, his voice flat and dispassionate.
“This is my post and those are the post’s provisions.”
They stared each other down again. A smile broke on Timmons’s mouth. He laughed.
“Are you crazy, boy?”
Timmons said this knowing that the lieutenant was a pup, that he had probably never been in combat, that he had never been west, and that he had not lived long enough to know anything. “Are you crazy, boy?” The words had come as though from the mouth of a fed-up father.
He was wrong.
Lieutenant Dunbar was not a pup. He was gentle and dutiful, and at times he was sweet. But he was not a pup.
He had seen combat nearly all his life. And he had been successful in combat because he possessed a rare trait. Dunbar had an inborn sense, a kind of sixth sense, that told him when to be tough. And when this critical moment was upon him, something intangible kicked into his psyche and Lieutenant Dunbar became a mindless, lethal machine that couldn’t be turned off. Not until it had accomplished its objective. When push came to shove, the lieutenant pushed first. And those that shoved back regretted doing so.
The words “Are you crazy, boy?” had tripped the mechanism of the machine, and Timmons’s smile began a slow fade as he watched Lieutenant Dunbar’s eyes turn black. A moment later Timmons saw the lieutenant’s right hand lift, slowly and deliberately. He saw the heel of Dunbar’s hand light softly on the handle of the big Navy revolver he wore on his hip. He saw the lieutenant’s index finger slip smoothly through the trigger guard.
“Get your ass off that wagon and help me unload.”
The tone of these words had a profound effect on Timmons. The tone told him that death had suddenly appeared on the scene. His own death.
Timmons didn’t bat an eye. Nor did he make a reply. Almost in a single motion he tied the reins to the brake, leaped down from his seat, walked briskly to the rear of the wagon, threw open the tailgate, and lifted out the first item of portage he could put his hands on.
two
They crammed as much as they could into the half-caved-in supply house and stacked the rest in Cargill’s former quarters.
CHAPTER IV
one
Saying the moon would be up and that he wanted to make time, Timmons pulled out at twilight.
Lieutenant Dunbar sat on the ground, made himself a smoke, and watched the wagon grow smaller in the distance. The sun left about the same time the wagon disappeared, and he sat in the dark a long time, glad for the company of silence. After an hour he started to stiffen, so he got up and plodded to Captain Cargill’s hut.
Suddenly tired, he flopped fully clothed on the little bed he’d made amidst the supplies and laid his head down.
His ears were very big that night. Sleep was hard in coming. Every little noise in the darkness asked for an explanation that Dunbar could not provide. There was a strangeness in this place at night that he hadn’t felt during the day.
Just as he would begin to slip off, the snap of a twig or a tiny, far-off splash in the stream would bring him wide-awake again. This went on for a long time, and gradually it wore Lieutenant Dunbar down. He was tired and he was restless as he was tired, and this combination opened the door wide to an unwelcome visitor. In through the door of Lieutenant Dunbar’s sleepless sleep marched doubt. Doubt challenged him hard that night. It whispered awful things into his ear. He had been a fool. He was wrong about everything. He was worthless. He might as well be dead. Doubt that night brought him to the verge of tears. Lieutenant Dunbar fought back, quieting himself with kind thoughts. He fought far into the morning, and in the wee hours close to dawn, he finally kicked doubt out and fell asleep.
two
They had stopped.
There were six of them.
They were Pawnee, the most terrible of all the tribes. Roached hair and early wrinkles and a collective set of mind something like the machine Lieutenant Dunbar could occasionally become. But there was nothing occasional about the way the Pawnee saw things. They saw with unsophisticated but ruthlessly efficient eyes, eyes that, once fixed on an object, decided in a twinkling whether it should live or die. And if it was determined that the object should cease to live, the Pawnee saw to its death with psychotic precision. When it came to dealing death, the Pawnee were automatic, and all of the Plains Indians feared them as they did no one else.
What had caused these six Pawnee to stop was something they had seen. And now they sat atop their scrawny horses, looking down on a series of rolling gullies. A tiny wisp of smoke was curling into the early morning air about half a mile away.
From their vantage point on a low rise they could see the smoke clearly. But they could not see the source. The source was hidden in the last of the gullies. And because they could not see all that they wanted, the men had begun to talk it over, chattering in low, guttural tones about the smoke and what it might be. Had they felt stronger, they might have ridden down at once, but they had already been away from home for a long time, and the time away had been a disaster.
They had begun with a small party of eleven men, making the trek south to steal from the horse-rich Comanches. After riding
for almost a week they had been surprised at a river crossing by a large force of Kiowas. It was a lucky thing that they escaped with only one man dead and one wounded.
The wounded man held on for a week with a badly punctured lung, and the burden of him slowed the party greatly. When at last he died and the nine marauding Pawnee could resume their search unencumbered, they had nothing but bad luck. The Comanche bands were always a step or two ahead of the hapless Pawnee, and for two more weeks they found nothing but cold trails.
Finally they located a large encampment with many fine horses and rejoiced in the lifting of the bad cloud that had followed them for so long. But what the Pawnee didn’t know was that their luck hadn’t changed at all. In fact, it was only the worst kind of luck that had brought them to this village, for this band of Comanches had been hit hard only a few days before by a strong party of Utes, who had killed several good warriors and made off with thirty horses.
The whole Comanche band was on the alert, and they were in a vengeful mood as well. The Pawnee were discovered the moment they began to creep into the village, and with half the camp breathing down their necks, they fled, stumbling through the alien darkness on their worn-out ponies. It was only in retreat that luck finally found them. All of them should have died that night. In the end, however, they lost only three more warriors.
So now these six disheartened men, sitting on this lonely rise, their ribbed-out ponies too tired to move underneath them, wondered what to do about a single feathery stream of smoke half a mile away.
To debate the merits of whether to make an attack was very Indian. But to debate a single wisp of smoke for half an hour was a much different matter, and it showed just how far the confidence of these Pawnee had sunk. The six were split, one cell for withdrawing, the other for investigating. As they dallied back and forth, only one man, the fiercest among them, remained steadfast from the first. He wanted to swoop down on the smoke immediately, and as the jawboning dragged on, he grew more and more sullen.
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