Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  The Indians surrounding the redoubt outnumbered the soldiers many times over. It was impossible to count them. Mid-afternoon they massed for a charge and galloped down on the little post in one wide, terrifying line. The attack was preceded by the bugle Rose had heard at dawn. All the men, even Anderson’s troops, looked to Trover for direction. He was always in motion, vaulting around on his crutch, shouting orders and words of encouragement as calmly as if he were directing target practice. “Hold your fire, boys,” he said. “Wait till you got something to hit. Aim low.”

  In the cabin with the other women, Rose crouched against a wall, her hands over her ears. Pat’s death had changed her mind about participating in the redoubt’s defense. The noise was deafening—a constant roar of gunfire, screaming men and horses, shrieking bone whistles. Rose had never heard it before, the sound of war.

  No soldiers were injured during the assault, which Trover said may have been mostly a means of measuring the redoubt’s strength. After, the Indian leader rode back and forth before his warriors, exhorting them in a powerful voice even the soldiers could hear. A giant on a big American horse, he wore no war paint other than vertical lines of red and black across his face. On his head he wore a feathered war bonnet with two short, black buffalo horns on either side.

  “What’s he saying?” Trover asked Gregory. “Do you know him?”

  “I know him,” Gregory said. “He’s called Cloudsplitter, a Cheyenne war chief. He’s telling his bucks they are many and we are few. He says, ‘Tonight we will bring the bluecoats’ scalps to our fires.’”

  The war drums started. Rose found this the most frightening sound of all. They aroused in her a primal fear and a wild, irrational impulse to run. If only they would stop. The throbbing was unbearable, like pressure on a broken bone. She fled the stifling cabin, hoping to find a breeze, but there was none. Across the yard Anderson, Dixon, Gregory, and paymaster Henry were deep in conversation. She moved closer until she could hear them.

  “What are you going to do, Anderson?” Henry said. “We can’t just sit here and wait for them to finish us off. You’re in charge. What do you propose?”

  Anderson, sitting on a cracker box, wiped the back of his neck with a handkerchief. “There’s only one thing we can do,” he said. “We have to send a rider for help. Tonight, after dark.”

  “Who’ve you got in mind?”

  “I’ll ask for volunteers.”

  Rose went back to the cabin and Anderson soon followed. He knelt by his wife’s bed and took her hand but Clara was too far gone to acknowledge him. “They’re dying,” he said dully. “Both of them.”

  Rose said nothing. She would not offer false encouragement.

  Anderson stayed with his wife and son until evening, sometimes dozing in his chair. With the darkness came clouds, sailing fast across the moon, and cool air that smelled of rain. Indian fires burned on the high ground across the water accompanied by the drums and wailing voices. Rose, standing alone in the yard, could not take her eyes off the black silhouettes moving before the fires’ orange glow. She sensed she was witnessing something ancient, from a ghost world.

  A light rain began to fall. Closing her eyes, she lifted her face to it. The cool wetness was refreshing and she stood this way for a long time, until she heard voices. She crossed the darkened yard and found Gregory and her driver, Ignacio, sitting on the ground tearing a blanket into strips and winding them around their feet.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “Me and Ignacio, we’re going for help,” Gregory said. “If we make it by the Indians, this will disguise our footprints.”

  Footprints, Rose thought, would be the least of your problems. “You’re very brave,” she said.

  Gregory kept his eyes on his work. “I don’t know about that, Mrs. Reynolds, but somebody’s got to go, that’s clear. Anyhow we’re lucky tonight on one count, there’s good cloud cover. And we’re gonna need all the luck we can get. Verdad, amigo?” Ignacio nodded.

  The two men wore dark ponchos made of army blankets with holes for their heads. Their boots were tied around their necks. When his foot-wrapping was done Gregory walked over to Rose. “Mrs. Reynolds, if anything happens to me, will you see my mother gets this?” He handed her an envelope addressed to Widow Gregory, Pleasant Hill, Cass County, Missouri.

  “Of course,” she said, putting it with the revolver in her waist pocket.

  He nodded his thanks and turned back to Anderson. “We’ll follow the creek bed far as we can. Once we’re clear of the Indians we’ll head north. It’ll take us at least fifteen hours to get to Reno. At least that.”

  Anderson nodded and offered Gregory his hand. “May God be with you.” He extended his hand to Ignacio and said, “Dios se lo pague.”

  The Mexican smiled, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “I take my rewards on earth, Teniente,” he said.

  Each man carried a gun and a pack with water, dried beef, and hard bread. Soldiers had dug a narrow tunnel under one of the adobe walls, just big enough for Gregory and Ignacio to slide through. Every soul in the redoubt prayed for their success—some silently, some aloud—as the two men crawled away into the darkness.

  The minutes that followed were agony. Anderson and Rose waited at the open door of the cabin, expecting any moment to hear the terrible sounds that meant discovery. Every incidental noise—Clara’s labored breathing, the distant yip of a coyote—was magnified tenfold.

  A man yelled. Rose felt her skin tighten in terror. Then she realized the shriek came from inside the redoubt. Major Henry was running across the yard carrying an open box. He stopped in front of Anderson, panting and red-faced.

  “They stole it!” he said, flinging the empty lock box at Anderson’s feet. “Gregory and that one-eyed greaser! The payroll money—every goddamn penny. Gone!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Harry was glad to see the last of Fort Reno, an ugly and sunbaked outpost filled with dispirited troops. Discipline was so poor men urinated against the stockade walls, an act that would result in court-martial back in the States. Still, he knew that in leaving this fort they were leaving the last civilized place on the Powder River Road. Between Fort Reno and Bozeman City lay 250 miles of undiscovered country inhabited by a wild, ferocious people. The men of his father’s regiment were like sailors, Harry thought, setting out across a wide, roiling ocean with no friendly ports.

  They left before dawn. By eight o’clock the sun was already blinding, by ten the mercury had climbed to 103. Heat-sick soldiers rode with women and children in the ambulances, fouling the air with their sweat and misery. Harry chose to ride, kicking Calico to the head of the column to escape the dust.

  The Indians first appeared after midday break, lining the sandy hills in front of the train and along its flanks. They showed themselves in greater numbers as the column neared a flat plain strewn with white objects Harry initially took for rocks but, upon closer inspection, turned out to be bleached human bones. There were also a number of stone cairns flying flags of faded calico that snapped in the wind. Harry rode to Bridger to ask him what it was.

  “A Sioux holy place,” Bridger said, “where they fought a famous battle with the Mountain Crows.”

  Just then a dozen soldiers broke from the ranks to collect skull souvenirs. Bridger tried to stop them but they ignored him so he appealed to the nearest officer, Quartermaster Brown.

  “Stop them,” Bridger said. “Call them back to the column.”

  Brown snorted. “What’s the damage? Let them have their fun.”

  Bridger was still angry that night when Harry and Jimmy joined him at his fire. Lit from below by the glowing orange coals, the old man’s face looked ancient as an Egyptian mummy’s, Harry thought.

  “Are you still bothered by what happened today?” Harry said. “Is it really so important?”

  “My bother don’t signify,” Bridger said, staring at the fire. “What signifies is the Sioux who wa
s watchin’—and they was. Just because you don’t see ’em don’t mean they ain’t there. These soldiers ain’t got the sense of a pinecone and the officers neither. They’re a danger to your father’s enterprise.”

  To change the subject, Harry asked why the stream by their campsite was called Crazy Woman Creek. Bridger always was glad to share his knowledge of the land.

  “Well,” he said, fishing through his bag of possibles for his pipe, “there’s two ways of tellin’ it and both come from the Injuns. One is it’s named for a old squaw, a crone, who lived here alone in her wigwam a long, long time ago. She had big medicine, so big that when she opened her mouth a bright light shone out, brighter than the noonday sun and hotter too. You could see that light for miles around, even in the daytime, and if it shone direct on you, well, you was rendered down to a smokin’ piece of charcoal. She could cast spells and shape-shift and whatnot and she used her gifts to make mischief. Though she ain’t been round here for an age, the Injuns say her spirit remains. Can ye feel her, boys? Can ye?”

  Jimmy edged a little closer to Harry. “What’s the other story?” he said.

  “So the others say it comes from the time Sioux warriors attacked a train of religious pilgrims followin’ the Black Robe, De Smet. Happened here, where we be sittin’ now. That big rock marks the spot.” He pointed to a boulder with the bowl of his pipe.

  “Right here?” Jimmy said.

  “Yep, this very spot. The Injuns cut one of the pilgrims up into little pieces right in front of his wife and made her watch while they fed him to the dogs.”

  Jimmy gasped.

  Bridger nodded. “What they say. Naturally, the poor woman lost her mind, why of course she did, watchin’ the dogs eat them little pieces. After that folks tried to do for her but she was past help, just wandered around like she was asleep with her eyes open, talkin’ nonsense to nobody but herself—kindy like that Lady Macbeth your ma read us about t’other night. Anyhow, one day the woman up and disappeared. Clean vanished. No bones, no nothin’. Some claim you can still hear her though, around here, cryin’ for her man.”

  He leaned in toward Harry and Jimmy, till his face was just inches from theirs. “You boys hear anything tonight, you come git me, all right?”

  That night Jimmy slept pressed up next to Harry. Ordinarily, Harry would not have tolerated such closeness but tonight—for Jimmy’s sake only, he told himself—he made an exception.

  The countryside improved dramatically the next day as they moved north. The flat, dry plain they had traveled since Fort Reno began to give way to a lush, green steppe thick with buffalo and gamma grasses. Wild strawberries and raspberries grew beside icy streams and the air was cool and sweet.

  They also started seeing more signs of Indians. Pony droppings littered the ground and vast stretches of prairie were scoured by travois-drug lodge poles so they resembled plowed fields. At noon Bridger and his scouts returned to the column saying they had met up with a band of twenty Sioux braves a few miles up the road.

  “They said they were hunting but they was spies,” Bridger said to Carrington, “sent to size us up.”

  The column continued with a new sense of caution. Later that afternoon they came across a weathered bit of paper nailed to a stake addressed “to all passers-by.” The author, captain of a train of civilian miners, reported an Indian raid on their beef herd and the wounding of one man. Not long after that they found a solitary grave marked with a rough wooden cross. Written in axle grease were the words:

  G Maupin

  Callaway County Missouri June 26 1866,

  killed by Indians

  That evening, after they made camp, a strange black cloud appeared in the clear northern sky. Men paused in their work, women stood up at their cook fires. One soldier nearly started a panic shouting the Indians had fired the grass. But soon it became apparent the fast-moving cloud was not smoke or storm but a legion of grasshopper-like creatures with bulging red eyes. Within minutes, the air thrummed with the beating of countless wings as insects covered every object in sight, moving and stationary, like a living blanket. Mules kicked and plunged and horses pulled their pins and bolted. Margaret and Harry freed their chickens and turkeys from their boxes in hope they would devour at least some of the winged invaders, but they were so many they darkened the sun and the confused poultry went to roost. Giving up, Margaret and Harry joined Jimmy and Black George in the tent. The creatures covered the canvas, making the interior dark as night. George was certain the insects were the Devil’s emissaries. “Their red eyes reflect the fires of Hell!” he cried.

  Harry remembered Bridger’s story of the evil old squaw and wondered if these were her messengers. Or maybe they had been sent by a malign god who lived high in the fog and snow of the Bighorn Mountains like Zeus on Mount Olympus.

  Gradually the buzzing stopped and daylight returned. When he stepped outside, Harry found the ground covered with dead insects that crunched underfoot like peanut shells at a circus. Then another flying legion appeared, this one of black birds, which circled overhead before diving down to devour the remains. After an orgy of noisy, argumentative feasting, every crusty carcass was consumed and the birds, like the insects, vanished as abruptly as they had come.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rollo died at dawn on the second day of the siege and Clara followed him four hours later. Dixon worked tirelessly to save them, even when it was clear to Rose they would not recover. His devotion was so intense, she found herself wondering if perhaps he saw in Clara and Rollo another woman, another child.

  A soldier made a coffin from boards stripped from the side of a wagon and they were buried together beside Pat inside the redoubt walls. It would not be their final resting place but because of the heat the dead could not remain unburied, even for a day. Trover read from the Bible over the grave as Lieutenant Anderson stood by, dry-eyed, stunned.

  By noon of the third day the water barrels were empty. Thick saliva collected in the corners of Rose’s mouth like a paste and her tongue grew until it was a rubbery, alien object in her mouth. By day four her thirst was like a knife stuck deep between her shoulder blades. She could think of nothing but water. Even worse, her treasonous brain tortured her with images of crisp, sweet apples, heavy with juice that ran down her chin with each imagined bite.

  She passed the hours lying on a blanket on the cabin floor, for she could not bring herself to take Clara’s deathbed. Whenever she stood her head swam and her field of vision shrank as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

  The white sun filled the sky, as if the distance separating it from Earth had been reduced by half. Though she was careful not to look at it, Rose was keenly aware of the soldier’s body rotting on the banks of the creek while vultures circled overhead, eyeing their ripening meal. The boldest one flopped to earth beside the corpse and leaned in, thrusting its red head into the gore. A sentry shot at it, then swore when he missed and the vulture rejoined his comrades in the sky.

  “Save your ammunition, Cy,” Trover said. He sat on the ground with his back against the sandbag wall. “We may be needing it.”

  The soldier turned to him. “Dammit, Trover! Me and Hugh, we was like brothers. We been together since we was boys! Through all the war, Rock Island, all of it. Ain’t it bad enough I got to stand here watchin’ him rot out there, swole like a poisoned pup? Do I got to watch them things eat him too?”

  “Reuben, go up there and relieve him,” Trover said. “Cy, you come down. You need a rest.”

  Reuben groaned as he got to his feet. Rose pitied the sentries who stood for thirty-minute intervals in the biting sun, watching the Indians splash in the water and taunt them, all the while remaining out of range. She wondered if sentries were even necessary. Clearly Cloudsplitter planned to let the sun do his killing for him.

  That night, as they sat at the fire, Rose started to believe she might actually die in this place. She thought it likely she would never see Mark again, or her br
others, never have a child, never have her own home with plenty of windows and white muslin curtains and window boxes brimming with red geraniums. She felt the hope bleeding out of her, like a spirit abandoning a lifeless body.

  “Don’t give up.”

  She looked up to see Dixon watching her from across the fire. He smiled. “They got through,” he said, “Gregory and Ignacio. Help’s on the way. I feel it.”

  Henry laughed. “Oh, you feel it. Put your worries aside, Mrs. Reynolds, because the good doctor feels it. Don’t be a fool, Dixon. Even if those thieves, the harelip and the greaser, got past the Indians—which I doubt—they’re halfway to Canada by now. They wouldn’t go anywhere near Fort Reno.”

  Trover joined them at the fire, lowering himself slowly to the ground. “No, if the Indians caught them they’d want us to know it. Their bodies would be out there beside Hugh’s. And even if they didn’t go to Reno our relief detail is due in three days. Don’t forget that.”

  “We can’t go three days without water,” Rose said. “Skinny will be dead by morning without it.”

  “He’s dead now,” Henry said, “or good as. Just look at him.”

  “She’s right,” Dixon said. “We’ve got to have water. I’m going to the creek tonight. Who’s coming with me?”

  There was a silence as men looked at each other across the flames.

  “Me,” Cy said. “Anything’s better than this.”

  A young Mexican teamster also spoke up. “And me,” he said. “I will go también.”

  “Good,” said Dixon. “We’ll leave right away before the clouds move off.” He took up a handful of soot. “Blacken your face and hands, any bit of skin. Anderson, round up canteens and kettles.” Anderson seemed not to hear. He had scarcely said a word since Clara and Rollo died.