Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  “It’s your commanding officer, you idiot,” Carrington said. “Stay as you are.”

  They waited in the bitter darkness, each alone with his thoughts. The Thoroughbred was dancing. Carrington spoke to him softly, stroking his neck. His voice had a calming effect.

  At last Sample arrived with the food and supplies. Dixon cut the blankets into strips, which he and Phillips used to wrap the heavy ammunition to their ankles. Harry had seen scouts do this before setting out on an especially difficult journey. The weight would help keep their feet in the stirrups. When they were finished Carrington told the sergeant of the guard to open the gates. The wood groaned as he slid the heavy bar from its brackets.

  “Harry, give me the letter,” Carrington said. He checked the envelope’s contents, then sealed it and gave it to Phillips. “Deliver this to the telegrapher at Horseshoe Station.” They shook hands. “May the Lord ride with you. Our life is in your hands.”

  He took hold of the bridle and steadied Beau as Phillips swung into the saddle. Harry heard sadness in his father’s voice as he said good-bye to the horse. Then Phillips applied his spurs and they flew away into the darkness at a gallop. Carrington closed his eyes, listening to the diminishing hoofbeats.

  “Good,” he said. “He has taken the softer ground at the side of the road.”

  Dixon mounted the Appaloosa and said, “Colonel, you said we’d be paid for this.”

  Carrington raised his eyebrows. Dixon was not a man known to be concerned with money. “Yes. Three hundred dollars for both of you.”

  “And if we don’t make it the money will go to our beneficiaries?”

  “Yes. You have my word.”

  Dixon shook Carrington’s hand, then turned to Harry. “So long, Harry.” They too shook hands. “I’ve got a favor to ask of you. If I don’t come back I want her to have it. You know who I mean. The three hundred dollars and everything else I’ve got. I’ve left a letter in my cabin. See to it, will you?”

  Harry nodded, a stone in his throat. “I will,” he said.

  Dixon kicked the Appaloosa’s sides and then they too were gone. For a brief time Harry heard the rhythmic beat of the horse’s shod hoofs on the frozen road, then nothing.

  “God be with them,” Carrington said as the guard barred the door.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The boom of the sunrise gun shook her from a fitful sleep. For an instant Rose was buoyed by a fragile hope. Maybe she had only dreamed Mark’s death and all the rest. But no, she woke to her surroundings and the truth came crashing down. She felt as a soldier must feel, she thought, waking in a trench on the day of battle.

  Slowly she got to her feet. The muscles of her back were stiff and sore from sleeping on the floor and her head ached.

  “I’m glad you slept.” Margaret sat beside a small table. A lamp was lit and a book lay open in her lap. “You needed it.”

  “Have you been up all night?” Rose spoke quietly so as not to wake the other women and children.

  “Most of it.” Margaret looked down at Jimmy curled up in a pile of blankets at her feet.

  “Has there been any change?”

  “No,” Margaret said. “Nothing.”

  Rose stepped gingerly around the bundled bodies on the floor and cracked the door, breathing in the cold morning air. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten. Carrington had doubled the guard. Two men stood on every sentry stand and the banquette was lined with watchful gunmen. If the Indians were going to come, it would be soon.

  Looking at her own cabin she saw it was dark, its windows boarded. Was Mark still there or had they moved him to the hospital to take his place with the other corpses? Poor Mark, she thought, to keep such ghastly company.

  Dixon’s cabin also was dark. Where was he? She wanted so very much to see him. She didn’t care what Frances Grummond thought. Her opinion did not matter. Only one person’s opinion truly mattered to her now. She closed the door and went to the kitchen where Margaret was stoking the fire in the cook stove.

  “Fill the pot, will you?” Margaret said. “I’ll make coffee.”

  Rose filled the tin coffeepot with water from the barrel by the door while Margaret ground the roasted beans. After putting it on to boil, she sat at the table and motioned for Rose to sit across from her.

  “I hope Frances didn’t hurt you last night,” Margaret said. “She was upset.”

  “I don’t care what she thinks. Truly, I don’t.”

  Margaret smiled. “I believe you. That’s something I’ve always admired about you, Rose, your honesty and independence. When all this is over you two should stay here, in the West. Helena, maybe. Henry says Helena will be a fine city someday.”

  “We two?”

  “You and Dr. Dixon, of course. You belong together. I’ve thought so for some time. Tell me, did Mark know you were with child when he left you at Fort Sedgwick?”

  Rose was stunned. “How did you know?”

  Margaret shrugged. “When a woman wants to have a child—as I do—she is sensitive to signs in others. How far along were you? Ten or twelve weeks?”

  “Ten weeks at most,” Rose said. “And yes, Mark knew.”

  “Henry encouraged him to remain with you, you know, but Mark insisted he stay with the regiment. Lieutenant Reynolds was very keen to prove himself.”

  Rose nodded. She suspected as much. After Fort Sedgwick, she knew her well-being and that of her child always would be second to Mark’s ambition.

  “I’m glad the child was not born,” Rose said. It was the first time she had admitted this, even to herself. “At the time I wanted it very much, but now I’m glad. Is that evil?”

  Margaret shook her head. “I don’t think so. But if the baby had come, I’m sure you would have loved him or her as much as I love my boys. You’ll be a fine mother one day, I’m sure of it.”

  Her admission and Margaret’s forgiveness made Rose feel as if a heavy load had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “I’m not sure Mark loved me,” she said. “Not really, not the way Daniel does.” She stood, feeling light as a feather. “I’m going to see him—right now. Where is he, do you know? In the hospital?”

  “Sit down,” Margaret said. “Dr. Dixon isn’t here. He rode with Phillips last night. He’s gone to Horseshoe Station for help.”

  “What?” Rose felt the familiar heaviness returning. “Why didn’t he tell me?” Did he mistake her tears of guilt at Mark’s bedside for something else? Why hadn’t she gone to him last night? Why, when confronted with the specter of death, had she let any meaningless sense of decorum stop her?

  Margaret walked to the stove and returned with a steaming mug of coffee. “Drink it,” she said. “You’ll feel better.”

  Rose looked down at the black coffee, her mind racing. She remembered the last time she saw him, in the quartermaster’s yard, with Jack Gregory, after their return from the ridge. Now, in her mind’s eye, she saw him beside Phillips, dead on the frozen ground. Rose closed her eyes and sent up a prayer, just as the bugler outside sounded assembly. The notes sounded full of portent and mournful as a dirge. Please, she prayed, let him return to me.

  The front door swung open and Carrington and Harry entered the cabin. They came first to the kitchen, moving awkwardly in their heavy coats and overshoes, stepping carefully around the small children still sleeping on the floor. Carrington took his wife’s hands and kissed her on the lips.

  “Did anyone come in last night?” Margaret said.

  Carrington shook his head. “No. We must assume that Grummond and the thirty men with him are dead.”

  His words were met with a moan from the daybed where Frances Grummond had passed the night. Jennie Wands went to her, holding her as she sobbed. All eyes turned to Carrington.

  A bead of sweat rolled down his face as he addressed the crowded room. “Last night I dispatched two brave men, Portugee Phillips and surgeon Daniel Dixon, to the telegraph office at Horseshoe Station. Our lives are in thei
r hands.”

  Harry saw the pain on Rose’s face.

  “Captain Ten Eyck is forming a recovery detail,” Carrington said. “I will lead it personally. I promise you”—here he looked at Frances Grummond—“we will not return until every man has been found and his remains brought to safety.”

  He walked to the daybed and removed his hat. His hair was wet with sweat and plastered across his pale forehead. “Mrs. Grummond,” he said, “I am very sorry for your loss. I shall bring Lieutenant Grummond back to you.”

  Frances raised her wet, swollen face. “George and the others are beyond suffering now,” she said. “You ought not risk other precious lives and make other women as miserable as myself.”

  Carrington looked at her with admiration. “Your selflessness does you credit,” he said, “but my reasons are not wholly sentimental. If we cannot rescue our dead, as the Indians do at whatever risk, how can I send details out for any purpose? They will think us weak. It may stimulate them to risk an assault.”

  This served as a reminder the fort was still at risk. Ripples of fear went through the room. Margaret walked to her husband’s side and took his arm.

  “Yes,” she said. “It is your duty. God will care for us. Go rescue the dead, Henry.”

  After he left the women busied themselves packing away the blankets and bed rolls. Outside they heard the relief column preparing to depart. Rose opened the door to cool the overheated room. Only Carrington, his two officers, and about a dozen men were mounted. The others were on foot or in the open wagons that would hold corpses on the return. Before leaving, Carrington handed Captain Powell two pieces of paper.

  “What are those orders?” Rose said to Harry, beside her at the open door.

  “I don’t know.” He lied. He watched his father write them.

  “I don’t believe you.” She fixed her blue eyes on him in a way that demanded truth.

  “One is a means of communicating with the troops in the field. If all is well, Powell is supposed to fire the sunset gun as usual and run a white lamp up the flagstaff. If Indians appear, he’s supposed to fire three guns from the twelve-pounder at one-minute intervals and run up a red lantern.”

  “And the second?”

  Harry remembered that document very well:

  If in my absence Indians in overwhelming numbers attack, put the women and children in the magazine with supplies of water, bread, crackers, and other supplies that seem best, and, in the event of a last desperate struggle, destroy all together rather than have any captured alive.

  He could not, however, repeat it.

  “Never mind,” Rose said. “I believe I know.” She raised her eyes to the sky, gray and pregnant with snow. “I don’t think the Indians mean to attack the fort. If they did they’d have done it by now. I suppose Red Cloud means to starve us out.” She spoke matter-of-factly, Harry noticed, as another woman might say, “I believe I will bake a cake this morning.” He admired her calmness.

  Snow began falling mid-afternoon, driven by a lashing, snake-tongue of a wind. By three o’clock it was dark as night. The women prepared beans and coffee for the post’s defenders, a force of only forty men. Harry carried a basket to the hospital.

  The front room was empty but a fire burned in the heating stove. Light showed under the sheet of canvas that separated the surgery from the back ward, which now served as a morgue. In there, Harry knew, the surgeons were cataloguing injuries, a list of horrors, for his father’s report. Heart thumping, Harry crossed the room and pushed the canvas to one side. A ghoulish sight, reminiscent of something conjured by Ambrose Bierce at the fireside, met his eyes. Horton, wearing an overcoat and a cheery red muffler, leaned over a nude body stretched out on a wooden stand while a steward held a lantern. The dead man’s head and face were crushed, his features slid to one side like a partly melted waxen mask.

  “Hello, Harry,” Horton said, glancing up. “What have you brought us?”

  Harry cleared his throat, hoping his voice would not fail him. “Beans and bread. Hot coffee.”

  “Thank you, son. Put them over there by the window. Carter, more light here.” As the steward adjusted the lamp Harry saw a crude tattoo on the dead man’s arm, a mermaid with full breasts and flowing hair, and knew he was looking at Purves, a Scotsman who used to entertain his fellow soldiers with stories, told in a thick burr, about his days aboard a Nantucket whaler.

  As Harry unpacked the basket Powell stomped into the room, brushing snow from his shoulders.

  “Horton!” he called. “Colonel Carrington is back. You’re needed in the quartermaster’s yard.”

  Horton came to the canvas door. “Was anyone found alive?” he said.

  Powell shook his head.

  Horton removed his bloody apron and tossed it onto a growing pile of dirty linens in the corner. “Did they find everyone?”

  “To a man,” Powell replied, “and they’re in the same condition as those you’ve got. Worse, if anything. Grummond was nearly decapitated. Strange, they even butchered that pinto of yours, Harry. That did surprise me. You’d think they’d take that Injun pony with them.”

  Calico! With a stab of pure pain, Harry realized he had not given a thought to the sweet pony who had been so much part of his life since leaving Nebraska. Tears stung his eyes. How could he have forgotten about Calico?

  “I’m sorry, son.” Horton finished buttoning his greatcoat and walked to Harry, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I know how much that pony meant to you boys.” He shook his head as he wrapped the red muffler round his head and face till only his eyes were showing. Harry watched Horton and Powell cross the parade yard. The new fall of snow lay white and perfect on the ground, reflecting the light of the full moon that hung over the Bighorns as if balanced on its highest peak. How peaceful everything looks, Harry thought, and what a liar Mother Nature is.

  Suddenly he saw a glimmer, a glint, from a distant ridge. They had not seen any signal fires since the previous evening but surely the Indians were still out there, red men of steel, impervious to cold and wind. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, then looked again. The entire ridge had vanished behind a veil of blowing snow.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  It snowed all night and all the next day. On December 22, the day after the massacre, the thermometer outside the quartermaster’s warehouse plunged to twenty degrees below zero. Drifts piled so high against the stockade’s west wall that a man could walk over the top. Carrington ordered the men to dig a ten-foot trench in front of the wall but within three hours it too filled with snow. The trench was dug a second time and then a third, but finally Carrington gave up and posted an extra guard.

  A funereal silence gripped the post. The only sounds were the sentries’ calls every quarter hour and the hammers of the coffin-makers. The dead officers—Reynolds, Grummond, Brown, and Fetterman—were buried on Christmas Eve in the cemetery below Pilot Hill. The ground was frozen hard as iron and the cold was so intense grave diggers worked in twenty-minute intervals.

  Chaplain White kept the ceremony short. It began at one o’clock in a driving snow. No one wept. Even the widows’ tears were spent. Although no Indians or signal fires had been seen since the night of the massacre, still the fear of attack hung over the post. Eyes that should have been closed in prayer scanned the hilltops for the first telltale sign of a lance or feathered headdress.

  The seventy-six enlisted men and civilians Wheatley and Fisher were buried the day after Christmas, in a long trench. Gravediggers labored round the clock, again in shifts. To save time and timber, the dead were interred two to a coffin. Each man met his maker well-dressed, as survivors donated their best uniforms to clothe their dead friends.

  No one spoke of Phillips and Dixon during the long and terrible time of waiting, as if saying their names aloud might somehow bring a curse down upon them. Rose managed to keep busy during the days but nights were torture. Alone in the cabin she once shared with Mark, she lay in the rope bed where he died and stared
at the canvas ceiling as hellish images played out in her mind. One hundred and ninety miles separated Fort Phil Kearny from Horseshoe Station on the North Platte, a hard ride during ordinary circumstances. The mercury had not topped zero since the day of the massacre and often it was far below. Even if Daniel managed to avoid the Indians, how could he endure the brutal cold without a fire? Sometimes she thought of Mark, which kindled a roiling mix of emotions. She punished herself with feelings of guilt, believing she owed Mark at least that. But sometimes she let herself imagine a new life in the West, a life free of the smallness of society and its expectations. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be a life she chose and not one chosen for her.

  In these waking dreams she shared her days and nights with Daniel Dixon, as his companion and the mother of his children—tall, strong boys who favored him and blue-eyed girls for her. Dan could practice medicine if he wanted to; if not, they would be ranchers or merchants or farmers. They would live in a big white frame house, two stories, with gable windows and a covered porch with a view of the mountains. She saw window boxes with showy red geraniums. Each child would have a pony and there would be a big yellow dog with a sweet face and floppy ears. Pleasurable though it was, she indulged in this dream infrequently because it made a return to reality all the more miserable.

  The day after the mass burial, six days after the massacre, a line of soldiers appeared on the Fort Reno Road. Cheers and huzzahs rang through the post but these faded when it became clear the column was too short to be a regiment of rescuers from Laramie. Instead it was Captain George Dandy, Brown’s official replacement as quartermaster, and his twenty-five man escort. He brought good news. Dixon and Phillips had made it to Fort Reno, arriving the day after Dandy’s company. After learning of the disaster, Dandy had insisted on coming to Fort Phil Kearny at once, unlike Reno’s commanding officer, who refused to move until the weather improved. They had seen no Indians on their journey.