Slocum and the Comanche

by Jake Logan

  Slocum’s thoughts turned to Tatum. In the back of his mind, he had a dark thought—one that he couldn’t tell Major Thompson about until he knew more about Fort Sill’s Indian agent and the government contracts for beef.

  11

  Slocum lay back on the bed. “Right now I’m too tired to think about Indian agents or much of anything else. It was a helluva long ride last night.”

  Fannie smiled at him. “You need some rest. I can see it in your eyes. Do you mind if I lie down beside you? I have to be at the Wagon Wheel by three.”

  “Fine with me,” he muttered. He was slipping closer into deep sleep. The feather pillow under his head was so soft.

  He closed his eyes. The rustle of fabric told him Fannie was undressing, but in his present state, he found he didn’t care, even as he recalled the pleasure of the night they spent together.

  A moment later, he felt her snuggling against him, all warm flesh and sweet smells. Lilac water and a hint of soap. Then he drifted off into a deep slumber. His final thoughts were on Senatey, her injuries, the blood on the front of her deerskin dress.

  He was vaguely aware that he was dreaming, and the dreams were unwanted things, reminders of moments from his past he’d tried to forget.

  He saw his father standing beside his mother on the steps of their cabin in Calhoun County, Georgia. Between them, his older brother leaned against a porch post smiling his roguish smile.

  “Where ya been, Johnny?” Robert asked, rolling a piece of straw across his lips.

  “Down at the creek ... fishin’.”

  “You forgot to tend to them mules,” Robert added, enjoying John’s swelling misery. He had forgotten to unharness the mules before he went fishing.

  “I let it slip my mind,” he explained. In his dreaming state, as this moment from his boyhood was so vivid, it was as if he were living it all over again.

  His father scowled. It was a look John knew all too well. “What if your ma forgot to feed you, son? How’d you feel if I left you tied to a tree wearin’ full harness?”

  “But I ain’t a mule, Pa,” John insisted. “Don’t see how it’s the same.”

  Pa’s frown deepened. “You’s sayin’ a mule ain’t got no feelins? It don’t get hungry?”

  “I was gonna do it, soon as I got back from fishin’. I swear I was.”

  Robert grinned so his parents couldn’t see it, which only made matters worse. His brother was enjoying his misery more than he should.

  “Go fetch them mules,” Pa said.

  “I’ll do it right now,” John promised, wheeling away from the porch like the seat of his pants was on fire.

  “When you’re done, fetch my razor strap off’n the back porch an’ bring it to the woodshed,” his father added. The remark stopped John in his tracks.

  “You mean I’m gonna get a strappin’ for leaving those mules tied to that tree? They ain’t been there but maybe a couple of hours, Pa.”

  His pa stepped off the porch, and Robert’s smirk widened behind his father’s back.

  “If a couple of hours don’t sound all that long to you, son, then you won’t mind a couple of hours in the woodshed feelin’ the bite of that razor strap.” He said it without a trace of humor in his voice, nor was there any twinkle in his eyes, like there was sometimes on the rare occassions when he was funning.

  “I don’t figure I deserve to be punished so hard just for leaving the mules tied. They was tied in the shade of a tree,” he said, backing away as his father approached him.

  “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it, son. An animal puts its trust in the man what keeps it. You done them mules wrong, an’ I intend to give you a reminder of that fact.”

  John bowed his head and took off after the mules. But as he peeked back over his shoulder, could see Robert holding his sides in silent laughter, and that was the moment when he understood what this strange dream from his childhood was really about....

  It was after Pickett’s charge across the peach orchard, when the bodies lay like felled trees all around him, that he found his dead brother. Lieutenant Robert Slocum had been assigned as aide-de-camp to General Pickett just weeks before the battle at Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of the war. It was on Little Round Top, where John watched most of the battle as Pickett’s men fired their Brown Bess muskets until the barrels were glowing-hot.

  He hadn’t known that Robert was killed by the first volley of Yankee rifle fire. He had not even guessed that his brother would be part of the charge—the “highwater mark” of the Confederacy, as it was called years later. But he recalled vividly what it was like to find Robert’s body. The pain was like a knife through his heart.

  “What’s the matter, Slocum?” a Confederate infantry-man asked when he found John kneeling beside the corpse of his brother.

  “I need a few minutes” was all he could manage to say as he choked back the tears.

  “Hell, boy, there’s wounded beggin’ fer water an’ medical attention all over. Git your ass up an’ help them that’s still able to use it.”

  Slocum whirled. His hand rested on his brother’s chest where a minnie ball had pierced his heart. “I’ll help soon as I can,” he stammered. “This here’s my brother.”

  The burly sergeant stopped in his tracks. “Sorry, son. I didn’t know. Stay as long as you need to. Men’ll be along with stretchers after a bit. They’ll help you carry him back behind our lines.”

  “I don’t need any help,” Slocum replied, digging into his brother’s pocket for a tarnished pocketwatch their father had given him. “He ain’t gonna be all that heavy. I’ll carry him myself.”

  As he lifted Robert off a patch of bloodstained grass, he turned to see what was left of the Confederate lines. For now, the shooting had stopped.

  Staggering under the body’s dead weight, fighting back tears, he made his way to the hospital tents, leaving his musket behind.

  He laid his brother in the shade of an oak tree, filled with emotions he couldn’t describe.

  “Damn you, Robert! Why’d you have to go and step in front of a musket ball!”

  The sound of his voice attracted the notice of a young Confederate captain who was supervising the delivery of bodies into row upon row of dead soldiers.

  “What did you say, soldier?” the officer asked, stepping down off his horse as the darkness fell on Gettysburg and the bloody battle scene.

  Slocum glanced in the direction of the voice. “Sorry, sir. Just found my brother’s body. Wasn’t talking to nobody in particular.”

  “Is he ... dead?”

  “About as dead as any man could be, sir.”

  The captain strolled over, leaving his sweat-soaked horse ground-hitched. He peered down at the body. For a time he seemed at a loss for words.

  “A hell of a lot of good men lost their lives out there today, Sergeant,” he said.

  “Wish it could have spared just this one,” Slocum replied with his heart in his throat. He was remembering scenes from their boyhood, despite a desperate wish not to just then.

  “These men fought and died for a just cause,” the captain continued.

  Slocum closed his eyes briefly. “I don’t think Bobby ever understood what that cause was, sir. We didn’t own any slaves. All that crap about states’ rights don’t seem to matter much right now.”

  “It isn’t crap, Sergeant. It’s a principle. Citizens of a state have the right to determine what is best for the people who live there.”

  A twinge of anger gripped Slocum’s stomach. “What about folks like my brother who don’t live in Georgia now? He’s gonna be buried here in Gettysburg.”

  “I understand. You must see it as your brother’s sacrifice for those people who still live in Georgia.”

  “He’s dead, so I don’t reckon it matters to him.”

  The captain hesitated. “Do you believe in God, Sergeant?”

  “I suppose I do. It’s a little harder just now to answer that question with my brother layin’ de
ad here.”

  “President Jefferson Davis has called this a holy war in which men are asked to give up their lives so others might enjoy freedom.”

  Slocum wasn’t really listening. Staring into his brother’s lifeless eyes took his attention from what the captain was saying. “Robert ain’t exactly what I’d call free,” he said after a bit of thought. “A grave ain’t the most free spot to be, in my opinion.”

  “You’ll understand better after the sorrow over your brother’s loss passes.”

  Something turned hard in Slocum’s stomach. “It ain’t never gonna pass, Captain. He’s the only brother I had. I feel like a part of me died with him today at Little Round Top.”

  “I’m sure he fought bravely.”

  “He never was anything else, sir. Bravest man I ever knew, except for our pa. Robert wasn’t scared of anything. I reckon he should have been afraid of a minnie ball.”

  “I’ll ask a burial detail to see to the arrangements.”

  “No need of that,” Slocum answered. “To tell the truth, I’d rather see to his burying myself.”

  “Whose brigade are you with, Sergeant?” the captain asked, after a solemn silence.

  “General Thomas Jackson, sir. They call him Stonewall after what happened at Bull Run.”

  “I’ll inform someone with Jackson’s brigade that you’ll be missing until you attend to your brother’s burial. And if you wish, I’ll let General Pickett know what happened. What was your brother’s full name?”

  “Robert Slocum, sir. Lieutenant Robert Slocum.”

  The captain turned to leave. “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother. We’ve all lost kinfolks and friends to this damn war. You’ve got to find a way to put your brother’s death behind you. I know it won’t be easy.”

  Slocum used his thumb and forefinger to close Robert’s eyelids. There was something chilling about the way he stared blankly at the darkening sky overhead and the dried blood on his lips. “Maybe some can put this sort of thing behind them, Captain. I don’t figure I’m the right mix of blood and grit to do it. This is gonna be one hell of a hard day to forget.”

  “It could just as easily have been you lying there where he is now, Sergeant Slocum.”

  He felt a tear trickle down one cheek. “To tell it to you straight, sir, I’d just as soon it was me.”

  In his dream, the surroundings suddenly changed to a quiet place beside the Mississippi River many years after the war, where he studied his reflection on a glassy, sluggish current moving slowly past him. Across a shallow firepit, an old man with tangled white whiskers watched him intently. A Mason Colt conversion was tied to the old man’s right leg.

  “You gotta let go of the past, Slocum,” he said in a voice thick with phlegm. “Grievin’ over your dead brother don’t do you no good. You let that war turn you hard inside. It’s my advice you let go of the memories.”

  “Some of ’em are damned hard to forget, Colter. I’ve lost my family. Nothing’s left for me back in Georgia. I’m gonna be on the move from now on, till I find a place where I can get some peace.”

  Colter spat into the fire, chuckling humorlessly and swirling the grounds in his coffee cup. “Peace comes from inside, Slocum. It ain’t a piece of ground.”

  “Something makes me keep looking,” he said quietly, with a sweeping gaze toward the western horizon as the sun became an orange ball over a ridge in the distance.

  “Hell, that ain’t it at all,” Colter explained. “Some men are born with wanderlust. You’s one of ’em. Trouble is, along with that wanderin’ nature, you’ve taken up the gun-fighter’s trade fer a profession.”

  “I’m not a hired gun.”

  “Don’t matter what you call it. When you use a gun against another man, if it’s fer pay or over somethin’ as simple as choosin’ sides, the killin’ part is the same.”

  Slocum thought about it. “If I had to pick the right words to describe it, I reckon I’d say I lost a part of me to that big war.”

  “Damn near everybody did, son. Hardly anybody got through it without a few scars. Yours run deeper’n most maybe.”

  He tossed the last of his coffee into the flames and got up stiffly. “Appreciate the Arbuckles, Colter. I’m headed west, up to Colorado Territory. If you’re ever in those parts, pay me a call.”

  “Enjoyed the company, John Slocum,” the old man said as Slocum went for his horse. “I’m gonna send a little advice along with you. Remember that when you use them guns you’re carryin’, the worst reason to take a man’s life is over money. Money is a hunk of metal or a piece of paper. A man’s flesh an’ bone. You spend all your money an’ you can always make some more. You take somebody’s life, they ain’t got but one.”

  He awakened slowly, remembering the Comanche girl whose life he had taken last night. Although he hadn’t done it with a gun, and the girl was hovering close to death when he found her, his conscience still nagged him. He hoped with all his heart he had done the right thing by ending her suffering. Somehow, what he’d done triggered old memories of Robert and the war, lives lost for no reason he understood back then.

  Old Man Colter’s advice lingered during his slow period of awakening. When you take someone’s life it’s the only one they have. The girl had done nothing. She didn’t deserve to die.

  12

  The skies were gray outside his hotel window, a sign of the early winter storm he’d known was coming when he felt the damp chill in the wind as he was riding with Sergeant Watson. Slocum turned his head on the pillow to glance at the woman beside him. Fannie lay there naked, with her hair spread across the pillow like a flaming red torch.

  “I’ve been watching you sleep,” she whispered, reaching for his cheek, cupping his chin in her hand. “You must have been dreaming. You kept talking to someone named Robert, and then you said something about a team of mules. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Slocum gazed at the ceiling. “Robert was my older brother. I have the same dream from time to time.”

  “He was your brother?”

  “He was killed in the war. I try not to think about it. Sometimes I dream about him. I reckon it had to do with finding that dying Comanche girl yesterday. I had the other girl across my saddle and she was hurt real bad, so I had to make ... a choice.” To push the scene from his mind, he reached for his father’s pocketwatch on the washstand beside the bed. It was a quarter past noon. “I’d best get back to the fort to see if Major Thompson got back and to check on that other Kwahadie girl. She was in pretty bad shape when I took her to the post hospital”

  Fannie smiled seductively. “Have you got time for a little bit of fun?” she asked. “It won’t take long.” As she said it, she reached for the crotch of his pants, tweaking his cock playfully.

  “I really oughta get going,” he protested helplessly as the warning swell of an erection began inside his pants leg.

  Fannie felt him getting hard and giggled. “A part of you wants to stay here with me. I can tell. You could stay for a while.”

  “I shouldn’t,” he said feebly, making no move to get off the bed while her fingers stroked his prick through his denims. “I oughta get dressed ...”

  “It won’t take but a minute, John,” she promised, beginning to open the fasteners at the front of his pants. “You just lie still on your back. I’ll show you something else Clyde taught me.”

  She drew his cock out and jacked it up and down a few times with her fingers curled around its thick shaft. Then she got up on her knees and straddled him, smiling, looking down at his prick while she guided the head gently into the moist opening between the lips of her cunt.

  Slocum looked up at her pendulous breasts and hardening nipples, then the soft lines of her face framed by her thick mane of red hair. “You’re one hell of a beautiful woman, Fannie,” he said, as she lowered herself lightly onto his cock until she felt resistance. “It’s mighty hard to say no to a request like that.”

  “And you are a handsome m
an, John Slocum, with the biggest prick I’ve ever seen. I’m still a little sore from the other night, so you’ll have to be patient with me. I’ve got to put it in slowly, and I know you’re in a hurry to get back to the fort to look for the Major. Please don’t say no to me. Not now, not when I need you.”

  “Take your time,” he told her. The warmth from her cunt was making the head of his cock tingle. He lacked the resolve at the moment to argue with her. If a beautiful naked woman wanted him to spend a few extra moments with him while she sat on his prick, it wasn’t in him to deny her request.

  “I’d planned to,” she replied, with a throaty catch in her voice.

  She pushed more of him inside her, another half inch of his pulsating thick member. “Oh John,” she sighed.

  He lifted his buttocks off the mattress to penetrate more of her. “Relax,” he said. “Give yourself time. It won’t hurt but a little while after you’ve opened up for me.” He knew he should be out at the fort reporting what he’d found out down at the settlement, but for now he was content to let passion distract him from his sense of duty.

  She stared down at him. “You think I’m a cheap woman for doing this, don’t you?”

  “Not at all. I think you’re a woman who needs a man and has been too long without one.” The gambler who abandoned her in Cache must have had higher priorities, he decided. Or an empty poke that the other woman could fill.

  “Just any man wouldn’t do,” she breathed. Her muscles were quivering with desire. “It has to be a special man, a man I want.”

  “I think I understand.” He said it with a mixture of feelings, spurred on by desire.

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of me, that I’d do this sort of thing without really caring about the man I was with.”

  He was sure what she said was part truth, part lie. Fannie wanted to get to San Francisco any way she could. “I promise you I won’t get the wrong impression. I know why you’re doing this. You have ambitions and ambitions are good. No sense in staying in a place if you can’t find what you want.”