“Our boys in Washington City oughta tell them furriners to go climb a stump,” Preacher said. “It ain’t our job to take care o’ the rest of the world.”
Sutton and Wheeler looked at each other, and Sutton shrugged.
“Whether we agree with you or not, Preacher, that’s not our place to say. We have our orders, and we’ll do our duty.”
“And Preacher and I will live up to the promise we made, Colonel,” Jamie said. “If those white prisoners are up there with the Blackfeet, we’ll find—”
Before he could continue, rapid footsteps sounded in the outer office and a soldier appeared in the open doorway. The youngster came to attention and saluted, then blurted out, “Begging your pardon, Colonel, but the sergeant of the guard wishes to report that, uh . . . all hell’s breaking loose at the sutler’s store!”
Chapter 16
Lomax sat at a table in the rear corner of the sutler’s store with a bucket of beer in front of him. He’d guzzled down half of its contents so far but hadn’t felt much of an effect from the bitter brew.
Whiskey had a lot more kick, but he didn’t want anything muddling his brain. When he was drunk, he had a much harder time controlling his temper, and he was determined to prove to Jamie MacCallister that he was a changed man.
So, no brawls tonight, Lomax told himself solemnly as he picked up the bucket and took another swig from it . . . even though he had been on the trail for a long time, and it sure would have felt good to cut loose his wolf and howl for a spell.
Lomax wasn’t sure how long the foreign fella had been standing beside the table before he finally glanced up and realized the man was there.
“You want something?” Lomax asked in a surly tone. He might be trying to walk the straight and narrow these days, but even so, he took an instinctive dislike to the hombre as soon as he laid eyes on him.
The man wore the Prussian uniform, but the crimson collar was loose and he didn’t have one of those funny-looking spiked helmets on. He wasn’t particularly tall, but he was barrel-chested and broad-shouldered and had long arms. His bullet-shaped head sat on a short, thick neck, and his close-cropped hair was almost colorless. His nose had been broken at least a couple of times in the past and healed crookedly, so that it was little more than a misshapen lump of flesh in the middle of his face.
Judging by the way the man swayed slightly, he’d been drinking already . . . and was a lot drunker than Lomax was.
The man pointed a short, fat finger at Lomax and rasped, “You are . . . buffalo?”
Lomax glanced down at the shaggy garment he wore and said, “Yeah, it’s a buffalo coat. What’s that to you?”
The man shook his head and said, “Nein, nein. You are buffalo, ja?” He put his hands to his head and stuck his index fingers straight up. “Wo ist der horns?”
“What the hell are you sayin’?” Lomax demanded. “You think I’m a buffalo?”
“Ja, ja!” The man made a face, pinched his nose with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and shook his head. “Sie stinken!”
Lomax didn’t have to speak the foreigner’s lingo to know that he’d just been insulted. He started to stand up, then remembered his promise to Jamie that he wouldn’t start any trouble. With an effort, he bit back the angry curses that wanted to spring to his lips and said, “I reckon it’s true, I do smell a mite like a buffalo. Be hard not to, wearin’ this coat and all.”
“Ja.” The Prussian nodded. He reached for the bucket of beer. Lomax started to grab it away from him, then shrugged and pulled his arm back. “Sure, if you want a drink, go ahead,” he told the man with a magnanimous wave of his hand.
“Du brauchst ein Bad,” the Prussian said as he picked up the bucket.
“No savvy,” Lomax said as he shook his head. “I don’t know what you said, old son.”
Frowning in concentration, the man said haltingly, “You . . . need . . . ein bad . . . a bath!”
With that, he turned the bucket up and dumped what was left of the beer over Roscoe Lomax’s head, then guffawed and tossed the empty bucket back on the table.
All thoughts of controlling his temper vanished instantly from Lomax’s brain. Like a beer-dripping rocket, he came up out of his chair and tackled the Prussian, wrapping his arms around the man’s waist and ramming a shoulder into his midsection.
Lomax drove forward with all his strength as he bellowed in rage, forcing the Prussian backward and he was unable to slow the charge.
Lomax slammed the man down on his back onto a nearby table, causing it to collapse as its legs broke. The soldiers who’d been sitting there scattered, several of them falling down in the process.
One of them was spitting mad when he got up, grabbed Lomax by the shoulder, and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doin’?”
Standing over the stunned Prussian lying amidst the wreckage of the table, Lomax jerked out of the dragoon’s grip and blistered the air with profanity. “This is what I’m doin’, you damned . . .”
He added a few more obscene epithets as he swung his left fist and crashed it against the soldier’s jaw. The man went down hard.
Several of his friends charged at Lomax, throwing punches of their own. For a moment, they crowded around the bullwhacker so thickly that he wasn’t even visible anymore.
Men began flying backward as Lomax’s malletlike fists connected with them. He flailed around him and cleared some room.
One of the attackers picked up a chair and lunged at Lomax, who ducked low, came up under the swinging piece of furniture, and grabbed hold of the chair-wielder. With a grunt of effort, Lomax heaved the man up and over his back. The man yelled as he flew through the air and slammed into several other soldiers, knocking them off their feet, as well. All of them sprawled on the rough plank floor in a tangled heap of arms and legs.
Hearing someone rushing toward him from behind, Lomax whirled around and backhanded a soldier who was about to jump him. They were still all around him.
Another man leaped on his back and yelled, “I got him! I got him!” He had gotten more than he bargained for, though.
Lomax threw himself backward and smashed the man against the wall. The soldier’s arms and legs slid off Lomax’s buffalo coat as he fell in a limp sprawl.
Lomax moved to the side, keeping his back close to the wall. With that side protected, he was able to ward off the attacks as the soldiers pressed in on him from the other three sides. His fists snapped out and landed with devastating force. He took some punishment, too, but seemed to absorb it without ever showing any effect from the blows that landed.
The sutler, an overweight bald man with tufts of hair sticking out of his ears, stood behind the bar and roared at the men to stop fighting, but no one paid any attention to him. He clapped his hands to his head in dismay at the damage that had been done already. And the battle didn’t seem to be anywhere near over.
In fact, it was about to get worse. The Prussian who had started the fracas by dumping the bucket of beer on Lomax’s head had recovered his senses. He climbed to his feet, kicked the debris from the broken table aside, and lumbered back into the fray.
Shouldering some of the American soldiers aside, the Prussian shouted what had to be curses in his native tongue as he lunged at Lomax with his arms pistoning.
A right and a left landed on Lomax’s bearded jaw and snapped his head back against the wall with enough force to make stars whirl madly before his eyes. For a second, he was disoriented, and that was enough of an opportunity for the Prussian to bore in and hook a pair of punches to Lomax’s belly.
Sickness welled up inside Lomax as he bent forward. He wanted to curl up around the pain but wouldn’t allow himself to give in.
Grabbing the front of the Prussian’s jacket and hanging on tight, he lowered his head and drove the top of it into the man’s face. He probably couldn’t do any more damage to the man’s nose than had been done in the past, but the impact drew a howl of pain from the Prussian and ma
de him stumble back a couple of steps.
With room for a counterattack, Lomax clubbed his hands together and swung both arms. The blow smashed into the Prussian’s slab of a jaw and knocked him sideways. The man landed on his right shoulder and slid across the floor as several of his comrades from the group of Prussian soldiers came through the door of the sutler’s store. They stopped and stared at their fallen comrade.
Sounding shocked, one of them yelled, “Teufel! Ist Feldwebel Becker!”
Another shouted, “Helfen sie dem feldwebel!”
“Ja!”
Lomax didn’t understand much of that grunting, but he figured the man he had just knocked down was named Becker, and one of the Prussians had just ordered the others to help him.
They all swarmed at Lomax with blood in their eyes.
Chapter 17
With longer legs, Jamie and Preacher hurried ahead of Colonels Sutton and Wheeler as they all hurried across the parade ground. Approaching the building they heard the yelling and crashing inside the sutler’s store, took the steps in a couple of bounds, and charged through the open door to see a wild melee going on. Men were fighting all over the room. At first glance, most of the battles seemed between American soldiers and the visiting Prussians; the crimson collars and cuffs on the Prussian uniforms made them easy to pick out.
But here and there, American dragoons were swinging punches at each other, too, as if there weren’t enough European opponents to go around and they had to hit somebody.
The real center of the fight, though, seemed to be a crowded knot of Prussians hammering away at an opponent Jamie and Preacher couldn’t see. Whoever was in the center of that had to be getting pummeled badly.
Paused just inside the doorway, Jamie looked around the room and didn’t see Roscoe Lomax anywhere. Remembering that he had told the bullwhacker to wait for him, Jamie had a pretty good idea who those Prussians had surrounded.
“Reckon we’d better give that fella a hand,” Jamie said as he started toward the group of foreign soldiers.
“Yeah, he looks to be a mite outnumbered,” the mountain man agreed.
They bulled their way across the room, shouldering men aside until they reached the knot of Prussians. Jamie grabbed one of the men by the shoulders and tossed him out of the way. Another Prussian turned toward them just in time to catch Preacher’s fist on his chin. The man’s head snapped to the side from the force of the blow, and his knees buckled. As he went down, Preacher stepped over him and seized another man’s shoulder, spinning him around and crashing a punch into his face.
Meanwhile, Jamie took hold of two of the foreigners by the back of their necks and smacked their heads together, creating a dull thud. Both men collapsed, knocked out cold.
Those actions had opened a path to the man in the center of the struggle. It came as no surprise at all that Jamie recognized Roscoe Lomax. Although the bullwhacker’s beard concealed most of his face, Jamie could tell that Lomax was battered and bloody—but he was grinning under all that tangled hair.
He clamped a hand over an opponent’s face and a hard shove sent the man reeling away. Lomax said, “I’m sorry, MacCallister, but I didn’t start this!”
“Worry about that later,” Jamie said. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a man swinging a broken chair leg at his head. He whirled, flung up his left arm to block the blow, and sunk his right fist into the man’s belly, all the way up to the wrist. The attacker doubled over, dropped the makeshift club, and fell to his knees as he crossed his arms over his agonized midsection. Jamie kicked him in the chest and knocked him on his back.
Preacher traded punches with a burly Prussian, drove the man back, and then threw a perfect left-right combination that sent the man sprawling. The next instant, a chair crashed down on Preacher’s back and made the mountain man stagger several steps. He caught his balance and swung around with an angry roar.
Lomax was already dealing with the Prussian who had struck that craven blow, however. The bullwhacker hammered punches into the man’s face, forcing him back. The Prussian dropped the chair, and Lomax scooped it up, raised it high, and brought it down on the man’s head. The chair shattered into pieces. The Prussian would be lucky if his skull hadn’t done the same.
“Stop it!” Colonel Wheeler bellowed from the doorway. “Stop this fighting now!”
Recognizing the voice of their commander, the American dragoons still on their feet slowly responded, throwing a few more punches before they began backing off from their opponents, but keeping their fists raised, ready to resume the battle if need be.
Only one of the few Prussians left standing, a burly man with a bullet-shaped head covered by a close-cropped fuzz of hair, disregarded the order. With a snarl twisting his heavy-featured face, he moved toward Jamie, Preacher, and Lomax, who stood shoulder to shoulder waiting for him. Even though the man was outnumbered three to one, he seemed to be so caught up in his rage that he didn’t care about the odds.
He stopped short when another figure appeared in the door and shouted, “Achtung! Feldwebel Becker!”
The Prussian practically trembled with the urge to continue fighting, but he stayed where he was and gradually came to attention. Baron Adalwolf von Kuhner strode into the room and joined Colonels Wheeler and Sutton in glaring at the men who had been fighting. The baron was fully and neatly dressed in his uniform, with the exception of the tall, spiked helmet. Lamplight shone on his hairless skull.
“What the devil happened here?” Colonel Wheeler demanded. “Who started this brawl?”
One of the dragoons pointed at Lomax and said, “It was him, Colonel. He dumped one o’ them furriners right in the middle of the table where me and my friends were drinkin’.”
A couple of the American soldiers called out in agreement with that statement.
“That’s a damn-blasted lie!” responded Lomax in a bull-like bellow. “That varmint right there dumped a bucket o’ beer on my head!” He pointed at the man von Kuhner had addressed as Feldwebel Becker, then glanced over at Jamie.
“I’m sorry, MacCallister,” Lomax added. “I tried to keep my word, I swear I did, but you wouldn’t expect me to just sit still for somethin’ like that, would you?”
“No, I don’t reckon I would,” Jamie said. “Chances are, I would’ve done the same thing in your position.”
“I woulda done worse,” muttered Preacher.
Von Kuhner walked across the room, clasped his hands together behind his back, and glared at Becker. In English, he asked, “Is this true, Feldwebel? Did you assault this . . . American?” He managed to put a sneer in his voice as he said the word, even though his lips didn’t curl.
Becker looked down at the floor and said, “Jawohl, Oberst. I will not lie.”
“You were drunk?”
“Ja.”
Von Kuhner jerked his head toward the door. “Leave now,” he ordered. “All of you. And do not come back here tonight.” He repeated the command in German.
The Prussian soldiers on the floor climbed unsteadily to their feet. They picked up their comrades who were unconscious and dragged them out of the barroom.
Von Kuhner turned to Wheeler and said, “My apologies on behalf of my men, Colonel. Such a thing will not occur again.”
“No, I expect not, since you’re all leaving tomorrow,” Wheeler said dryly. “It would be a gesture of good faith if your men contributed to paying for the damages inflicted here tonight.” The commanding officer raised his voice so all the dragoons in the room could hear him as he went on. “Since all of my men who were involved are going to be paying their share.”
Von Kuhner gave one of those little bows and said, “I shall attend to it, have no doubt of that.” With that, he walked stiffly out of the building without looking around.
Wheeler frowned sternly at the dragoons and said, “All right, you men, I want this place cleaned up as much as you can, and you’re all going to pitch in to pay for any repairs that are necessary. D
on’t even think about trying to duck that responsibility.”
“Thank you, Colonel.” The sutler still looked distraught but didn’t appear to be as upset as earlier.
Wheeler said, “You know things like this wouldn’t happen if you didn’t allow the men to get so drunk, MacKenzie.”
The sutler spread his hands helplessly. “But they like to spend their pay, Colonel. What am I to do but help them?”
Wheeler just shook his head in disgust and turned to walk out of the store.
Sutton looked at Jamie and Preacher and said, “I’ll see you fellows later. We’ll leave at first light.”
Jamie nodded. “We’ll be ready, Colonel,” he promised.
Sutton followed Wheeler out, leaving Jamie and Preacher there.
Lomax said to Jamie, “I swear, I didn’t mean for this to happen, MacCallister. I stayed away from the whiskey and stuck to beer so my mind wouldn’t get muddled. I even took it when that foreign fella Becker stood there and out-and-out told me I stunk. I didn’t do a damned thing until he dumped that bucket o’ beer over my head. And then I . . . I just couldn’t hold it in . . .”
“It’s all right, Lomax,” Jamie told him. “I’d say you had plenty of provocation for what you did.” He frowned. “But are you sure you still want to come along on this expedition, knowing those Prussians will be traveling with us?”
“I said I would, and I meant it,” Lomax declared with an emphatic nod. “Shoot, if I backed out now, I’d feel like I was runnin’ away from trouble . . . and I’ve never done that in all my borned days!”
“All right, then. I reckon you’ll be part of the bunch when we pull out in the morning. It might be a good idea for you to steer clear of that fella Becker as much as you can, though.”
“I’ll try. Can’t guarantee what he’ll do, though.”
“Well, give it time, and it won’t be a problem,” said Preacher. “Once we get where we’re goin’, we’ll probably be too busy fightin’ Blackfeet to tangle with each other!”
When All Hell Broke Loose Page 11
