The Dying Grass, page 114
Well, that’s not right. I’m a volunteer, and I’m the only white man around who can speak Nez Perce, so GODd——nit, lieutenant, you ought to show some consideration.
You heard me. Go over my head if you dare.
Why, I never knowed you was such an infamous tightwad!
I’ll meet you anytime you require satisfaction, sir. Now get out of my face or you’ll see what I can do.
D——d skunk!
Doc, that Ad Chapman wants a pair of boots.
What’s he got, kid? What’s he got for me?
I’ll find out.
Pair of boots for seven dollars goes for—seven dollars. I don’t bet that much,
the moon rushing up high over the cañons and a north wind blowing.
Now, the old grey flannel undershirt, Union cloth, we used to call it.
Yessir.
Watch out! There goes that sour Lieutenant Wilkinson, tattletaling to his master:
General, right after “Stable Call” I spied those two mule-drivers selling barefoot whiskey to the infantry.
That pair yonder?
O yes, general. Them. I’ve been—
Are you sure?
Positive, sir. And they’re some of ours, from Lewiston. When Bomus put them under contract—
See, I told you. That cocksucker Wilkinson does bear watching.
Count off six men and search both wagons. If you find liquor, arrest the sellers and lay them in irons. They’ll forfeit all their pay, and then I’ll see what else they deserve.
Yessir. It may inconvenience our march to-morrow—
But this is too much, especially after so many warnings and examples. Their professions cannot screen them from the punishment they deserve.
Yessir. Shall I inform Major Mason?
Of course. Perry, what is it now?
General, I know one of those muleteers pretty well. His name is Red O’Donnell. If you let me at him, and nobody present, I believe I can find out his confederates.
Why must there be nobody present?
Well, sir, because he knows me—
And why should you be known to a man like that? All right. You can have him out of jail for a half-hour, on your personal responsibility.
Yessir.
How’s your company?
Blood-crazy, general, and well dug in for the night. No complaints—
Report to me before “Tattoo.”
Yessir.
Perry, look me in the eye. I overlook what I need to, but I don’t forgive lying disobedience. You say you know Mr. O’Donnell. Did you have any part in this?
No, sir,
Diamond raising his ears as a teamster’s halter swishes not far away.
Enough. What now, Captain Fisher?
General, my Indians confirm the Nez Perces have speeded up. If our Bannocks don’t attack—
No. Where’s Joseph to-night?
His forward bucks must be in sight of the Missouri.
Well, that doesn’t signify, so long as we can seize his women and children. How long’s his column?
Still a good five or seven miles, general, and the dead horses—
We’ve thinned down his herds.
Looks like we have, sir.
So don’t be alarmist. Now, have you finally gained control over your Indians?
The point is, general, they keep teasing me to let them scalp some other reds.
If you don’t keep Buffalo Horn reined in I’ll have you punished. Do you understand me?
Sure do, general.
On your way out, find Old George and send him to me. Any news of Umatilla Jim?
Yeah, our Crows found him two miles south of Cañon Creek. Shot in the back.
Joseph, or your Bannocks?
Can’t say, sir. Anyway, he was a deserter, right?
Was he scalped?
Afraid so, general.
That’s all. Fletch, come here for a moment.
Yessir.
When I sent you to that livery stable in Lewiston last spring—
Yessir, for kerosene.
What was the sutler’s name?
Red O’Donnell, sir, and with him another sullen fellow who declined to give his name. He kept out of the light, but I’d stake ten dollars that the other teamster whom Wilkinson apprehended—
But you found no proof that they were supplying Lapwai.
No, sir.
You’re sure of this.
Yessir.
Among the drunkards did you see anybody you knew?
Throw some dirt on that sink, private. It’s a disgrace.
Yessir.
Yes, sir.
Was it Colonel Perry?
No, sir. Lieutenant Theller was there, not far gone, and off duty, so I considered it not my business. Forgive me for not peaching on a brother officer. Now that he’s dead . . .
Wilkinson would have informed me, Fletch.
Yessir.
And then I would have sent Theller to Lapwai instead of Bomus. You do recall that I sent Bomus for the mule teams?
Yessir.
Was Lieutenant Theller a habitual drunkard?
Sir, I never saw him so on duty.
Nor I. But you saw him so on more than that one occasion?
Yessir, once in Lewiston, in a certain tent—
Enough. Forgive me, Fletch, but please do look into your heart: Do you feel any responsibility for the disaster at White Bird Cañon?
Why, them clouds is greyer than Sapolio soap! We got winter creeping up on us—
He told me our Bannocks are pooping out.
Sure you’ll find some mighty fine whorehouses in Cheyenne, maybe even with white gals.
I’d rather have good bread and butter.
General, in my opinion Lieutenant Theller was a brave and effective officer. They say he was never in his life thrown from a horse—
Perry informed me that the last sight of him he ever had was of a disoriented man who had lost control of himself.
I wasn’t aware of that, sir.
You think my temperance is a mania, don’t you?
No, sir. You have never said a word against General Sherman, who drinks heartily, so I hear—
Fletch, on your honor, is Perry a good officer?
He drives himself hard, sir. I’ve never seen him drink. The men are afraid of him. I suspect his home life is unhappy—
Well, poor Mrs. Perry is rather . . . Continue, Fletch.
Sir, he means to redeem himself for White Bird Cañon and Cottonwood. I’m sure he’d be crushed not to be in on the death.
There might be no death but a natural one, if Joseph escapes across the line! You understand that there must be no more errors in this campaign.
3
They’re pretty tired, father.
I know. And Sturgis was good for nothing, I’m afraid. Entre nous, a disappointment, that officer!
He sure made it hard on us.
Is that a complaint, Guy?
No, sir.
All right. Then I’ll overlook it.
4
Bide a minute, blacksmith. The prisoner’s coming out with me, general’s orders.
Yessir.
All right, you, get walking,
with his hat aslant and his bandolier clanking, and the captive sweating,
our detail of sink-diggers turning to look:
But Gibbon was at Second Manassas, and he swears that the Secceshes—
. . . sent out Fisher’s Indians to make another scout—
Where’s he taking Red?
—a fascinating question also entertained by Trimble, who happens to be out his long wool socks,
while Pollock, who should be sewing a bit of gunnysack down the seam of his trousers, is already hosting his bunch to sing the same old nigger songs in that Sibley tent,
which induces in the general a melancholy memory for which he momentarily lacks a caption:
a circle of negresses in calico dresses and bonnets, sitting around their lunch-basket in the dust of the cotton field:
o, of course, Edisto . . .
as Wood, hunched over that journal of his, looks up at me in a way so reminiscent of the time I caught Lizzie trying to remove her freckles with buttermilk
—Chapman’s sharply triangular face and bare forehead suddenly flashing (that feller sure don’t miss nothing!)
Captain Fisher cleaning the upturned ends of his moustache as Redington keeps grinning away, his eyes shining,
and on the perimeter, our alert pickets half expecting Nez Perces, painted and feathered, to come bursting out of the timber like a forest fire
—while James Reuben, Old George and Captain John,
the latter of whom somewhat reminds Wood of Uncle Phil, our negro gardener back home
(as a boy I used to pull the miniature plow he made me),
sit smoking kinnikinnick, watching everything,
the wheel-spokes of the Gatlings silhouetted in the evening
and Wilkinson leans against the wagon, crossing his arms,
unable and certainly unwilling to deny Perry’s weakness, complicity, incompetence, cronyism, and, above all, untruthfulness
(Wilkinson, who is proud to have never uttered a lie ever since he reached the age of discretion, now considers Ad Chapman a necessary evil and therefore declines to influence the general against him, simply because Chapman is Perry’s enemy, and Perry is an unfit man)
when the poor general, whose goodness Perry continues to abuse, will not spare himself; has everyone forgotten that not much more than a week ago he rode all night through freezing winds at the head of fifty men to be in at the death should Sturgis succeed in cornering Joseph
(which is to say hateful Mr. Joe, imbrued with blood)?
—as of course Sturgis didn’t, and if I were a GODd——ning sort I would say (LORD forgive me), GODd——n him!—
and while the rest of us got to wait for Cushing to crawl into Clark’s Valley, that one-armed old man forded the Yellow Stone as soon as the sun came up and rode straight for Cañon Creek, as I know since I of course was with him; I was at his, so to speak, right hand!
No, general, that can’t be an Indian scalp. Know how you can tell?
No.
By the nits. If there’s no vermin crawling in it, then it’s not Injun. So our Bannocks are behaving themselves.
Well, then what is it?
Well, general, that I can’t tell you.
Captain Fisher, I won’t be made a fool of. You’re going to be watched from now on. Now get out.
As Perry leads the prisoner away, a prairie falcon rushes overhead, his wings striped white and brown,
Wakesh nun pakilauitin
JEHOVAN’M yiyauki,
pickets on perimeter and the wheel-spokes of the Gatlings silhouetted in the twilight.
Praise your lucky star he was late with your irons. No, shut up and keep walking, doublequick. Here’s a likely coulee,
and so they descend into a little cañon, where beneath three box elders some grand milkweeds, their sticky pods nearly ready to burst, strain up at the moon,
more or less as if Parnell and I were reliving our summer evenings on the trail ten years ago in Nevada Territory:
the Snake War, and glorious old General Crook
and Pi-Ute squaws fanning the chaff out of grass-seed that they used to mush up for their food; we put them all on the reservation.
Now they can’t hear us. O’Donnell, what can I do for you?
I don’t know, colonel.
Who pinched you?
Who else but Wilkinson? You know how he’s always like some pushy little officer trying to draw a revolver for himself at Uncle Sam’s expense—
Shut up. John Thomas wasn’t carrying?
No, sir, he unloaded when he caught that look on Lieutenant Wilkinson’s face—
O, how I know that look! Who’s with you in this?
Colonel Perry, I—
I’m trying to do you a kindness. Now listen. The only way to get your ass out of this is to give up a name to the general. Ruin one to save the others. Do you want me to stash some barrels for you?
There ain’t but one now.
Holding out on me, aren’t you? Well,
grinning tall and terrifying,
I’d do the same in your shoes. Is Chapman with you?
O no.
Good, for he’s a horse’s ass. Keep him out. My advice is have John Thomas unload it somewhere, in case the general gets a bug up his ass and searches that wagon again. Now what name shall I turn in? Or do you want to take it all on your shoulders? Speak up, man; we have to go back.
Then, sir, let’s pin it on that Mikey O’Malley of Calloway’s, since that bunch is long gone—
Good. I’ll get you out soon as I can. Here:
a heel of wormy hardbread.
Kindly done, colonel. They didn’t feed me nothin.
Now let’s doublequick to your irons. And be more careful around Wilkinson.
Thanks, colonel, and soon’s we get back to Lewiston we’ll have an entertainment like old times. Sure was a shame about the lieutenant—
Yes,
for those old days had been not half bad. When he and Theller used to ride down for cockfights at the livery stable in Lewiston, drinking barefoot whiskey and singing songs, they never hitched their horses out front, because who the fuck could guarantee that it wouldn’t get back to Pruneface Mason or that d——d Christian Soldier? The only quality that this aforesaid jackass shared with Crook was teetotaling, which Perry and Theller refrained from holding against Crook since he otherwise had so much “sand,” but which certainly made one more deficiency for which to hate Uh-Oh Howard, the Yellow-Hearted Nigger of Chancellorsville—not that they wasted breath on that fool when they sat at their ease with Red O’Donnell and that other mick sutler who went by John Thomas, a name unlikely to be legitimately possessed by any man who rolled his r’s so; well, those were pleasant tipples, all right, the more so after a canter up the Lewiston Hill’s tilted ocean of green and golden grass-waves, O, and spying round the whole world through their field-glasses, as happy as Presidents, or Senators at least—and then down that great hill, riding through the wind, the Clearwater and the Snake both twinkling below, every now and then the basalt showing through on the riverbanks, and the tents of the city as tiny ahead as painted squares on a Crow parfleche bag, and then that livery stable where last year’s chromolitho explained: OUR BOYS IN BLUE, WE GO FOR HAYES—and it was true that both Perry and Theller had voted for him, not that he’d proved good for much. Red O’Donnell was a good man who scarcely watered down the whiskey, while that John Thomas kept his mouth shut and had a way with sick horses. And yes, Chapman was sometimes there. He was a mean one, a backstabbing opportunist, but at least no coward. Lots of men came there; even Tattle-Tale Trimble called once on Red O’Donnell and John Thomas, whose eyesockets were as sooty as the filth-blackened wheel-rims of their wagons, and who both paid attention when Perry revealed a certain thing which he had learned in Crook’s army about Comanche women (secondhand, of course). There was a crib behind the harness room where a fellow could bring a woman if he hankered for more privacy than the joy tent offered, but Theller’s squaw never came there where the madam’s authority and protection could not reach, nor even to the dry goods tent to buy hairpins or candy, so brutally dangerous being the men of the town, and indeed this proved convenient to Theller and Perry since they could shop there for their wives without embarrassment; one afternoon they encountered Mrs. FitzGerald browsing for calico, and after that they made sure to fulfill their wives’ errands first, and only then drop by the livery stable to liquor themselves up, enjoying themselves until it almost seemed that Lewiston had become once more the capital of Idaho; and if they could further avoid Lapwai without demerit they afterward sometimes slipped away, knowing that Red or else John Thomas would mind their horses, to the joy tent, which in fact had been new to Perry, who did not particularly hunger that way, until the first time he accompanied Theller, after which that Blackfoot squaw each time haunted him more, but mainly because she was Theller’s (her other claim on his attention consisting in the question of which sad chain of stories had dragged her here from her old home up by the Medicine Line; had she been enslaved, married, traded or otherwise engaged?); in and of herself, although in face and form, to be sure, she appeared pert and smart enough, she meant nothing to Perry, since Delia Theller was the one he pined for. It consoled his fantasies that Theller was near about done with her anyway. But Delia, he knew full well, had long since distrusted him, however intermittently, smelling the whiskey on her husband’s breath on those nights when the two soldier-comrades rode back late to Lapwai, and now outright condemned him for White Bird Cañon, so that when he now thought of her he grew as defeated as if she had actually caught him and Theller coming out of the joy tent. But Delia, twenty-three years old and no place to go
(when Theller proposed she never looked back, since even being a military wife couldn’t be as awful as niggering all day in a Massachusetts cotton mill where one gal can’t even talk to another. She still had nightmares about the McKay stitching machine)
has told me that she was so grateful to get out of there, into the wild country
(I’d pay a three-cent nickel for an empty bottle of her White Magnolia perfume
or ten dollars hard money to be around her Cape Jassamine scent one more time)
and she must have been, as I was; I’ll never forget the way red whiskey seemed nearly black in that bar-tent where Theller and I used to go drinking, and the way that Blackfoot squaw glowed both red and black, not to mention both together.
When she gets him reburied, I’ll give him a closed oak wreath on a white metal token. That won’t hardly set me back.
GODd——n her; what did she lead me on for?
5
Wood, I have heard of an organization called the American Indian Aid Association, for the Protection and Civilization of the American Indian. You might wish to turn your energies there. I believe they sometimes petition Congress for a redress of wrongs committed against the red men . . .
