American Front (52 page)

You had to be careful about saying
redskins
hereabouts. The Indians didn’t like it for beans. Ramsay had the idea Negroes didn’t like being called niggers, either, but he didn’t let that stop him. It was different with the Creeks, though. They weren’t just hewers of wood and drawers of water. By law and by treaty, they were every bit as much Confederate citizens as he was. Up till manumission, they’d kept slaves of their own.

“Captain Ramsay?” That was Moty Tiger, probably—no, certainly—the best sergeant Ramsay had. He was the young fellow who’d apologized to Ramsay when he suddenly got a lesson in what foxholes were worth. Now his broad bronze face was worried.

When Moty Tiger worried, Ramsay figured he ought to worry, too. “What’s up, Moty?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“I’ve got a discipline problem, Captain,” the Creek sergeant said carefully.

“Well, let’s see what we can do about that,” Ramsay said. The Indian with the picturesque name turned and led him down the trench, presumably toward whoever was involved in the discipline problem.

Ramsay kicked at the muddy dirt as he followed. The Creek Nation Army—both regiments of it—had an inordinate number of discipline problems. Part of that was because the men had been under military discipline for only a few weeks. They chafed under it, like barely broken horses. And part of it was that they were Indians, and maybe less used to taking orders from anybody than a like number of whites would have been.

They particularly didn’t like taking orders from their own people. They accepted it better from their white officers. Ramsay didn’t think that was because he was white, as he would have if he were dealing with Negroes. But the Creeks seemed to figure that, as a real live working soldier, he knew what he was doing, whereas to them their noncoms were the same kind of amateurs they were.

“Ten-shun!” Moty Tiger called as he came up to the knot of Indians gathered around a fire. The Creeks got to their feet, not with the alacrity Confederate regulars would have shown, but fast enough that Ramsay couldn’t gig them about it. In lieu of uniforms, which hadn’t arrived yet from back East, they wore denim pants, flannel shirts with red armbands like Ramsay’s, and a variety of slouch hats.

“All right, what’s going on here?” Ramsay asked with something close to genuine curiosity.

“He gave me the shit duty again!” one of the Creeks exclaimed.

“Somebody’s got to have it, Perryman,” Ramsay said. “We don’t take the honey buckets to the pit and cover it up, we’d get even worse stinks than we have already, and we’d start getting sick before long, too. No way to keep clean or anything close to it, but we’ve got to do what we can.”

“Those damn buckets are disgusting,” Perryman said. “Hauling them is nigger work, not soldier work.”

“Mike, we ain’t got no niggers here,” Moty Tiger said, more patiently than Ramsay would have expected. “All we got is us, and if we don’t do it, nobody will. And it’s your turn.”

“
Is
it your turn?” Ramsay asked Mike Perryman; there was always the chance Moty Tiger was picking on his fellow Indian, which would have to be stopped if it was happening. But, reluctantly, Perryman nodded. “Then you’ve got to do the job,” Ramsay told him. “I’ve done it myself, on maneuvers and out in the field. Take ’em to the pit, fling ’em in, cover everything up, and then you can pretend it never happened.”

“You really did that?” Perryman asked, his black eyes scanning Ramsay’s face, searching for a lie.

But it was the truth. Ramsay nodded with a clear conscience. “You’re a soldier now,” he said. “This isn’t a lark and it isn’t a game. It isn’t pretty. It isn’t a whole lot of fun. But it’s what needs doing. So—are you going to be a soldier, or are you going to be an old soldier, somebody who’s always complaining and carrying on when he’s got no cause to? You said yourself your sergeant wasn’t being unfair. If you don’t do the job, somebody else will have to, and that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the men in your squad.”

He waited to see what would happen. He didn’t want to have to punish Mike Perryman. He’d already seen that punishment didn’t work as well with the Creeks as it did with white soldiers. The Indians only resented you more.

Perryman muttered something Ramsay only half heard. He didn’t think it was in English. That was liable to be just as well. If he didn’t understand it, he didn’t have to notice it. But then, slowly and with nothing like enthusiasm or even resignation, the Creek got to his feet and headed off to the latrine bay dug out from the main trench. Nobody watched him as he carried the buckets off to the disposal pit. Nobody watched him bring them back, either—more courtesy than white soldiers would have shown one of their comrades in the same fix.

“Thank you, Captain,” Moty Tiger said quietly as the two of them walked back toward where Ramsay had been drinking his coffee.

“You’re welcome,” Ramsay answered. “You were right, so I backed you up. Before too long, everybody will have the idea, and you won’t need me to back you up.”

“I shouldn’t have this time.” The Creek sounded angry at himself.

As an old sergeant himself, Ramsay understood that. But things were different here from the way they were in the Confederate Army or any other long-established force. “Next time, or maybe the time after that, everything will go smooth,” Ramsay said. “What you want to do is this—you want to make sure they do what you tell ’em before the damnyankees try another push into Okmulgee. That’ll keep a lot more of ’em alive, whether they’re smart enough to know it or not. They won’t thank you for it, but they’ll be here.”

“I understand,” the Creek sergeant said. He hesitated, then asked, “If the United States soldiers do attack here, can we hold them back?”

“We’ve got the Creek Nation Army, we’ve got some good Texas infantry, we’ve got artillery back of town and over in the hills,” Ramsay said, and then, because honesty compelled him, “Damned if I know. Depends on how hard the Yankees push things. Attacking costs more than defending, but they’ve got more men than we do, too.”

Moty Tiger nodded soberly. “This is not war, the way we Creeks talk of war. This is not warrior against warrior. It is a whole nation throwing itself at another nation. It does not bring men glory or fame. It uses them up, and it buries them, and then it reaches out and uses more.”

“You’re only wrong about one thing,” Ramsay said. The Indian looked a question at him. He explained. “A lot of the time, this here war doesn’t bother with buryin’ the men it uses up.”

Moty Tiger pondered that. He showed his teeth in a grimace of pain, but didn’t argue with Ramsay. Instead, after a grave nod, he turned around and went back down the trench, back toward his squad. They and he—and Ramsay—hadn’t been used up…yet.

The train shuddered to a stop. Paul Mantarakis, conscious that the two dark green stripes on the sleeve of his tunic meant he had more important work to do—and that he had to do it under more important eyes—than before, said, “My squad, get ready to pile on out.”

Soldiers stirred on the floor of the boxcar. Not so long ago, it had been carrying horses. The strong smell lingered. Some of the farm boys found it soothing. As far as Paul was concerned, that was their problem, not his. They grabbed their rifles, made sure they had all their gear, and grunted as they slung their packs onto their backs.

Not far away, Gordon McSweeney, also sporting corporal’s stripes, was telling his squad, “Properly speaking, these Mormons are not even Christians. They will go to hell regardless of whether we shoot them down or they die in bed. Spare not the rod, then, for not only are they heretics, they are rebels in arms against the United States of America.”

Lieutenant Norman Hinshaw was talking to the whole platoon: “We have to root out these bandits and rebels and bring Utah back under the Stars and Stripes. Remember, most of the people we come across will be loyal Americans. Only a handful have sold themselves to the Canucks and the Rebs, and they’re the ones causing all the trouble. Once we get rid of them, Utah should be a peaceable state, just like all the others.” He paused to let that sink in, then went on, “When they first hatched their plot, these Mormon madmen blew up the railroad line right at the border and seized the weapons in every arsenal in the state. Now we’ve pushed more than halfway to Salt Lake City. The town ahead of us is called Price. We’ll take it, repair the tracks, and move on.” He didn’t ask for questions. He worked the latch on the boxcar door and slid it open. “Let’s go!”

After so long cooped up on the train, Mantarakis’ eyes filled with tears when he stepped out into bright sunshine. The first breath of fresh air told him he wasn’t in Kentucky any more, or in Philadelphia, either. It was hot and dry, with an alkaline tang to it. It wasn’t summer yet, but it felt that way. Ahead—westward—and to the north, he saw forested mountains in the distance. A nearer line of green marked the Price River. But the land where he was standing had only scattered sagebrush and tumbleweeds and other desert plants on it. All it needed was the bleached skull of an ox to make it the perfect picture of an arid waste.

“This is the abomination of the desolation, as was spoken of in the Book of Daniel,” McSweeney said, and Mantarakis, for once, was not inclined to disagree.

The boxcar from which they’d emerged was one of dozens, hundreds, carrying the two divisions pulled out of Kentucky to their new theater of operations. They unloaded men, horses, mules, wagons, trucks, guns—all the tools needed to wage war in the modern age, and to keep on waging it in country like this, where they would be hard pressed to draw supplies from the land.

Every officer of captain’s rank or higher was running around with a list and a pencil, checking things off as fast as he could. In an amazingly short time, what had been two entrained divisions turned into two divisions ready for action. In spite of himself, Paul was impressed. Soldiers spent a lot of time groaning about officers, but every now and then they showed what they were worth.

Dust puffed up under Mantarakis’ boots as he marched along. Dust hovered all around the thousands of marching men. It held a stronger dose of the alkaline tang he’d noticed before. How the devil were you supposed to raise crops on soil like this?

Plainly, the Mormons did it. He marched past a big farmhouse of a sort he’d never seen before: it looked to be made of rammed earth. In a country where it rained more often, a house like that would fall apart pretty damn quick. This one looked to have been standing for a generation, maybe two.

It stood open now. So did the barn alongside. Whoever had lived here didn’t want to stick around and greet the United States Army with a big smile and an American flag.
They like the Rebels
, Mantarakis thought, not very happy with the idea. If only a handful of people were in revolt, why had the squad run across some of them so soon?

Then, ahead and off to the right, the familiar
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire rang out. “We will move to the firing, to support our soldiers under attack,” Lieutenant Hinshaw proclaimed. The whole platoon—the whole company—did just that.

The Mormons were holed up in another farmhouse. It had a big flag flying above it, on what had to be a makeshift pole. Paul couldn’t make out what the flag was, but it wasn’t the Stars and Stripes. He saw muzzle flashes from several windows; the Mormons were putting a lot of lead in the air, doing their best to hold the U.S. troops at bay.

They hadn’t built the place for defense, though. The barn offered one avenue blind to them for soldiers to approach. The well and the haystacks and the outhouse gave other approaches. Before long, Mantarakis’ whole company was peppering the farmhouse from pretty short range. A machine gun came up and started rattling away. Dust flew from the adobe as bullets stitched back and forth. Its pole clipped, the flag fell in the dirt in front of the house. Mantarakis and his comrades cheered.

“Let’s go!” Lieutenant Hinshaw shouted. Under cover of the machine gun, he rushed toward the farmhouse. Mantarakis and the rest of his squad followed. So did McSweeney and his men. If an officer had the guts to go out there, you couldn’t let him go by himself.

A bullet whistled past Paul’s head—not everybody in the farmhouse was down. The machine gun blasted away at the window from which the shot had come. Paul trampled on the fallen flag—it was, he saw, a beehive with the word
DESERET
beneath it—on the way to the front door. Along with several men, he hammered at it with the butt of his rifle. Someone inside fired through the door. A U.S. soldier fell with a groan.

Then the door went down. Soldiers were already clambering into the house through the windows. Mantarakis rushed in. Somebody shot at him from point-blank range—and missed. After a last fusillade of firing, silence fell: only U.S. soldiers were left alive in there.

Of the Mormon defenders, five had been men and two women. They had all had rifles, and had all known what to do with them. Mantarakis had seen plenty of death, but never till now a woman in a white shirtwaist with pearl buttons and a long black skirt—and with half her head blown away. He turned away, a little sickened. “They fought harder’n the Rebs ever did,” he muttered.