House of Masques (15 page)

Charles seemed to sag. “I'm willing.” He walked to the side of the room, lifted a chair from the gallery, and sat with his arms folded across his chest.

“You, of course, are the defendant,” Josiah said. “Jeb and Floyd will bear witness. Edward, will you be prosecutor? You'll make a good devil's advocate, don't you think?” Edward nodded. “Our cadets will serve as bailiffs. Jeb, Floyd, do you agree to abide by the decision?”

“Who shall be the judge?” Jeb asked.

“I will,” Josiah said.

“Will there be a jury?”

“There will.”

Jeb looked about the room. “I see no Jurors here.”

Josiah turned slowly. Kathleen backed farther into the shadows.

“You will be the jury,” Josiah said, and she knew he saw her. He turned to the others. “Miss Kathleen Donley will decide the Captain's fate.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Come over here into the light, Kathleen,” Josiah said. Reluctantly she obeyed, walking down the steps to his side. Was there no other way to discover the truth? she wondered.

Charles, face flushed, rose from his chair. “No,” he said, “I can't agree to this—she's too personally involved. I can never receive a fair hearing from the sister of Michael Donley.”

Jeb, ignoring Charles, put both hands on the table and leaned toward her. “Kathleen?” he asked in a puzzled voice. His eyes searched her face. “You're not Kathleen, you're Clarissa.”

“No, this is Kathleen Donley.” Josiah sounded impatient, as though he wanted to dispose of an unimportant detail. “You kidnapped the wrong woman.”

“You meant to harm Clarissa?” Charles's tone was threatening.

“You brought her to this house for your private purposes.” Jeb smiled lewdly at him. “The story's common gossip. I heard it last week in the taproom of the Storm King Arms. She's naught but a slut.”

“You son of a bitch!” Charles lunged for Jeb but the two cadets jumped in front of him and pinioned his arms.

“Enough!” Josiah's booming voice silenced them. “Captain, for God's sake, sit down. First things first. You're the defendant here, let your grievance with this man rest for the time being.”

“Damn him and his grievance,” Jeb snarled. He turned to Kathleen. “We agree with the good Captain on one point. We can't have this girl judge him. She hates us, me and Floyd, we're the ones what kept her prisoner.”

“Yet the Captain murdered her brother,” Josiah said calmly. “It seems she's equally unacceptable to both sides. I, for one, think her decision would be as fair as we're likely to get this side of the grave. Do either of you have an alternative?”

Jeb and Floyd whispered together. Charles, hands clasped behind him, stared out the window. Rain lashed the house. The day had darkened and Kathleen saw their shadows dance grotesquely on the walls. Had the masquerade ball been only two days ago? With a pang she remembered the cadet, who now lay dead in this same room, whirling past with the blonde girl in his arms, recalled Edward strutting in his black prince's costume. If she could put Michael's ghost to rest, would she and Edward be free? Was his unfinished mission for Josiah making him vacillate?

“Let me speak.” Kathleen looked between the flickering candles at Charles, spoke to his back. She felt annoyed. All of them seemed to assume she would do whatever they wished. “I don't want to judge you, Charles,” she said. “I want nothing more than to be done with this affair. We must have done with it before we're all destroyed.”

She looked from the Captain to Jeb, her voice choking. “We're being torn apart, Charles, you and I, even Jeb and Floyd. Let me try to find out what happened, let me judge the Captain's guilt. I beg you.”

Kathleen's hand went to her mouth. Surprised by her boldness, she felt a blush spread to her neck and face. Josiah stepped to her side and put his hand on her arm. “Are we agreed then?” he asked quickly. “Captain?”

“Agreed.” Charles's voice was low and muffled. He still faced the windows.

“Jeb? Floyd?”

Both men nodded.

Josiah sighed. “Then let us begin. First, I'd like a word with our advocate.” He held Edward by the arm and they talked, Josiah gesturing with his free hand, Edward nodding.

“Bailiff,” Josiah called one of the cadets. “Could we have some more chairs? Two here behind the table for Miss. Donley and myself. Good. Put the witness chair there across from us at right angles. The rest in a row behind the witness. Excellent.”

Josiah sat in an over-sized armchair. “We'll begin with the accusers. Jeb? Floyd?” Jeb walked to the witness chair.

“Both me and Floyd fought at Rock Creek,” he said, “but Floyd was with Captain Pierson chasing a Cheyenne hunting party. They were ten miles away during the battle.”

“What battle?” Charles spun to face him. “Massacre would be a better word.”

“Captain, sit down.” Josiah's eyes sparked with anger. “Another interruption and I'll have you taken upstairs. You'll have your opportunity to testify.” He looked at Jeb. “Did you see what happened?”

“Yes, sir.”

Josiah leaned forward. Kathleen, sitting beside him, saw the candlelight glow on his dark face, recalled sitting across from him in his study at Gleneden,but unlike that time she now felt comfortable in his presence. His mottled brown eyes gazed directly into Jeb's. “You will tell the truth,” he directed. “The complete truth as you lived it.” The young man, fixed by the hypnotic stare, nodded.

“All right, Counsel.” Josiah leaned back with arms folded. Edward, face turned so it was half in shadow, stood facing the witness. A two-day growth of beard blackened his cheeks and jaw. Kathleen had to force her eyes from him.

“Your name?” Edward asked.

“Jebediah Brewster.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Occupation?”

“Corporal, U.S. Cavalry, Ohio Volunteers.”

Jeb sat erect, as though at attention. His replies were quick, clipped, and unembellished, like the answers of a well-drilled soldier to an officer. At times, when thinking, he ran his hand over his light brown hair.

He described his enlistment two years before, his training at Fort Riley, and his duty on the plains. His dealings with the Indians had been brief and infrequent. “Our job's to fight them,” he told Edward. “They're filthy, lying, thieving heathens.”

His cavalry company had come upon a stage station a few hours after Cheyennes burned the buildings and murdered the agent. “I was sick,” he said, his voice rising. “Puked in a ditch along the trail. I thought the men would laugh at me. Nobody did. They must have felt the same way.”

Edward led Jeb to his assignment at Fort Dodge, Kansas. “The Indians were attacking the stage stations,” he said, “ambushing the coaches, running off stock, forcing the freight wagons to corral and fight. The Dog Soldiers, that's what the young Cheyenne braves called themselves, were the troublemakers.

“Then the new major arrived. Major Curtis. ‘My rule,' he said, ‘is to fight Indians until they lay down their arms and submit.' The men, tired of inaction, cheered.”

The cavalry raid on the Indian camp at Rock Creek came in October. They left the fort shortly after dark and rode all night across the plains.

“We attacked at dawn,” Jeb said. “The major formed us into a line front. The Cheyennes had camped in a bend of the creek, which was mostly dry that time of year. We charged, bugles blowing, over the streambed. I didn't see no guards. Not like Cheyennes not to post guards. The Indians came running from their tepees, seeming surprised.

“One of them came to meet us, holding his hands over his head calling, ‘Stop, stop,' in plain English. When we kept riding ahead he stood still and folded his arms. We shot him down. We were all firing then and the Indians ran back into the tepees for their rifles. Their firing was scattered, though.”

“Did any of the other Indians try to stop the fighting?” Edward asked.

“One did, I guess. A chief he must have been. His tepee was higher than the rest. He raised a big American flag on a pole and a lot of the women gathered around him. Then he ran up a white flag below the American one.”

“Did the cavalry parley?”

“You don't understand how it was. We were in the camp shooting, the Indians firing back, powder smoke everywhere. There wasn't no time to think or talk, just fight.”

“When did you first see Captain Worthington?”

“He weren't in the main attack, his company formed the line cutting off the Indians' retreat. I chased one of the braves, he was on foot, overrode him and he slipped off into the underbrush along the creek. I couldn't find him. By then I was separated from our main party. I come to the top of this small hill, saw the smoke of the camp to my right, then off to the left I seen the Captain. He seemed to be hollering at one of his men.”

“How far away was he?”

“'Bout a hundred yards.”

“Go on.”

“The man turned from the Captain. He was on foot, the Captain mounted, both of them sort of apart from the rest of the company. The others were riding this way and that, chasing down Indians, firing at them. The Captain had his revolver out and the man swung toward him, there was maybe ten yards between them, and I thought he yelled something at the Captain and I saw a flash from the Captain's gun and the man fell. Dropped, didn't move at all. I reckoned he was dead right then. Later I found he died the next day.”

“Who was the man the Captain shot?”

“Michael Donley. I rode over and helped take him to the rear. The Captain was walking back and forth, talking to himself.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell us?”

“We all knew the Captain sided with the Indians. Always excusing them. Donley was just doing his duty.”

Edward nodded and Jeb walked back to sit with Floyd. “Captain Worthington,” Edward said. “You're next.” The Captain sat in the witness chair, hands rubbing the cloth of his trousers, eyes blinking, sweat gleaming on his forehead.

He recounted his service in the Civil War, his assignments after the War in Washington. The year before he had requested duty in the West and been sent to Fort Dodge. Major Curtis was in command.

As Kathleen listened to Charles tell of the raid on the Indian camp she pictured the scene, the mist rising from the creek, the horses trotting four abreast beneath the stars. She could smell the tang of an early autumn night, feel the bite of the frost. Almost as though she were riding over the short-grass prairie of western Kansas…

Captain Charles Worthington rode at the head of his company. His horse, Demon, was rested and eager. Charles shook his head. “No good, no good at all,” he muttered to himself.

Excitement was in the October air, the Indians' Moon of the Changing Seasons, an excitement of facing the unknown, of going into action. His men were trained to fight and they were ready. The long months at the fort, on routine patrol, in fruitless search for marauding Indians was behind them. The excitement did not worry Charles. Without it, fear would take over.

We have four hundred men
, Charles thought,
and four twelve-pound howitzers. How many Indians were there?
He did not know. Six hundred, the scout reported. More than a thousand according to the talk at the fort. How many were warriors? One-half, a third? But the Indian fighting strength was not what bothered him. The cavalry had better weapons, were disciplined, and should have surprise on their side.

Major Curtis was the problem.

“These chiefs at Rock Creek are peaceful,” Charles had told the major. “One Arm, Black Horse, Bright Kettle. They brought their people near the fort after the agent gave them guarantees. They're trying to follow white men's ways.”

The major snorted. “What did Sherman say—‘The only good Indian is a dead Indian'? They're savages, blocking us from our destiny, murdering settlers, raping white women.”

And Major Curtis did not seem to differentiate between braves and women and children. “Kill all the Indians you come across,” were his orders, “big and little. Nits make lice.”

Remembering, Charles shook his head in despair. His opinion of Indians was very different. He found them decorous and trustworthy, understood their deep distrust of the white man. Was there not a trail of unkept promises and broken treaties stretching from the Alleghenies to the Rockies?
I will not order my men to fire except in self-defense
, he vowed.

The column moved on through the night. Not until light showed in the east did they stop in a grove of cottonwoods along the creek. Raven Cunningham, their guide, squatted on the ground, a lantern by his feet. Charles dismounted to join the major and the other officers clustered around the half-breed.

The guide picked a stick from beside the lantern and drew a horseshoe in the dirt. “The river,” he explained. He made a circle within the shoe. “One Arm's camp, many lodges, six hundred Cheyennes, two hundred warriors.” He drew a small “X” near the camp. “Pony herd,” he said. A larger “X” some distance away showed “warriors hunting buffalo.”

The major rubbed his hands together. He was a short, wiry man with a scar on his right cheek. “I'll lead the main assault from the south,” he said, scratching an arrow on the ground. “O'Connor, Stubbs, you're with me. Pierson will swing to the north and destroy the hunting party. Swanson, take thirty men and disperse the ponies. Worthington…” He paused to look speculatively at Charles. “Form a line across the open end of the horseshoe. We'll drive them your way. Start your advance after my attack begins. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” Charles replied. As a commander, he respected Major Curtis. As a man he despised him.

“This morning we destroy the power of the Cheyennes,” the major said. “Good hunting.”

Charles had his line of troops positioned by the time the rim of the sun appeared over the horizon. He patted Demon's neck to steady him as he watched the smoke drift from the Indian campfires. He gave his sheathed Spenser repeating rifle a last check. The wind rose, making the flags and pennants snap along the line. Where was the pride he had felt when he had fought the Rebels? Compared to this, that had been a good war, he thought, if any war could be called good.

He knew the attack had begun when he heard hooves drumming on the flats leading to the Cheyenne camp. Charles spurred his horse up and down the line. “Take prisoners, shoot only in self-defense.” Over and over he repeated the order until his voice grew hoarse.

The men stirred, hearing the volleys of shots from the direction of the Indian camp. Charles motioned to his bugler. At the signal the line moved forward at a walk. Two squaws stumbled from the woods in front of them and a sergeant dismounted to lead them to the rear. The shooting from the camp increased to a steady staccato.