Angelina Menges was twenty-six, with curly brown hair and a tight-waisted figure that bloomed in the right places. At first everyone wondered what such a beautiful girl had seen in the aging and failed officer. But the truth gradually came out. She was the eldest daughter of a family of girls, and the last of them to be married. There was talk of a game of cards with Menges having the luck for once and a heavy debt with the girl's father. An arrangement was made that satisfied everyone.
For the time being.
There was another aspect of the girl that only slowly came to light. She had beautiful, long-lashed eyes of hazel brown, tinted with flecks of green-gold. Lovely eyes.
But eyes that were agonizingly short-sighted. To read a book Angelina needed to hold the print only a couple of inches from her face and everything beyond a few feet was a pale blur of moving colors and shapes. It explained why the stunted and alcoholic Menges had won her so easily.
Crow learned a lot about Menges and his wife during the first evening in camp. And about the fighting strength of the unit that he had joined. There wasn't very much that he heard that he liked at all. Nothing of the Captain and very little about the way he was running his men.
Apart from Menges and Crow there was one junior Lieutenant named Kemp. A taciturn Scot who kept his own council and whispered to Crow during the meal that he would do well to do the same. There was an elderly Sergeant named McLaglen and a brace of Corporals.
With just fifty-seven Troopers.
'Sons of bitches keep tryin' to desert on me. Even that pup Custer had ten and twenty men a day runnin' off from him. It's the gold that does it. Cowards!'
Crow shook his head at the proffered jug of beer that Menges held out towards him, reaching instead for water.
Keeping his mind alert and watching and listening to everything that went on.
'How do you treat deserters, Captain Menges?' he asked.
'Damned if I bother. Catch them and I shoot them. But there aren't many bother now. I got the best guards for that in the whole damned Territory.'
Crow sipped at the warm brackish water, smelling whisky fumes in the evening air, wondering whether Menges had mixed it with the beer or whether he had been drinking alone in his quarters before the meal.
'What guards are they, Sir?' he asked politely.
'Crazy Horse and the Oglala Sioux.' The Captain laughed, throwing back his head, juice from the buffalo stew running down the layers of chins. The meat was tough and stringy, like buffalo usually was, sticking between Crow's teeth. But at least it was fresh meat.
'The Indian capture your deserters for you, Sir?'
'You had better believe that, Mister Crow. Ain't that right, Mister Kemp?'
The Scot nodded, preoccupied with picking a length of sinew from his back teeth. 'Indeed it is, Captain Menges. From the corpses we've seen around there aren't many getting through.'
'We are here to try and hold a position and report activity by the hostiles to Fort Buford. Is that correct, Captain?'
Menges nodded. Reaching across and squeezing the shoulder of his wife who had been sitting silently at his side throughout the meal, her beautiful eyes smiling vaguely in the direction of the tall new officer. She could tell he was tall. And darkish. With long hair. That was about all she could make out in the poor light of the tent.
'Correct, Mister Crow. Crow? That the only name you got? No first name?'
'Crow is my first name, Captain,' said the lean man quietly.
'And your second?'
'Yes.'
'Just Crow?'
'That's correct, Sir.'
Menges leaned back in his chair and stared at the tall officer as if he was seeing him for the first time.
'Something about you that I don't think I'm goin;' to cotton on to, Crow.'
'Sir.'
'Your hair. Damned long for a man. Not a damned brown-holin' boy-lover, are you?'
'Is this suitable conversation to hold in front of Mrs. Menges, Sir?' asked Kemp.
'I decide what's suitable to put in front of my wife,
Mister
Kemp,' warned the officer drunkenly. 'And what goes behind her as well.' Laughing at his own bawdy jest.
Reaching beneath the folding table and grabbing at his wife. Clearly reaching up beneath her skirt. Her face reddened at the insulting behavior, but she still said nothing.
'Sir,' began Kemp, half-rising to his feet in protest.
'Mister
Kemp,' said Menges with deceptive gentleness. 'Ever the officer and gentleman, springing to the defense of a lady who he believes has been insulted. Let me tell you, that Angelina here does not care. What I choose to do to her or with her is sufficient. Is that quite clear, gentlemen?'
Both Crow and Kemp nodded. Mrs. Menges rose suddenly to her feet, ignoring her husband and muttered vaguely to the tent in general.
'If I may be excused,' and hurried out, dropping her napkin to the grass floor.
Menges took no notice of her, throwing his head back and baying his amusement. 'Lilyish whore, ain't she? I plucked her from the shelf and she repays me by endless weeping and womanly carryin' on. Damned whore! Slut! Filth! No better than an Indian squaw. Some ways a whole lot worse than that.'
Crow pushed back his plate and stood up. 'Permission to leave, Sir?' he said, his voice soft in the stillness.
'No, you may not leave. You may not even break wind unless I give you permission. Sit down again, Mister Crow Crow. I wish to talk to you and this other whining apology for an officer about the Indians and about what I propose to do. If my wife bothers you, Mister Crow.?..'
Still standing, Crow looked into the eyes of the little officer, unable to hide his contempt. 'It is not your wife that offends me, Captain Menges.'
'Meanin' it's me, huh? I couldn't give a sweet fuck for that, Lieutenant. Angelina does like I say. Mighty pretty, ain't she?' He was very drunk, the words slurring and running into each other. 'Tits you can chaw on all night long. Honey-pit that's deep and wet.' Seeing Kemp also starting to rise to his feet. 'Sit down, Mister. I have not yet done. Angie has great curlin' hair over her nest o' love that's the longest and curliest I ever did see. Longer than any high-yeller whore in a New Orleans bordello. Damned if it ain't!'
It was worse than Crow had been warned. Whatever sense and sensibility the man had once possessed, the tension of duty out in Indian country and the harsh Dakota winter had stolen them all away, leaving a drunken, foulmouthed oaf who had terrorized his wife and brow-beaten his officers and men. And Menges would be commanding Crow and the others through a dangerous campaign against Crazy Horse and the Oglala during what promised to be a long and hot summer.
But that lay ahead.
If you two dummies aren't back sittin' on your asses in just two seconds from now you'll both be facing a court-martial for disobeying a lemit... legim... Damn! A legal order.'
Kemp sat down immediately, followed a moment later by Crow, folding his skinny body into the low seat.
Wondering how long it would be before he had to kill Captain Menges of the Third Cavalry.
For the next half hour Menges raved on about the local Indians. How he wished he was in command of Fort Buford instead of some scummy crew of jail-leavings and keg-scrapings.
'Crazy Horse is a jumped-up murderer of women and children. Never faced real soldiers led by a real commander.'
Crow coughed at that. 'With respect, Captain, I recall that not so many years back and not so many miles from here Crazy Horse took on and killed a sizeable force of cavalry.'
'Captain William Fetterman at Fort Phil Kearny? Man was a damned idiot. Chased after the Indians and they were lucky enough to be able to ambush them.'
'Lot of dead,' said Crow, quietly.
'You frightened of them, Mister?' snapped Menges. 'Because I tell you that I'm not.'
'No, Sir.'
'No, Sir,' mimicked the Captain. 'With enough men I could ride clean through the entire Sioux nation.'
'How many men, Sir,' prompted Crow.
'What?'
'I asked how many men you felt it would take for you to ride through the Sioux?'
'How many? Well... Give me eighty soldiers and I could do it. Do it with what I've got here and God knows that isn't very much to fight with.'
'Fetterman used to boast he could do it with eighty, Sir' said Crow. 'Fact is, Fetterman had precisely that number with him when he died. Massacred along with all eighty of them. Every one.'
There was a long silence in the small tent. Kemp caught Crow's eye and shook his head warningly. Outside they could hear the noises of the camp bedding down for the night. Orders being shouted out and men marching backwards and forwards. At first Crow wondered whether the senior officer had even heard what he'd said. His head was slumped forwards over his greasy plate and his eyes seemed to be closed.
'You like the Indians, Mister Crow? Crow. That's an Indian kind of a name. And your hair, Mister Crow. That's the kind of hair that I've seen on Indians. Long black hair. Like a Crow Indian. Or a Sioux. Or a Cheyenne. Or a Pawnee. Or an Arapaho. Damned strange hair for an officer in the Cavalry of the United States.'
'I am not breaking any standing orders with the length of my hair, Captain.'
'I'm sure you're not, Lieutenant Crow. That surely is an odd name. Where were you born, Mister?'
'That is my affair, Sir. With respect I would like to be excused your company, sir.'
'Denied, Mister. Mister Crow.'
Crow felt a bitter anger swelling through him, filling his throat with a blind rage that threatened to choke him.
During his time with the U.S. Cavalry he was constantly coming against fools. Men like Menges who had no talent for anything but who were, nonetheless, his seniors, whose dirt he had to eat. But he wanted only to kill the fat little Captain. To take his face between his thin powerful hands and rip the skin from the skull. To press his thumbs into the sockets and squeeze the eyes out like bruised grapes. To leave Menges a raw head and bloody bones in the dust at his feet and spit on him and walk away. But that wasn't possible. Not to stay in the Army and try to make a career in a legitimate manner.
Crow swallowed hard.
'As you wish, Sir,' he said.
'You can go to your quarters when I have finished with you, or you might perhaps prefer to spend your nights somewhere out there...' waving his hand to the bleak country around them in such an extravagant gesture that he nearly knocked over his glass. Out there with the rest of the Crows. And the Sioux.' He bellowed with laughter at his own joke, lips curling back from the jumbled graveyard of stained teeth. But the smile never got too close to the little eyes.
Kemp did his best to ease the moment. 'Perhaps I could inform Mister Crow of our problems, Sir?'
'Yes. You do that, Mister. I shall go and take a leak and I warn you both that I will hang any man... or officer... I believe guilty of any attempt at subversion of my authority.'
Both Lieutenants rose as their commanding officer lurched unsteadily from the tent. Crow sat first, careful to school his face to impassivity, not sure on which side Kemp was prepared to pitch.
He didn't have to wait long.
The young Scot spoke quickly and urgently, keeping his voice to a bare whisper.
'I believe that man is mad, Mister Crow, but there is nothing that you or I can do. I have tried three times to secure a release to another unit but every time the dog bars me. The men hate and despise him, but for a few fawning toadies. Twice he has been nearly struck by bullets in a stray skirmish against the Indians. But...' the voice dropped even lower and Crow had to lean across the table to catch the words. 'I believe that the shots have come from the rear and not from the front. Too few of the local Sioux have rifles to do such shooting.'
It was no great surprise. Crow had heard of unpopular officers who had died in mysterious 'accidents'. Even murdered in their quarters at night with the blame, as usual, being laid on the Indians.
'There has been a deal of trouble here. We need wood and several times the train has been attacked by a mixture of Sioux and Cheyenne. Never more than two or three dozen, but I fear there may be more coming north now the weather has changed for the better.
'Does Menges not use sufficient guards?' asked Crow.
Kemp shook his head. 'He believes the Indians are an enemy unworthy of too much consideration. He speaks more and more of putting out the entire force he has here in one grand sweep that will wipe the Sioux for ever from the map of this land.'
'Then he is a damned fool. I know something of the Oglala, even speak a little of their tongue. If the tribes of the Plains ever combine together they would be able to put three or four thousand warriors into the field against us.'
The Scot whistled through his teeth. 'As many as that! I had thought perhaps a thousand...'
'No. When they attack the wood train do they sometimes withdraw as if in disarray?'
Kemp nodded. Indeed they do, Mister Crow. It is that very matter that causes Captain Menges to believe he can one day surprise them and pursue their retreat, thus coming on their camp by surprise and slaughtering them all.'
Crow sighed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. 'That is their plan. It is one greatly loved by Crazy Horse. He will lead Menges and our command into the jaws of a trap.'
'Then you must warn him,' said Kemp.
'No. I think that he would take no heed at all of me. Perhaps you, as you have been with him longer?'
'Good Lord Almighty! You have no... I could not say that to Menges. He would say that I was a coward and make sure the men knew of his thoughts. No. We are trapped here, Mister Crow, with a man who is the devil himself. And there is nothing we can do about it. Obey commands and wait for Captain Menges to die or drink himself into an early grave.'