Tucker’s Grove (8 page)

“
Can
’
t see him.”

Kenner appeared at the top of the bluff and handed two bri
m
ming water pots to the dumbfounded Captain. “
Don
’
t just stand there! Get me two more pots
—
come on!”
The captain scra
m
bled to obey.

Impatient, Kenner picked up a large rock and hurled it over the bluff rim into the night. At that moment a shooting-star bla
zed overhead, and it seemed almost as if Kenner had thrown it as well.

Kenner snorted. “
Ain
’
t anybody else coming?”
He grabbed two more pots and scrambled down the steep trail again. More gu
n
fire bounced and skittered along the creekbed below.

“
Darby
’
s com
ing up,”
Tucker announced. A few moments later, the other man lurched over the rim carrying a canteen filled with barely a cup of water.

“
Good thing those Sioux are lousy shots.”
Darby gasped. Edgerton noticed a bleeding wound on the man
’
s arm where a bull
et had grazed him. “
I
’
m not going down there again.”

“
They
’
re just toying with us,”
Barrett mumbled. “
Cat and mouse. Isn
’
t it fun?”

Tucker gasped. “
That idiot! Kenner
’
s down there, up to his knees in the water, jumping up and down and cussing at the I
n
dians!”

“
What the hell!”
Edgerton, Barrett and Darby knelt beside Tucker, searching for the burly man somewhere below. The gunfire had stopped, but in the fresh silence they could hear the quiet patter on stone as the Sioux shot arrows.

Below, Kenner stop
ped shouting, still defiant. His large body jerked, twitched, and fell backward into the water.

The captain stood at the rim of the bluff. “
Is anybody going to go down and get him? See if he
’
s still alive? Or, for the sake of mercy, rescue his body from th
e Indians? You saw what they did to the ones we left behind this afternoon.”

“
Why don
’
t you go get him, Captain?”
Barrett asked. “
He fetched your water.”

“
He was your friend,”
the captain snapped.

“
I
’
m not going down there again!”
Darby insisted.

“
He wasn
’
t my friend,”
Barrett said.

“
You
’
re not making me do it!”
Tucker whined. “
I
’
m too scared. If you threw me over the edge, I wouldn
’
t even fall down there
’
cause I
’
m so scared.”

Edgerton mumbled, “
He wasn
’
t my friend either.”

³

“
It
’
s ironic, even laughable
now. But at the time we could i
m
agine no greater terror than that night on Reno Hill…
. Our i
m
aginations have grown since then.”

—
Lieutenant Edgerton
’
s journal.

³

In the back of my mind I always knew this war to be far more than a mere conflict between two
armies. No, it was a battle of trained soldier against painted warrior, civilization against bloodthirsty savagery, modern military techniques against a
r
row and tomahawk.

By all rights we should have won!

Perhaps civilization just doesn
’
t belong here.

Ther
e are those who claim the Sioux have a right to commit their atrocities, but you would be hard-pressed to find one such man among the survivors of Reno Hill, the ones who watched in the settling dust of a bloated afternoon as Sioux women ran over the batt
l
efield, slitting the throats of wounded troopers. Or as warriors stripped and mutilated the bodies of our comrades so that
—
as the Sioux believe
—
the spirits of the fallen enemy will find no peace in heaven.

Before any man tells me the savages have a right t
o do this, I will tell him to go back and look at the graves, to reflect for a moment that not one unmutilated body lies buried there, thanks to the cruel knives of the bloodthirsty Sioux. I will ask him to believe that the souls of hundreds of American s
o
ldiers now wander aimlessly and in anguish because the doors of heaven are closed to them.

A civilized man will not believe me.

He hasn
’
t seen Kenner.

Nor has he seen Darby
’
s murdered body within the security of Fort Pease, with the heavy doors ripped apar
t and bullet holes from Darby
’
s pistol dotting the walls…
and not one man at the Fort having heard a sound all night long. Nor does he have Barrett
’
s flag-wrapped body here beside him on the deck of a haunted boat in the middle of the night. Barrett
’
s eyes
were torn out, maybe so he couldn
’
t see his own blood spilling over the deck rail into the quiet river. His gleaming spectacles remained completely untouched on his face, as if for an ironic joke. T
o
morrow, when the
Far West
reaches Bismarck, they are goin
g to give Barrett a full military burial.

Put a man through all this, I say, and
then
ask him to be obje
c
tive about the savages.

I took Darby
’
s tomahawk with me to give to his sister as a keepsake, if ever I see her, and if I survive. I have my pistol load
ed at my side, but it gives me no comfort, because I r
e
member that Darby
’
s pistol did him no good in Fort Pease. Kenner still got him.

I am sweating.

On the riverbanks, all the insects suddenly stifle their sounds, extinguished like a fire. The river fails
to make any sound against the
Far West
. The quietly snoring troopers on the steamer
’
s deck cease to breathe.

Kenner has drawn a curtain of night silence around us, to she
l
ter himself from any prying eyes.

A loud thump strikes the deck behind me, as of something heavy settling there.

“
Your turn, Edgerton.”
Kenner says.

³

“
The nightmares of children are as nothing compared to the nightmares of men…
and at times even the nightmares of men pale before reality.”

—
Lieutenant Edgerton
’
s journal

June 27, 1876: Regarding the explanation of Walter Tucker
’
s death, as told by Lieutenant Edgerton, “
Purely conjecture, and purely preposterous!”
—
evaluation by Montana State Histor
i
cal Society, written in red ink.

They stared at each other, quivering like pudding as the afte
r
shocks of terror ran through them and then vanished. Tucker looked at Barrett, Darby, and Edgerton
—
the four of them had survived. Many of the other men were weeping. The Sioux had fought for mos
t of the following day and then, after setting the prairie afire, they took their women and children and departed.

Brigadier General Terry
’
s rescue column arrived the next morning, too late to do much more than help find and bury the mutilated dead. Custer
’
s entire Seventh Cavalry lay among those dead, but Tucker was hard-pressed to consider himself “
fortunate.”

All fighting had stopped, but the place still felt like a battlefield. Dry grass moved in the silence, implying the existence of a breeze, although
the hot sun denied it. Flies and stench hung in the sluggish air as hundreds of bodies began to bloat. General Terry
’
s men were appalled; when they bedded down for the night, many of them tried to sleep with their noses on the wet river bank to distract
t
hem from the smell. Terry had offered a hundred dollar bonus to any volunteer willing to carry a me
s
sage downstream to the
Far West
, asking Captain Marsh to prepare to receive casualties.

“
I
’
m going to see if I can find his body.”
Tucker said. He had rinse
d his mouth with fresh water again and again, but still the hot coppery taste of stolen blood clung to his tongue.

“
Who?”
Edgerton asked.

Barrett scowled at him. “
Who the hell do you think?”

“
You weren
’
t too anxious to go looking for him two nights ago, Tu
cker,”
Darby remarked.

“
Well, neither were you!”

“
Let him go. If he can
’
t find Kenner, maybe we
’
ll help look,”
Barrett said.

“
I, for one, don
’
t know if I can stand the sight of another corpse today. Besides, it
’
s almost dark,”
Edgerton said.

“
Scared of the
dark, are you?”
Barrett
’
s voice was rich with sarcasm.

“
I don
’
t know what I
’
m scared of anymore.”

“
Well, I
’
m going.”
Tucker gave a disgusted snort. “
That bastard made us drink blood
—
now we
’
re no better than the damned savages ourselves.”
He turned his bac
k on the other three, and began picking his way down to the riverbank.

The sun hung close to the horizon, tingeing the sky and sha
d
ows with a coppery color. The creekbed was rocky and filled with broken brush, and the shallow slow-moving water had a
l
ready
washed most of the battle from its memory. The dry-brown landscape held rises and dips that afforded hundreds of hiding places for hostile Indians. Arrows, tattered shreds of uniforms, personal possessions dropped in panic as Reno
’
s men had furiously spla
s
hed across the creek to the safety of the bluffs
—
all lay scattered on the riverbank. And a few bodies.

One of them would be Kenner
’
s.

Tucker felt sick inside; tomorrow, General Terry would want them to spend hours in the hot sun identifying and burying t
he hundreds who had been massacred. Tucker didn
’
t know if he had the stomach for it.

He slogged up the creek to where he had seen Kenner fall, darting his eyes into the shadowy corners where a dead man might hide. Within a few moments Tucker found him, hal
fway up the bank, as if he had crawled there with his last strength. Kenner
’
s body lay with one shoulder up against a rock and the other arm stiff and outstretched. His blue uniform was torn, and his mouth had been bruised and smashed, grinning with jagge
d
, broken teeth. Both of Kenner
’
s eyes were gone, taken away by the birds or the Sioux, and the torn-meat sockets stared at Tucker like gaping, blood-filled mouths.

“
Serves you right, Kenner,”
Tucker said, alone with his brav
a
do. Of all the soldiers, Tucker
believed he disliked Kenner the most. “
All the times you poked fun at me, beat me up, pushed me around, made me feel like a worm in front of the ot
h
ers
—
but now who has the last laugh?”