Then news came in from our new scouts which was a good set of Crow Indians from over Yellowstone direction that Caught-His-Horse-First was seen riding north-west of Laramie. So they follow him up there and after a day’s riding he enters all unknowing he is being watched into a new village, about thirty wigwams the Crows counted. Sergeant must of been waiting for that because he has a requisition order for a field gun already dated back a year so he furnishes this to the ordnance quartermaster who is a man more placid than Caesar without needing to bother the major and by dawn of the following day we are setting out in good heart to see if we can locate the village, the svelte gun making a sort of merry rattle along the way.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE BOW IS DRAWN BACK and the bowman tries to hold it as taut as he can and then when he is satisfied with the position of his prey he can let the arrow loose. There is a fierce strange moment when the arm can no longer hold the pulled string, and nothing will do but to let it fly, so the bowman must know all the staging posts of his task, or make a bloody hames of it. I was just pondering along these lines as we went in fairly good order in the hoofprints of our Crow scouts. That Caught-His-Horse-First was a wily man and it would not be any picnic to find him and bring revenge to his soul. The sergeant thought it only right that as many of the old section who had found the killed men so many seasons before should go that day to find the village. Caleb Booth was there as the Jesus among us risen again. In the meanwhile Caleb had grown a big moustache and had a little baby son by a pretty Sioux woman, Oglala Sioux too, so I guess that was strange. I guess love laughs at history a little.
The year just gone had wore away at the sergeant and even if we were young and knew nothing we knew it was not only age was eating away at him. He is as gaunt now like the spike of a dead tree sticking up from the land and all his old measure of flesh and even his violent talk had withered away somewhat. The man I had took to be just something of a monster and even a wicked man in his way was grown different in my eyes. He was as rough as the Black Hills in his demeanour and his brain was full of nothing but orders, drinking, and tobacco. He never said a thing that wasn’t pickled with cusses. But that were just the front side of him. Around the back was a differing aspect, I won’t say roses and gardens, but a sort of queer quietness that I had come to admire. And relish even, so that I could quite easily find myself seeking out his company. He drilled us along the boiling summer ground as if he wished the American sunlight to burn us away like leaves in a bonefire. He was harsh and cruel when you mistook an order or wheeled right when you should of wheeled left. I seen him hit troopers with the back of his sabre and I seen him one time shoot at the heels of a erring trooper so that that man was obliged to dance and caterwaul to survive. But he was a handbook of war and war’s actions and he had never led a company to their detriment. And even though he were not the culprit for the massacre of our companions a year back he took himself to be so by some degree and his thought of revenge was a calculation to put back things that was amiss in his estimation in their place.
That he was a filthy bad singer I have said before and only the memory of his vile tones forces me to say it again and I do pray that in heaven the singing will be confined to the angels.
A day and a night passes and the sergeant keeps us moving and is against sleep. Sergeant thinks we is crossing so far northwest the darned Crows must be bringing us home to Yellowstone. That is a strange country we often hear stories of. By morning of the second day we begin to move into forest and the land is rising and the sergeant robustly rebukes the Crows. You the craziest damn wolves I ever followed, says the sergeant. How you expect me to bring this gun over that pile of rocks? So the field gun is left to follow with a dozen men who will need to raise it foot by foot on pulleys and all kinds of damn hard work in the sun. There is a Negro called Boethius Dilward driving the mules that pull the gun and he is said to be the best damn mule-drover in the regiment, but still. Mules like flat ground just like human beings do. Boethius Dilward shakes his head at the Crows too. You do your best, Boethius, says the sergeant, and I apologise for this stupidity. I will bring that gun up, says Boethius, sir, never you fear. Just see that you go along quiet as a doe, you hear, Boethius? Yes, sir, and I will, he says. Goddamn, says the sergeant.
Just four or five hours later we begin to see a country whose beauty penetrates our bones. I say beauty and I mean beauty. Oftentimes in America you could go stark mad from the ugliness of things. Grass that goes for a thousand miles and never a hill to break it. I ain’t saying there ain’t beauty on the plains, well there is. But you ain’t long travelling on the plains when you begin to feel clear loco. You can rise up out of your saddle and sort of look down on yourself riding, it’s as if the stern and relentless monotony makes you die, come back to life, and die again. Your brain is molten in its bowl of bones and you just seeing atrocious wonders everywhere. The mosquitoes have your hide for supper and you are one hallucinating lunatic then. But now in the far distance we see a land begin to be suggested as if maybe a man was out there painting it with a huge brush. He is choosing a blue as bright as falling water for the hills and there is a green for the forests so green you think it might be used for to make ten million gems. Rivers burn through it with a enamelled blue. The huge fiery sun is working at burning off all this splendid colour and for ten thousand acres of the sky it is mighty successful. A stagger of black cliffs just nearby rise sheer and strange from the molten greens. Then a wide band of red striked across the sky and the red is the red of them trousers Zouave soldiers wear. Then a colossal band of the blue of bird eggs. God’s work! Silence so great it hurts your ears, colour so bright it hurts your staring eyes. A vicious ruined class of man could cry at such scenes because it seems to tell him that his life is not approved. The remnant of innocence burns in his breast like a ember of the very sun. Lige Magan looks at me, turning in his saddle. He’s laughing.
That’s a sweet country, he says.
I’ll say it is, I said.
Why don’t you say that to me? says Starling Carlton at his other side. I can apply an appreciation of a view just as good as Trooper McNulty.
Ain’t it just glorious though, Starling, ain’t it? says Lige, like he don’t know that Starling is coming at that one sideways. But he does know. Then Starling gives way and decides for the sake of friendship to follow Lige into that brand of easy talk.
Man, says Starling, it is. It just is.