Then Starling looks real happy. Then Lige does too.
Goddamn, says the sergeant, keep quiet back there, goddamn.
Yes, sir, says Starling.
It is approaching dusk and that same God is pulling a ragged black cloth slowly across his handiwork. The Crows return in a flurry of dust and haste, the village is only a quarter mile ahead, the sergeant bids us dismount and now we are in the awkward position of being clumsy-footed Europeans near a village of geniuses when it comes to tracking and vigilance. We got to be better men than we are for all that night, and the horses got to be quiet which ain’t always in the rulebook of horses, and what’s more we hope and pray that gun will come up in the darkness silent and not sound like the seven visions of Ezekiel. Cook parcels us out his dried provisions and we sit like a homeless people on our hunkers eating them not daring to light fires against the challenge of the night. No one says too much and what is said is only light-hearted and bantering because we want to preserve our advantage over fear. Fear like a bear in the cave of banter.
We’re two nights without sleeping and now as the dependable orb of the sun makes a show again on the horizon our bones are aching and our minds are strange to us and cold. About four in the night by the sergeant’s pocket watch the gun came creaking and crashing up behind us and the sergeant sent our full company back to carry it up into position. That was damnable crazy work. You got to dismantle the wheels and the carriage, take off the gun, and carry the weight of ten corpses through thorny scrub and rocky ground. Then the powder, the big bullets, and the percussion caps like Brobdingnag versions of what serves for our muskets. He brings the mules and horses back a mile, Boethius. It’s just us on our pins then, Shanks’ pony. We can hear the damn Sioux singing and calling like they was a hundred children bereft of their mothers. It just ain’t a sound to make your mind easy. I would not be the only fella wondering what in hell they was doing there. Revenge of course, but was this any way to take that revenge? Damn foolishness whichever way you looked at it. But no one says a word. We remember the sergeant standing alone at the site of the massacre and we remember him cutting off the noses. Caleb Booth no doubt remembers other things since he was there to see them. He lay alone in a tent with all his comrades dead nearby but he knew we would come. He said he knew we would and we did. Something binds us close in all that. So we work in the dark, stumbling about like drunkards, readying the gun, and the sergeant whispers his other orders, and how we are to form in a sickle moon shape so as to cover as much of the village as we can with fire after the gun has done its worst. Crows say there is a deep dark ravine behind the tents so we reckon we can cover the runaways left and right. The squaws will try to get the children away and the men will cover them till they reach some safety. If Caught-His-Horse-First is true to character he will fight as fierce as a mountain cat. There is no easiness in what we are doing. If the Sioux get the upper hand we are all food for hogs. There won’t be no mercy anyhow because we know we ain’t seen no sign of mercy beforehand.
Sergeant ain’t no beginner and he has placed his gun on somewhat higher ground by using his good judgement even in the dark and that seems right when the weak golden light of morning fills the land. Its beauty now feels treacherous and our hearts are sick with fear. We can’t seem to warm up none and yet we are moving about with vigour and the sergeant’s skinny shape walks over here, walks back there, and he whispers some instructions, he makes signs with his hands and arms, he is never still. The smoke of new fires rises from the Indian camp and it is suddenly as if we are hell’s men wandered into paradise.
So what is this sorrow then, this weight of sorrow? Pressing down on us. The gun is primed, rammed, and ready. The gunner is Hubert Longfield Ohio born. One half of his long thin face is blue from an old accident in the field. Guns blow up when they like, you never do know. He does all the work on the gun like he was dancing a queer old dance. He positions and pushes and opens and sets. He stands off with the firing string in his blue-mottled paws. Now he awaits the order, now he wants it. There’s two gunners ready to supply again. Every face of the watching troopers is turned towards them, a lean long moon of men. Must be six o’clock now and all the babes and the children of the camp are astir, and the squaws are at the kettles. We can see clear as paper cut-outs two buffalo skins stretched black and stiff on wooden frames. God knows where they found those buffalo, they must of ranged far afield for them. Now the skins are drying at the pace of drying skins, which is slower than a little brook of time. The wigwams are mightily decked and there’s none of the wretchedness you might begin to see in wigwams as you go back towards the east. Out here nothing much of us has touched them. The men will gladly take whisky if they find it, but they will drink everything they find in a sitting. A Sioux man will lie dead drunk for a day but the following day he will be Homer’s Hector again. These people before us made that treaty with the colonel but once the sorry articles of the treaty was neglected they went back to what they knew. If they was waiting on government victuals they starved.
The sergeant whispers his order like the word of a lover and Hubert Longfield pulls on his string and the gun roars. It is the roar of one hundred lions in a small room. We would gladly put our hands over our ears but our muskets are raised and trained along the line of the wigwams. We are watching for the rat-run of the survivors. There is a stretch of time as long as creation and I can hear the whizzing of the shell, a spinning piercing sound, and then it makes its familiar thud-thud and pulls at the belly of heaven and spreads its mayhem around it, the sides of wigwams torn off like faces, the violent wind of the blast toppling others flat, revealing people in various poses of surprise and horror. There is murder and death immediately. There are maybe thirty tents and just this one shell has made a black burning cancer in the middle. Squaws are gathering up children of all sizes and looking wildly about as if they don’t know what direction will be safety. Then the sergeant gives an order in full voice as our calling card has now been delivered and we fire the muskets off in a line and our bullets go viciously into wood, hides, and flesh. Straight away a dozen squaws go down and their children cling to them or try to flee. By now twenty braves are running about with their guns, and now Hubert is fixed to fire again and fires. A long segment of the camp is torn away like you might obliterate a painting. As if our bullets were only weary and weak we seem to wound twice as many as we kill. There’s many staggering about, clutching their wounds, crying out, but now the braves seem to have done their calculations and try to bring off the squaws and children towards the back of the village. Fire, fire, men, calls our sergeant, and we reload like lunatics and fire. Powder, ball, ram, cap, cock, and fire. Powder, ball, ram, cap, cock, and fire. Over and over, and over and over Death at his frantic task in the village, gathering souls. We work in our lather of strange sorrow, but utterly revengeful, fiercely so, soldiers of intentful termination, of total annihilation. Nothing less will slake our thirst. Nothing else will fill our hunger. To this story of our dead comrades we are writing an end on the hot wind of summer. As we fire, we laugh. As we fire, we cry out. As we fire, we weep. Leap away, Hubert, pull the string. Cock an ear, Boethius, back with the horses. Raise up your musket, John Cole, fire and fire again. Blue line of men, look lively, for Death is a fickle friend.
Sergeant gives the order to fix our bayonets and forward we rush to strike through anyone that shell and bullet has gave deceitful quarter to. If the braves have made a stand we ain’t hardly noticed it. Filled with revengeful force it’s like no bullet could harm us. Our fears are burned off in the smelter of battle leaving only a murderous courage. Now we might be celestial children out to rob the apples in the orchards of God, fearless, fearless, fearless.