The tracker was a Kiowa named Big Arm, assigned to Charles by the old man. He was a handsome Indian, and an expert horseman, but surly. Barnes said he came from a Kiowa band down in north Texas, and had committed the ultimate mistake on a buffalo hunt some years back. He'd gotten impatient, rushed in ahead of the other hunters, and stampeded the herd. No one got so much as one kill. Big Arm's possessions were taken and broken to pieces and he was shunned. He withstood two winters of that, then spitefully deserted to the service of the whites — in this case a bunch of brunettes, or buffalo soldiers as the Plains Indians called them, reminded of the buffalo's coat by the woolly hair of the black men. The troopers tended to like the term buffalo soldier, because the buffalo was revered.
"What do you make of that?" Charles said to Big Arm, in a tone unconsciously goading. He genuinely disliked the Kiowa, who refused to talk with Charles or his men except when necessary.
Big Arm answered with one of his laconic shrugs, then pulled a bright brass telescope from his belt. He started to snap it open. Charles knocked it down.
"How many times do I have to tell you? That thing shines like a mirror. What's burning? The next stage station?"
Big Arm shook his head, sullen. "Too close for stage. Must be new farm. Not here last time I rode the river." For him, that was practically an oration.
Alarmed, Charles yelled, "Wallis. Boots and saddles."
Having served out his sentence in the guardhouse, Shem Wallis had returned to duty and revealed some talent as a trumpeter. He blew the call with sharp, urgent notes. The black troopers heaved to their feet, complaining; it hadn't taken them long to learn that little Army tradition. Charles detailed two to guard the supply wagon and raced for his picketed piebald.
Despite the intense heat he lit a cigar. Nerves. Sweat poured down his chest and back as he trotted from the trees at the head of eight men in column of twos.
The sod house was still standing. It was the shell of a farm wagon producing the smoke. Charles ordered his men into line, and they approached with rifles and pistols ready. The brim of Charles's black hat threw a sharp shadow diagonally across his face. His eyes darted. Suddenly he smelled something foul. "What in hell's that?"
Evidently Big Arm knew. "'Bad," he said.
The line halted at the edge of the trampled dooryard. From horseback, Charles read sign there and in the beaten-down grass at the edge of the homesteader's small, dying vegetable patch. "I count eight ponies, maybe one more." Big Arm's grunt agreed. "How's he know that?" one of his men muttered behind him. Charles preferred to keep them in awe of his plains craft; he never explained that Wooden Foot Jackson had taught him everything, and that hardly a day passed when he didn't remember and use one lesson or another. They didn't know it was that simple. When he had them whipped into shape he might take some of the mystery out of it, and begin to teach them. Not yet, though.
He sent three two-man teams, dismounted, to search the ground in different locations. He led Magee, Big Arm, and another trooper around the square house, which was made of mud brick with a sodded roof. Tall grasses jutted from the sod, a weed patch against the hot sky.
The stench grew worse. "Smells like cooked meat," the trooper said. They turned the back corner and saw what remained of the white homesteader, staked out on the ground. Charles wiped his mouth.
"God. They built fires on him."
Magee, not easily impressed by anything, registered a sick astonishment. "The last one on his chest." The other soldier rushed away to tall grass and threw up.
Charles pushed Magee. "All right, let's go back and find a shovel." Both were eager to get away from the body. Around in front, he discovered Big Arm prodding at the sod house door with his telescope. "For Christ's sake, don't go in there until we're sure it's safe —"
While he was in mid-sentence, Big Arm pushed the door open and stepped inside. A roar flung him out again, a foot off the ground. He landed on his back amid drifting smoke. A hole in the bosom of his buckskin shirt welled red.
Charles jumped against the front of the house beside the door and flattened. "We're soldiers. United States Army. Don't shoot again."
He listened. Heard breathing. Then a whimper. A shadow passed by him on the ground. A circling vulture. "Hold your fire. I'm coming in."
While the others watched, Charles sucked in a breath and stepped into the doorway. "Soldiers," he said, loudly, as he moved forward in almost impenetrable shadow.
The homesteader's wife, a girl with auburn hair, lay in a corner amid broken furniture. Torn pieces of clothing were scattered around. She tried to cover her nakedness while her right hand shook under the weight of her pistol. Charles only glanced at her wet thighs, but it was long enough to humiliate her. He didn't have to ask what they'd done.
Violet eyes filled with tears. "Eulus gave me the gun. I was supposed to save the last bullet for myself. They took the gun away before they — before — is Eulus all right?"
Charles wanted to sink into the ground. "No."
A kind of mad misery glittered in the violet eyes. Her free hand moved across her thighs, as if to rub away the shameful stains. He thought little of it, trying to get hold of his feelings and organize his mind to handle this.
"Look, I'm sorry. Lie back and I'll find a blanket to cover you. Then we'll bring up our wagon to take you — don't!"
He lunged too late. His flung-out hand trembled in the air a yard from her as she pulled the trigger of the pistol she'd slipped into her mouth.
Magic Magee touched Big Arm's body with his beaded moccasin. "I'm only a city boy, Lieutenant, but it seems to me this here tracker didn't know his trade too well."
Charles stared at the white horizon and bit on his old cigar. "Fucking fool. Fucking savages. Fucking Hancock." He turned away to hide a typhoon of emotion.
To Shem Wallis, who had tears in his eyes, Magee said, "Going to be a mighty long summer."
Hancock's War, the press called the spring expedition, recently concluded. Hancock's belligerent demonstration-in-force was meant to promote peace; his impulsive burning of the village on the Pawnee Fork insured war. The Plains tribes saw the destruction of tipis, buffalo robes, willow backrests and other personal possessions as a reenactment of Sand Creek and a direct repudiation of the Little Arkansas Treaty.
And they retaliated.
Bands of young Sioux and Cheyennes led by hot-bloods like Pawnee Killer and Scar were pouring into Kansas, attacking homesteads like the one Charles had found, burning stage stations, swooping down on unarmed construction crews of the
U.P.E.D. laying track in the desperate race to be first to the hundredth meridian. Between Fort Harker, the temporary railhead, and Fort Hays, an even more primitive post about sixty miles west, the U.P. crews were refusing to work without armed guards.
Down from Sherman at Division came orders assigning cavalry and infantry units to guard the crews. The railroad's own security force, headed by a former Pinkerton agent named J. O. Hartree, supplemented the Army details. Hartree had a reputation as a killer, but that wasn't enough to stop the raids. The directors of the railroad screamed for more men; more guns.
Governor Crawford of Kansas screamed for protection of his citizens and started to raise a special state cavalry regiment. Sherman wanted the Army turned loose: "We must not remain on the defensive. We must follow them on all possible occasions. We must clear out the Indians between the Platte and the Arkansas."