Heaven and Hell (67 page)

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"I'd be better if this heat would break," Charles said. He hated her term of address, buck, as if he were some field hand. But she paid him, so he put up with it.

"You look mad enough to chew a brick."

"I didn't sleep so well."

"Something new," she said sarcastically, reaching for the glass of lemonade the bartender poured from her private pitcher. She drank no strong spirits. "You're a damn good bouncer, buck, but you make it pretty obvious you don't like it. I'm starting to think you don't belong here."

She helped herself to more lemonade while surveying the customers.

She paid special attention to the table where the blond cowhand sat. He was making all the noise.

"Watch that bunch," she said. "The young ones cause the most trouble."

Charles nodded and remained lounging with his back against the bar, the Spencer stock jutting above his left shoulder. Presently the blond cowboy staggered to the dance floor, rudely pushing Squirrel Tooth Jo and her customer out of his way as he veered toward Professor. He requested something. Professor looked dubious. The cowboy slapped gold pieces on the top of the shiny black upright, looking truculent.

Professor shot a look at Nellie and swung into "Dixie."

The blond cowboy whooped and waved his hat. He stepped on his chair and then onto the table where his friends were seated. Nellie bobbed her head at Charles. It meant, Stop that.

For the first time since awakening, he felt a pleasant anticipation.

A roughly dressed man pushed the street doors open just then, caught Charles's eye and grinned. The big bearded fellow in quilled pants and a fringed buckskin coat was familiar, but Charles couldn't quite place him. He had other things on his mind.

At the front end of the bar someone had left half a glass of whiskey.

Charles gulped it, then reached across his left shoulder, unslinging the Spencer. He walked toward the table where the cowboy was dancing.

The other men at the table stopped talking and pushed their chairs y<

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The Year of the Locust 423

away. The cowboy's boot heels kept pounding the table, which sagged now.

"Buying drinks doesn't entitle you to break the furniture," Charles said, forcing a conversational tone.

"I like to dance. I like this music." The cowboy was no Texan.

His thick accent said cotton South. Alabama, maybe.

"You can enjoy it sitting down. Get off the table."

"When I'm ready, soldier."

Charles's eyebrows shot up. The cowboy gave him a bleary grin, challenging him. "Soldier, I heard all about you in a place up the street.

Hampton's Cavalry, but you went back in the U.S. Army afterward.

We'd tar you for that in Mobile."

Out of patience, Charles reached for his leg. "Get down."

The cotton South cowboy hauled back with his boot and kicked Charles, clipping his left shoulder and throwing him off balance. The cowboy jumped down as Charles staggered.

Another cowhand snatched Charles's Spencer. Two more seized his arms. Charles bashed one and temporarily drove him back. Loco drunk, the blond youngster drove two blows into Charles's belly.

The impact knocked Charles away from his captors. He slipped and skidded, then dropped into a crouch. His Spencer lay six feet away.

"Stop that damn fool," Nellie cried as the cowboy pulled his .44

revolver.

His friends dove out of the way on either side, leaving no one near him. A similar exodus emptied the dance floor. The cowboy fired as Charles rolled to the right. The bullet flung up splinters and dust.

Nellie screamed, "That floor cost three hundred dollars, you son of a bitch!"

The bleary cowboy aimed at Charles again. Something slid along the floor to Charles's right hand. He saw only the boots and quilled pants of the man who'd slid him the Spencer. Before the cowboy could .

shoot again, Charles shot him in the stomach.

The cowboy flew backward, landing on the table and breaking it.

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Charles lurched up, favoring his left leg, which he'd twisted badly. One whore shrieked; Squirrel Tooth Jo fainted. In the ensuing silence, Nellie began, "Well, I guess that--" She got no further. Charles put a second bullet in the fallen cowboy. The body jerked and slid a foot. Charles fired a third time. The body kept jerking and sliding.

"Leave off," Nellie said, dragging his arm down.

"Self-defense, Nellie." He was shaking, fury barely under control.

"The

first time. Why'd you need the other shots? You're as bad as any damn Indian."

424 HEAVEN AND HELL

Charles stared at her, trying to summon an answer. His left leg gave out. He hit the floor in a sprawl.

They carried him to the shanty and lowered him to the cot. Nellie shooed the barkeep and the porter out and regarded him soberly.

"The boy's dead, buck."

He said nothing.

"You can rest here till your leg's better, but I'm giving you notice.

I know you had to defend yourself but you didn't have to mutilate him. Word gets around. Temper like yours, it's bad for business. I'm sorry."

Stony, he watched her turn and leave. Goddamn her, he was only trying to save himself--

No. That was a lie. Trooper Nell was right. One bullet was enough to finish the foolhardy youngster and he knew it. Why couldn't he get rid of the rage that had prompted him to fire the other shots?

A knock. He lifted his forearm off his eyes.

The shanty door opened. Against the fading August daylight, he recognized the silhouette of the bearded stranger, quilled pants and all.

"Griffenstein," the man in buckskin said.

"I remember. Dutch Henry."

"Had a hell of a time finding you. How's your leg?"

"Hurts. I'll be off it a while, I guess."

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"I hate to hear that. I rode a hundred miles. All the way from Hays."

"For what?"

"To recruit you." Griffenstein pulled up an old crate and sat down.

"The Cheyennes are running wild and all the cavalry does is chase 'em, so Phil Sheridan's decided to take the offensive. He's ordered one of his aides, Colonel Sandy Forsyth, to hire fifty experienced plainsmen and go into the field and kill all the hostiles they can find. I said we couldn't get a better man than you. You're still the talk of the Tenth Regiment."

Sourly, Charles said, "You mean my bobtail."

"No, sir. They talk about how you whipped those colored men into some of the best cavalry in the Army. They don't call your old troop Barnes's Troop, they call it Main's Troop--your real name--and the old man says amen."

"That a fact." Charles gripped his aching leg. "Here, give me a hand. I know I can get up."

He did, but he fell right back down, tumbling across the cot.

"Damn. I wish you'd come one day sooner, Griffenstein."

"So do I. Well, next time. The way the red men are scalping and burning, there'll be a number of next times. You can join up then."

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The Year of the Locust 425

"Count on it," Charles said.

"How will I find you?"

"Telegraph Brigadier Jack Duncan. He's with the Departmental paymaster at Fort Leaven worth."

"A relative, is he?"

The convenient lie: "Father-in-law."

"Nobody said you were married."

"Not any more. She died."

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And you killed every iota .of feeling in the only other woman you ever loved as much.

The big man said, "Truly sorry to hear that." Charles's curt nod dismissed it.

They shook hands. Dutch Henry Griffenstein tipped his hat and left, closing the slat door, leaving Charles to swear with renewed frustration.

In the dark he reached for the half-empty bottle under the cot.

Nellie Slingerland stuck by the firing. Charles was bad for business.

Trooper Nell's was almost empty for the entire seven days that he lay in the shanty. The grocer turned sheriff dropped in on the last day to say witnesses had exonerated Charles on the grounds of self-defense.

Hobbling, he packed his few possessions. Nellie didn't bid him goodbye personally, just sent ten dollars with the barkeep. Charles used the money to get Satan from a livery in the respectable part of town.

He left Abilene in the summer dusk and rode east into the dark.

y,

45

When Willa went to pieces and forgot her lines a third time, Sam Trump said, "Ten minutes, ladies and gentlemen."

He drew her aside to the cushion-strewn platform serving as a rehearsal bed. He sat her on the edge, leaving inky prints on the sleeve of her yellow dress. Because of the fierce September heat, his blackamoor makeup ran and smeared.

"My dear, what is it?" He knew. She looked bedraggled; her silvery hair was dull and pinned up carelessly. He sat beside her, his black tights and tunic darkened by sweat. The white chrysanthemum pinned over his heart was wilted. Prosperity jumped in his lap and purred.

When she stayed silent, he prompted her. "Is it the weather? It will surely break soon."

"The weather has nothing to do with it. I just can't keep my mind
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on my part." She touched his hand. "Will you cancel rehearsals long enough for me to dash to Leavenworth again?"

"You were there not thirty days ago."

"But that poor child needs someone besides a housekeeper to pay attention to him. The brigadier's gone with the pay chest for weeks at a time. Gus might as well be an orphan."

Sam stroked Prosperity's sleek back. It was imperative that he find some way to jolt Willa out of her melancholy. It was deepening day by day, robbing her performances of energy. He nerved himself and said,

"Dear girl, is it really the little boy who concerns you? Or his father?"

She gave him a scathing look. "I don't know where his father is.

Furthermore, I don't care."

"Ah, no, of course not. 'The poet's food is love arid fame,' Mr.

Shelley said, and it's true of actors also. But you are telling me that only half applies to you."

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The Year of the Locust 427

"Don't torment me, Sam. Just say you'll let Grace stand in for me for a few nights. I'll do better with Othello once I know Gus is all right."

"I hate to delay rehearsals. I have a premonition that our new production will be the one that propels us to the heights. I have telegraphed several New York managers, inviting them to come--"

"Oh for God's sake, Sam," she said, her face uncharacteristically hostile. "You know all those wonderful triumphs exist only in your imagination. We'll live and die provincial actors."

Trump stood. Leaping off, the theater cat caught claws in his tunic and left a long rip. Trump stared at his partner, wounded. Willa's blue eyes filled with tears.

"I'm sorry, Sam. That was a vile thing to say. Forgive me."

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"Forgiven. As to your absence, what choice have I? You are sleepwalking through your roles. If one more trip to Fort Leavenworth will arrest that, by all means go. Since we are being so candid, permit me to continue a moment more. I liked that young man when I first met him. I no longer like him. He's hurt. you. Even when he's absent he hurts you. Somehow he reaches out into my theater to poison everything."

Willa

gave him a sad half-smile. "It's called love, Sam. You've had affairs of the heart."

"None that destroyed me. I'll not see you destroyed."

"No, Sam. Just a few days, then things will be fine."

"All right," he said, doubting it.

On the train that carried Willa across the state, passengers jumped off at every stop to buy late papers. An unfolding story from eastern Colorado had burst onto the front pages. On the Arikaree Fork of the Republican River, a special detachment of Indian-hunting plainsmen under a Colonel Forsyth had been surprised by a huge band of Cheyennes.

The detachment took refuge on a sparsely treed island in the river and forted up to fight.

Incredibly, they repelled charge after charge by the Indians, who numbered as many as six hundred, according to some of the dispatches.

In one of the charges a renowned war chief named Bat had ridden in wearing a great war bonnet whose medicine was supposed to turn aside bullets. The medicine failed him. He was blown down, this Bat--Roman Nose, some called him.

Passengers on the train reveled in the reports of the battle of Beecher's Island, named in honor of the young Army officer, second in command, who had taken a fatal wound there. "They're safe," a passenger in the next seat exclaimed to Willa, showing a paper. "The men 428 HEAVEN AND HELL

Forsyth sent to Fort Wallace got through. The relief column found 'em still holed up and carving their horses for meat."

"How many did they kill?" another passenger asked.

"Says here it was hundreds."

"By God, there ought to be fifty more fights like that, to make up for all the poor innocents who got scalped and outraged this summer.

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Fuming, Willa spoke across the back of the seat. "You expect the Cheyennes to be peaceful when they aren't even treated with simple fairness and honesty? Almost a year ago, the peace commission promised them rations and weapons for hunting. By the time the weapons were issued, summer was nearly over. Do you expect them not to break faith when we do?"

Her voice trailed away over the clicking of the wheel trucks. The male passengers stared at her as though she carried cholera. The man with the paper said to the others, "Didn't know there was squaws who could pass for white women, did you, boys?"

Willa started to retort, but before she could, the man with the paper leaned forward and spat a large gob of tobacco pulp on the floor.

In times past, that kind of behavior would have challenged her to fight all the harder. Not now. She felt despondent, even foolish, caught in a battle that couldn't be won.

She stared out the window at white barns and cattle grazing in the twilight. She tried to close her ears to the sarcastic jokes the men continued to make about her. She felt miserable. Somehow he reaches out to poison everything.