Читать книгу Bugles in the Afternoon - Ernest Haycox - Страница 5

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AT one o'clock, Shafter left his seat at the foot of the stairs and went into the barroom. Everybody had gone except one drunk stretched dead to the world across the pool table, and one gloomy houseman cleaning up the debris. Shafter got a glass of whisky and carried it to a table and sat down; the woman who seemed to run this place came up from some other quarter of the house and took a chair across from him. The flame of her vitality obviously burned low, for she sat with her elbows on the table, supporting her head, staring at the table's green felt top. She murmured:—

"Hard way to make a living, isn't it?"

He said nothing and presently his silence made her lift her glance to him. He smiled at her and pushed his drink over the table. She looked at it a long while, all the brightness faded out of her. "No," she murmured, "I hate the sight of it." She looked up at the barman. "Go get us some coffee, Bill." Then she noticed the drunk on the pool table and a raspiness came to her voice. "Roll that dumb beast off there before he digs his spurs into a thousand dollars' worth of woodwork." The barkeep was a taciturn and a literal man. He moved to the table, put both arms under the sleeping drunk and gave him a short shove. The drunk fell loosely, striking in sections, at the knees and then at the shoulders. His head slammed hard on the floor and his mouth flew open. He rolled slightly, threshed his arms, and ceased to move. Bill went on toward the back of the house.

"Look at him," said the woman in bitter disgust, pointing to the drunk. "That's a man. That's what they all look like. He'll sober up, eat breakfast and go away. But he'll be back in a couple days. That's what I've got to make my living from."

He said: "Feel this way every night?"

"Every night."

"Time to move on then."

"One place is no better than another," she said, and looked at him with a small revival of interest. When she realized he had been steadily watching her, she pulled herself straight and ran her hands lightly over her hair. "Do I look as bad as I feel?"

"What's your name?"

"May," she said. "There's another May here, but she's Straight-Edge May."

"All women are beautiful, May."

"You fool," she murmured, "don't talk like that. You don't mean it. Even if you did mean it, it would get a woman like me to thinking about things she shouldn't anymore." But his words had lifted her; they had revived her spirits. "You've knocked around, haven't you?"

"Yes."

"Running from something."

He showed her his smile again, that easy and careless smile which changed him, which took the darkness out of him. He had sympathy for her but he let it show in his eyes rather than spend words on it. He sat with her and took her as she was. "Everybody runs from something, May. Or runs after something."

"In trouble?"

"No. I don't have to watch what's behind me."

"You've never had to come to places like this for your fun, either," she said, judging him with her wealth of man-knowledge. "Your kind uses theater tickets and bonbons, and back rooms at fashionable restaurants."

For the second time this night, she caught him off guard, causing him to flush. "May," he said. "Let's talk about the weather."

She regarded him closely, amused that she could embarrass him but also puzzled by it; embarrassment was a rare thing in a man and somewhat beyond her limits of experience. She shrugged her shoulders. "I guess I don't know much about your kind. I only met one like you. That was a long time ago. If I knew where he was now I'd write him a letter and let him know just how I turned out after he got through with me." A small tinge of bitterness got into her voice. "Maybe it would make him add something extra on the collection plate next time he went to church."

"How do you know he goes to church, May?"

"It's fashionable for his kind to marry somebody respectable and go to church, and buy his way into heaven. No doubt, when he gets sentimental, he sometimes thinks, 'I wonder where she is now.' Not that he's sorry. His kind of man is proud of one good sinful memory. As for the woman, she can just look out for herself." She bent toward him and showed him an old, old anger. "I don't like your kind of men." But as soon as she said it, her mouth softened. "But I like you. I guess that explains how I got here."

Bill came in with two cups of coffee, black and hot and rank, and moved back to his dismal chores. Shafter dumped his whisky into the coffee and drank it slowly. He was loose in the chair, he was thoroughly at rest, enjoying the small tastes and sounds and colors around him. She thought to herself, as she studied him: "I'd figure him a genteel bum, except that he threw George Dixon down the stairs." That made her speak up. "You're too quick for your own good. Dixon didn't mean to go into the lady's room. He was just drunk."

"There is only one way to handle Dixons," he said.

"He may come back," she said. "He's a mean one."

"If you hit Dixons hard," he said, "they don't come back. If you hit them soft, they do."

She said: "You uncover yourself just a little bit at a time. You get different as you go. Is there anything I can do for you?"

He looked at her with a greater attention. "How's that, May?"

"Do you need a stake? I've got plenty of money."

He didn't immediately answer and he didn't smile at her again. He finished his coffee, and rose. Her glance remained on him.

"Didn't hurt your feelings, did I?" she wanted to know.

He shook his head. "No, May, you made me feel fine. But I don't need it."

She followed him from the barroom to the front room. "You don't need to stay down here anymore. Take the room across the hall from your lady."

He turned on her, looking down, the quietness of his eyes and the expression in them giving her goodness. She wanted to touch him, to reach up and lay her fingers through his black hair; she wanted to come close upon him and lift her mouth for him. But she stood back, a realist who knew that for him she was a vessel long since drained empty; it was the first time in many years she had felt that way about a man.

"Why did you offer me the grubstake, May?"

"People can always hope," she said. "Maybe you would have taken it. Maybe you would have stayed."

He moved to the stairs and turned back there, one hand lying heavy-spread on the railing. "Remember what I told you," he said. "All women are beautiful."

She shook her head, darkened by what she wanted and couldn't have. "If you wish to be kind, never say that to a woman like me." She watched him all the way up the stairs.

And she was at the foot of the stairs at five in the morning when, following breakfast, he turned out of the house. She had taken pains with her hair; she had pressed away the lines about her eyes with cold towels, and she had put on the dress she used for trips to Fargo. But she didn't speak to him as he went by, for he had Josephine with him, and she knew exactly what her station was. After they had gone out, she moved to the porch, watching the stage swing around in the yard. She saw him bend and look through the window at her; and she stood still and watched the stage roll away through its dust and become at last a point in the distance.

The man who had been capsized from the table the night before now moved out of the house in painful slowness. He stopped beside her, puzzled as to the soreness of his bones. "By God," he said, "it must of been a big night. Somebody ride a horse through the barroom, May? I been stepped on, all over."

"No," she said. "You just fell down."

"Must of been from the roof," he murmured and went on to his horse. He groaned when he went into the saddle; he turned and waved a hand. "See you soon, May."

She still watched the stage, but she said, with a piece of a smile: "All right, Tom. Be good and come again."

THE coach ran along the twin ruts of the road, outward upon the prairie, under the rising flood of clear and brilliant sunshine. For the space of half an hour, the world stood bathed in morning's freshness, in its coolness, in its bright cleansing light; and for that half hour the horizons were sharp lines in the distance. Then the coolness went away and the faint fog began to rise and the enveloping dust settled within the coach and the monotony of the ride gripped them again. Three of the passengers had dropped off at the night station, leaving only the heavy man, Josephine and Shafter inside. Shafter propped his shoulders in the corner of the coach, braced his feet on the floor and fell asleep.

When he awoke, there was a series of small, ragged up-and-down black strokes against the emptiness and the horses had smelled their destination and were now running freely without the urging of the driver; somewhat later the stage moved into the mouth of Fargo's main street, passed a row of raw-boarded houses to either side, turned a corner and stopped at a depot shed standing beside a single track.

The driver got down, shouting, "Fargo, and yore train's in sight," and went up to the boot, throwing down the luggage without regard for the contents. Shafter stepped out and gave Josephine a hand; he found her luggage and piled it near the track, standing back to light a cigar. The train had come out of the east, its progress singing forward on the rails and its whistle hoarsely warning the town. Townsmen strolled up to break the day's tedium and to touch again for an instant that East out of which they had come; to catch, in the train's steamy bustle, the feeling of motion and excitement and freedom which had impelled most of them to come west but which they had lost as soon as they had taken root here.

Josephine turned to Shafter and regarded him with soberness. "You have been kind. If I should not see you again, let me wish you all good luck."

"I'll be on the train."

"Bismarck?" asked Josephine, and showed him a remote pleasure with her eyes.

He nodded instead of speaking; for the engine coasted by with its bell steadily clanging and its exhausts ejaculating gusts of steam. Two baggage cars and five coaches growled to a jerky stop, and passengers looked curiously through the grimed car windows; and an army captain stepped to the runway and began a vigorous constitutional, his cap slanted rakishly on a head of long, bright red hair. The conductor stood on the runway and shouted, "Fargo—Fargo, twenty minutes for lunch!"

Passengers now descended and ran for the lunchroom sitting at the edge of the platform. Josephine meanwhile turned to the train, whereupon Shafter gave her an arm up the nearest coach platform, collected her luggage and carried it into the car. He stowed his own valise on an empty seat and left the train, crossing to the lunchroom. Some of the passengers had seated themselves along a table, before a row of dishes prepared for hasty service; and other passengers, unable to find seats, reached over the heads of the fortunate ones and improvised sandwiches for themselves. Shafter noticed a pile of lunch boxes made up, took two of them, paid the bill and returned to Josephine.

"You never know when these trains get where they're going," he said, leaving a lunch box with her.

He returned to his own seat and began on his meal. The engine bell had begun to sound again and the conductor stood on the runway, crying "Bo-o-o-ard," to summon passengers from the lunchroom. The engine released its brakes and gave a first hard chuff, sending a preliminary quiver through the coaches. The train slid forward, gathering speed, while a woman on the train began to scream as a last man rushed from the lunch-room, sprinted along the runway and caught the grab rails of the last coach. The gathered townsmen cheered this extra touch of melodrama, and the engine whistled its throaty farewell as it gathered speed, and the vacuum of its passage lifted eddies of dust and paper on the tracks. It left behind the smell of steam and coal smoke and warm lubricating oil; it left behind the memory of liveliness and motion and it left behind, in the heart of more than one townsman, the half-formed decision to pull up his roots again, as he had before, and move into that bright West whose unknown distances held perpetual promise of fortune and adventure.

The coaches, castoffs of other lines in the East, swayed with the not yet thoroughly settled grade of this new railroad, stretched taut on their couplings, and slammed together when the engine slightly abated speed. Cinders pelted the windows and smoke streamed back the length of the train; and the engine whistle laid out its hoarse notice upon the land. Here and there a siding ran briefly beside the main line and here and there a yellow section shanty stood lonely in the sun. Out in the distance an occasional antelope band, startled from grazing, fled away in beautiful smoothness. Once in a great while Shafter saw a ranch house or a rider, or cattle. Propping his feet on the opposite seat, he fell asleep, and later woke to find the train stopping at a town that was four little shanties facing the tracks; and slept again until he heard the conductor cry, "Bismarck!"

The town's gray out-sheds and slovenly shanties and corrals slid forward and its main street appeared—one long row of saloons, stores, livery barns and freighter sheds crowded side by side, unevenly joined and roughly thrown together. The train stopped, heads bobbed beside the car windows and presently people came in to search for friends. Shafter picked up his valise and left the coach.

The sun was down and coolness already began to move over the earth. There had been rain in Bismarck, turning the yellow dust gray and slick, and coating the boots of the gathered crowd. An army ambulance stood near the track, held by a cavalry corporal, and a pair of ladies crossed to it and were whirled away. Josephine Russell meanwhile descended, walked to a gray-haired man and kissed him. The gray-haired man took her luggage and turned off, but for a moment Josephine Russell paused to look back at Shafter. Impulse moved her to him.

"I wish you luck," she said.

"I'll remember your wish," he answered and lifted his hat to her and watched her walk on. She was an alert, happy woman; she had presented him with that fair and serene face which he most admired, and as he looked at her retreating shape he had his slight regret—the regret of a man who sees beauty and grace disappear.

The cars were now empty, the engine had been uncoupled and moved on; for this was the farthest west of the railroad, in this year of 1875. Beyond Bismarck was the yellow Missouri, and beyond the Missouri lay the unknown lands of the Sioux where, intermittently for ten years, little columns and detachments of the army had marched and fought, had won and had been defeated. Shafter lifted his valise and moved toward a wagon wherein sat a driver. He spoke to the driver:—

"Where's Fort Abraham Lincoln?"

The driver pointed a finger southwesterly. "Along that road, four miles to the Point. Ferry there." Then he said: "Get in."

Shafter dumped his valise into the wagon's bed and took place beside the driver who now set his team down the street at a trot. At the end of the street the road moved in dog-leg fashion up and down and around little folds of earth, past an occasional house, past Indians riding head down and indifferent, their toes pointed outward, their shoulders stooped. The team kept up an easy mincing trot, making a little melody of harness chains, and so covered four miles, coming then to a highland upon which sat a collection of houses sitting apart and facing all directions. Beyond this highland the terrain rolled into bottom lands and reached the Missouri. Beyond the river stood the fort on its bluff, its line of houses square and trim and formidable. The driver slammed on his brakes as the wagon descended the grade to the ferry dock; and pointed at the houses to either hand.

"If you got money to spend, don't come here. This is the Point. It's off the military reservation. It is a bad place, my friend." He let go the brakes and the wagon rolled to the deck of a river steamer, once glamorous but now converted to something little better than a scow with steam; on the pilot house a gilded sign gave its name, THE UNION. The name was its only substantial part, for when the lines were cast off the ancient engines shook the boat in all its frames. They surged forward through the near shore's back eddy, came upon the middle channel and were seized by a current that lay deceptively beneath this murky river's surface. The Union shuddered throughout, paused and lost steerage way. It skewed across the current, fell five hundred yards downriver, and reached slack water on the far side; with its engines racking its ancient frame, it worked slowly upstream and nosed into the slip. The wagoner released his brakes, whipped his team into a run and went up the grade to the top of the bluff. When he reached it he sat back and blew out a breath.

"Damn boat someday is goin' to keep going right on down to Yankton. Or blow up."

The walls of this fort were formed by the back edges of barracks, storehouses, officers' quarters and stables, all these facing a great parade ground running a thousand feet or better in each direction. The teamster drew before the guardhouse post, said "Commissary," and was waved in.

"You know where the adjutant's office might be?" asked Shafter.

"Down there by the end of the quartermaster building."

"Thanks for the ride," offered Shafter and dropped off with his valise. He went along the east side of the parade ground, traveling on a board walk which skirted troop quarters; and as he passed these long barracks he heard the clatter of dishes coming up from the mess hall in the rear of each barrack. This was supper time, the sun just dropping below the ridge to the west of the fort; and the ceremony of retreat was not far away, for orderlies were now cutting out of the stable area, leading horses across the parade to Officers' Row. He had just reached the doorway of the adjutant's office when the trumpeter at the guard gate blew first call.

He stepped inside in time to see a huge, tall first lieutenant clap on a dress helmet with its plume, thrust the chin strap into place and hook up his sword. Dundreary whiskers grew in silken luxury along his jowls, out of which showed a big-fleshed mouth, a solid nose and a pair of darkly sharp eyes. He looked at Shafter. He said, "Yes?" and started for the door. "Yes?"

"I'll wait until the lieutenant returns from retreat," said Shafter.

The lieutenant said, "Very well," and flung himself through the door, followed by a sergeant major empurpled with years of weather and hard living. A corporal remained behind in the office, his arm hanging from a sling.

Shafter watched five cavalry companies file out from the stables to the parade ground. The hark of officers came sharp through the still air. "Column right! Left into line! Com-m-pany, halt!" Horsemen trotted briskly here and there, lifting quick puffs of dust from the hard parade. One by one, the five companies came into regimental front, each company mounted on horses of matched color, each company's guidon colorfully waving from the pole affixed in the stirrup socket of the guidon corporal's stirrup. For a moment the regiment remained still, each trooper sitting with a grooved ease in his McClellan, legs well down and back arched, saber hanging on loosened sling to left side, carbine suspended from belt swivel to right, dress helmet cowled down to the level of his eyes. Thus the Seventh sat in disciplined, impassive form—a long double rank of dark, largely mustached faces—homely, burned faces, Irish faces, seasoned and youthful faces, faces of solid value and faces of wildness—all pointed frontward to the company commander and to the adjutant now taking his report. Presently, the adjutant wheeled his horse, trotted it fifty feet forward and came to a halt before a slim shape poised lithe and watchful on his mount.

Even at this distance Shafter recognized the commanding officer—that long, bushy fall of almost golden hair which even the cowling of the dress helmet could not conceal, that sweeping tawny dragoon's mustache which sharpened the bony, hawkish nose and accented the depth of eye sockets, that sinuous and muscularly restless body now held in momentary restraint against its own incessant rebellion. There sat the man who was a living legend, the least-disciplined and poorest scholar of his West Point class of 1861; whose wild charges and consuming love of naked action had turned him into a major general by brevet at the age of twenty-five and who was, in the shrunken peacetime army, Lieutenant-Colonel of the Seventh Cavalry and its commander by virtue of the absence of Colonel Sturgis. Everybody in America knew the face of the man; it was a household familiarity, the thin lips half concealed by the waterfall mustache, the hungry boniness of the jaw, the blue inset eyes seeking attention, seeking any audacity to prove the right to attention.

Custer's arm answered the adjutant's salute with a swift nervous jerk. A word was spoken. The band burst into a quick march, still stationary on the right of the line. The officers of the regiment rode slowly front and center, formed a rank and moved upon the commanding officer. Shafter heard the brittle crack of an officer's voice halt them. He watched them salute Custer, and receive his return salute, after which they took place behind him. Suddenly now the band swung around and marched down the front of the regiment, in full tune, and wheeled and marched back. Silence came completely; all the shapes upon this parade turned still as the massed buglers tossed up their trumpets and sounded retreat. Hard upon the heels of the last trumpet note the little brass cannon at the foot of the flagpole boomed out, its echo rocketing into the western ridge and out across the Missouri. The flag began to descend and the band struck up a national air. Shafter pulled his heels together and removed his hat; he stood balanced, facing the flag as it slid down the pole toward the trooper waiting to receive it. In the ensuing quiet, Custer's strident voice carried the length and breadth of the parade.

"Pass in review!"

The first sergeants, now commanding the companies, wheeled about, harking their stiff calls. The band broke into a march tune, the regimental front broke like a fan and came into platoon column; it turned the corners of the parade and passed before the commanding officer with hard dust smoking up around it. Down at the far end of the parade ground, each company pulled away toward its own stable. The ceremony was done.

Out by the flagstaff the officers surrendered their horses and moved idly along the walk toward their quarters. The adjutant took his last orders and departed. An orderly galloped forward to take Custer's horse, but the general swung his mount and flung it headlong across the parade, wheeled and raced it back. Arriving before his quarters he sprang to the ground, tossed over the reins and stamped up the porch of his house; it had been one sudden outburst of energy which could no longer be dammed up.

Shafter meanwhile stepped back into the adjutant's office. Presently the adjutant came in, slightly sweating; he removed his dress hat and laid it on a desk, he unbuckled his saber and hung it to a peg on the wall and, having done this, he looked at Shafter.

"Well, sir."

"I should like to enlist in this regiment," said Shafter.

"Where are you from?"

"Ohio."

"How was it you did not enlist at the nearest recruiting service?"

"I prefer to pick my regiment."

"That involved considerable train fare," observed the adjutant, and took time to consider Shafter with a very cool eye. "Normally we are recruited from Jefferson Barracks. Still, we can enlist you." He turned to the corporal with the bad arm. "Get an enlistment form, Jackson. Get a doctor's blank, too."

Jackson searched another desk for the required forms and the adjutant lowered his rather massive frame into a chair and considered the work on his desk. The corporal sat down at another desk and beckoned Shafter before him. "Name?" he said, and began to take Shafter's history. "Recent address? Next of kin?"

"No next of kin."

"No next of kin."

"Closest friend, then."

"None," said Shafter.

The corporal leaned back and chewed his pen a moment, looking at Shafter. The adjutant raised his head to consider this new recruit. "Are you that alone in this world?" he asked, with some skepticism. But he nodded at the corporal and murmured, "Let it go." Both the corporal and the lieutenant, Shafter realized, were thinking the same thing: that he was another drifter running from a past. These regiments on the border had many such men; it was an old story.

"Birthplace, parents' names? Age, weight, color of hair and eyes? Height? Distinguishing marks?" The clerk rattled off the inquiries and scrawled them down. It grew late and he was impatient to be free—to join the poker game at troop barrack, to meet a woman across the river at the Point, to sleep—or perhaps simply to sit idle and dream of the comfort and the freedom of civilian life. Shafter quietly supplied the answers required of him, thinking of that same civilian life with no regrets and no particular warmth. Insofar as he had a home, this army post would satisfy him completely; the uniform would be the answer to his wants. He heard men come into the adjutant's office behind him. He heard the adjutant say:—

"It is slightly late, Doctor. But could you examine this man for enlistment?"

"Yes."

Shafter turned and saw the doctor, standing by the adjutant's desk. But his eyes lingered on the man only a moment; for there was another officer now in the room, a captain looking out from beneath the rim of his dress helmet at Shafter, with a keen attention. He was a heavy, stocky man with a broad practical face, with a heavy sand-colored mustache guarding his upper mouth. It was a serviceable, unemotional Irish countenance, a face disciplined by duty and routine and largely beyond the whims of excitement. Shafter looked back at him gravely. The doctor said, "Step in the room," pointing to a doorway back of the adjutant, "and strip."

He followed Shafter, he waited, his mind obviously on other things. He took a mechanical survey of Shafter's naked frame and pointed to the thick whitened welt of a scar that made a foot-long crescent on Shafter's left flank, above the hip "What was that?"

"Saber cut."

"Ah," said the doctor, and made his tapping inspection of Shafter's chest. "How old?"

"Thirty-two."

The doctor completed the rest of his routine in silence and motioned for Shafter to resume his clothes, meanwhile himself leaving the room. He sat down at the edge of the adjutant's desk, completing the physical form. "He'll do physically," he said to the adjutant.

The captain still remained in the room. Now he said: "I'll take that man."

The adjutant grinned. "You want everything for A Company, Moylan."

"I'm down to fifty-three men," said Captain Moylan.

"You're no worse off than the other companies."

"I'd like to have him, Cooke," said Captain Moylan, pressing the point.

The adjutant looked at the enlistment blank placed on his desk by the corporal. The corporal had gone. Cooke read through it. "He came all the way out here to enlist. You're buying a pig in the poke. Probably he's using the uniform to hide."

"He's had service before," said the doctor. "Saber scar."

Cooke said: "Jackson forgot to ask that question. It doesn't show here."

"Do I get him?" asked Moylan.

"You can have him, but the other company commanders will charge me with partiality."

"One more thing," said Moylan. "Let me swear him in."

Both Cooke and the doctor showed some degree of surprise. Cooke was on the point of asking a question, but at that moment Shafter, having dressed, returned to the office and took stand in front of the adjutant's desk. Cooke now gave Shafter a more thorough glance, noting his posture, his drawn-together carriage, his composed silence. Cooke said:—

"Do you leave any felonies behind you?"

"No," said Shafter.

"Have you had prior service?"

Shafter's answer came after a small pause, noticeable to all of them. "Yes," he said.

"What organization?"

The small delay was again noticeable. "Fourteenth Ohio."

"That would be the Civil War," said Cooke.

"Yes."

"What was the quality of your discharge?"

"Honorably mustered out, end of war."

Cooke nodded. He took a little brown volume of army regulations from a pile on the desk, searched through it and found a page. He handed the open book to Captain Moylan. Shafter turned to face the captain and, without being requested, raised his right hand. Moylan looked at the page and began the oath: "Do you solemnly swear..."

When it was done with, Moylan gravely listened to Shafter's "I do," watched his face a considerable moment, and tossed the book of regulations on the table. "Very well," he softly said. "You are now a private in the Seventh Cavalry, attached to A Company. Follow me over to barracks."

"Yes, sir," said Shafter, and moved out of the office behind Moylan. Cooke sat with his chin propped in, one massive, meaty hand, watching the two go. "That was odd. Porter. Something there, I fancy."

"He's no raw Irishman off the boat," commented Porter. "He smells like a broken-down gentleman to me."

"I didn't seem to catch the broken-down part. If he is a gentleman, may God help him. We've got a few of them. They're very forlorn souls. Well." He rose and made a halfhearted gesture of creating some sort of neatness on his desk. "A little game tonight?"

"I've been invited to dance the opening set at D Company's ball," said Porter. "I'll meet you later."

Out on the baked parade ground, Shafter fell in step with Moylan, to the left and slightly behind the captain. First twilight had come to the land, the low hills to the west of the fort turning dark and edged against the sky, the great endless prairie to the east slowly foreshortening, as night crept over it. A guard relief detachment went scuffing by, the sergeant saluting Moylan as he passed. Moylan returned it absent-mindedly. He spoke to Shafter without turning his head.

"This was considerable of a surprise, Kern."

"I hadn't realized you were with the Seventh."

"I'm damned glad to see you. Often thought of you, It has been a long time since Winchester and Cumberland Gap. I don't suppose you expected to see old Myles Moylan as a captain of cavalry. It has been a hard route. I was sergeant major in this outfit before I got my commission. Coming up through the ranks is not the easy way to do it."

"God bless you," said Shafter. "I can think of nothing better."

"I asked Cooke to attach you to my company," said Moylan. "I didn't say why. You didn't wish me to say why, did you?"

"No."

"It was a hard, hard thing," murmured Moylan. "I have never ceased to feel anger over it. Have you done anything about it?"

"Nothing to be done."

Moylan walked a full twenty feet before speaking again; and his words were troubled. "The strangeness of it does not stop with my being here and you being here. It is more than that. I wish I could have had the chance of speaking to you quietly before you took the oath. I think you wouldn't have stayed. Garnett is here. Or did you know that, and come to hunt him especially out?"

"I didn't know it," said Shafter, and said nothing more. He walked steadily beside Moylan, his chin dropped, expression drained from his face.

Moylan said: "He is first lieutenant of L. That is why I had Cooke assign you to my company. It would have been highly unpleasant for you to have served under him."

"It is strange how a thing never ends," said Shafter.

Moylan stepped to the porch of a barrack at the south end of the parade; a first sergeant sat there with a pipe in his mouth; he came to his feet and snatched the pipe from his mouth. "Hines," said Moylan, "this recruit is assigned to A. Take care of him."

"Yes, sir," said the sergeant. Moylan swung off, going at a steady, fast pace down the walk, into the gathering twilight. The first sergeant gave Shafter a considerable stare. "What's your name?"

"Shafter."

"Well, then, Shafter, come with me," said Hines.

The barracks was a building thirty feet wide and better than a hundred long, with peeled logs standing upright as supports and a floor of rammed earth. A continuous row of double-decked bunks ran down the walls. At the foot of each bunk was a small locker for each man's effects and a rack for sabers and gear and carbines and other equipment. At the far end of the building was a little office over the door of which was a painted sign, Orderly Room. A door led back into what seemed a mess hall. Meanwhile the sergeant strode along the bunk row, past men already asleep, past men lying awake on their blankets, past a table where men sat at a poker game and looked up at Shafter with an indifferent interest. The first sergeant stopped at a bunk. "This," he said, "is yours. Do I have to teach you to ride and handle a gun and mind your orders or—" and he studied Shafter with a closer eye—"is it that you've had service before?"

"Yes," said Shafter.

"Cavalry?"

"Yes."

"Alcott," called Hines, and drew another sergeant across the room with a waggle of his hand. "Take this man—Shafter's his name—and give him an outfit."

"Come along," said Alcott and towed him into a dark little cubbyhole of a quartermaster's supply room. The sergeant did a moment's measuring on Shafter with his eyes, then turned to his shelves and began to toss pieces of uniform over his shoulder.

Twenty minutes later Shafter emerged with an outfit stacked from his outspread arms to his chin—underwear, socks, field boots and garrison shoes, blue pants and blue blouse and two blue wool shirts, campaign hat, forage cap and dress helmet with plume, saber and saber sling, carbine with its sling, Colt revolver, Springfield carbine, ammunition, cartridge belt, canteen, mess outfit, intrenching tools, saddle bags, housewife kit, bridle, lariat and hobbles and picket pin, a razor, a silvered mirror, a cake of soap, a comb, two blankets, a straw tick, a box of shoe polish and a dauber, an overcoat, a rubber poncho with a hole through its center, a pair of wool gloves, a bacon can, currycomb and brush, and a pair of collar ornaments with cross-saber, the regimental number 7 above and the troop letter A below.

He laid these things on his bunk, took up his tick and left the room, headed for the stables. A hard-packed area lay between them and the rear of the barrack hall, used for troop assembly; beyond the stables stood the edge of the bluff which dropped to the Missouri now blackly running on into the night with a soft rustle of its silted waters. Beyond the river winked the lights of the Point and over the water at this moment slid the Union with a panting chow—chow of its engines. Shafter found the straw stack and knelt to fill his tick; he heard the casual stamping of the horses and smelled the rankness of horses—and the night came blackly down upon him and from afar drifted the rolling tune of the band, made beautiful by the distance, by the night, by the shining of the stars. When he had finished his chore he returned to the barrack hall, laid the tick on the bunk and made his bed. He took off his civilian suit and pulled on the army pants and shirt; he rolled up his civilian clothes and stood a moment looking at them, and had his long, backward thoughts. He turned around, speaking down the barrack hall.

"Anybody getting a discharge soon?"

"Yes," said a trooper, and sat up from his bunk. "I'm leavin' next week."

"How big are you?"

"Five-ten, one hundred and sixty."

Shafter rolled the suit into a ball and threw it at the man on the bunk. "The tailor can pull in the trouser legs and cinch up the coat. It's yours. When you get to New York, walk into the Netherlands House, and tell the headwaiter who wore those clothes last. You'll get a free meal out of it."

The guardhouse trumpet drew the slow notes of tattoo across the silence of the night, softly and beautifully. Shafter got a cigar from his luggage on the cot. He lighted it and strolled in his stocking feet to the barrack porch. Across the thousand-foot parade ground the lights of Officers' Row were pleasantly shining and somewhere about the fort the regimental band still was playing dance music. Out from Number One Post at the guardhouse came the sentry's call: "Nine o'clock—all's well," and the call was picked up, post by post, until it ran all around the fort. He thrust his hands into the pockets of the pants, feeling the roughness of them; they had the smell of the storehouse on them and they were stiff. But they covered him and they brought back to him recollections of the years gone, and all those recollections were satisfying. It was like coming home; nothing was strange. The voices of the men within the barrack, the sight of the carbines racked together, the sabers hanging at the foot of the bunks—all this was familiar. It was a way of living which, once surrendered, he now embraced again.

The darkness was a complete, moonless dark. Beyond Officers' Row lay the low, curved silhouette of the western ridge, over which a soft wind came with its scent of winter, with its scent of farther wildness. Out there, far out, lay a country as mysterious as the heart of Africa. Across it, during the past ten years, occasional military expeditions had traveled, had fought, had won and lost—but never had penetrated the core of it. That was Sioux land, the last refuge of a race which had given ground before the promises, the threats and the treacheries of the white man's frontier; and now had vowed to retreat no farther. Out there Sioux tepees made their rows and clusters along the Powder, the Yellowstone, the Tongue and the Rosebud; and along a stream which the Indians called the Greasy Grass but which was known to white men as the Little Bighorn.