Major Charles Lovick was the officer commanding Fort Garrett.
There had been a time when he’d been a bright young officer. Hair flaming like the sun over the Sierras, filled with gall and sand. The kind of young officer who managed to temper his own naturally impetuous spirit with considered caution. Saber rattling brought promotion and headlines, but it also brought a wall of corpses. Most ordinary soldiers preferred to be alive at the end of a patrol, even if the glory didn’t come so fast.
There were plenty of unmarked graves with worm-eaten markers across the South-West dedicated to heroes who’d finished up young and dead.
Charley Lovick was middle-aged and alive.
A few years back he’d earned a certain notoriety when he’d gone out with a small patrol after some bloody deserters. And survived a run-in with the legendary giant Mimbreños warrior, Cuchillo Oro. Old Golden Knife himself. ‘Pinner’s Indian’ as the Apache had been called at the time.
Lovick had come close to being a friend to the lonely and suspicious Indian. The grandson of the almost mythical Mangas Colorado, Cuchillo Oro had taken to the frank honesty of the young Lieutenant and they had, once, been near to a comradely understanding.
But those times were long gone.
Now Lovick was a Major, certain that further promotion wasn’t likely to come his way. Bitter at seeing younger men with less talent pushed up the ladder of command by money or influential parents and friends.
His hair was still tinted red, but it was more sparse than when he’d sat across a fire from Cuchillo Oro. His temples had advanced and he needed to keep his slouch hat on when he rode out with a patrol, keeping the Arizona sun off the bald circle at the crown of his head. The lines around his mouth that had once been etched with laughter were now furrowed deeper with worry and with grief and illness.
Lovick had married, back around ‘seventy-two. A plain girl from Tuscaloosa who he’d met while she was out west visiting a cousin. Their marriage had lasted only four months before he caught her out under a wagon with the young Lieutenant Dickens from Boston. She’d gone off home to stay with her parents while they both reconsidered their positions.
A week later she was dead of a flux from drinking tainted water at a river crossing baptism.
And Lovick’s own health had deteriorated over the last four years. There’d been a rupture that had become strangulated and led to surgery. The doctor had been a drunken butcher and Lovick now found that any length of time either walking or in the saddle left him almost doubled up with pain. And since the operation he’d found it impossible to achieve an erection on his infrequent visits to military whore-houses.
And in the last three weeks, with summer fading fast into memories, Major Lovick had been laid low with a cough. One that had begun as a dry, nagging tickle at the back of the throat. One that kept him awake at nights but didn’t bother him much during the days. Then it worsened after he’d been out with a small patrol, showing the flag among settlers to the north of the fort. There’d been a sharp rain that had soaked every man in the unit and when they’d gotten back to Garrett, the Major found he was shaking and running a fever.
And the cough had become much worse.
Deepening, sinking down on the chest. So that when a fit took him, it seemed to rattle clear to his bootstraps, making him fight for breath, his lungs feeling as though they had been filled with great wads of water-sodden paper.
The day before Crow came riding by the fort Major Lovick had reluctantly taken to his bed.
And it was to his bedroom–spartan in the extreme–that Crow was marched. He’d been locked in the guard-room after Corporal Chandler had laid his head open with the butt of his forty-five. They’d dragged him along by the heels, stripping him of the weapons and manacling his wrists together behind him. Chaining him to the wall. Only then had they felt safe enough to give him the obligatory kicking, beating him with belts and boots.
But Chandler had been there to make sure they didn’t go too far. He’d heard about the man called Crow at other times and in other places. And it had been the gray-haired veteran who’d forcibly thrown out the group of younger troopers when he sensed that the punishment had gone far and long enough.
“Leave him be!”
“He near killed Jonas,” protested one of them, breathing hard, eager to get in again at the helpless man who lay bruised and bloodied in the dry straw.
“Jonas was a son of a bitch, deserved what he got. And you know that.”
“Hell, Corporal, he weren’t that bad.”
“No. He was just a real good old boy liked to …”
Chandler held up a hand. “We know what he was. Jonas was a bastard to those weaker than him and an ass-licker to those stronger. He was about the least popular person on Fort Garrett.”
“Except for young Cyrus Quaid,” said another of the soldiers.
“Hell, yeah,” agreed Chandler. “If’n his Pa wasn’t sutler hereabouts, I figure the Major would have whipped that boy’s backside clear across the Rio Grande.”
There was a general murmuring of agreement, and among that agreement the men temporarily forgot that they’d wanted to carry on kicking the bejesus out of Crow.
The corporal had the last word on the matter.
“I’ve heard plenty ‘bout this shootist,” pointing at the semi-conscious man. “And all of it bad. They say that Crow got born out of the dark shadows of Hell. Where he steps nothing grows. When he smiles the birds sing and when he frowns the little children weep in the streets. Yeah.”
It was a long and imaginative speech for a corporal in the United States Cavalry, but Chandler had always had aspirations to become a writer.
“Guess you mean we kill him or we leave him be, Corporal?” asked one of the youngest troopers.
Crow had stirred among the straw at that. Blinking up through bruised eyes. Lips thick from the kicking he’d taken.
“True, son,” he said, quietly. “You carry on and by God but you’d do well to make certain sure I’m dead. If you don’t I’ll come after you …”he fought for breath, struggling to find a less uncomfortable position. “I’ll come and I’ll kill you. Kill you in ways you’d not believe, boy. Ways so that your Ma wouldn’t be able to look on you without weeping all her days.”
It was said calmly, and without venom, and that made it a hundred times more frightening than if he’d said it in a blustering, blowhard way.
The soldiers were used to living close to danger and they learned to recognize what was false and what was true.
So Crow was hauled into the bedroom of Major Charles Lovick.
His hands were still cuffed behind him. He could only stand with difficulty and he had to peer awkwardly with his head on one side to make out the officer who lay on the bed, a gray blanket tugged up to his chest. Lovick looked at the man with distaste, trying to stifle a cough.
Failing.
Battling for breath. “Why in Hades is this man here, Corporal? Looks like he’s lost an argument with a fighting bull.”
“Fell down some steps in the guardroom, Major,” replied Corporal Chandler. Straight-faced.
“You say he’s Crow?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Same one that gotten busted couple years back up north? Just before Autie lost his hair.”
“Believe so, Sir. That’s what he says.”
“And he damn near killed Maynard?”
“Broke nose. Broke jaw. Lost several teeth. Lot of cuts round the mouth. Ribs cracked. Elbow broke so bad the Doc figures he’ll never use it again.”
“Be up before a board for disability pension, then? Lot of damned paperwork you cost me, Mr. Crow.”
The shootist waited a while until another coughing fit had passed. Noticing that the officer pressed a white square linen to his mouth during the attack. Even in the dimly-lit room he could see that when Lovick brought it away from his lips it was flecked with crimson.
“You got nothin’ to say, Mr. Crow?”
“Sure, Major. Your man pointed a cocked Springfield carbine at my guts, and I don’t take kindly to that kind of greetin’.”
“That true, Corporal?”
Chandler was rigidly at attention. “Could be, Major. Some kind of disagreement.”
“What over, Crow?”
“I don’t recall. The soldier was passin’ comments about Indians.”
“You like Indians, Mr. Crow? I recall that at your court-martial there was—”
“I don’t specially like Indians, Major Lovick,” he interrupted. “Then again, I’m not partial to a lot of whites.”
Lovick coughed again, his face pale with the effort. Lying back on the bed, his chest fluttering as he fought for breath.
“They say you’ve killed a lot of men, Crow.”
“They say the Cavalry’s done its share of that, too, Major.”
“Don’t play damned games with me, Crow. By God!” he controlled his temper, but two spots of hectic color stood out on the thin cheeks. “I will not lose my temper with you, Crow.”
“Your trooper tried that, Major. Got him on the road to beggin’ in alleys.”
There was a noise from Corporal Chandler that might have been a muffled laugh. Or might just have been a cough.
“You’re threatening me, Crow! I do not believe what I’m hearing. You’re unarmed, manacled and guarded and you threaten me!”
“Yeah.” Crow flicked out his tongue to touch a tender swelling on his lip. “Guess you might just get some of your men to set to and beat some more crap out of me, huh? While I’m good and tied.”
“Are you saying you were ill-treated while a prisoner, Mr. Crow?”
The shootist hesitated. “The corporal there told you about the steps I fell down. Guess I must have done a whole lot of falling, Major.”
The same noise from Chandler.
Lovick shook his head. “Hell. I don’t want frontier killers like you round my fort, Crow. It may be … just may be, that Maynard deserved a reproach. But you could have killed the man.”
Crow sensed the weakening of the attitude.
“Sure I could have killed him. But I didn’t kill him.”
“More luck than judgment, Crow.”
“No.”
“No?”
“If’n I’d wanted the man dead, he’d have been dead, Major. The world outside doesn’t play games by your Army rules. I met men that’d cut your heart out for a dime. Not for any damned reason. Maybe they didn’t take to the color of your hair. I let that soldier live.”
“Why?”
“I told him not to rile me. Said I’d break his arms. Corporal stopped me doin’ the other elbow for the son of a bitch.”
“What do you think, Corporal?”
Chandler carried on looking straight ahead. Eyes fixed on a spindly oil-lamp with a fluted brass column. Watching the flame as it guttered with a yellow, smoky glow.
“Could be Trooper Maynard gave him some cause. But …”
“But it was a vicious assault, Corporal?” suggested the officer.
“That’s it, Sir.”
“Guess I’ll – Damn this cough. Guess I’ll think on it. When were you aiming to leave Fort Garrett, Mr. Crow?”
“First light tomorrow.”
“You’ll stay here a while.”
“What for?”
“I’ve got to think what to do,” snapped Lovick, voice suddenly like a petulant child deprived of a favorite toy cart.
“You bust me or you let me go,” said Crow.
“Maybe. I could have you sent for civilian trial. You know that.”
“Sure,” replied Crow.
“If there was provocation then …”
“Want me to lock him up again?” asked the corporal, stepping in closer to the shootist.
“Might arrange for me to fall down some more of them steps,” suggested Crow, quietly. “Next time it might even be steep enough to kill me. Solve your problems, wouldn’t it?”
“We don’t do that kind of thing in the Cavalry, Crow!”
The shootist didn’t speak. He knew, and Lovick knew, and Chandler knew that in the Cavalry, like anywhere else, they sometimes did just that kind of thing.
Lovick looked totally drained, like he’d run a mile across ploughed fields in full winter clothing. He swallowed hard, trying to recover his possession.
“Unchain him, Corporal. Let the surgeon see to his injuries. Make sure he has no access to weapons.”
“His horse?”
“Keep it in the stables under guard.”
“Do I get freedom of the fort, Major?” asked Crow.
“Within reason.”
“Armory, Officers’ Quarters, stable?”
Lovick nodded. “You got it, Mr. Crow. Then tomorrow we’ll think about this again. Maybe around noon. Corporal Chandler?”
“Sir?”
“I want Mr. Crow back here at noon. I do not want to see any evidence that he has had any further falls, Corporal.”
“Sure, Major. I’ll see to it. And I’ll take care that none of the men get riled up seein’ him round the place.”
Lovick nodded and lay back on his bed, closing his eyes.
Crow slept comfortably that night. A quiet, dreamless sleep.
It hadn’t been a bad day.