HEAD COUNT
After Cochise’s death in June of 1874, the United States government’s Indian concentration policy went awry. Instead of collecting most of the Apaches at the San Carlos reserve, it attracted all their flies. At least that’s the way the situation seemed to John Clum when he stepped out of the hovel where he had spent his first night. He looked out from under the wide brim of his soft felt hat at the grisly souvenirs in the middle of the agency’s assembly area.
The month was August. At seven o’clock in the morning, the thermometer refused to recant its declaration of 110 degrees, even though Clum had rapped briskly on the glass. The flies didn’t mind the heat. What appealed to them more than the infirmary’s dysentery patients, the quartermaster’s casks of rancid pork, and the overflowing privies, were the seven severed heads that greeted Clum when he stepped outside. The flies were concentrating around them with the sort of enthusiasm the government envisioned for the Apaches.
Clum assumed the rotting remains belonged to the Apache outlaws who had attacked and killed the passengers on a stage passing through the Chiricahuas’ reserve a couple hundred miles to the south. Clum knew that the army had tracked and shot the murderers two weeks ago, which would explain the heads’ unsavory state.
Until Clum saw them, he had been preoccupied with the heat, and with the centipedes, spiders, snakes, and scorpions that inhabited the mud-chinked log shed that the post’s commander, Major Babcock, had assigned as his quarters. He had awakened with a fist-size tarantula ankling up his chest to hold a stare-down with him. He suspected that the vermininfested
hut and the welcoming committee of decayed heads were Major Babcock’s way of letting him know who was in charge here.
Clum had news for the major.
John Philip Clum was not quite twenty-three years old, not quite five feet six inches tall, and not quite 125 pounds. He had the confidence of a man twice his age and the strength of one twice his weight. He was arrogant, aggressive, cocksure, and cantankerous. He was honest, able, smart, and fearless. And when in high dudgeon he could write letters that would singe the bristles off a badlands boar.
Major Babcock was in for a tussle.
RAFE WASN’T USED TO HEARING THIS MUCH GAITY BETWEEN paydays at a fort, and he could see no sign of ardent spirits. It wasn’t natural. The lamplight shining through the pale canvas of the soldiers’ tents was normal enough, but the laughter was louder, more carefree. From beyond the lines of tents came drumming, singing, and hands clapping in a bewitching cadence.
As Rafe led his chestnut throught the bivouack, he could see through the open tent flaps the soldiers with their jackets unbuttoned, and their sleeves rolled up. They were playing cards, rolling cigarettes, cleaning their guns, polishing their boots. They were doing everything that soldiers did except drink whiskey and start fights. The other disorienting aspect of the men of the Ninth Cavalry was that they were shades of brown, from beige to ebony, with ebony predominating.
Rafe followed the sound of celebration and found Caesar standing at the rear of the crowd spilling out of an arbor walled with brush on three sides. The Ninth had arrived in New Mexico only a few weeks ago, and this was the first time Rafe had seen Caesar in his uniform. His sky-blue trousers were tucked precisely into knee-high boots polished till they shone like obsidian. The brass spurs glowed.
The trousers and the dark blue jacket were spotless,
starched, and ironed with precise creases. The yellow stripe on each leg and the yellow piping around the collar identified Caesar as cavalry. The big gold chevrons on his sleeve proclaimed him a First Sergeant. The forage cap with the crumpled, low crown, and the stiff leather bill sat forward at precisely the correct angle. Rafe imagined that with the dress uniform’s white plume in the cap, Caesar would resemble his namesake.
Rafe leaned close so Caesar could hear him over the noise. “I thought you despised army life, Sergeant Jones.”
Caesar turned and grinned at him. “This is the cavalry, Rafe. This ain’t just soldierin’, it’s horse-soldierin’. And they treats my family well here.”
Rafe had a hard time keeping his boots from falling under the spell of the drums. He shifted from one foot to the other in time with the beat. “Is this a special meeting?” he asked.
“No, they does it just about every night. They calls it a shout.”
The drummers stood to one side, beating out the complex rhythms on kegs and crates, on tin pots, canteens, and a mule’s jawbone. A dozen or more men moved in a circle in the center of the ramada. Some danced, some whirled, others rocked side to side or trembled, while spectators shouted encouragement.
Another man joined Rafe and Caesar, and the three of them started toward the long adobe building where the sergeants lived with their families.
“Rafe, I wants you to meet Sergeant George Carson. Sergeant Carson, this here is my friend, Mistuh Rafe Collins. Mistuh Collins and I go back a long ways.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, suh.”
George Carson was as tall as Caesar and much thicker through the middle. At first glance a stranger would notice his exaggerated features, his wide, flat nose and swollen lips, and his field hand’s grammar, but Rafe knew to look into his eyes. He could see the quiet competence. He saw curiosity and a thirst for knowledge, too. A good sergeant was more valuable to a company of soldiers than a good captain,
and the army usually did better at selecting them.
They met Colonel and Mrs. Hatch coming from the officers’ mess with their daughter Bessie trailing behind. Mrs. Hatch was tall and rawboned, cinched into a palisade of iron corset stays. Cascades of lace foamed up around her sturdy jaw. Her hair was pinned up so tightly under her hat that it pulled the skin taut over her cheekbones. She had to stop in mid-harangue so the colonel could salute the sergeants, and she was not happy about it. The dusty hem of her long skirt quivered with the motion of the foot tapping under it.
Colonel Hatch was taller than average, five feet ten inches, but he looked small next to the two sergeants. He was slender, with a snug, military bearing. He had an abrupt span of a nose, thin lips, and a heavy black mustache. The soldiers, true to tradition, called him The Old Man, but he was a year younger than Rafe. Rafe noticed streaks of gray at Hatch’s temples, and he wondered if he had them too. He tried to remember when last he saw himself in a mirror.
Hatch gave a crisp salute. “And are you being treated well here, men?”
“Yas, suh,” said Carson. “But we be ready to go to work, suh. Don’ t’ink we should lie ‘round camp eatin’ up the pervisions.”
Hatch laughed. “You’ll be going out on scout in a week or so, as soon as the recruits arrive. We’re at half strength now.”
“Yas, suh, but we’s ready to go wiffout ’em.”
Hatch smiled. “Yes, I know you are.”
Hatch walked away, and his wife took up where she left off. Rafe heard Hatch say, “My god, Hattie, let me run the post, will you?”
Carson stopped at his quarters a few doors down from Caesar’s. When Caesar opened the door to his own place the room looked inviting in the lamplight. Something aromatic bubbled in the iron pot hanging over the flames in the fireplace. A rag rug covered part of the dirt floor. A trunk, a pine washstand, a bedstead with a quilt, and a table with four stools filled the space. The room was on the end of the row,
so there was a side window trimmed with a calico curtain. Caesar’s army-issue McClellan saddle rested on a wooden stand in the far corner. The bridles and other tack, the quirt and spurs hung from pegs above it, as did Caesar’s saber, spare uniform blouse, and trousers.
Linc was almost four now. Shouting “Uncle,” he threw himself at Rafe. He took Rafe’s hand and dragged him around the room to show him his collection of spiders, scorpions, and beetles housed in jars and meat tins on the shelf. He had on his Apache moccasins, and he wore his bow and quiver of arrows across his back. Linc’s uncle, He Makes Them Laugh, had probably made them for him.
“Chile, be still.” Mattie rolled her eyes at Rafe. “I swear them Apaches done put a juju on him and turned him into a wild Indian. He wants to sleep with them arrows.”
They heard a knock, and Sergeant Carson came in with his wife. Rebecca Carson was tidy, plump, and gracious. She was one of those women who could emerge from a hurricane with every hair in place. She set a bowl of early greens and ham hocks on the table next to the skillet of corn bread and the pot of boiled chicken and dumplings with carrots, onions, and potatoes.
As they ate, they talked about the raids of Whoa and Geronimo and the other renegades hiding out in the Chiricahua’s reserve. Caesar listed the ranchers who had lost cattle, horses, and lives. Geronimo and his boys had been busy.
“I hear that John Clum intends to bring all the Apaches to San Carlos,” said Rafe.
“Where’s that?” asked Sergeant Carson.
“About seventy miles north of Tucson. He brought fifteen hundred Apaches from the reserve on the Verde River. Next he convinced the Coyoteros, the White Mountain people, and Eskiminzin’s Aravaipas to come. I hear he counts the men every day and the entire mob of them on Saturdays.”
Like a miser his coins, Rafe added to himself.
“Maybe he thinks the tame Injuns will set a good example for the wild ones,” said Carson.
Caesar chuckled. “Iff’n he thinks that, he don’t know Apaches.”
“How many ‘Paches you suppose is still runnin’ loose down in the Chiricahuas Mountains?” asked Carson.
“God only knows,” said Rafe. “And most likely He’s estimating.”
“When you gonna take a rib, Mistuh Rafe?” teased Mattie.
“Looking around this room, I would say all the good ribs are taken.”
“Mus’ be a woman somewhere for a fine man like you.” Rebecca Carson’s voice was soft and warm, a loving voice. Sergeant Carson was a lucky man, and so was Caesar.
Caesar decided to distract the women. When they got onto the subject of marriage, he called them the hallooing hounds of love. He took a primer and slates from a box under the bed. The primer’s cover and pages had been worn to the texture of the softest cloth. He and Mattie, George and Rebecca gathered in the light of the oil lamp.
George smiled at Rafe. “I has to be able to write the morning reports for my men, how many are out sick, and how many absent.”
“Spellin’ am a good word for it,” said Mattie softly. “It’s a mighty spell, readin.’”
The lamp’s wick was starting to flicker and die when they heard the bugle playing “Taps.” Everyone grew quiet.
Rafe had never heard it played like this. It tugged at his heart with its melancholy air. Unfamiliar grace notes in a minor key gave it an infinite sadness and hope.
“That man shore can tease magic from a horn,” said Mattie. “He could bring down the walls of Jericho if he set his mind to it.”