December 14, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
KOHN IS DOZING ON HIS BUNK IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, eight days after arriving at Fort Phil Kearny, when he senses something shift in the quality of the lantern light; something blocking its dim purchase on the silent barracks room. Someone, not something, he knows in his half-lucid state, coming to consciousness but keeping his eyes closed and his breathing regular as if he is still sleeping. He makes to roll over so that he may reach the Remington New Model he sleeps with under the rolled blanket he uses for a pillow.
“You will have a ball in your brain before you reach that iron, Sergeant, so leave it be. You may open your eyes or leave them shut, it makes no mind to us.”
More than one man. Eyes still closed he thinks to make a move for the pistol, to take his chances. One man he may kill or at least take with him but two men will have the better of the odds, positioned above him as they are. He wonders where the other men in the barracks have gone and resigns himself. If he is to die today, he will go out fighting. He tenses to spring and senses the men above him do the same. He hesitates, which is unlike him. If they had come to kill him, he thinks, it would’ve been easier done to slit his throat or smother him in his sleep already. Something else they want? Kohn opens his eyes.
Standing over his bunk are two men in knee-length buffalo coats and tall hats fashioned from a buffalo’s hump. Around their faces they have tied blue muffler scarves of the type sanctioned for uniform wear and sold to soldiers in sutlers’ stores across America. Woollen mittens with fingers cut away. Only their eyes are exposed, though in the dim lantern light Kohn cannot determine their color. They are like bears standing above him in their thick furs, their human features obscured. Or the Golem, Kohn thinks, remembering how as a boy he was so frightened of one day meeting him. But that beast who once stalked his dreams is not these men.
One of them holds a Springfield carbine and the other a kindling hatchet. Kohn drops his eyes to their boots. One is wearing standard issue artillery boots but the other, holding the hatchet, wears dragoon boots with the knee flaps turned down to reveal well-balled red leather. The man is proud of the boots. He is no dragoon, Kohn reckons, or he would be holding a Colt instead of a hatchet like a wife in search of a chicken’s neck. Won the boots in a card game or took them from a dead man. You will be easy to find, bub, Kohn thinks, if I live long enough to do it.
So not beasts, but not parlor soldiers either. The barrel of the Springfield is not altogether steady but is steady enough to be fatal and neither of the men appears frightened. The speaker’s voice has been calm, reasonable almost. Take the rail to the next station, Kohn decides. See what happens. He says, “I asked to be woken for supper, boys. I did not need two of you for that.”
One of the men laughs. “You are a fine, jesting Jew fucker, all right. I heard what you done to the boys with that chair in Hapworth’s store. A right jester, surely.”
Irish, again. One of the men from the sutler’s store? Does not matter.
“I wasn’t jesting then and I am not jesting now. I’m the dog robber in this barracks tonight and the boys will be sore if I don’t have their vittles up promptly.”
“Them boys will be back and ready to ate when I tell them and no sooner, so listen you now if you know what’s good for you.”
“All right,” Kohn says. “Can I sit up?”
“No you may not sit up, by fuck,” the soldier with the hatchet says. “Listen and don’t spake.” He says something in the Irish language to the soldier with the Springfield who replies with a calming gesture.
“My pal says we should shoot your bothersome self as a Jew spy. Investigators, agitators and touts. As fair Fenian boys we do not abide them, we don’t. Do you understand that?”
“I understand you don’t like them. But I’m no English agent come to spoil your revolution. I had high hopes for the Fenians and their invasion of British Canada.” Kohn smiles.
“I’ll split your head wide open, you—”
Springfield carbine again makes a calming gesture with his free hand and says, “We know why you’re here which is why you’re drawing breath still.”
“Good. So what is your purpose for waking me?”
Again, the hatchet man says something to Springfield in Irish and the man answers him, impatience in his voice this time. His eyes do not leave Kohn’s. He knows his business or Kohn would have been upon him by now.
The first man says, “Them ledger books belonging the sutler, Mr. Kinney, the whoremaster. ’Tis true you offer fifteen bucks for them, is it?”
Kohn makes to sit up, no desire to gut or shoot these men now. Dragoon boots raises the hatchet with menace and he lies back.
“It’s true. Do you have them?”
For the first time, the soldier with the Springfield looks to his partner. Kohn cannot see the color in his eyes but he can see the doubt in them. Uncertainty on the verge of action. “We don’t. But we know who has them.” He looks back to Kohn. “And we will tell you this for ten dollars reward and the man who has them be fucked.”
Kohn smiles. “I thought you could not abide informers.”
The soldier with the hatchet says, “You curly whore’s pox. I’ll stuff your bashed Jew skull with salt pork—”
Springfield carbine says, “Go easy, Ow . . .” He is about to say the man’s name but stops himself. “Go easy, for the love of God. We are here to do business with the bastard.”
“You hold a gun on a man and then ask him for ten dollars? That is robbery and not business, Bill,” Kohn says but he is still smiling.
“You cannot be trusted, I was told.”
“Who told you that?”
“You don’t need to know but it does be nearly all who meet you. Now do we have a bargain, soreass?”
“I am going to sit up and discuss it with you but if your pal waves his hatchet at me again I’m going to take it from him and chop his cock off with it, do you understand that?”
Hatchet says something in Irish and takes a step toward the bed. His friend stops him with an arm across the chest and more words in the same language. Kohn does not speak the language but knows without doubt that Springfield has asked his friend if he wants his cut of the reward or not. He sits up on the bed and takes a cheroot from a packet on the crate beside his bunk that serves as a makeshift locker. He asks Springfield carbine for a light and he nods to his friend who grudgingly tosses a tin box of matches to Kohn, who takes his time lighting the small cigar.
Kohn punctuates his words with exhaled smoke. “So tell me who has the books.”
“The money first,” hatchet says.
“You holding that axe does not make me a fool. If you care to try to take the money from me, then take it and skedaddle as thieves but if you care to bargain, you prove to me you have what you say you have. I will then give you a dollar. When you tell me the rest, what I need to know, I will give you five more.”
“Six skins?” hatchet says. “I may sooner kill you and take it from you, boy.”
“You may try.” Kohn puffs on his cheroot and blows a stream of smoke up at the men.
“Eight,” says the soldier with the carbine.
“A reasonable man. Seven and we shake on it, Bill,” Kohn says.
Springfield nods and gestures spitting on his left hand, holding the carbine in his right, and mimes a handshake. “Done. Struck like a Jewman. Show me the dollar and I will tell you that there are three books in all with over two thousand odd dollars owing within. I will tell you a fellow here on post has them and is making good use of them and when you give me the other six bucks, I will tell you who he is.”
Kohn mummers the spitting on his hand and the handshake. “I am reaching into my pocket for my wallet.”
“Go ahead, Bill.”
Kohn takes a two-dollar note from the wallet and holds it out to the man with the carbine but the man indicates to the hatchet man to take the money. He switches the hatchet to his left hand and snatches the greenback with his right. Kohn then removes a five-dollar note and folds it around his fingers.
“Now speak up while I check that pot for coffee,” Kohn says, rising from the bed and passing between the two men, forcing them to step aside. He crosses the rough board barracks floor to the stove and lifts the boiler pot. He takes a tin mug from a shelf above the stove and pours coffee for himself, sitting down at the barracks’ long table. “There’s coffee enough for two in the pot boys but I won’t vouch for its quality.”
“We won’t be needing it,” Springfield says, taking a seat across from Kohn at the table. His friend crosses to warm himself at the stove but remains standing. “We will be going shortly. But I will tell you that them books you seek are held by a E Company boy who dogs as the fort’s smith and farrier. Never hardly been off-post nor fired no shot in anger for his work is valued highly by the brass, so he is left at it to smithy while we fight and die and do picket.”
Kohn remembers passing the smith’s, one of the larger structures at the southern end of the post within the quartermaster’s stockade and somewhat removed from the other barracks and stables for fear of fire. He cannot recall meeting the blacksmith but he ordered Rawson to have the horses reshod only yesterday. “What is his name?”
“He is called Ezekiel Sweetman, or that is the name he goes by. He’s a corporal, and a bull of a man as you would expect of a blacksmith. Sure, you may have met him if you’ve your horses shod since coming or p’raps you did refuse to pay his going, for he is a mean bastard who will shoe Uncle Sam’s horses all right as he is paid for it but will ask a king’s ransom for to shoe a civvie’s beast or a private-owned mount. So ’tis not like he needs the money as he’s his wages and a smithy’s special duty pay atop them, but there he is all the same with them ledger books and putting them to ill use for ill gain, the fucker.”
“How is he putting them to use?” Kohn asks, sipping his coffee and puffing his cheroot. He has a fair idea but is open to correction.
“Well the bastard is collecting what is owed at a half-rate before blacking a fellow’s name from the pages when he is paid up. Sure what else would he be doing with them?”
“Half-rate? How kind of him . . . and are the men paying up?”
“They are, for half is better than the full whack by far, and the smithy has given his word to burn them books once all owed is paid up so the whole of them owing have a bargain made with the devil at half-rate,” Springfield says, setting the butt of the carbine on the floor beside him. “And them owing can pay it by-the-by so ’tis never a hardship for them like when they owed the sutler hisself who did dock their wages as owing Uncle Sam.”
“That sounds fair enough but why do they pay him at all?”
“Well, he could sell the books back to the new sutler and they would owe the full whack then, surely. For the love of Christ, what kind of a Jew are you at all?”
“Not the kind who would pay another Bill for the privilege of halving debts I do not owe him. Are there any soldiers on this post or only wives with pearl shell combs in hock—”
“—to the Jewman,” hatchet says.
“If the Irish could reckon the arithmetic, they would own pawn stores instead of pubs,” Kohn says, without looking at him. “So tell me why don’t the men with their names in the books get the ledgers back themselves, or have they even tried to yet? Have you?”
Springfield looks away now. “No, we haven’t at all.”
“But you are asking me to get them. And what would you have me do with them if I succeed?”
The man looks back and Kohn can see the smile behind his muffler. “Why, burn the bastard books, to fuck. Once you’ve had your look at them.”
“But you haven’t answered me. Why haven’t you tried to take them yourselves already? Or why has not one Bill in the whole camp gone to his company first sergeant and told him what’s become of the books?”
“Tell a company first shirt and have him go to the brass about it? That would be a fool thing to do when all would then have to pay full whack if the books was given back to the new sutler and he had the power to dock wages for the whole amount each boy owes to Uncle as listed in them books. Sure, touting the bugger to the bosses would only cost you more money than you’ve to pay now, so that makes no sense at all.”
He looks at Kohn, as if the cavalryman has understood nothing of what he has said, before continuing. “As of now we pay half, see, though we don’t like that for Mr. Kinney’s death should benefit all of us who did owe him, much in the way as if a storm did blow them books away or a fire burn them. ’Twas an act of God—which no man should profit from, even by half—that thieving Mr. Kinney getting his throat cut. So there’s fair’s fair to consider. Them debts should die with the man who held them and not be run on by another no matter who he does think he is.”
“You still have not told me why you have not banded together, you fine Fenian boys, and taken them back.”
There is some shame in the man’s eyes now. Not as much the stag as Kohn had thought.
“Well, you would have to know the boy you would be taking them from to see that. For he is a bad fellow, a terrible bad egg altogether I’m telling you. A Nativist fucker, a hater of all foreign born soldiers. And he’s men about him who are the same, a fair number of American boys who is Protestant and Masons even, ’tis said, but all of them veteran Bills, hard men who do not leave his side for so much as a piss. And ’tis said . . .” The man leans across the table to Kohn and lowers his voice. “. . . ’tis said that Sweetman is a Missoura reb. One of Quantrill’s raiders joined up under a bluff moniker because he did be too cruel even for them slaughtering Ozark boys. And as I did say he and all his boys are fierce wild men who do revile the like of us Irish or you Jews. They do hate all followers of the Roman Catholic Church, whether they is Dutchies or Eye-talians or Portugee. And they specially cannot abide freed niggers but they are not alone in that.”
“They galvanized Yankees?” Kohn asks, referring to Confederate prisoners who switched sides during the war and enlisted in the Union army.
“Some is, I imagine. They are all sorts but they are rough and they would have the whole of America, God bless her, full of hale, Protestant, American-born boys and the U.S. army the same, I tell you.”
“That would make for a small army,” Kohn says, and the two men chuckle under their mufflers, knowing this for truth.
Kohn thinks it unlikely that this Sweetman is a former Missouri bushwhacker but considers only that the man has numbers who support him. He has heard there are factions in this new, regular army who despise immigrants—particularly the Catholic Irish and Germans but Jews and the emancipated blacks as well. And he himself, in his occupation posting with the 7th Cavalry in Louisiana and Texas, rode down on white-robed raiders and unrepentant rebels who thought the way to undermine Republican order in the South was to lynch freed black men and those thought to be land-grabbers and profiteers—who all assumed to be Jews, though they were as likely to be Ohio Lutherans as anything else. He decides he will enjoy paying Ezekiel Sweetman a visit.
“You’d do well to mind yourself around him, Bill,” Springfield says to Kohn now.
“Corporal Sweetman may be the one who needs minding if he does not present the ledgers to me when I ask him.”
“Oh Jesus, I would like to see it, I would,” hatchet says, his eyes gleaming.
“Well you are a fine man, for a Jew, I have to say it,” says Springfield. “A fine fucking man altogether.”
“A fine man for one man,” hatchet says. And then to Springfield carbine he says, “Why do you not ask him, sure, ask him why don’t you, boy?”
Kohn smiles, knowing what is coming. He hands the five-dollar note across the table to Springfield who takes it and tips his fingers to his buffalo hat.
“Ask me what?” Kohn says.
“More business, p’raps,” says Springfield. “Twenty leaves easy, we could muster up from the men, for you to kill that Ezekiel Sweetman bastard and burn them books. Twenty-five even. Once you’ve your read of them of course.”
Kohn shakes his head. “Four hundred blood-and-guts Indian fighters here on post and not one to be found to kill a man but a wandering Jew looking for a set of account ledgers?”
“Well, things is hard, Bill, and I’d not risk a rope for the small sum I do owe. Others might, sure . . .”
“No one had better try it until I get a look at those books or I’m coming looking for my seven bucks back, never mind your twenty.”
“Sure, you will have your work made up to see them, but now you know where to look.”
“I am going back to my bunk boys. You will see yourselves out.”
“We will, Bill. May God go with you.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Well, whichever watches over a body best, I s’pose,” says the soldier, standing and lifting his Springfield.
Kohn takes another look at the hatchet man’s boots so he will remember them if he sees them again. All in all, he thinks, he has done a fine bit of business this afternoon.