December 15, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
UNDER LOW, GRAY SKIES, KOHN WATCHES THE BUSY blacksmith’s shop in the bitter cold on the morning after his meeting with the informants in buffalo coats. It snowed during the night but the heat from the smithy’s fires has melted a halo of bare mud around the building. From his place in front of the quieter mechanic’s shop, some fifty yards distant, he can hear the hiss of the bellows and the roar of the forge from the smithy’s. The clank of a hammer on an anvil.
Kohn has not seen the blacksmith himself but he has seen men whom he assumes to be his protection. Big men with mustaches worn long and upturned like the horns of bulls, they come to the open door of the shop or stand and smoke under the shoeing area outside which is covered by a slanting, wood-shingled roof. The mustaches are uniform and sinister and so similar that they must be worn as a sign of affiliation. Two of the men wear pistols in holsters and the three others, Kohn assumes, have them stuffed in belts beneath their tunics, knives in boots no doubt. One or two of them squat to pare and shoe horses as they are brought in but in their wariness—the way they eye the yard and the passersby, the way they stroll to cover the back and front of the shop—they reveal themselves to be on picket at the smith’s, convincing Kohn that his visitors were correct and Sweetman the blacksmith does indeed possess something as valuable and coveted as the ledgers.
Kohn wears two pistols, his Remington in a cavalry holster and a Colt Baby Dragoon in his own belt, but hopes they will not see use. Earlier it occurred to him to consult Molloy about how to proceed but he decided against it. The officer was sleeping that morning when he went to visit him and one of the surgeon’s orderlies told Kohn that Molloy had suffered fits in the night and so the surgeon had dosed him once more with laudanum. It was not an unusual thing for drunks drying out to suffer, the orderly told him, and not much harm in the long run just so long as he don’t swally his tongue. Hell, the orderly said to Kohn, the lieutenant will dry out fine and dandy and be fit to drink again in no time at all.
The cold riding hard on his impatience, Kohn makes his decision and crosses from the mechanic’s to the blacksmith’s shop, having seen enough to know that he will be better to go in daylight, with the comings and goings of cavalrymen and civilian drovers alike providing him what safety he will need.
He enters the shop, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the forge-lit gloom within. The air is superheated by the brick forge and two open, raised fire pits and Kohn begins to sweat under his coat. A big man in a leather apron worn over an undershirt with its sleeves cut away tongs a horseshoe still glowing orange from the forge over to a tub of water. He plunges the shoe into the water and it hisses and steams. The smith then lifts it from the water and tosses it into a wooden bin full of shoes with a loud clank.
The smith’s head is shaved tight against lice, like many of the men in the fort. His mustaches are worn long, the same as the men outside, and hang below his chin, glinting with sweat in the forge’s firelight. Like fangs, Kohn thinks. He does not look at Kohn when he says, “If you need a beast shod, you talk to one of the boys. Likely to be a wait today as I’m up to my ass in the devil’s work.”
Kohn sees one of the boys look up from where he is shoveling coal into the forge. He is in uniform trousers and an undershirt, a leather apron and thick leather gloves that extend up his forearms. Noting Kohn’s uniform and boots, the man says, “What you need, soreass? You gonna shoe yourself or you gon’ wait your turn?”
“Do you know who I am?” Kohn says to the blacksmith, ignoring his man.
The smith looks over to him now and after a moment says, “I know who you are. You the Jew dragoon broke up the sutler’s the other day, ain’t you?”
“Word gets about a camp fast.”
“Every goddamn jack on post heard that five minutes after you done it.”
“So you know what I need to see already.”
The smith laughs. “I heard you offering fifteen sheets for some books is what I heard.”
“You heard right. I have it right now in my billfold. You just get the books and we’ll do business together.”
The smith’s man sets his shovel against the forge’s brickwork and takes off his leather apron. He leaves on his gloves. He is younger than the smith but just as big. The same mustaches but straggly like winter grass.
“The Dutchie Jew wanna do business,” the blacksmith says to his man and the man smiles and shakes his head. Another of the smith’s men, as if summoned, enters the dim shop and stands behind Kohn, blocking the door.
“That’s right,” Kohn says. “I came to do business because getting my lieutenant or your first sergeant to come here and order you to hand over the books would do no one any good, would it? You or any of the men whose names are in them.”
The man in the leather gloves laughs and looks over at the soldier who has just entered. “Well, there’s our first sergeant right there. Whyn’t you ask him yourself?”
Kohn looks at the figure in the doorway and notes his sergeant’s stripes. He looks around the shop and takes in the American flag hanging on one wall. Beneath it, a smaller flag showing a coiled snake and the legend “Don’t Tread On Me.” In the dim light he can see the blacksmith has extensive tattooing on his massive arms. Not unusual among soldiers who fought in the war, many had their names and hometowns etched in simple lettering under arms or on shoulders in case there was no other means of identifying their remains. Others had skulls and mermaids or eagles underscrolled with the name of their regiments in bold, gothic numbers and letters. Squinting, Kohn reads the legend in bold, black, cursive scrawl on the smith’s arm. “America for Americans.”
“I’ll offer twenty to you to look at those books. That is my final offer.”
“Your final offer, hell. Makes a man think, don’t it, why you want a look at these books I s’posed to got. What you hope to find in ’em.”
“If you know who I am, Corporal, you know I’m here to investigate the killing of the owner of those books along with his wife. Those books may be evidence in our investigation. I could order you to hand them over but here I am, offering you twenty leaves for a look, no questions asked. If I were you, I’d hand them over, but if I were you, you’d have more sense.”
Again, the smith laughs and shoves a half-rendered shoe into the forge, his face glowing orange in the firelight. “And if I were you, I’d kill my Jew self before someone else got wits enough to do it for me.” He spits tobacco juice into the forge and the spittle hisses and jets steam when it hits. “Anyhow, if them books is so goddamn priceless, you make a fool of yourself offering me twenty, when what’s in ’em’s worth more than a thousand, or so I hear.”
Kohn stares at him for a moment. On a table within reach is a heavy iron mallet. He thinks what he might do with it.
Kohn says. “I heard you were one of Quantrill’s raiders.”
“You might have heard right.”
“I heard Quantrill’s boys liked killing kids because it was a sight easier than killing Dutchie farmers. Buggering them, killing them, whichever took your fancy on the day,” Kohn says and notes that the three men are no longer smiling.
“You gon’ get yourself hurt, Jewman.” The smith takes a hot iron poker from the fire and looks over at the gloved apprentice.
“You know, Don, you know what I got a mind to do?”
“What’s that, boss?”
The poker’s tip glows bright orange and the smith holds it up, hefts the poker as if gauging the balance of a cutlass. “I got a mind to stick this iron in the Jew’s eyes. Each eye, one and the other. Then sit the Christ-killing son of a bitch down in front of them books he say I got. Give him a look at what he can’t see in front of his own face.”
“What books would those be?” the sergeant blocking the door says.
“Oh I don’t know. Some books this Jew fucker says I got.”
Kohn looks again at the iron mallet on the bench, at the anvil and then at each of the three men. The sergeant in the doorway meets his gaze but the soldier in the gloves will not. The smith smiles at Kohn.
Kohn says, “I have offered good money and you have declined my offer. Your loss, Smithy. You won’t be offered it again.”
The smith shoves the tip of the poker into the heart of the fire and holds it there for a moment. “I’m a let you leave with your eyesight, Jewman. But I hear you say another goddamn word round camp ’bout any kinda books at all, I’m gonna cook your goddamn heart on my fires. You understand me?”
“You assume I have one, Corporal.”
“You a funny boy. A laughing Dutchie Jew dog. You won’t be laughing we come for you in the night, boy.”
There are voices raised outside the shop and the three men turn to them. Kohn takes the iron mallet from the workbench and slips it into his belt under his tunic.
A young officer enters, shoving the sergeant blocking the door aside. “Corporal, my horse has thrown a shoe and is waiting to be goddamn shod and I am left standing outside with my prick in my hand.”
“Yessir, I’ll do it myself, pardon the wait, Lieutenant,” the smith says. “I been busy as two flies fucking, sir.”
“And less of the goddamn cussing, corporal,” the lieutenant says. “This fort is not the cock-sucking whorehouse where your sister works.”
“Yessir,” the smith says, taking four shoes from the bin and a box of shoeing nails from a workbench. He smiles at Kohn as he follows the lieutenant out into the cold.