CONVERSING ON A BASTION WITH RIDGEWAY & 1ST SGT. NEVIN
AND SO THE WEATHER TURNED COOL & WE CAME TO see more & more of Mr. Lo.
Day in & day out he did attack the woodtrain & so it was that Tom & I begun to do more guarding of the train & the cutters than we did cutting or sawing ourselves & this was fine & lively work at first as August ran into September & the leaves of the Cottonwoods turned from green to yellow in the cold nights with the dying off season coming early in this Valley.
It was at this time when we too like the trees began to change from regular soldier Bills to proper Indian fighters. Mad Capt. Brown our Master Of The Hunt did form us up as his Praetorian Guard his terrible contingent of Berserkers. So while he accounted for his logs & beams & nails & bails all of us were praying for Red Cloud to engage us & our prayers were oft answered for the scalps fairly collected about Brown’s saddle the sleek black hair of dead Braves bounding up & down as the Capt. raced 1/2 to death that mare Tom once broke for him. Some sight he was that Mad Capt. & a fearful sight were we all his special few with our cavalry cutlasses issued by the Q.M. himself God only knows how he got them. Carrington was agin us carrying them I do not know why. Perhaps because we are only pretend Dragoons & not proper horse soldiers like yourself Sir & he did not like it but as I told you Carpenter Carrington is no fighting man at all & will defer to those who are. Brown must of told him we had need of them so the Col. allowed it & we further turned into a rightly mob of marauders with our prickling array of arms & our faces burnt bright red or brown by wind & sun with beards or mustaches bleached fair & yellow & with locks near as long as Custer’s. We looked like white savages I tell you & no different did we act. Some of the boys collected scalps about their saddles in honour of Capt. Brown though I did not do it but all of us howled & hollered as we closed to battle so that you might see us as less men than beasts.
There was a part of all of us changing to suit the seasons going from the bright days of Summer to the rough cold of Autumn from peaceable days spent cutting trees & yarning to days of fizzing arrows & bloody business. And Mr. Lo too grew bolder as the days shortened. By night he danced round signal fires on the hills about the Ft. like Hell’s demons awaiting our arrival there only to be scattered by the bark of the mountain Howizter packed with exploding shot.
And though we did come to look fearful & savage like the Sioux & the Cheyanne & the Arap well the truth is we also came to live a sad & fearful life for as you well know a soldier’s Company does be like his family & nearly every day someone of our family got creased or wounded terribly & without Sgt. Nevin for to hold us together like a Company of soldiers well there would of been much more of the drinking & carousing & waking our dead than there was. 8 men of our C Company’s 65 struck down dead or disappeared & another 12 wounded tween August & September if I recall rightly & still the fort did rise up from the grass. It was safer we would feel (so we did tell ourselves) when it was complete.
I tell you many of our number began to wake with the roaring & shouting of foul dreams in the night. By daylight some of them started & cringed like dogs at the sound of a rifle shot or a harsh word & we were forced for to comfort them & to show them pity & not the contempt a soldier may feel (to spite himself) for fellows who will be no good to him should he get in a tight spot. It did fall to Sgt. Nevin in the main to calm them. A good man our 1st Shirt Sgt. Nevin though not agin the wrangling of a soldier’s wages if he could manage it but that is a privilege that comes with rank as you well know Sir & I did not blame him for it.
I passed a night with himself & Ridgeway on picket in 1 of the bastions which rose up above the gates of the finished stockade wall. 1 of our men Teddy Van Rick was shot through a loop hole with an arrow & killed while on picket within the walls some weeks before this God Rest Him after an Indian cloaked himself in a wolf skin & crept up to the Ft. in ambush so that even inside the finished stockade we did not feel safe & Nevin could get no sleep thinking about it. He would visit every picket posting when C Company was detailed telling us to beware & to keep the head down & that he would flay the skin off any man he caught napping.
And Ridgeway well he did oft just come for a natter when we stood guard for Tom & myself did not see as much of him now that we passed most of our days as Mad Fred’s Marauders.
That night he came to share out some of his tobacco & brung coffee in a pail because he was a proper sort of gentleman like that & I recall the night now because both of them are gone West never more of the Earth & I do miss them terribly May God Keep Them.
I recall that at the time the bastion had no roof yet on it but only beams of wood awaiting planks & shingles & we put a brazier to burning cow & buffalo chips for heat with the stars spangling above us in the Heavens in a way no man can tire of seeing. The air was cool & calm September mountain air & we smoked our pipes saying nothing for a long time.
It might of been lovely such a night under the stars of the Powder River Valley 3 pals sharing a puff & a pail of coffee but from the hospital barracks soon came the sound of a man screaming. The 3 of us knew that the keening came from a civilian timber man who took an arrow in his thigh some days before & was now surely in a state of terrible gangrene of that leg. Manys the time I heard screaming like it here in the Ft. & on battlefields & from the infirmary tents in the War but you never get used to it & as if in reply to that keening the coyotes of the Valley did take to yipping & the wolves howling from distant hills & though we are well accustomed by now to the songs of wolves it does always put the goose flesh on me. For the wolves do nightly wait for the moon to set so that they may come to scavenge the Ft.’s slaughter yard for offal & marrow bones & Carrington well he will not let us shoot the beasts any more for it does disturb Her Ladyship’s sleep. This angered the men greatly & many of them say this is why Van Rick bought his ticket West. I tell you if I did not hate the red b______ so much I would call that ambush a fierce clever one but I cannot because Van Rick was a soft fellow never meaning any harm to any man least of all the Indians. That boy did not know which end of a rifle to shoot with God Rest Him.
So I do hate the wolves & I do hate Mr. Lo & I tell you the wolf cries do sometimes fill the whole Valley from one side to the other as one pack answers another & there on the bastion with Nevin & Ridgeway I imagined they might stop it if the surgeon’s victim ceased his screaming but in truth I knew this was not the case at all. The wolves do not need a reason to howl no more than the Indian needs a reason to cut us down though if I am honest the Indian has every reason to do it & part of me cannot hardly blame him.
“Sounds like the surgeon’s got his saw out,” Sgt. Nevin said to be saying something to block out the noise of the poor fellow’s cries.
Says I feeling low & melancholy, “God Preserve that wood cutter. He will be no more cutting this season with 1 leg.”
Ridgeway said nothing at first & the terrible wailing & wolf howling continued til it all came to be like fingernails against a schoolboy’s slate a terrible sound that will twist a fellow’s blood making him vexed & anxious. I wondered how any man or woman in the whole Ft. could sleep with the din of it & why did the Surgeon not give the poor man a draft for to make him senseless under the saw & why did we not shoot every f______ wolf & yipping coyote in the territories as well. I would do it if I gave the orders round here.
After some more of this Ridgeway looking up at the stars says, “Is it worth it Sgt.?”
“Is what all worth it?” says Sgt. Nevin in a peeved manner for he did not know what to make of the Quaker boy & as a rule did not abide questions that did not have ready answers. Also he could not employ the usual threats a 1st Sgt. will use to silence a soldier. But truth be told I did want to hear the answer myself for oft times I had no notion what Ridgeway’s questions meant at the time only to find myself later in agreement or thinking & pondering on his words in my bunk.
Says Ridgeway, “This fort. The precious Bozeman trail & those who travel it to the gold fields. The gold itself which is mere metal & no good of its own accord for anything but the harvesting of avarice & the fostering of greed. Is any of it worth the lives of the men here? The lives of the people dying out there on the trail? The lives of the Sioux & Cheyanne?”
There did be times when Ridgeway’s words sounded to my ears like words from a book but this time in his voice I could hear something like anger or weariness or both in his words & this was not like him.
Nevin puffed at his pipe & I could see the cut of his frown in the orange light of the brazier. Says he, “The lives of the Sioux & Cheyanne well I do not give a G___ D___ about them. The deader they are the better we are but after that I care not a good G__ D___ neither if anything is worth anything else. Soldiers get told where to go & what to do & they G__ D___ do it. Worth it does not figure at all for a soldier Sir.”
“That man is not a soldier Sgt.,” Ridgeway did reply. “Those killed on the road to Virginia City are not soldiers. And the men telling soldiers where to go are quite comfortable in their beds back in Washington or Ft. Riley.”
Nevin pointed his pipe stem at the Quaker. “We are here to protect them folks on the road & that wood cutter is paid a fair wage to cut wood in Indian country. He is no slave & chose to come here. You will have to ask him was losing a leg worth it.”
I grew nervous for I could sense by his words & by the sound of them in his mouth that the 1st Sgt. had it up to his eyeballs with Ridgeway & his queer manner & his questions & because I am fond of both men I did not want a row to start.
Says I to them, “Well it would be worth something I think to God above but what only He can tell. Otherwise the Sgt. may be right Ridgeway. We Bills just do what is ordered & do not think much on it. I am told protect the road & build a Ft. so I guard the road & build the Ft. If someone does order me chase & kill the Indians well then I do that as well. No one above me ever asks do I think it worth anything & I never in truth ask it myself. For a body has to eat & soldiering is as fine a way of getting your grub as any.” I stopped myself for a moment realising I was thinking while speaking which can be a dangerous proposition for a lowly soldier but I decided I could speak my mind to the 2 of them without fear of judgement.
I went on, “Sgt. Nevin is right as well Ridgeway to say that poor chap hollering down the heavens well God Help him but no one did order him to come here & take 10 times the wages a wood cutter in Maine or Massachusetts would get. But I agree with you that it is fierce sad all the same to hear a man in pain & my prayers go with him & his lost leg Ridgeway.”
The Quaker boy smiled at this. “You make yourself out to be a simpler man than you are Michael. But I take your point & meant no offence by my question Sgt.”
“None taken,” says Nevin sounding less mithered by young Ridgeway now.
He stood up then taking one last long look above him at the stars. The keening did quieten down a little & the poor patient was saying something along with his wailing perhaps praying for mercy or perhaps cursing the sawbones for a butcher.
Says Nevin to me in a peevish manner as if it was myself asking the odd questions, “You keep your eyes wide Pvt. & sing out if you see anything strange. Mind not to let your attention be tied up by the Picture Maker’s wonderings or I will feed your G___ D___ corpse to the wolves out there.”
“Wide I will keep them Sgt.,” says I hoping that Ridgeway would not take offence but he never did.
In truth I think only Sgt. Nevin in the whole of the Ft. could be angered by that Quaker boy. You never met such a peaceable & generous & untroubled fellow until the things that came to happen later the things which brought you here Sir God Forgive Us. Poor Ridgeway. Poor fellow he was cursed to know us.