Giving up was such a relief that at lights out I fell direct into the first night of real sleep I’d had since I set foot in the barracks. Soon as I let my guard down, though, the night riders came creeping out of the dark forest where they’d hidden, waiting to pick me off as I rolled away from Old Mister’s farm.
Their faces were tombstone white, but the hands they reached out for me were black. I wasn’t in the wagon, though. I was running. Trying to run anyway, but I had that damn skirt on again. Though I fought to move, I was frozen in place. They were coming for me. I glanced over my shoulder, but it wasn’t the pattyrollers coming for me. The savages were. They would discover I was a woman and use me the way they used enemy women. When they grabbed me, though, their hands weren’t red, but black as rotten pawpaws. And I knew I was to be lynched. I tried to scream, but my tongue was frozen and the cry got trapped in my throat. Trapped by a tight strap of cloth.
I woke as a gag was cinched up so deep in my mouth, I near choked on my own tongue. I lashed out in the darkness at my attackers. Kicked one fellow in the head, another in the crotch judging from the loud “Oof!” he blew out.
“Hey?” I heard Lem ask. “Whatcha all—”
The hollow clunk of what sounded to be the heavy stock of a Spencer hitting Lem’s head was followed by a screech as the iron feet of his bunk raked across the floor when his falling body pushed it aside.
Six pairs of hands cocooned me in a rough army blanket until I couldn’t fight anymore. They finished the job by winding rope around the whole package and tying me fast.
They toted me atop their heads like a wild boar they were bringing back to camp to be dressed out. I heard a door open, then close, and we were outside.
They’re going to drown me in the river.
I waited for the slope that meant they were carrying me down the steep hill to the Mississippi and tried to work out how to get untied before I drowned.
But the descent I was expecting never came. Instead another door opened and from the way the sound of it closing echoed, I worked out that we were in the washroom with its hard tile walls and floors. This I came to know for a fact when they chunked me on the tile floor, face-first, causing my teeth to bust through my lip so that blood filled my gagged mouth. Then a couple of men hoisted up the draping ends of the blanket and started to swing. When they’d built up a good head of steam, they slammed me against the wall. I wasn’t knocked out, only left senseless. I drew myself into a ball as much as I could, trying to protect my head.
“Come on, boys!” It was no surprise to hear Vikers’s rasp of a voice. The hatred surged up in me throbbing hot. “Put your backs into it, we’ve got to give our champion shooter a real ride.”
The next few swings were the worst. After that I was beyond feeling anything. Worn out, and figuring they’d killed me, they dumped me on the floor. I played possum. They untied me. Vikers kicked the blanket away from my face with the toe of his boot and I sprung on him like a cougar leaping up to rip out a deer’s throat. I would have brought him down had his men not locked a stranglehold on me.
Vikers pulled up straight so that he stood an inch or two over me since my legs had given out and I drooped between Greene and Caldwell. “What did I tell you?” Vikers asked the other troopers’d ganged up with him. “Our man here sleeps in his uniform. Never takes it off. Any y’all ever seen our man here naked?”
His mob, already scenting even more blood, tried to top each other with insults about me and the nasty doings they claimed they’d seen me and Lem get up to. When they reached the right pitch of blood lust, Vikers pulled out a wicked-looking wire brush last used for scrubbing flaking paint off the stables. “Man never undresses, is a man must not ever bathe,” Vikers said. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
They keened for me like one of Iyaiya’s mobs calling for an enemy prisoner to be thrown down to them.
“I’d say it was past time Stanky had him a bath. Get him on his feet.”
Greene and Caldwell jerked me up, and though my mouth was gagged and my throat was nearly ruined with my silent screams, I gargled out a protest.
“Appears Stanky is trying to say something,” Vikers observed, playful as a cat toying with a mouse. “What do you have to say, Stanky? Were you going to scream for your sweetheart Mule to come save you? Let’s hear what Stanky has to say. Take the gag off.”
When they did, I didn’t have to work to lower my voice as I promised, “If you touch me, you hard-tailed bastard, I will kill you. Even if I have to come back from the grave to do it, you will die, screaming in agony.”
The men’s hold slackened a bit. I could of terrified any one of them into letting me go. But Vikers, who feared losing power more than death, said, “I believe this mouth needs cleaning up first.”
The pain of a wire brush being ripped across your lips is beyond my ability to describe. But not a drop fell from my eyes, nor did a cry escape from my ravaged mouth after that first cruel stroke. This surprised Vikers, and I took the opportunity to kick him in the face. That broke the spell and they fell on me, Vikers gouging me with the brush, the strokes getting hotter and harder when I refused to scream for mercy.
Panting hard as a roused-up stallion on the prod, his eyes walled, nostrils open wide, quivering in an odd way, Vikers ordered, “Strip him!”
With many idiot remarks about how I stunk and deserved what was coming, his boys tore my pants off, revealing my drawers. I went limp then, defeated by the inevitability of what was to come. Much worse than dying was how those men would use me when they discovered my true nature. There was no evil worse than a man sticking his business in a woman not of a like mind. I wished fervently for death instead of that. They were clawing off my drawers when the sound of a rifle being cocked stopped them.
Sergeant Allbright stepped forward. Lem, blood caked around a gash on his head that showed white to the bone, stood beside him. Allbright, his carbine pointed direct at Vikers, said, “Next man touches that trooper is dead.”
Vikers and the rest backed away, and though the pain was terrible when I moved, I managed to pull my uniform on.
Allbright took a long time getting his words out for his mouth was clogged with disgust. “There’s one reason and one reason alone that I am not going to hand every man in here a dishonorable discharge. Our orders came in late today. We deploy tomorrow for Fort Arroyo. I won’t muster every single one of you out. Not because you don’t deserve it, but because we are the first colored cavalry regiment in the history of the United States Army and we get one chance. I will not allow you animals to destroy that chance for those more worthy who will follow you.”
He stared, breathing hard against the anger he was reining back. When he spoke, though, it was with a sadness that stung worse than anger ever could. “Damn you all. Don’t be the animals they tried to turn us into. You are not slaves anymore. But if you keep on acting like slaves, like something less than men, they will keep on treating us as such. We will only be free men when we act like free men. Now get out of my sight. All of you.”
They slunk away beneath his hard stare. Barely able to walk, I shuffled past Allbright and he said, “I’ll leave your orders with the regimental clerk.” He shook his head, started to walk away, then stopped and added, “Or,” he paused before finishing, “you can come with us. If you’re fit for service.”
I think he made the offer to punish Vikers. Also, I’m certain he didn’t believe I would take it.
“I’m fit, sir,” I mumbled, blood and pain flowing with every word.
Allbright, disappointed and disgusted, shook his head sorrowfully as he walked away.
Nearly carrying me, Lem helped me outside. We passed Vikers and he hissed, “Something not right about you, Cathay. You know it and I know it. You can hide it here, but no place to hide out there. No place to hide.”