what I done with my manners. By all means, you little sack a’ shit, pass by.” McAfee made a show of stepping back, bowing at the waist and slowly throwing out his hand like a matador. Don’t do it kid, Hollister thought to himself. There were two guards, both armed with Springfields and blackjacks, talking in low tones to each other more than forty yards away, up by the barracks. Hollister knew the guards wouldn’t do much of anything. They were probably as terrified of McAfee as everyone else.
Chee stood still a moment. He closed his eyes and stepped past McAfee. The kid was a hard worker, and he’d dug up more ground this morning than anyone in the detail, Hollister included.
As he moved past the ex-sergeant, Hollister wanted to shout out a warning, but he knew better. Chee needed to deal with this, and if Hollister got involved he’d have to handle McAfee himself somehow, and so far the giant ape had left him alone.
As McAfee remained bowed, pretending to give Chee a pass, he flexed his arm, fist clenched behind his back. Hollister saw the big man’s arm swing forward and winced. He’d watched McAfee fight before and knew he was deceptively fast. This blow might just separate Chee from his head.
But it never landed. McAfee swung hard, but Chee was no longer standing where he should have been. The ex-sergeant’s momentum twisted him around and off-balance so fast that Hollister didn’t see how Chee got behind him. His foot shot out and connected with the back of McAfee’s knee, and the giant man crumpled. Chee’s left hand shot out like a sidewinder, grabbing a handful of McAfee’s hair and pulling his head back. With his other arm he drove his elbow into the bully’s nose. The crunch and crack of bone and tissue made McAfee bellow in pain. One of the other men moved on Chee, swinging his shovel like an axe. Chee released McAfee, who fell to his hands and knees, blood darkening the ground beneath him.
Chee easily ducked beneath the shovel and kicked the man solidly in the groin. He dropped the shovel, clutching his crotch with both hands. Chee took the man’s head in both hands and drove his knee into his face. He slumped to the ground, finished.
McAfee was standing, his mouth and nose a mass of twisted gore and blood, his eyes watering.
Three of McAfee’s men down in the hole with Hollister grabbed their shovels, thinking about climbing up to join the fray. Hollister moved in front of them and with a commanding look at the first one, an illiterate trooper named Smith, said quietly, “Don’t.”
The man looked at Hollister with hooded eyes. He tried to shrug past, and Jonas put his hand on the man’s chest. “I said, don’t.” The three of them saw something in Hollister they didn’t like and backed off.
Up above them, McAfee charged at Chee, trying to get his hands on the younger, faster man. His primitive brain told him if he could do that, he could rid himself of the pain he felt by pounding away at Chee until it was gone. What he didn’t realize was that the fight was already over. Hollister, with one eye on the three dregs in the hole with him, watched in quiet fascination as Chee leapt in the air, his foot flicking out and taking McAfee square on the chin. McAfee went down and didn’t move.
“The hell you doing, Chee?” said one of the screws, a blue-coated corporal named Larson. He and the other guard had finally arrived, waiting as usual until the two men had settled things before taking action. Chee said nothing and the corporal drove the butt of his Springfield into the young man’s gut. He groaned and doubled over, dropping to his knees.
What the corporal hadn’t noticed was the rifle butt had hardly hit Chee at all. He’d managed to bend his body away with it and take most of the force in his hands. He was acting. With Chee on the ground and Hollister in the hole, they were at eye level, and when the dark-skinned man winked mischievously at him, Hollister couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re going in the box, half-breed,” the corporal sneered as he and the other guard lifted Chee to his feet. “You men, drag this fat tub o’ lard to the surgeon.” McAfee’s followers scrambled out of the hole, pulling the sergeant and the other man to their feet, leading them away toward the administration buildings.
Hollister watched them for a while and returned to his digging.
Hollister dug on through the afternoon, then climbed out of the well, taking a break for water and hardtack with a piece of wormy bacon for lunch. The meat was inedible so he threw it over the wall of the fort. McAfee’s three varmints had never returned after hauling him to the infirmary. It was all the same to him; he preferred solitude.
As always, his mind returned to the ridge in the Wyoming Territory where he’d watched his men die four years ago. He remembered passing out as the wagon pulled away, and he’d woken up with the sun beating down on his face and his mount snorting at him from a few yards away. He was grateful he’d taken the time to train his mount, who he called Little Phil. The horse hadn’t spooked like most horses would. Besides mourning the loss of his men, the destruction of his life and career, and being locked up in Leavenworth for ten years, Jonas really missed that horse. Little Phil had been the best ride he’d ever had.
All that was left there on that ridge were the smoldering wagon and his horse. He mounted up and tried to follow the wagon trail, but quickly lost it. He was no tracker. He’d counted on Lemaire for that. As he rode back toward Deadwood, the face of the woman leaning over him kept returning to his memory. Had she been real or imaginary? He was convinced she was there, but why? Was she one of them? Or was she one of the party who had been able to escape somehow?
It was nearly a two-day ride back to Camp Sturgis, where he arrived sunburned, his horse nearly dead and wild with thirst. He staggered into the colonel’s office and reported what had happened. The next day the colonel got him a fresh mount and sent two companies back with him to the site.
There was nothing to see. The wagon was still there, but there were no bodies, no other evidence. There was another thing that bothered Hollister: the wagon was still full of goods. No one, not even the Sioux, had salvaged anything. In his heart he knew it was because there was a veil of something evil over the place where his troopers had died. His eleven murdered troopers had disappeared without a trace.
After returning to Camp Sturgis, Hollister slowly came to the realization that his colonel didn’t believe him. The old man had sat Hollister down and gone over the story with him again and again. What had he seen? How had his men died? It must have been the Sioux, wasn’t that how it happened? Not some strange and unbelievable story about blood-drinking creatures.
Hollister never wavered, and after nearly six hours of nonstop interrogation, a private walked in with a telegram for the colonel. Hollister remembered him running his hand through his white hair as he read it. He barked an order and a detail of troopers entered the room, ordered Hollister to attention, and arrested him.
He was held in the brig, and court-martialed two weeks later for dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, and several other made-up charges. The next thing he knew, he was in Leavenworth.
Hollister rarely thought of anything else but that day. He remembered the look on the face of the man- creature as the sun had risen. How the smoke had rolled off his clothes and skin as the light peeked over the horizon. He heard the serpentlike hiss of his voice. “We shall meet again. For Caroline,” he’d said.
Well, he’d have a hard time finding Hollister now. Hollister thrust his shovel into the ground and climbed back into the hole. He was wearing his striped cavalry pants and a red undershirt, soaked through with sweat and grime. The sun was almost gone behind the western wall of the prison fort. It would be chow time soon. Hollister laughed at the thought.
He had lost about thirty pounds since being incarcerated, and he’d never tended toward heavy anyway. The food in Leavenworth was awful beyond description, as long as the description commenced at disgusting. Hardtack was about all a man was able to choke down here.
“Hollister,” a voice called behind him.
He turned to find the duty officer; a first lieutenant named Garrick was headed his way. He figured now he’d have to make some kind of report about the fight. Whether he liked it or not, it looked like he was involved. Hollister scrambled up the ladder and came to attention, feet together and shoulders back. He made sure not to look the lieutenant in the eye when Garrick reached him. In his time in Leavenworth, Hollister had learned eye contact was a tool to be used in very specific ways: avoided with the guards and officers, used as a means of intimidation with the other prisoners.
“Sir,” he said.
“Colonel wants to see you. On the double, inmate.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and started for the administration building. Strangely, the lieutenant followed along. Word of Hollister’s story had made its way through the population and command structure at the prison. It had only served to isolate him because he was considered crazy. Luckily, in a place like Leavenworth, craziness was one way
