Days Without End (Days Without End #1) - Sebastian Barry Page 0,31

and the sergeant whispers his other orders, and how we are to form in a sickle moon shape so as to cover as much of the village as we can with fire after the gun has done its worst. Crows say there is a deep dark ravine behind the tents so we reckon we can cover the runaways left and right. The squaws will try to get the children away and the men will cover them till they reach some safety. If Caught-His-Horse-First is true to character he will fight as fierce as a mountain cat. There is no easiness in what we are doing. If the Sioux get the upper hand we are all food for hogs. There won’t be no mercy anyhow because we know we ain’t seen no sign of mercy beforehand.

Sergeant ain’t no beginner and he has placed his gun on somewhat higher ground by using his good judgement even in the dark and that seems right when the weak golden light of morning fills the land. Its beauty now feels treacherous and our hearts are sick with fear. We can’t seem to warm up none and yet we are moving about with vigour and the sergeant’s skinny shape walks over here, walks back there, and he whispers some instructions, he makes signs with his hands and arms, he is never still. The smoke of new fires rises from the Indian camp and it is suddenly as if we are hell’s men wandered into paradise.

So what is this sorrow then, this weight of sorrow? Pressing down on us. The gun is primed, rammed, and ready. The gunner is Hubert Longfield Ohio born. One half of his long thin face is blue from an old accident in the field. Guns blow up when they like, you never do know. He does all the work on the gun like he was dancing a queer old dance. He positions and pushes and opens and sets. He stands off with the firing string in his blue-mottled paws. Now he awaits the order, now he wants it. There’s two gunners ready to supply again. Every face of the watching troopers is turned towards them, a lean long moon of men. Must be six o’clock now and all the babes and the children of the camp are astir, and the squaws are at the kettles. We can see clear as paper cut-outs two buffalo skins stretched black and stiff on wooden frames. God knows where they found those buffalo, they must of ranged far afield for them. Now the skins are drying at the pace of drying skins, which is slower than a little brook of time. The wigwams are mightily decked and there’s none of the wretchedness you might begin to see in wigwams as you go back towards the east. Out here nothing much of us has touched them. The men will gladly take whisky if they find it, but they will drink everything they find in a sitting. A Sioux man will lie dead drunk for a day but the following day he will be Homer’s Hector again. These people before us made that treaty with the colonel but once the sorry articles of the treaty was neglected they went back to what they knew. If they was waiting on government victuals they starved.

The sergeant whispers his order like the word of a lover and Hubert Longfield pulls on his string and the gun roars. It is the roar of one hundred lions in a small room. We would gladly put our hands over our ears but our muskets are raised and trained along the line of the wigwams. We are watching for the rat-run of the survivors. There is a stretch of time as long as creation and I can hear the whizzing of the shell, a spinning piercing sound, and then it makes its familiar thud-thud and pulls at the belly of heaven and spreads its mayhem around it, the sides of wigwams torn off like faces, the violent wind of the blast toppling others flat, revealing people in various poses of surprise and horror. There is murder and death immediately. There are maybe thirty tents and just this one shell has made a black burning cancer in the middle. Squaws are gathering up children of all sizes and looking wildly about as if they don’t know what direction will be safety. Then the sergeant gives an order in full voice as our calling card has now