what he did tell rings true enough now so maybe he is less a fool than I thought him.
For he did regale us from horseback as we rode with tall tales that do not seem so tall now. He yarned of savages taking the scalps of men still alive them victims surviving to walk about the place with their skulls shining in the sun like billiard balls. Stories of men standing talking to you one moment & gagging on an arrow to the throat the next. Stories made for to scare a man into vigilance I see now but I did think them only nonsense then. Such is the way of soldiers everywhere I reckon. They learn nothing until blood is spilt.
And learn we did because of Carrington choosing such a rum spot for to build his City of Logs. For though in summer it may appear to be Eden itself it is a rum & cursed place I tell you Sir & I pray you will leave it as soon as your business here with me is done.
For the ground is now too hard for grave digging & the bodies be stacked like cord wood in the Q.M.’s cold cellar & soon that cellar will be full I reckon full up altogether with the bodies of men who did not see Mr. Lo coming with his hatchets bared & arrows strung & knives out for all of us who would choose to build a mighty Ft. in the heart of his Valley.
30
December 17, 1866—Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory
MOLLOY IS NOT IN HIS SICKBED AND KOHN IS NOT SURPRISED.
“Never came back,” says one of the surgeon’s orderlies. “Found what he been looking for I reckon, Sergeant. You might try the junior officers’ kip. There was a time had there last night or so the scuttle says.”
Kohn sighs.
He crosses the parade ground and knocks at the door to the junior officers’ barracks and waits some time for his knock to be answered. The morning air is sharp and still and numbing cold under an almost turquoise tub of sky. A man can see that the sky is a round, bowled thing out here in the empty expanses, Kohn thinks. He has heard it is the same at sea. He waits for another minute and knocks again until the door is opened by a bleary-eyed man in his undershirt, unshaven, snarling.
“What in God’s goddamn name—”
“I’m looking for Captain Molloy, sir,” Kohn says, knowing how to broach a drunk and angry officer. It is his lot in life, his cross, Molloy would say, to bear. “The colonel wants a word. Colonel Carrington.” Kohn also knows to invoke higher powers when negotiating higher powers than himself. In truth he has neither seen nor heard from Carrington since his original meeting with the man.
“I know who the goddamn colonel is. You don’t have to tell me.” The officer rubs his face, squinting in the harsh winter daylight. “Who does he want? Does he want to see me?”
Kohn remains impassive. “No, sir. It’s Molloy, 7th Cav, he wants to see.”
The officer wipes a dried paste of spittle from his mustache. “Well, there is a hobbled cav lieutenant asleep in front of the stove if that’s who you mean. I never did get his name.”
The officer turns away, leaving the door ajar for Kohn to follow. Inside the barracks two bunks hold sleeping men. The other four are empty, bedclothes in disarray. The air is cold and rank, the stove door gaping, cold ashes in its belly. There is something chaotic and unkempt about the barracks. Officers are under less scrutiny from their seniors than that in which they themselves hold their men but in Kohn’s experience, their quarters are generally well squared away. They have men to do it for them after all. Perhaps here at Phil K., things being stretched as they are, the men of the fort are needed for things other than cleaning the officers’ billets.
“Sir,” Kohn says. Molloy is snoring fitfully, wrapped in a buffalo coat on the floor in front of the stove, his breath visible in the stale, morning-after air. Kohn nudges his shoulder with his boot. “Sir, where are your crutches?”
The officer who answered the door swallows the remains of a glass of whiskey from a long table littered with bottles, mugs, empty peach cans and herring tins. Cigar stubs stud the floorboards. The officer winces and says, “He burned them, last night, when we ran short of firewood.