the tent flaps. “Rest easy, sir. You have told me nothing I did not know before.”
Ridgeway holds out the bottle to Molloy, nearly three-quarters empty now. “Keep it, sir,” Molloy tells him. “I will find another soon enough.”
“WELL, WHAT DID HE TELL YOU? Was it Private O’Driscoll and his brother there in the hog ranch?” Kohn asks.
Molloy continues past him on his crutches, making for the gate wicket to pass into the quartermaster’s stockade. Kohn follows him. “Captain, was it O’Driscoll who killed the sutler and his wife, sir?”
“For the love of all that’s holy in the world, Daniel, leave it go. You are a full chisel bastard every waking hour of the day and it is not becoming of a friend, much less a soldier. Has the army taught you nothing?”
“He was there, wasn’t he? And his brother?”
Molloy crutches on in silence, sweat running from beneath his Hardee hat. They reach the gate wicket, unmanned in the daylight, and pass through.
“Sir, what did the picture-maker tell you?”
“He told me nothing, Daniel.”
“He told you they were there, didn’t he, sir?”
Molloy halts his progress. A long-haired billygoat trots up to him and noses his palm. Molloy pats its snout, takes a long, curved horn in his hand and roughs the goat. The goat playfully butts Molloy’s thigh. “That’s right, billy,” Molloy says. He digs under his buffalo coat and comes out with a boiled hard candy, thick with lint and flaked with loose tobacco, and feeds it to the billygoat. “That’s right, billy.”
“Sir, where are we going? We must arrest the O’Driscoll brothers. We have to find out where they are and put them in irons. You know the men in C Company will tell them we’ve spoken to the picture-maker. The two of them will be on French leave before we can get to them.”
“We, Daniel? I am going to call on the one-armed sawyer to get another bottle. We are going nowhere.”
Kohn stares out at the snow-capped peaks of the Big Horns beyond the palisade. He clears his throat, spits. “You are drunk, sir. You have finished already a bottle and it is not even two bells in the afternoon.”
“I did not finish the bottle, I gifted it to the good photographer.”
“Quakers are not known as to take a drink, sir.”
“Because things are not known does not mean they do not happen, Daniel. You know that well enough from the war. And there is not a man on earth of any persuasion who will not bend temperance given the right or wrong circumstance.”
“You are drunk goddamn it, sir.” Kohn shoves the goat away roughly.
“Not drunk enough, Daniel.”
“I’ll go and lift them myself, sir. They killed that man and his wife.”
Molloy turns to Kohn and there is life, rage, in his features that has not been there for some time. “Cooke sent me to do his bidding, Daniel, not you. And not his own bidding, either. Not the bidding of a general officer in time of war but the cess work of a fat, cocoa-sipping fucker back in Washington with no more manners or care for a soldier’s lot than this goat. A politician, for the love of God. No, a politician’s wife’s bidding, Daniel. I am not inclined to carry some politician’s nightsoil nor his wife’s. Nor will I be Cooke’s executioner so that he may receive a posting more suited to his glorious and wholly blinkered view of his abilities as a fighting man. Damn Cooke and damn the Secretary of the Treasury’s wife. I will see no man, no soldier hanged for them.”
“They are murderers, sir, not soldiers. The picture-maker, Glover. He told you as much.”
“What do you know of them, Daniel?”
“I know they were there when Kinney and his wife—a woman, sir—harmless, unarmed, were cut down in cold blood. That’s not soldier’s work. Soldiers don’t kill unarmed women, children. It is not a soldier’s work . . .”
Kohn realizes his mistake and goes silent. Part of him wonders if he is glad to have said it, if only to hurt Molloy.
Molloy smiles sadly at Kohn and shakes his head. “It is not soldier’s work. You are right about that, Daniel. Neither is being a stinking constable, a filthy Pinkerton man turning over stones to read trails of snail shit beneath. That man told me nothing, Daniel. Nothing. A good friend to them and no informer. A fine friend.” Molloy’s words are beginning to slur.
“What will we do then, sir?” He has difficulty keeping the disgust from