are a cavalry man, I can see from your boots and the way you hold yourself in the saddle like God gave you the buggered earth and a horse for you to survey it from, damn your eyes, and look down on us poor, haversack-humping infantrymen, but I cannot have . . . who did you say you wanted to arrest again?”
The lieutenant blinks and blinks again as if attempting to focus.
“Privates Thomas and Michael O’Driscoll, sir.”
“You and this goddamn, son-of-a-bitch Injun?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, fuck your sister, Sergeant, but we haven’t enough men here to fight off this stinking savage’s wife and children let alone a war party. They took our picket from his post and we have still not found his body. Yesterday. Or today I cannot remember. I don’t imagine Captain Brown will allow—”
“Where can I find Captain Brown, sir?”
“Why he is in the blockhouse, you blockhead. Where else would you expect the man to be?”
Kohn does not answer but moves on, his horse’s hooves sucking in the cold mud. Sawing and chopping men, civilian and army alike, stop their work to watch Kohn and the Pawnee.
“Sergeant!” the lieutenant shouts after him and Kohn pulls up and turns his mount to face him.
“You salute an officer when you depart his company, goddamn your soreass heart.”
Jonathan does not turn his horse but waits, baiting the watching sawyers and soldiers to hold his eyes for more than a second. Kohn salutes, crisply.
“That will be all,” the lieutenant says, as if he has lost interest in them already.
Several hundred yards away, following a muddy trail through the wreckage of stumps, passing more soldiers and timbermen who stop their work to watch them, they come to the sawmill on the stream. Beside it is a fortified blockhouse, a long, deep pit dug four feet into the earth with walls of stacked stones rising several feet up from the banks of the pit. One half of the pit is roofed over with logs, thick mud and moss covering, for insulation and protection from fire. A chimney pipe rises up from this roof and there is a fire roaring in the long, open end of the pit around which are seated several men drinking from steaming tin mugs. Muskets rest against the walls, and crates of cartridges are stacked at convenient locations in the pit. Kohn notices loopholes built into the dry stone fortifications from which the men in the blockhouse can direct fire. A formidable defense, Kohn thinks, if they can access the stream for water. A half-company of men could hold out for days here if they had the ammunition.
From his horse, he calls down to the men around the open fire. The whine from the sawmill and the hack of axes force him to shout. “Captain Brown—is he here?”
All the men stare—with hatred, and some fear, Kohn thinks—at Jonathan, and Jonathan stares back. Kohn rests his hand on the butt of his revolver under his buffalo coat and repeats his question. One of the men looks over to him and nods to the roofed end of the blockhouse.
“That fucking redskin stays where he is,” the private says, looking back to Jonathan now. “He climbs down we’re likely to gut and skin him, like his friend in there . . .” Smoke from cook fires and wood dust from the mill hangs dense and low in the air, enshrouding the few remaining trees around the mill and stream bank.
Kohn says, “This Indian is a scout serving the United States Army, under command of General Cooke. If he is bothered in any way, there will be broken bones here. Is that understood?”
The men around the fire cough and go back to their mugs, taking their eyes from the Pawnee and ignoring Kohn, who climbs down a ladder into the blockhouse pit before crossing to the rough pine door of the shelter.
He knocks and calls out. Some moments later, he is given leave to enter. Inside, his eyes wince from the heavy smoke of tallow candles and an orange-glowing woodstove and he must duck his head under the low, log beams of the roof. Moss and earth hang between the logs and Kohn brushes them away from his face.
Two privates lounge on cut log stools in front of the woodstove. They are smoking pipes and drinking from tin mugs like the men outside, though no steam rises from their mugs and there is a smell of strong spirits in the cramped bunker. As Kohn’s eyes adjust,