Someone stepping on his grave. He says, “Go fuck yourself, Private.”
Private Rawson drags his finger across his throat. “See you in hell, Corporal Kohn.”
“FEELING BETTER, LIEUTENANT?”
Molloy sips his brandy-coffee and nods. Cooke knows the count, of course he does. He most probably has three parts cognac or Kentucky corn mash in his own brew. And sure what harm?
“Yessir, General.”
Cooke observes Molloy for a long moment, as if reconsidering something. For good or ill.
“Fort Phil Kearny,” Cooke says, picking a half-smoked cheroot from a clay bowl on his desk.
“I don’t know it, sir. Forts seem to be sprouting up all over. Like . . .” He had it. Gone now. Weeds? Don’t think the old boy would like that one. Mum’s the word. Shtum, like Kohn says. German, the word. Yiddish? Both perhaps.
“Yes, well, it’s in the Dakota Territory, Mountain District. My district, Lieutenant.”
Cooke waits and Molloy nods obligingly, imagining he knows what is coming. Ponies. New forts want horseflesh. The general sees in me a fine drover and desires that I bring a string of them to some forlorn fort of barked logs and mud floors. And what did you expect, Molloy?
Cooke says, “There’s been some foul business there. Foul.”
Not this. “Sir?”
“In my fort, my district, Lieutenant Molloy.”
An edge around the words, Cooke’s Virginia coming out in them. Glowering through cheroot smoke as if Molloy were the foul business itself. Despite the brandy, Molloy swallows and sits straighter in his chair.
“What sort of foul business, sir?”
Cooke shakes his head and flicks half an inch of ash in the direction of the clay bowl. “McCulloch. Hugh McCulloch.”
Something familiar in the name. “I don’t believe I’ve met him, sir.”
“Secretary of the Treasury, Molloy. A Republican from Indiana and great friend to all the high and mighty in Washington. Particular friend to President Johnson himself and Lincoln before him.”
“Now I am certain I don’t know him, sir.” McCulloch, the man who replaced Fessenden. He’d read about it somewhere.
Cooke cracks a smile. “No, I don’t imagine you do, Lieutenant. But you’re going to be working for him.”
Molloy tries to link a string of cavalry mounts to the Secretary of the Treasury. Cannot. He sips the dregs of his brandy-coffee. End this meeting soon, he thinks. Agree to anything to get out.
“How is that, sir?”
“His brother-in-law—McCulloch’s wife’s own dear brother—has the sutler’s concession at Fort Phil Kearny. Had. He had the contract there until two weeks ago when he got himself cut to ribbons along with his wife and an assistant. Nasty, brutish business, Lieutenant, more so when you are in-law to the Secretary of the Treasury who is a fine friend to President Johnson and a finer friend to our very own Secretary of War, whence comes this order.”
“Sounds dreadful, sir.”
“I have the Secretary of War in my ear, Lieutenant. As he no doubt has the Secretary of the Treasury in his and the Secretary of the Treasury has his wife in his own. Justice, they seek, Molloy, I don’t need to tell you, for what has befallen the good sutler.”
Cooke’s face shows what he thinks of such a notion. Justice? For a sutler? Was it in even God’s power to conceive of such a thing?
Molloy stays silent.
Cooke says, “I telegraphed the man and told him that word from the fort was that Indians did for all three of them but he, apparently, has had it from somebody—and God knows how word got from there to Washington so damn fast—but he has had word that it was not, in fact, Indians at all.”
“Indians, sir,” Molloy says, gazing down into his cup and finding it empty. He wishes he had a cheroot of his own.
“Now I do not know, nor give a sweet shit, if it was Indians or soldiers or the goddamn whirling dervishes of Ottoman Turkey who killed him, but some sonofabitch’s neck is going into the noose for it in order that the Secretary of War will cease to breathe down mine. Do you see where this train is headed, Lieutenant?”
Sober, Molloy assumes he would have seen it by now. “A neck for the noose, sir?”
“Boots on the gallows. The Secretary wants them and you will bring them to me, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t see how—“
“Or moccasins, Molloy. I do not care a nickel fuck, but someone pays for the murder of the Secretary’s wife’s brother, cad and bastard though he was reputed to be. You’ll move out tomorrow. Bring your orderly and speak to the quartermaster about mules and supply. My orders are