Let me go back to my beginning time in the army. We reached Fort Kearney, it was just near one of the new mining settlements, in a northern part of California that was mostly wilderness. Wild knotted country, said to be full to the brim with gold. Indians owned it, Yurok people. Maybe it wasn’t Kearney, I forget, Kearney is an Irish name. The mind is a wild liar and I don’t trust much in it that I find there. To tell a story I have to trust it but I can issue a warning like a ticket master issuing a ticket for a western-bound train that will be obliged to go through wilderness, Indians, outlaws, and storms. There was a local militia made up of the townsmen and some of the miners scattered about on the claims. They just couldn’t live with the thought of Indians and they went out in parties and scoured through the hills and tried to kill them. They could of captured the men and put them to work sluicing and digging if they had wished, that was California-style law. They could of took in the women and children for slaves and concubines but at this time they preferred just to shoot what they could find.
In Fort Kearney that night when we dusted off the bunks and had our grub, the townsmen came in and told us of the latest awful happenings from the Indians. There was a miner they said on the far edge of the settlement and the Yurok had stolen his mule. The way they told it it was the finest mule ever seen in the world. They stole his mule and tied him down in the dust and whipped his face a little. They told him he was digging in a graveyard and he must desist. These Yuroks were not big in stature but little men. The townsmen said the women were the ugliest women in creation. There was one New England man called Henryson said this and he was laughing about it. The major listened patiently enough but when Henryson said about the women he told him to shut up, we didn’t know why. Henryson shut up obediently enough. He said he was glad to see the cavalry there. It was a boon to the town. Then we felt quite proud. Well pride is the fool’s breakfast.
The sergeant was silent all through, he just sat on a two-legged brace stool and glowered at the ground like he couldn’t wait to hear the end of this deposition and get out there and do what we came to do. What that was seemed to comprise of finishing what the militia had begun. Henryson said they wanted the country cleared and the major said nothing then. He just nodded in his quiet way and his face looked sorta handsome and good, especially against the face of Henryson, which looked quite queer and black, like he had bitten off too many powder caps in his time. Then the townsmen gave the troopers a keg and we drank that into the small hours and played cards and there was those brief fights that you’d expect and men were ill as poisoned dogs.
Me and John Cole, staggering back to the hard bunks but knowing whisky would be our pillow, paused at the designated pissing spot by the boundary wall. There was a picket on the top of the wall, and all we saw was the hump of his dark back. He could have been sleeping for all the back said. The major was just finishing, pulling the strings of his flies tight again.
Goodnight, Major, sir, I said, to his own dark shoulders. He looked back at us. I saluted him as I was bound to do. In his whisky-sodden state his head weren’t quite as moored as usual on his neck. He seemed to be in a sort of fury. He saluted chaotically and shook his head and then turned it upward to the stars.
Are you alright, Major, sir? I said.
It’s a long way to come for a stolen mule, he said, ferociously, like an actor on the stage.
Then he was muttering, I heard the name Henryson, and something about letters to the colonel, and depredations, and murders of settlers, and damn lies. But this speech seemed to be directed at the wall. He was moving about awkwardly, trying to keep his feet on the sodden ground. Three hundred men make quite a bit of mud. And the stench was ferocious, it was a wonder the picket stood it.
It’s a long way to come for a stolen mule, and a whupping, he said, with an emphasis on the last word, like it was something he might like to administer to Henryson.
We helped him back to his quarters and then steered our own way back to ours.
He’s a good man, that major, said John Cole, with all the definiteness of the drunken man.
And then we quietly fucked and then we slept.
Next morning bright early despite the depredations to our bodies we saddled up. It was cold as dark dreams because now it was late in the year and the sun wasn’t just as keen as it had been previously. There was a frost across all that ground and we could see great shrouds of frost hanging in the redwoods that grew thereabouts. Long low hills waved with grasses where the trees had failed or been felled, we didn’t know. We were told we had about fourteen hours’ riding ahead. The scouts seemed to know the way after the instructions of the militia the night before. We were told the militia had rode ahead in the darkness, which vexed the major hugely. He shook his head and cursed civilians. Well our muskets were primed and we had food in our bellies and we were inclined to think well of the enterprise. The sore backs of the long journey west seemed less to the fore of our minds. All that riding grinds down your backbone till I believe you gain for yourself a little store of bone dust in your buttocks. That’s what it felt like. Every rut, every slip of your horse is a jolt of pain. But my horse that time was a sleek grey creature that you couldn’t feel displeasure with. John Cole was mounted on a broken-hearted nightmare right enough. He had to pull the mouth off of her to get his way. The mare had snapped her martingale somewhere in the desert so she was free to saw her head up and down just as she liked. But he put up with it. The horse was black as a crow and John Cole liked that.
The breath of three hundred horses makes a curling twisting mist in the cold November air. Their warm bodies were steaming from their exertions. We were obliged to try and keep formation but the ancient redwoods didn’t care about that. They were parting us and cutting us as if they were moving themselves. You could have tethered fifty horses to the girth of some of them. The curious birds of America were calling among the trees and from the far heights dropped the myriad speckles of frost. Now and then something cracked in the forest like musket-fire. There wasn’t any sense the trees needed us there. They were about their own business certainly. We made a racket of harness, spurs, equipment, things knocking and shrugging from movement, and hooves skittering and clacking on the earth, but the troopers barely spoke a word and for the most part we rode in silence as if by prior agreement. But it was the trees that pressed the silence on us. The major issued his orders with his arms and hands, and these were replicated down the line. Something was going on ahead, we sensed it before we saw it. Suddenly a huge nervousness invaded us, and you could almost hear the bones in our bodies tightening, closing, and our hearts seemed captive in our chests and desirous to escape. Men coughed to clear the spit of fright from their throats. We could hear a great sound of burning up ahead, as if ten thousand starlings were massing there, and through the trees we saw violent yellow and red flames, and a great pulse of black and white smoke everywhere. We came out of the trees at last. The fire was burning at the bottom of a wide meadow. There were four or five big lodges made of logs of redwood, and only one of these was burning, creating the storm of flames and smoke all on its own. The major spread us out across the meadow, as if he might be intending to charge against this conflagration. Then we were told to trot down slowly, our muskets at the ready. The townsmen were everywhere it seemed, running along the length of the Indian encampment, shouting at each other, and soon I saw the figure of Henryson, holding a big firebrand aloft. They were as busy as lawyers whatever was the work. Soon we were close and Henryson came back to talk to the major, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Then we were broken into sections and we were told there were Indians down in the copses to the right. We spurred on our horses and what with the steep decline felt like we were fleeing down the slope. Troopers Pearl and Watchorn were near me as normal, and then the thickness of the smaller trees obliged us to dismount, and a few dozen pushed on into the copse on foot. Then there was screaming and calling, and shrieking cries. We fixed bayonets to our muskets an
d now rushed forward, trying to avoid the springing undergrowth. Down from the burning lodge the smoke had plundered everywhere, into the copses, into every cranny, so that it was nigh impossible to see and our eyes smarted horribly. We saw the shapes of Indians and stabbed them with our bayonets. We worked back and forth through the milling bodies and tried to kill everything that moved in the murk. Two, three, four fell to my thrusts, and I was astonished not to be fired on, astonished at the speed and the horror of the task, and the exhilaration of it, my heart now not racing but burning in my breast like a huge coal. I stabbed and I stabbed. I saw John Cole stabbing, I heard him grunting and cursing. We wanted the enemy stilled and destroyed so that we could live ourselves. Every second I thought I would feel the famous tomahawk split my Irish skull, or the molten bullet pierce my chest. But nothing seemed to happen except our savage grunting and thrusting. We were a-feared to fire our muskets in case of murdering each other. Then all the work seemed done and all we heard then was the crying of survivors, the terrible groaning of the wounded. The smoke cleared and we saw at last something of our battlefield. Then my heart shrank in its nest of ribs. It was just women and children all around us. Not a brave among them. We had torn into the little hiding place of the squaws, where they had tried to take refuge from the burning and the killing. I was affrighted and strangely affronted, but mostly at myself, because I knew I had taken strange pleasure from the attack. It was as if I had drank six whiskies in a row. Watchorn and Pearl were dragging a woman from the ground and into the trees. I knew they were going to take their pleasure from her. I knew well. Babies that had spilled from their mothers’ arms were now stabbed and killed with the rest. The troopers worked until I believe their arms could do no more. Watchorn and Pearl rutting and shouting, then ruthlessly killing again. Till in runs the major shouting the loudest of all, with true horror in his face, shouting his orders, wild to bring a stop to things. Then we were all of us standing there panting, our cold sweat pouring down exhausted faces, our eyes glittering, our legs trembling, just like you would see dogs do after they have been killing lambs.
Wearily, wearily, we walked back. The townsmen were standing twenty feet back from the flames. It was still a ferocious turmoil of smoke and fire and resins sparking and spitting like some old painting of hell. The troopers massed together, not talking much yet, watching the flames and watching the townsmen. We didn’t know where we were. We didn’t for those moments know our names. We were different then, we were other people. We were killers, like no other killers that had ever been. Then with a huge queer sighing, the roof of the lodge fell in. It collapsed in a great smoulder and shatter of sparks. The sparks rushed into the air above and tumbled there, joyous and black and red. An enormous stormcloud of sparks. Then the walls of the building tumbled, and fierce in the dark worst flames burned the bodies, brave upon brave piled six deep, you could see the ruined faces and smell the roasting flesh, the corpses twisted strangely in the heat, fell and rolled onto the scorched grasses, no longer held by the walls. More sparks flew up, it was a complete vision of world’s end and death, in those moments I could think no more, my head bloodless, empty, racketing, astonished. Troopers wept, but they were not tears I knew. Others threw their hats into the air, as if it were a crazy celebration. Others held their heads as if they had just heard of the death of their own loved ones. There didn’t seem to be anything alive, including ourselves. We were dislocated, we were not there, now we were ghosts.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TOWNSPEOPLE WERE SET to put on a huge feast to show their gratitude. One short street with a few new buildings each side was the town. Troopers Pearl and Watchorn had been quietly detained by the major and were now in the lock-up at the fort, giving out betimes through the meal hatch, I do not doubt. Major said he would deal with them in due course. The town otherwise was heaving with preparations and general to-do for the following day. They had a bear for to butcher and also deer meat, they said, and a rake of dogs. Seemingly the Indians had a whole pack of them and the townspeople had rounded them up like sheep, drove them back to town, with all the crazy yapping and barking.
The major meanwhile sent back a detail with spades he got off the iron-goods store and we dug two long pits out in the wilds beside the deserted encampment and then we started to drag the bodies to them, and tipped them in. Major was loath to let wolves have them, though the townsmen didn’t seem to mind. Expressed a great deal of surprise at the major’s thoroughness, but the major, while polite, and even-tenored in his voice, wasn’t going just to think like everyone else. Major was of the opinion, and communicated it to us as we lined up reluctantly with our spades for the work, in that hateful and haunted place, that an Indian got a soul just like another man. I would like to tell you how I felt except it was all taking me back to Canada and the fever sheds that time and there’s no use going back there in my mind. Pits that time too, and people put in, thousands, babies too. I seen all that as a child myself. It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you or your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots.
So we dug like frightened heroes. John Cole I noted was the best digger, it wasn’t the first time he had turned the earth, you could tell. So I copied him. I had only ever pulled up potatoes with my hands as a little boy in Ireland, after my father shook the earth around them with his spade, that was just a little patch he had kept behind our house, it wasn’t like he was a true farmer. The frost was still on the ground everywhere and the temperature had started to freeze the little river that wound past the camp, making it I suppose a good choice for a stopping place. The grasses were sere and indifferent really, scratching the horizon of the sky with their sharp stems. That sky was clear and high and the lightest blue. We were four hours digging out the trenches. The troopers were singing as they worked, dirty-worded songs we all knew. We were sweating like window-glass in the winter. The major drove us on in his strange way, sort of cold, indifferent, like the grasses. He was set to do something and he was doing it. In the town he had asked the padre to come out but the townsmen vetoed that. After the hours of digging we were sent then to fetch across the bodies and we brought the bodies of the women and the children to the pit and after that we went to the burnt-out lodge and fetched in among the debris and the black dirt and got whatever we could of the bones of the braves, heads and such. Threw them in. You might have had a worried look when you saw how gently some of the men threw. Others throwing like they was throwing nothing of particular importance. But the gentle ones throwing gently. John Cole for instance. As for talk there were only the usual repartee that means nothing but somehow saves the heart and the day. It became clear to me that many of the squaws and the children had got out of the copsewood, because you could see still the trampling effect of their rushing off on the underwood. I found myself hoping many of the bucks had got away too but maybe I was asking for trouble thinking that. It was such a beautiful spot and the work was so lousy. You couldn’t help almost a more human thought. Nature asks you to go back a little and forget things. Gets under your hardened nature like a burrowing creature. When all the bodies were in, we covered over the pits with the soil we had left, like we were putting pastry tops on two enormous pies. It was wretched. Then we stood and took our hats off at the major’s behest and he spoke his few words. God bless these people, he said, and though we was doing our work as we were bound and ordered, may God forgive us. Amen, we said.
It was dark and we had hours of riding before us and we were not disappointed to mount up and head back.
Next day we were risen early at the fort and we washed off all our dirt at the water butts and put on our finery for the feast. That was, our usual uniforms brushed down best we could, and Bailey the barberman cut as many of the hairs as he could and shaved as many of the faces as he could too. There was a big line of men in their vests, waiting. The hair was bagged up in a linen sack and burned because of the nits carousing there. Then we were nigh ready, and rode with what gra
ce and style we could muster back into town. It is a fine thing to see three hundred men riding, and we all felt the fineness in it, I suppose we did. Some of us had drunk our livers clean in half, though we were young enough still. I weren’t even eighteen. Lower backs ground away by the hard saddles. Pain everywhere on waking. But the little grandeur of the line of riders affected us too. We were about the people’s business, we had done something for the people. Something like that. Puts a fire into your belly somehow. Sense of rightness. Not justice exactly. Fulfilling the wishes of the majority, something along those lines, I don’t know. That’s how it was with us. I guess it’s long ago now. Seems to sit right up in front of my eyes just now though.
Major let Watchorn and Pearl out for the festivities, he seemed to think that was the right thing to do. He said he would tend to them later. Where were they going to run? Wasn’t nothing around us only nothing.
I would have to say it was lovely how the town composed itself to welcome us. They had set banners all along their little street and they lit lanterns they had made from old packing paper, the candles burning in them like souls. The padre made a huge prayer out in the open and the whole town went down on its knees, right there, and praised the Lord. This was the section of humanity favoured in that place, the Indians had no place no more there. Their tickets of passage were rescinded and the bailiffs of God had took back the papers for their souls. I did feel a seeping tincture of sadness for them. I did feel some strange toiling seeping sadness for them. Seven hours off buried in their pits, the redwoods towering, the silence pitted by birds and passing creatures. The solemn awfulness of it maybe. There weren’t no padre praying in exultation for them. They were the boys with the losing hand. Then niceties all done, the town rose and cheered wildly, and then it was a maelstrom of meat eating and keg broaching, and all the usual mayhem. We were dancing, we were clapping backs, we were telling old stories. Men were listening with their ears cocked, till they judged when they could let loose the laughter. Time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending, but something that would go on forever, all rested and stopped in that moment. Hard to say what I mean by that. You look back at all the endless years when you never had that thought. I am doing that now as I write these words in Tennessee. I am thinking of the days without end of my life. And it is not like that now. I am wondering what words we said so carelessly that night, what vigorous nonsense we spoke, what drunken shouts we shouted, what stupid joy there was in that, and how John Cole was only young then and as handsome as any person that has ever lived. Young, and there would never be a change for that. The heart rising, and the soul singing. Fully alive in life and content as the house-martins under the eaves of the house.