The Red Hills Read online

  Luke Barrell guessed that.

  'Don't hurt the dog, Lieutenant,' he begged. Feeling a nerve beginning to work beneath his right eye.

  'I don't aim to hurt it much,' replied Crow.

  The farmer shuddered as though a cold blue norther had swung across the Plains, but the sun still shone and the sky was blue as blue. In the house he could still hear the merry laughter of his three youngest children and Becky had cornered Bart against the corral fence, bending down in front of it, scolding the panting animal.

  'You got less than a minute,' said the lean stranger.

  'Come on, girl. Get the Lieutenant's bandana for him. Quick! He's getting impatient with the waitin' for it.'

  'Half a minute.'

  'Come on, Becky!' Barrell couldn't hide the tense anxiety running through him.

  'Bart. You're a naughty boy. Momma'll spank you if n you don't give that up right now.'

  The girl didn't realize. Still intent on playing with her beloved dog, enjoying the teasing. Reaching out for the stained bandana, and giggling when Bart snarled at her, snatching it up in his slavering jaws and holding it tight.

  'Land's sakes, Bart,' sighed Becky exasperatedly. 'You are a dreadful dog. Mister Crow here is going to get mighty...'

  'Time's up,' said Crow, snapping shut the hunter's golden case and sliding it back in the pocket of his black vest.

  'Wait a minute..." began Luke Barrell, seeing the tall stranger thumbing back a retaining leather thong off the top of the sawn-down scatter-gun in its deep holster on the right hip.

  'I've finished waiting,' Crow said softly.

  The gun was a Purdey. A double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun with hand-engraved action and a polished walnut stock, dated eighteen sixty-eight. Crow had committed the ultimate sacrilege on a Purdey by hacking off the end foot or more of both barrels and sanding them down so that there was only about four inches left. The shot would star out as soon as the triggers were squeezed. At anything over fifteen feet the gun wasn't a whole lot of us. At anything under fifteen feet it could cut a man clean in half.

  'Move the girl.'

  'What?'

  'The little girl. Move her.'

  Luke looked at the stranger as if he was a man from another planet. 'How's that again?'

  There was the faintest note of irritation in Crow's voice. 'If n you don't want the little girl harmed, then move her out of the way. Now!' There was the crack of command in the last word and Barrell jumped at it.

  'Becky!' he yelled, frightened of what was going to happen.

  Unable to believe it as he saw the fluid ease with which the cavalry officer drew the sawn-down gun, cocking the twin hammers with his thumb. Holding it as easily as a light pistol.

  'What is it Pa?' Becky turned and saw the pointed barrels of the gun, gaping at her and at her dog. 'No!!!' she screamed, eyes wide.

  'Move girl,' said her father, eyes half closed in horror at what was happening. Wishing that this morning had never dawned. That such a beautiful day should have brought this living specter of death walking in to his spread like this.

  'Don't let him,' moaned Becky, standing and facing Crow, spreading her thin arms to try and shield Bart from the man's gun.

  Seeing that the farmer wasn't going to do anything, the tall black figure stepped forwards and slapped the girl across the side of the face with his left hand the marks of his long fingers standing out livid against her rosy skin, sending her spinning sideways in a bundle of tangled limbs and flying petticoats, a scream starting from her open mouth.

  'Stupid little bitch,' snarled Crow, squinting down at the dog. The animal had dropped the neckerchief in front of it and was shuffling backwards through the dust, tongue out, a deep growling rippling from its chest, hind legs tensed as though it was about to spring at the man who had hit its mistress.

  'No!' shouted Luke Barrell, taking a step towards the house and his own elderly carbine, knowing in his guts that he was going to be way too late and that the situation had slipped away from him right from the start.

  Without even appearing to aim, the tall stranger pulled one of the triggers of the gun. There was a burst of black powder smoke and the boom of the heavy explosion.

  Despite the power of the recoil, Crow didn't move, the gun steady in his right hand.

  The impact of the charge at short range ripped the hound apart, kicking it a dozen paces backwards, sliding through dry sand that suddenly became puddled crimson mud. Its skull dissolved in a welter of lead and blood and flayed skin and shards of splintered bone, mingled with the torn remnants of pink brains. The legs kicked and scrabbled at the dirt in a reflex of dying, watched in mute horror by Becky and by the other little children who had just appeared on the porch.

  Crow ignored them all, stepping forwards, the smoking gun cradled in his right hand, stooping to pick up the soiled bandana with his left, eyes watching Luke Barrell who was poised like a child caught stealing apples, one foot raised, unable to decide whether to go for his own gun or not.

  'If n you're goin' to do it, then get on,' said Crow softly. 'If'n not then I'm movin' on out.'

  'Pa!' cried Becky, standing up, hand to her bruised cheek. 'Don't let him get away with that, Pa. Please. Don't. He killed Bart, Pa. You always said you'd look lifter us all when Ma went, Pa. And now... now you ain't doin'...' and she collapsed on her knees in tears by the side of her pet's headless corpse.

  Luke Barrell shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands out, palms facing the gunman. 'Guess you got me cold, Lieutenant. Sure hope you're proud of what you done here.'

  'I did what I said I'd do Mister,' replied the officer, ejecting the spent cartridge from the gun, replacing it with another from the pocket of his jacket. 'That's the way I live my life. Don't know any other way. No better way. Your girl and the dog had their chances.'

  'That's not the way.'

  Crow shook his head, ignoring the weeping children.

  'You're wrong there, farmer. Damned wrong. Living is just the mistakes you don't make. So long, and thanks for the water.'

  He swung back into the saddle of the black stallion, sliding the scatter-gun back into its holster and flicking over the leather cord that held it safely in place. Luke Barrell watched the lean stranger, stepping to one side to avoid the long shadow falling across him.

  'You didn't have to do it. You know that.'

  The stranger glanced back at him, eyes still veiled in shadow, horse headed north. 'Sure, but I figure you might be thankful for one thing, Mister.'

  'What the Hell's that?' asked Barrell, only too aware of the way he'd failed his family when it came to facing down the stranger.

  'Be thankful it was only the dog got killed,' he replied turning away from the small spread and riding on.

  Leaving Luke Barrell to watch him go and wonder about the man called Crow.

  Chapter Three

  Fort Buford was a key installation in the campaign to suppress the Indian tribes of the northern plains. Built in hostile territory in eighteen sixty-six, its buildings had originally been fashioned entirely of adobe. In eighteen seventy-two, four years before Crow reached the Fort, they had been replaced with the more common wooden frame buildings.

  Situated at the junction of the Missouri and the Yellowstone, Fort Buford was of vital strategic importance. Units of the Seventh had been stationed there but the local Sioux had become so troublesome that it had been necessary for a unit of the First Squadron, Third Cavalry to go up there on active service.

  And some thirty miles north and east of the Fort, a temporary camp had been set up. Commanded by Captain Silas Menges.

  Crow had heard about Menges even though he'd not yet served under him. During the War he'd been a junior officer with the Eleventh Ohio, fighting with little distinction and only finally reaching his present rank at the age of thirty-eight. At a time when the Civil War had led to early promotion for many young and ambitious officers Menges stood out by his lack of progress.

  He was short a
nd stout, looking better on a horse than he did on foot. Bow-legged with a belly that sagged over a regulation belt that had already been expanded by several inches. His face had that permanent flush of a heavy drinker. Narrow eyes that slitted out from rolls of swollen fat and thin lips that barely hid a mouth filled with rotting teeth. Menges was a man who had risen as far as he'd ever rise, and who now stared ahead of him down a long and winding road towards either an early death or an empty retirement.

  There were plenty of officers like him on the frontier but most of them were content to sit quietly behind their desks and leave the running of their commands to younger and more able men. But Menges wasn't prepared to do that. Five months earlier he'd gone off East on a furlough, and had confounded every man in his command by returning with a pretty and much younger wife from Boston.

  Angelina Menges was twenty-six, with curly brown hair and a tight-waisted figure that bloomed in the right places. At first everyone wondered what such a beautiful girl had seen in the aging and failed officer. But the truth gradually came out. She was the eldest daughter of a family of girls, and the last of them to be married. There was talk of a game of cards with Menges having the luck for once and a heavy debt with the girl's father. An arrangement was made that satisfied everyone.

  For the time being.

  There was another aspect of the girl that only slowly came to light. She had beautiful, long-lashed eyes of hazel brown, tinted with flecks of green-gold. Lovely eyes.

  But eyes that were agonizingly short-sighted. To read a book Angelina needed to hold the print only a couple of inches from her face and everything beyond a few feet was a pale blur of moving colors and shapes. It explained why the stunted and alcoholic Menges had won her so easily.

  Crow learned a lot about Menges and his wife during the first evening in camp. And about the fighting strength of the unit that he had joined. There wasn't very much that he heard that he liked at all. Nothing of the Captain and very little about the way he was running his men.

  Apart from Menges and Crow there was one junior Lieutenant named Kemp. A taciturn Scot who kept his own council and whispered to Crow during the meal that he would do well to do the same. There was an elderly Sergeant named McLaglen and a brace of Corporals.

  With just fifty-seven Troopers.

  'Sons of bitches keep tryin' to desert on me. Even that pup Custer had ten and twenty men a day runnin' off from him. It's the gold that does it. Cowards!'

  Crow shook his head at the proffered jug of beer that Menges held out towards him, reaching instead for water.

  Keeping his mind alert and watching and listening to everything that went on.

  'How do you treat deserters, Captain Menges?' he asked.

  'Damned if I bother. Catch them and I shoot them. But there aren't many bother now. I got the best guards for that in the whole damned Territory.'

  Crow sipped at the warm brackish water, smelling whisky fumes in the evening air, wondering whether Menges had mixed it with the beer or whether he had been drinking alone in his quarters before the meal.

  'What guards are they, Sir?' he asked politely.

  'Crazy Horse and the Oglala Sioux.' The Captain laughed, throwing back his head, juice from the buffalo stew running down the layers of chins. The meat was tough and stringy, like buffalo usually was, sticking between Crow's teeth. But at least it was fresh meat.

  'The Indian capture your deserters for you, Sir?'

  'You had better believe that, Mister Crow. Ain't that right, Mister Kemp?'

  The Scot nodded, preoccupied with picking a length of sinew from his back teeth. 'Indeed it is, Captain Menges. From the corpses we've seen around there aren't many getting through.'

  'We are here to try and hold a position and report activity by the hostiles to Fort Buford. Is that correct, Captain?'

  Menges nodded. Reaching across and squeezing the shoulder of his wife who had been sitting silently at his side throughout the meal, her beautiful eyes smiling vaguely in the direction of the tall new officer. She could tell he was tall. And darkish. With long hair. That was about all she could make out in the poor light of the tent.

  'Correct, Mister Crow. Crow? That the only name you got? No first name?'

  'Crow is my first name, Captain,' said the lean man quietly.

  'And your second?'

  'Yes.'

  'Just Crow?'

  'That's correct, Sir.'

  Menges leaned back in his chair and stared at the tall officer as if he was seeing him for the first time.

  'Something about you that I don't think I'm goin;' to cotton on to, Crow.'

  'Sir.'

  'Your hair. Damned long for a man. Not a damned brown-holin' boy-lover, are you?'

  'Is this suitable conversation to hold in front of Mrs. Menges, Sir?' asked Kemp.

  'I decide what's suitable to put in front of my wife, Mister Kemp,' warned the officer drunkenly. 'And what goes behind her as well.' Laughing at his own bawdy jest.

  Reaching beneath the folding table and grabbing at his wife. Clearly reaching up beneath her skirt. Her face reddened at the insulting behavior, but she still said nothing.

  'Sir,' began Kemp, half-rising to his feet in protest.

  'Mister Kemp,' said Menges with deceptive gentleness. 'Ever the officer and gentleman, springing to the defense of a lady who he believes has been insulted. Let me tell you, that Angelina here does not care. What I choose to do to her or with her is sufficient. Is that quite clear, gentlemen?'

  Both Crow and Kemp nodded. Mrs. Menges rose suddenly to her feet, ignoring her husband and muttered vaguely to the tent in general.

  'If I may be excused,' and hurried out, dropping her napkin to the grass floor.

  Menges took no notice of her, throwing his head back and baying his amusement. 'Lilyish whore, ain't she? I plucked her from the shelf and she repays me by endless weeping and womanly carryin' on. Damned whore! Slut! Filth! No better than an Indian squaw. Some ways a whole lot worse than that.'

  Crow pushed back his plate and stood up. 'Permission to leave, Sir?' he said, his voice soft in the stillness.

  'No, you may not leave. You may not even break wind unless I give you permission. Sit down again, Mister Crow Crow. I wish to talk to you and this other whining apology for an officer about the Indians and about what I propose to do. If my wife bothers you, Mister Crow.?..'

  Still standing, Crow looked into the eyes of the little officer, unable to hide his contempt. 'It is not your wife that offends me, Captain Menges.'

  'Meanin' it's me, huh? I couldn't give a sweet fuck for that, Lieutenant. Angelina does like I say. Mighty pretty, ain't she?' He was very drunk, the words slurring and running into each other. 'Tits you can chaw on all night long. Honey-pit that's deep and wet.' Seeing Kemp also starting to rise to his feet. 'Sit down, Mister. I have not yet done. Angie has great curlin' hair over her nest o' love that's the longest and curliest I ever did see. Longer than any high-yeller whore in a New Orleans bordello. Damned if it ain't!'

  It was worse than Crow had been warned. Whatever sense and sensibility the man had once possessed, the tension of duty out in Indian country and the harsh Dakota winter had stolen them all away, leaving a drunken, foulmouthed oaf who had terrorized his wife and brow-beaten his officers and men. And Menges would be commanding Crow and the others through a dangerous campaign against Crazy Horse and the Oglala during what promised to be a long and hot summer.

  But that lay ahead.

  If you two dummies aren't back sittin' on your asses in just two seconds from now you'll both be facing a court-martial for disobeying a lemit... legim... Damn! A legal order.'

  Kemp sat down immediately, followed a moment later by Crow, folding his skinny body into the low seat.

  Wondering how long it would be before he had to kill Captain Menges of the Third Cavalry.

  For the next half hour Menges raved on about the local Indians. How he wished he was in command of Fort Buford instead of some scummy crew of j
ail-leavings and keg-scrapings.

  'Crazy Horse is a jumped-up murderer of women and children. Never faced real soldiers led by a real commander.'

  Crow coughed at that. 'With respect, Captain, I recall that not so many years back and not so many miles from here Crazy Horse took on and killed a sizeable force of cavalry.'

  'Captain William Fetterman at Fort Phil Kearny? Man was a damned idiot. Chased after the Indians and they were lucky enough to be able to ambush them.'

  'Lot of dead,' said Crow, quietly.

  'You frightened of them, Mister?' snapped Menges. 'Because I tell you that I'm not.'

  'No, Sir.'

  'No, Sir,' mimicked the Captain. 'With enough men I could ride clean through the entire Sioux nation.'

  'How many men, Sir,' prompted Crow.

  'What?'

  'I asked how many men you felt it would take for you to ride through the Sioux?'

  'How many? Well... Give me eighty soldiers and I could do it. Do it with what I've got here and God knows that isn't very much to fight with.'

  'Fetterman used to boast he could do it with eighty, Sir' said Crow. 'Fact is, Fetterman had precisely that number with him when he died. Massacred along with all eighty of them. Every one.'

  There was a long silence in the small tent. Kemp caught Crow's eye and shook his head warningly. Outside they could hear the noises of the camp bedding down for the night. Orders being shouted out and men marching backwards and forwards. At first Crow wondered whether the senior officer had even heard what he'd said. His head was slumped forwards over his greasy plate and his eyes seemed to be closed.

  'You like the Indians, Mister Crow? Crow. That's an Indian kind of a name. And your hair, Mister Crow. That's the kind of hair that I've seen on Indians. Long black hair. Like a Crow Indian. Or a Sioux. Or a Cheyenne. Or a Pawnee. Or an Arapaho. Damned strange hair for an officer in the Cavalry of the United States.'

  'I am not breaking any standing orders with the length of my hair, Captain.'

  'I'm sure you're not, Lieutenant Crow. That surely is an odd name. Where were you born, Mister?'

  'That is my affair, Sir. With respect I would like to be excused your company, sir.'