Heaven and Hell (49 page)

"Well--" A bit nervous about it, she shrugged. "I would. But I'm not sure how Charles would feel. He's a wonderful man, but there's a strange, distant streak in him."

"The war." Willa gazed at the brigadier, her pale eyes as quizzical as his had been a few moments ago. "The war did that to a lot of soldiers. On top of it, Charles lived through the massacre of a man who
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befriended him."

"I understand. I just don't know how long someone can use the past to excuse present behavior."

Duncan frowned. "Until the patience of others is exhausted, I suppose.

Patience, and affection too."

She concentrated on folding her napkin. "Never the latter. But the former--I don't know. My patience grows very thin sometimes. 1 refuse to deny everything I believe just to please Charles."

"Charles is strong, like you. Right or wrong, he won't abandon this vendetta against the Indians."

"And I hate it. I hate it for what it is, and for what it does to him." She paused. "I'm almost afraid to see him at Ellsworth."

The old soldier reached out and closed his thick-knuckled hand over hers. She turned away, overcome with embarrassing tears. The squeeze of his powerful fingers said he understood her fear. His eyes said she had some cause for it.

Charles's detachment came in the night before the performance.

He found Ike Barnes with Floyd Hook, discussing details of a C Company club modeled after the International Order of Good Templars, a society to promote temperance. There were chapters at many Western posts. As the old man explained, the epidemic Army problem of drunkenness hadn't spread into his troop, and the club would help insure that Banditti 311

t wouldn't. First Sergeant Star Eyes Williams would be responsible for

:alling the initial meeting.

Tense about seeing Willa again, yet eager too, Charles shaved and pruced up in a clean uniform with big yellow bandanna and regulation at. Since he'd stabled Satan to rest him, he took another company lorse for the five-mile ride along the north bank of the Smoky Hill to

/hat was officially called the Addition to Ellsworth. As he rode, he

/histled the music Willa had written out. His Carolina music, he called Much of the original site platted by the Ellsworth Town Company ad been destroyed in June when the normally placid Smoky Hill verflowed its banks and washed away flimsy cottages and stores. Scarcely ad they disappeared when the town promoters bought new land, on
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igher ground to the northwest. They filed a new plat in Salina to create le Addition, which showed every sign of becoming the real town of llsworth. It already had its own depot to supplement the one at Fort

[arker; the first passenger train had rolled in from the east July 1.

The town also had cattle pens and chutes, testifying to the develpers'

faith that Ellsworth could become a shipping point for the trail

;rds pushing up Chisholm's Trail from Texas. Ellsworth boosters deded Abilene, about sixty miles east, and its promoter, Joe McCoy, ten though McCoy had received his first big herd in September.

The November evening was clear and bitter. Charles was bundled his thigh-length double-breasted buffalo coat. Weaving through wagon id horse traffic on the Addition's rutted main street, he saw half a

)zen wagons approaching in a line. Red-stained tarpaulins mounded

'er the bed of each. Broad swipes of dried blood marked the wagon ies. Riding ahead of the wagons was a young man Charles recogzed.

The horseman next to the young man recognized Charles.

"Howdy. You're Main. We met at the Golden Rule House."

Charles wasn't accustomed to hearing his right na'me, but he didn't : on. "I remember. You're Griffenstein." He peeled off his gauntlet

d leaned over to shake hands.

"This here's my boss, Mr. Cody."

Charles shook hands with the young man too. "Griffenstein said u wouldn't stay in the hotel business. Are you two hunters for the lroad?" He'd recognized the blood smell pervading the air.

Cody said, "For Goddard Brothers, the railroad's meat contractor. iev pay five hundred a month, and me and my boys guarantee them

the buffalo meat they need to feed their crews. We knock 'em down ll» which makes it a profitable trade."

Charles studied the wagons, their reeking cargoes silhouetted against 312 HEAVEN AND HELL

twilight stars in a rosy sky shading up to deep blue. Dutch Henry Griffenstein was amused by something. "You don't know the meanin' of fast till you watch Buffalo Billy work. He knocks down eleven, twelve bison in the time it takes most of us to load a Winchester."

"Mighty boring, though," Cody said. "Wouldn't mind scouting again. We'd better hustle, boys. It's almost dark."

He waved the wagons ahead and rode on. Dutch Henry grinned inside his huge chest-length beard. "You ever get tired of soldiering, Main, look us up. We can always use another good shot."

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After Dutch Henry trotted off, Charles looked at both sides of the street, to see if there was anyone who might have overheard his name.

' 'Our revels now are ended. These our actors are melted into air, into thin air."

With flamboyant gestures, Sam Trump boomed Prospero's farewell to the audience. This portion had been purloined from the end of the Act IV masque. Trump was confident no one would detect the theft.

A half circle of chimneyed lamps lit the improvised stage. Blankets hung on rope served as side curtains. The theater was the dining room of the unfinished Drovertown Hotel, a room heavy with the smell of new pine lumber.

Charles had arrived too late for a seat on the benches brought in for the evening. He stood at the back, among some other bachelor officers from the fort. Seated in front of him were officers, their wives, and plainly dressed townspeople, but not a single black soldier.

Over the heads of the audience, Willa spied him only moments after he came in. She immediately fumbled one of Juliet's lines from the balcony scene. She was playing against Trump's giggle-inducing Romeo. Not only was Trump paunchy and too old, but he slapped his heart with both hands at any reference pertaining to romance.

The audience, however, starved for entertainment, clearly loved the Shakespearean excerpts, and listened attentively for two hours. During that time only one tipsy teamster had to be removed.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on . . . and our little life is ended with a sleep." With but a breath between, he jumped to the epilogue of The Tempest, squeezing every syllable of the text for its juice. ". . .or else my project fails, which was to please . . ." Charles fidgeted from foot to foot, while the actor fairly begged the audience

for applause. "As you from crimes would pardoned be . . . let you?

indulgence set me free.''

Trump's last line was spoken as he swooped into a low bow, &n'

ticipating his ovation. He got it. Willa, Trueblood and the stocky character woman dashed from behind the blankets. All linked hands a*1

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bowed. Ike Barnes's wife jumped up and yelled, "Bravo, bravo," which prompted Trump to step forward for a solo bow. He knocked over a lamp. A soldier in the front row stamped on the leaking oil as it flamed,
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preventing a disaster. Trump paid no attention.

Each time Willa bowed, her eyes remained on Charles. He held fiis hands high so she could see him clapping. Lord, how pretty she was, and how he warmed at the sight of her. For a moment he felt peaceful; free of spite, the past--all his pain.

As the audience broke up; he joined others moving forward to congratulate the company. "Dear boy," Trump cried, spying Charles and lunging out to have his hand shaken. "How splendid to have you here. I'm glad you saw us this evening. This tour is a triumph. I'm sure they're already hearing of it in the East. When they send for us, I'll have to cancel the rest of the itinerary." And off he went to another admirer.

Charles strode to Willa, took hold of her arms and kissed her forehead.

"You were wonderful."

She slipped a hand behind his back and hugged him. "And you're very bad for my acting. Will you take me out of here?"

"Right now," he said, clasping her hand.

"I'd like to walk," she said. He reminded her about the cold. "I have an old wool coat, very heavy, and a muff."

So they set out, walking away from the unfinished two-story Drovertown Hotel. Suddenly they were facing a rolling black prairie with white and yellow stars sparkling above it.

"Don't you want supper?" he asked. "Aren't you starved after all that work?"

"Later. I want to hear about you." She fairly bubbled. "Are you all right?"

"I'm all right." She linked arms with him. He commended her for refusing to play Fort Harker. "Sam told me the tour's been a triumph.

You can tell me the truth."

She laughed. "Fort Riley was fair. The audience was off somehow, or we were. I caught Sam trying to sneak to the sutler's just before curtain."

"Did you play Leavenworth?"

"Yes. The audience there was fine."

i "Did you have a chance to see my boy?"

s j "I did. He's wonderful, Charles. Very smart. The brigadier said ¦* d trained himself with the chamber pot before he was eighteen months

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*" Charles cleared his throat. She laughed a second time. "Oh, that's 8 pounds t, proper females don't mention such things to gentlemen. The

ness of my profession is showing again."

314 " HEAVEN AND HELL

Amused, he said, "I knew about the chamber pot."

"I should have guessed. The brigadier did say it's difficult for him to handle Gus, because he adores the boy, and spoils him even though he doesn't intend it. He shows him your photograph constantly. Gus knows who you are. He misses you." Another squeeze of his arm. "I miss you, too. Buy me supper and ply me with a little wine and I'll show you how much."

She turned, directly in his path. She flung up an arm, hand around his neck, and pulled him into a kiss. He put both arms around her waist and felt her cold mouth warm quickly. They held one another in silence.

Then something in Charles began to push away, distancing him from her.

"Oh, I have missed you. I love you, Charles. I can't help it."

She didn't pause, the conventional signal that she expected him to say it in reply. She didn't want to push him. "Perhaps you'll get to see more of Gus now. There seems to be peace on the Plains."

They resumed their walk, going up a small round hill on crackling frost-killed grass. At the summit they stopped, awed by the gigantic canopy of stars.

At length he answered her. "It's always peaceful in the winter."

"Yes. But what I mean is, now there's the Medicine Lodge Treaty.

That should promote--"

"Willa, let's not start. You know that the subject of Indians always causes a muss between us." Did he want that? Was that why he put a certain testiness into his tone?

She heard it; it irked her. "Why should we not discuss it, Charles?

It's a meaningful treaty.''

"Come on. No treaty is meaningful, and Medicine Lodge was worse because only a few chiefs touched the pen. Did you read the dispatches Mr. Stanley wrote for the New York Tribune? The stupid commissioners didn't even read the entire treaty to Black Kettle and the rest. The chiefs wanted to accommodate the commissioners, they wanted the goods and guns, so they signed." By this point she'd separated her
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arm from his. "As soon as they realize what they gave away, they'll repudiate the treaty. If the Dog Society men don't kill them first."

"And that's what you want, I suppose?" She faced him, her face dim in the starlight. Her breath was a white cloud that spread and disappeared.

"I

want the men who killed my friends. I wish you wouldn't bring it up."

"I bring it up because I care about you."

"Oh, hell." He pivoted away.

~w

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"You want the treaty to fail." She was losing control, something unusual for her; he heard it in the unsteadiness of her voice.

"Willa, I told you what I want. As for the rest of it, you're still on stage. Dreaming! The Cheyennes won't quit until they're penned up or killed. That may not be pretty, that may not please you or your Quaker friends who bleed their hearts out for a bunch of savages they never have to deal with, but that's how it is, and you ought to wake up."

"I'm awake, thank you. I thought you might have changed a little.

You won't give the treaty a chance."

"Because that's useless, goddamn it. Henry Stanley said it. General Sherman has been saying it for two years."

"And what all of you prophesy eventually comes true? Why don't you prophesy peace for a change?

"By God, you're the most blind, unrealistic--"

"You're the one who's blind, Charles. Blind to what you're becoming.

Some sort of--of hate-filled creature who lives to kill. I don't want a man like that."

"Don't worry, you haven't got one--even though you chase damn hard."

He was shouting. She cried out, "Bastard!" and struck at him with her open hand. He deflected it and stepped back. He was altogether

stunned when he realized that even as she cursed him, she was crying.

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He stood like a dolt under the autumn stars, watching her flying figure race back toward the lamps of the Addition. "Willa, wait. It isn't

safe for a woman to be by herself--''

"You be quiet!" she yelled over her shoulder. She stopped and faced him. "You don't know how to behave like a decent human being. You drive everyone away. The war did it, Duncan says. The war, the war--I'm sick of the war and I'm sick of you."

She turned and ran on. He heard her weeping. The sound faded slowly, and then he lost her running figure against the black shapes of the flimsy buildings of the new town.

He walked slowly along the side of the Drovertown Hotel to the rail in front where he'd tied his mount. He was lifting his boot to the stirrup when someone lurched out of the heavy shadow.