North and South: The North and South Trilogy (79 page)

After Charles handed his papers to Lee’s aide, a cheerful Pole named Lieutenant Radziminski, he was received by the regimental commander. Lee ordered him to stand at ease, then invited him to sit. September sunlight flooded the white-painted room. The open windows admitted dry, bracing air.

Lee was punctilious, yet cordial. “It’s good to see you again, Lieutenant. You look fit. The Academy agreed with you, then.”

“Yes, sir. I liked it—though I confess I wasn’t much good in the classroom.”

“Out here, other qualities are just as important as scholarship. The ability to ride well and endure hardship. The ability to lead men of varying backgrounds.” He turned toward a large lacquered map of Texas hanging behind him. All the posts in the department were identified by pins with small ribbons on them. “Where you are being sent, the troops are composed chiefly of Alabama and Ohio men. Of course we have our quota of recent immigrants throughout the regiment. By the way—”

Having failed to satisfy Charles’s curiosity and name his destination, Lee faced forward again. “My nephew is serving with the Second.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“You and Fitz were friends—”

“Good friends. I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Lee nodded, thought a moment. “For your information, General Twiggs will soon be arriving to assume command of the department. Major George Thomas will take over the regiment and transfer its headquarters back to Fort Mason. I’m returning to Virginia.”

Charles tried to hide his disappointment. “A new assignment, sir?”

Gravely, Lee shook his head. “My wife’s father passed away. I must take a leave to attend to some family matters.”

“My condolences, sir. I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I plan to return as soon as practicable. Meanwhile, you’ll find Major Thomas a very capable commandant. He graduated in the class of 1840.”

It was said as if to stamp Thomas with a mark of approval. Charles was learning that the mark united those officers who had gone through the Academy and separated them from those who had not.

Lee relaxed, grew more conversational.” Our work here is confined to just a few tasks, but each is important. Guarding the mail coaches and emigrant trains. Scouting. And of course suppressing an occasional Indian outbreak. The threat of Indian trouble isn’t as constant as our playwrights and novelists would have gullible Easterners believe. But neither is it imaginary. I think you’ll find the duty both interesting and challenging.”

“I know I will, Colonel. I already like Texas very much. There’s a feeling of freedom here.”

“We’ll see how you like it after you’ve lived through a norther,” Lee replied with a smile. “But I understand what you’re saying. Last year I read a book by a chap named Thoreau. One line stuck in my mind. ‘There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon.’ That certainly applies to the frontier: Perhaps it also explains why there is so much turmoil and disputation in our country. Ah, but I haven’t mentioned your post, have I?”

He stood up, faced the map, and indicated one of the ribbons pinned almost due north of San Antonio at what looked to be a distance of about 250 miles.

“Camp Cooper. On the Clear Fork of the Brazos. It’s two miles upstream of the Penateka Comanche agency and reservation. Your troop commander is also a West Point man recently transferred from Washington back to line duty here. His name is Captain Bent.”

Charles drew equipment and a fine horse, a roan, for the trip to Camp Cooper. He would ride north with the departmental paymaster and his party. On the night before his departure, he was on his way to find supper when he encountered Colonel Lee and Major George Thomas on the street. Lee asked him where he was going, and when he answered, the colonel said that he and Thomas were on their way to dine at the Plaza Hotel, and why didn’t he join them? Lee again made reference to the Academy background the three of them shared, and that overcame Charles’s hesitation. He thanked the senior officers for the invitation and fell in step beside them.

Hot, humid weather had produced a new crop of flies and mosquitoes—overnight, it seemed. In the hotel dining room, little black boys with palm fans stood by the tables to shoo the insects away. A touch of home, Charles thought with a twinge of conscience. Though he remained a loyal Southerner, four years at West Point had exposed him to new ideas and changed some of his thinking. He had begun to feel that the South’s economy was built on a rotten foundation, one that could not help but collapse eventually—if it were not swept away by outside forces first.

Lee and Thomas chatted in a convivial way about a variety of things. The Indian problem. Major Bill Hardee’s new infantry tactics, which were replacing those authored by General Scott. A horse race won by another South Carolinian in the regiment, Captain Nathan Evans of Marion. He commanded Company H and still went by his West Point nickname, Shanks.

The talk turned to the weather. “Texas brings out the mettle of our military Shadrachs and Abednigos,” Lee said. “Wait till you patrol in this kind of heat for twenty or thirty days at a stretch.”

“While trying to find ten thieving Comanches in a thousand square miles,” Thomas added. Heavier than Lee and more reticent, the major was forty or so. His quiet demeanor suggested a strong will, as did the occasional flash of his silvery blue eyes. Like the commandant, he was a Virginian.

“If most of the Comanches are cared for on reservations, why do they steal?” Charles asked.

Lee answered the question in a roundabout way. “We’ve tried to turn the southern Comanches into farmers, but I don’t believe they’re temperamentally suited for it—and beyond that, for the last year or so, the weather’s been against us. Nothing but drought. So their crops have failed, which means they have no money. Yet, like all human beings, they have wants. Tobacco, knives, strouding. Certain unscrupulous traders are willing to deal with them and supply those things. The traders are Choctaws, mostly, down from Indian Territory. A few are Comancheros from New Mexico.”

Still puzzled, Charles said, “But if the Comanches don’t have cash crops, what do they trade?”

“Horses.”

“Stolen horses,” Thomas clarified. “Colonel Lee’s predecessor believed in what he called rigorous hostility toward the Indians. Patrol, pursue, punish—that was the strategic concept. Lately, however, Washington has followed a somewhat more passive policy. We are under orders to stand pat until there’s an outbreak, until the Comanches descend on some white settler unfortunate enough to have a few horses in a pole corral. Then we rush into action, praying to God we aren’t too late to prevent the settler’s murder.”

Lee studied his plate of venison steak in a pensive way. “You can’t entirely blame the Comanches. We took their lands for settlement. Then we drove off the game they depend on for survival. If they have nothing, and steal, we’re partly responsible.”

“Don’t let Governor Houston hear you say that,” Thomas declared with a humorless smile.

But Charles could only think of the excitement of it. A mounted chase, a charge with sabers swinging.
Patrol, pursue, punish.
He was glad he’d been posted to the Second instead of some stodgy regiment in a safe part of the country.

Three times a year the paymaster brought the departmental payroll from New Orleans in the form of coin. Six times annually he set out on a circuit of the Texas forts, carrying the payroll in a padlocked chest. He traveled in a mule-drawn ambulance accompanied by a provision wagon and six mounted men commanded by a sergeant.

The mounted men were dragoons in orange-faced uniforms. Riding with them, Charles felt himself the object of the veteran’s unspoken contempt for the greenhorn. The dragoon uniforms and gear were weathered, whereas his were obviously brand-new.

The dragoons were America’s original mounted service. Now they were being superseded by the cavalry; light cavalry, really. Like the other new mounted regiment, the Second had no heavily armored men, as European cavalry did. Further, the Second was supposed to fight on horseback, not merely ride to a battlefield and then dismount. The dragoons felt threatened by this new style of mounted warfare, of which Secretary Davis obviously approved. Their resentment showed. Except for military courtesies, they ignored Charles during the journey.

At Fort Mason he had a joyful and alcoholic reunion with Fitz Lee, who was as cheerful and carefree as ever and just as scornful of authority. He and Charles discussed most of the West Point men in the regiment: Shanks Evans of South Carolina; Earl Van Dorn from Mississippi; Kirby Smith of Florida; John Hood of Kentucky; Alabama’s Bill Hardee, whose name had been given to the new-style hat while he was serving with the Second Dragoons. No wonder critics accused Davis of creating an elite regiment staffed with Southern gentlemen.

Just before the pay train moved out, Fitz said to his friend, “Watch out for that troop commander of yours. He hasn’t been out here long, but his reputation’s already bad.”

“Incompetent?”

“Not that so much. Devious. Not to be trusted. Be careful.”

Charles pondered the warning as he rode in the dust raised by the provision wagon, occasionally patting and murmuring to the roan he had named Palm in celebration of his home state.

A hot southwest wind flung grit against the back of his neck. Then, within a period of ten minutes, the wind shifted almost 180 degrees, the sky filled with boiling black clouds, the temperature plummeted, and a norther came tearing at him with torrential rain and hail so large that one piece gashed his cheek and drew blood.

In an hour the sun shone again. Ahead, the now-muddy road wound on across low hills toward a horizon rapidly clearing of clouds. As the caravan moved from a vale of glistening pecan trees to a stand of post oaks, a frightened cottontail rabbit bounded in front of the roan. Deep in the oaks, Charles heard larks singing.

His old, brash smile returned. His uniform was soaked, but he didn’t mind. The violent, changeable weather appealed to his sense of adventure. He liked Texas better and better every minute.

From a bluff above the Clear Fork, the paymaster’s party descended to a pleasant green valley that stretched northward until its floor became lost in the noon haze. Charles had seldom seen a lovelier place. Somehow, the twisted mesquite trees and stunted prickly pear contributed to its fierce beauty.

But the valley’s verdant look was a trick of distance and perspective. Near the meandering river, heat-withered leaves on huge elm trees were barely stirring in the sultry breeze. The caravan passed melon and pea fields that had a parched look. Here and there an Indian stood in a dusty furrow watching the soldiers with sad eyes or sullen ones.

Beyond the drought-stricken fields, Charles saw his first Indian settlement—about two hundred animal-hide teepees decorated with yellow and red designs and symbols. The village generated an overwhelming impression of poverty.

Columns of smoke rose from cook fires. The odor of broiling meat mingled with the smell of human waste. Children laughed and played, emaciated dogs barked and ran every which way, and half a dozen young men added to the dust and din by riding bareback through the settlement. They were careful not to come close to the column, Charles noticed.

Two more miles and he’d be able to dismount. He was sweating and his thighs were sore despite the protection of the regulation saddle piece that reinforced the inside of his trousers. When he finally saw Camp Cooper, it looked like paradise, even though it was simply an assortment of fourteen primitive buildings made of stone, logs, clapboard, jacal, or combinations of two or more of them.

The post was laid out as a rambling reversed L. In front of the flagstaff on the parade ground, a platoon of foot soldiers was listlessly practicing the manual of arms. Charles recalled that two companies of the First Infantry were posted here, in addition to a squadron from the Second Cavalry.

The paymaster’s detail passed a little bakehouse with a clapboard roof. Two sweaty, bare-chested bakers stood in the shadow of a wall, never moving except to raise and lower their pipes in greeting. As the smell of hot bread gave way to that of manure, the dragoon sergeant rode up to Charles.

“The stables are there, sir. Those two log buildings.”

Charles returned the salute and trotted ahead. He turned into the nearest building, which was open at each end and empty except for the horses. A moment later, a long-striding, lanky man came through the far entrance.

The man wore bleached cord pants and a flannel shirt decorated with small wood pickets. A sheath knife hung on his left hip, and on the other a Holster Pistol—the cavalry nickname for Colt’s 1848 Army Model revolver. Charles owned a similar gun, a six-shot .44 with beautiful walnut grips and a brass trigger guard. He had also paid for a couple of optional extras: a detachable shoulder stock with a sling ring and a cylinder with a decorative engraving of dragoons in combat with Indians. A cavalryman’s revolver was a prized and highly personal possession.

The man scrutinized Charles. He was about forty and had a long, pleasant face partly hidden by a red beard the sun had bleached to copper. In the lobes of both ears he wore brass rings, pirate style. Some civilian attached to the Indian agency, Charles presumed. Or maybe the fellow was the post sutler. Charles dismounted and addressed him brusquely.

“Direct me to the adjutant’s office, if you please.”

The man pointed the way. For some unfathomable reason his eyes were simmering all at once.

“Where can I find Captain Bent?”

“In his quarters nursing a bad case of dysentery.”

Tired and irritable, Charles slapped Palm’s rein against his pants leg. “Then who’s in charge of K Company?”

“I am, sir.” The man’s eyes froze him. “First Lieutenant Lafayette O’Dell.”

“First—?”

“Stand at attention, sir!”

The shout, so reminiscent of thousands at West Point, automatically drove Charles into the correct braced position. He saluted, his face turning red.

O’Dell took his time returning the salute. He eyed Charles with what the latter took to be hostility. “My apologies to the lieutenant,” Charles began. “I’m—”