The Veteran (39 page)

The first was to Kevin Braddock. She admitted she had developed a silly, girlish crush on a young wrangler she had met, but that it was over. She told him she had been foolish to write him the way she had, and asked for his forgiveness. She wished their engagement to resume and looked forward to becoming his wife before the end of October.

Her second letter was addressed to Mr. Ben Craig, c/o Fort Heritage, Bighorn County, Montana. Both letters were posted the following day.

Despite his obsession with authenticity Professor Ingles had made two other concessions to modernity. Though there were no telephone lines to the fort, he kept in his office a radio/ telephone powered by rechargeable cadmium/nickel batteries.

There was also a postal service.

The Billings post office had agreed to deliver all mail for the fort to the office of the town’s principal tour bus company, and they had agreed to send the satchel of mail needing delivery with the driver of their next bus out. Ben Craig received his letter four days later.

He tried to read it, but had trouble. Thanks to Charlie’s lessons he had become accustomed to capital letters and even lower-case print, but the cursive handscript of the young woman defeated him. He took the letter to Charlie, who read it and looked at him with pity.

“I’m sorry, Ben. It’s from the girl you took a fancy to. Linda?”

“Please read it to me, Charlie.”

Dear Ben,

she read,

Charlie folded the letter and handed it back. Ben Craig stared at the mountains, lost in thought. Charlie reached out and placed her hand over his.

“I’m sorry, Ben. It happens. Ships that pass in the night. She clearly developed a girlish crush on you, and I can understand why. But she has made her decision to stay with her fiance.”

Craig knew nothing of ships. He stared at his mountains, then asked:

“Who is her betrothed?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t say.”

“Could you find out?”

“Now, Ben, you are not going to cause any trouble?”

Long ago Charlie had had two young men come to blows over her. She found it rather flattering. But that had been then. She did not want her untamed young protege heading into a fist-fight on account of a chit of a girl who had come three times to the fort to mess with his vulnerable affections.

“No, Charlie, no trouble. Just curious.”

“You’re not going to ride into Billings and start a fight?”

“Charlie, I just want that which is mine, in the eyes of man and the Everywhere Spirit. As it was spoken long ago.”

He was talking riddles again, so she persisted.

“But not Linda Pickett?”

He thought for a while, chewing on a grass stem.

“No, not Linda Pickett.”

“You promise, Ben?”

“I promise.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

In college at Bozeman Charlie Bevin had had a friend who had become a journalist and moved to work on the Billings Gazette. She called her and asked for a quick check of the back issues for any mention of the announcement of an engagement involving a young woman called Linda Pickett. It did not take long.

Four days later the mail package brought her a cutting from the early summer. Mr. and Mrs. Michael Pickett and Mr. and Mrs. William Braddock had been pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter Linda and son Kevin. Charlie raised her eyebrows and whistled. No wonder the girl did not intend to break her engagement.

“That must be the son of Big Bill Braddock,” she told Craig. “You know, the beefsteak king?”

The scout shook his head.

“No,” said Charlie with resignation, “you just hunt your own. Without a licence. Well, Ben, the father is very rich indeed. He lives on a big spread up north of here, near the Yellowstone. Do you know the river?”

Craig nodded. He had ridden down every inch of the southern bank with General Gibbon, from Fort Ellis to the junction with the Tongue, far east of Rosebud Creek, where they turned back.

“Could you find out when the wedding will be, Charlie?”

“You remember your promise?”

“I do. No Linda Pickett.”

“That’s right. So what do you have in mind? A little surprise?”

“Uh-huh.”

Charlie made another phone call.

September slipped into October. The weather remained fine and mild. The long-range forecast suggested a real Indian summer, with fine sunny weather until the end of the month.

On the 10th a copy of the Billings Gazette arrived with the tour bus. With the school term well under way, the flow of visitors was easing fast. In the paper from her friend Charlie found an entire column from the writer of the social diary. She read it out to Craig.

In breathless prose the diarist described the forthcoming nuptials of Kevin Braddock and Linda Pickett. The ceremony would be at the magnificent Bar-T Ranch south of Laurel Town on 20 October. Given the continuing clement weather, the ceremony would take place on the expansive lawns of the estate at 2 p.m. before an invited thousand guests who would include the social cream and business elite of the state of Montana. She went on like this to the bottom of the page. Ben Craig nodded and memorized.

The next day the post commander addressed them all on the parade ground. The Fort Heritage summer experience would I close for the winter months on 21 October, he said. It had been an outstanding success and messages of congratulations had flowed from educators and legislators across the state.

“There will be much hard work to do in the four days prior to closure,” Professor Ingles told his young team. “Salaries and wages will be paid out on the day before. We have to get the facility cleaned, stored and ready for the hard winter before we go.”

Afterwards Charlie took Ben Craig aside.

“Well, Ben, we’re coming to the end,” she said. “When it’s over we can all go back to wearing our normal clothes. Oh, I suppose those are your normal clothes. Well, you have a wad of dollars coming. We can go into Billings and get you some sneakers, jeans, a selection of sports shirts and a couple of warm jackets for the winter.

“Then I want you to come back to Bozeman with me. I’ll find you nice lodgings and then introduce you to some people who can help you.”

“Very well, Charlie,” he said.

That evening he tapped on the professor’s door. John Ingles was sitting at his desk. A wood-burning pot-bellied stove glowed in the corner to take the chill off the evening air. The professor welcomed his buckskin-clad visitor warmly. He had been impressed by the lad, by his knowledge of the wild and the old frontier and the fact that never once had he slipped out of character. With his knowledge and a college degree, the professor could have found him a post on campus.

“Ben, my boy, how can I help you?”

He expected to be able to dispense some fatherly advice for the future.

“Would you have a map, Major?”

“A map? Well, good Lord. Yes, I suppose I do. Which area?”

“Here at the fort, and north to the Yellowstone, please, sir.”

“Good idea. Always useful to know where one is, and the surrounding country. Here.”

He spread the map out on the desk and explained. Craig had seen campaign maps before, but they were mostly blank except for landmarks noted by a few trappers and scouts. This one was covered with lines and blobs.

“Here is the fort, on the north side of West Pryor Mountain, facing north to the Yellowstone and south to the Pryors. Here is Billings, and here is where I come from, Bozeman.”

Craig ran his finger the hundred miles between the two towns.

“The Bozeman Trail?” he asked.

“Quite right, that’s what it used to be called. A blacktop highway now, of course.”

Craig did not know what a blacktop highway was, but thought it might be the long strip of black rock he had seen in the moonlight. There were dozens of smaller towns shown on the large-scale map and, on the southern bank of the Yellowstone, at the confluence with Clark’s Creek, an estate marked Bar-T Ranch. He reckoned it to be a tad to the west of a line due north from the fort and, cross-country, twenty miles.

He thanked the major and handed back the map.

On the night of the 19th Ben Craig turned in early, just after chow time. No-one thought it odd. All the young men had spent the day cleaning up, greasing metal parts against the winter frosts, storing tools in secure cabins for next spring. The others in the bunkhouse came to bed around ten and quickly fell asleep. None noticed that their companion, beneath his blanket, was fully clothed.

He rose at midnight, slipped his fox hat on his head, folded two blankets and left without making a sound. No-one saw him cross to the stable, let himself in, and start to saddle Rosebud. He had made sure she had a double ration of oats for the extra strength she would need.

When she was ready he left her there, let himself into the smith’s forge and took the items he had noted the previous day: a hand-axe with belt sheath, a jemmy and metal cutters.

The jemmy took the hasp and padlock off the armoury door, and once inside the cutters made short work of the chain threaded through the trigger guards of the rifles. They were all replicas but one. He took his Sharps ‘52 model back and left.

He led Rosebud to the small rear door by the chapel, unbarred it and walked out. His two blankets were under his saddle, the buffalo robe rolled and tied behind. The rifle in its sheath hung forward of his left knee and by his right knee hung a rawhide quiver with four arrows. His bow swung from his back. When he had walked his horse half a mile from the fort in silence he mounted up.

In this manner Ben Craig, frontiersman and scout, the only man to survive the massacre at the Little Bighorn, rode out of the year of grace 1877 and into the last quarter of the twentieth century.

By the setting of the moon he reckoned it was two in the morning. He had time to walk the twenty miles to the Bar-T Ranch and save Rosebud’s energy. He found the pole star and headed a few degrees to the west of the due-north path it indicated.

The prairie gave way to farmland and here and there he found posts in his way, with wire strung between them. He used the cutters and walked on. He crossed the line from Bighorn into Yellowstone County, but he knew nothing of that. At dawn he found the banks of dark’s Creek and followed the curving stream north. As the sun tipped the hills to the east he spied a long stretch of bright white post-and-rail fencing and a sign announcing: ‘
Bar-T Ranch. Private Property. Keep out.
’ He deciphered the letters and walked on until he found the private road leading to the main gate.

At half a mile he could see the gate, and beyond it an enormous house surrounded by magnificent barns and stables. At the gate there was a striped pole across the road and a guardhouse. In the window was a low night light. He withdrew another half-mile to a stand of trees, unsaddled Rosebud and let her rest and crop the autumn grass. He rested through the morning but did not sleep, remaining alert like a wild animal.

In truth the newspaper diarist had underestimated the splendour Big Bill Braddock planned for his son’s wedding. He had insisted that his son’s fiancee undergo a thorough examination at the hands of his family doctor, and the humiliated girl had had no choice but to concede. When he read the full report, his eyebrows rose.

“She’s what?” he asked the doctor.

The medical man followed where the sausage finger pointed.

“Oh yes, no question about it. Completely intacta.”

Braddock leered.

“Well, lucky young Kevin. And the rest?”

“Flawless. A very beautiful and healthy young woman.”

The mansion had been transformed by the most fashionable interior designers money could hire into a fairy-tale castle. Out on the acre-sized lawn the altar had been set up twenty yards from the rail fence, facing the prairie. In front of the altar were row upon row of comfortable chairs for his guests, with an aisle down the centre for the loving couple to walk, Kevin first, attended by his best man, she and her nincompoop father to join them to the strains of the Bridal March.

The buffet banquet was to be laid out on trestle tables behind the chairs. No expense had been spared. There were pyramids of champagne glasses in Stuart crystal, oceans of French champagne of an eyebrow-raising marque and all vintage. He was determined his most sophisticated guest would not find a single detail amiss.

From Seattle arctic lobster, crab and oysters had been flown on ice. For those who preferred something stronger than champagne there was Chivas Regal by the crate. As he clambered into his four-poster the night before the wedding. Big Bill was worried only about his son. The boy had been drunk again and would need an hour in the shower to shape up in the morning.

To entertain his guests further, as the married couple changed for their departure on honeymoon to a private island in the Bahamas, Braddock had planned a Wild West rodeo right next to the gardens. These troupers, like the caterers and their staff, were all hired. The only people Braddock did not hire were the security detail.

Obsessive about his personal security, he maintained his own private army. Apart from three or four who stayed close to him at all times, the rest worked as wranglers on the ranch, but they were trained in firearms, had combat experience and would follow orders to the letter. They were paid to do so.

For the wedding he had brought all thirty of them into close proximity to the house. Two manned the guard post on the main gate. His personal protection detail, headed by an ex-Green Beret, would be near him. The rest posed as stewards and ushers.

Throughout the morning a stream of limousines and luxury coaches detailed to pick up guests from the airport at Billings cruised up to the main gate, were checked and passed through.