Wolf Creek (5 page)

He hefted his tripod and worked his way
through the smoldering village, taking pictures of stacks of Indian
bodies. At first the sight of so many dead had bothered him, but he
got used to it as he finished with the Kiowa settlement and headed
for the Cheyenne. More than once, he stopped, looked around, then
stole knives off the slain Indians. They hadn't been given time to
put on their full war gear, so the beadwork, necklaces and the rest
went wanting.

At the edge of the village, he set up his
tripod and carefully sighted in. The image was upside down, but he
had learned to frame and get the best possible photograph. The sun
highlighted the scene perfectly. He took the picture, then hurried
to load another plate in and expose it as he hid the first plate in
his pocket.

"You, Marsh, don't take a picture of this!"
Major Putnam stormed over and placed himself squarely in front of
the lens to block any further pictures.

"Looks like part of the enemy action,
Major." Wil leaned around and saw Captain Dent and Charley
Blackfeather all trussed up and guarded by a half dozen men. He
didn't have to be familiar with cavalry insignia to know the guards
weren't from Dent's company.

"Inaction, I should say."

"So the captain and his pet ʼbreed showed a
yellow streak?"

"They did not obey orders."

"Not taking part in this fine massacre is a
court-martialing offense, isn't it?" He tried not to gloat. Neither
Dent nor Blackfeather had shown him any kindness. The times he had
made overtures to win their friendship, they had scorned him.
Mockery came easily to their lips, and now they were in hot water.
"Heard tell Blackfeather helped one of the squaws escape. Any truth
to that?"

"Your job is not to spread rumors, sir. I
hired you to take photographs."

"Why, Major, that's what I'm doing."

Putnam took a quick glance over his
shoulder. The guards poked and prodded Dent and Blackfeather away.
He turned back.

"You took a photograph. Give it to me."

"It's like this, Major," Wil said, "you
might need photographic proof come the court marital."

Major Putnam held out his hand. Wil heaved a
big sigh, reached into the camera and pulled out the plate.

"There it is, Major." Wil winced as the
officer dropped it into the dirt and crushed it with his heel. "How
about me taking a few pictures of you alongside the dead? Maybe get
one of your officers who knew how to follow orders to join
you."

"A set piece, as it were?"

"You've got the lingo down, Major. We pose
you a bit, make sure everything's where it ought to be, take the
picture and you've got something worthy of the
National
Republican
newspaper back in Washington. Or even your hometown
paper."

"A splendid idea, Mr. Marsh."

Wil spent the rest of the day taking
photographs, many with Major Joad Putnam in them making him look to
be the sole conqueror of a hundred ferocious Indians. By the time
night was settling and long shadows darkened the battlefield, Wil
had packed his wagon and started the long trip back to Wolf Creek.
The pictures for the major would bring him a pretty penny, but the
knives and other trinkets he had stowed away would make him that
much more.

Best of all, he had a mighty fine shot of
Tom Dent and Charley Blackfeather under arrest. He hoped he got the
chance to photograph their hanging for treason. That would give him
more satisfaction than money.

Chapter 2

Cora Sloane had finished her teaching duties
for the day and was on her way to the mercantile store. She was
crossing the street when she saw the rider coming hell-bent for
leather down the dusty, rutted street. She hurried the rest of the
way across to avoid being run down, her heavy reticule bouncing
against her leg. She’d just stepped onto the boardwalk when the
rider reined the horse to a stop, causing a dust cloud to rise from
the street.

The rider was a young Indian woman. Cora
thought she might have seen her before, but she wasn’t sure. The
horse blew out air. Its sides heaved. It had been ridden hard and
fast for too long a distance.

Then Cora noticed that the woman was also
taking deep, heaving breaths, too, but not because she was
fatigued. She was weeping. She took another breath and exhaled it
in a wail. Cora set her reticule down, stepped off the boardwalk,
and went to her.

“Dead,” the woman said between sobs in a
voice that tore at Cora’s heart. “All dead. Please help.
Please.”

She started to slide off the horse. Cora
reached up and helped her down, then guided her to the boardwalk.
They sat on the edge of it, and Cora put her arm around the
woman.

A small crowd began to gather. John Hix, the
barber, came out of his shop, wiping his hands on a towel. Mr. Li
hurried down from his laundry.

“Who’s dead?” Cora asked. “What’s
happened?”

“Soldiers,” the woman said. “They killed
everybody.” She wailed again. “Women, children, all dead.”

“Damn injun.” Jared Woodson emerged from the
doorway of the mercantile store. “Soldiers done the right thing.
Should’ve killed you, too.”

Woodson had a little farm outside of town,
where he and his wife raised meager crops and two sons, both of
whom had proved troublesome to Cora more than once in the little
one-room school where she taught. He was cut from the same cloth as
Elijah Lusk, also the father of troublemakers, whom the marshal had
been forced to shoot down earlier that winter.

Cora stood and turned to face him. “You’d
best watch your manners, Mr. Woodson.”

Woodson looked at her as if he hadn’t
noticed her before, which he probably hadn’t. Cora was sure he
considered women in general insignificant, but he knew very well
that he’d better not think that way about her. He had been present
when she backed Lusk down with the revolver she carried in her
reticule.

Woodson narrowed his beady eyes and started
to speak again, but he appeared to think better of it. He closed
his mouth and tromped off down the boardwalk. Cora turned to see
Mr. Li try and fail to suppress a smile.

“What’s going on here?” Hix asked, jamming
the towel he held into his back pocket. He wore a wrinkled white
barber’s jacket that hung on him loosely. Quite a few dark hairs
adhered to it. He was several years older than Cora, maybe as many
as ten. She liked him well enough, but she suspected that he wasn’t
all he claimed to be. But then she wasn’t, either.

“I’m not sure what’s happened,” she said.
“Something terrible.”

“Soldiers,” the Indian woman said. “Killed
everyone.”

“That fool Putnam,” Hix said.

Kathleen Hyder, the estranged wife of one of
Wolf Creek’s pastors, came out of the mercantile store carrying a
small paper bag.

“I heard someone crying,” she said, her
voice full of concern. She looked at the Indian woman. “You poor
dear. Mr. Li, please go for Doctor Munro. This woman needs
attention.”

“Yes,” Li said. “I will fetch him.”

“Fetch the marshal, too,” Hix said.

Li nodded and hurried off. The Indian woman
sat up straighter. She seemed to be gaining more control.

“The soldiers came into the Kiowa village,”
she said. “I am not of that tribe. I am of The People. I have
visited here before.”

“I thought I’d seen you,” Hix said. “You’re
Little Spring.”

The woman nodded.

“Tell us what happened,” Cora said.

“The People had come to talk with our
friends the Kiowa, and all the men had gone out to hunt. No one was
left behind besides women, children, and men too old to hunt.
Soldiers came and killed them all.”

“My God,” Hix said. “All?”

“Not all. Many. Most. Charlie Blackfeather
got me on this horse and away from the village. Now he will be
punished or killed.”

No one seemed to know quite what to say to
that, but they were saved from having to reply by the arrival of
Deputy Marshal Quint Croy.

“Li told me there was a problem here,” Quint
said.

Cora didn’t know the marshal well, but she
respected him. He was young, about her own age, and she had never
heard anyone say a word against him. He was quite a bit different
from his flamboyant boss, Marshal Gardner, but the two of them got
along well and did a good job of keeping the peace in Wolf
Creek.

“It’s not your problem,” Hix said, and he
told him quickly what had happened.

“It’s my problem if it affects the town,”
Croy said, “and this sure as hell does. Pardon my language, Miss
Cora.”

Cora smiled at him. “Quite all right,
Deputy.”

He had no way of knowing that in her former
life she’d heard considerably worse, and she certainly wasn’t going
to tell him. He’d arrest her on the spot if he were ever to learn
the whole story of her past.

Cora turned at the sound of Doctor Munro’s
buggy rolling down the street. The doctor sat tall and straight in
his black coat. Li sat beside him.

Munro reined in the horse and got down from
the seat, as did Li. Hix went through his brief explanation of the
situation again, and Munro bent to examine Little Spring, who
pulled away from him. He didn’t appear to be offended.

“She appears to be unhurt,” he said. “I
don’t believe she needs my attentions, but there might be others
who do.”

“Yes,” Cora said. “There might be people
still alive at the Kiowa village. If there are, they’ll need your
help.”

“Absolutely correct,” Munro said, rolling
the r’s in the word. Cora had never quite figured out his accent.
All she could tell was that it wasn’t like anything else she’d ever
heard. “I have my medical bag in the buggy, and I can pick up a few
more things on the way.”

“I’m going with you,” Cora said.

Munro gave her a skeptical look.

“I can bind wounds,” she said. “I won’t
faint, if that’s what you think.”

Cora had, in fact, more experience than she
wanted with blood and death. Her outlaw brother had come home more
than once with wounds that needed binding, and he had finally
brought the law close behind him in the shootout that had made Cora
a fugitive.

“Very well,” Munro said. “We’ll start
immediately.”

“I’m going with you, as well,” Hix said,
surprising Cora. She wouldn’t have expected him to volunteer to
help. “I’ll get my horse and catch up.”

“I cannot go,” Kathleen Hyder said. “I will
take Little Spring to the parsonage and see that she’s safe.”

“I’ll go along,” Croy said. “You never know
what kind of trouble you might run into out there.”

“Your wound,” Munro said, referring to the
arm injury that Croy had recently incurred.

“Don’t worry about that,” Croy said. “I’ll
be fine.”

“I’m the doctor here, if you please,” Munro
said.

Croy grinned. “That’s true, so if anything
goes wrong, you’ll be there to patch me up, won’t you?”

“I suppose so,” Munro said. “Assuming that I
choose to do so.”

Croy laughed. “I’ll get my horse and ride
along with Hix.”

Li apologized but said he couldn’t leave his
wife and boy. Cora understood, as did the others. She hefted her
reticule and set it in the buggy, and Munro helped her up onto the
seat. Munro went around to the other side and climbed aboard, the
buggy sagging a bit under his weight.

Cora dreaded what they might see when they
arrived at the Kiowa village, but she couldn’t abide injustice and
suffering. She was determined to help if she could.

She made herself as comfortable as possible
on the hard buggy seat and said, “I’m ready.”

Munro flicked the reins and clucked to the
horse. The buggy bounced along the rutted street toward Munro’s
office. Cora braced herself with her feet and hands so she wouldn’t
jostle against the doctor.

“Do you think things are as bad as Little
Spring said?” she asked as they neared the doctor’s office.

“Bad?” Munro said. “From what I’ve heard of
Major Putnam, I’m afraid it might be even worse.”

Cora felt a chill at the base of her spine.
Munro wasn’t a man given to overstatement. For the first time, Cora
was afraid of what she might be getting into.

***

Whatever Cora had expected, whatever Munro’s
words had meant to her, the reality of it was worse. The contrast
of the peaceful flow of the nearby Cimarron and the brutality of
the slaughter was shocking in a way that Cora registered but didn’t
quite understand.

The river wound along between green banks
with a few trees scattered here and there, and the bodies of women
and children had been laid out not far from the river so that Wil
Marsh could photograph them. The first thing that sprang to Cora’s
mind as she climbed out of the buggy was a line from a poem by John
Keats, “the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.” Cora had once
thought the line beautiful, but she would never hear the buzz of
flies again without seeing a cloud of them in her mind’s eye as
they rose and fell over bloody bodies.

The stench of death mingled with the sharp
odor of gunpowder that still lingered in the air. What had once
been colorfully decorated tipis were flattened or burned, smoke
still rising from them. Cora thought she might vomit, but she
managed to control herself.

She heard a few wails from some women and
old men who hadn’t been killed, but their number was few compared
to the dead. Soldiers stood between them and the bodies to keep
them away.

As far as Cora could see, there were only a
few wounded to be treated. If there had been any others, the
soldiers had put paid to them.

“What can we do?” she asked Munro, who had
come to stand beside her.

“Very little,” he said. “It’s far too late.”
He paused and got a faraway look. “I saw things in the war that I
thought terrible, but nothing like this. This wasn’t a battle. This
was butchery.”