Desert Hearts (36 page)

“Sergeant Burke.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is no doubt obvious to you that these Indians are ready to be moved on to Fort Sumner.”

“Ready” was not the word Michael would have chosen. They would never be ready to leave Dinetah. And physically most of them weren’t ready. But it was, he had to admit, necessary to move them soon. Presumably there would be food and shelter at Sumner that wasn’t available here.

“I know that you have been friends with some of them.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need someone familiar with Navajo ways to be assigned to this escort duty.”

“I am happy to serve under you, sir.” And Michael was. Mr. McLaoghlin was not vindictive. He would do what he had to do without regrets, but at least he wouldn’t be enjoying it.

The officer cleared his throat. “I am staying here, Sergeant. Mr. Cooper will be in charge and I am transferring you into his company.”

“Yes, sir,” said Michael through clenched jaws.

“I understand you have some history with the lieutenant. I hope that won’t get in the way?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. You leave the day after tomorrow.”

* * * *

“I can’t do it, Elizabeth,” he raged when he got home. “I can’t serve under that
amadan
.
Día
, that they would put him in charge of something like this.”

“At least you will be able to help Antonio and Serena, Michael,” she offered hesitantly.

He supposed she had a point. But something in him was rising up. Not just the hatred of Cooper, although that was enough, but a stronger combination of rage and grief.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Elizabeth,” he said in a low voice.

“But you have no choice, Michael. Carleton’s policy is not your fault. And surely having someone sympathetic along will help the Diné?”

“No one can help them now, Elizabeth,” he said despairingly. “No one in New Mexico cares how many die along the way. The fewer Indians, the better. All they want is the land and the minerals it holds. And I am playing a part in it, whether I want to or not.”

“Maybe it is time for you to think about leaving the army, Michael?” Elizabeth suggested hesitantly.

Michael looked at her in surprise. “Would ye want me to do that?”

“I want you to be able to live with yourself.”

It was as though Elizabeth had put words to a conviction that had been growing stronger for months, perhaps years. But it was a huge step. And whatever would he do then to support them?

“Let me think about it,
a ghra
. When I come back, we will see how I feel.”

* * * *

It was spring, but you would never know it, thought Elizabeth as she watched the troops line up inside the fort. The sky was gray and threatened snow and the temperatures had been close to freezing for a week.

The troops were mounted and ready, their faces buried in wool scarves. Outside the fort, twenty-four hundred Navajo waited. Some would ride the wagons, some their own horses, but most of them would walk.

Thank God Antonio’s bay had regained some weight and strength, thought Elizabeth. At least Serena and the baby could ride.

It was too cold for the usual band send off. “I miss the music,” said Mrs. Taggert, who was standing next to Elizabeth.

“I think the trumpeters’ lips would have stuck to their instruments” was all Elizabeth said in reply. It would have been awful to have lively music starting off this march.

Michael lifted his hand as he rode by and Elizabeth waved in response. She hated to see him go. She wasn’t afraid for his physical safety this time, although perhaps she should be, given the weather. But she did worry about how he would cope with his duty. Would his nightmares keep him from sleep? Would he be able to take orders from Cooper and keep still?

It started snowing the first afternoon of the journey and by evening heavy winds were beginning to drift the snow across the road. By early morning when they started off again, the drifts were almost impossible to move through and so Michael and a few other men rode ahead, their horses breaking a trail.

Most of the Navajo were poorly clothed even for mild weather and some were actually half naked. The people clung to each other for warmth as they struggled through the snow, but by the end of the second day, Michael knew many of them must be suffering from frostbite as well as near starvation.

“
Día
, he is keeping us at a forced march,” Michael said in a furious voice as he sat down next to Joshua Elwell at camp that night.

“That is exactly what he considers it, Michael. These are prisoners of war.”

“Prisoners! They came in of their own free will, Joshua.”

“That doesn’t matter to Cooper. He wants to get them out of the territory and onto that reservation as quickly as possible.”

“Well, half of them will be dead before we get there.”

“Do you think he cares?”

“I know he doesn’t.” Michael spilled the rest of his coffee out without thinking.
Damn it, boyo
, he scolded himself as he realized what he was doing.
Save whatever you can for Antonio and Serena
.

The next day before they started, Cooper had the soldiers distribute flour to the Navajo. Michael was in front again, breaking trail, and he didn’t realize until the next day that the people who were unfamiliar with it had been eating the flour raw or mixed with water. Their stomachs couldn’t take it and they were crawling off the side of the road, doubled over by the cramps of dysentery.

Cooper kept his men after them, dragging them to their feet, forcing them to continue walking. That evening Michael dreamed again of the silent faces frozen in anguish. But this time, they were not the faces of his family and friends and neighbors. They were Navajo faces. He woke in a cold sweat and lay there shivering under his coat and blanket. It seemed to him that time and reality had shattered and shifted in some way. He didn’t know where he was: in Ireland, where people had been sent Indian corn from America and doubled over and died because they didn’t know how to prepare it and ate it raw, or in New Mexico where Indians doubled over and died trying to eat European flour. Had any time passed since he was eleven? Had anything changed? How could it all be happening again? How could a troop of healthy, well-fed men drive starving people like cattle?

Something in him had split, but he knew he had to hold himself together, at least until he got back to Elizabeth, And so he prayed for sleep, which came for a few hours at least.

They had moved through the worst of the snow and Cooper sent the trailbreakers back to their platoons and pushed on even harder than before.

Michael had looked for Antonio but had not been able to find him. But the next day, he saw his distinctive bay and rode Frost over to him. He pulled several small bundles out of his saddlebags. “Here, take them quickly, Antonio, before old Stringy Arse comes breathing down our necks.”

Antonio flashed him a quick smile and nodded his head gratefully.

“Are you and your family all right?”
Christ, what a stupid thing to ask
, thought Michael. How could they be all right, leaving their home behind and being driven across New Mexico like sheep. But what else was there to say? “I am sorry”? Em, he was sorry. He was in agony, not knowing who he was or what he could do about anything. He couldn’t have saved his mother; his uncle had died…. He shook his head to clear it. He was here, not there. Oh, but here was so much like there….

Serena had turned to him with such a look of gratitude in her eyes that he was ashamed and ducked his head. Then he saw her hands on the reins: they were wrapped in scraps of blanket but her fingers weren’t covered and were looking almost white. She followed his glance and shrugged. “My husband and I think maybe I am turning
bilagaana
,” she joked. “Do you think they would let us go if that happened?”

Michael stripped off his gauntlets. “Here, put these on.”

Serena protested. “But your hands will freeze.”

“Take them, please,” he said, his voice breaking. “ ‘Tis little enough I can be doing for you except praying.”

Serena reached up and grasped Michael’s bare hand. “Whatever happens to us, my friend, I am glad to have known you. I think it will be important to remember your kindness to keep our hearts open in the days to come.”

* * * *

On the fourth day of the walk, more people began to drop by the side of the road. Their relatives surrounded them, encouraged them. Some families even carried the fallen ones, taking turns with an old grandmother or grandfather.

The soldiers were prodding them with bayonets, but some were so far gone that even that couldn’t get them on their feet again.

“Put her in the nearest wagon,” ordered Michael when he came up to three troopers pushing at an old woman’s body with their boots. The men were halfway there with their burden when Lieutenant Cooper came riding up.

“What is going on here, Sergeant Burke?”

“We are moving this woman into a wagon, sir.”

“The wagons are overloaded as it is, Sergeant. We’ll be lucky it the mules make it. Take her to the side of the road and shoot her, Corporal.”

Michael started to move forward, his mouth open to protest.

“Is there anything you wanted to say, mick?” Cooper said with deceptive mildness. “Some order you wanted to refuse? You are lucky I am not asking you to do it.” Cooper wheeled his horse and rode back to the beginning of the line.

Michael couldn’t watch. He kept saying to himself, She was old, she wouldn’t have made it anyway. Perhaps this was a merciful end.

* * * *

The next day, it happened again. Only this time it was a young woman who had just given birth. Her husband was beside her, carrying their baby, and she was stumbling along when a woman behind them saw the snow becoming bright red in front of her as she walked. “Your wife…she bleeds!” the woman told the young husband. “Let me take the baby.”

The man lifted his wife into his arms. She was only semiconscious and he could feel her few garments soak with blood and then freeze stiff. “Put me down,” his wife whispered as he stumbled along.

“Never.” But after a few minutes, he realized he was too weak to carry her and he moved off to the side, laying her down gently and brushing her hair back from her face with his blood-soaked hand.

Michael saw them and spurred Frost. “Get going, man,” he said urgently, “or they’ll shoot you.”

“My wife is bleeding,” the man whispered.

“
Día
,” exclaimed Michael when he saw her. The woman who had taken the baby was standing next to the couple and he motioned her back to the march. Before he could think of what to do, troopers ran by him, their rifles ready.

“No, ye cannot,” said Michael, starting to dismount. He didn’t hear Elwell come u p beside him and almost kicked him in the face as he swung his leg over Frost.

Elwell grabbed him by the collar of his coat and pulled him backward, nearly choking him.

“You dumb mick! Do you think Cooper will let you get away with insubordination a second time? He’ll have you hanged, you fool!”

Michael fought only for a minute and then sagged against his mare. One shot rang out and then the two men moved by. The third was prodding the young woman’s husband, saying, not unkindly, “Come on, man, get back to the march. I don’t want to have to shoot you, too.” Finally, the woman who was carrying the baby pulled the father up and led him along.

“Mount up, Burke, before Cooper sees you over here.”

Michael mounted up and rode on. One more Navajo, an old man, was shot just before they stopped to make camp. And he was sure it would get worse the further they went, for the people had started out weak and hungry and were now dying from exposure as well as hunger.

He was fumbling with the coffeepot, trying to pour his coffee with his frozen fingers when Elwell squatted down beside him.

“What the hell is wrong with your hands, Burke? Are your gloves worn through?”

“I gave them away,” Michael muttered.

“You are a madman, Michael,” said Elwell.

“I am keeping them wrapped in my scarf. They’ll be fine.”

“Better be careful or you’ll have yourself a case of frostbite,” Elwell warned him. “What is it with you and these Indians, Burke? You’ve fought the Sioux. You’ve been Indian fighting for years.”

“Maybe I’ve done too much fighting, Joshua. Maybe I’m just tired of seeing the same thing happen again and again. Maybe I’m wondering what the hell an Irishman is doing to others what was done to him.”

“You’re a damned idealist, Michael, and you’d better keep out of Cooper’s way or you’ll be a dead one.”

“Thanks for grabbing me today, Joshua,” Michael said, smiling ruefully at Elwell.

“Just keep that Irish temper of yours under control for now, man,” said his friend, spitting out the dregs of his coffee onto the ground. “Save it to keep yourself warm!”

Michael made it through the rest of the walk by blocking out as well as he could the sights and sounds around him. He did not forget Antonio, however, and whenever he could speak to him and Serena without drawing attention to himself, he would. The soldiers were on reduced rations themselves by now, but he saved whatever he could and passed it on.

Michael had expected that when they at last reached Fort Sumner there would at least be food and shelter. But with their arrival, the number of Indians doubled and there were almost five thousand Navajo gathered on the edge of the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain, one of the bleakest regions in the territory. Makeshift hogans and tattered tents provided shelter for some, but most were exposed to the freezing winds blowing out of the Staked Plain. The troops at the fort were on half rations so that the Navajo might receive at least subsistence level.

If he had seen the march as hell, thought Michael, then he had been mistaken. It had only been the approach to hell. Sumner itself was Hades.

By the time they arrived, two of his fingers were frostbitten and he sought permission to find the camp doctor.