Murder at Medicine Lodge (23 page)

All right, I wanted to steal the bottle. Prior to being caught up with Lone Wolf's mob headed for the Blue Jackets' camp, my original intent had been to find a new present for my wife because of the shovel. Well, even though I knew she would have loved to have had it, that big black iron pot William used for washing plates and cups was too big and too heavy for me to cart off. But the bottle of sweet water was just right. And it fit perfectly inside my carry pouch. But it just wasn't right to steal from a man who had next to nothing left. I couldn't be just another vulture in Lieutenant Danny's life. Hating myself for it, I put the bottle back where I'd found it and closed the bag quick, before I could change my mind.

When the voices beyond the canvas wall became muted, I hastened myself and slipped back into the small front room of the tent. I wasn't noticed until I asked of Hawwy, “Does the young chief have a soldier-servant?”

Hawwy and Lieutenant Danny blinked at me. Because Hawwy hadn't understood the whole of my question, he went to the door and called Billy back inside. Seconds later, Billy repeated my question.

“No,” Lieutenant Danny answered. “For some time now, I haven't been able to afford a steward.”

Well, that made sense, as Buug-lah had been steadily draining him of his finances, reducing him to the necessity of handing over his personal as well as cherished items. A young man like that wouldn't have the spare money to pay for an attendant. Still, as neat as he appeared to be, I couldn't see that he actually had need of one. I looked back over my shoulder to the bedchamber. Until my meddling, nothing in there appeared to have been touched. Which meant that whoever had come in, had meant to take only the letter left lying in plain view on the small desk.

I looked back to Billy. “Ask him what he'd been writing. Tell him to explain as thoroughly as possible.”

Lieutenant Danny was given to dizzy spells when overly distraught. His hands on the sides of his face, he reeled around almost drunkenly as he blathered on about his total ruin. Hawwy guided him back to the chair and sat him down.

“I'd been confessing all,” he lamented. “I'd felt that there was no point in holding back once I'd settled on my final course.”

Stanley came back inside just as the lieutenant was slumping farther in the chair, moaning his doomed fate. Really, for a young man with his entire life stretching before him, a loving wife anxiously awaiting the day they would be reunited, Lieutenant Danny seemed almost anxious to give up without a struggle. And for once Hawwy and I were on opposing sides of this issue. The more Lieutenant Danny wallowed in self-pity, the more impatient I became, whereas Hawwy had become the very spirit of sympathy. Billy and I rolled our eyes, and Stanley, standing close to Billy, madly scratched at his notepad. In low tones, Stanley asked questions and Billy—that thickhead—answered! When Stanley again said something under his breath then let go a tiny whistle between pursed lips and scratched even faster, I kicked Billy's leg.

“What are you telling him?”

“He asked how the young chief was related to the Gray Ghost. I told him the Ghost was his mother's brother.”

“And what did he say just before he whistled?”

Billy was trying to tell me, when a shot rang out.

I looked questioningly at Hawwy, then at Billy. “Was that another type of signal for the soldiers?”

Hawwy jumped to his feet and ran out of the tent with the rest of us—even Lieutenant Danny—hard on his heels.

*   *   *

Hicks was dead, shot down and left lying just outside the camp near the grazing area for the army's horses and mules. Brigadier General Augustus Gettis had a pinched-looking face, made even more so by a murder committed completely in the open, in full view of two companies of soldiers and herd guards, and still not one eyewitness to the deed. Hicks had been shot neatly through the heart, powder burns on his jacket indicating that the shot was delivered at close range. Because I was with Hawwy, General Gettis allowed me access to the victim's body. As a doctor, Hawwy's duty was to pronounce Hicks officially dead. While he checked his watch, seeming to time the length of inactivity of the man's heartbeat, I busily looked for signs of a struggle, any bruising on arms or wrists. There were none. To my mind, this meant that Hicks had voluntarily met with his killer, thoroughly unaware of any danger until the fatal shot was fired. Examining the outside of the dead man's jacket, I found a telltale brown stain.

“Where is Cullen?” I asked.

Hawwy looked confused by the question until I pointed to the dried tobacco spittle on the jacket sleeve. “By God!” he boomed.

General Gettis, hands clasped firmly behind his back, paced. His face was a berry red color, his expression livid. The soldiers surrounding him were given the odd task of standing at attention yet remaining out of the way of the briskly striding general. When Hawwy stood to his full height, and me right behind him, the general stopped, executing a remarkably sharp turn by placing the ball of one booted foot close against the heel of the other. Then he stood there, his full-on wrath challenging Hawwy.

“Do you have any idea just what the hell happened here?”

“This man was shot, sir.”

“I am well aware of that, Doctor!” Gettis raged. “My question is, do you have any idea as to the culprit?”

Hawwy hesitated, his eyes glancing away from the general to the man lying dead at his feet. “We have two, actually. The first being that this murder could not have been committed by the trooper currently in custody. The second, that the killer, a tobacco chewer, is most probably the same man responsible for the death of Bugler Wakefield. One such man springs instantly to mind.”

“And that man would be?”

“Sergeant Cullen.”

The general stubbornly refused to spare Hawwy's opinion a second's thought. “I find this deduction to be totally without merit. I am quite certain of the guilt of the actual party in Wakefield's case. And so would you were you not so…” his words faded as a hand toyed with his chin. The hand fell away and the strong chin lifted as he stared at Hawwy over the few yards separating them. “How to put this … so emotionally embroiled with the Kiowa. For all any of us know, this same miscreant sneaked in under our very noses and committed yet another act of barbarism against the United States. ‘Counting coup' I believe its called. Yet one more sin that poor darky will be made to die for.”

I was lost during this exchange. All I knew was that Hawwy was getting mad. I watched as his spine stiffened, his color changed, and his jawline tightened. Wanting to know what was going on, I chanced a furtive glance toward Billy. Keeping his face blank, and without acknowledging my questioning gaze, he subtly hand-signed, White Bear. He accuses White Bear.

Hawwy and I were put on the hunt again, but this time we were armed with a vital clue. With a legion of soldiers and officers coming with us, Hawwy explained, just in case Cullen got rough, we went looking for the sergeant. As we all trooped along, I tried not to think too much about the fact that I was walking in front of a host of soldiers, all of them pointing guns directly at my back.

When this parade of armed men caught up with Cullen, he was no longer arrogant. He was scared—so scared that he swallowed that big lump of tobacco in his jaw. Alarmed by what he'd unintentionally done, his eyes flashed. Feeling the scalding burn as the tobacco slid down his throat, he placed a hand against his chest, his face beginning to glow a bright red. Then he proceeded to gag.

A brisk wind had come up. Even though we were all standing in fiercely bright sunlight, that steady breeze crisp, I shivered, envying the Blue Jackets' their thick coats and hats. I even envied Billy with his long, dull gray coat and battered black hat. Just that morning I'd felt quite comfortable in light clothing but now as late afternoon rapidly approached, I was clenching my teeth against the cold. The prairie during the autumn season is unpredictable, mild one minute, biting cold the next, making a constant change of dress necessary. As a stronger wind whipped by—sharper, able to penetrate to the bone—it vigorously ruffled the flattened grasses of the camp.

As Cullen continued to make disgusting noises and act as if he were choking to death, and Captain Mac yelled to his fullest capability, I shook my head and turned away, contenting myself to watch the dark tangle of our shadows moving across the wind-fluttered grasses as if in a type of dance. Captain Mac collided with me, bringing me roughly back into the moment as he and several soldiers grappled with Cullen, trying to fix heavy chains on his wrists.

“I didn't do it,” he wheezed as he struggled.

“Then just stand still, soldier, while we sort this out! If you stand still, you won't be chained.”

Cullen quickly stopped fighting and did what he was told. The soldiers stepped back from him. A second or two later, Captain Mac was relieving Cullen of his side pistol.

The sergeant stood with his head down as two troopers came forward to stand on either side of him while the captain sniffed at the muzzle of Cullen's gun. Then, with quick, expert movements, Captain Mac opened and checked the cartridge chamber. Looking from the gun to us, his eyes were a tight squint; his mouth was such a pucker that it looked little more than a pink dot set just above an exceptionally strong chin. Anger flitted across his face as he waved the pistol, snapping the cartridge chamber closed.

“This gun has not been fired!”

Pointing an accusing hand toward me, he launched himself into a tirade. What he yelled, Billy assured me, did not bear repeating, for every word coming from Captain Mac's mouth was unabashedly obscene—a slur not only against my parent's union, but also their subsequent begetting of me. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Hawwy interrupted him, reminding the captain about the stain on Hicks's jacket. That's when Cullen began to laugh.

“Well, he chewed himself, didn't he?” Cullen brayed. “Used to eat what was left of those cigars of his. The man was too cheap to buy cigars and chewing tobacco. Said he didn't need to. That using cigars for both kinds of tobaccy suited him just fine.” He turned his head, looked me directly in the eye and laughed louder. Then he turned toward Captain Mac.

“Is that all you got? Just some scrawny Injun's say-so an' a little Hicks spit?”

Realizing that yes, he had jumped to making an arrest based on a scrawny Injun's say-so and a dash of spittle, Captain Mac's heavy jaws bunched. As there seemed to be only one way out of this humiliating circumstance, Captain Mac took it. Ordering the soldiers to stand down, he let it be known that he would personally vouch for Cullen's innocence to General Gettis. He would also express concern that a “bad-boy” Kiowa felt free to roam the temporary military installation spreading lies and causing mayhem among the troops. That said, Captain Mac led the gloating sergeant and the others away.

I really can't say how Hawwy, Billy, or Stanley felt in those moments of defeat, but I felt as if we were starting all over again, looking for a killer among too many men who looked virtually the same. And that uniform sameness was beginning to drive me crazy. Hawwy touched me on my trembling shoulder, asked if I was cold. After I said yes, he led me off in the direction of his tent, and there found a spare coat.

Its simplicity made it beautiful, a dark blue with a single line of black buttons. Hawwy explained that it was his going-to-town coat. One he wore when he didn't want to be seen wearing his uniform. Officers, he said, always had to be in uniform but in some towns where the Rebel faction outnumbered occupying Union soldiers, a man alone and wearing an officer's blue-jacket uniform was viewed as a walking target. I thought about the coat Lieutenant Danny was wearing. I had not seen another coat in his tent. To my knowledge the one he was wearing was the only one he had. It was not a nice coat. It looked old and worn-through in places. Maybe the condition of his coat was on account of his wearing it all the time during the war. Then again, maybe not.

“Towns like … Dallas?” I asked.

Hawwy laughed as he buttoned me up inside the warm coat. “Especially towns like Dallas.”

As he was working on the last buttons, I lifted my arm, breathed in the aroma of rich wool tinged with the subtle redolence of Ha-we-sun. My arm was in the process of falling to my side when Hawwy stood and admired the sight of me in his coat.

“I would like to visit Little Jonas,” I said.

Stanley and Billy were lolling just outside the tent, sharing back and forth a small white-colored cigar. A cigar-ette, Stanley called it. As Billy and Hawwy were fascinated by this latest smoking fashion, recently begun in the East, Stanley began to roll up shreds of tobacco in tiny, whisper-thin pay-paas. As I didn't care to share, I stood enjoying the warmth of the coat while they rolled up and smoked, Stanley blowing smoke rings at the sky. Now, in my culture, offering smoke to the Four Corners of the earth, then the sky, is a religious practice, so I reverently bowed my head. The next thing I knew, Stanley was trying to put that cigar-ette between my lips. In self-defense I smoked as he wanted me to do, and while I did, I noticed something about Stanley. Puffing eagerly now on that cigar-ette, I stood just as close to him as I possibly could. After a second or two of this familiar contact, I more anxious than ever to get to Little Jonas.

The guards at the prison tent buckled over,
haw-haw
ing at the sight of me in Hawwy's long coat. I looked so comical that they granted almost instant permission for the four of us to visit their prisoner. Once inside, I sat down on the cot next to Little Jonas, with Billy, Hawwy, and Stanley standing before us.

“Hicks is dead,” I said solemnly.

Little Jonas said nothing.

I tried again. “I suspected Cullen.”

The huge black man grinned, said that I must be one smart Injun.