Murder at Medicine Lodge (27 page)

I had been sitting there, one leg crossed over the other, both arms resting on my knee, totally enthralled. The Blue Jackets weren't quite as captivated. Captain Mac and General Gettis were becoming so angry that they were steadily gaining color in their faces.

Which was precisely Skywalker's intent. And now that he had them sufficiently riled, had their full and undivided attention, he summoned me forward. Evidently we were to trade places, for, as I walked toward him, he turned and aimed himself for my vacated chair. Passing me, he murmured, “Don't be nervous.” The next thing I knew, I was standing beside Billy, looking straight at that row of tight-faced Blue Jackets.

When I began to speak, there was a quiver in my voice. There was no such tremor in Billy's as he translated. Billy's presence, his strong voice, gave me courage. And so I told everything I knew.

“There are two killers among you, and neither of them is Kiowa or the Buffalo Soldier known as Little Jonas. The two are your Lieutenant Danny and the Buffalo Soldier known as William.”

The blood left Lieutenant Danny's face in a rush, leaving him with no color other than his big, red-rimmed blue eyes. Hawwy's head swiveled on his neck as he glared at the younger man who was now so terrified he couldn't move. Captain Mac leaned forward, braced his upper-body weight on the arms resting on his thighs. General Gettis was leaning back in his chair, listening more to McCusker, talking rapidly against his ear, than to Billy.

“Prove it,” Captain Mac dared.

Oh, I do love a challenge, and as Captain Mac and I seemed forever destined to be both foe and associate, it was to him that I directed my entire focus.

“You didn't see the first dead man,” I said evenly. “The violence done to him. His face was cleaved in half. This told me two things, first the killer's rage. Secondly, that only someone the dead man hadn't been afraid of, could get him so far out of your camp, get that physically close to him in order to kill him in such a manner. This would not have been as easy as you might suppose. The dead man had many enemies. He made these enemies because of his burning ambition to become a little chief. To be a little chief in your army, he needed money. At first I did not understand this. To be a chief in my Nation, a man must be brave and generous, most profoundly generous. But in your nation, only money would earn him a place at your council of chiefs. This man had no money, but he had a sneaky mind. He made it his business to find out secrets of his fellow soldiers, then he forced them to give him money to keep his tongue still. He knew so many secrets and so many were buying his silence that he could no longer trust that he would awaken each dawn if he slept among his own kind. So, he begged for, and was given, a separate tent.”

I paused both for breath and for Billy to finish translating. While he was doing that, my eyes locked with General Gettis's. The man was leaning forward, listening to Billy but staring unblinkingly at me. Seconds after Billy finished, I began again, this time speaking directly to the general.

“A man so terrified for his life, and with good cause, does not meet anyone alone. Unless he considers he is meeting a friend. And therein lies the fatal flaw of the dead man. His skewed perception of friendship. His liking, even admiring someone, did not mean that he was above using or controlling that person. He liked, admired, and controlled Lieutenant Danny.”

His face draining of color, the general sat back, glanced at the lieutenant. The young man avoided his eye, raised a trembling hand to his brow.

“He knew all about the lieutenant's marriage, his family ties to a southern hero. The lieutenant didn't want any of this known, so he had to give up valuable things to keep this man quiet. He was a young man filled with rage that this person had not only taken all of his money but had begun taking away his most precious possessions. But, the thing which sparked his killing anger was that this man—who had almost enough to buy what he wanted and had begun using him to manipulate his way into the company of bigger chiefs, earning their gradual acceptance of his hovering presence—soon would not need him anymore. Lieutenant Danny had to have been plagued by the worry that once this man had bought his chieftainship, he could not be counted on to keep his secrets. In fact, exposing Lieutenant Danny would most certainly make him a hero in the eyes of his brother chiefs. This worry became a murderous fear and the dead man, morally devoid as he was, did not expect his victim to turn. Did not understand that the man he tormented would eventually cry enough. Not until it was too late.”

Captain Mac chewed the corner of his mouth as he bird-eyed me. “But the uniform—”

“Oh, that,” I chuckled. “That was my best proof of all. Little Jonas never wore his missing jacket. He was saving it, ‘keeping it for good,' as he phrased it. William knew just where he kept it, stole it, and passed it along to Lieutenant Danny.”

“Why?”

“Because Lieutenant Danny said he needed a soldier's uniform. William hero-worships Lieutenant Danny. He will do whatever that man says, and without question. So he gave him Little Jonas's jacket and, knowing that the trousers would be too big for the lieutenant, he gave him his best pants. He did not know until we found the dead man just why the lieutenant had needed these things, but before that, Little Jonas had been making noise about his jacket. To cover his theft, William made noise about his trousers. Then when he saw with his own eyes the horror that had been committed while the lieutenant had been wearing this clothing, he was physically ill. Recovering from that, he stayed near the lieutenant, the two of them talking in low, earnest tones. I imagine that Lieutenant Danny was explaining why he had no choice, and William, eager to believe him, finally accepted this. Then he saw the dead sergeant and Cullen threaten the lieutenant.”

Captain Mac sat back, his creased brows meeting at the bridge of his nose. His tone came at me in a bellow. “Well, now you've lost me! Why would two sergeants threaten a superior officer?”

“Because of a thing that happened in Dallas.”

Captain Mac tossed his hands in the air and shook his befuddled head.

A hint of a smile toying his mouth, Hawwy touched the man's arm and said, “Bear with him. I'm sure he really does know what he's talking about.”

But even Hawwy became hesitant when I made my next statement.

“It's all to do with smell. The different odors of men. The dead man had a fine long coat, but it held the faint trace of flowers. Little Jonas's jacket had that same faint odor, the odor of Lieutenant Danny. I knew by this that Lieutenant Danny had worn Little Jonas's jacket, and that the coat in the dead soldier's possession really belonged to the lieutenant. From this I knew that it had been the soldier, not the lieutenant, who had been wearing the coat in Dallas when the soldiers were given permission to go there before coming into the Territory. So it was that man dressed like an officer, not the lieutenant, who witnessed the two sergeants running away while being shot at on account of Sergeant Cullen stirring up trouble with a lady named Tuttle. But the dead man was given money by both sergeants, who believed that their money was being passed on to the lieutenant. It was after that man was dead that the two sergeants turned on the lieutenant, because they knew who the killer was, and knowing this, Cullen felt safe. He could not be accused by the lady in Dallas because he now had an obliging officer to protect him.

“The reason they figured out the lieutenant was the killer was that The Cheyenne Robber found the uniform. None of the Blue Jackets got a clear look at it, but the sergeants knew a uniform was missing, on account of Little Jonas. Days before his jacket was stolen and he made a fuss about it. He went to you,” I said, meaning Captain Mac. “And by your own account, he was upset, and knowing the volume of his voice myself, I can well imagine that everyone within the general vicinity of your tent heard him too. Which meant the thief, William, heard him and knew he had to act in order to avert suspicion. He did this by quickly reporting that his trousers were missing. He also told me that he and Little Jonas had had a fight, the result of the fight causing him to be wounded in the leg.

“Now, all of that was true, up to a point. I treated the wound, so I know that it was real. What wasn't real was William's contention that Little Jonas attacked him. He didn't. It was the other way around. I know this because when I talked to Little Jonas, explained William's version, Little Jonas became quite irate. Then the true purpose of the fight became clear. William had picked the fight to draw any notice away from the lieutenant. Another point which became clear during Little Jonas's fury was how supremely stupid I had been.

“First I had been concerned about the lieutenant, because when I went to talk to him I found him writing a letter and about to commit suicide. He was not doing this for anyone's benefit. This had indeed been his real intent and I allowed his defeated emotion to sway me. But my suspicions were aroused again when I came back to him, bringing with me Lieutenant Haw-we-sun as a way of offering him hope, and the letter he had been writing was missing. He tried to make us think that the letter had been stolen, but it wasn't. He had gotten rid of it and he had been too obviously coming out, not going into his tent when we arrived.

“Second, when William had been telling me about his missing trousers, I had been so involved with eating a pie that I had been listening without hearing when he revealed something completely unintended: that he knows how to read.”

Eyes flared, mouths dropped.

“William is from Georgia. I know that Little Jonas is from Louis-anna and, being from that place, he wasn't allowed to learn how to read. Hawwy said that the rules about slaves learning this craft are different in various places. Evidently, in Georgia, it was all right for slaves to be taught to read because William had learned. He let this be known when he said that he saw Captain Mac take out the report forms but did not stay to watch him fill them out. Now, the important thing here are the report forms. Lieutenant Danny had two such forms in his case and they were old. Captain Mac said himself, that those reports stating that the two sergeants needed to be punished on account of the lady in Dallas, should have been given to him a long time ago. But they hadn't been. They had been kept in Lieutenant Danny's case.

“When I found the reports, I noticed something strange about Lieutenant Danny's tent. It was too neat. The other officers are not neat at all. I asked if the lieutenant had a servant and he said no, that he could not afford to pay one. But I had seen the way William took care of him, the way he rushed to get him food, the way he hovered. Then I knew why the lieutenant was so neat. William took care of him there, too. So, having access to the lieutenant's quarters meant that William saw his hero being steadily reduced to poverty, and reading the hidden reports, he naturally assumed that the two sergeants were responsible.

“Out on the prairie, when he learned about the dead man and the lieutenant told him why he'd had to kill him, William also saw that the lieutenant was still in danger when the two sergeants became physically abusive. Knowing how protective he was toward the lieutenant, the dead sergeant came after William. I imagine he warned him off, told him to say clear of the lieutenant. I can only imagine this because I didn't understand what was being said, but I did witness the sergeant's threatening posture, watched William's close-to-the-surface anger. In order to protect the man he admired, the man he believed he owed so much, William felt he no longer had a choice. He killed one of his hero's tormentors, and he did this with the dispassion of an executioner, not the intense rage that was evidenced against the first man. So, aside from the fact that the lieutenant was with me and several others when the sergeant was killed, I knew immediately that there were two killers. It just took a bit longer to understand that both had killed for the same purpose: the protection of the young man known as Lieutenant Danny, the Blue Jacket war hero who, as it happens, is also the nephew of the Gray Jacket hero known as the Gray Ghost.”

I really wasn't allowed to say anything after that, for the furor that erupted would have drowned me out even if I'd tried. The sobbing lieutenant was quickly arrested and soldiers were sent to hunt down William. While all of this heated activity was taking place, Lone Wolf stood, walked out, the rest of us following him.

*   *   *

I did not witness the hangings. There are some things that are simply beyond me. But I did ask if the lieutenant's things were being sent to his wife, and Hawwy said yes.

I know the young woman had tears on her face when she received them. Skywalker had already seen her tears; I had just mistaken them for the tears of loneliness, not understood that they were instead, tears of grief, for receiving her husband's things meant she would never see him again. To help her be proud of the husband she lost, her family was sent a letter telling them that the lieutenant had been excecuted for being a Gray Jacket spy. As far as I know, no mention was made of him being a murderer.

*   *   *

The next day, the council at Medicine Lodge resumed. The gathering was just like it had been on the day before, except this time Three Elks went to sit in his proper place and when he did, he and The Cheyenne Robber began to bicker. I watched them, knowing in my heart that big trouble would sooner or later erupt between those two and when it did, Three Elks would have more to worry about than a silly wound to his backside.

Yet again the generals were dressed in their most splendid uniforms. Looking ill at ease, they stood off waiting for the late arriving Washington men. It was with a superior air that these men finally meandered on to the scene, talking among themselves as they resumed their places at the long table. After they were seated, the generals sat. I have since learned the names of those Washington men. I made it my business to do so, for it was those men—beginning at Medicine Lodge—who brought into play the resulting destruction of a world, an entire way of life, a freedom that will never be known again to any race. Of course it took the United States ten long years of hard fighting to accomplish this goal and I've never seen any of the original men since, but they were present on day one of an ancient civilization's destruction, and for no other reason than this, they should be named.