Onward With "Pony"

The next installment: 

The year had suffered a bloody beginning.  War was being fought between the states and it seemed with each passing month the god of battles conjured ever greater spectacles of slaughter.  In June, as Bauer’s wagon rolled slowly up the Platte valley, Lee marched north, his butternut-clad scythe swinging through central Pennsylvania - mayhaps for the harvest of Washington itself, the citizens cried. 

As it happened the fate of the Bauers was not discovered until the late afternoon of July 3^rd.   Pickett’s wreck in the wheat field at Gettysburg was a matter of historical record when a small hunting party of Pawnee guided a detachment of Nebraska Volunteer Cavalry to a spot 35 miles west of Fort Kearny.  The Indians pointed out a large and clamorous flock of crows above the cottonwoods that lined the river.    

 The birds were harassing a pair of feeding coyotes, which loped away upriver, panting, as the Pawnee made sign and the troops approached the immigrants’ tossed camp.  Their horses shied and sidestepped around the broken furniture and hatcheted trunks and overturned pasteboard boxes.  Gangs of black flies rose in spiraling tendrils.  Animals had been at the bodies for three weeks; Lisbeth and the boy were little more than blood-stiffened cloth and scattered bones attended by a few shreds of gnawed flesh, blackened with rot.

With bandanas covering their noses the patrol fanned out, and within the hour a trooper discovered the disconnected skeletal remains of Lorenz Bauer on the river sand where he died, an arrow still lodged in the spokes of his ribcage.  A few yards away, in the middle of the shallow channel a bleached trunk of driftwood split the river’s gentle current.  Spiked on a branch angling up from the surface was Bauer’s caved skull, its cracks limned with bird droppings, empty eye sockets staring west, toward Oregon.

The troopers dismounted to gather and identify the dead.  They searched the barrow of the wagon and the smashed cartons and crates, discretely pocketing small items that appealed to them.

The twelve enlisted men were ten-dollar-a-month soldiers ranging in age from seventeen to fifty-five.  None had more than three years of formal education and three spoke little more than a dozen words of English.  The majority were recent immigrants and sons of immigrants but not one had ever fought in a battle of any kind, especially against Indians; nor was there among them a marksmen.  Only a few had ever fired a weapon.  Alcohol abuse and lack of sanitation at the fort would kill three within six months. Within a year’s time four would desert the post to wander westward.

 As he sifted through the remnants of the immigrants’ possessions Lieutenant Artemus Edward Baker was strangely reminded of the martyrdom of Christians in ancient arenas – of the men, women and children torn apart by wild animals for the amusement of a pagan populace, and he likened himself and his men to civil workers of that time, hired to clean the killing pit.  Cruelty, he thought, is a concept expressed by every race during the centuries since the Son of God lived among men.  Is good truly the stronger force? he wondered - fearful the answer was here, before his eyes, flyblown and stinking.

The young lieutenant had not sought this posting on the frontier. In the previous year he had graduated from West Point near the top of his class.  The Ohio-born son of a dry goods merchant, he grew up listening to the winter stove stories of Mexican War veterans gathered in his father’s store.  Chapultapec, Buena Vista, Churubusco - the bloody tales excited him, and he embraced the concepts of duty, honor, and martial glory, often imagining himself commanding regiments in battle.  The war over secession was to be his opportunity; he had studied hard.   

Then just before Christmas in his final term he attached his name as witness to an affidavit which accused another cadet of cheating.  It was the truth, and the guilty cadet, who happened to be the nephew of an Indiana congressman, was expelled.  Never was punishment more just nor retribution less sure.  The congressman reacted swiftly:  none of the names on the affidavit would be awarded command or staff positions in any of the corps occupying the field against the rebels. 

Several of Baker’s humiliated classmates resigned their commissions to enlist as privates.  Four had been killed in battle already.  But Baker would not resign.  The rank was his by merit, and so earned would not be surrendered.  He decided he would perform the duties assigned to him:  he would compose the duty rosters, file the reports, supervise the fatigue details and endure the ennui and risks imposed by garrison life on the frontier.  He would not be broken.  His exile on the frontier was but a delay, nor was he uncertain that his destiny lay on battlefields as yet unknown.

-- 

The soldiers found the Bauer family bible.  And though none among them read German, they looked at the roster of names and births and deaths and became aware of one missing body.  Then someone found a scratched daguerreotype made in St. Louis and they saw Meta’s face.  The little girl was not here.

They dug graves and Baker opened a small prayer book to speak over the dead as the late sun dropped behind reefed, blood-red clouds. 

Throughout the night heat lightning flashed behind the dark horizon as the soldiers slept.  In the morning Baker sent a trooper back to the fort with word of the massacre while the patrol rode southwest, following the tracks left by the Indian ponies and stolen mules. 

The soldiers rode all day in the heat, their dust rising in sluggish swirls that could be seen at great distance, their eyes straining to discern a trail that broke apart and grew faint and finally vanished in the cedar-choked canyons that began to divide the dry short-grass tableland. 

When shadows of horse and rider stretched over the prairie like long blue ropes the patrol halted and hobbled their footsore animals and made coffee.  For all their trouble they found nothing but the slaughter site of one of the mules.

Eat a goddamn mule, said a private as he dismounted and shook the dust from his blouse.  He pressed a dirty fingertip against a nostril and blew gouts of muddy snot into the dry grass.  Goddamn ‘em.

The patrol spent the night on the prairie and in the morning headed back, crossing mile after mile of the dry and alien country until they climbed a low ridge and followed it  eastward until it broke apart into the rolling hills that marked the course of the south fork of the Platte.  Far to the north across the shallow flood plain the tired riders cursed the sight of yet more hills, so it was not strange that late in the afternoon they cheered and raised their hats like marooned sailors when on the far side of the river a distant train of freight wagons came into view, their white canvas covers glowing in the scorched humid air like the sails of ships.  They were almost home. 

Upon the patrol’s return to Fort Kearny an elderly Pawnee was given a cup of whisky to inspect the arrow pulled from Bauer’s rib cage.  The old man held the shaft close, turning it slowly in the bright sunlight as his milky eyes parsed the grooves and fletching.  He took two long swallows of whiskey, spit on the arrow and made the chopped finger sign for Cheyenne.