A Good Day Read online

  “Yeah.” Crow flicked out his tongue to touch a tender swelling on his lip. “Guess you might just get some of your men to set to and beat some more crap out of me, huh? While I’m good and tied.”

  “Are you saying you were ill-treated while a prisoner, Mr. Crow?”

  The shootist hesitated. “The corporal there told you about the steps I fell down. Guess I must have done a whole lot of falling, Major.”

  The same noise from Chandler.

  Lovick shook his head. “Hell. I don’t want frontier killers like you round my fort, Crow. It may be … just may be, that Maynard deserved a reproach. But you could have killed the man.”

  Crow sensed the weakening of the attitude.

  “Sure I could have killed him. But I didn’t kill him.”

  “More luck than judgment, Crow.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “If’n I’d wanted the man dead, he’d have been dead, Major. The world outside doesn’t play games by your Army rules. I met men that’d cut your heart out for a dime. Not for any damned reason. Maybe they didn’t take to the color of your hair. I let that soldier live.”

  “Why?”

  “I told him not to rile me. Said I’d break his arms. Corporal stopped me doin’ the other elbow for the son of a bitch.”

  “What do you think, Corporal?”

  Chandler carried on looking straight ahead. Eyes fixed on a spindly oil-lamp with a fluted brass column. Watching the flame as it guttered with a yellow, smoky glow.

  “Could be Trooper Maynard gave him some cause. But …”

  “But it was a vicious assault, Corporal?” suggested the officer.

  “That’s it, Sir.”

  “Guess I’ll – Damn this cough. Guess I’ll think on it. When were you aiming to leave Fort Garrett, Mr. Crow?”

  “First light tomorrow.”

  “You’ll stay here a while.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve got to think what to do,” snapped Lovick, voice suddenly like a petulant child deprived of a favorite toy cart.

  “You bust me or you let me go,” said Crow.

  “Maybe. I could have you sent for civilian trial. You know that.”

  “Sure,” replied Crow.

  “If there was provocation then …”

  “Want me to lock him up again?” asked the corporal, stepping in closer to the shootist.

  “Might arrange for me to fall down some more of them steps,” suggested Crow, quietly. “Next time it might even be steep enough to kill me. Solve your problems, wouldn’t it?”

  “We don’t do that kind of thing in the Cavalry, Crow!”

  The shootist didn’t speak. He knew, and Lovick knew, and Chandler knew that in the Cavalry, like anywhere else, they sometimes did just that kind of thing.

  Lovick looked totally drained, like he’d run a mile across ploughed fields in full winter clothing. He swallowed hard, trying to recover his possession.

  “Unchain him, Corporal. Let the surgeon see to his injuries. Make sure he has no access to weapons.”

  “His horse?”

  “Keep it in the stables under guard.”

  “Do I get freedom of the fort, Major?” asked Crow.

  “Within reason.”

  “Armory, Officers’ Quarters, stable?”

  Lovick nodded. “You got it, Mr. Crow. Then tomorrow we’ll think about this again. Maybe around noon. Corporal Chandler?”

  “Sir?”

  “I want Mr. Crow back here at noon. I do not want to see any evidence that he has had any further falls, Corporal.”

  “Sure, Major. I’ll see to it. And I’ll take care that none of the men get riled up seein’ him round the place.”

  Lovick nodded and lay back on his bed, closing his eyes.

  Crow slept comfortably that night. A quiet, dreamless sleep.

  It hadn’t been a bad day.

  Chapter Four

  “You the man loves Indians?”

  “What?”

  “You the yellow bastard that loves Indians and near killed my friend Jonas over one?”

  Crow drew a long, slow breath. During the previous evening he’d been subjected to a certain amount of muttered abuse from some of the other soldiers at Fort Garrett, angry at what had happened to Trooper Maynard. But they had been held back by their own fear. The story had raced around that the experienced veteran had actually been holding the tall stranger with a cocked carbine ready and rammed into his belly. And the shootist had still taken him apart with ruthless ease.

  This morning things had been calmer. The men had worked off their anger and were now eager to show some respect for such a lethal fighting machine. Crow had even eaten breakfast in the mess with the rest of the non-commissioned officers, listening with interest to their stories of the occasional Indian troubles they’d been enduring. Every now and again he’d interrupt them with a question.

  “Mainly Chiricahua, are they?”

  Sergeant Haydon had answered him. Haydon was a tall, well-built man with a neatly trimmed moustache. “Sure are, Mr. Crow. Led by Small Pony.”

  “Kind of tall, I hear.”

  “Nigh on six feet. Shorter than old Cuchillo, but big enough for an Apache.”

  Afterwards Crow had walked out alone, strolling around the fort. Mostly keeping himself to himself. Sensing the way word of who he was had run around, even to the group of tame Indians that huddled under blankets near the gates of the establishment.

  It was very much in his mind to try and find a way of getting out of the fort before he had to see the ailing Commanding Officer at noon. It wouldn’t be that hard to get his horse out of the stables, though it might be necessary to do some harm to the trooper standing as sentry. But the guns and his saber were locked away good and tight in the Major’s office. The pistol was easily replaced, but Crow loved his Purdey and knew his chances of replacing that with an equally fine scattergun were as near to zero as makes no difference.

  So, he chose to wait.

  It was while he was near the blacksmith’s that he heard the voice calling out to him. A mean, whining little voice, like a spoiled girl or an unpleasant boy.

  It was the latter.

  Crow immediately recalled the words of yesterday about who was the nastiest character around Garrett.

  “You’d be Cyrus Quaid,” he said.

  “What of it, Mr. Indian-lover?” replied the boy.

  Crow stood and looked at him in silence for several seconds. The lad seemed to be around fifteen years old. Standing about five feet four inches, with good broad shoulders. But that was his only decent feature. His chest was sunken and his waist was concealed beneath rolls of fat. His build was more like an ageing lumberjack with too much of a taste for the bottle.

  He wore a smart suit of speckled gray and brown, too tight around the midriff where the buttons strained at their holes. His brown boots were neatly polished and elegant. On top of his round head was perched a fashionable hard hat, also in brown.

  Crow thought that he looked like an overweight illustration from a mail order catalogue.

  “What you lookin’ at, Indian lover?”

  Crow still didn’t reply. Cyrus Quaid had a singularly unlovable face.

  Chubby cheeks and puffy eyes, the lashes long and almost colorless. The lips were bowed and bright red, like a New Orleans whore. The eyes were bright blue, the hair blond and overlong.

  “You don’t frighten me, Mister.” Said in a voice that betrayed the truth.

  “Son, I guess I’d take it kindly if’n you’d get along out of my way.”

  “I’ll tell my Pa ‘bout you.”

  “Do that.”

  “He’s Big Cyrus. I’m Little Cyrus.”

  Crow spat in the dirt, narrowly missing the gleaming toes of the boy’s brown boots.

  “Hey. He’s Sutler here.”

  “I don’t give a good damn if’n he’s Jesus Christ Almighty, son.”

  “I’ll tell him you sa
id that.”

  “Tell him.”

  “Major Lovick respects me and my Pa.”

  “The Major’s sick. Dying. I’m not.”

  “Sutler’s mighty important around an Army fort, Mister.”

  “Sure. Sells cheap food riddled with crawlin’ maggots and waters his liquor. Lets soldiers run up debts and then skins them for their pay. Worse than worm-covered buffalo shit.”

  The boy’s jaw dropped open. He’d never heard anyone talk about his father like that before and it was as if the world had crumbled into shaking powder beneath his feet.

  “Hey …”

  “And if you don’t get the Hell out of my way, son, I’ll take down those fancy britches of yours and beat you black and blue.”

  “You dirty.

  With no sign of any effort the shootist reached out with his right hand and picked the teenager from his feet. Holding him by the collar of his jacket, nearly strangling him. Cyrus’s face turned redder than a turkey-cock and he began to choke. Tongue protruding from his swollen lips, boots kicking desperately several inches off the earth.

  Crow slapped him several times across the cheeks with his left hand. Not hard enough to knock him out, but hard enough to make the boy’s ears ring. A thread of blood wormed from Cyrus’s nostrils and he started to cry. Hands going to his face as the tall man dropped him to the floor, turning his back and walking away from the blubbering lout.

  “Fuckin’ Indian lover,” said Quaid. Taking care his voice wasn’t loud enough for Crow to hear. “I’D get even. I’ll tell my Pa.”

  But he didn’t tell his father.

  Events moved on too fast for that.

  The meeting with Lovick was an anti-climax.

  At noon precisely Corporal Chandler marched to the officer’s quarters with Crow along at his side. Striding through the pale heat of the watery sun.

  “Winter’s on the way, Crow.”

  “Sure is. Feel that bite in the air.”

  “You been down in Arizona long?”

  Crow came as close as he ever did to smiling. Feeling a certain respect for the veteran corporal. Sensing the man’s toughness.

  “Been most places. Summer in Death Valley. Winter in the high Sierras.”

  “I never been more than two hundred miles from where we stand here. Never seen the sea.”

  “I seen the Atlantic and the Pacific”

  “What are they like, Crow? Wonderful as folks say they are?”

  The shootist considered the question for a few moments as they stood together near the centre of the fort’s parade-ground.

  “You seen a fresh water pool after a flash flood?”

  “Hell … Course I have.”

  “Oceans is like that only a damned lot bigger.”

  Chandler grinned, punching the shootist on the shoulder in a friendly gesture. “You’re all right, Crow. All right.” Dropping his voice for a few seconds. “Heard you tangled with that little runt, Cyrus Quaid.”

  “Yeah. Slapped him for his lip.”

  “Watch your back while you’re on Fort Garrett, Crow. Young Cyrus isn’t to be trusted further than a man could spit lead in a typhoon.”

  “Kind of deep, is he?”

  Chandler shook his head, face serious. “Deeper than a privy-digger’s plunger and about as damned pleasant to know.”

  “His Pa carry some muscle?”

  “Show me a Sutler on an Army post that doesn’t. Half the men here are in debt to him. He’s a greasy bastard. Touch of the Mex in him somewheres way back when. Major can’t tolerate him but Quaid treads real careful.”

  “Guess we ought to be goin’ in to see the man. Past noon.”

  The Corporal sniffed, hawking up a mouthful of phlegm, then remembering he was on the parade-ground and swallowing it again with a grimace of distaste.

  “That’s right enough. Just watch out for little Cyrus. He got a pretty Remington derringer in his belt. Special holster made for it. Pearl-handled gun. Ladies’ gun. His Pa got it to pay off a debt. Gave it his precious only child. And there’s a good stiletto knife on his left hip.”

  “Regular army, ain’t he?”

  “No joke, Crow. Been trouble with him and his bastard knife. Couple of friendlies been cut at night. Both women. That’s his style. And there’s been damage to trade goods bought by those Chiricahuas outside the gate. A mule got hamstrung only a week back.”

  “Nice,” said Crow. “Real nice.”

  There was a half-breed in Lovick’s room. A sheepish, round-shouldered man, with long hair, tied back with a length of beaded braid. He wore the ordinary clothes of the local Apache. Cotton shirt in flowered material and a loincloth over bare legs. High fawn boots of animal skin. In a few weeks, as the weather worsened, he would probably change to cotton breeches.

  The Major was sitting up at his desk, looking about as healthy as a wrung-out hank of old cloth. He was partly dressed, but his shirt was open by several buttons and he wasn’t wearing a hat. The shutters were drawn tight and a couple of lamps cast a flickering, warm golden glow across the room, reflecting off the bald patch on the top of Lovick’s head.

  He looked up as Chandler and Crow walked in. The shootist noticed that there was a patch of dried blood crusted around the older man’s mouth and that he hadn’t shaved that day, a light gingerish stubble blurring the outlines of his face.

  “What the …? Oh, yeah. Mr. Crow. I swear I don’t feel too damned well today. Can this wait until later? The surgeon’s comin’ in this afternoon. Told me to go to my bed. Wait for him. Just had to see Johnny Dancer here.”

  “More trouble with the friendlies?” asked Corporal Chandler.

  The breed turned, his dark eyes searching the face of Crow. Flicking away, then coming back as though he hadn’t believed his first glance. Then speaking, his words aimed somewhere towards the corner of the room where a smoke-darkened print of a ruined castle hung crookedly on its cord.

  “Bad weather comes. We need more corn and maize. More wood for fires. Must come inside Fort Garrett.”

  Lovick’s voice showed his illness. “I said we would allow you in when the weather grew bad.”

  “When?” asked the breed, stubbornly. Still not looking at the white officer.

  “When I damned well say, Mr. John Dancer. When I say!”

  Chandler coughed. “Maybe if’n we leave it ‘til tomorrow morning, Sir?”

  “Yeah. That sit well with you, Mr. Crow?”

  The shootist nodded his agreement. “Guess I’m fine for another day. You feed me and I’ll stick around a few days.”

  “Very … Oh …”He panted for breath, face turning crimson, half-rising, then sitting down again. His eyes wrinkled with pain and he brought out the inevitable handkerchief, pressing it to his lips. Eventually managing to recover control.

  “Send in the orderly to help me, Corporal. And see the breed off the fort.”

  “What of the boy?” asked Dancer.

  “Quaid?”

  “Yes. He insults our women. And his father sells us spoilt meat and poor goods.”

  For a long moment there was a silence in the room. Crow was conscious of the oppressive heat, the remnants of a fire still smoldering in the hearth. And the smell of sickness.

  Then Lovick spoke, his voice quieter. Resigned. “I know the problems of your people, John. It is not easy to be the loser in a war.”

  “We have not lost. Not yet, Major.”

  “But you will lose. Only the miners and the farmers will win. The Indians, the soldiers …we will be the losers.”

  “You cannot help us.”

  It was a flat statement and the officer didn’t try to reply. Contenting himself with a tired wave of the hand, dismissing the three men.

  The breed glanced sideways again at Crow, pausing as though he was going to speak. Changing his mind and walking from the room. Followed by the shootist. Corporal Chandler bringing up the rear of the group, closing the door quietly behind him.

  “I’ll g
et the orderly. Come and have a drink, Crow?” he asked.

  “Sure.” Watching the soldier march off along the line of buildings, until he vanished around the corner of the stables.

  Crow himself was about to leave when he felt a hand on his sleeve. Looking into the face of the half-breed.

  “What is it?”

  “You know my people?”

  “I know many people, John Dancer.”

  “You fought with the small pig-boy.”

  “Cyrus Quaid?”

  The breed nodded solemnly, the rising wind tugging at his long hair. “He is bad for us, Crow. The whites push and the gold star with red hair …”

  “Lovick?”

  “Yes. He is sick and close to the long silence. He will not help. Beyond those hills is Small Pony and his young men talk war.”

  “All of the tribes of the Chiricahua?”

  “The young men. Always young men, Crow. Heads full with red blood and eyes closed to danger. If there is not help then we leave fort and go to our leader. It will be bad.”

  “Why do you care, John Dancer?”

  The breed looked down. “I am not Chiricahua. I am not white. I am a dirty breed to some. But there are good men in both fort and hills. Do you understand what I mean, Crow?”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “That is why I speak. There will be great unhappiness if fighting begins.”

  The shootist sniffed the air. “Rain on the way, from the north.”

  “You can do nothing?”

  “That’s right, Dancer. Nothing is about all I can do round here. If’n I was you I’d take my people and get out. Better to go with Small Pony than get caught between the fires here.”

  The half-breed nodded again. “These are good words, my brother. I thank you.”

  And with that he turned away and walked towards the main gates of the fort, where a small group of the friendly Indians still huddled.

  Later that evening the Corporal of the Guard heard the sound of a scuffle from the collection of patched tents by the gate. A woman calling out and a man shouting. He sent two troopers to investigate. There was more yelling and the noise of a blow being struck.

  “Indian squaw’s been cut round the face, Corporal,” reported the soldiers when they returned a couple of minutes later.