War-Crossed Eyes

By Joseph Hirsch

It is less than a year before the bloodiest chapter in American History, the Civil War, commences in earnest. A Blackfoot Indian rides the prairie, looking for revenge on the society which has stolen his son from him. He is about to cross paths with a beautiful young woman whose disappearance will send ripples through the Western Frontier, conscripting mercenaries and mutineers into the hunt to bring the Indian to justice and the girl to safety. But nothing is easy in the Kansas-Nebraska territory and anyone brave or foolhardy enough to try their hand must first suffer the brutality of man and beast, which only grows in intensity the further west that a seeker might travel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: Feb 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781612355634

Book preview

War-Crossed Eyes

by Joseph Hirsch

Published by

Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.melange-books.com

War-Crossed Eyes, Copyright 2013 by Joseph Hirsch

ISBN: 978-1-61235-563-4

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Art by Stephanie Flint

WAR-CROSSED EYES

JOSEPH HIRSCH

It is less than a year before the bloodiest chapter in American History, the Civil War, commences in earnest. A Blackfoot Indian rides the prairie, looking for revenge on the society which has stolen his son from him. He is about to cross paths with a beautiful young woman whose disappearance will send ripples through the Western Frontier, conscripting mercenaries and mutineers into the hunt to bring the Indian to justice and the girl to safety. But nothing is easy in the Kansas-Nebraska territory and anyone brave or foolhardy enough to try their hand must first suffer the brutality of man and beast, which only grows in intensity the further west that a seeker might travel.

Table of Contents

War-Crossed Eyes

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

About the Author

Previews

Chapter One

Someone was going to die. That much was clear to Private James Crib. Before he could further ponder who that individual might be, reveille sounded and the greenhorn Lieutenant was going down the line, raising the men from their slumber.

After rousing them from their pickets and fish-slicker sleeping arrangements, Lieutenant Cording made use of his West Point smarts to draw a diagram in the sand with a detached Enfield bayonet. Then he began the briefing:

"While on patrol, several Cavalry scouts encountered a couple of wayward Sooners who complained of their claims being jumped in the form of a scalping, conceivably at the hands of the Pawnee or the Piegan Bloods. The Indians have grown more than mildly resentful at our imposition on their former hunting grounds."

The Lieutenant stopped for a moment at this point to look around at the gawking faces. Our task, he resumed, is to track these savages and bring some measure of justice to the slain and to restore order, which will in turn restore local faith in the Union.

Bucking for his captaincy bars was the silent consensus among the men which Crib heard bandied around camp when the soldiers got to griping. Maybe even Bonaparte’s epaulettes. He’d do it, they had no doubt, ascend to the rank of full bird, rising on a tide of his boys’ blood, just for the privilege of sharing tea in a sitting room somewhere with Senator Lincoln, the Lieutenant’s Montenegro cigar staining the glass protecting a Buchanan ambrotype.

Now, the Lieutenant said, none of us are trackers, but we have been given the impression by the assaulted parties the savages were corned when they struck. Since commerce of alcohol to Indians is outlawed in this land, and here his gaze steeled, "we can assume there is a distillery operating somewhere nearby. Someone has put personal profit over the welfare of the territories we are charged to protect.

My guess is our moonshiners are crafty enough to keep their still outside of town, but not sharp enough to hide their doings from a people who we might induce by some means, the Lieutenant said, with a smile, to tell us where this illicit trading post, this devil’s mushroom, has sprouted in the Lord’s large forest.

So, marching sans fife and drum to the tune of this poor man’s Von Clausewitz, PFC James Crib and Buck Private Orville Rayburn sallied forth, taking their places in a two-file column, away from the willowed safety of Camp Slumgullion, into a sulfur-tinged night, latticed with clouds which commingled pink and white, like salmon trapped in a creek frozen in the midst of spawning season.

Invalid Corps is the rub, Orville grunted, shifting the weight of his heavy haversack. He was having trouble managing his powder horn and truncheon. The impromptu bandoleer formed by their crossing straps was chafing his chest.

Won’t hold copper, James said. How are you going to convince them you’re invalid?

Easy, Orville said, I got the idea from my daddy. He brushed his errant canteen aside with one hand, and pulled the upper and lower lid around the wide, viscous white of his eye. I drop in a little bit of something to irritate it, then I go to the doctor and I says ‘Doc, while on furlough I was a working to make ends meet as a safe polisher, when wouldn’t you know it, a stray shaving done jumped into my eye, with the speed of a weevil or a louse.

Horse feathers, James Crib said, laughing. The noise got the Lieutenant’s attention. None of them were riding mounts, but he seemed to be riding ten hands high on the gold of his commission. Keep it down back there.

At least he leads from the front, Crib thought. James was about to play devil’s advocate some more to pass the time, when a loud smacking sound came from their flank. He turned his neck, causing the wool of his greatcoat to chafe him severely. What are you smacking on there, boss?

Corporal Curtis smiled, allowing them to guess which teeth were blackened out from the chaw he chewed, and which of his pearly whites had been missing since before he had even acquired the bad habit. Try you some. He handed a plug, the size of a fatted Mediterranean date, to Crib. See if you can pick up the flavors.

Orville jerked a thumb at his friend. If he knew a thing about flavor, he wouldn’t have been stricken as camp cook.

Crib tried to speak around the plug bulging in his jaw. Maybe if you were not such a heathen, you could have kept that plum as chaplain’s assistant.

This time it was the corporal’s guffaws that turned the Lieutenant’s head. If I have to make camp to restore order to ranks, there will be extra-duty in it for the jack-jaw I deem responsible.

His threat was hollow. There was a town up ahead, visible all the way down the line.

Ground your gear and post the guide-on. I want the first ten men to follow me into town. The lieutenant raised his voice so the rest of the platoon could hear him. The rest of you make ready to strike up camp here, and keep it light just in case we got to move out fast. He removed his slouch hat and wiped his brow, which was sweaty in spite of the cool edge to the air.

Try to guess the flavors in the mix, Curtis whispered.

Crib didn’t have time to respond; he and Rayburn made nine and ten in the officer’s derring-do abacus. Their muskets were at the low-ready, bayonets affixed. Behind them, the black smoke from a three-legged spider pot was already forming a creosoted fist moving heavenward, where it would camouflage itself among the gray cumulous clouds.

Well, Rayburn said, tensing, what do you taste now?

Crib lolled his tongue around his mouth. Sorghum, some molasses, and a bit of maple, maybe even cherry... He spit into the makeshift spittoon of the earth.

Licorice, he said.

Would that be red or black licorice, because I hate me some black licorice? Rayburn said.

Orville, the Lieutenant called, just because you are a buck private does not mean you cannot sink lower into the morass.

Yes sir, he mumbled.

As for the town, it didn’t look worthy of a name, and may well not have had one. From this distance of a few hundred feet, it didn’t look as if there was anyone around to ask. There was a concentric, slowly widening circle of whipsaw-lumbered, single and two-story buildings. Near the far edge of town, a sturdier blockhouse stood, but it was still too distant for them to tell whether or not it was occupied.

The village lacked a church, a town square, or even cattle. If there was a well, it was not in sight. The materials used to build the town were all as familiar as those used to erect the first of the Plymouth colonies, but they were arranged in a pagan order, nothing at all foursquare about them, as if some tribe of redskins had commandeered a white architect and made an indentured slave of him.

The hush lifted a bit as the squeal of pigs invited them closer. They crossed a clay threshold of firebreaks, which had frozen into rocky defiles.

The Lieutenant pointed the cuts out to the men behind him as he made for the nearest house. We can use those as ready firing positions should the need arise.

Slowly, by ones and twos, and then by entire families and by occupation, the townsfolk began to appear, curious to inspect the soldiers who had stumbled upon them. There was an ironmonger with an adze-like tool slung over his shoulder. There were a few women in sunbonnets, western in their dress and without corsets, but modest enough in decorum to cover their petticoats with muslin shawls. There were a number of children unlucky enough to have been born here, no doubt enduring near-starvation during the long monotony of winter.

The only way Crib had managed to get through his own youth had been to imagine during the cold season he was a bear, gorged on honey and ready to sleep. Like the mass of the enlisted men in the ranks, he had grown up poor.

The Lieutenant approached a woman standing in front of the closest house, probably a widow doing her ablest to keep her family’s meager holdings afloat. Madam, the Lieutenant said, cocking his head and bearing a patronizing smile, as if she might need a bit of translating, we’re in the area, keeping an eye out for troublemakers, non-Christian sorts. Might you have witnessed anything untoward in these parts, of late?

Crib could not hear her response. The pigs were squealing too loudly, and the wind had almost managed to tear down the pegs of her pole-fence. There was no need to worry about the hogs fleeing, should they happen to break free. They were gorging themselves the way pigs always did when they had managed to secure a bit of true gristle, in a week that otherwise consisted of bullying chickens and bantams for their grainy feed.

One Dalmatian-spotted, finely-haired pig crowded out his brothers and assumed the bulk of the meat that smoldered beneath a sheet of icy hay.

Who the hell cooks their pigs’ feed? Orville Rayburn asked. The private obviously no longer felt the need to whisper.

The Lieutenant was standing close to the woman who had emerged from her house moments before. She shouted over the wind as she clutched at her bonnet, which was tied in a knot the gusty current proved strong enough to undo.

Who gives their pigs meat when their young ones are starving? Crib asked. He navigated around the ghost of an abscessed tooth in his mouth, and sent a red stream flying. Some pious citizen, a man who nature had made bald in the pattern of a monk, shot Crib a dirty look.

The Lieutenant broke away from the woman. Hoover, he said to a soldier standing near Crib, "I need you to restrain this young woman." Hoover, without hesitating, did as ordered.

Look at him, someone said from behind James and Orville. Bastard ain’t never touched a woman he didn’t pay for first.

There was laughter, and the sound of the wind blowing. You two, the Lieutenant said to Crib and Rayburn, I want you to drag a sow out from that pen, and bring her back to camp. Have Butch clean, dress, and prepare her. Butch, so named because he was the son of a butcher, had saved the men with his trapping and game skills many a night.

God bless Butch, James said, removing his greatcoat, and then his blouse.

I know, Rayburn seconded. Without him, we’d be on double rations of hardtack and half-rations of desiccated veggies.

And I’d never get to leave the outhouse. More laughter came from behind them. It trailed into a dangerous silence.

You sons of whores! The Christian façade fell from the woman, and the Old Testament vehemence was unleashed from her bosom.

The Lieutenant drew his saber. The old monk man tried to calm the woman, but as he got closer to her, Hoover shoved him and the man fell into a wet clump of mud. Crib and Rayburn, brothers in arms who had shared the same Sibley tent and occasionally the same canteen, tried to guess the nature of the conversation that had occurred between the Lieutenant and the woman of the town, and where exactly things had gone wrong.

Behind them, the children gathered at the ironmonger’s legs, and the smith choked up on his tool’s handle. Bastards!

The remaining soldiers were no longer keeping their arms at the low-ready. Their guns were leveled, with one remolded shot prepared should the need arise. If the men in the town decided to charge the troops, they might succeed in killing them before the blue boys could raise another plug of choked and papered powder. The Union boys knew it, greenhorns though they were, but prayed that none of the townsmen knew it.

Rayburn and Crib lifted the Dalmatian pig over the fence, while behind them a few men began to trail from the camp proper, heading toward the town. They were about halfway to the iced firebreaks squaring the cruciform circle of shanties, when Crib and his partner saw what the fat pigs and their hay had been hiding. The diced and smoked remains of a man, enough kersey blue stripes to make it obvious she had been―

Lieutenant, she’s feeding these pigs our boys!

The Lieutenant’s face creased. Without asking for approval, the soldiers let the flint spark. One of the children’s eyes was hollowed in a blink. The man with the smith’s hammer took two steps forward and split a Union boy’s head like a log, before his own Adam’s apple cracked like a raw red egg under the weight of a bayonet. The woman bit Hoover’s hand, and he released her.

She used that moment to flee, but unfortunately into the waiting cavalry saber of the West Point graduate. Her head did an impressive number of somersaults before coming to rest, bonnet and all, in a firebreak.

There were no more people on the street. There were, however, return volleys of musket fire coming from windows, chinked spaces, and blind spots known only to those who lived here.

The ten soldiers who had entered the town as advance-party were now seven strong. Three had been sniped and were in the process of dying without cover or concealment, the crimson teeth marks of powder burns devouring them like a pack of inconceivably fast coyotes.

Men! The Lieutenant was staged behind the mulberry-colored house. Form behind me for a charge! Several of those from the camp had made it to the line. One or two had