“I think I met that sad fellow in a saloon,” I says, and Homer he says, “Well, he was a hard drinker, but he was the straight-shootingest sumbitch I ever knowed, leastaways when he was down sober.”
Whilst Homer was trumpeting on (“I’ll rip that hard-ass cunnel apart with my bare hands if I ever catch him alone by hisself!”), I fell asleep in the saddle, waked from time to time by the snow and Star’s restlessness. My head weighed down and kept bouncing off my chest. My limbs didn’t have no feeling in them and my thoughts was all muddled up. There was a moment when me and Dan was in a circus, and it seemed like the realest thing ever. We was way up on a high icy platform skiddering about, and Homer was up there, or else it was Tom, trying to push Dan off. Their feet went out and they both dropped away, and I was a-dropping, too—I come to with a start, nearly falling off of the horse, and when I looked around, I couldn’t think at first where I was, only that it was dreadful dark and cold.
“Who was that Dan feller you was yelping about?” says someone beside me. It warn’t Homer there no more, it was General Hard Ass’s whiskery scout Charlie.
“A soldier I knowed who got killed.”
“By injuns?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Which tribe done it?
“They said it was the Lakota.”
“You and the general got that sadfulness in common, then,” Charlie says. “He lost a young officer in a ambush, the boy and all his party. They was a-bringing the general a dispatch, but they got entirely massacreed instead. All them sweet boys with their glistning headbones on show, it warn’t a uplifting sight.” Charlie’s whiskers was white with snow like I s’posed mine was, except his was painted with tobacco drool. “Them injuns was also Lakotas. Lakotas and Cheyennes, palling together in their heathen devilment. We gotta larn ’em they cain’t do that. It’s like larning your dog not to shit in the tent—the stupid creturs cain’t think fur theirselves, so you hafta swat ’em now’n agin to make the rules stick.” Charlie took off his slouch hat to knock the snow off of it and unpin the floppy front brim, then he set it back on his bald dome, tugging it down to his ears, and he touched his forehead and shoulders like some religionists do for luck. “They’s a pack a them shameless Cheyenne butchers camped just up ahead. They think night-fighting is unsivilized, the iggorant sapheads, so they won’t be especting us. We’ll catch ’em with their breechclots down.”
“Theirs is a sad life,” I says, thinking about what Dan said.
“Yup,” says Charlie. He leaned over to spit into the snow. “And it’s ’bout to git sadder.”
When I asked him what happened to Homer, he says, “That dang blowhard run off with some other mizzerbul buggers. I gotta go catch ’em and hang ’em, nor else shoot ’em if they take a vilent dislike to the rope.” He peered over his shoulder, twitching like he often done, and he made that good luck sign again. “Fallen angels,” he says. “Ain’t nuthin more wickeder.” It had got dead quiet with only the push-push of the horses plodding in the snow. “The general was mighty inpressed by your bronc busting, Hucklebelly,” Charlie whispers. “I told him you was planning to join another cattle drive in the spring, but he wants you to stay. He’s took a liking to you. You’re a lucky feller.”
“Why don’t I feel lucky, Charlie?”
“Well, it ain’t easy when your arse is froze,” he says with a grunt, and him and four others turned and struck backwards into the snowfall.
What happened a few minutes later come to be called a famous battle in the history books and the general he got a power of glory out of it, but a battle is what it exactly warn’t. Whilst me and Star watched over the spare horses, the soldier boys galloped howling through the burning tents and slaughtered more’n a hundred sleepers, which the general called warriors, but who was mostly wrinkled up old men, women, and little boys and girls. I seen eyes gouged out and ears tore off and bellies slit open with their innards spilling out like sausages.
When I turned my head away from the distressid sight, there was General Hard Ass a-setting his horse behind me. “Sorry about your soldier friend,” he says. Nothing on his face seemed to move when he spoke, except his frosty moustaches, a little. “Maybe this will help you feel that some justice has been done.” Under the stony cheekbones, there was a thin sneaky smile on the general’s face that seemed like it was chiseled there. “After we’re done punishing the Cheyenne,” he says, “we’ll go after the Lakota. I promise. Now come along. There’s something I want you to do.”