Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas
June 1880
“Where you goin’, Chee?” Sergeant McAfee asked as he poked a sausage-sized finger into the young man’s chest. Chee, thin and rangy, with dark eyes, said nothing, but Hollister saw his fists clench. There were seven of them on prison work detail, digging another well, and it was unseasonably hot for June, with the afternoon sun high in the sky moving the temperature just past hell. Hollister kept digging, not caring about their conflict, but watching from the corner of his eye just the same.
McAfee was a huge Irishman, nearly three hundred pounds and solid, his skin pale and ruddy from drink. The lines on his face were a map of booze, fights, and hard living. He was hot-tempered and foulmouthed; he smelled like a stable and was quite likely insane.
The officers who’d served on McAfee’s court-martial board had deliberated for less than three minutes at his trial. He had shot his commanding officer, a lieutenant, in the head. The lieutenant had taken issue with McAfee’s handling of a half dozen Sioux prisoners. According to rumors, he’d pulled his sidearm and put a round between the man’s eyes and left him on the ground. Then he’d shot his prisoners for good measure.
He had been a master sergeant, and had been incarcerated at Leavenworth since it opened. When Chee arrived two months ago, McAfee had chosen the kid as his personal punching bag. Hollister had a feeling someone was going to break, soon, one way or the other.
Whenever there was no other meaningless labor for them to perform, the warden decided the prison needed a new well. Hollister hated digging, but he had at least another six years of it. He didn’t know the length of Chee’s sentence; the kid never talked much. McAfee was in for life.
“I said, where you going, boy?” McAfee was in front of Chee, blocking the path to wherever.
“Let me pass, please, Sergeant,” the boy said quietly. Hollister guessed Chee was in his early twenties, just a boy compared to everyone else behind these walls.
McAfee laughed and his crew laughed with him. McAfee had a group of vultures following him around Leavenworth, watching and sometimes participating in his terrorization of the prison’s population. There was a moment of quiet. Hollister knew the sound of this silence. With every altercation-any fight, every battle he’d ever witnessed since he’d left West Point in 1864-there was always a calm before the storm. A brief moment of silence before the screams and grunts and dying began.
“Huh. Let you pass. I’m sorry. Why of course, you mongrel-breed, dog-shit-eatin’ son of a whore. I don’t know what I done with my manners. By all means, you little sack a’ shit, pass by.” McAfee made a show of stepping back, bowing at the waist and slowly throwing out his hand like a matador. Don’t do it kid, Hollister thought to himself. There were two guards, both armed with Springfields and blackjacks, talking in low tones to each other more than forty yards away, up by the barracks. Hollister knew the guards wouldn’t do much of anything. They were probably as terrified of McAfee as everyone else.
Chee stood still a moment. He closed his eyes and stepped past McAfee. The kid was a hard worker, and he’d dug up more ground this morning than anyone in the detail, Hollister included.
As he moved past the ex-sergeant, Hollister wanted to shout out a warning, but he knew better. Chee needed to deal with this, and if Hollister got involved he’d have to handle McAfee himself somehow, and so far the giant ape had left him alone.
As McAfee remained bowed, pretending to give Chee a pass, he flexed his arm, fist clenched behind his back. Hollister saw the big man’s arm swing forward and winced. He’d watched McAfee fight before and knew he was deceptively fast. This blow might just separate Chee from his head.
But it never landed. McAfee swung hard, but Chee was no longer standing where he should have been. The ex-sergeant’s momentum twisted him around and off-balance so fast that Hollister didn’t see how Chee got behind him. His foot shot out and connected with the back of McAfee’s knee, and the giant man crumpled. Chee’s left hand shot out like a sidewinder, grabbing a handful of McAfee’s hair and pulling his head back. With his other arm he drove his elbow into the bully’s nose. The crunch and crack of bone and tissue made McAfee bellow in pain. One of the other men moved on Chee, swinging his shovel like an axe. Chee released McAfee, who fell to his hands and knees, blood darkening the ground beneath him.
Chee easily ducked beneath the shovel and kicked the man solidly in the groin. He dropped the shovel, clutching his crotch with both hands. Chee took the man’s head in both hands and drove his knee into his face. He slumped to the ground, finished.
McAfee was standing, his mouth and nose a mass of twisted gore and blood, his eyes watering.
Three of McAfee’s men down in the hole with Hollister grabbed their shovels, thinking about climbing up to join the fray. Hollister moved in front of them and with a commanding look at the first one, an illiterate trooper named Smith, said quietly, “Don’t.”
The man looked at Hollister with hooded eyes. He tried to shrug past, and Jonas put his hand on the man’s chest. “I said, don’t.” The three of them saw something in Hollister they didn’t like and backed off.
Up above them, McAfee charged at Chee, trying to get his hands on the younger, faster man. His primitive brain told him if he could do that, he could rid himself of the pain he felt by pounding away at Chee until it was gone. What he didn’t realize was that the fight was already over. Hollister, with one eye on the three dregs in the hole with him, watched in quiet fascination as Chee leapt in the air, his foot flicking out and taking McAfee square on the chin. McAfee went down and didn’t move.
“The hell you doing, Chee?” said one of the screws, a blue-coated corporal named Larson. He and the other guard had finally arrived, waiting as usual until the two men had settled things before taking action. Chee said nothing and the corporal drove the butt of his Springfield into the young man’s gut. He groaned and doubled over, dropping to his knees.
What the corporal hadn’t noticed was the rifle butt had hardly hit Chee at all. He’d managed to bend his body away with it and take most of the force in his hands. He was acting. With Chee on the ground and Hollister in the hole, they were at eye level, and when the dark-skinned man winked mischievously at him, Hollister couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re going in the box, half-breed,” the corporal sneered as he and the other guard lifted Chee to his feet. “You men, drag this fat tub o’ lard to the surgeon.” McAfee’s followers scrambled out of the hole, pulling the sergeant and the other man to their feet, leading them away toward the administration buildings.
Hollister watched them for a while and returned to his digging.
Hollister dug on through the afternoon, then climbed out of the well, taking a break for water and hardtack with a piece of wormy bacon for lunch. The meat was inedible so he threw it over the wall of the fort. McAfee’s three varmints had never returned after hauling him to the infirmary. It was all the same to him; he preferred solitude.
As always, his mind returned to the ridge in the Wyoming Territory where he’d watched his men die four years ago. He remembered passing out as the wagon pulled away, and he’d woken up with the sun beating down on his face and his mount snorting at him from a few yards away. He was grateful he’d taken the time to train his mount, who he called Little Phil. The horse hadn’t spooked like most horses would. Besides mourning the loss of his men, the destruction of his life and career, and being locked up in Leavenworth for ten years, Jonas really missed that horse. Little Phil had been the best ride he’d ever had.
All that was left there on that ridge were the smoldering wagon and his horse. He mounted up and tried to follow the wagon trail, but quickly lost it. He was no tracker. He’d counted on Lemaire for that. As he rode back toward Deadwood, the face of the woman leaning over him kept returning to his memory. Had she been real or imaginary? He was convinced she was there, but why? Was she one of them? Or was she one of the party who had been able to escape somehow?
It was nearly a two-day ride back to Camp Sturgis, where he arrived sunburned, his horse nearly dead and wild with thirst. He staggered into the colonel’s office and reported what had happened. The next day the colonel got him a fresh mount and sent two companies back with him to the site.
There was nothing to see. The wagon was still there, but there were no bodies, no other evidence. There was another thing that bothered Hollister: the wagon was still full of goods. No one, not even the Sioux, had salvaged anything. In his heart he knew it was because there was a veil of something evil over the place where his troopers had died. His eleven murdered troopers had disappeared without a trace.
After returning to Camp Sturgis, Hollister slowly came to the realization that his colonel didn’t believe him. The old man had sat Hollister down and gone over the story with him again and again. What had he seen? How had his men died? It must have been the Sioux, wasn’t that how it happened? Not some strange and unbelievable story about blood-drinking creatures.
Hollister never wavered, and after nearly six hours of nonstop interrogation, a private walked in with a telegram for the colonel. Hollister remembered him running his hand through his white hair as he read it. He barked an order and a detail of troopers entered the room, ordered Hollister to attention, and arrested him.
He was held in the brig, and court-martialed two weeks later for dereliction of duty, conduct unbecoming an officer, and several other made-up charges. The next thing he knew, he was in Leavenworth.
Hollister rarely thought of anything else but that day. He remembered the look on the face of the man-creature as the sun had risen. How the smoke had rolled off his clothes and skin as the light peeked over the horizon. He heard the serpentlike hiss of his voice. “We shall meet again. For Caroline,” he’d said.
Well, he’d have a hard time finding Hollister now. Hollister thrust his shovel into the ground and climbed back into the hole. He was wearing his striped cavalry pants and a red undershirt, soaked through with sweat and grime. The sun was almost gone behind the western wall of the prison fort. It would be chow time soon. Hollister laughed at the thought.
He had lost about thirty pounds since being incarcerated, and he’d never tended toward heavy anyway. The food in Leavenworth was awful beyond description, as long as the description commenced at disgusting. Hardtack was about all a man was able to choke down here.
“Hollister,” a voice called behind him.
He turned to find the duty officer; a first lieutenant named Garrick was headed his way. He figured now he’d have to make some kind of report about the fight. Whether he liked it or not, it looked like he was involved. Hollister scrambled up the ladder and came to attention, feet together and shoulders back. He made sure not to look the lieutenant in the eye when Garrick reached him. In his time in Leavenworth, Hollister had learned eye contact was a tool to be used in very specific ways: avoided with the guards and officers, used as a means of intimidation with the other prisoners.
“Sir,” he said.
“Colonel wants to see you. On the double, inmate.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and started for the administration building. Strangely, the lieutenant followed along. Word of Hollister’s story had made its way through the population and command structure at the prison. It had only served to isolate him because he was considered crazy. Luckily, in a place like Leavenworth, craziness was one way to stay alive: even thugs like McAfee gave him a wide berth. Yet he felt something changing. Jonas suddenly realized this shitty day had the potential to grow much worse.
“What’d you do, Hollister?” Garrick asked him. With the sun gone behind the western wall, the heat had subsided a bit and twilight shadows were racing across the grounds.
“I don’t understand, sir,” he replied.
“Like hell you don’t. You been writing letters again? You might’ve stepped in the cow shit, Hollister.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure I did, sir,” Hollister said.
When he’d first been sentenced to prison, Hollister had used whatever meager privileges he could muster to write letters to his former comrades, commanders, and even the congressman who’d appointed him to West Point. Asking for a new trial, he had pleaded his case and begged his friends and former classmates to investigate the disappearance of his men and find the creatures that’d killed them and destroyed his life.
All for naught. He was shunned by everyone he’d once called a friend; standing up for him was a sure way out of the army. He had given up after a year.
“Colonel Whitman ain’t going to be happy, if you been stirring up the shit, inmate. You been stirring up shit again, Captain?” The lieutenant sneered. It was a grave insult to a prisoner, especially a former officer, to be referred to by his old rank. He took a deep breath, determined not to let the lieutenant draw him in to his little game.
“No, sir,” he replied quietly.
The two men crossed the main yard, reaching the wood-plank walkway leading to the main gate. Passing through, they entered the administration building with the lieutenant in the lead, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and proceeded to the colonel’s office. The lieutenant knocked on the door and they heard the gruff man answer from inside.
Lieutenant Colonel Whitman was a pompous little rooster. He was about five feet five inches tall, gray haired and clean shaven. He was approaching thirty years in the army without ever seeing combat, and as a result had never risen above his present rank, even during the war, when promotions were handed out like wooden nickels.
“That will be all, Lieutenant,” the colonel said. He was standing at the window of his office, which overlooked the yard of the main prison. Running the nation’s military prison was no plum assignment no matter how you tried to frame it. Whitman would be here until he retired or died.
“Inmate Hollister, your appearance is, as usual, appalling. You are out of uniform. I can smell you from here.” The tone in his voice was measured. These were facts, not to be disputed, and Hollister knew he would be punished for his transgressions. More digging lay ahead.
“No excuse, sir,” he said, hoping it would save him from the lecture on the importance of an inmate’s personal hygiene. The colonel remained at the window, looking out on the prison grounds. This was unusual as he normally was all business, sitting at his desk and dispensing whatever orders he needed to in a clipped and efficient manner.
The colonel’s body language made him look bound up and angry, as if he had been forced to swallow something and could not bear the taste. Hollister then noticed the other man, sitting in the corner. Medium height, thick chin whiskers and a hard, granitelike face, which implied he knew a thing or two about trouble. He sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap. Hollister noticed the rough, scarred skin on his hands, especially on a few broken fingers that had never healed right. Whoever he was, he’d been in few scraps. Hollister remained at attention and turned his eyes to the practiced middle-distance stare of a prisoner, and waited.
“You have a visitor, Inmate Hollister,” the colonel said, his back still turned to Jonas. Jonas saw Whitman’s stance go straighter as he spoke, and he clasped his hands behind him. Neither man said anything, as if waiting for Hollister to speak.
“Yes, sir,” he finally replied.
The stranger stood up, striding confidently across the creaking office floor to Hollister and stuck out his gnarled right hand.
“Captain Hollister,” he said. “My name is Allan Pinkerton.