Michael Spradlin: Blood Riders

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.