Brothers in Blood (Tony Hillerman's Frontier Series)

Chapter One

Seven minutes, no more. That's how long it should take for the men of C Company to fall in. At least, that's what Benoit demanded. And to make sure they stuck to his timetable he clocked them with the pocket watch that Inge had given him for their first anniversary several months before, the one in the engraved silver case that she had ordered special from New York.

He glanced at the timepiece. A minute and a half since he had sent Sergeant Hampton into the barracks to roust the troops. They wouldn't be happy, he knew, since they were already busy giving the place a good spring cleaning. Too bad. They'd thank him for it later, after Colonel Kemp awarded them the banner signifying they were the best company at Fort Laramie in 1858. It was all part of Benoit's long-range plan to prove beyond a doubt that he could handle the responsibility. Shape up the troops. Get them distracted with one chore, then surprise them with something else, like an unannounced arms inspection. Keep them on their toes. Keep them sharp.

Benoit looked up as two privates came running out the door, lugging their rifles and strapping on their ammunition pouches. Two minutes. Not bad, he thought.

Impatiently he began pacing back and forth: ten strides to the east, then ten back. When he turned to make the westward leg, he noticed the wind in his face. He stopped and glanced around, his brow furrowed. Here and there across the vast, dusty parade ground, he noted with irritation, several small dustdevils were dancing mischievously about. "Merde!" he said half-aloud. "It isn't even midmorning." The wind usually did not begin picking up until the afternoon.Goddamn spring, he thought. He was really beginning to hate the season.

This attitude, he would readily admit, was newly developed. When he was growing up in New Orleans, even when he was away at the military academy at West Point, he used to love the spring. In those days he agreed wholeheartedly with the poets who wrote entire sonnets proclaiming the glories of the vernal equinox. It was easier then, he thought, to believe all the words the lyricists wove about spring being a time of wondrous rebirth and rejuvenation. He had been more ready to accept these accolades then because all around him there was evidence to substantiate the claims of the bards. Gentle rain falling from thick, dove gray clouds. Tender new leaves sprouting on once barren trees. Robins singing in the early morning. Dew-sprinkled grass daily turning a deeper, more luxuriant green. And flowers — ah, the flowers-bursting forth from thick, rich soil, promising a display of color that would make even the most insensitive soul soar. But those poets, he reflected wryly, had never been to Fort Laramie. Not one as far as he knew-and he wasdamn near certain he was correct-had ever trod the Great Plains.

Out west, out here where he and some three hundred other blue-clad men helped protect a steady throng of Pacific Coast-bound emigrants through a harsh and cruel land populated by numerous tribes of increasingly resentful, hostile Indians, the traditional, widely sung benefits of spring were virtually nonexistent. The rain, on the rare occasions when it came, was hardly ever gentle. Instead it arrived in ominous-looking clouds as black as midnight. And it came down not gently but in torrents, accompanied by booming thunder and wildly flashing lightning. Except for the pines and evergreens that grew thick on the nearby mountains, the only trees deserving of the name anywhere near the post were the creaking cottonwoods and supple willows that sprang up along the banks of the North Platte and Laramie Rivers. And these were disappearing rapidly as the emigrants chopped them down for firewood. Grass grew thick and tall on the prairie, but that was utilitarian food-grass, a staple in the diet of the buffalo, the elk, and the antelope. It wasn't lying-on-your-back-in grass; it definitely wasn't making-love-in grass. That kind of grass didn't exist out here. Never had; never would. There was no place here, either, for the flowers of his youth. The wildflowers that grew in the mountain meadows were truly spectacular in their own right-beautiful and lush in their short season, but one had to spend hours in the saddle to see them. On the Plains, where Fort Laramie sat like a wart on a fat man's back, the symbols those who lived back east associated with the season were totally absent.

Not, he thought, that this was not a beautiful country in its own right. He had never seen a sky as blue and clear as the western one. The mountains were not tiny hills, bare undulations on the horizon, but majestic peaks of black rock with caps of pristine snow that never melted. Looking to the west, he could see the fingerlike projectile of Laramie Peak, jutting so far into the sky that, even at a distance of fifty or so miles, he could barely take it all in without tilting his head. The West definitely had its points, he conceded, but the arrival of spring was not one of them. To him, the western spring meant one thing: wind. Goddamn, drive-you-insane, dry-you-out, beat-you-to-death wind.

In the summer there was the unforgiving sun, but if one knew what to expect, it was endurable. Besides, the nights always were cool; the temperature invariably dropped thirty degrees or more between the time the sun went down and the time it rose again. This was true even in June, which was usually the hottest month. And for someone who had never seen snow until he reported for duty at the military academy, even the western winters were bearable once one learned to adapt, even if the snow flew from September through March; even if it piled up in drifts higher than the tallest buildings along Canal Street. He could adjust to those seasons. But he had never learned to adjust to the cursed wind.