Page 34 of For This We Are Soldiers
He was readingHuckleberry Finnon his bed, boots off, moccasins on, when the barracks grew quiet. The sergeant raised himself up on one elbow, suddenly alert.
Without even knocking, Lieutenant Shaw burst into his room, waving several letters that looked well-traveled, maybe even stomped on by buffalo. He slammed the door shut behind him and slumped into the room’s only chair, his face a study in desperation. Hiram feared the worst from Miss Hinchcliffe.
“Sir?” he asked finally, when Shaw seemed unable to form words.
The lieutenant waved the letters again, but more feebly. “The paymaster handed these to me,” he said finally. “He had got them from Fort Robinson, where they went astray, heaven knows when.” He held them out dramatically. “Here are the two letters I sent to Miss Hinchcliffe. She hasn’t heard from me in three months, Hiram, three months!”
“Well, uh …”
Shaw was far from done. He held out another letter, this one open, but bearing few signs of travel to and from Fort Rob. “Then this just arrived! Read it and weep.”
Trying not to smile, Hiram took the letter from his lieutenant’s shaking hand. “Are you certain, sir? I’d rather not read a lady’s correspondence.”
“Hang it all,” Shaw snapped, grabbing back the letter. “I’ll boil down the nasty thing. The love of my life, the future mother of my children, has assured me that if she doesn’t hear from me or see me before June 4, she is taking the Shy-Dead to Cheyenne and walking out of my life forever.”
As if on cue, both men’s heads swiveled to look at Hiram’s calendar, with each day neatly marked off down to May 30.
You are such a pup,Hiram thought, remembering their captain’s admonition to keep Lieutenant Shaw out of trouble and learning his duties. “Sir, we’ll be escorting the paymaster to Fort Laramie,” Hiram reminded the lieutenant. “He’ll pay the officers and men tomorrow. If we leave early the following day, I believe we’ll make it to Fort Laramie on time. It takes three days, if we move along smartly. We’ll get there at sundown on the third, and you’ll have time to kneel at her feet and propose.”
Shaw gave him a hard stare, then began to relax. “I believe you’re right. There won’t be time for spectacle. I had hoped to make an occasion of it, with champagne and perhaps the Fort Laramie glee club to serenade her.”
“You probably still can, sir,” Hiram said, at his soothing best. He had noticed another letter. “Sir, you have another letter.”
“Yes, yes. It’s for you. Here.”
Shaw stood up. He opened up the door to Hiram’s potbellied stove and tossed the unread letters into the flames. “I am going to speak to the paymaster, and do my dead-level best to convince him to quit this place with our escort as early as possible the day after tomorrow, or even tomorrow. Sergeant, have six men ready to ride on June 1 or sooner.”
“Aye, sir,” Hiram said with a salute which Shaw did not return, because he was already out the door and off on his mission to move the paymaster along.
Shaw lay down again, Huck Finn forgotten. He opened Birdie O’Grady’s letter, wondering as he did so if she was the sort of woman to declare ultimatums like her mistress.
To his relief, but not his surprise, Birdie was not. There was no feminine vitriol on the closely written pages, no complaint because letters had not been forthcoming. It was only another kind letter, this one asking how he did, and telling him a little more about herself. He read it through twice, pleased that he would see her soon. He had roughly the same plan in mind as his lieutenant, but without champagne or singers. If she said yes, that empty duplex at Fetterman would be soon inhabited. Miss Hinchcliffe would fire her servant, but as he had pointed out to Birdie at Christmas, what did it matter? He slept soundly that night, with Birdie O’Grady’s letter under his pillow.
Following Guard Mount the next morning, no one dispersed to the day’s fatigue duties and drill. Anticipation writ large on many a face, the garrison with its two companies of infantry and one of cavalry, assembled in front of the adjutant’s office, where the paymaster, a pale, glum-looking fellow name of Captain Perkins, had set up his table.
Since the men were paid in the order of their company commander’s seniority, C Company came in dead last. As Sergeant Hiram Chandler stood at attention with his troops, Lieutenant Shaw sloped over to chat, not at his sparkling best.
“I tried to get that dratted man to leave right after he finishes here, but Captain Perkins is a milky boy with dyspepsia and vertigo,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “He says it has been a trying month of travel and he must rest today.”
“We’ll still make it, sir,” Hiram said, in his soothing best. He wondered just how many more five-year enlistments he could tolerate before officers drove him crazy. Maybe Birdie O’Grady would have some wisdom about the future.
No trooper in C Company wasted a minute when it was his turn at the desk. Each man knew to sign the payroll, remove the white glove from his right hand, receive his handful of greenbacks, and salute with the left hand. Fetterman’s company laundresses stood to one side, ready to receive their payment from each soldier, because it was the law that they be paid before any sprees.
Sergeant Chandler took a good look at Captain Perkins, gauging the paymaster’s fitness and hoping the man wouldn’t drag his feet and insist on another day at Fort Fetterman. He thought it unlikely, because no one wanted to spend one more day at that unfortunate post than he had to.
That evening, Hiram joined the other sergeants in keeping some sort of order in a post that hadn’t been paid in half a year. He watched men stagger about from too much beer, oversaw a few card games, broke up several fights, and escorted members of the garrison to the guardhouse. He slept less soundly.
A
The morning brought overcast skies threatening snow, even this late in May, and a trembling Captain Perkins, who appeared scarcely better off than the men in the guardhouse sleeping away the remnants of payday.
“Sergeant, don’t even give him a chance to cry sickness and spend another day here,” Lieutenant Shaw said through tight lips.
Hiram soon learned that Captain Perkins had no intention of prolonging his stay at Fort Fetterman, but he did intend to complain and scold about such a desolate piece of US government property, as though anyone in C Company could make it better.
Help came from a surprising source. As the escort mounted and waited more or less patiently—less patient was Lieutenant Shaw—for Captain Perkins to wind down his complaints and climb back into the ambulance that had brought him to Fetterman, Minnie Coates bustled up, followed by two servants bearing blankets and pillows. The wife of Fort Fetterman’s commanding officer took over for Sergeant Chandler, listening and shaking her head as the paymaster continued to bemoan his very existence.
While she was engaged, her servants entered the ambulance and quickly converted the horsehair seat into a tolerable bed. Sheets and blankets followed, and then a pillow, as the redoubtable Mrs. Coates edged Captain Perkins toward the vehicle. Before he even knew it, the paymaster was inside and the door closed.
