Story: Belleau Wood II.
Clockwise from upper left: Preacher Morrow circa 1870, Cards, Private Pierce, Morrow prior to War of Independence, Morrow at the Fairweather saloon in Beckenbridge.
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Bouresches, 4th June 1918.
It had been discovered by the other Captains and also Major Carlton, that Captain Morrow played a mean hand of poker. Morrow was in fact, a demon at any form of card game anybody cared to lay down rules for. (He even knew how to play - and win - Louisiana Bait and Mine ’49, two games only Derby had heard of and he swore they’d been made up by his grandmother.) This made him more than welcome in whatever shack currently served as the officer’s mess, or whatever primus stove everybody huddled round in the evenings.
The other discovery, although this was known more to the Lieutenants and the Privates, was that Morrow told stories. Sure, everybody had some old grandpa who liked to spin tales of the wild old times, of how they’d been in a bar fight once or how they had a friend who’d met the Earp brothers in Dodge. There was likely only the one tale, grossly exaggerated and much repeated until everybody was sick to the gills of it. But Captain Morrow’s stories were different. There were a lot of them for a start, and they were peopled with every kind of crazy or crooked sonofabitch you could ever meet out West. There were duels and chases, ghost towns and whores, principled desperados and unprincipled officials - as well as a bunch of men he called Los Siete who seemed to have spent their lives guarding a small border town from trouble just out of sheer stubborn spite.
On this evening, a conversation had been started about the Fourth of July, seeing as it was the next holiday along and therefore a universal point of interest to the soldiers. People volunteered comments about firework displays they’d seen or sweethearts they’d kissed and kegs they’d drank on Independence Day. “How about you, Captain?” Someone asked, as someone always did. “What’s your best fourth of July?”
The chatter hushed, expectant and hopeful that Morrow might find a story to tell. He did not disappoint.
“Can’t say much for best, but I’ll tell you the one that sticks in my mind like a goddamn tack in my boot heel.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled, blowing the smoke lazily out through his nose. “I was sat with Bill Leonard at the Fairweather Saloon in Beckenbridge. That was a miscalculation on my behalf, this was back in my youth before I realised what a sorry hole Beckenbridge was - nothing good ever came of it.” (That was his first lie - there’d been a grand Blackjack sting with Ezra in Beckenbridge, but that wasn’t relevant here and so was discarded.) “Only place worse is Leadville.” That however was true; Leadville had all but been the death of him - twice - since 1848 he'd refused to set foot within town limits on principle.
“I was dealing Faro, had been on and off for the past month, and Leonard had at last been persuaded to join me to ‘see how it was done’. The boy was six years my senior but had so far stayed very much on the quieter side of town throughout his narrow walk of life. All o’you will no doubt know that such careful orderliness is hard to keep a hold of in the face of a friend who insists on grabbing life by the throat and near throttling it. Consequently, Bill was finding being in my company a new and interesting experience.”
There was a rumble of laughter around him as each imagined their own version of a young and foot-loose Morrow raising cain and causing trouble for his friends.
“For my part, I was just glad not to be sitting out the Forth o’ July on my own: any sort of celebration can be pretty miserable without company. Since the Fairweather was a sporting house,” - sniggers and grins greeted that - “lack o’ company did not look to be a problem: Leonard already had a questionable young Miss on his arm. I’d been given the eye so many times I’d put on my smoked glasses to stop myself getting distracted...” There was good natured disbelief. “Of course the girls had to work - but so did I,” Morrow told them, dead-pan, which only made it funnier.
“There was one man in particular at my table who was not having a good time of it. He’d rolled in late that afternoon with pockets fat as bacon, set on winning himself a grand Independence Day. Unfortunately, the cards had not obliged. Small gains had been made, merge winnings taken, but every time the man bucked the tiger for serious tin, House came up trumps.” A stern look. “Bad fortune, mediocre whiskey and good grace seldom go together, and this man - Khan by name - was no exception. His began mouthin’ about ‘getting a better dealer’ - the implication o’which I resented. At length I grew tired of all his bitchin’ and told him to go join another game - maybe Poker would favour him as Faro had not.”
This telling, as all Morrow’s tales, was a masterful exercise in understatement; which naturally led to the overworking of the imagination of his audience. “This did not placate the gentleman in question. In reply he snatched up the pretty young Miss from Leonard, pinned her between him and the table, slammed ten dollars in her hand and ordered her t’place a bet. The young lady was not best pleased at bein’ handled so, but she placed two dollars on the corner of the Jack and eight on the side of the seven.
“Now I,” he began in saintly tones, “have always been a straight dealer. But, that’s not to say I’m above a little mischief. I dealt for the House first, pulling up a deuce. Next I drew the seven. A three for the House, and the Jack for the young dove.”
There was a whistle or two as those savvy with games of chance clocked the girl had won.
Morrow smiled wolfishly around his smoke. “I told her I’d lay double odds if she let the bet ride. She agreed; I turned the cards to show a nine and another seven. With the House folded she’d won herself one hundred and eighty dollars.”
There was a smatter of laughter and whooping as in their eyes, poetic justice was served. But the Captain hadn’t finished.
“Khan took exception to this,” he noted dryly, his voiced raised a little to recapture their straying attention. “He tried to grab up the money. I told him it wasn’t his: he’d paid the young lady for her time in his company and the bet was hers. This did not sit well with him and his behaviour became unreasonable, and towards the lady most un-exemplary.” He sighed as if the whole sorry affair pained him still.
After only a beat of silence someone asked, “What did you do?”
“He had one fat fist at the lady’s throat, the other on the table; I took Leonard’s cane and broke his hand. He dropped both girl and money and I beat him out o’the saloon.”
“Ha! Damn right, Captain!”
“How big’d you say he was?”
He flicked away ash from his cigarette. “Bigger than I was, but most of it was fat.”
“You pounded him outta the place and no one did anything?”
“He was an unmannered yahoo an’ I believe people were all too glad t’see the back o’him.” An odd expression flit across his face like a shadow. “That was not, alas, the last I saw of him.”
That was a baited hook and it was swallowed whole. “What d’you mean?”
“Khan left at my behest; Leonard went to fetch a round of drinks and I stayed on the porch for a smoke and to calm my nerves some before rejoining civilized company. The fireworks had started up; my friend returned with some Kentucky Blue bought for us by the young lady and her friends... And that was when a large man on a long-legged bay, hunched crooked in the saddle, came careering down the road. The bay overshot the Fairweather and was wheeled round in a bucking circle.
“I pushed Leonard, spilling him and both whiskeys onto the boardwalk. There was a bang - and another - and I couldn’t tell if they were firecrackers or shots. I threw the cane I still held; it scythed through the air and hit the bay which shied, pitching its fat rider headfirst into the dirt.
“It was around about that time I realised several things: first, I’d been shot. Second, Khan was lying on the ground in a way no working body naturally lay.” He gave a dry cough; he seemed to be coughing a lot since his arrival at the lines. . “Third, that I’d just won a duel against a man on a horse with a long iron when all I had was an ebony walking cane. And lastly...” Another cough and his words faded.
“Lastly what?”
He grinned. “An’ lastly that I’d lost both my whiskey and my smoke and I’d be needin’ another o’each.”
“That true, sir?” Pierce asked him.
“All too,” he affirmed, although it wasn’t.
He’d not mentioned HellBitch was there, not mentioned how the cane was snapped and useless after smashing Khan’s hand against the table. Not mentioned how actually after he’d been shot he’d pulled out the nearest bullet lodged in the boards at his feet and driven it into Khan’s neck with a thought before dropping down himself like some skinny lump of veal as the blood poured out of him. All in all he’d not mentioned a score of things integral to the tale.
But the truth wasn’t what was needed. A story was. And so he kept the truth to himself.
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Sector 7 between Bouresches and Triangle Farm, 5th June 1918.
The crack of the rifle shot was sharp and echoed oddly in the crisp morning air. It was followed immediately by the more muffled sound of something that had been airborne crumpling like a broken umbrella.
The thin CO with the eyes like blue bottled glass threw down his smoke and moved down the lines in rangy strides, stopping and rounding on Private Pierce. “What the hell did you do?” he asked, his voice trying to hide a note of dread and loathing that seemed out of proportion to the situation.
The Private swallowed his grin, unaccountably nervous, and not because he’d just wasted a bullet. “I thought it was a messenger bird, sir. Major Carlton told us...” his excuse trailed. In truth the boys had just been ragging each other about who was the better shot and he’d decided to prove it was him. Sergeant Faulkner would likely have his ear off - matching the one he guessed Morrow would be stripping any moment. Which was what he got for paying the slightest bit of attention to Archer and his damn jawing. “It’s just a crow, sir,” he muttered, uncomfortable with the usually unflappable Captain’s grim expression. Archer and the others remained conspiratorially quiet, supportive in their silence.
The CO continued to stare at the dark feathered body that had fallen and was impaled on the barbed wire beyond the camp like a farmer’s trophy. “Wasn’t a damn crow. It was a goddamn raven.” His words were quiet, vacant, like someone reading the eulogy at their own funeral.
In that moment Private Pierce would have given anything to wind back time, to make it so the bullet had never struck, if only so he’d never have seen that expression, heard those words spoken like that. “I - I’m sorry, sir,” he blurted, knowing it was inadequate and having no idea why. It was just a bird - just a damn bird.
After a long moment the narrow-shouldered officer nodded, bleak acceptance writ large across his thin features, and turned away without another word. Pierce watched him go, still with no idea what he had done.
“What’s eating him?” Archer demanded blithely.
Pierce kicked him. “Shuttup.”
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NOTES:
- Bill Leonard was a friend of Doc Holliday's; I stole him wholesale. Khan and Beckenbridge on the 4th of July was also something that happened to Holliday.
- The Kachina Clan originated amongst the Native Americans; the Raven features in many of their stories and is the symbol of the Clan. As such it has significance for both Morrow and Cait and killing one is a very bad omen.