Free 0525427368 by Sebastian Barry

Darned glad to see us. So then the sergeant pokes around the wound a bit to see where the bullet went and looks like it went right through and out somewhere. Flying like a gemstone over the plains. Sergeant nods his head like someone asked him something.
Digging holes for nineteen men in earth never ploughed is taxing work. But the bodies are already swelling and we ain’t got a cart to carry them home. We gather up all the wigwams and all the bits and pieces and pile them up and then we fire the lot. Lige Magan says he hopes the Injuns can see the smoke and hurry back to save their dirty rags. He says the best thing to do is bury the men and then light out after the killers. Kill every one of them for a change, he says. I’m thinking but not saying that we don’t have the supplies for that and what about Caleb Booth. They could be a day away and what’s more cavalry can never find Indians like that, they’re wilier than wolves. And Lige knows all that as well as me but he goes busting on about doing it. Tells us what he thinks we can do when we find them. Seems to have a lot of plans. More than likely the sergeant can hear him but the sergeant is standing alone now beyond the wigwams. The grass is so baked by the sun that it looks blue, it shines like blue blades beside the sergeant’s old boots. He hashis back turned to us and he doesn’t say anything in response to Lige. Lige shakes his head and goes on digging. Starling Carlton has gone puce-red in the face and is panting like an old dog, but he keeps the shovel moving. Bangs his foot down on it and keeps it moving. They say Starling Carlton killed men in his time outside the law but no one knows for sure. Some say he was a child-catcher, taking Indian children for slaves in California. He sure would give you a clatter if you looked sideways at him. You gotta treat him with due caution. He don’t mind losing at cards and has a jolly aspect to him sometimes but you don’t want to find out the thing that irritates him because it might be the last thing you find out. There’s no one on earth would say he’s a polite man. How he carries his big weight out here on a job like this is anyone’s guess and he don’t seem to eat much more than the next man and he sweats like a cut cactus all the time. It’s washing down his face now and he rubs it away with his filthy hands. He digs nearly as good as John Cole, has a little steady knack to his spadework, which is agreeable to watch even as we mourn. We don’t know rightly what to do with the dead Indians so we just leave them. Sergeant comes over suddenly and cuts off their noses because he don’t want them to reach the happy hunting grounds, he says. He throws the noses out onto the prairie like he thinks the dead might rise to try and put them back. He fetches the papers and them little travelling Bibles and the like off of our boys. Wives and mothers to send them to. On we go, then we respectfully drop the men into their holes and then we cover them up with a bedding of earth and every man in due course has a mound of the same earth over him likeeiderdowns in a fancy hotel. The sergeant rouses himself and says a few words appropriate to the moment and then he bids us mount up and Lige puts Caleb Booth up behind him because it’s Lige who has the strongest gelding and then we ride off. No one looks back.
Caught-His-Horse-First and his band is pinned up in barracks as the number one criminal. Sergeant pins the notice up himself. Colonel signs the order. Doesn’t take the terror and the sorrow out of it but puts revenge in beside it as a brother. Like cutting beer with whisky. The Pawnee scouts come in eventually but when they can’t give a good account for hightailing it the colonel reckons it’s as good as desertion and they’re shot. The major don’t like it and says scouts ain’t soldiers proper, you can’t shoot them. Apart from that old and useful phrase nahwah which means howdy, no one speaks Pawnee