Page 87 of The Veteran

‘Rifle,’ said Craig.

‘Can I see? I’m way into guns.’

Craig eased his Sharps out of the sheath and handed it down. Brad was ecstatic.

‘Wow, that is a beauty. A real antique. What is it?’

‘Sharps fifty-two.’

‘That’s incredible. I didn’t know they made replicas of this.’

Brad sighted the rifle on the bell in the frame above the main gate. It was the bell that would be rung with vigour if any hostiles were spotted or their presence reported, and would warn outside working parties to hurry back. Then he pulled the trigger.

He was about to say ‘Bang’ but the Sharps did it for him. Then he was knocked back by the recoil. If the heavy bullet had hit the bell square on, it would have shattered it. Instead it hit at an angle and screamed off into space. But the bell still emitted a clang that stopped all activity in the fort. The professor came tumbling out of his office.

‘What on earth was that?’ he called, then saw Brad sitting on the ground clutching the heavy rifle. ‘Brad, what do you think you’re doing?’

Brad clambered to his feet and explained. Ingles looked sorrowfully at Craig.

‘Ben, maybe I forgot to tell you, but there is a no-firearm rule on this base. I’ll have to lock this up in the armoury.’

‘No guns, Major?’

‘No guns. At least not real ones.’

‘But what about the Sioux?’

‘The Sioux? So far as I know they are on the reservations in North and South Dakota.’

‘But, Major, they might come back.’

Then the professor saw the humour. He gave an indulgent beam.

‘Of course, they might come back. But not this summer, I think. And until they do, this goes behind a chain in the armoury.’

The fourth day was a Sunday and the staff all attended morning service in the chapel. There was no chaplain, so Major Ingles officiated. In mid-service he moved to the lectern and prepared to read the lesson. The big Bible was opened at the appropriate page with a marker.

‘Our lesson today comes from the Book of Isaiah, chapter eleven, starting at verse six. Here the prophet deals with the time when God’s peace shall come upon our earth.

‘“The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. And a little child shall lead them.

‘“And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion . . .”’

At this point he turned the page, but two of the ricepaper sheets had stuck together and he stopped, as the text made no sense. As he wrestled with his confusion a young voice spoke from the middle of the third row in front of him.

‘“And the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”’

There was silence as the congregation stared open-mouthed at the figure in the stained buckskin suit with the eagle feather dangling from the back of his head. John Ingles discovered the remainder of the passage.

‘Yes, precisely. Here endeth the first lesson.’

‘I really do not understand that young man,’ he said to Charlie in his office after lunch. ‘He cannot read or write but can recite passages from the Bible that he learned as a child. Is he weird or am I?’

‘Don’t worry, I think I have figured it out,’ she said. ‘He really was born to a couple who chose to live in isolation in the wilderness. When they died he really was adopted, unofficially and probably illegally, by a single man, much older, and raised as the old man’s son. So he really does have no formal education. But he has a huge knowledge of three things: the Bible that his mother taught him, the ways of the last remaining wilderness and the history of the Old West.’

‘Where did he get that from?’

‘The old man, presumably. After all, if a man died at age, say, eighty, only three years ago, he would have been born before the end of the last century. Things were pretty basic around here back then. He must have told the boy what he recalled or was himself told about the frontier days by survivors.’

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