Drill Sergeant v. Dyer

The Drill Sergeant pushes his way past the chaos of books, clothes, radio equipment, paper, and overturned furniture, and into Stetson's cabin. After an hour of straightening and searching, he finds a thin parcel containing carefully layered strips of pemmican. He steps from the cabin.

Two strips are thrown on the ground in front of the schnauzer, who gobbles them up. The Drill Sergeant takes a strip for himself. He re-wraps the parcel, tosses it back into the cabin, and, using the strip he saved, spends the rest of the afternoon teaching the schnauzer to salute.

The dog's a fast learner.

Later that night, as the Drill Sergeant bunks down beside the oak, and the dog close beside him, the schnauzer stands, ears perked high, looking in the direction of forest.

Enemy, boy?

The dog salutes.

Good damn, the Drill Sergeant whispers. He stands, holstering one pistol in his trouser, holding the other. He walks slowly in the direction of the forest. The schnauzer, alert and on point, walks a few paces ahead.

As they near close to the edge of the forest, the hair on the back of the schnauzer stands on end. It lowers his stance, growling deeply. Without warning the Drill Sergeant fires ahead, in the direction the dog faces. There's an anguished cry from behind the bush.

The dog lunges, fangs barred, into the woods. There's a great struggle, snapping of branches, barking - and wailing from an unseen man. The Drill Sergeant, unsure of the dog, unable to push into the pitch black envelope of branches and leaves, calls out for the animal. The struggle ends. The man stumbles off. The dog runs back to the Drill Sergeant.

From the dog's mouth the Drill Sergeant takes a torn, dusty leather satchel. Beads and simple decoration adorn the front, the band.

The Drill Sergeant opens the prize. In the light of the full moon he looks inside: a small light blue glass bottle, half full of bathtub gin; a handful of highly decorated, engraved .455 Webley brass shells; a pouch full twenty or thirty live .455 bullets, undecorated; a small marble bust of a nameless woman of plain appearance; an elk mask; and a crude, hand-printed pamphlet, in a language the Drill Sergeant doesn't recognize.

We'll find him tomorrow, he tells the dog.

The next morning, after eating the last of the pemmican, they walk into the forest, at the spot of confrontation the night before. Splotches of dry blood flower the ground. The schnauzer, excited by the memory, runs frantically around the spot, whining, pushing his way deeper into the forest, looking back at the Drill Sergeant as if pleading to be followed.

The Drill Sergeant, after a careful scan of the area for more objects, follows the dog. Not forty yards away, slumped over beneath the trunk of a great ash, sits an obscured figure of a man.

The Drill Sergeant and dog stand silently for a few seconds before advancing quickly, pistol out, pressed against the man's head.

The man's dead.

He's the same native that greeted the Distiller, but with two holes in his torso - one in his chest, one in his gut - and deep bite marks on his arms and legs. The only distinguishing mark, apart from the wounds, are the pattern and nature of the tribal tattoos that mark the the man's body: inked notches on his cheeks, a self-consuming snake on the upper right bicep, an obscure double-zodiac running vertically between his shoulder blades.

The Drill Sergeant drags the body from the forest to the grounds in time to meet the Dyer, a hearty young woman with a worried expression.