CALL HIM SAVAGE

BY JOHN POLLARD

Illustrator: Sanford Kossin

  didn't even hear her come in. What with the Sioux rising against the white settlement at the fork of the Platte, the attack being set for dawn, and Chief Spotted Horse's impassioned speech to his braves, I wouldn't have heard anything under a ninety-seven-decibel war whoop.

Soft lips brushed the back of my neck and she said something.

"That's fine," I said.

"Sam!"

I heard that, all right. I looked up from the typewriter. "Hey, that's a nice nightgown!"

"I said I think I'm getting a cold."

"Well—with a nightgown like that...."

"Silly!" Her smile would have corrupted a bishop. "You coming to bed? It's almost midnight."

"Soon's I finish writing this chapter. Best thing I've ever done."

"More Indians?"

I reached for a cigarette. "Sure, more Indians. What else would one of the country's leading authorities on the original Americans be writing about? I hate to keep harping on the same subject, my sweet, but the dough from my last book bought you that mink stole you keep dangling in front of your girl friends."

"If you make so much money at it, why are you still a reporter?"

"I like being a reporter."

"What about me? Between reporting and Indians my love life is beginning to wither on the vine. You should have married a squaw."

"Who says I didn't?" I gave her my best leer and reached out an exploring hand. She blushed and backed away, laughing. "Nothing doing, Sam Quinlan! You want me I'll be in bed."

"Hey-hey!"

She gave me a quick kiss, evaded my grasp and disappeared into the bedroom. I finished lighting the cigarette, typed a few more lines. But my working mood was gone, a casualty of a black lace nightgown. Finally I got up from the desk and snapped on the radio and, while it warmed up, strolled over to the living room window.

At this hour Washington was largely in bed. Away over to the east I could see the dim glow of lights marking the Mall, with the Capitol dome beyond that. Now that communism was dead, buried and unmourned in Russia and her satellites, with peace and prosperity booming from Iowa to Iran, even the President would be sleeping like a baby. Any day now I would be down to covering PTA meetings for the Herald-Telegram. That was okay with me; my big interest was "Saga of the Sioux"—the third in the series of books I was writing on the history of the American Indian.

An early autumn breeze crawled in at the open window and moved the line of smoke from my cigarette. A quiet serene night, with the faint smell of burned leaves in the air and the promise of a cool, sunny, peaceful tomorrow. A lovely night, made far lovelier by the thought of the beautiful blonde waiting for me in the next room. After twelve years of marriage I still found her to be the most exciting and rewarding woman I had ever known.

"... most of eastern Colorado," the radio said suddenly, "as well as the western fringes of Nebraska and Kansas."

I turned the volume down. Weather report, probably, except that the announcer was making it sound like a declaration of war or a "sincere" commercial.

"We repeat," the voice continued, "since 8:10 this evening, Eastern Standard Time, literally nothing has come out of that section of the country. All communication has ceased, outbound trains and planes are long overdue, highway traffic out of the area has stalled."

"Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"You coming to bed?"

"... tuned to this station for further bulletins con—"

I clicked the set off. "Could I have three minutes for a fast shower?"

"Umm ... I guess so."

"I," I told her, "am coming to bed."

Lois rattled the handle of the stall-shower door, and I shut off the water. "Yeah?"

"Telephone, darling."

"At this hour? Who is it?"

"Sounds like Purcell."

"For Crisake!" I came out and grabbed a towel. "This is worse than one of those Hollywood farces about honeymooners. What's he want?"

"I didn't dare ask him, he sounded so grumpy."

I kissed her. "About that nightgown...."

"You're getting me all wet!"

Purcell was night Editor at the Herald-Telegram, a small, intense, middle-aged, highly literate man. Years before, his wife had run off with a reporter, leaving Purcell with an undying hatred for all members of the profession.

His voice, over the wire, cracked like a whip. "Sam?"

"Listen, I'm off duty. You got any idea what time—"

"You're wanted at the White House. Now."

"The White House? You mean—?"

"The White House. The President wants to see you."

"The President! Cut out the gags, will you? I'm in no—"

"I don't kid with reporters, Sam. On your way."

The phone went dead. I stood there staring stupidly at the receiver. Lois had to shake my arm to get my attention. "What did he want?"

"The President wants to see me."

"You're joking!"

"Hunh-uh. Anybody but Pete Purcell, I'd agree." I put back the receiver and went over to the dresser for clean underwear. "Get back to bed, honey. I'll be home as soon as I get through running the Government. Can you imagine! The President wants to see me!"

She yawned and stretched, looking like the June page on an Esquire calendar. "Well, so much for my sheerest nightgown."

"Believe me, darling, if it wasn't the President—"

"I know. It would be an Indian."

I finished dressing while she sat on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chin, watching me. I kissed her thoroughly and patted her here and there and went downstairs. The night man in the garage under the building put down his Racing Form and dug my Plymouth out of a welter of chrome and glass.

I drove much too fast all the way.

A guard at the gate looked at my press pass and used a hidden telephone. Within not much more than seconds I was ushered into the Press Secretary's office. The Secretary, a badly shaken man if ever I'd seen one, had evidently been pacing the floor. He looked at me sharply out of pale, bloodshot eyes. "Your name Quinlan?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I see your identification?"

I handed him my wallet. He flipped through the panels holding my press pass, social security card, driver's license and a picture of Lois in a bathing suit. When he failed to do more than give the latter a casual glance I knew this was a man with a troubled mind.

I said, "Maybe you could give me kind of a hint on what's going on."

"Going on?" he repeated absently.

"You know—going on." I got off a nonchalant-type laugh that would have fooled anybody who was deaf. "I even heard that the President wanted to see me!"

He gave me back the wallet. "Ah—yes. Come with me, please."

We left the office and went down a hall, around some corners and down more halls, past a lot of doors, all of them closed. Finally he stopped in front of a pair of doors with shiny brass doorknobs, knocked twice, then turned the knob, said, "Mr. Quinlan, gentlemen," shoved me through with a jerk of his chin, and closed the door behind me.

I never saw him again.

There was a long table down the center of a long narrow room. The woodwork was white and the walls papered a dark green, with walnut-framed pictures here and there of the kind of men you see in albums of Civil War vintage.

But the men around the