A Cold Day in Hell (59 page)

Wheeler studied the Irishman’s face a moment, then asked, “From the looks of that belt and buckle—you figure we got one of the chiefs, eh?”

Bourke wagged his head. “Could be—I know Little Wolf was one of the leaders who went back east to Washington City here lately.”

Donegan said, “Mayhap he got this as a present from the President, Johnny.”

Bourke wagged his head, “Or from some kindhearted official in the Indian Bureau.” Throwing the belt down onto the blanket, the lieutenant grumbled. “The red bastard sure showed his gratitude in a strange way, didn’t he?”

“Come with me,” Wheeler suggested, leading the two away. “I’ve got a lot more to show you.”

He stopped beside another pile of plunder.

“Was that a guidon?” Bourke asked, bending to feel the cloth.

“Damn right it was,” Wheeler replied. “You can see who it once belonged to.”

From that bloody silk swallowtail guidon of the Seventh Cavalry some industrious woman had fashioned herself a pillow stuffed with prairie grass and sage.

“You figure these belonged to a white man?” Bourke asked as he rose holding a crude, grisly necklace at the end of his outstretched arm.

“Badly mortified,” Wheeler replied, “but—yes—looks like the fingers of many different white men to me.”

Bourke asked, “Mind if I keep this?”

Wheeler shrugged, saying, “It was going into the fire anyway, Lieutenant.”

“I know just where I can send this back east where folks will get a chance to see it in the museum,” Bourke added as he toed aside some saddle blankets as if searching for something to put the finger necklace in for safekeeping. Suddenly he leaped back. “What the goddamned hell is that?”

Seamus bent to look at it, nudged with his toe, turning the object over and over. “Looks to me like it was once some man’s ball-bag, Johnny.”

Bourke shuddered at the thought, swallowing hard. “As much as I try my best to understand these people, they never cease to surprise me with their penchant for supreme savagery. I suppose I’d better take that for the museum too.”

Donegan asked, “Not for your collection, Johnny?”

“Hell no, Irishman. I’ve got one of my own,” and he cupped a hand beneath his own scrotum when he answered. “I’ll keep it all with me until I can ship them back east.”

Donegan snorted, saying, “Good idea. Having a reminder like that around just might help you take better care of your own balls.”

From pile to pile Wheeler went on to lead the lieutenant and the scout, showing them many of the other remarkable souvenirs pulled from the Cheyenne lodges.

That taffeta-lined buckskin jacket recognized as having belonged to Tom Custer.

A hat bearing inside the headband the name of Sergeant William Allen, I Troop, Third U.S. Cavalry—killed at June’s Battle of the Rosebud and buried in the creekbed with the other casualties.

“Did you know him, Johnny?” Donegan asked quietly.

“Not that well, but I could have picked him out of a crowd nonetheless,” Bourke replied sourly as he carefully set the hat back atop a greasy blanket where other items lay for the viewing of all.

There were currycombs marked with troop initials and the Seventh Cavalry brand, as well as hairbrushes, some with men’s initials crudely scratched into the wood.

Donegan leafed through a notebook that listed the best marksmen at every target practice held by Lieutenant Donald Mcintosh, killed in Reno’s retreat across the Little Bighorn and up to the heights.

Next he carefully thumbed page by page through a memorandum book. Its one-time owner, a Seventh Cavalry sergeant, had penciled in his last entry: “Left Rosebud June 25th.” That page and many of the rest were embellished with drawings by an unknown Cheyenne warrior to illustrate his battle exploits and coups—one showing him lancing a cavalryman who clearly wore sergeant major’s chevrons, on another page the warrior was seen killing a teamster, on the following page the Cheyenne was shown killing a wretched miner somewhere in the Black Hills, and across two facing pages of the book he adorned an illustration of himself escaping from Reno’s barricade on the hill—represented by a round line of rifle fire, with saddled horses lying down inside—amid a hurricane of bullets. On other pages the Cheyenne represented himself as having been wounded once and his horse shot four times in that battle beside the Little Bighorn.

Bourke examined an officer’s blue mackintosh cape for signs of ownership, but no name was found.

Likewise, a gold pencil case and a silver watch provided no clues as to who had been their previous owners.

On another Indian blanket the troopers had collected China plates, cups, and saucers.

“It’s clear to me,” John Bourke commented, “that contact with the white man has given these aboriginal people a profound taste for acquiring the finer things in life.”

“I saw a few of these earlier today,” Donegan said, holding up a wallet partially stuffed with greenbacks. He asked of Wheeler, “How many of these have you come across?”

“Enough to know that Custer’s men hadn’t had a chance to spend their pay before they were butchered—”

“Dear God,” Bourke suddenly murmured softly there by the crackle of the fire as he handed Donegan an envelope.

Seamus turned it over, immediately recognizing it as a letter addressed to a woman back east, stamped and sealed by some soldier, ready for mailing.

“Look on any of these blankets,” Wheeler commented. “You’ll find even more. We’ve come across a lot of mail once addressed to members of the Seventh Cavalry, come from relatives and loved ones.”

Among the beaded pouches and shields, the shirts and leggings adorned with quillwork, lay many faded, wrinkled chromos and cabinet photos of many a soldier’s family members: parents, wives, children, and sweethearts all far away from these men gone off to war.

These small articles of personal value lay scattered among the many McClellan saddles, canteens, and nose bags all emblazoned with
7th
.

That twilight, as the sun began to sink beyond the southwestern hills, a bitter John Bourke flung a canteen down onto the blanket with a loud clatter, saying, “No man now in this valley with Mackenzie should dare think—after looking at all of this bloodied loot—that we aren’t completely justified in such extreme punishment being meted out this very day to such a band of thieves and robbers.”

“I’d daresay from the looks of it, Johnny,” Donegan added, “surely some of these warriors have fought against the army in every encounter this year.”

“By damn!” Bourke growled. “Not even a gunnysack must be spared the flames and left behind for these murderers!”

From the angry intensity of the soldiers’ work, it was clear to the Irishman that all such reminders of dead soldiers fallen in battle to this warrior band during the months of what had become known as the Great Sioux War only increased the thoroughness with which Mackenzie’s men went about destroying what had been the greatness of the Northern Cheyenne.

More than seven hundred Cheyenne ponies and horses, some of which had once belonged to the cavalry—their flanks plainly branded with
US
and 7—had been captured and were now in the hands of the cavalry. Close to a hundred of the finest war ponies were claimed by the Norths’ Pawnee and were already loaded with plunder hauled from the lodges by the time the first spire of oily black smoke had curled into the afternoon sky.

As an eerie background to the destruction, the Shoshone scouts continued beating on that huge drum found near the center of the horseshoe of lodges as twilight deepened into the gloom of winter’s night. That same drum captured from their people, and now back in their hands once more, throbbing with the thunder of victory that reverberated from the hills where the conquered Cheyenne faced the coming dark and frightening cold.

One hundred seventy-three lodges once stood in the valley of the Red Fork of the Powder River.

Until that day the Northern Cheyenne had been a prosperous people, by far the wealthiest of warrior bands on the northern plains.

Never had so rich a prize fallen into the hands of the frontier army.

Still, Ranald Slidell Mackenzie had paid a price for his victory: McKinney and four troopers had been killed in the battle; a fifth had been felled by the sniper with the big gun hidden among the rocks.

As the canopy of blue turned to a deep indigo over their heads, Bourke asked, “You realize how fitting it is, don’t you, Irishman?”

He turned to the lieutenant. “What’s so fitting?”

“The date.”

Turning away to regard the huge, leaping flames once more, Seamus struggled to sort it out, then replied, “I’m afraid I don’t know what the date is, Johnny.”

“It’s the twenty-fifth, Irishman,” Bourke said almost prayerfully as the darkness came down around them like an oozy wound.

Donegan’s breath caught in his chest a moment; then he said, “I … I hadn’t realized.”

“Just think of it: five months—to the day, Seamus … since these Cheyenne bastards joined Sitting Bull’s devils to wipe out Custer. Five months to the day.”

“Y
ou can damn well be glad it got dark before you showed up to beg a cup of coffee off us,” Luther North said to the Irishman as he handed Seamus a steaming tin.

“I suppose you’re right,” Donegan replied, dragging his gloves from his fingers and welcoming the warmth into his hands. “Coffee does taste better when it gets as cold and dark as it will tonight.”

“He didn’t mean nothing about the bloody cold,” Frank North corrected, walking up to join them.

“I was talking about that son of a bitch with the big gun up there in the hills,” Luther added. “He’s been right handy with that buffalo rifle he’s got.”

Seamus savored the warm track the coffee cut in coursing its way down before he said, “Good enough shot to pucker your of bunghole, eh?”

“Naw. He never come close enough to hit us,” Frank explained.

And Luther snorted, “But that weren’t for want of trying!”

Just as the sun had eased down on the southwestern rim of that canyon of the Red Fork, Frank and Luther North had given their Pawnee scouts permission to kindle their supper fires, having gone more than twenty-four hours forked in the saddle, under the guns of battle, and without a hot meal. With Mackenzie’s troops now ringing the burning village in a horseshoe stretching from the north, to the east, and along the south
to prevent the possibility of the enemy charging or sneaking in to regain their village, the Pawnee eventually went about making their camp for the night near the center of those Cheyenne lodges. Backlit there by many of the roaring bonfires, and clearly illuminated by their own cookfires, their shadowy forms provided some tempting targets for those snipers still moving about among the snowy slopes and rocky hillsides.

The warrior with that big buffalo gun who had taken up his station in the bluffs west of the Pawnee proved to be the greatest annoyance as he placed a bullet in their vicinity every few minutes, slowly walking his shots in by using the cookfire to gauge his distance. Time and again bullets flew into the area immediately around the fire where the scouts had cleared the ground of snow. Dirt or splinters of firewood splattered in their frying pans with every round. A little later as the darkness became all the deeper, a well-placed bullet did strike a frying pan in the fire, scattering ashes and dried buffalo meat over the Pawnee scout tending his meal close to the North brothers—causing all of them to jump.

After more than a half hour of sensing the sniper’s bullets inching closer and closer to them, during which time the North brothers stoically returned again and again to sit on their log by the fire, placing their backs bravely to the west, eating their supper and having their coffee to show their scouts what little danger there was, they both suddenly leaped nearly out of their skins—

No sooner had a loose mule wandered contentedly up to their fire to stand some twenty feet to the east in front of them than another shot rang out and the lone animal set up a noisy screech, thrashing about in a crazed circle as it went down, legs kicking in those moments before it wheezed its last.