A Cold Day in Hell (60 page)

“Damn!” Luther had grumbled, determined to sit tight despite the danger. “You s’pose he was aiming to hit that mule?”

“Doubt it,” Frank replied. “Figure that poor dumb creature just got in the way.”

Luther added, “Means that fella’s just about got our range.”

Frank studied the sky a moment, then said, “Getting too dark to really see us.”

“But he’s got the fire,” Luther replied. “Besides, Frank—you know he’s probably using a hundred-twenty grain cartridge.”

“S’pose you’re right, Lute: a bullet like that’ll sail right out there, by damn.”

“And if that fella lowers his sights a little,” Luther continued, “he could make us move, after all—”

The next shot perforated Frank’s huge quart-sized tin cup filled with coffee where it sat on the log between the Norths.

Without waiting for the Cheyenne rifleman to place his shots any more accurately, Frank and Luther helped their scouts erect a breastwork constructed of the many bundles of dried meat not yet destroyed in the bonfires. It was behind this shelter at the far side of the Pawnee cookfire where Seamus had now found the brothers and their scouts lounging, their legs stretched out toward the merry fire, enjoying the last of their repast washed down with the wilderness elixir of army coffee, here in their nest of peace and relative safety.

“That sharpshooter took a few more shots at us,” Frank explained as Donegan settled to his haunches nearby, cup in hand, “but he soon gave up.”

“For some reason,” Luther added, “we haven’t heard a thing from him now for a while.”

“I’ll bet he’s the one knocked a couple of the couriers out of their saddles this afternoon,” Donegan declared.

“Eat your fill, Seamus,” Frank suggested, rising to pass the Irishman a plate heaped with slices of the lean buffalo meat. “I’ll be back shortly, Lute. Going to get the sergeants to post our guard for the night.”

By the time Donegan had eaten his fill and had more than enough coffee to warm the cold knot of his belly, a dozen of the Pawnee scouts had returned from the east gap where they had dismounted that morning before dawn, unsaddling their horses and stripping off heavy coats for battle. Luther had sent the twelve back to fetch their saddles and blankets.

“Look here,” Frank White said as he strode into the firelight. Behind him stood the eleven others, each one clutching the reins to his horse. Then the scout dramatically threw down a saddle at the feet of the North brothers, its cinch and straps freshly cut.

“What the devil is this?” Frank demanded, dragging over the saddle to inspect the butchered cinch.

“All like that,” Peter Headman came up to explain. “All.”

“They’ve been cut, Frank!” Luther screamed. “Those sons of bitches wanted that horse of yours so bad—now them goddamned Sioux gone and done this to our boys!”

“Hold on! Hold on a minute here,” the elder North said, gripping Luther by the arm. “We don’t rightly know who did this.”

“Who had the chance?” Donegan wondered.

“Who?” Luther squealed with indignation. “We all know the Sioux and Cheyenne were behind us in the charge!”

Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Ho-hold on, Luther, I know it looks like Three Bears and his bunch skulked back and done this … but, dammit—I don’t want to go blazing away half-cocked like that.”

“You better get yourself ready for a row, big brother,” Luther snapped, wrenching his arm away from Frank. “I’m going to report this crime to Mackenzie. By God—he’ll have the Sioux replace these saddles for our men, or this is the last time our battalion will ever march on campaign!”

Seamus hung close to the fire to finish his pipe, then set out for the hospital about the time it began to snow again, lightly at first. He meandered northeast through the scattering of bonfires as the destruction continued, picking his way through the many cooking fires and smoldering heaps of ash still aglow with crimson coals.

From the groans and cries of those men in restless agony, it became all the easier to make out where the surgeons had set up their bloody business. There, some three hundred yards east of the ravine where the warriors had ambushed Lieutenant McKinney’s troop, lay the bodies of the dead and the wounded. For a moment he stood planted in place, peering at the doctors and their stewards hunched over their work in the light of blazing fires and a pair of lamps one doctor had his assistants holding close above his work as he probed a deep back wound while the dying soldier was held down by three of his companions, groaning through teeth clamped on a bit of bloody rag.

Off to Donegan’s left two soldiers suddenly appeared whole from the northwest out of the black of that night, stepping into the snowy firelight and coming to a halt by another surgeon at work retying a bloody bandage.

“Is our lieutenant here?” one of the pair asked.

The doctor said nothing, only pointing before he continued with knotting the cloth on the struggling soldier beneath him.

However, one of the stewards helping that physician asked, “You in the lieutenant’s troop?”

“We are.”

The steward shook his head. “He’s dead.”

“D-dead? We didn’t know.”

Now the doctor looked up. “Didn’t know he was dead? I thought you said you were in his troop.”

“We are … w-were,” the soldier answered. “Got separated when the red-bellies pitched into us.”

“He was killed and a bunch more wounded” the steward explained. “How come you didn’t know they was all taken off the battlefield? You didn’t run, did you?”

The two young soldiers looked at one another; then the first tried to explain. “No. We ain’t no cowards. Got separated from the rest and had to hide when things got hot.”

“Hide?” asked the doctor.

“All day,” he replied. “Been waiting for it to get full dark afore we could come in. Up in them rocks we didn’t know how bad it got for any of the rest of the boys. But we did know the lieutenant and the sergeant got hit afore we took cover up the side of that ravine.”

Donegan wagged his head—remembering the fear he had swallowed down time and time again as a young soldier faced with those moments before making a charge, those terrifying heartbeats as the fighting, the scuffling, the cannonade began all around them. Perhaps the difference between a private and a sergeant had always been that the private was supposed to be scared. And in this army the sergeant was never allowed the luxury of fear.

“Irish … Irishman.”

Seamus turned at the sound of the soft, croaking call. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The voice called again, “Over here.”

He started toward the sound, in a few steps reaching the feet of McKinney’s sergeant.

“Forsyth?”

“Yes.”

“It is you,” Seamus said as he squatted beside the wounded soldier and nodded to the young private who sat at the sergeant’s head, holding a wool blanket over them both as the flakes came down.

Forsyth said, “Started to snow again, dammit.”

For a moment he laid his wool glove on the sergeant’s arm. “You’re warm enough?”

“I’ll be fine on that account. Others worse off.”

“I seen they brought you in with the rest,” Donegan said.

“Was pretty well et up with the pain by then,” Forsyth replied. “Then the doc give me some laudanum and he went to work.”

The young soldier added, “Damn bullets flying over our
heads all day—scaring the bejaysus outta every last one of these sawbone meat cutters, they have.”

“How’s it been for your cawpril over there?”

Forsyth turned slightly to glance at the big soldier who had stationed himself beside the blanket shroud laid out at the edge of the field hospital, both the corporal and the dead man slowly collecting ribbons of white as the snow began to fall more insistently. “He’s been quiet. Been there all day for what I know. Ain’t never left the cap’n’s side.”

“Good for him,” Seamus said.

“Yes,” agreed the young soldier as he shifted the blanket bower above him and Forsyth, “good for him. The lieutenant never had him a chance. The doc said he counted four bullets in him—any one of ’em s’posed to kill him right off.”

“F-four bullets you say?” Forsyth asked.

“One gone through his chest. ’Nother one gone through his lower arm and ended up in his belly. Third one done the worst: shattered his backbone. And the last one hit him in the head—stayed right there in his brains ’thout coming out.”

“Damn!” the sergeant whispered. “I’m sure thirsty, soldier.”

“Yes, sir. Here,” and he handed over a canteen.

Forsyth took himself a drink, then held it up for Donegan. “You thirsty, Irishman? Sure you are: ary a fighting man gets thirsty after doing his duty, don’t you think?”

He took the canteen, hesitating because he was not really all that thirsty—when the sweetish fragrance of the corn mash whiskey drifted up to his nostrils. Seamus sniffed at the canteen.

“Gloree be, Sergeant Forsyth!” he exclaimed with quiet wonder, then tilted the canteen up slightly to let a little wash across the end of his tongue. “That tastes good enough for me to stay here and kill my thirst with you, it does, it does. But—a man in your state needs your thirst killer much more’n I do.”

“You’re sure you don’t want none, are you?”

“Aye. I’m sure, and thankful too we had men like you on that line today.” Donegan watched the sergeant’s eyes soften. Wondering if it were the laudanum, or the whiskey, or maybe it was enduring all that pain that made them go soft and doelike right then.

“You won’t drink any more of my whiskey,” Forsyth said, “then you’ll have to give me your hand before you go.” They shook quickly. “Man like you, Irishman—you had no business coming on that charge with us. No reason on God’s green earth to be at the edge of that ravine.”

“I had every reason in the world,” Donegan replied. “But the two most important reasons are waiting for me back at Laramie.”

“Then see that you get yourself back to them whole,” the sergeant ordered as he sagged a bit, jamming the cork back in the top of his canteen, his eyelids drooping. “You don’t mind—think maybe I’ll grab me a bit of shut-eye now.”

“I’ll look you up tomorrow,” Donegan declared, patting the sergeant’s arm before he got to his feet and moved away into the firelit snowy night.

As he walked back toward the creek, his mind snagged on how McKinney had clutched at Dr. LaGarde, speaking of his mother so far, far away with his dying breath.

Natural that Donegan’s thoughts turned to his own mother now in heaven, still watching over her firstborn son come so far, far away to distant Amerikay.

Throughout the waning of the light that afternoon, Morning Star’s people had scrounged through the snow to gather wood to kindle the fires one of the old men started with the flint-and-steel fire-striker he had carried from his lodge at the upper end of camp that morning. These were not big fires like the ones the soldiers below fed with all that the
Ohmeseheso
had once owned. Instead these were small by comparison as the wind came up along the ridgetops and the snow began to fall around them.

It weighed down his heart to think that some of his people would not last this cold, cold night despite the small fires where the strong ones rubbed the hands and feet, legs and arms of those who were too small or too sick or too old to warm themselves. Not only had he lost family and friends to the soldier bullets this day, but with the coming night, Morning Star realized he would lose a few more to the winter giant.

As a Council Chief, it was his station in life to worry about such things—to concern himself more with the fate of his people than with his own family, his own fortune. So it saddened Morning Star that he thought again of Old Crow, a longtime friend who had elected to stay at the White River Agency
*
last summer when Morning Star and the others had decided to return to the north country. Especially after the soldiers had turned them back
in the skirmish
*
with the soldiers near the Mini Pusa,
†
men like Old Crow had elected to stay behind.

So why was it, Morning Star asked, that Old Crow and other old friends of his then decided to join the soldiers in tracking down their own tribesmen? To side with the
ve-ho-e
in making war on their old friends, their own families?

How could the world have got so crazy that a man would turn his back on his own and join with the enemy?

Throughout the morning’s battle several warriors came to Morning Star reporting that they had seen Old Crow and others—some relatives of the squaw man Rowland—all from the White River Agency, among the
Tse-Tsehese
scouts fighting on the side of the soldiers. This was so hard to believe!

But that afternoon Morning Star saw for himself.

A solitary horseman rode out from the enemy’s side of the valley and approached the bluffs where the warriors continued to put up a strong fight and Black Hairy Dog was working his medicine with the Sacred Arrows. As the lone rider drew closer to the rocky hillside, Morning Star recognized his friend, despite the white man’s heavy blue coat and the canvas britches.

“Old Crow!”

“It is me!” the soldier scout cried out.

“You best not come closer!”

The rider reined up. “I am here to tell you something.”

A warrior in the rocks near Morning Star angrily hurled his voice at the horseman. “Tell us nothing but that you are coming to fight beside us against the soldiers.”

“I must fight against you,” Old Crow sadly admitted from the back of his skittish pony.

“Then perhaps we should kill you as we will kill the soldiers!”

Other warriors in the rocks shouted in derision too, but no one fired a shot at Old Crow. Killing one of their own would be so hard a thing to do.

Morning Star’s voice rose above the others. “You have come here for a reason, my friend. Tell us.”

The horseman patted the pockets of the dark wool coat he wore. “Although I am forced to fight against you—I am leaving a lot of ammunition for your guns on this hillside.”

They watched him ease out of the saddle, lead his pony to
a rocky outcrop, then quickly empty his pockets. Then the Council Chief leaped back into the saddle, tightened his grip on the reins, and called out in parting.