Merline Lovelace (24 page)

Suddenly, the bad man flung his arm out. Suzanne went sailing through the air with it, still tethered by her unrelenting bite. She hit the ground hard, so hard she almost opened her mouth to scream with the pain of it. Her papa yelled something, then gunfire exploded right beside her ear.

Deafened and terrified, Suzanne squeezed her eyes shut. Something hot and wet poured over her. There was another shot, then another. Someone wrenched her up, or tried to. She wouldn’t open her eyes, wouldn’t unlock her jaw.

“Suzanne!” her mother sobbed. “Let go,
ma petite!
Please, let go.”

Andrew rode out at first light.

Lone Eagle rode beside him.

Dawn pinwheeled across the sky, a swirl of gold and pink, dimming the glow of the hundreds of little fires that shot embers into the purple sky. The fires had danced in the darkness all night, constant reminders of the overwhelming force that waited patiently for daylight to renew its attack.

Andrew could only pray Spotted Tail rode at the head of the army of warriors, and not Red Cloud or Sitting Bull. If the old man would listen to reason,
there was still some hope they could salvage the fast-shredding hopes of peace…and Andrew could honor his promise to the stone-faced Arapaho riding beside him.

The pinks and golds faded. The sky lightened enough for him to make out a distant figure mounted atop his painted pony, sitting motionless on the crest of a hill. His eagle-feather war bonnet crowned his head and spilled down his back to trail his pony’s flanks.

The Sioux didn’t move, didn’t ride down to meet them halfway. The warriors ranged below him on the hill parted silently to allow the major and the Arapaho scout passage, then just as silently closed ranks behind them. The hair on the back of Andrew’s neck prickled with each plop of Jupiter’s hooves on the hard prairie dirt.

He reined in a few yards away from the grim-faced chief. Spotted Tail didn’t acknowledge the Arapaho by so much as the flicker of an eye.

“Have you come to tell me you will give me the ones who kill my niece, Long-Knife-Who-Walks-With-A-Limp?”

“No.”

“Then you will not leave this place alive. Nor will any of the other horse soldiers.”

“I came to tell you I will leave the bastard here, on the plains. With Lone Eagle.”

Contempt twisted the old man’s mouth. “He has not the medicine to avenge a Sioux.”

The Arapaho spoke for the first time, his voice as flat and dead as his eyes. “She was my wife. I will avenge her, if I must battle you and every one of your warriors first for that right.”

Spotted Tail’s gaze flicked to the naked warrior. He sat as still and as immutable as the snow-capped mountains rising far to the west.

“I ask you to think of Walks In Moonlight,” Andrew said quietly. “She begged you to give her to Lone Eagle as his wife. She would want him to avenge her, as she would want peace between our peoples. Don’t destroy the chance for peace now, with General Sheridan set to board a train the moment you give the word.”

Spotted Tail grunted. For a moment his shoulders sagged, as if they carried all the promises made and broken by both sides. Of all the chiefs, he’d spoken the longest and most eloquently for peace with the whites. Signed treaty after treaty. Traveled to Washington to meet with the Great Father.

The battle between his head and his heart was painful to watch.

Spotted Tail sat silent and unmoving for so long his pony snuffled impatiently and thumped the earth with a rear hoof. Tossing his head, he flicked his mane to disperse the prairie mites that swarmed about his eyes and nostrils in a hazy cloud.

Beneath his wool uniform shirt, sweat trickled down Andrew’s sides. He was preparing to bargain
his life in exchange for safe passage for Suzanne and Julia when the old chief grunted again.

“You will leave the ones who kill my niece,” he told Andrew. “Sioux and Arapaho will both avenge her.”

A
brisk afternoon breeze carried the distant sound of bugles down the dun-colored slopes to the fort.

The laundresses bent over the tubs ceased slapping wet uniforms against their washboards. Infantrymen at drill on the parade ground cocked their heads. Troopers in canvas work shirts and pants dropped their sponges and currycombs and rushed out of the stables.

Even Henry Schnell paused. Patting a patient suffering from a severe case of hemorrhoids from too many hours in the saddle on the shoulder, he instructed the hospital steward to administer the normal remedy of a turpentine suppository and left the poor fellow to hop about like a jackrabbit. Stripping off his stained canvas work coat, the surgeon hurried outside to join the crowd streaming to the parade ground. He’d just met his wife enroute when a shout rang out.

“There they are! It’s Company C, all right.”

The long line of horse soldiers appeared on the low
bluffs above the fort, moving at a slow walk in a column of fours. The company’s red-and-white banner fluttered in the breeze.

The bugles sounded again. Tired shoulders straightened. Men sat taller in the saddle. The pace picked up to a trot, then a brisk canter. The column swept down the sloping road, rode past the stables, the sutler’s store, the surgeon’s quarters. Murmurs of relief rose from the crowd when they spotted no empty saddles.

“Column le-effft,
turn!
”

The waiting crowd cheered as the column wheeled onto the parade ground. Maria Schnell gasped and snatched at her husband’s arm.

“Look, Henry! That’s Julia riding the horse beside Andrew’s. She’s got a pair of trousers on under her skirt! And isn’t that Suzanne in Andrew’s lap?”

“Why the devil aren’t they riding in the ambulance wagon?” the surgeon wondered.

He learned the reason shortly after the officer of the day rushed down the steps of Old Bedlam and hurried across the parade ground to stand at attention in front of the flagpole.

The column slowed to a trot, marched past him, halted and wheeled again at Andrew’s command. Sitting rigid in the saddle, the major returned the officer’s salute.

“Colonel Cavanaugh’s compliments,” the captain called out. “He asks you to report to his quarters immediately.”

“Tell the colonel I’ll be with him as soon as Mrs. Bonneaux and her daughter have been attended to, and her husband’s body taken to the coffin makers.”

Startled gasps rose from the crowd. All eyes turned to the canvas-draped sides of the ambulance wagon, then drifted back to Julia. She stared straight ahead while the officers finished their formalities and the troop dismounted.

Andrew swung down first, then reached up for Suzanne. She tumbled unceremoniously out of the saddle and into his arms, clinging to his neck like a limpet until Mary Mulvaney pushed through the crowd.

“Come with me, poppet. You just come with me.”

With a murmur of thanks, Andrew relinquished the girl to Mary’s charge. His days in the saddle showed in his limp as he moved to Julia’s mount. She lifted a trousered leg over the pommel and slid into his arms. When he would have given her, too, into Mary’s care, she shook her head.

“I want to come with you. I think Cavanaugh needs to hear what happened from someone other than you.”

George Beauvais elbowed his way through the gawking troopers. “I need to hear it, too.”

Henry Schnell joined him. “Dammed if I won’t come along as well. Don’t argue, Garrett. We might as well all get the story straight out, since we’re each of us likely to be testifying before a board of inquiry.”

The story, as Julia told it, left the colonel shaking with fury and helpless to do anything about it.

“Kinkaid killed my husband,” she related in a hard voice. “The mule driver tried to kidnap my daughter, but Philip wrestled him down. Kinkaid’s gun was trapped between them and went off.”

“Where in hell did the prisoner get a gun?” the colonel exploded. “Someone was damned derelict in their duties.”

“He took it from the trooper whose throat he cut,” Julia fired back. “And if we’re to speak of dereliction of duty, I’d like you to explain why you sent those murderers out onto the plains with only a twenty-man escort.”

“So would I,” George Beauvais growled.

“I answer only to my superiors,” the colonel sputtered, “but Garrett had demmed well better tell me what he did with Kinkaid and Brewster!”

He swung toward Andrew, the buried resentment and hate spewed from his mouth.

“If you gave them to Spotted Tail against my direct orders, you won’t see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of your days! Assuming I don’t shoot you where you stand for breaking arrest and taking a troop out without authorization.”

“You signed his release,” Henry Schnell put in with a lift of his bushy brows.

“After you laced me with opium!”

“Come, come, sir. I left you with your usual dose which, unfortunately, you took too much of.”

And no one could prove otherwise, the surgeon’s expression shouted.

Beauvais took advantage of Cavanaugh’s maddened incoherence to step into the fray. The fur-trapper-turned-peace commissioner had been fuming over the turn of events since Private O’Shea tracked him down.

“If you’re chawin’ on about the order you gave Garrett not to talk to me, you’d better think twice afore you shoot your mouth off. General Sherman’s gonna want to know why you tried to gag him.”

Goaded, Cavanaugh swung back to Andrew. “Don’t think you’re out of this. You still have to answer for Kinkaid and Brewster. Those prisoners were in army hands, under army jurisdiction.”

They’d
still
been in army hands the last Andrew had seen of them. More or less. The gut-shot Kinkaid was alive and moaning when Andrew left him staked to the dirt, with Lone Eagle on one side of him, Spotted Tail on the other, their bone-handled hunting knives glinting in the sun. A weeping Brewster writhed and drummed his heels against the dirt beside his friend.

“I’ll take my case to any board of inquiry the Army chooses to convene,” Andrew answered calmly.

Lieutenant General William T. Sherman headed the peace commission that arrived at Fort Laramie the first week in November. He also served as president
of the board chartered by the commander of the Department of the Platte to determine whether the actions of Major Andrew Garrett warranted trial by court-martial.

Andrew was held in house arrest for the three weeks prior to the general’s arrival. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Julia since their return to Fort Laramie. Nor did he see her during the week-long inquiry, which was considered an Army matter and closed to all outsiders.

When the board finally returned a finding of no inappropriate action, he walked down the front steps of Old Bedlam to a bright, cold afternoon. Crystalline flakes of snow drifted from a leaden sky. It was the first snowfall of the season, feather-soft and powdery white. Clean. Fresh. Covering the scars in the earth left by the summer and fall.

Dennis O’Shea walked Jupiter up and down the path outside the headquarters building. Steam blew from the charger’s nostrils and melted the snow on the shoulders of O’Shea’s caped overcoat.

“The missus said to tell you she’d be waiting for you, sir. Down by the river, just past Suds Row.”

“In this weather?”

“That’s what she said to tell you, sir.”

Andrew thrust his boot in the stirrup. Moments later, Jupiter cantered past the laundresses’ quarters. Smoke curled from the communal kitchens behind Suds Row. With the onset of winter, the washwomen had taken their tubs inside.

He followed the riverbank until he spotted a lone figure. The snow muffled his approach until he was almost upon her. Even then, he wasn’t sure it was her. A scarf covered her hair, and she wore a bulky surplus army overcoat that swathed her from nose to toes.

“Julia?”

She spun around. Worry creased her forehead and darkened her eyes to a near purple.

“I heard General Sherman dismissed the board of inquiry,” she said anxiously, her breath pearling on the frosty air. “What were the findings?”

“Cleared of all charges.” A wry smile curved his lips. “I think the fact that Spotted Tail and Red Cloud have indicated they’re ready to talk had more to do with the board’s findings than my testimony.”

Instead of the exclamation of joy Andrew expected, she stared at him for long moments, then burst into tears. Dismounting, he closed the short distance between them and bundled her into his arms.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart. You’ll get frostbite on your cheeks and nose. Why the devil did you want to meet me outside in the cold, anyway?”

“It’s so beautiful, and—” She lifted her face to his, tear tracks silver on her cheeks “—I didn’t want Suzanne to see how frightened I was. I thought you might…might…”

He drew a finger across her cheeks. “Might what?”

“Might have to leave the Army. Or Fort Laramie.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “Or me. Oh, Andrew, I was so afraid they might recommend a court-martial and send you to prison!”

The smile that had started a few moments ago slipped out full and warm. “Haven’t I already proved that no prison can keep me away from you?”

He’d held the words in for so long, they now came easily, unshackled, unshadowed. The old ghosts slept peacefully now under their blanket of clean white snow.

“I love you, Julia. I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you in that ballroom in New Orleans, and loved you almost as long.”

Another long shudder shook her.

“I know it’s too soon after Philip’s death for this to be right or proper, but I have to know. Did you mean it when you said you’d follow the bugles?”

She nodded, but Andrew needed to hear the words.

“Say it, Julia. Say you’ll marry me. Again.”

“I’ll marry you. Again.” She slid her arms around his neck, went up on tiptoe. “And again and again, if necessary.”

“Once more should do it,” he said roughly, then bent to cover her mouth with his.

Have you ever walked into a room or stood on a hill and been transported to another time or place? That’s how I felt when my husband and I walked onto the grounds of Fort Laramie National Historic Site. There was Old Bedlam in all its glory, the sutler’s store, the surgeon’s quarters, the cavalry barracks. I could almost hear the distant sound of bugles on the wind! I knew right then I had to set a book at the fort.

Researching Fort Laramie and its history was a fascinating journey back in time. You might be interested to know the people and key events which provide the backdrop for this story are real. Although the post was never commanded by a Colonel Cavanaugh, and Julia and Andrew exist only within the pages of this book, Chief Spotted Tail did bring his daughter to the fort to be buried. He was among the first of the Sioux chiefs to meet with the peace commission which arrived in November, 1867. Red Cloud held
out until April, 1868, when the Army agreed to burn the forts along the Bozeman Trail.

Unfortunately, the peace negotiated at Fort Laramie in 67/68 only lasted until 1874, when Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and brought back reports of gold. Hoards of eager prospectors invaded the lands promised to the Sioux in the treaty. War broke out once more…a war that would cost the flamboyant Custer and the men of the 7th Cavalry their lives at the Battle of the Little Bighorn two years later.

If you enjoyed learning about the men and women who lived by the bugles, I hope you’ll keep a watch for the next book in the Wyoming Winds series. WILD INDIGO is Suzanne’s story. All grown up and very much at home in the newly established Wyoming Territory, she’s abducted from the Cheyenne-Deadwood Stage by a hard-eyed ruffian who soon discovers she was taught a few surprising tricks by the horse soldier who raised her.

Happy reading!