Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (39 page)

“Soldier!” he hollered at the closest trooper hunching past in the white swirl. “Be sure you drag in that sowbelly of buffalo chips when the rest of them got the shroud up!” The sergeant turned to Donegan and winked, which creased half his frozen, windburned face. “Boys, looks like I'm going to try to build the most important damned fire I ever started in my life.”

As quickly as the tents went up, each one filled with wind-driven snow—billowing, then sucking empty as a flattened bladder, then puffing full again with fury—they ripped free of their double stakes one by one, to go tumbling off to the south, disappearing. No man went after them. They had their hands full beneath the wagon and canvas shroud, the wind grown so strong it threatened to topple it onto them.

For the moment most of the soldiers were gathered around the old sergeant as he struggled, one match after another, to light the fire in the lee they formed with their shivering bodies.

“Goddamn you!” Pierce wailed suddenly, lunging forward and with his gloved hands flinging the char and buffalo chips one way then another.

“Get that sonofabitch and tie him up!” snarled Donegan.

“Put him over there!” Stanton ordered, yelling from behind a shoulder he raised to protect his face from the stinging snow.

“Let's pull the wagon over,” Jack Stillwell suggested. “It'll make a windbreak for us where we can get under the shroud as the snow builds up.”

For a moment the lieutenant thought, then agreed. “Throw everything out of the wagon, here! Then put your backs behind it.”

“Leave my belongings—” Pierce shrieked, tearing away from the two soldiers restraining him, darting to the open gate at the rear of the wagon and vaulting himself up.

“Get him now!” the lieutenant shouted.

“These are mine!”

Donegan watched as Pierce scrambled over bedrolls and extra tack, snatching up the long leather map tube and his canvas valise with one arm. Without fail the other arm never moved from Pierce's midsection, as if he were clutching something to him, hidden there beneath his coat.

Roughly the soldiers dragged the man out of the wagon by his ankles. He rolled onto his back clumsily, the map case and valise tumbling from his hold on them. Pierce lashed out with his boots, connecting with a soldier's jaw, and sent the trooper sprawling. The other soldier, bigger and stronger, began to twist the civilian's ankle to control Pierce.

Pierce cried out, gritting his teeth in pain, and pulled his right hand from his coat pocket. The pistol roared, muzzle-flash bright in the murky gloom of the descending blizzard.

With only a look of shock, the soldier took a stumbling step backward, his mouth moving wordlessly as he slowly turned to the others as if asking for help, a neat, blue-black hole in his forehead that began to ooze sluggish blood. He collapsed into the small snowdrift forming behind the wagon.

Scooping up the valise and map case, Pierce held the pistol on the others as he clambered down from the wagonbed.

“I don't need you now, Lieutenant,” he said, wagging the pistol to herd the soldiers into a tighter bunch. “The Canadian isn't far.”

Seamus had seen that same light in the eyes of a few others in his time. A crazed, empowered light that would suffer not other men, nor suffer something so insignificant as a winter blizzard attempting to darken the glow of its madness.

Stanton took a step toward the fallen soldier.

Pierce brought up the pistol, his hand trembling terribly. “Stay where you are. He's dead.”

The officer halted as suddenly. “You … you're going to the Canadian now? In the middle of all this?”

Pierce nodded. “All of you can stay here. With your precious wagon and animals. I'm going on. And when I've made my report to Washington City—there's not a man of you won't be rotting in jail for the rest of your miserable lives.”

“You'll die out there,” Stanton said.

His eyes widened as he laughed. “Die? I think you're mad, Lieutenant. As mad as William Graves was. And you've become a man I see I cannot trust now. So, you'll be the first to suffer disgrace when I return in triumph to Washington City … New York and the world!”

Pierce turned halfway to the beckoning, white prairie, clutching his few precious belongings beneath his arm, waving the pistol at Donegan, who inched toward the dead soldier.

“Stay away! Or you'll get the same, Irishman!”

Seamus wagged his head. “A shame the blizzard is going to claim you, Pierce. I'd love to watch you die myself.”

He laughed, a crazed cackle that he had to swallow down with a breath-robbing, howling gust of wind. “You'd love to kill me yourself—admit it, you insolent, brainless mick!”

“You're right about something for once, Pierce. Yes—I'd like to kill you myself.”

“C'mon then. Show these soldiers how brave you are. Take me.”

Donegan stared at the muzzle of that pistol, flexing his fists, anxious to try it, assessing the odds of crossing the drifts of icy snow, perhaps dodging one shot … but by putting the bullet between the soldier's eyes, Pierce had proved himself too good a marksman. Tonguing down the gall of his disappointment, Seamus resigned himself to allowing the land and the storm to take Simon Pierce.

“Afraid, aren't you?” the civilian shrieked. He began backing away, the thin veil of swirling white between him and the rest growing thicker with each step into the storm.

Pierce laughed. “The ancient conquistadors had far more courage than any of you … more than all of you put together! They braved this wilderness without a whimper—as I am now to do. So don't you see? The untold wealth that awaits me can't belong to anyone else—I alone am brave enough to walk in their footsteps. I alone can possess the wealth I will find in the walls carved with gold—where the ancient peoples will anoint me their new king! Hail to the mighty monarch!”

The hair raised on the back of Donegan's neck as he listened to the civilian's fading, maniacal voice. It had a ghostly quality as it was bullied by the growing howls of the storm.

“I alone will rule the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola!”

“You're insane, Simon Pierce!” Seamus flung his voice back at the gauzy apparition as Pierce disappeared into the blizzard.

“You'll wish you would have gone with me, Irishman! One of these days you'll pray you hadn't crossed me! I'll have power … such great power!”

Chapter 30

Late November 1873

Never had he seen a blizzard like that in his young life.

Jack Stillwell had been through his share of northers on the prairie, but nothing had prepared him for the vicious rage of that capricious winter storm that roared down on the southern plains in the early winter of 1873.

By sawing a spare double-tree in half, the soldiers had formed two poles they used to prop up one side of the wagon they had tipped over for shelter. There beneath the wagon shroud, with the wagon itself keeling on its side to cut most of the life-robbing wind, they huddled through the next two nights while the world shrank around them, becoming more white and silent as the endless hours passed.

From time to time one of them would complain of the cold, or grumble about his gnawing belly, but there wasn't a one of them who complained for very long at a stretch. Someone else would remind them of the specter of Simon Pierce out there, somewhere in the storm—likely dead already.

Or someone might remind the grumbler about Malley—the soldier Pierce had killed before the civilian took off into the teeth of the blizzard.

Beneath the flapping shroud and their wool blankets and the deepening cavern of snow swallowing them, the men stayed warm enough. While they could still see their breath suspended in gauzy sheets before their faces, they realized at least the skin on those faces hadn't frozen to the stiffness of buffalo rawhide.

Throughout those two days of waiting for the raging howl of the storm to pass, the old sergeant or Donegan or Jack or the lieutenant keep feeding small chunks of the dried buffalo chips to the smoky coals that gave off enough heat to cut most of the chill sneaking through the exposed wagon planks or seeping behind the edges of the wagon shroud, showering them at times with a dusting of icy, white silt.

But through the hours that stretched into more than two days, the soldiers told jokes, regaled one another with memories of the war, told favorite stories, sang a few songs and learned some others, besides making use of a greasy, well-wrinkled pack of cards the old sergeant always carried. With nothing for chips, they played for all the wealth in Washington City, for all the gold near Sutter's Mill or in Cripple Creek or up north along Alder Gulch in Montana Territory.

And they would sleep a lot. It did not matter when, what with the little light coming through the canvas like watered-down milk to let a man know if it was day or night. All they had was the lieutenant's pocket watch to know that time really was passing. Too slowly, but passing all the same.

“You hear that, Seamus?” Jack asked, nudging the big man huddled beside him, snoring quietly with most of the others. Stillwell had kept himself awake, feeding the little fire that had likely saved the lives of thirteen lucky men.

Donegan stirred, cocking an ear for a moment before he turned to the young scout. “No—don't hear a thing.”

Stillwell rose to his knees, joints stiff with cold and lack of movement. “That's just what I mean, Irishman!”

“By the saints and the Virgin Mary!” Seamus cried, lunging at Stillwell. They embraced fiercely as the others began to stir.

“What's going—” Stanton started to ask. Then his eyes grew wide. “Is the … is it over?”

Jack's head bobbed. He sensed the sting of salty moisture at his eyes. “I think so, Lieutenant.”

Most of the others were howling now, happily. Now that the noisy, wind-driven blizzard had passed, their voices and laughter and the hearty slaps they delivered to one another echoed within the tiny shelter that had kept them cramped, but alive, for more than two days on the Staked Plain.

“Suppose I go see how the world looks outside, fellas,” Jack told them, then turned to the Irishman. “You wanna come have a look for yourself, Seamus?”

“Anything to stretch my legs.”

As Donegan turned and started to pull aside the canvas wagon shroud, a shower of snow tumbled into their shelter.

“Watch it, you dumb mick!” howled the old sergeant. “Move aside and let a old file show you how to dig hisself out.”

“That's right, Donegan,” said one of the troopers. “Sarge there is about small enough, and he knows how to tunnel real proper—just like a barracks rat burrowing down in my tick.”

“You got rats in your beds, have you?” Seamus asked as the sergeant squeezed past him.

“If'n we wanted anything else as warm and squirmy as them rats in a bed,” declared the sergeant, “a soldier's gotta go visit one of them whores over to Jacksboro!”

In a few minutes all they could see of the sergeant was his boots. Then a moment later he let out a muffled whoop and began scooting back down into the canvas and wagon shelter. He turned around, his eyelashes and the five-day growth on his cheeks frosted.

“There's sunshine out there, boys!”

“Thank you kindly, sergeant,” said Stillwell, slapping the old soldier on the shoulder as he eased by in the cramped space and began clawing his way up the tunnel dug by the sergeant.

Even before he had made it to the top of the drift, Jack could see blue sky, and the light grew so bright it hurt his eyes for a moment. He blinked them clear, then started back down the tunnel, where he bumped into Donegan.

“Aren't you going out to greet this glorious day, Jack?” Seamus asked, allowing Stillwell back into the shelter.

He grinned. “Damn if I ain't. We been like rats here in this dark hole for more'n two days. That sun's too damned bright—my eyes can't take it all at once.”

Dragging off one of his wool gloves, Jack dipped a couple of fingers in the black soot at the center of the shelter where the buffalo chip fire had kept them warm. He smeared the soot beneath one eye, then dipped so he could smear a fat gash of black beneath the other eye.

“You fellas best do the same—you fix on coming out to see the world with me,” Jack said.

“Can we, Lieutenant?” one asked.

“That's right—we gotta go up some time, sir.”

“Let's all go,” Stanton sighed, then grinned. “We might as well take a look at the work that awaits us.”

“Damn,” growled the sergeant as he smeared black soot at the tops of his cheeks, “ain't that just like a officer now? Reminding a soldier of a work detail—and taking all the fun out of our little celebration!”

Jack clawed his way back up the gentle slope of the shaft cleared by the sergeant, slowly widening it for his shoulders as he went, packing the snow beneath him for the men coming behind. He heard their muffled clamor and friendly joking.

And he felt like he was being reborn.

It had to be like this, he figured, not knowing any different. Coming headfirst through the passage, so the old sawbones surgeons said. Headfirst into the world between your mama's legs. Squinting and blinking and everything so damned bright. The air so cold it took his breath away as his head broke the surface. Its shock burned his chest until he pulled up the wool muffler and started breathing beneath it.

For a long moment he just hung there, his shoulders out in the morning merely looking around the bright, sunlit new world. White in every direction. The horizons stretched endlessly now, a deep, cornflower blue beginning there and stretching overhead with such a reflected brightness that for a moment Stillwell felt as if he had resurfaced here the first day after God had created the world, and he the first one allowed to look at what the Lord had created just for him.

He felt an insistent nudge on the bottom of his boot.