Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (13 page)

Minutes after the caravan had left the grave behind and resumed its march, the men had spotted a half-dozen shapes loping along the lip of a hill off to the side of the trail. Fearing those shapes might prove to be Indians, Templeton brought out his looking glass.

“Only wolves,” he had announced confidently.

Templeton, Bradley and Frank had galloped to the crest of the hill, scaring off the wolves, only to confront the stench of putrefying flesh that had brought the predators to this place.

“George, that doesn't look like any Indian pony I've ever seen,” Bradley admitted.

Templeton had to agree. “Army.” He held a kerchief over his nose and dropped to the ground. Near the animal's carcass he found the remains of a military bridle. And an arrow shaft broken off in the animal's withers. “They took everything else. Saddle. Blanket.”

“They?” Frank inquired.

“My guess is the Sioux,” Templeton had answered.

“What's the horse doing out here?” Frank asked, his shoulders hunching, his eyes searching the surrounding hills.

“Perhaps,” Templeton lifted himself to his saddle, “the horse belongs to that poor fella we buried back at the creek.”

“He was army,” Bradley said as he led down the hill. “That much we know.”

“More than that,” Templeton added. “No commander would send a courier along this road infested with Sioux unless it was damned important to get that message through.”

Back with his detachment, Templeton told them what he had pieced together. First, he assured the women and civilians there was no need for concern. “The savages might attack a lone rider—like that poor courier riding between our posts—but they surely won't attack a detail as armed as ours.”

Lieutenant Daniels hadn't been reassured. And neither had she.

A refreshing breeze brushed Abigail Noone's cheek now, nudging her awake. She had been dozing, daydreaming with the rhythmic rocking of the ambulance. Squinting into the bright sunlight, she studied the trail ahead. Ever since Dry Fork, the Montana Road had begun its climb out of the high prairie into a country knifed with ridges and deep coulees. Now, at last, Abigail saw a further change to the landscape. From this high ridge they rode along, the trail gradually descended into the drainage of the Crazy Woman Fork. To her left rose a rounded knoll south of the creek. Just beyond a fringe of trees that meandered beside the creek below arose a quiltwork of blue foothills only now touched by mid-morning light. Farther still, wrinkled peaks piled one against the other.

Abigail drank deep of the new, welcome coolness to the air, shuddering with an unaccustomed chill as she gazed down the gentle slope at the cottonwoods beckoning from less than five miles away.

Perhaps we'll find water there, she prayed. They had been promised water at Dry Fork. Instead, they had found the dead courier.
Dear Lord, let there be water by those trees.

“Look! Just beyond the creek!” Daniels hollered like a schoolboy. “That's got to be a buffalo herd!”

Templeton brought out his glass again and gave the hillside a hard appraisal. The dark, ambling objects beyond the trees on the other side of Crazy Woman Fork did appear to be great humpbacked beasts, grazing leisurely near the creek. “By god, Napoleon! This could be our first taste of buffalo!”

“Let's ride ahead, George! Before the others scare the buffalo off. We'll cross the creek above the buffalo. Sweep down and drive them back toward the road. That way the rest of the fellows will get in some shots as the herd charges past.”

“Sounds like it'll work,” George said, turning to Lieutenant Wands. “Alex, you're in command in my absence.” Templeton kicked his fatigued horse into a trot, straining to catch the eager Daniels, who raced down the slope toward the creek.

“Just make it a fat one for dinner!” Wands hollered after them as the pair disappeared into the trees.

Abigail slipped the damp bonnet from her head. The breezes refreshed her, enough that the sun's warmth no longer seemed all that bad. In that cool water just ahead she could soak her tired, dirty feet. Dip a kerchief in its icy chill to press against her sticky neck.

The wagons lumbered down the slope into a winding gut of gorge that led them toward the creek. Dust from the wheels twisted upward in gold ropes toward the clear, cloudless blue overhead. Tall cottonwoods momentarily hid the buffalo hunters from view. Still, those left behind could hear the enthusiastic yelps as the two lieutenants galloped into the herd.

“We're twenty-six miles from Reno, dear.” Frank glanced at his wife, beside him on the ambulance seat.

Abigail glanced back at the rest of the wagons. Thick, glittering dust rose in sheets from the spinning wheels as they plunged into the gorge that would usher them to the cool, waiting water. Down to the shade of trees and thickets of chokecherry, plum, and rock grape. Fragrant, verdant growth mixed with the smell of axle grease and the sweet sweat of the mules. Rays of morning sunlight slanting off the nearby ridges turned the dust screen to a shower of gold.

“Heave! You brutes!” Frank slapped the reins against the team's rumps. Like huge paws grabbing at the wheels, the deep sand of a dry wash made their wagon lurch and list. Slowing almost to a halt. “Hup! Hup!”

In one arm Abigail held fast to the baby, her other hand clutching the bouncing seat-board. Suddenly they careened onto firmer ground, rolling more easily.

“Must be a dry course of the creek back there—come spring runoff,” Frank volunteered, sweat beading his forehead. “But these mules smell the water now. Look at 'em!” He smiled at Abigail. “They're pulling better. Won't be long now, dear.”

Wands loped past on his horse, headed back along the column. “Keep 'em moving! Don't let 'em slow down in that sand. We'll never get those wagons out if you bog 'em down now! Hump it, fellas!”

“Goddamn!” Sgt. Patrick Terrel hollered as his team slowed then lurched to a complete halt in the dry sand. He looked at the shaken passenger beside him. “Sorry, Reverend. At times we Irish have a way of sprinkling our speech.”

“Q-Quite all right, Sergeant. You and Seamus Donegan both,” he replied as he wiped his brow. “I sympathize with your sentiments for these brutish animals we find ourselves hitched to!”

Wands reined up beside them, signaling his enlisted men. “Reverend, if you'll be good enough to step down. We can use you in back of the wagon.”

“Certainly, Lieutenant.”

“Sergeant, when we start pushing, I want you to shake these sonsabitches like they've never been shook. You understand?”

“Completely, sir.”

“Put your shoulders to it, men!” Alex reined away. “Heave on it! Slap those mules, Sergeant. Slap——”

The wagon broke free of the sand at the exact moment something else snagged Abigail's attention, drawing her eyes back to the creek. An unearthly cry. As if wrailing out of the land of the damned itself. She gazed up at the steep walls of the gorge ahead, where the hellish wail of death seemed to echo. Surely it must be her imagination. This tight, closed-in place, like the belly of a tomb.

Pounding, pounding, pounding hoofs. The buffalo were coming! At once she grew frightened, hoping the wagons would not be turned over. Her baby trampled. Then, that unearthly cry again. Something inhuman. Almost like a beast … in great pain.

A clatter of gunfire echoed along the gorge. Arrows like swift, iron-beaked birds whispered into the sidewall beside her. Frank swore as his left arm swung abruptly back without warning, knocking her and the baby into the wagon. Her last glimpse of the bare ridges hemming the gorge froze Abigail's heart in her breast.

Never before had she seen naked, painted warriors. Shrieking like demons from hell. Shaking their rifles and bows. Cavorting along the ridgetop as they fired down on the wagons again and again and again …

Naked, brown demons freed from her worst nightmares. Lieutenant Daniels's nightmare come true. Glistening brown bodies sweeping down on the helpless wagons. To butcher them all.

“Not my baby!”

That voice screeched in her ear so loudly Abigail could not recognize it. A voice hollering those three words over and over again as she mantled herself like a sage hen over the infant.

“Not the baby!”

Not sure who kept screaming in her ears, until her own throat began to burn.

Chapter 9

The foul taste of his own stomach flung itself against his tonsils, burning his nostrils. All too well Ridgeway Glover remembered that taste of fear so intense it caused him to vomit. Again and again during the war he had crawled off and hidden himself after dark, certain no man would find him—afraid he would have to fight the next day. Each time certain even God Himself couldn't see how he cowered from the gunfire.

Glover swallowed and kept his stomach down. His limbs wouldn't move at first. Petrified. Forcing him to stand riveted by the wagon tire as the soldiers raced for their rifles and cover. Captain Marr and the Reverend shouted for him to dive beneath a wagon. Then a bullet smacked into a mule beside him. The beast dropped in its traces, kicking in its death throes, brassy lungs shrieking out a death song. Deafening in his ears.

Glover was yanked off his feet.

Like a doll, Donegan flung Glover along the wagon, shoving him beneath the box. Reverend White pulled the photographer into the shadows.

“Welcome, brethren!”

“Addle-minded sonuvabitch was fixing to get himself punctured out there, Reverend.” Donegan cursed with a smile as he rolled his rifle into position.

“What in God's name is that?” White asked.

Donegan sighted along the weapon, fired, then looked at the minister. “This? Called a Henry.” He pulled the trigger again.

“Blessed God!” White marveled. “A repeater.”

“A blessing indeed, Reverend!” Seamus aimed and fired. “Sixteen shots worth of repeater, i'tis.”

“We'll ask our Heavenly Father to see to it those sixteen shots mean sixteen heathen souls sent scurrying straight to hell!”

By the creek the first wagon shook and shuddered. A mule went down, braying in its pain. The other three answered with their own brass-lunged cries, exploding in three directions at once. Unable to handle the reins and keep his seat at the same time, the young driver leaped from the wagon. He caught an arrow high in his throat with the next jolt of the mules. With a whimper, the soldier tumbled over the sidewall to the sand, gurgling as he drowned in his own blood.

She had never watched a man die before. At least Abigail supposed he was dead. The soldier didn't stir. Mesmerized, she watched the body to see if it would move—breathe or quiver. Death …

A painted face leaped into view at the front of the wagon, scrambling onto the ambulance seat. She shrieked, not sure if she had made a sound at all. Twisting to the side as the warrior raised his tomahawk, deciding to shelter her daughter to the end. His grinning, painted, savage smile—

The ambulance jolted, throwing the warrior off-balance for an instant. He clambered back to his feet just as a blue blur hurtled itself against the glistening brown body. Abigail slapped a hand across her mouth.

“Frank!” she screamed.

Like a true soldier, Noone grappled with the muscular brave, not the trumpeter he was nor the concert musician he had always hoped to be. Again and again he wrenched on the arm that held the hatchet, until the warrior lost his footing and fell back against the cushioned seat. Frank fell with him, choking the brown neck with all the strength left in his hands. Frantically the warrior fought back, pinned beneath the blue fury. For a moment they both held the tomahawk. Then Frank found it in his hand alone, watching in fascination as it streaked high over his head and plunged squarely into the middle of the warrior's face.

Abigail felt the hot sting as flecks of blood and brain slapped her face and neck. Tasted the Indian's blood on her lips. She watched Frank slowly release the tomahawk, gulping. The first man he had ever killed. Right in front of his wife. She knew he would need her. Needing him. To feel his arms around her. To take the horror away—

“In God's name, Abby—stay down!”

Obediently she fell back to the floor of the ambulance, among the baggage and clutter of what an enlisted man's family was allowed to bring west to a new household. Crawling like some maimed animal on knees and one hand, clutching the wailing infant against her breast. Sobbing harder still as she watched Frank leap from the seat, disappear. He was gone. Alone again with the baby.

“Cut that one loose!” she heard some man cry out. “He's done!”

Abigail hoped he meant a mule in harness. Not another soldier. None of them would last long if the Indians cut soldiers down so quickly.

“Pull the harness loose!”

“Pull it, hell! Cut the goddamned straps! Slash 'em!”

Another mule cried out. Abigail shuddered as bullets slammed into flesh with a sickening smack.

“Dear, merciful God—watch and protect Frank—”

“Jesus, that was close!”

“Cut it loose,” another, deeper voice hollered, banging into the ambulance. From the thickness of his brogue, it sounded like that standoffish one, Donegan. “Too late! Too late! Here they come for another go a'tus!”

As if ordered by that stern voice without, Abigail fell to the floor among the canvas bags, blankets and a straw tick. Coming from a foggy daze, she suddenly heard her infant daughter wailing. Hungry and frightened by all the noise thundering against the canvas and wood of their little sanctuary. Whimpering, feeling so alone—Abigail unbuttoned her blouse and freed one engorged breast, guiding the rigid nipple into her baby's mouth. The infant grabbed the nipple, suckling lustily. Abigail cried in silence, her hot tears splattering her bare breast. It was all she knew to do, remembering the horror of the squaws' promise to take her baby.