Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (14 page)

“Behind you, Noone!”

Abigail jerked as she heard Wands's voice cry out. A man yelped in pain. Not knowing if it was Frank or not, she clenched her eyes shut with all her might, hoping the horrid sounds would be shut out as well.

“Watch it!”

She heard Frank shout.

Beside her an arrow ripped through the thick canvas, burrowing its iron head into the board siding behind her.

They're above us … on the ridge!
She cowered.
Firing down on us—we're like helpless animals. Lord, the baby's not safe
——

“Abby!” Frank's voice shrieked.

“W-We're … we're all right, Frank!”

Blessed God, savior of man, she began to pray. And wondered if that Methodist minister was praying as well, clutching his worn bible between his wrinkled, veiny hands.

“Reverend! Get down! Great ghost, but White's a fool!”

It was that man's voice again. Donegan.

In the next breath the wagon lurched as a body flung itself against the rear gate. Abigail's heart surged into her throat, fearful another warrior had made it to the wagon. Desiring her. Wanting her baby even more.

Through the buttoned leather pucker-hole at the rear a wild spray of gray hair appeared. In the middle of its disarray hung a bright red circle of wrinkled flesh, White's veiny nose suspended beneath two wild, marble-like eyes.

“Dear woman!” the reverend shouted in at her. “Pull me in, for the grace of God. Pull me in!”

She dragged a dirty hand beneath her runny nose and flung it his way. Clutching the hand, White dragged himself into the rear of the wagon.

“Dear Lord!” she gasped, looking him over at close range at last. “You're … you're bleeding.”

“Nothing to worry the Lord over, dear lady.” White smiled, trying out his wounded arm by combing at the wild gray hair that stood out in thick sprigs along both sides of his head. At the top, where the reverend was very much bald, a second wound. Long, ugly, and bleeding. He dabbed fingers at it. “Nothing at all.” Then used his sleeve. “Afraid I didn't keep my head low enough as I took cover beneath a wagon. There, now. Better still. My bag, Mrs. Noone. I need my bag.”

With that imperative ring to the minister's words, Abigail scanned the ambulance for his bag. He pulled his legs into the wagon at last, took one final glance out the rear then searched for the bag himself.

“Ah, blessings upon us all!” he cried, leaping for a canvas satchel topped with thick leather handles. He crabbed over Abigail to get at it.

Nimbly his old fingers fought with straps and buckles until a wrinkled hand dove into the satchel. Extracting a stubby object of dull pewter. Ugly as a pond-toad, she thought, staring at those seven round holes backing the squat barrel. White cracked the pepperbox in half, quickly checking each chamber before he slammed the barrel back in place.

“The Lord helps those who help themselves.” He held the pistol before his chest like a chalice at communion.

“P-Pray for me … us,” she pleaded, her eyes imploring him to remember the babe suckling at her breast.

White glanced at the firm, milky flesh and gulped, his eyes leaping back to her face. His cheeks crimson. “Our Heavenly Father, may we all live to see this child grow to your glory! Amen.”

He brushed by her, again at the rear of the ambulance. Turning, he seemed to decide on a better plan of action. Crawling past Abigail again, White slid over the back of the driver's seat and tumbled to the ground.

“By the saints, Reverend!” Donegan cried out. “I thought you'd hidden yourself off somewhere to pray for us all!”

“Pray? HELL! Comes a time for praying … and a time to slay the heathen Levites!”

“You'll get plenty of that today,” Donegan added grimly. He pressed his Henry into his shoulder. “You any good with that stub of a pistol?”

“This?” White held the pepperbox high in his hand as he slid in beside the Irishman. “Don't have to be. Got seven chances to dispatch them straight to Lucifer himself!”

As the wave of warriors rushed past, smoke puffed beneath one pony's neck. A young soldier on the other side of Donegan lurched backward, clumsily. The trooper moaned, eyes rolling back in his head.

Donegan stared down at the youngster for a moment. “He's gone now. Better off, he is too—a man stops one in the belly like that, Reverend.”

Wands bolted up, helping Marr and a soldier drag the quivering body behind a wagon. “We can't stay here,” the lieutenant explained, rising from the body soon to turn cold. For an instant the lieutenant surveyed the creek bottom, then the hills and gorge surrounding them.
We're like clay targets here.
Wands swallowed, his nostrils already fetid with the stench from the young soldier's punctured bowels.
Our only chance
 …

“None of us will last pinned down here!” Donegan grabbed Wands by the shoulders. Swung him round. “Best get your wagons moving afore we're just a greasy spot on this crossing!”

Wands glared back at the big Irishman a moment, ready to lash back. Instead, something pushed him back to the saddle. He spurred away, riding low at the horse's neck, shouting, “Back to the hill! We've got to make a run for it. Follow me! All of you!”

Back again by Donegan and White, Wands slid to a halt, kicking up sand. “You! Irishman. Grab the reins to that wagon! Chaplain—you'll drive that ambulance. Noone—the other. We'll run two wagons up front … then the two ambulances. As a rear guard we'll bring up the last four wagons. I want the Irishman to lead the way. Now, ride like your necks depend on it!”

Savagely the lieutenant sawed his reins to the left, his mount tearing back toward the creek and the waiting ambulances, his hat flying into the air. “Bradley! You spotted Templeton or Daniels?”

He shook his head. “Not a sign, Alex. I'm afraid both were cut off up ahead. Never make it back—”

“It's up to you now. Take the point. To the high ground—yonder!”

“I'm on my way!” the young lieutenant answered. “Sergeant Terrel. You five—no! All the rest of you, FOLLOW ME!”

“Hep-haw!” Donegan urged his wagon full about through the sand, back into the throat of the gorge behind the soldiers charging ahead on foot.

“Blessed are the beasts of the earth!” Reverend White screamed to his mules, urging them into the hairpin turn on two wheels. “Pray they deliver!”

By the time Wands had his wagons backtracked into the gorge and headed toward the knoll south of the Crazy Woman, Bradley's dozen foot-soldiers were scampering up the sandy hillside, leading the way for some snorting, protesting mules. To the troopers' surprise, three dozen yelping horsemen burst over the far lip of the high ground, every one of them brandishing a bow. Reinforcements arriving to seal the ambush as tight as a puckered buffalo totem.

“Arrrggghhh!”
Bradley plunged straight up the side of the slope without stopping, hoping to confuse some of the warriors, frighten the rest. Like a man possessed, his thick legs churned like pistons in a steam engine, intent on blurring things just long enough for everyone to reach the high ground. The rest of those in army blue followed blindly in his wake, their lungs bellering their best cry, certain to put fear in a Confederate heart or a Sioux breast.

That noise, the headlong assault and confusion—Indian ponies reared, pitching their riders backward or thumping into others galloping up from the rear. Shrieks of rage and challenge fell down upon the soldiers, but nothing more deadly. Surprised at the fierceness of the soldiers' gallant charge, nearly forty warriors turned tail, scampering back down the slope to the west, where the Crazy Woman came tumbling down to the crossing.

“Ho, you bastards! Pull with all you've got!” Donegan urged his team.

“Close up! Close up!” It was Wands, riding in their midst, exhorting the drivers.

“If these old gray whores'd do what I want—”

“Bring it up!” Wands hollered, then brought his horse around, reining back toward the top-heavy, swaying ambulances having a tough time keeping up. They had lagged far behind the other high-walled freighters and Conestoga wagons. From the corner of his eye the lieutenant caught a sudden glimpse of wild movement. To his right appeared a dozen or more mounted warriors, screaming down on his rear guard. He slowed his horse, watching the gap widen between the wagons and the lumbering ambulances.

“Bring it up, Frank!” His horse pranced around in a circle. “Dammit, Reverend. Drive that wagon like you were chasing an offering plate!”

Far behind the other wagons, both ambulances surged forward in a final, valiant effort to reach the knoll. Up out of the gorge, their drivers slapped reins over the wildeyed teams like mad charioteers. Wands felt the bullet scorch past his cheek before he ever heard the crack of a rifle. The six freight wagons raced on by him before he dug his heels into the lathered flanks of his animal.

Too late,
he cursed. A dozen warriors had cut the ambulances off as the rest of the wagons reached the top of the slope.

Abigail watched naked horsemen flit like streaks of multicolored light past the front of the ambulance where Frank stood behind the seat, leaning into the reins, slapping and hollering at his team. Never before had she heard him sound quite like this. A shiver of January water spilled down her spine as she realized a banshee must sound much tamer. But the maniacal screech of her husband's voice as he dove into the midst of those warriors would cause more than the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. She closed her eyes. Dreading to witness his death.

Our Father, which art in heaven
 …

Chapter 10

Frank Noone simply refused to let the horsemen sweep to one side or another as they bore down on him. He saw no other way out—either he was going to force his way through the trap or the rest would watch one hell of a collision. When the Sioux veered to the left, Frank yanked in the same direction. The warriors dodged to the right. Noone pointed his lethal wagon straight for them. Swaying back and forth until … the brown-skinned phalanx parted like water round a rock in a stream at the last moment.

Abigail heard the shrieking monster drain from her husband's throat. As the screams of the warriors faded down the slope behind them, she dared open her eyes. Frank glanced round at his wife, smiling that brave, sensitive smile of his. The unashamed tears cut a wide swath down his dirty face.

With no specific orders, the drivers brought their wagons into corral at the crest of the knoll as if they had performed the maneuver in a thousand Indian surrounds. Donegan wheeled the first wagon close to the sharp lip of a ravine at the south end, leaning back into the reins, his brake-lock snarling against the iron tire. The second and forth wagons spun up on the left. The third and fifth skidded to the right. To begin shutting the corral, the reverend rolled up in his ambulance. Frank Noone rode as file-closer, lumbering to the crest with his three-mule team, accomplishing what the other drivers had with a full harness.

Frank leaped inside to embrace Abigail. With no words spoken, their tears mingled a moment before he disappeared through the leather hole at the rear. Only then did she feel the baby wriggling against the iron-like lock of the arms she had clamped around her.

Without warning mother and child pitched backward. The wagon shuddered and pitched convulsively. Back and forth, side to side. Abigail clung to the sidewall. The baby had long ago lost its hold at her breast. The infant shrieked, wanting that nipple ripped away from her back in her little mouth.

A mule sang out. Two men cursed as they grappled with the wounded animal, wild with the pain of two iron-tipped arrows sunk shaft deep in its flanks. The mule strained against the rest of the team.

“Cut it loose, for God's sake!” someone hollered.

“No. No time for that,” Donegan objected.

Before she could catch her breath, Abigail heard a rifle shot, followed by a loud, sodden clump striking the ground.

“Now,” she heard the big Irishman say, calmer this time, “you can cut the son of a bitch from its harness.”

“They're gathering up again, brethren!” White hollered above the rising shriek of the onrushing warriors.

Donegan listened as the pounding, thundering earth-beat crescendoed, watching in fixed admiration as the Sioux sat lightly atop their galloping ponies until, by some secret signal, they dropped from sight. Years he had spent fighting some of the world's finest horse soldiers: J.E.B. Stuart's “Invincibles,” who consistently ripped apart Union cavalry formations. But these naked warriors were a pure marvel, surpassing all. Never before had he seen any riding to equal what he witnessed this bright morning near the Crazy Woman Crossing.

By instinct, he brought the heavy Henry to his shoulder, sighting along the gleaming blued barrel.

Mark this day, Seamus—the first you've found a man in the sights on this rifle.

He held, led a striding Indian mount, then squeezed.

The rifle slapped his shoulder. More of it came back to him now. The firing of a carbine pointed at the butternut uniforms. The cries of the wounded in the dark, shadowy woods. Always the smell of death thick in his nostrils. Suddenly he gazed down at his hands.
There'll always be enough dead soldiers.

“Can't see the red bastirds no more!”

Glover jerked up at the sound of Donegan's voice. Every man behind the wagons watched the mounted warriors disappear from view down a long, gradual slope to the west. Toward a hidden bend in the creek. Among the shelter of a belt of cottonwoods.

“Just keep your heads down, soldiers!”

Someone else hollered on the other side of the corral. Glover swallowed hard, gripping the rifle like life itself.
Where did the weapon come from?
Someone must have put it in his hands.
That big man, the Irishman. Maybe the gun belonging to the soldier with the gut wound.
He remembered now. The young soldier wouldn't be needing the rifle anymore. Black thoughts flooded through him. Ridgeway Glover had never had a problem keeping his head down.