Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (15 page)

“Everyone ready?” Wands dashed up behind a knot of men, his hand on Glover's shoulder. “When they come, make every bullet count. Don't aim high, for God's sake. Make sure you hit something.”

Glover felt the fraternal slap on his shoulder before Wands scampered off to the north side of the corral. Perhaps this officer isn't like the ones I've known, he thought. Maybe we'll all pull through this.

“Stay ready! Here come those sons again!”

Glover gulped, hearing Captain Marr's warning, and swiping at his misting eyes. By damned, he wouldn't let the gut-wrenching sickness wash over him again as it had month after month and year after year. All those battles where he tried to lose himself in the brush and the smoke and the bodies. A coward. Afraid of fighting. Afraid of running even more. He knew what they did to the ones who ran.
No more,
he promised himself. His eyes clenched shut, tears streaming as he brought the rifle to his shoulder. It shook uncontrollably.

“Easy, lad. Easy.”

He opened his eyes, finding Donegan at his side.

“You fired a weapon like this before?”

Glover nodded.

“Just slow down. One target's all you need. Take your time.”

He winked at Glover with those piercing gray eyes of his, then slid away along the side of the wagon. The words helped. Glover sucked deep at the hot air. Held it. His stinging eyes cleared, focusing along the barrel. A warrior dared stay atop his pony longer than his companions. Glover found him, squeezed. And felt better.

“By damned!” Donegan cheered. “You got the bastird! Nailed him in the lights, lad!”

As if by rote, Glover rolled onto his back, hunkered down behind the wagon wheel and yanked the ramrod free. Powder. Ball. Start the ball down the barrel. Behind him the ponies thundered past the wagons, sweeping away down the long slope. Through the spokes he watched the warriors roll back atop their ponies, galloping out of range. Shaking their rifles and bows in triumph.

Like a rush of hot air that won't let a man breathe, another band of fifty or more pressed toward the corral. Most of the soldiers hadn't finished reloading. Donegan grumbled, finding only one other man ready for the new wave. Marr with his Henry. The two of them would have to brave the rush until the soldiers had reloaded their clumsy Springfield muskets.

Glover twisted round at the thundering hoofs. The ramrod stuck in the barrel. Without another thought the Philadelphia photographer slapped the rifle to his cheek and found a target. A glistening chest bearing down upon the wagons. Weaving back and forth behind his pony's wide-eyed head.
Wait. Wait. Wait … squeeze!

Back over the horse's rump spilled the warrior, toppled by both ball and ramrod.

“By the saints! You can use a weapon!” Donegan cheered.

Glover slid behind the wheel once more, intent upon finding another rifle, listening to the cries of the wounded and dying. The tally of wounded grew each time the Sioux tore by, sending their whistling death among wagons and mules.

“Dammit, Sarge! Another rush or two like that, won't be enough of us to keep them off the wagons!”

Glover recognized the panic in that voice. That was the voice of fear he had never been able to utter. Too afraid even to speak.

“Shuddup, Meeker!” Sgt. Patrick Terrel growled back. A wiry infantry sergeant who had served under the 18th's banner throughout the war. “Ain't never been in battle before, 'ave you?”

“We gotta do something!”

“Go tell the lieutenant!” Terrel hollered. “I ain't in charge 'round here. Tell Bradley!”

“I c-can't, Sarge. He's out … cold.”

“Dear Mither of Saints!” Terrel muttered, crossing himself and swiping the sweat off his brow. He gazed down the slope. “Well, I'll be … sweet, sweet, Mither of——”

Glover watched the sergeant rise off his knees with some of the other soldiers. Staring dumbfounded down the slope, the troopers gathered next to the wagons they had just used to race to this knoll. Struck by the eerie silence. No shrieking warriors. No thundering hoofs. Quiet enough to hear the soldiers muttering their curses. Mumbling their prayers.

Out of the brush and up the slope lumbered a riderless horse.
Army.
Glover knew that much from its size and color. As the animal raced closer to the corral, he could make out the arrows dancing from its neck, more along the ribs and flanks. Bristling like dried cornstalks before a winter wind. Glover slowly stood with others. Every man in awe as the wounded animal sought companions in its pain and fright. Perhaps it recognized the wagons as something familiar.

Topping the knoll, the horse staggered toward the corral. It was then Glover noticed the saddle swinging beneath the heaving belly. An empty saddle. Swaying back and forth until the animal collapsed, rolled on its side, struggled to rise on its rear legs and fell a second time. Then lay still.

Terrel crossed himself again. A woman shrieked. To Glover it sounded like the colored maid riding with Lieutenant Wands's family. Then another woman cried out. Glover rose, his shoulders hunched in a flush of fear that he'd make too good a target when the next wild rush came.

Only another lone horse lumbering up from the creek. Yet this second army mount carried a rider slumped over its withers like a wet sack of oats. Hatless. Weaponless.

As the horse brought its load closer, Glover could make out the arrows deep in the withers where the soldier clung. His eyes instantly drawn to the one long shaft quaking in the middle of the rider's back. As the soldier neared the corral, he raised his head slightly. His white face a mask of horror. More pain than a man should be asked to bear. It was——

“Templeton!”

Glover started at the sound of Wands's voice. Rushing toward the north side of the corral, Alex was the first to rescue his fellow officer. With a few final, faltering steps, George Templeton was among them, falling from his horse while muttering something incoherent. Donegan led the wounded horse to the edge of the corral, pulled the cavalry revolver from his belt and fired one bullet into the animal's brain. The mount twisted then dropped at the Irishman's feet.

“Templeton! For God's sake, talk to me, man.”

Wands cradled his friend across his lap, supporting Templeton's arms so he wouldn't jar the arrow stuck between the shoulder blades.

“Daniels? Daniels!” the wounded man cried out. “Great ghost, they're not buffalo! Ride, man, ride!”

Templeton's voice cracked as he moaned, twisting this way and that, trying to relieve the pain of the arrow, the pain of his dash to freedom.

“Help me, will you?” Wands implored, staring at the soldiers circling him. “Into the ambulance.”

Three of them carried Templeton to the wagon. But they struggled getting Templeton's feet over the back wall. His legs gone limp. His arms like rags.

Donegan leaped into the ambulance and hefted the legs over the back-wall so he could drag the unconscious lieutenant over Abigail Noone. Placed on his side, Templeton appeared to breathe a mite easier.

“For the love of God, you've got to pull that out of him.”

Donegan looked up. Wands's eyes implored him from the hold at the back. For Seamus it suddenly grew unbearably hot inside the ambulance. Close. Suffocating.

“This arrow?” he gulped, his mouth gone dry.

“However you do it,” Wands nodded, his eyes pleading, “take it out of him.”

Donegan blinked to clear the sweat in his eyes. Maybe they were tears of anger. Or frustration. When he looked up, the face was gone. He glanced at Abigail. She shook her head violently to answer his unspoken question. He knew she wouldn't do it. Couldn't do it. His gray eyes drawn to her flesh. The creamy breast stood naked, rigid from her blouse. The nipple still wet from nursing.

“All right, faith,” Donegan murmured, slowly tearing his eyes from her flesh. “Up to me to do, is it?”

Gently he rolled Templeton onto his belly among the baggage and blankets. Stuffing an end of the straw tick beneath the lieutenant's head, Donegan watched the eyes flutter, trying to focus on who was ministering to him. The tip of his tongue raked along his dry lips below the dark, shaggy handlebar.

“Water…”

“Soon enough,” Donegan replied, then gazed at the woman. “I'll need bandages.” He searched, straining to keep his eyes off the bare breast. “There, faith. Your petticoat. Please.”

Abigail nodded, looking down at the rumpled dress a'swirl like seafoam around her legs. Unselfconsciously she tucked her breast back inside the blouse before tearing three strips from her dirty white petticoat. From the floor the lieutenant's breathing grew ragged, grinding like a coarse file drawn over cast iron.

Never before had Donegan been handed a problem like this. He drew in a long breath and pulled at the arrow. Templeton shrieked. Seamus released the shaft as if it were a bright red branding iron. That plan was not about to work.

“The blighter! It's … it's hung on something.” Talking to her as if he had to explain it.

His eyes frantically sought something. What it was, Donegan didn't know. Then he saw it. Stuck in the side of the wagon wall hung an arrow. Seamus yanked it free, then measured the distance from the tip of the iron point to the end of the sinew binding point to shaft. His finger and eye felt along Templeton's arrow. That was a relief.

“Begod, and thank the Holy Mither.” He made it sound like a prayer for what was to come. “T'isn't buried deep enough to cut the lung, praise be.”

“Do it!”

Donegan gazed up at Abigail, finding her wide-eyed with fright. She shook her head. He gazed down at Templeton.

“Now, dammit!”

Obediently the civilian grasped the shaft, low, his hands soppy with the lieutenant's warm blood. Pulling, Seamus measured the resistance. Templeton's whole body rose as Donegan pulled. The lieutenant's nails raked again and again across the floorboard. Donegan rose, placed one knee just below the shaft and drew upward. Steadily. Grunting in his own effort against the unearthly shriek pouring from the man pinned below him. With all his weight he pressed Templeton down as the arrow inched free.

Abigail bit a knuckle anxiously, until she was sure she had drawn her own blood. She clenched her eyes, shutting out the bloody scene as she heard the shaft scraping bone, tearing muscle and sinew like a moist, sucking wheeze.

Templeton's body sagged when the shaft broke free. The arrow hung dripping from his hand before Seamus tossed it aside. Then he ripped the lieutenant's shirt open down to his belt. “The bandages, faith.”

Abigail opened her eyes. Handed him the strips. Watched the stranger fold the cloth into a thick bandage he stuffed over the ugly, red-purple hole. “Find something to wrap 'round his chest,” he ordered. “He comes to … no, wait.”

She watched him push and shove against the bags in the ambulance, searching until he yanked the one he wanted into his lap. Brown, scuffed cowhide, with his initials emblazoned below the silver clasp. From it Seamus pulled a tin flask. About to hand it to Abigail, he thought better. Worrying the cork from the neck, the Irishman drank long and deep. She watched in fascination at the bobbing of his Adam's apple between the muscular neck muscles while he pulled hungrily at the liquid.

Finished, Seamus inserted the cork again and handed her the flask. “He comes to, give him some of me potion. Better still, bathe the wound with a little of it after I'm gone. Wait till I'm gone, faith—for I can't stand to see good devil's brew wasted on a wound. Damn the luck of it all! Sounds like the h'athens are back on the rampage out there.” He studied her, his eyes settling on the cleavage between the two swollen breasts where her blouse remained unbuttoned. “You'll minister to the lieutenant, aye, colleen?”

She nodded.

“Some on the wound. Bind it all with a strip from your dress. And give him some of me potheen to drink when he comes 'round. He'll … he'll bless you for that whiskey. A time like this—any man would.”

Donegan smiled at the woman, quickly licking the last drops of the potent whiskey from his lips. Then he disappeared from the front of the ambulance.

Alone once more, Abigail Noone gazed down at her infant, asleep through it all. Her tummy warm and full of milk. Her little lips moist from mother's body. The flask grew heavy in her hand. She didn't think she could possibly move to tear another strip of cloth from her petticoat. Much less pull the bandages off that ugly, oozing wound just to pour some foul whiskey on it.

Whiskey.

She always forbade Frank from drinking. Even in the company of his friends. Evil brew. Just thinking what it did to man. What it made a man want most of all … she had recognized that glint in the Irishman's gray eyes. The flask grew heavier still in her hand. No strength remained to help the lieutenant.

Outside, the shrieks of warriors and the pounding of pony hoofs pierced her private world. Soldiers cursed. Mules brayed and jostled against the ambulance. Rifles roared and bullets slapped against the wood side-walls closing in around her. Abigail tried lifting the flask. So heavy.

The cork will be lighter, she decided.
No man's ever looked at me the way that Irishman did. Not even … my husband Frank.
The cork popped free with no effort at all. Her head seemed to swim once more with the sudden smell of the whiskey, as it had reeked on the Irishman's breath.
Funny, with the cork out of it, the flask isn't all that heavy anymore.
She brought it to her lips, fighting the revulsion she felt from the smell and tilted her head back just as she had watched the civilian do. Past her tongue and down her throat washed the potent liquid, sending a shockwave of heat through her being.

Abigail knew she would lose her stomach and prepared to vomit. Lightheaded, she pulled at the flask again and again, fighting down the waves of nausea by choking down more whiskey.
No sense wasting it all on that oozy hole in the lieutenant's back.