Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (23 page)

For a long, languid moment, the young woman flung her head back, eyes closed to the bright light pouring down upon her. As if glorying in its warming caress upon her body. Then she ran her hands slowly over those breasts, wringing the water from her freckled flesh.

He felt himself growing hard, watching the young woman stroke her own flesh. Sun rays played like a thousand bits of rainbow light in each water droplet that trickled down the fine nape of her ivory neck, across the soft curve of her shoulder. Onto the rounded melons the likes of which Seamus Donegan was certain he would not see again, would he live a century of searching.

By the saints! She's … she's so young
 …

Quickly he raked the back of a hand across his dry lips, puzzled on what to do. Let her finish her bath so as not to scare her? Yes … yes!

His eyes poured over her pale skin freckled by rose and umber, caressed by both sunlight and the cool waters of the Little Piney. Seamus swallowed, with each passing second becoming more unconscious of himself, so absorbed in the young woman in the water.

“By the saints … preserve me!” he blurted out in a whisper.

Surprising himself as it slipped from his lips.

Frightened as the woman whirled about. She sank to her chin in the stream. Head bobbing side to side, darting from bank to bank.

“Who … who's there?” she called out anxiously.

He wiped sweaty palms down his damp shirt and rose from the willows.

“S-Sorry, m'am,” Seamus stuttered. “Didn't mean to startle——”

“How dare you scare me like that!” She flung her sudden anger at him, cheeks flushed and green eyes flashing every bit as liquid as the creek itself. Eyes every bit as fiery as the sunlight refracted off the water that danced around her shoulders as she covered those magnificent breasts beneath her folded arms.

“Didn't mean to scare you … truly didn't,” he said, finding himself a bit tongue-tied. Seamus pointed upstream, foot shuffling. “Heard you singing … come down here … figured to tell you——”

“Figured to take a peek at me, didn't you?”

By the love of the saints, she is a feisty one, is she not?

“Come to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?”

His head bobbed downstream. “Injins, m'am. They're all 'round us. No one's told you?”

For a moment that made Seamus even more anxious, she only stared back at him. Then she slowly rose from the stream. Now he could see most of her freckled arms. And the beginning of deep cleavage, a hint of fullness hidden beneath her hands. He was certain the woman was unaware she was showing so much of her flesh to him as she rose from the water.

At the same moment, Donegan felt strangely uneasy—not quite certain she was not toying with him, taunting him with her flesh.

Without warning she flung back her head, exactly as she had to feel the sun upon her face and neck moments before. That same graceful curve to the ivory neck. Strong muscles. The press of windpipe against the surface of her flesh. The strong chin that said this one had fire in her. And this time, she laughed loud. The trickle of that laughter rang about him like the waters of icy, Big Horn snow-melt tumbling over a pebbled stream-bottom. Merry and cheerful. Without a care.

“Indians?” She laughed some more. Louder still. “Looks instead like what I've got to fear most is some peeping Irishman creeping up to spy on a lady's bath.” She stared him in the eye, as if suddenly uncertain of it. “You sound Irish.”

“I am—was, I mean I am—yes. Come to America before the war.”

She measured him a moment before replying. Then nodded. “My husband fought in the war as well. Union.”

As she spoke of her husband, the woman sank back into the creek until the water rippled at her chin. Hidden once more.

Seamus nodded. “Union. Second Cavalry I was, m'am.” Then, of a sudden, he remembered more of his mother's teachings and swept the soft-brimmed hat from the shock of curly, dark hair that rubbed his shoulders. “Seamus Donegan, m'am. Sorry. Should introduce myself.”

She giggled, lightheartedly this time. “Thank you for your manners, but, I'm not really in the position to shake your hand right now, am I, Mr. Donegan?”

Feeling like a sham dodger, Donegan's eyes raked the grassy bank as his sweaty hands rolled the hat-brim. “My manners don't always show at the proper times of it, I suppose.”

“You'd be most good-mannered if you'd simply leave, Mr. Donegan.”

“The Indians, m'am. They've been at their killing every day now.”

“You needn't explain that to me, Mr. Donegan!” she snapped, those eyes flashing their sudden anger.

Now he nodded. “You're right … yes'm. Best that I just leave.” Seamus slapped the hat back atop his head, then surprised himself by a quick bow from the waist. “And best you get dressed quick and scoot back close to the camp and the stockade. Much safer it'd be for a beautiful woman like you than out here alone.”

Her eyes followed the Irishman as he rounded the big clump of willow, until he was a good twenty yards upstream, his back growing smaller with each long stride.

“Mr. Donegan!”

He stopped and whirled about before she had it all said. “Yes'm?”

“Do your manners also say you should allow a lady to introduce herself?”

He bobbed his head, grinning. “Sorry, m——”

“Jennifer,” she interrupted his clumsy explanation. “Jennifer Wheatley.”

Seamus swallowed.
Damn!
This angel of a creature belonged to that saint of a Nebraska sodbuster, James Wheatley.

“M-Met your husband, Mrs. Wheatley. Fine … fine man. I work with him up in the Pine——”

“Yes. Jim is a … fine man, Mr. Donegan.”

“I best be going,” he admitted, tapping the brim of his hat.

“Mr. Donegan, let's just tell Jim you … we bumped into each other. Won't do for him to worry about me out here with the Indian scares. Best if he didn't know I came down here to bathe … where you bumped into me.”

“I figure that's best, to let him know we … we just bumped into one another, Mrs. Wheatley. Just so's there's no talk.”

“And you?” Jennifer began, then paused as she pushed a handful of auburn hair from her cheek. “You'll forget you ever saw my … caught me bathing, Mr. Donegan?”

For the first time now he chuckled lightly, and wagged his head. “Sorry, m'am. Won't promise you something I know I can't possibly do. Truth is, I'll never forget such devastating beauty as yours.”

Seamus had turned and was gone among the willow as those final words dropped round her. Not at all sure if he really heard her whisper to his back as he plodded upstream.

“I was hoping you'd say that Mr. Donegan. Praying … you'd not forget me.”

Chapter 17

“Red Cloud's five hundred lodges on the Tongue ain't all there is, Gabe,” mulatto Jim Beckwourth said as he leaned over, whispering to his old friend, “Big Throat” Jim Bridger.

Together the two had trapped from the Marias and Milk rivers clear down to South Park in the Colorado country. When beaver was prime. Then years ago Beckwourth had parleyed his dark skin into a place of honor among the Crow tribe as one of their respected warriors. Jim's father, it was rumored among the trappers of the old west, had been a wealthy Virginia landowner who sired his son by one of his plantation slaves. Rather than owning up to his paternity, Beckwourth's father had instead granted that son his freedom. After years of homeless wandering, Jim found himself happy among the mountain trappers to whom a man's color simply didn't matter.

Ultimately the Crow, who had captured Beckwourth in a horse raid many years back, believed the man with the remarkable mole on one eyelid a long-lost son returned home to his people at last. The tribe had treated him so regally that Jim couldn't bring himself to leave. Instead, he had chosen to stay, marrying and helping the Crow in their wars on Blackfeet and Sioux, earning himself a place of respect among the elder counselors of the river Crow.

“You're telling me there's bound to be more than just Red Cloud's boys hankering to kill soldiers, eh?” Bridger whispered, feeling Seamus Donegan's cold, gray eyes on him across the fire.

“From what Rotten Tail says here,” Beckwourth gestured toward the old Crow chief seated across the lodge-fire, “those soldiers got something to worry about.”

To Bridger those words had the flat sound of a beaver tail smacking water to warn its neighbors of trouble. Yet, he had to admit, it was just as he had feared, and figured.

“Others joining up with Red Cloud?”

“Yep. Rotten Tail says I should tell you that he rode through the camps as the Sioux was gathering on the Tongue himself. A half-day's ride, he says it took him. Near as I can figure what he claims, says there's fifteen hundred lodges coming together.”

“Must means the Miniconjou have joined the Oglalla, eh? Hunkpapa, too?”

“From the sounds of it.” Beckwourth nodded. “I hear Sitting Bull's the nigger to watch in that band. He's a seer—has his powerful dreams and visions.”

“Big medicine to them Sioux,” Bridger admitted. “Where the rest of them Lakota stand for war?”

Beckwourth waited politely as Rotten Tail smoked his pipe and passed it on to the other old ones, respected counselors of this band of Plains Crow who followed the buffalo across the seasons, up and down the valley of the Yellowstone. Bridger knew as well as any man that it would not do for him to have Beckwourth rush the old chiefs. Injun etiquette dictated he politely, and silently, wait while the formal smoke went its four rounds of The Tail's lodge. Jim winked at the young Irishman seated on the far side of Beckwourth. As if to say Seamus was to settle back and relax.

Looks as if we're going to make a night of it here, Bridger mused to himself in the smoky lodge. No sense in hurrying things now.

The better part of a week ago, Jim had invited the Irishman to ride along on this errand for Colonel Carrington. The army commander had dispatched his chief-of-scouts to visit the Crow, see if he could glean anything on the mood and disposition of Red Cloud's Sioux.

Seamus Donegan had jumped at the chance to ride along with this new friend, Jim Bridger. Anything to escape sawing trees or building Carrington's new fort. Besides, the Irishman told Bridger, he could learn a damned sight more from the old trapper than he could any number of lug-headed soldiers who always figured they knew everything already.

Despite the fact they were totally ignorant of this new country. Every bit as ignorant about fighting Sioux and Cheyenne.

Across five days Bridger and Donegan had followed a pair of Crow guides, nosing their ponies north by northwest. Up to the country of the Tongue, down to the Big Horn itself. Then straight across country to the wide Yellowstone that would take them west into the heart of Absaroka—land of the Sparrowhawk people.

For those hours spent in the saddle or during cool nights beneath the biggest, starriest sky the Irishman had ever seen, Bridger talked and talked. Normally a quiet and reticent man, more prone to keeping his mouth shut than running off at the tongue, Jim thought it strange a time or two that he palavered with this Irishman so damned much as they traveled along or sat around the evening fires. Yet long ago Jim Bridger, known as Gabe to his friends, had learned to accept things as they are. As well, he accepted the bond growing between them. This old trapper in the seventh decade of his life. And the young, scarred ex-soldier who hungered for knowledge and information, drinking in everything Ol' Gabe had to say like parched desert soil sucks down a spring rain.

The young fella was smart, about as smart as they came, to Bridger's way of thinking. Jim had met the best across forty-four years in the West. Of a recent time the old trapper had thought there was none who could shine with the likes of Jack Stead and Mitch Bouyer for plain gut-savvy. But there was now a third. This Irishman had him the makings of plainsman. Pure and simple, Jim Bridger figured, this boy Seamus Donegan would do to ride the river with.

From first-light to moonrise Jim found a pair of eager ears to listen raptly to all his stories and frontier lore. An apt pupil who asked questions that many a time made Bridger smile and puff out his chest like a prairie cock. The sort of questions few men would think to ask. Questions that showed young Donegan truly realized he was in the company of the finest of mentors.

Jim liked that feeling Seamus gave him. The sense that he believed there was none better for teaching him what he needed to know about this high country, its animal and plant life and all a man could learn about the Indians who lived the seasons upon the face of this tumbling, kneading, rugged land.

So by the coming of that fifth morning, Jim had quietly hobbled over to the young Irishman, his rheumatism giving fit to an old hip injury. Bridger had grasped Donegan's arm and gazed up that tall frame of his, into those gray eyes, and told the lad something meant for their ears alone.

“I crossed these'r mountings more'n most men I know, Irishman.” He stopped there, not sure where this was going, then plunged ahead. “Seen my share of niggers come and go. Some I'd lay store in. Most I'd as soon spit at.”

Jim ground to a halt once more, digging a toe into the pine needles beneath his moccasins.

“I figure what you're telling me is … is you like me. Right, Gabe?”

Bridger nodded. “Only knowed a handful of fellas in my years out here who I'd figure I could go into a fight with. Be it Blackfoot or a watering-hole brawl. But … I sense you're the kind to trust at my back, Irishman.”

Jim turned away with it said. Dragging that bum hip over to the old mule, where he fussed with the cinch and smoothed the blanket. Never aware of the mist that he had brought to the young Irishman's eyes. So intent was he in fighting the salty sting of moisture in his own.