Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (28 page)

“What kind of odds did they give the soldier today?” Kinney puffed into the circle beside Frank.

“These Cheyenne weren't anywhere near Pine Island today.” Stead measured the crowd, listening to the muttering voices all around him. The slow, sliding of boot-soles on sand. He was surrounded too.

“Odds, you ask?” he flung his voice over the group, ready to see what the mob was made of. “Funny that cowardly dogs always travel in packs … like you, Frank.”

The woodcutter slashed with the Walker, catching Jack across the cheek. Stead stumbled backward, falling against two of the mob. They heaved him out of their arms. Dazed, Jack sank to his knees in the sand.

“He's no better'n these red bastards!” someone hollered.

“I damn well know that!” Frank replied. “Squaw-man. That's what he is. Same mongrel filth as these redskins!”

“Kill Stead!”

“Yeah, do him first! Injun-lover!”

Frank spat a stream of tobacco into the small fire. “Stead's got him a Injun wife, Judge. Bet this bastard's been feeding the red niggers all kinds of information on the fort.”

“Could very well be,” Kinney chimed in.

“I said, let's kill 'im!” someone hollered.

“Why not?” Frank growled in agreement, looking over at Kinney. “Judge?”

“Be my guest, sir,” Kinney answered. “Stead had no business here to begin with. I figure a man always gets the judgment he deserves.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Frank lowered the Walker muzzle, pressing it against the scout's temple. “Why, he ain't even American.”

“Kill 'im!”

“Shoot the son——”

A shot rang out from the hillside above them. Frank yelped, spinning, the Walker flung into the sand. He gripped his bleeding arm. A loud voice hurled down on the mob like a boulder from above.

“I'll shoot the next bleeming fool who so much as pulls his weapon!”

“And I'll put the rest in the guardhouse!” a second voice answered, this one even closer. On the sandbar.

The mob ring parted in four places. A half-dozen armed troopers stomped out of the night, holding their carbines on their fellow soldiers and civilians. Through the final crevice strode Carrington and Ten Eyck, following the sergeant who had threatened arrest.

“I believe I've got more here'n I can handle, Captain. Guardhouse won't hold 'em all.” He waited a moment, watching the men shuffle their feet as one of his pickets pulled Stead to his feet. “What say I just arrest ringleaders? Charge 'em on attempted murder. Send 'em down to Laramie to hang——”

“We ain't gonna hang!” someone shrieked.

“Nobody got hurt!” another voice defended.

“It were Brown's and the judge's doin'! Not ours.”

The crowd surged against itself. A few began backing away, inching across the pebbled creek-bottom.

“Halt, soldier!” the sergeant ordered. “Identify yourselves!”

That was all it took. The rest bolted like a flushed covey of blue hens. Crashing across the creek, stampeding past Gregory's sawmill.

“Halt!” the sergeant roared after them, almost chuckling. “I'm pressing charges for desertion!”

“That's quite enough, Sergeant.” Carrington stepped into the firelight.

“Think they got the idea, Colonel? Scampered back to their bunks fast enough, didn't they?”

Carrington turned from the sergeant, stepping before Two Moons. “Jack?” He waited for Stead to come up. “You tell the chiefs to see me before they leave in the morning. Tell them how important it is.”

When the chiefs had grunted their approval, the colonel turned back to Ten Eyck, the pickets, and the night-watch sergeant. Carrington didn't know whether to congratulate the man or chastise him. “That was a damned foolhardy thing to do, Sergeant—firing into crowd the way you did. Might've gotten yourself killed very easily——”

“Wasn't me, Colonel!” he answered, shaking his head.

“Who? If——”

“Wasn't your sergeant,” Jack piped up. He flung a thumb back at the shadow ambling down the slope toward the fire. “My new friend.”

The shadow strode into the firelight. He stopped just behind the ring of Cheyenne chiefs. “Gentlemen.”

“Who the devil——” the sergeant began.

“You care to explain this, Jack?” Carrington turned on the scout.

“Certainly, Colonel. My friend stayed back in the dark … case things got nasty.”

“From the looks of your face, things turned nasty.” Carrington gazed at the newcomer. “And what were you doing hiding in the dark?”

“Wasn't hiding,” he answered softly. “Hanging back if my friend needed me.” He tapped his Henry. “I'd taken sixteen with me had there been trouble.”

“Trouble?” Carrington growled. “Seems you two came here this evening looking for trouble.”

“On the contrary, Colonel,” the stranger replied. “Jack and I came here to stop
your
trouble. Never counted on your guards getting here in time.”

“The nerve,” Carrington fumed. “From the smell of it, you've both been at the bottle.”

“What'd you think holds my gun hand so steady?”

Stead laughed. “Colonel, don't believe you've had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Seamus Donegan, formerly Master Sergeant, the Army of the Potomac and Shenandoah, Union cavalry.”

Chapter 22

To his tongue, his mouth was like the, bottom of muddy boot-sole, and tasted worse. Bad part about it, Seamus Donegan's head felt as if it were a painful saddle boil, ready to burst atop his shoulders every time he tried to move it.

Brushing some crawling insects from his cheek, the Irishman became aware of the sun grown hot on his skin. Gathering the strength, Seamus blinked, opening his eyes into the new light.

“Top o' the morning, Irishman!”

Donegan sat up slowly, staring full into the face of Jack Stead as he held his swollen head between both hands. “Thought you drank much's me last evening, cabin-boy.”

Stead chuckled. “I did. Least before we came down here to help out the Cheyenne.”

Blinking, Seamus recognized some of the old men gathered around the smoky fire nearby. “I recall you brought with you a bottle of your own.”

“Aye, Seamus.” Stead slapped him mercilessly on the back before rising to go kneel by the fire. “So I'll be a long time in forgiving you for drinking that bottle damned near all yourself!” He set the pot down and shuffled back to the Irishman.

“What's this?” Donegan growled, opening his eyes again as the steam wafted into his nostrils.

“Coffee? Your nose so stove-up you can't smell coffee?” Stead laughed easily, which caused the old chiefs to laugh along as well. “Must be in some bad way, not to smell the coffee that's going to make a new man out of you.”

“Coffee, eh?”

“Well…” Jack sighed, suddenly serious, plopping onto the grass beside the Irishman. “I tried the only other way I know to make a new man out of you last night.”

Donegan eyed the Englishman suspiciously over the lip of his dented tin cup. “How?”

“Her.”

Seamus followed Jack's arm, the finger at the end of which pointed to the old, squat Cheyenne woman who smiled back at Seamus. Toothlessly among her wrinkles.

Donegan sputtered on his coffee, turning to Stead with a look of helplessness. “I …
no!
I couldn't have. Could I? Did I, Jack?” He stared into his coffee and whispered so the Cheyenne chiefs and the squaw could not overhear. “Was I drunk enough to … to do … to … her.”

Suddenly Stead was roaring, laughing so hard he fell over backward, rolling on his side and thrashing his legs in merriment. When he gathered himself again, swiping the tears from his eyes and crawling to Donegan's side, more of Jack's teeth showed than Donegan could recall seeing.

“You were worried, weren't you, Irishman?”

He swallowed, looked down at his cup of coffee and considered flinging it into the grinning face. “Damned worried—still am!”

At that moment she was there between them, presenting Seamus with a long, wide, nondescript strip of dried meat. Thing about it as she held her offering up before the Irishman, the jerky seemed alive with green-backed bottle flies. Swarming, in mass, like the meat itself throbbed. Donegan fought the empty heave of his belly. Bile threw itself against his tonsils.

He shook his head and pushed the rotten meat and the squaw's hand away.

“Careful, Seamus,” Jack whispered. “Them old men had that woman come over and offer you some of the little they have to eat.”

He swallowed down his revolting stomach once more. “I … I'm sorry, Jack. Their offer…” Seamus nodded and tried to smile on the woman.

“You had no supper so they figured you could do with some breakfast.”

He belched, unable to rid himself of the sour but familiar taste pasty in his mouth. “Looks's if I slept right here.”

“When you got through drinking and dancing.”

“Dancing, was it?” he squeaked feebly, headache worsening.

“First you had those old boys up and shaking their legs with you in a Yankee jig,” Stead declared, then laughed. “So for good measure, they had you dance Cheyenne with them as well.”

He wagged his head, holding it with one hand while the other sloshed steaming coffee on his boots. “But I didn't … didn't touch,” he begged, wagging a finger at the woman now.

Stead grew serious. “Not while you were awake, at least. You passed out sometime after the moon sank out of the sky. But she stayed right beside you. Did you ever make a show of it—moaning in the throes of pleasure, Irishman.”

“P-Pleasure, Jack?”

“Sure, you had that old woman rubbing what you claimed was your ‘poor, bleeming back'!”

“Rubbed me back, you say?”

“Until you passed out on her, and she had to waddle back here to the fire while you snored.”

“So,” he gazed up from his coffee, “I didn't … you say you didn't see me…”

“No, you didn't touch her,” Jack confided. “Besides, I don't think she'd crawl in the robes with you now, anyways.”

“H-How's that?” Seamus inquired, his pride suddenly pricked.

“She come back to the fire last night, telling all them chiefs how the big whiteman must not really have the donicker of a buffalo bull after all.”

He swallowed, brow knitting. “She … she did, did she?”

“Yeah. She said the big whiteman must have him a tiny donicker of the weasel … seeing how the whiteman didn't have enough of a donicker to share with her!”

Seamus sipped his coffee in silence while Jack, the chiefs, and the wrinkled old squaw laughed at him round their smoky fire. And he flushed in embarrassment when he caught himself staring down the loose neckline of the woman's skin dress, gazing at those saggy, discolored dugs of hers.

As bad as the coffee tasted this morning, Donegan was sure it in no way tasted near as bad as would those flabby, dried-up teats.

*   *   *

Not long after the 2nd Battalion's veteran bugler, German Adolph Metzger, had blown reveille, the nine Cheyenne chiefs presented themselves at the south gate. For close to an hour they waited patiently while Carrington dressed, sending adjutant Wands to scare up Jack Stead.

His office filled with aromatic pipesmoke, the colonel had his interpreter begin by asking the whereabouts of the troublesome Sioux.

“Red Cloud and Man-Afraid,” Jack began, “both are on the Tongue. They're your biggest threat.”

“But by no means my only problem, Jack.”

“A chief goes by the name of Buffalo Tongue—he's causing trouble for Reno and the Powder River country.”

“What of the other tribes, Jack?” Carrington rocked forward in his chair. “I want to know if they can confirm any of what Bridger learned from the Crows.”

Back and forth the interpreter talked in Cheyenne and sign. When at last Jack straightened in his chair, he looked squarely at the colonel.

“The Hunkpapa and Brule have come in to join the fight. Along with a big band of Arapaho, making war under a white renegade they call ‘One Thumb.'”

“Do the chiefs have any notion what the Sioux and Arapaho plan against us?”

The Cheyenne whispered among themselves for several minutes before Two Moons turned to give Stead their gripping report.

“The Sioux are going all out for a winter campaign against you. When the first snow flies.”

“That first snow has come and gone, Jack.”

“
Winter,
Colonel. You haven't seen anything like cold yet. When old-winter-man blows the snow right out of the north itself … that's when the Sioux are planning to cut your post off. That's when the chiefs say the Sioux plan on one big fight with the soldiers. They'll raid your herds no more.”

“One fight?” Carrington sounded doubtful.

“The Sioux brag that what soldiers they don't kill in that big fight … will all be driven away. Like snow-flakes before a summer wind.”

Carrington grew thoughtful, face gray with concern. “Do the chiefs know where the Sioux plan this big fight … where they'll kill so many soldiers?”

Jack bit his lower lip. “Over Lodge Trail Ridge, Colonel.”

Carrington relaxed. He slapped his palms down on his thighs, grinning. Causing Jack to wonder if the man had lost his mind momentarily.

“That's good news, Jack!” he explained himself. “All I do now is finish my post as I've planned all along … and simply forbid my officers from pursuing any warriors beyond Lodge Trail Ridge!”

“That might be easier said than done,” Jack said. “Hardest thing to do is stop a man from crossing the Lodge Trail when he's got his fighting blood up.”

“Not when its an official order,” Carrington smiled to ease the harsh sound to it. “Official policy.”