Wolf Mountain Moon (35 page)

C
ould Seamus be with Randall?

Samantha looked down at her trembling hands, the way they made the newsprint rattle so.

The instant she started to read that news story about the reported massacre, Samantha remembered how often Seamus had talked about Major “Black Jack” Randall—Crook's chief of scouts.

Stifling a sob, she quickly glanced at the babe sleeping in his tiny bed made from a crate Elizabeth Burt had talked the post quartermaster out of—afraid she had awakened the child with her anguished cry. Holding her breath, a quaking hand over her mouth, Sam waited, watching the infant.

When she saw that the boy still slept, Samantha turned away, her mind racing with the horror of possibilities. Then her eyes darted aimlessly here and there over the room. And at last, on instinct alone, she literally dived onto the tiny rope-and-tick bed, plunging her hand beneath the overstuffed goose-down pillow.

Her fingers touched it, seized the pages, brought his letter out into the light.

Barely breathing, Samantha opened the folds. Her eyes danced over her husband's words. Did he mention riding off with Randall?

How her heart leaped into her throat, her breath suddenly stilled like river ice in her chest as the seconds stretched into moments … as she desperately searched for some clue to just what Seamus was doing in that country, some mention that he might possibly be with Black Jack Randall's company of scouts.

She bit down on her lip so hard to keep from crying out, Samantha was sure she made her flesh bleed. Scouts with General Crook's command may have run onto Crazy Horse's band!

“Dear blessed God,” she whispered prayerfully, then ran the tip of her tongue over her bleeding lip. “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”

Angrily she swiped at her eyes that darted over the words she realized she had memorized by now, reading his letter over and over again so many times the pencil scratches were all but rubbed off the cheap army paper.

Closing her teary eyes, Samantha raised her face to the low ceiling Seamus always came close to scraping with the top of his head. Alone there in the quiet and the cold, she began to whisper her plea.

But in the midst of her prayer, as she stuttered to a stop mouthing the words, her heart reminded her of snatches of what he had told her in that letter.

“Dear God,” she whispered almost aloud. “Listen to every one of my prayers. Please listen to his too. And bring him back to us as soon as his work is done.”

Samantha crumpled into the overstuffed pillow, trying her best to muffle her whimpering sobs. This not knowing, this simple matter of just plain enduring day after day…. Was she strong enough to be Seamus Donegan's wife?

She cried and cried and cried some more that afternoon and didn't realize until the baby's cries awoke her that she had cried herself to sleep.

Quickly she went to the child's tiny bed, swept the boy into her arms, and clutched him to her tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Dear God,” she whispered there as she cradled her child, “just as I am holding the son of Seamus Donegan in my hands, I pray you'll hold Seamus himself in yours.”

She worked quickly at the buttons on the front of her dress, pulling aside the linen bodice to free one breast. The boy took to it eagerly.

“Keep Seamus warm,” she whispered, laying her lips atop the child's warm, furry head. “Holy Mother, watch over your wayward child in the wilderness.”

No one knew how long it would take for the Sans Arc runner to reach the Sitting Bull camp.

Many suns ago Crazy Horse had asked for a volunteer, a man who could ride day and night, switching back and forth between three ponies, galloping north to find the Hunkpapa people. He was carrying Crazy Horse's request that Sitting Bull trade for ammunition with the Red River Slota north of
the Muddy Water River.
^*
Trade for as many weapons as the Hunkpapa could get their hands on.

Then he asked Sitting Bull himself to bring the rifle cartridges to the Shifting Sands River,
^†
where the Hunkpapa camp circle would rendezvous with the Crazy Horse people. And once more they would be strong enough to turn back, perhaps to wipe out, all
wasicu
soldiers—with enough bullets and guns, the
Titunwan
Lakota would never have to bow their heads in shame like those who had been driven back to the agencies.

Day after day Spotted Elk watched and waited for the runner to return with word that Sitting Bull was on his way, especially now that they knew the Bear Coat's soldiers were marching south toward the villages. With his slow wagons pulled by the plodding, lead-footed animals the white men were so fond of, it would take the Bear Coat many more days before his men were a threat to the women and children in the villages. Once the soldiers reached the ground Crazy Horse had selected for their battle, only then would the warriors ride out to engage them.

If the ammunition and guns arrived in time, then their war against the
wasicu
could go on, and they never would have to surrender, Spotted Elk realized. But if after he had delivered that precious cargo, Sitting Bull still desired to flee back across the Elk River, north beyond the Muddy Water River until he had crossed the Medicine Line into the Land of the Grandmother, then Crazy Horse would not try to stop the Hunkpapa visionary.

Then Crazy Horse would be on his own.

After the decoys left for the soldier post, the Horse ordered that the village move upstream from the mouth of Suicide Creek
^#
to the sheltered mouth of Prairie Dog Creek, which flowed into the Buffalo Tongue from the west. With plenty of wood close at hand as well as a warm, seeping spring that did not freeze over even in the coldest weather, the camp raised their lodges, sent out small hunting parties of the younger boys, and kept wolves moving up and down the Buffalo
Tongue day after day—watching the Bear Coat's army advance through the deepening snow.