Wolf Mountain Moon (66 page)

“After coffee and breakfast at reveille,” Pollock said.

Using the officer's brevet rank, Donegan asked, “Could you have me up two hours before sunrise, Major?”

“I'll be sure one of the pickets on the last watch comes in to roust you,” a sergeant offered.

He looked round at them again, slowly, some faces sinfully handsome and some downright mud ugly, the old and the young among them, sallow-eyed veteran and peach-cheeked shavetail too. Soldiers all … every bit like those soldiers he had ridden beside as they'd galloped into the face of Confederate cavalry and the pounding of Rebel artillery; like Captain Butler's brave men clambering for a foothold on the slopes of an icy hell. Soldiers paid so damned little by an unappreciative country that had scant idea of just what it asked of its fighting men.

Seamus rolled the wolf-hide hat in his hands nervously and told them, “Thank you fellas—for being here when I come riding in. For being here where likely no one else knows you're here. God bless each and every one of you … for leaving your families to come to this lonely place on the Powder River.”

For a moment they all sat and stood there stunned into silence by his sudden words. One of them coughed selfconsciously. Another turned aside and silently dragged a hand under his nose. And most of the rest found somewhere else for their eyes as they looked away, their own thoughts suddenly far, far from here. Away to loved ones.

Then he cursed himself inside, feeling sorry of that moment, having caused these soldiers to think of home, to think on others so far from this cold, winter wilderness.

“Most of all,” Donegan concluded, his throat clotted, “I wanna thank you fellas for helping me on my way home to my family.”

“W-where are they?” Pollock asked. “Laramie.”

“Laramie,” a soldier repeated almost wistfully as he nodded, then looked away at the flames in the crude fireplace constructed along the outer wall of the hut.

“Y' ain't got far to go now,” another declared.

A bearded corporal said, “Less'n two hundred miles by my reckoning.”

The sergeant stood, laying his muskrat hat atop his head, tugging it down over his ears. “I've got a night watch to check on right now, Mr. Donegan … but I'll see you're up early for coffee and tacks afore lightin' out.”

Epilogue
17-24 January 1877

“Y
ou want me send a word or two on down the wire, so they can let your missus know you're coming?” the soldier at the key asked him.

“No,” he said, having decided long ago that he would do just as he had promised, wanting her to keep her eye on the hills to the north of the post for sign of him. “Thank you anyway, sojur. But long ago I decided to make it a surprise.”

There at the drafty key shack at Cottonwood Station, Seamus had shared a cup of coffee and a few stories of Miles's fight with Crazy Horse as three soldiers crowded in around that tiny Sibley stove. The wind gusted old snow outside beneath a lowering sky as his horse crunched on grain that filled the nose bag a kind soldier had draped over the claybank's ears. Then, with his own belly warmed, Seamus tugged the scrap of wool blanket back over his head, adjusted the eyeholes so he could see, then pulled the wolf-hide cap down over it.

“Welcome back … again,” the key operator said as the three soldiers crowded one another there at the doorway, watching the civilian clumsily rise to the saddle in his heavy buffalo-hide coat and leggings.

Tapping his brow with his fingers, Seamus saluted. “Thank you for the coffee, fellas.”

“You ain't got far now!” a soldier reminded.

For a moment Donegan gazed to the southeast down the Laramie-Fetterman Road. He had covered more than half the distance between the two posts already. “I got a boy to christen there. My son … to finally give my son a name.”

Miles and hours later, after one more night spent beside a lonely fire, Seamus moved on that morning of the twenty-fourth, hurrying into the fourteenth day of his homeward journey. Snowless gusts of wind battered him and the mare all that day when they could not take shelter by riding down along the courses of the creeks. Then late that blustery afternoon, as he was staring across the changeless landscape, Donegan suddenly realized he was looking at the top of the gigantic flagstaff that stood in the middle of the Fort Laramie parade.

Like a beacon signaling homecoming sailors from the perilous depths and crushing waves … a little farther and he could see the whole of that flag—its stripes: the white like high-plains snow, the crimson blood of those who had laid down their lives to answer their nation's call. And the blue. Like her own starry eyes as they peered up into his.

Then, finally, he reined up the claybank on the brow of a brushy knoll just north of the post, feeling a tightness wrap his chest from the sweet anticipation as he gazed down at the bustling activity of tiny figures scurrying across the snow, trudging between the buildings, each one scuffing dark as beeties
across the white expanse of the parade. A gust of wind kicked up swirls of ground snow around the figures from time to time.

Then Donegan put the weary mare into motion, urging her down the hill, heading for that patch of open ground right below him, between the long row of stables and cavalry barracks. Slowly, as the horse plodded through the snow, picking its way among the crusty drifts, the faraway figures began to loom closer, taking on human form at last despite their layers of heavy garments—every man and woman bundled against the frightening cold.

Closer still … when he realized that among all the soldiers stopping momentarily to give him a cursory look before continuing with their fatigue details, what with all the others who paid him no attention at all on this busiest of frontier forts—a single figure leaving one of the latrines stopped … turned and gazed to the north … then appeared to start directly for him.

Slowly, guardedly. Although tentative at first, the figure nonetheless stayed its course across the drifted snow as if on a compass heading that nothing would deter.

How he wanted to hope—

By then Seamus could make the figure out to be a woman from the way she moved beneath that long, heavy army wool coat, bundled as she was head to foot. Suddenly she burst into a lope, swinging one arm only, the other clutching some thick wrap)—perhaps a muffler. Ungainly as she was in her heavy boots and long coat, the woman dashed his way resolutely.

Then of an instant he no longer had to hope.

Like a man sensing once more that magnetic pull of his one and only lodestone, Donegan gave the horse a tap with his heels, urging these last two hundred yards out of the animal that had carried him all the way home. Gasping for its breath, spears of frost shooting from its nostrils, a halo of white wreathed the horse's head—Seamus leaped from the saddle even before the claybank came to a halt.

On foot he stumbled those last five yards, tearing off the wolf-hide cap in one hand, the blanket face-mask with the other, hurling them both aside to enfold her and the bundled child in his arms instantly, sweeping them off her feet despite Samantha's bulky clothing, despite her giggling, weeping protests,
the child clutched between them as he swung her round once, twice, then set her down in the snow. Both of them gasping for air, tears at their cheeks, planting kisses on those faces not seen for so long.

“It's your f-father, come home as he p-promised,” Samantha squeaked, barely able to get any sound out past the clog in her throat.

Gently he pulled back the top layer of the crocheted blanket, finally able to peer down into the reddened face, the wide eyes that stared up at his. To see again those rosy cheeks, and that unruly curl of auburn hair spilling down the boy's forehead.

“Is this …,” he began to ask. “Sweet Mother of God—but he's growed in the time I've been gone.”

She nodded, swiping a mitten across her cheek as she stared up at Seamus's ruddy, bearded face. “They have a way of doing that—so I'm told, Mr. Donegan.”

Then she laid her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes and sighing. Despite the bulk of all her layers, he could still feel her trembling. For the longest time he stood there as soldiers and others passed by—content to clutch his family to his bosom, his chin resting atop Samantha's head. In the midst of that busy fort on the plains they were like a warm, quiet island of serenity for these stolen moments in the bitter cold.

After some time she pulled her red, wet cheek away to stare into his glistening gray eyes. “Happy New Year, Mr. Donegan.”

He felt the tears spill again onto his wind-raw flesh. “Happy New Year to you, Mrs. Donegan.”

She dragged her mitten under her nose, then pulled the blanket back from the boy's face once more. The babe's eyes came instantly alive as they focused on the man's face. Samantha said, “We've saved your Christmas for you—so to have one of our own. Together.”

“It's not too late for Christmas?” he asked, his belly a'roil with so many feelings at once, he felt he might just explode like one of Pope's cannonballs.

She giggled behind one of her mittens a moment, saying, “It's never too late for Christmas, Seamus! Especially when a man can be as much a boy as you can!”

The tears were freezing on both their cheeks as he
snatched up the reins in one hand, then tugged Samantha around and positioned her beneath the other arm. Husband and wife walked slowly past the end of the cavalry barracks, on toward their tiny room, where they would celebrate their own family Christmas, where they would see in their own festive New Year.