Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (32 page)

“Like taking fat cow and leaving poor bull, Billy,” he said to himself. He licked each cartridge for luck before sending it home.

“What you got going on here?” Seamus Donegan asked as he crawled up minutes later.

Cody looked behind him and grinned. “Halloo, Irishman. C'mon, join the fun. Three shots for a dollar—just like back home where you can shoot the head off the turkey—and keep the bird!”

“How many you got out there?”

“Fourteen, maybe more,” he answered.

“Damn, if that don't beat,” Seamus whispered, pointing far to the right.

“They want in on everything, don't they?” Cody replied, watching Frank and Luther North gallop up, have a quick word with some of their men, then daringly race their mounts across the open plain between the Cheyenne and Pawnee positions. Bullets sang out. Puffs of rifle smoke rose over the lip of the far ravine.

“Showy bastards,” muttered the young chief of scouts.

“Watch your manners, Bill Cody. Look how them two are helping you—giving us targets.”

“Be damned, but you're right. I'll start on the right, Irishman. No, as a matter of fact, I want that one.”

“The one shouting to the others?”

Cody nodded, driving home another big cartridge. “Bet he's chief?”

Donegan shrugged. “Don't know if he's Tall Bull or not. But he's some big medicine—haranguing the rest of 'em like that to hold out against us. You put him down, Bill—the rest will fold like a bad hand.”

Cody smiled, bringing the big-bore needle gun to his cheek. “Just my thinking, Seamus.”

The large, imposing Cheyenne who had been waving to his warriors whirled at the hillside, screaming out his battle-cry. As he rose from the edge of the ravine, Cody squeezed the trigger.

The big gun bruised him as it kicked back brutally.

“He's gone, Bill,” Donegan whispered with admiration, slapping him on the back.

“I hit him? You see it—I hit him?”

“Blew his head off.”

Chapter 27

July 11, 1869

Eugene Carr arrived while Cody and the Irishman were pounding each other on the back exuberantly.

By the time the major was handing his reins to one of his staff, a pair of women were signaling from the narrow mouth of the ravine. Afraid, they crouched behind the body of a fallen Indian pony, waving with a shred of cloth to get the attention of the soldiers.

“North!” Carr shouted. Frank North turned with his brother. “Get someone to talk them out of there. I want prisoners—no more corpses.”

Staying back with the others behind the hillside, Carr watched as Frank North spoke in sign to the woman across the forty or more yards of open, grassy plain. He glanced at Cody. “How many warriors in there?”

“Don't know how many now, General. Maybe as many as fifteen when the shooting started.”

Carr looked over his shoulder at the village, listening. “You hear that?”

“Hear what?” asked one of his staff.

“The quiet,” he said, having to smile. “It's done. The fighting is over and the village is ours.”

“The women are coming out,” Seamus announced.

The men, Pawnee and white, civilian and soldier, stood as a pair of women leaped over the neck of the fallen pony and darted across the grassy open field. Stopping in front of Frank North, one of the two put her hands to her face and bowed her head symbolically. She gestured wildly at the ravine, then put her hands over her face again.

“What's she telling you, Major North?”

“Says she's Tall Bull's wife. He's dead.”

“In the ravine?”

“Right.”

“Any more?”

“All dead now.”

“Take a squad in there, Major—be sure there are no snipers,” Carr ordered. “Captain North?”

“General?”

“Get those women back to camp with the other prisoners.”

North grinned. “They ain't both women. One's Tall Bull's daughter.”

“Just get them back with the others.”

Minutes later Major North trotted back across the grass field to report his findings. “I counted thirteen back in a little wash-out of a canyon, General Carr.”

“That all there were?”

“No. Found seven more up near the mouth. I figure they were there to try to keep us out if we stormed the place. Two women are dead in there too.”

“Fighters?”

“Looks like it—died beside their men.”

Carr took a deep breath. “We've got twenty, perhaps twenty-five enemy dead back in the village.”

“It's a good operation, General—even though most of the Cheyenne got away.”

“Where'll they go … without horses, blankets and food?”

North glanced at his brother, returning from the village. “The Cheyenne will survive, General. They'll head north, find a friendly village of Sioux or Cheyenne maybe. Over time they'll reoutfit themselves and continue their raids.”

“You don't sound like you think we've done any good here today, Major.”

North wagged his head. “Not that at all. We've done a damned good job here. Do you have any tally going in the village, sir?”

Carr nodded, looking back across the open field as North's Pawnees emerged shouting and singing from the ravine. They brandished the dripping scalps like schoolboys coming home from the fishing hole with their catch. Each of the army scouts was hunchbacked under captured weapons and bandoleers of bullets taken from the dead.

“Yes, Major. My adjutant is seeing to a count at this time. Lodge by lodge, I want to be able to report how badly we stung these … these warriors.”

“One thing's for sure, General,” said Luther North. “This is the bunch you were wanting to get your hands on. Tall Bull's bunch of thieving outlaws.”

“The two women in the village pretty well prove that,” Frank North added.

Carr turned away as the Pawnee came up, not desiring to see their grisly trophies. “Tell your scouts to move away, Major. I'm still not sure yet how I feel about using Indian trackers to find and fight an Indian enemy.”

“This is the first time the Pawnee have been used so effectively, sir.” North waved his Indian scouts away. As a group, they ambled off on foot, talking and joking and recounting their coups.

“It's something the army will have to assess,” Carr replied, drinking deep of the afternoon air. Its heat stung his lungs, shocking him. “Any of you have a canteen about you?”

While Carr drank from Donegan's canteen, Frank North reloaded his pistol. The major asked, “General, have you got plans to pursue those who fled the village?”

“You can take a company of your scouts—whatever you feel safe in taking, Major.”

“I'm requesting to go along,” Donegan said.

Carr nodded. “All right, Irishman. You go with Major Royall. In fact, take word to him now that I want him to have fifty men saddled and ready to ride in ten minutes. Those fittest to make the trip … on the strongest horses.”

“What of the stragglers, General?” asked Cody.

“Aye,” Donegan agreed. “There were many who had their horses break down under them.”

Carr nodded. “It was a long march … a hard one on us all. Yes, Cody—you and Lieutenant Price need to lead a squad into the sandhills east of here. Wait until dark for any stragglers bringing up the rear. Guide them in here—the wagon train too.”

Donegan left on foot behind Cody and the North brothers. Carr waited a moment, wanting badly to go to the ravine and have a look for himself at the desperate fight that had taken place there. Instead, he admitted to himself that he would not.

Not that he was unaccustomed to the horror and gore of violent death. Too much of that he had seen already in his military career begun years ago on the plains, even before the rebellion down south.

Instead he pulled the big hat from his head and swiped a hand across his thinning hair and the receding hairline. Thirty-nine years old and he felt a hundred. It had been hard to find the stamina to push himself and his men, their animals as well, on this march. But once he had seen those tiny boot-prints in the sand days ago … it all became so real.

No longer were these just Cheyenne he had his Fifth Cavalry trailing. Looking down at the fragments of those footprints scuffed in the sand made this band of Indians his enemy—the enemy to everything he stood for and had worked for out here for almost seventeen years.

He thought back on her painfully. Mary Patience Magwire-Carr. So far away in St. Louis. It crushed him to think either of the white women could have been his sweet Mary. He scratched his beard, fighting back the sting of tears. Once more he swallowed down the pain. Knowing this land was truly no place for her and the children.

But this is where he had to be—torn from Mary and the children. Here on campaign, happiest in the saddle. He disliked being a subordinate, and too often that dislike had shown in his dealings with his superiors. It had been his strong sense of devotion to the institution of the army, rather than the individual personalities who ran the army, that had from time to time caused Carr to run afoul of his superiors as he petitioned for arms and equipment and supplies to wage the frontier war.

In quiet moments like this, Carr dwelled on how his vigorous claims in all likelihood retarded his promotion. He knew he could be frank to the point of tactlessness.

Nevertheless, Carr remained an odd one at times, putting before all else the welfare of the men assigned him. Although only a major that summer, he was one of the few who had survived the “Benzine Board” which purged the army of its incompetents following the war of rebellion.

He strode up to his adjutant and stopped. “What have you got to report, Lieutenant?”

Robert Montgomery let the papers flutter before him. “Most of the count is complete, General. I'm waiting for the tally of stock—both horse and mule.”

“Tell me the rest of it,” Carr sighed. He drew himself up as he often did. Shorter than average, it was his impeccably erect carriage that made him seem taller.

“Captain Maley reports seventeen prisoners.”

“The dead?”

“With the ravine fight—a total of fifty-two, General.”

“What of the plunder in the village?”

Montgomery regarded his papers. “Forty bows with arrows. Twenty-two revolvers of varying conditions, and fifty-six rifles. We counted over fifty pounds of powder. Many knives and camp axes.”

“Blankets and robes?”

“Yessir. Many of what I'd call a Navajo blanket. Over a thousand buffalo robes alone.”

He nodded. “A large camp, Lieutenant.”

“I counted eighty-four lodges myself, General. Many wickiups for the young, bachelor warriors.”

It made him feel a bit better. “We've struck them a blow.” Carr turned to watch the last of Major Royall's men leave camp on their weary mounts. He sighed, looking over the captured Cheyenne herd, knowing full-well Indian ponies would not cotton to the smell of his young white soldiers. There was more pressing business at hand.

“Did we find any food?” Carr asked.

“We've separated the dried meat, General. Quartermaster Hayes is waiting for you to give orders on it.”

“Tell him to package what he can of it. Take it on the wagons. The men are due for a change of diet between now and the time we get to Sedgwick.”

“We'll march there, sir?”

“It's closest—not that far north of here.” Carr turned back to Montgomery as the last horsemen disappeared over the hill. “Tomorrow—after we bury the woman and burn the village, though. For now take word to the commands to establish a defensive perimeter and bivouac here in the village.”

“You fear an attack by the survivors?”

“Not really. But, in all my years out here, fighting everything from Comanches to these Dog Soldiers—I've kept my men alive by not taking any chances, Lieutenant.”

Montgomery cleared his throat, clearly ill at ease saying what he felt he had to say. “These men would follow you anywhere, General Carr.”

At that moment Carr looked at his adjutant in a new light.

Montgomery continued, “They'd do anything for you, sir. Ride into Hell and back if they had to.”

“They've done just that since we started this chase, Mr. Montgomery. Tell the men I'm proud of them—
damned
proud of them.”

Self-consciously Montgomery said, “Not a man who rode with you today won't like hearing those words from you, General.”

“I can't tell them. It's … it's up to you.”

“I'll let the men know how you feel, sir.” Montgomery saluted and left.

Carr turned away, looking west to the far, rumpled horizon where the Rockies rose cold and keen against the summer sky.

Ah, Mary,
he said to himself as the air began to cool against his bearded cheeks.
My sweet, sweet Mary—you might as well be as unreachable as those mountains right now … for I am feeling every bit as cold without you here with me …

*   *   *

Seamus rolled along easily in the saddle atop a horse that would take some getting used to. Whereas the mare had been gentle and resolute, this young gelding gave hint of something that only a strong hand could control.

Riding in among the fifty soldiers and the dozen or so civilian scouts commanded by Major William B. Royall as the sun fell into the west was the only thing he could think of doing in those minutes after the short, fierce battle. Royall ordered him to stay behind, what with his two wounds.

“Begging pardon, Major—but I got Carr's orders to ride along with you. Besides, this little march will do some good, taking me mind off the ruddy wounds.”

Donegan could not tell Royall or Cody or any of them that he needed this ride among all these men to take his mind off the remembrance of Liam O'Roarke and another campaign across these plains of eastern Colorado Territory almost one year gone. The same clatter of tack and weapons and drone of hooves through the grassy sandhills that had accompanied George A. Forsyth's ragtag band of Indian fighters drummed its way into the painful place inside where Seamus did his best to hide at times like these.