Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (38 page)

Nelson nodded as he went to his knees beside Cody and the Irishman. “The old ones get so old. Look at her. Doubt she's had a thing to eat in days.”

“We make 'em do this—pushing the village the way we are?”

Nelson nodded. “That's likely, Irishman. A band of 'em gets on the run, they'll leave the old and the sick behind because they can't keep up. The young ones know the soldiers won't kill an old one like this—if we can keep the Pawnee off'n her.”

“Pawnee'd kill her?”

“Damn right they would. Sioux scalp is a Sioux scalp to them Pawnee. Don't matter if that scalp's gray and got a couple of dry teats hanging empty below it.”

“Damn but this country out here gets crazier the more I learn.” Seamus dragged the canteen up and pulled the cork. She fought the hand he tried to put under her chin.

“Let her drink for herself,” Nelson suggested. He spoke a few words in Lakota.

She reached out clumsily and took the canteen in both hands, really opening her eyes for the first time. It was then Seamus saw the thick clouding of cataracts over both opaque eyes.

“She blind, Nelson?”

“Yep. No doubt that's why she's here, and starving. Waiting for her time to be called up yonder.”

“See what you can get out of her,” Cody said. “Anything on the village.”

Nelson pulled two thick slabs of jerky from his belt-pouch and laid them in the old woman's hand. She said something to him and he chuckled.

“Says she smells tobacco on me. Wants our tobacco more than our poor meat. Says white man has poor meat, but good tobacco.”

“Tell her she can have some to smoke or chew when she answers your questions,” Cody suggested.

With the browned stumps she had left for teeth after a lifetime of chewing hides, the old woman gnawed and sucked on the tough jerky while she conversed with the white scout. At last Nelson turned to Donegan.

“Give me some of your chew for the woman. I just found out she's a relative of my wife. More'n that, fellas—we're in the presence of Sioux royalty.”

“Somebody special?” Frank North asked.

“This is Pawnee Killer's mother,” Nelson replied, slicing off a thin strip of the fragrant, coal-dark plug. She promptly stuffed the tobacco in her mouth and began gumming it noisily into a moist cud.

“Where's her son gone?”

“She doesn't know for sure. Only that when he left her here three nights back, she listened to the village move off. Upstream.”

“I doubt they're moving southwest,” Cody said.

“I agree,” said Frank North. “If anything, they'll turn north and make their run for Red Cloud's country.”

“How can a man just leave his mother here?” Donegan asked, wagging his head in disbelief. He looked about, finding nothing left with the woman for her well-being.

“Says she had a little meat, what Pawnee Killer could spare when he rode off. And he left her a little gourd of water she finished yesterday.”

“Just her and this greasy blanket?”

“That's right, Irishman,” Nelson replied, “Seems hard-hearted to us, but it's the Indian way. Got a soft spot in your heart for the old Sioux witch, do you?”

“No,” he snapped, testy as a wet goat. “Just … just that she's someone's mother and … and that red h'athen run off on her, s'all. That's what sticks in me craw like a chicken-bone.”

“Column's coming up,” Luther North announced, coming up easy on his horse. “Who's this?”

“Pawnee Killer's mother,” Nelson replied. “You want me leave her where we found her, Cody?”

“What? And let them bloodsucking Pawnee stick a knife in her belly?” Seamus growled. “I'll have no part of that, you heartless bastirds.”

Cody rose to his feet. “The Irishman's right. Let's get her packed on one of the wagons.”

“To do what, for God's sake?” Luther North asked.

“Taking her back to her reservation,” Cody answered.

“No better place for her now that she's bound to die out here,” Nelson said.

“She don't have to die.” Seamus scooted forward on his knees, scooping up the tiny, frail frame in his arms. He rose with her steadily. “I'll go down and meet the wagons coming up.”

Cody and the rest watched in wonder as Donegan walked down the rise into the flat meadow filled with grass beaten down by lodges and moccasined feet. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Duncan's troops were arriving.

“Look at the way she clings to him,” Nelson said quietly. “Maybe she thinks the Irishman's her boy.”

Cody wagged his head, adjusting his pistol-belt. “No. But I've a notion Seamus is treating her as good as he wishes he could treat his own mother right about now.”

Chapter 33

October 28, 1869

For three more weeks Duncan pushed his troops up and down the Republican, sending out scouting parties, hunting off the land, trying to catch one village after another as they scattered and disappeared from the country as if snatched off the face of the earth.

Winter was coming. The bands going south for the season were already on their way. Those planning to make the north country before the big snows came had already put Kansas Territory far behind them.

Winter's cold hand of death was coming.

The first snow was wet and heavy, coming as it did in the middle of one night when most of the men were asleep beneath their blankets and gum ponchos. By the next afternoon everything was melted and muddy and bogged down in a quagmire of cursing wagonmasters and balky mules. It was the second storm that convinced Duncan he needed to turn back home.

It was one of those plains' storms that had all the bluster of a spring blizzard, aggravated by winter's cold bite of the arctic where it had been sired. Born of the mating of wet, warm air sweeping up out of the south, tumbling and roiling beneath the frigid storm system hurtling out of the north like a hungry woman thrusting herself back at her impassioned lover, this snow had all the ingredients of a killer.

On the second day the skies cleared and the men finally ventured out from under shelter-halves and tents and the bellies of wagons to greet the sun, see what stock was still alive and to count noses. That twenty-third day of October, Duncan decided they'd had enough.

“We're close enough to McPherson—we can make it inside a week, we take our time and don't stretch out the strength of men or animals.”

Five days later, as the sun heaved out of mid-sky, heading down the homeward side toward the far mountains, Cody's advance guard came within sight of the far-off bastion. Angered by an insistent west wind, the big flag snapped and protested above the home station for the Fifth Cavalry. The Irishman admitted it was a sight almost as good as laying eyes on Fort Wallace after Carpenter's brunettes dragged Forsyth's survivors out of the wilderness.
*

If it wasn't Sioux, it was Cheyenne. And if it wasn't the brutal cold of a trip heading north on foot along the Bozeman Trail, then it was a sudden prairie storm that could kill a man even more quickly than the sun and starvation and despair ever could. Maybe he'd had enough, Seamus told himself—enough of the plains and these Indians. Enough of working damned hard to keep her off his mind when Jenny had made it pretty plain she preferred moving on with her life to waiting for him.

Why, Seamus asked himself, was he staying on in these parts when he should be pushing ahead?

Quartermaster Sergeant John Young turned Pawnee Killer's mother over to the post chaplain upon arrival.

“Likely he'll see that she's shipped up to Spotted Tail's agency, north in Dakota,” Cody said after the civilians split off from the soldiers and dismounted on the parade.

Seamus nodded, gazing about at the pandemonium of homecoming. Officers' wives and the enlisted man's laundresses were out in force. Waving handkerchiefs and colorful bandannas, singing out the words of their favorite song: “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

“Full many a name our banners bore

Of former deeds of daring,

But they were of the days of yore

In which we had no sharing.

 

“But now our laurels freshly won

With the old ones shall entwin'd be;

Still worthy of our sires each son,

Sweet girl I left behind me.”

Youngsters wrapped against the blustery winds beat on tin pots with wooden spoons or blew on penny whistles to accompany the regimental band with every verse and chorus.

A happiness Seamus felt not a part of.

“Duncan declares Colonel Emory's splitting the Fifth for the coming winter,” Cody said as they began walking slowly toward McDonald's trading post at the outskirts of the fort buildings.

“Some to garrison here,” Seamus said, nodding, “the rest going where?”

“He's keeping five companies here. Six going on to Wyoming. To garrison Fort D. A. Russell.”

“Damn these Indian wars,” Seamus whispered under his breath.

“You want me to meet you later for a drink—wash down some of the trail dust?” Cody asked.

That brought Seamus up suddenly. “Why, ain't you coming to have one now? McDonald be expecting us come harroo—now we're back, like old times.”

Cody tried out a limp smile. “I'm … it's not like before, Seamus. Lulu and Arta—my family is here now.”

“Yes,” Donegan said finally, feeling the great tug of something inside that reminded him he was without any of that family or love. Adrift on this prairie sea as he was years gone a'coming to Amerikay on that stinking death ship.

“You'll come meet them later,” the young scout said, anxious to go.

Donegan suddenly felt sorry as well that he had kept Cody. “G'won, me good man. I'll share the warmth another time. Come 'round the saloon when you get the chance this evening and I'll buy you a drink in farewell.”

“Farewell?”

“I've decided I'll be leaving in the morning, soon's the paymaster gets me mustered out.”

“You don't have to muster out yet—I'll see to you staying on the winter—”

“No, Bill. You've had me here long enough, and it's high time the Irishman was moving on.”

“We'll talk about it—”

“No, Cody. There's nothing to talk about.”

“Damn you—we've a lot to talk about, Donegan. I'll see you standing at McDonald's shaky bar after sundown.”

Seamus glanced at the orange orb settling to the west. “That doesn't give a man much time for saying his proper how-do to family and kin.”

“Plenty time for me. Besides, I don't want you leaving, Seamus,” Cody said, holding out his hand. “Not, just yet.”

Donegan shook. “We'll drink our fare-the-well this night, Billy, me boy. Maybe we'll round up a few of the others to make it a merry send-off at McDonald's place.”

“See you after sundown, Irishman.”

He watched the young scout go, Cody's long, curly hair all the more golden beneath the afternoon sun this late autumn day. Seamus knew he'd miss the man dearly.

On instinct, he reached for the medicine pouch he kept hung out of sight inside his shirt. Before his eyes swam the face of the old mountain trapper turned army scout. In liquid remembrance of Jim Bridger.

The same two years gone since Donegan quit the Bozeman Road, bidding farewell to Sam Marr with the promise to meet him north to the gold fields one day.

“You'll never make it back,” he whispered to himself as he trudged wearily toward Bill McDonald's trading store standing like an orphan at the edge of the gathering of buildings the army called McPherson. “Too much water gone under your boots.”

Something more hauntingly precious than gold-fever drove him on now. Perhaps it was something that few men could really understand, never as much as they said they understood, no matter as they might try. Looking for a piece of his past, consumed with the nagging why of it all. Unable to find rest with anyone or anything until he completed the quest begun in County Kilkenny, Ireland, years before.

The familiar warmth washed over him as he closed the door behind him. All these places smelled the same: odors of men living out their days on the frontier, fragrances not all pleasant. But familiar. Stale sweat and unwashed longhandles. Tobacco smoke and whiskey spilled on bare wood. The sun's late rays shot through the two small windows at an angle that illuminated only half the room in golden, shimmering light. The rest hung back in cold shadows. The bar stood there among the darkness.

“What'll it be, Irishman?” McDonald asked as Donegan stepped up, arms burdened with gear.

“Rye, if you have it.”

Plopping his bedroll and rifles off in a corner, Seamus returned to the bar for his drink.

“You'll be staying on now that the regiment's busting?”

He shook his head and threw the first shot against the back of his throat. “No,” and he wiped his mustache. “Hope to put some ground between me and this infernal prairie before snow closes travel down.”

A familiar voice asked, “Where to this time, Donegan?”

He looked up, finding the old white scout, John Nelson, sliding up the bar. “Likely, Denver City holds the bait for me now.”

Nelson chuckled amiably. “Ah, to be young and footloose again,” he replied wistfully. “Yes, Denver City is the hive, and you young hotbloods are the drones who keep that place alive.”

“What's the honey?” Seamus asked, smiling as he poured Nelson a drink from the brown bottle of rye.

“You're asking me, Irishman? Why, it's the lure of whiskey better'n you can get in a place like this stuck out here on the prairie. Maybeso—it's the lure of white-skinned women.”

“You get tired of your Sioux wife, Nelson?”

“Never grew tired of her, or her widowed sisters, Donegan,” and he laughed with Seamus. “They're enough to keep any three men satisfied … especially an old plainsman like me.”