Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (17 page)

Seamus Donegan knew no one worth his salt ever spoke out loud about the odds.

Chapter 12

Over the corral, a steamy silence fell like a mantle of torture round them all.

From the Wands's ambulance came the sobbing of women. Little Bobby cried out, confused and frightened. In the second ambulance the baby fussed, crying from time to time. At one point things even grew so quiet Donegan thought he heard the woman praying for her baby daughter, for her husband. Praying too for the lieutenant who lay bleeding at her feet.

Seamus closed his eyes, recalling the creamy fullness of her breast. Then the wounded mules rose in chorus all over again, drowning out the woman's praying with their brassy
scree-haws.
In the tomblike lull between their tortured screams, a nearby horse tore at the weedy ground and dry bunch-grass, chewing noisily. And when all fell silent, Donegan listened to the rustle of a breeze nudging the canvas tarps lashed over the freight-wagons. He gazed down the blue octagon barrel and the dull-brass hardware gleaming in the bright sun, watching the warriors squatting on the ground over his sights. And wondering why the red heathens had quit. Wondering, why it had to be so damned quiet——

Out of a pale sky arrows fell like sparks of iron-tipped fire spewed from the sun. In that moment of terror a man yelped in pain, digging at the arrow that had fallen out of the sky and pierced the back of his neck. Clawing at the shaft, he bolted from the trench like a wounded animal. Two others burst from their pit, one tackling the wounded soldier, holding him down in the yellow dust. The other braced a knee against his comrade's shoulders, yanking at the arrow until it wrenched free.

“God damn you all!” Terrel leaped to his feet, his rifle in hand, the muzzle sweeping the horizon, a man hungering for a target. Any target. “C'mout here and fight me like men! Show yourselves, you bloody bastards!”

A second shower of arrows rained from the heavens.

Wands sprinted toward the southern side of the corral. “There!” he screamed, pointing, shaking in anger and frustration. “Dammit! They're coming from the ravine!”

Other voices rang out—some in pain as arrows struck them or friends. Most in shock. No man immune from fear now—finding himself vulnerable to an unseen enemy.

“They're in the ravine!” Wands whirled, screaming to the men as they dashed up. A few kept craning their necks to the sky as they hobbled toward the lieutenant. He stood there, shaking his head in frustration, pounding a fist against his forehead. Not near so certain of their safety now as he'd been when he ordered the wagons toward the lip of this ravine.

Sure that this southern side of the corral would be safe from attack. Like having our backs to water. So damned sure the warriors couldn't sweep 'round our southern flank.
Almost on the verge of tears that he hadn't so much as considered——

“Watch out!” someone shrieked.

Like a covey of flushed quail, the soldiers scrambled for cover. Arrows hissed out of the ravine, a hundred pieces of mirrored light, glinting, winged into the dry air. Each one rising into the sun, stalking predators curving in flight to plummet down into the unprotected corral. A mule struck—braying in pain, kicking wildly. A soldier cowering under the mule rolled free of the thrashing legs. Like cruel retribution for his stupidity, the mule's wild dance found the wounded soldier again and again and again …

“By all that's holy, Lieutenant,” Terrel grabbed Wands with his free hand, “let me have a dozen men. I'll clear out the ravine before the——”

Wands laughed crazily. “A dozen men, Sergeant? We don't have a dozen! I can't spare a goddamned one!”

“Bejesus, sir! We can't fight like this. None of us has ever fit a enemy what won't stand up to you—a enemy what's gone like a breath of smoke. Shooting us from behind. We ain't used to this, sir!”

Wands gulped, his eyes narrowing. “Looks like us soldiers got a lot to get used to out here, Sergeant.”

“Here, Lieutenant.” Reverend White shoved his rifle into Wands's hand. “I won't be needing that.”

“What? Good God—don't need your rifle?”

“Not down in Daniel's den of lions!” White's mouth set in a tight line of determination.

Wands studied the minister, wild-eyed and powder-burned. “Lion's den——”

“The ravine, Lieutenant. I'm going to flush the buggers out for you.”

“You'll do no such——”

White pressed a veiny palm against Wands's chest, shutting him up. “I'm called for the job, you see. The power of the Lord rests in my hand.” He raised the old pepperbox aloft.

“At least take your damned rifle with you!” Wands pleaded.

White shook his head. “The face of the Sioux is red, Lieutenant, but his heart is black. Jehovah saw fit to arm little David with nothing more than a sling when he stepped forth to battle the mighty Goliath.”

“I can't allow a civilian——”

White shoved the lieutenant aside.

“My god, Reverend!” Wands lunged for White, “You're wounded.”

White stopped and turned, tapping the pepperbox against his left arm where the broken shaft of an arrow poked out of his bloody shirt-sleeve. “A mere flesh-wound, my son! I'll take one other…” His eyes scanned the soldiers nearby before Wands could protest further. “You, son. Gird thy loins! Verily I say, we shall slay the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass! Come, race on the heels of the Lord!”

“Halt—Fuller!” Terrel roared, dashing to the young soldier's side. Quietly, he asked, “You wanna do this?”

Fuller nodded eagerly. “Way I figure it, Sarge, they get me now … just save 'em the trouble of rubbing me out later.”

Terrel watched the boy-faced recruit tear from his grip and follow White, leaping over a wagon-tongue. He watched, mesmerized, as the pair stopped at the lip of the ravine, glanced over, then plunged from sight as if a huge maw had opened to swallow them both. Terrel turned to Wands.

“Better that boy than another, Lieutenant.”

Wands nodded, watching the sky for more arrows. “Can't really spare any man now, Sergeant.”

“You three!” Terrel shoved the soldiers away from the wagons. “Watch them red bastards out there. They mount up—you sing pretty for me! Off with you!”

From the ravine echoed two quick shots. Immediately a volley of shots rumbled over the lip of crumbling earth. Then a final, lone crack of a rifle. And a wild, demonic war-cry screeched to the skies.

The hair at the back of Donegan's neck rose. He had never heard anything so hideous. Like the scream of a banshee itself. Knowing, like the others, that the minister and the young recruit were done.
Each man alone to wonder whether t'is better to put things off … or stare death in the face
——

“Bejesus!” Donegan growled. “Lord Mither of Gawd! Lookit!”

From the upper end of the ravine, where it swept toward the western hills, raced a haggard band of warriors. Not one dared glance behind him as they sprinted toward the slope where the other warriors watched in astonishment.

“No-o-o!” one of the old soldiers wailed.

“They killed 'em both!” Frank Noone groaned, swallowing hard. Thinking of the two he had back in the ambulance. Thinking of what could have been for his little family. “We gotta be ready now. Watchit … those bastards'll come right outta——”

The ravine belched up a dark head. A madly grinning head. Fuller, the boy-faced infantryman. Over the crumbling, sage-covered lip poked the gray-headed eagle. Wild-eyed still, his face almost unrecognizable for the dark smudges of burnt powder. Arm in arm the two scampered to the wagons amid cheers and hearty back-slapping until White winced in pain when the celebration jostled his wounded arm.

The reverend shook the pepperbox before him. “Went off all at once.” His high-pitched voice quaked with conquered fear. “Can't understand it.”

Fuller nodded eagerly, his youthful smile bigger than ever. “Like to cut that big'un right in half—that pepperbox going off all to once.”

White shook his head in disbelief that he stood before them still whole. “Always worked proper before, Lieutenant. Yet,” he grinned weakly, “who am I to question the ways of the Lord Jehovah!”

“That one buck got tore up to pieces,” Fuller explained. “The rest bolted off like skeered cottontail. Flat skeedaddled!”

“Listening to their wild shrieking,” White smiled, “seems music fitter for the bounds of hell!”

“Sarge!”

Terrel wheeled.

“They're coming at us again!”

“Lieutenant.” White patted Wands on the shoulder. “Appears we've only angered them. I'm heartily sorry.”

Wands laughed. “Reverend, with the way that bunch was flinging arrows into us, we'd not lasted much longer. I'm proud to have you along, sir. What you did took courage. Foolish—but no question of guts.”

“My loins were gird with the power of the Lord!”

“C'mon, Reverend.” Wands took off at a trot. “Let's send a few more of these savages straight to hell!”

The warriors no longer raced wholesale toward the corral. Ridgeway Glover figured they must have decided the soldiers had been knocking too many down each charge to keep flinging themselves against the wagons time after time. And losing two of their number down in the ravine to the reverend's mighty gun that shot many times in the hand of the gray-headed one surely proved a bit disconcerting to the Sioux.

What had started off as easy pickings had grown into hot, dirty blood-letting. Work. And that was one four-letter word a warrior wanted no part of. Still, occasionally throughout the afternoon, a brave handful would rush the white men, swinging from their ponies to fire a bow or rifle. Whittling away at those white men still capable of holding a gun. By the time the sun sank midway toward the west, over half of the corral defenders lay wounded or dead.

Glover realized most of the wounded wouldn't see another sunrise without proper attention.

Funny thing about pain, though. As the shock of a wound fades, the pain grows. Like a strangling fist gripping 'round a man's throat.
Through the lengthening shadows Glover studied the wounded who had been pulled together at the center of the corral. He himself had talked Katie Wands and Abigail Noone into helping him nurse those who lay helpless and terrified—waiting for the next thunder-roll of pony hoofs or clatter of rifle-fire, or simply a whispered curse as another man fell quietly to the yellow dust. Each time the Sioux galloped out of range, Glover laid his rifle down and returned to help the women.

Abigail knelt beside Glover as he wrapped some clean muslin over a shoulder wound. “Don't you think you should get some rest like the others?”

He looked at the rifle-pits as the first fingers of sundown stretched out of the west. What men still held weapons lay exhausted, drained, the juices sucked out of them in dusty, blood-soaked holes burrowed into the ground. “I…” he tried to explain, “I'm afraid if I stop … I'll never get started again.” He watched her smile before moving away without a word.

“Besides, ma'am,” he whispered so that no one would hear, “I'm finally doing what I should've done back in the war. Too long I hid from the fighting, and those wounded in it. Not hiding any more. No man'll take that from me now.”

A raspy whisper interrupted his reverie. Glover crawled close to the old veteran. The soldier tugged him down to his cracked, bleeding lips, coughing sounds into the ear Glover held close.

“Wah—uhghh—wah…”

The soldier collapsed, his hand freeing Glover's shirt. Faint with the effort. Glover gazed down into the wrinkled face, for the first time noticing the long, thick scar worming from temple to jawbone. Saber, he figured. Nothing else would cut so clean nor lay a man open quite like that.
To survive a wound the way this old soldier has … only to march west all the way on foot … and die in the dust on this hill.

“Yes, my friend,” he answered the soldier's pleading eyes. “We'll have some water soon. Real soon.”

Glover found Wands looking in on Templeton. He waited until the lieutenant had stepped down from the back of the ambulance. “We need water,” Ridgeway explained. “Some of your men are in a bad way and won't last without it. I'll go alone if you can't spare a soldier,” he rushed on, not waiting for Wands to object. “Just get me some buckets and I'll climb down the ravine to the creek.”

Wands stared at Glover for a long moment, numb and dumbfounded. White and Marr came up before the lieutenant found the will to speak. “You're right about getting the water for the wounded. Except … I'll lead the detail.”

“But if something happens to——”

“Captain Marr, I'll lead the water detail myself. Is that understood?” He waited. No word was raised in objection. “Good. While Peters and Wallace fetch some buckets from the wagons, I want Terrel and the captain here to pull Templeton from the ambulance. Lay him in the shade over there with the others. That way we can keep an eye on him. You'll see he's cared for properly, Mr. Glover?”

“I will,” he answered. “But——”

Wands turned. “Get those buckets ready for me, men. Now, Reverend, I want you and Fuller on the point leading the way. Secure the ravine for us. We'll follow you down to the water. That set by you?”

“We're on our way,” White answered. “Private? Shall we march once more into the land of mine enemies?”

“After you, Reverend!”

“Don't exactly know how far down the ravine it is to water, Lieutenant,” White said. “But we'll help you fill buckets, and boots if necessary. Singing the Lord's praises as we do!”

Buckets appeared moments after White and Fuller had disappeared over the lip of the ravine. Wands waited with Peters and Wallace at the south side of the corral for a few minutes, intent on every sound below them. Only when he was certain his two scouts had not run into an ambush did the lieutenant lead his water detail down the slope.