Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (35 page)

“By god they'll stand and fight now, Judd!” Brown raised his shrill voice above the clamor, struggling with the skittish calico.

“Damn right, Fred! Here's our chance to get our licks in!” Fetterman cried.

Behind them along a thin rib of bare ridge, more than thirty feathered warriors blotted a span of skyline. Pouring down toward the bottom of the draw. Wands pointed, begging Fetterman to realize what he had ridden into.

“More keep coming!” Wands yelled. “Till we run out of ammunition and they overrun us!”

As swiftly as the thirty warriors raced off the rib, they were followed into the ravine by Bingham's squad. Down the face of the slope his cavalry charged toward the cheering troopers penned down with Fetterman and Brown. Straight through the center of the ravine the warriors scrambled. Bingham driving the Sioux before him in a wild charge through Fetterman's position.

“Lieutenant!” Fetterman hollered at Bingham as he raced up, then swept on by without slowing.

“BINGHAM!”
Brown leaped from cover to holler after the lieutenant.

Fetterman and Brown stood their ground at the bottom of the ravine, holding their rifles in the air, shouting, ordering Bingham's troops to stop.

“It's an ambush!” Brown shouted.

“You'll be killed, you follow him in there!” Wands joined the captains. Surrounding the trio, lathered horses snorted, their riders fighting for control.

“C'mon!” Bingham hollered to his men as he disappeared around the brow of the ravine, a handful of troopers hot on his tail. The rest fidgeted, confused, halted by Brown and Wands. Staring at the officers' carbines.

“First man moves to retreat…” Brown screamed maniacally, “just one of you rides anywhere—I'll shoot!”

The quiet grew eerie as the pounding of iron-shod hoofs disappeared with Bingham's handful of faithful cavalry. The whoops and screeches of warriors faded over the bare, windswept knobs. Beside Wands a young horse-soldier's teeth rattled like dice in a horn cup. Off in the distance he thought he heard a bugle. He couldn't be sure—this high, thin air might play tricks on a man. Might only be the wind …

Alex thought it almost quiet enough to hear the cold breeze nudging the brittle grasses in the thicket. Like the rattle of arrows seeking him out. The nightmare of the Crazy Woman returned to haunt him still.

“Mount!” Fetterman bawled.

“Mount up, men!” Brown echoed. “We're going after those warriors.”

“Let's raise some scalps!” Fetterman hollered, leading off. “Show the red devils what real soldiers are!”

As Alex climbed into the saddle, he finally realized his own teeth were chattering like a box of dominoes.

Chapter 27

“Carrington can rot in hell!” Grummond flung his words back at Donegan. “I won't go back. Won't retreat … he's a craven coward!”

The lieutenant spat his words into the cold wind as they scrambled down the scarred slope of Lodge Trail Ridge together.

“You'll be killed!” Donegan repeated. “What can one man do——”

“I'm not alone!” Grummond pointed.

Directly ahead appeared Lieutenant Bingham and a handful of troopers, chasing more than thirty feathered warriors over a raw finger of bare ridge. Into the badlands north of the Lodge Trail.

“Bingham's a fighter, by jove!” Grummond wore a wild smile across his mouth normally hidden beneath a bushy mustache. “Carrington can rot in his goddamned post—and leave the fighting to real soldiers!”

Donegan turned in his saddle, fretting what to do. The long, brittle slope of Lodge Trail had disappeared behind another knuckle of scarred landscape. Carrington and the rest were back there. Somewhere. A damn poor choice … but at least he knew where he could find other men. Straight ahead. Ride with Grummond. Join Bingham. Chase the Sioux. Shoot some warriors while hoping the blood lust cooled in these mad officers.

Get back to the post before the Sioux backtrailed and surrounded them.

By the time he and Grummond overtook Bingham, only one Indian remained in sight. On foot. Tantalizingly dashing from thicket to bramble. Luring the hot-blooded soldiers. Seductively.

“Can't you see it's a trap?” Seamus hollered into the wind.

Both Bingham and Grummond smiled mechanically at him.
As if they don't bloody care that they're leading these men to their deaths!

“It's a bleeming decoy!” Donegan shrieked.

Angry beyond words, the Irishman turned in his saddle, reining up for a heartbeat, haunch-sliding the big gray to a stop. And felt the hair along the back of his neck rise. Dozens of warriors sprang from the bushes on either side of the backtrail.

They're closing the bleeming trap on us!

“LIEUTENANT BINGHAM!”
he bellowed like a wounded bull.

It didn't matter. Bingham and Grummond already had their hands full at the moment. As soon as the warriors behind Donegan sprang from hiding, even more Sioux leaped from the brush up ahead. Eight soldiers and one angry civilian trapped.

Donegan raked his heels along the gray's flanks. He'd stand a better chance joining the soldiers than fighting off the screaming savages hot on his tail.

Too late for … Bingham flung his arms in the air, the side of his head a red blossom sprayed in the frosty air. He tumbled from his horse into the trampled snow.

“Sergeant!” Grummond hollered at the soldier with bright chevrons. “Form up the men!”

“Form up?” Bowers asked. He was infantry. “Damn well know how to fight on foot,” he yelled back, struggling with his unruly mount as the warriors closed in. “Gimme a chance to——”

Three warriors using a rawhide lariat yanked Bowers from his saddle. More loops whistled through the air as the Sioux worked at pulling the soldiers from their horses. Not risking a gun battle that might kill the valuable soldier mounts.

Donegan flung aside a lariat sailing toward him. Watched another loop tighten about a soldier ten feet ahead. In a spray of snow and icy slush, the trooper slapped the ground, rolling over, hollering for help as a warrior leaped over him, pinning him down, a gleaming tomahawk held high. The pitiful screech——

As the soldier's face disappeared beneath the Indian's bloody weapon, Seamus recognized those sensitive eyes of a musician. The terror-filled eyes of Frank Noone.

“By damn—follow me!” Grummond yelled.

“Where, sir?” Pvt. John Guthrie shouted.

“Out, goddammit!
OUT!
”

Donegan saw the lieutenant rip his saber from its scabbard. Flinging his empty pistol away, Grummond swung the saber from side to side like a scythe lopping wheat.

Seamus yanked the Henry to his shoulder. Swung the front blade about. And peered down the frosty, blued barrel at a white man dressed in buckskins and capote. Hollering orders at the warriors. Directing them.
Commanding the h'athens!

He blinked his eyes to be certain of what he saw, then watched the white leader turn his way, arrogantly staring for a long moment as Donegan eased back on the trigger. Looking down the barrel at that white man watching in disbelief as the mounted Irishman shot him in the belly.

Gawddamned renegade!

“Arggggghhh!”

He wheeled, seeing Grummond slashing on all sides as he urged his rigid horse back, back up the hill.

Seamus and the four soldiers still left in the saddle swung their rifles like clubs. Muzzle-loading Springfields emptied and useless now. Warriors breathing too close for Donegan to use his Henry.

Bleeming hand to hand
——

A rigid shock thundered through his shoulders as the Henry's stock cracked against a copper head or smashed a ribcage. At his side rang the familiar
crick
each time Grummond's saber cleaved skull or bone.

Their retreat splattered with sinew, brain, and blood. A savage, slashing dash back through the gaping maw of hell.

*   *   *

“If you'd supported Bingham—”

“Captain Fetterman!” Carrington roared. “I'll not be badgered nor lectured——”

“A cowardly act of a post commander,” he shouted, his voice crackling like a quirt on still air. “Abandoning your officers——”

“I didn't——”

“Withholding your support!”

From the moment Fetterman and Brown had led their troopers after the fleeing warriors and bumped instead into Carrington's squad, the young captain had been jabbing an accusing finger at the colonel. Brown sat silent, his lips a thin line of undisguised hatred. He could tell from the look on Carrington's face that the colonel well understood his post quartermaster had disobeyed orders to join Fetterman. Fred Brown seethed to join the argument. He dared not. Not, just yet.

“By god, you're a spineless bastard!” Fetterman exploded. “I vowed as an officer that within sixty days of my arrival that I'd regain the honor of this regiment … an honor you've done your bloody best to destroy!”

“That's quite enough!” Carrington snapped.

A distant clatter of iron-shod hoofs coupled with the frantic yells of men interrupted their heated debate. Over a bare knob raced a soldier jabbing his horse in the flank with a saber. On his trail charged another soldier whipping his mount into a lather. At the rear galloped a big gray horse, its rider wearing a plaid mackinaw coat.

“Lieutenant Grummond!” Carrington hollered as the trio skidded to a stop on trampled snow.

“George!” Brown cheered. “Your horse—bleeding——”

“Spurs weren't enough!” Grummond growled. “I stuck him to make the bastard move!”

“More than once from the looks of it, mister,” the colonel accused.

“If you'd supported your men, Colonel Carrington!” Grummond wheeled on his commanding officer, his eyes aflame. “You left it to me to support Lieutenant Bingham—while the rest of your command gets chopped to pieces.”

“Exactly what I told him!” Fetterman agreed, nodding at Grummond. “You've acted like either a prissy fool, Colonel, or the damned coward every man says you are.”

“You'll not bully-rag me, Captain!” Carrington barked.

“I'll grant you this Indian war's quickly become a hand-to-hand fight—requiring the utmost caution,” Fetterman allowed.

Carrington appraised the captain suspiciously. “Thank you, Captain Fetter——”

“But that caution's no excuse for abandoning your troops.”

“Gentleman,” Carrington soothed, trying to calm his own anger, “have you forgotten about Bingham?”

“Wasn't he with you, Grummond?” Brown inquired stridently.

“He was,” George stuttered. “Or, I was with him——”

“Lieutenant's dead.”

Their heads turned to look at the red-cheeked Irishman.

“Last I saw of him—the side of his head blowed off.” Donegan pointed.

Brown watched the Irishman's eyes settle on him.

“We slashed our way out,” Grummond explained.

“Mr. Donegan.” Carrington threw a hand up to silence any more conversation. “Take us.”

“Aye, Colonel.” He sawed the big gray around, pounding heels.

“Troops at a gallop!” Fetterman hollered. “Center—
HO!
”

Minutes later they found Bingham's body flung over an old stump. More than fifty Sioux arrows bristled from his naked corpse. The scalp ripped from his skull. His scrotum obscenely jammed into his mouth.

In a nearby clump of bullberry Donegan found Frank Noone, split wide open from crotch to chin. Most of his organs lay on either side of the body. It reminded him of a Christmas goose his mother would stuff. The neck and giblets and heart …

Not far away they located Sgt. G. R. Bowers lying in the trampled dust of a game-trail. His coat, shirt and trousers stripped from his body, along with his boots. Brown vaulted from the calico at a run. Kneeling beside the sergeant, he gently took Bowers's bloody head in his lap. The sergeant's eyelids fluttered against a glittering dance of frost crystals afloat in the bright December sun.

“Don't try to talk, Greg,” Brown said, wiping dirt from lips trembling to speak.

The side of the sergeant's head was missing where a warrior had split it with a tomahawk. Bowers's blood and tissue soaked into the captain's blue britches like a splatter of dark molasses as Brown cradled his Civil War comrade.

“I'll walk the last few steps beside you, Greg,” Brown whispered. “You've not far to go now. I'm at your shoulder—here till you no longer need a friend.”

*   *   *

“Bowers said he got three of the devils before … before they got him, Frances,” George Grummond whispered to his wife huddled at his side.

Even his remark could not take her eyes from the young widow dressed in black, her face hidden from time to time by the veil that the wind refused to honor. Her baby clutched to her breast, wrapped in a dark scrap of bunting. Perhaps no older than Frances herself.

The poor … poor Abigail …

A cold scut of wind knifed along the bare ground without remorse, rustling her black crinoline dress and petticoats. Frances wondered if she'd ever be warm again. What a lonely, forsaken place the colonel chose, she brooded to herself, and leaned against George.

For the post cemetery Carrington had selected this high rib of ground jutting off Pilot Hill, overlooking the valley where the Pineys began their march across the plains. Overhead the low-running clouds made Frances Grummond's little world look like the bottom of a slate-colored pool.

Nearby waited the hundreds come to watch three more boxes lowered into the frozen earth. Other red-eyed women and fellow soldiers.

Too many funerals, she thought, eyes wet behind her black veil. Then Frances recalled how three days ago she and Margaret Carrington had stood frozen in terror when the picket rushed up shouting that the wood train had been attacked and all killed. Remembering now that look on Eleanor Bisbee's face. Her husband rode escort that Thursday.