The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller (11 page)

“Is it too soon to say I told you so?” Gray Dog asked in almost perfect, unbroken English as he joined the two men. The coyote-skin cap he wore bobbed up and down as he maneuvered his mount and pack mule in beside Thomas as the sergeant major gave the Comanche a dirty look.

“Would it stop you if I said it would be?” Thomas said as he pulled the map from his shirt.

“Yes it would, especially since I already said what was meant to be said,” Gray Dog said with a smirk.

“Goddamn Indian speaks better English than me,” the sergeant major muttered under his breath. “And in words I never understand.”

Thomas opened the map to survey rugged terrain ahead. “You’ll have to excuse Sergeant Major Dugan. He’s just thrilled at the prospect of riding farther north.”

“And why don’t you take that damn dog off your head? It’s starting to get to me.”

Thomas looked up from the map to eye the filthy bowler hat that Dugan wore. The small Irishman was always mad at the world, and Gray Dog was a frequent target for his frustrations. He had also known the boy from his days with Thomas while riding with the fifth cavalry in Texas.

“And he’s a jealous sort of Irishman because you wear better headgear than he. You get a coyote, he gets a dirty and very much dead skunk.”

Sergeant Major Giles Dugan quickly removed the stinky bowler and looked it over. He was happy to be wearing a hat of his choosing over the blue cap of a cavalryman. He sniffed, recoiled, and then angrily placed the hat back on his head. He snorted and cast Gray Dog another withering look. He was about to comment when a shot rang out across the prairie. It was quickly followed by another, and then another.

“What the bloody hell?” Dugan pulled on the reins of his horse. Thomas and Gray Dog had already stopped and were listening intently.

“Northeast,” Gray Dog said as he spied the sloping land ahead, which afforded no view of the area in front of them. More and more gunfire erupted, and to Thomas gunfire meant white men. These were the first sounds of gunfire he had heard since the battle of Antietam in 1862.

“I believe that is the sound of Spencers, Colonel boyo,” Dugan said as he turned in the saddle to face the colonel. “Lord knows we heard enough to know.”

Without a word Thomas reached over and relieved Gray Dog of the mule’s reins and then nodded the Comanche forward. The Indian without command to his small horse shot away as Thomas dismounted and tied off his horse and the pack mule on a scrub brush. He quickly removed his Henry repeating rifle from its scabbard. Dugan, seeing this, did likewise.

“Come out here in the godforsaken wasteland only to walk head-on into a firefight. Who in the world wants to shoot each other in this heat?” he mumbled as he pulled an older-model Spencer carbine from his saddle. He quickly followed Thomas as he made his way forward in the wake of Gray Dog, who had silently gone ahead to spy the happenings in the valley.

The two men had only gone a hundred yards when Gray Dog returned and brought his Appaloosa to a brutal stop as he hopped from the old cavalry blanket covering the horse’s back. He immediately caught the extra-heavy Spencer carbine Thomas tossed to him.

“What do you have?” Thomas asked as he kept moving forward.

“Soldiers. They are attacking a family of Sioux.”

“A family, you say?” Dugan asked as he hustled to keep up with the two younger men.

Gray Dog didn’t respond but only led the way to the ridge ahead. He ducked low and then crawled to the edge. Thomas and then Dugan joined him as the gunfire ceased below. The colonel quickly assessed the scene. Below at about two hundred yards, ten U.S. cavalrymen had dismounted and were checking the bodies of what looked like eight Sioux Indians. Thomas quickly noted the small children and women lying among the dead. He gritted his teeth as he heard a few of the men laughing at the sport of killing the family.

“Stupid sons of bitches! What did they have to go and do that for?” Dugan asked as he saw that at least the family had gotten off a few defensive shots before dying at the hands of the troopers from Fort Dodge. At least three of the ten men had taken arrows and were being attended to by their comrades.

“Look,” Gray Dog said, pointing to the three circled buffalo-hide tepees and the meat still roasting on a spit over the undisturbed fire. “The family of Sioux had stopped for a meal by the small, muddy creek. They were doing nothing but eating a meal, John Henry.”

Thomas remained silent as he scanned the horrid scene below. He was about to comment when a scream sounded in the preternatural silence that always falls after a gun battle. He looked to the left and saw a large man with the three stripes of a sergeant pulling a Sioux woman by the hair and laughing. Thomas became furious as he knew what was going to befall the young woman next.

“Sergeant Major, disable that trooper … now!”

“T’would be a pleasure, Colonel Darlin’.”

Dugan aimed his Spencer. The act of shooting was natural for the man from Belfast, the best shot Thomas had ever seen. He had learned his trade while a guard for the Knights of the Vatican before joining the U.S. Army as a lad of twenty.

The man was still laughing as the bullet hit before the sound of the blast could echo down to the other men. The large round caught the sergeant just left of the groin. The man looked shocked and immediately released the woman’s hair. He screamed after his hand went to the wounded area of his leg and he fell to his knees. The other troopers looked stunned until they realized they were under attack. They drew their weapons, aiming in all directions around the small Indian encampment. Thomas spied the man in command as he ordered several of his men to relocate their positions. As the young officer reached for his own pistol in its holster, Dugan’s second shot exploded a geyser of sand and dirt only inches from his feet.

“Hold your fire!” Thomas yelled, dropping to his knees in case the troopers below became brave enough to fire on an armed and wary attacker, unlike the small group of familial Indians they had just slaughtered.

The men in the valley looked around in fear as they swung Spencer carbines in all directions.

“Stupid bastards. If we leave ’em alone, they’ll just shoot each other. Look, they don’t know what to do with someone shooting back at ’em.”

Thomas finally stood and presented his filthy form to the men below. Gray Dog followed suit and then Dugan, with the still-smoking carbine aimed below.

“Who are you and why are you interfering with United States Army business?” the young officer called out. Thomas noticed that the man had holstered his revolver.

“It doesn’t matter who we are, you stupid son of a whore!” Dugan yelled out while still aiming his weapon.

“Sergeant Major,” Thomas said in rebuke to Dugan.

“This is the one time I agree with Hair Face,” Gray Dog said. “I think we should shoot them all down like they did that Sioux family.”

Thomas gave withering looks to both Gray Dog and Dugan.

“Colonel Thomas, is that you?”

John Henry Thomas started down the slope, disregarding the frightened troopers below, who were shaking and still aiming their weapons at the three men approaching. As the colonel entered the killing field he felt his stomach roil in his gut. Two of the male Sioux had already been scalped, the hair and skin discarded by the soldiers. Three small children lay within an arm’s reach of the mother who fallen to protect them. Thomas glanced at Dugan and nodded his head in the direction of the woman who had been about to be scalped, which to Thomas would have almost been preferable to being manhandled by the pig of a man moaning and writhing on the ground in front of him, cursing that he needed help.

“Colonel Thomas, I’m Lieutenant Biddle, C Company, Fort Dodge. We were sent to find you, sir.”

Thomas tossed his Henry rifle to Gray Dog, who was staring at the man on the ground with hatred in his eyes, and then he confronted the young, fresh-looking lieutenant who stood at least seven inches shorter than the colonel.

“But you decide to stop off for some sport instead,” John Henry said as he took the man by the tunic collar and shook him. The colonel had been ashamed of army blue since the battle of Bull Run in 1861. He caught himself before his famous temper became apparent.

“Colonel,” the boy stammered as Thomas released his uniform collar. “We thought they were a band of hostiles that raided into Kansas last week. We thought—”

“Enough, Lieutenant.”

“She’s dead, Colonel, shot before this animal started dragging her away,” Dugan said, rising from the body of the young woman.

“May I attend to my wounded man, sir?” Biddle asked, afraid to look the large man in the eyes. The wounded sergeant had stopped screaming and was mumbling as the blood flowed heavily from his wound. Soon he stopped moving completely and the lips stiffened into a tight line of death.

“That man fell to enemy fire from the hostiles, and that is what your report will read, Mister, is that clear? If it isn’t, consider yourself under arrest for the illegal killing of an aboriginal family.”

The lieutenant swallowed hard against the bile rising in his belly. Thomas glared at the new officer until he could bring his boiling blood back down to normal. He was sorely tempted to give the boy a hard whack across the face, but past experience—and the reason for him being out west in the first place—stayed his gauntleted hand.

“Tend to your other wounded and get these bodies buried.”

“No, John Henry, leave them,” said Gray Dog as he continued to check for any form of life from the eight Sioux. “They will be found and the death rites performed by their own. More Sioux will come.” Gray Dog looked up after checking for a pulse from a small boy of only six or seven. “More will come.”

Thomas nodded but didn’t like leaving this innocent family for the wolves. He finally turned to the lieutenant with a scowl. “Now, what in the hell are you doing this far away from Dodge?” he asked as he took a menacing step toward the young man who was reaching into his tunic as quickly as he could. He pulled out a telegram and passed it to Thomas, who was finally joined by Sergeant Major Dugan. The officer appraised the bearded sergeant and his filthy bowler hat and wondered just what sort of soldiers these men were who traveled with a savage and were as arrogant as any two men he had ever seen before.

“Major Cummings received this telegram from Washington City.”

John Henry opened the folded paper and read. Dugan, ever curious, held his patience while Thomas finished reading.

“Well, boyo, has the brass in Washington found a new and better way to have us killed than being stuck out here in Indian territory”—he looked over at the lieutenant—“where it seems young fools have the right to shoot and kill whoever they want?”

“Who are you?” Biddle asked Dugan.

“He’s the second name mentioned in this telegram, and he is a sergeant major, in every way your superior, is that also clear, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir!”

Dugan raised a brow and snickered at the boy’s naiveté. “Well, since it mentions your old sergeant major, what in the bloody hell does it say?”

Thomas turned and walked a few steps away and then addressed Gray Dog, who was looking at him, afraid that he would again lose his friend to the war in the east. John Henry winked at him.

“Feel like traveling?” he asked the young Comanche. He turned back to Dugan. “We’ve been recalled to Washington.”

“Now, Colonel Darlin’, don’t tell me we’re going to drag dog-head boy with us?”

“I’m not leaving him again. He comes with us and the Army can go straight to hell if they don’t like it.”

“Well, we’re probably being recalled just to be put in front of a firing squad anyway.” Dugan smiled at Gray Dog. “Yeah, maybe old dog-head should come along.”

Gray Dog only watched the two men, who always seemed to be at odds. He knew Dugan was close to the colonel, almost as close as himself, but the man was rougher than a corncob and he took a lot of getting used to.

“I guess old George B. McClellan finally got his way and reached out and grabbed us.”

Thomas quickly and briefly smiled for the first time.

“Oh, no, McClellan isn’t in command any longer. We received word that General Grant turned the Rebs back in Tennessee and George Meade whooped Lee in Pennsylvania … somewhere called Gettysburg.”

“Then who in the hell recalled us?” Dugan asked, perplexed, as he was expecting to be either court-martialed or designated to the west for the rest of his career. Thomas handed Dugan the telegram.

The sergeant major opened it, observing the colonel’s smile. He lowered his eyes and read the words slowly. He wasn’t as accomplished as Gray Dog at reading, but he managed. It was the one name at the bottom of the telegram that gave him chills. He folded the telegram and then walked away a few paces, still seeing that name—Stanton.

“The secretary of war?”

“Yes, but he would never have sent that without authorization,” Thomas said as he accepted the telegram back from Dugan.

“Who, then, Colonel?”

“I imagine the order came from the president.”

“President? You mean President Lincoln?” Dugan said as the color drained from his face.

“Yes, at least he was president before our little trip to the western climes.”

The young lieutenant just stared at the filthy men before him. Just who in the hell were these two that they received personal messages from not only Secretary of War Stanton, but also from Abraham Lincoln?

*   *   *

Two hours later Gray Dog, Sergeant Major Dugan, and Colonel John Henry Thomas were riding east toward Fort Dodge and closer to the madness that had overtaken the nation.

They assumed they were heading back to war against their brothers in the south.

4

FEDERAL CONFEDERATE PRISONER OF WAR CAMP, FORT LAFAYETTE, NEW YORK

AUGUST 1864

The fort was built on a small rock island lying in the Narrows between the lower end of Staten Island and Long Island, opposite Fort Hamilton. Hamilton was designed and built by Robert E. Lee, then a major in the United States Army, and overlooked the older post that housed the rebellious men of the Confederacy. The crowded conditions would have shocked most northerners, who complained so bitterly about the treatment of Union soldiers in camps such as Andersonville. If the truth had been known, Fort Lafayette was almost as bad. There was no funding to keep prisoners fed and clothed with the massive slaughter still continuing in the south. Lafayette held mostly commissioned and noncommissioned officers the Union would never exchange back to the South for Union officers. The men here were considered much too valuable to the Confederate war effort and would remain interned for the duration.