The old soldier glanced at Graham for guidance. The captain shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s got a right to send the wire, Sergeant,” Graham replied.
“All right,” the operator responded, a strange, tight look come over his face. “You want to send this to General Sheridan—I’ll see what I can do to reach him.”
“Try Fort Hays first,” Cody suggested, stepping back over to the guardhouse stove, where he poured himself another cup of coffee. He turned on the operator. “If not there, try Leavenworth. While I was visiting St. Louis a few weeks back, I heard Sheridan was called back East to attend Grant’s inauguration.”
The operator nodded. “You know the general pretty good, do you?”
Cody smiled, sipping at the hot coffee, enjoying every bit of it. “Sheridan hired me to carry dispatches between some posts when no other man jack of you would do it. And because I carried them dispatches, the general made me chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry. Can’t say I know him like a brother—but good enough he oughta know what’s happening to me out here.”
“I’ll see what goes—who’s up and listening.” The operator closed the door behind him as he left, a gust of wind blowing some orphan flakes of snow into the guardhouse.
Early that afternoon, Cody sat across the table from one of his guards, moving faded checker pieces back and forth across a scratched board when Seamus Donegan burst into the guardhouse.
“Cody—thought you ought to know: that rat-eyed telegraph operator never sent your message to Sheridan this morning.”
Bill turned, the gust of wind from the door hitting him full in the face like the news. “How you so sure of that?”
“Heard it meself.” Donegan plopped onto a stool. “He went right over to the colonel’s office with your telegram. Bankhead tore it up—didn’t want it sent.”
“You know that for certain?” asked Captain Graham, coming back from the stove and coffeepot.
Donegan nodded, then looked at the young scout. “You’re stirring trouble here that Bankhead don’t want, Bill Cody. He’ll do everything he can to keep a lid on you. If Sheridan finds out—”
“Damn him!” exploded the young scout, rising so quickly the table tipped, sending coffee cups, checkerboard and pieces flying.
“Wait, Bill!” Graham shouted, waving two guards toward the civilian tearing for the door.
Cody felt them clamp his arms and wheeled on Graham. “You got no right!”
“I’m trying to help you, Cody,” the soldier explained, warily eyeing the tall Irishman. “You go raring over there in the funk you are, there’ll be big trouble—more than I can help with.”
“He’s right, Bill,” the Irishman agreed, but he turned on the captain. “Still, he’s got every right to send that wire. Sheridan is the one who hired him.”
Graham hung his head, wagging it. “I know, I know.”
“Damn you, George Wallace Graham—you and your boys rode with me before … you know me, George,” Cody pleaded.
“That’s so, Captain,” said one of the guards.
“You’re making things hard.” Graham straightened, breathed deep. “All right. I’ll go to Bankhead myself—tell him you want to go to the telegraph office—under guard—to send your message.”
Donegan waited while Cody fumed. Finally the young scout nodded.
“All right. Go tell that pompous popinjay that I’m not gonna play soldier with him no more … that he better let me go or send my message to Sheridan. It’s one or the other, George.”
Graham nodded as he turned to go. “Understood.”
Thirty minutes later both civilians stood outside the guardhouse, watching the pair of horses being brought to them by soldiers. Striding across the parade were Bankhead and some of his staff. The colonel came to a stiff halt about the time the horses arrived.
“Well, Cody,” he blustered, “I’d just as soon put this whole thing to rest right here and now. Have you on your way.”
Cody did not reply at first. Instead he took the reins to his mount before turning to Bankhead. “Colonel—I figure you for the sort who just doesn’t like stirring muddy water.”
Bankhead hard-eyed them both as the two civilians went to saddle. “I want you to remember your promise to leave the quartermaster’s agent alone when you step foot in Wallace.”
“Not going that way—not now, Colonel,” Bill replied. “Heading for Lyon. Fifth Cavalry has work soon enough for us.”
“Remember you’re not welcome back on this military reservation, Cody,” Bankhead repeated, stepping back as the scout brought his horse around. He looked up at the Irishman. “Seems I recall you with Forsyth’s bunch.”
Donegan nodded. “Right, Colonel.”
“Maybe you should think twice about getting yourself into trouble—Indian or army—again, Irishman.”
Seamus smiled at Cody, then gazed down at Bankhead. “Colonel, way I see it—you’re the one ought to be skittish about things. See, the way you overstepped your legal bounds by arresting a civilian off this military reservation—holding him in a military guardhouse, not allowing Cody the rights of every civilian … why, I think General Sheridan would love to hear about what you’ve done to the chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry.”
Bankhead’s lips went into a white, straight line of seething hate beneath his flaring eyes. Finally, his lips trembled as the words came out. “See these two men away from the fort immediately!”
“Good day, Colonel,” replied Donegan.
“Best o’ luck to you,” Cody said, saluting as they turned toward the gate.
“Made ’im mad, didn’t I, Bill?” Seamus whispered.
“Yeah, damn you,” Cody answered. “Didn’t give me the chance to.”
* * *
“Looks like you made your trip here from Fort Dodge for nothing, boy!”
Jack O’Neill stared at the black hole of a mouth in the man’s face when the sutler plopped his head back to laugh with all the rest of the customers stuffed in the dingy, mud-roofed watering hole that smelled of urine and vomit and unwashed anuses claimed by soldier and buffalo hunter alike. He did not like the rancid smell coming from that brown-toothed mouth.
Jack stuffed his right hand under the flap of his wool coat at the same time his left snagged a handful of the sutler’s dirty shirt.
“Suppose you say it a little nicer,” O’Neill hissed, yanking the Fort Lyon sutler along to the corner of the crude bar so he could eye the rest of the dimly-lit place. Not wanting his back on a single one of the grumbling patrons shifting now away from their tables and the short bar.
“No nigger’s gonna tell me—”
He hoisted the little man up to his toes. Off to his right a table and chair clattered across the packed dirt floor. O’Neill turned, yanking his gun hand from the coat, filled with the freshly-oiled Walker Colt. The big hammer clicked back at the same instant the stranger’s hand moved for the pistol in his waistband. The white man’s hand froze, suspended over the pistol butt, trembling.
“I want no trouble,” O’Neill growled, as every set of eyes in the mud hovel widened, realizing he had spoken in Cheyenne. “I don’t want trouble.” He released the sutler. From the corner of his eye, he watched the man cautiously rub his throat.
“Like I said, suppose you speak a little nicer to me,” O’Neill whispered, husky and mean across the low-roofed room. “Why you say I made the trip here for nothing?”
The sutler had poured a quick shot and thrown it back. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes gone feral and fear-filled. “Man you’re looking for already gone.”
“Gone where?”
“I hear it was Denver City,” answered the sutler, his shaking hand still wrapped around the bottle of red whiskey.
“Denver City?” O’Neill asked, his mind working on it.
“Don’t you know where that is, nigger? Shit, no black-assed bastard like you gonna need directions where you’re going!”
O’Neill turned toward the new voice, the right hand and its pistol coming around before him. He had seen the flash of movement as the skinny white man spoke, mocking him. Something like a ray of sunlight bouncing off a prairie pond when the clouds finally break up after a spring thunderstorm.
Standing from his table … going for the big hog-leg pistol strapped against his left leg … the buffalo hunter’s muzzle-flash blinded Jack for an instant—just before he pulled the trigger on his Walker Colt. And felt the hot tearing of flesh along his right side, in the ribs, right under his gun arm.
The smoke snaked up from the muzzle of the big Walker as the skinny stranger with the pockmarked face stumbled backward against the wall, bounced against it twice, his face gone white. Then he slowly sank, leaving a sticky, shiny track on the peeled cottonwood logs as he collapsed to the dirt floor, legs akimbo.
“Any more of you want trouble?”
They all shook their heads, showing their hands, eyes darting from the dead man with the hole blown in his chest to the big black man with his unkempt kinky hair spilling from his hat like charcoal-colored fringe tickling his shoulders.
“Who do I look for?” O’Neill demanded, his voice filling the place.
“Scouts is all the same,” came the immediate answer from the sutler as he inched backward from the mulatto.
“Get over here.” The sutler obeyed. Jack grabbed him again. “What is the name of the scouts.”
“Name?”
He jerked the man off his feet again, jamming the Walker’s front sight under his chin. “The scouts with this group at the fort.”
“He means the unit,” whispered one of the patrons.
The sutler’s head bobbed. “Yeah—you mean the Fifth Cavalry.”
O’Neill smiled. “That’s right. The Fifth Cavalry. You told me the scouts went to Denver City.” He waited while the man nodded again. “So, you remember a tall white man riding with these scouts? Real tall. And if you get up close enough, he has gray eyes. Know him?”
He nodded, and swallowed, eager to please. “He’s been in before—when Carr had his men out at the fort … coming and going. Maybe the one you’re looking for … gone with that bunch just went to Denver City.”
O’Neill smiled wider, the teeth gleaming in the oily light. “You—come with me.”
“What for?” squeaked the sutler as O’Neill pushed him along toward the door, the gun barrel still under the man’s chin like a fence-post.
“I don’t want no back-shooting … unless these others figure I can’t twitch my finger and blow out the top of your head, Mister Barman.”
“D-Don’t nobody move!” squealed the sutler as he shuffled along, his toes barely touching the dirt floor, clamped close to the big black man who towered over him.
Jack kept his eyes moving as he inched backward to the door, felt it against his left shoulder. He opened it, pulled the sutler out with him.
“Free all them horses.”
He inched along the hitching rail as the sutler released the horses one at a time.
“Not that one. He’s mine. Hand me the reins to the last one—there. I’ll take him with me.”
Behind the smoky glass windowpane O’Neill made out at least four white faces watching him climb to the saddle, adjust his long coat, then shove the sutler backward with the sole of his moccasin before he whirled away. He could hear them yelling as he galloped down the single muddy, rutted street the place boasted.
Jack turned in the saddle, leveled the Walker at the crowd that milled over the sutler plopped in the mud puddle filled with rainwater and horse dung. He pulled the trigger only when puffs of greasy, gray smoke appeared from the group.
Whirling back around in the saddle as the crowd scattered, leaving one man sinking to his knees, O’Neill laid low along the horse’s neck, figuring no more bullets would come his way from that pack of yellow-spined white men.
If the mulatto was right, few men had the backbone of the tall, gray-eyed killer who had murdered Roman Nose at the island in the river.
O’Neill had just killed two. And that suddenly felt very, very good to him. He was warming up to the chase and the blood.
Chapter 12
Mid-April 1869
Overhead the ducks swept the sky, their great formations pointing north to the feeding grounds in the land of the Grandmother. They did not make as much noise as the great long-necks honking across the blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds left behind with the passing storm.
Tall Bull looked down at the puddle of rain collected in the depression. Like a plate mirror, the unruffled surface of the tiny pond reflected the unhurried passing of the white fleece above. The wrens and sparrows were busy as well. Gathering food for their young. Repairing their nests after the onslaught of the thunderstorm. Industrious animals, these with wings. So perpetually in motion.
Every bit like the buffalo his people followed season after season across the plains. And like the buffalo, the Cheyenne ponies were growing sleek and fat once more on the new grass poking its head through the hardened winter crust of the great prairie that was the home of Tatonka Haska. The Tall Bull had taken control of this collection of wild outlaws and renegades and outcasts from other bands. He became their leader when the chiefs abandoned the fight against the half-a-hundred white men who had huddled together on the tiny island in the middle of the dry riverbed long before the snows of last winter.
Around Tall Bull the young and the daring had rallied. Perhaps because he would not give up the fight. More so because Tall Bull was a war leader who took the war right to the white man’s doorstep. While other chiefs were content to merely defend themselves, Tall Bull led those who still boiled in gall whenever they remembered the Little Dried River. Black Kettle was an old woman who begged peace from the white man. But again last winter the soldiers had attacked the old chief’s camp.
On the Washita.
It would not happen to his people, Tall Bull swore.
He looked south, toward the land of his birth. Where he learned to fire a bow and ride a pony. Where season after season he had hung himself from the sun-prayer pole to give thanks.
It was no longer the land he could call home. The white man had come in with his black wagons that belched oily smoke and ran on a iron trail. Behind them came more white men who pulled huge knives behind mules and oxen, cutting a swath into the breast of the earth. Their kind drove the game away and polluted the streams they camped beside.
At least his people had been safe up here close to the Niobrara River for the winter. But now Tall Bull yearned for the southland once more. If the Cheyenne could not stop the white man in the south, there would be no rest for his people in the north. For, one day, the white man would come north, wanting that land too.
Red Cloud had waged a relentless war on the soldiers and the civilians traveling the Prayer Road north through his coveted hunting ground. In doing so, Red Cloud had defeated the white man. Sent the soldiers scurrying from his land.
Tall Bull rose from the edge of the rain puddle, for the first time sensing the insistent breeze along his cheek, the same breeze ruffling the smooth surface of the blue sky-water.
“It is time,” said one of the four who stopped nearby.
He nodded. “The others are gathered?”
“They wait for you.”
Tall Bull smiled at the four, his lieutenants ever since the battle with the white men on the river. Without another word he led them into the village, to his lodge.
Around the fire his warriors had gathered, eaten and smoked before they began talk of the coming season, and with its approach, the raids they knew Tall Bull would lead.
“I have grown weary of chasing the white man’s wagons up and down his roads. Stealing his horses and his mules. Killing and scalping the white man and his soldiers,” Tall Bull explained when the group asked what plans the chief had for the short-grass time. “Still, the white man comes. There is no end to his numbers. We kill and steal—and there are
always more.”
“What is this talk?” demanded Feathered Bear. “You sound like an old woman ready to give up our fight.”
Tall Bull turned on him. “I am not. It would be a very stupid man who thinks that I would deny my people this fight.”
“Tatonka Haska is no old woman,” agreed Bullet Proof, himself wounded in the battle against the half-a-hundred white men on the river island. “There are plenty enough here who remember how Tall Bull stood proud when Two Crows and Turkey Legs ran from the white men.”
The chief held up his hand to silence the clamor. “If there are those among you who believe I should not lead our warriors into battle this season—let him speak it clearly … now.”
Most of the eyes in the smoky lodge turned toward Feathered Bear. Many moments passed until the warrior dropped his gaze and spoke.
“Tall Bull will lead us in war against the white man.”
“Hau! Hau!” roared the warriors with approval.
“All of us, Feathered Bear?” asked the chief.
“Yes—every warrior.”
He nodded. Once more he had them in his hand. Now to excite them, make their blood hot for the hunt and the kill. To make their hearts pound and their temples throb with the promise of the chase.
“This summer we will not send out scouts to hunt for small bands of soldiers. Nor will we look for the white man’s white-topped wagons to attack. Instead—we will concentrate all our warriors on one objective.”
“If we do not attack the soldiers and the white men who travel along the trails—who are we to attack?” asked Pile of Bones, a young and eager warrior.
“We kill soldiers … and still more come,” Tall Bull explained, stroking the otter-skin pipe-bag he held on his lap. “We kill the white wagon men … and still more of them come the next time.”
A veteran warrior spoke, “We steal horses and coffee and sugar. Our women like the cloth we bring them, and the kettles too.”
Tall Bull looked at Pretty Bear for a moment before answering. “All these things are good—but in taking them we still do not have our land back. We have not driven the white man from our country.”
Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 Page 12
