The German grinned even wider. “Let’s get these Pawnees back to North—so I can tell Carr we’ve got Cheyenne wolves to track now.”
Chapter 22
July 8–9, 1869
“Carr just kept staring at them footprints, like something strong came over him,” Cody said to Donegan as he accepted a hot tin of coffee from the Irishman.
For two days after the Pawnees’ running skirmish with the Cheyenne, Major Eugene Carr had kept his column marching northwest along the Republican River. Then, during yesterday’s march, the scouts first showed the telltale footprints to Major Frank North. Not until running across a second camp with another group of footprints did North finally show them to Carr.
“The general—he finally go back to his bivouac and get something in his belly?” asked Donegan.
Cody nodded. “Only after it was too damned dark to while he walked back and forth over them prints.”
“Gives me a cold feeling too,” Seamus agreed. “Something I can’t name, or put my finger on.”
“Them prints?”
“Last two big camps we come on—this village we’re trailing.” He sipped his coffee awhile, refusing to gaze up into the inky sky overhead. It would only serve to darken his mood.
Cody finally spoke first as he stretched his feet out to the fire. “Did raise the hair on the back of my neck first time I saw them prints made by a woman’s shoe.”
“Two sets of ’em,” Seamus grumbled. “Narrow … short little feet jumbled in among all them moccasin tracks.”
Cody could see some pain glistening in the Irishman’s dark eyes before he spoke. “Major’s not the only one worried ’bout them women. Hell, for a time there this evening, I was thinking hard on Lulu—thanking God it weren’t her with them bastards.”
Seamus looked at Cody, his eyes growing moist. “It’s the Alderdice woman, I know it. Tom’s wife. He fought … with me, with Forsyth—”
Cody heard the sound snag in the tall man’s throat. “I’ll wager the other tracks belong to Mrs. Weichel—German woman.”
Donegan set his coffee cup aside and pulled the plug from his vest pocket. From it he cut a corner with the pocket knife he kept in another vest pocket.
“I like being in camp this time of night, Seamus. Getting them soldiers bedded down and all. Prairie gets pretty quiet. Sometimes so quiet you can hear a horse fart on some bad grass he’s et, maybe even hear the stars whir overhead.”
“Things so damned quiet—sometimes forces a man to think on things he’d rather not,” Seamus commented after a pause.
Cody could tell Donegan was not fully there with him.
“A woman?”
“What troubles a man more than anything else in his life, I ask you?” Donegan said quietly. “More than matters of life and death—it’s matters of the heart, even more what a woman does to a man’s heart, that trouble him most.”
“Carr won’t let us stop now that he’s got a trail to follow.”
“Forsyth was the same way—once he got the scent in his nostrils.”
Cody nodded. “I think I understand how the general feels about them women dragged along with that band of Cheyenne outlaws. He asked me—and I told him. I said we don’t run ’em down and run ’em down soon, that bunch we’re tracking is going to fly from our reach.”
“And we’ll never get a chance at ’em again, will we?”
“They’ve turned north now. Aiming right for the Laramie Plains. From there it’s a quick run to the Black Hills, sacred land of the Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne. We’ll never find those women then. Be the chance of breathsmoke on a whirlwind that we—”
They both rose together at the hammer of hoofbeats. Staccato from the hills rising just past the Pawnee camp. The pair was moving when the first shrill war whoop echoed eerie and disembodied from the black of night.
Cody looked at the man running through the dark with him, certain that shrill, ghostly cry gave the Irishman willies too. With the cavalry sleeping a mile away, at that moment it seemed they were the only men awake in camp, heading for the dull white of the low tents clustered where the Pawnee battalion had bivouacked. Only they—and the Cheyenne, that is—making a second unpredictable night raid on the forces marching under Major Eugene A. Carr.
The Pawnee camp erupted with life. Orange muzzle-flashes flaring the night with blinding light and the deafening racket of pistol fire. Three languages caught in a tangled web of confusion, all smothering one another in a hodgepodge of orders and war-cries and profanity.
Gunfire and grunts, war whoops and startled cries from half-sleeping men all followed the disappearing hoofbeats.
Frank North appeared out of the black beside Mad Bear, the trusted sergeant of his Pawnee battalion. At first sight of the two white scouts, Mad Bear turned back into the dark.
“What’s wrong with him?” Cody asked.
North looked after Mad Bear, shaking his head. “I figure as soon as he found out it was you two out here, he hightailed it back to grab his horse.”
“Chasing our night callers?” Donegan inquired.
“Yeah. How many you figure, Cody?”
“Six, maybe seven.” Cody asked. “Anyone hit?”
“My tent, for the most part. They came barreling right by, firing into it. Running east to west. Fired into Lute’s tent too. Then out of camp, trying to chivvy the horses.”
“Get any?”
“Not a damned one for all their trouble,” North replied. “All of ’em tied and hobbled as I’ve ordered.”
“Damn, but this bothers me,” Luther North grumbled, appearing out of the black.
“The night raid?” Cody asked. “Injuns not supposed to attack at night.”
“These do—twice now,” Luther replied. “It’s not only that…” He turned to his older brother. “Mad Bear’s gone out after ’em. Says one Pawnee is worth a half-dozen Cheyenne any day.”
As he said it a trio of shots boomed from the west side of camp. The four men sprinted to the sound of the gunfire, reaching a group of more than ten Pawnee scouts walking onto the prairie in the starlight. As the North brothers came up, several began chattering excitedly.
“Says Mad Bear ran after one of the Cheyenne who came through camp,” explained Frank North.
“One of the enemy’s ponies was hit—spilling a warrior. Mad Bear was on his way to kill the Dog Soldier when the new shooting started,” continued Luther North.
“Why, did the Pawnees see some more horsemen?” Donegan asked.
Frank North shook his head. “No, says they just saw some movement out here in the dark.”
After walking another fifty yards, following one of the scouts, the lone Pawnee called out ahead of them. As Cody and the rest came up, they found the tracker kneeling over a body lying among the trampled grass.
“We get one?” Luther North asked.
“Damn!” muttered the older brother as the body was rolled over.
All could see the dull brass buttons of the army blouse the dead man was wearing, the bright reflection of the blood spreading damp across his chest evident beneath the starshine.
“Shot in the back,” Frank translated as the rest of the Pawnee dropped to their knees surrounding their fallen kinsman, wailing, crying out in grief.
“He wasn’t killed by the Cheyenne?” Cody asked.
“They saw Mad Bear out here—chasing the damned Cheyenne—and opened fire on him—thinking he was one of the bastards rode through camp.”
Seamus made the sign of the cross, a rare thing for him to do.
At that moment in the dark it struck Cody as a superstitious thing to do as well—every bit as superstitious as the way the plains Indian made his medicine over things unexplained. It gave Cody shivers standing here over the dead Pawnee, listening to the death-songs of the others.
“We’re going to find them soon, boys,” Frank North said quietly, turning back to camp with the other white men.
“We better,” Donegan said quietl
y. “I feel bad blood come a’rise more and more every day. It’s time we found us something more than old footprints and cold firepits.”
* * *
That next morning Major Carr ordered a day’s layover in camp while various parties of the Pawnee scouted the area for more sign of the Cheyenne.
“Wish we was laying to in camp, Bill,” Seamus said as he refilled the loading tube on the Henry repeater.
“Wish I was going along with you, Irishman.”
“Better I than you to go with Lute North’s group, young man.” Seamus winked and slipped the repeater into its boot before climbing into the saddle.
“He don’t like me much, does he?” Cody asked, leading his big buckskin off.
“Neither do I—come to think of it!” Donegan said, then laughed easily as Cody waved him farewell, slapping the mare’s rump.
Seamus joined Captain Luther North and Carr’s Lieutenant Billy Harvey along with five Pawnee trackers in a small scouting party that would scour the countryside south and west of Frenchman’s Fork of the Republican. After a day-long ride covering the rolling, grass-covered sandhills of the western plains, the eight horsemen had made a wide circuit back to strike the river about twenty-five miles above the camp of the Fifth Cavalry.
North called a halt.
“Your butts as sore as mine, we could do with a night out of the saddle. Ride back in the morning.”
“Splendid idea, Captain,” Seamus said cheerfully.
North turned to the cavalry lieutenant. “Billy—I imagine it’d be a good idea for us to ride up that hill yonder and take a look around before we go into camp.”
The sun was settling amid a blazing show of red-orange as the eight worked up the slope. Near the top North signaled another halt and ordered one of the Pawnee to crawl on up to the crest, where he could have a look before the rest broke the skyline.
As the Pawnee scout made the top on all fours, he suddenly dropped to his belly. In a matter of moments he signaled the rest to dismount and join him. As the others reached the crest on foot, the sun eased beyond the western mountains, from here no more than a ragged, worn hemline of horizon.
What greeted the Irishman’s eyes made the breath seize in his chest.
Less than a mile west of that hilltop Frenchman’s Fork swept gently to the north. Between that bend and the bottom of the hill where the scouts lay in hiding was strung a long, wide coulee that in the spring rushed its rain-swollen runoff into the river.
But for now, moving without hurry down among the shady willow and alder and rustling cottonwood, was what seemed like the whole Cheyenne nation on the move: mounted warriors and old men on foot, children and dogs and travois drags, while on the flanks throbbed the massive pony herd.
“You figure that’s Tall Bull’s bunch?” asked Lieutenant Harvey.
Luther North nodded. “None other. For some time we’ve figured it was his bunch been making for trouble after Roman Nose was turned good Indian at Beecher Island.”
Seamus found North gazing at him. “Never thought I’d see that many Indians again in me life, boys.”
North smiled in that half-sarcastic way of his. “Second time you’ve laid eyes on this bunch of outlaws and misfits.”
“I lived to tell of the first,” Seamus sighed.
“Let’s pray the Irishman lives to tell his grandchildren of the second,” North whispered, turning from the hilltop and signaling his Pawnee to follow him.
Seamus hung back with the soldier, watching the vanguard of the Cheyenne camp disappear among the brush and timber down near the mouth of the widening draw that met the riverbank. From where he sat, the caravan marched no more than two hundred yards from the hilltop. Many of the ponies labored under loads of fresh buffalo meat shot that day.
“They look about as ragged as our outfit,” Harvey whispered.
“Same heat, same territory to cross—same goddamned chase,” Donegan replied. “Times I feel like I’ve swallowed so much dust on this march with Carr that I could apply for territorial status meself.”
Harvey nodded. “We’re damned sure out of Nebraska by now, Irishman.”
“Colorado?”
The officer nodded again. “Let’s skeedaddle. I’m feared any minute some of those bucks gonna come riding up here to take a look around the countryside.”
It struck Donegan as a more than reasonable suggestion. “Let’s make ourselves small, Lieutenant.”
They rejoined North and the Pawnee scouts at the bottom of the slope with the horses.
“What would we have done if they had seen us, Billy?” asked Luther North.
The older soldier thought a moment, then grinned and shrugged. “I suppose I would have said King’s-X.”
“A lot of good it would have done us,” North replied. “We can’t camp here tonight—with that big village going into camp above us.”
“We have no other choice but to clear out of here quietly,” Harvey suggested. “Get downriver to the cavalry to report.”
North brooded on it a moment, studying the faces of the five Pawnee. “I suppose you’re right—we should report to the general.”
“As much as your boys want to fight those Cheyenne,” Seamus said.
The young captain regarded Donegan haughtily before replying. “I don’t figure these boys want to tangle with that many warriors any more than we do.”
“Like snuffing a candle in the wind, Captain,” Seamus replied, for some unexplained reason feeling like he had something new upon which to hang his dislike for Luther North. The man seemed without any humor, and took offense at the smallest slight.
“You can come—or you can stay to watch the show by yourself,” North said harshly before turning away.
Donegan watched North move to his horse and lead the others off before he mounted. He let the flush of anger run off his shoulders. In a way he felt sorry for this Lute North, hungry as he was to have some glory come the way of his brother and the Pawnee battalion, while Major Carr still acted partial to Bill Cody.
No wonder Luther North carried the chip on his shoulder the size of a fence-rail. Soon enough all that poison the man kept festering inside would come boiling to the surface.
It didn’t really matter—before long the whole outfit would have something more to worry about than the ruffled feelings of a sour-mash civilian.
Now there was time to think of nothing more than Cheyenne Dog Soldiers—and those women’s footprints in the sand.
Chapter 23
July 10, 1869
“You gonna get my goddamned wagon loaded or ain’t you?” hissed the fat mule-whacker with the rotten teeth and whiskey-stale breath.
Jack O’Neill ground his teeth, wishing it were another place, another time—and he could look down at the terror in the white man’s eyes as he plunged the tomahawk into his brain.
Instead, the mulatto forced down the bile and turned back to the grain stacked in sacks by hundred-weight. The bed of the huge freighter creaked under the load as O’Neill helped the teamster chain up the rear gate.
“’Bout time, goddammit,” the man muttered, glaring at O’Neill with impunity.
Jack knew the man realized he was safe saying anything to him here in broad daylight on the streets of Denver City. The mulatto and Indian were the outcast minorities here. A man could speak what trash he dared—and a nigger, no matter a freed nigger, kept his mouth shut, he knew what was good for him.
“I ain’t never gonna make Cripple Creek the way you dawdling on me, nigger.”
Jack stepped back out of the fleshy man’s way, marveling at the size of the pores in the whiskey-swollen nose, all scored with tiny burst veins that reminded Jack of the tracks the hens made down in the chicken yard after a summer thunderstorm back to home.
For a moment he yearned for Mama and home, then hefted the remembrance away like handling those hundred-weight sacks of feed. O’Neill watched the teamster settle with a groan from the plank seat.
“Better pi
ck up the pace, boy!”
O’Neill turned to find the thin, bald, rail of a man with his sheaf of papers emerging from the cool shadows of the brick warehouse. He wore that look of practiced tolerance for the mulatto.
“Got three more of them wagons to load for Cripple Creek before noon. Now get your black ass moving, you want to have time for lunch.”
Four smaller black men and one Chinaman worked in relay to bring the feed sacks out of the cool darkness of the warehouse. Only Jack O’Neill stood beneath in the midsummer sun, naked to the waist, his skin the color of coffee softened with sweet milk—just the way his daddy used to take it right up to that morning he marched off to the war. Down on the dock the five dropped their sacks before disappearing into the darkness. Up he dragged a bag to his shoulder, slowly kneeling to wrench a second sack beneath his free arm. That was the only way he had figured to keep up with the five of them.
They was only mindful of their jobs and families. He couldn’t blame ’em. They done what the white men told ’em.
So many white men. Never had he seen so many in one place and at one time until coming here to Denver City. It had been good money at first when he hired on here down near Cherry Creek at Addison’s Grain & Feed. Fair money after that first day’s sore muscles. And it was only enough after the first week—he had himself a bed in a room with seven others, and two squares each day, along with some dried bread and meat broth for lunch to see him through to evening. And if he was lucky and watched his money the way he did when he first came to the plains, Jack had some left over by the end of the month to go calling on one of the powdered chippies at one of the dance halls.
Jack didn’t dance with the fleshy, sweating girls. Though a white man had tried goading him into dancing for them all one time. O’Neill never went back, and steered clear of the place. He wasn’t no sun-grinning, hymn-singing, foot-shuffling field nigger. Never had been. They wanted to see dancing, let ’em come out on the prairie to where Roman Nose and his earthy people roamed.
That hurt him—to suddenly have to think of Roman Nose as gone forever. All too painful and true—for he had seen the war-chief’s body laid out on the scaffold, lying there for the wind and the seasons to reclaim.
Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 Page 21
