Black Sun: The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Damn if it ain’t!” Cody cheered, standing of a sudden, flinging the chair out of his way. He yanked the pistol from his belt, slowly spinning the cylinder.

  “How you want to play this?”

  Cody smiled at the three of them. “Green will come inside the corral with us. Farley, you best hang back at the gate—in case the bastards make a run to light out.”

  “How many guns you figure on us coming up against?”

  He wagged his head. “Don’t know, Seamus. Farley counted two sets of tracks down there on Sand Creek. Chances are they’ve got someone up here in on things—help ’em get these animals sold off.”

  “Could be three, eh?” Green replied.

  “That’s why there’s three of us going in—and Farley closing the door behind us, boys,” Donegan said.

  Entering the Elephant Corral, Cody sent Green up the north wall of stables. “Hang ’round the auction ring to see what comes up when the mule goes for sale.”

  He nodded for Donegan to follow him into the milling crowd. “Let’s have us a look at the mule, Irishman.”

  The vivid perfumes of lilac water mingled with the earthy fragrance of horse dung and old sweat as the two strode slowly through the crowd, on a direct course for the black mule being led toward the auction ring.

  Closer and closer they drew to the animal and its handler until the handler nervously looked back over his shoulder at the same moment the crowd parted.

  “I know him!” Cody hissed.

  The handler broke for it, pushing his way through the spectators and bidders, the mule rearing and scree-hawing, frightening the ladies with its gyrations.

  “Damn well seems he knows you too!” Donegan shouted as they both darted into the pandemonium.

  “He’s going for the gate—cover me!”

  Lunging heedless into a small knot of monied stockmen dressed in silk and fine skin boots, the thief stumbled, fell to a mud puddle and picked himself back up as the young scout reached out, snagging the thief. Cody wrenched him about by the shoulder.

  “Williams! By damn—it is you!”

  He tore at the grip Cody had on him, freeing himself long enough to go for the two long-barreled pistols stuffed in his waistband.

  “Don’t think about it, me friend.”

  Williams froze as the voice whispered harsh in his ears, the thief’s hands hanging motionless over his pistols. His eyes grew wider as the big muzzle nudged his backbone a trifle impatiently.

  “Good to see you could make it, Seamus.”

  “Just trying to help, Cody.” He glanced around at the crowd, finding everything had stopped, everyone staring at the three gunmen. “Suppose you take this man’s guns and we’ll walk ourselves out of here, Bill.”

  “Why you steal army property?” Cody asked the thief once they were outside the corral.

  “Didn’t steal nothing.”

  “That mule you were dancing with belongs to Lieutenant Forbush,” Farley snarled in the man’s face.

  “You know him too?” Cody asked of Farley.

  He nodded. “Nate Williams. Small-time horse thief and road agent. Plays second fiddle to some bigger fish, Bill.”

  “Who’s that, Williams?” Cody prodded, jabbing the muzzle of his pistol into the thief’s ribs as Donegan tied Williams’s hands.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied.

  “I’m not gonna mess with him,” Cody said, walking behind Williams so he could wink at Green and Farley. “Why don’t you both take this lying bastard out of town—get him out of my sight. Hang him so we can get back to Fort Lyon with the major’s horses.”

  “H-Hang me?”

  “That’s what’s done with horse thieves out here,” Farley hissed. “Didn’t you know that when you started keeping company with Bevins?”

  The thief licked his lips, his eyes darting anxiously. He swallowed hard, as if sensing a tightness ringing his neck.

  “Bevins?” Cody asked.

  “Bill Bevins,” Farley replied. “He’s the big fish in this bad act.”

  Cody stepped up to glare into Williams’s face. “Tell you what, mister—I’ll see what I can do so you don’t hang, if you see that I get my hands on Bevins.”

  “He … he’d kill me—he found out I told you—”

  “He won’t know,” Cody said.

  “Here’s the rope,” Donegan said, striding up with a length of hemp he had taken from Farley’s mount.

  “We can’t do it in town,” Green said. “I know a tree south of here that’s high enough to stretch his neck good.”

  “Help me get the bastard on a horse,” Farley said.

  Williams was actually shaking by that time, wagging his head frantically. “You ain’t … no—you can’t! That’s murder … I just—”

  “Just what?”

  “All right—I’ll tell you,” he spit out in a gusher. “Bevins is out of town. Place we found. Where we got the rest of the goddamned animals.”

  “Where?”

  “North. Down the Platte a ways.”

  “How far?”

  * * *

  Three miles farther down the Platte River, a frightened Nate Williams nodded to show that the rough cabin up ahead through the trees was the one where they would find Bill Bevins.

  Seamus glanced at the sky, finding the sun was falling from its zenith, dipping behind some clouds. “Be a good time to go in now.”

  “What we gonna do with him?” Green asked, indicating Williams.

  “Tie him up here,” Cody directed. “We’ll come back after we’re done with Bevins.”

  Williams was left behind, seated, gagged and tied to a cottonwood while the three advanced on foot toward the cabin.

  “Awful quiet in there,” Green said as they huddled in the willows, watching for some sign from the cabin.

  “Suppose he’s spotted us?”

  Donegan shook his head. “I’ll wager the bastard’s taking himself a nap—so he can gamble and play with the ladies all night.”

  Cody smiled back at him. “Sounds like he’s a man after your own heart, Irishman.”

  Donegan nodded. “He does at that. C’mon, Cody—this is your show. Let’s be about it.”

  The young scout led them out of the willows, sending Farley to the left and Green to the right. Donegan backed him up from a cottonwood as Cody ran in a crouch to the cabin door. He stood beside it a moment, as if listening. Then inched closer to the entrance, ears cocked.

  Suddenly he whirled about, kicked at the door and burst into the cabin. Donegan sprang from the tree, sprinting toward the cabin as the voices erupted from the doorway.

  “Drop it, Bevins!”

  “Goddamn you! I’ll see you in hell!”

  “Drop the gun, damn you!”

  “You all right in there, Cody?” Seamus asked.

  It was another half-dozen heartbeats before he saw a tall, thin rail of a man duck out the cabin door, his hands on his head. Behind him came Bill Cody, holding the muzzle of his rifle against Bevins’s backbone. The pair stopped halfway to the Irishman as Green and Farley walked up.

  “By the saints, Cody. You gave me a start there.”

  Cody laughed, easy and full-hearted. “By the saints, indeed, Irishman! It was just like you said, goddammit—he was taking himself a bloody nap!”

  Chapter 14

  Mid-April 1869

  As the sky turned dark and the wind leed about out of the north with the smell of winter to it, Cody found the rest of the stolen animals roped off in a narrow, tree-lined draw not far from the cabin. They were all there: seven horses and three mules, in addition to Major Carr’s prize thoroughbred and Forbush’s animal captured that morning at the corral. All twelve were left with Robert Teats at the Elephant Corral just about the time the sky turned belly-up over Denver City, whirling over the scouts and their prisoners with a typical spring snowstorm: heavy and wet and wind-whipped to a white froth.

  The animals protested the storm, c
oming rumps around as the horsemen dropped to the soggy street and attempted tying the horses off in front of the marshal’s office. Narrow ribbons of yellow light spilled from the two windows on either side of a door that opened only a crack against the howling wind.

  “You boys get on in here!” a voice shouted from the doorway.

  A wild gust of snow snaked its way through the opening as the four scouts dragged their prisoners from the saddles and shoved them toward the narrow slit opened by the marshal.

  “Is that you, Bill Cody?” the voice called out as the young scout stomped into the room, knocking wet snow from his tall boots.

  “Dave Cook—I’ll be go to hell in a hand-basket!”

  They shook, pounding each other good.

  “You fellas meet a friend of mine, Dave Cook. Met him hauling freight years ago. You’re town marshal here?”

  Cook nodded. “Just been nominated to run for sheriff, Bill.”

  He grinned and clucked. “You sure coming up in the world, Sheriff Cook.”

  “And you?”

  “Scouting for the Fifth Cavalry.”

  “How’s that bring you to Denver City?” Cook asked, eyeing the two prisoners with their wrists bound in rope.

  “Horse thieves,” Cody replied. “Army property. Gonna take ’em back to Fort Lyon come morning. You got a dry place for ’em to spend the night, Dave?”

  “Sure as hell. The rest of you too, if you care.”

  “I’ve no mind,” Seamus replied. “Soon as spend a night here. Just as dry as Chase’s inn—and cheaper too.” He presented his hand to Cook. “Name’s Seamus Donegan.”

  “You’re scouting with Cody?”

  “Aye—but we’ve not found many Injins yet,” he answered, winking at Cody. “Only hijacked a load of Mexican beer and waylaid a bathtub full of some Old Tom-Cat gin!”

  The four scouts laughed as Cook closed the prisoners in separate cells.

  “You’ll have to tell me about that campaign,” the marshal said.

  “Tonight’s as good as any, Dave,” Cody replied. “Put some coffee on to boil.”

  Cook moved to the wall pegs where his heavy mackinaw hung. “Put it on yourself. I’ll go on over to Singlaw’s place and get us all something to eat.”

  “On you?”

  He grinned. “That’s right, Cody. I’m buying. Least I can do is to feed you boys—to repay you for feeding me your wild stories of the Indian campaigns.”

  * * *

  Seamus Donegan poked the fire, sending a bevy of sparks into the cloudy, night sky. He looked longingly at the pile of firewood they had gathered to last them until morning, hoping it would stretch past breakfast. He truly wanted to put more on the flames, make himself and the others a bit warmer. But if the wood was to last …

  Driving the recaptured animals before them, they had slogged through the drifted, wet snow since sunup, when Marshal Cook awakened them all with coffee and fried salt-beef. Not much to excite the palate, but it was a change from the pork and bacon the army offered its scouts. Williams and Bevins devoured their breakfast using only their hands, saying it was the first time they had eaten in three days.

  Outside the marshal’s office the horses stood saddled and readied to begin the trip south to Fort Lyon. First Bevins, then Williams—both were retied, wrists bound together, then lashed to the saddlehorn. Their ankles were roped together beneath the belly of their mounts.

  It had been a long and exhausting day, keeping the small remuda of army animals plowing trail in front of them as they put Denver City behind them.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Seamus had volunteered, arriving at their camping spot.

  “You just want to do that because it’s easier for a man to stay up than to wake up,” Cody grumped.

  “All right, you take first watch,” Donegan replied.

  “Did I hurt your feelings, Irishman?”

  “Not near as much as your nose is going to hurt when I get through knocking it sideways across your face, Cody.”

  “All right,” the young scout said and chuckled, standing from his supper dishes as the moon rose in the east beneath a thick layer of heavy clouds soiling in the night sky, “Donegan will stand first watch. Farley, you’re next. Then Green and me.”

  They nodded, setting down their tin plates and cups of boiled coffee.

  “I suppose first watch means I clean mess?” Donegan asked.

  “And I make breakfast on mine,” Cody answered. “We’ll stand three hours each. Here’s my watch.” He tossed the timepiece to Donegan. “Good night, Irishman.”

  As his three fellow scouts rolled into their blankets and canvas shelter-halves, Seamus was left to see that the prisoners were bedded down warmly.

  “Take your boots off, Bevins.”

  “Go to hell, mick.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that. Now, take off your boots.”

  “Like hell, I’m gonna do anything for you—”

  “Best you do as he says, Bevins,” Cody’s muffled voice rose from his bedroll. “You’ll be his meat if you don’t.”

  Donegan watched the horse thief eye him critically. “Don’t make no difference to me, Mr. Bevins. I can take you back to the authorities … or I can leave you staked out here in the snow as wolf bait. Now, suppose you tell me what’s gonna be easier.”

  “Don’t give no goddamned—”

  Seamus pulled his pistol, pressing the muzzle of the .44 under the thief’s nose. “I agree, Mr. Bevins. It’s just as I thought as well—far easier to blow your brains out and be done with it here.”

  “N-No, goddammit! Don’t shoot!”

  “The boots, Mr. Bevins,” Seamus reminded. He glanced at the man’s wide-eyed companion. “Yours as well, Mr. Williams.”

  Nate Williams nodded anxiously, struggling with the broughams that had been soaked throughout the day, in and out of the wet, deep drifts.

  “Proud of you, me boys. Now, make yourselves comfortable for a winter’s nap. We’ll be waking you come breakfast time.”

  With his toe, Donegan nudged Bevins’s ankle-high boots aside in one direction, Williams’s broughams in the other, before he stepped around the fire and resettled himself by the coffeepot.

  Just past ten o’clock, Seamus shook a reluctant Jack Farley awake. “You want some coffee poured down you before I crawl in me blankets?”

  Farley ground some knuckles into his eyes and mumbled, “No, I’ll be all right. G’won to bed.”

  “They’re both sleeping like babies, Jack,” Seamus whispered, nodding toward the prisoners.

  “Like I wanna be.”

  “Get some coffee down,” Donegan reminded as he pulled the heavy wool horse blanket up to his chin.

  Overhead some stars were beginning to break through the thinning clouds. Those sky lights spelled nothing but a deepening cold across the rest of the night as he closed his eyes, feeling his breath freezing the skin on his face. Then all was delicious sleep.

  * * *

  “Goddammit!”

  Seamus sat upright with Farley’s shrill call. He found the army scout sailing into the firepit with an explosion of burning branches and red coals, sending a spray of bright fireflies into the dark of midnight. Williams was up on his feet after colliding with Farley, crouching only long enough to scoop up his broughams. As if on a mainspring, Bevins was leaping in the opposite direction, out of the firelight, dragging both boots out of the snow.

  “Cody!”

  “Stop—you two!” Cody shouted.

  “What the hell!” Green hollered as Farley tripped over his feet.

  Jack Farley was dancing around the firepit, kicking coals and burning limbs onto their blankets, wildly slapping his wool coat and britches free of smoldering sparks, cursing his luck.

  “Son of a bitch! I didn’t see it coming!”

  “Shuddup!” Cody ordered, sprinting after Williams, disappearing into the dark. “Just get after Bevins, Farley!”

  “What about me?�
�� Green asked.

  Donegan flung his voice over his shoulder. “Stay at the fire. Someone’ll be back here soon enough.”

  “I don’t like the sounds of that,” Green muttered as Donegan disappeared into the darkness.

  Within minutes the Irishman and Farley were back at the fire, finding a much relieved Green and Cody on either side of one of the horse thieves.

  “You all right, Mr. Williams?” Seamus asked, kneeling in front of the thief who had his head slung in his hands.

  “He’s a might under the weather,” Cody explained.

  “Something you gave him?”

  Cody nodded, showing the scouts the barrel of his pistol. “He didn’t want to stop running at first—and I seriously considered shooting him. Instead, I gave him a .44 headache.”

  Green glanced at what Donegan took from under his coat. “What you got there, Irishman?”

  Seamus held it up in the firelight. “A shoe.”

  “Bevins?”

  He nodded at Cody. “Looks like his. Whoever’s running out there, he’s hobbled with only one good hoof now. All we got to track.”

  Cody turned to Farley. “You lost him, Jack. It’s up to you to see we track him and get him back.”

  “You want me stay with Williams?” asked Green.

  Cody was bending over his gear, yanking up the blanket and saddle, heading for his horse. “I’ll take Donegan with Farley and me.” He glared at Green. “Don’t lose this one.”

  Donegan stopped in front of Williams with his saddle and blanket hung over his arms. “That’s right, Bill. We want at least one of these bastards alive for General Carr to skin.”

  * * *

  Across the horizon to the east it looked like the white expanse of the earth was tearing itself from the dark clot of skyline in a long, thin and bloody laceration.

  They had covered something close to twenty miles in the dark: down from the saddle to inspect the tracks, then gaze into the distance before climbing back atop their horses to pursue the footprints of the fleeing Bevins. Tiny spots of blood had begun to muddy the single, barefoot print the last handful of miles.

  “He’s hurting,” Donegan whispered as they halted atop a low rise, the South Platte down below.

  “Damn right he’s hurting,” Cody replied. “But I’ve gotta hand it to him. Son of a bitch is a tough one. All these miles, up and down this broken country—what with six inches of icy snow and the trail covered with cactus. Damn right Bill Bevins is a tough bravo.”