“Amen,” Frank North whispered. “Amen.”
* * *
“They’re shipping that poor bastard back to McPherson with the supply train in the morning,” Bill Cody said as he came to settle beside Seamus Donegan at their mess fire.
Four days had passed since the Pawnee tracker had wounded himself. Four days of heat and maggots and blackening of the flesh along the full length of his arm. That afternoon a supply train out of Fort McPherson bearing supplies, food and forage for the mounts had appeared over the hills, guided by a detail of North’s Pawnee scouts.
“How long it take ’em to get back to McPherson you figure?”
“Four—most likely five days.” Cody watched the Irishman wag his head. “Shame that Pawnee won’t let the surgeon near him—being nearly out of his mind now with the blood poison. Damned shame.”
Donegan cut a slice from a new plug of tobacco brought in with the supply train that day. With a jab of his tongue he nestled the dark quid inside his cheek. “That arm don’t come off soon, he’s one man of us won’t have to worry about any Cheyenne Dog Soldiers lifting his scalp.”
For more than a week now the weather had been unbearably hot. Her swollen, aching feet trudged through each day’s march across the trackless prairie, beneath the mapless blue of a sky unsullied by clouds hinting of hoped-for moisture.
Susanna Alderdice didn’t know what she hated more. The march from dawn till dusk each day, or the nightly terror she suffered after Tall Bull’s band made camp at the end of each march. She stumbled along without water beneath the blazing sun, and had to fight for scraps of food to eat because the chief’s wife was jealous of the blond-headed white woman. But worse still was to dread Tall Bull each night as the stars swirled overhead, when Susanna was forced to endure the savagery of his assault and copulating.
She was reminded of the horses when they mated. The grunting. The shrill cries. It was not lovemaking with the big Cheyenne warrior. This was nothing but violence, his defiling her with his seed in her most private of places. The only time he had let her be was when she bled last month. He had been so brutal with her at first that for days on end she bled, with nothing to keep it from seeping down her leg, onto her torn stockings as she marched with the moving village each day.
He had stayed away from her, fearing the power of a woman’s menstruation over his own medicine. Susanna Alderdice had gloried in that little lie, letting the brute believe she was suffering her monthly. But as quickly her joy disappeared when she realized she had had no menstruation for more than two moons now. It gave her such a galling, bitter taste at the back of her throat to think that she might be carrying the Cheyenne’s child in her womb.
She turned at the sound of footsteps. Ducking beneath the protection of her arms as Tall Bull’s wife rushed her, swinging a piece of firewood overhead. Battering the white woman. Tall Bull’s daughter kicked and flailed at Susanna, while they both spit and hurled their curses at her.
As quickly, Tall Bull was pulling his wife and daughter from the cowering captive. He shouted at them, shoving them away, sending them off into camp.
Susanna realized her time had come. He was again sending the others from the lodge for the evening so that he could have his way with his grass-haired prisoner.
She watched the two women move slowly away as she was wrenched up, her wrist imprisoned in his grip. Tall Bull dragged her toward the doorway. It was the only time she was allowed in the chief’s lodge. To suffer his abuse. He shoved her through the opening, then pulled the door-flap closed behind him.
Tall Bull tore at her ripped, dirtied clothing. She slapped at his hands, backing away around the fire. He smashed a flat hand across her cheek.
Feeling the warm blood oozing into her mouth, seeing stars, Susanna Alderdice shook her head, trying to make him understand. She began to unbutton what she had left of dignity. Rather than let the man rip the clothing from her, she would do what she could to save the dress.
There would come a day, she prayed as she lay back upon the buffalo robes and spread her legs, watching him tug his breechclout aside and sink over her.
There would come a day when she would need this dress to wear back home.
Chapter 21
First Days in the Moon of Cherries Blackening
He hated her at the same time he lusted for her with all his being. Longed not only for her white flesh, but for everything she was that he was not.
Finished with her again this night, as on so many nights past. More than two moons since he had captured her, and she still was reluctant in coupling with him.
Why was she so different than his own woman? Different than any Cheyenne woman in making love?
Several nights ago she had pushed him away and removed her own clothing, then laid herself on his bed at the rear of the lodge and spread her legs to welcome him. But it was still not as if she had enjoyed his coupling with her.
The white woman just lay there, crying while he rose to a fury of violence and lust for her and all white skins. She sobbed quietly, shaming him.
He hit her each time she did so. Hit her hard, making her eyes puffy, causing her lips to bleed. He could not help it—this that she drove him to do. What did she expect of him? He was a man, after all. And she was a woman. A white woman, but woman nonetheless.
So he cast her out of his lodge when he was finished with her. Again tonight, as he had done every night. It was for her own good, for when his wife came home, she would be angry with the white woman and would beat her. It was a shameful thing for a woman to suffer a beating from another woman, and he did not want to witness her shame. More dignity in a woman being beaten by a man.
He watched the woman drag herself away, naked and pitiful in the growing moonlight, her skimpy bundle of clothing clutched under an arm as she crabbed along on one arm and both knees. Dogs nearby were drawn to the odor she gave off—perhaps the blood, perhaps her female scent heightened by their coupling. The animals came yipping at her, sniffing at her as Susanna dragged herself into the trees, kicking, hitting, scolding the dogs that gathered, following her to her hiding place.
Turning away, he decided he had better things to think on now that he no longer had to worry about his loins. At least until tomorrow.
“White Horse,” he called out. Others were with the warrior, smoking outside the Horse’s lodge this summer night.
“Join us, Tall Bull.”
He sat and accepted a pipe the men were smoking socially without ceremony. “It is time we talk of more attacks.”
“The summer heat makes you grow restless too?” Wolf Friend asked.
“Why does Wolf Friend ask? Because he does not have a white woman to copulate with when he grows restless like Tall Bull?” joked Bad Heart.
The group laughed together, passing a water gourd around. A group of children hurried by in the deepening dark of night as the moon rose yellow as a brass cartridge in the east.
“Tall Bull is right,” agreed Plenty of Bull Meat. “We must not let up on the white man now.”
“Aiyeee! We must keep attacking until the white man and his kind are driven out,” Yellow Nose said.
“What of his soldiers?” prodded Tall Sioux. “We go in search of the white man’s settlements to attack … and still the soldiers come. It is not the earth-scratchers we must attack. It is the soldiers who winter after winter come marching to attack our villages.”
“This is true,” said White Man’s Ladder. “The soldiers search out our villages, killing our women and children who cannot escape.”
“Black Kettle lived too close to the white men,” Bobtailed Porcupine muttered.
“Black Kettle is dead,” Tall Bull roared. “Killed by the Yellow Hair on the Washita.”
“The old men … the ones who act like old women, those who want peace with the white man—these are the ones the soldiers catch and kill!” White Horse shouted, his words angry. “Perhaps we should not cry for any who die, caught by the soldiers—
for they were stupid not to fight back with the last ounce of their strength.”
“White Horse is right,” Tall Bull agreed. “We must not just wander this prairie, staying away from the white man. We must attack … and attack again. Find his outlying settlements. Kill the white people there.”
“What of the great smoking horses that move back and forth across the land once grazed freely by the buffalo?” Bullet Proof asked, speaking for the first time.
“The herds are cut in half,” Feathered Bear said, wagging his head. “No more will they cross the iron tracks the white man has laid down for his smoking horse.”
“It is as if the white man has laid down two lines on the prairie—one north of us, one south. The buffalo no longer move freely,” said Red Cherries.
“We no longer move freely across the land of our fathers!” White Horse growled.
“It was the land of our fathers at one time,” moaned Yellow Nose. “We must not be known as the sons who gave it away to the white man.”
On the far side of camp, to the east, there arose a commotion. Some muffled shouts and the barking of dogs interrupted their council for but a moment. The warriors turned back to their talk.
“Let those words rest now where your hearts lie,” Tall Bull continued. “We will not be the last generation to ride free across this prairie. We will fight. While other bands run away, we will fight. While other bands tuck their tails like scared rabbits and hide on their reservations, we will fight.”
“When? When will we ride again!”
He looked at Heavy Furred Wolf, who had asked the all-important question. “As soon as we want!”
“Tomorrow!” White Horse replied.
“Yes—let us ride tomorrow,” Tall Sioux echoed.
The commotion drew his attention once more. Tall Bull turned, as did most of the others in the large ring seated in the grass. “What is this?” he asked of two young boys running up at full speed.
“Our scouts!” one of them huffed, out of breath.
“They have come back running.”
“Running?” Tall Bull asked.
“They bring word of the white man.”
“We will attack soon!” Wolf Friend cried in happiness.
Tall Bull grabbed the two boys by the shoulders. “What is this news of the white man? Where?”
“Pile of Bones saw the soldiers.”
“Soldiers?” White Horse asked, crowding close on the two boys now.
His young head bobbed as he caught his breath from his hard run. “Pile of Bones saw them. Many. He says there are ten-times-ten for each finger on one hand.”
White Horse looked at Tall Bull. “These must be the same soldiers who have been following us for more than a moon.”
Tall Bull grinned, spreading his arms as he roared. “It is good! The swallows follow the hawk too closely—the hawk turns and eats the swallows up!”
“Attack!”
“Aiyeee! We kill them all!”
“Swallow the sparrows and spit out their bones!”
* * *
“Carr won’t let you ride out with Becher’s patrol, Cody?” asked Seamus Donegan as he hoisted the saddle atop the big mare.
Cody wagged his head as he tightened the cinch on the new horse he had named Buckskin Joe. “Says he wants me keeping my nose pointed north for now.”
“Pawnee going to be disappointed.”
The young scout sighed, smiling. “That was some show the other day, wasn’t it?”
A few days before, North’s Pawnees had bumped into a small herd of buffalo and killed thirty-two in a surround. Cody had then asked Frank North to hold his scouts in check while he went in to do what he did best on a buffalo pony. In a short, half-mile run, Cody dropped thirty-six bulls and cows on his own.
“From that day on, me friend, you’ve been some big medicine to them Pawnee,” Seamus said.
“That Lieutenant Becher asked for you to come along with him and his Pawnee—said the scouts wanted you if they couldn’t have me ride with ’em, Irishman,” Cody explained.
Seamus stuffed a boot into the stirrup and rose to the saddle. “I’ll consider it a compliment that the Pawnee want me riding with ’em when we go looking for h’athens. Watch your hair, Bill Cody.” He tossed a hand as he reined away.
“Your hair just as pretty as mine, Irishman! Look good hanging from a Dog Soldier lance or lodgepole.”
Seamus laughed easily as he loped over to the bustling soldier bivouac in the early light of this fifth day of July. He reported for duty with Lieutenant Gustavus W. Becher, German immigrant and war veteran in his late thirties. Major Frank North had given immediate command of fifty of the Pawnee scouts to Becher, one of North’s white officers. The German officer and the Irish scout would be the only white men along on this rapid probe to the northwest.
Becher gave the order and the Pawnee column loped out of camp in an orderly column of twos.
For the better part of the morning the scouts felt their way up Rock Creek from the Republican River. Looking for sign as they probed north by west until the lieutenant ordered a ten-minute breather for the horses.
“We’ve seen so damned little in the last few days,” Becher grumped as he settled beside Donegan in the low shade of some stunted cottonwood.
“A blessing it might prove to be, Lieutenant.”
He studied the Irishman a moment before replying. “You don’t want the fight that everyone says is coming?”
“I don’t want to fight if I can avoid it, no. But a man must remember that what I’ve learned is that when you find a lot of Injin sign … you don’t find the Injins. It’s when you don’t see the sign of the h’athens that a man must be wary.”
Becher regarded him with a knowing eye. “Something about you, Irishman. Young as you are—but knowing savvy the way you do. Sound old, I didn’t know better.”
Seamus chuckled. “Just had me some good teachers took me under their wings—till I was able to fly on me own.”
Becher got to his feet. “Can’t help you fly, Irishman. But we do have some riding to do.”
They stopped again for a brief time when the sun reached mid-sky. Miles from the next trickling creek, the horsemen quietly ate their jerked buffalo and hardtack, washed down with warm water from their canteens. From there Becher pointed his Pawnee scouts almost due north toward Frenchman’s Fork, into the sandhill country that hugged close by Colorado Territory. That endless, rolling monotony of tableland reminded him of the sandhill country south along the Arikaree Fork where for nine days Forsyth’s faithful had clung to hope.
Seamus had sunk so far into that warm, dreamy place a man on horseback goes to when long in the saddle beneath an endless sky, that he was unaware of the first scattering of shots. Donegan snapped awake when one of the Pawnee horses jostled against the mare in the confusion.
At the center of the melee sat Lieutenant Becher, shouting in his German-laced Pawnee. The scouts obeyed, it appeared, dismounting to split into three squads. Horse holders scurried to the rear a hundred yards, as the full brunt of the Cheyenne wave hit them.
“I say a hundred, Irishman,” Becher snapped as Donegan skidded to a stop beside him, levering another cartridge into his Spencer.
“More like hundred twenty or so.”
“Your eye better at this than mine,” he said above the roar of the carbines. The Spencer slammed back into his shoulder.
Seamus heaved the moist quid from his cheek, his mouth suddenly gone dry and the leaf-burly grown tasteless.
The Cheyenne were sweeping over the bright, sun-washed hills in two groups that met in a sweeping arc some three hundred yards to the north.
Back they came on themselves in two rushing torrents of painted, feathered horsemen.
“They out looking for us?”
Seamus shook his head for the German. “Don’t think so. Figure we just bumped into ’em.” He levered the Henry and cheeked it to his shoulder.
They grew daring—he co
uld see that. Coming in a bit closer with each run. Although there were already two of the naked horsemen stretched unmoving on the sand, the Cheyenne kept coming back for more—feeling here, then there, at the three squads Becher had ordered to make their stand.
“They’ll break off soon,” Donegan growled at the German. “Odds aren’t good enough in their favor—and they’re just as surprised as we are. Can’t run us over … so they’ll pull back to fight another day.”
“I pray to Gott you’re right, Irishman. We don’t have enough ammunition along to make a standing fight of it.”
“What’d I tell you,” Seamus cheered moments later when the two swirling columns scattered over the hills to the north instead of turning to attack the Pawnee scouts again.
“By Gott, we did it! Three of them dead by my count.”
“These Pawnee of yours did it, Lieutenant,” Seamus said, feeling the sting of sentiment burn at the back of his throat. “For some reason they stood as you ordered—’stead of going to horse.”
“To horse?”
Seamus nodded. “I’d wager it’s only natural for these Pawnee to want to fight from horseback. Brought up that way.”
Becher finished signaling in the other two groups.
Horse-holders stived through the sand with their wide-eyed mounts as Seamus became aware of the sun on the back of his neck once more. He dragged the greasy folds of his huge bandanna up beneath his long, wavy hair.
“Told them to reload, Irishman,” Becher commented as he walked over. “You too?”
Seamus began pulling the brass cartridges from his pocket. “Where you think we are now? Colorado already?”
Becher shrugged. “Only place I know we are is on the right trail now. We’re going back to bring up the main column.”
“Carr will be pleased to hear of you being hit by these Cheyenne?”
Becher nodded, smiling. “Very pleased, I think. We have plenty of sign now. Good-size war party like this—painted and feathered—they were out for no good.”
Black Sun: The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 20
