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

by Terry C. Johnston

  The best friend Jack O’Neill knew he would ever have was a red man. Copper-skinned. And celibate to the point Jack knew had to drive Roman Nose crazy. Still, the big Cheyenne just laughed when the mulatto told him of the delicious things white women would do for money and the Indian women did for fun.

  The best of friends. Roman Nose had treated Jack more like a man than any other before, or since. They had fought together. Galloping down that creekbed, racing toward the island—a vision come now before his watering eyes as clear as if he were once more riding beside the war-chief, water and golden sand-grit spraying as high as their bronzed shoulders in that morning sun.

  Jack found his pace quickening as his anger and pain swelled like an overworked blister, pouring from him like the sweat glistening his dusty torso.

  Simply to find the man who had killed the only friend he ever had …

  That helped the mulatto dull some of the pain, the way the rye whiskey dulled his craving for the powdered chippies who always smelled so strongly of the man come and gone before him. He hated the women almost as much as he hated the gray-eyed white man who had killed his best friend.* Hated the women he took ravenously—because none of them were Emmy.

  His eyes moistened, recalling how Emmy felt that last time in his arms, their blood mingling, pooling beneath the white girl’s slashed and riven body.

  He smiled, like a wolf watching a hamstrung old bull go down on the prairie.

  Remembering how exquisite it was to extract so much pain from the white man who had killed Jack’s whore. He began to laugh right then and there beside the loading dock. Recalling how the renegade cried out for mercy—to be killed—to stop the torture that was such a delicious revenge.

  As bloody and filled with gore as that torture had been for the white renegade, now Jack O’Neill realized the slow killing of Bob North was merely practice. The old man’s screams, his pleading to die—all of it would pale beside what the future held.

  No terror, no blood, no begging could compare with that moment to come when he got his hands on the tall, dark-haired, gray-eyed civilian scout—the killer of Roman Nose.

  * * *

  At dawn the morning after Lieutenant Harvey’s scout had watched Tall Bull’s village going into camp, Major Eugene Carr ordered his cavalry to march upriver to locate the Cheyenne trail.

  Wasn’t a man in that outfit didn’t know he’d be going to war soon enough. Spotting the whole damned village. Even Major Royall’s scout with ten Pawnee under Lieutenant Becher had run across a small war-party the day before and had a running fight with the warriors, killing three before the Cheyenne broke off and disappeared.

  The gap was closing. It was only a matter of time before Carr’s cavalry caught up with them.

  Not that many miles up Frenchman’s Fork of the Republican, Carr briefly halted his command at a site used by the Cheyenne three days before. In resuming their march, a few miles farther up the fork they came across the camp used by Tall Bull’s people two nights before. The soldiers were as enthused as they were nervous. They were on a hot trail—knowing from Lieutenant Harvey’s report exactly where the hostiles went into camp the night of the ninth. In a matter of a morning’s march, they had closed the lead of their quarry by three days.

  The major ordered camp made and the entire outfit readied for any eventuality.

  “No telling what those warriors will do they find out we’re breathing down their necks,” Bill Cody advised Carr as they went into camp.

  “Just as well,” Carr replied. “I’m sending back a handful of the Pawnee and two of my men to hurry along the supply train that’s due in from McPherson.”

  “I don’t recommend you sit here like an owl waiting for your prey to come to you,” Major Frank North said.

  Carr considered it. “If I have no other choice—we’ll make a forced march with part of the column intact, the rest waiting for resupply.”

  “That village finds out we’re back here, they’ll bolt,” Luther North said, adding his pessimism.

  “It’s a chance I’ll have to take. We’re in no position to attack that village and scatter it—not knowing where our supply train is, gentlemen. I’m not going to gamble with the lives of those civilian teamsters if the Cheyenne suddenly turn about and scatter furiously. I would be signing the death warrants for our freighters.”

  “You might be missing the chance of your career to capture the worst outlaw this part of the country’s seen in a generation,” Frank North said.

  Carr squared his eyes at the leader of the Pawnee battalion. “I’ve considered that, Major. I’ll note your exception for the record. However, I’ll let others rush in for the glory. Custer and his like. As for me—I’ll protect my rearguard and the civilians in my employ before I’ll have their deaths on my conscience. There won’t be any Major Elliotts in the Fifth Cavalry, by Jupiter!”

  Cody and the rest watched Carr stomp away with his adjutant, Lieutenant Montgomery.

  “He’s still smoldering over last winter’s campaign, ain’t he?” Cody quietly asked of Donegan. “Us busting snow and our tails—coming up empty-handed while all the glory went to Custer.”

  “Carr’s got every right to complain,” Seamus replied sourly. “You heard the reports—read it in all the papers back East. That business about Custer abandoning Major Joel Elliott and his eighteen men in the valley of the Washita as soon as Custer found out his gallant Seventh Cavalry was about to be surrounded by the might of the Arapaho and Kiowa nations.”

  Cody nodded, watching Carr’s wide back disappear among the horses and men and small, smokeless fires where the soldiers boiled their coffee and chewed on their salt-pork.

  “I don’t imagine Carr’s the same kind of soldier as Custer,” he replied, loosening the cinch on Buckskin Joe’s saddle. “He’s cautious, and Custer sounds full of bluff and bluster. Carr is cut of a different cloth.”

  Donegan snorted. “You got that right, Bill Cody. By the saints—you got that right.”

  Doubt nagged him as he pulled himself from her body, his breathing coming more regular, his pulse slowing.

  It wasn’t anything to do with the white woman. Instead, it was a doubt rattling around inside Tall Bull the way stream-washed pebbles clattered around inside a stiffened buffalo-scrotum rattle. He wanted to move the village on—but the medicine men claimed they were safe here in the narrow valley by the springs the Dog Soldier band visited at least twice each year in their migrations.

  Still, the confident vision of the medicine men did nothing to allay his fear as Tall Bull gazed at the bruised white woman beneath him. She rolled to her side, pulling the shreds of her dress and the corner of a blanket over nakedness. One eye was puffing where he had cuffed her. The woman’s dry, swollen lips were cracked, bloodied where he slapped her repeatedly during their coupling. Blue bruising stood out like his war-paint against the paleness of her skin.

  Tall Bull cursed her—why could she not enjoy the rut as much as Cheyenne women? Before, she had fought back: crying, lashing out and kicking at him. It had been more exciting in those first days. Now, for many suns, the white woman had become a different animal—passive unlike anything he knew in the animal kingdom. It unsettled something inside him, and he resented her for it.

  Not good to have this feeling about this place and the medicine men and the nearness of the soldiers … not good to have the woman lay beneath him, staring up at the circle of poles while he hit and bit, slapped and pinched and rutted with her.

  She was not an eager partner like his wife. He cursed the white woman because she made him feel alone. Cold and eerie as he gyrated over her body, exacting his vengeance on her flesh.

  He toyed with the fire smoking at his feet in the lodge lit with nothing more than the stars bursting forth at twilight through the narrow smoke-hole overhead.

  Tall Bull stared at her a long time. She seemed to be gazing back at him in the dim light of the lodge. But he was sure she wasn’t looking at him. Instead,
she must be looking somewhere in the distance at that place she went each time he came to possess her body.

  He hated her for that. If she could not throw herself into the mating like a good woman should, then at least she should fight him, just as she did the first time he spread her white legs. But something inside him told Tall Bull this white woman would never do either.

  Too quickly she had learned how to hurt him.

  And when Tall Bull was hurt, he hurt back.

  One day he might get angry enough to kill her. When most men tired of a female prisoner, they sold her to another warrior. But he would not sell this one. She had caused him too much pain and stabbed his pride. He would kill her someday.

  And if the soldiers came to rescue her, Tall Bull would glean such pleasure in driving the tomahawk into her brain. Watching the horror on her face as he plunged the blade into her head … wondering now if that look of terror would be any different than the fear on her face that first time he plunged his flesh within her, there beside her burning cabin.

  Those soldiers gave him pause. An unsettled brooding came over him as he stared at the white woman gazing with empty, lifeless eyes back at him.

  If the soldiers came—he vowed she would be the first to die.

  Chapter 24

  July 11, 1869

  Carr rousted the men out at two A.M. They were moving at four A.M., well before first light.

  No time for coffee.

  Donegan listened to the grumbling soldiers and civilians in the darkness. The moon was sinking into the western quadrant, leaving enough light to march on, cutting away at the enemy’s lead.

  By mid-morning they had covered fifteen miles, when the column came across the camp the hostiles had used the night of 9 July. One hundred fifty miles already covered in four days of forced marches had brought them to the brink of battle.

  “General—the Pawnee say the Cheyenne are breaking up into three bands,” Luther North announced as he climbed down from his horse.

  Carr regarded him a minute. “That’s what Cody’s already told me.”

  “With your permission, General—I suggest you put out a reconnaissance in force in three parties.”

  “Cody believes the Cheyenne will regroup before camping.”

  North glowered at Cody a moment, the turned back to Carr. “Nonetheless—we’re close, sir. We follow any one trail—the other two groups escape.”

  “They won’t escape, General,” Cody protested.

  “The Cheyenne’re breaking up on you, General Carr—you’re about to lose them,” North pleaded frantically, stepping closer.

  Carr appeared troubled at that prospect. He looked at Cody. “Why won’t they escape, Cody? Wishful thinking?”

  He shook his head. “No. They’re in the same fix we are. They need water just as bad as your outfit does. It may look like they’re splitting up … but that’s just to throw you off ’cause they know your cavalry is back here. They’ll regroup at the Platte.”

  “The South Platte?”

  “That’s right, General. You get your outfit to march north from here on the double—we’ll get between the river and the Cheyenne. They get there before you—you’ll never catch ’em.”

  “What’s there going to be to catch, General?” North asked. “You don’t follow these trails, you don’t have an idea where they’re going. All you’ve got is Cody’s word that they’re pointing to the Platte.”

  “They’ve got to have water, General.”

  Carr chewed on his lip. “Interesting point you make, Captain North. Good point. All right—despite Mr. Cody’s misgivings, we’ll divide into three wings here. Captain, you and your brother will take Captain Cushing along with most of your Pawnee to scout the middle trail heading due north. Major Royall?”

  The officer walked up. “General.”

  “Major Royall—you will have command of half our unit—companies E, G and H. Take Cody along with some of his men and scout the right-hand trail leading off to the northeast, onto that open land yonder.”

  “I assume you’re going to lead the third wing, General?”

  “Correct. Companies A, C and D. I’m taking the Irishman, Sergeant Wallace and four of the companies with me, in addition to six of the Pawnee. If nothing else, they will serve to communicate with the other two wings. I’m leaving M Company in reserve with the supply train.”

  Into the darkness that still shrouded the sand hills of eastern Colorado Territory, Major Eugene Carr dispatched his nearly three hundred officers and soldiers, civilian and Pawnee scouts. The sun rose over the three wings spreading out across the separate trails. From time to time Donegan watched as Carr sent a Pawnee tracker in one direction or another to make contact with either Major Royall or the North brothers.

  “I can see now that the Cheyenne are moving toward the river,” Carr admitted quietly to the Irishman. “Just as Cody suggested they would.”

  “We’re in the position to flank them now, General,” Seamus reminded.

  He nodded in agreement, standing momentarily in the stirrups. “We come around them from the northeast—putting ourselves between them and the river—we’ll have them bottled up whether we find them in camp or on the move.”

  “Let’s hope you find them on the move.”

  Carr studied Donegan a moment. “Why?”

  “We surprise them in camp, General—the men will fight all the harder while the women put together a retreat.”

  “And if we surprise them on the march?”

  “They’ll be running from the first shot—covered by the men only long enough to make good their escape.”

  “I’d rather have a fight of it, Irishman. Like Custer made of his on the Washita—I want my chance to make a fight of it for the Fifth.” He fixed Donegan with his hard eyes. “I want to catch these Cheyenne in camp.”

  “I’ll pray your boys are ready for a stiff scrap,” Donegan replied as he looked away, mentally making the sign of the cross across the big dome of blue sky that had stretched over them all that morning. The sun hung white, almost at mid-sky, as hot as a blacksmith’s bellows, the breeze every bit as hot as a smithy’s firebox.

  Less than an hour later the half-dozen Pawnee riding with Donegan began talking among themselves, pointing more frequently at the trail sign, gesturing at the skyline ahead and on the flanks. Seamus rode in among them. In sign he asked them the question troubling him.

  Do we near the enemy camp?

  They nodded. The Pawnee sergeant, wearing an army blouse with three gold stripes beneath his long, unbound hair, moved his hands above the horn of his saddle.

  Very near, he replied in sign, then pointed off into the distance.

  It took a moment to make something out of the shimmering heat rising from the rolling sand hills. But Seamus did see them. Dark, undulating forms some three, maybe four miles off. He felt the old pull at his gut, the tensing caused by adrenaline as it dumped into his bloodstream.

  Those are not buffalo?

  The Pawnee sergeant shook his head. Not buffalo—Cheyenne ponies.

  I will tell the soldier chief, Seamus signed, then pulled the big mare about, back to Major Eugene Carr.

  “General—the Pawnee figure it’s time you should have a better idea where the village is. We’ve spotted what looks like the hostiles’ pony herd up ahead.”

  “They believe we’re getting close?”

  “Meself even, I sense many of the smaller trails are converging,” Seamus replied. “The river can’t be too much farther. A handful of miles at most. There,” and he pointed. “You might see the herd for yourself.”

  Carr shaded his eyes and gazed into the distance for the longest time. With no other sign of recognition, he glanced over his Pawnee scouts for a brief moment, then slowly pulled the steamy slouch hat from his receding brow and wiped a damp kerchief across his forehead. “Get one of the Indians to ride to Major Royall’s unit. Bring Cody back. I want him to take these six Pawnee and charge ahead to find out i
f that is the herd or if they can see the village—or some sign of where I’ll contact the bastards.”

  Cody rode in, received his orders and pointed his big buckskin northwest, leading the six Pawnee in the direction he believed he would find the camp.

  Carr halted his troops to await Cody’s return. Time dragged itself out in the steamy heat of the plains as the horses and mules grew restless. Looking for water, wanting to graze. For what seemed like hours, Donegan had kept his eyes trained on the hills where the pony herd had been spotted. Seamus turned at the sound of a single horse’s hooves.

  “Donegan.”

  “General Carr.”

  “It’s after noon.”

  “You’re worried about Cody?”

  Carr finally shook his head. “We haven’t heard any shots.”

  Seamus smiled. “I don’t suppose they’ve been swallowed up. Not yet.”

  “There,” Carr said, and pointed over Donegan’s shoulder.

  He turned to see only one of the seven he had sent coming back at an easy lope. As the young, blond scout drew close, Seamus could see Cody wore his characteristic irrepressible grin.

  “You found it, didn’t you, Cody?”

  “Just like I told you, General. Left the Pawnee there to keep an eye on things till your men come up.”

  Carr smiled approvingly. “I’ve come to trust you even more now.”

  Cody was clearly excited. “They haven’t an idea we’re about to come down on them.”

  Carr had been bitten by the contagious excitement. “By Jupiter—I’ll have them this time!”

  “There’s a route—a detour. Take the command on it through these hills … moving off on the right flank. You’ll skirt the village and come in from the north. They’ll never know until you’re right on top of them.”

  “Thank you, Cody. You’ve performed splendidly.”

  Carr wheeled his mount and was gone.

  In a matter of moments the command was moving once more, just about the time the wagon train was seen coming up from the rear. The teamsters and mules were having a hard time budging the bulky wagons in the soft soil and clinging sand of the Platte Bluffs.