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

by Terry C. Johnston

  North wagged his head. “Not that at all. We’ve done a damned good job here. Do you have any tally going in the village, sir?”

  Carr nodded, looking back across the open field as North’s Pawnees emerged shouting and singing from the ravine. They brandished the dripping scalps like schoolboys coming home from the fishing hole with their catch. Each of the army scouts was hunchbacked under captured weapons and bandoleers of bullets taken from the dead.

  “Yes, Major. My adjutant is seeing to a count at this time. Lodge by lodge, I want to be able to report how badly we stung these … these warriors.”

  “One thing’s for sure, General,” said Luther North. “This is the bunch you were wanting to get your hands on. Tall Bull’s bunch of thieving outlaws.”

  “The two women in the village pretty well prove that,” Frank North added.

  Carr turned away as the Pawnee came up, not desiring to see their grisly trophies. “Tell your scouts to move away, Major. I’m still not sure yet how I feel about using Indian trackers to find and fight an Indian enemy.”

  “This is the first time the Pawnee have been used so effectively, sir.” North waved his Indian scouts away. As a group, they ambled off on foot, talking and joking and recounting their coups.

  “It’s something the army will have to assess,” Carr replied, drinking deep of the afternoon air. Its heat stung his lungs, shocking him. “Any of you have a canteen about you?”

  While Carr drank from Donegan’s canteen, Frank North reloaded his pistol. The major asked, “General, have you got plans to pursue those who fled the village?”

  “You can take a company of your scouts—whatever you feel safe in taking, Major.”

  “I’m requesting to go along,” Donegan said.

  Carr nodded. “All right, Irishman. You go with Major Royall. In fact, take word to him now that I want him to have fifty men saddled and ready to ride in ten minutes. Those fittest to make the trip … on the strongest horses.”

  “What of the stragglers, General?” asked Cody.

  “Aye,” Donegan agreed. “There were many who had their horses break down under them.”

  Carr nodded. “It was a long march … a hard one on us all. Yes, Cody—you and Lieutenant Price need to lead a squad into the sandhills east of here. Wait until dark for any stragglers bringing up the rear. Guide them in here—the wagon train too.”

  Donegan left on foot behind Cody and the North brothers. Carr waited a moment, wanting badly to go to the ravine and have a look for himself at the desperate fight that had taken place there. Instead, he admitted to himself that he would not.

  Not that he was unaccustomed to the horror and gore of violent death. Too much of that he had seen already in his military career begun years ago on the plains, even before the rebellion down south.

  Instead he pulled the big hat from his head and swiped a hand across his thinning hair and the receding hairline. Thirty-nine years old and he felt a hundred. It had been hard to find the stamina to push himself and his men, their animals as well, on this march. But once he had seen those tiny boot-prints in the sand days ago … it all became so real.

  No longer were these just Cheyenne he had his Fifth Cavalry trailing. Looking down at the fragments of those footprints scuffed in the sand made this band of Indians his enemy—the enemy to everything he stood for and had worked for out here for almost seventeen years.

  He thought back on her painfully. Mary Patience Magwire-Carr. So far away in St. Louis. It crushed him to think either of the white women could have been his sweet Mary. He scratched his beard, fighting back the sting of tears. Once more he swallowed down the pain. Knowing this land was truly no place for her and the children.

  But this is where he had to be—torn from Mary and the children. Here on campaign, happiest in the saddle. He disliked being a subordinate, and too often that dislike had shown in his dealings with his superiors. It had been his strong sense of devotion to the institution of the army, rather than the individual personalities who ran the army, that had from time to time caused Carr to run afoul of his superiors as he petitioned for arms and equipment and supplies to wage the frontier war.

  In quiet moments like this, Carr dwelled on how his vigorous claims in all likelihood retarded his promotion. He knew he could be frank to the point of tactlessness.

  Nevertheless, Carr remained an odd one at times, putting before all else the welfare of the men assigned him. Although only a major that summer, he was one of the few who had survived the “Benzine Board” which purged the army of its incompetents following the war of rebellion.

  He strode up to his adjutant and stopped. “What have you got to report, Lieutenant?”

  Robert Montgomery let the papers flutter before him. “Most of the count is complete, General. I’m waiting for the tally of stock—both horse and mule.”

  “Tell me the rest of it,” Carr sighed. He drew himself up as he often did. Shorter than average, it was his impeccably erect carriage that made him seem taller.

  “Captain Maley reports seventeen prisoners.”

  “The dead?”

  “With the ravine fight—a total of fifty-two, General.”

  “What of the plunder in the village?”

  Montgomery regarded his papers. “Forty bows with arrows. Twenty-two revolvers of varying conditions, and fifty-six rifles. We counted over fifty pounds of powder. Many knives and camp axes.”

  “Blankets and robes?”

  “Yessir. Many of what I’d call a Navajo blanket. Over a thousand buffalo robes alone.”

  He nodded. “A large camp, Lieutenant.”

  “I counted eighty-four lodges myself, General. Many wickiups for the young, bachelor warriors.”

  It made him feel a bit better. “We’ve struck them a blow.” Carr turned to watch the last of Major Royall’s men leave camp on their weary mounts. He sighed, looking over the captured Cheyenne herd, knowing full-well Indian ponies would not cotton to the smell of his young white soldiers. There was more pressing business at hand.

  “Did we find any food?” Carr asked.

  “We’ve separated the dried meat, General. Quartermaster Hayes is waiting for you to give orders on it.”

  “Tell him to package what he can of it. Take it on the wagons. The men are due for a change of diet between now and the time we get to Sedgwick.”

  “We’ll march there, sir?”

  “It’s closest—not that far north of here.” Carr turned back to Montgomery as the last horsemen disappeared over the hill. “Tomorrow—after we bury the woman and burn the village, though. For now take word to the commands to establish a defensive perimeter and bivouac here in the village.”

  “You fear an attack by the survivors?”

  “Not really. But, in all my years out here, fighting everything from Comanches to these Dog Soldiers—I’ve kept my men alive by not taking any chances, Lieutenant.”

  Montgomery cleared his throat, clearly ill at ease saying what he felt he had to say. “These men would follow you anywhere, General Carr.”

  At that moment Carr looked at his adjutant in a new light.

  Montgomery continued, “They’d do anything for you, sir. Ride into Hell and back if they had to.”

  “They’ve done just that since we started this chase, Mr. Montgomery. Tell the men I’m proud of them—damned proud of them.”

  Self-consciously Montgomery said, “Not a man who rode with you today won’t like hearing those words from you, General.”

  “I can’t tell them. It’s … it’s up to you.”

  “I’ll let the men know how you feel, sir.” Montgomery saluted and left.

  Carr turned away, looking west to the far, rumpled horizon where the Rockies rose cold and keen against the summer sky.

  Ah, Mary, he said to himself as the air began to cool against his bearded cheeks. My sweet, sweet Mary—you might as well be as unreachable as those mountains right now … for I am feeling every bit as cold without you here with m
e …

  * * *

  Seamus rolled along easily in the saddle atop a horse that would take some getting used to. Whereas the mare had been gentle and resolute, this young gelding gave hint of something that only a strong hand could control.

  Riding in among the fifty soldiers and the dozen or so civilian scouts commanded by Major William B. Royall as the sun fell into the west was the only thing he could think of doing in those minutes after the short, fierce battle. Royall ordered him to stay behind, what with his two wounds.

  “Begging pardon, Major—but I got Carr’s orders to ride along with you. Besides, this little march will do some good, taking me mind off the ruddy wounds.”

  Donegan could not tell Royall or Cody or any of them that he needed this ride among all these men to take his mind off the remembrance of Liam O’Roarke and another campaign across these plains of eastern Colorado Territory almost one year gone. The same clatter of tack and weapons and drone of hooves through the grassy sandhills that had accompanied George A. Forsyth’s ragtag band of Indian fighters drummed its way into the painful place inside where Seamus did his best to hide at times like these.

  Best to be on the trail of the fleeing Cheyenne, better that than back in the village, alone with his memories. Struggling with the frustration—not knowing where to go but farther west to find Liam’s brother, Ian O’Roarke. West now …

  Anything at this moment to keep his mind off the thought he felt himself lashed to and bound by like a rawhide hobble.

  Knowing the chances were very good that lying dead back in that village of Tall Bull’s Dog Soldiers, if not very much alive and up ahead with the fleeing Cheyenne, was the nameless, faceless warrior who had taken the life of Liam O’Roarke.

  * * *

  Late that night of the eleventh Bill Cody watched as Major Royall led his detail back to the Indian camp. The Cheyenne had scattered in all directions like a flushed covey of quail. Royall’s men returned empty-handed except for the rain and hail they brought with them.

  North’s Pawnees had earlier wrangled the Cheyenne herd, capturing the pride of the Dog Soldiers. More than four hundred ponies and mules Carr’s troops would drive north to Fort Sedgwick.

  All afternoon and through the night, troopers of the Fifth Cavalry straggled into the village on foot, having left behind any horses done in from the last four days of exhausting chase.

  After breakfast around the many smoky fires the following morning, most of the soldiers gathered beside the nearby spring at Major Carr’s request. Cody stood with Donegan and the scouts as the hat was passed among the hundreds. Both the soldiers and Pawnee trackers turned over nine hundred dollars in gold and cash they had found among the looted lodges.

  “Last night after supper, Dr. Tesson, who is seeing to the needs of Mrs. Weichel, made a suggestion to me—something I want to put before you men,” Carr told them as the morning breeze caressed the place with a hallowed sense of the occasion.

  “I think his suggestion appropriate in light of the fact that Mrs. Weichel lost her husband in the raids upon Kansas made by these very warriors earlier in the year,” Carr said, then cleared his throat. It was evident that he felt a tugging sentiment in the moment.

  “Dr. Tesson suggested that this money be donated to the woman who defiantly survived the horrid atrocities visited upon her by the Indians who held her prisoner. Without saying more, I know every one of you men can imagine the unspeakable horrors she had to endure at the hands of her captors.”

  He waited in silence while the hats circulated among the soldiers.

  “Our final duty this morning is to lay another poor woman to rest, here where she fell—her life given in blood to her captors.”

  Those soldiers who had not uncovered, quickly removed their kepis or wide-brimmed slouch hats in a nervous rustling there beneath the shady cottonwoods.

  As Carr went on, from time to time uttering a phrase of his fluent French, Cody continued to gaze at the bundle near the major’s feet. In lieu of a coffin, a pair of unnamed soldiers had wrapped Mrs. Susanna Alderdice in a buffalo robe and bound her securely with rawhide ropes found among the lodges. From the back of the worn Bible Carr carried in a saddlebag, he read the brief funeral service and two scriptures.

  Behind him, Cody listened to the sniffles of a hundred men and the shuffling of half a thousand feet made nervous by this spiritual moment beside the spring. Men unaccustomed to showing tears wept openly as Carr ordered the body of Mrs. Alderdice lowered into a deep grave.

  “We will conclude this service with the singing of ‘Blest Be the Tie that Binds.’ Any of you who would like to throw a handful of sod on the mortal remains of this poor woman, let him come forward in a single, orderly column as we end this service in song.”

  One by one the silent hundreds lined up to march slowly by the darkened pit scooped out of the grassy earth beside the gurgling spring. Each one knelt for but a moment, scooping a handful of crusty, sandy soil, tossing it upon the buffalo-hide coffin of Susanna Alderdice.

  “Before our Father’s Throne,

  We pour our ardent prayers;

  Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,

  Our comforts and our cares.

  “We share each other’s woes,

  Each other’s burdens bear,

  And often for each other flows

  The sympathizing tear.

  “When we are called to part

  It give us inward pain,

  But we shall still be joined in heart,

  And hope to meet again.”

  Thinking of Lulu and little Arta back home, safe and far away, from this dangerous land, Bill’s fingertips raked across the words carved in the crude marker driven into the sand at the head of the grave. Boards torn from a hardtack box, nailed together as the last memorial to the woman who had followed her husband into this dangerous land.

  Susanna Alderdice

  wife of Tom

  died 11 July 1869

  Buried by her friends in

  the Fifth Cavalry

  “We knew her pain.”

  Chapter 28

  Moon of Cherries Blackening

  White Horse did not like the taste of fleeing in his mouth. Not only the taste, but the stone of a feeling in his belly that sickened him with turning his back on the soldiers.

  He listened patiently as Two Crows and many of the older ones talked. It had been three sunrises since the soldiers drove his people from Tall Bull’s village.

  He thought that ironic, especially as Tall Bull’s second-in-command. Tall Bull was dead. At least half a hundred, perhaps more, warriors dead, left behind when the village fled into the hills and Platte River bluffs. The count very well might go higher, he was afraid. But for now, no one knew for sure how many warriors they had lost. Women and children too. Many of them cut down in the first frantic minutes of fighting and flight.

  How many still wandered the open prairie this night, after all these days without food, perhaps without water … he found it hard to know.

  Something every bit as hard to understand was why the old ones were advising that summer would soon end, and with the coming of the new season would be the death-song to their old way of life. They were for giving in and going south.

  “Last summer we lost Roman Nose on what our people call Warrior River,” Two Crows said to the assembled Cheyenne who had wandered the plains with Tall Bull. “This last winter, in the time of first snows, our people who camped with Black Kettle died beneath the hooves of Yellow Hair’s pony soldiers. But Yellow Hair did not stop with the destruction of Black Kettle’s village. Yellow Hair continued the chase through the winter and captured the mighty Rock Forehead—keeper of the powerful Medicine Arrows of our people.”

  “But now they live like the white man’s spotted cows, kept like prisoners on their reservation far to the south of here,” White Horse said when it was his turn to speak.

  “I am tired,” Bull Bear admitted when Two Crows did not rise to speak
against White Horse. “My wife and children … we cannot live like this anymore. We strike back at the white man—he follows us until he catches us and drives us from our homes. We strike again—the white man sends even more soldiers after us. And each time we leave more Cheyenne bodies behind.”

  “So you will surrender?”

  Bull Bear evidently felt the full force of White Horse’s glare. He could not bring himself to look in the warrior’s face as he answered.

  “Too many of my friends … my relations—they are no longer among the living. I will go south and join Rock Forehead’s people on the Sweetwater … perhaps Little Robe’s band on the Washita. They live in peace.”

  “Where there is no buffalo!” White Horse shouted, startling the entire assembly gathered beneath the dark summer canopy endlessly dusted with stars like flecks of tiny foam.

  “They live,” Bull Bear replied finally.

  “No—they do not live. And like them, if you go live south on the reservation—you will slowly die. You will walk, and you will sleep. You will eat and you will hunt for rabbits. But this is not living for Shahiyena!”

  “I will go with Bull Bear and Two Crows,” said White Man’s Ladder.

  “Go then,” White Horse declared, feeling something disintegrating around him. “The rest of you who would call life on the reservation living—go with tomorrow’s first light. I do not want to look upon your faces. Tuck your tails between your legs and run south. I pray the white soldiers who drove us from our village will not find you and leave your bodies to bleach on the prairie.”

  “We will go west before turning south,” Two Crows said. “And stay away from the soldiers.”

  “Yes,” White Horse agreed. “You should stay far away from the soldiers. For if they found you—there would be no warriors among you to fight.”

  “I will be with Two Crows’s people,” declared Standing Bear.

  White Horse glowered at him. “And your heart will not turn to water at the sight of the pony soldiers?”

  “No—I will fight to protect my people.”

  He puffed his chest proudly. “Then stay and fight with me, Standing Bear. Come with my people … north—where the water runs clear and so cold that it will hurt your teeth to drink it.”