Black Eagle

by Charles G. West

  It was a bewildered young lieutenant who said good-bye at the infirmary porch and thanked the lady for a pleasant afternoon. She looked at him long and hard, the pain of regret in her eyes. She squeezed his hand and said she would see him tomorrow. Then she was gone, leaving him wondering why it had all happened. She never answered his proposal of marriage. Would she? He wondered. And then the question . . . now that I’ve found her, how can I live without her?

  * * *

  As he expected, the following morning he received orders to return to his station at Fort Fetterman to rejoin his troop. The orders specified his departure the next day, giving him one more day at Laramie. Florence Linebaugh sent word through her husband that she expected him for supper that evening. This meant one last evening to see Martha.

  Though he was still stiff and sore, he decided he could manage without the sling so he discarded it when he left the infirmary. Most of his day was spent in odd jobs necessary to clear the post. It took almost half of the day to select a horse to replace the one killed during the fight on the Powder. He took his time making his choice because there were more than a few broken-down mounts in the herd. When he finally decided on a chestnut roan that exhibited a little enthusiasm, he went to draw a saddle and tack. The day passed more quickly than he had anticipated, keeping his mind off of Martha for the most part.

  Six o’clock at last . . . Thad stood at Major Linebaugh’s front door. His knock was tentative, as if reluctant to announce his presence. After the previous evening’s conversation and unanswered proposal, he was quite nervous, not sure how he should act when he saw Martha. Should he press her for her answer? Or just pretend it never happened? He didn’t know.

  The door opened and there stood Martha, a sad smile on her face, and he knew immediately what her answer would be. His initial impulse was to turn on his heel and retreat but he forced what he hoped would pass for a warm smile.

  “Good evening, Thad.” She extended her hand.

  “Evening, Martha,” he replied. Taking her hand, he looked deep into her eyes, searching for a spark that would prove his initial assessment false. He heard Robert’s voice behind her.

  “Come on in, Thad.”

  The evening was pleasant. Most of the conversation centered around Thad’s leaving the following morning and the apparent increase in hostile raiding parties to the north. Florence’s stew was tasty as usual and Robert even produced a bottle of wine for the occasion of Thad’s farewell dinner. As often as discreetly possible, Thad stole glances at Martha and each time met her gaze in return. He found himself desperate to be alone with her.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t pull enough strings to keep you here,” Robert said. “Colonel Whitman was willing enough but, when he requested your transfer, Colonel Fleming wouldn’t approve it. I’m sure it’s strictly a manpower problem. We’re supposed to get replacement troops in a month or so. Maybe then.”

  “I appreciate it, Robert. Fetterman is a miserable duty station. I didn’t really mind it before now.” Realizing he was exposing his private thoughts, he said no more.

  The meaning behind his statement was not lost on the rest of the dinner party. Florence glanced quickly at her sister, a knowing smile across her pleasant face. Martha flushed but slightly and Robert beamed broadly. Never one to impede her sister’s opportunities, Florence got up to clear the dishes. When Robert suggested the men should go outside on the porch to smoke a cigar, Florence immediately overruled him and insisted that Thad and Martha should take the night air instead. One sharp look from his wife and Robert was quick to second the motion.

  Outside, the night air had cooled, providing refreshing relief from the afternoon sun. It was August, the month the Sioux called Moon When the Geese Shed Their Feathers, and it had been unusually hot. But the nights were cool and Martha had pulled a shawl over her shoulders.

  “Do you want to walk?”

  “No,” she replied. “Let’s just sit here on the step.”

  He dusted the step with his hand and they sat down. Neither spoke for a long while. They sat silently, watching the light gradually fade as the long summer day reluctantly receded. Suddenly she turned to face him, pausing but a moment, then came into his arms. He held her close to him for a few moments and then she gently pulled his head down to meet her lips. He kissed her feverishly with a need he could not disguise. She met his passion with her own. Then they broke it off and pulled away, both fighting a desire that they knew could not be fulfilled. The pain of it was tearing at his heart. They were desperately in love and both knew it. Finally her frustration overwhelmed her.

  “Oh, Thad, I don’t know what to do! Why couldn’t I have met you in St. Louis, back east somewhere . . . anywhere but this godforsaken place!”

  “I love you, Martha.”

  “And I love you,” she cried in anguish. “But I can’t live out here on an army post.”

  The finality of her words left him in devastation, not knowing what more he could say to change her mind. He hung his head, staring down at the step beneath him.

  She sighed heavily. “I’m going back to St. Louis tomorrow. I don’t want to stay here after you leave. I’m sorry, Thad. I love you but I’m just not made of the pioneer stock necessary to make a life out here.”

  He said nothing in reply. There was nothing he could say. They continued to sit in silence for a long time after that, each suffering the emptiness of their dilemma. After several long minutes had passed with no words between them, she got to her feet.

  “I’m going in now. Are you coming?”

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just be on my way. Say good night to Robert and Florence for me, will you?”

  He saw her to the door where she paused and looked up at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered and reached up and kissed him quickly and then she was gone. He stood motionless for a moment, staring at the rough wood of the closed door. The heaviness in his shoulders, the aching he felt in his chest, had nothing to do with his healing wound. He had been privileged to glimpse Heaven for a brief moment only to have it snatched rudely away from his grasp. What, he wondered, was the point of it all? He wished again that he had never met her.

  CHAPTER XII

  Jason sat on Black, watching Lieutenant Harry Lassiter form up D Troop. The sun was only now peeping over the far horizon and the lieutenant was inspecting the formation in preparation for a six-day patrol to check out reports of a small band of hostiles camping on Goose Creek. Jason had little patience with military drills. Most of them were a waste of time in his mind. But he supposed this one was necessary. Over half of D Troop, like most of the regiment, was made up of green recruits who had probably never seen an Indian in battle before that one engagement out on the Powder. He supposed it was necessary to make sure they all drew their rations and grain for their horses. Some of them had just joined the regiment only a week before and had probably never fired their carbines more than half a dozen times. Ammunition was in short supply at Fetterman, consequently there was none spared for target practice. Helluva way to make up an army, he thought, and reached over and rubbed Black’s neck for a moment.

  Hearing a horse coming up behind him, he turned to find Shorty Boyd pulling up beside him. “Want some company?” Shorty snorted.

  “Not especially,” Jason deadpanned. “I’d kinda hoped I could get shed of you for a few days.”

  Shorty pretended to be offended. “Well, if that ain’t a fine attitude to have . . . after the way I been keeping you from losing your hair.” He shot a stream of tobacco juice between his horse’s ears and the animal jerked backward. “He hates it when I do that,” Shorty observed.

  Jason laughed. “What happened? Captain Blevins fire you?”

  “Nah. H Troop’s standing down for a few days. I’d rather go with you than sit around this sorry place. Where we going, anyway?”

  “One of the Sioux scouts said he saw about a dozen hostiles camped up on Goose Creek . . .”

  “That could be fi
ve or twenty,” Shorty interrupted.

  “I reckon. Anyway, we’re going up there to see . . . if the lieutenant ever gets through inspecting his soldier boys.”

  Shorty paused to watch the formation for a while. “Boy, they’re green, ain’t they? Lassiter’s all right, I reckon, but he still thinks he can fight Injuns the same way he fought the Rebs back in the war.” He turned again toward Jason. “How come you got sent out with his troop? B Troop ought to be back here in a day or so.”

  Jason shrugged. “Said he didn’t have a civilian scout and, after Lieutenant Anderson’s little surprise on Buffalo Creek, he don’t completely trust his Sioux scouts.”

  Shorty snorted and coughed, then snorted some more, trying to free a little piece of tobacco leaf that got caught halfway down his throat. When he finally dislodged it, he snorted one more time. “Damn!” he swore and cut himself another plug from a twist he carried in his shirt pocket. “I reckon Lassiter figured you done in ol’ Bone so you ought to take his place.”

  “Maybe,” Jason commented dryly. He started to say more but just then Lieutenant Lassiter gave the command “Right, By Twos,” and the troop was finally in motion. He nudged Black lightly and the horse started out toward the head of the column. Shorty wheeled in behind him.

  Jason didn’t have much opinion about Lieutenant Lassiter one way or the other. He hadn’t had that much exposure to the man. Lassiter was another wartime appointment without the benefit of West Point connections. He’d volunteered for the Second Cavalry and a tour of duty out west to save his commission, like so many of his fellow officers. Like young Thad Anderson, Lassiter held a brevet rank of captain, but unlike Thad, his commission had been in the Union Army. According to Shorty, Lassiter had little imagination when it came to frontier fighting. It seemed his only tactic was, when the enemy was sighted, to charge hell-bent for leather.

  Jason doubted if there would be any opportunity to charge this small group of hostiles the Sioux scouts had reported. In his mind, it was a sheer waste of time to send a full troop of cavalry out after a handful of Indians. They were doubtless on their way north to join one of the bigger villages and it would be a pitiful bunch of Indians that couldn’t hide from a troop of soldiers. Of course they didn’t ask for his opinion or he would have given it. They were paying him to scout and he could sure as hell lead them to Goose Creek if that’s what they wanted.

  Lassiter sent Jason and Shorty out ahead of the column as they left the fort and headed out across the treeless prairie toward the northwest. Jason knew the spot where the Sioux scouts had seen the hostiles. It was a favorite camping site for roving bands of Sioux and Arapaho, a tiny branch of one of the Powder’s tributaries. It was called Goose Creek although it was little more than a trickle that usually dried up if the summer was dry. He figured it would take the troop two days to reach it.

  * * *

  On the day following D Troop’s departure to Goose Creek, B Troop, without Lieutenant Anderson, rode in to Fort Fetterman. Some of the Indians from the camp outside the fort stood by to watch the procession of blue-shirted soldiers as they wheeled around in formation to be dismissed, after which the men soon dispersed to return to their regular quarters.

  Over near the edge of the parade ground, three children paused in their play to watch the soldiers pass. Then they resumed their games. Lemuel giggled delightedly as he watched the baby trying to throw the ball back to him. Jeremy, being the eldest at six years of age, was charged with the responsibility of watching his two younger brothers while Mama hung up the wash. Ruth Woodcock trusted Jeremy to do as he was told and she had laid down very strict boundaries for the area of their play. It wouldn’t do for the children to get in the way of a galloping cavalry horse and get trampled.

  Jeremy called to Lemuel to bring the ball back toward the house. He realized they were getting outside his mama’s limits and he didn’t want to get the seat of his trousers dusted. As his only concern was in avoiding a whipping, he took no notice of the group of Indian men standing behind the sutler’s where they had been watching the soldiers. Being a small boy, and on an army post, he had no need to be concerned with the forlorn lot of various Indians camped outside the fort. There were always some Indians around the fort—displaced families, refugees from cavalry raids, scouts—he had grown up with it. Consequently, he paid no attention to the tall, smooth-muscled Cheyenne who, while the other men watched the soldiers, never took his eyes off of the children playing. While his companions continued to watch the goings-on of the military post, he walked unhurriedly to the back of the store where his pony was tied. Almost in one motion he approached the horse and leaped gracefully upon its back.

  Ruth Woodcock was near the bottom of the basket, down to Wes’ underwear. She could not see the boys. The sheets on the line behind her blocked her view so she decided it was about time to check on their whereabouts. She pulled two clothespins from her apron and held them in her mouth while she shook the wrinkles from her husband’s drawers. They’re getting mighty threadbare, she thought. I’ll be ashamed to hang them up for folks to see before long. She heard Jeremy yelling as she stuck the last pin on the line.

  She was not immediately alarmed. The younguns were always yelling about something but she put her basket down and hurried around the corner of the house to see who had hit whom. When she rounded the corner, it was to see Jeremy and Lemuel racing to meet her, both yelling at the top of their lungs.

  “Stop that yelling,” she ordered, looking beyond them for the baby. “Where’s John?” she asked, concerned now. “Where’s your brother?”

  Jeremy, breathless from running and barely able to get the words out, panted, “He took John!”

  “What?” she demanded. “Who took John?” She grabbed her son by the shoulders. “Jeremy! Who took John?” She could not as yet fathom the seriousness of what had taken place. Jeremy started to cry. She shook him by his shoulders. “Jeremy! Where’s John?”

  Still crying, he turned and pointed toward the Indian encampment. “Injun! He rode by and just picked John up and rode off with him!”

  The words hit Ruth with the force of a cannon. She could barely believe it was actually happening, right there in the midst of an entire regiment of soldiers, the baby kidnapped! Dumbfounded for the moment, she looked in the direction Jeremy still pointed. There, almost out of sight, a lone rider galloped away. Screaming for her sons to go into the house and stay there, she ran to the headquarters building to get her husband.

  Wesley Woodcock was horrified. This could not happen here, not in broad daylight. Colonel Fleming, horrified as well, seemed dumbfounded at first but quickly regained his composure.

  “Sergeant, mount a detachment to go after him right away.”

  The sergeant-major was thinking as a father now as well as a soldier. His mind was still numb as he acknowledged the colonel’s order. “Bates!” he shouted to his clerk. “Get the Officer of the Day!” Then his rational mind took over and he knew it was highly unlikely, if not damn near impossible, for a cavalry patrol—no matter how quickly it could be mustered—to catch up with a fast Indian pony with a sizable head start. Disregarding rank, he turned back to Colonel Fleming and said, “Send someone to find Jason Coles.”

  “Right,” Fleming replied, not realizing that the sergeant was giving him orders.

  * * *

  The sun was riding low on the horizon when Jason and Shorty rode back to meet the column. They reined in on either side of Lieutenant Lassiter and Jason gave his report.

  “Well, they were there all right, only there were six of ’em instead of a dozen. I’d say they’ve been gone about two days. Probably four men and two women—six horses, two pulling travois. Not exactly a war party.”

  Lassiter nodded solemnly, concern written on his face. Jason wondered if the man had heard him right. His serious expression would have been called for if Jason had reported six hundred instead of half a dozen. “How far?”

  “Goose Creek? About a mile.�
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  “Very well. We’ll make camp there tonight and get an early start in the morning.”

  “You’re still gonna chase after six Injuns?” Jason couldn’t help but ask.

  “Of course. My orders are to capture the hostiles.”

  Jason looked at Shorty, who shook his head in amazement and spit a stream of brown juice on the grass. Never one to hold his tongue for very long, Shorty offered his observations. “Might as well go chasing after them clouds on the horizon over there.”

  Lassiter looked from one scout to the other, then focused on Jason. “What do you think, Coles? Do you share Mr. Boyd’s opinion?”

  Jason smiled. “I reckon he’s pretty much right about it. I don’t think it would be the best use of a troop of cavalry.”

  Lassiter thought about it for a moment before replying. “I’ve got my orders. We’ll make camp on Goose Creek and continue the search tomorrow. I’d like to have something to show for this patrol.”

  They went into bivouac about fifty yards down the creek from where the Sioux had camped. Pickets were posted and Jason and Shorty took a long scout around the perimeter. Shorty returned to the camp before Jason so he had a fire built and a pot of coffee boiling by the time Jason showed up.

  “Where you been?” Shorty asked. “Waiting back yonder behind the hills till I got the coffee on?”

  “Seemed like the smart thing to do,” Jason returned. He unsaddled Black and hobbled the horse close by the bank of the stream. Black had long since decided he and Jason were a team and he wouldn’t normally stray far from his partner. But Jason didn’t want to take a chance that his horse might wander, searching for grass, and he didn’t want to have to look for him if he needed him in a hurry. Black rolled his eyes back at Jason as he was tying the hobbles. The horse almost looked as if he was insulted. Jason rubbed him down a little to soothe his pride. His horse taken care of, he settled himself by the fire to sample Shorty’s coffee. Each man brought out some salt pork and hardtack from their rations and settled back to eat.