The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  “You heard the major!” McCall bawled. “Left face! Front by column of twos! At a walk … forrard—h-o-o-o-o!”

  Clumsily, the citizen soldiers turned their mounts and straggled into something like a column of cavalry. Many of the men recalled familiar commands of years gone by, yet painfully fresh in both mind and soul of a fighting man. Behind Forsyth followed some fifty of those who had served one army or the other across four bloody years, men now like thousands of others flocking to the frontier when they found nothing they could go home to.

  For sure, Donegan thought, most of these had fought in the war—had some action under their belts. And some even looked as if they might be seasoned plainsmen. Good at tracking Indians. Experienced at fighting them as well.

  As soon as it had been made known that this troop of scouts was to be organized back at Fort Harker, Forsyth had been buried under applicants. Many of those lounging about the fort as frontiersmen would often do, waiting for work of one color or another. Others came in as word spread, men who might have a personal debt to settle with the Cheyenne—knowing a friend, perhaps a relative, who had suffered at the hands of the raiding war-parties igniting the Kansas plains. The major had skimmed the cream at Fort Harker.

  When he had moved west to Fort Hays, Forsyth found the news had raced there before him. More than a hundred men of all breeds waited a chance to sign on. From them, Forsyth had chosen but twenty. Still he had one to pick up at Fort Wallace in the days yet to come.

  The brigade would travel fast and light. As McCall had told them, “Not stringing no baggage train ahind us. We’ll carry what we need on our horses, boys.”

  As the dust of the Kansas prairie stung his nostrils, Donegan recalled how the sergeant had chuckled, then continued.

  “I’m in charge of four of the ugliest mules you’ll ever see. Trouble is, them Jennies’re prettier than a lot of the chippies some of you bastards been sleeping with! Them four mules is our whole pack-train. Most of it ammunition. I’ll have food for your gut, bandages for your wounds, and salve for your saddle-galls. Yes, by damn—bacon, beans, biscuits … and bullets, boys! That’s all we’re taking this ride out!”

  Besides the four thousand extra rounds of ammunition, those four pack-mules also carried some medical supplies for Dr. John Mooers, in addition to extra salt and coffee. A few camp kettles and six shovels completed the pack-train’s load. Each man carried his own seven-day rations in his own haversack slung to the back of his saddle. Not much more than each scout’s own dry rigging, perhaps a change of shirts.

  “Light and lean,” Donegan mumbled once more.

  Perhaps as well as any man on this march, the big Irishman knew the plains Indian. He was not alone in considering the warriors the finest light cavalry the world had yet seen mount a four-legged animal.

  “The major’s got to travel light and lean to ever entertain a hope of catching those h’athens—much less a hope of getting them to fight on his terms.”

  Seamus rode on, the Confederate at his side whistling one mountain tune after another. And all the while the Irishman cursed himself.

  Bacon, beans, biscuits … and bullets. By the saints! It appears Mither Donegan’s first-born son is back in the army!

  Chapter 6

  George Forsyth had taken his men north by northwest from Fort Hays as the sun climbed high in the sky that thirtieth day of August.

  Early the morning before, he had been handed orders from Sheridan.

  Fort Hays, Kansas

  August 29, 1868

  Brevet Colonel George A. Forsyth,

  Commanding Detachment of Scouts:

  I would suggest that you move across the headwaters of Solomon to Beaver Creek, thence down that Creek to Fort Wallace. On arrival at Wallace report to me by telegraph at this place.

  Yours truly,

  P. H. Sheridan, Major General

  From the Smoky Hill country, the major steered his brigade of scouts toward the Saline River in that bracing, clear air of the plains. No more than an hour out of Hays, Forsyth spotted his first antelope of the trip on the distant, rolling hills. More of the white-rumped creatures joined the first, curious as to the long column of riders crawling across the brown, shimmering plains beneath a midday sun.

  At noon they halted to rest the animals and gnaw on their “tacks,” the hard bread, while coffee boiled. By the middle of the afternoon Forsyth figured no man with him could fail to understand they were at last beyond civilization. At the Saline late that night in the first drops of a drizzling rain, he quietly informed the scouts they entered the land of the Cheyenne.

  Most of the civilians went about their mess as cheerfully as possible in the cold mist. Few of them had stayed atop a saddle for this long in many a month. Blisters, sore backsides, or just plain fatigue were commonplace as the camp settled itself for the rainy summer night.

  Sgt. William McCall assigned duty to rotating pickets at Forsyth’s order while coffee brewed over small, red-pitted fires that twinkled as merrily as the stars overhead.

  “Major.”

  “Billy,” Forsyth replied, nodding to McCall as the sergeant settled beside his firepit.

  Experienced plainsmen all, they started each fire at the bottom of a hole scooped out of the sand. In that way, a wandering warrior would not easily spot the glowing fires, until he would be practically upon the camp.

  “You get the feeling we’re chasing the wind, Major?” McCall whispered as he accepted a steaming cup of coffee from Forsyth.

  George smiled, drinking from his own cup before he answered. “They’re out there, Billy. If I don’t find them, I’ve got a feeling the bastards will find me.”

  McCall blew steam off his brew. “Have me the same feeling. Us … or them. No matter—there’ll be a fight of it.”

  Forsyth held his cup on his thigh and gazed past the cottonwood and willow. Somewhere to the northwest in the inky blackness of that prairie night. “The Cheyenne are waiting for us, Billy. They know we’re coming. Sooner or later, they knew someone had to come.”

  “They know, sir?”

  He nodded, his eyes coming back to rest on McCall. “August 12: seventeen killed … August 14 on Granny Creek: another murder. Twenty-eighth: eight more on North Texas, three on Two Butte, two on Pond Creek. Between Kiowa Station and Fort Lyon itself: five more killed … I could go on.”

  “I understand, Major. They’re gouging you, begging someone to come out and dance, aren’t they, sir?”

  Forsyth nodded as he rose stiffly, the kinks in his legs once more knotting up as the prairie’s warmth where he had been sitting quickly escaped into the cold of summer night. “Billy, I’ve waited the better part of three years for a chance like this.”

  “So had Fred Beecher, Major.”

  “I know. Yet no man will ever understand how it feels to watch Sheridan give the cream of the action to Custer. Or to that aide of his, Crosby. Sheridan even gives his own brother——”

  “Your time’s come, sir.”

  “Yes, my time has come, Billy. I’m ready to dance with Roman Nose.”

  Silently Forsyth turned and slipped into the darkness, his eyes adjusting to pick out the lumps of sleeping bodies among the saddles and baggage on the ground. Out near the pickets, he stopped and loosened the buttons of his fly. It felt good, this. His kidneys got a damned hard pounding all day.

  As much as he had wanted this assignment, George Forsyth realized it would be many days before he would once more be saddle-fit, truly ready to take the hammering of the trail. He turned, gazing at the dark lumps, men rolled in blankets, most paired back to back to share their warmth.

  And he shuddered.

  Knowing these men didn’t have an idea one what they were heading into. While most of his volunteers had fought in the war, and a few had skirmished with Indians here on the plains of Kansas—a melancholy Forsyth figured that not one among them understood what might be asked of them in the next few days.

  Truth of it was, h
e and Beecher were heading into Cheyenne country come morning, fixing to stir a big stick in a hornets’ nest.

  * * *

  Their second night out of Fort Hays, Seamus Donegan lay awake for the longest time, listening to the musical snores of other men, the whispers of the nearby pickets, and the gnawing of the animals on the brittle, sun-cured grasses where they were hobbled. That first night he had fallen into his blanket, exhausted from Forsyth’s relentless march. But after two full dawn-to-sundown days of straddling a saddle, Seamus had been relieved to find some of the old familiar exhilaration that came from the fatigue.

  As the sun had sunk in the west, Sharp Grover had signaled the column from a far hilltop. From there, the scouts had recognized the inviting ribbon of water glittering in the twilight a few hundred yards away. The South Fork of the Solomon River. From what some of the Kansas men were saying, seemed like the major was aiming them straight for Fort Sedgwick with this northwest trail he was cutting into Cheyenne country.

  “He’s got orders to turn back to Wallace once he hits Beaver Creek,” Grover explained to Donegan in a harsh whisper during that third day’s ride.

  “You think he’ll do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Point us back to Wallace.”

  “You must wanna see this uncle of yours something awful, Irishman.”

  “I do. My mither asked it of me.”

  Grover had nodded without more reply and reined away for the rest of the day. But Seamus could still not help thinking that George Forsyth had a burr under his saddle-blanket, bound and determined to march his men into a fight. And he recalled the major’s own words that last night at Fort Harker.

  “You men have been hired to fight Indians. To kill as many as you can.”

  Before they kill us, Major? he asked himself now as Bob Smith hollered beside him, pointing to a far knoll in the rolling swales of land that reminded Seamus so much of the Atlantic Ocean and that cursed ship that years ago brought him to Amerikay’s shores.

  Forsyth ordered old man Trudeau to spell Sharp Grover, sending Sharp back to the column. Trudeau loped off, joining Grover on top of the knoll. Neither of them rode down the slope. Instead, they waved the column on.

  What greeted the command when they crested the knoll was something most men of the day had never before seen, and lived to tell of.

  Forsyth peered at the sun. “Late enough in the day, Sergeant. We’ll order a halt here.”

  “Yessir.” McCall turned his horse as Forsyth walked off, talking in low tones to Fred Beecher. “Dismount! Water ’em quickly, boys. Supper’s up to you. Light ’em if you got ’em. I’m gonna take me a shit.”

  Donegan chuckled along with most of the others as he slid from the saddle. Once The General had been watered and hobbled in a nice spread of grass beside the mouth of Sappa Creek, Seamus had him some boiled coffee and fried pork. Deciding to return for beans later, the Irishman wandered fifty yards from camp to the bank of the North Fork of the Solomon. Here Sappa Creek flowed clear and cool into the bigger stream.

  And here he stepped cautiously into the ghostly remains of a Cheyenne sundance arbor.

  With the setting sun casting long, blood-red shadows from the west, the upright poles encircling the tall center pole reminded Donegan of the skeleton of some huge, prehistoric beast. Halting at the base of the center pole where lay four painted buffalo skulls, he stared into the growing twilight of the Kansas sky at the tatters of rawhide thongs still tied to the top of the monstrous pole.

  “The bastards hang themselves from that pole.”

  With the sound of the voice, Seamus jerked around, his heart in his throat. Having believed he was alone, in a place both savage and sacred at the same time, he was unnerved to find that the Confederate Bob Smith had crept up on him soundlessly while he had been standing in awe of the structure.

  “Hang themselves?”

  Smith pointed an index finger at each breast. “Medicine men cut under the muscles. Slip a twig under the muscle and hook up the young bucks to those long rawhide whangs.”

  “Then what?”

  Smith snorted and knelt, his fingers playing with the designs in earth-paint on the forehead of a skull. “Then the sonsabitches dance round and round and round … yanking back on those rawhide cords all the time.”

  Seamus winced. “That all?”

  “That, and the drumming. Like to make a man go out of his mind—they drum for four days straight.”

  “How long the men hang and pull on the cords?”

  “Long as it takes ’em.”

  “To do what?”

  “Get a vision of something powerful. Or pull free.”

  “Rip their muscles?”

  Smith rose, kicking at the buffalo skull. “Yep. Tear ’em to hell sometimes. Awful scars.”

  “You seen it, Smith?”

  The Confederate nodded and turned away with that tobacco-stained smile of his. “Gotta go. Show up for my guard-duty, Donegan.”

  Seamus listened as the man scrunched across the hardened earth, then turned to stare at the tall pole once more. Funny thing about it, Smith kept on talking as he climbed the hill to camp.

  “Way things look to me, them Cheyenne was making powerful medicine here, Irishman. They fixing to do some mighty big hurt to somebody now.”

  “Who?” Seamus asked as he turned back to the knoll. “Who they fixing to hurt?”

  But he found the hillside empty. Except for a scut of cold wind that announced the sun had abandoned the sky and the ghostly shadows bleeding into the moccasin-hammered sand. The hair stood up on the back of his neck.

  Seamus figured he had the answer to his question.

  * * *

  Continuing northwest, Forsyth led his fifty across the North Fork of the Solomon. By sundown of the fourth day, they had finally reached Beaver Creek at the spot where Short Nose Creek emptied into the Beaver. It was here they camped and when the mess-fires were warming kettles of coffee, and the smell of roasting bacon drifted on the cool breezes, the major called the men together.

  “I want to speak to all of you for just a moment, and thought this would be the best time before Sergeant McCall has to assign his pickets for the first watch. With the sun setting and the horses watered, I won’t have another chance to talk to you before morning.”

  Seamus listened as someone muttered grumpily behind him, and others shifted nervously from foot to foot.

  “I’ve got to tell you, I’m disappointed, men.”

  There, Donegan thought to himself. Forsyth’s admitted it.

  “Disappointed we didn’t see a single Indian for our trouble. So, although I would rather plunge ahead … keep going straight on toward the South Fork … the Delaware or Arikaree Fork of the Republican—I’ve got my orders from General Sheridan. We’re turning south in the morning.”

  “South, Major?” asked someone behind Donegan.

  “Yes. My orders read that I’m to push on to Fort Wallace and await word from the general there.”

  “We’re marching to Wallace in the morning?” asked another voice.

  “With first light,” Forsyth answered. “Sergeant McCall, I want the men up at four-thirty. Cold mess done by five. See that we’re marching by five-thirty, Billy.”

  “Yessir,” he replied and saluted.

  “You men are dismissed. Get your supper down, and into your blankets as quickly as possible.”

  Seamus turned into the throbbing body of scouts breaking apart to the individual mess-fires. As he settled to his haunches beside his own fire-pit, the familiar voice settled nearby.

  “Reckon I heard the sound of disappointment in the major’s voice back there.”

  He glanced over at Smith. “He might just well be the only one, me friend. Looked to me like everyone else be glad to have ’em a stopover at Wallace.”

  Smith slurped at one of the juicy plums the men had pulled from the trees that abounded along Short Nose and Beaver creeks. On a nearby gum poncho lay bu
nches of wild grapes some of the scouts had picked and rinsed off in the creek for evening mess.

  “I get the idee you’re the one happier’n all the rest to be heading to Wallace.”

  Seamus smiled. “I am.”

  Smith slipped a long, thin-bladed knife from under his coat. For the first time, Donegan caught a glimpse of the porcupine-quilled scabbard that hung from the back of the Confederate’s belt. Smith sliced off a portion of the pork side-meat dripping into the low flames of their fire. For the longest time, Seamus watched the Rebel eat, smacking his lips and wiping the grease in his beard and hair. Sucking at his dirty fingers as if they were sugar-cane after every bite.

  “That an Injin knife?”

  “What knife? Oh, this’un here? Yeah. Here, have you a lookee-see to it.”

  Donegan felt the balanced heft to the sleek weapon. The hardness of the steel. “Knife and sheath come to your hands together?”

  “This ol’ thing? Nawww. Ol’ poxy squaw made this for a old knife of mine. I come on this not long back, Irishman.”

  “Didn’t look like it was a h’athen’s weapon.”

  Smith laughed crudely, sputtering round his greasy chew of meat. “Shit-fire, Irishman. That’s a woman’s knife. I got me the gawddamned thing from a chippie while back.”

  “She give you this knife?”

  “You might say she gave me that knife. Yessir. You might just say that now.”

  Chapter 7

  “What’s eating a hole in your belly?” Sharp Grover asked, scratching his cheek where the skin lay freshly bared of whiskers. He, like many others in Forsyth’s detachment, had taken advantage of a shave compliments of the Fort Wallace barber after arriving on the fifth of September.

  Three days ago.

  Seamus had just stormed out the door of the post commander’s office as he had many times in the past three days, bumping this time into the old scout responsible for Donegan coming to this part of Kansas.

  “Still not a shadow of him, gawddammit!” the Irishman spat.

  “O’Roarke?” Grover asked, stepping alongside Donegan in the sunlight.