The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I mean to have no part in his fight.”

  Liam filled his huge hands with Seamus’s shirt, lifting him from the ground. “I do, Seamus. And a good fight it will be.”

  “We go now.” Donegan tried to make it sound as forceful as he could, staring into the face that had changed over all those years. But the eyes had remained the same. Enough of that face as well, a face he had grown up with across the seasons in County Kilkenny. And those eyes that had wept at the side of that dark hole the day his mother’s two brothers had buried Seamus’s father.

  “One way or the other … I mean to take you back——”

  “What the blazes is going on here?”

  Seamus turned, finding Major Forsyth shoving his way through the knot of spectators.

  “Liam.” Forsyth almost gushed with the word. “Bank-head told me you wandered in here in the wee hours.” Then he looked at the bloody Donegan as well. “Explain this, O’Roarke—why you’re up to your old ways … beating one of my men.”

  “Good to see you, Major,” he began, hoisting Donegan to his feet, dusting the young man’s clothing. Liam held out his hand to Forsyth and they shook.

  “I’m waiting, O’Roarke.”

  “Just a bit of a donny-brook, Major.”

  “Between you and one of these men? I can’t take the chance of any of you fighting among yourselves … not with the job we have——”

  “Major, please,” Liam cooed, the gray hairs in his mustache curling upward. “Wasn’t beating up on one of your men.”

  “He most certainly is one of my——”

  “One of your best scouts, Major. This is Seamus Donegan … me blooded nephew.”

  “You … your nephew?”

  “Sure and begora, Major,” Liam chimed. “We was … just having us a bit of a family squabble, ’t was.”

  “Dammit! With one of the colonel’s own soldiers getting himself killed a night ago over in that latrine—Bankhead’s nervous as a hen about to lay. And you come in here blooding this ground——”

  “That weren’t none of my doing, Major. Wasn’t even here.”

  “Damn well I know you weren’t!” Forsyth snapped. “Your kind of work it was, Liam. The knife. The poor man’s scalp ripped off—like an Injun himself. Or…”

  “Or, you’re saying,” O’Roarke interrupted, “the work of a half-wild army scout?”

  “I don’t know who or what, Liam. All I know is, I’ve got Cheyennes to stalk. And you can hunt them with me if you’re a mind to taking orders.”

  “I’m of a mind to take orders from you, Major Forsyth.”

  To Seamus, the words of his uncle sounded as if they had come from the mouth of a contrite schoolboy caught roughing up the younger lads on the school-ground.

  “I’ll have none of this scrapping on this ride, O’Roarke. Save it for the Cheyenne, damn you!”

  “The Saints preserve me if I ever go again’ you or your orders, Major.”

  “Be more than saints you’ll have to worry about, Liam—I catch you flogging a man with your fists again.” Forsyth turned, finding McCall.

  “Goddammit, Billy!” He began pushing his way through the crowding spectators. “Get these men saddled up! We’ve got some murdering Cheyenne to track!”

  Seamus turned back as McCall ordered the rest away to their mounts.

  “You’ve got a horse, Seamus?”

  He jerked back round to stare into Liam’s face. “I do.”

  “Bring ’im with you, boy. You’ll ride with Liam O’Roarke. And we’ll talk of old times, you and me will. Talk of mending broken hearts as well.”

  Chapter 10

  If he lived through the coming hunt, Jack Stillwell brooded, he would see his twentieth birthday this autumn. If he didn’t—well, it had been nineteen years of fun as it was.

  Time and again he tried to swallow down the fear-tinged excitement that puckered his bowels and twisted his stomach into such tight knots that he hadn’t been able to eat breakfast that morning in the darkness before they climbed into the saddle. Not a chance to climb out for a bite yet either. No matter. Jack was certain if he had tried to eat then as now, for sure he would lose it all on the side of the trail Forsyth was racing down to reach Sheridan, Kansas, some thirteen miles northeast of Fort Wallace.

  Where the Cheyenne had just killed two men and run off with some stock. Providing the major and his scouts a clear trail to stalk.

  Straining to make out the changing countryside in the murky, pre-dawn light, Jack was soon heartened to see the sun rise in the east, red as a buffalo cow giving birth. That sun hung barely three fingers above the horizon when Forsyth’s scouts pounded into the little settlement of Sheridan, on the north fork of the Smoky Hill River. For a moment in time on this expanding frontier, Sheridan would enjoy its singular status as the farthest advance of the Union Pacific track.

  Outside the tiny settlement on a stretch of some marshy grassland, the scouts found the smoldering ruins of several wagons.

  As he led his horsemen off the hills toward the scene of the Cheyenne attack, a few riflemen ventured cautiously from the doorways of pine-slab shanties several hundred yards away. They set up a lusty cheer upon recognizing the fifty as white men. Led by three uniformed soldiers. A few slowly made their way toward the teamsters’ camp where the Cheyenne had killed two Mexican drivers.

  Both bodies had been butchered and scalped, and still lay in the grass beside the charred wagons. Stripped of all clothing, their arms slashed four times and thighs opened up like a hog’s neck, from hip to knee. Eyes gouged out and tongues cut off, each replaced with a shriveled penis, the scrotum like a dark pendant on their battered chins. Stripped of dignity in their violent passing.

  Jack Stillwell forced the bitter gall back down his throat. He had nothing else in his belly to come up.

  “Never seen how a Injun cuts up a man, eh?”

  Stillwell gazed over at the old man, Pierre Trudeau. And finally shook his head, still unable to speak.

  “Won’t be your last, eh?” Trudeau clucked. “You do to suck it down. These two past praying over now.”

  Jack watched the old frontiersman nudge his horse ahead, worming through the others who ambled about the charred wagons.

  “You! All of you—stay back!” Forsyth hollered, standing in his stirrups.

  “You boys’ll ruin the tracks!” Sharp Grover screeched, waving the scouts back to the far side of the battle site. “Leave me something to read, dammit!”

  Dropping from his horse and ground hobbling it with the rest, Stillwell hung close behind Forsyth and Beecher, listening as the two picked their way across the trampled grass. Then finally worked their way up toward the far hill where Sharp Grover was down on his hands and knees. Crawling back and forth, back and forth, until he raised his head, noticing Forsyth and Beecher. He smiled.

  “You got it sorted, have you?”

  “Could be, Major.” Grover clambered to his feet and dusted his hands. From a pocket he took the remains of a plug, bit it in half, and shoved the leaf-burley to his cheek like a squirrel storing nuts.

  “Sergeant McCall, I want you to go back and get some of those cowardly railroad workers to work, digging graves for these two. We won’t be here long, but I better see them buried before I’m gone.”

  McCall had saluted and gone down the slope before Grover began to explain.

  “Ground’s soft, Major. Wagon ruts cut it up pretty good all round here. Supplies coming in. Truck going out.”

  “What you make of it, Sharp? A big war-party hit this place?”

  He pursed his lips a moment. “Wasn’t a big one, Major. Lots of tracks … but for all that I gone over the ground, I can’t make the group any bigger’n twenty—maybe twenty-five at most.”

  Forsyth squinted at the trampled, broken grass leading over the slope and out onto the distant prairie. “You’re sure about that, Sharp. Sure all this was done by twenty-five warriors.”

  He nodded. “Near as I can
make it. They weren’t a real war-party. Been more of ’em had it been a bunch of bucks out on a hunt. This was just a bunch of youngsters letting the wolf out to howl, Major. Have themselves a spree. From the looks of things, they rode in from the east.”

  “The … the east?” Forsyth sounded more astonished than before. “How can that be, Sharp? Few days back we came in from——”

  “Most likely, the bucks was trailing us, Major. We’ve been bedded down at Wallace for several days. And most like this little war-party crossed our trail back east a ways. Likely they was following us when they come on track’s-end here.”

  “And had themselves their spree,” Fred Beecher grumbled.

  Grover gazed at the lieutenant. “You see most of these prints are different. Many as they are, all round here, as they rode down and shot up the teamsters’ camp—we only got twenty-five to track, Lieutenant.”

  “I only need one, Sharp,” Forsyth said before anyone else spoke. “Only one—if he’ll lead me to the rest.”

  “Major!” Sergeant McCall shouted as he trotted uphill. “Got some of the other drivers digging the graves now.” He huffed up to the group, catching his breath. “They tell me the warriors came out of the east, off those hills there, riding straight down for the teamsters’ camp. But the drivers evidently put up enough of a fight of it that the warriors let off their attack after a couple hours, and scared off the stock instead.”

  “Good,” Forsyth answered. “It will give me more to track.”

  In silence, Stillwell watched them all turn their heads up-country, eyes following the wide, well-beaten path through the tall, browning buffalo-grass. The downtrodden trail across the soft, marshy ground made a distinct shade of brown from the grass on either side of it. A path as plain as the scars on the back of Jack’s hands, the Cheyenne trail could be read by a schoolmarm just off the train from Toledo.

  “Go gather the men, Sergeant,” Forsyth said suddenly as he turned, flinging his arm to shoo McCall on his way.

  Jack loped downhill behind the sergeant, where he caught up his horse and milled in close with the rest of the scouts as Forsyth came to a halt in their midst.

  “Sharp, I want you and Lieutenant Beecher to ride the point.”

  “We’ve got something to track now, Major!” Beecher cheered. About half of the scouts shouted in encouragement with the lieutenant.

  “Damn right we do, Fred. We’re not letting this trail go cold on us now. Those murdering bastards left their tracks behind for me to follow. We’ll ride this bunch to the end of the earth if we have to.”

  Jack watched Forsyth turn, sweeping up his reins. “Saddle up, boys. There’s a lot of daylight left us. And we’re going to use every minute of it to cut down the Cheyennes’ lead.”

  The major waved Grover and Beecher ahead, then followed at fifty yards while the scouts roughly formed their column of twos as they loped their way into the rolling hills.

  “Major find these Cheyenne, no?”

  Jack once again found Trudeau, the old frontiersman, beside him.

  “I s’pose that’s what he’s counting on.”

  “And you, young one? What do you count on?”

  Jack gulped, looking back over his offside shoulder at the tiny valley buried in the swales of tall buffalo-grass where lay the two butchered bodies and the wisps of greasy smoke hung on the dawn air.

  “I count on finding them Cheyenne too, Pierre.”

  Trudeau winked at Stillwell, then turned away chuckling like a mad rooster who believed not a word of it.

  Hell, Jack thought. I don’t believe it either. All I count on is to keep from wetting my pants when we find Forsyth’s Cheyenne.

  Just keep from soiling my britches.

  * * *

  As soon as the men had packed the mules and Beecher inspected their loads, Forsyth once again sent Grover and the lieutenant out on the point. First to follow the trail they had dogged all day yesterday after leaving the Sheridan outpost, until it grew too dark and the major was forced to make camp. Around a few small fires the men had boiled coffee and chewed on their raw bacon before curling up in their blankets. A few of the scouts had done without, falling asleep almost where they struck the ground as they slid wearily out of their saddles.

  For only a moment, Sharp Grover had been concerned about those few among Forsyth’s scouts who were green to this much saddle-work. The whole bunch of them were at it before dawn the day before and not down on the ground again until twilight had swallowed the prairie.

  And now, a handful of hours later in the gray light of predawn, the major had Sharp pushing ahead as soon as there was enough light to follow the trail.

  Once the sun rose behind his right shoulder, the old scout began to grow more and more certain of it. And sure that the major would not like hearing the news he had to bring. Though he believed what he had seen with his own eyes, Sharp nonetheless waited to tell Forsyth until they halted for a noon rest.

  He strode up to the major through the knots of scouts talking excitedly of overtaking the Cheyenne, preparing themselves for the possibility of a fight. Sharp shoved his dusty hat back, showing a stripe of trail-dust halfway up his forehead. “Major?”

  “Sharp,” Forsyth cheered, squinting into the bright sunlight. He patted the grass beside him and offered a chunk of pork. “Have a seat.”

  “No thankee, Major. Et my own yonder.” Sharp settled, then sighed. “’Pears the bucks are heading northwest, like they were following a compass.”

  Forsyth finished his bite of bacon. “To the Beaver?”

  Sharp nodded. “Looks like it.” He watched Beecher scoot in closer to join the conversation. “From there to the forks of the Republican.”

  “Cheyenne country, Major,” Beecher added quietly.

  Forsyth nodded, looking back at Grover. “Something’s worrying you, Sharp.”

  Pursing his chapped lips, Grover spat it out. “Trail’s growing dimmer and dimmer.”

  The major looked at Beecher. “You read it that way too, Fred?”

  “’Fraid so, Major. Appears the warriors are dropping off here and there. Makes it harder and harder to read the trail. Man has to keep looking ahead of him quite a ways to get an idea where it’s heading.”

  Forsyth sighed. “Not good news, is it, fellas?”

  “Didn’t wanna have to tell you.”

  “One good thing about it, Sharp,” the major cheered. “They know we’re back here, on their tails. And we must be getting close or they wouldn’t be dropping out, would they, boys?”

  “I suppose you’re right, Major,” Beecher agreed.

  “You figure on going on like we are?” Grover asked, rolling a sprig of buffalo-grass between his lips.

  Forsyth scrambled to his feet slowly, stretching some kinks out of his back. “I don’t have a choice. We’ll follow this trail until it gives out.”

  “You turning back if it does?”

  Forsyth eyed the bunch that had been gradually gathering round him. Then his eyes fixed on the wolf-faced Confederate who had drawled the question.

  “No, Mr. Smith. I won’t turn back. Chances are, we’ll cut another trail sooner or later by heading northwest into Cheyenne country. And that new trail will take me where this one won’t. Right to the main village.”

  “The main gawddamned village, Major? What happens we run into fifteen hunnert the sonsabitches? We being the ones get rubbed out?”

  Forsyth snorted angrily, his eyes glowering at the Southerner. “You hired on to fight Indians.”

  “Fight ’em, Major. Not get kilt by ’em!”

  There was a patter of some nervous laughter to Smith’s rejoinder.

  “Each of you was given a new pistol and a new repeating rifle. Those weapons make every man jack of you equal to ten times your number in Cheyenne warriors. Don’t let your fears run away with you, fellas. If we come eye to eye with Roman Nose’s murderers, we may not be able to whip the whole damned bunch——”

  “That�
�s just what I’m ’fraid of, Major!” Smith whined.

  “Mr. Smith, I spent a good portion of the war following a man you Southern boys came to hate, General Sheridan. And let me tell you that to Phil Sheridan, the only thing that counts in warfare is results. Success, gentlemen. Now tell me how we’re to defeat the Cheyenne if we don’t fight them. Eh? We may not be able to whip Roman Nose, but by damn those bastards won’t defeat us!”

  “Hear, hear!” Beecher cheered, raising a fist to the sky. “Here’s to giving Roman Nose a sound whipping, boys!”

  “By Jesus, we’ve got to find the bastard first!” Liam O’Roarke hollered above them all.

  “Suppose you start earning your keep, Liam.” Forsyth stepped up to O’Roarke. “Ride on up there with Beecher and Grover … let’s see if you still have the eyes for this job, Irishman.”

  “Wondering when you’d be giving this leprechaun the pleasure, Major! At your command!” He snapped heels together and saddled. “Lieutenant? Mr. Grover? Let’s find these red h’athens for the major here—what say?”

  Beecher rode off with O’Roarke. For a few minutes Grover hung back among the scouts as the rest climbed aboard their mounts.

  “Major, remember my suggestion?”

  “I certainly do, Sharp.” Forsyth turned in the saddle. “Sergeant McCall—form up a dozen of your best men. I want to use some outriders. Sharp believes we have reason to be on our toes now, riding this far into Cheyenne country as we are.”

  “Certainly, Major. I put six outriders on each flank of our march.”

  “Splendid, Billy.” He turned back to Sharp. “Better?”

  Grover smiled. “Yes, Major. With your outriders now on our flanks, the Cheyenne can’t jump us so easy.”

  “But I’m almost willing to risk that, Sharp,” Forsyth replied. “Sheridan granted me a roving commission. I’m not locked in. It’s the hostiles I need to find. But, if they find me first…”

  “Major Forsyth, I figure with some fifty men riding with you, there’s no way the Cheyenne will let you catch up with a small war-party on the prowl.”

  “What do you mean, Grover? I’ve made up my mind to find and attack the Indians, no matter what the odds.”