As he moved close, a vapor of mosquitoes rose with an angry whir from Liam’s face. During the day, the bloody head wound had been crusted with flies, laying their eggs in the gore. Now with the cool of evening, the mosquitoes had risen from the slow water along the river, and came to torment the wounded as well. Seamus swatted them away angrily, repeatedly killing them on his own bare cheeks as well.
Then, taking a plum from the oil-cloth wrapper, he placed it between his uncle’s lips and squeezed some juice into the slack mouth.
He tried to drive the stench of this place from his mind. Not only the decaying horse carcasses and dead men. But the awful stench from the wounded as well.
“Liam,” he said softly. “We ain’t got any bacon or hard-bread left now. Found these plums in me saddle-sack. I don’t know if you can hear me or not … but suck on it till you’re down to the pit. I’ll put you ’nother between your lips.”
He watched for some sign of recognition. Then as he was about to turn away, Seamus saw the eyes flutter half open. The plum tumbled from the lips as O’Roarke began to whisper in a harsh rasp, half his mouth immobile.
“Don’t want no plums, Seamus.”
“Don’t try to talk. You haven’t eaten since yesterday. The plums will give you——”
“No idea how long I’ve got left on this earthly veil, Nephew. We must talk before I pass out again. The pain—sweet God, this pain is almost exquisite … you’re still there, Seamus?”
“I am, Uncle,” he replied, sliding closer and squatting beside O’Roarke, lifting a hand in his.
“Good…” Liam sighed, eyes closing slightly. “Your mother, bless her—tell her it weren’t none of your fault you didn’t bring me home.”
He squeezed his uncle’s hand. “We’re both going home, Liam.”
“Aye, in the end—we all go home, don’t we, lad?” He sputtered softly, licking his dry lips. “Put some water on me mouth, will you?”
After Seamus had bathed his uncle’s mouth with drops of water, Liam spoke again.
“I have to tell you, before I go home … go home afore you, Seamus. Me and brother Ian would never done anything to hurt your mother, or her seed. Never had us a notion you was coming.”
“We talked of this already, Liam,” he said. “Save your strength now.”
“It’s night?”
He glanced about, into the darkness. It made him uneasy that O’Roarke could not tell. “Yes, Uncle. Well past sundown now.”
He seemed to smile. “Last I remember of the day was the sun’s light going down behind the far mountains, me boy. A pretty, pretty sight i’ t’were. I’ve scratched for gold in the mountains, you see.”
Seamus gazed to the west. As far as he remembered, there were no mountains he had seen. No mountains Liam could have seen. “You wrote Mother of it. California.”
“That, and not far from here as well in the Colorado high country. Scratched up enough to buy meself a trip to Bannack City up in Alder Gulch.”
“Was headed there meself two years ago now,” Seamus murmured. “Did Ian go with you?”
He sighed, eyes slipping down. “No, lad. Me brither and me had us a falling out in Cripple Creek.”
“Falling out?”
“I’m tired now, Nephew. Growing cold.”
Seamus drew a second smelly saddle-blanket over his uncle, then unlashed his own bedroll and laid it out. Glancing at the sky, he noticed the heavy, scudding clouds beginning to break apart, a few sparkles of starshine showing through the cracks. Less chance of any more rain now.
“You’ll be warm and dry now, Uncle. Tell me before you go to sleep … about you fighting with Ian. You went north. He went where?”
Seamus listened as the breathing became more regular. Figuring Liam asleep, he drew the thick horse-blanket under his uncle’s chin.
“I to Bannack,” said the weary voice within the whiskers. “And Ian … he took the woman west…”
“West?” He waited, listening to the breathing. Seamus grabbed his uncle’s hand again, clutching it beneath the blanket. “California?”
“No, lad. West. Not … California.”
“Where, Uncle?”
No reply came from the bloodied lips.
Donegan eased back, finding Grover standing at the lip of the rifle-pit. “I don’t make any sense of it.”
“What’s west, if not California, Seamus?”
He shook his head in exasperation, tucking the blanket securely round his uncle. I’ll have to wait to find out, when he’s in a talking mood again.”
“You’re damned lucky Liam talked much as he did.”
He finally nodded. “Lucky me uncle’s still alive, ain’t I?”
“Someone’s said their prayers over him, no doubt.”
“I know who, Sharp,” Seamus replied as he clambered out of the pit to stand beside the army scout.
“Who?”
“His sister.”
“Sister, eh?”
“Me own mither. She prays over us all.”
* * *
He had heard most of what he wanted to hear. From his spot far down the south bank where he had hidden himself throughout the day-long battle, Bob North moved out at slap-dark and crept into the swamp-willow directly opposite the place where Major Forsyth gathered his twenty-eight able-bodied men. North heard most of it, connecting the rifle-pits, cutting meat off the horses and roasting it, making the wounded comfortable. And assigning guards to watch over the others. He thought he had seen the big, tall Irishman standing beside Grover at the sunset meeting.
And figured his chance to gut the Irish bastard would come sometime just before midnight when the sky had finally drained to black.
Creep on the island, hugging the shadows of the overhanging willow. Slow, across the shallow river and into the tall grass.
North felt for his knife in its rawhide sheath. As much as he wanted to put a lead ball into the tall bastard’s brain—to pay him for the ball he had suffered in his gut—the knife would do his work this night.
Someone on the island began singing. North had to smile. It sounded good. Like those nights in camp with his fellow Confederate soldiers, singing round their fires and working themselves up for the next day’s fight. But he was captured and left to rot in a prison called Rock Island before getting “galvanized” to become a Yankee soldier sent west to fight Indians during the war back east. As long as he didn’t have to fight any of his fellow Southerners, North had figured. And shipped west.
It had been his ticket out. Soon finding the chance to escape from Camp Connor on the Powder River. And getting himself taken in by an outlaw bunch of Arapaho.
All day long North had worked it over in his mind, figuring the chances were good there might be some Araps with Roman Nose’s bunch upstream.
Was some Araps with Roman Nose last summer, wasn’t there, boy?
He amused himself, remembering the day-long attack on the hayfield workers.
Inching forward, he cautiously pushed the tall grass aside and peered at the island, sniffing the cool breeze that carried the strong, heady fragrance of horseflesh roasting over an open fire. He realized he hadn’t eaten all day either.
North sniffed again, listening with a surge of strange joy as the Yankee scout continued his song over the dull, red glow of his cooking-pit.
“Give ear unto my story,
And the truth to you I’ll tell
Concerning many a soldier,
Who for his country fell.”
Damn, if that wasn’t some fine singing to his way of thinking. Even if it was a blue-belly song … and about the war too.
But, fine singing nonetheless, and a most welcome change from the drumming, chanting, shrieking racket going on up-stream. He figured the squaws and old medicine shakers were busy tonight, what with all the bucks he had seen knocked from their ponies.
North smiled. Only one more white man did he want to go down this night.
Chapter 26
“You value it, you’ll take your hand off me, Grover!” Seamus growled, whirling on the scout who gripped his arm.
Sharp slowly released the lock he had on the Irishman. “You’re on a fool’s errand, Donegan.”
“Am I, now?” He turned in the darkness, the cool breeze left in the thunderstorm’s wake brushing his cheeks dappled with week-old whiskers now. His last shave at Wallace. Too many miles away now to be anything more than a faint ripple in his memory.
“The Cheyennes got him by now anyway.”
“Damn sure of that, aren’t you?”
Grover pursed his lips, and his eyes gave him away. “No telling, Seamus,” he finally said quietly. “What would you say a white man’s chances were off this island? Much as the bastards were swarming over us … around us all day.” His arm swept in a wide arc as his eyes narrowed on his friend. Above them the dim starlight peeked through cracks in the clouds. “You play a lotta poker, Seamus. So, tell me, what’s that bastard’s chances of still being alive?”
He sighed, sinking in a dejected heap to the sand. He rubbed the bandage wrapped round his left arm. Its brown stain no more than a dark afterthought on the dirty tail of his shirt he had used to bind up the holes from Bob North’s bullet.
“Five hundred to one. That’s his chances,” Donegan admitted.
“Be yours too, dammit.” Grover slid to the sand beside him. Five feet away, both could hear the shallow, labored breathing of Liam O’Roarke, motionless beneath his blankets as the night turned cold. “Here you wanna go off and do something foolish, Seamus—when the high, low, and the jack are all against you.”
“Don’t understand it, I don’t,” Seamus grumped, his shoulders sagging. “Who the divil he is, and what he wants with me dead.”
“Likely it don’t matter now at all,” Grover consoled his friend. “Likely, Seamus—them Cheyenne turned him to dogmeat already.”
Donegan stared into the darkness. “The horse—why’d he go and have to kill the horse?”
Grover wagged his head a moment. “Suppose it’s no different from what we tried to do with that charge of warriors we stared in the eye all day. If the Confederate could drop your horse and put you afoot out in the open, he’d better his chances of killing you as you ran to the island.”
“That big, beautiful brute carried me here … across the river,” Seamus said, sensing the sting at his eyes, recalling just some of what the horse had carried him through since capturing the animal in 1863.
“And by damned, it might come down to it that we all might have to walk that hundred miles back to Wallace,” Grover said, “but you try sneaking off this island tonight—or anytime with those Injuns thick as bears round a honey-tree—mark my words, Seamus Donegan won’t be alive to walk outta here.”
For the longest time he sat staring at the lone cottonwood silhouetted in the starlight at the far end of the island, forced to listen to the death-rattle of his uncle’s breathing.
“All right,” he finally whispered. “By the saints, Sharp—I’ll allow that Seamus Donegan lets his heart do his thinking for him most oft … but comes a time when I’ve got to swallow down what’s gnawing at me, and back off.”
“C’mon, Seamus. Time enough for us finding out why he was trying to kill you. Right now, the major needs us standing watch over the rest of the boys.”
Cautiously, the two prowled the length of the island for the first time through that long night, assuring themselves and Forsyth that the hostiles were not skulking across the shallow river under the cover of darkness. Quietly the pair returned to the dim glow of the fires buried down in holes at the bottom of a few of the rifle-pits.
Already some of the scouts had skinned back the hide from the meaty rumps of the army mounts. On their chapped lips glistened the moist juices as they chewed or sucked on the raw flesh while slicing more they laid on willow frames over the low flames. Stacks of the firewood collected by others sat in the shadows of the pits, driftwood found on the island, smooth as elk antlers after a seasonal rubbing. Those men at the fires understood only this night to cook as much of the stringy horsemeat as possible. By the time the sun would crawl to mid-sky tomorrow, the flesh of the dead animals would simmer into a putrid gruel no man could stomach.
What the men could not choke down before sunup they would bury in the sand, wrapped in canvas haversacks and gum ponchos, to stay sweet for two, maybe three days at the most. The trip here from Wallace for a relief column would take longer than that in itself.
The crackle of fat dripping into the fires and the heady aroma of broiling meat hovered close around the rifle-pits while the summer air turned sharper with each renewed gust of night-breeze.
A season of change arrived here on the high plains. Days hot enough to bake a man in his britches and nights cold enough to remind him winter could not be far off.
Seamus squatted by a fire overseen by John Donovan and Chance Whitney. Donovan handed his fellow Irishman a charred strip of flesh.
“Thankee,” Seamus replied, then chewed at the tough, raw meat encased in a charred coating.
“Sorry, Seamus,” Donovan apologized. “It’s pretty bad at that.”
“This?” Donegan choked it down, smiling within his Vandyke whiskers. “I remember the war, boys. That was bad food, now i’ t’was. Our grub back then was enough to make a army mule desert. And all the while them generals ate seven-course meals … from the lentil soup to the pecans after dinner.”
Some of the others squatted in close, chuckling. Donegan sensed that it felt good to them to laugh a bit, what with all they had shared that long day come to an end and no man wanting to think about what sunrise would bring. Least of all Seamus himself, forcing from his mind the thought of Liam O’Roarke lying in the far rifle-pit, his life oozing from that gaping hole in his head.
But only a matter of time …
“Most of you boys served like me … so you know bloody well what I’m talking about, don’t you?” he asked them as they gathered round, some of them pulling knives to help with the roasting.
“Goddamn officers—begging the major’s pardon…” John Donovan cursed, turning to Forsyth in apology. “There’s good officers and there’s bad’uns.”
The major smiled warmly in the firelight, his brow beaded with sweat though the night had turned cool. “No offense taken, Donovan.”
“Not many of the good ones, hows’ever, Major Forsyth,” Seamus added. “Not many like you, sir.”
Forsyth’s eyes softened as he gazed quickly at the young Irishman. “You’ve a lot of your Uncle Liam in you, Donegan. Of that you can be proud.”
“Every hour he hangs on, I find meself more proud, I do,” he replied, then sensed the talk made the group go sour and morose on him. So, despite the cold rock he felt in his belly, Donegan chuckled as warm as a summer morn.
“Hope you make it to your general’s stars, Major Forsyth. Best job in the world … from what I seen during the war.”
“Damned right,” John Donovan replied. “Every general I served under was always warm and comfy in his tent: popping corks on their decanters and squeezing squealing wenches.”
“Aye,” Donegan agreed, “preferring them comely wenches to fighting ’longside us enlisted. But, the major here’s a different breed, ain’t he, fellas?”
Seamus listened to the grunts of approval.
“While he could be back at Hays or Larned with the rest of this army’s officers having their time with a spare-rib, he’s out here getting hell knocked outta him!”
“And what, pray tell, is a spare-rib, Donegan?” Forsyth asked.
“Know ye not your Bible stories, Major? Eve was created out of a rib took from poor Adam, bless his carnal soul!”
Forsyth chortled at that. “So a woman is my spare-rib, is it?”
“Aye. You’ve got that to look forward to, Major, we get you back to headquarters with Li’l Phil Sheridan. You’ll find some weed monkey to do some sack duty with you.”
“’A
t’s it!” John Donovan cheered, leaping to his feet and standing straight as a ramrod, saluting Forsyth. “Private Donovan reporting, sir! Found you a comely wench as ordered, sir! Wench safely ensconced in your quarters and ready for horizontal drill, sir!”
The battered, burned, and weary scouts rolled against one another in laughter as Donovan rubbed himself against Seamus in a most suggestive, and feminine, manner. Tossing his imaginary head of long curls back and eyeing the supposed bulge in Donegan’s pants.
“Say, soldier,” Donovan wheezed in a high voice, “are you carrying a concealed pistol in your britches … or are you just overjoyed to see me!”
Donegan playfully shrugged Donovan off. “Be off from me, you field-hussy!” He knelt by the fire once more while the group laughed easily. Perhaps the best part of the day this, keeping at bay the thoughts of tomorrow and all the rest of the tomorrows yet to come.
“Let’s have me ’nother slice of that Jenny steak,” he asked.
“Another it is.” Chance Whitney passed a charred, dripping strip of fragrant mule-haunch.
“Time again for another stroll downstream, Seamus,” Grover reminded.
“Aye,” he replied, rising, still chewing on his stringy mule. “Just when the enlisted are being fed, body and soul—the officers come ’long and yank a man off for guard-duty!”
* * *
With the easy laughter he heard coming from the island, and able to see the shadows of many men moving about in the central rifle-pits, Capt. Bob North figured it was time to make his move on the Irishman who had shot him on the far side of Lodge Trail Ridge almost two years ago.
No better time than now, what with the voices of men consumed by their cooking, eating, and digging. Best part of it was that from what he had seen earlier in the evening at twilight, the Irishman shared a rifle-pit with Sharp Grover on the far upstream end of the island. But for a dismal spray of starlight, the rifle-pit lay in the dark. Nothing could be better.
With a fingertip, North tested the six nipples of the pistol. Each held a percussion cap. He stuffed it in his belt, then felt once more for the Arapaho knife. Over his hip.
The Stalkers Page 24
