Shadow Riders: The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  He was nearing the edge of the platform, having just found the steps that would take him down into the dust and the dung that lay stretched clear to the corrals hugging the tracks run endlessly back across the flats of western Kansas and into Colorado Territory—where twice already he had fought the Cheyenne: once beside Sharp Grover at Beecher Island, and a year later helping Major Eugene Asa Carr’s Fifth Cavalry scatter the mighty Dog Soldiers plundering the high plains under chief Tall Bull.*

  So deep in thought was he of those places and the weeping scars they had left upon his soul that the Irishman really did not hear the voice call out his name the first time. It came more like an unsettling part of the damning recollections he carried with him in his waking hours. Yet, too, ringing with every bit as much stark terror and physical pain as the dreams he suffered when he closed his eyes each night. Alone.

  “Seamus? Is that you?”

  But this was a real voice, not one of those that haunted the unplumbed depths of his solitude. Donegan turned.

  A figure moved toward him from the shadows cast beneath the rail station awning. Then the dark shadow halted.

  “Lord, Seamus—it is you!”

  He strained his eyes, inching the finger into the guard, encircling the trigger of his Henry, a cold prickling at the back of his neck as the stranger swept out of the shadows, wearing the flaring drape of a long coat that nearly reached the platform etched with the inky clomp of the thin man’s boot heels.

  But the stranger stopped as Seamus brought up the Henry.

  “Seamus—it’s me—don’t mean you no harm.”

  The thin man raised his arms out in a way that reminded the Irishman of the crucifix hung over the head of his bed, where he slept as a boy in Town Callan, listening to the lonely sobbing of his mother on the far side of the thin wall, crying herself to sleep each night for want of the return of her husband—now dead and buried beneath the loamy soil of Eire so stingy and refusing to give back life to its own.

  “It’s Jack. Jack Stillwell, Seamus.”

  “Jack … young Stillwell, is it?”

  The stranger stepped fully into the last pink light of the sun as it eased off into the far side of the prairie behind the Rocky Mountains, days away in Colorado Territory.

  “Damn, but I don’t believe it’s you, young Jack!” He dropped pistol belt and saddle and bags in a mad rush at the tall, thin man, sweeping Stillwell against him in a crushing embrace.

  They pounded one another on the back until weary in a close-cropped dance of glee that hammered the cottonwood platform. Then Seamus stepped back, moistness at his eyes and a lump come again to his throat.

  “Good to see you, young Jack.”

  “It’s been five years, Seamus,” Stillwell said, gone serious. “None of us so young now as we was then. On that bloody island where Lieutenant Beecher fell.”

  “Aye,” he answered softly, the sting come again to his eyes. “But were it not for the grit of a likely lad by the name of Stillwell, who went to fetch us relief from Fort Wallace, likely that island would have proved a grave for Major Forsyth and the rest of us what rode after Roman Nose.”

  “Then you know … it was Roman Nose you killed in that first charge?”

  “If it weren’t me—likely it was Liam.”

  “Everyone here on the plains talks of you being the one who brought that red bastard down.”

  “They do?”

  “It’s a story makes the round of every barrack and barroom that I know of.”

  “And what would Jack Stillwell be knowing of barracks and barrooms. You ain’t gone and become wolf on me, have you?”

  “No—ain’t likely. But I enjoy army food—and two squares of it a day, as a matter of fact. Gotten used to it.”

  “You still scouting for them out here?”

  “I am, Seamus. In fact,” he said, craning his neck, “I’m here to pick up two gentlemen the army’s hired me to guide down into the southern part of Indian Territory with an army escort from Fort Dodge.”

  “Sounds like it might be a dangerous ride.”

  “Naw. Ever since Custer and his Seventh settled things back to ’sixty-nine—been mostly quiet down there. Look, I think I see them two off the train and looking for someone who’s supposed to be waiting for them. So, here,” Stillwell said, as he stuffed a hand into the inside pocket of his long trail coat. He brought out a small, folded bundle, none too thick and about six inches square, tied up in brown baling twine. He dusted off the flat package, much rumpled, wrinkled and trail-worn.

  “Damn my soul if I walk off from you and didn’t give you this.”

  “What is this?” he asked, staring down at the bundle.

  “Letters,” Stillwell answered, as if it were the most normal thing in the world to hand such a thing over to a friend one has not seen in the span of five years.

  “How long you—”

  “Been carrying ’em for Sharp Grover. He toted ’em around for you for two year. Listen—I gotta be getting, Seamus. Those two fancy fellas getting nervous. Meet me later in town. Where you gonna stay?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Henshaw’s place. I’ll find you there tonight, Irishman.” Stillwell held out his hand. They shook. “Damn but I’m glad to bump into you. And finally get shet of those letters Sharp’s had me lugging around for you the last three years—hoping I’d run onto word of you somewhere after you quit scouting for Bill Cody and the Fifth.”

  “That’s a story we’ll share over some whiskey tonight.”

  “Damn right we will, Irishman. I figure we got a lot of tales to share.”

  “Five years’ worth, Jack.”

  “I’ll see you to Henshaw’s after I get these two gentlemen with their paper collars tucked in for the night.”

  “Watch your backside, Stillwell.”

  “I’ll watch yours as well, Seamus!”

  As the young scout disappeared into the twilight of that station platform, oily, yellow light beginning to spill from the multipaned windows, Donegan stared down into the package suddenly going heavy in his hand. With nervous fingers he tore apart the twine knot and unwrapped the coarse, browned paper that enclosed two envelopes.

  After dragging his trail gear into the splash of saffron lamplight pouring from a window, Seamus spread the wrinkled brown paper with his fingers and began reading what appeared to be the unfamiliar handwriting of a woman.

  Dear Irishman,

  If you are reading this, then you are alive. I’ve carried these two letters with me for close to two years now, but am fixing to move on south and do something new with my life. My woman’s had enough of Kansas and hears good things from her family gone to Texas. That’s where I’m going, south across the Red River. So I’m giving these two letters over to Jack Stillwell.

  Lord, has that fella growed. But as I give them over to him for safekeeping for you to show back up, I’m having the wife of a storekeeper in Sheridan write this letter for me since I can’t make no word on paper but my name.

  Want you to think about coming south with me, Seamus. Plenty of ranching land for a man down there. Good timber and water. We can make a go of it and live out our days as peaceful country gents. Something me and Liam always talked about. It does still give me pain to think on Liam now—how he talked so on one day settling down with me and we could run some cattle and raise some fine-strutting horses.

  Won’t you come look me up? Jack will always know where I end up roosting. I’ll let him know how you can track me down.

  Don’t blame this on the woman, Seamus. I gave the army my best years, and owe that woman the rest of what I got left in me. Come on down to Texas, put your boots up on the rail with mine for a change. Neither one of us meant to be a Injun fighter the rest of our natural days.

  Abner Grover

  There was a trembling of emotion that threatened to spill over as he stared down at that name illuminated by the lamplight on that Hays City station platform. “You always hated that na
me, Sharp. Thank you, Abner—but I don’t figure I got any business coming south to Texas, when I’ve got something stronger still tugging me back to Ireland.”

  Stuffing the brown paper in the pocket of his mackinaw, Seamus stared at the top letter, much wrinkled as well, addresses crossed out and new ones squeezed into what blank space was left on the folded envelope. A litany of posts and forts and towns up and down the Platte River Road and on up the Bozeman Road. It had been better than seven years now since he had started up that bloody trail into Red Cloud’s country, looking for yellow gold but finding instead an unrelenting red wall.*

  Unfolding the envelope, Seamus found it hard to believe his eyes.

  Dear son,

  I am writing this at the old table where we all used to sit for what meals I could place before my family. It brings back so many memories of you now. Gone so long from this place. How I would love to see your face come past the window one more time.

  Ian has written me. From someplace on the far side of America. Calls the place Linkville Town. Oregon must be the county he’s settled in from the sounds of it. Happy he is too. God bless him now that Liam’s gone. Your letter telling me how Liam died reached me here several months ago. How scared I am for you still.

  Come on home now. Liam has gone on to stay with God and Ian is putting down deep roots with his family in that new land. He writes like I remember him as a boy, not like the hard man he became before leaving Eire. But now full of hopes and dreams once more, like our papa, like your papa too, had dreams for you living close to the earth. Ian has that now, and a good woman to love him and stand by him.

  Come home now so you too can be far, far away from those savages who have claimed your uncle and nearly took your life too. I wait every day watching for your face at the window, to hear your steps on the stones at the stoop before you open the door.

  Your mother loves you, Seamus.

  For a moment he held the letter against his breast, almost as if the warmth of her hand were still there upon the page despite the years and the miles and the aching loneliness that had separated them for so long.

  “I’m coming home, Mother.”

  Carefully folding her letter, Seamus put it in the pocket with Grover’s, then glanced at the last letter, nothing more really than a twice-folded page, addressed much as the first had been. And from Town Callan in Ireland as well.

  Dear Seamus Donegan,

  You will not remember me, nor know me. I came to the parish several months after you were bound over to America, as your mother told me of you on so many occasions. I was her priest all these years. She became a friend to me, one of the few I could count on in this land and a time of little to count on.

  It is not easy when anyone dies, but especially a friend. So it is that I hope you can feel my remorse and pain in losing your mother. We share that loss together.

  He blinked his eyes, smarting with the sudden tears, straining at the words swimming now in that smear of lamplight splashing from the window where he stood. Then slowly, ever slowly, he sank to his knees, sobbing silently, falling back against the clapboards beneath the station window.

  Seamus ground a fist into both eyes angrily and read on.

  She died peacefully, after a hard illness, Seamus. And she died with the love of God in her heart and a smile on her face. But, I am writing you since she asked me to, just before she breathed her last, and to tell you that in those final moments, your mother prayed for your welfare in a far and savage land, at the hands of strangers, and not among the bosom of your family.

  She is laid in a small spot beside your father, as she wanted. Your brothers and sisters come to the grave often these past two weeks, for I always find fresh sprigs of this or that on her resting place. You would be settled to see it for yourself some day.

  My prayers are for you, as your mother asked me to ask God to watch over you now that she can’t pray for you. But, I feel she is watching still, Seamus. Now much closer to you than she was in her last days here in Eire. Her spirit is with you, and her love as well.

  Father Colin Mulvaney

  The moon rose full on the horizon and climbed toward mid-sky before Seamus felt capable of arising without shaking. He folded the last letter neatly and found a place for all three at the inside pocket of his mackinaw.

  Dragging a hand beneath his nose while the summer night cooled the Kansas tableland, the Irishman dragged his saddle and gear to his shoulder then stepped off the platform.

  He was moving into Hays City now, to Henshaw’s place. To find Jack Stillwell.

  Ireland lay behind him now.

  He would ride south through Indian Territory with Stillwell’s government men and army escort to find Sharp Grover. Seamus Donegan was heading south for the Red River country of Texas.

  Chapter 13

  July 1873

  “As things turned out,” Jack Stillwell explained to his gray-eyed drinking partner at Drum’s Saloon in Hays City, “those two Kiowa butchers never was hung.”

  “By the saints!” exclaimed Seamus Donegan, swiping whiskey from his mustache with the back of his hand.

  “Seems some folks back east grabbed the ear of the President, so Grant put the arm on Governor Davis of Texas.”

  “Grant made the governor change his mind about hanging them Kiowa, is it?”

  Stillwell nodded. “Instead, the governor sent the two chiefs to prison for life.”

  Donegan shook his head. “Why is it I’ve got the sneaking idea what you haven’t told me is that those two won’t be spending the rest of their miserable lives in prison?”

  Stillwell did not attempt to hide the sheepish look on his face. “They was scheduled to be released back to the Kiowas last March.”

  “I take it the chiefs are still down in a Texas prison?”

  “For now.”

  “So what’s to come of it?”

  “I think Governor Davis has gone and promised the tribe they’ll have their chiefs back by October.”

  Seamus stared into his murky reflection in the brown whiskey. “Sounds like you’ve got me riding south into Texas to find Sharp Grover just about the time the Kiowas are due to get their bloodthirsty chiefs back.”

  Stillwell pursed his lips. “You’re due, Seamus. Got a right to know.”

  “What else, Jack?”

  “Them two I been hired to guide down through Injun Territory—they know all about Satanta and Lone Wolf. In fact, they said they’ve been given permission to talk to those two chiefs when we’re down at Fort Sill.”

  “You’re telling me now that we’re going to be around when those two Kiowa are released?”

  “You don’t wanna go, you don’t have to.”

  Donegan brooded into his whiskey. He finally gave Stillwell half a grin. “I haven’t seen Sharp Grover in a long time, Jack. And, I figure you and me been through enough together that something like this ought not to scare me. I’ve heard nothing yet that makes me change me mind.” Then he glowered at the scout. “Unless you’ve got something else up your sleeve you’re not telling me about.”

  Relieved, Jack sat back, a grin on his face. “No—nothing, Seamus. I’m telling you everything.”

  “We leaving tomorrow?”

  “Day after, I’m told.”

  “I suppose that gives me time, Jack.”

  “Time … for what, Seamus?”

  He hoisted his glass. “To get meself in trouble before you take us south to get me scalped!”

  * * *

  Last spring, Billy Dixon’s three-man outfit didn’t sleep much that long, anxious night out on the prairie, deep in the buffalo country of the Cheyenne.

  With every crunch of grass by the horses or every faint call of a bird swooping near their fireless camp, with every sigh of the wind that brought the rumor of hostile warriors to their ears, the trio bolted out of their bedrolls. No man could really sleep in country like this. He might only close his eyes because they burned from the long day’s ride, or from th
e sun and grit and pure weariness. But no man really slept.

  When dawn spread a murky gray the color of backwater in a buffalo wallow out of the east, Dixon had the old skinner and McCabe on the move. They were back among the other three skinners before dawn gave the rolling grassland a red glow.

  “Sorry to scare you boys,” Dixon apologized to the trio, who themselves had spent a fitful night in camp, fearing the others had been set upon and wiped out by hostiles. “I just plain missed my bearings when it got dark last night.”

  “We was worried—’cause we knew we’d be next,” one of the skinners explained.

  “We’re clearing out this morning,” Dixon went on.

  “Where to?” McCabe asked.

  He shook his head. “All I know is, this country isn’t healthy for us. We’ll spend too damned much time watching for Injuns … time we should be hunting buffalo.”

  “Can’t say as I don’t disagree with you, Billy,” said the redheaded McCabe as he strode off a ways, turned his back on the others and unbuttoned his fly.

  “We’ll spend too much time fighting and losing sleep,” Dixon went on to explain. “I figure we’d have to stand watch in rotation—”

  “Billy!”

  They all turned at McCabe’s call.

  “C’mere!” he shouted, wagging his arm to the others, still holding his limp flesh with the other hand. As they drew near to him, McCabe said, “Listen. Now shuddup, and listen.”

  Dixon, like the other men, put his ear to the spring wind, straining—at first only hearing the sound of the breeze and the faint thumping of his heartbeat. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to hear the distant lowing, and snorting and bellowing.

  “By God!” one of them shouted.

  “I hear it!” exclaimed another.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Dixon whispered. “If that ain’t buffalo, then Mother Dixon raised a rock-headed idjit!”

  At a lope he swept up his Sharps rifle and snagged up the reins to the horse he had just ridden into camp.

  “I’m going to find out for myself, boys,” he told them once he was in the saddle, tightening up on the rein. “Get your knives sharpened—I got a feeling we’ll be working hides before the day’s half old!”