Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Tell Hump, tell them all, the Bear Coat speaks with one tongue,” Miles instructed. “Tell Hump I welcome him here with his friends, the Cheyenne.”

  When the Lakota chief had settled at the back of the room among his brother and their warriors, Miles turned to ask Bruguier, “Should we smoke the pipe now?”

  “It is a good thing,” Johnny answered. Then the interpreter knelt before Old Wolf and Crazy Head, in the middle of the assembly, and made sign.

  Old Wolf turned to a warrior behind him, who handed the chief a pipe, its bowl already filled. Bruguier shuffled over to the Sibley stove and poked a twig through the slots in the door. With it burning, the half-breed returned to hold the twig over the bowl of Old Wolf’s pipe. It took only a moment for the fragrant smoke to fill the room before the chief handed it over to Crazy Head. When he had smoked, Crazy Head held it up for the Bear Coat.

  Having watched every detail of their ceremony, Miles puffed on the pipe-stem four times, then two more to finish before he passed the pipe down to the warrior seated at Old Wolf’s right hand. The handsome, dark-skinned man smoked, then handed the pipe on. More and more of the heady smoke rose to the low log beams over their heads as the pipe continued its crawl from man to man. When it came back to Old Wolf, the chief passed the pipe over his shoulder to the warrior behind him, then spoke.

  Bruguier whispered to Miles, “This one, he’s one of their Council Chiefs. Important man. He’ll talk first.”

  “All right.”

  “Old Wolf wants to know why he should surrender his people to the Bear Coat. Why the Shahiyela should surrender at all. They are a strong people. A powerful people with many warriors. In their camps are more fighting men than you have soldiers at this fort. They could bring their village up and attack this fort, so Old Wolf asks why he should surrender his people to you at all.”

  “A fair question,” Miles replied, drawing himself up, and glancing over many of those dark, luminous eyes reflecting the glow of the oil and bacon-grease lamps. The stove, the lamps, and all those bodies were making it warm in his small office. And he could smell the animal grease—what he had heard warriors smeared in their hair.

  Miles could tell bluster for what it was. Of course they would try to talk tough, he brooded while studying the faces of those men who had been his enemies since the arrival of his Fifth Infantry on these northern plains. They would size him up as quickly as he would size them. If he showed the slightest weakness, they would likely capitalize on it. Instead, the colonel vowed he would show these war chiefs nothing but an iron hand. Perhaps one wrapped in the velvet glove of mercy, but an iron hand nonetheless.

  His very future depended upon it.

  “Here you are in my house,” he began. “I have called you here to talk with me. You came to talk surrender to me. I didn’t come to talk peace terms with you. This is my ground.”

  After waiting for Johnny to translate his words for Hump and Old Wool Woman, he then had to wait for her to translate them into Cheyenne. He paused after every sentence or two so that he wouldn’t get so far ahead that all understanding was lost on this singularly important occasion.

  All of a sudden, Bruguier’s face flushed, and he leaned close to Miles, whispering tensely. “The one called Little Chief—I think he just told the young men to put something in their guns.”

  “In their guns?” His eyes darted across the stony faces of the Cheyenne.

  They all studied him as he watched their hands.

  “Gentlemen,” Miles called to his officers in a calm tone of voice, “our interpreter here says we should be watchful of treachery. They’ve been told to put something in their guns.”

  “I knew it!” Bennett grumbled. “Sonsabitches brought weapons to a goddamned peace conference!”

  “And so did we,” Miles said, still wary, but with growing confidence since not one of the delegates had moved to load, much less expose, a weapon.

  “In some ways, I am a mean man,” he declared. “In other ways I am a good man. I want you to bring your people here to surrender to me. I want you to give up your weapons—rifles and pistols. And you must give up your horses, your ponies. Your animals must be turned over to my soldiers when you surrender.”

  “If they do all this for you,” Johnny translated Crazy Head’s question, “what will you do for them?”

  “If they and their people do as I tell them to do, I will be a good man to all of them,” Miles vowed. “I will see that they get their own reservation, anywhere south of the Yellowstone.”

  “But if they don’t give you their guns and ponies,” Bruguier inquired after another of the Cheyenne had spoken, “what then?”

  Realizing how every last one of them was staring directly at him, Miles took a dramatic pause, conscious of the nuances of expression on his face, the import of his furrowed brow, the forthright, determined glint in his eyes.

  “If you chiefs do not surrender your weapons and ponies to me, then … yes, I will be mean to you,” Miles promised. “The war will go on. I will hunt down your camps. I will make it so you have no time to hunt. Your children will cry with hunger and your women will weep because I have made them widows without husbands. Your camps will be filled with children without fathers. I will be mean to your people until the last survivors obey me and surrender.”

  As Miles patiently watched, several of the men in the front row conversed in low tones until one of them finally spoke to Old Wool Woman. She related something to Bruguier. Then the half-breed spoke.

  “They say they’ve heard your words and now they’re going to talk about it among themselves.”

  “Among themselves, yes, yes,” Miles repeated. “Tell them that’s good, Johnny. Explain that they can return here in the morning to tell me what they have decided to do.”

  After the last of the Indians had departed in the dark toward their two large tents, Miles stayed on, staring out that single small isinglass window at the parade ground illuminated beneath a cloudless, moonlit sky. If nothing else came of this conference, even if the war chiefs left and did not return with their village, at least he now had information as to the location, numbers, and condition of those hostile bands.

  Nearby, he thought he could hear the wailing cry of one of the women. Perhaps the old woman had returned with some bad news for one of the other prisoners. Every now and then the wail rose to a pitiful screech that made the skin across the back of his neck crawl. Against the eerie cry, the sergeant of the guard called out while making his rounds of the pickets, his random footsteps stomping across the squeaky snow.

  Tomorrow Miles would find out if these chiefs were going to surrender to him, or if he would have to continue his war on their villages. If they decided to turn in their weapons and horses, so much the better. What a feather in his chapeau that would be!

  And if the chiefs told him they thought they could do better than his kind and generous offer, then he would carry on with his war against them. Perhaps he might even start by taking the chiefs prisoner—to hold them hostage. After all, they were fighting men, and leaders of fighting men. He had never promised any of them sanctuary if they came to talk to him, so he would not be breaking an oath.

  Tomorrow morning might well be just another day of the horrid war in this frozen wilderness … or it might be the first day of peace on the northern plains. That would make Ol’ Bill Sherman and Little Phil Sheridan sit up and take notice like they never had before.

  Tomorrow.

  The woman continued her skin-crawling wail as Nelson A. Miles closed his eyes to sleep.

  Chapter 17

  20 February 1877

  “Them’s the finest two I got right now, Seamus,” the trader explained, standing behind the wide wooden counter of his Fort Laramie store. “Fact be, I can’t recollect seeing two finer dresses in all my years.”

  Donegan dithered with this sort of thing. On anything else it was pretty much an open-and-shut matter. If he sorely needed something and had the money, he si
mply bought it. Ammunition, a belt knife or scabbard, a new pair of britches or boots, perhaps a heavier coat when autumn winds began to blow through the thin, worn places in his old one. There was no deliberation to it, no confuscating deliberation to it at all!

  But having to decide between the two dresses was another matter altogether. This was damned important, buying gifts to make Samantha feel again like more than just a mother. Something to tell her he saw her as a woman.

  “Hold this’un up on you again,” he instructed, handing John Collins the pink gingham.

  Exasperated, the trader sighed and reluctantly took the dress from the Irishman, dragging it back across the top of the counter.

  “Step out here where I can see all of you again,” Donegan demanded.

  He waited while Collins came around the end of the counter, unaware that he was really pushing his luck by asking the trader to model the dresses for him. Thoughtfully scratching his chin whiskers, the Irishman wagged his head, looking the dress up and down, from hemline to neck ruffle.

  “Now the other’n,” he ordered.

  Collins carefully spread the first across the counter, then seized up the second and held it against him as Donegan ran a finger along the length of his nose, brow furrowed as if he had just been asked to calculate the number of fools it would take for the army to fill up this Indian country before there would be a lasting peace struck with the warrior bands.

  “By the Virgin Mary!” he exclaimed with a snort. “If I don’t like ’em both!”

  “Damn your hide, Seamus!” Collins roared, whirling toward the counter with that second dress billowing around him like seafoam. “You’ve had me wearin’ both of them bloody dresses for you for the better part of the afternoon and you still can’t make up your mind—”

  “Trader Collins!” the voice boomed as the door flung open. “Never knew just how pretty you looked in a springtime dress!”

  “Colonel!” Collins gulped as Major Andrew Evans entered the store. Red-wattled with embarrassment, the trader flung the second dress across the counter then hurried as far away down the counter from those dresses as he could get and still be in his own store.

  “Don’t give him none of your guff now, Colonel,” Donegan growled and winked as he patted one of his two belt pistols. “The poor man had him no choice. I threatened Collins with my persuader here, made him hold them dresses up so I could make a choice.”

  “Ah,” said Evans, “you’re selecting a new spring wardrobe for your wife?”

  “Aye, Colonel. But I can’t decide—like ’em both.”

  “Men aren’t meant to have any business in matters such as this, Mr. Donegan.”

  “How so?”

  The major rubbed the end of his nose with a philosophical air. “My experience only, you understand—but every time I choose a dress for my missus, damn if I don’t learn she would have picked the other one! Was a time I figured I’d picked just the right one for her, then I remembered she always chose the contrary. So, I did likewise and chose the other. But, lo—when I went home with that box I learned she’d had her eye on the first one I’d picked but left back to the store!” He wagged his head dolefully. “There’s just no figuring womankind, is there, Mr. Collins?”

  Pressing himself back into the corner behind the counter, the trader gulped. “I wouldn’t know, Colonel. Not being a married man like you two.”

  Suddenly Seamus stepped over to the counter and picked up the first dress. He begged, “Which of ’em would you pick, Colonel?”

  After due consideration, Evans answered, “That’s a tough one. I’m glad I’m not standing in your boots, Seamus.”

  “By the saints, my Samantha needs a new dress,” he exclaimed as he ran his fingers over the fabric of the two garments. “Nearly every dress she had when we come up here from Texas she’s let out while she was carrying the boy.”

  “What fits womankind before sure don’t fit ’em after they swell up with child,” the major observed.

  “So I want her to have a new dress, something she hasn’t had to sew and sew again just to fit into.”

  Perplexed, Seamus sighed as he looked at one, then the other. In his big, clumsy hands, this matter of a woman’s things was nothing more than devilment to him.

  Of a sudden Evans stepped up to his shoulder and suggested, “Did you ever consider buying your missus both dresses?”

  As the Irishman turned to stare at the officer, thinking Evans had plainly gone daft, Collins hopped behind the dresses spread across the counter.

  “That’s it, Seamus!” he bubbled, eyes bright and luminous. “You won’t have to bother with deciding any more!”

  “B-both?”

  Evans nodded. “You’ve got the money, don’t you?”

  It struck him like a cold slap of the wind. “Yeah … yeah! I’ve got the money, don’t I?” He looked up at the trader, grinning hugely. “All right then, trader! Wrap up both them dresses for Mrs. Samantha Donegan, by God!”

  When Collins turned away and Seamus had stepped over to pick up one of the toy tin fifes from a wooden crate, the major stopped at the Irishman’s side. “You still want me to hold onto your money, Mr. Donegan?”

  “Yes, Colonel. It’s safer with you.”

  “Bullshit. You’re not the sort to go have yourself a spree and burn through it all.”

  Donegan smiled wickedly. “Time was, Colonel. If only you’d knowed me then. Time was.”

  “Perhaps—but not now that you’ve got a family.”

  Nodding, Seamus said, “That’s why I like it just this way. I know where the money is if I truly need it. And, you have my instructions to turn it over to my Samantha if … if I shouldn’t make it back.”

  The officer gripped Donegan’s forearm. “Then it is true, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve heard talk that you’ve planned on riding back north to Miles’s post on the Tongue River this spring.”

  “Talk does make its way around Laramie post, don’t it?”

  “It’s true?”

  “Aye,” he sighed. “I gave my word that when General Miles marched out come spring, I’d be there to scout for him.”

  “Don’t you realize how far that is from here?”

  “You remember, Colonel, I rode down here from the Tongue.”

  “Yes, yes you did,” Evans replied with a wag of his head. “But with spring coming on, the Indians will be up and moving about again—hunting, raiding, letting the wolf out to howl—”

  “Tell me, Colonel. Does George Crook have any scouting wages to pay a working man back there with him in his Omaha offices?”

  “Can’t say I’ve heard any word of Crook planning a spring campaign.”

  “So does Mackenzie have something for an idle man to do over to Camp Robinson?”

  “There might be something you could scare up to do around that agency, what with all the talk that Crook is busy convincing Spotted Tail to go bring Crazy Horse in—”

  “Bleeming, bloody damn!” Seamus whispered harshly, glancing over the major’s shoulder as Collins went about neatly folding the dresses, preparing to tie them in brown paper with coarse baling twine. “If I had to wait for those mights you’ve throwed at me, had to wait on all the could-be’s the army promises a man, why—I’d still be damned poor and my wife wouldn’t have had that grand celebration the day we named our son. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have enough money to buy her the dresses she deserves, Colonel.”

  Evans nodded reluctantly. “But there’s always work to be done here—teamster, blacksmith—something rather than chancing your way north through the hunting bands, something better than to keep on fighting just when things are quieting down.”

  “Things ain’t going to quiet down enough for my wife and that little boy until they’re quiet enough all the way north into Montana Territory, Colonel. I intend to go there to find an old friend I’ve lost track of over the years. And together we’ll do us some digging.”
/>   “Gold?”

  “I pray it’s gold we dig up,” he replied. “But to do that, I’ve got some work to finish. And so has the army, Colonel. All them warrior bands ain’t gone in yet. Which means Mrs. Donegan and her boy are sitting right here till her mister helps get things settled down.”

  “Will there be anything else now, Seamus?” Collins chirped, tying a knot in the twine he had wrapped around the second package.

  Donegan held up two tin fifes. “A pair of these, my friend. One for the wee lad, and one for his pa. I’ll take one along with me to the north country and learn to play it so I can teach the boy when I return.”

  “You’re dead set on riding back into that Indian country, are you?” the major asked.

  The Irishman’s eyes glimmered softly as he stuffed the two small fifes in a big patch pocket on his canvas mackinaw coat. “I’ve got a family to support now, Colonel.” He stuck the fingers of his left hand through the twine on both packages and raised them from the counter. “I’m too old and set in my ways to join your bleeming army. And I’m too proud to dig latrines, to hammer shoes on your horses, too proud to slap the backs of wayward, cantankerous mules.”

  “Give me time, I’ll find something for you to do here instead of you sticking your neck out—”

  He laid a hand on the officer’s shoulder, stopping Evans midsentence, then explained, “I know what work I’m good at, Colonel. It’s honest work and I get paid a fair wage for it. After all, I’ve got a family I love more than life itself.”

  Evans nodded in resignation. “Because you’ve got a family to support.”

  “The older I get, it seems, the less opportunity jumps up in front of me … so when General Nelson A. Miles tells me he’ll pay good wages for an Irish scout—by God, I’ll ride as far as it takes, eat all the beans and hard-bread I can shove down, and I’ll help him find the last of them warrior tribes, sir.”

  * * *

  “The Bear Coat speaks with straight words,” Two Moon declared, the first to talk that morning after their first night spent under army canvas. Army food lay in their bellies, army coffee and blankets had warmed them after their long journey.