Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  But now they were his. They had seen that resistance was futile. To carry on the war would only mean the destruction of their people. They must have realized that to flee to Canada with Sitting Bull was to abandon their homeland. In the end, they had heard the honor in his words, and decided to surrender to him.

  Five days ago, exactly four weeks after his first council with the peace delegates at the cantonment, the half-breed Bruguier brought in the Mnikowoju leader Hump along with his clan’s warriors. They had come to give themselves up, and surrender their arms to the soldier chief.

  Then two days after, when the weather again turned cold, blustery, bearing an icy snow in its bite, forty-five lodges of the Cheyenne limped in with their chiefs Old Wolf, Crazy Head, and Two Moon. What a sad, sad scene that procession had made: those three hundred men, women, and children, dressed in rags, many in nothing more than bloody, bare feet, trudging painfully along behind their leaders, sitting proudly upon their emaciated ponies. Behind them all young boys wrangled a herd of several hundred more of the ribby, winter-gaunt horses.

  It was plain to read the despair and hunger in the eyes of every one of those who now turned their lives over to him.

  Miles had immediately ordered that some cattle be handed over to the newcomers as they erected their camp near the mouth of the Tongue. He had watched the faces of the hundreds as they moved past him, those dark, black-cherry eyes ringed with fatigue and hunger—understanding why every last person among them wanted to get a good look at the Bear Coat. He had defeated them, commanding respect from these powerful warrior bands of the Northern Plains.

  Near midmorning the following day, the twenty-third of April, squawman William Rowland and his son Willis escorted the Cheyenne males from their camp to the parade where Miles had formed up his companies. There, in a ceremony painful for any old warrior to witness, the Cheyenne dismounted and watched soldiers lead their ponies away. Then one by one by one, the warriors laid their rifles, carbines, and pistols on the cold, soggy ground.

  No more were they warriors who would fight for hearth and home against the army. No more were they men free to follow the great herds of buffalo and challenge any who might usurp their claim to this hunting ground.

  Now the Cheyenne belonged to him.

  Even these thirty-some warriors who had just enlisted as scouts belonged to Nelson A. Miles. Exactly as George Crook had first used Apache against Apache down in Arizona Territory, just as Ranald Mackenzie had used Sioux and Cheyenne to hunt down and locate that Cheyenne village on the Red Fork, Miles was now going to use these warriors to find the last of the holdouts.

  He was sure they were out there. Those north of the Yellowstone surely had already scampered across the Missouri with Sitting Bull, and would likely reach Canada in safety now. And White Bull said the majority of the Northern Cheyenne were pushing south to surrender to Lieutenant William Philo Clark, one of Crook’s damnable protégés.

  So it would be up to his department to sweep the country clean. His men—these Indian scouts and his campaign-toughened doughboys—they would be the broom Miles would use to sweep up the last of the stalwarts. There wouldn’t be a coulee those hostiles could hide in, not a tree or rock to hide behind, once Miles turned his scouts loose on the trail—

  “General!”

  Miles looked at the door where Charles J. Dickey had called. “Yes, what is it, Captain?”

  All around him at that moment his staff and other officers were shaking hands with every one of the newly sworn-in scouts. Lord, how these Indians took to ceremony!

  Dickey turned away a moment, and flung his arm to the south as voices from the parade grew louder. “A rider approaching, sir.”

  “Rider? One?”

  “Yes, General. Only one.”

  “By the stars—is it another Cheyenne coming in?”

  Then Dickey laughed. Deep and lusty. “No, it isn’t a Cheyenne! Not an Injun, sir!”

  More voices were calling outside. Singing out their happy greetings. Hallooing and huzzahing. A damned celebration going on right outside as he stepped toward the doorway. Then he glimpsed the rider—

  It couldn’t be, he told himself. Although something tried to convince him otherwise. No, it simply couldn’t be. Even though the man had vowed to return …

  Miles reached the door, peered into the distance, anxious to know for sure. “If not someone surrendering—who’s coming, Captain?”

  “It’s that by-God Irishman, General! The one what went south to Laramie after our fight,” Dickey roared. “Raised right up from the dead himself, sir! Raised right up from the blessed dead!”

  BY TELEGRAPH

  Manifesto of the Czar–Intense Excitement.

  Two Men Killed in a Deadwood Street Fight.

  New Complications Arising on the Rio Grande.

  DEADWOOD.

  Seven Men with Six-Shooters—Only Two of Them Killed.

  DEADWOOD, D.T., April 23.—This afternoon a dispute arose in which seven persons engaged, concerning the title of a town lot in South Deadwood. After some harsh language all hands drew six-shooters and commenced firing. The result was that Dan O’Bradovitch, of Eureka, Nevada, was killed, Steve Corsich, of the same place, mortally shot, and N. Millich slightly wounded. Another disturbance, caused by town-lot jumping, occurred to-day, during which several shots were fired, but nobody hurt.

  “By the stars above—it really is you!” Miles roared, bolting from the doorway just as Seamus dropped to the ground, the reins still in his glove.

  All around Seamus jostled those officers who he had guided up the Tongue in January until Crazy Horse stopped retreating. Those men he had joined at the base of the butte, where gallant soldiers had run out of ammunition and their officers ordered them to fix bayonets.* The crowd parted in a wave as Miles lunged up.

  “In the ever-livin’ flesh, General!” Donegan cried.

  “I was afraid some war party would have eaten you alive before you got anywhere close to Laramie,” said Miles, holding out his hand. As they shook, the colonel pounded Donegan on top of the shoulder.

  “Didn’t see a feather,” Seamus admitted. “Colder’n a Welsh miner’s lunch bucket, it was—but had me no trouble with Injuns.”

  Captain Poole jumped in to ask, “You got back to your family?”

  “Aye,” he said, grinning hugely in that full, bushy beard. “Even christened me boy too.”

  “What’d you name him?” asked Lieutenant Cusick.

  “Colin Teig Donegan.”

  “That’s a fine name, Mr. Donegan,” Miles replied with approval. “Strong and sturdy.”

  “A good Irish name!” Captain Butler roared. “Can I get you something wet and we’ll drink to your lad’s christening?”

  “Something wet? By the Virgin Mary!”

  “It is that homely Irishman for sure!” a familiar voice called out.

  Seamus turned to watch Bruguier step up, holding out his hand. “Good to see you’re still here, Johnny.”

  “We going to scout together again?” The half-breed flicked his eyes at Miles.

  “Looks that way, don’t it?” Donegan replied. “Need us a good interpreter along.”

  “You damn bet I’m going along, Irishman,” Bruguier declared. “Not going nowhere else till this soldier chief gets that rope off my neck.”

  For a moment Donegan gazed at Miles, then said, “I figure the general here to be the sort of man to do just what he says he’ll do. If he says we’re riding after the last of them hostiles, then we’re going. And, when the general’s officers go and offer me a drink, I damn well better take ’em up on it!”

  The group roared with laughter. Miles snagged Donegan’s elbow as the civilian started to turn away. The rest of the group stopped, falling silent as the colonel went stone serious and said, “I wouldn’t have put money on you making it back.”

  “Didn’t take me for a man of me word, General?”

  “No, Mr. Donegan. Not that at all. It’s just th
at there’s … a lot of open country between here and there. Going and coming. I just want you to know how glad I am that you came back for our spring push.”

  He flicked his eyes around at those hardy officers who had tracked and battled the hostile bands all the way from the Missouri River on the north down to the headwaters of the Tongue on the south. “Your outfit has a job to do, General—and for sometime now it seems yours is the only outfit doing a bleeming thing. Damn right I’ll throw in with you till we get this Sioux War over and done with.”

  “Good to have you riding scout with us,” Adjutant Baird said.

  “Where’s Kelly? You got him out on some errand, General?” Seamus asked.

  “Kelly took himself a leave to go back east,” Miles explained.

  That struck him hard. Friends and comrades in arms they were—sharing all the miles, the cold, the terror, sharing the passion of living there on the verge of dying.

  “Kelly, gone east,” he repeated as if in disbelief. “Not gonna be back soon enough to go along?”

  The colonel wagged his head. “We’re preparing to set out on the first of May. Kelly said he wasn’t planning to be back before fall.”

  “We’re pushing off first of May?” Donegan asked. “How soon is that?”

  “Less’n a week now!” cheered Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous, clearly anxious to be on the trail.

  “How you fixed for scouts?” the Irishman inquired.

  Miles laid his hand on the tall man’s shoulder and turned the civilian to the left. “There, you see those Cheyenne just coming out of my office? And there’s some Sioux among ’em too.”

  “They your prisoners?” he asked, his brow knitting.

  “They’re your scouts, Mr. Donegan.”

  “M-my scouts?”

  “You did ride all this way from Laramie to sign up to scout for me again, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, General—”

  “Then I’ve just made sure you’re going to have the best trackers in this country, Irishman. If we intend to find the most stalwart of the holdouts, then I want you to have the best eyes and ears in the territory. Warriors who know every ridge, every hillock and coulee, every tree, and creek, and bush.”

  “Haven’t you ever worked with Indian scouts before, Mr. Donegan?” asked Captain Cusick.

  “Lots of times,” he explained. “But they was never Injuns I just been fighting me own self. Not no bucks I done battle with.”

  Miles cleared his throat. “You have misgivings, Mr. Donegan?”

  Seamus turned and regarded the colonel a moment before answering, “No more misgivings than the next man what’s been fighting these warrior bands since the summer of sixty-six.”*

  “Are you or are you not volunteering to ride with my scouts, Irishman?” Miles pressed on.

  “Long as we can make sign—me and them—we’ll be able to talk,” he said, a dull edge of reluctance flattening his voice. “Just like I give you my word: I come here from Laramie to do what I could to find the last warrior bands still out there, General.”

  The colonel said, “My outfit needs men like you to help us finish the job others started. I want to know if you’re in.”

  “I’ll ride for you, General,” he declared. “I need the work.”

  “And I need you because I want to trust these warriors, Mr. Donegan,” Miles said as if sharing a confidence. “I’m going to need someone to tell me if I can trust them.”

  At long last, Seamus smiled hugely and said, “And you figured me for that someone, eh?”

  Miles pounded him on the back as the entire group set off for the low-roofed cabin that served as a cramped mess hall. “Now, shall we go drink to our new civilian liaison of scouts, gentlemen?”

  Chapter 26

  Spring Moon

  1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  The War in Europe Underway Already.

  More Indian Murders Reported in Wyoming.

  Wyoming.

  An Indian Attack and Murder.

  CAMP BROWN, April 26.—Barney Hall, a prospector, has just arrived here badly wounded by Indians. He and two others were attacked near Bad Water on the 16th, and after a sharp fight the Indians killed his two partners. Three others from the same party have not been heard from.

  Box Elder turned his face toward the emerging sun, feeling its newborn power. Although his rheumy, matted, watering old eyes could not see, he knew the sun was rising.

  He had been waiting for it.

  Sitting here that dawn, he listened as the temperature of the air subtly changed, hearing those first whispers of the earth as it warmed, feeling across his skin the talk of the wingeds, the crawls-on-their-bellies, every fragrant perfume of re-awakening life, the fertile conversations of the individual blades of grass, each tiny leaf budding on the chokecherry. Box Elder paid attention to all that his senses told him. For most of his life, this stooped and wrinkled old man had been blind, yet, he could nonetheless see things other men with normal vision failed to see.

  For the moment he was alone, brought to this hilltop in the darkness by his new apprentice. Lame Dog, son of Spotted Wolf, had already left, returning to the small camp their group had made upon reaching Beaver Creek three days ago.

  “Do you see that ridge east of our lodges?” he had asked Lame Dog the evening before.

  “How did you—”

  “If you don’t know the answer to your own question, then I am failing to teach you all I can teach you,” he said, his face crinkling with a smile. “The top of that hill, take me to it after the moon has set tonight.”

  “In the dark?”

  “Yes,” Box Elder had explained. “Then you can return to our shelter and go back to sleep.”

  Lame Dog had awakened him as the moon sank out of sight. After wetting the bushes nearby, Box Elder held out his arm and it was seized by his young apprentice who led the blind man slowly through the brush, loose rock, and patches of old snow, then up the sharp slope to the top of the ridge.

  “Do you need anything more?”

  “Only for you to leave me alone now,” Box Elder had instructed. “Come for me when the sun is two hands off the earth.”

  “I will return for you in the morning.”

  Box Elder listened while the sound of the young man’s moccasins faded down the rocky slope. Then he was alone with the last of the night, the vestiges of this inky darkness, the final gasp of that coldest time of the day. Alone with the expectation to feel, to hear, to know.

  By the time the sun had risen off the earth and was finally climbing into that spring sky, Box Elder did know.

  It was time for them to turn north.

  When the Ohmeseheso first broke apart on Rotten Grass Creek, this wizened, blind prophet had elected to stay with the Sweet Medicine Chief, Little Wolf, and the Sacred Hat Priest, Coal Bear. Better was it for the Northern People to concentrate as much of their power within one village.

  Then the peace delegates returned from their first visit with the Bear Coat at the fort on the Elk River. Box Elder grew troubled, less sure of his decision to follow the others south. He had never visited one of the ve-ho-e reservations. Over time he had grown uncertain that the land chosen for the Lakota Little Star People was truly the place the Ohmeseheso should live.

  “I will take those lodges that follow me west to the Rose-berry River,” he had explained to Little Wolf, Morning Star, and Coal Bear many days ago when he knew he must set his own path. “I don’t know yet where I am to go, but I am certain it is not to the White River Agency. I will wait for sign to come to me, then I will put my feet on that path.”

  On that terrible day when the multitude set off for the south behind their great chiefs, when Crazy Head and Old Wolf led their smaller group north for the Buffalo Tongue River, Box Elder turned his face west. As he held Nimhoyoh, the Sacred Wheel Lance, high over his head in those first, faltering steps, he was joined by Spotted Wolf, a great war chief, and Elk River, a noted horse catcher, along with t
heir families. Days later when they reached the upper waters of Beaver Creek, the old man instructed the others to have the women make camp.

  “For how long, Box Elder?” Spotted Wolf had asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It might be days. I only know that after all our traveling alone, it is here I will be given a sign.”

  For three mornings they had stayed there beside Beaver Creek as afternoon tempests raged over them, soaking the lodgeskins and those poor canvas shelters where the families huddled cold and wet until the raging spring storms had passed. Now, on this fourth morning, he knew.

  “Is that you, Lame Dog?”

  The young one huffed to a stop at the top of the ridge, “Who did you expect, old man?”

  “Come, come get me,” he directed as he stood on unsteady legs. “Take me down off this hill. I have much to tell the others.”

  When Box Elder and the young apprentice neared the camp, Lame Dog began to holler like a camp crier. “Gather yourselves! Drop what you are doing! Our prophet has important news!”

  He heard their moccasins, heard their murmurings, felt them pressing close as Lame Dog brought him to a halt. Sensing the sun’s warmth full on his face, Box Elder explained what he had come to know.

  “I am going in to the Bear Coat’s fort. Those of you who do not want to go with me are free to follow your hearts. You can join Little Wolf’s village on their journey south. Or you can follow your hearts and wander—there are Lakota still wandering, staying out, refusing to go to their agency. Spotted Wolf or Elk River may lead you—”

  “I am going with you, Grandfather,” Spotted Wolf interrupted, addressing the old man with that term of deepest respect.

  Elk River instantly agreed, “Where you go, Box Elder, my family will follow.”

  How his tired old heart leaped in his chest, as if on the broad wings of a blue heron catching wind beneath it. “I have been shown this will not be an easy thing we are going to do.”

  Spotted Wolf said with a gulp, “The easy times are in the past.”

  “Yes,” he told them quietly. “I am certain we have many dark days yet to come, my children. Many, many dark days yet to come.”