“The creek!” Johnny started to explain as he pointed, yelling above the shouts and hoofbeats, the cries of fury and the gunshots. “The bank’s too high! Slow down! Slow the soldiers down!”
At that point it took but a moment for Jerome to look for himself where the ponies were being funneled together—slowing, rearing as they were forced off the steep bank into the narrow creekbed. Down in the churning water some were already stumbling across the slippery rocks as more animals were shoved into the air to come crashing down into the stream where they slammed against those before them.
“I see!” Jerome yelled, ripping the bloody glove from the deep furrow along his jaw, crimson glistening his lips and tongue. Already he was turning to the others, shouting wet words at them about a file.
Johnny didn’t understand what those orders were as the others began to draw back on their reins, slowing, pulling aside in two wide arcs, left and right. Just ahead of the soldiers the Shahiyela were forcing their ponies off the bank, into the air in leg-thrashing arcs, plunging down to the water, every man of them shrieking with joy at capturing the enemy herd.
In the next moment Bruguier was at the bank himself, yanking savagely on his own rein as the horse skidded to a halt just before it no longer had any more ground beneath its hooves. The pony sailed through the air, legs flailing, and plunged into the creek on its back two legs with a jolt, churning its two front legs at the water, raising a blinding spray of water as it side-stepped, snorting in fear.
Bruguier was barely out of the way, his animal lunging sideways frightfully, when the first of those soldiers on his heels lunged off the bank. Then a second, and a third—all of them hurtling single file into the air to land in the middle of the stream with him. One at a time the troopers righted themselves in their saddles with a grunt, then yelled at their mounts and each other as they kicked the horses into motion, plunging through the rushing, belly-deep stream for the far bank where the animals clawed their way onto the south side of Big Muddy Creek behind the captured herd, great gushes of water sluicing from every animal.
As he erupted out of the stream with the soldiers, Johnny reined in among those who were streaming to the right while others raced to the left, both wings fanning out to seal off the Lakota ponies. No more guns fired at them. No longer did these soldiers shoot back at the Lakota. All the gunfire was back there in the village now. With much less noise, Bruguier could make out the shouts of these soldiers as they hepped and hawed at the frightened Indian ponies.
“We got ’em, by damn!” one of them cried happily as he streaked past Bruguier, waving his pistol wildly in the air.
These horses are only the start of the fight, Johnny thought as the herd streamed toward the nearby bluffs, suddenly turned back on themselves by Casey’s Shahiyela.
Only the start of this damn fight.
* * *
White Hawk awoke at dawn, slowly sensing his woman’s bare skin against his leg beneath the blanket. Lying there in the ash-gray of early morning, he kept his eyes closed, concentrating on that feel of her skin against his, gratified in the way it made his manhood grow.
As he rolled over, the Cheyenne little chief pushed back the blanket so he could look at her sleeping naked. He gazed down at the earth color of that one exposed breast, its crimson nipple set in the center of that soft mound he so loved to clutch as he rode her, afraid he might buck himself off. Dragging the blanket off her hipbone, he stared at the dark triangle nestled there between the tops of her legs. Knowing that’s where he wanted to be right then.
His eyes crawled quickly back up her belly, to that breast, climbing to her neck and finally to discover that her eyes were open. She had been watching him look at her body. When their eyes locked, he realized she knew what he wanted.
The woman gazed down at his rigid manhood, and smiled.
Rolling onto her back, she spread her thighs as she reached out and took his hardened flesh in her hand.
Groaning, White Hawk rocked onto his knees and went to climb between her legs.
They had come here several suns ago. Traveling with Lame Deer had given White Hawk’s people a sense of protection as they went about hunting out the last of the cold weather, into the beginning of the wet days that heralded the Fat Horse Moon when the grasses grew tall and lush. At every camp White Hawk’s people chose to raise their lodges off by themselves.
Here they were close enough to that village of Lame Deer’s Lakota, but White Hawk’s camp was out of sight, downstream, and around a hill.* His people would wander with Lame Deer as long as the hunting was good, as long as they managed to stay out of the way of the soldier columns that had to be stalking the land this spring. Especially after the half-breed named Big Leggings showed up at their camp on the Tongue and told them the Bear Coat would be on his way.
Sometimes White Hawk agreed with Lame Deer’s nephew, Iron Star. Chances are they should have killed Big Leggings when they had him in their camp. Now only bad could come of letting that half-breed go, riding back to tell the Bear Coat how to find their trail, to follow their camp.
Most of the men in White Hawk’s camp were Elkhorn Scrapers who owed this little chief their loyalty. Young men with no families, or whose families had gone south to surrender at the White Rock Agency. But, a few were men with wives and children like White Hawk—men who chose to stay free for the sake of their loved ones.
As his woman positioned his manhood against her waiting warmth, White Hawk heard the bark of a camp dog. He lunged, barely able to contain his anticipation for her.
More dogs joined the first.
He nestled himself deeper, moving slowly to savor what he knew would be over all too quickly. Back and forth, warming her, sensing the woman grow wetter at the same time, gazing down to see how she stared up at him with those eyes half-closed in exquisite feral pleasure.
Back and forth, back and forth he rocked, both of them groaning until he was able to plant himself fully inside her. She grunted as he drove himself against her violently, quickly locking her heels over the backs of his calves—
That gunshot came from downstream!
Another. And then a loud volley rumbled their way through the quiet, wet dawn.
Below him she jerked, having heard the shots too.
Now they could hear the distant screaming, and many, many more gunshots.
Outside the lodge, some of his people were shouting.
“The soldiers!”
Yanking himself from his wife, White Hawk lunged across the lodge for his belt and breechclout, tying them around himself as he stumbled for the lodgedoor and flung back the covering.
Outside all was pandemonium. Men were running about, catching up their horses. Children cried and the dogs ran round and round, growling while the women heaved their belongings out of the doorways. Young children climbed onto the shoulders of older youth to begin dragging lacing pins from the tops of the lodgecovers, while other children hunched over tall stakes, heaving this way and that to free them.
“The soldiers!” a woman yelled, her face looming in front of his suddenly. Then she was gone, dragging the long poles of her travois toward her lodge.
Something soured in his belly, telling White Hawk this was the end of his little clan. Perhaps the end of the last free Elkhorn Scraper warriors. The very end of the Ohmeseheso who had sought to live free, away from the agencies.
In the distance came more, louder cries of frightened women and the angry shouts of men, the cacophony broken by the rapid staccato of soldier gunfire.
The soldiers. Just as he had promised, the Bear Coat had come for Lame Deer.
Now all White Hawk’s people could do was be gone before the ve-ho-e discovered they were here. Before they too would be forced to abandon everything they owned just to save their lives.
When he turned, White Hawk found his wife had pulled on her dress. She and their two children were stuffing a few belongings into rawhide bags.
The soldiers would always come.<
br />
They always had.
“We must run!” she sobbed, sinking to her knees in futility among their few possessions after all these seasons of destruction.
“Take only what you need,” he chided her. “I don’t care about those things. I want you and the little ones to live. Go now—to the Roseberry! On the horses and go!”
He watched them scurry toward the ponies like a small covey of flushed quail, then leaped back inside the lodge. Snatching up his rifle and gunbelt, stuffing the soldier pistol inside his waistband, White Hawk whirled back outside.
“Do not stay to take down the lodges!” he ordered the other women. “Run downstream to the Roseberry! The soldiers will come and kill us all if you do not hurry!”
“Our lodges—it’s all that we have!” a father and husband stumbled up to protest.
“No!” White Hawk said, grabbing the man’s shoulders and shaking him brutally. “Get into the hills! There with your family, you will have all that is truly important!”
Chapter 37
7 May 1877
Heads poked from lodgedoors and disappeared; then half-naked warriors dashed into the dim light.
Spurts of flame jetted from the muzzle of each rifle, every pistol aimed at those Cheyenne scouts and Casey’s mounted infantry as they galloped past the northern reaches of the village.
The village was fully awake by the time Tyler’s F Company charged toward the lodges, Wheelan’s G on their heels. In the graying light, more bright orange flamed from the muzzles of enemy weapons in the camp.
Among the first to reach the shallow coulee west of the village, Seamus watched three warriors emerge from the prairie itself—bravely racing toward the cavalry line as they shouted to one another, buoying their courage. He figured more would appear, but only those three came to fight. They dropped to one knee, aiming their rifles.
They look like cavalry carbines, he thought as Captain Tyler hollered his order.
Most of the troopers didn’t wait to hear the dismount command echo from their sergeant. They were already swinging a right leg up and over the backs of their ass-numbing McClellans, leaping to the ground, huddling in fours as one among them snatched up the reins to the other three mounts. Only then did each trio hurry forward as the fourth man wheeled to the rear, tightly clutching the throatlatches securing his quartet of nervous horses.
A soldier went down noisily in the grass off to Donegan’s left. He could hear him thrashing. Some men fell quietly, even without a sound, only to be discovered later by their comrades. But this one was not going to die without bellowing at the devil for his fate.
Over the front blade of his Winchester, the Irishman leveled the carbine high on a warrior’s chest. Pulling the trigger, he felt the reassuring nudge against the socket of his right shoulder as the .44-caliber sphere hurtled on its way. Lead slammed into the Lakota, spinning him off the one leg he was kneeling on, back into the tall grass where he disappeared from view.
Now there were only two defenders who somehow held back the whole of Tyler’s company as the captain rode among them on horseback, waving his service revolver in the air and crying out orders to advance toward the coulee.
“Forward! Forward, goddammit!” he was screaming at those Second Cavalry troopers as Donegan started for the depression in the bottomground that stretched up from the creekbank. “You don’t go forward—they’ll pin you down! When they pin you down, they’ll cut you up! Forward, men!”
Seamus wanted to yell at them too, but instead he levered another round into the chamber of his carbine and turned to wave them on behind him. Perhaps they would see him and it would encourage them to scurry through the grass; now that they were dismounted skirmishers, now that they were no longer mounted cavalry.
He waved, watching the determined and the scared coming his way, each soldier’s face carved deep with the terror of the battle just enjoined. Remembering the faces of another Second Cavalry. Union Second Cavalry. Men who were no longer. Comrades flinging their bodies at the cream of the Confederacy with wild cries and glittering sabers decorated with blood-red braided knots. Oh, for the glory of it those youths had offered up their flesh, bone, and blood—riding into the mutilating spray of grapeshot and the whine of a thousand minié balls.
How they had sacrificed to preserve the Union.
And in the end how they had fought to save their own lives, praying God above would spare them just one last time, vowing to go back home to wife or sweetheart, to mother and father. Some would live through the battle, live through that day ultimately to break that vow and fight on with their comrades of the Second in the charges and bloodletting to come. Others would lie in the fallow grass, their bright, glistening blood daubing the emerald green until it dried to black and the bodies bloated in the sun.
“Come on, you horse sojurs!” Seamus bellowed at these youngsters, unable to contain a tangible swelling of pride within him.
These were the Second Cavalry—no matter what the political changes or how their superiors had tinkered with it over the years. These were the same fresh-faced soldiers who had always ridden for the Second—whether stymieing the Confederacy outside of Gettysburg, or riding into the gates of Fort Phil Kearny behind William Judd Fetterman in those last weeks before they all charged into hell together—this was the Second-by God-Cavalry.
Always the first into battle. And always the last to ride back out.
Already the women and children were spilling across the deep creek, clambering up the south bank, soaked and lumbering in their blankets, racing toward the slopes in ragged lines, these refugees screaming at the children, herding the little ones through the freezing water, dragging the old ones up the steep bank so they could keep up, keep up as they headed for the timbered southern hillsides where snow still clung in dirty, icy patches.
It was clear that the village hadn’t been sealed off.
No matter, the Irishman figured. It would be like the Red Fork when they had captured the ponies and driven the enemy into the hills. Then Miles would burn all that could burn, destroy the rest, and butcher the horses. The survivors would have nothing, left only with the choice of starving or coming in to surrender.
He prayed this fight would not turn out like Reynolds’s on the Powder—the battle that started this Sioux War. The enemy had regrouped on the heights when part of Reynolds’s cavalry refused to advance in support of the rest and Egan got himself pinned down beneath the warriors’ crossfire. If it hadn’t been for Donegan leading Anson Mills’s company down the hill against orders, why, Reynolds would have had himself more than four dead soldiers. And then the officers had ordered their men to pull back so suddenly, abandoning the bodies of their dead and dying to the enemy … Seamus vowed he would never again look down into the face of a young soldier who knew he was going to die, forced to listen to that soldier plead, “Finish me.”
It was too much to ask a man to kill his brother-in-arms, to finish him off before he fell into the hands of a brutal enemy warrior who would torture and mutilate before killing.
“Forward!” Tyler was growling at them all over again as he came up behind the soldiers on his horse. “Toward the village! We got ’em on the run, boys!”
That much was true, Seamus thought, as he bolted out of the shallow coulee ahead of the rest, yanking down the lever and ejecting that hot copper case. They did have the village on the run. Very few warriors remained among the lodges. It appeared most had already scampered across the rain-swollen stream toward the hillsides where they were taking cover behind trees, firing at the soldiers lumbering through the scrub and sage, darting this way and that around the stands of trees toward the empty lodges where breakfast fires still raised their wispy fingers at the dawn sky.
One by one the warriors fled the village, darting from lodge to lodge until they reached the creekbank, leaped into the deep water, and struggled across the stiff flow to clamber up the far side, before sprinting for the nearby slopes. On those hillsides stood the
women and children, crying out to their men, exhorting them with their brave-heart songs, encouraging the fighters as they raced across the open ground.
“We have the village!” hollered battalion commander Ball, wheeling his mount. As Captain Wheelan’s company came up, the captain ordered them to make a careful search of the tipis to assure there weren’t any snipers left within the camp. Then he stood in the stirrups to call, “Captain Tyler!”
The cavalry officer loped his horse over to Ball. “Sir?”
“Take your men across the creek and continue to drive the escapees into the hills. I don’t want any of those warriors left close enough to the village to cause problems for the men searching the tipis. It appears the general is bringing his staff this way. Let’s clear the slopes, Captain.”
“Snipers. Very good, sir!” Tyler roared and spun his mount away.
When Donegan looked back to the west, he spotted Miles and his headquarters group headed toward the camp at a lope. Now that the village had been cleared of those last stragglers, it was safe to bring in the Bear Coat.
“Bring up the led horses!” Tyler sang out.
Nearly every one of the men in F Company took up that call. “Horse holders to the front!”
In moments the throatlatches were being passed off to the riders and snapped free before the men climbed into the saddle.
When most were ready, Tyler shouted, “Across the stream! Column of twos. It doesn’t have to be pretty—just get there in one piece!”
They came off the bank into the Big Muddy with cockscombs of spray that drenched them all as the horses landed, found their legs, then began to hurtle their riders to the far bank where the animals lunged onto the grass. All of it was accompanied by the first sporadic rifle fire returned by the enemy who were just then reaching the nearby slopes.
The landing the claybank made almost jarred Donegan’s teeth loose as a surge of bile flung itself against his tonsils. Swallowing down the pain in his groin and rising in the stirrups, Seamus urged the mare on across the stream in the midst of those shouting, clamoring troopers.
Ashes of Heaven Page 34
