Devil's Backbone: The Modoc War, 1872-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “This land will bake your brains in the summer … freeze your balls in the winter. Nothing like the high plains, Seamus.”

  He snagged the worn leather of his holster belt, slung it over his shoulder as he recalled those words of Abner Grover, the prairie scout who had for a time shared a rifle pit on a stinking island in the middle of a nameless river bottom somewhere up high on the Colorado plains.

  Pulling up the scarred remains of his trail-weary saddlebags, he hefted the saddle that had cradled his ass for so many miles, and half that many years. With his free hand, Seamus retrieved that last item of his belongings wedged into the narrow seat: the brass-mounted, blue-barrelled .44-caliber Henry repeater. Much as if the rifle were coming home, he swept his huge paw around the action, his hand cupped in a made-to-order groove ready to receive the weapon.

  He was alone in the car. The noise was all outside now: the calls of friends and family to those who had stepped off the wheezing monster. Stevedores hustled, shouldered back the huge doors and disappeared into baggage cars to retrieve luggage and trunks and freight bound for offloading at this stop on the central plains. A clanging of bells, a rush of pouring water from the rail-side tank and another loud exhaust of steam greeted the Irishman’s ears as he turned his bulk sideways and eased down the aisle for the narrow door at the end of the passenger car.

  Three steps and his tall, mule-eared boots clattered to a halt on the platform. He glanced up, then down, and found a uniformed station man hurrying past with papers rolled beneath his arm. Seamus held out the Henry rifle like a man who required a toll to be paid before passing.

  “Where might I get my animals?”

  “What sort of animals, Mister?” he asked, irritated.

  “Horses.”

  “You bring with you in from Denver City?”

  “Aye. Farther still. California.”

  The harried man pointed back down the track. “Likely they were loaded in the last few cars. There ain’t another platform, but they run a ramp up to the cars and put ’em down in the corrals.”

  Seamus looked downtrack, then turned around to utter his thanks but found the small man hurrying on to other duties at the far end of the passenger platform.

  In the fading light of this early summer’s eve, every form took on a unique texture here in the clear air of the central plains. Ever since the iron rails had catapulted him over the California mountains and on to the plains, his nose had reveled in that special quality to the air that bespoke this high land yearning against and for the endless sky. Not that the land hugging the boundary of California and Oregon wasn’t pretty. It just wasn’t country for him.

  But, saints almighty, if that hadn’t been land that reminded every fiber within him of his native soil so far from his bootsoles now. The air of that Oregon-California borderland smelled of the same high, chilling dampness of County Kilkenny. That same rugged blending of rock and turf and those brittle plants that clung tenaciously resisting a brutal environment. And in passing up the western slope of those California mountains, looking down one last time into the land his uncle had adopted, Seamus finally and fully understood why Ian O’Roarke had chosen that rainy land as the spot where he would send down his roots and raise up a family with his sweet Dimity.

  That far land had reminded Ian of all that he had once had back in Ireland, before so many started slowly dying off from hunger and disease, or from nothing more complicated than simple despair.

  Seamus started for the far end of the platform, hoping the green land of his birth had come on better times in all the years he had been gone from Town Callan. Were that those better times would not be too much to hope.…

  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 who 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 bootheels.

  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 until 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 Ian.”

  “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 I’m 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 i
nside 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 bailing 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 multi-paned 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 an 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 name, 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 someday.

  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 in the inside pocket of his mackinaw.

  Dragging a hand beneath
his nose while the summer night cooled the Kansas tableland, the Irishman hoisted 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.

  SHADOW RIDERS—VOLUME 6 IN TERRY C. JOHNSTON’S PLAINSMEN SERIES—DON’T MISS IT!

  THE PLAINSMEN SERIES BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON

  Book I: Sioux Dawn

  Book II: Red Cloud’s Revenge

  Book III: The Stalkers

  Book IV: Black Sun

  Book V: Devil’s Backbone

  Book VI: Shadow Riders

  Book VII: Dying Thunder

  Book VIII: Blood Song

  Book IX: Reap the Whirlwind

  Book X: Trumpet on the Land

  Book XI: A Cold Day in Hell

  Book XII: Wolf Mountain Moon

  Book XIII: Ashes of Heaven

  Book XIV: Cries from the Earth

  Book XV: Lay the Mountains Low

  Book XVI: Turn the Stars Upside Down

  CRITICAL PRAISE FOR TERRY C. JOHNSTON’S PLAINSMEN SERIES

  “EXCELLENT … keep[s] readers in suspense.”

  —Fred Werner, noted Western historian

  “JOHNSTON’S BOOKS ARE ACTION-PACKED!”

  —Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph

  “Compelling, memorable characters, a great deal of history and lore about the Indians, whites and wild animals of the period … FASCINATING!”

  —Topeka Capital-Journal

  “GUTSY ADVENTURE-ENTERTAINMENT … larded with just the right amounts of frontier sentiment.”