Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Dixon had to agree with that. “It’s for certain some of these boys have stolen a horse a time or two, but of all the things Chapman might be—he ain’t a spy for the Cheyennes and he ain’t the sort to lead them soldiers down here to arrest anyone. That’d be a sure death sentence for him when word got out.”

  With a sigh, Donegan conceded, “I suppose you’re right. Still, some of this bunch was ready to string Chapman up that very night, wasn’t they?”

  “Hanrahan himself covered for Chapman and got the half-breed out of the saloon before those drunk hunters tied Amos to Hanrahan’s ridgepole. Chapman hid out with the Mooar outfit and that next morning told Hanrahan that he gave John Mooar word about the war party headed this way.”

  “So that’s why Mooar hurried out of here.”

  “To fetch his brother, Wright, and the rest of their outfits—before the Injuns ran across ’em. John Mooar figured he had less’n a week to do it and get high-behind back north to Dodge with all their hides. The Mooar brothers still run the biggest outfit in the country, Seamus.”

  Donegan nodded like it was beginning to come together in his whiskey-soaked mind. “That Mooar bunch pulled back through here a day later telling us those stories of getting set on by warriors three times between their camp and the Canadian.” He scratched at his chin whiskers. “Now it makes sense why John Mooar suggested Hannah Olds go back to Dodge with ’em—saying it would be for her own good.”

  “I heard Mooar asking Mrs. Olds to come with ’em—get her sore tooth pulled. But she said if it got bad enough, she’d let one of us pull it with some pliers. Better than that whiskey-soaked dentist they got up at Dodge, she told him.”

  The Irishman snapped his fingers. “Why, those bloody cowards!” he rasped. “Rath and Myers running out on their clerks and the rest! Both of ’em left here about the same time as the Mooar bunch, didn’t they?”

  “Only man left what knows of the attack coming is Jimmy Hanrahan.”

  “And you, Billy.”

  “That’s only because Jimmy confided in me—we’re partners now, and he figured I ought to know.”

  “If he knows what’s coming—why’s Hanrahan staying?”

  “Simple: he’s got everything he owns in his saloon business. Got nothing else now that he threw in with Rath. Jimmy figures he best stay and fight for the whole pot.”

  “Damn good man, I’d say,” Donegan replied. “Still, it’s hard to figure, though. After the Mooars’ outfit had their scrape a few days back, we ain’t seen a feather or a bit of paint one.”

  Dixon chuckled. “What was it you say Jim Bridger once told you, Seamus—up on the Bozeman Road?”*

  His teeth gleaming in summer’s early twilight as lantern light from the nearby windows and doorways scoured yellow channels of brightness through the coming darkness, Donegan answered, “It’s when you don’t see Injins that you best be worrying.”

  “And you believed that old trapper, didn’t you?”

  “Damn if I still don’t, I suppose.” Seamus looked toward the bluffs to the west that rose hard against the fading light. “The twenty-seventh, you say?”

  “That’s when word from Camp Supply has it. It makes sense, don’t it? Come the full of the moon, Seamus.”

  Donegan squinted, seeming to Dixon to look somewhere off into the distance. “That’s right. And the full of the moon is good time for war parties to ride: moonlight at night, enough light before dawn for them to get into position for an attack. Yeah, Billy—the full of the moon is coming on the twenty-seventh, ain’t it?”

  “And when it comes, I sure as hell don’t count on being here—Billy Dixon’s scalp hanging from no Comanche’s smelly breechclout string!”

  * * *

  “I doubt Horace Jones is a man any of us can really trust,” declared Louis H. Carpenter, captain of H Company, Tenth U.S. Negro Cavalry.

  Reuben Waller wagged his head in frustration. He wanted Carpenter to believe him, if not believe in Jones, Fort Sill’s post interpreter. “He ain’t been drinking this time, Cap’n.”

  “Too many times Colonel Davidson has known Mr. Jones to blow things all out of proportion, Sergeant.”

  Waller pursed his lips, looking at the handful of his soldiers from H Company who had accompanied him to Carpenter’s quarters, requesting an audience with their company commander. “It ain’t just what Jones says about the Kiowa being split in half here, Cap’n.”

  “We’ve known the Kiowa have divided loyalties for some time. Kicking Bird and his bunch are trying their best to stay peaceful—if the horse thieves and whiskey peddlers would just give them a chance.” Carpenter sighed, breathing deep of the warm summer air of this evening. “And on the other side of the equation stands Lone Wolf and Swan and all the rest who scamper off the reservation whenever it damn well suits them.”

  “They’ve gone and run off now, Cap’n,” Waller told him. “And this time they’ve joined up with that Comanche medicine man who’s been beating the drum for to start a war.”

  “A small, fanatical bunch, I assure you, Sergeant. Colonel Davidson is well aware that some of the Kiowa were down at the Comanche sun dance last month. Why, Kicking Bird admits to being down there himself with his people.”

  “But Kicking Bird scooted right on back here as soon as the war chiefs started talking about killing soldiers and buffalo hunters. The Penateka Comanche came running back here too.”

  Carpenter smiled. “Kicking Bird and the rest do know which side their bread is buttered on, don’t they?” He placed a hand on Waller’s shoulder. “You’re a good soldier, and you’ve made a fine officer, Reuben. But, why don’t you let Colonel Davidson worry about things. If there were something for us to really be nervous about, don’t you expect the colonel would have patrols out or have the post on alert?”

  “Cap’n, it ain’t just this post.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Waller licked his lips in the deepening twilight. “I hear tell that up at Supply there’s a buzz of it too.”

  “What sort of buzz, Sergeant?”

  “The Cheyenne have took off to join up with the Comanche and Kiowa.”

  Carpenter narrowed his eyes, face gone grave as a cemetery stone. “Where did you learn this, Reuben?”

  “M Company, Cap’n. They rode in for rotation a week or so back.”

  “I know.” Carpenter considered, staring at the ground beneath him. “What’s the mood up at Supply?”

  “From the sounds of it, not much better’n here.”

  “Ugly, is it?”

  “This could be something big, Cap’n.”

  Carpenter straightened and took a deep breath. “Yes. It could, Sergeant. I’ll pass your concerns on to the colonel. Thank you for coming to see me this evening. Good night.”

  Reuben returned Carpenter’s salute and watched the captain stride back to his quarters, wondering if Carpenter’s talk with Davidson would do any good. Time and again Reuben had followed the chain of command, like other good soldiers always did. And somewhere along that chain things always seemed to grind to a halt. Nothing was ever done with those scraps of news the soldiers passed among themselves.

  He was beginning to believe it was Davidson’s self-appointed job to do nothing about the growing war scare. The colonel would just as soon wait to dispatch some troops to put out a fire—rather than stopping the fire before it began. That was the army way. And so that made it his job to wait and do nothing until they got orders from farther up the chain.

  Again it became the job of soldiers like Sergeant Reuben Waller to sit and wait. Wait until they would be asked to mount up and ride out. Marching somewhere in that great wilderness to the west, where they would be ordered to fight and die.

  * * *

  It was Friday night, June twenty-sixth.

  Another hot, sultry night on the southern plains. Buffalo country.

  Why, the meadow itself was so dry, the Irishman figured a man could raise enough powdery dust to choke Bi
lly Dixon’s dog Fannie just by spitting on the ground.

  The full moon had come up hours ago and had now ridden just past mid-sky. Seamus Donegan stood staring at it for a moment as he relieved, himself outside Hanrahan’s saloon, hearing the moisture splatter on the bone-dry crust of this drought-ravaged land. Time to find Dixon’s wagons, and Billy himself. Time to find his bedroll and sleep off all the whiskey he poured down his gullet.

  The company had been good and the music worth a listen. Along with it were a few stories told among new friends and old. Some dancing to that scratchy fiddle and wheezing squeeze box. All of it well greased with Hanrahan’s whiskey; “sweeter’n honey and stronger’n iron,” that’s what Jim Hanrahan claimed.

  “Ah, the pure. My beloved cottheen,” Seamus often purred over the red whiskey served at the saloon. “Nothing finer is there in this whole world for sinking your sorrows in … or for raising your joys!”

  “Sing for us, Seamus!” Hanrahan had hollered above the clamor.

  “Yes, sing, Irishman!” others had called out.

  Even though he could not carry a tune in a perfectly sound bucket, for some reason they enjoyed the life he put in every song he bellowed out for them—be they sad and tragic tales, or be they full of joy and zest and a love of life. Like the popular “Hangman”:

  Hangman, hangman, hold your rope,

  Hold your rope a little while.

  Thought I saw my father a’coming,

  From many, many a mile.

  Father, father, have you gold,

  Have you gold to set me free?

  Or have you come to see me

  Hung upon the gallows tree?

  Oh, son, oh, son, I have no gold,

  Have no gold to set you free.

  I have come for to see you

  Hung upon this gallows tree.

  Or the lover’s lament in “Molly Van”:

  Come all you young men who handle a gun,

  Beware of your shooting just after set sun.

  Jimmy Randall went hunting it was all in the dark,

  He shot his sweetheart and he missed not his mark.

  Stooped under a beech tree a show to shun,

  With her apron pinned around her he shot her for a swan.

  Young Jimmy went home with his gun in his hand,

  Saying, “Father, dear Father, I’ve killed Molly Van!”

  Then just before the Irishman had risen to go, leaving the hardy handful who would likely drink till first light, Seamus sang the very old “I’ll Hang My Harp on a Willow Tree.”

  I’ll hang my harp on a willow tree

  And off to the wars again;

  My peaceful home hath no charm for me

  The battlefield no pain.

  One gold tress of love’s hair I’ll twine

  In my helmet an able plume,

  And then on the field of Palestine

  I’ll seek an early doom.

  And if by the Saracens’ hand I fall

  ’midst the noble and the brave;

  A tear from my lady love is all

  I ask for a warrior’s grave.

  Seamus weaved a bit now, the clean, pristine air helping to clear his head of the remnants from that smoky saloon resplendent with the stench of buffalo men. He ground to a halt, trying to make out the dark lumps on the ground beneath the moonlight. Then he tried focusing on the four wagons set against the starlit sky, their loads covered by canvas, their long tongues disappearing in the tall grass surrounding O’Keefe’s blacksmith shop.

  By God, if it didn’t appear Dixon was ready to pull out. He snorted quietly.

  “That you, Donegan?”

  “Billy?”

  “It’s me,” Dixon replied from the ground. “Your bedroll’s over here. Climb in.”

  “You’re going in the morning, are you now?”

  “Hanrahan needed a hunter he could count on—so we’re partners. I’ll get fifty percent of everything because he knows I can keep his skinners busy. Our wagons’re loaded and ready for hitching at sunrise.”

  Donegan plopped noisily onto his bedroll. “Why don’t Hanrahan go himself?”

  “Too much to worry about here.”

  Seamus snorted. “Oh, yeah—the Injins you was telling me about yesterday. Aren’t you feared they’ll raise your hair?”

  “No. I’m taking the outfit north toward no-man’s land.”

  “That ground between here and the Arkansas, is it?”

  “Yes—there’s been no trouble up there.”

  “And damned little buffalo,” Seamus growled as he sank back on a pillow he made of his new blanket mackinaw bought from trader Rath the day before the caravan left Dodge City last spring.

  “The Schiedler brothers just come down from Dodge.”

  “Saw ’em come in today meself,” Donegan replied sleepily.

  “Said they saw enough buffalo to make it worth a man’s while, Seamus.”

  “That why they’re heading back in the morning? To hunt buffalo—or because they’re afraid too?”

  “No,” Dixon replied. “They aren’t afraid. And they ain’t hunters either. Just teamsters—hauled goods down for Myers, and now they’ve got two wagons loaded with hides, ready for the return trip. Ike and Shorty want to take off first light—so, I’ll pull my outfit out with theirs.”

  “Can you use another hunter, Billy?”

  “Someone needing a job?”

  “Mother Donegan’s whiskey-sucking rounder of a son, that’s who, God-blame-it!”

  “You? You want to hunt buffalo now?”

  “If there’s nothing better for a man to do than kill his way through a herd of buffalo—then I suppose I’ll bid farewell to Jimmy Hanrahan’s saloon. I’m broke. Dead broke, Billy.”

  “Besides, it might be safer for your long and curly hair if you was long gone from here when the Comanche and the rest ride down on this settlement day after tomorrow—right?”

  Donegan cleared his throat. “I suppose you’re right. Might be a little more healthy for us both, Billy.”

  “I been wondering, Seamus. Maybe this scare from those traders and Amos Chapman was all some kind of joke the traders are playing on each other.”

  For a moment Seamus considered that, listening to the owls hoot in the timber down by the creek. Nearby the horses and mules snuffled and grazed on the dry grass. “Maybe Amos Chapman’s playing the joke on the lot of you.”

  “No, I don’t think the half-breed would do a crazy stunt like this. It about got him killed for it. No,” Dixon mused, “Chapman ain’t to blame for the joke that’s been pulled on us.”

  “Just the same—we’re going to be long gone before any warriors ride down on this place … right, Billy?”

  “If I don’t see this place for another month, it’ll be too soon. We’ll hunt to our heart’s content, Irishman. Which reminds me, I left that new .44 Sharps of mine over at Hanrahan’s. Got to get it and the cartridges I left with Langton in the morning before we pull out.”

  “You? Without a big fifty to shoot?”

  “The .44 is the best I can put my hands on for now.”

  “Since you drowned your other one in the river!”

  “Well, I’ll make that .44 work for me—and come back here only when we need powder or lead for it.”

  “Or coffee or whiskey,” Seamus said softly, starting to drift off to sleep.

  “A little less whiskey for you, my friend. And a little more work might do you some good—”

  Seamus sat bolt upright, instantly awake again. His head hurt, his mouth dry and pasty. There were loud voices coming from the saloon. Beside him, Dixon had come up at the same instant—with what sounded like a gunshot.

  A rifle. A sharp crack, just like a rifle shot.

  Dixon was pulling on his tall boots. Seamus reached down to pull his on and was surprised to discover he hadn’t taken his off, as hot as the night was.

  The voices grew even louder. A lamp went on in the Rath store. Muffled shouts came
from the distance where the Myers and Leonard compound stood in the moonlight.

  “I been asleep?” Seamus asked.

  “You just got here,” Dixon growled. “C’mon—we’ll see what the trouble is over at Jimmy’s.”

  “Dixon!” a voice came out of the prairie blackness.

  “Over here,” Dixon replied as he dragged the Irishman along by the arm, getting closer and closer to the smudge of yellow light spilling from Hanrahan’s windows. “What’s the shooting about?”

  A dozen or more men were soon milling about the saloon. Oscar Sheppard and Mike Welch bolted from an open doorway, shouting that they would find something for a prop.

  “No shooting,” Jim Hanrahan said as he appeared out of the moonlit night. His eyes were red with whiskey and worry, and as furtive as an animal’s.

  For the moment, Seamus thought they reminded him of a badger’s eyes. A trapped, cornered badger.

  “No shooting,” Hanrahan repeated, smiling as big as his face would allow. “Welch and Sheppard are getting something to prop the damn thing.”

  “What they have to prop?” Donegan demanded.

  Hanrahan gestured toward the saloon. “Can only figure it was that ridgepole cracking in my place.”

  13

  June 27, 1874

  It was the full of the Moon of Fat Horses. And Quanah was leading the ten-times-ten he could count on seven of his fingers, leading them out of their last camp some five miles due south of the earth-lodge settlement. He swore they were close enough to smell the wood smoke of the taibos’ fires.

  The thought made his hooded, gray-tinged eyes go dark with hate.

  Not quite six feet tall, Quanah nonetheless stood taller than most Comanche and Kiowa warriors. Too, his long, straight hair, now tied in a single braid at the back of his neck, was not as black as a raven’s wing. Instead, there was clearly a touch of brown to it, perhaps a reminder of his mother’s hair—hers the color of buffalo grass kissed by the first frost of autumn.

  They had started west from the mouth of Elk Creek with some four hundred warriors. But by the time Quanah and the rest had reached the Staked Plain, their fighting force had nearly doubled. In four days almost three hundred warriors had hurried from the reservations to catch up, to take part, to be included in this glorious victory.