And what of Uncle Ian O’Roarke? he asked himself again as a woman from town came out the front door and down the steps, walking quickly across the yard to whisper something in the ear of the fiddle player. Donegan grew gray-gilled and his heart pounded all the more as he thought back on the happiness Ian had found with one woman—seizing the chance and fighting for her, staking his claim not in gold or silver, but in love of a woman for life. Ian had risked his hide and heart, and for it he had won Dimity.
Now they lived at the edge of the Lava Beds, raising crops and cattle and a passel of five children. And while Liam had been happy of a time in his own way, Seamus had to admit that Ian had something that his younger brother had never laid claim to: that peace and contentment a man could possess when he found at long last the piece of ground where he would make his stand.
So both uncles had given him much, not only during those hard years in Ireland while young Seamus was growing up fatherless—but even more of late, realizing now as he did that he had gone in search of them and ultimately found them both when he was supposed to find them all along. When each had even more to teach him about life. It was a shame, he said to himself as he looked over the children in the crowd, darting this way and that, scolded and chased by their parents through the dapple of shadow and sunshine, a shame that a man has to spend so many of his years before he learns what it truly means to live.
Both Liam and Ian, so richly Irish each in his own way. And his mother. With a sour ball of regret rising to his throat, Seamus wished again she were here to stand with the others at this moment, once more to look upon her face so pale, framed by the auburn hair that curled and fell across her shoulders. How she would look now, so different, older than that day she stood on the dock, waving farewell as she saw her oldest off to Amerikay.
How he owed that strong woman of County Kilkenny who had held their family together the best way she knew after her man was gone. He recalled how he had learned at her knee, listening intently as she read those bible verses, paying heed as she explained the intricate meanings to be sorted out in the proverbs and the tales of those ancient and faraway peoples of so long ago. With warm fondness Seamus remembered how that woman had explained those stories and those people as if they were her neighbors and those truths were her life. Testaments to be lived by when one’s own path grew rocky.
Something so strong and abiding, yet something so warm and intimate in those stories of life and living—that perhaps was the woman’s greatest gift to her firstborn son.
He was fighting the sting of tears, again wishing she were here to listen to this music, to hear as well the laughter of the children and smell the lilacs on the summer breeze, to enjoy the sunshine she had known so little of in all her life—
—when the crowd gasped, falling into abject silence, all gazing as one at the porch behind the spot where he and Sharp Grover stood.
Slowly, Seamus turned, to look at what had stunned the others into silence, finding Samantha stopped in the doorway behind Rebecca. While he had never seen Rebecca look lovelier, it was nonetheless the sight of her younger sister that had silenced the entire congregation gathered here at the behest of Sharp Grover for this ceremony and celebration.
Samantha slowly moved out of the shadow onto the sunlit porch, radiant in yards and yards of lace Rebecca had ordered in from Dallas to fashion this long, flowing gown that Rebecca now swept in a wide arc and let settle behind Samantha as the young woman moved down the three steps and came to a stop beside Seamus.
“Take her hand,” Grover whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Then Seamus realized he was standing there with his mouth open, staring at her—finding that she was not only beautiful, as he had remembered her every one of those nights at Adobe Walls and those cold, rainy nights following Mackenzie up and down the Staked Plain, but perhaps the most beautiful woman in the whole world. She held her hand out to him in front of her, a small bouquet of blue bonnets in the other.
“Hold my hand, Seamus,” she said to him quietly.
He swallowed and took hers in both of his own. Finding that it was all right. Now they were trembling together.
Then she was pressing her leg against his as the bald-topped minister edged forward from somewhere at the side of the porch and he heard the crowd inch up behind them, the better to hear the vows. Sensing the beads break out on his brow as she pressed her leg to his, Seamus knew no one else would know that she did so beneath the yards of lace and crinoline—that private embrace shared between them at this moment only the merest hint of the fiery passion that he knew would once more be his this night. The first of their new life together.
And for but a moment he remembered that first night he had recited poetry for her. Likely he had smelled of horse sweat and wood smoke and a few more things nigh on to impossible to wash out of a man’s body with simply bathing. Despite that, he smiled, Samantha still wanted him.
“Dearly beloved,” the booming, stentorian voice of the minister rocked over them all, shade and shadow and sunlight too, “we are gathered here in the sight of God and these witnesses, this community of true believers…”
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
“AN UNFORGETTABLE ADVENTURE!”
—Rocky Mountain News
“A WINNER!”
—The Buckskin Report
“MASTERFUL!”
—John M. Carroll, historian and renowned expert on the Indian Wars
“EXCELLENT!”
—Fred Werner, noted Western historian
‘“COMPELLING … FASCINATING!”
—Topeka Capital-Journal
“GUTSY ADVENTURE-ENTERTAINMENT!”
—Kirkus Reviews
Terry C. Johnston is a two-time Golden Spur Award nominee, and award-winning author of Carry the Wind, the Plainsmen series and Long Winter Gone.
TERRY C. JOHNSTON, born on the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas, lived his whole life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books have appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. There are more than 2.5 million copies of the Plainsmen Series in print.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DYING THUNDER
Copyright © 1992 by Terry C. Johnston.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 978-0-312-92834-6
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / July 1992
eISBN 9781466849716
First eBook edition: July 2013
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 6, Shadow Riders
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
† The Plainsmen Series, vol. 4, Black Sun
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 6, Shadow Riders
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 4, Black Sun
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 1, Sioux Dawn
; * The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 6, Shadow Riders
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 4, Black Sun
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 1, Sioux Dawn
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 2, Red Cloud’s Revenge
† The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 5, Devil’s Backbone
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
† The Plainsmen Series, vol. 4, Black Sun
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 2, Red Cloud’s Revenge
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 1, Sioux Dawn
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 4, Black Sun
* The Plainsmen Series, vol. 3, The Stalkers
Dying Thunder Page 44
