“Webb Wood?”
Sam nodded. “Him.”
She sighed. “Nothing settled, Sam. I was so sure I wouldn’t marry him when John and Webb first come here. Then I got to thinking that Webb had been like family for most all my life, growing up down the road like he did. Like a brother. Then, come a time he didn’t want to be a brother any longer. He wanted to marry me. And I had to tell him … no.”
Jennie came halfway across the floor, the big ladle out in front of her like a stick an old woman would use to scare a bad dog away with, shaking it slightly. Almost menacingly.
“But, Sam—I got to thinking there … with Seamus gone and no word from him. Not even knowing if he really cared for me at all—got to figuring that Webb offered me one hell of a lot more than Seamus Donegan ever could.”
He swallowed and cleared his throat, waiting for her to continue. “What … what can Webb Wood offer you that Seamus can’t, Jennie?”
“He offers me home, Sam.”
Marr watched something seize her there in the middle of the tiny cabin, seize and shake her almost invisibly. But enough to know she was fighting for control.
“Home. That’s a mighty powerful thing, Jennie Wheatley. Do you … care for the man?”
“I always have, Sam.”
“I see—”
“No, you don’t,” and she shook her head. “Cared for him like one cares for something … useful. Like a comfortable pair of mittens in the winter. Or woolen britches so worn and broke in that you don’t even think about ’em anymore. Cared for him like that.”
“I got an idea what you’re saying.” And Sam did know. “Man like Webb Wood offers a good woman like you what she deserves—what you got every right to deserve—a home and some security … a chance for these two boys here—why, that woman oughta well jump at the chance for that.” He said it all in a spurt, like a spray of dancing water at the limestone spring back home in Missouri. Said and shet of it.
“You make it sound like Seamus Donegan hasn’t a thing to offer me … offer the three of us,” she replied after a moment of silent reflection, her arm sweeping at the two boys.
He smiled. “Seamus … well now—Seamus Donegan is a different sort, ain’t he, Jennie? I suppose you and me know him about as good as any, that’s for sure. So, there’s no use my mincing words with you. You’d know better’n any what Seamus Donegan can offer you, Jennie.”
She bent at the fireplace, busy over the soup kettle for a few minutes. When she finally pushed the rewarmed coffee back from the flames, Jennie turned and straightened wearily.
“Seamus Donegan can give me something I ain’t ever had before, Sam. These boys’ papa loved me … that’s for sure. But,” and she glanced quickly at them by their small prairie bed, studying her like wrens watched a thicket filled with wooly caterpillars. “I never did love their papa.”
“So likely you’d never love Webb Wood.”
She nodded eventually, a sob catching in her chest. “I figured—there for just a day or two—I’d found a man to love.”
“Seamus?”
“Yes.”
“You love him?”
She cocked her head, staring into a corner where a spider’s web danced gently and golden-threaded in the lamplight. “I don’t know that it is love yet, Sam. I know only that it’s something a whole lot different than anything I’ve felt before. Makes me … scared. And at the same time, I’m mad at myself for being scared.”
He waited a minute more. “I ain’t ever made out to be the kind of man who knows everything, Jennie Wheatley. But one thing for sure, you got the sorriest, hangdog look about you I ever seen … that is, since I looked in the mirror when I was courting Abigail Hooper.”
“Your wife?”
He nodded and sighed. “That was one woman who knew her mind, so it seemed. A lot like you, Jennie.” He rose, turning to the pegs by the door where he took down his coat. As he slipped it over his arms, Sam Marr said, “You’re falling in love, girl. And knowing the way Seamus Donegan said he felt for you when he was drove from this place, I think it fitting he should know how you feel about him. That Leighton fella’s lighting out with his wagons for Fort Smith in the morning.”
“I know,” she replied, wagging her head. “Webb’s going north for a few days to deliver some of my brother’s supplies to the fort up yonder.”
“Well, Leighton will be carrying a letter from me, Jennie—if’n I have your permission to tell Seamus what’s in your heart right now. I won’t do it, girl—less’n you say it’s all right.”
She took a step forward, then a second, and finally stared up into his tired eyes, her own brimming with moistness. Her full lips quivered.
“Tell him, Sam. Tell Seamus Donegan what I feel.”
* * *
He stared down at his hands. The Irishman couldn’t remember when they had hurt as much as they did right now. He had never fancied himself a soft man, his frame as strong and lean and sinewy as any man’s on this frontier. Horses and wagons, harness and single-trees—and he knew of weapons as well. But this … this farming.
As he swiped the stinging, salty drops from his eyelids, Seamus Donegan had a renewed respect for the man who chose to wrench his living from the soil. Despite the destructive odds of weather and stubborn animals, despite the chance of losing it all to the Sioux.
But be a farmer he must. At least that was what he and the rest of the civilians hired out to A. C. Leighton laughingly called themselves two days ago when they first rode down here from Fort C.F. Smith to begin their hay-cutting. Eight of them joking and full of themselves, ready for an end to the boredom that had been life at the post for too long. Eight men hired by Leighton to supply the fort with hay for stock. And while they would wait for the first cutting to dry, Leighton would have some of his hands at work building his ferry across the Bighorn River.
The man had one idea after another to make money, Seamus figured. But right now, Donegan stared down at his hands. The tall grass nudged insistently against his cavalry britches the way a cat would rub up against his leg. Purring in the breeze as he stared down at the two bleeding palms. Calluses torn and tender. Angrily he grabbed a bandanna from a pocket and ripped it roughly in half. With the ragged pieces he bound his palms, yanking knots in the faded blue cloth with his teeth.
“C’mon, Seamus!”
He looked up, seeing Finn Burnett waving to him from the mule-drawn mower ahead.
“Slow down you bleeming son of a bitch!” Seamus hollered back. “You and Leighton trying to turn a fighting man into a farmer in three days, damn you! Gimme time to heal!”
Burnett rared his head back, laughing. Donegan laughed with him and the others across the field who held their bleeding hands up as well. It was good to laugh in this cool, fragrant meadow. The muscles of your back taut and resisting the new work, the sun creeping beneath the brim of your hat to dry the thick droplets pouring from your flesh. And the taste of cool, sweet water from Warrior Creek, dipper by dipper poured down your throat from the five-gallon keg lashed on the side of Leighton’s wagon where it waited for them, wrapped in burlap soaked to keep it every bit as cool as when that sweet water had been pulled from the dancing creek.
Near the beginning of the fourth week in June, Leighton had arrived after tarrying but two days at Fort Phil Kearny to off-load supplies on lading for Judge Jefferson T. Kinney. It did not take long for Donegan to present himself to the sutler who had been awarded the hay-cutting contract, offering his services.
A little traveling money, Seamus had figured. Some money to replace his depleted funds that had seen him through the winter. Army script earned at Fort Phil Kearny and augmented with what he won at the lamplit gambling tables at Fort C.F. Smith. If a man were to travel on to the goldfields of Alder Gulch, he would need him some money.
But once he had read Sam Marr’s hen-scratch note, Seamus Donegan realized he would need money before starting out to claim the woman who Sam Marr said had strong feelin
gs for the Irishman.
I can’t say come now, Seamus. But you will mind the days, you follow my advice. The woman is pulled by her brother back to home in the weeks ahead, as soon as he finishes his work here with the Judge. Three weeks at the most, Morrison tells me. That’s all the time you got to get here and tell her how you feel yourself, Seamus. Three weeks before she’s gone for good.
I tried my best to talk her out of going. To wait. But she needs you to tell her. I ain’t sure what you said to her before you left Kearny. But it’s time you come back—and damn the army! Time you come back and tell her yourself that you want her.
If you don’t choose to buck the army this soon again, and you think it best not to come back right now—better you write her. Whatever way it is, Seamus Donegan better tell that gal how he feels. And quick. Her brother’s about to take her back home in three weeks. And that Wood fella is planning to make her his wife when they get to Ohio again.
I never gave you advice before. Not on horses. And surely not on women. But you think long and hard on this. And tell this woman so if you want her. If Jennie Wheatley is to stay behind when her brother goes back to the only home this poor woman’s ever knowed, you best tell her to wait for you.
Sam Marr
With his sore fingertips, Seamus once more touched that letter nestled inside his damp shirt pocket. He glanced again to the hills surrounding the southern end of this valley. Gone down the Montana Road two days now that Crow mailman called Iron Bull was riding by night now. Hiding by day. Carrying letters and dispatches to Fort Phil Kearny.
Iron Bull also carried an important note in Seamus Donegan’s hand. Each letter and word formed carefully. As thoughtfully as each sentence was planned in advance. To tell Jennie his feelings so long held mute.
“You working any more today, Seamus?” Zeke Colvin hollered out, his giant fork spearing more of the tall grass cut by the mule-drawn mower.
Seamus blinked the sweat from his eyes. “I’m working, Zeke. By the saints, I’m working.”
So he bent himself over his pitchfork, his mighty shoulders heaving load after load of the grass into monstrous piles. While his heart worked every bit as hard at struggling with the loneliness.
Four nights back he had left Eyes Talking’s lodge in the Crow camp not far away. Telling her he would be staying now in the hay-cutters’ corral in the meadow far from the fort walls. That had been hard enough, trying not to lie, struggling not to tell her he would not be coming back when Leighton was done with the cutting.
To tear himself from one, a mere girl who had given herself so freely to him while he healed of the hurt of many years. But reluctantly admitting their lives had come down such different paths. Different people, they were. She so gentle. Understanding as he told her of the hay-cutting, her eyes moisting yet refusing to let him see more of her pain in letting the big Irishman go.
And now he was hopeful once more of finding what he needed most with the widow. Before she returned East, back to the place where she and the boys would be safe. Where life would be one hell of a lot easier. Before she went back home where she should be, Seamus Donegan wanted Jennie Wheatley to read his letter.
Chapter 19
“Gawddamned heathen sonsabitches,” he growled, throwing the bone he had been gnawing on at a camp dog, more wild than tame.
Bob North rared back in laughter, hands balled on his hips, watching the animal scamper off, its tail tucked between its legs, the dog glancing wide-eyed over a shoulder as the white renegade barked back at it. North laughed all the louder.
Sonsabitches even think the clap and swamp-cholera and smallpox that the tribes’re catching come from the magic the white man’s practicing on ’em to steal their lands.
Let ’em be afeared of the white man’s magic some more, North thought to himself as he gazed over the ragged Arapaho camp he had called home for many months. Keeps ’em in line for me, by Gawd!
Another dog raced up, attempting to nip at his heels. North kicked viciously at it, connecting with the ribs, sending the animal off yelping like a greasy cog.
“Araps no better a’times than their beggar dawgs!”
With the back of a hand he swiped the grease from his lips. Gnawing on bones had become a favorite pastime with him. Convincing himself that by doing so nowadays he grew every bit as rangy and mean as the half-wild wolf dogs that called the Arapaho camp home. Around the Confederate renegade hung the odors of stale meat, old hides, and cheap whiskey. That, and tobacco, when it could be had at the posts.
“Possum up a gum stump,
Coony in a holler.
Wake, snake, june-bug
Stole a half-a-dollar.”
He sang half under his breath as he sank in the shade of a buffalo-hide lodge. The place where he had mended for many long months from the bullet wound suffered back in the first week of December. By North’s reckoning, it must now be July. Moon of Black Cherries to the tribes of the northern plains.
Whiskey. His mind burned with the word and the want of it. As much as his tongue hungered for its raw, red-pepper, gut-kicking taste.
Funny, ain’t it? Them white soldiers think Red Cloud’s Sioux and the rest getting help from half-breed traders come down from Hudson’s Bay posts. Shit! That’s a cork!
He scratched his back up and down against a lodgepole in the warmth of the morning sun, the way a boar grizzly rubbed himself on a blue spruce.
“Ho, for the maids of Kenanville,
A song for Carolina fair!
We’ll sing a stanza of good will
To beaming eyes and flowing hair.
To rosy cheeks and teeth of pearl.
So drink, each one—to our fair girl.”
He liked singing. It brought the children round, and with it their mothers and big sisters. He liked that the best. The women. Better yet to smell their rancid bear grease and rotten breath as he rutted with them in the dark robes or tangled with a squaw back in the bushes in the broad of day’s light. Wherever he could get his hands on a halfway willing one.
A small group of children was gathering to listen to the strange renegade leader sing his songs in the summer sun beside the lodge he called home.
“And now I’m going southward,
For my heart is full of woe,
I’m going back to Georgia,
And find my Uncle Joe.”
North figured it would not be long until he just might command more than this measly bunch of rag-tag Arapaho. What with Man-Afraid staying in the south now, and many of Red Cloud’s bands torn apart by arguments over how best to pursue their war on the soldier forts … Bob North figured the time might soon come for a man of his talents to wrest control of things from Red Cloud himself.
This summer’s war don’t go the way that thieving bastard Red Cloud hisself guarantees the Sioux that it will … why, ol’ Bob North be there to step in and pick up the pieces of this dirty little fight to drive the soldiers out.
He grabbed a swaying, fat-bellied youngster and placed the child on his knee, signaling to the child’s older sister with that devilish twinkle of lust in his eye, patting the ground beside him as he raised his voice in song again.
“You may sing about your dearest maid,
And sing of Rosalee.
But the gallant Hood of Texas
Raised hell in Tennessee!”
Ever since that rainy, December day last, North had been sending his Arapaho wards to the farflung posts. More and more often now. Trading for whiskey mostly. A little tobacco a’times. Perhaps some powder and lead. But mostly whiskey. Bob North needed the whiskey.
To control the fire in the wound at his side. To stoke the flames of his hatred for the man who shot him. And with every drink, a swamp-water part of North’s soul vowed that he would one day wear the scalp of that man. One day.
He turned, hearing the hoofbeats. A handful of young Arapaho warriors reined their grass-fed ponies to a halt near him. They dropped to the ground, scattering the childr
en as they tethered their ponies to the stakes of the lodge where he sat reclining in the sun, stroking the hair of the adolescent he often caught in the willows by the creek.
North recognized his band of cutthroats, warriors who thirsted for whiskey almost as much as he himself. Returned from a ride to the trading post at Fort Peck.
The renegade clambered to his feet, unsteadily, an arm clutched at his side against the burn of the healing wound that only recently had allowed him to ride a little more each day, growing accustomed to the throb of horseback once more.
Seeing the crooked smile on the Arapaho leader’s face, North nearly lurched toward Sings The Moon, the eldest of the bunch, his eyes wild with anticipation.
“You bring more whiskey?” he growled in Arapaho at the young warrior, his teeth the color of lodgepole pine-wood chips.
Sings The Moon turned his face from the stench of North’s breath. When he stared back at the black-whiskered face, he stared silently into the bleak and passionless eyes of this white murderer, eyes every bit as cold as chips from the speckled-blue tin plates he had seen many times in the trader’s rooms at the posts from Laramie to Peck. Cold, and more lifeless everyday.
“No whiskey for us, North,” he replied, using the renegade’s English name at the end of his short string of Arapaho.
“No whiskey!”
He wagged his head.
Behind Sings The Moon, North watched some of the others kick at the ground nervously, their eyes narrowing on their renegade leader.
“We did not go to Peck,” Sings The Moon explained. “Got only as far as Red Cloud’s camps on the Powder.”
“Why’d you stop at that bloody thief’s camp?” he roared.
“To eat their meat,” he answered. “And learn of the soldiers’ forts.”
North rared back again, laughing. And as suddenly as a cat could turn on a pouch of catnip, the renegade grabbed the antelope vest Sings The Moon wore. He brought his nose within an inch of the ugly Arapaho’s.
“You were gone many, many days … and only went as far as Red Cloud’s camp of Bad Faces?”
Red Cloud's Revenge Page 18
