Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  Just outside the corral itself the teamsters had dug three trenches some thirty feet long, all half-moon in shape, each wrapping a corner of the corral. Only the southwest corner lacked a trench. Here Warrior Creek ran closest to the camp, where Burnett and the others squatted now by the cook tent standing just outside the corral wall.

  “You cook good antelope, Burnett,” Donegan said around a piece of juicy flank, grease dripping into his full beard. “I’ll teach you yet the most tender part of the female anatomy—you being such a good student and all, me lad.”

  The civilians and troopers chuckled wordlessly, each man wolfing chunks of rare antelope and fluffy sourdough biscuits, all washed down with the dark, heady brew that was Donegan’s specialty.

  There was for the teamsters and soldiers assigned to the corral a sense of isolation here. Although only some three miles by road away from C.F. Smith, intervening bluffs and the plateau kept the corral and the fort hidden from one other. The road leading to the teamsters’ camp had to circle north around the base of the tall bluff before it wound south and east past the spur, heading directly for Leighton’s meadow.

  While the road to the fort ran past the north side, the only entrance to the corral itself was in the center of the south wall. This opening was closed each night by chaining a wagon’s running gear across the entrance, locking the wheels to the corral posts. During the day and night, a soldier was picketed on the spur some seven hundred yards down the valley to the east of the camp.

  As the purple of twilight slid off the land like rain off a rawhide drum, there arose a shout from the trooper stationed outside the corral near the road to the fort.

  “Halt! And name yourselves!”

  The teamsters and soldiers at their mess bolted from the firelight, scrambling for their weapons. Near the bright flames was the only place to be if a man had decided on committing suicide.

  “Ho, the camp!” rang a voice from the darkness as a half-dozen murky shadows halted on the fort road.

  “Saints preserve,” Donegan whispered to Burnett, “if that don’t sound like Mitch Bouyer himself.”

  “We’re coming in!” the voice shouted.

  “Halt, goddammit!” the young sentry ordered, nervousness rising on every syllable.

  “That you, Mitch Bouyer?” Donegan flung his voice over the corral wall.

  “No other, you goddamned Irishman!” Bouyer hollered back. “You tell this soldier with the itchy trigger finger to let me and my friends ride on in … slow and easy like.”

  “What friends you got out there?” Burnett asked, the hair on the back of his neck relaxing at last.

  “Have five Crow with me.”

  Burnett and Donegan eased their weapons down.

  “C’mon in!” Burnett shouted into the murky twilight. “’Round to the gate.”

  Finn met the six riders at the corral entrance, the five warriors and Bouyer illuminated in firelight now.

  “Damn,” Mitch sighed as he kicked a leg off his pony, “you boys sure jumpy.”

  “We been hit a lot lately,” Burnett explained, shaking Bouyer’s hand. “I’m Finn Burnett, Leighton’s boss here in the field.”

  “You run things here?” Bouyer inquired.

  “Yep.”

  “So, been hit a lot lately, eh?” the half-breed continued.

  “Nothing much. The bastards just swing by, trying to scare stock … or trying to pitch a burning limb in the hay we got stacked to dry out in the meadows.”

  “Just raising hell,” Seamus Donegan remarked as he inched forward, presenting his hand to Bouyer.

  Mitch shook it eagerly. “Hey, Irishman—better you keep your eyes open from now on. The Sioux been gaming with you so far.”

  Burnett looked from Bouyer’s face to Donegan’s. Both drained of smiles. “Sounds like they’re planning something big for us.”

  The half-breed nodded. He flung a thumb over his shoulder at the Crow riders. “From what this handful tells me, Sioux already quit this part of the country. Heading for Kearny, to work some devil down there.”

  Donegan chuckled, slapping Burnett on the shoulder. “Then Mitch is right—we are getting a little jumpy … what with Red Cloud’s bunch ready to turn the burner up on Kearny.”

  Bouyer stepped closer to Donegan, the smile not returned to his dark features. “Red Cloud’s Sioux may be off the Big Horn. But the Crow tell me the Cheyenne and Arapaho are flexing muscle and itching for a big fight.”

  Burnett glanced at Donegan. “Must be the sonsabitches hit us a few times each day.”

  “Might be,” Bouyer replied. “More likely they’re feeling you boys out.”

  “You got a lot more to say,” Donegan growled. “Spit it out, Mitch.”

  Bouyer scratched his cheek. “Coffee on?”

  “Soon as you tell us what you come to say,” Donegan remarked.

  “The Crow gone to their camps. Heard what Red Cloud’s bunch been planning.”

  “Yeah,” Burnett sighed. “They’re down to Kearny to jump that post again. Never gave Smith much trouble. Too close to Crow country here.”

  “Not no longer,” Bouyer hissed. “The Cheyenne and Arapahos stayed on hereabouts when Red Cloud went south. These boys tell me they heard the Cheyenne planning to hit the fort tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  Mitch nodded.

  Donegan handed him a steaming tin of coffee which the half-breed slurped noisily. “Tell them others get down … have some coffee on us.”

  “No. We go on to the fort for the night. Attack come, we use our guns from the fort come morning.”

  “Makes sense, I suppose,” Burnett said. “Tomorrow, eh?”

  “They’ll hit the fort with everything they got, so the Crow tell me,” Bouyer said as went back to his black coffee.

  “You trust it, Mitch?”

  He eyed Donegan over the lip of his tin. “I trust ’em every bit as much as I don’t trust the Cheyenne and Arapaho. These boys say the attack will come tomorrow morning … you’ll see more mad Injuns than you ever wanna see come tomorrow morning.”

  Burnett accepted the empty coffee tin from the half-breed before Bouyer turned to his pony and leaped atop bareback.

  “Thanks for coming to tell us, Bouyer,” Finn said, sticking his hand up to the half-breed.

  Bouyer shook the offered hand. “No problem, Finn Burnett. Just figured your bunch and that ugly Irishman there needed to know … case you hear gunfire from the fort come sunup.”

  “We’ll be listening, Mitch,” Donegan said as he waved.

  Bouyer signaled his Crow horsemen. They turned, ambling toward the fort road.

  “By the way, Bouyer!” Burnett hollered. “You know who’s leading this bunch of Cheyenne and Arapaho gonna hit the fort?”

  Mitch twisted around on his pony as he disappeared from the corona of firelight.

  “A bloodthirsty bastard by the name of Roman Nose.”

  Chapter 27

  Bob North had to admit, this was one big Indian. Probably the biggest he had ever seen. Every bit as tall as the white man who had shot the renegade last December, maybe taller. And this ugly Cheyenne war-chief was built like the ox that had pulled North’s plow through the rich, steamy soil of his farm back in the South before the war. The chief had a chest it would do the white renegade work to get both his arms around. North shuddered, glad Roman Nose was on his side.

  “Possum up a gum stump,

  Coony in a holler.

  Wake, snake, june bug,

  Stole a half a dollar.”

  North sang to amuse himself during the lull in war talk.

  “Arapaho white man sings his medicine song?” the ugly Cheyenne asked with a sneer, his eyes hard as flints in the firelight.

  North gulped. “My … my medicine song. Yeah! My medicine song,” he stammered.

  Squatting around the fire were the various headmen of the Cheyenne and Miniconjou bands who would lead the attack on the dirt-walled fort the a
rmy called C.F. Smith. With a sprinkling of North’s Arapaho thrown in for good measure. Here in their camp of buffalo-hide lodges and blanket-covered willow wickiups, the combined tribes could boast of quite a force of warriors to throw against the soldiers. The Indians had no accurate way of counting. And Bob North was never one to put much stock in ciphering numbers as a boy.

  Close as he could count, there were ten-times-a-hundred in this spreading camp. Cheyenne and Arapaho. Even some Oglalla and a few Miniconjou who wanted in on this attack rather than following Red Cloud and Crazy Horse south. Plus a band of Blood and Piegan come all the way from up north near Canada.

  Rode down here for a piece of the white man’s pie, North brooded now.

  The Sioux had ripped themselves apart, trying to decide how to press their war against the forts. Man-Afraid, Little Wound, and Pawnee Killer had gone south in the spring. They would have no more of Red Cloud’s war. Instead, they planned to wreak their havoc along the white man’s railroads.

  Two hundred warriors killed last winter—two hundred, Red Cloud had reminded them in his harangues all through the harsh winter. Killed by the eighty and one they had butchered at the end of Lodge Trail Ridge.

  Bob North didn’t care who ran this fight. Who called the shots now. He was riding along for one thing and one thing only: a chance to put in his sights the tall, dark-headed one who had shot him last winter. The man who had slipped through his Arapaho attack a few days back.

  Roman Nose could have his fort for all the renegade cared. Bob North wanted the tall one to suffer.

  “Time has come for the Cheyenne to show the Lakota how to kill soldiers,” Roman Nose hissed. His voice had a way of slapping a man into silence. His every word a sting upon the ears.

  North knew Roman Nose to have a reputation smellier than the Cheyenne’s own brechclout. But a bloody, murdering reputation just the same. Roman Nose would kill any white man with half the justification it took for most Cheyenne. The troubling thing was that Roman Nose would kill his own fellow Cheyenne as well—often for less provocation.

  His was a respect engendered by nothing more than stark, naked fear. Many a man had Roman Nose killed with his bare hands. Strong, talonlike hands that pointed to the starry sky overhead.

  “Most may succumb to the bait of the white man’s possessions … raiding along the roads and striking the forts to steal what the white man brings with him into our hunting lands,” Roman Nose spat. “I make war on the white man like Crazy Horse. For no other reason than to kill the white man. I like the taste of his blood.”

  North gulped again. For as the Cheyenne war-chief spat out the last few words, he glared haughtily into the eyes of the white renegade.

  “Over a long winter of hungry bellies, we have planned with the Sioux our attack on the two forts. They choose the one at Pine Woods. I,” and the war-chief slapped his bare barrel of a chest, “I choose the dirt-walled fort.”

  “You can be proud of yourself, Roman Nose,” North said quietly, eager to butter-up the ugly warrior. “For better than a year now you’ve run the war to your liking. Killing your share of soldiers down at the Pine Woods Fort. You have scared off all the civilian wagon trains from this road to the land of the Crows. You have new ammunition and guns. You have prayed at your sundance only a moon ago. Now it is time to forget about Red Cloud and his weakening plans for the war.”

  For the longest time Roman Nose remained silent, glaring at the white man, who grew increasingly nervous as the logs crackled in the firepit.

  “Yes,” the war-chief finally said. “Now it is time for Roman Nose to wipe this land clean of soldiers and the filthy white men who follow those soldiers to our hunting grounds. Time has come—for now Roman Nose will show Red Cloud how to kill soldiers.”

  * * *

  A man could count the miles on the fingers of one hand. Nothing but a few ridges, some grassy hills and a creek or two separated that war camp of Roman Nose from the hay cutters’ corral. Under that same summer moon, while the Cheyenne chief harangued his faithful, the white men cheered themselves that the Crows’ predictions had proven false. Congratulating themselves for seeing another day draw to a close without trouble of any kind.

  Just the sort of thing to bother Seamus Donegan.

  “Something’s afoot, boys,” the Irishman grumbled to his mess mates.

  “You’re getting more nervous than a hen about to lay,” piped J. C. Hollister, another of contractor Leighton’s civilians.

  Seamus glanced at the man’s eyes gleaming in the firelight. “I am, eh?”

  “Just relax, will you,” big Bob Wheeling whined. “For God’s sake, the Sioux didn’t even show a feather today.”

  “That’s what’s stuck in me craw,” Seamus admitted.

  “Shit!” Finn Burnett said, slapping his thigh. “Every man here knows the Injuns are off hunting buffalo and antelope after their sun-dance celebration. Right, fellas?”

  Al Stevenson nodded as he leaned forward, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Finn’s right, Seamus. Ain’t a Injun in the country. Sit back and enjoy the evening … all them stars. Sunrise come soon enough.”

  “Damned Crows,” Wheeling growled, then spit into the fire. “Like a bunch of jumpy old women.”

  “Their kind sees hoodoos and spooks in every shadow,” Pvt. Thomas Navins declared as he came into the circle of civilians clustered at their fire. He squatted. “Jumpy at the wind moving through the grass, fellas.”

  “See, Seamus?” Finn asked. “The army figures the Crow playing a big joke on us—believing that shit about the Sioux attacking. Joke’s on us.”

  Donegan eyed the old private. Navins had seen action throughout the Civil War. In silence, Seamus brooded that Navins was the sort who would either retire a private or die one. With his boots on.

  “Believe the army, eh, Finn?” Seamus asked. “The day I go back to believing what the army tells me … that’s the day you might as well throw six feet of dirt in my face.”

  They all laughed with him. Including Private Navins. Him mostly. His thick, colicky brogue barking every bit as loud as Seamus Donegan’s.

  “Why didn’t you stay in the army, Donegan?” Navins asked.

  Seamus thought for a minute, then smiled that crooked smile inside his full beard. “Belonging to the cavalry is mostly bad grub and a sore ass … and damned little excitement to suit me.”

  “I figured you for the sort who needed more excitement than most,” Navins commented.

  “Aye, me friend.” He stared up at the stars, with their edges sharp as white sparks set in a ripple of clear water by the sun itself. “Nothing the army can give me to top this, me boon companions. Army makes you work too hard. Man’s not meant to work so hard, I say.”

  Seamus reached for a small canvas satchel nearby, dragging it to his side. From it he pulled a bottle wrapped protectively in his only clean shirt. “Man’s meant to enjoy good friends … and strong whiskey.”

  “Here! Here!” Wheeling cheered.

  “Pass it ’round, Seamus!”

  He worried the cork from the neck with his teeth, then held the mouth against his lips, throat bobbing like apples in a washtub at a harvest festival. Wiping his mustache, Seamus passed the bottle on to Navins.

  “Send it ’round the circle, Private.”

  “After I’ve damned sure had a drink of my own,” Navins growled. “You worked hard enough on it yourself.”

  Seamus rared back his head, laughing. “Reason I drank like that is I don’t figure there’ll be a drop one left for me after it goes ’round this circle of rummies!”

  Navins sputtered his last swallow, laughing with the rest as he passed the bottle on. “Where be you from, Seamus Donegan?”

  “The emerald isle. The warm, fragrant motherland herself.”

  “I know that, goddammit.”

  “Born in County Kilkenny. On the southeastern edge of the isle … in a little place known as Callan town. Sits nestled on the banks of the river
Nore.”

  “Your parents from Kilkenny, then?” Burnett asked. “Seems I’ve heard my own folks talk of the place.”

  Seamus shook his head, watching the bottle slowly make its way round the fire, stars whirling overhead. “My mother’s people come from Skibereen, County Westmeath. Ah, the women from Skibereen are oft known to be the most fair in that part of the land … but the men—well, the less said about the men, the better.”

  “You’ve something against your uncles, have you?” Burnett asked.

  “Nothing,” Seamus snarled, too quickly. “’Cept … a boy fresh off that goddamned stinking boat couldn’t find either one—least not where they wrote me mother they’d be in Boston-town. Left that boy with nary a trace to track ’em.”

  “But now,” Zeke Colvin, ex-Confederate, joined the talk, “now you’ll go in search of ’em again?”

  Seamus nodded, a faint smile creasing his face. “Hear told one of ’em might be found in Kansas.”

  “You’re still set on leaving day after tomorrow?” Zeke’s older brother Al asked.

  “Sure as I’m born. Just as soon as Leighton passes out July pay.”

  Burnett brightened. “By damned, that’s right. Day after tomorrow is the first of August, fellas. We got a payday coming!”

  “Hurrah!” quiet George Duncan hollered, holding the amber bottle aloft in the firelight.

  “C’mon—drink your fill!” Al Stevenson complained, clawing at Duncan’s arm. “Best you leave me a drink to toast Donegan’s parting in two days.”

  Dragging a second bottle from the canvas satchel, Seamus said, “No worry any man drinking his fill this night!”

  “Won’t feel like working tomorrow—we get drunk tonight,” Wheeling grumbled.

  “Sweat’s a waste of good whiskey,” Seamus agreed.

  “I damned sure don’t wanna work beside Hollister’s team tomorrow,” Burnett remarked as the second bottle headed his way. “Helluva lot easier standing the smell of whiskey … than having to listen to it!”

  Hollister threw a half-hearted punch at Finn, throwing himself off balance in the process. He fell from the keg he was using as a stool, plopping into the trampled grass outside the corral where the civilians took their mess. Everyone hooted and cheered.