“Tell us about that ship what brought you over, Seamus,” Burnett prodded. “I like that story every time,” he explained.
“Curse the bastard captain and that scurvy boat,” Seamus grumbled. “The hold filled with the teeming, stinking refuse of Ireland’s shores. The air so close, and filled with the stench of human excrement and vomit—packed in there like we was.”
“You made it, though.”
Seamus nodded, his eyes staring somewhere in the middle distance. “Aye. I made it. Not all was lucky as I, Finn Burnett. Not all walked down that plank into Boston town.”
Finn’s bantam tuft sprayed wider as he pursed his lips in sudden silence.
Seamus sensed a darkening to the mood of the gathering. Realizing it was his fault, he suddenly smiled.
“You lads ever hear tell of a song the Irish sing about coming to America?”
“What’s it called?” Bill Haynes asked, speaking for the first time that evening.
“‘Amerikay.’ Song of a young man talking his love into coming with him to this new land.”
“You sing it?”
“Just as beautifully as if me own mother was singing me a lullaby.”
“I heard you sing afore,” Zeke Colvin growled. “Out in the field, pitching hay. You don’t sing like no lullaby.”
“More like a bullfrog croaking to find himself a place for his pecker!” Bob Little piped up.
As the laughter died, Seamus swiped a hand across his lips and began to sing.
“My curses attend that savage shore.
O how came this to be?
That I should leave my parents
Who reared me tenderly?
“For to follow you through woods and groves
Where savages wild do play,
That would devour both you and I
Gone to Amerikay.
“Then he kissed her ruby lips
And embraced her tenderly,
Will you come with me, my heart’s delight
To the land of liberty?
“When daylight peeps
No tribute we need not pay;
So forebear to spill those precious tears,
Come to Amerikay.
“Young man, your moving eloquence,
You’ve surely won my heart,
And it’s from my old aged parents
I’m willing now to part.
“He took his bonny lass on board
By the dawning of the day,
Crowded all sails to reach the shores
of Rich Amerikay.”
Donegan’s voice sailed over the log-and-brush walls of the corral, his last notes drifting off into the silence of the summer night. Around him the civilians and soldiers alike sat in stunned and unspeaking silence, each man very much in his own thoughts of loved ones back home. Wherever home might be. Some thinking of loved ones left behind. Others brooding on their own private despair, realizing they had no one left behind.
“C’mon, Navins!” Seamus cheered, sensing the melancholy suffocating their camp like a scratchy horse blanket. “You know ‘Union Soldier,’ don’t you, lad?”
“I do!” the private replied, stamping his foot with a beat of his own making.
He and Seamus sang raggedly together.
“Ye loyal Union volunteers,
Your country claims your aid.
Says Uncle Abe, a foe appears,
Are we to be afraid?”
The second time through, a handful of soldiers joined them at the fire. Corporal Wade lent his voice to the song.
Ethan Wade chuckled when the song was finished. “Not much more than two years ago now, it was. And so far away, in many ways. So close … so damned close in others.”
“The war?” Seamus asked.
Wade nodded, staring at the fire. He finally smiled. “Time has a way of doing that, I suppose. Healing things.”
“Not when a man needs him some answers,” Seamus replied.
“Your uncles?” Burnett inquired.
He nodded. “Time don’t lessen the sting of not knowing what became of ’em. Why they lied to their sister the way they did.”
Talk fell off round the fire, like water running down greased rawhide. So quiet they could hear the animals munching fodder nearby. Or limbs crackling in the firepit. Sparks sent like wildly darting fireflies into the night sky.
“Never forget the hard-bread they give us,” Navins suddenly blurted.
“Hardtack?” Burnett asked.
Navins nodded. “Damned bread was so full of weevils … why—we had to post a guard on it just to keep the bread from marching off on its own!”
Seamus turned his back to the firelight. His pupils widening once more, he stared into the darkness of the hills shouldering in on Warrior Creek and the valley of the Bighorn River itself. Then he began to quietly sing to himself.
“My curses attend this savage shore.
O how came this to be?
That I should leave my dear mither
Who reared me tenderly?
“For to follow those two through woods and plains
Where Cheyenne wild do play,
That would devour both uncles and I
Gone to Amerikay.”
Chapter 28
“Here come your relief, boys!” Sam Marr hollered over his shoulder at some of the soldiers in the wagon-box corral.
He stuffed a long slice of fried pork into his mouth as several of the troopers in A Company clambered to their feet and joined him in watching Captain Powell’s C Company making a golden mist on the powdery road leading down from Fort Phil Kearny.
“By damn, it’s time we got shet of this stinking shithole!” an old soldier grumbled.
“Lucky bastard, you are,” Marr said, turning, addressing the soldier. “You’re going back to the post. Rest of us ain’t getting no relief.”
“You’re being paid handsomely for your work,” another soldier joined in. “Gilmore pays lot more than the army does.”
“We work for it,” R. J. Smyth said as he inched alongside Marr.
“Every penny, eh?” a soldier inquired.
“I suppose these young soldier boys deserve a break, don’t you, R.J.?” Sam said, grinning with a wink. “Not every man got the bottom to take it like we have to—day after day—making a target of hisself for the likes of Red Cloud’s nasty bastards.”
For a little more than a month the teamsters working for contractors Gilmore and Porter had called this wagon-box corral their home while they continued to cut wood on Pine Island and across the slope of the hills bordering Big Piney Creek. Here on a level plain some six miles west of Fort Phil Kearny and in sight of Pine Island, the civilians had removed fourteen wagon boxes from their running gears, stripping both canvas sheeting and iron bows from the boxes. Resting on their bottoms, these wagon boxes formed an oval. A few logs, some extra kegs of rations, sacks of grain for the animals and harnessing were stuffed in the openings between the wagons for even more protection.
At either end of the enclosure stood two wagons with canvas stretched over their bows, boxes still bolted to their running gear. Since both were filled with supplies, the wagons were used to block the two entrances to the corral. They could be rolled into position, sealing both openings when all defenders were inside. The wagon at the east entrance contained woodchopper rations, while that on the west held rations for the military escort. Just beyond the ring itself both teamsters and soldiers alike had pitched their tents, white canvas dotting the green-gold of the summer prairie.
In the event of attack, every man was under orders to make his way to the wagon-box enclosure. There they would defend themselves with everything they had until the post sent out a relief party to drive the attackers off.
“Captain James W. Powell, fellas,” the sandy-haired soldier announced as he walked up to the teamsters’ fire. He presented his hand around the circle.
“Pleased to make your ’quaintance, Cap’n,” Sam replied, shaking Powell’
s arm. “Sam Marr.”
“Captain. Missouri volunteers. Right?”
Powell’s surprising remark caught Marr off his guard. “Yes. That’s right.”
“Let me introduce my second in command, Captain Marr. Lieutenant John C. Jenness.”
The young soldier stepped forward, shaking hands all around before he rubbed a hand across his belly.
“Welcome home, fellas,” Marr remarked, flinging his arm at the cookfires. “Help yourselves.”
“We ate breakfast at the post before assembly,” Powell explained, bringing Jenness up short. “I understand some of your men will be ready to make a run to the fort with a load of timber soon?”
Marr nodded. “We load in the afternoon. First thing come next morning, we make the first run of the day. We’ll get Heeley off his ass here soon and get hitched up, Cap’n Powell.”
“I’m not rushing you,” the captain explained. “Just wanted to assure myself of the routine here.”
“Not much of a routine here,” R. J. Smyth replied. “The far camp cuts wood. We haul it down from the island and the slopes. Injuns show up, the boys up on the hill run to the blockhouse. The rest of us run here to the corral.”
“From what we’ve heard, the Sioux haven’t been much of a problem of late,” Lieutenant Jenness said.
Marr clucked, grinning. “Son, the Sioux’ll come ’round real soon, I reckon. Them bastards never far from this post, they aren’t.”
“How long have you been in the Big Horns, Captain Marr?” Powell inquired.
“Last summer. Came up with the bunch the Sioux jumped at Crazy Woman Fork.”
“Templeton’s group?”
“Yep. And that was only the beginning.”
“Things safer here in the wagon-box corral, I figure,” Jenness commented.
Sam wagged his head with a wry grin. “These damned wagon-boxes was Gilmore’s idea. I told him they wouldn’t stop the Injuns if they got a mind to rush us.”
“The hostiles will actually attack a well-defended fortification like this?” Jenness asked.
“Yes, son. They done it while we was building the fort—Kearny itself. Us civilians made a ring of wagon-boxes like these up on the plateau, busy each day planting the stockade in the ground. Every evening the fellas would play cards by firelight inside that circle of wagon-boxes.”
“And?”
“Well, now—one time I went to bed early but was woke up to hear three shots fired near the end of the wagon-box I was sleeping in.”
“I’ll be damned!” Powell commented.
Sam nodded, gnawing on the last of his skillet-fried pork. “Injuns crawled in real close after dark … right through the picket lines … shooting up our camp.”
“Anyone hurt?” Jenness asked.
“Yep. Three shots. One wounded. Two killed. All near the fire. Red bastards was good shots that night.”
“Firelight made a good backdrop, I suppose.”
Sam regarded Powell. “I’d say you’re right, Captain. Since then, I stay out of the firelight after dark. I didn’t get this gray hair of mine by taking chances. And I don’t figure on starting now.”
* * *
“Does make a man walk a little straighter, knowing he has some knocking ’round money in his pocket, A.C.,” Seamus declared, smiling at his employer, contractor Leighton.
“Sorry to see you pulling out, Irishman,” Leighton replied, turning back to the tailgate of his wagon. “You worked mighty hard—and got hard work out of the others. I’ll miss you, Seamus Donegan.” He held out his hand.
Seamus took it, shaking the arm solidly. “Likewise, A.C. There’s a world of difference between you and that little sutler squatting on his tradership down at Fort Phil Kearny.”
Leighton laughed, then sighed, looking over the hay cutter’s corral here along the stream they called Warrior Creek. “Never been one to ask more than my share.”
Seamus grinned, slapping Leighton on the shoulder. “I never been one to take to employers, A.C. But if a man must have an boss—you’re the best a man could have. I wish you luck here at Fort C.F. Smith.”
At two o’clock earlier that morning, forty men of D Company had left the post to escort six of Leighton’s wagons on their return to Fort Phil Kearny to pick up more supplies destined for the northernmost outpost of Lt. Col. Luther P. Bradley on the Bighorn River. That escort left some 240 men at Fort C.F. Smith, not to mention a full company of forty-odd soldiers assigned to protect the hay cutters’ corral.
With the rising of the sun that steamy first day of August, the civilians and soldiers alike had eaten breakfast before some of Captain Powell’s soldiers left the corral, escorting a few wagons back to the fort, each straining under a load of hay dried in the previous day’s cutting. About the same time, a half-dozen civilians leisurely moved off toward the meadow where they began whipping the mule-drawn mowers into motion, watched over by a dozen young soldiers.
Left behind at the corral were Lt. Sigmund Sternberg and eight of his enlisted men, along with three civilians. It would be up to Finn Burnett and Robert Wheeling to water and feed better than thirty mules tethered at the picket line inside the corral. As he was no longer on Leighton’s payroll, Seamus Donegan had found himself some shade by a wagon-box complete with its bowed-canvas top, waiting for Leighton to ride down from the fort. It was, after all, payday. The Irishman had better places to be off to.
And faces to see.
With the stock fed, soldiers and civilians alike pulled blankets from the tents and wagon-boxes, airing the bedding as was their custom each morning. The water barrel inside the corral refilled, Burnett joined Donegan and Wheeling at a hand or two of cards with the lounging soldiers. Some of the troopers pitched horseshoes nearby. Two of the peach-faced recruits busied themselves with letters.
“How many of them redskins you boys figure we can cut down with our new breechloaders?” Robert Wheeling asked those in the circle holding seven of the stained cards from his greasy deck.
Seamus eyed the two pistols Wheeling had stuffed in his belt, figuring the man for a lot of wind and little gumption.
“We can wallop the devil out of all the Indians that can fill the field between here and that hill,” the cocky private James Leavey answered first, throwing his arm toward the ridge some three hundred yards away.
“By jinks,” said Pvt. Ed Holloran, “I’d like a crack at the red bastards myself. Now we’re armed the way we ought’n be.”
“Damn right,” joined in Pvt. George Frambier. “Way I see it, we could all make them sonsabitches scratch where they don’t itch!”
In the midst of the laughing all round, Pvt. Rudolph Raithel declared, “I’d make ’em scratch best of all, I would, bejabbers. For it would be the ground they’d be scratchin’ with their noses!”
“I figure we can take ’em all,” answered the cocky James Leavey. “Make mince of every last one of them Sioux Red Cloud wants to throw at us—we’ll kill ’em all.”
“How you see it, Sergeant?” Seamus asked the veteran at his shoulder.
James Horton shook his head, studying the field a moment. “Don’t like the idea of having to test them new guns a’tall. Don’t like it—with what your contractor done out there in the fields … leaving so much grass drying up so dang close to the corral the way he’s ordered you boys to do.”
“You ’fraid of fire?” Burnett inquired.
“Damn right I am. Fire would play hell with us,” Sergeant Horton answered, spitting into the cold firepit. “But don’t count on them savages giving us a chance to try out the new guns. They don’t fight fair. Nor do they come out when you’re ready for ’em. Now that I think of it, fellas—some of you deal out of the game a hand or two—go loosen the screws in the lids on those ammunition boxes. If we end up needing it—we’ll need it quick.”
Seamus chuckled. “Sergeant, if Red Cloud’s warriors come ’round and stay long enough for your boys to thump those five thousand rounds into ’em—there�
�ll be a damned lot of them h’athens needing a surgeon, I’d wager!”
“And by the same token,” Wheeling blustered, “there’ll be that many more what won’t need a surgeon, but good for only the devil when it’s said and done.”
“Lookee yonder there,” Pvt. Charles Bradley announced. “Appears to be your bossman coming now, Burnett.”
Finn looked over at Donegan. “Leighton’s coming … with your pay, Seamus.”
The Irishman smiled without real happiness as he laid his cards down on the wagon gate they used as a table. “Looks like I can be going, Finn.”
“Gonna miss you, Irishman.”
“You as well, Finn Burnett.”
When he had settled with Seamus and left the other teamsters’ pay in the care of Burnett, Leighton turned to climb into the saddle. “Sorry to rush off, Donegan. Got a couple boys waiting for me upriver. Gonna repair that ferry before lunch.”
“I thank you again, A.C. Been a pleasure knowing you.”
“Oh—almost forgot.” Leighton scratched his cheek before stuffing a hand inside his shirt. He pulled out a thick fold of paper. “Bradley give me this for you. This morning. Said it come in with the Crow mailman some time back.”
Donegan took it, seeing his name scrawled across it in an unfamiliar hand. “How long?”
“Said he’s had it about a week now.”
“A week? Damn.”
“I feel the same way ’bout the army, Seamus. Pray it isn’t bad news … a death in the family.”
Alone at last when Leighton departed, Seamus carefully tore at the waxed seal of the paper, finding inside a one-page letter folded over a piece of brittle, yellowed newsprint. He promptly squatted in the shade near the kitchen awning outside the southern wall of the corral to read the letter.
Seamus,
Best to say this off the front and be done with it. Jennie Wheatley’s taking her boys back east.
She don’t know as things set now how far east she’ll get. Leaving with her brother tomorrow. Taking the boys with her. And wanted me to get word to you that she’s going. Wanted me to tell you that she cares for you, son.
As it sounds, Jennie might well be waiting in east Nebraska for you. Round Osceola, on the Big Blue River. That’s where Wheatley’s folks are from. I don’t figure she’ll get any farther east than that, Seamus. Plant herself there, and wait for you.
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