Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Near as I can tell, Major—we have three killed. Two wounded. One civilian wounded.”

  “Civilian?”

  “Our marksman, sir. He as well as any man accounted for making Red Cloud one unhappy chief during the battle. I say that without reservation.”

  The major’s eyes continued to scan the corral. “Will he live, Captain?”

  Powell sniffed, running a hand under his nose. “We get him back to the post in time, he might. It’s … he’s no longer in our hands, sir.”

  “Surgeon Horton accompanied us. He can see to your wounded while the men load your dead into the ambulances as quickly as possible. I do not relish the idea of seeing the sun go down on us here, Captain.”

  Powell straightened his back, saluting. Sensing the strain suddenly in every muscle now that the fight was over. Like cat-gut fiddle strings loosened after a vigorous playing. “As you say, Major.”

  At the west end of the corral Dr. Horton leaped from his ambulance with a large canteen under his arm. He hurried up to Powell.

  “Captain! By God, it’s good to see so many made it through your … your emergency!”

  Powell nodded. “Thank you—”

  “May I have your permission to give your wounded a dram of the whiskey I’ve brought along?”

  The captain smiled at Horton, his muttonchops quivering a moment. “By … by all means, Surgeon. And, if perchance there’s any left when you’ve given all the men their due, I would like to share a drink with you, friend.”

  Horton stepped up, holding his hand out between them. “James, I’ll buy you an entire bottle myself this evening! That’s a promise!”

  Powell squeezed the surgeon’s hand in his own blackened one. “And I’ll see you keep that promise, Sam!”

  Some of the relief party methodically worked over the Sioux and Cheyenne dead abandoned on the field, scalping every body and even chopping off one head to present to the post surgeon for his examination. In the midst of that raucous, bloody work, most of the corral defenders slumped against the sides of the wagon-boxes, silently determined to replace their army-issue brogans now that the fight was won.

  When they had Jenness and Doyle and Haggerty gently laid among the folded tents and bedding and rations in the wagons, and had the wounded helped into an ambulance, Major Smith gave his order for the columns to move out.

  Powell turned to Smith at the head of the march and sighed. “Do you … would you have the time, Major?”

  Smith pulled the silver chain at the end of which hung the cased watch. He pried it open. “It’s a little past two, Captain.”

  Powell stared over his shoulder, off to the northwest, pointing at the long columns of Indian ponies laden with travois of wounded and dead. “They charged down on us at seven-thirty, Major. We … by damned—we held them off for more than six hours.”

  Smith’s eyes turned from the retreating Indian columns, finding Powell’s eyes misting. “A fight you can take pride in, James.”

  “I tell you, it feels like we held them off for six days.”

  “Before I left the post, Colonel Smith talked of recommending every one of your men for the medal of honor.”

  Powell grinned crookedly inside his dirty, smoke-smudged muttonchops. “Right now, the best thing I could hope for is some of Surgeon Horton’s whiskey.”

  Chapter 41

  “Sam … can you hear me?”

  Seamus Donegan watched the old man’s eyes flutter, then crack open into narrow slits. He leaned back some, his big hand beneath Marr’s head, cradling it gently as a thumb stroked the old man’s leathery cheek.

  “It’s Seamus, Sam. Seamus Donegan.”

  Marr nodded weakly, his dry lips moving like the trembling breast of a hummingbird working among lilac blossoms. “Waaaa…”

  “Water?” Seamus asked, then held the cup to Marr’s lips without waiting for an answer.

  He drank a little, sputtering on it, then let his head droop back against the straw-filled pillow again. Donegan dipped his fingers in the water, slowly running them back and forth along the old man’s lips. Watching the tip of Marr’s tongue occasionally dart out to lick at the droplets.

  As the sun inched over the horizon that morning, Seamus had shown up at the north gate of Fort Phil Kearny, minutes after he had found some of the civilians lighting their morning fires under coffee kettles and breakfast skillets in their camp near the sawmill on the banks of Little Piney Creek. Emerging from the shadows and timbered hillsides after a three-day ride south from Fort C.F. Smith, the Irishman was relieved to find the post still standing and, from all appearances, practicing the same routine it had for the past year of its existence here in the lee of the Big Horns.

  Yet before that first kettle of coffee had begun to boil, the rest of the story spilled from the lips of R. J. Smyth. Without waiting to drop breakfast into his pinched belly, Seamus leaped atop the tired army mount that had carried him south. He had to see to his old friend, whom R.J. said was under Horton’s watchful care.

  He had banged on the gate and been allowed into the stockade to dart across the parade on foot until he hammered for admittance to the infirmary. Waking one of Surgeon Horton’s two stewards, who tried to calm the tall Irishman, Donegan was told they had kept a twenty-four-hour vigil over the crusty, old civilian across the last three days.

  With a head wound, things were never certain, the young soldier in the white gown had explained helplessly.

  Flinging his hat at the foot of Marr’s bed, Seamus had dragged up the ladder-backed chair that groaned beneath his weight when he settled beside Horton’s sleeping patient.

  Seamus took his fingers from Sam’s lips now, setting the enameled cup aside. For a long moment he studied the bandage wrapped round Marr’s head. Two dried, crusty brown patches contrasted against the dressing, stark and white in the sunbeams streaming like warm buttermilk into the room. The shafts sparkled like gold dust whenever a person moved down the long aisle between two rows of neat, blanketed beds. Marr’s cot had been partitioned off from the rest of the ward. Sick soldiers only. The other wounded from the wagon-box fight had reported back to their units yesterday.

  “R.J. told me the blue roan was killed.”

  Marr nodded weakly, turning his head away from Seamus slightly.

  “Sorry to hear that, Sam,” Seamus said, trying to make up for mentioning Marr’s prize stallion. “Know what he meant to you.” He laid his big hand on his friend’s forearm and squeezed. Seamus did not take his hand away.

  Sam eventually turned back to him, tears misting in his eyes. “He was a good horse, Seamus. A might touchy ’bout his feed … but a good horse.”

  The Irishman nodded, not knowing what to say more than, “You’ve had good horses before as well, Sam. And you’ll find a good horse again.”

  “Not in this hellhole, I won’t,” he growled in no more than a raspy whisper, his throat unaccustomed to talk these past three days.

  Seamus smiled, squeezing the arm again. “No, I suppose you won’t, you old horse thief—unless you heal up and crawl out of this bed to find you one among Cap’n Dandy’s stock.”

  “A army horse?” he croaked.

  “Don’t you remember you were buying horses for the army when I met you in Kansas, old man?”

  Marr nodded once, a hint of a smile crossing his cracked lips. “Tried to buy that big stallion of yours.”

  “You didn’t try to buy him, Sam Marr. You tried to steal him from me!”

  Sam looked squarely at Donegan. “That big gray of yours, Seamus. How come … you never named him in all this time?”

  “I … never thought about it—until I was riding down here from Smith. Saw him this morning, down in camp. Looks like he’s fared well in your care.”

  Marr studied his friend. “Too damned long since he’s seen you, son. Half a year now. I rode him when I could. But, he knowed the difference atween you and mean, Seamus.”

  “I can’t repay you for minding him.”<
br />
  “Maybeso you can tell me what name you give the big sonuvabitch though?”

  “General.”

  “General?”

  He nodded. “General Lee.”

  Marr nodded as well. “General Lee. My God, that does sound good, don’t it, Seamus? Sonuvabitch big enough to carry Lee proud.”

  “Southern bred as well … just like your best studs, Sam.”

  “True. True. General Lee. Fine name, Seamus.” His eyes blinked at some moisture. “If only I could find a animal with half the sense that blue roan had.”

  “Dandy’s got some fine stock to look over—”

  “What that quartermaster has left in army stock? Shit!”

  Donegan nodded. “So you figure to raid Red Cloud’s camp for one of them mangy, ribby Cayuse ponies they ride?”

  Sam Marr sputtered a moment, his eyes flashing fire at bis young friend. “I s’pose I ain’t got much choice, do I?”

  “About the horse? Or, about getting your good-for-nothing lazy ass out of this bed and back to work?”

  Marr sputtered again, then broke out laughing weakly. He laughed with Donegan until it hurt the chest wound and he broke off in a hacking cough.

  “Careful, Sam,” Seamus soothed, patting the old man’s chest gently. “R.J. says Gilmore and Porter need you bad.”

  “Oh?” he replied, then rolled his head to the side slightly, his eyes gazing off.

  For a long time Sam remained silent. Seamus allowed him his pout, watching the Missourian’s lips curl up childishly. Donegan figured it was good therapy for the old man’s healing. Eventually Marr turned back, glaring at his young friend with a flinty stare.

  “You talking ’bout R.J. and Gilmore and the work—I s’pose that means you’ve decided to head back east to find the widow?”

  Seamus pursed his lips a minute, and squeezed the arm before answering. “No, Sam. Not going after Jennie…”

  Marr seemed to rouse at that declaration. He tried to push himself off the pillow, pressed back down against the prairie-tick mattress by Seamus. “That means we can get outta this hellhole army slip-trench latrine of a post and get on to Alder Gulch where a man can make his fortune. Way I got it figured, Seamus—Red Cloud’s off licking his wounds, and the road north of here gonna be safe just as long as we—”

  “Sam … Sam—quiet down,” he soothed, holding his friend on the bed. “You aren’t in any shape to be talking of going on to Virginia City for some time now—”

  “I’m healing, boy! You go ask that sawbones Horton yourself!”

  “Sam,” he cooed again, wondering if there were any other way to say it than straight out. Any other way but straight out that might make it easy on the old man. “We aren’t going to Alder Gulch.”

  “We … we aren’t?”

  Seamus sensed something go out of the old man’s body as it sagged with those words, sinking back into the mattress beneath the sheet like a small and helpless thing. “Maybe I should say … I’m not going to the goldfields. Not … not just yet.”

  The old, watery eyes searched his until Seamus had to look away. “We … we’re not gonna dig for gold like we planned for so long, Seamus? What … what you expect me to do?”

  “I figured you’d stay here. But when I come back and don’t find you here, I’ll wander on up to the Montana goldfields looking for you.”

  “When you come back?” he squeaked. “You ain’t going after Jennie … then where the hell you going?”

  “You old fake,” Seamus said with a chuckle. “You know bloody well where I’m headed. Put me on the scent yourself, Sam.”

  “I did what?”

  “Sent me the clipping from the newspaper.”

  “I did?”

  He nodded.

  Marr ground his teeth a moment. “S’pose I did. No telling what stupid stunt a old man like me will try, is there?”

  “Nothing stupid about helping a friend, Sam Marr.”

  “Am I your friend, Seamus?”

  “You’re the best I got in this world,” Donegan answered, the knot of sentiment grown hot at the back of his throat. “That’s … that’s what’s hardest about this, Sam. Leaving you behind, especially like this—”

  “You don’t have to leave me behind! I’ll go with you, boy … gimme a day or so … I’m on the mend—”

  “No, I can’t take you with me, Sam,” he whispered, holding the man down on the bed beneath his big hands. “Not where I’m going. You’re in no shape to travel for some time—especially riding south to Laramie, through the gut of Red Cloud’s hunting ground. You remember our long day at the Crazy Woman?”

  “Shit! Remember that bloody ground? ’Course I do, Seamus—”

  “Then you know why I can’t take you down to Laramie with me,” he explained. “And from there the maps I looked over up to Fort C.F. showed I’ve got to ride south and east across Colorado Territory. Into Kansas.”

  Marr finally nodded, his eyes softening. “I’d hold you back, wouldn’t I? Maybe … maybe even get you killed.”

  “What I have to do is a one-man job as it is, Sam.”

  “That uncle of yours?”

  “Liam O’Roarke. Said to be scouting for Hancock this summer.”

  “By the time you get down to Kansas, Hancock’s summer circus gonna be only a piece of history, Seamus.”

  “So?” he asked, cocking his dark head and scratching his full beard.

  “You stupid mick Irishman!” Marr chuckled weakly, trying to fling a fist at Donegan. “So Hancock’s campaign against the Sioux is over and done with—the army goes into quarters for the winter, and they muster out their scouts … that’s what!”

  “Muster out the scouts?”

  “If a army ain’t marching against the Indians, they won’t keep a bunch of scouts on the payroll, now will they, Seamus?”

  He shook his head, feeling the sense of dread rising in him like a grease scum rising to the top of a kettle of blood soup. Sensing the fleeing of that hope he had nurtured over the last few days since reading the news story that told of Hancock’s scouts. Hope brought by that and a long day’s fight on Warrior Creek.

  “I suppose I can hope, Sam,” was all he thought of to say.

  “I know you gotta go, Seamus,” Marr finally admitted quietly. “Even if you don’t find him down there. You’ll likely find his trail, won’t you? Now that you got his scent.”

  Donegan nodded. “Even if I don’t find him, I feel like I’m close. Damned close.”

  “You come find me, Seamus,” he said as he slipped a hand from under the dusty sheet. Marr squeezed the Irishman’s big paw. “Come find me when you’re done doing this for your mother.”

  “How you know about her?”

  “I read the letter she wrote you … wanting you to find her brothers. Both of ’em. Bring ’em home.”

  “Before … before she…”

  “Before she passes on, Seamus. Ain’t a man can find fault with you doing what your mother wants of you. Even if it turns to some bloody work atween here and there.”

  For the longest time Seamus stared down at that ruddy, fevered face below him, looking all the more frail against the gray sheeting. The skin sagging over the brow and cheekbones, cadaverous.

  “Tell me, Sam. Why’d Jennie go? After I sent me my letter, asking her to stay put here … telling her I’d be coming for her soon. Why’d she go east on me?”

  “Letter?” Marr squeaked. “She didn’t get no letter from you that I know of. We never heard a word out of you, neither of us, Seamus.”

  “I wrote,” he stammered, confused. “Sent it down with the army mail. Told ’em to deliver it to you personal.”

  “Mail goes across the colonel’s desk.”

  He nodded, recognition slowly clearing light at the corner of his mind. His jaw squared. “Never have been too popular with the brass, have I, Sam?”

  “I expect your letter disappeared, son. Sonuvabitch probably started one of his fires with it, I’d i
magine.”

  “Letter isn’t all that important now, I suppose.” He studied the old man’s watery eyes again. “You’ll make it … won’t you, Sam?”

  Marr smiled weakly, gripping the big hand in his. “I’ll be where you can find me … you get things settled with your uncles.”

  Seamus sighed, holding the wrinkled hand still crusted with burnt powder, the blood caked around the fingernails like dark crescents. He stood slowly, nudging the ladder-back chair out of the way, still clutching the hand.

  “How many of those Sioux do you figure you put down?”

  Marr smiled crookedly. “Damned near all of ’em, Seamus. You oughta know better than ask me a question like that. As I’m laying here at night, it gets damned quiet. Seems I hear the wailing in Red Cloud’s camp from here, boy! All the way from here. If I turn my head just right, I can make out the old nigger himself cussing me out for the damage I done his warriors.”

  “You’re too ornery to die.” Donegan swallowed, fighting the feelings the words welled up inside him. “I … I best be going, Sam.”

  “Going south alone?” he asked, refusing to release the big hand.

  Shaking his head, he answered. “Nawww. Jim Bridger says he’ll ride down with me far as Laramie. The colonel here doesn’t have him on the payroll no more. So Jim says he’ll wander south. What with winter coming.”

  “Comes early … this part of the country.”

  “Stays a while as well, don’t it, Sam?”

  “It does, that, Seamus Donegan.” He choked a moment before he got the words out. “I … I wish you Godspeed,” Marr whispered.

  “My prayers stay with you as well, old friend.” His eyes were misting now, and the old man swam out of focus. “I’ll think long and hard on you while I’m gone from your side.”

  “Just get this stalk of yours over and done with, Seamus.”

  “Stalk? You make it sound like I’m hunting down trouble.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing, Seamus Donegan? Stalking trouble … like enough of it doesn’t find you on its own?”

  “Never looked for trouble in my life, Sam. But, you’re right—enough trouble just naturally haunts most of my days as it is.”