Black Sun: The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 4

  Any soldiers looked the same to Tall Bull. They were his enemy.

  He took great pride that he and his warriors did not follow the main leaders of the Cheyenne who had made peace with the white man and the army. To Tall Bull’s camp had come some of the most hardened veterans of plains warfare. Not only Cheyenne Dog Soldiers who’d taken a vow to die with honor fighting the soldiers, but Arapahos and even some renegade Sioux under Pawnee Killer.

  Theirs was a fighting band. Women and children readied at a moment’s notice to tear down lodges and be on the march, to suffer the privations of the warpath as much as their men. Young, green warriors the Dog Soldiers were not.

  These were the proven. The elite. And many times the most cruel. Among the Cheyenne, they were the hotamintanio, a select warrior society with its own magical rituals and omens, prayers, songs and taboos.

  These were the Cheyenne who vowed to clear their land of the white man for all time.

  These were the Dog Soldiers of Tall Bull.

  Chapter 2

  October 1868

  The air at twilight already had a bite to it. Nothing at all like the sweltering heat he had suffered a month ago when Forsyth’s fifty scouts rode baking beneath this same sun, tracking Cheyenne across this same piece of ground.

  An hour before the Fifth Cavalry had reached Prairie Dog Creek, called the Short Nose by many of the plainsmen Cody knew. Major Royall immediately set Company L to establishing a base camp while he divided the rest of his command into two battalions, which would bivouac some distance away. Come morning, Captain William H. Brown with Companies B, F and M, would work their way downstream, scouting east for more recent sign. At the same time Captain Gustavus Urban, leading Companies A, H and I, would follow Cody upstream, south by west, in hopes of running across some newer campsites abandoned by the Cheyenne.

  “Evidently the old man figures it’s better that we’re split up for a time,” Donegan muttered as he loosened his mare’s cinch. He watched longingly as Cody tightened his, checked the loads in his pistols then swept into the saddle once again.

  “I’ll be back to raise hell with you before you know it, Irishman. Major can’t keep us apart all that long. Watch your hair!”

  With a whoop, Cody leaped away, heading for Urban’s command, just then getting their order to go to saddle. Both battalions headed for campsites over the hills, and those left behind settled into the routine of fire-building, coffee-brewing and watering the horses while beans and salt-pork bubbled above the flames.

  The feeling would not free him—this loneliness and dread. It was the fourteenth of the month. Little more than a month since Forsyth had led his civilian scouts into this country. Two more sunrises and he would be forced to remember that bloody first day on the island. Seamus had promised himself he’d keep his mind busy. That was the whole idea about coming along on this scout with Cody and the Fifth Cavalry—so he would not have to drink himself crazy at Hays City, just to keep from remembering. He hungered now for a drink in the worst way and ran his tongue inside his cheek. It didn’t kill the deep hunger, but it took some of the edge from it.

  All he had to do now was deal with the loneliness and the dread. Captain Taylor’s L Company weren’t bad sorts. They were mostly boy soldiers, and not a bit interested in the big civilian scout who had been keeping to himself ever since the command pulled out of Fort Hays.

  “Quiet is good,” Donegan whispered into the mare’s ear as he rubbed her down with a handful of dried grass. “Sometimes, quiet is real good.”

  Yet he longed for the company of soldiers with good talk and new ears for his old stories or perhaps new stories from others’ lips. His loneliness would set in once the sky darkened and the stars came out in force, dusting the big canopy from horizon to horizon, with nothing to stop the view or clutter up the night but the full rising moon poking its big egg-yellow head up in the east at the edge of the endless prairie.

  Sitting alone at his small fire and drinking his alkali coffee, it gave Donegan a little comfort to touch the medicine pouch hung at his neck. He pulled it from his shirt, thinking on the old mountain man who gave it to him a year gone now. Jim Bridger was of that breed who had spent a lifetime of nights separated from friends. Yet Seamus could not drive away the memories of one uncle dead on a sandy island—no more than he could resist the despair that he would never find Liam’s brother, Ian.

  Yet having Bridger’s memory there at the fire tonight got Donegan’s feelings all tangled up with his memories of Liam and the kind of man his uncle must have been. Seamus had few regrets in his life, yet one of the weightiest was not having known Liam better.

  Ian—now he was a different matter altogether. The darker of his mother’s two brothers from County Tyrone. Always brooding while younger brother Liam acted like a big leprechaun dancing through life the way sprites glided through the clover. Ian was the older of the two, always acting as if the world weighed on his shoulders. While Liam drew folks to him like magic, Ian took brutal pride in the fact that no man of Eire called him friend. He took no stock in people—telling his young nephew Seamus that friends only caused one heartache. Since Ian did not need people, he could not be hurt.

  Donegan knelt at the fire, dragging the pot from the flames when the first shot rang out.

  Cries erupted from the far side of camp, near the picket-line. A handful of shots rattled the dry night air beneath that rising moon that shed full, silver light on the tableland.

  His coffee cup lay gurgling into the thirsty soil as his legs began churning, just as the first war-whoops sailed over the small encampment. Inside, his belly went cold, his mind working over the numbers and the odds if they were hit by something big. No small war-party this. That old saw that Sharp Grover and the other old-timers always told about Indians not coming at night—well, those old hands would just have to think that over now.

  Seamus figured if the warriors were here after dark, they were here in numbers.

  The growing intensity of their cries seemed to circle the camp as soldiers darted here and there, following orders of a few officers. Major Royall and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Brady each shouted at once to form up, hold their fire, volley-fire, secure the horses, and get out of the firelight.

  Didn’t matter, the moonlight shone bright enough for a man to stand out plain as day and make himself a good target to boot. But what the moon did to the soldiers, it did every bit as well to the warriors sweeping along the perimeter of the camp, working in and out of the horse herd. There were screams from the horses, and shouts from the soldiers punctuating the war-cries of the horsemen flitting in off the prairie like bat-winged shadows flying beneath the silver light.

  Seamus brought the Henry to his shoulder and set to work on the riders. Most of them stayed upright atop their ponies in the dark, not too concerned with dropping off to the side as they rode in close.

  The first he hit spilled to the sand and skidded to a stop as two more rode close behind, sweeping low and lifting the wounded warrior from the ground as they raced over the body.

  Seamus levered four more rounds at the rescuers while the horsemen disappeared over the hills. There were a few final shouts and cries of pain from both sides as the riflefire slowed to random shots, then stopped altogether. It grew strangely quiet for long moments, until Royall was standing there in the moonlight.

  “Reload immediately and report casualties. Mr. Brady—take a squad and secure the horses. Report back to me how many head we lost to the buggers.”

  Royall turned on Donegan. “Irishman.”

  “Major?” he replied as the officer stopped close.

  “Looks like you were the only one to draw blood with that run-through they made on us.”

  “Run-through?”

  “Just like the Comanche I fought on the southern plains some twenty years ago,” Royall sighed.

  “Comanche, eh?”

  “Mouth of Coon Creek, that’s on the Arkansas River.”

  “Yo
u fought Injins before, Major. Well, a-well.”

  “You and I’re not the only ones. There’s a few. But, I must say you were the coolest of the bunch just now.”

  “I’m afraid we won’t get a chance to find out how many we wounded. They always drag their dead away as well.”

  “I’m a trained officer, Mr. Donegan. Rather than participate firsthand, I observe during the heat of battle. It’s my duty to know how we stung the enemy—and you were the only one who stung these buggers tonight.”

  Brady loped up. “Major!”

  “How bad is it, mister?”

  “Twenty-five … maybe twenty-six horses.”

  “Damn!” Royall muttered. “Goddamn them!”

  “How’re your sojurs?”

  Royall hollered into the night as the camp settled into an uneasy silence. One trooper wounded. Another dead. Both with arrow wounds. A few of the remaining stock had arrows stuck in them during the melee.

  “I want a double watch, Captain Taylor,” Royall ordered. “Put your men around the herd now.”

  “I’ll go out yonder on the prairie, Major,” Seamus offered.

  Royall seemed to size the civilian up. “You figure to see them coming back and give us a bit of a warning—that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded once. “Good.”

  Donegan started to go, pulling cartridges for the Henry from his vest pocket.

  “Irishman!”

  He turned on Royall.

  “Just wanted you to know, Irishman—it was good having your gun on my side of things tonight.”

  “You’re welcome, Major.”

  * * *

  “Before the sun rises to the middle of the sky tomorrow, the soldiers will regroup and be on our trail,” Tall Bull warned his warriors when they finally came to a halt several miles from the soldier camp they had just raided.

  “We will return to the village well before the sun rises,” Pile of Bones replied. “There is plenty of time for the women to tear down our lodges and begin the trail north.”

  “Do not forget that some of our lodges have prisoners,” Tall Bull added. “They must be watched closely as we break camp.”

  “I am for killing the white women!” growled Heavy Furred Wolf.

  “No!” Tall Bull shouted. “These white women are ours to keep. Not to kill. They will prove of use to us yet. If nothing more, their wombs will nurture more Cheyenne warriors. We will make Dog Soldier squaws of them yet!”

  “Heya! Heya!” exclaimed many of the other warriors gathered close.

  “Come now. We must get these new horses among our herd quickly … so they grow accustomed to the smell of us and our animals. Tomorrow will be a long day riding south.”

  “South?”

  “Yes. We should march south toward the white man’s settlements one last time—making a run at the soldiers before we turn about and head north for the winter season.”

  “We will travel to the land of Red Cloud’s Sioux?” asked Pile of Bones.

  “Perhaps,” Tall Bull answered. “I hear the great Oglalla chief has driven the soldiers from his country. He and the Northern Cheyenne have defeated the white man. Perhaps it would be wise for us to spend the winter closer to that land where no white man dares come.”

  “Heya! Let us go winter where the water is cold and sweet, and the buffalo grow fat for the coming cold!” Heavy Furred Wolf agreed.

  “Soon enough there comes a time when we again make war on the soldiers,” Tall Bull said. “I pray this coming winter will not last long—the sooner to return to spill the white man’s blood on this ground. My heart yearns to watch this land of my birth drink on the blood of these soldiers who follow our trail. They always follow.”

  * * *

  The next day saw the return of the two battalions about the time a grave detail finished burying the dead soldier. After hearing the brief reports of their fruitless reconnaissance, Major Royall gave the command to move out once more.

  “Major, if I might make a suggestion.” Donegan halted his mount beside Royall’s.

  “What’s that, Irishman?” Royall eyed Cody suspiciously.

  “As you come about with the columns, lead them over the soldier’s grave.”

  “You want us to ride over the place we buried the man?”

  Cody nodded. “It’s a good idea. Critters won’t be so likely to come dig his body up when you trample over the ground.”

  “Major, if those warriors can’t find that sojur’s grave,” Donegan explained, “they can’t dig the man up, now can they?”

  Royall grinned slightly, a look of bemused respect on his face. “All right, Irishman. It’s a good idea. Sergeant Major Maynard!”

  “Sir?”

  “Carry the word back with my compliments to the commands. We’re marching over the grave—in silence … with bare heads.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The Fifth Cavalry moved out, circling their encampment so they could pound hoofprints over the newly-turned ground. In absolute silence that cold fall morning, the horsemen pointed their noses south by west, pulling their kepis and slouch hats from their heads in paying this last respect before they marched up the Prairie Dog Creek, flankers out and scouts roaming far in advance to pick up the trail of the fleeing hostiles who had stolen twenty-six head of army horseflesh.

  By evening Cody found the Cheyenne trail turning south from the creek, angling back toward the country of the Solomon. Yet across the next two days the trail grew more and more faint.

  “They’re splitting up, Seamus,” Cody announced over a cup of evening coffee.

  “Army chases a village, that’s what they’ll always do.”

  “In two more days I may not have but one lodge left to track.”

  “You tell the major?”

  “He’s damned disgusted with me.”

  “Ought’n be disgusted with the Injins we’re tracking.”

  “Major’s gotta be mad at someone, Seamus. He’s run out of time. This was his big chance to be the one to catch these Cheyenne been burning and killing and kidnapping all summer long.”

  “His big chance?”

  Cody nodded. “Right. Drawing close to the time his orders tell him to head down to Buffalo Tank.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Water stop on the Union Pacific line south of here.”

  “Why’s Royall going there if the Injins are splitting up?”

  “Sheridan has a Major Carr coming in to take command now for the winter campaign.”

  “Who’s this Carr?”

  “Don’t know him. Just his reputation. Good man from what the word is.”

  Donegan nodded. “So now the junior major is ordered to ride behind the senior man—that it?”

  “Way I see it.”

  On 22 October, Royall marched into Buffalo Tank with his battalions, turning over his command of the Fifth to Major Eugene Asa Carr, a thirty-nine-year-old veteran of plains warfare, who sat in camp awaiting the arrival of the regiment. Joining his cavalry at Buffalo Tank were about a third of the reorganized civilian scouts first assembled by Major George A. Forsyth, now commanded by Lieutenant Silas Pepoon of the Tenth Negro Cavalry.

  Chapter 3

  October 1868

  It was a somber reunion for the most part, yet not without some joy when Seamus Donegan walked among those familiar faces at Buffalo Tank on the Union Pacific Line in central Kansas.

  A month before, many of these same plainsmen had been pinned down by the Cheyenne like cornered badgers in their holes, on an island Forsyth named after Lieutenant Fred Beecher. After returning to Hays, most had elected to stay on scouting with Lieutenant Pepoon, although a handful had gone their way, having had enough of Indian fighting to last them. Besides Sergeant William McCall and veteran scout Sharp Grover, there were a few who sought out the tall Irishman, to shake a hand or slap a back and talk of nine days of siege on Beecher Island. Only one of the boy-faced men
was still among those scouts to celebrate the grim reunion.

  “Jack is the one who carried word from Beecher Island to Fort Wallace,” Donegan bragged on the youth after he had introduced young Stillwell to Bill Cody.

  “Just one of four, don’t forget that,” Stillwell admitted.

  “Where’s Slinger? He riding with Pepoon and Custer?”

  Stillwell shook his head. “Had a letter waiting for him at Hays when we got in there. His family back East thought it better for him to come home,” Stillwell explained.

  “Not like you—grown up out here.”

  “He might not be born in these parts, but I heard Slinger held his own on the island after I left.”

  “He did, Jack. Every bit as much as any man, and more.”

  “Who is this Slinger?” Cody asked.

  “Name’s Sigmund Schlesinger,” Donegan said.

  “Damn but I remember a fella of that name,” Cody replied.

  “He ain’t the sort you’d forget,” Seamus continued. “Him or the name.”

  “Met him earlier this year at Hays while I was hunting buffalo,” Cody said. “So Slinger was on the island with you two?”

  “Damn right. Major Forsyth was proud of the man.” Donegan turned to Stillwell to ask, “How’s this Pepoon?”

  “Sharp don’t like him worth squat,” Jack admitted. “But, the man’s all right at his job for a soldier. He’s just dyed-in-the-wool army is all.”

  “Thing is, it sometimes takes more than soldiering to get the job done out here,” Donegan replied. “Major Forsyth was the sort of man who didn’t let his army-mouth overload his common-sense ass. Forsyth had sense.”

  “Him and McCall was the best I served with,” Jack sighed as orders thundered up and down the line of picketed horses.

  “Prepare to mount!” the sergeants were bawling at their men, soldiers and civilian scouts alike.