“Terry Johnston is an authentic American treasure.”—Loren D. Estleman, author of Edsel
It was a day that shocked a nation. June 25, 1876. The day General George Armstrong Custer fell at Little Big Horn. Now the U.S. Army is on the march. Vowing revenge, its commanders have declared total war on the Cheyenne and Sioux. Every able-bodied man must answer the call of the cavalry trumpet . . . men such as frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody and scout Seamus Donegan. From the Black Hills to Slim Buttes, from Yellowstone to Warbonnet Creek, some would succumb to ambush, some to starvation, others to disease and even madness. Under the blood-red sun of that terrible summer, Seamus Donegan prays only to survive . . . to return to his wife, Samantha, and witness the birth of their first child.
Release date:
June 30, 2010
Publisher:
Domain
Print pages:
672
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“I hear water’s better when you mix it with whiskey.”
Upon hearing the quiet interruption of that familiar voice, the Irishman raised his head from the cool grass that flourished along the bank of Little Goose Creek to watch Frank Grouard slide out of his saddle.
“I wouldn’t know,” Seamus Donegan replied, propped up on one elbow as he kicked his bare feet in the cold water. He had his canvas britches snugged in loose rolls all the way up to his knees to soak in the refreshing current. “You see, I never water down my whiskey.”
The half-breed with skin the hue of coffee-tanned leather tied off his army mount, then came over to settle in the shade of a huge cottonwood beside Donegan. “Much as you bellyache about missing your whiskey this trip out, you sure as hell done a lot of soaking in water.”
Seamus grinned, then nodded in agreement as he said, “This tends to take a man’s mind off his real thirst.”
“The sort a man gets when he has a whiskey hunger, eh?”
“Or the kind of hunger what hits a man when he’s gone without a woman for too long.” Donegan immediately felt bad for the thoughtless words that fell from his tongue. “I’m sorry, Frank. Didn’t mean nothing by it. Forgot, is all.”
Grouard waved it off with a lukewarm grin and a shrug of his shoulder. “Don’t make nothing of it, Irishman. Women been nothing but trouble for me. Whiskey too. Now, a fella like you, he can handle both, I’d wager: all he wants of both. But a man like me gets all buried in a woman, and that makes for trouble with that woman’s brother—so that’s when I go and get all fall-down and underfoot with some cheap Red River trader’s whiskey….”
He heard the head scout’s voice fade away while watching the wistful look come over the half-breed’s dusky, molasses-colored face. “I figure we ought to talk about what brung you to look me up—”
“It don’t matter no more, Seamus,” Grouard interrupted. “Something I can talk about now. Hurt for a while. Not so much no more.”
“Damn, but you’ve had your share of dark days. First the trouble with Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas over them whiskey traders. Then you go and get yourself all but scalped and skewered over a woman with Crazy Horse’s band.”
“Didn’t mean for things to turn out so bad with He Dog, that woman’s brother, bad with the rest of them Hunkpatila that way.”
As much as Crook’s chief of scouts might protest otherwise, Seamus could still read the torment of that lost love carved into the lines around Grouard’s eyes. Just the way it had to be cut into his very soul. “Never knew a man who lost a woman could honestly claim he was meaning for things to turn out that way, Frank.”
Grouard pulled free a long brilliant-green stem from the grass at his side, placed it between his lips, and sucked absently, gazing at the gurgling flow of Little Goose Creek at their feet. Moment by moment the midsummer sun continued its relentless climb toward midsky, easing back the cool, inviting shadows beneath the overhanging cotton woods like a woman at her morning chores sweeping against a thickening line of dust across her hardwood floor.
“Crook’s changed his mind, Irishman,” Grouard finally said, sliding the green grass blade from his lips.
“For sure this time?”
He nodded. “When he called off us going on our scout last night like he’d wanted original’, I just figured the general wanted time to set his mind on something. But this morning he told me he didn’t want to take the chance of losing me, losing any of us right now.”
“Don’t blame him, do you? What with all but a handful of them Shoshone up and pulling out for home this morning? Why, just two days back even the Crow saw the elephant and left us on the trail so they could hurry back to their villages and have their scalp dances. So now, by God, with the Snakes gone too, the old man’s been left stranded.” He wagged his head dolefully. “Ain’t no wonder that Crook’s afraid the enemy could be all around us, now that he ain’t got his Injun scouts to be his eyes and ears. But there’s no way to know for sure what’s out there, all around us now, if we don’t go out and scout.”
“Them war camps still ain’t strong enough to jump us here,” Frank replied sourly.
“Maybe they won’t jump us, but they sure been making a bunch of trouble for us while we sit and wait. Crook’s gotta know that by now.”
“General knows.”
“So he wants us just to sit on our saddle galls?”
Grouard grinned. “Why the hell you complaining, white man? Looks like you’re getting in all the feet soaking you want, Seamus.”
“Think about it. While Crook’s army sits, what you suppose the Injun camps are doing?”
Grouard’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the distance, as if he were attempting to measure somehow the sheer heft to all that danger out there. As if he might actually try to divine the enemy’s intent across that great gulf in time and space.
“Both. While they’ll hunt for hides and meat to put up for the winter—they damn sure gonna keep an eye on us here. Send scouts down to watch Crook’s camp all the time so they’ll know if we go to marching north again.”
“That has to be a big camp, Grouard. I can’t figure ’em staying together for much longer.”
“Me neither,” Frank agreed, sweeping the grass aside with his fingers so that he could scoop up a palmful of dirt. “That many lodges, that many people, thousands and thousands of ponies—they’ll need to break up.” With a flick of his wrist he sprayed the dust out from his hand in a wide arc.
Donegan said, “But Crook’s got it set firm in his mind he’s gonna have to tangle with the whole bunch again.”
“He does figure on that—so he don’t fed much like moving till he’s got more men and bullets.”
Donegan rocked off his elbow and eased his head back onto the grass. The sun felt as good as a man could ever want it to feel—every bit as good as he had dreamed the summer sun could feel on his skin while he struggled vainly to stay warm shuddering atop a cold saddle last winter on Reynolds’s long march north to the fight on Powder River.
Here in the heart of summer, Seamus sighed with contentment and said, “If Crook’s waiting for men and bullets—then this army of his ain’t gonna be marching anytime soon.”
“Don’t mean you and me won’t be working.”
At that moment he wanted to crack one of his eyes into a slit so he could weigh the look on the half-breed’s face, to see if Grouard was trying to skin him or not. But Seamus fought the sudden impulse down like it were a real thing, not wanting to move at all from this warm, sundrenched creekbank. “Little while back you said Crook’s changed his mind.”
“He has.”
“But?”
Grouard answered, “But it don’t mean Crook can’t go and change his mind again.”
Thinking back on all the generals he had known since 1862, Seamus had to agree. “Seems like that sort of thing just naturally comes with those stars, don’t it, Frank? Like it’s their duty to up and change your mind. Mither of God! But that’s the sole province of a general: this right to change one’s mind.”
“Crook’s the general hereabouts.”
“What of those columns off to the north of us?”
Grouard shrugged. “Lots of Injuns between us and them. Like I told you last night: there’s a hundred miles stuffed right up to the bunghole with badass Lakota and Shahiyena warriors all wanting white scalps.”
“And especially your hair—for you leading sojurs down on them twice now.” Donegan brooded a moment, then asked, “What all do you think the Lakota are up to, if them camps really are out to hunt like you say?”
“Figure they have scouts keeping an eye on them other columns too.”
“How is it Gibbon’s Montana sojurs, or Terry’s Dakota column from over at Fort Lincoln, haven’t run onto a village that size yet?”
“You asking about Terry’s column—that bunch what Crook says is pushing this way with Custer’s cavalry riding right out front?”
“Yeah, them. Why hasn’t Terry’s sojurs run up against that big camp what jumped us three days back?”
Grouard shrugged. “Just lucky, I suppose.”
“Naw. It ain’t just luck, Frank. Way I see it—them warriors will keep right on doing their best to keep their women and children out of the army’s way. Reason they rode south to jump us was they didn’t want Crook’s army getting anywhere near their village. They’ll go and do the same thing with that bunch up north: keep well out of the way of Gibbon and Terry.”
He studied Donegan a moment. “Don’t think so, Irishman. Way it lays out to me is this: a village that big won’t be worried about a damned thing but finding enough grass to feed all their ponies.”
“So—what about them sojurs up north of us? You’re saying that war camp hit us on the Rosebud just don’t give a damn about the three columns closing in on ’em?”
His face a mask of disgust, Grouard slowly brought his two hands together. “Only two columns still closing in now, Irishman.”
“So either of them other two expeditions. Why you figure neither of them bumped into that goddamned big village themselves yet?”
With a slow wag of his head Grouard said, “Can’t say, Seamus. Only … I know one thing’s certain as rain: it’s just a matter of time before Custer and his men run smack up against more’n they can handle.”
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