Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (16 page)

Jack stuffed his right hand under the flap of his wool coat at the same time his left snagged a handful of the sutler's dirty shirt.

“Suppose you say it a little nicer,” O'Neill hissed, yanking the Fort Lyon sutler along to the corner of the crude bar so he could eye the rest of the dimly-lit place. Not wanting his back on a single one of the grumbling patrons shifting now away from their tables and the short bar.

“No nigger's gonna tell me—”

He hoisted the little man up to his toes. Off to his right a table and chair clattered across the packed dirt floor. O'Neill turned, yanking his gun hand from the coat, filled with the freshly-oiled Walker Colt. The big hammer clicked back at the same instant the stranger's hand moved for the pistol in his waistband. The white man's hand froze, suspended over the pistol butt, trembling.

“I want no trouble,” O'Neill growled, as every set of eyes in the mud hovel widened, realizing he had spoken in Cheyenne. “I don't want trouble.” He released the sutler. From the corner of his eye, he watched the man cautiously rub his throat.

“Like I said, suppose you speak a little nicer to me,” O'Neill whispered, husky and mean across the low-roofed room. “Why you say I made the trip here for nothing?”

The sutler had poured a quick shot and thrown it back. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes gone feral and fear-filled. “Man you're looking for already gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I hear it was Denver City,” answered the sutler, his shaking hand still wrapped around the bottle of red whiskey.

“Denver City?” O'Neill asked, his mind working on it.

“Don't you know where that is, nigger? Shit, no black-assed bastard like you gonna need directions where you're going!”

O'Neill turned toward the new voice, the right hand and its pistol coming around before him. He had seen the flash of movement as the skinny white man spoke, mocking him. Something like a ray of sunlight bouncing off a prairie pond when the clouds finally break up after a spring thunderstorm.

Standing from his table … going for the big hog-leg pistol strapped against his left leg … the buffalo hunter's muzzle-flash blinded Jack for an instant—just before he pulled the trigger on his Walker Colt. And felt the hot tearing of flesh along his right side, in the ribs, right under his gun arm.

The smoke snaked up from the muzzle of the big Walker as the skinny stranger with the pockmarked face stumbled backward against the wall, bounced against it twice, his face gone white. Then he slowly sank, leaving a sticky, shiny track on the peeled cottonwood logs as he collapsed to the dirt floor, legs akimbo.

“Any more of you want trouble?”

They all shook their heads, showing their hands, eyes darting from the dead man with the hole blown in his chest to the big black man with his unkempt kinky hair spilling from his hat like charcoal-colored fringe tickling his shoulders.

“Who do I look for?” O'Neill demanded, his voice filling the place.

“Scouts is all the same,” came the immediate answer from the sutler as he inched backward from the mulatto.

“Get over here.” The sutler obeyed. Jack grabbed him again. “What is the name of the scouts.”

“Name?”

He jerked the man off his feet again, jamming the Walker's front sight under his chin. “The scouts with this group at the fort.”

“He means the unit,” whispered one of the patrons.

The sutler's head bobbed. “Yeah—you mean the Fifth Cavalry.”

O'Neill smiled. “That's right. The Fifth Cavalry. You told me the scouts went to Denver City.” He waited while the man nodded again. “So, you remember a tall white man riding with these scouts? Real tall. And if you get up close enough, he has gray eyes. Know him?”

He nodded, and swallowed, eager to please. “He's been in before—when Carr had his men out at the fort … coming and going. Maybe the one you're looking for … gone with that bunch just went to Denver City.”

O'Neill smiled wider, the teeth gleaming in the oily light. “You—come with me.”

“What for?” squeaked the sutler as O'Neill pushed him along toward the door, the gun barrel still under the man's chin like a fence-post.

“I don't want no back-shooting … unless these others figure I can't twitch my finger and blow out the top of your head, Mister Barman.”

“D-Don't nobody move!” squealed the sutler as he shuffled along, his toes barely touching the dirt floor, clamped close to the big black man who towered over him.

Jack kept his eyes moving as he inched backward to the door, felt it against his left shoulder. He opened it, pulled the sutler out with him.

“Free all them horses.”

He inched along the hitching rail as the sutler released the horses one at a time.

“Not that one. He's mine. Hand me the reins to the last one—there. I'll take him with me.”

Behind the smoky glass windowpane O'Neill made out at least four white faces watching him climb to the saddle, adjust his long coat, then shove the sutler backward with the sole of his moccasin before he whirled away. He could hear them yelling as he galloped down the single muddy, rutted street the place boasted.

Jack turned in the saddle, leveled the Walker at the crowd that milled over the sutler plopped in the mud puddle filled with rainwater and horse dung. He pulled the trigger only when puffs of greasy, gray smoke appeared from the group.

Whirling back around in the saddle as the crowd scattered, leaving one man sinking to his knees, O'Neill laid low along the horse's neck, figuring no more bullets would come his way from that pack of yellow-spined white men.

If the mulatto was right, few men had the backbone of the tall, gray-eyed killer who had murdered Roman Nose at the island in the river.

O'Neill had just killed two. And that suddenly felt very, very good to him. He was warming up to the chase and the blood.

Chapter 12

Mid-April 1869

Overhead the ducks swept the sky, their great formations pointing north to the feeding grounds in the land of the Grandmother. They did not make as much noise as the great long-necks honking across the blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds left behind with the passing storm.

Tall Bull looked down at the puddle of rain collected in the depression. Like a plate mirror, the unruffled surface of the tiny pond reflected the unhurried passing of the white fleece above. The wrens and sparrows were busy as well. Gathering food for their young. Repairing their nests after the onslaught of the thunderstorm. Industrious animals, these with wings. So perpetually in motion.

Every bit like the buffalo his people followed season after season across the plains. And like the buffalo, the Cheyenne ponies were growing sleek and fat once more on the new grass poking its head through the hardened winter crust of the great prairie that was the home of Tatonka Haska. The Tall Bull had taken control of this collection of wild outlaws and renegades and outcasts from other bands. He became their leader when the chiefs abandoned the fight against the half-a-hundred white men who had huddled together on the tiny island in the middle of the dry riverbed long before the snows of last winter.

Around Tall Bull the young and the daring had rallied. Perhaps because he would not give up the fight. More so because Tall Bull was a war leader who took the war right to the white man's doorstep. While other chiefs were content to merely defend themselves, Tall Bull led those who still boiled in gall whenever they remembered the Little Dried River. Black Kettle was an old woman who begged peace from the white man. But again last winter the soldiers had attacked the old chief's camp.

On the Washita.

It would not happen to his people, Tall Bull swore.

He looked south, toward the land of his birth. Where he learned to fire a bow and ride a pony. Where season after season he had hung himself from the sun-prayer pole to give thanks.

It was no longer the land he could call home. The white man had come in with his black wagons that belched oily smoke and ran on a iron trail. Behind them came more white men who pulled huge knives behind mules and oxen, cutting a swath into the breast of the earth. Their kind drove the game away and polluted the streams they camped beside.

At least his people had been safe up here close to the Niobrara River for the winter. But now Tall Bull yearned for the southland once more. If the Cheyenne could not stop the white man in the south, there would be no rest for his people in the north. For, one day, the white man would come north, wanting that land too.

Red Cloud had waged a relentless war on the soldiers and the civilians traveling the Prayer Road north through his coveted hunting ground. In doing so, Red Cloud had defeated the white man. Sent the soldiers scurrying from his land.

Tall Bull rose from the edge of the rain puddle, for the first time sensing the insistent breeze along his cheek, the same breeze ruffling the smooth surface of the blue sky-water.

“It is time,” said one of the four who stopped nearby.

He nodded. “The others are gathered?”

“They wait for you.”

Tall Bull smiled at the four, his lieutenants ever since the battle with the white men on the river. Without another word he led them into the village, to his lodge.

Around the fire his warriors had gathered, eaten and smoked before they began talk of the coming season, and with its approach, the raids they knew Tall Bull would lead.

“I have grown weary of chasing the white man's wagons up and down his roads. Stealing his horses and his mules. Killing and scalping the white man and his soldiers,” Tall Bull explained when the group asked what plans the chief had for the short-grass time. “Still, the white man comes. There is no end to his numbers. We kill and steal—and there are always more.”

“What is this talk?” demanded Feathered Bear. “You sound like an old woman ready to give up our fight.”

Tall Bull turned on him. “I am not. It would be a very stupid man who thinks that I would deny my people this fight.”

“Tatonka Haska is no old woman,” agreed Bullet Proof, himself wounded in the battle against the half-a-hundred white men on the river island. “There are plenty enough here who remember how Tall Bull stood proud when Two Crows and Turkey Legs ran from the white men.”

The chief held up his hand to silence the clamor. “If there are those among you who believe I should not lead our warriors into battle this season—let him speak it clearly … now.”

Most of the eyes in the smoky lodge turned toward Feathered Bear. Many moments passed until the warrior dropped his gaze and spoke.

“Tall Bull will lead us in war against the white man.”

“Hau! Hau!”
roared the warriors with approval.

“All of us, Feathered Bear?” asked the chief.

“Yes—every warrior.”

He nodded. Once more he had them in his hand. Now to excite them, make their blood hot for the hunt and the kill. To make their hearts pound and their temples throb with the promise of the chase.

“This summer we will not send out scouts to hunt for small bands of soldiers. Nor will we look for the white man's white-topped wagons to attack. Instead—we will concentrate all our warriors on one objective.”

“If we do not attack the soldiers and the white men who travel along the trails—who are we to attack?” asked Pile of Bones, a young and eager warrior.

“We kill soldiers … and still more come,” Tall Bull explained, stroking the otter-skin pipe-bag he held on his lap. “We kill the white wagon men … and still more of them come the next time.”

A veteran warrior spoke, “We steal horses and coffee and sugar. Our women like the cloth we bring them, and the kettles too.”

Tall Bull looked at Pretty Bear for a moment before answering. “All these things are good—but in taking them we still do not have our land back. We have not driven the white man from our country.”

“You have a plan to do this?” Bad Heart asked, speaking for the first time.

He nodded, watching the anxious silence come over the council. “The white man is many. He will always be many here in our land. But, you must remember there is one thing the white man values more highly than his soldiers, more highly than his coffee and kettles.”

Pile of Bones's eyes narrowed. “What does he value more than all these?”

“We will attack the white man's homes … where he scratches at the ground and builds his mud-earth lodges.”

“Is this what you call your great plan to drive the white man from our land?” demanded Feathered Bear.

“Yes,” he answered quietly, turning to his rival.

“We have done this before—”

He held up his strong, powerful hand, silencing all. “This time will be different, my brothers. This time we will go to take what is most valuable to the white man … what he cannot replace. He can replace soldiers and kettles and blankets. But we will take something he will never replace.”

“What is so valuable, Tall Bull?”

“Soon, we will be riding south and east toward the white man's settlements.”

“To steal horses again,” sneered Feathered Bear.

“No,” and Tall Bull smiled, a wolfish slash across his face. “This time we steal the white man's women.”

*   *   *

“Damn them, Cody!” growled Major Eugene Asa Carr when he had burst into the scouts' camp circle, accompanied by scout Bill Green. “They got away with a horse of mine.”

“Hold up, Major,” Cody had replied. “Who got away with this horse?”

Carr had gone ahead to tell the civilian scouts the story: Fifth Cavalry stock stolen right under the noses of the herders. Including a mule owned by Lieutenant W. C. Forbush and a horse very much prized by the major himself.

That recollection now rolled before Seamus Donegan's eyes as clear as the day Carr had sent them after the horse thieves.