Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (19 page)

They nodded, setting down their tin plates and cups of boiled coffee.

“I suppose first watch means I clean mess?” Donegan asked.

“And I make breakfast on mine,” Cody answered. “We'll stand three hours each. Here's my watch.” He tossed the timepiece to Donegan. “Good night, Irishman.”

As his three fellow scouts rolled into their blankets and canvas shelter-halves, Seamus was left to see that the prisoners were bedded down warmly.

“Take your boots off, Bevins.”

“Go to hell, mick.”

“I'll pretend I didn't hear you say that. Now, take off your boots.”

“Like hell, I'm gonna do anything for you—”

“Best you do as he says, Bevins,” Cody's muffled voice rose from his bedroll. “You'll be his meat if you don't.”

Donegan watched the horse thief eye him critically. “Don't make no difference to me, Mr. Bevins. I can take you back to the authorities … or I can leave you staked out here in the snow as wolf bait. Now, suppose you tell me what's gonna be easier.”

“Don't give no goddamned—”

Seamus pulled his pistol, pressing the muzzle of the .44 under the thief's nose. “I agree, Mr. Bevins. It's just as I thought as well—far easier to blow your brains out and be done with it here.”

“N-No, goddammit! Don't shoot!”

“The boots, Mr. Bevins,” Seamus reminded. He glanced at the man's wide-eyed companion. “Yours as well, Mr. Williams.”

Nate Williams nodded anxiously, struggling with the broughams that had been soaked throughout the day, in and out of the wet, deep drifts.

“Proud of you, me boys. Now, make yourselves comfortable for a winter's nap. We'll be waking you come breakfast time.”

With his toe, Donegan nudged Bevins's ankle-high boots aside in one direction, Williams's broughams in the other, before he stepped around the fire and resettled himself by the coffeepot.

Just past ten o'clock, Seamus shook a reluctant Jack Farley awake. “You want some coffee poured down you before I crawl in me blankets?”

Farley ground some knuckles into his eyes and mumbled, “No, I'll be all right. G'won to bed.”

“They're both sleeping like babies, Jack,” Seamus whispered, nodding toward the prisoners.

“Like I wanna be.”

“Get some coffee down,” Donegan reminded as he pulled the heavy wool horse blanket up to his chin.

Overhead some stars were beginning to break through the thinning clouds. Those sky lights spelled nothing but a deepening cold across the rest of the night as he closed his eyes, feeling his breath freezing the skin on his face. Then all was delicious sleep.

*   *   *

“Goddammit!”

Seamus sat upright with Farley's shrill call. He found the army scout sailing into the firepit with an explosion of burning branches and red coals, sending a spray of bright fireflies into the dark of midnight. Williams was up on his feet after colliding with Farley, crouching only long enough to scoop up his broughams. As if on a mainspring, Bevins was leaping in the opposite direction, out of the firelight, dragging both boots out of the snow.

“Cody!”

“Stop—you two!” Cody shouted.

“What the hell!” Green hollered as Farley tripped over his feet.

Jack Farley was dancing around the firepit, kicking coals and burning limbs onto their blankets, wildly slapping his wool coat and britches free of smoldering sparks, cursing his luck.

“Son of a bitch! I didn't see it coming!”

“Shuddup!” Cody ordered, sprinting after Williams, disappearing into the dark. “Just get after Bevins, Farley!”

“What about me?” Green asked.

Donegan flung his voice over his shoulder. “Stay at the fire. Someone'll be back here soon enough.”

“I don't like the sounds of that,” Green muttered as Donegan disappeared into the darkness.

Within minutes the Irishman and Farley were back at the fire, finding a much relieved Green and Cody on either side of one of the horse thieves.

“You all right, Mr. Williams?” Seamus asked, kneeling in front of the thief who had his head slung in his hands.

“He's a might under the weather,” Cody explained.

“Something you gave him?”

Cody nodded, showing the scouts the barrel of his pistol. “He didn't want to stop running at first—and I seriously considered shooting him. Instead, I gave him a .44 headache.”

Green glanced at what Donegan took from under his coat. “What you got there, Irishman?”

Seamus held it up in the firelight. “A shoe.”

“Bevins?”

He nodded at Cody. “Looks like his. Whoever's running out there, he's hobbled with only one good hoof now. All we got to track.”

Cody turned to Farley. “You lost him, Jack. It's up to you to see we track him and get him back.”

“You want me stay with Williams?” asked Green.

Cody was bending over his gear, yanking up the blanket and saddle, heading for his horse. “I'll take Donegan with Farley and me.” He glared at Green. “Don't lose this one.”

Donegan stopped in front of Williams with his saddle and blanket hung over his arms. “That's right, Bill. We want at least one of these bastards alive for General Carr to skin.”

*   *   *

Across the horizon to the east it looked like the white expanse of the earth was tearing itself from the dark clot of skyline in a long, thin and bloody laceration.

They had covered something close to twenty miles in the dark: down from the saddle to inspect the tracks, then gaze into the distance before climbing back atop their horses to pursue the footprints of the fleeing Bevins. Tiny spots of blood had begun to muddy the single, barefoot print the last handful of miles.

“He's hurting,” Donegan whispered as they halted atop a low rise, the South Platte down below.

“Damn right he's hurting,” Cody replied. “But I've gotta hand it to him. Son of a bitch is a tough one. All these miles, up and down this broken country—what with six inches of icy snow and the trail covered with cactus. Damn right Bill Bevins is a tough bravo.”

There shone a glimmer of begrudging admiration in young Cody's eyes, something any man could read had he been sitting there alongside Seamus Donegan as the sun tore itself into a new day. The sky went red-orange, smearing the old snow a pale pink beneath the gray-bellied clouds hovering against the foothills.

“You want him for yourself?” Donegan asked once he realized Cody had seen the black speck darting through the willow down along the riverbank.

Cody nodded and sighed. “Sort of a funny end to this chase, don't you think, Seamus? Me just riding down there to retake a man on foot. Not something that sounds so good when we get back to General Carr and tell him.”

“Bevins ran. You caught him without firing a shot. That deserves the general's congratulations. And he's getting his bleeming horse back to boot.”

“C'mon, Farley. You and Seamus ride down with me. Bastard's caused me so much trouble—I might just kill the son of a bitch if you leave me alone with him.”

He saw them coming, turning to glance over his shoulder suddenly as their horses loped through the shallow snow that hugged the clumps of willow and prickly pear cactus. Bevins tripped and fell, crying out, crawling on all fours through the snow, stumbling to his feet and hobbling forward like a cripple. He was crazed, grunting like some treed animal, done in but refusing to end the chase.

“Give it up, Bevins!” Cody called out as he signaled the other two riders. All three slowed to a walk directly behind the frantic horse thief.

Bevins made some unintelligible sound as he swung around, arms wide like post oaks, crouching, stumbling backward into the snow. He lay there, heaving, his hair plastered to his forehead, rivulets of sweat creasing his beard. Cody slid from the saddle. It struck Seamus that Cody trudged over to Bevins like a man not relishing what he had been called upon to do.

“It's gone sour, Bevins,” he said quietly.

With a growl, the horse thief pushed himself back through the snow.

Cody held out his hand, his right over the butt of his pistol. “Don't make this any harder'n it has to be.”

Bevins moaned, sinking completely into the snow. He wagged his head, sobbing without restraint for a moment. When he had composed himself, the thief dragged one foot into his lap. Around the ankle hung the muddied, blackened remnants of what had once been a cotton foot-stocking. The sole of the stocking completely worn, it hung in tatters over Bevins's swollen, bloody foot.

“I can't go on, Cody.”

Cody glanced up at Donegan and Farley for help. Then back to Bevins.

“Cactus?”

He nodded, cradling the swollen foot. “Damn thorns—lemme use your knife?”

Cody shrugged. “Sure. Don't wanna keep any man from cutting on himself he takes a mind to.”

Using the point of the blade, Bevins hunched over his foot in the snow, digging at each bloody wound, cutting every thorn from the sole of his wounded foot. He handed the knife back to the scout, then held his hand up for help.

“You're a big one,” Cody replied as Bevins rose beside him. “I'm thinking you better ride my horse.”

“Shit, you gonna let him ride?” Farley asked, sending a spray of brown to the old snow below him. “What you gonna do—walk all the way back to our camp?”

“No,” he answered. “Since you're the smallest here, I'll ride double with you, Jack.”

The older man glared incredulous at the spunk of the young scout. “This is the horse the army give me, and I'll say if you ride double with me or not.”

He glanced at Donegan a moment. The Irishman nodded in support.

“All right, Farley,” Cody continued. “You got a choice. I'm chief of scouts for this outfit. That makes me your boss, 'cause you're riding an army horse, on army orders. You can step down and give me your horse to ride alone—or, we ride back double.”

“Shit, you peach-faced ninety-day wonders are all alike,” Farley grumbled. “Back in the war, why, we'd—”

“Back in that goddamned bleeming war, Farley,” Donegan interrupted him, “we'd likely followed a man as good as Bill Cody into Hell and back again.”

Chapter 15

Early May 1869

Bill Bevins caused no more trouble for Cody. But two nights later Nate Williams made good his own escape, easing into the brush to relieve himself after moon-dark, then quietly disappearing.

Donegan, Cody and Farley turned their lone prisoner over to civil authorities at Bogg's Ranch on Picket Wire Creek, more properly named the Purgatoire, which flowed into the Arkansas River upstream from Fort Lyon, where Major Eugene Asa Carr awaited the return of his chief of scouts with his favorite thoroughbred.

By the first day of May the major marched his seven companies of the Fifth Cavalry out of Fort Lyon, on orders to head north for their new duty station of Fort McPherson, on the Platte River in Nebraska. At the head of the column rode Bill Cody and his band of civilian scouts hired from the surrounding country for the coming spring campaign. Cody kept Seamus Donegan busy riding advance scout those first days of their march, steering a course past Cheyenne Wells.

Odd duck that Colonel Henry Bankhead was, when the Fifth Cavalry arrived at Fort Wallace behind the young scout, the unpredictable Bankhead swallowed his pride enough to patch things up with Cody. The following day Cody and Donegan escorted Captain William F. Brown the thirteen miles into Sheridan to purchase some supplies needed by Brown's F Company for the next leg of Carr's journey to McPherson.

Springtime on the prairie can bring about changes in the chemistry of a young man's blood, of that there is little doubt. Cody and Donegan weren't immune to the season.

Captain Brown, along with these two jolly scouts, agreed that there was better use of their time than spending it all on buying grub. Brown was soon in no condition to purchase provisions. But, taking a break during their drinking, the three provisioned as best they could and sent the goods back to Fort Wallace with the company cook. The revelers stayed behind until sundown came and the money ran out.

The next morning, Carr ordered the march north resumed. From here on the Fifth Cavalry would enter Cheyenne country, bound for Fort McPherson. That first evening's camp out of Wallace, the F Company cook stomped up to Captain Brown and the rest at their mess fire as a spring sun settled in the west.

“Captain,” the cook fumed, wringing his apron angrily, “dunno what to do—can't find a trace of those damned victuals you bought yesterday in Sheridan.”

Brown gazed at Cody for a moment, strangely. “Can't for the life of me figure where your victuals would be, Corporal Murphy. We bought them in Sheridan and put them in the wagon.”

Murphy wrenched the apron between his hands nervously. He whispered, “Captain—ain't nothing in that wagon but a five-gallon demijohn of whiskey, another five gallons of brandy, and two cases of Old Tom-Cat gin.”

Cody and Donegan howled, slapping each other or pounding a leg as they fought to catch their breath. All about them, Brown's company roared with laughter.

“Dammit, Cody!” Brown shouted above the noise. “You and that bloody Irishman going to tell me what happened?” He gazed up at Murphy, his eyes begging forgiveness of the company cook as he pointed at the two civilians. “These two are to blame! They put me in the brine in the worst way.”

“By the saints, Cody—Brown's claiming we got him drunk, ain't he?” Donegan said, stomping his boot on the ground in a fit of laughter.

From the small crowd of soldiers who had gathered emerged an officer. “Captain Brown, we'll damn well trade some of our victuals for some of your … your provisions!” declared Philip Dwyer, commander of E Company.

“See there?” Donegan roared. “Cap'n Dwyer's here to pluck your cheeky ass from the fire, you fog-headed rummy!”