Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (21 page)

Carr ground his teeth a minute. He studied the column coming up over his shoulder. “I can't cross in the dark, fellas. Even worse would be for me to forge across the river before the train has come up.”

Cody nodded, scratching his nose. “This is a nasty bunch—been known to double back and attack at night. They've hit us and run before.”

“From everything I was told before I came out here in the fifties—Indians didn't attack at night,” the major said, wagging his head.

“The officers who told you that hadn't fought Injins before,” Donegan said.

“What do you think makes this bunch so different than others?”

“General, these are Cheyenne Dog Soldiers,” Seamus answered. “Their kind just doesn't fight to defend their families—Dog Soldiers fight simply for the love of killing.”

“Then that decides it—I don't want that bunch destroying our supply train,” Carr repeated. “I'll wait here until morning, when the entire unit can start off anew.”

Cody wagged his head. “I agree with you on waiting for the rest of your men to come up, General—but don't count on ever finding this bunch of Cheyenne again for some time.”

Carr stepped closer, the strain of the afternoon's battle showing in the creases of his dusty face. “That's maybe the first time you're wrong, Cody—but you're dead wrong just the same. I killed thirty of these bastards today. Mark my words, I'll find these Dog Soldiers again, by God. I'll find this bunch again if it takes all summer.”

*   *   *

If it wasn't lockjaw, typhus or diphtheria, it had been worms, dysentery or malaria.

Jack O'Neill poked with an iron picket-pin at the willow limbs in his tiny fire. Remembering all the sickness of those years before the great war, when he grew up on the plantation with his white papa. In a house filled with concubines and mulatto children. Hell, even the master's lily-white children were suckled and raised by the house niggers. The man's white wife spent too much time dressing and napping and eating to be bothered with nursing or raising her own young'uns.

Too busy to keep her man satisfied as well. Jack's papa had a wandering eye, and grew partial to Jack's high-cheeked, full-lipped black mama.

“Good stock.”

That's what Jack had heard the man call his mama many, many times during his visits to the slave quarters. Jack's mama was good breeding stock. It wasn't until many years later, during the war itself, that Jack learned what his mama did all those times behind the blanket partition with the white master who was his father. All the grunting and groaning.

Hell, Jack didn't do it for breeding—just for fun.

It was a damp, cold, and lonely camp he had made a day's ride west of Fort Wallace. Heading for Cheyenne Wells and the road ranch there. Last night he had determined he would not ride north in search of the gray-eyed killer. Too many soldiers and too much open territory—with Cheyenne war and hunting parties combing it.

His plucked eyebrows had grown back, and every day he was looking more like a freedman making his stake on the plains. Looking less and less with every passing sun like the mulatto turned smooth-faced Dog Soldier running with the band now under Tall Bull.

Soon enough he could disappear into any crowd.

Jack nodded, smiling grimly as he pulled his collar up over his ears. The wind was insistent, dusting his little fire with a spray of sparks. That wind was all left behind in the passing of the spring storm about the time the sun decided to fall out of the gray underbellies of the clouds and settle on the peaks far to the west.

He knew he was brooding on it—with a growing despair that he had already killed twice that he knew of, and still he had not completed his vow to Roman Nose.

Perhaps now it would be easier to track the gray-eyed one. Able to disappear into a crowd when it was done.

Maybe that was something that fit like a snug boot inside him with all the hate and loathing he carried in a festering boil. Along with something unnamed pulling him northwest from Fort Wallace. They said the next fort north of here was at Jules-burg, a place called Sedgwick.

But more and more Jack was thinking he should be going to Denver City. More people. More money. And certainly more women. He had been without a woman for too long. After all those …

He squashed the thought of their dusky, copper-skinned limbs the way he would crack a louse between his fingernails.

Denver City was the place, he decided. If nothing else, he owed it to himself to make a holiday of it. But it still didn't explain why he felt drawn to the busy place peopled of so many white men.

Come what may, Denver City just might be the ideal place for a coffee-colored mulatto to disappear for a while, having himself a new powder-skinned chippy every night—planning what he was going to do when he finally tracked down the gray-eyed killer.

*   *   *

For two more long days Major Eugene Carr pushed his Fifth Cavalry behind Cody's scouts, doggedly pursuing the trail of the fleeing village down the Republican River, using every available minute of light. With the aging of the season, the sun made its appearance in the east earlier each day, easing out of the west later each evening.

As he did every morning prior to the day's march, Carr rotated his companies. On the sixteenth the major moved M Company under lieutenants John M. Babcock and William J. Volkmar forward to advance guard under Bill Cody. For the better part of six hours the forty soldiers stayed some three miles ahead of the rest of the troops, following a freshening trail.

“You care to stop the men for a spell? Let 'em refresh their canteens?” Cody asked First Lieutenant Babcock as they reached the mouth of a stream flowing from the north into the Republican.

“What's that up ahead?”

“Spring Creek, I figure.”

Babcock twisted about on his saddle, quickly studying the men of Company M, dusty, sweaty and fatigued. “I suppose we should give them twenty minutes.”

Cody led them down the gentle slope toward the tree-lined mouth of Spring Creek as Babcock gave orders to his second.

“Mr. Volkmar, see that two men are posted here on the high ground to watch for sign of the main column. Relieve them with two others after ten minutes.”

No sooner had the soldiers dismounted and spread out along the creekbank than the first war whoop split the air.

Gunfire erupted from upstream. Over the hills poured warriors bearing down on Babcock's small detail.

“Order the men to mount!” Volkmar shouted at his first lieutenant.

Cody grabbed Babcock, whirling him about by the arm. “No! You'll never outrun these red bastards.”

“There's … more than two hundred of them!” Volkmar shouted.

Babcock swallowed hard, his eyes growing wide as the warriors closed in. “We don't stand a chance in the saddle, Mr. Volkmar. Sergeant Payne—inform the men we'll use the horses as shields. Ring up … ring up, goddammit!”

The old sergeant tossed the reins to his animal to another before he darted into the confusion, hollering his orders. “In a circle, boys! Ring up!”

Cody was pulling on his hesitant army mount with the wide streak of white running from forelock to muzzle. “C'mon, Powder Face—no time for fighting me now.” He turned, shouting to a half-dozen soldiers struggling with their rearing mounts, “Close up.”

“Volley fire, Sergeant!” Babcock yelled.

“Fire!” repeated Sergeant Payne.

“Let 'em reload and fire on their own, dammit!” Cody snarled at Babcock.

As the warriors swept past, they broke like the river on a large boulder, racing along two flanks of the soldiers' circle like foaming, surging whitewater. Forty guns crackled through the timber and willow, spilling three horsemen into the new green grass that waved in the spring breeze beneath an endless canopy of blue. Two of the fallen Cheyenne were dragged over the hill at the end of long, rawhide tethers tied from their waists to their ponies' necks. The third lay unmoving beneath the pounding hooves until a companion swooped by, leaning off his pony and snagging an arm.

The entire bunch was gone over the hills to north and west, their wailing cries fading beneath the midday sun.

“Get your men reloading if they haven't a'ready,” Cody reminded Volkmar.

“Reload. Everyone, reload quickly.”

“You think they're coming back?” Babcock asked, kneeling beside Cody, who was hunched beneath the legs of Powder Face, slamming home cartridges into the Blakeslee loading tube for his Spencer.

He snorted, feeling the drip of cold sweat down his own backbone. “Damn right they'll be back. They're just feeling you out, Lieutenant. Pushing in the edges a might. Digging for your soft spot.”

Babcock swallowed slowly. His eyes raked the young soldiers in his untested command. “We're … soft all around, Cody.”

For a moment he gazed at the lieutenant, perhaps only five or six years older than he, his eyes softening. “Then let's pray Carr brings up the rest of the unit on the double.”

“We won't last long, will we?” Volkmar asked as he squatted beside Cody.

He wagged his head. “No. But we can try to fall back.”

The war whoops grew in volume once more. The pounding of hundreds of pony hooves throbbed the valley floor from two directions.

Babcock strained to understand. “You just told us we didn't stand a ghost of a chance if we made a run for it. Now you—”

“We're not running, Lieutenant,” Cody said, rising, slipping the Spencer over his saddle. “We'll fall back, a yard at a time. Keep the men together … on foot. Inside the barricade of their mounts.”

The first lieutenant looked at his second. “You get all that, Mr. Volkmar?”

He nodded. “An orderly retreat it is, Mr. Babcock. Just as scout Cody has directed. Yes, sir!”

“Sergeant Payne!”

“Sir?”

“Are we reloaded?”

“Yessir,” Payne huffed as he skidded to a stop nearby.

Babcock grabbed the old sergeant by the shoulder and explained the plan. “Wait till they're gone this time by.”

“Fire!” Cody hollered before he brought his own cheek down on the rifle stock and pulled the trigger, feeling the powerful carbine slam like a mule kick into his shoulder. Powder Face nudged against him, frightened by the rifle fire, scared of the screeching Indians bearing down on them once more, the horse perhaps skittish most of all for the fear it smelled in its master.

Up and down the oblong ring of soldiers and mounts, the white men fired and the horses bucked and reared as arrows flitted among them, bullets hissing and whining like angry hornets.

“Now, Lieutenant!”

“Retreat!” Babcock followed Cody's instruction. “An orderly retreat … this way.”

“Follow the lieutenant!” Payne shouted, waving his arm, letting the rest pass. He waited, watching the youngsters scurry past, each one yanking on a reluctant mount, firing after the disappearing backs of the young warriors as another wave of Cheyenne emerged out of the north.

“You coming, Sergeant?” Cody asked, stopping beside Payne.

He smiled. “We'll close the file together, you young sprout!”

Cody shoved him aside as the warriors broke from the trees.

Pict—pict—pict.

Bullets whispered past the civilian as Payne fell. Lead filling the void where a heartbeat before the sergeant had been standing. Cody was defenseless, Powder Face rearing behind him now, pulling on his left arm, ruining his aim. The white man stood in the open.

“Get down, son—”

As Cody sailed backward in the air, he marveled on how funny it felt. The first time he had been knocked off his feet. Not really sure at first if Powder Face hadn't pulled him backward, or that the old sergeant had pushed him … then realizing something was dreadfully wrong with the way his head hurt. He struck the ground so hard it knocked the wind from him.

A spray of meteors cascaded before his eyes, pain welling behind them like a slow lava flow of red ice. His ears rang with a shrill whistle, reminding him of the bugle of an elk bull in the rut.

Payne was over him, dragging him up by the collar of his hickory shirt.

“Jumpin' jiminy, son,” the sergeant whispered. “The rest are moving away.”

“Is … is it trumpets I hear?” Cody asked, sitting up slowly, then turning over on his knees weakly. He felt like he wanted to heave, light-headed, and his stomach heavier like never before.

Payne put his ear to the breeze, sorting sounds. “By damn, it is! Carr's coming, young'un. We're gonna make it after all.”

He stood, wobbly at first, unsure and leaning against Payne for a moment. “They're coming again—hurry…”

Payne nodded, staring at someplace on the top of Cody's head as he did. He reached down, untying the faded red bandanna that hung about Cody's neck. “You need something. Here, put this 'round your head so we can get the hell out of here.”

Cody watched the old man spit a long stream of tobacco before he quickly lapped the bandanna around his head. It served to stop the blood dripping into his eye. Then he realized he had lost his hat. He spotted it more than thirty yards back, as the warriors screamed over the hilltop again.

He took a step in its direction.

“Leave it!” Payne shouted.

Cody nodded reluctantly, securing a second knot in the bandanna. Angrily he yanked on the rein, bringing the mount to his side as he jammed the Spencer against his shoulder and fired, then twice and a third time. Walking backward slowly, they protected the rear flank of the retreating Company M.

Through it all, every step of the way, the old sergeant at his shoulder muttered under his breath between nearly every shot.

“Jumpin' jiminy—but you're a cool one, you are. Injun bullet scratched your brains loose the way it did … bleeding the way you are. You're a cool one, Bill Cody.”