Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (22 page)

Chapter 17

May 16, 1869

“To my dying day, Cody—I'll not forget that scene when the whole unit came up and we found you and M Company making a stand of it,” said Major Eugene Carr late on the evening following the brief skirmish with the Cheyenne on Spring Creek.

Seamus Donegan sat with Cody at the fire where coffee boiled as they waited for the gray of twilight to darken into night. “You ought to hear Babcock and Volkmar go on about you, Cody.”

Carr nodded, accepting a tin of coffee. “They haven't stopped talking about your coolness and bravery—especially in the face of your wound.”

Cody gently touched the fresh bandage tied round his head to cover the deep furrow that marked where the Indian bullet had plowed along the top of his skull for nearly half a foot.

“If I go on this ride for you, General—I need two things.”

“One is that I'm riding with you,” Donegan said quickly.

Cody nodded, with a grin. “And the other is, I need a new hat.”

Carr chuckled. “I'll supply you both the Irishman and the hat.”

He wagged his head slowly, still aching the way it was. “Glory—but that was a damned fine hat, Seamus. Almost as pretty as my head before them red bastards tried to shoot that off.”

“They nearly did, Cody,” Carr replied. “We rode to the sounds of the guns as fast as I could bring up the whole unit. And as we came up, the Cheyenne broke off from their attack on Babcock. But I've got to tell you I was confused for a moment or two—seeing the Indians in retreat on the prairie beyond … then seeing a figure wearing what looked like a red cap rise slowly from the crest of a nearby hill. It puzzled me, because the figure wore buckskins and his long hair was caught on the breeze.”

“Sounds like he was a Injin to me, it does,” Donegan muttered with a smile for Cody.

Carr nodded. “When I looked closer, I could see that the figure led your horse, Powder Face … and I found that the figure was you, but without that dusty sombrero you're so fond of. And that's when I first spied the bloody handkerchief covering your frightful wound.”

Cody stood, slinging the dregs of his coffee toward the firepit. “That hat was a favorite, General. That's why I want the army to get me another like it as soon as possible.”

“When we reach McPherson, rest assured of that.”

“And for my ride?”

“Any hat you want, Cody. Even mine.”

“One like it will do,” Cody replied. “So—you agree Fort Kearny is our best bet?”

“North and east of us, on the Platte. We've been chasing this bunch of Cheyenne about as long as we can without resupply. Fort Kearny is the closest depot. It's up to you two now.”

“We'll bring supplies back for the regiment. No one else knows this country between here and there the way I do.”

“And you're sure as hell not riding out of here alone tonight with that chunk of skull ridged up the way it is,” Donegan quickly added.

They turned as the horses were brought up to them, and Carr took the hat from his head.

“If this fits, wear it until we get to McPherson.” He reached inside his blouse to pull out a folded slip of paper. “This is the requisition I'm making on the Fort Kearny stores. It will get you what we need from the quartermaster's supplies there.”

Cody patted Powder Face then hoisted himself to the saddle, feeling a bit unsteady. “We'll see you soon, General Carr.”

The leader of the Fifth Cavalry saluted the pair and watched as they pointed their mounts northeast from Spring Creek.

“I wager I'll see you sooner than I imagine.”

*   *   *

Slap dark surrounded them as they loped the first few miles, to put some distance between themselves and the regimental camp of the Fifth Cavalry.

Seamus admired the younger man who rode the piebald at his side, this Bill Cody who had fought Cheyennes that afternoon, been seriously wounded and now was taking this cross-country ride under the cloak of darkness to avoid roving war parties, as if he were the strongest man Carr had for the journey.

Perhaps he is, Donegan brooded, praying the Cheyenne were continuing their flight south and would not double back to the north.

It was well after dark, with at least an hour left until moonrise, before Seamus let himself relax in the saddle, finally believing the Cheyenne actually might be in their camp somewhere south of the Republican by now, licking their wounds and not desiring another engagement with the soldiers anytime soon. Babcock's M Company had been lucky, no doubt of that. But a good deal of the credit had to go to the old sergeant and the young scout who together had covered the company's retreat until the full unit could come up to pull their fat from the fire.

That night the pair did what to many would have been impossible—covering some fifty miles in the dark, heading by instinct and the stars above for Fort Kearny on the Platte River. Like a beacon spotted by a wayward ship on a rocky shoreline, Cody and Donegan spied the bare flagpole from beyond the rolling swell of land in the first graying of dawn that eighteenth day of May.

They were presenting Carr's request to the post commander when the sunrise gun roared across the parade.

By mid-morning the pair was leading a short procession of supply wagons from the fort, headed on a southwesterly course of interception with Carr's cavalry. The major would be continuing his march north, up Spring Creek toward the Republican.

“If I figure it right, Seamus—we'll find the general's boys camped on the creek, about fifteen miles above last night's camp.”

Donegan nodded, yawning. “Where two idiots left to ride out on this ruddy fools' errand.”

“Don't be hard on me, Irishman. You volunteered to come along to nurse me—but you really came along to buy yourself some whiskey.”

Seamus smiled, pulling the green bottle from his shirt. “And aren't you glad I did, Bill Cody?”

“Give me a tonic, Surgeon Seamus,” and he smiled. “I'm sore in need of it—and do believe my head is aching something fierce.”

Cody's supply train reached Carr's camp far down Spring Creek that evening after sunset. The cheering and huzzahs for the pair who had brought in the supply train went on and on as the troops celebrated with salt-pork, beans and hard bread. Once again they had fresh coffee and were no longer consigned to boiling old grounds. Two genuine heroes who had been in the saddle for more than forty hours without sleep.

“I'll let General Sheridan know of my commendation as soon as we reach McPherson in two days,” Carr said as he came up with coffee tin in hand. His nose twitched, his eyes widening. “Is that whiskey I smell, Cody?”

“Aye, it is, General,” Donegan answered, standing, with the green bottle in evidence.

Carr licked his lips. “It's … well, by damned—let me have a pull on that, will you? It will do me some good, I'll grant you.”

“My pleasure, General.” Seamus handed the bottle over and watched the major pull thirstily.

He brought it down from his lips. “Been a long time, fellas. My, but that was better than I could possible imagine.”

“Man can always find whiskey when he wants it,” Cody said. “Especially if that man is born with a Irish nose and is named Donegan.”

They had had their laugh with Carr, and wandered off to the blankets not long after filling their bellies with warm food. As it always does, the next sunrise came too early for the two who'd kept sleep at bay for the better part of two days. That reveille meant a quickened march north to the Platte River, then pointing the column west along the south bank. Again the following day Carr kept his regiment marching toward the setting sun, reaching Fort McPherson, their new duty station, near evening.

“It's about time we got here too,” Donegan grumbled to Cody as they sighted the bastions of the prairie fort. He held his green bottle up in the fading light, swished the last of it around and offered some to his young companion.

Cody sipped at the whiskey, then returned the bottle.

He drank the last with a flourish, then sent the bottle sailing into the nearby Platte. “Good thing we'll be stationed near a sutler for a while, Bill Cody—for you've given this Irishman one hell of a thirst having to follow you and fight the ruddy Cheyenne!”

He was no young warrior, but nonetheless, the blood ran hot in his veins in these moments before attack.

Tall Bull glanced to the east, gazing at the brightening line stretched between the horizon and the blackness of night where the sun would emerge in a matter of heartbeats. Already the air felt warmed, if only by the prospect of another day.

Perhaps, he thought, it is the coming of battle that warms the day, the way it fires every sinew of my body.

Nearly three hundred of the finest warriors to ever fork a war-pony awaited his command. They stood in anticipation back in the timber of coulees and dry washes, behind hills in the shadows of night-going. His command would bring them roaring down on this second settlement that stained the sacred hunting ground of buffalo country the white man called Kansas.

The warriors had ridden south of the creek called the Beaver. South of Prairie Dog Creek and on to the Solomon where they had struck twice in the last risings of the sun. Raiding was good now in the Moon of Fattening as the days grew longer and warmer, as the grass stood tall and green to fill the bellies of the ponies that carried them down on these settlements.

They had been taking everything they could carry on the backs of those ponies when they left the white man's buildings burning. Thick columns of oily black smoke smudged the sky as they rode away from the reddened, naked bodies they had scalped and butchered. White-faced cattle and hogs left to bloat in the sun, arrows bristling from their ribs.

Guns and bullets, kettles and blankets. One warrior even took a fancy to a ladder-backed rocking chair and carried it off from one raid. And yesterday morning they had found a large grouping of settlers' cabins hugging the Saline River. They were close to what the white man called the Buffalo Tank, near the tracks of the great smoking horse that moved the soldiers west toward the setting sun. In that settlement one of Tall Bull's warriors had emerged from a burning cabin, holding a screaming woman thrashing at the end of his arm. She swung at him nonstop as he laughed. And she talked in some tongue that was so foreign that even Tall Bull had to admit the white man must have many dialects—perhaps as many as the Shahiyena and Lakota and Arapaho and Kiowa and …

This woman's tongue was strange. But she was possessed of muscle, and young enough to bear many children. Her loins would give birth to many Cheyenne warriors.

He smiled widely, glancing in anticipation at the coming light of day. To him, there was great irony in dragging these white women along instead of killing the women beside their men, who'd been left to lie and bloat in the sun near their burning cabins and butchered livestock. The women would belong to their captors, and the Cheyenne sons born of their wombs would grow to make war on the white man for many summers to come.

“It is time,” White Horse whispered at Tall Bull's side.

He nodded. “Stand and give my signal.”

White Horse leaped to his saddle. Tall Bull tossed him the long lance from which fluttered the hair of many who had fallen to the fighting skill of the Dog Soldier chief. The lance wavered slowly back and forth, causing a rustle along the hilltops as warriors sprang to the backs of their ponies, adjusting medicine pouches and weapons, shields and blankets.

When Tall Bull had climbed atop his pale pony, he nodded to White Horse. “It is time to rub this place clean.”

White Horse volved the lance around and around in four tight circles, then jabbed the air with it, pointing down the slope.

From the throat of all three hundred sprang the cries intended to make the white man soil his pants as he lay sleeping in his warm bed, there beside his white-skinned woman who would soon lie pinned beneath a Cheyenne husband, receiving his seed, which each summer would grow into another Cheyenne warrior raised to stop the profane advance of the white man across this sacred buffalo ground.

In a wide arc the warriors swept off the hills and out of the timbered coulees, screeching their war-cries as they bore down on the humble grouping of cabins and split-rail corrals that cast shadows along the Saline River of central Kansas. The first of the horsemen had nearly reached the cabins and livestock before the warriors fired their first shots.

Every bit as quickly, those first shots were answered by a few random replies from the darkened cabin windows—bright flares of muzzle-flash exploding like momentary fireflies illuminated against a summer's night sky.

The milk cows, pigs and hogs in nearby pens cried out in confusion and terror, finally in pain as the horsemen swept around them, tearing down fence-rails, freeing the animals, then having sport with the domesticated stock before each trembling beast fell kicking in its death throes.

Here and there the Cheyenne worked close-in, riding up to the small, curtained windows, smashing them with lances and rifle butts, then hurling burning torches into the dawn darkness that for a moment sheltered the white families inside. When the flames and smoke and fear grew too much to keep them inside, the settlers burst through the doors in a flurry—more afraid of the flames than of the unknown waiting in the pink-orange of dawn outside.

Some of the men fought for a few desperate minutes, aiming and reloading, shooting until overrun. Others fell immediately to bullets or arrows or club or were impaled on the long war-lance of the Cheyenne buffalo-hunting days. One man was impaled, left swinging, swinging gently on his front door.

Screaming, everyone screaming just as loud as the animals grunted and squealed, just as horrendous as the victors cried out in blood-lust as each new white victim fell onto the spring-damp soil.