Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (34 page)

“Carr's given Captain Brown orders to take some companies north and feel our way around.”

Seamus pushed the hat brim back and peeked out again. “Bill Brown? The bastird we got drunk in Sheridan last spring?”

“One and the same.”

“What companies are you and Brownie taking out after the Injins, Bill Cody? Every one of them poor bastirds we marched in here with last week ain't fit to ride a wagon, much less straddle a horse yet.”

“Carr tells me there's three replacement companies already on their way from McPherson. Due in by nightfall. He's sending home A, E and M.”

“Them others what been in garrison at McPherson, eh? Maybe they'll be ready to try their hand at chasing Dog Soldiers now.”

“That's the cut of it,” Cody said. “You in, or have you had your fill of me?”

He laughed, easily and loud, pounding Cody on the leg before reaching over to wrap the young scout up in his big arms, squeezing Cody for all he was worth.

“You addle-brained blackguard! I'll ride with you till me tongue is swollen and there's not a drop of whiskey left west of the Missouri River. Had me fill of you, indeed!”

Seamus stood, offering his hand and pulling Cody up. “C'mon, let's go celebrate something.”

Cody dusted his britches off. “I take it you're in?”

“In, by damned—or the Virgin Mary ain't Catholic.”

From the bivouac of the Fifth Cavalry, the pair of them tromped up the hill to the squat fort buildings, where they ran across Captain William Brown.

“Cody. You and the Irishman just in time to buy us a drink.”

Seamus eyed the cut of the short, hefty civilian at the captain's side. Though clearly not a soldier, nor at all a soldierly type, nonetheless the man wore the standard-issue, blue wool military coat. The left breast of the coat hung dripping with some twenty colorful gold medals and insignia of fraternal societies.

Donegan looked back at the captain to say, “And this time we're paying—instead of the army?”

Brown laughed along with them, then explained the joke on him to the civilian. The captain suddenly snapped his fingers, sobering. “Just remembered something I should tell you both—being friends of General Carr.”

Cody went quickly serious. “He's not in trouble with the brass, is he?”

Brown shook his head. “Hell, no. The newspapers love him and the Fifth Cavalry. Nebraska and Colorado legislatures are drafting resolutions of commendation for wiping out Tall Bull's village. No,” he sighed. “This is something that strikes a lot closer to home.”

“Tell us,” Donegan prompted.

“One of his children,” Brown replied. “In fact two of his boys. Clarkey—he'd be close to three now—and very sick.”

“It must be eating the man up,” Cody replied. “To be out here and have your child sick like that.”

Brown wagged his head. “That isn't the worst of it. The general left St. Louis just weeks after his youngest was born—young George, he is named. The boy was about five months old when … when—”

“What do you mean the boy
was
five months old?” Donegan asked.

The captain swallowed, eyeing the civilian. “George died a couple days ago. I was there this morning when the telegram caught up with the general.”

“Carr's boy died? Of what?”

Brown shrugged. “Haven't found out. I've told you all I know from reading the telegram in his hand for myself … he wouldn't let it go. I just remember seeing his wife's name—Mary—at the bottom. And, one other sentence she wrote him: ‘Oh dear Gen'l I wish you were here.'”

“Goddamn the way things work out for the man,” Cody cursed. “We were skunked all of last winter while other outfits blundered into glory. Now here while Carr's just riding to the top of the heap—something like this comes along to kick the pins out from under him. Damn the fates anyway.”

“He's heading back to be with her, ain't he, Captain?” Donegan asked.

Brown nodded. “Tomorrow. He's telegraphed Colonel Emory at McPherson requesting emergency leave. He'll go east if he gets leave or no.”

“By damned—then we ought to do our best to catch those Dog Soldiers what slipped away from us at Summit Springs, boys!” Seamus cheered.

“For General Carr, by Jupiter!” Cody rejoiced, using one of Carr's favorite exclamations.

“I'm ready for that drink now, Captain,” Seamus said, pointing the way. “By the way, who's your boon companion here, Brownie?”

Captain Brown stopped, suddenly self-conscious. “I'm dreadfully sorry—forgot my manners there, boys.” He gestured at the squat civilian, then to the Irishman. “The tall, gray-eyed one is Seamus Donegan.”

The two shook hands. Then the stranger presented his hand to the young, blond scout.

“Bill Cody's the name. Didn't catch yours.”

The stranger smiled. “William F. Cody, you said?”

“That's right, sir.”

“You're the one named Buffalo Bill?”

He smiled with the recognition. “By golly—that's what they've taken to calling me, I guess.”

He shook Cody's hand like he wanted it to come off the end of the scout's arm. “By all that's holy—I'm proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cody. My name's Edward Zane Carroll Judson.”

“Sweet Mither Mary—but that's a mouthful of a name,” muttered the Irishman.

Judson glanced at Donegan. “If you like, you can use the name I'm better known by—Ned Buntline.”

Chapter 29

July 28, 1869

“You can read, boy?”

Jack O'Neill looked up at the white man whose shadow had come across his yellowed copy of the
Rocky Mountain News
dated a week earlier. “I read.”

The white laborer sat down on the loading dock beside the mulatto. “You ain't just hacking me, are you, boy? I mean—you really read?”

He eyed him, wishing the knife were in his hand and he could open the white man up the way the Cheyenne had taught him to use the knife. The way the renegade opened Emmy up—

Jack quickly hefted the pain of that away with a healthy draught of contempt for the man he had worked beside for weeks now. “My daddy's people taught me.”

He nodded, taking another large bite of the bread loaf he ate for lunch. “I thought you was high-yellow. White daddy, eh?” When he didn't get an answer from O'Neill, the white man pressed on undeterred. “Didn't leave you nothing when the South lost, did he?”

“I like it out here.”

“Shit, niggers like you thought you'd have it better when the Yankees won the war—”

O'Neill snagged the man's shirt, lifting him off the brick and plank warehouse dock. “You talk a little too much.”

The man's eyes showed his quail-like fear. “Didn't mean … just that—ain't nothing for any of us to go back to after the war.”

He let the man go and went back to his paper. His eyes were scanning the headlines on the bottom half of the sun-bleached paper as the white man self-consciously chattered on with a mouth full of his old bread.

“… a farm and a milk cow. It's gone too—”

“Shut up,” O'Neill hissed, scratching the new whiskers that itched on his cheek.

His eyes went across the words, being sure of each one. Dark letters, more bold than the others and bigger to boot, announcing the news … what was news days ago. He flipped the paper up—finding the date. Days old now—Lord, how it made his heart pound with something fierce and damp. Like coupling with those Cheyenne women.

FIFTH CAVALRY DEFEAT CHEYENNE

Carr's Cavalry Strike Tall Bull at Summit Springs

Bold, black words leaped at him off the yellowed, brittle page like the wings of the moths rattling at this very moment around inside his belly. He mouthed most of them, unaware of where he sat or the poor trash beside him as he read.

“… Dog Soldiers driven from the village … fifty-two warriors killed … seventeen prisoners … only casualty was one trooper wounded … two white women held prisoner … laid to rest at the scene of the victory … as just compensation for the horror of her captivity … returning to McPherson … continuing fall campaign from Fort Sedg—”

He looked up at the white man. Jack grabbed the worker by the shirt again, catching him just as he took a bite off the loaf of brown bread.

“Where's this Fort Sedgwick?”

“S-Sedgwick?” he mumbled around the bread, swallowing, eyes glassing over with moisture as he fought to breathe with the dough swelling on his tongue. He spit it out, swallowing hard. “Up north—”

“Where, up north?”

“North and east some from here … on the South Platte,” he answered, looking at the bite of lumpy bread he had spit out on the yellow dust as if he actually yearned for it.

“South Platte River.”

He nodded enthusiastically, still staring at the lump of moist dough. “You follow it—all the way … can't miss Fort Sedgwick—up by Julesburg.”

“Still in Colorado Territory?”

“By damned if it ain't. Still in Colorady—”

Jack stood suddenly, catching the man off balance. He fell back to his elbow on the plank flooring.

“Tell your bossman the nigger don't wanna work for him no more.”

“You up and quitting?”

“Just like that.”

“He ain't gonna like it—here'n middle of the day.”

“Tell him he's gonna have to learn to live with it. The darkie don't work here no more.”

“What about your pay? You got two and a half day's coming.”

“Maybe he'll give it to you, Homer.”

The white man smiled, then it sank in. He wagged his head with disappointment. “Ain't likely, boy. Ain't at all likely he'll do that.”

Jack smiled, thinking of what he had to do as he leaped down from the end of the warehouse dock, avoiding the moist horse apples clustered everywhere. “You're right, Homer. He'll keep my money for himself, won't he?”

“Where you going?”

“Don't matter, 'cause you don't need to know,” Jack replied over his shoulder as he hurried down Blake Street, heading for the Elephant Corral, where he had been sleeping the last six nights.

That room with the seven other snoring laborers, most of them white, with one Mexican thrown in, had grown a little too close for the likes of Jack O'Neill. In exchange for mucking a few stalls, he had parlayed himself a bed of soft straw every night in a vacant stall from Robert Teats.

Damn if it hadn't beat that stuffy room with wall-to-wall bodies covered with old sweat and afflicted with britches crusted with dried urine. At least the Cheyenne knew how to live out on the prairie where the wind blew much of the stench away. And unlike the white man, they bathed.

It made him think on Tall Bull. Wondering how the big copper-skinned man looked in death. The paper had said the chief was killed by someone named Cody. And that was the man leading the civilian scouts for the Fifth Cavalry.

He remembered that much.

Enough to put it together in his mind and set his course. Feeling as if he were closing in at last on the tall gray-eyed killer of Roman Nose … who he knew was riding with Cody's scouts for something better than a year. This was something solid, something he could almost taste.

Snatching his few belongings and stuffing them inside the single blanket he quickly rolled, Jack slapped the stolen saddle and blanket atop the stolen horse he had ridden here to Denver City. The animal had one more journey to make for him. Didn't matter that the horse was cow-hocked and ready for pasture, he figured the animal still had enough bottom left in it for this one last, short trip north.

Fort Sedgwick beckoned.

As he left the outskirts of town, pushing along the east bank of the South Platte, Jack O'Neill was sure he could almost make out the gray eyes of the killer in the low clouds overhead that threatened to soak the land with another summer squall.

The gray eyes soon to be filled with fear.

*   *   *

“I'll be damned if that Buntline ain't full of talk,” Bill Cody muttered as he came to a squat beside the Irishman's evening fire.

Supper over, Seamus had a kettle of coffee he had pulled off the flames. “Never at a loss for words, that one.”

Cody twisted his tin cup around and around on a finger. “It ain't that he's just making conversation, Seamus—Buntline asks so damned many questions.”

Donegan inched forward to splash a little cold water in the coffee kettle, settling the grounds. “What's the sort he's asking you?”

After Cody had skimmed his coffee tin through the kettle and set himself back against his saddle, he let out a sigh. “Stuff about the wagon work I did for Majors and Russell, lots of questions about the mail express I ran for a few months.”

Earlier that day Captain Brown had led them down the South Platte River as far as O'Fallon's Station, where Ned Buntline hopped the train to continue his trip east. Every day for the better part of a week on the trip up from Fort Sedgwick, the soon-to-be dime novelist pressed Cody for information on his exploits and daring deeds.

“Didn't ask you anything about hunting buffalo?”

Cody snorted over his cup. “Damn if Buntline didn't like them stories—riding through 'em or making a stand of it.”

The first day north of O'Fallon's Station, Cody and his scouts had finally come across the trail of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, who evidently were fleeing across the North Platte, toward the land of their northern cousins.

“For being such a strange sort, Buntline didn't lack for gumption,” Donegan said.

“You see how he put his horse down into the South Platte all wide and high, swollen with rain?”

Seamus agreed, sipping at his coffee. “He swam the bleeming horse over like he did it every day.”