Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (5 page)

“Why, you—I ought to put you in irons for this, Cody!”

“Major Royall, Cody and I only brought the buffalo to you,” Donegan said, edging up to prevent things from going to blows. “This way there's no wear and tear on government property. And no use of government employees—them soldiers of yours—to provide meat for the camp.”

The much-scarred Royall eyed them both, grinding his palms on the front of his britches as if he itched to be at them both, then thinking better of it. “You got the meat here. Now be at it, Cody.”

“Can I get some of your boys to help me butcher our supper, Major?” Cody asked.

“Captain Sweatman!”

“Yessir,” replied the young officer, loping up.

“Get a few squads of your men to help these two,” Royall growled. A longtime veteran of the Indian country, serving from the days of the Dragoons, Royall commanded respect among his soldiers. On his forehead and cheek he wore scars of Confederate steel. Frustrated, he waved at the crowd gathered four and five deep. “Rest of you—get this damned camp picked up! You, there—get those animals quieted!”

Royall turned on his heel, forcing his way through the crowd. Renewed hurraws and laughter swallowed up the two hunters.

“The major won't forget this, Bill,” Donegan whispered as they eased out of their saddles.

Cody stared after the man disappearing through the shove of bodies. “Hope he doesn't, Seamus. I suppose I've grown to hate pompous officers 'bout as bad as you do.”

“I've heard barracks-talk about Royall. In 'sixty-two at the battle of Hanover Court House, he took six major saber wounds in hand-to-hand combat with the Johnnies. His unit was cut off, surrounded—but he and a few more cut their way out and made it back to their regiment.”

Cody chewed on it a moment. “Maybe I was having too much fun with the man, eh?”

“Not that fun ain't good, Bill. Just … might not do to tempt the man this early in the campaign. He's the sort who's all spit and polish.”

“Goes by the book?”

“Old Dragoon veteran like him—it's all he knows, Bill.”

*   *   *

The autumn wind rattled the buffalo hides against the lodgepoles, reminding Tall Bull that it was the middle of the Moon of Scarlet Plums. Soon enough his people could expect the first snow. Their raiding would be over for another season.

Yet, many of the head men of this large band of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers had decided not to go the way of the other villages and bands who were presently going into winter camp. The warriors had come here tonight to discuss their many victories, fine plunder, scalps, and a handful of prisoners taken during their raids along the Saline and Solomon rivers. Even more, the blood among the Dog Soldiers beat hot and strong for continuing the pressure on the white man. Many voices were raised in favor of denying the soldiers any rest come the time of snow.

Tall Bull was their hero, no mistaking that. He had survived the attack of Colorado Volunteers on the Sand Creek camp of Black Kettle four winters before. Last summer he had seen again firsthand the treachery of General Hancock when soldiers surrounded a Cheyenne camp under a promise of peaceful negotiations, then attacked and destroyed the village after the Indians had sneaked away in the night.

Any soldiers looked the same to Tall Bull. They were his enemy.

He took great pride that he and his warriors did not follow the main leaders of the Cheyenne who had made peace with the white man and the army. To Tall Bull's camp had come some of the most hardened veterans of plains warfare. Not only Cheyenne Dog Soldiers who'd taken a vow to die with honor fighting the soldiers, but Arapahos and even some renegade Sioux under Pawnee Killer.

Theirs was a fighting band. Women and children readied at a moment's notice to tear down lodges and be on the march, to suffer the privations of the warpath as much as their men. Young, green warriors the Dog Soldiers were not.

These were the proven. The elite. And many times the most cruel. Among the Cheyenne, they were the
hotamintanio,
a select warrior society with its own magical rituals and omens, prayers, songs and taboos.

These were the Cheyenne who vowed to clear their land of the white man for all time.

These were the Dog Soldiers of Tall Bull.

Chapter 2

October 1868

The air at twilight already had a bite to it. Nothing at all like the sweltering heat he had suffered a month ago when Forsyth's fifty scouts rode baking beneath this same sun, tracking Cheyenne across this same piece of ground.

An hour before the Fifth Cavalry had reached Prairie Dog Creek, called the Short Nose by many of the plainsmen Cody knew. Major Royall immediately set Company L to establishing a base camp while he divided the rest of his command into two battalions, which would bivouac some distance away. Come morning, Captain William H. Brown with Companies B, F and M, would work their way downstream, scouting east for more recent sign. At the same time Captain Gustavus Urban, leading Companies A, H and I, would follow Cody upstream, south by west, in hopes of running across some newer campsites abandoned by the Cheyenne.

“Evidently the old man figures it's better that we're split up for a time,” Donegan muttered as he loosened his mare's cinch. He watched longingly as Cody tightened his, checked the loads in his pistols then swept into the saddle once again.

“I'll be back to raise hell with you before you know it, Irishman. Major can't keep us apart all that long. Watch your hair!”

With a whoop, Cody leaped away, heading for Urban's command, just then getting their order to go to saddle. Both battalions headed for campsites over the hills, and those left behind settled into the routine of fire-building, coffee-brewing and watering the horses while beans and salt-pork bubbled above the flames.

The feeling would not free him—this loneliness and dread. It was the fourteenth of the month. Little more than a month since Forsyth had led his civilian scouts into this country. Two more sunrises and he would be forced to remember that bloody first day on the island. Seamus had promised himself he'd keep his mind busy. That was the whole idea about coming along on this scout with Cody and the Fifth Cavalry—so he would not have to drink himself crazy at Hays City, just to keep from remembering. He hungered now for a drink in the worst way and ran his tongue inside his cheek. It didn't kill the deep hunger, but it took some of the edge from it.

All he had to do now was deal with the loneliness and the dread. Captain Taylor's L Company weren't bad sorts. They were mostly boy soldiers, and not a bit interested in the big civilian scout who had been keeping to himself ever since the command pulled out of Fort Hays.

“Quiet is good,” Donegan whispered into the mare's ear as he rubbed her down with a handful of dried grass. “Sometimes, quiet is real good.”

Yet he longed for the company of soldiers with good talk and new ears for his old stories or perhaps new stories from others' lips. His loneliness would set in once the sky darkened and the stars came out in force, dusting the big canopy from horizon to horizon, with nothing to stop the view or clutter up the night but the full rising moon poking its big egg-yellow head up in the east at the edge of the endless prairie.

Sitting alone at his small fire and drinking his alkali coffee, it gave Donegan a little comfort to touch the medicine pouch hung at his neck. He pulled it from his shirt, thinking on the old mountain man who gave it to him a year gone now. Jim Bridger was of that breed who had spent a lifetime of nights separated from friends. Yet Seamus could not drive away the memories of one uncle dead on a sandy island—no more than he could resist the despair that he would never find Liam's brother, Ian.

Yet having Bridger's memory there at the fire tonight got Donegan's feelings all tangled up with his memories of Liam and the kind of man his uncle must have been. Seamus had few regrets in his life, yet one of the weightiest was not having known Liam better.

Ian—now he was a different matter altogether. The darker of his mother's two brothers from County Tyrone. Always brooding while younger brother Liam acted like a big leprechaun dancing through life the way sprites glided through the clover. Ian was the older of the two, always acting as if the world weighed on his shoulders. While Liam drew folks to him like magic, Ian took brutal pride in the fact that no man of Eire called him friend. He took no stock in people—telling his young nephew Seamus that friends only caused one heartache. Since Ian did not need people, he could not be hurt.

Donegan knelt at the fire, dragging the pot from the flames when the first shot rang out.

Cries erupted from the far side of camp, near the picket-line. A handful of shots rattled the dry night air beneath that rising moon that shed full, silver light on the tableland.

His coffee cup lay gurgling into the thirsty soil as his legs began churning, just as the first war-whoops sailed over the small encampment. Inside, his belly went cold, his mind working over the numbers and the odds if they were hit by something big. No small war-party this. That old saw that Sharp Grover and the other old-timers always told about Indians not coming at night—well, those old hands would just have to think that over now.

Seamus figured if the warriors were here after dark, they were here in numbers.

The growing intensity of their cries seemed to circle the camp as soldiers darted here and there, following orders of a few officers. Major Royall and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Brady each shouted at once to form up, hold their fire, volley-fire, secure the horses, and get out of the firelight.

Didn't matter, the moonlight shone bright enough for a man to stand out plain as day and make himself a good target to boot. But what the moon did to the soldiers, it did every bit as well to the warriors sweeping along the perimeter of the camp, working in and out of the horse herd. There were screams from the horses, and shouts from the soldiers punctuating the war-cries of the horsemen flitting in off the prairie like bat-winged shadows flying beneath the silver light.

Seamus brought the Henry to his shoulder and set to work on the riders. Most of them stayed upright atop their ponies in the dark, not too concerned with dropping off to the side as they rode in close.

The first he hit spilled to the sand and skidded to a stop as two more rode close behind, sweeping low and lifting the wounded warrior from the ground as they raced over the body.

Seamus levered four more rounds at the rescuers while the horsemen disappeared over the hills. There were a few final shouts and cries of pain from both sides as the riflefire slowed to random shots, then stopped altogether. It grew strangely quiet for long moments, until Royall was standing there in the moonlight.

“Reload immediately and report casualties. Mr. Brady—take a squad and secure the horses. Report back to me how many head we lost to the buggers.”

Royall turned on Donegan. “Irishman.”

“Major?” he replied as the officer stopped close.

“Looks like you were the only one to draw blood with that run-through they made on us.”

“Run-through?”

“Just like the Comanche I fought on the southern plains some twenty years ago,” Royall sighed.

“Comanche, eh?”

“Mouth of Coon Creek, that's on the Arkansas River.”

“You fought Injins before, Major. Well, a-well.”

“You and I're not the only ones. There's a few. But, I must say you were the coolest of the bunch just now.”

“I'm afraid we won't get a chance to find out how many we wounded. They always drag their dead away as well.”

“I'm a trained officer, Mr. Donegan. Rather than participate firsthand, I observe during the heat of battle. It's my duty to know how we stung the enemy—and you were the only one who stung these buggers tonight.”

Brady loped up. “Major!”

“How bad is it, mister?”

“Twenty-five … maybe twenty-six horses.”

“Damn!” Royall muttered. “God
damn
them!”

“How're your sojurs?”

Royall hollered into the night as the camp settled into an uneasy silence. One trooper wounded. Another dead. Both with arrow wounds. A few of the remaining stock had arrows stuck in them during the melee.

“I want a double watch, Captain Taylor,” Royall ordered. “Put your men around the herd now.”

“I'll go out yonder on the prairie, Major,” Seamus offered.

Royall seemed to size the civilian up. “You figure to see them coming back and give us a bit of a warning—that it?”

“Something like that.”

He pursed his lips and nodded once. “Good.”

Donegan started to go, pulling cartridges for the Henry from his vest pocket.

“Irishman!”

He turned on Royall.

“Just wanted you to know, Irishman—it was good having your gun on my side of things tonight.”

“You're welcome, Major.”

*   *   *

“Before the sun rises to the middle of the sky tomorrow, the soldiers will regroup and be on our trail,” Tall Bull warned his warriors when they finally came to a halt several miles from the soldier camp they had just raided.

“We will return to the village well before the sun rises,” Pile of Bones replied. “There is plenty of time for the women to tear down our lodges and begin the trail north.”

“Do not forget that some of our lodges have prisoners,” Tall Bull added. “They must be watched closely as we break camp.”

“I am for killing the white women!” growled Heavy Furred Wolf.

“No!” Tall Bull shouted. “These white women are ours to keep. Not to kill. They will prove of use to us yet. If nothing more, their wombs will nurture more Cheyenne warriors. We will make Dog Soldier squaws of them yet!”

“Heya! Heya!”
exclaimed many of the other warriors gathered close.