prepared for the winter … It is regretted that other of the villages near by were not surprised and destroyed, but this affair demonstrated the good policy of a stern chase after Indians, even with foot soldiers, who come in here to the relief of the cavalry, as their part in the play gives them renewed vigor and esprit.
No, his name wasn’t there. Not printed among the others as she reread the list of the dead. Not even among the wounded. Reassured, her heart hammering as it hadn’t in so long, Sam continued down the page.
LATER—September 10th—There was a little picket firing throughout last night, and this morning after the command was on march a number of Indians came down on the rear of the column, but were met with a warm reception by Captain Sumner’s battalion of Fifth cavalry, who covered the enemy in the ravines, killed several and disabled others. Privates Foster, company F, privates Wadden, Company M, and Geo. Clantier, company D, were wounded. The command marched fifteen miles to-day toward the Hills, bringing all the sick and wounded on twelve litters. Medical director Clements amputated the right leg of lieutenant Van Letwitz last evening and private Kennedy died of his wounds. No other amputations or deaths are likely to occur. American Horse died last night. Most of the captives are brought along, a few squaws being left back by the General to advise the hostile bands to go into the agency and behave themselves and all will be well with them. Colonel Mills, Lieutenant Cubbard and Frank Gruard go through to the hills tomorrow with a view to secure future supplies.
Lying on her back, holding the paper right above her face, Sam licked her lips thoughtfully, her eyes searching for some word of him. Maybe she had been wrong all along thinking he had gone with the column. Maybe he had stayed behind with the wagons up north at that camp General Crook established before he fought the Sioux on Rosebud Creek. No, Sam decided. Seamus would have come back here with one of the supply trains if he wasn’t going to stay on to fight with the rest of Crook’s troops.
So again she read the casualties. Despite the fact that she could not find his name anywhere, Sam could not rid herself of that lump in her throat, that cold hole in her chest. She tried to convince herself that there was no way to know for sure—maybe the correspondent who wrote that story simply could not list every one of the civilians who were wounded. Scouts were civilians, after all.
And maybe that’s why Seamus’s name wasn’t printed. He could have been wounded! He could be on one of those twelve litters. Bleeding and in pain. But being a civilian—
“Samantha!”
At that first shriek of her name she rolled onto her side and struggled to sit up. She heard steps, loud footsteps clattering on the stairs.
“Samantha!” It was Elizabeth Burt’s voice. “Look out your window!”
Suddenly the woman stood framed in the narrow, open doorway, having flung open the door, the knob still clenched in her hand. She pointed to the solitary window. “Samantha Donegan—do as I say! Go look out that window!”
Dread gripped Sam as surely as had the morning sickness that plagued her the first three months of this pregnancy. She fought for air as Mrs. Burt helped drag her from the side of the narrow bed, across the carpet Samantha had sewn from discarded burlap bags, right to the window.
“There! Look! Can’t you see, dear?”
Elizabeth was tapping on the windowpane with her knuckle, then pointing with the same finger at the horsemen entering the far corner of the parade. From the northeast. They were ragged. Their horses dusty. Everything about them frightened her. But she was immediately relieved to find that none of those weary, played- out horses dragged a litter behind it.
“It’s Crook!” Mrs. Burt declared. “He’s got his staff with him!”
She turned to Elizabeth, filled once more with hope as she asked, “He’ll have word from the rest, won’t he?”
“Word about Seamus? Is that what you mean, dear?”
Her head bobbed eagerly, sensing the cold knot in her chest. She simply had to know. One way or the other, she had to be told.
“Look, Samantha,” Elizabeth said reassuringly, patting Sam’s shoulder. “You don’t have to ask General Crook about your husband. If you look real closely—you’ll see one of those riders is Seamus Donegan himself!”
* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 7,
Epilogue
Early October 1876
How he reveled in the feel of her arm curled in his. So simple a joy this was, her walking at his side as they strolled each evening since his return—twelve of them now—both of them bundled against the chill, bracing air that brought a rose to Samantha’s cheeks as dusk fell and twilight slipped down upon Fort Laramie.
That first night back, well—it was the sort of night that lived on and on in a man’s soul, chiseled deep within the marrow of him. How he had held her and loved her and kissed her and cried with her too; how they laughed now, as they remembered that ache of not seeing one another in four long months.
Right about the time Samantha had reached the landing at the top of the last flight of those narrow stairs, right where she could look down and see Old Bedlam’s front door flung open in one grand sweep, in he burst. And there Seamus had stopped, gazing up at her as she gripped the banister for all the support it could give her. His eyes marveling at the sheer size of her.
So, so different from the woman he had left behind in May. Yet in every way but one—Seamus knew she was still the same.
“Come down,” he had said to her softly as more than a dozen of the officers’ wives filled in the doorway and the landing behind him, most all of them beckoning her. “Feels like an eternity that I’ve been waiting to hold you.”
Glancing at the happy faces of those who stared up at her, Sam could not find a single dry eye among them. Some blubbered unabashedly. But most dabbed their tears away with the corner of an apron or a handkerchief pulled from a cuff or simply whatever it was they could find.
He wagged his head as she began to descend once more, step by step. “You’re simply the most beautiful creature on God’s earth.”
Her eyes had been wet, her cheeks tracked as she reached the bottom step, where he started to enfold her in his arms, then bent to kiss her lips. She had drawn back, her eyes blinking.
“I won’t break, Seamus!” she scolded, taking his big arms still inside that dirty, muddy mackinaw coat of his and looping them around her. “I’m only pregnant. Not made of glass!”
It was then that he did embrace her, sensing the bulk of her against him, the firmness of her swelling breasts. Feeling that arousal he had for so long fought down out there in that wilderness separating him from his mate. Never before had he held a woman who carried a child. Yet here she was, grown in size, brought to full bloom in the time they had been apart.
Late that first night as she had snored on his shoulder, Seamus ran his fingers softly over the changes in her, the heaviness to the breasts to be sure, but more so the taut roundness to her stomach. The way her belly button was stretched so much it even protruded. For now this was the greatest marvel to a simple man—becoming a father for the first time!
The days to follow had simply flowed one into the next with her. Just to enjoy the smell of her, the feel and shape and texture of her, the very nearness of her. To take the cascade of her curls in his hand and smell them, brush them along his cheek, across the lids of his eyes. To experience her in every way he had been deprived of her.
No, he wasn’t going back out there, Seamus vowed. Not now that he had learned just how much she meant to his soul.
