get from lying with the white man’s pay-women.”
Pourier added, “Then Standing Bear asked Frank, ‘Do
Donegan wagged his head and said, “Goddamned country’s full of warriors, that’s what.”
“Irishman, the bastard asked me if I could fly up into the air, or burrow like the badger into the ground,” Grouard replied acidly. “They figure they got us, and there’s no way out now except to fly or dig our way out under the mountain. He says they’ll have my scalp for Sitting Bull before sundown.”
“We wait here much longer, Frank—they might even try to burn us out,” Pourier advised.
“Before we burn—I vote for trying to break our way out,” Finerty finally spoke, his eyes darting among them, lit with nervousness.
Donegan turned and said, “Thought you were busy collecting flowers, Johnny.”
“Just a few—the ones I could reach—got them pressed between the pages of my book where I was making some notes on our … our predicament. Mountain crocus, and a forget-me-not growing within my reach. Somehow the beauty in life seems so, so very sweet this afternoon, Seamus.”
“Always does seem all the sweeter when death looms close, my friend.” With a wry grin the Irishman turned to Sibley. “You need to get your men ready, Lieutenant.”
The officer nodded, saying, “I’ll tell them to prepare to mount.”
“No,” Seamus said, gripping the lieutenant’s arm. “Better to leave the horses.”
“Leave the horses?” Finerty asked.
“If we leave the animals here,” Donegan explained, “we might have enough of a lead to fool the sons of bitches and make it out on foot.”
“Abandon our mounts?” the lieutenant asked, his face carved with disbelief.
“Irishman’s right,” Grouard said. “Only chance is make those warriors believe we’re still here because our horses are.”
Sibley shook his head emphatically. “I don’t like leaving those horses for the enemy to capture. If we abandon them—we must shoot them.”
“We go and shoot all those mounts,” Donegan explained, “that war party will figure out what we’re trying to do. But if we leave the horses standing—that might be our only chance to reach Goose Creek alive.”
“Besides,” Grouard instructed them, “I’ll lay odds them warriors are sitting on all the easy ways out of these hills. Horses wouldn’t make it under us where we need to go. Our only chance is to cover some real rugged ground … on foot.”
“What about sending one of our men?” the lieutenant suggested. “The best rider we have—send him off to get reinforcements from Crook.”
“We don’t have the time to wait for Crook,” Donegan argued.
Pourier agreed. “It’ll take the better part of two days for any help to reach us.”
“And like Frank said,” Donegan added, “the h’athens could fire the forest around us and smoke us out right into their guns. No, we don’t have much time left, Lieutenant. If we’re gonna do it, we’ve got to do it now.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the officer relented, finally yielding to the advice of his three scouts. He prepared to crab off on hands and knees, then turned back to say, “It’s plain we are looking death in the face here.”
John Finerty snorted sourly, “And I can feel the grim reaper’s cold breath right here on my forehead, sense his icy grip round my heart.”
“Never been in a fix like this before?”
“No, Seamus. But often I have wondered how a man must feel when he was confronted by inevitable doom and there was no escaping it.”
“Just remember to keep a bullet for yourself if things don’t work out for us,” Seamus said softly.
“Don’t worry, you bloody Irishman—I’ll blow my own goddamned brains out rather than fall alive into the hands of those gore-hungry savages.”
“What you worried about, Finerty?” Bat said, his eyes bright with sudden devilment. “Now you’re gonna have lots of good stories to send your paper when we get you back to Crook’s camp!”
The newsman snarled, “Damn you, Bat—you’re always making fun at my expense!”
Valentine Rufus crawled up to Finerty. His weather-beaten face was prickled with stubby gray hair. “Lieutenant says for us to sneak back to the horses. Get all our ammunition from the saddlebags. We’re taking all of it we can carry when we leave the horses.”
“All right, Private,” Finerty said. “But my horse is up the hill, and I ain’t going back there to get a damn thing out of those saddlebags.”
“You stick with me, then,” Rufus said. “We’ll share ammunition and see this through together.”
“Are you Irish?” Finerty asked.
“No.” The old soldier shook his head. “Don’t rightly know what I am anymore.”
The newsman winked at Donegan as he said to Rufus, “Well, from the sounds of your pluck, Private—you damn well should have been Irish.”
“Go on with the private now,” Seamus instructed. “Me and Bat are going to make sure they think we’re still in here while the rest of you slip away.”
Finerty knelt at the Irishman’s side to whisper, “What are you going to do?”
“Just keep up some firing, make ’em keep their heads down. Between the two of us you should get a good jump.”
Finerty laid his hand on Donegan’s shoulder. “And you’ll catch up soon?”
“Don’t you worry, Johnny boy. I’ll be running right up your backside in a damned fine fashion before you know it.”
After quickly shaking hands, Seamus watched Finerty follow Private Rufus, both of them crawling off to join those who moved among the eight horses still standing, other soldiers laboring over the saddles of the animals fallen to the warrior fire, every man frantic to retrieve what he could before Sibley ordered his soldiers on into the timber beyond. Swallowed by the shadows.
“Let’s go to work,” Seamus said grimly, turning his shaggy face up the slope.
Without a word of reply Pourier nodded and rolled onto his belly behind some deadfall to fire his Springfield. Yanking open the trapdoor, the half-breed rammed home another shell and aimed in a different direction. Between the two of them they placed a scattering of shots all round the half crescent where the warriors hollered and kept up a desultory fire on the white men’s position.
After a few minutes Seamus turned to Pourier. “Why don’t you head on out?”
“You coming?”
“Gimme a minute or two more,” Donegan explained. “Wouldn’t do for us both to stop firing at the same time.”
Bat’s face showed how he measured the weight of that. “All right. But I’m going to wait for you a ways down in the timber, just past the horses.”
“Go on. I’ll be along straightaway.”
By the time he fired a half dozen more shots and looked back over his shoulder, Seamus could no longer hear or even see Pourier. The breech on the Sharps hissed and stank when the sweat from his forehead dropped into the action, sizzling, bubbling as it vaporized on the superheated metal. It had worked, by God. The warriors hadn’t tried anything more than shouting and shooting from afar.
Looking left and right, he could see no good route for him to take but straight back. On his belly Seamus slid, pushing himself, dragging the Sharps through the dead needles, clumps of grass and dust that stived into the air, capturing fragments of golden light among the sunbeams streaming through the thick canopy of emerald-green tree branches.
His horse was dead.
Gently he rubbed its muzzle, for a moment remembering the big gray. Remembering how the General had carried him to that sandy island before it fell, more than one bullet in its great and powerful chest.
Fighting back the smarting of tears, he quickly yanked loose the latigo tie lashing the twin bags to the back of the saddle and threw his weight against the dead animal to free the off-side pouch. In the bags were rolled the two long shoulder belts of Sharps ammunition, along with his reloading tools. As he flopped them over his shoulder, Seamus heard the reassuring clatter of a few boxes of cartridges for the pair of army .45s he wore belted over his
