provide more of a wind buffer and insulator. It too had been hacked through at the moment of escape. By the fire pit sat kettles of water and a skillet filled with dried meat. Rawhide parfleches and boxes hung from the liner rope or sat here and there against the liner itself atop the beds. Everything, including the rumpled blankets and buffalo robes, appeared as if the inhabitants might return at any moment.
Here one moment. Driven into the teeth of winter the next.
When he pulled his head from the slit and his eyes had adjusted to the startling sunlight, Donegan watched more of the Pawnee dragging plunder from nearby lodges. Piles of clothing, knives and axes, kitchenware, craftwork, and a few weapons were already being deposited on separate piles destined to be loaded upon the captured ponies and driven home to make a good many Pawnee wives very happy that they had allowed their husbands to go riding off to make war on the Cheyenne.
A high-pitched sudden scream rang out across the camp near the stream—louder and more grating on his soul than the intermittent din of battle. Then a pistol shot. And all fell quiet—except for the rattle of a far-off, long- range gun battle.
As he moved around the side of the lodge, Seamus saw a seventh pile of plunder the Pawnee were collecting. By far the smallest in size, it would nonetheless prove to be the most jarring of the spoils.
Stopping at the edge of the small mound, the Irishman knelt down, picking up the fringed sleeve of a buckskin jacket. He dragged it on out into the light; finding a small, bloody bullet hole in the back. Beneath the coat lay the bright red, white, and blue of a few of the Seventh Cavalry’s regimental guidons. A motley collection of leather gloves and gauntlets, some clean, most greasy, dirty, and stained with blood. Soldiers’ blouses and officers’ coats —gold chevrons and bars and hash marks sewn up the cuff. Here and there a smashed felt or straw hat, even a few old kepis, all having seen their better day.
Besides, there were saddles and currycombs, memorandum books and tiny bundles of letters tied with twine or faded hair ribbons, numerous canteens and wallets still containing a few of the green-and-yellow army scrip the victorious warriors had no use for.
“Hey, mister—it’s time to eat!” a soldier called out from a nearby lodge. “Pack train’s set up camp over yonder near the willows. By the butte where the wounded get took.”
Seamus waved in thanks, then looked back down at the pile at his feet.
Something shiny in the reflected light caught his eye. Plunging his thick glove down into the pile, he pulled out a tarnished pocket watch with vest chain attached. Pressing the release, he opened the watch to find inside the cover a faded brown chromograph of an attractive older woman cracked and wrinkled with age. A cold drop of sweat tumbled down his spine.
Feeling the ghosts of Custer’s dead at his shoulder.
Quickly snapping the watch shut, he stuffed it at the bottom of the pile once more and covered it up with those shirts once worn by the living. How strange he felt—here in this place of the dead Cheyenne, going through the effects left behind on this mortal plane by Custer’s dead.
Seamus stood, disgusted with himself, ashamed. Like a damned grave robber. Like these goddamned Cheyenne. Just like those Lakota they had bumped into at the Slim Buttes.* All these souvenirs stripped from the soldier bodies left on that hill beside the Little Bighorn.
“Goddamned grave robbers!” he cursed under his breath, thinking about that watch and that woman. About the man who loved her and rode off with an army far, far from home.
Then that thought of the watch made him wonder what time of the day it was—thinking on what Sam and the boy were doing right then.
From the hang of the sun, it was likely past noon. Perhaps as much as two hours past. And in that moment he remembered how hungry he was.
He untied the bay and walked it east toward the commotion: men hollering and snapping like starved, gaunt dogs around that pack train. None of the drooping mules had been unloaded nor none of the escort’s bone-weary horses unsaddled for almost twenty-four hours.
“Irishman! Over here!” Frank Grouard called out.
As he came up to the headquarters group, Seamus saw that Mackenzie had turned his complete attention to the swarthy half-breed and place a folded sheaf of paper in Grouard’s glove.
Frank promptly loosened a button, shoved the papers inside his coat and wool blouse, then rebuttoned his buffalo-hide coat as the North brothers turned away and the Irishman came to a stop. “Donegan! I’ll be carrying word to General Crook to bring up the infantry.”
“Good for you, Frank. If you can carry word from the Black Hills to Laramie for Crook, I figure you’re the best man we got for this job. Good luck, you ugly child.”
Mackenzie turned as Donegan held out his hand and shook with Grouard. The colonel seemed to size Seamus up and down a moment, then said, “How would you like to give me a hand yourself, Mr. Donegan?”
“This about them words we had earlier?”
“That? Hell, no—that’s all forgotten.”
Donegan asked, “What you have planned?”
“I figured you’d like to help me see if we can put an end to this long-range sniping and get ourselves a truce worked out with the warriors in the hills.”
“Yeah,” he quickly answered. “I’d like to have the chance to do that. What’s your thinking, General?”
“Go round up Rowland for me—that squaw man who can talk the enemy’s language,” Mackenzie said. “I first thought of using one of the scouts—but I’d always wonder if I was being told the white man’s truth. So go fetch Rowland for me. Bring him here. I want the two of you to see about quieting things down and getting these folks to surrender before night falls.”
Seamus glanced at the sun keeling over into the western quadrant. “We don’t have all that much time, General.”
“That’s why I’m in the hurry I am, Mr. Donegan. If the warriors aren’t going to surrender soon, then I want the infantry getting here on the double to force ’em out of the rocks tomorrow.”
“And?”
“And,” Mackenzie replied thoughtfully, “if the warriors will at least surrender their women and children to me for the night—then not one of the noncombatants needs to die from this inhuman cold.”
From all that Young Two Moon could see, there were only five left on top of that rocky knoll. Before, there had been many, many more. But now so many had retreated as the soldiers had punched through the village and scattered the warriors in the rocks along the northern wall of the valley.
So only five remained. Cut off. And the soldiers were moving in.
Two, three, then four times the Cheyenne made futile attempts to reach the five courageous warriors who continued to make things hot on the soldiers and scouts scampering around in the upper end of the village.
“Do not worry about us!” they shouted down to their friends far away. “We sing our death songs and will take many of the enemy with us this day!”
It was clear they had given up. Almost like the suicide boys whom the elders had paraded through camp the night before the soldiers had attacked that great village nestled alongside the Little Sheep River. But these five were not suicide boys. These were seasoned, veteran warriors who had likely calculated the gamble of being caught where they were when they first went to the top of that hill. From there they would have had themselves a perfect view of the destruction of the gray-horse soldiers by the warriors in the ravine. On the brow of the hill he recognized White Horse, Long Jaw, and Little Horse. Young Two Moon did not know the others.
“Look!” a voice called out behind Young Two Moon. “See who is coming to fight!”
“Yellow Nose!” the cry went up among the warriors at the side of the slope leading up to the breastworks.
“Yellow Nose has come!” the women screamed above them, trilling their tongues and shrieking with renewed passion.
Yes, Yellow Nose—one of the most daring in the fight against the
Somehow this morning he had rescued his feathered warbonnet, or perhaps he wore that of another man. It did not matter. How magnificent he looked atop the bare back of that pony, wearing only leggings and breechclot. No shirt nor moccasins as he moved the horse slowly through the crowd that clamored about him, touching his leg,
