25 November 1876
“You can damn well be glad it got dark before you showed up to beg a cup of coffee off us,” Luther North said to the Irishman as he handed Seamus a steaming tin.
“I suppose you’re right,” Donegan replied, dragging his gloves from his fingers and welcoming the warmth into his hands. “Coffee does taste better when it gets as cold and dark as it will tonight.”
“He didn’t mean nothing about the bloody cold,” Frank North corrected, walking up to join them.
“I was talking about that son of a bitch with the big gun up there in the hills,” Luther added. “He’s been right handy with that buffalo rifle he’s got.”
Seamus savored the warm track the coffee cut in coursing its way down before he said, “Good enough shot to pucker your of bunghole, eh?”
“Naw. He never come close enough to hit us,” Frank explained.
And Luther snorted, “But that weren’t for want of trying!”
Just as the sun had eased down on the southwestern rim of that canyon of the Red Fork, Frank and Luther North had given their Pawnee scouts permission to kindle their supper fires, having gone more than twenty-four hours forked in the saddle, under the guns of battle, and without a hot meal. With Mackenzie’s troops now ringing the burning village in a horseshoe stretching from the north, to the east, and along the south to prevent the possibility of the enemy charging or sneaking in to regain their village, the Pawnee eventually went about making their camp for the night near the center of those Cheyenne lodges. Backlit there by many of the roaring bonfires, and clearly illuminated by their own cookfires, their shadowy forms provided some tempting targets for those snipers still moving about among the snowy slopes and rocky hillsides.
The warrior with that big buffalo gun who had taken up his station in the bluffs west of the Pawnee proved to be the greatest annoyance as he placed a bullet in their vicinity every few minutes, slowly walking his shots in by using the cookfire to gauge his distance. Time and again bullets flew into the area immediately around the fire where the scouts had cleared the ground of snow. Dirt or splinters of firewood splattered in their frying pans with every round. A little later as the darkness became all the deeper, a well-placed bullet did strike a frying pan in the fire, scattering ashes and dried buffalo meat over the Pawnee scout tending his meal close to the North brothers— causing all of them to jump.
After more than a half hour of sensing the sniper’s bullets inching closer and closer to them, during which time the North brothers stoically returned again and again to sit on their log by the fire, placing their backs bravely to the west, eating their supper and having their coffee to show their scouts what little danger there was, they both suddenly leaped nearly out of their skins—
No sooner had a loose mule wandered contentedly up to their fire to stand some twenty feet to the east in front of them than another shot rang out and the lone animal set up a noisy screech, thrashing about in a crazed circle as it went down, legs kicking in those moments before it wheezed its last.
“Damn!” Luther had grumbled, determined to sit tight despite the danger. “You s’pose he was aiming to hit that mule?”
“Doubt it,” Frank replied. “Figure that poor dumb creature just got in the way.”
Luther added, “Means that fella’s just about got our range.”
Frank studied the sky a moment, then said, “Getting too dark to really see us.”
“But he’s got the fire,” Luther replied. “Besides, Frank—you know he’s probably using a hundred-twenty grain cartridge.”
“S’pose you’re right, Lute: a bullet like that’ll sail right out there, by damn.”
“And if that fella lowers his sights a little,” Luther continued, “he could make us move, after all—”
The next shot perforated Frank’s huge quart-sized tin cup filled with coffee where it sat on the log between the Norths.
Without waiting for the Cheyenne rifleman to place his shots any more accurately, Frank and Luther helped their scouts erect a breastwork constructed of the many bundles of dried meat not yet destroyed in the bonfires. It was behind this shelter at the far side of the Pawnee cookfire where Seamus had now found the brothers and their scouts lounging, their legs stretched out toward the merry fire, enjoying the last of their repast washed down with the wilderness elixir of army coffee, here in their nest of peace and relative safety.
“That sharpshooter took a few more shots at us,” Frank explained as Donegan settled to his haunches nearby, cup in hand, “but he soon gave up.”
“For some reason,” Luther added, “we haven’t heard a thing from him now for a while.”
“I’ll bet he’s the one knocked a couple of the couriers out of their saddles this afternoon,” Donegan declared.
“Eat your fill, Seamus,” Frank suggested, rising to pass the Irishman a plate heaped with slices of the lean buffalo meat. “I’ll be back shortly, Lute. Going to get the sergeants to post our guard for the night.”
By the time Donegan had eaten his fill and had more than enough coffee to warm the cold knot of his belly, a dozen of the Pawnee scouts had returned from the east gap where they had dismounted that morning before dawn, unsaddling their horses and stripping off heavy coats for battle. Luther had sent the twelve back to fetch their saddles and blankets.
“Look here,” Frank White said as he strode into the firelight. Behind him stood the eleven others, each one clutching the reins to his horse. Then the scout dramatically threw down a saddle at the feet of the North brothers, its cinch and straps freshly cut.
“What the devil is this?” Frank demanded, dragging over the saddle to inspect the butchered cinch.
“All like that,” Peter Headman came up to explain. “All.”
“They’ve been cut, Frank!” Luther screamed. “Those sons of bitches wanted that horse of yours so bad—now them goddamned Sioux gone and done this to our boys!”
“Hold on! Hold on a minute here,” the elder North said, gripping Luther by the arm. “We don’t rightly know who did this.”
“Who had the chance?” Donegan wondered.
“Who?” Luther squealed with indignation. “We all know the Sioux and Cheyenne were behind us in the charge!”
Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Ho-hold on, Luther, I know it looks like Three Bears and his bunch skulked back and done this … but, dammit—I don’t want to go blazing away half-cocked like that.”
“You better get yourself ready for a row, big brother,” Luther snapped, wrenching his arm away from Frank. “I’m going to report this crime to Mackenzie. By God—he’ll have the Sioux replace these saddles for our men, or this is the last time our battalion will ever march on campaign!”
Seamus hung close to the fire to finish his pipe, then set out for the hospital about the time it began to snow again, lightly at first. He meandered northeast through the scattering of bonfires as the destruction continued, picking his way through the many cooking fires and smoldering heaps of ash still aglow with crimson coals.
From the groans and cries of those men in restless agony, it became all the easier to make out where the surgeons had set up their bloody business. There, some three hundred yards east of the ravine where the warriors had ambushed Lieutenant McKinney’s troop, lay the bodies of the dead and the wounded. For a moment he stood planted in place, peering at the doctors and their stewards hunched over their work in the light of blazing fires and a pair of lamps one doctor had his assistants holding close above his work as he probed a deep back wound while the dying soldier was held down by three of his companions, groaning through teeth clamped on a bit of bloody rag.
Off to Donegan’s left two soldiers suddenly appeared whole from the northwest out of the black of that night, stepping into the snowy firelight and coming to a halt by another surgeon at work retying a bloody bandage.
“Is our lieutenant here?” one of the pair asked.
The doctor said nothing, only pointing before he continued with knotting the cloth on the struggling soldier beneath him.
However, one of the stewards helping that physician asked, “You in the lieutenant’s troop?”
“We are.”
The steward shook his head. “He’s dead.”
“D-dead? We didn’t know.”
Now the doctor looked up. “Didn’t know he was dead? I thought you said you were in his troop.”
