To the east the invisible sun was just then beginning to turn the underbellies of the low clouds to an orange fire, pink above. By the time he had saddled, tied his bedroll behind him, and pushed on down the Tongue another five miles, he could see that the thick clouds stretching from horizon to horizon were destined to blot out the sun again for another day.
All around him the wind skipped, whittling its way across a desolate country scarred by winds of a thousand centuries, a thirsty land veined by the erosion of countless springtimes that brought moisture, only to have that moisture sucked right out of the ground come the bake-oven summers.
Plodding slowly, letting the roan pick its own way, Donegan kept the Tongue to his left, winding northward into that afternoon, sensing the path the sun took at his back all the while, until it finally rested for another day near the far, far mountains somewhere beyond the back of his left shoulder. A Sunday, he had figured out. One long week since he had finished that letter to Samantha in those moments before he’d ridden away from the Belle Fourche with Three Bears.
At the muffled crack Donegan pulled back hard on the reins—so hard, it startled him, realizing he must have been half-asleep in the saddle again. A dangerous thing to do, even in this cold. A man who counted on its being far too cold to bump into a hunting party of Lakota might well be a dead man in this country.
Nudging the horse into the trees, where he might have a chance to see them before they saw him, Seamus waited and listened. Another muffled crack. Then more, all muffled, in a ragged rhythm. And in the space between some of those cracks, he imagined he heard voices.
Straining his eyes through the bare, snow-slickened branches of the trees, he studied the far side of the Tongue, the slope leading up from the river. The sounds came from beyond that rise of ocher earth mantled in patches of dirty white. He decided he had to know.
Leading the horse out of the brush, Seamus moved to the riverbank, plopped one boot down on the ice, thumped it good with a heel to test it, planted both feet down and jumped several times, then yanked on the reins. Slowly, deliberately, measuring each step, Donegan began to cross, eyes flicking from the opposite bank to the place where he would plant each foot. Yard by yard he moved across the opaque, shimmering ice, where he could sometimes make out the Tongue River bubbling beneath its thick, protective coat.
Now the voices grew louder, one voice more so than the others, sternly snapping; then more of that clack- clunk of wood against wood. In minutes Seamus was at the top of the hill, brazenly putting the skyline at his back because he knew, he remembered, he recognized those sounds. Donegan held his breath as he stared down on the wood detail. A dozen soldiers wrapped in heavy buffalo-hide or wool coats, muskrat caps tied under their chins, axes and saws in their mittens, and a sergeant standing up on a pile of wood in the first of two wagons, bellowing his orders as the men finished filling the bed of the second wagon up to the gunwales.
Each of those resounding clunks of wood like a step taken closer to home for a lonely wayfarer.
Then he blinked, not really sure his ears weren’t playing tricks on him. Suddenly those faint, brassy notes floating his way on the cold wind.
“God-blessit!” the sergeant bawled in his mass of gray-and-black whiskers. “I tolcha idjits! Said they’d blow retreat afore you’d get this detail done, din’t I, you slackards! Now we have to bust our ever-livin’ humps to get back afore dark!”
Again the trumpet blew those homecoming notes. And Seamus felt the cold tighten his throat, remembering the sound of that call at Fort Laramie just before they would fire the sunset gun. Retreat for the day. Which meant supper, and shelter for the coming of night.
Below him now sharp commands cracked above the six-mule teams, whips snapped, and the loads groaned as wagons lurched into motion with a creaking rumble across the hard, icy ground. Beside both wagons the dozen soldiers strung out on both sides, having laid their long Springfields at a shoulder now.
Grabbing hold of the horn, Seamus swung himself into the saddle with an ungainly grunt, settled his coat and the thick buffalo-hide leggings, then hurried the roan into motion along the ridgetop, watching the first of the soldiers at the back of the procession turn to look up his way, suddenly stumbling, regaining his footing, and pounding on the back of the man in front of him.
They both whirled about, beginning to yell and point, and a moment later the wagons shuddered to a halt as the whole outfit turned about to watch the lone rider lope down the hillside, cutting this way and that around the snowy turnip heads of greasewood.
“S-sojurs!” he sang out as loud as he could in joy, finding his voice a croak after so many days of not using it.
“Just who the hell you be?” the slit-eyed sergeant demanded. “Keep a eye on this’un, fellers. And that hill too. Might be more of ’em.”
“Just me,” Seamus pleaded as he reined up. “Donegan’s the name.”
“Where the blazes you come from?” asked the soldier closest. “Up from Glendive by the south bank?”
With a wag of his wolf-hide cap Donegan grinned, for the moment just letting his eyes dance over the faces raw and chapped by the brutal wind and cold. How good it was to see such faces, men, soldiers. Even if they all had guns pointed at him.
“No, not Glendive,” he answered with an unused voice. “Over from the Belle Fourche. And the Crazy Woman Fork of the Powder far to the south. Beyond that—I come all the way from the Red Fork Canyon where Mackenzie’s Fourth drove the mighty Cheyenne into the snow.”
“Y-you from Crook’s bunch?” the sergeant squeaked in disbelief. He wiped a dribble of tobacco juice from his lower lip.
“None other,” Seamus said, sliding out of the saddle clumsily with those thick buffalo-hide leggings. He stomped over to stop in front of the sergeant, pulled off his horsehide gauntlet, and held out his bare hand in the cold. “I’ve got a letter from Crook for your General Miles.”
They shook and the old file muttered, “I’ll be go to hell, boys … if this feller don’t look like he’s come through hell to get here.”
“You really come from Crook?” another soldier gasped, shuffling up close to look the Irishman up and down as if he had to be an apparition.
With a shudder of his head the sergeant asked, “That ain’t no bald-face? It true you come right up through all that country down yonder?”
“I been eight days doing it, fellers,” Donegan replied, licking an oozy lip, then shoved the wolf-hide cap back from his forehead a bit. “And I sure got me a hankering for a hot cup of coffee right about now.”
“By God, if we all don’t have such a hankering our own selves!” roared an old soldier who shoved his way into the knot around Donegan.
“Lookee there under his hat, Sarge!” another man piped up. “He come up from Crook’s country … an’ still got him his hair!”
The sergeant’s eyes finally began to twinkle as he pounded the Irishman on the shoulder. “So, you gol- danged civilian—maybeso while we finish our li’l walk back to the post yonder … you can tell us how come your scalp ain’t hanging from Crazy Horse’s belt right about now.”
Chapter 16
18 December 1876
BY TELEGRAPH
THE INDIANS
The Latest from General Crook.
CHEYENNE, December 14.—NORTH FORK BELLE FOURCHE, December 10.—Crook’s force left Buffalo Springs on the 6th, arrived here on the 9th, and is now in camp here. The train leaves to-day to bring up rations and forage
