“I should have known you’d be the kind of man who would have a sweetheart tucked away down there!”
“No, sir. A wife.”
The colonel’s eyes softened. “Children too?”
“A babe. Our first. A boy—born seven days into October.”
“More than anything you’d love to see him again, wouldn’t you?” Kelly said suddenly, turning abruptly at the window to fix Donegan with his stare. “More than anything to hold that woman of yours in your arms.”
Donegan swallowed hard. For a moment he thought he was reading something in the civilian’s eyes that had the look of brass-cold certainty. Trying hard to keep his voice from cracking, Seamus replied, “I can’t think of anything I could ever want more than to hold the two of them.”
Kelly declared, “Then you don’t dare ride south from here alone.”
“But I told you I come north alone.”
The chief of scouts asked, “From where?”
Instead, Miles answered, “From the Belle Fourche.”
“East of here, isn’t it?” Kelly asked.
“That’s right,” Donegan replied.
“Which is why you wouldn’t make it riding south from here by way of the Tongue or the Powder or the Rosebud or any of the rest of them,” Kelly said emphatically, pounding a fist into his open palm. “You didn’t lose your hair because the route you used to get here from the Belle Fourche took you around the country where the Crazy Horse bands are wintering.”
Seamus felt that first pinch of despair. “I want to go home.”
“Home, Mr. Donegan?” Miles asked.
But that despair quickly turned to the first flare of irritation at the colonel and his chief of scouts. “Fort Laramie, General.”
“From what I can tell—it’s the closest thing you have to home, isn’t it, Mr. Donegan?” asked Kelly.
“Where my wife and boy are—that’s where home will always be … yes.”
Miles pushed himself away from the rickety desk. “You want to live to see them?”
“Yes—”
“Then you’ll pay heed to what Kelly here has to tell you,” and the colonel turned back to his canvas stool behind the desk.
“Seamus, you strike me as a man smart enough to read sign,” Kelly said, taking a step closer.
“I had my first fight with the Sioux on the Crazy Woman in the summer of 1866,”* Donegan told the room. “I’ve seen my share, Kelly.”
“Call me Luther or call me Yellowstone,” the civilian replied. “So if you’ve seen your share, you ought to take it from another man who knows, Seamus. Take it for gospel from a man who’d like nothing more than to have a family of his own one of these days. Because of that—I can’t stand by and watch you ride off to the south by yourself.”
His empty belly pinched in warning again, rumbling for lack of fodder. How he wanted that promised cup of coffee a young soldier had been sent to fetch minutes ago as they’d walked into the colonel’s office. As that long, wide scar itched in apprehension across the width of his back, Donegan’s mind tumbled round and round with despair and dilemma at having all that he had planned upon suddenly dashed upon the rocks of—
“Ten years of scouting for the army out here?” Miles asked.
“Off and on, General.”
Kelly turned to gaze at Miles. “Can I put him to work, General?”
“I want to go home,” Seamus groaned, closing his eyes and wagging his head.
“You’d never make it,” Kelly echoed.
Then Miles said, “You’ll be on
“Yours?”
“Already on Crook’s, aren’t you?”
“It’s the dead of by-God winter,” Seamus growled, wanting to protest in the worst way as he settled back to the half-log bench. “What in hell do you think you’re going to accomplish against the Sioux with your infantrymen between now and spring?”
“I’m waiting on my last battalion to make it in from the field,” Miles explained, pointing off across the Yellowstone. “Baldwin’s men have been chasing Sitting Bull down.”
“Any luck?” Donegan asked, sensing a twinge of excitement flutter within him as he looked from Miles to Kelly.
“We nailed him once on Cedar Creek, back in October,” the civilian explained to Seamus. “And already Baldwin’s caught the old fox back up near Fort Peck.”
“He slip through your fingers?” Seamus asked.
“Through mine,” Miles admitted, “and a second time through Baldwin’s grasp.”
“A courier brought me word from the lieutenant that his battalion has been following Sitting Bull south from the Missouri and they expected to engage his village within a matter of days,” Miles declared proudly.
Looking down at the mucky floor below his boots, Seamus said, “So you’ll keep hammering away at them, no matter that it’s the dead of winter.”
Miles brushed the question aside, saying, “Mr. Donegan, I’ll pay you scout’s wages, but understand that Kelly here will make you work for that pay.”
Drawing in a deep breath, he let half of it out slowly, the way he would when he was trying to squeeze off a tough shot. “If that’s the way it’s to be, I’ll stay on till I stand a chance riding south again.”
“You can head home before spring.”
Donegan looked at Miles with sudden hope. “I thought you just told me the country south of here was crawling with Crazy Horse’s warriors!”
“They are,” Miles said, pushing himself erect from the desk, rubbing his two big hands together.
“Mother of Christ—I’d promised my wife I’d be back by Christmas,” Seamus explained with a doleful wag of his head. “New Year at the latest. Now you wanna promise me I’ll be heading home before spring?”
“As soon as Baldwin gets his battalion in here and we’ve reoutfitted this regiment, I plan on letting my men celebrate a merry little Christmas right here,” the colonel instructed.
Not understanding, Donegan shook his head and shuffled his feet, stretching his aching, cold, saddle- hammered back muscles. “I don’t know how that can help me ride south before spring, General.”
“Mr. Donegan, before the New Year has arrived,” Miles said as he came up to put one hand on the tall Irishman’s shoulder, “I plan on marching my Fifth Infantry, with you joining Kelly and his company of scouts … the whole lot of us headed south to corral Crazy Horse once and for all.”
Seamus began to grin within his thick beard. “Once you’ve beaten Crazy Horse, then I can ride back to my family.”
Miles grinned in turn. “Once I’ve beaten Crazy Horse, Mr. Donegan … you can damn well ride anywhere in this country you bloody well want!”
*
Chapter 18
18-23 December 1876
Having finished the fiery destruction of some ninety canvas and hide lodges abandoned by Sitting Bull’s people close to sundown, Vic Smith, Joe Culbertson, and Edward Lambert led Frank Baldwin’s column south, following Ash Creek into the coming twilight. Just shy of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide the lieutenant gave the order to bivouac at dusk.
