making.” Her eyes dropped a minute to the dozing child Samantha was burping at her shoulder. “You’ve told me more than once that your Mr. Donegan first came west after the war to look for gold in the Montana diggings.”
“Yes—well, but … he never got that far to try,” Sam began to explain.
“Still wants to make his fortune in that precious ore, doesn’t he?”
Samantha nodded less than emphatically. “Seamus has talked about it with me a time or two, yes we have.”
“When he gets back this winter—you sit him down and convince the mister that it’s high time for him to get back to what he intended to do ten years ago,” advised Martha.
“Yes, digging for gold and silver must be a much safer occupation for a husband and a father than riding scout for Crook or any of the rest of them,” Nettie added.
“It’s really a single man’s profession, Samantha—don’t you see?”
“I … I never thought of it in those terms. It’s just what I’ve come to believe he has to do—so I’ll wait behind.”
“And when he gets back,” said Nettie, coming around behind Sam’s chair to lay a hand on the young mother’s shoulder, “don’t you think it better for your child to grow up some other place where you’re not in the middle of the comings and goings of Indian country?”
“It’s what we both talked about …,” Sam began, feeling a little put upon by the others, who were taking far too much an interest in what Seamus should be doing with his life. That sort of thing was for a man to decide for himself.
“Just … just think about it, Samantha,” Martha said, in her own way shushing the other women in the kitchen, all in flour-dusted aprons, as this was baking day for the week. “I’m sure it will all make sense to your mister when he comes riding back home to you.”
Sam pushed herself up from the chair, adjusted the tiny blanket around the sleeping baby in the crook of her arm, and said, “Seems I better put Mr. Donegan’s son down for a nap. I’ll be back down to help later.”
She heard their voices as she slipped out to the landing and began her climb up the narrow stairs. Women talking about this and that of no real consequence to her, bits of news from the papers just come to the post late yesterday, perhaps the latest rumor to find circulation among the officers and their wives, or the most recent tremor in relations with the Sioux up at Red Cloud’s agency. All of it meant nothing much at all to her.
She waited only for news of Crook’s army and its return to Fetterman. Then heard that Mackenzie’s Fourth was moving back to Camp Robinson. But neither of those meant Seamus was coming back.
What did she have to count on? she asked herself as she laid the boy in his nest of blankets. Was she really being selfish to want Seamus with her more than he had been around her for most of their married life?
Oh, Samantha! she chided herself, catching a glimpse of herself in a faded, scratched mirror she had nailed above the tiny bureau. You have as much of your husband as any army officer’s wife. Yes—he could be a store clerk or a blacksmith, or he could be a farmer gone all day to the fields like Pa.
“No, he couldn’t,” she whispered quietly.
And looked down at the child.
“You and I both know it, don’t we, God? Seamus Donegan couldn’t be any of those.”
But maybe it wouldn’t hurt—she thought—to look downstairs for that old paper with the news story about the Silver City ore strike. Just to have it here and ready when he did return home soon.
Maybe the lure of silver and gold and riches beyond imagination would entice him once more. God knows there’d never be any money in army scouting.
BY TELEGRAPH
More Indian Murders Toward
the Black Hills
THE INDIANS
More Murders by “Good” Indians Near
Red Cloud.
CHEYENNE, December 30.—A courier into Fort Laramie, from Red Cloud agency, reports that two couriers, a mail-carrier and a wood-chopper, left Sage creek early Christmas morning, and two hours before sundown they were struck by a party of thirty friendly Indians within sixteen miles of Red Cloud, who killed the two couriers, named Dillon and Reddy; also mortally wounded the mail-carrier, Tate, who had two sacks of matter, and likewise severely wounded the wood-chopper. The wounded men arrived at Red Cloud day before yesterday, and being exposed during the interval to intense cold, they were severely frozen. They report hearing more firing in their rear an hour after being attacked and it is supposed that other parties not yet reported were attacked. A party has gone out from the agency to search for the bodies.
They were gradually gaining in altitude the farther they marched up the valley of the Tongue. And for much of the time the wagons did not have too bad a time of it, what with the way the large Indian village had itself followed the trail made by some buffalo along the river. So many hooves, so many travois poles, so many moccasin prints in that snow gradually pounded down and hardened into a highway pointing south—toward the Wolf Mountains.
Just before dawn on Thursday morning, the fourth of January, Luther Kelly returned from his reconnaissance over to the valley of the Rosebud.
Seamus held out a cup of coffee in the gray light as Kelly stomped up to seize it eagerly. “You see anything worth making mention of?”
“Not a sign,” Kelly admitted, then blew on his coffee and drank. “No trails, no tracks, no sign of buffalo over there either.”
“What that tells me is that we’re gonna stare the lot of them in the face here real soon, Luther.”
He looked up at Donegan and nodded once before going back to his coffee and staring at the fire. “They’re all together, aren’t they? All those warrior bands.”
“Used to be a man could figure they’d split up come winter.”
“Not this bunch,” Kelly said. “If it really is Crazy Horse, he’ll hold ’em together because they know we’re coming. Won’t be any going this way or going that. They’ll
“By gor,” Seamus whispered harshly as he started kicking snow into the fire the moment the first orders were shouted around them to prepare to mount. “Looks plain as sun that Miles is going to get himself exactly what Crook his own self has been wanting for the better part of a year.”
“What’s that?”
“To get a crack at Crazy Horse—and have the bastard stand and fight.”
“Just like he did at the Rosebud … right?” Kelly asked, then swilled down the last of the coffee in the tin.
“And nearly overran us three times, the bleeming bastard.”
“Yeah,” Kelly commented quietly. “Miles will get his own crack at them Sioux … just like Custer prayed Crazy Horse would stand and fight.”
“This could be it, Kelly,” Seamus said, dragging the reins off the ground and stabbing a buffalo moccasin into the stirrup.
“Could be what?”
“Maybe this will be the last battle Crazy Horse will ever fight.”
Just about the time the scouts pushed out of the bivouac to probe the valley ahead of the soldier column, a fine mist began to fall. Within the hour that chilling mist became a continuous and galling rain that tended to soak man and animal to the bone, turning the wide trail to a mucky slush, hard going for the foot soldiers and wagons both.
From time to time that day Donegan and the other scouts came across recent sign of the retreating bands. Here and there among the cottonwood groves they found the crude frames for wickiups and the cold, lifeless black rings of dead fires. Clearly, all indications showed how bands of warriors were staying behind the villages, between
