The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  Listen upstream, and without straining you’ll hear the screeching war-cries of Indians and the pounding of two thousand pony hooves. And if you’re lucky, and can sense the throb of your own blood at your temples, you might even overhear the prayers of the man in the rifle-pit next to yours, prayers mingling with the smothered screams of those slowly dying.

  Sniff the air—you’ll likely smell the burning fragrance of gunpowder or the stench of your own blood slowly cooked as it drops from your wounded head into the overheated breech of your Spencer carbine … while you wait for the next rattle of gunfire from the Indian snipers clustered among the swamp-willow on the bank, wait with the others for the hair-raising thunder of Indian pony hoofbeats bearing down on you in a glittering spray of sand and creek-foam.

  The fight for this unnamed strip of sand happened. This story needs no false glamour, no shiny veneer of dash and daring. What has through the centuries been the story of man at war—of culture against culture, race against race—needs be told without special effects.

  There’s drama enough for any man across those nine bloody days on the Arickaree.

  Yet, the story of Beecher Island is really a very old tale indeed, my friends. A tale whose time for telling has come at last. I’ve done my best spinning the whole-cloth of that story in these pages.

  None alive can say if I’ve succeeded or failed … save for those ghosts still haunting the sage-covered, umber ridges overlooking that wide scar of sandy riverbed—ghosts both red and white who alone lived and perhaps died during those desperate days when Roman Nose’s Dog Soldiers and Pawnee Killer’s Brule Sioux flung themselves against fifty scared yet courageous men, men determined to hold out against all odds.

  —Terry C. Johnston

  Beecher Island Battleground

  Colorado Territory

  September 17, 1988

  Map drawn by author, prepared with the aid of Historian Fred Werner, and from firsthand visits to the battlefield.

  Prologue

  “I don’t figure this got nothing to do with you,” the sergeant growled, his red-rimmed eyes glaring harshly at the civilian striding up to the hitching post. He reminded the newcomer of a skinny wolf.

  “None o’ your business, stranger,” echoed a second soldier.

  A third dressed in dirty army blue lunged up, shoulder to shoulder with the first. “You heard the sarge here,” he spat. “Best you g’won your way now, sonny. Afore you get hurt.”

  “Not so sure it’s me what gets hurt here,” the tall Irishman replied, the hint of a smile spreading his dark beard. Almost a head taller than any of those five soldiers now crowding him at the hitching post, he gazed down at the shiny, blood-smeared face of the Negro soldier sprawled in the dust of what Fort Wallace, Kansas Territory, called a parade.

  “A mick, he is, boys!” the sergeant roared upon hearing the stranger speak, his reedy laughter goading the other four shouldered close round him like a pack of wolves with a downed buffalo calf in sight. “As if there ain’t enough of ’em in this goddamned man’s army … we got loudmouthed ones wearing civilian’s clothes, too!”

  “Sarge—this’un makes out like he owns them army britches!”

  The older sergeant’s eyes narrowed, studying closely the patched and worn Union britches the tall civilian sported. Complete with yellow stripe down the outside of each leg.

  “Cavalry, was it, Irishman?”

  “Aye,” he answered, taking one step back as two of the leering soldiers slowly flanked him.

  “That’s horseshit if I ever heard it!” the sergeant spouted. “Ain’t an Irishman been borned what can straddle a horse long enough to be a cavalryman!”

  The five roared with crazy laughter.

  The Irishman swallowed the knot of pride hot in his throat and lunged, snagging the soldier inching up on his right. Flinging him back against three others, the stranger spoke it as calmly as he could. “Like I said when I walked up on your little party here … your fun’s over, sojurs. I asked you polite to quit jobbing on the darkie here.”

  “Oh, he asked us polite to quit jobbing on the darkie, was it now?”

  “I suppose you sojurs wanna dance?”

  “And what army impostor would be asking me now?” the sergeant snarled.

  “Seamus Donegan … formerly of the Army of the Shenandoah,” he answered. “And by the looks of your dirty uniforms … you all must belong to the Seventh Cavalry I hear so much about … from Julesburg on south.”

  “Heard about us, he has?” roared one of the corporals as he scuffed backward and grabbed a handful of the dirty blue blouse worn by the Negro soldier on the ground, yanking the bloodied man to his feet. “Have you heard we don’t take to these here darkies the army sends out here to fight Injuns as well?”

  “Heard your regiment’s led by a man named Custer,” Donegan replied. “Word has it up to Laramie that Custer got himself in trouble having some of you nice fellas shoot deserters this past summer.”

  “Any man deserts General Custer deserves what he gets!”

  Seamus smiled. “I was there when that curly headed sonuvabitch strung up some Johnnies at Front Royal in the Shenandoah—”

  “You called Custer a … a sonuvabitch?” the sergeant roared, spittle flecking his cracked lips.

  “Figured I had to get you fellas riled up some way. Let’s dance!”

  With the last word off his tongue, Donegan swung his big right hand in a might arch, scooping the sergeant off the ground. Before the soldier landed in the dust, Seamus’s left fist jabbed the man rushing his flank. As quickly, he flung his boot at another before dancing backward, both fists up before his face, shoulders hunched and bobbing as the five soldiers assessed their three casualties in those first few seconds.

  Stunned, the sergeant brought his fingers to his mouth as he sat sprawled in the dust. The fingers came away stained and damp. With a tongue he rocked some loosened teeth. “You stupid bastards—tear his eyes out!”

  The three soldiers who were still on their feet charged him at once, swinging wildly with all they had. Backward Seamus pedaled, jabbing and swinging when an opening came. Bobbing right, then left, as fists shot his way in a blur or dirty fingernails clawed for his face.

  From the corner of his eye he saw two more soldiers in dirty blue tunics bolt from the shade of the nearby porch, on their way to help their kinsmen. The sergeant clambered clumsily to his feet, charging back into the fray.

  “Now you’ll pay for sticking your mick nose in where it don’t belong!” the sergeant roared.

  Five of them descended on him at once. Pinning down his arms so that Donegan couldn’t swing. He sensed the blow coming more than saw it, the great, white scar along his back gone cold, prickling with warning. Then recognized the metallic clunk of the pistol-barrel against his skull. A glancing blow, but enough to jar him to his boots. Enough to bring him to his knees.

  “Now we’ll show this big-mouthed bastard what the Seventh Cavalry does to them that talks bad about the general!”

  Seamus gazed up through the meteors in time to see the play of October sunlight glint off the knife-steel twisting in the sergeant’s hand.

  “What say we cut out his tongue, Sarge?”

  “Good idea. Teach this mick not to talk bad ’bout Custer, won’t it?”

  The sergeant no more than got it said while hauling down on Donegan’s chin whiskers, intent on opening the Irishman’s mouth, when a black hand swept round the soldier’s neck, yanking the sergeant off his feet. Seamus figured that was his cue.

  Two of the soldiers imprisoning Donegan made the mistake of lunging to help their sergeant.

  Wrenching his left arm free as the pair pulled away, Donegan put that powerful oak-rail arm and mallet-sized fist to work. Swinging it across his body with sudden effectiveness, the first soldier stumbled backward. Stunned, holding a hand to a nose spurting bright gouts of blood.

  That left hand pistoned back and jabbed the second soldier, who waited t
oo long to make his move. Petrified too long as he watched his friend back off bleeding, he himself crumpled backward into the dust as the Irishman’s quick left jab cracked against the side of the soldier’s head.

  Whirling, Donegan was pleased to find the mouthy sergeant had his own problems. In one hand the sergeant still gripped his knife. While the other clawed at the black arm clamping his throat in a vise, barely dangling the soldier above the ground. Above the clamor, the sergeant struggled to growl orders for the four soldiers to come to his aid. His voice no more than the squeak of a field-mouse caught in the jaws of a trap.

  The sergeant’s four gallant rescuers pummeled the black soldier from all sides. Swinging, yanking, wrestling to free his death-grip on the sergeant and his knife. Tiring of the struggle, one of the four freed the mule-ear, army-issue holster at his right hip and cleared his pistol, swinging it overhead toward the shiny black face.

  Hurling forward, Donegan caught the hand before the pistol cracked into the unsuspecting skull. He wrenched the soldier round, stared a moment into the surprised eyes, then jabbed his fist into the face, blood spurting from his nose.

  Stumbling over the body as it sank to the trampled dust, Seamus dug his fingers into the hair of two more attackers, trying to yank them off the black soldier. They only yowled in pain. One lashed out with a dusty boot. Both hands still in their hair, the Irishman cracked the heads together like a hickory axe-handle whacking the staves of an oak water-keg. They crumpled without protest.

  He turned in time to see the last of the rescuers dig his fingers into the black soldier’s eyes, pulling the darkie off the sergeant. Gasping for air, one hand clawing at the neck of his sweaty tunic, the sergeant fought to breathe, his eyes bulging. Then turned in one swift motion, bringing the knife into the air once more as he lunged up the Negro soldier’s back.

  Donegan caught the arm from behind, clutching the white wrist in both of his hands. Wheeling beneath his own arm, the sergeant brought a knee violently into the Irishman’s groin. Seamus stumbled back a step, then a second, as another blow came his way. Yet he refused to release the knife hand. The sergeant connected with a third boot.

  A rush of gall and puke flung itself against his tonsils as Seamus sank to his knees. Almost more pain than he could bear. Watching the sergeant through the sweat dripping in his eyes. A swirl of dust around them all. Faintly heard, the murmur of voices ringing from all directions. That knifeblade glimmering in the bright autumn sun here on the far western plains of Kansas.

  The knife falling toward him like the streak of a meteor … a streaming sliver of sunlight off the blade, like that dusty trail smeared behind a falling star against a prairie night-sky.…

  A gunshot cracked through his pain.

  The crack of a pistol.

  “Hold it!”

  That stopped the knife-hand in its fall.

  Seamus glanced up at the sergeant, recognizing in those red-rimmed eyes the look of an animal suddenly caged. Something dark and dangerous shut off behind those whiskey-soaked eyes. Again the pale saber scar along his back warned the Irishman. He whirled around, staring into the muzzle of another pistol held by a soldier with a smashed and bloody nose. The lower half of his face glistening pink in the midday, October sunlight.

  “Belt your weapons!”

  He watched the pistol tremble for a breathless moment before the soldier dropped his arm, and reluctantly stuffed the weapon into the holster on his right hip.

  “I don’t have enough to worry about here,” said the same deep voice, drawing closer. “Cheyenne and Sioux tearing up the tracks … Kidder’s men got theirselves butchered … I can’t keep the mail-lines open to Denver—and now you boys get yourselves all oiled up and jump this civilian and one of Carpenter’s brunettes!”

  Seamus clambered to his feet, studying the big-framed soldier striding up at a ground-eating gallop. A thick shock of hair atop his head, wild and unruly, and now slightly flecked with gray. Shiny teeth in a neat row beneath the iron-colored mustache, waxed and curled at the ends.

  “Sergeant of the guard?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Bring those others over here until we make sense of this.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Give me your knife, Larson.”

  “Captain … weren’t our fault——”

  “That was an order. Gimme your knife!”

  “Yessir.”

  The officer turned on Donegan. “Who are you, and what business have you here at Wallace?”

  Seamus took a moment in answering, dusting the front of his sweat-stained shirt. “Donegan.” He looked squarely in the officer’s eyes. “Seamus Donegan. Come here looking for word of me uncle. Heard at Fort Hays he might be here.”

  “A soldier?”

  “No, Cap’n. Civilian. Scout, so I’m told. Working for you.”

  “This uncle of yours has a name, I take it.”

  “O’Roarke. Liam O’Roarke.”

  “Indeed, he is a scout for us. Or”—the officer paused—”I should correct myself. He was a scout during Hancock’s summer campaign.”

  “He’s not here?” Donegan asked, craning forward anxiously.

  “Not any longer, stranger,” the officer replied. “With Hancock’s campaign over … Colonel Custer brought up on several serious counts of courts-martial … the army let its scouts go for the coming winter.”

  “Let him go?” He bit his lip. “Where? You hear where he was heading?”

  “Hold on, stranger. O’Roarke said he was heading over the Rockies to spend the winter in the City of the Saints.”

  “City of the——”

  “Salt Lake. Brigham Young. Mormons,” the officer instructed impatiently. “You heard of Mormons, haven’t you, stranger?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  The officer sighed. “You will out here. If it ain’t Cheyenne stirring up trouble … it’s Mormons migrating to their beloved City of the Saints. Or on the road east to sell their goods. And if it ain’t Mormons … it’s soldiers like these with too much time on their hands, jumping Carpenter’s brunettes. I wish Bankhead would get Carpenter and his darkies transferred outta here,” he muttered.

  “What would he be doing in the City of the Saints?”

  “Not that I have anything against Negras, you understand,” the stocky officer explained, still deep in his own thoughts. “I was born in Virginia and raised out Missouri way—fought for the Union, mind you. A Union man tried and true——”

  “Captain—what would Liam O’Roarke be doing in the City of the Saints?”

  “O’Roarke? Why, probably looking for work.”

  “Work?”

  “Brigham Young always has something for a man to do on the other side of them mountains,” he said wistfully, pointing off to the west beyond Fort Wallace’s pink-limestone walls. “Any man that’s good with a gun and can stay atop a horse at a full gallop. I hear he calls that bunch of renegades his ‘Avenging Angels’… Danites. Damn—but there’s times I wish I had a few like them myself. If I only had some that were good with a gun and could stay nailed in the saddle at a full gallop—”

  “How do I get there … to this City of the Saints?”

  The captain laughed. “You aren’t going there now, stranger. Unless you’re planning on taking the long way around. Them mountains out there would chew you up this time of year … spit your bones out come spring. What’s left of you, anyway. Wouldn’t be a scrap of meat left after all those winter-gaunt critters get through with you.”

  Then suddenly, the officer clamped a hand on the Irishman’s shoulder.

  “Best you stay on this side of them mountains for now. Come back here in the spring … early summer. Liam O’Roarke will return here then as well.”

  “Back here?”

  “He knows I’ve got honest work for him next year,” the captain replied. “Another summer. Another campaign against these infernal Cheyenne. Keeping the wires up and the telegraph open. Push
ing the railroad to Denver. Honest work for a scout … not like working for Brigham Young.”

  Seamus watched the captain direct the guards off to the stockade with the grumbling, cursing soldiers. “I’ll be back … come spring.”

  “Suit yourself,” the officer muttered, reluctantly tearing his eyes off the far western mountains. “Now you”—he flung his voice at the black soldier—”get your ass back to Carpenter’s camp and stay there! For your own good!”

  “Yessir! Cap’n, sir!”

  “Hold on, sojur,” Donegan ordered. “I’ll walk ’long with you.” Then he turned back to the officer just starting back to the shade of his post commander’s office.

  “Say, Cap’n, I want to thank you for your help … the information on my uncle.”

  The officer stopped in stride, turned. “Quite all right. I’d appreciate a return of the favor by you taking yourself and the darkie out of here. I don’t need any more excitement this week.”

  “Did not catch your name, Cap’n.”

  He smiled beneath that bushy mustache, pushing a shock of dark hair from his eyes. “Benteen. Fred Benteen. Don’t believe I caught yours.”

  “Seamus Donegan.”

  “Been nice talking with you, Donegan. Best now that you make yourself scarce before any more of these drunk, sullen soldiers take a carving knife to you.”

  “See you come next year, Cap’n Benteen.”

  Seamus turned back, finding the Negro soldier awaiting him.

  He ground his dirty kepi hat between his two huge, black hands, both scarred with light-skinned tracks. “Wanna thankee, sir.”

  “No thanks needed. You’re a freedman, aren’t you?”

  His shiny face bobbed up and down. Flinging drops of sweat. “I am.”