Women and watering holes. The first to arrive after the soldiers and the railroad.
He barely listened as the noise at the bar rose, then fell, while glasses filled, then emptied. An ebb and flow of sound washing about him like the waves of that ocean separating him and his beloved Eire. A stinking, rat-infested English ship had carried him to this new land, away from the grave of his father and the home of his mother.
Much, much better it be, he brooded, better to forget that cursed ship brought me to Amerikay——
“I’ll be damned,” a voice roared above the clamor.
A hand landed on Donegan’s shoulder.
Whirling about, Seamus recognized, through the fog that had been his most of this past winter, a familiar face.
“Seamus Donegan, ain’t it?”
His eyes watered in the smoky haze of the barroom. The figure swam before him a moment. Then his focus cleared. “Sharp? That you, Sharp Grover?”
The man dragged a broken chair to the table and straddled it beside Donegan. “All winter you been punishing that saddle varnish they proudly call whiskey here, eh?”
Attempting to steady it, Seamus held his hand out. Instead, the hand trembled slightly. He hid it in his lap. Out of view. And smiled at the older plains scout. “Ain’t been much else for a man to do in a hole like Hays, Sharp.”
Grover wagged his head. “Used to better in your Boston, is it, Irishman?” He sipped at his whiskey. “Damn—this stuff wash the varnish off my tonsils!”
“Good, ain’t it?” Seamus held his chipped glass up in toast.
Grover clinked his up against the Irishman’s. “Damn right, Donegan. Here’s to green-up.”
“Aye. Here’s to spring.”
They drank in silence for some time while Grover watched Seamus peer into his amber whiskey, the color of pale tobacco-juice.
“How’d you fare the winter, Irishman?”
“Cutting wood. Teamstered between here and Harker a few runs when the blizzards shut down the roads and no one else dared make the haul. I took their money—and the gamble as well.”
“You’re a man likes a gamble, is it?” Grover asked.
Christened Abner at birth, his father had hung him with a name that suited the youth better when it was discovered the boy could shoot sharp. Born in the East, Grover had come to the plains with his parents at an early age, growing up on the border of the frontier where he learned to speak a fluent Sioux. He was pushing the downside of his forties as he sat across the tiny table this winter night. Shorter than Donegan, he was spare in build as well, yet most men gave him wide berth. Knowing not only that his mother’s French-voyageur blood had given him its hot courage, but most had learned of his recent return from Turkey Legs’s camp, a journey that had cost the life of Grover’s partner, Bill Comstock.
“Aye, I gamble,” Seamus answered. “If the stakes are fit … and I’m not staring a hold card. You have something on your mind, Sharp?”
“It can wait,” he replied. And poured them each another into the dirty glasses.
No less than Gen. Philip H. Sheridan himself had dispatched Grover and Comstock to Turkey Legs’s village, north on the Solomon River at that time, to find out the mood of the Sioux. Rumors had it that the bands would be taking war to the plains again come green-up. Turkey Legs’s war-chiefs had professed a hollow friendship for the whites, yet insisted the two scouts leave their camp. Seven warriors left the village, explaining they were there to escort Sheridan’s emissaries safely some miles from camp, when the Sioux suddenly swung about and fired on the white men, hitting them both in the back.
Comstock fell, dead instantly. Behind the body the wounded Grover huddled, opening up on the warriors with his repeating carbine. The warriors fell back to the safety of some trees, where Grover held them at bay until darkness drenched the sky.
Bleeding heavily, Sharp stumbled off across the prairie, eventually making his way on foot to Monument Station on the Kansas–Pacific Railroad. He was bandaged there, then placed on the train to catch a ride as far west as the rails allowed. Alone, he had reported in, telling Col. Henry C. Bankhead, commander at Fort Wallace, about the murder of his partner.
In those early post-war years on the Central Plains, there were five army scouts whose names brought admiration from the civilians they protected and the officers they served: William Cody, Dick Parr, Liam O’Roarke, Sharp Grover, and William Comstock.
That had been the toughest part of walking out of that wilderness on foot for Sharp Grover. Knowing that now there were four.
“Heard someone talking ’bout you last week,” Seamus said, easing his glass to the table. “Said you was wounded by an Indian bullet.”
“I was,” he replied, then sipped at his whiskey. “I heal fast.”
Seamus saluted with his glass. “I suppose out here a man has to heal fast, doesn’t he?”
“Was a cold one this year.” Sharp sighed, changing the tune.
“Be glad when winter lets go this land.”
The dark eyes of the prairie scout narrowed. “You ready for some honest work, Seamus?”
He perked a bit, one eye squinting at his table-mate. “Honest work, you claim? And what would that be, coming from a stinking mule-lover like you?”
Grover laughed and slapped Seamus on the shoulder, then poured them each another round from Donegan’s bottle. “Word has it all the way from Little Phil’s headquarters that we’ll be moving out again this spring … soon as freeze-up breaks.”
“Sheridan, eh?”
“Yep. He’s bound and determined to punish the Cheyenne and Sioux since he couldn’t whip ’em last summer.”
“Hancock and his God-a’mighty self, Custer … neither didn’t make Lil’ Phil proud, did they, Sharp?”
“If you’re a man for taking another’s advice, Irishman—best you keep your voice down about Custer in these parts. This is the general’s country … and his soldiers’ as well.”
Seamus chuckled. “Learned how Custer’s sojurs watch out for him last fall over to Wallace. Funny thing, though—the Boy General hisself is taking holiday back in Michigan, I’ve been told.”
“Every word of it true.”
“The army gave him a year’s vacation, Sharp. Shooting deserters like they was Johnnie prisoners.”
“Take my word for it, Irishman. Hays isn’t the place to be hacking on Custer.”
“Sounds like you’re a fast friend of the general.”
He shook his head. “I’ll just figure that’s the whiskey talking, Irishman. I work for the man a’times. Work for the army as well. And the pay’s good. Out here, a man learns fast he don’t bite the hand what feeds him.”
Seamus finally grinned, and held up his glass in salute. “You’re right, Sharp. I’ll keep Custer to meself.”
“Besides, Irishman … you might soon be working for the army as well.”
He cocked his head. “I had my share of whipping mules through snow-drifts. Don’t figure to——”
“Their money saw you through the winter, didn’t it?”
“Waiting for my uncle ’swhat I’m doing here.”
“Drinking it away?”
“Don’t see any reason why a mule-whacker can’t keep a belly full of this puggle, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” Grover leaned back in his chair, the fingers of both hands laced atop his belly covering the greasy gray tapestry of his brocade vest. “But, a man wants to step up in the world … a man what don’t wanna always work on the south side of a northbound mule—that man gonna have to back away from the bottle ever’ now and then.”
Donegan eyed him. His foggy mind working it over and over as he repeatedly licked his cracked, raw lips. “You got something on your mind, Grover. Better you spit it out. I ain’t of a mind to dust it off for meself.”
“Short of temper, are you, Irishman?” he said, then laughed loose and easy.
“Might say that,” he growled, his dark head slung between his shoulders.
“Cheer up, Seamus. I get that whiskey soaked out of your system in a few weeks, we’re gonna make a army scout out of you.”
“Ain’t in no mood to have any man hacking on me. That includes you, Grover.”
He wagged his head, pushing himself away from the table, and stood. “So be it. If that’s the way you want it. Thought I might do something to help you out—give you a job to count on while you wait for Liam.”
Seamus glared up into the murky lamplight at the plains scout, startled. “Liam … Liam O’Roarke. That’s right.”
“I remembered you’re his nephew.”
“I … see.” He looked back at his whiskey. Suddenly his stomach lurched sourly. And Donegan remembered he hadn’t eaten in the better part of a week.
“What I seen, you can ride a horse better’n most men … and I’ll teach you to read trail sign sooner’n you can——”
“Don’t do me no favors, Grover,” he snapped.
“Excuse me,” he replied after a moment, taking a step away from the table, appearing to fight down the impulse to stomp away. “I got you confused, Irishman. Got you confused with someone who really needed at least one friend.”
He never looked up from his whiskey. “That’s right. You got me confused. Don’t wanna work for the army. I’ll sit right here and wait for O’Roarke, biding my time.”
“You do what you will, Irishman,” Grover said as he lashed up the leather whangs on the front of his greasy, buffalo-hide coat. “You get yourself dried out and ready … come look me up. Me or the lieutenant I’ll be riding with come green-up.”
“Humph!” Seamus growled. “Small chance of me doing that. Thankee for your kindness all the same, Grover.”
“Come see Lieutenant Fred Beecher … or me, Irishman. You get your head cleared of that poison. That whiskey, and whatever else’s eating a hole in your privates.”
Donegan listened to the aging scout shuffle away, back to the bar, where Grover rejoined the soldiers he had accompanied to the Shady Rest. At the bar a noisy reception greeted Sharp.
“Beecher?” Donegan repeated the name under his breath as the strong brown liquid hurried past his lips.
Lt. Fred Beecher …
Chapter 3
“I came south to fight the whiteman,” the tall Northern Cheyenne warrior boasted. “Not run from him.”
“We are not running from the whiteman,” protested Tangle Hair, a headman among these Cheyenne on the Central Plains. “We must protect our villages … women, children, and the old ones.”
“Perhaps you have grown old as well,” the tall one snapped. He slowly twisted some strands of light hair between his fingers. The hair was not his.
Roman Nose enjoyed displaying his colorful trophies from the fight for the Northern Plains. Hair of gold and that touched by the red of a setting sun. Strands of curly brown the color of mud in a buffalo wallow, and that hair of black-skinned white men the color of a buffalo bull’s hump with the coming of winter. The corners of his large mouth turned upward in it characteristic thin-lipped sneer as one of Tangle Hair’s compatriots rose to the bait.
“Long ago we decided our warriors would do our fighting,” Running Elk spoke evenly, knowing that it perturbed The Nose that he was not provoked to anger. “There have been too many empty lodges, too many motherless children for any man not to remember the lessons of Sand Creek … don’t we remember the lessons of Pawnee Fork last summer?”
Roman Nose let fall the auburn hair that hung beside the quillwork sewn down his arm, glaring at the Cheyenne chief across the smoky firepit. “Yes, my friend—I remember well the lessons of those who would listen to the words of the whiteman treaty-talkers and their women-killer soldiers.”
Of a sudden, the diabolical grin stretched into a smile, startling the others. His gleaming teeth more wolfish than friendly, eyes like cold obsidian chips, The Nose realized he had once more caught these chiefs unawares. Just when they thought they had him sorted out.
“It is right, what our chiefs say. Right that the villages should stay far away from these soldiers and their forts. It is for our warriors to take the battle to the whiteman.”
Around him arose a brief muttering of assent as more of the Cheyenne chiefs agreed. Suspiciously.
“Surely,” Roman Nose continued, “our warriors can raid the roads that take the whitemen west. Lay siege to the camps where stay the men who plant the iron rails for the puffing-smoke horse. Our scouts will tell us where and when the whiteman gathers to follow us. So that once more we can disappear like a puff of breath-smoke in a winter wind.”
“Perhaps our brother Roman Nose sees the merits of protecting our villages, while continuing to strike back at the whiteman and his soldiers?” asked old Two Crows, one of the acknowledged leaders of the plains Cheyenne.
He nodded. “I do, Uncle. Last summer I watched Red Cloud’s Sioux and Cheyenne slowly strangle the life from those three forts the whiteman had built along his medicine road north into the land of the Sparrowhawks.”
“Where the whiteman scratches at the ground for little yellow rocks!” injected White Horse, laughing, his ample belly wiggling.
“Where they go for yellow rocks,” Roman Nose agreed, “but instead find red death.”
“Yet, even before the first snow fell last winter in the Drying Grass Moon, word came from the northlands that Red Cloud and Crazy Horse had not been victorious when they attacked two forts along the whiteman’s road.”
Roman Nose slowly shifted his eyes to Tall Bull. Near his right hand, The Bull was not a man given to many words. When he spoke, it was with wisdom, and always struck straight to the heart of a matter.
“Yes, Uncle. The words of Tall Bull are always straight. Too many of our warriors, Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapaho all, fell from their war-ponies … to rise no more.”
“It was said the whiteman made medicine over his guns.” Sioux chief Turkey Legs finally entered the debate.
“The whiteman made no medicine,” Roman Nose sneered. “He has rifles that shoot many times before reloading. We too will have these rifles one day soon.”
“Until then?” Tangle Hair asked.
“We must continue to strike the whiteman wherever we find him—stealing his powerful weapons until we have enough of his repeating rifles that we can successfully attack his forts.”
“Roman Nose will stay in this southland for the coming summer?” Running Elk inquired.
The Nose smiled, knowing The Elk was attempting to put him on the spot. “Yes, Uncle. I will remain with your bands here in the south for the summer. And … I will lead our warriors in our raids on the whiteman’s roads and camps and settlements.”
“Yes!” Two Crows cheered. “The white peace-talkers guaranteed us rifles and bullets in the shipments he would bring us under last winter’s peace-signing. The rifles have not come.” His eyes grew cold. “Someone must pay.”
“Let all whitemen pay,” White Horse replied. “When we receive our weapons from the peace-talkers, we can once again hunt buffalo … and whitemen as well.”
“Forget buffalo this year, my friends.” The Nose raised his voice above the noisy clamor, quieting them all. “Forget having our young warriors follow the shaggy beast this summer. Instead, we leave the hunting of buffalo to the women and old men … to the boys. Instead, the men of our bands will hunt bigger game.”
“What … what is bigger than a buffalo, Roman Nose? What could be harder to bring down than a full-grown bull in his prime?” asked Turkey Legs.
The Nose rose slowly to his feet, all six foot, three inches of him, taller than every other man in each of the gathering bands of Cheyenne. “This summer we hunt a worthy foe. Come the short-grass time, Shahiyena will stalk the white-man!”
* * *
“By damn, I want that red bastard’s scalp myself!” Lt. General Philip H. Sheridan roared, banging his meaty fist on the tabletop. His black bush of a mustache all but covered his mouth below the hawk’s-beak of a
n Irish nose.
Maj. George A. Forsyth watched the papers and maps and dispatches scatter as his commander whirled into the horsehide chair behind the desk. Handsome, curly haired “Sandy” Forsyth had been with Sheridan since the bloody days of ’64 in the Shenandoah Valley. In fact, Forsyth carried the reminders, puckered scars left behind by four rebel bullets he had earned himself in the final year of the war. One of three leaders who more than any others had earned the unbridled respect and trust of the little Irish bantam-rooster who commanded this Department of the Missouri. Without reservation, Sheridan trusted George Armstrong Custer, Wesley Merritt, and Sandy Forsyth.
Custer had been there to accept the rebel flag of surrender at Appomattox Wood. Made possible by Sheridan’s daring and magnificent ride that saved the day at Winchester. At Phil’s side had galloped George A. Forsyth.
Sheridan’s three commanders had brought Phil his victory in the Shenandoah. And in so doing, Sheridan had handed Ulysses S. Grant his victory over Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in turn.
“We’ll find where Roman Nose is, Phil—and if I have to cut his hair off with a butter-knife myself … by God—I’ll do it!”
“That’s the spirit, Sandy.” Phil whirled back round in his chair.
The two of them alone in Sheridan’s spartan office here at Fort Leavenworth on the plains of eastern Kansas, Forsyth knew the short, dark-haired Irishman realized this battle for the Central Plains was not his to fight. Sandy knew the gauntlet was being passed to him.
“Custer’s not here to do this,” Sheridan muttered to his papers, not raising his eyes.
“You have me, Phil.”
Only then did the general lift his bearded face and stuffed a match-stick between his meaty lips. “I may need him yet.”
George felt the heat rise from his collar. He hadn’t been as fortunate as had the “Boy General” during the recent rebellion. Never in the right place at the right time. Yet, Forsyth remained certain that he was every bit as good as the younger, more impetuous soldier spending a year’s hiatus in Monroe, Michigan. “But, Custer’s been … court-martialed for a year, Phil. Won’t be back till late this fall.”
The Stalkers Page 4