The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  Here and there a few men moved out from camp in several directions as McCall dispatched his first watch for the coming evening. He read his assignments from a small ledger he kept inside his shirt, next to the itchy long-handles that kept a man warm come sundown on these high plains. Despite their fatigue and hunger, most of the scouts appeared in high spirits, gratified to make camp earlier than had been Forsyth’s practice on this long march.

  Seamus stepped to the swamp-willows and plum thicket. He unbuttoned the fly on his cavalry britches, listening to the dry leaves rustle on the cottonwoods abounding on the creekbank. As he watered the dry ground, he gazed over the umber and orange light brushing the gentle slopes of a ridge almost due west of the sandy island in the middle of the stream.

  Some one hundred seventy feet wide, the island had been recently formed owing to a gravel rift upstream at its head where the stream parted itself. Along either side of the island approximately fifteen feet of cool water flowed no more than half a foot deep, gently gurgling for two hundred fifty feet before rejoining at the far end. Sage grass and bunch-weed grew at the west extreme, while a thicket of swamp-willow, alder, and some plum dotted the center, all of it almost as tall as a man.

  Then something cold grabbed him as his eyes snagged on the lone cottonwood at the far east end of the island.

  Almost like a man it stood. The cottonwood facing the onslaught of spring run-off like a man rising to face the charge of Cheyenne horsemen.

  Seamus blinked the vision clear. He shuddered, remembering another hot summer day on the plains of Montana Territory when the lathered-up warriors flung themselves at the hay-cutters’ tiny corral.

  As he turned back to his fire from the plum-thicket at the riverbank, Donegan gazed a moment to the north, studying the low hill beyond the bluffs rising some forty to fifty feet in height. And made mental note that from there someone could see a good piece of the country roundabout. If nothing else, after dinner it would make a good climb. From there, a man could look down on this part of the valley, and see everything.

  Forsyth had led them to this place through a narrow gorge that opened itself into a valley some two miles in length, not nearly as wide. While the country to the south of the stream sloped away gently without much of any obstruction to view, the bluffs and hills rising behind the scouts’ camp gave Seamus a feeling of walls and cantonments.

  “Major figures we’ll be up to our assholes in Injuns by midday tomorrow,” Bob Smith announced with a dry drawl as Donegan marched back into camp. The Confederate trotted alongside to get in step.

  Seamus nodded and kept on walking. Something about the Confederate’s eyes, like blue chips lit with a strange fire. “O’Roarke says the same.”

  For a moment more the rebel soldier glared at Donegan’s back before he grumbled, “You sure ain’t sociable this evenin’, are you?”

  “Hungry,” Donegan muttered.

  “Damn you, anyway,” Smith mumbled and moved off, hurling his oaths in all directions. “Gawddamned Irish mick anyway…”

  As Seamus settled by his fire, John Donovan marched up, delivering supper rations.

  “You’re commissary tonight, Donovan?”

  “’At’s right, my friend!” he cheered, dropping off a small hunk of salt-pork, four pieces of crusty hard-bread, and four hand-scoops of dried beans he poured in Donegan’s upturned hat.

  “That’s not all you owe me,” Seamus growled without malice. “There’ll be two for dinner. Leave me his share as well.”

  “I just did, you idiot!”

  He stared at the portions in his hat. “This? To feed two grown men?”

  “All we got,” Donovan explained as he continued on his rounds. “Major says we empty all the haversacks tonight. Tomorrow we scare up our own forage and game.”

  Seamus wagged his head, sensing his empty stomach growl. “And me … I could be supping on Jennie Wheatley’s fluffy biscuits and juicy kidney pie, a big hunk of her flaky crust floating in a sea of cobbler. Instead, I have to eat this … and look at me uncle’s ugly face!”

  Donovan disappeared chuckling beyond the swamp-willow and alder, off on his rounds. A cold prickling at the saber scar caused Seamus to whirl about. Nothing but the sinking of the sun, and that lone cottonwood, like a sentinel on that island.

  His heart beat faster with the unexplained dump of dread into his blood, worrying him as well.

  If nothing else, this bunch can make a stand of it there, Seamus thought, almost mumbling the words to himself. Perhaps to hear the sound of something more than the dry rustle of the breeze through the brush and the anvil-pounding of his own pulse at his ears.

  Nothing on that island to stop a bullet, though, he brooded. Brush … about like the hayfield corral last summer.

  That fight had convinced some of the experienced plainsmen that Indian warfare was changing. No longer did the Sioux and Cheyenne practice war as they had in the past: individual sniping runs jabbing away at their enemy once they had the white man pinned down. Now it seemed, at both the hayfield and wagon-box fights that the warriors on the northern plains had learned to fight en masse. No longer did individual warriors hurl themselves suicidally at white defenders.

  Now the Sioux and Cheyenne had seen the wisdom in massed charges that would attempt to overwhelm the enemy quickly.

  As Seamus watched his strong coffee brew, he gnawed on the raw salt-pork and hard-bread, washing it down with gulps from his canteen. From time to time he heard guards hollering to one another near the herd where the horses grazed, hobbled for the evening. Come full dark, however, Forsyth had ordered the animals into camp, the long pin driven deep into the sandy soil and the picket-rope double-knotted for security.

  Jumpy and not knowing why, the Irishman strode off to check on The General while his coffee cooled off the flames. He brought the big gray back to his lonely bivouac early. He would pick grass for the horse nearby if he had to. Something about this camp; that island had given him the spooks.

  A smart man always kept his horse near in country like this. A land the Cheyenne and Sioux hunted, from where they would never retreat. A land where the white man found himself not welcome in the least.

  Out of the night-sounds Donegan listened to the quiet footsteps of a man inching along the sand and grass, hugging close to the swamp-willow and alder that prospered beside the creek. As they neared his bivouac, the steps halted, waiting, then resumed their stealthy work.

  Seamus rose slowly from his lonely fire, intent on finding out who kept to the brush in the deepening darkness.

  At that moment instead, a familiar voice harkened from across the camp, opposite the willows.

  “Like some company this evening, Mr. Donegan?”

  Jack Stillwell strode into the light, tugging on the reins to his mount.

  The Irishman sighed, more at ease, yet glanced once over his shoulder at the nearby alders. “Love to have you spend the night, friend. Picket your horse over there where there’s still some good grass. Then join me in this hearty kettle-brew the army calls coffee.”

  Stillwell grinned like it would crack his young face. “Mc-Call’s got old Pete out standing watch. I got … well——”

  “Was lonesome meself, Jack. Sit there.”

  “You see the lights on the hills, Mr. Donegan?”

  Seamus tensed. “What lights?”

  “Lookee yonder.” Jack pointed toward the ridges in the west. “Like torch-lights.”

  “I don’t see a thing now,” Donegan admitted.

  Jack shook his head. “Half dozen of us saw ’em while back. Culver hisself was first to spot ’em. Major figures it’s lights from the Injun camp everybody says we’ll run onto tomorrow.”

  He poured a tin of the steaming coffee for Stillwell. “Major’s run out of time, Jack.”

  “And us,” Stillwell added, “we’ve run out of trail to follow.”

  Time passed as they talked quietly, watching the bright stars slowly wheel overhead until moonrise.
When Seamus finally realized his uncle would not be returning anytime soon, he pushed forward the kettle he had left warming near the fire.

  “You hungry, Jack?”

  “Ain’t your uncle gotta eat?”

  “Major’s got him and Grover out sniffing round for h’athens. If you’re hungry, it’s yours.”

  Jack swallowed hard, licked his lips. “Ain’t been eating well, Mr. Donegan. Old Trudeau somehow manages to get hisself the best cut of the sowbelly and a extra tack or two. Always got more to eat than me, it seems.”

  “Eat up, Jack. No telling when the lot of us will eat this good again.”

  As he let the fire grow low, sinking to coals, Seamus watched Stillwell scoop up boiled beans with his fingers, gnawing at half-cooked pork and crumbling hard-bread. Without much further said between them, the Irishman laid out his bedroll, then patted the ground beside him. The youngster was there to share the warmth of their bodies without delay. On these high plains at this time of the year, the days could fry a man’s brains for him beneath the crown of his hat. Yet the nights might freeze him every bit as quickly. The prairie rendered itself quickly to the cold cloak of night. Beneath their communal blankets, Donegan and Stillwell fell quickly to sleep, listening to the horses cropping the dry grass, the snores of the others, and the faint gurgling of the nearby stream.

  Sleep came a lot harder to their leader that dark night beneath a skimpy, thumbnail moon. Time and again the thirty-one-year-old Forsyth tossed his blanket aside and prowled through camp, speaking in a whisper here, then there, visiting his sentries throughout the night and into the small hours of morning. Almost obsessed with a goading sensation that he stood within striking distance of his goal. In reach, his chance to prove himself to Sheridan.

  Knowing that if he did not achieve his objective of stinging the Cheyenne this time out, Custer would very likely become the general’s favorite come the winter campaign that Sheridan was in the process of planning for the whole of Indian Territory.

  Forsyth ached to have a crack at the Cheyenne. If only a small war-party.

  More important, he had to get them to stop running, turn and fight. Sheridan would have a victory. And Forsyth would enjoy Sheridan’s favor once more, a favor in the wain for some time now as Custer grew more and more flamboyant in his dress and his campaigns.

  He shuddered with the morning cold as he paced one end of the camp to the other, oft-times gazing at the sandy island bathed in starlight. In the hills and craggy ridges behind their bivouac, a coyote set up a serenade. A second took up the chorus.

  From the sound of things, he believed he was the only two-legged thing moving about on the prairie. Little could he know how wrong he was.

  Although, Maj. George A. Forsyth was entirely correct in his hopeful estimation of the enemy.

  The Sioux and Cheyenne were no longer running.

  Chapter 14

  By the time Roman Nose, Tall Bull, and White Horse had led the stirred-up Sioux warriors south to the Dog Soldier camp, overhead the sun was racing fast for its western sleep.

  As the war-chiefs gazed over the combined forces of Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors, numbering more than a thousand horsemen, they reluctantly gave in to the falling sun. No man in fear of his own soul would consider fighting at night. For if a warrior were himself killed during a battle after the sun had disappeared from the sky, his spirit would forever roam this earth, unable to spend his forever days in Seyan.

  “Our warriors ride before the sun climbs out of its bed, Nibsi,” the tall war-leader declared as he slid from the back of his pony.

  “Not now, Roman Nose?” Jack O’Neill asked, feeling the disappointment.

  The Nose shook his head. “Come,” he directed.

  Jack obeyed, following the warrior into the small lodge of Roman Nose. He had no need of anything larger. With no wife, his furnishings were spartan to the point of poverty. Yet, the great war-leader had everything he desired: the respect of his people. That, and the fear he elicited in his enemies.

  “I … I have never been asked to your lodge,” Jack explained as he sat where Roman Nose indicated.

  “In my youth, the water-spirits instructed me to remain alone … never taking a wife. Instead, all Shahiyena are my family. I must do everything for their good, Nibsi. Live only for their protection.”

  Jack watched him remove a bandoleer of brass cartridges from his shoulder, marveling at the flexing, tensing, rippling musculature of the man.

  “Start a fire, Nibsi. We will eat.”

  As they waited for the kettle to come to a boil, both men stared into the swaying flames. Outside, the village took on a festive atmosphere. With news of the white men coming, every man older than sixteen summers had prepared for battle, bringing out his weapons. Most of the firearms possessed by the warriors had been spoils of the Fetterman Massacre—single-shot muzzle-loading Springfield muskets. Only a handful owned repeaters, captured in recent raids on the white man’s roads.

  In this village of Dog Soldiers the Cheyenne hosted visiting Sioux as all warriors reveled this night before resuming their march to wipe out the half-a-hundred. Word had it this evening that the fighting force following the villages had camped no more than ten miles away. Within easy reach before the sun rose on the ground they would splatter with white blood.

  On every lip this night was talk of the cold-time fight when Crazy Horse had lured the soldiers out of their fort far north in Red Cloud’s country. On this occasion, however, there would be no need to seduce the soldiers into the ambush. To surround and attack the half-a-hundred would be more than easy, everyone cheered. Like squashing a tick grown plump and lazy between one’s fingers. Watching the blood trickle and ooze over one’s hand.

  “I have sworn to stop the smoke-belching medicine horse that rides on the iron tracks,” Roman Nose finally declared, his face beaded with diamonds of sweat from the fire’s heat. “Together with the Dog Soldier chiefs, we Cheyenne had planned to join Pawnee Killer’s Sioux in a great raid against the whiteman’s settlements this summer-going. Since the greening of the first grass, we have planned for this sweep through the whiteman’s villages—the coming of the first full moon after the first frosts have licked the prairie ponds with ice.”

  “I can go as well?” Jack asked, grown excited.

  He nodded, smiling sadly. The strong, white teeth gleaming in the firelight. “Of course, Nibsi. Unless … unless you choose to take another path of vengeance.”

  “Another path?”

  “I will explain soon enough,” Roman Nose cheered, easing Jack’s sudden apprehension. “In these great raids the Shahiyena will ride to the east in bands of fifty to a hundred warriors at most. Scattering out to do our killing. Leaving no whiteman alive, carrying his women and children away with us. Burning the whiteman’s lodges. Taking all his horses and slow-buffalo for our own.”

  Jack felt the tingle of real excitement race down his spine like January icewater in the pumphouse back in Georgia. “We will be strong once more, and drive the whiteman back, will we not, Roman Nose?”

  “For but a short time will our two-times-a-hundred raid and kill and burn, Nibsi. While that full moon shrinks to half its size. Then all warrior bands will turn from their destruction and journey north, to the land where Red Cloud himself defends our ancient hunting grounds, kept free of the white-man. No more will the soldiers bother us there.”

  “Because of the snow and cold of Winter Man?”

  “No,” he answered, then smiled sadly again. “Though the whiteman knows not how to fight in the snow. Instead, the soldiers have learned their lesson. Instead, word comes from the northern country that Red Cloud has won. The soldiers are leaving the forts along his road leading into the land of the Sparrowhawk people where the crazed whitemen dig for the yellow rocks.”

  “The army is giving up the Bozeman Road, Roman Nose?” Jack asked, astonished.

  “It is true. From the dirt fort on the Bighorn … to the Piney Woods fo
rt, clear down to the dirt-walled fort on the Powder River. Our prayers to the Earth-Maker have been answered at last! Red Cloud has won!”

  “Then the Shahiyena has won as well!”

  “If the whiteman had continued his attacks on our hunting ground,” The Nose explained, his voice gone grave, “the Shahiyena would become as few as the leaves of the trembling aspen in the cold moons … leaves clinging desperately to the shivering trees.”

  “The whiteman is a powerful devil, Roman Nose.” Jack spoke every bit as gravely. “He and his soldiers are as many as the grasshoppers in this Drying Grass Moon now on this land.”

  Roman Nose laid his Winchester repeater across his thighs, stroking the stock, the barrel, the receiver. “These whitemen who hunt us now will soil their pants when they stare into the barrels of our guns.”

  Jack chuckled at the thought of that sight. Watching the white scouts soiling their pants like frightened children. Then he grew attentive as Roman Nose set the rifle aside. The Cheyenne’s face hardened as he spoke.

  “Last summer my medicine helper told me I would find a place of power on a river dried like a rawhide strip beneath the sun. Another winter came and went, and with the short-grass time, I discovered myself consumed with finding that scorched river.”

  “What did your vision tell you?” Jack inquired, his brain carefully searching for the words.

  “That I would charge down on a island of sand and grass in the middle of that river, leading our warriors in that charge.”

  “Leading them to victory. How will you know this place?”

  Roman Nose did not answer at first. The firelight held his eyes captive. “At the far end of the island I would see standing a lone tree, not yet at full growth. And at the end nearest to my charge, I watched a lone whiteman rise, aim his rifle unafraid of the hundreds of pounding hooves hammering his way.”

  “Yes?” Jack asked, for the first time sensing his own anxiety, alone here with Roman Nose as the great war-leader unburdened his soul. “This whiteman fell beneath all those hooves as you passed over him … wiping out them all.”