The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  Yet, these men were not soldiers. Simply a company of civilian scouts. Bound together now like no company of blue-coats or pony-soldiers ever could be. Bound to one and the other by something stronger than army discipline. A special bond shared among these brothers-in-arms, something none of them dared the thought of breaking.

  Seamus felt his stomach roll, empty but for the murky warm water from the bottom of the pits. Yet now, for the first time in a handful of days, he did not mind his belly being so empty as he listened to the night-sounds.

  The soft voice of the river flowed past him on two sides. Drying leaves stirred on the plum and swamp-willow.

  The first, mournful howls of the wolves and coyotes, drawing closer … closer still to that bloody island of death.

  Chapter 38

  “Lieutenant! Lieutenant Johnson!”

  Acting post adjutant for Fort Wallace rolled off his rope bunk in the O.D.’s room, yanking a suspender over his shoulder with one hand, the other rubbing grit from an eye.

  “What is it, Sergeant?” he demanded, blinking in the dim light as he stumbled to his desk, where he turned up the wick on a lamp.

  “These fellas, sir.”

  Hugh Johnson watched two poor excuses for humanity shoulder their way past the sergeant of the guard and enter his tiny office. He was immediately struck with the smell, figuring the men in some need of a bath. Their shabby clothing showed the lieutenant the pair had been out on the prairie for some time. Torn, greasy, and bloody. And the way they limped in tender-footed in those cracked, dusty boots.

  Still, Johnson’s nose troubled him, picking up something more than the stench of sour sweat. A days’-old odor of cooked meat and alkali water seemed to seep from the civilians’ every pore.

  “You are?” Johnson asked, yanking up the second suspender.

  “Jack Stillwell, sir. Forsyth’s scouts. Me … and him.”

  Johnson looked over the old man. “He’s about done in. Sergeant, get this man to the infirmary.”

  “Yessir. Come ‘long with me, ol’ timer.”

  “Name’s Trudeau. Pierre Trudeau, by God. Me and boy, we been to hell and back…”

  Johnson watched the old man and the sergeant fade into the light before he realized he had pulled his watch from his pocket. Holding it at the length of the fob under the pale, saffron lamplight, the lieutenant noted the time, muttering under his breath.

  “Eleven—goddamned—o’clock.” He turned, looking Stillwell over again. “Now, what’s this about Forsyth’s men?”

  “I was with the major up on the Republican.” Jack gushed it out. “Me and ol’ Pete snuck off five days ago. Forsyth sent me for relief. Need to talk with the post commander, Colonel Bankhead.”

  “Relief?”

  “Listen, goddammit. Forsyth and the rest of his outfit—we got ourselves pretty chewed up. There was two dead when I left the first night.”

  “Two dead,” Johnson repeated, skirting his tiny desk for some paper and the stub of a pencil.

  “There’s likely more dead now,” Stillwell kept on. “The way we was having the wounded pile up that first day. No telling how many the Cheyenne shot up since me and Pete escaped.”

  “You escaped?” Johnson asked, striding past Stillwell to the open door.

  “Yessir. We escaped and been walking ever——”

  “Guard!” Johnson was hollering at the door. Footsteps dashed up outside. “You’ll find Colonel Bankhead at the sutler’s store. Tell him word has arrived that Major Forsyth is in sore need of a relief expedition.”

  Johnson turned back to the young civilian as the guard trotted off into the black of night. “Yesterday morning Bank-head dispatched H Company under Carpenter to patrol west of here along the Denver Road.”

  “I run onto a couple darkies riding with dispatches to Carpenter’s outfit,” Stillwell disclosed. “Give ’em Major Forsyth’s map.”

  “What the hell you give it to them boys for?”

  “Carpenter’s gonna need it,” Jack explained, sinking in a ladder-backed chair that complained as he settled on it.

  “We could’ve used that map,” Johnson griped. “The colonel’s gonna be mighty angry about you giving away Forsyth’s map like——”

  “What the hell am I going to be so angry about … besides you interrupting my game of dominoes, Mr. Johnson?” asked Colonel Bankhead in his loud but cheerful voice. He strode into the room grandly, bringing with him the odors of cheese and pungent cigar smoke, his eyes flicking from his adjutant to the young civilian in tattered clothing. “And just what’s all this about Forsyth needing relief?” He looked from Stillwell to Johnson, back to Stillwell.

  Jack told his story in a single gush, from the dawn attack, to the three big charges and the snipers on both banks and the horses all killed by Indians or the scouts using them for barricades and surgeon Mooers down with a head-wound, then Lieutenant Beecher shot in the side and died that sundown before they started cutting up the horses and digging for more water, then Forsyth gave him the map and sent him on his way into the night with word for the colonel but he ran onto the two brunettes riding for Carpenter’s camp so he gave them the map and the message, then turned his nose east for Fort Wallace and the colonel.

  Bankhead sighed, slowly settling in the horsehide chair behind Johnson’s tiny desk. He tapped a finger against his lower lip. The size of the colonel made the desk look even smaller. Leaning over, he turned up the lamp so far that the wick smoked. By this time the whole post was on the alert. Voices were heard hollering to one another across the parade, announcing the arrival of the scouts, spreading what rumor they had of the siege on the island and talking one another up on the rescue they wagered was about to set forth.

  At the doorway, listening through Stillwell’s short story of the day-long fight, were two civilians: Richard Blake, a clerk with the fort commissary, and the post sutler, Homer Wheeler.

  “Homer,” the colonel said, “you’re a good soldier but a damned poor domino player.”

  “That your way of telling me I can go along with you, Henry?”

  “Damn right it is.” Bankhead turned to his sergeant of the guard. “If they aren’t up, inform all company captains there will be a meeting in my office in ten minutes. No, make that five minutes. And tell them to alert their units, we’ll be selecting companies for light marching order in … in one hour. Now, go!”

  “One hour, sir?”

  “I gave you an order, Sergeant!”

  “Yessir!”

  “Lieutenant, take down a message to Captain Carpenter,” Bankhead began, rising from the chair and patting it for the adjutant’s attention.

  Johnson sat, dipping his best quill in the inkwell, then began moving his shaking hand over the foolscap. There had been nothing this exciting for him since the battle of Vicksburg. His hand flew across the page, transcribing Bankhead’s orders.

  Headquarters, Fort Wallace, Kansas

  September 22, 1868, 11 P.M.

  Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel L. H. Carpenter,

  On Scout.

  Colonel:

  The commanding officer directs you to proceed at once to a point on the Dry Fork of the Republican, about seventy-five or eighty miles north, northwest from this point, thirty or forty miles west by a little south from the forks of the Republican, with all possible despatch.

  Two scouts from Colonel Forsyth’s command arrived here this evening and bring word that he (Forsyth) was attacked on the morning of Thursday last by an overpowering force of Indians (700), who killed all the animals, broke Colonel Forsyth’s leg with a rifle-ball, and severely wounded him in the groin, wounded Surgeon Mooers in the head and wounded Lieutenant Beecher in several places. His back is supposed to be broken. Two men of the command were killed and eighteen or twenty wounded.

  Then men bringing word crawled on hands and knees two miles, and then traveled only by night on account of the Indians, whom they saw daily.

  Forsyth’s men were entrenched in the
dry bed of the creek with a well in the trench, but had only horse-flesh to eat and only sixty rounds of ammunition.

  General Sheridan orders that the greatest despatch be used and every means employed to succor Forsyth at once.

  Colonel Bankhead will leave here in one hour with one hundred men and two mountain howitzers.

  Bring all your scouts with you.

  Order Doctor Fitzgerald at once to this post, to replace Doctor Turner, who accompanies Colonel Bank-head for the purpose of dressing the wounded of Forsyth’s party.

  “Now sign it, Lieutenant. As my adjutant.”

  “Yessir,” Johnson replied. Finishing the dispatch with a flourish of his pen.

  I am, Colonel, very respectfully

  your obedient servant,

  Hugh Johnson,

  First Lieutenant Fifth Infantry,

  Acting Post Adjutant

  “Did I get down everything right, Mr. Stillwell?” Bank-head said, turning on the young scout.

  He swallowed. “Yessir, far as I knew when I left. But, I already told them two brunettes about it all too.”

  “I know,” Bankhead replied. “But I’ll trust this dispatch to explain things to Carpenter just the same.”

  “May I go with you, sir?”

  Bankhead eyed the youngster. “You’re in pretty bad shape, son. Probably wore out and in need of a decent meal and some sleep.”

  “I asked if I could go, Colonel,” Stillwell repeated, standing straight in his shabby, bloody clothing.

  Bankhead turned to Blake at the door. “Richard, I want to see just how much food you can stuff in this boy before we pull out.”

  “You got it, Colonel,” Blake answered, waving Stillwell out the door. “Let’s get you some supper … on the colonel.”

  Bankhead turned back after watching Stillwell limp out of the room on his wounded feet. He impatiently patted Johnson on the shoulder. “Once you’ve got a courier on the way … immediately—get the telegraph operator out of his bunk and get word of this to General Sheridan. Now see that this message is started by courier … immediately.”

  “They’d probably be somewhere near Sandy Creek, sir.”

  “Sandy Creek, Cheyenne Wells … I don’t give a damn,” Bankhead blustered, running a palm across his thinning hair and bald spot. “Just give the order to your courier that he’s not to get out of the saddle until he locates Carpenter.”

  “Not out of the saddle … yessir!”

  * * *

  “Reuben!”

  Corporal Waller heard his name called, but nonetheless worked his black cheek down in the warmth of his saddle blanket. Dreaming of home back in Mississippi before the war, and the way his mama called out to him each long summer night to come in to bed with his brothers and sisters.

  “Reuben Waller!”

  And that voice sounded a damned lot like his owner’s, the man he had followed on foot, trotting behind the owner’s big thoroughbred into and out of battle after battle after defeat through the war. Until Reuben figured out he no longer had to return to the plantation behind his owner in the tattered butternuts and instead wandered west to Kansas looking for a start.

  “Corporal!”

  He sat up, blinking his eyes, realizing he was on the prairie, encamped near Sandy Creek with H Company. On patrol.

  “What is it?” he asked, bleary-eyed and staring up in the dark at the three black men looking down at him in the light of some six-hour coals.

  “These two couriers just come in from Wallace,” one of the night pickets disclosed. “Say they gotta see the captain ’bout something.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you boys know better’n that? When the captain getting his sleep, goddammit——”

  “We was give this map for the captain.” One of the couriers shoved round the picket’s carbine. “It’s mighty important, Corp’ral. Major Forsyth got hisself in a bad way of things.”

  “Forsyth?” Waller bolted out of his blankets.

  “Yessir,” the courier answered. “His scouts got themse’ves shot up by Roman Nose.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Waller burst as he leaped to his feet, his smile suddenly bright in the cloudy darkness. He yanked on the first courier as he turned and set off.

  “Captain Carpenter won’t mind me waking him up to hear this news!”

  * * *

  “Just gimme some coffee, biscuits, and some side-meat that don’t whinny or bray,” John Donovan requested of Lieutenant Johnson as they hurried across the Fort Wallace parade, headed for sutler Wheeler’s store.

  Minutes ago in the small hours of the morning of 23 September, Donovan and A. J. Pliley had scrambled off the east-bound coach coming in from Denver on the Federal Road. After reaching the road ranch outside of Cheyenne Wells, the station-master had treated Forsyth’s messengers to a royal breakfast of bacon, fresh eggs, and sourdough flapjacks. With their bellies full for the first time in the better part of a week, both men dozed until the catch-up call awakened them. Outside the station-master and his hired hand harnessed a new team for the incoming coach.

  Once the ragged, bleary-eyed scouts were on board and rocking their way toward Fort Wallace in the brick-red, yellow-wheeled Dearborn coach, they watched the stars whirl overhead as they regaled their fellow passengers with bloody tales of three days’ fighting on Forsyth’s island.

  With a great deal of shouting and excitement, Fort Wallace sprang alive for the second time that short, summer night. Two more civilians showing up out of the prairie black of night, asking for Colonel Bankhead.

  “He isn’t here,” Hugh Johnson explained, sleepy-eyed again, checking his watch beneath the lamp he refused to turn up this time. His red eyes came wide when he closely studied the two men standing before him in his tiny office. “You? You from Forsyth too?”

  “How you know?” Donovan asked.

  “Young fella and an old man came in late last night——”

  “Jack Stillwell? He still here?”

  “No, sir. Left as guide for Colonel Bankhead.”

  “When’d they pull out?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  “The old man … Trudeau—he go with ’em?”

  “He was used up, I’m afraid,” Johnson replied, settling in his chair. “He’s in bed, the infirmary. Not sure how he’ll fare.”

  Donovan turned on his partner, collapsed in a hard chair. “A. J. That’s where you need to be. In a bed like Pete.”

  “Where you going?” Pliley asked weakly, about done in.

  “I’m riding out of here soon as the lieutenant gets me some rations.” He turned on Johnson. “You got a surgeon here for Pliley? He’s in a bad way.”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “Surgeon Theo Turner set out with Bankhead. Carpenter’s been ordered to send surgeon Fitzgerald back before he sets out north.”

  “Make sure the surgeon sees to Pliley when he gets here.”

  “Him,” Johnson replied, “and that Trudeau too.”

  “By the way, you’ll want this,” Donovan said, pulling the folded scrap of paper from his greasy shirt. He watched Johnson’s eyes read Forsyth’s pencil scratchings once, then twice.

  The lieutenant looked up, with amazement, even admiration spreading across his face. “You had no surgeon——”

  Donovan scratched his fuzzy cheek, cutting the soldier off. “How’d Bankhead figure on going?”

  Johnson turned, consulting the map on his wall. He traced a line with his finger. “North by northwest, cross the Beaver, from there to——”

  “That’ll take him too damned long,” Donovan snapped. “Likely Forsyth and the rest be dead by then.” Suddenly, John’s face lit up. “Where’s this Carpenter’s outfit you was talking about ‘while back?”

  Johnson held a fingertip on the map, west and north some of Wallace. “Most likely be here tonight, on Sandy Creek. Heading over toward Cheyenne W——”

  “That’s where I’ll go,” Donovan said quietly,
almost to himself as he held the lamp up, casting a murky, yellow light on the wall-map.

  “You’ll miss him now.”

  “No, I won’t,” Donovan replied. “I’ll head out this way … most likely run onto him somewhere … somewhere out there.” His fingertip circled a good-sized chunk of eastern Colorado Territory. He turned on the lieutenant. “You have a half-dozen soldiers what can ride with me?”

  “No soldiers left I can spare, mister,” Johnson apologized. “But, I did get a wire from General Sheridan little while ago, saying I had his authorization to pay a hundred dollars to any civilians who volunteered to go to Forsyth’s relief.”

  “That count me?” Donovan asked, his voice rising.

  “Yes, I suppose it does.”

  “What we waiting for, Lieutenant? Get your guards busy rounding up some hungry civilians who want to take old Phil Sheridan up on his hundred-dollar gamble … and find me that side-meat, by God. Side-meat that don’t fight the bit, whinny, or bray! By God, I’m heading out to find this Captain Carpenter!”

  Chapter 39

  A late-summer sun came up on this, 23 September, their seventh day on the island. With the Indians apparently gone, those survivors still strong enough ventured out to hunt in the coming light. They found no game and were forced to return to Major Forsyth with their news.

  Everyone notched their belts a little tighter. Said their prayers. And tried to stay out of the scorching sun as they kept constant watch toward the south and east, eyes yearning for some sign of troops coming to their rescue. Ears always on the alert for a distant bugle-call.

  Besides the constant, heavy drone of the flies carpeting everything in black masses, the only sound that met their ears was the quiet rustle of the dry-leafed cottonwood and swamp-willow. As the afternoon sun slipped in its westward path, Seamus Donegan watched Sigmund Shlesinger pull a small, three-and-a-half-by-eight-inch notebook from his shirt.

  “That your journal, Slinger?” Seamus asked as the young scout wet the nib of a stubby pencil.