H. G. Otis came back and handed the colonel his flask of German silver. Taking loose the cap, Mackenzie promptly began to pour a dribble into every one of those cups that suddenly made their clattering appearance out of nowhere.
“Hear, hear, gentlemen!” Mackenzie roared. “To Seamus Donegan! Let’s drink to the Irishman! By Neptune’s beard, let’s all drink to one of the finest scouts it’s been my pleasure to follow into battle!”
Samantha saw Martha Luhn dashing across the parade with a bundle of newspapers under her arm, waving one of them as she shouted, disturbing the peaceful quiet of that Sunday morning right as most of the officers’ wives were gathering on the front porch of Old Bedlam. It was warm and sunny there, a pretty place to wait until the time came when they all walked over for church together.
In an instant women pressed against the whitewashed porch banister, crowded on the steps, every one of them listening as Lieutenant Gerhard Luhn’s wife hurried their way chattering nonstop, her skirts and petticoats billowing about her ankles like a rush of foam.
“It’s true! It’s true!” she shouted as she burst past the flagpole.
Now Samantha could make out Mrs. Luhn’s words.
“They did capture a village!”
“I told you,” Elizabeth Burt declared self-assuredly, moving down to the first step. “When that rumor first got here to us—I told you there was truth to it!”
As Margaret Luhn reached the bottom of the porch steps, a crowd swallowed her, flying hands and arms reaching for the stack of newspapers she held out for the others. This latest edition of the Rocky Mountain News had reached Fort Laramie just last night, and Mrs. Luhn had always been the first to stand in line at sutler Collins’s trading post, where she commandeered what copies she could for the other wives.
Hugging Elizabeth Burt’s elbow, Sam stared at the banner headlines. The bold letters printed in black ink across the newsprint all but leaped off the front page.
New York Times, dated 16 September
headlines read:
ATTACK UPON A CAMP OF SIOUX
COMPLETE VICTORY FOR THE TROOPS
How quickly her eyes flew from that brave announcement to the smaller type running completely down the three columns against the far left-hand side of the page.
Crook Stumbles Upon and Surprises
an Indian Village.
CHEYENNE, September 16—A courier who left General Crook’s command September 9, brings the following news: Since General Crook’s column turned south toward the Black Hills on the 5th inst. there has been considerable hardship through wet weather and living on bacon and hard bread, and a good deal of grumbling. On the 7th it was decided to send a portion of the pack train ahead under escort of Colonel Mills, with fifteen men on the best horses of each company of the Third cavalry, making 150 in all. Lieutenants Von Lutwitz, Schulle and Crawford composed the subordinate officers, with Lieutenant Babb, Fourth infantry, chief commissary; Tom Moore, chief packer; and F. Gruard, Crook’s chief scout. The latter was to serve both as guide and scout, and on yesterday evening he discovered through the rain and fog, without being himself observed, a hostile Sioux village, consisting of forty-one large lodges and a band of several hundred ponies and a few American horses.
Mills concluded to attempt an attack with his 150 men without waiting to send word to Crook for reinforcements. He fell back a few miles, hid his command in a ravine, and at two o’clock this morning marched for the village, which was situated on a little creek, a tributary of Grand or Owl creek. He formed on the north side before daylight and ordered Lieutenant Schwatta, of Company M, to charge through the village while the rest of the force, dismounted, were to form skirmish lines on either side and pick off the Indians as they came out.
The latter were completely surprised, and scattered out pell-mell, half-naked, returning the fire to some extent. Their ponies were effectually stampeded, but, owing to Mills’ small force he only succeeded in securing the lodges and property therein and about 140 ponies. There was an immense quantity of dried meat, berries, etc., all that Crook’s whole pack train could carry, and sufficient to postpone the proposed purchase of supplies. There were wagon loads of robes and savage spoils of all kinds, including some of the equipments and arms of the Seventh cavalry which Custer used in the Big Horn massacre, and various articles of wearing apparel worn on that occasion was also captured … Von Lutwig was seriously wounded in the knee, and privates Milbury and Charles Foster, of Company B, Augustus Dorm, of Company D, and Sergeant Glass, company E, were wounded, and private Wensall, of company A was killed in the action.
As soon as she could grab a copy for herself, Sam lumbered up the narrow steps to her tiny room and fell upon the bed, where she continued to read the story, regarding each word just as carefully, every bit as slowly as she had been poring over each one of the newspaper stories the women at Fort Laramie always received days, sometimes as much as a week, after the Rocky Mountain News was printed in Denver.
In the morning about 7 o’clock, word reached Crook fifteen miles back, with the main column, and he came forward with two sections of cavalry, reaching Mills at 11 o’clock. The latter had kept up a good picket fight during the forenoon, but Crook was very much disappointed because Mills didn’t report his discovery last night, as there was plenty of time to have got the entire command there and so effectually surrounded the village that nothing would have escaped; but the General is also pleased, all things considered.
About 100 yards from the village is a little ravine, in which a band of seven warriors and fifteen women and children were safely lodged in cavernous rocks, and it was in trying to dislodge them that Mills lost his killed and most of his wounded. General Crook desired to save the women and children and, by means of Gruard’s interpreting, a parley ensued, and three warriors came out, one chief named American Horse being mortally wounded. Before this parley was effected, however, Frank White, a citizen, was shot through the heart, and privates Kennedy and McKenan of company F, 6th Cavalry, wounded. About twenty minutes past four o’clock this afternoon sudden picket firing sprung up, beginning on Colonel Mason’s front, resulting in the wounding of Sergeant Schruber, company K, and private Dorm, company F, Fifth cavalry. It proved to be the result of reinforcements received from Crazy Horse’s band and a running attack began all around the circle, but troops were quickly thrown out and the enemy driven off in every direction. The latter got about a dozen horses too poor to get in to camp back a mile on the line of march.
The village was thoroughly ransacked and the spoils divided around. Colonel Mills and his men got the ponies … Much ammunition and many guns were found in the lodges, and all evidence is to the effect that the Indians were prepared for the winter … It is regretted that other of the villages near by were not surprised and destroyed, but this affair demonstrated the good policy of a stern chase after Indians, even with foot soldiers, who come in here to the relief of the cavalry, as their part in the play gives them renewed vigor and esprit.
No, his name wasn’t there. Not printed among the others as she reread the list of the dead. Not even among the wounded. Reassured, her heart hammering as it hadn’t in so long, Sam continued down the page.
LATER—September 10th—There was a little picket firing throughout last night, and this morning after the command was on march a number of Indians came down on the rear of the column, but were met with a warm reception by Captain Sumner’s battalion of Fifth cavalry, who covered the enemy in the ravines, killed several and disabled others. Privates Foster, company F, privates Wadden, Company M, and Geo. Clantier, company D, were wounded. The command marched fifteen miles to-day toward the Hills, bringing all the sick and wounded on twelve litters. Medical director Clements amputated the right leg of lieutenant Van Letwitz last evening and private Kennedy died of his wounds. No other amputations or deaths are likely to occur. American Horse died last night. Most of the captives are brought along, a few squaws being left back by the General to advise th
e hostile bands to go into the agency and behave themselves and all will be well with them. Colonel Mills, Lieutenant Cubbard and Frank Gruard go through to the hills tomorrow with a view to secure future supplies.
Lying on her back, holding the paper right above her face, Sam licked her lips thoughtfully, her eyes searching for some word of him. Maybe she had been wrong all along thinking he had gone with the column. Maybe he had stayed behind with the wagons up north at that camp General Crook established before he fought the Sioux on Rosebud Creek. No, Sam decided. Seamus would have come back here with one of the supply trains if he wasn’t going to stay on to fight with the rest of Crook’s troops.
So again she read the casualties. Despite the fact that she could not find his name anywhere, Sam could not rid herself of that lump in her throat, that cold hole in her chest. She tried to convince herself that there was no way to know for sure—maybe the correspondent who wrote that story simply could not list every one of the civilians who were wounded. Scouts were civilians, after all.
And maybe that’s why Seamus’s name wasn’t printed. He could have been wounded! He could be on one of those twelve litters. Bleeding and in pain. But being a civilian—
“Samantha!”
At that first shriek of her name she rolled onto her side and struggled to sit up. She heard steps, loud footsteps clattering on the stairs.
“Samantha!” It was Elizabeth Burt’s voice. “Look out your window!”
Suddenly the woman stood framed in the narrow, open doorway, having flung open the door, the knob still clenched in her hand. She pointed to the solitary window. “Samantha Donegan—do as I say! Go look out that window!”
Dread gripped Sam as surely as had the morning sickness that plagued her the first three months of this pregnancy. She fought for air as Mrs. Burt helped drag her from the side of the narrow bed, across the carpet Samantha had sewn from discarded burlap bags, right to the window.
“There! Look! Can’t you see, dear?”
Elizabeth was tapping on the windowpane with her knuckle, then pointing with the same finger at the horsemen entering the far corner of the parade. From the northeast. They were ragged. Their horses dusty. Everything about them frightened her. But she was immediately relieved to find that none of those weary, played-out horses dragged a litter behind it.
“It’s Crook!” Mrs. Burt declared. “He’s got his staff with him!”
She turned to Elizabeth, filled once more with hope as she asked, “He’ll have word from the rest, won’t he?”
“Word about Seamus? Is that what you mean, dear?”
Her head bobbed eagerly, sensing the cold knot in her chest. She simply had to know. One way or the other, she had to be told.
“Look, Samantha,” Elizabeth said reassuringly, patting Sam’s shoulder. “You don’t have to ask General Crook about your husband. If you look real closely—you’ll see one of those riders is Seamus Donegan himself!”
* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 7, Dying Thunder
Epilogue
Early October 1876
How he reveled in the feel of her arm curled in his. So simple a joy this was, her walking at his side as they strolled each evening since his return—twelve of them now—both of them bundled against the chill, bracing air that brought a rose to Samantha’s cheeks as dusk fell and twilight slipped down upon Fort Laramie.
That first night back, well—it was the sort of night that lived on and on in a man’s soul, chiseled deep within the marrow of him. How he had held her and loved her and kissed her and cried with her too; how they laughed now, as they remembered that ache of not seeing one another in four long months.
Right about the time Samantha had reached the landing at the top of the last flight of those narrow stairs, right where she could look down and see Old Bedlam’s front door flung open in one grand sweep, in he burst. And there Seamus had stopped, gazing up at her as she gripped the banister for all the support it could give her. His eyes marveling at the sheer size of her.
So, so different from the woman he had left behind in May. Yet in every way but one—Seamus knew she was still the same.
“Come down,” he had said to her softly as more than a dozen of the officers’ wives filled in the doorway and the landing behind him, most all of them beckoning her. “Feels like an eternity that I’ve been waiting to hold you.”
Glancing at the happy faces of those who stared up at her, Sam could not find a single dry eye among them. Some blubbered unabashedly. But most dabbed their tears away with the corner of an apron or a handkerchief pulled from a cuff or simply whatever it was they could find.
He wagged his head as she began to descend once more, step by step. “You’re simply the most beautiful creature on God’s earth.”
Her eyes had been wet, her cheeks tracked as she reached the bottom step, where he started to enfold her in his arms, then bent to kiss her lips. She had drawn back, her eyes blinking.
“I won’t break, Seamus!” she scolded, taking his big arms still inside that dirty, muddy mackinaw coat of his and looping them around her. “I’m only pregnant. Not made of glass!”
It was then that he did embrace her, sensing the bulk of her against him, the firmness of her swelling breasts. Feeling that arousal he had for so long fought down out there in that wilderness separating him from his mate. Never before had he held a woman who carried a child. Yet here she was, grown in size, brought to full bloom in the time they had been apart.
Late that first night as she had snored on his shoulder, Seamus ran his fingers softly over the changes in her, the heaviness to the breasts to be sure, but more so the taut roundness to her stomach. The way her belly button was stretched so much it even protruded. For now this was the greatest marvel to a simple man—becoming a father for the first time!
The days to follow had simply flowed one into the next with her. Just to enjoy the smell of her, the feel and shape and texture of her, the very nearness of her. To take the cascade of her curls in his hand and smell them, brush them along his cheek, across the lids of his eyes. To experience her in every way he had been deprived of her.
No, he wasn’t going back out there, Seamus vowed. Not now that he had learned just how much she meant to his soul.
So every evening they spent this time together. The air so cold of each twilight come to these high plains that he was certain the next day was sure to bring snow. But instead the leaves began slowly to turn, and frost gathered once more on the inside of that single tiny windowpane beside the bed where they held one another throughout the long nights.
Minutes ago they had left Major Townsend’s quarters, where Colonel Ranald Mackenzie had invited Seamus and Sam to have supper with him and General Crook. A real sit-down meal, the finest a frontier fort could offer. So now after that sumptuous dinner and paying their respects, they strolled on into the coming of twilight as the wind died.
He looked down at her while they walked along, crossing the center of the parade, heading for the big cottonwoods that lined the banks of the river. Sam’s cheeks glowed rosier than ever before, at least what he could remember. It must not all be the cold wind, he thought. Some of it had to do with her condition.
His wife’s hunger had surprised him that first night. And every one of the twelve nights since. Just as he had been a bit afraid to hug her so fiercely in those first moments at the bottom of the stairs, so he was frightened of what might happen if he penetrated her warm moistness— what he had dreamed of night after night for those long months of their separation.
“The other women have told me there is no danger, Seamus,” Sam had whispered in the darkness of their room that night as she had stroked her fingers up and down the hot, hardened length of him.
“You’re sure?” Oh, how he wanted her to be sure!
She giggled, like the flutter of a small bird, and said, “They’ve all had children, Seamus Donegan. I think they ought to know firsthand, don’t you?”
“Just as long as I don’
t … you don’t … you’re so big.”
Nudging him over onto his back, Samantha quickly straddled him, almost as nimble as ever despite the size of her. He gasped when she took his flesh into her hand and aimed it true, slowly settling her weight upon his hips.
“I’ll make you a promise, Seamus Donegan,” she said huskily, her eyes half closing as she began to rock upon him in a slow dance. “If it makes you feel any better, I promise I’ll let you know if you hurt me.”
“M-me? F-feel any better?” he stammered. “What could possibly feel any better than this?”
Every night since, they had worked their immense passion around the full bulk of her belly. Right now he remembered again how it felt to kneel behind her, to reach around her widened hips, to stroke his hands across the heaviness of her—as if he were caressing the very womb where she carried their child.
Seamus looked down at her in the silver light of that half-moon just then climbing over the tops of the cottonwoods, stripped daily of their autumn-kissed leaves by strong, gusty, tormenting winds.
How he wanted her again, to feel the great warmth of her, to savor the love he felt when he was in her arms. Just walking beside her as he was now, he knew it wasn’t enough. He had to have more. Never would he get enough of her.
“Oh!” she squealed in a high pitch.
As soon as she stopped, he stopped. Clutching her arm, he asked fearfully, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
For a moment she rubbed her wool mitten across the round expanse of her greatcoat. Her eyes widened in surprise, lips pursed in a little fear. “Oh, oh, oh!”
Her each new utterance of the word alarmed him. As did the way she gripped at his arms, clamped on to them,her fingers like claws. Then it was past. Whatever it was, he could see it disappear, leave her face—tangibly. The way something visible might release her, replaced by the relief that showed there on that rosy face.
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