“The story of Lazarus, of course,” Seamus replied. “Returning from the dead.” He sighed. “Ain’t this just like being a Lazarus?”
“I’ve never been one to mind getting down on my own prayer bones and taffying up to the Lord with you,” growled the sergeant as he heaved himself free of the hole and slid down the slope.
As he stood, the lieutenant, then the rest came out to greet the brightness of this new, white, brutally cold world.
“Any chance we have some of the stock left?” Stanton asked, pointing at five partially covered brown carcasses, stiffened in death and cold where the wind had kept much of the snow leed off the collapsed animals.
“The rest might be buried under the bigger drifts,” Donegan said.
“And then again—they might not,” Jack said. “If your men are up to it—we need to find out. They might have drifted on south, driven by the storm.”
“If they were—how far could they be by now?” asked the lieutenant.
Stillwell shook his head. “No telling. Might be no more than a mile … or maybe even on their way to Mexico by now.”
The lieutenant sighed and shrugged. “We’ve got to try, I suppose.” He turned back to the wagon. “We have a chance of pulling this free, if we get enough muscle behind it, then we can right it.”
“But we need stock to pull it,” one of the soldiers said.
The lieutenant nodded.
“We don’t find any still alive,” Jack told them, “we’ll be walking south out of here on our shanks.”
“Maybe we ought to try pulling the wagon south ourselves,” the lieutenant considered.
Donegan shook his head. “These men—wore down the way they are—they’re in no shape to drag that bleeming wagon through these drifts. Better you have them carry what they can each one. That wagon shroud. What’s left in the way of vittles. Assign a couple of them to drag that sowbelly with buffalo chips in it.”
Jack agreed. “We’ve got a lot of walking to do, Lieutenant. And there’s many a fire we’ll still be needing to make with those chips.”
“All right,” the officer sighed. “Sergeant, you stay here with another, and keep the fire tended inside. The rest of us, we’ll try to run across some tracks … find some of the stock.”
Stillwell went with Donegan, the both of them choosing to strike out to the north, more so to see if they could find sign of what had become of Simon Pierce. The lieutenant divided the rest into three squads to work the other points of the compass. He himself would lead the detail going to the south, where the faintest of crusty, snow-filled hoofprints indicated the stock had indeed wandered before the wind, driven east by the storm.
As cold as it was, the sun felt good on Jack’s cheeks as they plodded north, slowly picking their path between drifts of snow, trying their best to stay on ground blown clear by the blizzard’s passing fury.
“You figure that’s him?” Donegan asked hours later when Jack stopped, pointing at something he had spotted many yards ahead of them—something dark, contrasting with the snow.
Stillwell only nodded, then set out again, his feet growing colder with every yard they had tromped across the unforgiving winter plain.
A man’s leg protruded from the edge of a snow-bank. His stocking had been worked through, the flesh of the exposed foot blackened with frostbite.
Jack tapped it with his gloved fingers. “Solid as ice, Seamus.”
Donegan said, “Let’s see who it is.”
“We know already,” he replied as he knelt and began scooping snow from the upper body. “Poor bastard lost one of his shoes and his foot was so froze he didn’t even know it. Kept right on going, instead of turning around and coming back to where he could have stayed warm till the weather blew on over.”
They had a struggle pulling the stiffened body over, frozen as it was to the ground at the edge of the snow-drift that had formed against it during the height of the storm.
“Simon Pierce.”
They could tell it was the government man, even as blackened as was the flesh on his face. The wool muffler Pierce had tied over his head, knotted beneath his whiskered chin, was so stiff there was no removing it. The frozen lips were drawn back in what looked like a grotesque smile. But it was more the freezing retraction of the skin than it was anything Simon Pierce wished to communicate from beyond the pale of death to the two scouts.
“He kept everything to the last, didn’t he?” Donegan asked, pulling the long map tube from beneath the dead man’s arm. Next came the valise.
“Pierce acted like he had something else with him, inside his coat,” Jack said.
Together they pulled apart the frozen, stiffened wool coat.
“Gives me the willies,” Seamus said quietly, “going through a dead man’s clothes.”
“I heard a lot of the soldiers in the war did that with the enemy dead.”
Donegan nodded. “Not just the enemy dead, Jack—but their own too. An extra shirt or jacket. Maybe a new pair of shoes or boots. A dead man didn’t need ’em no more.” He shrugged. “There’s nothing here.”
Jack rocked back on his heels. “I was sure there was something … check that valise. Maybe he put it in—”
“What the divil is this? Weighs like a rock, it does,” Seamus declared as he pulled forth a heavy, brick-sized object wrapped crudely in a tattered, greasy piece of gray-brown corduroy.
“I didn’t know better,” Jack said, sniffing at the smoke-scented cloth before he helped pull the frozen shards of cloth from the object, “I’d say this was in a Injun camp at one time.”
“Lord!”
They both just stared at it for the longest time, sitting there as it was across Donegan’s palms, brilliant in the new sunlight of this midday in winter on the Staked Plain.
“It’s got to be real,” Jack said finally.
“No doubt of it, Jack. Pierce was protecting it from the rest of us. Likely he killed Graves for it—or because of it. Here.” Donegan gave the crudely-cast gold bar to Stillwell and began digging around in the valise.
“You understand any of this writing?” Donegan asked, shoving some papers to the young scout.
He didn’t. “Looks like it might be Spanish, Seamus. I don’t know that tongue.”
“Who would—anyone you know?”
“Only one Mex I know. He’s got a place up at Dodge City now. Runs him a whorehouse. Keeps Mexican girls, nigger girls too, for the buffalo hunters come in. They pay good to dip their stingers in a moist honey pot.”
“Shutup, Jack,” he said with a grin. “That’s just what a man like me has to keep his mind off of way out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Jack chuckled. “I s’pose you’re right. But he’s the only one.”
Seamus went through the papers, page by page, until he came to a stack of telegram flimsies. “While I read these, why don’t you see what’s in that tube. Might explain what Pierce and Graves come looking for.”
“I don’t know if we ever will know, Seamus. All Pierce told us was he had to get up to the Canadian.”
Donegan looked at him a moment before saying, “And up there is where you said the Comanche and Kiowa are thick as ticks on a bull’s hide.”
“I suppose so—’cause that’s where the warrior bands figure they’ll have to stop the hide hunters from coming any farther south.”
With the two buckles freed, Jack pulled aside the top of the leather tube and shook out the stiffened map printed on a large sheet of ivory-colored stock. As he unrolled a map of the central and southern plains, an old parchment map, somewhat smaller, slid into his lap.
After a moment of studying the newer map, Jack said, “Looks to be government work, Seamus. Here’s the surveyor’s seal. And they have the railroads marked in, some of the reservation boundaries. A few of the forts. But look here—seems Graves or Pierce marked something of their own on the map.”
“Right on the Canadian,” Seamus replied. He looked down at the old drawings.
“What’s that?”
Setting the new map aside, Jack picked up the old parchment. “By Jesus, this is old, Seamus! And writ in Spanish too. You think this has something to do with the gold bar?”
Donegan wagged his head. “Pierce was crazy. I know that. But maybe not all he said was crazy.”
Jack remembered the mad talk, those final, almost unheard ramblings, that crazed babbling carried to them on the ghostly wind about gold walls and the seven cities and the Spanish conquistadors.
“And you remember Pierce saying he was going north to find the entrance to the road that would take him to the Seven Cities?” Seamus asked.
“Cibola?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Shit—now that’s just some old talk, what some call a legend, Seamus.”
Donegan shook his head, pulling free one of the telegrams. “Maybe … maybe not, Jack.” He looked into Stillwell’s eyes. “You ever hear of an old trading post on the Canadian River?”
Jack nodded. “I heard tell of it. Goes back a long ways. Bents had a operation there. Kit Carson fought a battle with Injuns there back to ’sixty-four.”
Seamus studied the telegram a moment more, then looked at Stillwell. “Is the place called … Adobe Walls?”
“Damn, if it ain’t.”
Chapter 31
Early December 1873
“Then it’s decided. That’s where we’re going—up to the Canadian,” Seamus declared, stuffing the official documents, correspondence and telegrams back in the ice-stiffened canvas valise.
Jack Stillwell shook his head. “Whoa—hold on now. Not till we get some answers from the Mexican fella in Dodge City.”
“One runs the whorehouse?”
“Louie Abragon.” Jack rolled the small parchment map inside the larger U.S. survey map, both against his coat. He slid them into the leather map tube as he said, “Abragon will translate this map for me.”
“You don’t plan on telling him about the gold, do you?”
Stillwell replied, “I wasn’t planning on it.”
Seamus looked down at the frozen corpse. “What you figure we should do with Pierce?”
“Nothing. If we can get the wagon righted, and round up some stock—I suppose Stanton will want us to fetch Pierce’s body.”
“Good—because I’m not dragging this frozen bastard back across those drifts for no one, Jack.”
“And if they haven’t found any horses, we’ll just have to leave him here.”
Donegan nodded. “That means the lieutenant will have to report him dead when we get back to Fort Richardson. And he’ll have to explain why he didn’t bring in the body.”
“You were in the army too damned long,” Stillwell said. “All that fuss, all that paperwork. The lieutenant damned well has a good reason for leaving that bastard out here. Pierce killed two men: one of his own, and one of Colonel Mackenzie’s soldiers too.”
The sun was in the last quadrant of the sky by the time the two came within sight of the wagon camp, following their deep bootprints hammered into the wind-scoured snow. The closer they got, the more it appeared there were too many men moving around the wagon. Seamus’s eyes swam with the bright light. He blinked, trying harder to focus—concerned that the Comanche, who were not known to move about in the deep snow and bad weather, much less a blizzard, had raided the camp in their absence.
But as they drew closer, inching from snowdrift to snowdrift, both Seamus and Jack discovered why there were too many men in that camp. And animals to boot.
The old sergeant was regaling with a squad of buffalo soldiers laughing and joking around a smoky fire. The crusty soldier was the first to notice the two civilians coming back across the snowy plain.
“Donegan!” he called out. “Stillwell—both you come on in. We got us company!”
“Seamus Donegan, you say. As I live and breathe!”
That call brought the Irishman up short. “Reuben? That really you, Sergeant?”
“In the flesh. You half froze for a hug?”
He watched the tall brunette soldier hurrying toward him. “From you, anytime!”
They back-slapped and pounded heartily between the three of them until each was breathless.
“By the saints, is it really you? What you doing out here in the middle of the blizzard?”
“Mama Waller’s boy knows better than to get hisself caught in a blizzard, Seamus,” Waller explained with a smile. “We stayed behind it, moseying slow out of eastern New Mexico as it pushed on ahead of us.”
“Why were you out there in New Mexico?” Jack asked.
“Following horse thieves.”
“You catch any?” Jack asked.
Waller wagged a finger for the two scouts to follow him. He stopped by the canvas wagon shroud and pulled it back to expose two white men, lashed back to back in the dark, out of the cold.
“Shut that flap, nigger!” one of them snapped.
“Damn you, Sergeant Coon—that wind’s cold!” the other growled. “You give me a knife, I’ll show you whose balls I can cut off, boy!”
Waller dropped the canvas and turned to his friends, smiling.
“What’s this all about?” Stillwell asked.
“Horse thieves—like he told you, Jack,” replied Donegan, turning to the sergeant. “You went all the way to New Mexico after them?”
“Had a good trail to follow—so we followed,” Waller answered. “Tracks led right off the reservation.”
“Those white fellas steal Injin horses?” Seamus asked.
Waller nodded. “We’re taking ’em back to the Kiowa.”
“Whose bunch they belong to?”
“Lone Wolf’s band. These two and a half-dozen others rode in a while back and stole about fifty head of Kiowa stock.”
“What happened to the rest of the horse thieves?” Jack inquired.
“We shot three when we caught up to ’em in New Mexico. Couldn’t stop to give ’em decent burying ’cause the other three took off with a high tail behind—like they wasn’t ever going to stop.”
Donegan glanced over the group of some twenty brunettes. “You lose any of your men?”
Waller appeared to swallow down the pain of owning up to that. “Two of my own—H Company.” He nodded to the west while he dug his heel in the snow. “We buried ’em out there. Someplace no one will ever know—out there.”
“That’s only fitting,” Donegan replied quietly. “Those men fought out there on the Staked Plain. They died where they fought—like soldiers. It’s right what you done, to bury ’em there, Reuben—with the sky to look down on ’em for all of eternity.”
“One of the men said some words over the graves,” Waller said quietly. “And them words made me think, Seamus—think on when you and me carried the body of your uncle up to that high place looking down on the island where you and the rest waited for nine days.”*
“A man like me uncle Liam chooses to live his time in this open country, Reuben—it’s right he should be allowed to rest out here for the rest of all of God’s time.”
“So what you do with them two now?” Stillwell asked, throwing a thumb back at the canvas shelter where the prisoners waited out of the cold.
“We’ll take those two on back to stand trial before Colonel Grierson at Fort Sill,” Waller told them, “after a side trip to Fort Richardson.”
That surprised Donegan. “Why so far south?”
Waller grinned, his teeth bright beneath the fading light in his dark face. “Here, and I took you for being a smart man, Seamus. We got us a heap of horseflesh here to tend to, and your lieutenant ain’t got a single animal. How can I live with myself, I don’t ride on in to Richardson with you, then turn my bunch north back to Sill from there?”
Seamus looked at Stillwell. “Reuben makes a lot of sense to me, Jack. Don’t he?”
They laughed and pounded shoulders once more as the old commissary sergeant strode up, his pipe smoking in a thick wreath about his head.
Waller put his men to work with their mounts and several ropes and in short order had the wagon righted and what camp goods the commissary sergeant had left squared away. The brunettes then devoted their efforts to enlarging the buffalo chip fire as the sun eased toward the far west and the last of the search parties straggled in to celebrate new faces and horses and a warm meal among friends with all the rest.
Twilight deepened into a shocking purple as the cold stars came out one by one by one overhead, like a saloon keeper in Dodge City would turn on his oil lamps come sundown. The smell of hot food and fresh coffee made the Irishman’s belly gnaw all the more.
“We ain’t et proper in more’n two days, Seamus,” Jack said as he squatted beside Donegan with a couple cups of coffee.
Seamus took his. “Whatever Sarge is cooking going to be fine with me. Smells good, don’t it?” He sipped at the scalding coffee, then asked, “When you figure we can head north to Dodge City to get some answers from that Spanish map, Jack?”
“We could fight our way north anytime,” Stillwell said. “But I been figuring it might be a better idea to wait until late winter. Weather might be more predictable. And…”
Donegan looked over at Jack, waiting for the rest. “And what?”
“And,” he got a sheepish look on his face, “with us spending the winter down near Jacksboro with Sharp Grover like he asked you to, well…”
“Spit it out, Stillwell,” he growled, blowing steam off his coffee.
“All the better for you to burrow in for the winter with that pretty Samantha Pike.”
Seamus sputtered on the hot coffee. “Jack—not you too! First Sharp’s trying to marry me off to the woman. And now you! Saints preserve mother Donegan’s boy if I stand a whore’s chance in Sunday mass with you two matchmakers around!”
HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM DYING THUNDER—THE NEXT VOLUME OF TERRY C. JOHNSTON’S EPIC WESTERN SERIES THE PLAINSMEN:
Prologue
Moon of Deer Shedding Horns 1873
Shadow Riders: The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 31