Each time the warriors started to get in too close, Leonard did his best to force them back with the long-reaching carbine and its .45-caliber bullets. And the few times they were foolish enough to attempt rushing him, the trooper used the .45-caliber bullets in his pistol.
When next he stuffed his hand into the saddle pocket to pull out some long copper cases for the Springfield, Leonard stared down at his hand. He held the last of them now, with no more than five rounds left in his pistol.
“Save the last for yourself, bunkie,” he said sourly. “Don’t let ’em take you alive, not these red devils.”
He figured he would use the Springfield to keep them as far away as he could for as long as he could, then fire the last four shots in the pistol as they rushed in closer the way they had threatened to do all morning.
And when he had only that one last bullet left—
Leonard jerked around as if yanked by a rope. Surprised to hear the voice. Like an answer to his prayer.
Three of them appeared there just this side of the creek, down by the brush at the bottom of the slope.
He couldn’t tell what they were yelling, if they were yelling at him or shouting at others who were coming behind—but did those three ever look good to him!
Doughboys! Foot-goddamned-sloggers! Walk-a-heaps! No matter what folks called ’em, they damned well looked like angels of salvation to Private William Leonard then and there.
They were pointing up the slope as more of those uniforms joined the trio. Then there was a horseman. Had to be an officer. The man stood in the stirrups, yanking his horse around, flinging his arm up the slope, bellowing like a stuck pig as two dozen or more of those foot-sore doughboys started out in a dead sprint up the side of that hill toward Leonard.
Tears streaming down his face, the private stood, slamming the carbine into his shoulder and finding the broad, brown back of one of the retreating warriors who were whooping it away on the double. He fired, missed, and cursed his foggy vision. Quickly he ejected that scalded shell and rammed home another. One more shot at the bastards who came close to getting his scalp, the bastards who almost made him use that last bullet on himself.
“Holy mother—” one of the first doughboys exclaimed as he huffed breathlessly to a halt, leaning slightly on his Long Tom rifle to peer down at Leonard. “How … how the hell long you been holed up here?”
“A 1-long time,” Leonard croaked, surprised he could speak around the bitter ball that clogged the back of his throat.
“I hope to shout, soldier,” one of the others commented as the rest began to gather close, gazing down at that litter of strewn copper casings for themselves.
A third one stepped to the side and propped one of his feet on the flank of the dead gelding. “You done you a piece of work here, horse soldier. A fine piece of work.”
“You don’t mind,” Leonard said quietly, “I’d ’predate you taking your boot off my horse.”
That third infantryman suddenly looked down selfconsciously, realizing his foot was resting on the dead horse, and dragged it off. “I-I’m sorry, trooper.”
“If it weren’t for this horse a’mine,” Leonard explained as he knelt beside the gelding’s head, “I’d been red soup long afore you boys come to save my hair.”
“Didn’t mean no disrespect, soldier.”
Leonard blinked and nodded at the apology as he turned to watch more of the foot soldiers coming into view now. “You was the fellas stayed with the packs we left on the Rosebud?”
“That’s right,” answered the first man. “That down there’s Captain Dickey. Coming out of that brush is Captain Poole.”
The third man stepped around the carcass and pushed back his kepi, saying, “Heard us a ton of shooting. Brought us on the double. Didn’t figure to find only one poor horse soldier needing rescue—”
“Listen!”
When one of them snapped that command, they all went silent, rigid, listening. Sure enough, just beyond the next rise, they could hear some rifle fire. Not near enough to be a big fight in the village. But surely more than a half-dozen guns.
“You suppose them Injuns we run off got some other poor horse soldier pinned down?” asked the first infantryman, spitting a brown dribble into the grass.
“I s’pose it could be,” Leonard said, stuffing the near-empty pistol back into its holster.
Downhill Dickey and Poole were barking orders, shaping their men back into line as the soldiers descended the hill with that lone cavalryman and his carbine, leaving behind the bay gelding and his busted saddle atop a lonely little hill above the Big Muddy. They were moved out again at a trot, settling into a pace the foot soldiers were told they would have to endure for another mile or so, just long enough to reach the sound of those guns.
Leonard swiped at the drop of sweat hung pendant from the end of his nose and jogged alongside the doughboys in the muggy dampness of that morning.
Damn if that wasn’t the way it was with this army.
Officers always yelling at their men to ride to the sound of the guns!
* * *
The young infantryman swore he could smell the dead civilian’s blood on the chilly breeze that morning.
He had been forced to listen to the mule-whacker gurgle and thrash his last there in the trampled grass beside the creek. Between each shrieking charge of the warriors, between each loud boom of his Long Tom, the man went noisy. And finally died, coughing and gurgling no longer.
That morning wore on and on, and at times the soldier swore he heard gunfire from upstream to their right. But each time he listened, he just figured it was a random echo from the fight downstream to their left, off in that village he might never get a chance to see. Just some echoes as the cavalry mopped things up and drove off those what they couldn’t kill in their fight. Those horse soldiers would never know the mule-train was pinned down here until they needed more ammunition.
At the start of this dirty little scrap, the warriors managed to get off with two of the mules, scaring the animals enough that they bolted free of the pack-string, heading tea-kettle-over-biscuits downstream with their boxes of ammunition slapping and rattling like dice in a bone cup. But the old soldiers and the young recruits leaped up and got control of the rest, and with the help of the three other civilians they managed to keep the rest of the mules from running off each time the blankets flapped and the whistles cried and the red-bellies shrieked, close enough he was sure he had only to reach out and yank a breechclout clean off one of them.
Then he had glanced down at his own itchy wool britches, self-consciously, and was relieved to see that the dark stain was fading from that pale blue cloth. He’d leave the warriors their breechclouts, if he just didn’t have to display his britches until they were dry.
“Lookee thar’!”
The old corporal poked a fist at his shoulder, pointing off upstream.
“Ain’t that the purtiest sight!” someone else called.
“Doughboys!”
“It’s Dickey! And Poole’s boys!”
Sure if it wasn’t. Trotting into view came Captain Dickey. And right behind him came a double column of shuffling foot soldiers struggling to keep up that numbing, ground-eating pace.
“Wasn’t they back at the Rosebud when we left ’em?” he asked the corporal.
“They was, son. They was,” he answered thoughtfully, his old eyes beginning to brim. “But, like any good foot soldier, they come a running when they heard there was trouble.”
“C-come a running,” he repeated in amazement, thinking back on all those miles these doughboys must have put behind them, “Come on the double.”
“That’s right, soldier,” the corporal added, dragging a hand beneath the dribble at the end of his nose. “Man can allays count on ’nother good foot slogger come to pull your fat out of the fire: no matter how far, no matter how long it takes.”
Chapter 40
7 May 1877
Though the village had been pu
t to flight and the warriors driven into the hills, the bloodiest fighting of the day was yet to come.
Nearby, Miles and Captain Ball quickly formulated a plan to prosecute their advantage now that Lieutenant Jerome’s H Company and the Cheyenne scouts had returned to the camp with the captured ponies. The colonel put Jerome’s men in charge of both the village and the horses while he had battalion commander Ball form up his cavalry for a full-scale assault on the heights. Many of the Cheyenne scouts were already making calls on some of the Sioux ponies, in addition to picking out some of those larger cavalry horses and government mules discovered among the herd.
As the three companies dressed right and left into formation for this attack on foot, their horse-holders stepped to the rear, ready to advance right behind the skirmishers. In the center stood the men of Norwood’s L Company. On the left flank stood those troopers of Wheelan’s G, and to the right, Tyler’s F Company. With their mounts arrayed behind them, Ball shouted the order.
“Advance!”
As the troopers moved out at a walk, Seamus Donegan turned to find Miles watching the dismounted cavalrymen advance. He loped over to the colonel.
“General, permission to ride along behind formation?”
“By all means, Irishman!”
He quickly saluted, jabbing heels into the claybank and burst away.
At the center of the horse-holders of Company L, Seamus dismounted and dragged his mount behind him. He joined the movement up the slope about the time the warriors unleashed a furious barrage.
“Hold steady, men! Hold steady!” Ball hollered behind them on horseback, moving first to the right flank to encourage Tyler’s men, then loping to the left past Norwood’s men to cheer on Wheelan’s company.
As soon as the enemy fire became intense, the company commanders and the noncoms were in among their men, moving them by squads, each platoon firing a volley as the others came up behind them, then went to reloading while another squad knelt, aimed, and fired at the enemy concealed among the brush and trees up the slopes. Leapfrogging up the gradual slope, yard by soggy yard.
“Put ’em on the run!” hollered F Company’s Second Lieutenant Alfred M. Fuller who was waving his revolver, bringing up the laggers. “We’ve got ’em routed now—”
The bullet struck Fuller squarely in the right side of his chest, spinning the man off balance so that his pistol flew in one direction as he toppled backward out of the saddle in another, landing under the hooves of the first of that company’s horses. Seamus was on the ground with lightning quickness, along with a private who fell out of formation the moment the bullet struck his lieutenant.
Coming to a halt, the horse-holders clustered around the scene protectively.
“That’s a bad one,” someone in the group declared quietly.
“Hush yer goddamned mouth!” another snapped.
“Get something on it so the man don’t bleed to death—”
“The rest of you!” hollered their sergeant, prodding them all into motion. “Keep moving! Keep moving! The lieutenant don’t need none of you to help ’im! He just needs you to flush them bastards off the hill!”
“How I get him back down, Sarge?” asked the private.
The noncom looked up at Donegan. “Mayhaps this man’ll help you.”
“Sure as sun, I’ll help,” Seamus volunteered. “Bring my horse over, sojur.”
The young private wheeled to go for the reins. As he brought the claybank near and steadied it, the noncom said, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant Fuller? Can you sit?”
When no reply came from Fuller, the sergeant looked up at Donegan and said, “Don’t think he can sit your horse, Mister.”
“We’ll throw him over the saddle. The man’s in bad shape. Better we get him back to one of the doctors fast as we can.”
They had Fuller slung over the saddle in no time and Donegan had started back to the rear with the private, while the sergeant continued up the slope with the rest.
Miles already had doctors Brown and Eman marking out their hospital in a small horseshoe of the stream, across the creek from the village. Two men were already there, John O’Flynn of F Company, and that other form stretched out on the ground beneath a gray army blanket, Private Charles Shrenger.
“This man needs help!” Donegan hollered as he trotted up with the horse.
Assistant Surgeon Paul R. Brown and a steward dashed up to help pull Fuller from the back of the mare, gently laying the lieutenant out to inspect his serious chest wound.
“He gonna make it?” Seamus asked.
Brown looked up, and slowly wagging his head he said, “Odds don’t look good right now.”
“Then do what you can to make him rest easy, Doc,” Donegan requested. He stood and took up the reins to his horse.
Swinging into the saddle he brought the animal around and started at a lope for the side of the hill where Norwood’s soldiers were all but stopped in their ascent. His L Company had the toughest part of the battlefield to cover: ordered to climb where the slopes were the steepest, to defend themselves and advance offensively, all while struggling to maintain their balance and not slip backward each time their boots lost a grip on the wet, grassy hillside strewn with loose rock.
Back among the first line of horse-holders who had clattered to a halt right behind the fighting men, Seamus watched Tyler’s men continue their dogged climb on the west side of the ridge. A yard or two at a time they managed to scramble forward, forcing back the warriors who were putting up a stiff resistance, giving ground only when the odds finally tipped in the army’s favor. But despite the intense pressure the Lakota faced from three sides, the warriors managed to keep Norwood pinned down and Wheelan’s G struggling to advance up the ridge a foot at a time.
Of a sudden the first handful of Tyler’s front ranks broke over the crest, seizing a firm foothold on the top where they began to lay down a murderous crossfire against the warriors who had forced the other two companies to take cover. A cheer went up among Tyler’s horse soldiers as more and more of F Company reached the heights, concentrating a devastating fire on the enemy.
With what little ammunition they had begun the morning with, the warriors had no choice but to start falling back, some of the young men on horseback and others on foot fleeing over the top of the ridge where the slope descended into the valley of the Big Muddy. Most hurried upstream, their blood boiling from the rout. In their flight some of them would fall upon the pack-train, while others pinned down a lone horse soldier struggling to repair his busted saddle.
But on the east side of the ridge, where most of the women and children had gathered behind a few of those stalwart warriors making a valiant stand, the story would play itself out to a sadder end.
There the warriors slowly retreated along the heights, clinging to the brush and trees, covering the retreat of the women and children until the slope eventually gentled to their right. Terrain that would allow Wheelan’s Company G to remount and charge down upon the screaming, fleeing Indians.
“Horse-holders to the front!”
Seamus turned, the hair on his forearms prickling at that order. How many charges had he made with saber? How many had he been part of against these red horsemen of the high plains? He stood with the others in Norwood’s company to watch as Wheelan’s horse-holders rushed forward with the mounts, quickly passing off throatlatches. Men snapped carbines onto their slings, flung the Springfields to their backs, and leaped into the saddles as G Company went stirrup to stirrup.
“Front into line!”
That second command gave him a cold shiver across the broad scar streaking down the great muscles of Donegan’s back.
“Charge!”
And Wheelan’s men were off with a deafening roar as those half-a-hundred scared, worked-up men jabbed their tiny brass spurs into the flanks of more than fifty matched grays. Whooping and hawing, they raced uphill after the Indians scattering on foot like a flock of wrens with a hawk swooping down.
There on that gentle, open slope turned to killing-ground, Donegan watched it happen. The older ones, those not able to keep up with the strong warriors who ran, turned and fired, then ran again, were the first to fall beneath the onslaught of Wheelan’s charge.
“No!” Donegan bellowed, feeling like he’d been gored himself as he watched the slaughter from afar.
There, midway across the slope, he spotted the old gray-head, not sure if it was a man or woman at first. Then as the form stumbled, he saw it was an old woman, gray braids flapping as she scrambled back to her bare feet in her muddy, soaked dress.
A trooper was upon her in the next breath, swinging the barrel of his revolver at the back of her head as he loped past. With the power of that blow, the woman went sprawling. While the soldier yanked back on his reins to wheel his mount in a skid, the stunned woman lurched to her hands and knees, still crabbing up the slope where others called to her.
But the soldier reached her first.
Leaping out of the saddle as the woman continued to labor up the slope on all fours, the young cavalryman lunged over her, grabbing the woman by the braids, and yanked her around.
Surely he had to see she was a woman—not a warrior! Seamus felt the angry bile rising in his throat.
For a moment the soldier held his pistol out as if he was going to slash it across the old woman’s face, but instead he flung the woman’s head about as he stepped around her and began dragging the old one across the slope to a small copse of stunted pine a few yards off. There he threw her down against a tree, watching how she cowered and peered up at him, blubbering pitiably.
When the soldier turned his back on the old woman, walking away a few steps, Seamus breathed again with relief, his lungs aching while he held his breath.
But the soldier suddenly wheeled, took deliberate aim, and fired a bullet point-blank at the woman’s head.
Biting his lower lip in fury, Donegan felt the warmth of the blood ooze across his tongue as his eyes began to sting with rage.
Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series) Page 37