Ashes of Heaven

by Terry C. Johnston

  “In the dark, your foot soldiers may well cover the ground almost as quickly as we will, Captain,” Miles declared. “Good luck to you.”

  Dickey saluted as the colonel took the reins of his horse from Baird and swung into the saddle. The animal pranced away to the head of the march where the officers set their outfits into motion, departing in a column of twos.

  Night quickly squeezed down around them, and once more the cavalry was forced to string itself out in single file, making a slow and agonizing crawl across the landscape. Then just past nine o’clock, Miles suddenly decided he needed to halt there in the darkness to await the scouts.

  He was worried. Perhaps the trackers had been caught out in the open, discovered, forced to make a run for it, or were pinned down and unable to get word to him. That could be the only reason. After all, engineering officer Long informed him they had covered more than fifteen miles since leaving the foot soldiers behind. Something closer to sixteen miles. And that was more than the scouts’ estimate of the distance to the village that very morning!

  Something was wrong, terribly wrong. The scouts should have returned by now, and his command should have drawn close to the village after covering all that distance.

  Throwing out a tight ring of pickets and assuring that their horses were hidden from discovery, as well as forbidding any fires, even the lighting of pipes because of just how close they might well be to the enemy—Miles tried to sleep.

  Unable to rest out of fear for his trackers; the colonel instead sat in the cold mist and darkness with some of the cavalry officers, listening as the hours crawled by to the low sounds of conversation all around them, the murmur creeping up and down this creek that spilled eastward to tumble into the Rosebud. From time to time he heard a man snoring—jealous of that ability to nap here on the precipice of battle—

  “Rider coming in, General!”

  Miles bolted to his feet. “What the hell time is it, Mr. Baird?”

  “Can’t for sure read my watch—”

  “Read the damned thing!”

  “M-midnight, General.”

  Miles blinked and swallowed the taste of gall strong at the back of his throat. Less than six hours until sunup.

  If this scout had left for the return trip near sunset, at about 6:00 p.m., then it had taken him six hours to get here from the enemy village. Damn! Miles realized that meant he and his men would have to cover that same ground in the dark in less than six hours to be in position for the attack.

  As he lunged forward toward the sound of the voices and curious soldiers rising from the cold ground, the colonel hoped—no—he prayed it was the Irishman. Surely that Donegan was one man who could lead them on to the village in this rainy, coal-cotton night.

  But the hope went out of him as he saw the rider loom out of the mist atop his horse. A slight figure that wearily kicked a leg over the saddlehorn and plopped flat-footed in his moccasins to the ground, stepping close enough for Miles to see his face in the dim starshine.

  “Jackson.”

  * * *

  “Yessir, General,” Robert Jackson responded as he saw the soldier chief striding up. “May I have some water for my horse, sir?”

  “By all means,” Miles declared, wheeling on the others. “Someone—take the man’s horse and see that it’s watered.” Then he turned back to the young half-breed. “I was expecting your group back earlier.”

  “Sorry, General,” he apologized with a gulp. “Turns out the village is farther away than the Cheyennes thought, far ther’n we figured from what they said when they first sighted it this morning.”

  Disappointment was never plainer than it was at that moment on the face of Colonel Nelson A. Miles.

  “F-farther away?” the officer croaked.

  “Yessir,” he answered. “I started back here at sunset.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Miles groaned. “The rest, they stayed behind?”

  “The Irishman, that one named Donegan, he sent me back alone,” Jackson explained in a strong voice, drawing himself up. “Said I was the one small enough to make it back quick, since my horse was likely the strongest.”

  “Yes, I imagine that was a wise decision on the Irishman’s part,” the soldier chief agreed. “So, tell me—you saw with your own eyes what we’re up against?”

  “We did, sir. The old white man, and one of them Cheyenne went down the hills to get closer to the village than where we was hanging back,” Robert began to relate his story. “They come back and that medicine man—”

  “White Bull?”

  “That’s the one, General. He said he counted thirty-eight lodges. But the Irishman said there had to be more’n that.”

  “I’ll go with Donegan on that one too,” Miles echoed. “And the herd?”

  “Two of ’em, sir. One on the north side of the stream, and the other south. Both on the far side of the camp from where your men will come in on their charge.”

  Miles clapped his hands once. “We’ll make a sweep around and seize both herds, then they’ll have to make their escape on foot.” He loomed over the younger man. “Now, tell me squarely: can you get my cavalry back there by first light?”

  Jackson felt his pulse leap, racing now at his temples. So weary, so damned weary. He quickly glanced from Miles to the other faces that had crowded close in that long, breathless moment while his lungs cried out for air. Robert gasped, swallowing down some of the mist and that night breeze tousling his long, black hair.

  “Yes, sir. I can get your men back there before dawn,” he vowed. “How fast can them soldiers be ready to follow me?”

  “You grab yourself something to eat, Jackson,” Miles instructed. “Get yourself a long drink from the stream there. I’ll have these horse soldiers ready to march in less than an hour.”

  As it turned out, those troopers weren’t ready to mount up until it was nearly 2:00 a.m.

  Having stripped his attack force to light marching order, the colonel ordered that every man rid himself of unnecessary weight, then lash down every canteen, tin cup, or carbine sling that might slap or clang. It promised to be a very grueling march to make it to the village by sunrise.

  “If the terrain permits,” Miles instructed his officers, “we’ll be in double time, gentlemen. All haste, all haste! Our enemy awaits.”

  As Miles finally climbed into the saddle and motioned for Jackson to lead them out, it was plain as sun the soldier chief could smell those Sioux in his nostrils the way a mountain puma winded his quarry unawares. Robert started them into the inky darkness as the mist stiffened, no more than a few stars pricking the black canopy behind them to the north.

  “Mr. Jackson!” Miles called out right behind the young scout a few minutes later. “Pick up the pace!”

  Robert nodded and without a word tugged the hat down on his head as those first cold drops of a chilling spring rain lanced out of the clouds, stinging his face as he tried to dip the brim of his hat against the onslaught.

  If Miles wanted him to ride faster, then he’d do just that. Jackson hoped these soldiers could keep up. They had miles and miles to go, and a storm to fight now.

  But by damn, he vowed, Robert Jackson would have these pony soldiers banging at Lame Deer’s lodgedoor by first light!

  Chapter 35

  7 May 1871

  As the hours crawled by and darkness deepened like the black blight on that final potato crop he had grubbed as a youngster in old Eire, Seamus grew all the more convinced he should have been the one to make that ride back to the column himself.

  Not that Bob Jackson didn’t have a heap of trail savvy. Not that he worried that the half-breed wouldn’t make it to Miles with his report. Just that the young man might not be able to convince the general that the soldiers would have to double-time it if they were going to make it here by dawn.

  No telling what these Sioux were going to do come sunrise. Those lodges might come down and they’d put to the trail, with Miles’s column playing catch-up
again. Especially if that camp suspected the army was close at hand.

  Truth be, young Jackson might not have it in his power to convince the gruff, single-minded general that his soldiers had to be whipped and prodded into hurrying.

  Seamus didn’t want to consider the alternative: dragging this God-bleeming war out any longer.

  They’d be caught an hour or two short of closing the noose around this last bunch of hard cases, letting the enemy slip right through their fingers. The sooner Miles and his men got the hostiles rounded up and driven back toward their agencies, the sooner Seamus could get south to Laramie, barter for some more horses and fixings, then light out for the Montana gold-diggings with Samantha and little Colin.

  Ten years late.

  Beginning with that hot, dusty, parched July day on a bare, windswept ridgetop above the Crazy Woman Fork, Donegan had been staring at these Sioux and Cheyenne warriors down the barrel of one rifle or another for more than a decade. But now he could take Samantha and the boy north to Fetterman, up to Reno Crossing, on past the Pineys where Fort Phil Kearny once stood, up to the crossing of the Bighorn where he had endured a winter, a spring, then a fateful summer at Fort C.F. Smith. From there he would strike out north across the fabled Yellowstone to reach the diggings at a place called Last Chance Gulch—the mother lode those Montana miners had described in rich and glorious hues late last summer.

  To hold a small fortune in his hands at long, long last. How it made his mouth go dry here and now in the cold darkness as the wind soughed through the pines stabbing the underbelly of the night sky as he lay on this bony ridge overlooking the creek that the trail-breakers called the Big Muddy. Likely he’d grub and sweat and grumble as the aging muscles in his back complained—but he’d be able to buy Samantha more dresses and another bonnet, along with all those things she had been denied these past two years, since he dragged her away from her sister in Texas, dragged her north from the Staked Plain, dragged her right into another Indian war.

  Sam and Colin deserved his very best, and Seamus swore he’d claw at that Montana ground with his bare hands if he had to just so he could give them all they were entitled to in life. He’d eat salt-beef and moldy hardtack for a month of Sundays if God would only grant him a little pay dirt. If God would just smile down on this poor man wanting all the better for his little family.

  After slap-dark as the clouds rolled in, his belly began to rumble. Seamus crawled back to the horses, but didn’t find anything in his saddle pouches. Returning to the ridgetop, he settled in among the others again, yanked off a glove between his teeth, and scratched around in his pockets. The moment he touched it, he realized what he’d found.

  From the bottom-of that big patch pocket on his canvas mackinaw, the Irishman pulled out the rat’s-nest of soft yarn just as the sky began to mist. Unable to see it in the cloudy darkness, he held the yarn under his nose, drinking in the fragrance of it. He imagined he could smell her, smell Sam’s long-fingered white hands as she tied the yarn in knots around the brown paper and box. Sinking to his side as the mist became heavier and began to blow on gusts of wind, Seamus rubbed the yarn against his damp cheek, just as she might brush her fingertips down that very same skin.

  And he began to weep in the cold.

  He kept thinking on Sam and Colin, unable to sleep like the rest who dozed uncomfortably on the wet ground, curled fetally beneath the low branches of the cedar and scrub pine, out of the rain. He listened to the soft, wheezing breath of that soggy night, wrestling with his growing apprehension, until he knew he could struggle with it no more and must be on his feet, in the saddle—

  “Bill!” he whispered harshly, kneeling over the man through the soppy grass.

  The squawman jerked up, water sluicing off his hat brim. Seamus clamped a vice of a hand on Rowland’s shoulder, sensing how the old man’s muscles tensed.

  When they relaxed, Rowland sighed, “You hear something?”

  Donegan released his grip and wagged his head. “I’m going back. Can’t wait no longer to know what’s taking ’em so long.”

  The older man stared up at the thickening storm clouds, looked this way and that, finding neither the moon nor any constellation that would give him some idea as to the time. “How long I been sleeping?”

  “Long enough I hope,” Seamus replied as he stood. “You keep watch now.”

  Rowland scrambled to his feet too, held out his bony hand. “You be careful.”

  They shook and Donegan promised, “I’ll be back by sunrise.”

  Then he was at the side of the claybank, slipping the bridle back into its mouth, yanking the cinch tight as he could on the mare, dragging down the stirrup fender and legging up. He was swinging the horse away even as his right leg was clearing the cantle, dropping down in the saddle and stuffing that right boot into the stirrup as the animal bolted off. Perhaps it sensed his anxiousness.

  Seamus worried not so much about Bob Jackson or Nelson Miles or any of those soldiers hurrying their way right now, as he worried that if the column didn’t make it back to the Big Muddy by dawn then all of his prayers would go unanswered for another month, another campaign. Another year of Samantha left to wait back at Laramie for a husband who was off doing all that he could to clear a path for his family right through the middle of the Sioux and Cheyenne’s last hunting ground.

  “Hep!” he husked into the claybank’s ear as he leaned forward. “Hep! Hep-a!” The animal rocked into a rolling gait once down onto the bottomland.

  Out of the night loomed boulders and monstrous stands of brush through which he weaved until he spotted a break in the valley wall. On the far side would be the Rosebud itself. Up, up he urged the horse as its hooves clattered across loose sandstone shale. Its iron shoes began to lose their grip as it scraped and clawed—

  Slamming his boots onto the shifting ground, Seamus grunted. He landed on both feet, catching his balance on the loose rock, then looped the reins around one hand and clucked at the mare to follow him to the high ground. He was breathing so damned hard, feeling the reluctance of the animal at the end of those long reins, hearing its own dry, ragged breathing, that he wasn’t sure if it really was worth the struggle by the time he reached the top of the ridge. Going cross-country like this to save miles and minutes took near everything out of a man—

  Then he heard a sound as he stood there in the wind, bent at the waist heaving, sucking air, gasping like the mare beside him.

  Squinting into the night, trying to see something in the misty storm, Seamus wondered if the wind were playing him the fool. Or did he just want this war to be over so badly that he—

  There!

  By the Virgin Mary—they were coming!

  Damned if Miles and his cavalry weren’t on the march already!

  Down the slope, there in the valley of the Rosebud.

  Quickly he turned, feeling the stab of pain in his back muscles as he did, looking to the east. No sign yet of any graying beneath those storm clouds. They might yet make it if he could hurry those horse soldiers on down the Rosebud and up those few miles of the Big Muddy by dawn.

  Faint shreds of disembodied voices began to drift up from below, cold and spare against the bare rock of those timeless ridges. Orders were issued first, followed by curses as the word was passed back along the column. And finally the reassuring clatter of iron shoes scraping creekbottom stone. They were crossing the Rosebud to the east. Good, Donegan thought as he gripped the horn and heaved himself into the saddle, shorted his hold on the reins and jabbed the small brass spurs into the claybank’s flanks, urging her down the slope toward the creek.

  It didn’t take all that much convincing—thirsty as the mare was by now, fully ready for a drink after that blow atop the ridge.

  “Who goes there!”

  “A friend!”

  The trio of startled soldiers loomed out of the heaving mist as Seamus bolted into sight at the edge of their noisy gathering—the men watering horses on the bank, tightening c
inches, chewing on hard-bread and cheap army tobacco.

  “It’s the scout!”

  The mist was tapering off, perhaps the clouds were blowing over. Donegan asked, “Where’s the general?”

  “I’m over here!”

  Out of the black emerged a half-dozen men strung out behind that big one in the center. At his elbow stood the slight, dark-skinned half-breed with the long straight hair and the old, shapeless, rain-soaked hat pulled down on his head.

  “You made it, Jackson!” He stepped up past Miles to offer his hand first to the youngster.

  “Is there trouble, Irishman?” the colonel demanded, grabbing the tall scout’s upper arm. “Where are the others?”

  “They’re safe,” Seamus declared. “But I come to say you’ve got some miles left to go.”

  Nodding, Miles pointed to the east. “We’ve stopped here only to give the animals a little water. No longer than that—”

  “We’re going to have to ride hard to make it, General.”

  The officer’s lips closed and tightened into a long, grim line of sheer determination. His eyes narrowed just before he spoke, “We’ll make it, Irishman.” Turning to his adjutant, Miles said, “Tell the battalion commander he has five minutes to finish watering up the stock.” Then he wheeled on Donegan. “We’re close?”

  “You’re damned close, General,” Seamus smiled, feeling the sense of hope take wing in him once more. “These horse sojurs gonna be there by dawn.”

  “You heard the man, Lieutenant!” Miles bellowed at Baird who was still standing there, mouth agape. “Give the battalion commander my compliments and let’s get this outfit moving!”

  Minutes later as the colonel himself was climbing into the saddle, Seamus glanced over the officer’s shoulder at the horizon.

  “General, look.”

  Miles turned, some of the cavalry officers turning to look east as well. The sky was graying there beneath those swollen rain clouds.

  “Sunup’s coming,” Jackson whispered.

  Twisting back around to look at Donegan as the Irishman swung into the saddle, patting the neck of his own big chestnut warhorse, the colonel asked, “How many miles?”