Ashes of Heaven

by Terry C. Johnston

  Iron Star slowly rolled aside, lumbering to his feet to stand over his dead uncle, one arm clutching his belly wounds and the other dragging the muzzle of his rifle. Surprising Donegan with his stamina, Iron Star lurched around sharply and continued to trudge desperately up the slope.

  As Seamus looked aside to find Jackson among Wheelan’s men, the troopers started to move out toward the far side of the narrow spur Iron Star was climbing. In moments Company G would be in position on the far side of the low ridge—waiting for the Lakota warrior, nephew of the fallen chief.

  The wounded young man appeared to grow more weary the higher he climbed, struggling step by step, one foot falling in front of the other, dragging his weapon by the muzzle as if it weighed as much as a horse.

  Already, White Bull and Brave Wolf were hurrying forward, hoping to reach Lame Deer’s body, preparing to strike first coup on this enemy who had once been their comrade-in-arms.

  What dogs war makes of us, Donegan thought as gunfire erupted from the far side of that spur where Wheelan’s men had disappeared to lay in wait for Iron Star.

  More desperate cries burst from the far slopes where the women and children watched. They must be able to see it, Seamus thought—to watch Iron Star cut down.

  Leaping atop his horse, Donegan kicked it into motion, heading for the far side of the spur. He reached the rising ground just in time to watch Iron Star settle heavily into the grass as if he were merely sitting. There he leaned forward slightly, attempting to reload his rifle from some cartridges in his belt.

  By then Robert Jackson was the first to burst away from Wheelan’s line. He covered half the distance between the troops and Iron Star before he reined up suddenly and spun out of the saddle. Dashing forward a few paces, he suddenly knelt and took aim, gripping his pistol in both hands.

  Iron Star’s head popped back violently, his headdress slipping off to the side as the Lakota slowly lay back in the grass, his legs twitching for a moment before the body ceased moving.

  Already on his feet, the young half-breed was shouting, sprinting for the body as renewed rifle fire came from the hillside above them. After making no more than a few yards toward his intended quarry, Jackson wheeled about and beat a hasty retreat.

  “No scalp’s worth losing your own!” Seamus bellowed, spurring his horse up so that he provided some cover for the young half-breed.

  “Not just that! I want that headdress too!” Jackson huffed as they both came to a halt among Wheelan’s soldiers. “Soon as we start mopping up and burn the village, I’ll get that bonnet off that body.”

  “Time enough for taking your trophies later,” Donegan reminded sourly. “For now, the general’s got his work cut out for him clearing these hills.”

  * * *

  “They’re having a time of it!” the young infantryman yelled exuberantly to the others all up and down the line of pack-mules.

  “I’d say, my boy,” replied an older foot soldier. “Just listen to ’em banging away at them red-bellies!”

  The sounds of battle were well carried up the valley that dawn as this escort struggled to reach the village with their precious ammunition lashed to the mules, struggling over the open ground.

  He had already been blooded, as the old files with the Twenty-second called it. Assigned to the Glendive depot last summer, he was with Otis’s bunch when the Sioux jumped them on their way with that long bull-train of supplies bound for Miles’s Fifth at the mouth of the Tongue.* He was blooded already, by damned. Seen men hit, watched army bullets strike the enemy. Heard their shouts and screams and blood-curdling shrieks. He was blooded all right. Not no wet-eared, shave-tail recruit no more.

  “Gonna make short work of it, them boys are!” cried a voice, cheery and lustful, as they marched along to a certain victory over these last of the warrior Sioux.

  For some time he kept expecting to reach the battle scene, listening to the booms of the big guns rattling closer and closer, the cracks of the smaller carbines the Sioux used. The minutes and yards crawled by as the soldiers struggled to push the mules up and down the broken landscape, stumbling themselves each time they had to cross and re-cross the narrow stream, as it meandered from one side of the valley to the other. After all this time and all that fighting, after all the miles of trying to catch up …

  Disgruntled, he grumbled, “We gotta be getting close—”

  “Sweet mother of pike!”

  At that exclamation from one of the civilians walking ahead of the column, they all jerked to look up at the high ground, just as the first screams and shrieks burst from the throats of the warriors. More than a dozen of them, perhaps as many as twenty.

  “Jesus God!” he whispered, filled with sudden panic as the Sioux swept down on them.

  Half of the Indians were on foot, the others racing ahead on ponies.

  He could see the puffs of smoke from the muzzles of their guns. Had to be Springfields, he thought, captured from dead soldiers.

  Then came the first sound of bullet striking bone, the sharp, pained, wordless cry of one of the men up ahead.

  Already the mules were balking, yanking this way and that on their leads, tugging against the men, yanking away from one another as if an artillery canister had gone off in their midst.

  “Shoot ’em, goddammit!”

  A few of the men were yelling at the others; likely the sergeant and some older ones, the youngster thought as he dropped to his knee beneath one of the nervous mules who had gone stiff-legged there on the trail, frozen in fear. He wondered if the mule would piss on him as he huddled there. Then worried if he would piss on himself.

  The horsemen swept sideways across the sodden slope above them, firing wildly, full of fury at the soldiers, while those warriors on foot came running straight downhill for the mule-train, shrieking and flapping blankets. The mule he hunkered under shifted sideways, enough so that he was no longer within the cavity of its legs, then the animal suddenly bolted, hee-rawing as it thrashed spraddle-legged into the brush, snared by the wide ammunition boxes in making its escape.

  A bullet hissed past, slamming into the mule’s rump.

  He looked down at his crotch. “Damn,” he muttered as the warmth spread.

  No matter, he decided. None of the others gonna notice I pissed on myself. They’re too damned busy right now anyway. Blooded was he, but it was still hard to keep from puking as he heard that dying man thrashing, saw the civilian with the lower half of his face blown off, gurgling in his own blood. Drowning slowly, noisily.

  He hoped a bullet would find him quick so that he didn’t have to go slow and painful like that.

  “Hold them goddamned mules, you sonsabitches!” some man ordered.

  Another voice bellowed, “You heard the sarge! Hold onto ’em!”

  Then a new order, “Save the bloody ammo! Save the bullets!”

  He suddenly heard all the voices around him, each and every word distinct, able to put a face to each voice—wondering if that clarity meant that he was going to be all right … or if such clarity came to a man only in those final moments before he was killed.

  Either way, he decided, it was going to be fine by him.

  “You gonna shoot that rifle of yours today, soldier?”

  Jerking about, he found the old corporal looming over his shoulder, grinning. By damned, the man was grinning.

  “Y-y-yes, I will—”

  “There’s plenty of them red buggers for targets,” the corporal bawled, some of his front teeth gone, the rest a pasty brown from his chew. “Pick you one and blow his eggs off!”

  The corporal settled in beside him, gave him a wink, and put his Long Tom to work.

  By damn if it wasn’t gonna be fine now, the young soldier thought as he set his rifle against his shoulder and peered down the barrel at the backs of those warriors who were scampering back up the hill now that the soldiers were getting themselves over that initial shock, beginning to rally and put up a stiff defense.

 
On either side of them the few on ponies swept by, pouring this way and that, then upon reaching the streambank, they circled back toward the slope. Mules grunted. Men cursed, doing their best to hold onto the frightened, balky animals carrying that precious ammunition, doing their best to hold their urine, to hold back their gorge that threatened to make them puke.

  Men who knelt there among the pack-train doing their level best to hold back this ambush.

  He knew they would do it. As the minutes crawled by, the Sioux grew less and less brassy and bold. Less willing to take a chance and get too close to those Long Toms these infantrymen carried. He knew they would do it.

  If worse come to worst, he figured, they could hold out till just this side of forever with all this ammo. Leastways till them horse soldiers with Miles heard this gunfire and come running to raise this siege.

  But that would have to wait for now and he would have to find another target, to hold off these red hellions for a while longer. The cavalry with Miles had their own fight going and until it settled down, none of the horse soldiers was about to hear this little fight going on a valley or two over.

  “That’a way, son!” the corporal cried as one of the warriors on foot stumbled and pitched face forward onto the grass.

  Two men on horseback saw their companion fall at the same time, wheeling about to rescue the wounded warrior.

  The corporal clapped and hooted, “They make a fine target of theyselves!”

  The young soldier yanked up the trapdoor of his rifle, ejecting that hot copper cartridge. Stuffing his trembling hand down into the black leather pouch at his belt, he pulled another shell from his kit and stuffed it into the breech. Slamming down the trapdoor, he dragged back the big hammer and nestled the rifle into his shoulder again.

  If they were going to be here for a while, he might as well keep himself busy.

  Chapter 39

  7 May 1877

  “Dear Jesus, help me hold ’em back,” whispered Private William Leonard, L Company, Second U.S. Cavalry. “Just help me hold these red bastards back.”

  So angry he was close to tears, the young soldier wanted to curse himself for forgetting the prayers taught him in his youth. He dwelled on his mother and father, how they always saw he got to church on Sunday mornings. The remembrance made his eyes smart, and that made Private Leonard even more angry at himself. He swiped at his bleary eyes and shoved his cheek back down on the stock of his Springfield carbine.

  Damn if he didn’t have all the luck—dragging himself out of one scrape just to plop into another. From the frying pan right into the fire.

  How he had looked forward to getting in some fighting with the Sioux hostiles before this war was over. Just like the over-riding eagerness felt by all the others in those four companies of horse soldiers who had followed Major Frank “Grasshopper” Brisbin east from Fort Ellis in April, assigned duty with General Miles’s campaign punching south of the Yellowstone. All those rough miles of up and down in the last two days as word along the column had it they were getting close to the village. Then just as Miles had them moving at a trot toward the enemy camp in the dark that morning, his saddle started to slip off the backbone of his big bay gelding.

  Quickly Leonard reined out of column and leaped to the ground as the rest poured past in a throbbing, thunderous wave, following Miles’s scouts toward the coming dawn. Goddamn that cinch! Why now?

  Busted but good, the stitching worn loose. It was almost enough to make a man want to cry. The private stood there with a loose end of that cinch hanging in one hand, staring at the tail end of the column as it disappeared down the creek valley. Damn, but they were going to have themselves a daisy of a scrap. The last scrap there might well be out here.

  Forlorn as a man ever was, he felt angry, bitter, and despairing that he wasn’t going to get in on the fighting now.

  It was to have been a glory ride! Sweeping in at dawn on that last Sioux village to thumb their noses at the army and their Indian agents. Likely the last chance the Second Cavalry would have to cloak itself in honor for a long time to come, what with the Indian wars coming to a close both south and north. Then it would be back to having nothing more to look forward to than endless days of fatigue duty until his enlistment was up.

  As the sounds of his comrades faded downstream, Leonard collapsed right there beside the trail, ready to bawl from frustration, when he had a prick of inspiration: he’d do what he could to repair his saddle. He had his folding pocketknife after all, and he might just improvise enough to get that cinch re-attached to the saddle. A few long whangs might work. He could cut those narrow strips of leather from the saddle cover itself. He only needed a half-dozen of them to make his repair, just enough to keep the saddle and cinch together until he made it into that village and that last glorious fight.

  So he had gone to work there in the growing light of that cold spring dawn, struggling to drag his pocketknife through the thick latigo leather, carving out the first of the narrow strips. By the time he started on the third one, the distant gunfire had become all but steady. Those sounds and the growing frustration he began to suffer spurred him to work a little faster.

  He was poking holes through the braided sisal fabric of the cinch, matching holes in the saddle leather, when he heard the first yelp.

  Snapping his head up in surprise, Leonard couldn’t believe his eyes. A half-dozen warriors on foot, and another three on ponies, had just reached the top of the ridge behind him—and peering down had discovered the lone soldier. Without losing a step they came rolling toward him, shrieking billy-be-hell and eager for his scalp!

  He stood up so suddenly the pocketknife tumbled off his thigh. Leonard scooped it up, clumsily closing the blade as he stuffed it into a back pocket on his wool britches. Already the bay was skittish. Maybe the scent of ’em on the wind. More likely all their hollering.

  He hurriedly dragged up the blanket and saddle as one and flung it on the back of the horse. Untying the rein from the brush, he swept up his carbine. Only then did he wonder where the hell he would go. It had to be quick, and it had to be close, because he was heading there on foot. Still couldn’t cinch that saddle down, but he prayed it would stay on that bay’s back long enough to get him somewhere he could fort up.

  “C’mon, girl!” he bellowed as he yanked the horse away, heading sidelong up the slope.

  If he could reach the top, he would have the high ground and a good field of fire. Not that he had ever had to worry about having a field of fire before; he and the others never had themselves a good dirty scrap with any Injuns. Could have, if Iron-Britches Custer had decided to take Brisbin up on his offer of these same four companies, back when the Seventh marched away from the mouth of the Rosebud to its destiny. These same four companies that marched east to go campaigning with Miles.

  Time now to see if all that stuff they’d filled his head with back at Jefferson Barracks was worth a damn … at least worth one poor soldier’s life.

  High ground, he huffed almost out loud. And recognized the paunch-water sounds of the horse behind him as it rattled up the slope.

  Turning, Leonard glanced back to see that the saddle was still there, bouncing along on the gelding’s broad back. Damn if he didn’t need what was in them saddle pockets. Hell, if it come down to it, a man might figure that saddle cost him his scalp, Leonard thought as he neared the crest of the hill. Then again, if he didn’t lose his extra cartridges, that saddle might just save his life too.

  While hanging onto the gelding’s tail for all he was worth, the horse dragged him up those last few yards to the top. He spun around, looked, and gulped. No trees. Only some scrub brush. Nothing big enough for the bastards to hide behind and slip up on him—

  He heard the slap of lead. The bay whinnied, twirling and kicking, flinging off the saddle so that it tumbled into the tall grass. A big hole bubbled in its chest, red and glistening, spewing froth. Done for, goddamn.

  Leonard dropped his carbine, wrapping bo
th hands around the reins as the horse struggled against him, shoving at first, then pulling the private as he dug in his heels to keep the animal from bolting. Up here in the open, he still needed that gelding.

  Lashing the reins around his left hand, the soldier yanked back the mule ear of his holster and dragged out his service revolver. Snapping back the hammer as the horse lunged to the side, Leonard felt all the strength oozing from that arm the gelding had nearly popped out of its socket. The bay almost knocked him over as he leaped close, jamming the muzzle just below the ear, clenched his eyes shut, then yanked on the trigger.

  The gelding settled on all fours, then gently keeled onto its side, legs facing the top of the hill.

  Snapping off two quick pistol shots at the horsemen who were the closest to him, Leonard spun on his heel and scuttled for the saddle down the slope. Snagging hold of it in his left hand, the private whirled and started back to the dead horse. A bullet whined past him, ricochetting off a small boulder he hurdled in midstride. Skidding in between the dead animal’s legs, he dragged up the carbine. Now he had some ammunition, enough to reload his pistol four times, and a hundred rounds for his Springfield.

  There wasn’t that many of them, so Leonard figured he could hold them at bay long enough with what ammunition he had. Here between some shin-high rocks and this carcass, he hunkered down, settling in to return their fire. Listening to them yell for his blood.

  As minutes crawled past, the morning began to wear on and on. Those warriors wouldn’t stop yelling, and the distant shooting in the village continued. Neither of them were good signs, the lone private figured. The others wouldn’t know he was missing, wouldn’t hear his carbine—not with all they had to deal with then and there.

  So, he reminded himself, clenching his teeth in resolve, it was going to be up to him for the next hour or so until help came along.

  Beneath that cloudy sky as the wind came up, it seemed as if time slowed, then stood still. After what must surely have been an eternity of holding the warriors at bay, he heard the distant rifle fire trickle off, and it grew quiet on down the valley.