Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Already the soldiers were stripping the buffalo-hide covers from their poles, leaving the lodgepoles standing like so many skeletons against the winter sky, immersed in counting weapons and food and robes captured. As Dixon walked through the smoky village, marveling how these brown-skinned fighters kept moving, fighting, then moving again while dragging along their families and homes, a young soldier nearby jumped back, frightened by something in the pile of buffalo robes and greasy blankets he was digging through.

  “Them … them buffler hides moved on me!” exclaimed the frightened soldier, pulling his service revolver.

  “You likely scared some varmit, soldier,” Dixon said, pulling his pistol as well. “Some critter just took shelter in there—Injun dogs can be a bit dangerous, you don’t watch out.”

  Billy’s jaw dropped as the first little hand pushed out from a gap among the hides. He knelt, peering closely into the shadows, seeing the pair of eyes back in the darkness of that hiding place.

  “You … you’re white?” asked a little, frail voice.

  “My name’s Billy,” he said, tears starting to sting his eyes. He leaned forward as the second set of eyes appeared beside the first. Dixon gently pulled back some of those heavy hides the Cheyenne had abandoned in their rush to retreat before the attack of Miles’s troops.

  Both sets of frightened, furtive eyes squinted up and blinked into the dull gray light of the heavily overcast sky threatening to snow. Their faces were smudged, scratched and streaked with blood, their hair hanging in greasy sprigs.

  “It’s all right now,” Dixon soothed, forcing himself to speak as he held out a hand to them both. “There’s just two of you?”

  The oldest of the small girls nodded her head, her chin quivering as she started to sob. The younger girl clung to her sister like a tick, keening loudly as a small crowd of soldiers gathered.

  Quickly he tore off his own coat, motioning for one of the young soldiers to do as well. They wrapped the two small girls in them, the bottoms of the coats dragging the ground. Then Dixon gathered them both against him as the cruel November wind whined, slashing brutally through the abandoned camp.

  “Is your name … German?”

  The oldest of the pair nodded. Her eyes focused more on Billy. And the younger one quieted her sobbing a little.

  “Get them something to eat, will you?” Dixon asked the growing crowd.

  “Lord deliver,” one of the older soldiers murmured prayerfully, pulling some dried beef from his haversack and handing it to the grimy little hands that snatched it from his.

  Hands so thin they reminded Billy of birds’ claws. He looked up around the gathering of faces, men jostling and shoving to get a better look at the two tiny girls. A few men silently, openly cried, others angrily swiped at betraying tears. A few turned away to hide their feelings. But there wasn’t a man there, hardened soldier or veteran scout, who was not moved by the sight of those two tiny victims of this cruel war.

  Out there, he thought—somewhere out there in the midst of all this wilderness—the other girls were still captive.

  “Yes,” Dixon replied as the two youngest of the four German sisters gobbled down strips of salted beef. “We have two of them back now. The Lord does deliver.”

  40

  New Year’s Eve, 1874

  For the first time in three days, the snow and wind had stopped. Seamus and Sharp lost no time in bundling into blanket-lined canvas mackinaws, gloves and wool mufflers, before they pressed through the door into the icy drifts that corduroyed Sharp’s yard.

  Needing first attention was the stock they fed in the ramshackle pole and shake barn Grover had plans of expanding come spring. Then they set about sawing and bucking more firewood. The supply inside the cabin’s tinderbox had been dangerously depleted during the past few days. By the time they were nearing the end of their labors over the sawbuck, the sun even made a bright appearance, bringing a sparkle to the snow’s white scurry.

  “We get back inside, you gonna bring out more of that fruit brandy you keep tucked away out of sight?” Donegan asked.

  “Damn right I keep it tucked away,” Grover replied. “You had your way, you’d drunk it all the night we got back.”

  Seamus snorted. “No cause for celebration, that.”

  Grover stopped and sighed, a grin creasing his face. “You’re right, Irishman. We both had cause for celebration—getting back here whole and of one piece.”

  After destroying the pony herd, Mackenzie had moved his command northward once more, marching around the head of the Palo Duro Canyon then back down south to the North Pease River by the middle of October. From there he continued on back to his supply camp on the Freshwater Fork, continually probing with his scouts the country of the Brazos, up toward Mound Lake in the caprock country of the Staked Plain, then back north to Yellow House Creek through November. In early December, as the weather began to close down and word came that two of the German girls had been rescued from Gray Beard’s band of Cheyenne, Mackenzie redoubled his efforts, pushing men and animals while he still could, sweeping southwest to Cedar Lake, then eastward across the Colorado River and back to the Brazos.

  From time to time Donegan and the rest came across sign of small parties of Indians, warriors and travois too, fleeing this way and that. They came across campsites, halting temporarily where the escaping bands had killed a settler’s cow or slaughtered a few buffalo, simply made meat in a herd of antelope. But for all Mackenzie’s efforts, it was as if the Indians were ghosts. No more were they gathering in great numbers as they had at Palo Duro Canyon. No more were they staying in one camp for more than one night.

  Mackenzie had them on the move, not allowing them time to dry meat for the winter, to flesh hides to replace lodges lost, destroyed, burned. Then on the nineteenth of December, a day after ten of Lieutenant Thompson’s scouts had a brief skirmish with more than fifteen hostiles, Mackenzie came to the smoky breakfast fire where Grover and Donegan boiled coffee over wet wood.

  “We’re not far from Fort Richardson, fellas,” the colonel had said, yanking his gloves from his hands, warming them over the low flames.

  “You figure on turning back from here?” Grover asked.

  Mackenzie nodded. “It’s time to put in. They’re transferring me.”

  That caught Donegan’s attention. “Where they sending the Fourth now?”

  “Sill,” he had answered. “Enough of the war bands have been surrendering, they want us to come in and reinforce the troops from the Tenth up there. Just in case of trouble.”

  Donegan nodded, dragging the coffeepot off the coals before he threw more grounds into the water.

  “So, I figure you fellas won’t mind having these,” Mackenzie said, his hand dragging two folded notices from inside his wool coat.

  “What’re these?” Grover asked.

  “Pay vouchers. I signed ’em this morning.”

  “You’re firing us?” Donegan asked, a strange grin crossing his smoke-smudged face.

  “Yeah, you might say so, Sergeant. You too, Sharp.” Mackenzie stared back into the low flames a moment before going on. “This part of the campaign’s over. We’ve done all we’re going to do for now. We’ll just have to see about getting Quanah Parker’s Kwahadi band come spring.”

  “You’re going to winter up at Sill, is it?” Sharp asked.

  Mackenzie nodded. “But we’ll never be closer to Richardson … to Jacksboro than we are now, fellas.”

  Donegan found Grover looking at him with a wide smile. “Why, Colonel,” the Irishman declared, “I do believe you’ve got a heart.”

  The soldier flashed a grin quickly, pointing to a stack of tin cups. “Suppose one of you pour your commander a cup of that coffee looks done now. We’ll share one last pot of the Irishman’s devil brew before you boys are out of a job and got to ride back home for the winter.”

  They had come riding back to Grover’s little spread late on an afternoon a week ago. Christmas Eve. As the lig
ht had faded early, Donegan found nothing more heartwarming than the four red candles lit in the front window as the two ice-crusted riders dismounted stiffly and knocked snow off their boots, when suddenly the door flew open and two teary-eyed, shrieking women burst onto the porch, bringing with them the fragrances of baking and cinnamon and vanilla.

  Not to mention the just plain good smell of a woman, wrapped around a man, all arms and legs and moist, warm lips kissing and kissing and kissing some more as Mackenzie’s former scouts were dragged into the warm, cozy cabin while night closed down on the southern plains that twilight before the day they would celebrate the birth of the Lord who had once more delivered both Donegan and Grover from the hands of their enemies.

  The day after Christmas, Sharp and Seamus had taken a ride on over to Richardson to present Mackenzie’s vouchers to the fort’s paymaster. It was a bad time of the year, the officer told them, but he could likely pay them a part of what they were owed. With new vouchers for the balance in their pockets, the pair returned to Grover’s spread and began to repair the battered cabin and barn for winter, as the air changed and the wind swept out of the north, foretelling the coming of a winter storm.

  “The older girls likely with Stone Calf’s band,” Grover declared now as he leaned on the huge, heavy maul he was using to split the firewood Seamus was sawing in the buck. “And he’s likely headed south.”

  “Will he sell ’em?” Donegan asked, his eyes narrowing.

  Grover pursed his lips. “Chances are he might. Those Comancheros like white-skinned women. They’ll fetch a pretty price if Stone Calf runs onto any of them Mexican or Navajo traders.”

  The glittering dance of snow crystals bobbed and weaved on the cold breeze in the bright January sunshine. Seamus dragged the saw back and forth through the firewood a few minutes, then turned back to the older man as Grover drove the maul down into a chunk of wood.

  “You ever worry, Sharp,” he began, then sighed, as if searching for words, “ever worry about Rebecca, about Samantha being here alone while we been away from the place?”

  Grover laid both wrists over the end of the maul’s handle and stared at the cabin for a moment. The windowpane frosted, a curl of gray wood smoke rising from the stone chimney. His own breathsmoke slowed as he turned back to the Irishman.

  “No, Seamus. And that’s honest. I never worried about Rebecca. Not once. She can take care of herself, Rebecca can. But there was a time or two that Samantha crowded my worries some.”

  “Well, if Rebecca can care for herself, then likely Samantha will be fine too.”

  Grover snorted, dragging his mitten under his reddened nose. “I’m not talking about someone else coming out here and doing the women harm, you stupid jackass. I’m talking about me being worried about Samantha’s safety—when she’s around you.”

  Donegan straightened, leaving the saw in the cut he had made. “When she’s around me?”

  “Neither one of ’em are dog-shanty, cow-ranch women. And you’re plainly a dangerous man to Samantha Pike, Seamus. I … don’t want to see that woman get hurt.”

  He wagged his head as if he could not believe what he was hearing his old friend telling him. “You don’t think I got feelings for her?”

  He stared at the Irishman a moment before saying, “You damned well never spoke of ’em, Seamus.”

  “Well, I—”

  “But it’s about time you did,” Grover snapped, suddenly sounding very protective of his young sister-in-law. “Just what the hell are you planning on doing about that woman who’s gone all cow-eyed over you?”

  Donegan’s hands moved a little in front of him as he released the long cross-cut saw, his lips moving too, but without any words coming out.

  “What is it, Irishman? Of a sudden you’ve gone fiddle-footed and shy, eh?”

  Only the muscles along his jaw were moving now, making tiny ripples below skin the color of smoked buckskin, ripples trembling all the way down into his dark chin whiskers. Then finally Seamus said, “It ain’t like I haven’t thought about it, Sharp. The saints preserve me, but I have, and thought about it a lot. Problem is, I worry about what I can give her—the kind of woman she appears to be. Samantha deserves a lot.”

  “Damn right she does. But more than anything else, she deserves to know where she stands with you, Irishman. You gonna tell her what she means to you? Or you gonna keep that woman tortured, in suspense all winter long while you figure out what it is that you want?”

  Seamus swallowed, hard. All autumn into winter he had ridden across the Staked Plain with Colonel Mackenzie, free to dream and ponder and plan—but now he had to put up. No more it seemed did he have the luxury of merely dreaming of possibilities. As he had been free to do when he searched out dreams of gold and tracked down one uncle after another, from the high plains of Colorado Territory to the far, misty land of southern Oregon. As he had done first with auburn-haired Jennifer Wheatley and now with golden-haired Samantha Pike. No one had ever made him put up before. If any man could, Sharp Grover was that man.

  “Why, just look at you, Irishman,” the old scout said. “You growed as rosy as a Georgia belle at her first ball.”

  His brow wrinkled, struggling with it inside. Seamus had fought his way across this land with his fists and with lead. He had ridden hard and loved hard and never shied from giving back what he figured had been give to him. “What … what you think I ought to do?”

  “Damn you,” Sharp said quietly. “Seamus Donegan asking me what he ought to do? You’re a man never asked another what to do.”

  Seamus shrugged, suddenly feeling helpless. He glanced at the frosted windowpane and those four red candles the women lit every night near sundown.

  “What you ought to do is make Samantha your wife and get Rebecca off my back where she’s been riding me cinch and bridle to get you convinced that her sister will make you as good a wife as any man’s bound to find, and far better than you deserve.”

  “She … Sam’s a fine woman,” Seamus replied finally, his stomach turning flips the way a starling would dive and swoop after a moth. He looked away thoughtfully.

  “I figure every woman’s equipped about the same, Seamus—to one degree or another. They all have the same God-give power, and to one degree or another they know how to use those God-granted gifts to make a slave of a man,” Grover continued. Then he sighed. “She’ll make you a fine wife, as fine a partner in your life as she has been a warm and willing partner in your bed.”

  “You know?”

  Grover shrugged a shoulder, gazing at the ground. “I didn’t. I suppose us men never really do. But Rebecca knew, even before she was able to drag it out of Samantha.”

  “Damn! How am I gonna face your wife now? How am I gonna face either of ’em knowing that they talked about me like that?”

  Grover suddenly laughed. Seized so suddenly and so hard, he doubled over. Leaving the Irishman to sputter in dismay, bewildered.

  “Lookit you—acting like a schoolboy caught pulling a young girl’s pigtails! This man who’s charged into the muzzle of the best the Confederate army had to aim at him. This man who’s stared down the finest light cavalry this world will ever see—be it Sioux or Cheyenne Dog Soldiers or Quanah Parker’s Kwahadis. And this man is of a sudden all afeared of what two soft-skinned women gonna say about him? Damn, Irishman!”

  Donegan grabbed Grover’s coat in both his gloves, suddenly shaking the older man as Sharp went back to laughing uproariously. “Tell me, what am I gonna do?”

  “The human eye is not for future-seeing, my mama always told me, Seamus.”

  He let go of Grover’s coat. “I think I’d rather face Confederate artillery or Roman Nose’s horsemen than walk back into that cabin and face them two.”

  “Then you just damn well better go off to the barn right now and saddle up, Irishman. Because it appears to me you got two choices: ride off and never show your face around this part of the country again. Or…”

  “Or wh
at?” he shrieked, grabbing Grover again, shaking him in the snowdrift at their feet.

  “Or, you walk back in there with an armload of firewood and fill that tinderbox. Then stroll over to Samantha Pike and take her smooth hand in yours … and tell that pretty woman you’ve got something to talk to her about tonight after supper.”

  41

  April 1875

  All through the late fall and into the early winter, the army columns crossed and recrossed the Staked Plain, from the Canadian down to the Rio Colorado, forcing the war bands to stay on the move. Sometimes Sophia saw Katie on their long marches with Stone Calf’s village. Sometimes she did not see Katie for days at a time. Sophie prayed as the Cheyennes kept their noses pointed steadily to the southwest, marching farther and farther away from the soldiers.

  By the last week in January, Nelson A. Miles figured what bands had not come in and surrendered to their agents were about done from the constant harassment and lack of food. It was upon looking at the small cabinet photograph Surgeon Powell had asked W. P. Bliss to take of the two little German girls that Miles decided what to do next.

  Sophia was startled that cold February day when the Mexican-Comanche half-breed had eased over beside her there in Stone Calf’s village and spoken to her quietly, his dark eyes constantly moving, wary that he would be discovered. In broken English he explained that the chief of all the soldiers in this part of the country had promised him a lot of money and four fine horses if he found the white girls who had been captured in Kansas many moons before.

  Then he asked her, “Are you German?” His eyes touched her briefly, then flicked away, watchful.

  “I am … Sophia German,” she answered. It had been so long since she had said her family name.