Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  Her knees softened. George caught her as she collapsed.

  “I’ll carry you down to the fort, dear.” He swept her up.

  Frances stared, mesmerized at the pale corona surrounding his head.

  “The baby, George. Our baby!”

  Chapter 28

  In his seventeen winters Curly could not remember a robe season any colder. The wooly smother of snow on the land did not dampen winter’s bite.

  The rivers had begun to freeze while the north winds sculpted every snowdrift into jewel-glittered fans surrounding the gold stubble of prairie bunch-grass. Even now the bullberry along the bottoms stood naked against the onslaught. Across the sunny slopes the willow had surrendered its last red leaves, wind-driven across the frozen hills like bloody arrowheads left behind come this season of sleep upon the land.

  For days after their fight with the soldiers, many of the Sioux argued among themselves. Many sided with Yellow Eagle, who had planned and led the main attack on the wood train. He said they had done right in trying to pull the soldiers from their horses rather than shooting them from cover. A growing number of young warriors, however, followed the words of Curly.

  “Never again should we let soldiers live merely because we covet their horses,” he had explained around lodge fires in those days following the fight. “We lost the horses … and the soldiers got away.”

  “Curly has the heart of a warrior.” Man-Afraid had silenced much of the criticism flung at his young protégé. “I agree. We must kill soldiers. Forget the horses. We must keep our eye on one thing only—death to all the soldiers at Pine Woods.”

  Each night in those villages stretched like a buffalo-rawhide lariat for some forty miles along the headwaters of the Tongue River, they debated the lessons to be learned from what had taken place in the opening days of this new moon. Argued, yes—yet everyone among them certain they had found the secret to crushing the soldiers who had come to profane Sioux hunting ground.

  From late summer through the frosty days of fall, more and more recruits had ridden into the Sioux camps gathering no more than fifty miles north of the soldier fort. Not only the Sioux confederation, but Cheyenne under Roman Nose and Medicine Man. Arapaho under Little Chief and Sorrel Horse. Yet not until that fight in the valley of the Peno was there universal agreement among the chiefs and principal warriors. To all the villages runners had been sent to gather a great council. Tonight they would decide how to kill many soldiers, driving the rest from Sioux land—for all time.

  Curly slid to the snow from his pony’s back. The wool greatcoat kept him warm. The soldier who wore yellow bands on his arm no longer needed it. Curly had smashed an axe into the back of the soldier’s head, leaving him to die because other white men hurried to the ridge-shadows where Curly killed the soldier leader and Yellow-Bands-on-His-Arms. Too many soldiers had escaped.

  “Tonight, we have agreed how to assure that no soldiers escape our next attack.” Red Cloud’s voice rose over the lodge.

  “It is good,” Black Shield of the Miniconjous replied. “We are ready to fight together.”

  “So that we will never have to fight the white man again,” Roman Nose agreed. “One big battle.”

  “With the white man driven from our land,” Sorrel Horse echoed hope.

  “We saw how we can overpower the soldiers … destroy any army sent against us!” Red Cloud roared in a voice that sent fiery chills along Curly’s spine. “The first day after the next full moon we will lay a trap of all our warriors.”

  “Attack their slow wagons!” Man-Afraid cheered. “They always send soldiers out to protect their slow wagons!”

  Red Cloud nodded. “Let a few lure the soldiers to their deaths.”

  “Who will lead the decoy?” Black Shield asked.

  “Who among our young men should have this honor?” Red Cloud echoed.

  Muttering filled the council lodge. Worry crossed their faces. The bands had agreed to a battle plan and when to spring their trap. Now their harmony appeared threatened. Curly grew anxious that all the good done would fall asunder.

  “Brothers!”

  Man-Afraid’s voice rang out, silencing every man in the crowded lodge.

  “There is but one among us who should bear the honor of leading the decoy that will lure the soldiers into the trap where the many will wait to spring.”

  “Who?” one old Oglalla called out.

  Roman Nose stood. “I agree with Man-Afraid. He should lead the decoy!”

  The ripple of a cheer began its trickle through the lodge warmed by fire and body heat—until Man-Afraid raised his arms and silenced the chiefs and head men.

  “No,” he answered, nodding to Roman Nose. “The Cheyenne chief humbles Man-Afraid by this honor. Yet Man-Afraid himself says there is but one to lead the decoy.”

  “Who is better qualified than you?” Sorrel Horse demanded.

  “Yes,” Red Cloud agreed. “None is braver than Man-Afraid.”

  The Oglalla shook his head with a smile. “In days gone by there was none known braver,” he said, slapping a hand against his warshirt. “Comes a new day—there is one who no longer stands in my shadow. His courage spurs us all! He shall lead the decoy. He shall lure the soldiers to their death like the sage hen draws the wolf. He who has a heart of iron!”

  Man-Afraid flung his arm out, pointing across the fire at his young protégé. Surprising him.

  The young man stood slowly, unsure at first. Then squared his shoulders as the chant grew louder, and louder still, ringing off the buffalo-hide walls, thundering in his ears with a mystical power all its own. A call for blood.

  “Curly! Curly! CURLY!”

  * * *

  He hadn’t smelled a woman’s perfume in … it had been a long time.

  The fragrance of her almost made his mouth water as he turned from throwing some wood on the fire in a tiny sheet-iron stove that was her only source of heat in this small cabin. No more than a low-roofed, one-room log hut the army provided for the few families of enlisted men stationed at Fort Phil Kearny. Fortunate for her and the baby, at least, that it did not take much of a fire to knock the December chill off the place.

  Seamus turned to find Abigail Noone still nursing her infant daughter, sitting in the only chair in the room. For a moment he questioned again why he had come here tonight after the funeral. Bowers and Bingham and Noone. But looking around the little hut, he again realized he felt sorry for her. That sympathy he rarely showed brought him to her doorstep this night as the wind howled beyond the plank door. Taking pity on her, for Abigail had followed her husband west with the 18th Infantry. Bringing their daughter, now six months old, and all they owned in the world.

  One chair. And two battered trunks.

  The army had provided a small pine-board and rope bed on which lay a lumpy tick bulging with musty straw. Atop a crude washstand Abigail had placed her fine china washbowl and pitcher. Suspended from a nail above them hung a mirror, a corner of its mercury-glass broken, like one spindly strand of spider’s web.

  He pulled up one of the old wooden trunks by the stove and eased himself down. For the longest time he watched her nurse the baby. Fascinated, for it was the first time he had witnessed this passing of life from one body to the next.

  When Abigail looked up to find him watching, she turned slightly, more to give the impression of propriety than to hide her engorged breast pendant from the front of the black dress borrowed from Margaret Carrington.

  “I … I’ve never owned anything black,” she had explained to him when he first came here this evening, not long after the last stragglers scurried back to the fort from the post cemetery. “Mrs. Colonel Carrington let me wear it. I’m … good that she’s so … full-bodied that a nursing mother has room to fit in it.”

  He remembered her saying it without embarrassment. Talking to him as if he were but one of the women here when he had approached her door.

  Sitting there in Kinney’s place earlier as the light
seeped from the sky like a room gone dark when a lamp snuffs itself out, Seamus had stared for the longest time into his red whiskey. Sensing what, he was not sure. Having himself experienced loss before. Grappling with it like a man might work at skinning the hide off a deer he had shot. Slowly, working his knifeblade through the thin, opaque membranes like a sharpened finger on his hand. Careful not to cut through the spongy hide itself. Steadily working down, down until he had decided he had no choice but to visit her.

  To console another with a need at this hour greater than his own.

  Finding the Noone cabin easy enough, he had listened at the door to the subdued voices of several women. Donegan withdrew to the shadows and waited out of the wind. Nearly an hour later he recognized the scrape of the plank door on its doorjamb. The soft glow of lamplight spilled across the entry as three women stooped out the door, bid their good-byes and hurried off across the snowy parade.

  Margaret Carrington. Lieutenant Grummond’s pregnant wife. And a third he could not identify. Likely the wife of the post surgeon.

  Looking back on how he had shown up at her door, Seamus found it interesting that no look of surprise or wonder had come into her reddened eyes when she found him there in that pale lamplight seeping onto the trampled snow. Instead, it was as if she had expected him all along, motioning him inside without a word. She had offered him the last of some tea she had warmed for her guests. They sat for the longest time, talking of the trip north from Laramie last summer. Both of them carefully avoiding that awful day spent on the Crazy Woman, until the baby awoke and began to cry.

  “It’s not normal for her to wake up,” Abigail had apologized, with her eyes mostly. “It’s been … a trying day for us all.”

  “I’ll build up the fire.” He had risen from the trunk as she went to the rifle-case Frank Noone had made into a crib with soft cotton batting and blankets. “Knock some of the chill off, Mrs. Noone. Most like’ the baby’s cold.”

  “Thank you,” she had replied, settling to the one chair. Then slowly, deliberately slipping one button at a time from their tiny loops at the front of her mourning dress. Sensing his eyes on her, but resolved to feed her daughter in front of him. “You must call me … Abigail. We are not strangers, Seamus.”

  “No, we’re not … Abigail.”

  She slipped the rigid nipple between her daughter’s open, grasping lips. “All of us who survived that horrid day share a bond few others can ever appreciate.”

  “You and the others … you women—come through something that made many a man tremble and cry out in fear during the war,” he explained quietly.

  She had nodded silently, stroking her daughter’s face. Seamus waited a few moments, then pushed split firewood through the stove door. As he listened to the wet nng-nng-nggg sounds made by the hungry, confused infant eager at her mother’s breast.

  “I suppose that’s why I came here this evening. I know everyone else tells you they’re sorry for what—for Frank. But me—I want you to know I really am sorry for the way things worked out for you here. The baby.”

  As she sighed, he heard the rattle of a sob in her chest. For the moment she tried to conceal her hurt by cooing at the infant, then turned again to the Irishman.

  “We had such dreams, Seamus. Frank and I.” She stroked her daughter’s hair. “Frank asked for duty assignment. We talked about it before coming West. He knew he could not be a musician the rest of his life … to support a family.” Abigail held one of the tiny, pink hands wrapped around a single finger. “He asked for duty out here. But now Frank’s girls must go on … without him.”

  “Will you head East?”

  She nodded once without looking at him. “The next chance there is to leave. Colonel Carrington says it will be at least a week before the next mail escort attempts a trip south. Lieutenant Bisbee took his family south today after the … the ceremony. I imagine we’ll be able to leave with an armed escort as well.”

  “You need anything between now and then, Abigail—have someone come for me.”

  She looked at him full now, her face alive with a soft glow radiating from the single oil-lamp perched atop the table made of rough-hewn planks laid across hard-bread boxes. With those eyes so stark and reddened, the soft light made it appear as if her face itself was aglow. Translucent.

  “Do you have any whiskey with you?” she asked.

  He started for his coat hung from a peg by the door. “I always——”

  “Just that I remember that day by the Crazy Woman——”

  “… carry a small flask with me——”

  “… how good your Irish whiskey tasted——”

  “… tell everyone it’s for medicinal purposes only——”

  “… watching you pull that arrow from the lieutenant.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that … I wasn’t thinking——”

  “Don’t apologize.”

  “In a fight, I forget me manners.” He sighed. “Sorry you ripped up your petticoat for bandages.”

  “There was nothing better we could use.” She eyed the small flask he held in his lap. “May I?”

  Wordlessly, Seamus worried the cork free and watched her drink, delicately at first. Taking a sip, and licking her bottom lip with the pink tip of her tongue. He found himself aroused, watching her draw at the neck of his flask. Without breaching the silence in that tiny cabin, the Irishman watched the baby feed at the rounded breast, watched Abigail nurse at the bottle. When finally the infant slipped off the damp nipple, soundly asleep, Abigail made no attempt to cover the breast as she passed the flask to Seamus.

  Once the baby lay buried beneath her covers in the rifle-case crib, the young mother turned to find Donegan standing at the stove. She started toward him, her boot-toe stubbing an uneven plank on the rough floor. As Abigail pitched forward, he caught her before she fell to the burlap sacking she had stretched out in her little home as proudly as any rich carpet.

  Slowly he rose with her cradled in his arms. Finding her shudder, gently at first. Growing in intensity until Abigail sobbed pitifully, her shoulders shaking violently, like the frantic efforts of a bird to free itself from his hand.

  Yet this bird clung to him. Reluctant, refusing to let go. Not wanting him to free her.

  It was some time before she calmed herself, huddled there against him. As he stroked her fragrant hair. So, so damned long since he had smelled a woman’s perfume. Seamus encircled her within his arms as he watched the solitary lamp slowly burn itself out, the wick become a red glow, the chimney filled with curls of black smoke as the room snuffed into darkness.

  Dark, but for the orange glow of firelight creeping round the stove’s ill-fitting door.

  Abigail pulled herself away from him, gazing up into his eyes. She made no attempt to swipe at her damp cheeks, to clear away the tears smudging her face-powder and rouge. Nor did the young mother hide her breast. As if it were again that hot July day at the Crazy Woman, both brought together here, as they had been in the cool, dim light of the Noone’s ambulance.

  He felt his heartbeat throb at his temples, gazing at her flesh. The muscles along his jaw tensed like rope gone taut as his eyes fixed on the firm curve of that milky breast. He looked up once. And found her eyes locked into his, as if she wanted him to admire her. As he had that hot summer day on the Crazy Woman.

  Tenderly Abigail slipped her tiny, slim fingers round his big, callused hand and raised it to her bare breast.

  As his flesh met hers, the woman’s head tumbled back, rocking from side to side as she slowly ground her hips against him.

  “Abigail——”

  Her fingers flew to his lips. Silencing him. “I … I need you tonight, Seamus. I’m so … never been this alone before.”

  He shook his head, confused. Feeling such an overpowering lust for this young mother barely three days a widow. Her flesh like soft velvet to his hands grown more accustomed to clutching hickory axe-handles or mule-harness. “I … I can’t, Abigail.�
��

  “You must … please—you must,” she pleaded. “Surely your need is every bit as great as mine.”

  She whispered against his chest, unbuttoning his wool shirt quickly. Her breath-words warm and moist against his flesh as she pulled aside his long-handles.

  The Irishman shuddered. Knowing at once he tread on dangerous ground. Believing he should flee. Realizing he was already powerless to stop. Admitting he hungered for a woman as badly as she needed him. A part of him feeling like a sham dodger, for Abigail had chosen him among the many. While Seamus Donegan would likely have bedded most any moist and warm female given half an invitation.

  The simple elegance of Abigail Noone’s graceful body was an added pleasure.

  She stood before him now as his hands pulled away the top of her widow’s dress, hurriedly ripping open her white bodice to free both engorged breasts, her clothing hung a’swirl from her waist. Like the paws of some fevered animal, Donegan’s hands raced over her warm, trembling flesh. While most men would look at Abigail and see a plain woman not attractive enough to warrant a second glance, Seamus instead now gazed upon the striking firmness of her slim body. And found a wanton embodiment of physical desire that had for too long remained hidden by layers of restrictive clothing.

  At the edge of the bed where he removed her high boots and long stockings, he at last found beneath all those layers an even warmer flesh tingling over a body that yearned up at his hungrily. Pulling him downward atop her, seeking a fevered, anxious mating.

  Instead, the Irishman drew back when she held her arms up to him. Gazing upon her while he ripped his own clothes free. Watching Abigail writhe atop the coarse blankets as her eyes narrowed on his readiness for her. She reached out as he came to her. Took him in both hands, kneading him gently as he sank to the protesting bed beside her.

  His nose and mouth found the nape of her neck, pushing her black hair aside to suck deep of the smell of that perfume he had been too long in recognizing. Too many months. So many lonely nights without a woman. And thanking his God that the woman who would break his fast was one as hungry for him as was Abigail Noone.