Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Sounds a bit like sutler Kinney there,” Stead whispered, nodding toward the counter.

  Jefferson T. Kinney leaned one pudgy elbow on the rough-hewn pine-plank bar, wiping a dirty towel across some spilled whiskey and laughing with two civilian workers who had bellied their way through the crowd to nurse their whiskey. A former U.S. judge out of Utah and an ardent pro-slaver, Kinney had lost his bench when President Lincoln had entered the White House. Kinney had been one of the many who had rejoiced when the Great Emancipator was cut down in Ford’s theater not two years ago come April.

  Bridger’s eyes joined the Irishman’s in glaring at the sutler. Kinney must have felt the heat, for he looked up from the bar, gazing across the noisy, smoky room with those black beads he had for eyes. They locked on Donegan.

  “No love lost on that one,” Bridger whispered around the stub of his pipe which kept a constant wreath round his gray head.

  “Aye,” Donegan agreed as he nodded and went back to staring at his red whiskey. “That’s one bastard wishes Seamus Donegan’s body had been hauled back from the Ridge with Fetterman’s dead.”

  “What makes a man like him hate a man like you, Seamus?” Stead asked, gazing at the sutler’s plump fingers pouring drinks for civilian workers pressing the bar.

  “Man like Seamus Donegan here,” Bridger began, snagging the attention of the other two, “always brings out the fear in little men like the judge over there. And in such men, fear is the worst thing you want. No telling what a fella like him might do you get him scared enough.”

  “What’s a man like Kinney got to be afeared of from me?”

  “Seamus Donegan, down inside where that fat, little bastard lives, Kinney knows he don’t belong out here in these mountains like you do,” Bridger explained. “Somewhere in his gut he knows he’s bought his way out here—but he can’t ever earn what it is you already have for free.”

  “What’s that, Jim?” Stead asked.

  “The respect of other men. Strong men. Honest men. The kind of man it will take to tame this land. The kind of man Judge Kinney will never be, but will always try to buy, and failing that … will try to squash like a sowbug.”

  “Pour me more whiskey, Jack,” Seamus said as he slammed down his empty cup, “and I’ll drink a toast to the sowbug squashers in the world. Appears me uncles have much in common with our friend Judge Kinney over there.”

  Stead poured from a thick glass bottle packed in straw all the way from Omaha. “What keeps Seamus Donegan from being a sowbug squasher himself?”

  The Irishman stared at the red whiskey a moment before answering. “I suppose I’m not the kind content to die peacefully in bed with me eyes closed. Because some time back on a hot, bloody battlefield they called Gettysburg, Seamus Donegan realized he would never die an old man’s death. Now some cold and bony finger’s always tapping me shoulder, telling me every day’s borrowed time.”

  “The reaper has us all, sometime,” Bridger added.

  “To the reaper, then!” Donegan cheered, lifting his cup. “To the reaper—the last friend a dying man will ever know.”

  “To the reaper,” Stead joined in, sloshing his cup into the air.

  “To the old bastard himself,” Donegan added after swilling down some of the burning whiskey. “This God-blessed, hell-forsaken country gonna keep the reaper plenty busy before this war with Red Cloud’s over.”

  * * *

  Seamus stood shuddering with the cold blast knifing his groin. Quickly as he could, he finished wetting the snowy ground at the corner of the latrine slip-trench behind Kinney’s cabin, and was buttoning the fly on his faded cavalry britches when the voice startled him.

  “Should have known, Seamus Donegan. If I don’t find you drinking whiskey in the bar, you’re outside in the cold, pissing good whiskey away!”

  Donegan smiled at his old friend, Samuel Marr, as he pulled on a buffalo-hide mitten and swiped at his drippy nose. “Hate the smell of these places. Remind me of sojurs, a latrine like this does.”

  Marr chuckled. “Where the hell you think you are, boy? You spit in any direction … you’ll hit a soldier.”

  “Curses be to ’em!” Seamus growled. Then he grinned and slapped the gray-headed Marr on the back. “Man tries to forget ever being a sojur and fighting that war—there’s always mitherless sons like you want to remind him of the bleeming army! C’mon in to Kinney’s place—I’ll buy you a drink if the bastard will take my treasury note.”

  Marr stopped, pulling away from the tall Irishman’s arm. “You can’t, Seamus.”

  “And why can’t I?” he asked, both hands balled on his hips and a wide grin cutting his face. His teeth glimmered beneath the thumbnail moon tracing a path out of the east.

  “The girl,” Marr replied. “She wants to see you.”

  “The Wheatley woman?” He felt his pulse quicken.

  Marr nodded without a word.

  Donegan’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, not wanting to hope. “What would the widow be wanting with me?”

  “You told her to call when she needed anything.”

  “Aye.” He nodded, staring at the crusty snow beneath his tall, muddy boots. “The day we buried her husband. Brave man, that one.”

  “A few who marched with Fetterman were every bit as brave as they had to be on that hellish day,” Marr whispered, taking a step closer to the tall man.

  “She say what it was?”

  Sam shook his head. “Not a word. Just asked me to fetch you to her place … small cabin outside the east wall of the quartermaster’s stockade.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve kept me eye on her since.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, Cap’n,” Donegan growled.

  “Didn’t say it was. Just, I’ve got a fatherly feeling for the girl. Not yet out of her teens … and with two young boys to raise … her husband butchered with Fetterman’s command but a month ago this day. She’s alone in the world now.”

  “No she’s not, Cap’n.” Then Donegan slapped a big paw on the older man’s shoulder. “She’s got you … and me both watching out for her and the boys.”

  Marr winked in the pale light. “Best you get now. I told her I’d send you straightaway.”

  “You’ll be at Kinney’s for the evening?”

  Marr nodded. “Nowhere else to be, is there, Seamus? You’ll find me here.” He turned and scuffed off across the old snow, his boots squeaking over the icy crust as he stomped toward Kinney’s door.

  Donegan watched after him while the old man’s form faded from the pale snow. He loved that old man, he did. Capt. Samuel Marr, Missouri Union Volunteers.

  When Seamus had mustered himself out in those months following Appomattox, he had wandered west with the big gray stallion, his yellow-striped cavalry britches now patched and worn, and the .44-caliber army pistol that had carved out a comfortable place for itself at his hip. Wandering into Missouri, he had run onto Sam Marr busy buying horses for the newly organized frontier army. After the canny horse trader Marr discovered he couldn’t buy Donegan’s gray stallion, they had learned together of the wealth to be made in the Montana diggings along Alder Gulch. And from that moment had begun forming a fierce friendship frequently tested as they fought their way up the Bozeman Road through Sioux hunting ground.

  Seamus Donegan would not do a thing to hurt Sam Marr. Nor would he ever do anything to harm the widow Wheatley.

  Purposely he slid to the door as quietly as a winter-gaunt wolf and listened. Inside he made out the muffled voices of the two young boys. The oldest, Issac, named for his father’s best friend. Issac Fisher who had stood and stared cold-eyed into Red Cloud’s Sioux ambush at Wheatley’s side. Then Donegan made out the smaller boy’s voice. Little Peter. Taking after his mother. A beauty she was, that woman. With so much to bear at her young age. He heard her scolding the two, then listened as she laughed.

  Never was
one to get hard with those boys of hers, Seamus thought, bringing his big fist up to the rough-hewn door.

  Two pairs of little feet hammered to the other side of the door, accompanied by excited voices. He listened as her feet scuffled up, her whisper shushing the boys as she drew back the huge iron bolt and cracked the door an inch.

  Seamus gazed down at the single eye peering through the crack at him under the pale moonlight. He cleared his throat.

  “Mrs. Wheatley. It’s Seamus. Seamus Donegan.”

  Then he suddenly remembered his hat. Quickly he raked the big, stiff, quarter-crowned brown-felt hat from his long, curly hair and nodded.

  “Pardon me, ma’am. A man out in this country doesn’t get much of a chance to be a gentleman.”

  By this time the door had opened and the shy, liquid eyes were blinking their welcome as she waved him inside. “Please … Mr. Donegan. Come in.”

  He stooped through the doorframe and stopped two steps inside as the woman urged the heavy door back into its jamb and slid home the iron bolt. She came around him, shyly reaching for his hat.

  “I’ll take that, Mr. Donegan,” she offered, taking the hat from his mittened hands. “Your coat. Please. Make yourself to home.”

  Beyond her the two boys stood huddled as one, staring at the tall man who had to hunch his shoulders beneath the exposed, peeled beams of the low-roofed cabin. Their eyes wide with wonder, Issac finally whispered to his young brother.

  “We see’d him afore, Peter. Day we put Papa to rest.”

  “It was cold, Issac,” the little one whispered. “I don’t remember him.”

  “I do,” Issac replied protectively of his mother, never taking his eyes off Donegan. “I remember that one.”

  Jennifer Wheatley slid an old cane-backed chair across the plank floor toward the Irishman. Donegan slipped the heavy mackinaw coat from his shoulders and shook it free of frost before handing it to the woman. He settled carefully on the chair many-times repaired with nails and wire.

  Things have to last folks out in this country, he brooded as he watched her pull up the only other chair in the one-room cabin.

  He saw a wooden box turned on its end that served as a third chair at the tiny table where the family took its meals.

  “You’d like coffee, Mr. Donegan?” she asked, pointing to the fireplace of creek-bottom stone and mortar.

  “If it’s no trouble, ma’am.”

  “Have some made. But you must stop calling me ma’am, Mr. Donegan,” she said as she knelt by the iron trivet where the blackened and battered coffeepot sat warming over the coals.

  “You’re a married woman, ma’am,” he started, then ground his hands over his knees, growing angry with himself for his careless words. Words that caused her to stop pouring the coffee. “You’ve got two fine boys here,” Seamus tried again, hoping it would ease the pain of his thoughtlessness.

  Jennifer rose slowly, two cups in hand. She passed one to Donegan. “My name’s Jennifer. Family and friends back in Ohio called me Jennie. I … I want you to be my friend.” For a moment she glanced at the two boys. “We … we all need a friend. So, please—call me Jennie.”

  He sipped at the hot liquid. The coffee tasted as if it had been setting in the kettle, reheating for most of the afternoon. Seamus nodded. “Make you a deal … ma’am. I’ll call you Jennie—if you and the boys here call me Seamus.”

  Jennie looked over her shoulder at the boys huddled by the fireplace with wooden horses in hand. They had stopped play to stare once more at the big man sprawled over the tiny chair.

  “Boys, I want you come over here now,” the woman directed. “Want you meet a kind man who knew your papa.”

  Issac nudged Peter across the floor until both stood at their mother’s side. “You knowed my papa?” Issac demanded gruffly.

  Donegan nodded and smiled. “As fine a man as any I’ve met, Mr. Wheatley was.” He stuck out his hand to the boy. “My name’s Seamus Donegan. Who do I have the pleasure of meeting?”

  Issac wiped his hand across his patched denims and stuffed it into the Irishman’s paw. “Issac Wheatley, sir. Pleased to meet a friend of my papa’s.”

  Seamus gazed at the youngest when Issac stepped back. Peter glanced up at his mother. She nodded before he inched forward.

  “Peter, sir. I’m pleased.”

  “Not as pleased as me, Peter.” Seamus felt the small hand sweating in his grip. “Your papa would be proud to know how his boys help their mother.”

  Seamus tried to blink away the stinging tears, glancing round the little cabin split in half by wool blankets suspended from a rope lanyard. In the back there was barely enough room for the one small bed he supposed the boys shared. Here in the front half of the cabin another small prairie bed joined the table and chairs, along with a battered old hutch where Jennie kept what dishes had not been broken in her travels west.

  When he looked back, he found her staring at her hands in her lap, wringing them silently as she bit her lower lip between her teeth.

  “Jennie?” his deep-throated whisper filled the tiny room. “You have nothing to fear now, ma’am. You and the boys got a friend.”

  Chapter 2

  “Your orderly said you requested to see me, Colonel.”

  Henry Walton Wessells looked up as his office door dragged across the plank floor in closing. The lieutenant colonel shuddered at the blast of cold air accompanying Capt. Tenedore Ten Eyck into the room. Wessells shuddered more with what stared him in the face this cold winter morning.

  “Please, Captain. Take a seat.”

  Ten Eyck pulled up the straight-backed chair near the desk and settled stiffly, yanking off his buffalo-hide mittens.

  “Damn cold, Captain.”

  “Yessir.”

  Wessells moved around his desk to the sheet-iron stove in the corner of his small office. He remembered this office had once belonged to another, tortured commander of Fort Phil Kearny.

  “There’s no easy way to do this, Captain.”

  “Sir?” Ten Eyck turned to the side, straining to keep his one good eye on Wessells.

  He cleared his throat and turned back to his desk. “When I arrived here to assume command from Colonel Carrington … I personally requested that you alone remain behind when his headquarters group left for Fort Caspar.”

  Ten Eyck waited a moment, expectant of more. “Sir?”

  “Captain, I wanted you to remain behind to help me during the transition of commands.”

  “After Henry … Colonel Carrington had his command wrenched from him by General Crook?”

  Wessells stiffened, bristling. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Didn’t say you did, sir.”

  Wessells caught how Ten Eyck emphasized that last word. Studying the Dutchman’s face, he saw how the good eye was even more bloodshot than usual. Then he recognized it—what he had caught a whiff of as Ten Eyck swept into the room on that gust of winter wind. The smell of old whiskey and urine-stained britches. Wessells had smelled enough of that potent mix during the war. A lot of good officers grown tired of the army and its tedium. And the whiskey became an easy way out.

  “I didn’t have a thing to do with Colonel Carrington’s dismissal.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Something in Ten Eyck’s eyes reminded Henry of a wounded puppy at that moment.

  The captain stared at the floor now. “I know it was Crook and Crook alone who drove Henry out. In fact, the truth be known—Henry wanted out. He’d requested a transfer, sir.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Most men aren’t,” Ten Eyck said as he smoothed his mittens self-consciously across his legs. “The approval of his transfer just came at a bad time … making it appear like Crook was drumming Carrington right out of the Mountain District.”

  Wessells watched Ten Eyck stare at the rough-boarded floor under his feet. Damn, this isn’t going to be easy at all, Henry.

  “Captain.”


  “Yessir.”

  “Surely you’re aware of what most of the men are saying in regard to you and your actions on the day of … Fetterman’s slaughter?”

  He watched Ten Eyck gulp, then finally bob his head in admission of it.

  “Yes … sir. I hear talk. Can’t help it. Talk saying I was afraid. Others say I took too long to get to the … the place where we found them … the bodies.” Suddenly Ten Eyck wheeled in the chair, his eyes imploring Wessells. “Do you believe them, Colonel?”

  Wessells straightened and inched forward so that he stood closer to the captain. “I wouldn’t have asked for you to remain behind to help me when Carrington left … had I believed in any of that trash, Captain.”

  Ten Eyck visibly sank back into the chair with some relief. “I … thank you, sir.”

  “While I don’t believe you were a coward in going to Fetterman’s rescue, nor do I believe you purposely took too long in reaching the site of the … the savagery—I am presented with a dilemma.”

  “A dilemma, sir?”

  “Yes.” Wessells waited until he strode around his desk and settled in the horsehair-stuffed chair. It struck him again that, as post commander, Carrington must have sat in this chair with Captain Ten Eyck across the desk from him many a time. Just like this. None of it made an obedient career soldier like Henry Walton Wessells enjoy what he was about to say.

  “Captain … what I want to say to you is for the good of this command. But, if it matters to you—I want you to know that I reached this decision in large part due to my respect for you and your abilities as an officer.”

  “Thank you, Colonel. But—”

  Wessells waved a hand to silence Ten Eyck. “Even more important, the decision is reached in large part for what you … endured during your imprisonment during the war in that Confederate hellhole.”

  Ten Eyck gulped, not sure where Wessells was leading him. “No man was ever the same coming out of Libby Prison, sir. Thousands like me.”

  “That’s the shame of it. Dead men make heros.” Wessells rose from the chair, nervous once again. He paced to the frosty pane of the single window that looked onto the parade. Gazing at the white monolith of Lodge Trail Ridge. “Dead men always make the best of heros, Captain. But those who the war ruined without killing them … men like you—are left to struggle on the best way you can.”