“Rye would do nicely, Cap’n Marr.”
“Rye it is.”
By the time Marr had purchased two rounds and the third sat before them on the small table, Ten Eyck was past his anger, well past the tears, and finally where Sam wanted him to be. Laughing at last. If at nothing more than himself.
“Sonuvabitch transferred you again?”
Ten Eyck nodded. “This time to C Company. Says my next move is out the gate.”
“He serious?”
“If he’s not, I sure as hell am,” Ten Eyck grumbled, staring into the amber liquid before him on the table. “I’ve had it with him … and Fort Phil Kearny. ’Bout goddamned time I moved on anyway.”
“Tomorrow’s first of April. A whole new chance for you, Cap’n.” Marr fell silent for long moments after Ten Eyck didn’t reply. Instead the soldier sipped at his rye without a word. Like a man relishing the numbing forgetfulness that would soon arrive to rescue him.
“Man like Wessells—he needs someone like you to blame for his troubles.” Marr thought he recognized a hint of thanks in Tenedore’s eyes.
Ten Eyck hoisted his cup, then tossed back the rest of the rye in one swallow. “Blames me for everything now. Because he can’t keep on blaming Carrington now. He’s gotta find someone to blame for the rations … and the scurvy … and the low morale.”
“Morale?”
“Worst it’s been since we arrived here last summer. At times a man’s got no choice but to drink until he forgets.”
Marr threw back the rest of his whiskey and pushed the cup aside. “That’s your whiskey talking, Cap’n. Sure, you got pain. It’s the God’s-honest truth you pulled through something during the war that any of the rest of these fellas would’ve died from. That Libby Prison killed many a lesser man—”
“It don’t matter, Cap’n Marr.”
“It matters, Ten Eyck. Matters that a soldier like you is drinking to forget Libby Prison … to forget your pain.”
“More’n that,” Ten Eyck replied quietly, the pink tip of his tongue darting across his bottom lip. “Trying to forget those bodies over Lodge Trail Ridge.”
“You … and Seamus Donegan both.”
“I wake up in the middle of the night, sweating like it was August at Libby Prison in that swamp. Shaking—in a sweat, Cap’n. And everywhere ’round me lays those bodies … arms, legs … their cocks shoved in their—”
“Hush now, Cap’n Ten Eyck.”
He swallowed hard, raking the back of his hand across his mouth. “Problem ain’t what the others say about me … that I was a coward—”
“You wasn’t no coward. You and Seamus both figured it best to ride the ridge north of the Lodge Trail. And it made sense.”
“Sense?”
“Yeah, Ten Eyck. You didn’t do that—there’d been another pile of mutilized bodies left behind by them red bastards.”
Tenedore wagged his head, glancing over at the bar. “You suppose?”
“You’ve had enough for now, Ten Eyck.”
He nodded once, staring dumbly at his hands. “The real problem, Cap’n Marr … ain’t what the others say about me being a coward. Real problem is that I figure I am. And a little bit of rye always helps to kill the pain of that when it gets too much to bear.”
“You ain’t no coward—”
“You’re wrong,” he whispered with a hiss, his head hunching into his shoulders protectively. “And there’s come times when I wonder if it’ll be the rye whiskey … or the bullet I’ll put into my own brain that kills me first.”
Marr watched in disbelief as Captain Ten Eyck clambered to his feet, swaying a moment before he lurched out the door of Judge Jefferson Kinney’s stinking watering hole. Sam wondered a moment if he should have himself one more bracer before braving another night alone himself. Glancing over the soldiers who had watched the captain leave, Marr thought better of it.
Enough liquid painkiller in his gut for one night.
He moved carefully into the cold, sensing his own lightheadedness. Wondering when Seamus Donegan would be riding back to Fort Phil Kearny to claim the widow Wheatley as his own. That, or passing on through to find his two uncles and answer his mother’s prayer.
* * *
Seamus breathed deep, the air electric with the sun’s rising. In a moment the orb would show itself red as a mare’s afterbirth in the east. But for this singular moment, the earth hung in the balance.
Here, to this hillside overlooking the plateau, he had wandered more than an hour ago, in the cold of this mid-April dawn. To think on things he doubted a simple man should have to trouble himself with. Matters of the heart. And of family. Enough to trouble any three men, the weight of it like a railroad tie cutting into Seamus Donegan’s wide shoulders this cold morning as the breath vapor before his face turned pink, then a bright rose with the sun’s rising.
Below him the garrison of Fort C.F. Smith slowly stirred. While Fort Phil Kearny had quivered in the death throes of low morale, scurvy, and continued reports of Indian attacks through the winter, the Big Horn post had been left to its isolation, cut off from the outside world since the twenty-eighth of November. It was not until the twenty-sixth of March, when mail arrived from Fort Phil Kearny, up from Laramie, that the isolation was broken. News of the East. Word from beyond the shores of America.
From time to time across his two months here, Seamus had heard Mitch Bouyer and John Reshaw say the Cheyenne and Arapaho were gathering nearby. The warnings of the half-breeds had fallen on Kinney’s and Burrowes’s deaf ears. The captains had only laughed at such assertions of danger. After all, Fort C.F. Smith had already missed the serious harassment of Red Cloud’s Bad Face Sioux, sitting so close as it did to Crow lands.
If anyone knew Red Cloud and the others who gathered around the Bad Face camps, Seamus figured Bouyer and Reshaw did. As surely as officers like Kinney and Burrowes had no business laughing at anyone, much less half-breed scouts every bit as savvy as army brass was stupid.
He stood. Taking in the full glory of the red globe’s rising off the far lip of the earth like a healing wound tearing open, turning the April frost on the ground pink like pale blood. Off to his left the Bighorn River burst from its mountain prison, shimmering like a silver-red cleft through the awakening valley below his feet.
Seamus turned back to the fort, curious with the clamor. Three riders. Five horses approaching. A pair of pack animals. One burdened with a winters’ worth of furry treasure. The other dragging travois as well. Most likely Indians coming in with hopes of trading. He could see these didn’t ride like white men. Legs loose and feet flopping outside their stirrups.
Indians for sure.
By the time Donegan lumbered down the slippery, icy slope warming beneath the April sun, two of the newcomers were dropping from their ponies. The third stayed in the saddle, huddled against the morning chill in a furry buffalo robe.
“By God, it’s Bouyer!” Donegan shouted as he recognized the half-breed. Mitch turned. His companion as well. “Reshaw! You’ve fared well, you old half-breed pissant!”
Both lunged to greet the huge Irishman. He swung his arms wide to enclose the two small half-breeds in his embrace, like small terriers attacking the herd bull.
“You ain’t froze yet?” Bouyer asked.
“Me?” Donegan roared. “Not a chance. Till we run low on whiskey, me friend. Where you been since last you left?”
“Wessells hired me on to scout for him at Kearny,” Mitch began, waiting for Seamus to nod. “And you know Reshaw come down to sign on too.”
“But that’s been better’n six … seven weeks now. You been out trapping in the meanwhile?” Donegan flung an arm at one of the pack animals burdened with a full load.
Reshaw flicked his ebony eyes at Bouyer, then toed the frozen mud at his feet.
“Not trapping, Seamus Donegan,” Bouyer admitted quietly as more soldiers drew around them. He shouldered his way over to the pony burdened with the full load slung o
ver its back. Pulling at the canvas tarp covering the load.
“What the devil you hauling, if it ain’t—”
The words froze in Donegan’s mouth as surely as water in a kettle these early spring mornings. The half-breed scout yanked the tarp off the pony.
“Who the hell is that poor fella?” Donegan moved beside the body. Head fully scalped, eyes gouged out. The muscles in the face relaxed and sagging, what with the scalp gone. His throat had been deeply slashed, looking like so much cleaved pork.
Old wounds.
“John Bozeman,” Bouyer whispered.
“B-Bozeman?” Captain Kinney squeaked as he shoved his way through the crowd, still buttoning his shirt against the morning chill.
Reshaw nodded. “Found him … and what was left of his goods the Sioux didn’t take—about ten mile from here.” He pointed.
“Bound from Missouri City,” Kinney clucked, wagging his head. He waved two young soldiers over. “Get the body over to the hospital. And wake that damned surgeon. Sleeping off another drunk, that one is. Played cards till damned near sunrise with the bastard myself. Easy there, fellas. That’s John Bozeman himself.”
“Man who cut this road?” Donegan asked.
“None other,” Kinney said, turning to the Irishman. “Been supplying us since last fall. When he could get through. Usually he brings at least two wagons of goods down from the settlements. Hadn’t been for John Bozeman bringing in what he could last fall before the road became impassable with snowdrifts … Fort C.F. Smith would likely be a ghost town now.” Kinney looked at Bouyer. “He bring only the one wagon?”
Bouyer shook his head. “Not so. Found tracks of two more wagons.”
“Damn!” Kinney muttered, shivering slightly.
“More bodies?” Seamus asked.
“No sign,” Reshaw answered. “Likely dragged off with the other wagons. For what fun Red Cloud’s warriors can dream up.”
“They’ll turn Bozeman’s men over to the squaws, most likely,” Bouyer growled.
Donegan sensed the hair on the back of his neck stand. “Squaws?”
Bouyer gazed up at the bearded Irishman, nodding sourly. “The women are really good—it comes to carving a man up. Better’n the warriors … making a fella suffer before they outright kill him. Women got a natural talent for causing a man misery, Seamus Donegan.”
“I want to see you both in my office—in five minutes,”
Kinney pointed toward the north wall, where his small office huddled itself against the adobe brick darkened by morning frost. “Goddamned paperwork … reports.” He walked away, wagging his head and muttering. “Sonuvabitch. John Bozeman himself…”
For the first time Donegan paid real attention to the third Indian, still seated atop a pony, bundled in the furry robe, a few streamers of black hair gleaming in the new sun on the breeze.
“A friend?”
Bouyer looked at Reshaw and winked. “No, Seamus Donegan. A relative of mine.”
“Crow, eh?” Seamus asked, stepping over to the pony with every intention of introducing himself, as the most polite of the Irish were wont to do.
“Yes,” Bouyer answered again, a grin growing. “Crow.”
“By the saints … he’s—a woman!” Seamus stammered. “It’s … she’s a woman!”
Bouyer and Reshaw chuckled along with the soldiers who had hung back to gaze at the oriental beauty encircled in the buffalo robe.
“My wife’s youngest sister, Seamus Donegan,” Bouyer explained as he stepped beside the Irishman. “Eyes Talking.”
Seamus was at a loss for words. What with all the warriors he had laid eyes upon, this was his first up-close, arm’s-length look at an Indian woman. And this one proved a feast for any man’s hungry eyes.
“Why, she can’t be more’n a girl … young as she—”
“Seventeen summers, Seamus Donegan,” Bouyer interrupted. “The last of my wife’s family. They’re hoping she will marry.”
“Marrying age among your people?”
Reshaw and Bouyer laughed. Mitch explained, “As ol’ Bridger would say, she is prime doin’s!”
Despite himself, Seamus found himself blushing. Staring unashamedly at the girl’s beauty. “Why she not interested in a Crow husband?”
“Like many Crow squaws, she believes a white man will treat her better. And if not a white man … then a half-breed like John or me.”
“So,” Seamus said, smiling, as he clapped a big hand on Mitch Bouyer’s shoulder, “you brought her over to marry her off to one of these soldier boys, eh?”
Bouyer winked at Reshaw. “No such, Seamus Donegan. Soldiers go off where the officers tell them. They cannot marry and keep a wife.”
“Not all the officers here took up with wives, Mitch.”
Bouyer wagged his head. “Eyes Talking would not make good wife for army officer. This one has spirit … like young pony needing to be broke.”
“You figuring to take her down to Kearny, then?”
Bouyer finally laughed, loud and lusty. “Seamus Donegan—you fooled me. I thought you were smart man! Eyes Talking would not be wife for a soldier. She could only be wife to a free man. A man like Seamus Donegan!”
It took a moment to sink in through that thick, battered skull of his. Then he reluctantly tore his eyes from the face of Eyes Talking. Staring at Mitch Bouyer. Registering disbelief. The half-breed nodded again, his round face cut with a wide grin.
“You gotta be pulling me leg here, Bouyer!” he roared. “I ain’t about to take your wife’s sister here to marry!”
“Why not, Seamus Donegan?”
“I—I—I—” he stammered, hands flying. “I never … such a thing … your wife’s sister—”
It was Bouyer’s turn to grab hold of Donegan and turn him round so the Irishman would look at the woman. “Tell you what, Seamus Donegan. Eyes Talking brought all her plunder, even dragged along her own lodge. She’s heard us talk all about you, so she was dead set on raising her lodge down with Iron Bull and the other Crow nearby.”
“I don’t understand at all,” Seamus stammered, staring at the young woman’s smiling face, fully exposed now as she slid the buffalo robe from her head. “Don’t see what this—”
“Don’t be late, Seamus Donegan. She expects you for dinner,” Bouyer went on. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?” he squeaked, feeling helpless.
Bouyer nodded, slapping the big Irishman on the back while the soldiers about them hooted and whistled in merriment. “Tonight you pay court to Eyes Talking!”
Chapter 10
She was beautiful.
Of little consequence that she had white skin. And beneath her breasts beat a white heart.
To Crazy Horse, the woman was beautiful.
There was a sad, haunting look to her dark eyes, like sunken pockets in the creamy skin. Reminding him of dark pools of cold water captured in the low places on the endless prairie after a spring thunderstorm.
And her mouth, so brightly rouged. He had seen a few mouths like hers around the forts. Soldier women.
This one had belonged to a soldier as well.
He held her tiny picture in his palm. A portrait encased in a small, gold cameo locket the soldier had worn about his neck.
At his waist hung that soldier’s scalp.
Lieutenant Grummond had fought bravely. More courageously than most that day beyond Lodge Trail Ridge. He had sold his life dearly, slashing out with saber and taking five lives with the six shots in his pistol. He died as bravely as he had fought, wielding his long-knife against the young Oglalla warrior who claimed his scalp. Crazy Horse, who had plunged a lance already bloodied with frozen gore into the breast of George Grummond.
The scalp was his to take. As was the locket bearing the tintype photograph of Francis Grummond, already pregnant with George’s child that day they had the daguerreotype made. Two days before moving west, orders in hand, to join Col. Henry B. Carrington’s men defending Fort Phil Kearny, D
akota Territory.
Crazy Horse closed the locket, hearing footsteps in the soft, wet snow outside the small lodge he alone used. Quickly he stuffed the amulet down the neck of his war shirt once more, where it hung suspended on a thin leather thong. Exactly as he had found it hung round the soldier’s neck that cold day in the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns, a day when blood froze on the snow.
“Crazy Horse! You are there?”
He recognized the voice. “I am, Man-Afraid. Join me.”
Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses stooped through the lodge entrance. He stood just inside the buffalo-hide circle of poles, shaking wet snow from his blanket. “Every year we see one last snowfall like this,” he said, grinning as the blanket slipped off his shoulders. “Here in the Moon of New Grass before Winter Man is through with us until next robe season.”
“Sit, my friend,” Crazy Horse said, indicating a seat at his left hand. “What brings you out so late on this cold night?”
Man-Afraid sat, staring at the fire for long moments, left to his thoughts by The Horse before he finally spoke. “Already they are calling me Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses. And not only behind my back.”
“I have heard such talk,” Crazy Horse admitted, nodding once. “Don’t let it bother you.”
Man-Afraid stared back into the low flames that radiated a warmth to the small lodge. “I have grown old perhaps … sensing this war of Red Cloud does not go well.”
Crazy Horse nodded. “After our fight of the Hundred in the Hand, some soldiers left the fort near the Piney Woods. But not until other soldiers had come to take their places.”
“It is so. We all believed the soldiers would scamper away from our land, with their tails between their legs like so many whipped dogs. I believed it as strongly as any.”
“When they did not,” Crazy Horse replied, his voice rising with enthusiasm, “I realized we were in for a long, long fight of it. Come soon the short-grass time, our ponies will be strong once more. And again we can ride—”
“My young friend,” Man-Afraid interrupted, “perhaps the fight is now for others to take up.”
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