Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  * * *

  “By damned you are one unlucky sonuvabitch,” the soldier said with a smile as he raked in the pot that included a good deal of Seamus Donegan’s money.

  The Irishman wagged his head, smiling within his dark beard. He blew a kiss at the paper script as it was swept away from the center of the table by the soldier. “Farewell, my beloved lucre. How true it is what they say. Unlucky at cards, lucky at love.”

  “You been spending a lot of your time down in that Crow camp, ain’t you, Seamus?” another soldier asked as the cards were shuffled and dealt.

  “Man sleeps where it’s warmest, I suppose,” Donegan admitted with a grin. “Don’t figger I got to be back up here to the fort till the new trader comes in and gets his mowing operation going. Then I’ll have to go to work for a living again. Instead of living off army wages.”

  “Living off us poor soldiers, you mean!” A third player laughed.

  “Man does what a man must to live, I say,” Seamus added. “Hmmm. Not a bad hand you gave me, Wilcox. Not bad a’tall.”

  “’Nother of your bluffs, Seamus?”

  He gave a look of mock wounding. “Not me, Humphrey. Looks like I’ll take two cards … and make ’em sweet ones this time. My poke’s getting awfully light after those last two hands Riley swept away.”

  Donegan watched Humphrey staring at him over the top of his cards. “You worried ’bout me hand, soldier? You been staring at me hard most of the night.”

  Humphrey smiled. “Wasn’t thinking about cards, Donegan.”

  “You figure to read my face—get an idea of my hand?”

  This time Humphrey shook his head, laying his hand facedown on the table. “I been trying to place you, Donegan.”

  “Place me?”

  “I run on to someone looks almost the spittin’ image of you.”

  Donegan’s eyes narrowed. The table around him grew quiet. He laid his cards on the table. “Looks like me, eh? Where?”

  “Back in Kansas. Can’t remember if was Fort Harker. Maybe Wallace.”

  “Kansas, you say. And he looked like me?”

  “Close enough to be your brother.”

  Donegan eventually nodded, the beginnings of a smile creeping into his beard. A smile that eased some of the tension at the lamplit table. “Close enough to be my … uncle?”

  Humphrey nodded. “Yeah. Sure—”

  “You remember his name, sojur?”

  Humphrey’s eyes batted nervously. He licked his lips a moment, thinking on it the way he would heft a heavy object. “O’Connell … no.” He swallowed hard. “I think it was O’Roarke.”

  Wilcox turned to Donegan. “Ain’t that the name your uncles carry? Ones you said you was looking for?”

  Donegan slowly picked up his hand, plus his two new cards. He smiled before he turned to Wilcox. “You betting?”

  Wilcox regarded his new hand. “No,” and he slapped the table with the cards. “Ain’t it them, Donegan?”

  Seamus ignored the question as his eyes sought out the other three soldiers around the lamplit table in this muddy, adobe hut the soldiers of Fort C.F. Smith called home. After two raises and a call, Seamus laid down his full house.

  “Kings … and jacks, me boys!”

  As he dragged the paper script toward his side of the table, Seamus looked again at Wilcox. “Best deal me out for now.”

  “Going to the Crow camp again, Seamus?”

  “Not right away, Hastings,” he answered the soldier across the table, stuffing the bills in his pocket. “Got me some thinking to do.”

  He stood and stared at Humphrey. “My mother’s name was O’Roarke. And you knowing a soldier in Kansas named O’Roarke means I got better things to figure on than playing pasteboards with you fellas.”

  Humphrey stared at his hands, then cleared his throat loudly. “He ain’t there anymore, Seamus.”

  “What?”

  “O’Roarke ain’t in Kansas no more.”

  “Where’d he go?” Seamus demanded, his fist banging the rough-hewn, wobbly table.

  “Don’t know.”

  “He was transferred to another outfit?”

  “Never was in the army, least as I knew.”

  “Not in the army? How’d you know him? What’s he doing on a post?”

  “Wait … wait a minute. He was civilian,” Humphrey began to explain. “He was hunting for the army … supplying meat—buffalo mostly, for the post.”

  “What post?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Remember, gawddammit!”

  Humphrey swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bobbing in his neck like a turkey gobbler. “Wasn’t Wallace. No, wasn’t Fort Wallace. Was either Harker or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or Fort Hays.”

  “Hays?” Wilcox asked.

  Humphrey’s head bobbed up and down. “Yeah.”

  Wilcox looked up at Donegan. “That’s where your old friend is in command, Seamus.”

  “My old friend?” Donegan asked.

  “Lieutenant Colonel … United States Seventh Cavalry,” Wilcox announced it slowly. “George Armstrong—”

  “Custer,” Donegan finished the name. “By the saints! If I don’t run across that bastard’s tail again. The hanging general who first cost me my stripes. George Armstrong Custer.”

  Chapter 13

  “They just waltzed right out?” Col. Henry W. Wessells shrieked.

  For a moment it was all Lt. John C. Jenness, officer-of-the-day, could do to bob his head. “Y-Yessir. Bold as brass.”

  “Dressed like Crows?”

  “From what the sentries can tell me—”

  “How do we know the two weren’t Crow to begin with?”

  Jenness took a deep breath. He rattled the pages of the report before him. As Wessells snatched the papers from him, the young lieutenant answered, “The count of Crow warriors allowed in the gate this morning, sir. You’ll read on page three—the notation by the second watch—their count of Crow warriors leaving the post this afternoon. Two more than arrived this—”

  “I can damn well read, Lieutenant!” Wessells shrieked again, his face red from the collar up. He felt his stomach go cold.

  So, this is the kind of thing that brought Henry Carrington to his ruin, Wessells brooded, not really looking at the report any longer as his eyes bored a hole in the floor. More damned desertions … on top of all the rest of my problems, with the Sioux stepping up their forays at the herds again—I’ve got problems with desertions. And there’s always Ten Eyck’s drinking. The only thing saving him right now is that … he’s not the only one …

  “Can you figure it, sir?”

  “What’s that, Lieutenant?” Wessells asked his officer-of-the-day, suddenly yanked back to the present.

  “How’d they work it … looking like Crow? No wigs on the post, I know of.”

  The colonel shook his head. “Does it matter, Jenness? They pulled an old flea-infested blanket over their heads … put on some moccasins they traded off the warriors … walked out in the middle of that bunch from Fort C.F. Smith. Problem is, they did it. And I don’t have the manpower to go traipsing off to find where the bastards ran off to.”

  “Any change in sentry policy, sir?”

  He glanced at Jenness, then stared out the window at a shaft of sunshine just then pouring through the clouds to splatter its golden light across the muddy parade. Everything a soggy mess at Fort Phil Kearny. Spring come to the Northern Rockies.

  “No, Jenness. Stand down your detail you were about to take after them.”

  “Sir?”

  “If those two soldiers want to go to the trouble to dress up like the Crow and live with the goddamned flea-bitten beggars—then the best I can do is wish them well.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Enough, Jenness! Good riddance to the bastards. Let them go north with Iron Bull and live by the walls of Fort C.F. Smith … like that Irishman.”

  “Donegan,
sir?”

  “Yes. I washed my hands of him too.”

  “Word has it—”

  “I know all about Mr. Donegan, Lieutenant,” Wessells cut him off. “He’s … sharing the lodge of a Crow woman in her teens up there at Smith … and still Kinney allows him on the post—playing cards … regularly carousing with the contractors and enlisted.”

  “Nothing you can do, sir?”

  He looked at Jenness hard for a moment. “Nothing I will do … for now. Come a time, I’ll rid this department of scum like Donegan. Soon enough, Lieutenant. I’ll not have his kind worrying me. Fomenting discontent. Drinking. Lally-gagging ’round the posts—it’s his kind creates these deserters, Mr. Jenness. I’ve got enough to worry about right now,” he growled, finding the dispatch on his desk. He waved it before him.

  “Bad news, sir?” Jenness inquired. The eyes studied his commander’s face.

  Wessells nodded. “This informs me they’ve chosen a replacement for Carrington.”

  “I take it, then, they’ve selected someone else, Colonel?”

  “Bloody well right, they have, Jenness!” he barked, flinging the dispatch down on the desk. “What with all I’ve tried to accomplish here since that incompetent clerk Carrington retreated with his tail between his legs. And this is the thanks I get from Department Command.”

  Jenness cleared his throat, waiting until Wessells looked up from the dispatch. “Who … who is it, sir?”

  “Name’s Smith. Colonel … John E. Smith.”

  “A new District Commander.”

  “That’s right,” he replied, softly this time. And marched to the window where he studied the shaft of sunlight breaking through the clouds. “A new commander for the Mountain District. I wish him luck.”

  “Luck, sir?”

  Wessells wheeled suddenly. “Luck, Jenness. Luck accomplishing what Carrington couldn’t do. Nor I in the short time allowed me here. Time to shape this district into something the army would be proud of.”

  Jenness swallowed hard. “The desertions, sir. They’re not your fault.”

  Wessells smiled broadly. He saw the look of surprise that sudden smile brought to the young lieutenant’s face. “Damn well right they’re not my fault, Jenness. I know just who’s fault they are, you see. So … come a time and soon—Mr. Seamus Donegan will get what’s coming to him for causing all this trouble hereabouts. He’ll get what’s coming to him.”

  * * *

  He had to admit he liked the softening thud of the warclub he smashed against the side of the soldier’s head. The sensation of blood warm and sticky on his hands as he slashed the scalp from the white man’s head.

  War up close. Not fought at long distance the way the white soldiers preferred to practice it. Roman Nose liked it up close. Where he could see the fear in another man’s eyes as the knife or tomahawk or warclub was already singing through the air.

  Close enough to smell the fear exuding from the enemy’s pores.

  The Cheyenne war-chief rose to his feet, shaking the scalp and screeching his victory song. All round him echoed the shouts of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors alike. Roman Nose stood over the body of the first soldier killed this fine morning, late in the Moon of Ducks Coming Back, exhorting the others on to feats of bravery of their own.

  It seemed he always led the charges himself, as did his Oglalla friend, Crazy Horse. Unafraid of soldier bullets. Certain of his own medicine. Knowing lead from soldier guns would fall away before it reached his glistening, naked body atop the fleet, grass-fed pony.

  As soon as it grew light enough to see the outline of the tents and horses picketed outside the walls of Fort Reno, Crazy Horse and Roman Nose led their combined forces down on the Powder River post. The drumming of their pony hoofs and their wild screams answered immediately by the fearful shrieks of the soldier guards. More of the white men, soldier and civilian alike, rolled from their tents into the chill dawn air, pulling up their britches with one hand while the other held their unpredictable muzzle-loading Springfields.

  On the outskirts of the confusion the warriors circled their wide-eyed ponies, aiming their rifles at the dark forms darting against the backdrop of white canvas and purple dawn light. The Sioux and Cheyenne fired rifles captured long ago in the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns when the soldiers had given themselves up at the foot of Lodge Trail Ridge. Many rifles. Much ammunition found on the bodies bloodying the trampled snow.

  Now the warriors would use soldier weapons and soldier bullets on soldiers at the dirt fort beside the Powder.

  Roman Nose laughed as bullets sang around him. He felt them sting the air near his face, or whistle by his arms as he waved the scalp in one hand, a Winchester eleven-shot repeater in the other. No soldier lead would touch him. His medicine decreed it so.

  A glorious day to fight! his mind sang out as he gathered up the long, looping rawhide rein and leaped onto his pony’s back.

  Less than a moon now until the time when all the bands would Dance for the Sun. Praying for the Sun’s blessings. Praying for the gift of Life for the People. Enough time before the Sun Dance that Roman Nose had talked Crazy Horse into joining him in this raid on the dirt fort south of the Crazy Woman Fork.

  Not the dirt fort the soldiers had built where the Bighorn River flowed from the mountains farther north.

  Time enough to destroy that fort, Roman Nose brooded. Time enough to butcher the soldiers there by the Bighorn River.

  At his side a young warrior careened off the back of his pony. Roman Nose recognized the familiar smack of lead colliding with a naked body.

  He wheeled, waving the rifle in the air, signaling. On cue two young horsemen pulled away from their charge on the soldier camp, sweeping down on the fallen one. Leaning off their ponies, they yanked his limp body from the dusty sage, dragging him over the hillside.

  The Cheyenne chief let his big pony prance a moment as he watched the battle rage before him. Inside the fort itself the white men were scrambling like beetles from an overturned buffalo chip. With no order. Only a mindless fear, a mindless obsession with self-preservation ruling them.

  That was the thing about striking at the white man, Roman Nose thought as he hammered his heels against his pony’s ribs, leaping back into the dusty fray. The white man was slow to gather his wits about him when surprised. And that slowness is enough to spell his doom.

  On the far side of the camp where Crazy Horse had deployed his warriors, the soldiers dragged two more bouncing bodies across the sage toward the tiny ring of dirty tents where everything was a beehive of frantic activity. Puffs of gunsmoke blossoming above the dark-shirted troopers like white flower petals.

  Already the air in his nostrils reeked of burnt powder. Roman Nose liked that smell. A strong, pungent odor always meant victory for him. Good that the sting of burnt gunpowder mingled with blood, sweat, pony droppings, and the acrid dust staining the coming of day in this place.

  Off to his right another young warrior toppled from his frightened pony. Just beyond, among the sage and an overturned wagon-box, Roman Nose watched a puff of dirty gray smoke rise to betray the soldier’s position. Whoever fired from behind that wagon was good enough to kill one of his Cheyenne warriors. Good enough that the soldier must be stopped.

  “Aiyee-yi-yi-yi!” the war-chief shouted, his voice high and shrill as he hammered his pony’s ribs once again.

  Beneath the barrel-chested Cheyenne the animal burst into a full gallop. Jamming the rifle barrel under his left arm, Roman Nose cocked the Winchester as the wind of day-coming whipped his face. Closer and closer still. He would wait until he was close enough to fire. Another soldier scalp this day—

  He heard the bullet slam into the pony’s chest. Felt the first quiver between his legs, and with it the change in the animal’s stride. One of the war-chief’s legs grew damp with the pony’s blood. The animal slowed even more.

  He goes down, Roman Nose thought.

  To his left a puff of smoke betrayed where the soldi
er hid among the tents. Determined, Roman Nose reined his dying pony toward the soldier who had killed two warriors already. Vowing that the white man would kill no more this day.

  The pony stumbled as it neared the wagon-box, pitching sideways.

  Roman Nose was off the animal in a smooth leap, hitting the ground at full stride when the pony toppled over. Done for as it carried its master into the jaws of the white soldiers.

  Running, yelling, waving his rifle wildly between shots, Roman Nose hurtled over the sage. Glancing at the first thumbnail of red-orange sun creeping atop the edge of the world beyond. Daybreak.

  A good day for soldiers to die!

  The soldier marksman stood, turning this way. Turning that. Ramming a new charge home. He stumbled backward two steps as the Cheyenne’s bullet smashed into his chest.

  Roman Nose always liked the look on a man’s face when he was hit with a fatal shot, but stood, his heart still pumping, not yet giving out.

  Roman Nose slammed the soldier backward another two steps with a second bullet in the chest. Then a third to the belly as he drew close and eased his race. The soldier doubled over, sinking to his knees slowly, his face gone white as the alkali dust on the ground. He stared up at the Cheyenne, his mouth moving but no sound coming forth.

  Swinging the Winchester’s butt, Roman Nose was on the white man in two more long strides. The wooden stock smashing the soldier’s jaw, his head flopping sideways like a sawdust doll’s.

  He dropped onto the soldier, one knee on the man’s chest, sensing beneath him the rapid, frightened breathing. Roman Nose peered down into the glassy, blinking eyes. Then ripped his knife from its scabbard at his waist.

  With a swift, practiced movement, Roman Nose slashed the blade across the soldier’s throat like light in a mirror. So quickly no blood dirtied the gleaming blade. Instead, the hot crimson spurted onto the Cheyenne’s legging.

  The soldier jerked convulsively, his arms and legs flailing like an animal about to be butchered. From his throat bubbled thick, gurgling noises. With his left hand the Cheyenne rammed the greasy blond head against the ground, holding it steady as the soldier struggled against the weight over him, against the blood choking him, blood soaking into the thirsty soil as well.