Instead, Roman Nose knew he would meet the tall, bearded, black-headed one near the fort built at the mouth of the canyon where the Big Horn erupted from the mountains.
The place the white soldiers called Smith.
Chapter 17
“I’ll never forget that tiny barnyard Sternberg built at the east wall,” Amanda Kinney sniffled as she passed the last of the luggage to her husband, Capt. Nathaniel C. Kinney.
He stuffed and squeezed their meager belongings into the back of the ambulance that would carry them south past Fort Phil Kearny, on to Fort Laramie, then east to retirement from the army. His release from service had been accepted on January 7.
Now, the twelfth of June, it struck Amanda once more that for five months she and her husband had been virtual prisoners here at the mouth of the Bighorn, suffocating within the four walls of Fort C.F. Smith, Montana Territory.
“Yes … Sternberg,” Captain Hartz’s wife Lucille found herself sighing. “Bless his German heart.”
A favorite of all the women, Amanda thought to herself. Dear, sweet Sigmund.
“Those dear animals he pushed west across that lonely wilderness,” Lucille continued, glancing at the mail escort tightening cinches on their mounts.
Why did she say that? Amanda wondered, knowing she had so far to travel. This tearing apart’s hard enough … so, who’s more fortunate? Those who go … or those left behind?
“After eight hundred miles that milk cow of his still gave the finest cream for our coffee … and such splendid pastry!” replied Sarah Burrowes, wife of the officer who would assume command of Fort C.F. Smith until a replacement for Kinney arrived.
She would say that, Amanda reflected, trying to smile. She’s the best cook among us all. Always hoarding those precious eggs of hers. What danger … what boredom we shared … filling our lonely hours with each other—why, with our coterie of four officers’ wives at the post, each had a choice of three homes to visit. Now, we are … less.
“Remember the two piglets who foraged their way north?” Lucille asked. “And Sternberg’s chickens!”
“Yes! Oh, yes!” Amanda answered with a brave smile. “Remember dear Sigmund’s face when he found half of them had gaped themselves to death in that first snowfall last autumn?”
The women laughed, uneasily. Their laughter rang with a tinny, hollow sound. This was not an easy thing—to let go of friends you had carried in your heart across hundreds of miles of wilderness. Friends whose hands you had held through countless hours of dread. Waiting and worrying till husbands returned through the fort gates once more. Knowing each time soldiers galloped out those gates, fewer men plodded back. Some never returned.
Amanda sniffled, retying her bonnet beneath her chin. “Damn those coyotes!”
“Amanda!” Sarah chided.
The others stood silent, aghast at the sudden curse. Then they all laughed together at their little secret.
“Yes, Amanda,” whispered Louise Henry, wife of Smith’s assistant surgeon. “Damn those old coyotes!”
They laughed together again. More easily now.
“Taking our turkey hen the way they did,” Lucille clucked. “Just when she was about to brood some little ones!”
Amanda sensed an unspoken sisterhood among them all. She studied their brave smiles as each one put the best of faces on this painful parting. Through those weeks and months of arduous, unspeakable journey to Fort Phil Kearny, then asked to bear another ninety miles of wilderness to reach this place along the Bighorn River, followed by the rigors of fort construction—their sisterhood had proven a refuge for those women who needed something that could not be found in the company of a husband. Something rare and precious—found only in the warm kinship of their survival together. The homey familiarity of the daily routine—baking, brewing, stewing and sewing. Yet always time for a game of charades or authors, or the challenge of croquet.
“Lucille,” Amanda reached out for Mrs. Hartz’s hand, “that dear spotted cow of ours tied in Sigmund’s barnyard will not be coming east with us.”
“Pray tell why not?” Sarah asked.
Amanda smiled as if divulging a secret. “Nathan doesn’t think it fitting for a retiring fort commander to be found pulling a cow behind his wagon all the way to Ohio!”
As they laughed, Amanda squeezed Lucille’s hand, then patted the swelling belly beneath Lucille’s heavy wool coat. “I give the cow to you, Lucy. She … with the baby coming…”
Amanda choked off the sob at the back of her throat. Then smiled through a fog of tears.
Lucille struggled to clear her own throat. “I won’t ever forget Amanda Kinney’s Fort C.F. Smith mincemeat pies!” It had such a brave ring to it as she squeezed Amanda’s hand.
Amanda snorted back the dribble pendant like a translucent pearl at the end of her nose and laughed sadly. “Just a little beef heart, Lucy. Some dried apples, raisins, and that precious sweetened vinegar from sutler Leighton. You … you’ll make it for everyone now that I’m gone, won’t you, Sarah?”
“Y-Yes … oh, God! Yes, I will, Amanda.”
Dear God, this good-bye hurts, Amanda thought. All those days Nathan and the other husbands were too busy to remember their women, we were all we had to each other. Besides our children … we were all we had.
Amanda gazed around as she raked a raw, freckled hand beneath her nose. “I’ll never forget this place, you know.” The others nodded in silence, staring at the toes of their boots.
Hard to admit what’s being torn from us all.
“What grand memories I’ll have of this place. Grand! All the buildings complete now—just when Nathan’s leaving the service.” Amanda sought something happy to talk about. Nothing happy with this moment.
“Thomas says Leighton’s men can begin cutting hay for the winter in a couple weeks,” Sarah Burrowes said, attempting to find something to fill the void.
“Yes, more hay,” Amanda replied. “Another civilian train. Another soldier escort. More … waiting … more worry—”
“Amanda?”
She turned at Nathaniel Kinney’s voice. “Yes. I’m ready, Nathan.”
She held out her arm as the captain helped her climb into the rear of the ambulance. Amanda settled atop the leather luggage and pushed some loose strands of hair out of her eyes. Sighing, she held apart the leather pucker so she could see those she left behind.
Kinney crawled atop the sun-warmed leather of his saddle and signaled the corporal who would lead his mail escort of eight soldiers and the ambulance south, far from this wilderness of blizzards and savage, naked warriors, and …
“Sit still, son,” Amanda whispered to her six-year-old. “We … we have such a long way to go.”
“Mama—”
“Hush now, dear.”
Amanda swiped again at her nose, no longer caring about her foggy eyes. The boy couldn’t see her face. She kept it turned from him. Looking back at her good, good friends. Those left behind. For all they had gone through together, standing steadfast at their husbands’ sides while this mud fort was raised and defended … there would never be friends like these again.
Not in her whole life. Never again would anyone have friends like these.
Amanda Kinney waved desperately as the ambulance lurched into motion. Her brave smile grown damp.
“Good … good-bye.”
* * *
God almighty!
Sam Marr marveled at the feel of it. Riding along at a full gallop, guns booming in his ears, the whoops and cries of wild, feathered warriors encircling him. Surrounded by Crow horsemen and a handful of civilians. Chasing a band of daring Sioux and Cheyenne raiders who had slipped over Lodge Trail Ridge to strike the few head remaining in Fort Phil Kearny’s beef herd.
Marr and a few of the hardy civilian employees down in their camp near the Little Piney had been closest to the herd itself when the herd guard raised their warning. A few gunshots from the civilians watching the cattle, and a lot of shoutin
g. The sight of painted, naked warriors riding down through the trees at the Big Piney crossing was enough to pucker any man’s asshole.
Even an old fighter like Sam Marr.
Captain Marr, veteran of Missouri volunteer cavalry. Cut his teeth twenty years back on Mexicans under Zachary, by God, Taylor it was. And now he found himself chasing after some mounted Sioux warriors, in the midst of some screaming Crow who had been camped near the civilian tents at the sawmill on the Little Piney.
They relish warfare like this, Sam realized. This is their life. And it may well be the goddamned death of me!
Time like this, he knew a man needed a good horse under him. And Sam Marr had the best. Seamus Donegan’s big gray.
“Son of a buck … Seamus never did name this horrid monster,” Marr muttered beneath his breath.
Sensing the surge of muscle and fire beneath him. Tears whipping back at the corners of his eyes with the hot June breeze.
He watched a young Crow beside him topple, and looked back to see the body kicked aside by the ponies charging behind.
“Poor bastard,” he muttered.
Ahead one of the Sioux tumbled to the side into the sage and stunted grass. Not much of the grass left now. What with the Sioux and Cheyenne sneaking close almost every day now, setting fire to what grass they could. Burning fodder to starve the horses and mules and cattle out. What better way to force the soldiers from this place at the foot of the Big Horn Mountains?
A heartbeat later the long rawhide rope that ran from a loop around the Sioux pony’s neck back to the fallen warrior’s waist snapped taut. The pony started, prancing to its left. Then was off again like a bolt of summer lightning. Dragging its unconscious master through the sage and burnt grass. Following the rest toward the Big Piney crossing.
Around Sam Marr the young Crow warriors renewed their yelps of bloodlust, driving their small, ribby ponies ahead of the white men, most of them centering their attention on the unhorsed enemy bouncing through the sage at the end of his tether.
As the old man watched in amazement, two of the young Crow slowly drew closer to the enemy’s pony, hampered as it was with its ungainly burden dragged bounding and bleeding across the prairie. First one, then the other sped beside the dragging body. The first struck the unconscious enemy with his quirt. With a victorious wail, the first to count coup on the enemy, he pulled aside an arm’s length to allow his friend a chance at the Sioux’s flying body.
This time an unstrung bow slapped the back of the enemy’s head and shoulders.
The first warrior was beside his companion again, shouting words Marr could not hear. He could only watch the black hole in the Crow warrior’s face volving up and down as he shouted his order. The second man obeyed, slowing his pony dutifully, keeping a yard behind the older warrior.
And then as quick as a hungry Missouri toad would catch and swallow a fat bluebottle fly, the first warrior snatched a butcher knife from his belt and brought it down across the rawhide tether.
Suddenly freed, the Sioux pony surged ahead. The second warrior kicked his heels wildly into the side of his mount. This four-legged prize would be his. The older one had his enemy as spoils.
The Crow slowed his pony, reining around in a hairpin near the crossing.
Marr watched the Sioux and Cheyenne reach the far slope leading up the Lodge Trail before any of them looked back to find one of their number gone. Never to cross the Big Piney again.
They waved their arms, held up their breechclouts, obscenely shaking penises and slapping brown rumps at the pursuing Crow and white men. Then as one, they kicked their ponies into motion when they saw the enemy not only had unhorsed one of their own, but had captured a pony as well.
The second Crow recrossed the Big Piney with his prize, a grin as big as any county-fair blue-ribbon-winning farmboy could show.
Sam reined up, throwing an arm into the air to signal the rest of the civilians who had followed him out of camp.
“What they fixing on doing to that red bastard?” R. J. Smyth asked.
He regarded the teamster a minute then smiled. “R.J., you oughtta know better’n that. Those Crow boys fixing to have a little fun with what’s left of that red nigger after his pony dragged him through the brush.”
Smyth dragged the back of his hand across his dry lips, eyes narrowing. “God, they’re all savages, ain’t they, Marr?”
“By damned, I believe you’re beginning to understand things now, ain’t you, R.J.?”
“You gonna stay to watch, Cap’n?”
Marr wagged his head. “Ain’t a thing here I need to watch. Saw enough of it already. What I didn’t see during the war … by God, it filled my craw when I saw what was over that ridge last December.”
The smile drained from R. J. Smyth’s face. His brown eyes narrowed as he nodded once. “Got my belly full of mutifying that day as well, Sam. Don’t need to see no more of it, I suppose.”
“What one bunch of red bastards does to another bunch don’t concern me now, R.J. I’m thirsty—dry as August ground. What say we go find us a drink of whiskey and a piece of shade afore that quartermaster Dandy wants us to report back for work.”
“Sounds fair to me, Sam.”
“Didn’t think you was one to pass up a drink, R.J.”
“Don’t ever figure to make it a habit, neither—you goddamned Yankee sonuvabitch.”
“Then, I suppose I’ll have to drink to your health?”
“Damn well better drink to yours as well, Sam. Sure as hell these red bastards aren’t going to!”
“Only reason these heathen Crow got anything to do with us—we’re fighting again’ the Sioux and Cheyenne what took their hunting ground from ’em, R.J.”
“Maybe you and me best pray while we’re having that drink.”
“Pray, R.J.? Didn’t know you was a praying man.”
“I might become such, you blue-belly sonuvabitch! Out here in this godforsaken wilderness … having to wonder what red bastard gonna stick his knife twixt my ribs first—Sioux … or Crow!”
Chapter 18
“Oh, Sam—I don’t know what to do!”
Marr clutched the widow Wheatley in his arms gently, her sobs wracking her small frame. “It’s gonna be all right, Jennie. Ain’t a soul gonna push you to do something you don’t want to.”
“Don’t know what to do, Sam,” she repeated, this time mumbling into his shoulder where she cradled her head. “Don’t know what to feel.”
“Just let things be, girl,” he soothed, sensing even more a responsibility for her now than usual.
Over the top of her head Sam gazed down at Jennie’s two young sons. They stared at their mother and the old man, both wearing a look like that of a blue-tick hound caught in a barbed-wire fence. Not sure whether to howl in pain, or bark in anger. Remaining quiet in the meantime, their sagging jowls and sad eyes telling it all.
Sam figured their whole world now had turned upside down. Their mama for the moment no longer the rock to which they could cling in security. Now that papa was gone and never coming back. Marr didn’t rightly know how the two young’uns felt not having a pa now who would return from his labors at the end of the day. It had been some six months already that this cabin had been without that man. Another had come forward briefly to fill that shadow.
Marr suddenly felt every bit as sad for Seamus Donegan. Tough job—stepping in to fill another man’s boots in the eyes of young’uns the likes of these. A family man himself, with two boys not come home from the war—Sam Marr tried the best he could to take some of the pain from them all.
Jennie stepped back from Marr, swiping the back of her callused hand at a drippy nose. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“No need apologizing, Jennie.”
She glanced at the boys, then dragged a sleeve across one reddened eye. “Been doing far too much of this in front of them,” she said, trying to laugh as she nodded at her sons.
“Good boys, they are,” Marr soothed. “Time they
learned their mama’s not made of stone, Jennie.”
She turned, wringing her hands in the threadbare apron hung in big folds at her waist. “Don’t know what I’m made of lately.” Jennie stepped to the fireplace, where she swung the trivet supporting the old coffeepot back over the flames. “I’ll warm you something to drink, Sam. Nights are still a mite chilly.”
Finding himself a stool, Marr settled like an old owl with a tired, rumpled wing. Uncomfortable, but with nowhere better to land.
He glanced at the blankets rolled and bound in straps beside the rumpled, leather cases by the door, then in turning back caught her staring at him. “Your brother … he coming back soon?”
She wagged her head, shoving the two-quart cast-iron kettle over the flames in the stone fireplace that glowed with life from well before dawn to well past dusk. Jennie Wheatley, Sam knew, had been a stranger to sleep these past months. He figured he alone at this post might know what the woman was going through, losing a wife himself years gone now. First the hours that would never pass. Then each day crawling from sun to night. But eventually the months marked their miraculous passage on the heart. A pain still there for those left behind, but having made a place for the unbearable loss and hurt, those still living went on with life.
Sam Marr had done what he could to help Jennie Wheatley survive here in the shadow of the Big Horns. Here in the shadow of her loss. Seamus Donegan would have done the same. But it was the army once again that tore man from woman, even when that man did not wear army blue.
In rising, Jennie wiped her coal-smeared hands on the ragged apron and went over to the boys. She pushed the long hair from their eyes and clutched them both against her belly.
“He spends his evenings up at the trader’s,” she said when she had pushed her sons off to a corner to play.
“In Kinney’s place?”
She nodded. “I’ve given up being afraid John will drink up every bit of profit he made on the trip here.”
Marr studied his boot toes a moment, hearing her thick-soled brogans scuff back across the rough plank floor to the fireplace. “And your brother’s friend? None of that settled?”
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