Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  Sings The Moon brought his hands up swiftly, breaking the renegade’s grip on him at the same time he took a step backward, a fist wrapping round the knife at his waist.

  North saw the gesture. His eyes narrowed. Then his burning, fevered mind began to chew on it the way he chewed on the shag-leaf burley plugs brought him from Peck and Laramie by the Arapaho. His taut face loosened, and he laughed again maniacally.

  “Stop the fun now,” he said with a grin. “Tell me what kept you so long if you did not go to Peck.”

  Sings The Moon stepped halfway across the chasm. “We were told many interesting things in the camp of the Bad Face Oglallas.”

  “Like what?”

  “We hear talk of the Sioux and Cheyenne planning a big fight on the forts.”

  “What forts?” he barked, eyes narrowed and cold once more.

  “The fort by the Piney Woods … and the dirt fort in the north.”

  “Forget that one,” North growled. “Tell me about the fort at the Piney Woods.”

  Sings The Moon shook his head, grinning crookedly. “No. It is the dirt fort you will want to hear of.”

  North’s nostrils flared, impatient. He gazed at the warrior’s hand on the knife at his waist. “It’s the Piney Fort I’m interested in, you savage! There’s someone there I want to … to see again one day soon.”

  The Arapaho’s crooked grin grew into a gap-toothed gaping smile. Two upper teeth at the side of his grin had been knocked out back in the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns, when the tribes had surrounded the soldiers and killed them all. Sings The Moon lost two teeth to the last soldier standing that cold winter day. The soldier who fought swinging only his tin horn at his attackers.

  “He is there.”

  North lunged forward again. “Who is, gawddammit!”

  Sings The Moon slowly wiped the spittle from his face where the renegade had sprayed him with his question. “The one you seek.”

  “At the gawddamned dirt fort?” North’s voice rose two pitches, his heart pounding as it hadn’t through many months of healing.

  The warrior nodded.

  North squinted one eye, doubtful. “How you so sure? By taking the word of them Sioux again?”

  This time Sings The Moon shook his head. “We were long in returning here with the news.” His arm swept over his little band of riders. “We went to see for ourselves. So we could bring you the news you want to hear.”

  North grabbed the antelope vest again. But this time the Arapaho warrior let the renegade cling to him, as surely as a man would cling to desperate hope.

  “You saw him … the big one? That … tall one?”

  He nodded, his smile widening into a wolf-slash that exposed more of his brown teeth. “Yes. The tall one.”

  “Where? At the fort?”

  “No. It is better. He cuts grass with others. Sleeps in the white-man camp near War-Man Creek.”

  “How many of ’em?”

  “Less than ten hands … soldiers and grass-cutters together.”

  “In a camp away from the fort, you say?” North asked, releasing his grip on the warrior, smoothing the vest, and grinning.

  “Yes. Far enough away from the dirt fort that the soldiers there cannot see the grass-cutters’ camp.”

  North smiled, squinting one of those speckled-blue eyes at Sings The Moon. “It is good you did this for me. I want whiskey badly. But I need to know this news even more. It is good you bring me word, my friend. Come now. Bring your friends over here. We sit and talk now. Talk about riding west to this dirt fort the soldiers call their Bighorn post.”

  Sings The Moon waved the others to follow him and the renegade among the lodges, dogs barking at their heels, jumping in the air as if they sensed some excitement in the beginning of the hunt. Then he looked squarely at the renegade.

  “Yes, white man. We go for the one you seek, don’t we?”

  “He is mine!” North snarled. “The rest—soldiers and all the rest … they are yours. That big, black-headed one … he belongs to me.”

  The renegade turned slightly, facing west. “One day real soon now, I’ll catch that slab-sided sonabitch … and make hog-paste outta him. He’s mine now. He’s all mine.”

  * * *

  “You’re the laziest goddamned drunk I ever knowed!” contractor Pitman Judd growled at teamster Silas Heeley, who ambled slowly toward his lead wagon. “I had my way, I’d see that Captain Dandy let you go—put you afoot and on your own out there with Red Cloud and those red bastards of his!”

  “Shit, Judd,” Heeley replied, stopping at the front wheel of his wagon and flashing his crew boss a rotten-toothed smile, “you had your way—you’d hand me over to Red Cloud your own self!”

  “Damn straight I would! Now get your good-for-nothing Confederate ass in that wagon and haul this timber back to the goddamn fort. Best you earn your pay today, boy—or I’ll have your ass to fry tonight.”

  “Why, boss—I thankee for all your lovin’ concern!” Silas cheered. “I’ll give quartermaster Dandy your most cordial greetin’s.”

  “Just haul the lumber, Heeley. What you was hired to do.” Judd slapped the lead mule on its rump, watching his hired man Heeley slap the reins down across the backs of the whole team. Heeley rumbled off singing.

  “Fare thee well! Fare thee well! Fare thee well, my cap-ee-tan!”

  Silas Heeley liked his job. All he was called on to do was drive this timber wagon from the fort, past the rolling Sullivant Hills on the wood road, down to the dense woods on Pine Island that lay in the middle of Big Piney Creek. Every day. After his wagon had been loaded with timber chopped by the cutting crews and dragged down to the road by mules in log-harness, Heeley hauled the timber back to the Little Piney Creek just below the fort’s water-gate, where Carrington’s soldiers had erected their horse-powered sawmill last summer upon arriving here at the foot of the Big Horns. A clumsy, tedious contraption that was—more apt to break down than to work—until army engineer J. B. Gregory had arrived with his steam-powered sawmill and promptly planted it in the middle of the narrow creek, just beyond the stockade gates.

  “Fare thee well!” Silas roared off-key, enjoying that early morning breeze rising out of the valley on its way into the canyons of the Big Horns. Midsummer already, and he wondered if he should have pushed on up the Montana Road when spring broke winter’s hold upon the land. Sure, he might be making more money in the Montana diggings. But then again, chances be he might not have much hair left either.

  Better to lay out another winter here, Silas Heeley had decided last month. Just like he had decided last summer when he and a few others had straggled up the road from Fort Reno and run onto Carrington’s post like an act of divine intervention. Silas Heeley had come to meet Captain Frederick Brown, who proved anxious to hire some civilian drivers for his wood crews. Then Brown galloped over Lodge Trail Ridge with his friend Fetterman and the rest last December.

  And got hisself killed for it, Silas brooded. The image of Brown’s naked, mutilated body would stay with Heeley until the day he died. Especially the memory of that Sioux lance rammed up through the quartermaster’s ass, blood-frozen point protruding from his chest. He shuddered, shaking himself free of that image like a dog shedding water.

  “To hell with Pitman Judd! And every slave-driving mother’s son like him!” he hollered over his shoulder at the crew boss left standing behind him in the middle of the road. Only four easy miles to go—through the Big Piney Creek bottoms and up along the Sullivant Hills, then down into the bottoms of the Little Piney at last. He knew every rut and rock in the road.

  “So do these damn mules,” he grumbled, his eyes already heavy.

  First run of the day, and here he was dozing off already. “Well, a lil’ sleep’s quite all right, Silas Heeley. Sun’s warm on your face. Rightly put a man to dozing, it will. ’Sides, these mules know their own way back to that sawmill by the fort.” He yawned. “Dumbest mule still smarter’n that Pitman Judd…”
>
  From one side of the wood road to the other Heeley’s wagon rocked in the well-worn ruts a year in the making, swaying him gently from one rut to the other. Like a pine-board cradle, the timber wagon lulled him to sleep. Sleep-caressed by dreams of those Montana mountain streams glittering with nuggets big enough for a pillow. And those Montana whores he had heard tell of who would help Silas Heeley spend all his gold.

  Why, yes indeedee! Come next year he’d head for Alder Gulch up by Virginia City. Work every night lapping up traders’ whiskey, and wake each morning beside some new toilet-watered chippie. Her huge white breasts suspended over him as she nudged him awake. Shouting at him to get out of bed. Finally, to wake Silas Heeley up, that big-hipped whore would loudly slap the side of the bed with her tin commode.

  CRACK!

  Awaking with a start, Silas glanced down at his feet, eyes blinking in the bright sunlight.

  By God—a arrow! Another whistled past. A third thwacked into the seat beside him.

  Great ghost of the saints!

  Heeley’s eyes shot up the southern slope of the Sullivant Hills. Like boulders tumbling down upon him in a red avalanche, the warriors charged dead on a collision course for his wagon. Scrunching his head into his shoulders like a turtle drawing into its shell, Silas glanced back downtrail to find the other drivers frantically slapping reins against their mules, hurrying not to be the last to the fort. On the wagon’s running-gear behind him the logs shifted with a boom like rolling thunder. Up front, the mules strained at the shifting load, their tall ears pricked at the wild warrior shrieks coupled with the clear panic in Silas Heeley’s own screech.

  With his next ragged breath Silas decided he would never make it to the fort hauling the logs.

  No time to dump ’em neither! ’Sides, it ain’t the logs they want. They want these goddamned mules!

  “Ho! Ho, there! You blessed mean-hearted sonsabitches!”

  Silas Heeley pulled back on the reins, standing tall in the footwell against the brake, putting everything he had into getting his wagon stopped. Even before it had rumbled to a complete halt, Silas was on his feet among the mules. His knife sang through the leather harness on the first, followed by a slap on the rump to send the animal lumbering up the slope. A second and a third he sent on their way. Diversion for the oncoming warriors.

  Silas pulled himself atop the last raw-boned animal, grasping frantically to shreds of butchered harness as his heels pummeled the mule into action. Round the hill he bounced, hearing ragged gunfire from the soldiers assigned to escort the wood train. Silas Heeley wanted no part of such doings.

  Hard enough for a man to make a living till he gets to the Montana diggings … what with getting caught in this gawddamned Sioux war these Yankee soldiers wanna fight so blamed bad.

  He kicked the lean flanks below him more insistently. Praying he could just get his ass on down the road toward the sawmill and the fort, where a simple man could find safety.

  Chapter 20

  “Relieve the pressure on the wood train and escort it back to the fort!” Tenedore Ten Eyck excitedly sputtered his orders to the young lieutenant who had swung into saddle. Another wood train jumped by the Sioux.

  The lieutenant was fearful this attack bode no good, though it brought him a chance to shine before his superiors.

  John C. Jenness saluted. “Yessir, Captain!” In that instant he noticed how Ten Eyck’s one good eye twitched nervously. “Follow me!” Jenness shouted to the twenty-eight mounted infantry troopers who had been closest to the saddled horses when the sentry’s alarm rang across the parade.

  Pickets had alerted Ten Eyck that gunfire had been heard down along the Sullivant Hills. The wood train must be under attack, they told him. Still a bit shaky from last night’s bout with his private bottle of painkilling consolation, the captain screamed for the first soldier he could lay hands on to lead the rescue.

  Lieutenant Jenness felt rightfully proud he had been at Ten Eyck’s side when the alarm came in.

  After all, this is the way the army is supposed to be, John thought as he galloped down the plateau onto the wood road, racing west toward the southern brow of the hills, where he could plainly hear the rattle of gunfire. Dull echoes booming down in the valley of the Little Piney.

  This is the way I was meant to serve all along. Riding at the head of some mounted soldiers … throwing our might against the cream of the Sioux nation. By Jove! This is your chance to shine, John Jenness!

  Only a youngster when Confederate forces had fired on Fort Sumter, John Jenness had ached to join up when President Lincoln issued his call for ninety-day volunteers. Older boys had marched off to battle and glory. Those three months of service had stretched into three bloody years of war before John could lawfully volunteer his service in the Union cause. After but a few months of savage fighting under Jenness’s belt, General Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had been bottled up in the Appomattox Wood, forced to turn over a dirty hand towel to George Armstrong Custer’s Union cavalry in surrender.

  With the war finally over, Henry B. Carrington’s 18th Infantry was reassigned to old Fort Kearney along the Platte River in Nebraska Territory, where they would relieve volunteers who had attempted to keep a lid on Indian problems on the plains during the war back East. Ideal duty for a young soldier who had yet to see enough fighting to fill his craw. Just about perfect for the newly commissioned Lieutenant Jenness—as he spotted the first of the mounted warriors atop a low ridge ahead.

  The Indian whirled round and round, holding a lance over his head from which fluttered feathers and long streamers of multicolored trade cloth and calicoes.

  He’s signaling the rest of ’em, Jenness’s mind burned.

  He threw his hand up about the time the loose mules clattered round the bend in the wood road.

  “You!” He pointed at a private, “Take two men with you and catch those mules!” He watched the trio rein away, down the hard, crumbling slope into the bottom of the Little Piney.

  Jenness was little prepared for what he saw when he turned back around, loud screeches ringing his ears.

  A handful of naked warriors swept over the knoll above them, hot in pursuit of the wood train’s mules themselves. Surprised to bump into the troopers, they hauled back on their ponies, every bit as startled as the young soldiers who reined up as well, jostling one another, grabbing for their long Springfield rifles.

  Jenness tried raising his Long-Tom rifle as he watched the warriors lift bows when they had their swift, skinny ponies under control. He’d never fired the big rifle from horseback.

  Hell, he thought as he clattered to the ground, these long infantry guns never were meant to be used atop a horse.

  Jenness ripped the hammer back as he slid the barrel over the saddle, the fingers of his left hand inching up the wedding bands. Down the muzzle, one young warrior flung both arms wide, singing out his defiance, while the other five wheeled in retreat toward the crest in dusty confusion. All the time Jenness needed.

  Through a puff of oily muzzle-smoke the lieutenant watched the warrior tumble into the dust and sage—then felt the ground yanked out from under him as he got knocked aside himself. His skittish mount hadn’t taken at all to standing so close to the roar of that flaming muzzle. A quick-thinking soldier grabbed the bridle and brought the horse to a halt. Jenness picked himself and the rifle out of the dust of the wood road, then clambered back into the saddle.

  “There’s more of ’em!” Jenness cried out. Some of his detail nodded nervously, their horses prancing, snorting. “Enough for all of us!” He waved and led out, only then realizing he had not reloaded his rifle.

  Forgot like some damned green recruit, he cursed himself.

  His first action against Indians, and he forgot to reload the big Long Tom. Around the brow of the hill the valley closed in a mite. One fork of the road led off round a low hill toward the southern end of the Pine Island in Big Piney Creek. From the sounds of it, the shooting and shouting
came from down along the right fork.

  It was there at the western end of the Sullivant Hills that the Sioux held the wood train captive. While they kept the drivers and the military escort pinned down in the dust of the road, the Indians rode back and forth along the slope, in control of the high ground where they could fire their arrows almost at will. When any soldier stood to aim at a warrior, he made himself a dandy target for another warrior somewhere down the slope. With a fierce knot of determination in his gut, Jenness realized that the drivers and soldiers had gotten themselves pinned down with little chance of breaking free.

  Up to his right along the slope raced the five warriors who had bumped into Jenness’s relief column back along the road. Spotting the lieutenant’s troopers again, the five shouted and waved their weapons, signaling the others for help. Like a covey of quail swooping as one through the dry grass, the Sioux turned from the wood train. Intent on Lt. John C. Jenness and his twenty mounted troopers.

  “Skirmish formation!” Jenness shouted, wheeling his horse about sharply. Few of the soldiers knew what he had asked of them. Most did not. There was little time to explain. “By fours—horse-holders to the rear!”

  Clumsily, the soldiers dropped to the road, sorting out who would be the fourth man of each group assigned to take all four horses to the rear while the other three troopers dropped to their bellies or knees, spaced some three yards apart. Most got their rifles cocked and aimed just as the warriors rolled down the slope in a wild assault, intent upon counting coup on these soldiers who stood in the open with nothing to hide behind, waiting to die. Like a wave of water, they had rolled from their attack on the wagons toward Jenness’s command, freeing the drivers and their escort to train their rifles on Indian backs.

  Blossoms of gray smoke bent into the air over Jenness’s command, followed by the dull boom of the big Springfields. One warrior clutched his side, reeling atop his sidestepping pony. With a thin, reedy screech he fell to the dusty grass beside the road, unable to stay on his pony any longer.