Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  As Captain Dandy skidded into the northeast corner of the stockade, he peered down into the bottom, watching the herd guard draw their pistols.

  “Is that loaded?” Obadiah shouted to the sentry who stared frozen and helpless into the valley as the herd guard finally opened fire. In and out of the maze of cattle the naked warriors weaved, making it less than easy for the pickets to find a target, much less worry about wasting their precious ammunition.

  “Sir?” the guard turned to answer, frustrated and frightened. “Yes, sir. It’s loaded. I’m under orders not—”

  “Back off, then, son.” Dandy shoved the soldier from the mountain howitzer, squat and ugly as an iron toad in the sunburnt grass atop the plateau.

  “Sir, I can’t—”

  “I told you, get the hell out of my way!” Obadiah bellowed, instantly shutting the guard up. “This is my stockade. Those are my cattle down there. And if no one else is going to do a goddamn thing about those Sioux stealing army property—Obadiah Dandy sure as hell will, soldier!”

  “Y-Yes, sir!” the soldier hollered in reply, stumbling backward, battered by Dandy’s verbal assault, saluting for good measure.

  As quickly as he said it, Dandy gauged range and distance. Just like they taught you at the academy. Slow, prepare your charge. Don’t rush it …

  He cut his Boorman fuse the length he calculated he would need. Just long enough for the flight of the case of eighty .58-caliber balls into the valley below. With a swift movement, he rammed the twelve-pound case down the howitzer’s throat, primed the gun, and dragged a sulfur head along the cast-iron breech. He stepped to the side, watching the powder spark the fuse hole. With gray smoke, the gun belched. Sending Dandy’s charge on its way over the valley.

  “Hurraw!” the young sentry shouted, dancing as he watched the case explode, spewing its eighty deadly balls down upon the warriors and cattle in a spray of noise and confusion and pain.

  “Goddamn right, son!” Dandy bellowed, seeing the warriors wheel and turn from their assault on the pickets, retreating through the cattle.

  Bastards only want one thing now. To get the hell across that creek before I blow their red asses off their goddamn ponies.

  Dandy threw his weight against one wheel, struggling to jostle the howitzer to the left. That’s it, Obadiah. Point it at the creek this time! Good! Hit ’em as they—

  A second twelve-pound case he rammed home after cutting the timing fuse, struck his match. He watched the howitzer belch, sending his renewed greetings into the valley.

  “We got ’em on the run now, sir!” the young soldier cheered. “Watch them red niggers go!”

  Dandy did indeed watch the Sioux go. Tearing across the creek. One warrior knocked from his pony. Plucked from the ground on the run by another warrior who swung his dazed companion behind him on the back of his prancing pony. The cattle rambled, still frightened from the noise and the lead hail falling from the sky. But they slowed restlessly, and finally returned to grazing as the pickets in the valley surrounded the herd and quieted what few head of beef Fort Phil Kearny had remaining after a year in the shadow in the Big Horns.

  “Sonsabitches won’t get one damned head of my cattle … not if Obadiah Dandy’s got anything to say about it!” The captain turned and stomped off, dusting his hands down his sweat-stained blouse.

  “And Obadiah Dandy’s got a helluva a lot to say about it!”

  * * *

  “You hear that?” civilian teamster R. J. Smyth asked the armed trooper beside him on the wagon seat as they rumbled up the Montana Road, headed back toward Fort Phil Kearny from the hay flats near Lake DeSmet.

  “Yeah,” Pvt. John Ryan answered, craning his neck. “Sounded like two howitzer shots.”

  “You don’t s’pose the fort’s under attack, do you?” Smyth’s voice squeaked in fear.

  The young soldier waited, then waited some more, staring up the road toward the valley of the Pineys and the fort they could not yet see. After long minutes with no more shots heard, Ryan’s shoulders sagged. “Nawww. I suppose not. Be more gunfire if they was under attack.”

  “Maybeso, you’re right,” Smyth commented, wishing he had brought along a plug of chew. Wishing he could afford to buy chew more often. “I don’t figure them Sioux for real guts—’cause that’s what it’d take to make a rush on the fort.”

  “I’ll grant you that,” Ryan muttered. “Seems all they do is jump these trains anymore. After what they done to Fetterman and all those—” His voice broke off in remembrance of those mutilated bodies. “Red bastards content now scaring hell out of us when they jump a train.”

  Smyth turned at the loud clatter of hoofbeats pounding the iron-hardened road. He turned in time to watch a young soldier loping up past the twelve wagons quartermaster Dandy had assigned to bring hay back to the post from the flats near the lake. Down where the Sioux hadn’t burned the grass the army’s horses and mules depended upon. On each side of the dozen hay wagons rode three mounted infantrymen, rifles ready. R. J. Smyth figured it had to be that last soldier on the west side of the road who allowed his horse to gallop past Smyth’s lead wagon.

  “Now, what you s’pose that sonuvabitch is up to?” Smyth grumbled as the horseman trotted past with a big grin cracking his face.

  “That’s Private Johnson,” Ryan answered. “Peter’s a loose one, he is. When we were mounting up, he told us he’d be having some fun on the ride back … fixing to light out for the post. I declare, but he is a loose one! Said it was too nice a day to spend lallygagging back in the dust with the wagons. Wanted to ride on the point … see some of the country.”

  “See some of the gawddamned country?” R.J. shrieked. “What with them Sioux waiting to loose a man from his hair like they are?”

  “Johnson ain’t the kind to worry,” Ryan answered. “Just look at him up there. Having the time of his life.”

  Smyth sensed the first twinge of apprehension, brooding that now the caravan had one less gun along for protection.

  After all, R.J. figured, it’s the mules them Injuns is always after. They don’t have no truck with this gawddamned hay.

  “Hey, soldier … don’t you think Johnson’s getting a bit far ahead now. Better’n three hundred yards. Why’n’t you flag him back with us. Make me feel whole lot better.”

  “Can’t now, Smyth. Johnson just dropped off the top of that hill yonder. Down to a ravine. He comes up on the other side, I’ll give him a holler and a wave. Don’t you go fretting now.”

  “I’ll fret,” R.J. spit. “I’ll fret, all right. You’re not the one liked to lost his hair back to last month on the wood road. Not your hair they was—”

  Like shadows flitting across the sun, the warriors swept off the hill to their left and up from the trees on their right. His eyes bugging in hungover redness, R. J. Smyth cursed his luck and glanced at his uniformed passenger.

  At the same moment, trooper Ryan bolted upright in the footwell. Searching the road ahead for some sign of Private Johnson. As if to answer Ryan’s unspoken question, gunfire crackled from the ravine still a hundred yards away.

  “They got him cut off now!” Ryan growled, cocking the hammer on his big Springfield.

  “It ain’t him I’m worried about, you stupid blue-coated dunderhead!” Smyth screamed as he slapped reins down on the rumps of his team.

  “Look!” Ryan hollered, still standing, a’sway with the lurching wagon as Smyth’s mules bolted into a gallop. “There he is!”

  Up the far side of the ravine raced Peter Johnson, with a half-dozen warriors hot on his trail like wet hornets.

  “This way, Johnson!” Ryan yelled, hoarse already. “This way, dammit! You’re going the wrong—”

  “Ain’t no wrong way when you’re running from Injuns, soldier!” Smyth growled, bouncing on the seat and glancing back to see where the rest of the hay wagons were.

  “But he’s headed back to the fort!”

  “Just where I’m headed too, gawdammit!�
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  “Awww, shit! He’d stand a better chance getting ’round ’em and heading back to us.”

  “He ain’t bound to do nothing of the kind now,” Smyth moaned, watching up the road in disbelief.

  “What you figure made him jump off his horse that way?” Ryan barked. “Man’s gone plumb crazy with fear—lookit ’im run! Thrown his pistol away! Can’t you make these mules get up and run any faster, Smyth?”

  “They running just as fast as they please … keeping me away from those Injuns up side of that hill yonder.”

  “Goddammit!” Ryan groaned as he watched a warrior race right past Johnson, slamming the private on the back of the head with a stone club that dangled from the Indian’s wrist. They watched Johnson catapult almost ten feet through the air, crumbling to the dust like a sack of rags.

  “C’mon, R.J.!” Ryan yelled suddenly. “Get these mules running now, or I’m fixing to take over the reins on you.”

  “You’ll do no such a thing!”

  “Army property this is—”

  “But I ain’t no gawddamned army property!” Smyth bawled. “Ain’t a thing you’re gonna do for that stupid boy now. Save our own hides is what we’re gonna do.”

  By the time the warriors broke off their ambush, disappearing into the hills like smoke as quickly as they had appeared, the twelve wagons and escort reached the ravine where the soldiers had watched Johnson attacked. With creaking brakes and snorting, lathered mules, they brought the wagons to a halt. Even before Smyth’s lead wagon rumbled to a complete stop, Private Ryan leaped to the ground in search of his fellow trooper.

  Johnson’s horse had disappeared. That much was easy to understand. The Sioux loved army horseflesh. The pistol Peter Johnson had flung aside in desperation and fear was gone as well. Ryan accepted not finding that either.

  Yet most disturbing was that where the young private had fallen after the blow from a Sioux war club, Ryan found only a small patch of dark blood on the grass, quickly soaking into the parched, flaking soil. The ground around the blackened spot of dust appeared torn from many hoofs. None of them wearing the white man’s iron shoes.

  John Ryan sank to his knees beside the blackening patch of fresh blood. Dipped his fingers in it. And screamed with a cry that echoed off the hills and ridges.

  It raised the hairs along the back of R. J. Smyth’s neck, that cry climbing into the cool, purple heights of the Big Horns.

  Chapter 22

  “It is a good sign,” Red Cloud said. “High Back-Bone is a grandfather now in the Moon of Black Cherries.”

  High Back-Bone smiled, accepting the congratulations of his fellow chiefs. “You should not praise me,” he said, chuckling lightly and accepting the bowl of stewed antelope as it was passed round the circle in the lodge where the old friends sat in council. “It is my son who had all the fun in fathering this child!”

  The lodge rocked with good-natured laughter. Crazy Horse was glad. It had been a long, long time since these men had laughed together. For more than twelve moons these chiefs had not had reason to laugh. Ever since they were told at Laramie of the soldier army coming to shove its fist down the throat of the Indian here in the Big Horn country. This last, best hunting ground of the Lakota and Cheyenne. For more than a year now the bands had drawn close around Red Cloud to press their war against the white men who used the road the way herd bulls would stand off attacks from a pack of wolves. They painted their victories on the winter-count robes—like that Battle of the Hundred in the Hand at the beginning of last robe season of heavy snows, when the soldiers followed the decoys beyond the Lodge Trail to their deaths.

  Since then, no civilian wagon trains had ventured north along the Medicine Road that led the white man toward the land of the Crow and beyond, to the places where those white men scratched at the earth for the tiny yellow rocks.

  What craziness led those men to risk their lives for yellow rocks, Crazy Horse would never know.

  For a long, wet spring of short-grass time, into the summer’s beginning spent following the buffalo and antelope herds, the tribes had celebrated and wandered across their hunting ground. And prayed that the harshness of the last two winters would be the last. Knowing the reason the Spirits made hunger visit every lodge was that the mighty Lakota had failed to drive the soldiers from this sacred land.

  As long as the white man stayed in this country, living within the safety of his walled forts, the Spirits would bring hunger to the people. This summer the Lakota must drive the soldiers from the land, for all time. No longer merely a war of scalps and manhood for the brave young ones to wage—Red Cloud’s war had now become a sacred mission for all. Before the snows of the Winter Man again smothered the land, Crazy Horse knew his people must drive the soldiers from their forts.

  “High Back-Bone’s grandson is a good sign that means my plans are strong,” Red Cloud declared as the lodge quieted. “No more can we merely attack what soldier trains move north along the road. No longer can we content ourselves by stealing a few of the white man’s horses and mules near the forts.”

  “This would take too long,” Little Hawk agreed.

  “I agree, uncle,” Crazy Horse replied, nodding to his blood relative. “We do not have the time. We must join with Red Cloud in planning to attack the forts themselves.”

  He watched Red Cloud smile at him. They had planned it this way. For the popular war-chief Crazy Horse to announce Red Cloud’s scheme for him. Thereby sealing a successful vote of the council in favor of the plan worked out in secret between the two Oglalla leaders.

  “Attack … attack the forts themselves?” Yellow Eagle asked in the midst of much muttering rumbling through the lodge.

  Red Cloud nodded. “We must go into the badger’s den … or we will never drive him from our land.”

  “But like the badger,” the shrill voice of Red Leaf rose above the clamor, “the white soldier will fight all the harder when we back him into his forts.”

  “Yes. Make no mistake,” Crazy Horse said, holding his hand up for quiet, “the soldiers will fight hard.”

  “Aiyeee!” roared the Miniconjou chief Black Shield, “it is good they will fight much harder than the hundred-in-the-hand we killed in the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns.”

  “Many of those threw their lives away, yes,” replied Yellow Horse.

  “But many among them fought hard as well,” Crazy Horse retorted. “The soldiers in the forts now will fight as hard against us. But there is no other choice.”

  “Crazy Horse is right,” Red Cloud said. “If the soldiers choose not to stick their heads out of their holes, we will take our war to the forts … where we can fight them.”

  “I have an idea, Red Cloud.”

  All eyes turned to the aged warrior, the many winters of his life sprinkling his hair with much iron.

  “Ice wishes to speak to the council. We are grateful for any ideas you can give us.”

  “Thank you, Red Cloud,” the old man began, his voice quiet and low, like the grating croak of frogs along the wet places on a summer night. “To throw our bodies against the soldier forts is madness.”

  “But we cannot lure the soldiers—”

  “Hear me out, Crazy Horse,” Ice continued calmly, his hand silencing the young war-chief. “We must plan to draw some of the soldiers out of the forts. Then we will attack not only the soldiers who come riding out to scare us off, but more warriors still can then throw themselves at the weakened posts.”

  “This is good!” Crazy Horse said, sensing the surge of excitement like a hot burst of lovemaking through his body. “The forts will never expect an attack. They believe we will only draw the soldiers out as we lured the hundred to their deaths beyond the Lodge Trail.”

  “It is a fine idea, Ice,” Red Cloud agreed with a wide smile, his eyes twinkling, feeling the support of the entire lodge behind him now that Ice had sealed the plan’s approval. “We must talk now about a plan to decoy more soldiers from the forts.”


  “You need no plan!” Ice chuckled. And with his laughter, the sagging skin on his face stretched across his high cheekbones, like an old linen sheet thrown carelessly over the bare bedsprings of a white man’s bed.

  “Tell me, old one,” Crazy Horse began, coming up on one knee and turning full to the old counselor. “Why don’t we need a plan to lure the soldiers from their forts?”

  Ice laughed, his rheumy old eyes moist and dim. “The soldiers will come. They always do.”

  “The soldiers always come? I do not understand.”

  Ice licked his lips. “They always come to help when we attack. And this time, we attack the little camps far from the forts.”

  “Yes!” Red Cloud shouted, seeing the genius in the idea. “The little camps at the Pine Woods where the tree cutters stay!”

  Crazy Horse was standing now, beating his bare chest with one fist. “Ai-yi-yi-yi! And at the dirt fort on the Bighorn, where the grass cutters stay the nights, sleeping far from the fort walls!”

  “We attack them, young ones?” Ice inquired, his old shoulders shaking with sudden laughter.

  “Yes, old man!” Crazy Horse roared his approval. “We attack the small camps of the stupid ones who sleep far away from the forts!”

  * * *

  A few high, puffy clouds decked the July blue of the sky overhead this warm, Sunday morning that found Finn Burnett and seven others leading A. C. Leighton’s mules and horses from the protection of the post corral to a grassy spot some three quarters of a mile southwest of Fort C.F. Smith. After hobbling all the mules Leighton’s crews used to pull the mowers, four of the teamsters returned to the fort, to spend their day of rest at cards or the bottle, whatever diversion a man could afford.