Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  “You gonna use that Spencer of yours, Zeke?” Burnett asked the younger Colvin brother.

  He shook his head. “Not less’n I have to, Finn. Cain’t shoot that Spencer the way I can this’un.” He stroked the battered Enfield muzzle-loading musket laid like a tree branch across his arms. “I been holding my own so far.”

  Seamus chuckled. “You have been taking care of your share, Zeke. Where’d you come on that Yankee gun?”

  “Took it off a dead soldier. Battle of Wilson Creek.”

  “Missouri?” Finn asked.

  “Yep,” Zeke answered. “Figured it was mine to keep. I shot the Yankee bastard.” Then his eyes nervously found Donegan’s. “No offense, Irishman.”

  Seamus chuckled dryly. “None taken, Zeke. We was all doing what we believed in, wasn’t we?”

  “What about now?”

  He studied the southern boy’s face a moment longer. “I figure we’re fighting for our hides right now. You and me can sort out everything else when it’s done.”

  Zeke appeared to accept that. He glanced at his brother across the corral.

  Al nodded. “Irishman’s right, Zeke. We ain’t fighting that bloody war no more. We’re fighting these bloody Injuns. Ain’t no Yankee … and there ain’t no secesh out here. We’re just fellas trying to hold onto our scalps.”

  “You fought in the war, Zeke?” Seamus hollered.

  “Yep,” came the drawl. “General Price.”

  “Good unit, Zeke. Damned good unit, I hear.” Seamus rolled onto his back, reaching into pockets to check his supply of cartridges. For the first time he noticed Al Colvin’s weapon.

  “You fought for Price too, Al?”

  Colvin sank to one knee a few yards away. His eyes darted over the top rail of the corral wall at times. “General Buell, t’was. Captain Colvin. Missouri foot.”

  “Hey, fellas,” Seamus suddenly shouted, snagging every man’s attention. “We got a real captain here! I vote for Cap’n Al Colvin to command our unit. Do I hear any disagreement?”

  “Hell, no!” Zeke hollered.

  “Colvin’ll do,” Haynes replied.

  The soldiers grudgingly agreed. Alone and leaderless, looking for any man to give them direction, if not pull their fat from this fire.

  “You’re it, Cap’n, sir!” Seamus announced, looking at Colvin’s thick, lower lip. From the day Donegan had first met the southerner, that lip had been weepy and sore, perpetually cracked beneath a summer sun on these high plains. Everytime Al spoke or laughed, the lip began to seep and bleed. It was puffy, and bleeding now. “Say, Al—where’d you come on your Henry?”

  “Leavenworth.”

  “Henry better than them Spencers.”

  “A damned sight better,” Al agreed, patting the battered stock of his Henry repeater. He seemed to draw himself up of a sudden and sighed, gazing round their little corral. “So, you fellas want me as your captain, eh? I one time had bars on this shirt, you know.”

  “He took off the bars,” brother Zeke explained. “Kept the shirt.”

  “Damn right, I kept the shirt, lil’ brother! Eight battles and five states I fought with this shirt on my goddamned back. Sonuvabitch grew so used to me, when I tried to shuck it and buy a new one from Leighton, why—the damned shirt marched on over to my bedroll and crawled in with me all by itself!”

  They laughed together. For Seamus it felt good. Knowing there was another man, a leader of men, someone else here who knew how to joke in the face of death. To get others to laughing as they stared at the hoary face of death.

  “You know, Seamus Donegan,” Al Colvin whispered as he knelt beside the Irishman, “chances are none of us never gonna make it outta here.”

  “You and me been in tougher scrapes than this, Al,” Seamus reminded him.

  Colvin stood. “Boys, the odds are again’ us today. That’s by a long chalk. But what say we all take as many of ’em with us as we can while we’re here. By God, we’ll make these sonsabitches remember this day as long as there’s a Sioux alive!”

  The corral erupted with wild cheering and huzzahs as Colvin glanced back at Donegan, nodding once. Seamus nodded back. It was all that need be spoken between fighting men come a time when dying was a thing every man did well.

  Chapter 30

  In a second massed charge, more horsemen raced down on the corral than before.

  Screaming wildly, some blowing their eagle-wingbone whistles, gunfire rattling and blackened powder hanging in a noxious cloud over the enclosure … a brave hundred leaped from their ponies to reach the corral on foot. Flinging themselves against the wall, scrambling at the willow, climbing frantically, brown hands grasping the top rail, pulling themselves over to peer inside. Intent on bloody close-in work with knife and club and tomahawk. The way they had swarmed over the little groups of winter-soldiers beyond the Lodge Trail.

  This time the warriors found themselves blown backward into the brittle grass and dust by lead hail poured into them at point-blank range.

  “Brownskins! And thicker’n fiddlers from hell they are!” Seamus shouted, pumping the lever on his Henry until no shells remained.

  Burnett saw the Irishman dig into his pocket to reload a half-dozen rounds before knocking some more warriors from their perch atop the walls. One close enough that his hair caught fire from the muzzle blast of Donegan’s Henry, before the warrior’s own blood and gore put out the smoldering flame.

  With wild whoops, another mounted attack unexpectedly swooped in, intent on dragging their wounded and dead from the walls of the corral. From across the creek and along the hillsides their rescue was covered by snipers hidden in the willows and behind trees.

  A soldier ten feet from Burnett worked diligently on lessening the odds, though he found himself caught in some cross fire between the creek and the hillside sixty yards away. Waiting for the right moment, he caught one of the warriors exposed. And pulled the trigger on his .50-caliber needle-gun. The Indian flopped from the shady willows along the creek-bank, his legs thrashing in the grass as he struggled to rise.

  The soldier took aim once more. A bullet splattered the warrior’s brains into the thirsty soil.

  “By damn, you got ’im!” Burnett shouted. “Good shooting, soldier!”

  “Thankee, mister,” the old private replied as he sat up straighter to reload.

  “Get down—”

  Finn watched the soldier’s head explode in a crimson spray, flinging the body back against one of the wagon-boxes used for sleeping. For a moment the drone and wheeze of murderous hail faded into the distance as Burnett watched the man’s face turn the color of old flour left setting on a millstone. He had seen enough death in his years. But never so violent, never so much of it compressed into so short a time, giving a man no chance to recover from the shock. And never had such violence happened so close. Intimate in its terror.

  First Sternberg. Now this nameless, faceless soldier.

  “He’p me, gawddammit!”

  Burnett wheeled from the soldier’s body, finding Zeke Colvin struggling with a burden out of the dust and powder smoke. Zeke practically threw Sergeant Horton into Finn’s arms.

  “Jesus!” Burnett grumbled as he fought to keep the soldier on his feet.

  “Colvin said you knew something ’bout bandaging my wound,” Horton whispered hoarsely. “You ain’t got any whiskey, do you?”

  Burnett stared at the growing blossom of blood encircling the hole in the man’s shoulder. “No, I don’t, Sergeant. But I know a fella what has some whiskey we all can use ’bout now.”

  “Seamus!” he hollered as he dragged Horton toward the nearest wall tent.

  Together they wrapped the soldier’s wound, pouring precious whiskey into the hole, a little more into Horton’s gaping mouth.

  “Can’t handle a rifle now,” the sergeant grumbled. “Not against this shoulder. Just gimme your pistol there, Burnett.”

  Finn glanced at the revolver stuffed in his waistband looking as big as
a goat’s hoof. Then back to the soldier.

  “I got two hands, don’t you see, Burnett. I ain’t gonna let ’em take me alive.”

  “You stay in here—”

  “Leave me your gun, Burnett,” Horton begged.

  Finn flicked his eyes at Seamus.

  The Irishman nodded. “Leave him your pistol. They come over the walls, Sergeant—we’ll need your guns for the close-in work.”

  “You won’t need my guns, Donegan. I’ll be there blowing them bloody savages to hell with ’em myself.”

  “Make way, goddammit!”

  Finn turned at the sound of Al Colvin’s voice. He and a soldier dragged in J. C. Hollister. The civilian held an arm clamped like a bloody vice over a messy gut wound.

  “Belly?” Burnett asked as they dropped Hollister down beside the soldier. He saw the hand Hollister kept pressed like an immobile claw over his stomach. J.C.’s skin had a strange, pale luminescence to it, like old wax. Blood had caked and dried around his fingernails, boldly outlining each fingertip in black.

  “Water, Finn? Gotcha any water?” Hollister moaned.

  “All you wanna drink,” Seamus replied, sweeping up a canteen and pulling the stopper.

  Burnett clamped onto Seamus’s arm. “Don’t go give a man with a belly wound any water.”

  The Irishman’s eyes narrowed and clouded a moment. “Finn,” he said quietly, “it’s all right. Gonna be … fine. It doesn’t … doesn’t matter about Hollister now—let the man have his drink.”

  “He ain’t supposed to have no water,” Burnett protested.

  Seamus rose, his eyes imploring Burnett to understand. Then he looked over at Al Colvin. And nodded, handing the canteen to the Confederate. Kneeling at Hollister’s side, Colvin dribbled some water past the waiting lips.

  “THEY’RE COMING BACK!” a frantic voice slashed through the tent wall.

  Burnett and Donegan dashed toward their positions. “He gonna die, Seamus?”

  The Irishman nodded once as they ran crouched to the wall, the shrieking growing louder than ever now.

  “Then water don’t matter, does it.” Burnett stated it matter-of-factly.

  “A friend dies in your arms,” Seamus began, huffing into his place, “he gets whatever he wants.”

  * * *

  The first shot screamed into the corral, smashing alongside one of the upright wall timbers, sending splinters and dried willow leaves flying, spraying the Irishman with debris.

  Looking around, Seamus Donegan noticed most of those nearby already wore a headful of dirt, wood chips and leaves from the bullets wheezing through the flimsy barriers into the corral. Behind him a mule set up a racket, noisy in its dying. Brassy lungs scree-hawing as it fought the picket line, kicking up dust and slamming into the animals at its sides before it settled into the urine and blood-dampened soil at its feet.

  Out of the misty dust kicked up by the animals, Sergeant Horton appeared like a gauzy specter. The sweat necklace and damp patches under his arms made his dusty shirt look as if it were sewn of two colors. That, and the dark, wet patch spreading from his shoulder. He lurched toward the wall like an ungainly draught horse, blazing away with both pistols.

  “He’s got no business being here!” Burnett shouted to Donegan.

  Seamus shook his head. “Soldier like Horton belongs right where he is … his kind don’t ever let other men do their fighting for them!”

  “Not like that one?” Burnett asked, pointing the muzzle of his double barrel at a nearby stack of harness where it stood wedged up beside some ammunition and hard-tack crates.

  Peeking from the shadows of the boxes were two boot soles.

  “Who is it?”

  “Wheeling,” Burnett answered with a snarl.

  Seamus had to laugh. “That big bag of air?”

  Finn nodded, leaped to his feet as half a hundred warriors swept by, letting fly with first one then the second of his ten-gauge greetings into the red horsemen.

  Donegan watched a dozen ponies shy at both blasts, stumbling sideways into others, the riders and their animals alike sprayed at close range with smoky shrapnel from those cruel, gaping muzzles.

  “Goddamn, Burnett! That bastard gun of yours makes messy work of the h’athens!”

  “You want clean work of it, eh, Irishman?”

  “Don’t matter to me what they look like after I’ve killed my share of ’em, Finn!”

  Seamus glanced back at the boot soles dragging themselves even farther back beneath the cover of the harness pile. He wagged his head and winked at Burnett as the teamster reloaded both chambers on the ten-gauge. “Happens like this every battle I rode into.”

  “What did?”

  “The ones talk the loudest, strut the most—their kind’s the first to cower.” Seamus swept his muzzle around the little corral. “Meanwhile, this is the first action most of these boys ever seen. I’d wager a month’s earnings on that. But you don’t find them hiding like Wheeling.”

  “No place to run, I reckon,” Burnett replied.

  Seamus shook his head. “No, even a brave man will sit there, wetting his own pants—and keep shooting … because he knows he stands a better chance swallowing down his fear … than letting it best him.”

  Seamus emptied his seventeen-shot Henry twice more before the red tide washed back from the walls.

  “Mither of saints!” he roared as he rammed more cartridges into the loading tube beneath the barrel, eyeing the retreating horsemen. “We drove ’em off again, lads!”

  “How many of us left now?” Al Colvin hollered as he dashed from the east wall. “Who’s down?”

  “Horton and Hollister, Al,” brother Zeke shouted.

  “Any more?”

  “Over here!” Stevenson’s deep voice rang out.

  Al Colvin and Donegan loped to the south wall near the kitchen awning.

  “He ain’t got his senses,” Al Stevenson said, dragging the soldier back from the wall with considerable effort. “Bullet whacked his skull bone pretty good.”

  “That’s Scotty,” Colvin said.

  “Another sergeant, eh?” Donegan replied, eyeing the arm stripes. Then the blood streaming down the side of the soldier’s face, bright and red beneath the midday summer light.

  “That bullet break his skull bone?”

  Stevenson shook his head. “Grazed him. Lucky bastard.”

  “Not like that foolish Sternberg. Well, shit—find some shade for him, Stevenson,” Captain Colvin ordered. “Wrap his head and get back to the wall yourself—pronto, boy.”

  Colvin turned, stepping close to Seamus. “That run they just made at us was a short one. You figure they’re getting tired, Irishman?”

  Seamus wagged his head, pursing his cracked lips inside his dark beard. “They ain’t tired at all. Many horsemen as they got out there, the bleeming bastards can keep hammering us all day, they choose to.”

  “You say they’re gonna get cautious now, eh?”

  “That’s the way I see it,” Seamus replied, accepting a drink of warm water from Zeke Colvin’s canteen. “They burn us out. Starve us out now. Doesn’t look like that peacock Bradley’s gonna send us any help, does it? We’re penned down here on our own. And the red bastards gonna do their best to wipe us out. But if they can’t overrun us—their medicine isn’t strong enough to take on the fort.”

  “Makes sense to me,” the Confederate captain replied, staring at the dust between his boots. “I figure they’ll try to snipe at us now.”

  Seamus nodded. “Ain’t at all safe out there in the middle of the corral no more. They’ll creep in close as they can, force us to keep our heads down so we can’t shoot back … all while they plink away at anything moving in here.”

  “Like the mules?” Zeke nodded to what animals still stood along the picket line.

  “Yep. Like them mules,” brother Al answered just as more shots thundered into the corral from the bluff two hundred yards away to the west.

  A mule scr
eamed out in pain and confusion, tearing at the rope line, ripping up stakes as it thrashed wildly. Seamus watched the deadly precision of the Indian marksmen take its toll on the remuda. One by one each animal was singled out for execution. Repeatedly struck by bullets or arrows. At the same time, a few iron-tipped shafts wrapped with burning firebrands of hay slammed into the willow and log walls. The Irishman grew more certain than ever now that the hostiles intended to burn the gallant band of defenders out.

  Still more bullets and arrows whined overhead, fired from the willow thickets along Warrior Creek. Chips and splinters flew from the log walls, showering the soldiers and civilians. Dust kicked up by the dying mules added to every man’s misery. Holes ripped through that canvas bowed over the four wagon-boxes and the handful of wall-tents. From time to time, a flaming arrow reached its target. And one brave man or another leaped into the dusty maze, making a target of himself to rip the arrow loose and pound the fire out.

  Seamus wheeled, the hair at the back of his neck standing on end. He recognized that sound. No horse soldier could forget that screeching cry of pain and fear, especially in his nightmares. It was the horse he had been sold by Leighton for his ride to Phil Kearny.

  Onto its hind quarters it crumpled, struggling to rise on its forelegs. The first few feet of gut began to tumble from its belly wound. With four slashing hoofs, the animal continued to tear more and more intestine from its own belly, darkening the ground with blood and stinking offal.

  Seamus’s mouth went dry. He wanted a drink more than anything at this moment, knowing his whiskey was with the wounded in the tent. As far away as Fort Phil Kearny was now.

  The horse was down on its belly now, all legs thrashing as life drained away. Another arrow smacked needlessly into its withers.

  “Damn those godless sonsabitches,” he mumbled hoarsely. “If a horse don’t sound just like a man screaming as he’s dying.”