Seamus turned away, unable to watch the animal any longer. Seemed things had conspired against him again. Holding him here at the corral this morning when he should have been on the way south to Fort Phil Kearny and Jennie Wheatley.
She’s not there no longer, you bleeming idiot, he reminded himself.
Then, by God—you should be on your way to Kansas, Seamus—track down Liam O’Roarke.
A mother’s dying wish.
Pray you’re not too late for that, you stupid, godless bastard, he cursed himself. Not too late.
Not too late to help Al Colvin, he decided next. Seeing the Confederate officer effectively penned down in the corner by some hot cross fire pouring from the hill and the willow thicket both. Seamus yanked the pistol from his belt. All cylinders loaded. He carefully laid the Henry down on some canvas beside one of the wagon-boxes and leaped into action.
First he pulled one end gate from a wagon-box free. Then a second. With them steepled over his head like a hip-pitched church roof, the Irishman lumbered big-footed toward Colvin’s position. More lead splintered the end gates. He listened to arrows hiss, smacking into the wood. By the time Donegan slid in beside the Confederate, his eyes were filled with dust and splinters.
“Thought you’d never come, Yankee,” Colvin drawled, his head scrunched down in his shoulders as far as possible.
Seamus chuckled, pulling the end gates over them both. “Shame to see a good man get punctured, i’tis.”
“Shit, blue-belly.” Colvin grabbed an end gate and straightened under its protection. “I’m finding out you Yankees ain’t all bad, y’know?”
“Don’t go getting sentimental on me, Reb,” he growled, and winked. “There ain’t a man here who can drink with the likes of Seamus Donegan—’cepting you. So I ain’t about to see you go under!”
Seamus tore away to Colvin’s laughter, crabbing off with the single end gate across his shoulders for as much protection as it would give him.
“I’ll buy first round, you blue-belly mick!” Al Colvin shouted.
“And I’ll buy the last, you miserable Johnnie!” Seamus hollered back once he made his spot at the west wall. “Since I’m usually the only left standing, by the saints—I’ll buy the last round!”
Chapter 31
“You see that, Irishman?” Finn Burnett asked Donegan as the big man slid alongside him at the southeast corner of the corral. He pointed.
“Darty thieves, ain’t they, Burnett?”
Finn nodded. “Appears so, Seamus.”
As they watched in amazement, the willows near the kitchen awning rustled and parted slightly again. Atop the plank counter the camp cook used were stacked the tinned dishes and cups cleaned immediately following their breakfast meal. From the willows bordering the creek itself appeared a long, fur-wrapped coup stick, controlled by an unseen hand, inching toward the precious tinned cups stacked on the rough-hewn plank sideboard. Noiselessly, the end of the coup stick worked its way among the cups until a handle had been hooked. With a little elevation the cup slid down the stick, disappearing into the willow thicket.
“I’ll be damned, Finn Burnett,” Donegan whispered. “Sonsabitches not only out to kill us—they’re out to rob us blind as well!”
“I’ll bet those tin cups will be quite the prize back in the Sioux camp tonight.”
“Not to mention our scalps,” Donegan growled.
“What say I show ’em stealing doesn’t pay, Irishman?”
Donegan waved a gracious hand. “Your show, Finn. Make the red thieving h’athen pay.”
A third and a fourth cup disappeared down the coup stick before Finn felt confident of his shot. Gauging where the end of the stick emerged from the willows, he thought he caught a glimpse of a few patches of brown, glistening hide back in the safety of the brush. Then a streak of red paint smeared across the warrior’s brown skin.
Burnett’s Spencer spoke, spitting fire at the willows.
As the coup stick toppled with a clatter among the dishes and cups, a voice yelped in pain from the creekbank. The bushes rattled as the warrior thrashed.
“By God, I believe you got him, lad!” Donegan shouted. “Good shooting, Burnett!”
For a moment everything grew quiet in the willow thicket beyond the camp kitchen. From the creekbank sounded a croaking frog. A signal to the rest.
Suddenly the willow rustled as a dozen warriors burst from the brush, hightailing it back across the creek to safety. Burnett’s Spencer and Donegan’s Henry were barking as quickly as the targets appeared. Their deadly work brought two more hostiles down, wounding another three before the whole bunch disappeared across the far side of Warrior Creek.
Finn was shaking hands with the Irishman when a small, swarthy soldier crawled up. It was hard to tell with the burnt powder and dust caked on the man’s face, but he appeared in his early thirties. Old enough to know better.
“It ain’t no use, Irishman,” he whimpered at Donegan.
“What’s no use, sojur?”
Then the man’s reddened eyes implored Burnett as he crawled over Donegan’s legs. “We’re going to be overrun here in a few minutes,” he whined. “They get over the walls—my heavens—what those savages’ll do to us!”
“Get hold of yourself!” Seamus growled, grabbing the soldier and shaking him.
The private whirled on Donegan like a cat surrounded by yard dogs. He hissed, white spittle caked at the corners of his mouth. His eyes muling with fear. “They’ll torture us—don’t you see? Carve us into little pieces while we die, Irishman! I can’t take it!”
He was beginning to shriek now, shaking beneath Donegan’s grip.
“Shuddup, dammit—”
“I won’t take it! Won’t! I’ll shoot myself first,” he whimpered, wagging his head dolefully.
“Sit over there.” Burnett shoved the soldier gently. “You lie down over there and help us fight for a while. You’ll be all right—”
“No!” he shrieked, yanking away from Donegan’s grip. “There’s no chance for any of us, I tell you! I’ll kill myself! Kill myself before I let those savages at me!”
Seamus wagged his head, glancing at Burnett. Finn asked the question.
“How you figure to kill yourself, soldier?”
“With this ramrod I found,” the soldier answered, his eyes lit with fire. “All I gotta do is hold the muzzle up to my head like this … just use the ramrod to work the trigger back … like this—”
“THEY’RE COMING IN AGAIN!”
Finn and Seamus both turned from the soldier. After the brief wave of horsemen had swept past, showering the corral with arrows and lead hail, dragging off their wounded, the two civilians turned back to find the soldier had crawled across the enclosure to Zeke Colvin. To the ex-Confederate soldier he told his plans.
“Zeke won’t put up with a damned coward,” Burnett said.
Colvin yanked the Springfield from the soldier’s grip. “There now!” he spat. “Get your yellow-bellied ass over there by the wall—you’ll find a hole the dogs dug out yesterday, goddammit. I hear ’nother word outta you … by God I’ll be the one to blow your damned brains out my own self.”
“B-b-but … you can’t take my—”
“GET!” Zeke snarled. “You don’t move NOW … I take some goddamned pleasure outta splattering your brains on the ground aside you—”
“Goddammit! Goddammit! Goddammit—I’m dying!”
Finn whirled round. Nearby, another soldier lay on his belly, spread-eagled on the ground. A single arrow had passed through the calves of both legs, just beneath the flesh. But from the painful howl he set up, a man would think he was knocking on heaven’s door.
As quickly, three of his fellow soldiers were on him. One clamping a hand over the wounded man’s mouth. Another sitting on the man’s legs. And the third breaking the arrow off and pulling it from the wounds. They dragged the screaming trooper off to the tent where the wounded lay, plopping their noisy companion between Holl
ister and Sergeant Horton.
It took but moments for the warriors on the hillside to begin directing their fire at the tent where the soldier groaned and screamed. Moments more and the dirty canvas tent top was hanging in shreds.
Bullets and arrows hissing and whining overhead, Sergeant Horton rolled onto his side, stuffing his pistol under the soldier’s jaw.
“Listen, boy,” Horton snarled. “One more yelp outta your miserable mouth—and I’ve have excuse enough to splatter your brains all over this tent. Now, shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you!”
Finn didn’t hear so much as a whimper from the tent housing the wounded from that point on.
* * *
“Say, Finn,” Seamus whispered, nudging Burnett. “I think we got us another visitor to the kitchen.”
Just behind the wooden boxes that held the cook’s utensils and supplies, Burnett made out a moccasin at the end of a bare calf.
“C’mon over here,” Seamus suggested. “You’ll see the top of the bastard’s head.”
“By damned, I’ll pepper that’un’s ass,” Burnett swore.
Seamus gripped Burnett’s arm. “Sit tight, me friend. That pepper-gun of yours ain’t got the range to do the work at hand. You’ll only scare ’im away. Lemme pepper his tail my way.”
“Whatcha gonna do, Seamus?”
“See for yourself. Hand me that old Springfield behind you.”
“This old one. It’s just a muzzle loader. One shot—”
“One shot’s all I’ll need, Finn. Now, dig in your pocket and gimme a handful of your .32-caliber ammunition.”
“For my pistol?”
“Goddamn right. C’mon now—afore the h’athen finishes licking that pan clean of molasses.”
Pistol ammunition in hand, Seamus dumped the lot of it down the old Springfield’s muzzle. Cartridge case, bullets, powder and all.
“Gimme a chance to get outta your way afore you touch that cannon off, Seamus.”
“Then get, lad,” Donegan replied. “For I’m fixing to show the red bastard the error of his savage ways.” Then he winked at Burnett, who had slid ten feet off along the side of a wagon-box. “We’ll teach that’un it don’t pay to have a sweet tooth!”
While Seamus waited, the dark head bobbed up and down as the warrior licked his tongue slowly, deliciously across the molasses-covered tin plate he had found after creeping up the bank of Warrior Creek into the kitchen area.
When the Irishman eased gently back on the trigger, the gun roared, louder than any of the modified Springfields had, attracting every man’s attention. Even more startling was what the handful of pistol shells had done spraying into the kitchen box. Not to mention what a mess it made of the warrior with the sweet tooth.
“Lookee yonder, Seamus,” Burnett hollered as Donegan turned from his sniper’s work.
“The red bastards’re fixing on setting fire to the grass.”
At the foot of the hillocks to the west of the corral, some twenty warriors with firebrands of dried hay began setting fire to the brittle, summer-cured grasses.
“Wind’s gonna carry it right over us,” Burnett complained quietly.
“Their horsemen can’t ride over us, they figure the fire’ll do the trick for ’em,” Seamus muttered angrily. “Those of us don’t flush with the fire … we’ll roast once those flames work themselves up.”
While a steady, hot breeze fanned the flames out of the west, some of the soldiers crabbed across the open compound to the east wall. A few more feet of safety from the thick, stifling smoke that boiled over the corral, stinging the defenders’ nostrils.
“Those flames reach the wall, Seamus…”
Donegan nodded to Burnett. “Don’t think about it, Finn. We’ll go to the east wall … there’s nothing for it to feed on in the middle of the compound.”
“The smoke—”
“They burn down this wall … you just shoot at anything that moves our way out of the cloud.”
Yet in the next moment, as the wall of angry, orange flames soared better than forty feet in height over the tall grass, roaring like a thundering steam-powered locomotive beneath an insistent west wind to within a scant twenty feet of the corral itself, the searing blanket of fire undulated twice. As if measuring the resistance of the defenders.
And the moment after, those flames extinguished themselves with a spanking slap, like that of flapping canvas in a hard gale. It was almost more than Seamus could believe.
Like the right hand of Providence Itself. Sweet Mither of Christ!
Still, Providence had not finished with the grass fire that midday. No sooner had the flames been spanked out than the smoldering wall of oily smoke reversed direction, sending the gray cloud swirling back to the west rather than sweeping over the corral itself. Under this cover, several dozen warriors darted in to recover their wounded and dead comrades.
“That did it, boys!” Seamus hollered.
Al Colvin even stood, shoulders bowed, peering over the top of the west wall with the Irishman. “Figure that broke their backs, Donegan?”
“If not their backs … then we can pray it broke their will.” Seamus found Colvin studying his powder-grimed face.
“I suppose they figure it’s bad medicine, eh, Irishman?”
“You’re learning, Rebel. You’re learning.”
“We best not waste this break in the fighting,” Colvin suggested, turning toward the corral. “Zeke! You and couple more boys—get that barrel filled, hauling water back from the creek. No telling how long the sonsabitches give us!”
Al directed the majority of his defenders to the south wall to cover his water carriers. With buckets and metal pans in hand, Zeke led Bill Haynes and Bob Little under the wagon at the gate, then the trio made its mad dash to the willows bordering Warrior Creek. With their successful return, Captain Colvin ordered a second trip to the creek.
“I don’t get it, Irishman,” Al said quietly as his brother and the others scurried to the creekbank a third time. “Can’t figure why they’re letting us at the water.”
“No way to figure it, Al. Best you get some of that water into the tent for the wounded. Your man Hollister’s setting up a groan.”
“Something awful, ain’t it.”
“The howl?”
“No,” Al answered, wagging his head. “That belly wound of his.”
Seamus nodded. “Yes, Cap’n. Man gets it in the belly like that, the old sump keeps pumping blood into his gut till there ain’t no more to pump. Man dies drowning in his own juices.”
“You seen enough of it too, eh?”
Seamus tried to smile. And couldn’t. “Enough to last any man a lifetime, Reb. A lifetime.”
“I was to Vicksburg myself. Worst I saw it. Heard tell from other units Vicksburg wasn’t nowhere near as bad as Gettysburg.”
“Nothing ever be as bad as Gettysburg, Cap’n. Nothing.”
“I’ll … I best get the rest digging in,” Colvin said quietly.
“Good idea,” Seamus replied, sensing that he had made the Confederate uneasy.
Colvin turned to step off.
“Say, Al.”
Colvin looked over his shoulder anxiously. “Yeah?”
“You’re doing just fine, Cap’n. You a good officer. In fact—I’m bloody-well glad I never come up against you in that darty war we had down South.”
Colvin smiled. “Know what, you blue-belly, mick sonuvabitch? Goddamned glad we didn’t either.”
“Man hates killing those he’s taken a liking to,” Seamus cheered, slapping Colvin on the shoulder and shoving him off on his duties.
While the warriors hung back along the hills and out of rifle range down the valley, the grim-faced defenders used the lull to dig rifle-pits behind the bottom logs at the wall. With knives, tin plates, pots, and a skillet or two, the men scratched frantically at the earth. Others dragged a few of the dead mules against the fortifications. Some set to work repairing broken weapons, cleaning the rest. More
of the ammunition boxes were broken open and dragged to strategic places on the perimeter of the corral. And when they had a chance, most grabbed a mouthful or two of salt-pork or hardtack sopped in some scummy gravy or molasses that had set out the morning long beneath a forge-hot sun.
Seamus eyed the buttermilk-white orb hung almost directly overhead in a summer-pale sky, pulling the watch from his britches’ pocket. A few minutes past noon. Some two and a half hours of fighting already.
And this day’s not half-old.
Chapter 32
“Captain?”
Edward S. Hartz turned in his saddle, unconcerned. He was watching his wood detail cutting timber in the clearing near the ridge. Daydreaming mostly. Here in the hills above Fort C.F. Smith, near the mouth of the Bighorn Canyon. Hartz’s frost-blue eyes narrowed on the private cantering up, his horse snorting anxiously. He was daydreaming no longer.
“What is it, soldier?”
“Sir—you come take a look at something with me?”
“Is this important?”
His head bobbed nervously, eyes flicking to some of the rest who had stopped their sweat-work among the trees, leaning on axes and saws. “Smoke, Captain Hartz.”
“Smoke.” He sniffed. Smelling the air. “Those damned Sioux back again? Setting fire to the dry hay in the fields, Private.”
Hartz watched the young soldier swallow, as if choking on something hard and thorny. “More’n that, sir. Want you come see for yourself.”
When the Civil War veteran came to a halt on the end of the ridge overlooking the valley, what he did see for himself was enough to raise the hackles on any soldier’s back. He glanced at the private’s face.
“You did well, son.” After he took an even better look at the valley through his field glasses, Captain Hartz kneed his mount around savagely.
By jeeves, the red bastards aren’t just striking and running off this time, he brooded as he galloped back to gather his detail, figuring the fight down in the valley would require every man. Besides, with that number of hostiles brazenly out and combing the countryside, flaunting their presence, Hartz knew it would not do to leave his work detail behind, even secreted back in this black timber.
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