Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Watch your backside, Seamus Donegan,” he reminded, shaking the big hand, then letting his drop to the sheeting.

  “I got this scar on my back, left there by Confederate steel and fumaric acid,” he answered. “It burns when there’s danger ahind me.”

  Then Seamus did something that he figured they might talk about for days to come at Fort Phil Kearny after the big Irishman had gathered up the big gray horse and General Lee’s hoofs hammered south toward Fort Laramie. And the plains of Kansas.

  He bent over and planted a kiss gently on the old man’s cheek. As he pulled away from Marr’s face, Seamus saw the tracks of water glistening down the leathery skin.

  “Damn, if you can’t turn a he-boar into a whimpering sissy,” Marr sputtered angrily.

  “Sorry, Sam,” he apologized. “Just … just that you’re the closest thing I’ve known to a father … hardly knew mine. Suppose … that’s why my mother always put so much faith in her own brothers. Hoping as she did one of them might take the place of me own father after he was killed. Until, they both run off to America.”

  “You’re the first man what’s kissed me, Seamus,” he sobbed quietly. “Wished … I’d kissed my boys afore they enlisted and were gone off to the war. Wish I had.”

  “You watch your hair. ’Cause I’ll be back, Sam Marr,” he reassured, straightening after grabbing up his slouch hat. “That’s a promise.”

  Seamus turned on his heel, listening to the sound of his boot soles on the rough-hewn plank floor as he made his way down the row of beds, stomping noisily through the brilliant shafts of gold streaming in through the windows.

  You’re burning daylight, Seamus Donegan. Best get south while you can.

  And he worked at scuffing up more noise with his boots as he hurried toward the door at the end of the infirmary.

  “Godspeed, Seamus Donegan!” Sam Marr hollered out from his bed, the voice stronger than before as he struggled up on one elbow to hurl his words down the aisle. “Man goes on a death stalk like you—I’ll keep you in my prayers!”

  Seamus worked at making still more noise with his boots now as he neared the infirmary door, passing by Horton and his stewards. More noise, so no man would hear the sob catch in the big Irishman’s chest.

  “I’ll pray for you, Seamus Donegan!”

  Epilogue

  Up north at the hay cutters’ corral near Fort C.F. Smith, the Indians returned the morning after their daylong fight with the white men. Licking their wounds and eager to wreak vengeance on anything the defenders had left behind.

  The bitter warriors hacked to death all the wounded mules abandoned by Captain Burrowes in his haste to return to the fort. They set fires here and there in the fields, flames having the last, purifying word on the flimsy corral wall.

  Days following that second of August, a band of friendly Crow rode into the post with intriguing news of seeing firsthand Red Cloud’s villages on the Rosebud, filled with wounded. Each morning following their visit to the Sioux camps, the Crow informed the soldiers that more of those who had died through the night were taken from the villages into the surrounding hills. Sioux and Cheyenne and Arapaho squaws wailed their ancient, keening cry of lamentation.

  The soldiers figured the Crow were doctoring the truth, if not outright lying.

  So to prove what a horrendous toll the corral defenders had exacted from their attackers, those visiting Crows guided some soldiers to a sandstone ledge not far to the east of where the hay cutters’ corral had stood that hot first day of August. In caves dug out of the ledge, and in the trees dotting the valley itself, the Crow explained they had counted more than fifty bodies buried by the retreating hostiles. Because Red Cloud’s warriors were still about the nearby country, the soldiers declined to go in search of more graves at a site farther down the Bighorn River where the Crow claimed the white men would find even more bodies.

  On the morning of August third a detail from Fort Phil Kearny rode down to the wagon-box corral. When Major Smith had brought his noisy relief party and the mountain howitzer to the rescue the day before, Red Cloud’s hostiles had been forced to abandon many of their dead, especially those fallen close to the corral. Upon reaching the meadow that next morning, the soldiers found not one Indian body remaining on that field all but ringed with the silent foothills of the Big Horn Mountains.

  Those fierce and jealous guardians of this hunting ground had done exactly as Col. Henry B. Carrington himself had done the day after Fetterman’s command suffered annihilation. They returned to the scene of their defeat to retrieve their honored dead.

  * * *

  A September sun streaked the eastern sky with the pink of dawn as Seamus Donegan finished lashing his bedroll to the back of General Lee’s saddle. He sighed and turned back to the fire, accepting the cup of coffee Jim Bridger offered him.

  After a mutual silence for long minutes, the Irishman finally spoke. “I’ll miss your coffee, Jim.”

  The old man grinned crookedly, then tossed a twig into the flames that danced around the skillet in which he was grilling slices of venison. “I see you’re serious about leaving this morning, son.”

  Seamus blew steam from his cup into the chill, predawn air of the high plains. Then nodded. “I stay here any longer, I’ll not make Kansas before the snow flies.”

  Bridger never looked up. Continuing to poke and prod the venison steaks with a peeled willow twig. “I ain’t good enough winter company, eh?”

  Donegan chuckled. “Some of the best company a man could hope for, Jim Bridger.”

  As the old trapper pulled a steak from the skillet and slapped it on the tin plate he nudged across the ground toward Seamus, Donegan continued to stare at the flames.

  “You never talked about the woman … all the way down from Kearny, son. So tell me, you fixing on going after her now?”

  The Irishman drew his knife blade across the tender meat taken from the doe found less than a couple miles from Fort Laramie yesterday afternoon on their hunt for Donegan’s trail food. The steak fell apart under the steel, red juices seeping from the tenderloin.

  “Got some family business to attend to first, Jim,” he answered, not irritated with the old man’s natural inquisitiveness.

  Bridger spoke around a chunk of steak he shoved into his wrinkled mouth. “Just as well, son. Women get a man so bedizened … he’ll tromp through hell to find the one he loves.”

  Donegan stopped chewing. “Sounds like you speak from experience, Jim.”

  His grin cracked the well-lined face that was like a war map of his forty-plus years in these mountains. “Lots of experience, you young lop-eared pup!”

  “You figure Injin women make the best wives, eh?”

  “Don’t you? Man like you’s laid with all kinds, way I see your stick float. So, you tell me about women, Irishman.”

  Seamus wagged his head. “For better and for worse, old man … usually means for good.”

  “And that scares you, don’t it?”

  “Damned sure does, Jim!” he sighed, thinking on it. “But, then another feeling comes roaring in that tells me what I felt with Jennie was good. God help me, I can’t begin to tell you how it was … without even laying with her. Feeling something so strong I could taste it.” His eyes sought Bridger’s, imploring them, wanting the old trapper to understand. “I want to go on tasting it till my candle’s snuffed out.”

  “Why’n’t you following the Platte to Nebraska, son?”

  “It’s just … just that I have this to do.”

  The old trapper clucked like a sage hen, stuffing another chunk of venison between his lips. “Take the word of a old man what’s seen a bunch of country, son: the farther you run … the longer the way back.”

  The memory of her clutching him, clinging to him like ivy to an oak, was the most bitter potion Donegan had ever tasted. And with this moment Seamus fully realized he must drink a little from that cup every day. Drinking every day until he finished this stalking of men a
nd could go in search of Jennie.

  After brooding on his own thoughts a few minutes, Donegan sat his tin cup aside and began whittling a fine stick he would use to pick his teeth. “You’ll stay here for the winter, Jim?”

  Bridger nodded, rubbing his belly. “Damned good venison you shot, boy. Yeah—I’ll stay here. The folks good to me. Not like they are up the Montana Road some. Just as well stay here, since they don’t need me up there no more.”

  He paused, sensing that Donegan was not really listening at all. “And you, son. What about you? Nothing gonna turn you from hunting down this uncle of yours?”

  Seamus wagged his head, never looking up from the fire. “You might say I promised someone I’d see this through, Jim.”

  “Lot of space out on them Kansas plains.”

  “You wanna come show me?” Donegan’s voice rose with a twinge of excitement at the prospect.

  “Shit! I don’t belong there no more’n farmers belong out here among God’s greatest creations. Farmers—hear they’re pushing ’crost Kansas now.”

  “That’s why the army’s there.”

  “Damn right, son. And that’s why the buffler ain’t.”

  “Maybe I’ll see me some buffalo in Kansas, Jim.”

  “Could be,” he replied absently, still mad at the unseen settlers farther east. “What’s a fella like you to do this winter in Kansas? You find yourself a place to stay warm and your belly full?”

  Donegan laughed. “Worse comes to worse, Jim—I’ll wait out the winter hanging ’round one of those army posts. Find me something to do. A good horse there—General Lee is. And I reckon the army will fill me belly least once a day. Besides, their beds are warm and dry.”

  “Sounds like you see yourse’f wearing army blue again, boy.”

  Seamus wagged his head and chuckled. “Not just yet, Jim. But the army does give a man a good horse, full belly, and warm bed. All that some men truly need.”

  “My way of callating—you need something more.”

  Seamus rose, rotating an aching shoulder, flexing the muscles of his left calf which complained more and more with autumn coming ever since a Cheyenne arrow had pinned him to Leighton’s horse.

  “I do need something more’n the army can give me right now, Jim.”

  “Scouting’s a fair game. Lookit me.”

  Seamus nodded, smiling warmly. “Perhaps I’ll give it a try someday. Had a good teacher in you.”

  Bridger tossed back the last of the coffee in his cup. “Lot more to learn than what I teached you riding to Laramie, Irishman.”

  Donegan took hold of the reins of the big gray, then finally turned to look over his shoulder at the old trapper. “Way I see it, Jim—you’ve forgotten more about scouting than any the rest of us will ever know.”

  Bridger hobbled over quickly as he could, hunched a little more with the morning chill, his rheumatism refusing the hips much motion.

  “You always knowed what to say to this old man to make him feel pert, Irishman.” He stopped in front of Donegan, pulling a long, well-oiled thong from round his neck. “Want you have something afore you tear off for the prerra on your own hook.”

  Bridger pulled the small medicine pouch over his head, spreading the thong with his hands. Seamus yanked his felt hat from his head then bent his great height forward as the old trapper slipped the pouch around his young friend’s neck.

  Jim sighed, squinting an eye up into the new sun peeking over the great plains of the Platte River stretching endlessly east from their camp.

  “Here’s something to have, case we don’t run onto one ’nother again.”

  Donegan examined the small, elkskin pouch trimmed with red wool and porcupine quillwork. “What … what is this?”

  “Medicine bag. Carried it for many a year now. Near as I can callate, I had that ’round my neck ’bout as long as you been alive, young’un.”

  “A good-luck charm?”

  Bridger snorted, throwing a punch at the big man. “More’n good luck, Irishman. Injuns got medicine helpers … the spirits that live in rocks and trees and such. It’s all in there. Feathers and ashes … all that.”

  Seamus squeezed it, sensing something warm and uncanny in his palm. “It will be my medicine helper as well then, Jim Bridger. But I have nothing to repay you—”

  “Wagh!” Bridger snorted the grizzly’s battle cry, chuckling. “I don’t need nothing in return. I’m an old man, Irishman. Lived me a damned full life out here in these spaces. All I need is up here.” He tapped a gnarled finger against a temple. “And what no man can ever take from me in here.” Bridger brought the finger to his heart.

  Donegan reached out slowly so as not to scare the smallish man before him, having never touched Bridger before in the year they had stood the test of Red Cloud. Yet now, to the Irishman, it seemed only fitting that in this parting he should do exactly what he felt.

  Seamus pulled the hunched, brittle old man into his embrace, feeling like a mighty oak sheltering the aspen seedling.

  When Bridger finally pulled back, he sniffed once, dragging a hand under his nose through the white, week-old mustache. He hobbled back to the fire muttering as Seamus slipped a foot in a stirrup and rose to his saddle.

  “Time was, Irishman,” Bridger spoke up, his back to Donegan while he knelt over the blackened kettle and poured more steaming coffee into his battered tin, “this ol’ man come to the mountains but a child o’ seventeen. Young’un makes mistakes a’times, you know? I did.”

  Jim rose painfully from the fire, the coffee tin smoking like a cup on fire itself. “That first trip to the mountains … I offered Gen’l Ashley to stay with a man I figured would be a day or two in dying. Got mutilized by a sow grizz. Me and another said we’d stay till he died … out east it was a ways … near the Grand River as I recollect. That fella—ol’ man named Hugh Glass—he never died. Day after day … but the other’n—he talked me into leaving ol’ Hugh there … aside the grave we scooped out’n the sand for him along that creek where the sow grizz jumped and mutilized Glass.”

  Seamus nudged General Lee toward the firepit.

  “Me and Fitzgerald spooked and got high tails behind us … pulled out on Hugh. Left him to die by wolves or red niggers—whatever hap’t on him first.”

  “You’ve always been sorry you left him to die.”

  Bridger wagged his head, rolling his lower lip between a thumb and forefinger thoughtfully. “Naw. Hugh Glass didn’t die. He come looking for me and Fitzgerald. Ol’ man found me that winter up to Henry’s fort. I was a pup then—seventeen years old and my first winter in the mountains.”

  “So, this Glass figured you owed him, right?”

  “Plain and simple, I was his meat. He had every right to kill me for leaving him for dead. But, after holding his pistol again’ my brow for a few minutes, he took ’er away. Saying I was just a pup and didn’t know no better.”

  Seamus nodded. “Those fortunate among us learn in the journey across our years, Jim.”

  Bridger chuckled, taking a sip of the scalding coffee. “Taught me, that ol’ man did. Across all my winters in these mountains, Jim Bridger’s never left a wounded man behind again.”

  “I recall you arguing with those cowards who were not in favor of Carrington’s plan to retrieve Fetterman’s dead.”

  Jim snorted into his coffee, his eyes narrowing on the tiny flames. “I learned some powerful medicine once I gave up thinking I knowed everything, Irishman.” He looked at Seamus.

  Donegan sensed more than Bridger’s eyes boring into him. It was as if something wise and far smarter in that old man’s soul were peering right into the pit of him.

  He smiled. Holding down a hand to the old trapper. “You’ve taught me well, old friend.”

  Bridger took the big hand and shook it, his rheumy blue eyes twinkling. “I trust you will fare well in your search, Irishman.”

  “I got your medicine watching over me now, old man. Got your spirit helpers riding with me.�
�

  Seamus Donegan gently nudged the big gray off, easing the animal through the shafts of sunlight slanting into the cottonwood grove here beside the Platte River like fractured yellow streamers. Shadow. Then sunlight. Shadow. Then …

  HERE IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE STALKERS—THE NEXT VOLUME IN TERRY C. JOHNSTON’S BOLD NEW WESTERN SERIES—THE PLAINSMEN:

  Prologue

  “I don’t figure this got nothing to do with you,” the sergeant growled, his red-rimmed eyes glaring harshly at the civilian striding up to the hitching post. He reminded the newcomer of a skinny wolf.

  “None o’ your business, stranger,” echoed a second soldier.

  A third dressed in dirty army blue lunged up, shoulder to shoulder with the first. “You heard the Sarge here,” he spat. “Best you g’won your way now, sonny. Afore you get hurt.”

  “Not so sure it’s me what gets hurt here,” the tall Irishman replied, the hint of a smile spreading his dark beard. Almost a head taller than any of those five soldiers now crowding him at the hitching post, he gazed down at the shiny, blood-smeared face of the Negro soldier sprawled in the dust of what Fort Wallace, Kansas Territory called a parade.

  “A mick he is, boys!” the sergeant roared in hearing the stranger speak, his reedy laughter goading the other four shouldered close round him like a pack of wolves with downed buffalo calf in sight. “As if there ain’t enough of ’em in this goddamned man’s army … we got loud-mouthed ones wearing civilians’ clothes too!”

  “Sarge—this’un makes out like he owns them army britches!”

  The older sergeant’s eyes narrowed, studying closely the patched and worn union britches the tall civilian sported. Complete with yellow stripe down the outside of each leg.

  “Cavalry was it, Irishman?”

  “Aye,” he answered, taking one step back as two of the leering soldiers slowly flanked him.

  “That’s horseshit, if I ever heard it!” the sergeant spouted. “Ain’t an Irishman been borned what can straddle a horse long enough to be a cavalryman!”