Somewhere miles ahead already were Crook and his headquarters group, likely following the North brothers and their Pawnee trackers. It suited Seamus just fine that he would ride back here with Mackenzie’s Fourth and the rest of the scouts, most of them Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, some of whom were beating on hand drums, all singing in their own tongue to the cold dawn sky.
Prayers.
Dear Father in Heaven, did he ever feel like praying right then.
She pulled her damp face from his coat slightly, looking up at his bearded chin. “You’ll do nothing foolish this time out, Seamus Donegan.”
“I’ve done nothing so foolish in my youth that got me killed—”
She grabbed some curls resting upon his shoulder, whispering, “Though many’s tried to raise that beautiful hair of yours.”
“But now that I’ve grown older, I find I’m one to do less and less that’s so daring and foolish.”
That too might be a vow hard for him to keep.
“It’s just two days to Fetterman, Seamus. Promise you’ll write us from there.”
“As I always do.”
“But this time write a letter to your son.”
“And you will read it to him for me?”
“Over and over again, I’ll read it to him,” Sam answered, pressing her face back into the mass of him when the wind kicked up a skiff of old snow across the icy porch. People were cheering, crying out, young children leaping across the parade as they banged away on pots and pans while the cavalry strung itself out at long last and the rear guard was finally in motion. She sobbed, “I will read it … like his father was singing a lullaby to him every night.”
With one finger he pushed back the shawl’s hood slightly and smelled deeply of her hair this last time. The tears coming freely now, he could almost feel them freezing on his cheeks, in the burr of his beard. He wanted so to remember this scent of her across all those cold days and freezing nights yet to come.
“This will be swift and sure—I’ll be home soon.”
“And when you do, Seamus—you promised to bring home a name for your son.”
“Aye,” he whispered, his lips against her ear now. “We’ll name him when I return from … from—”
“From Hell.”
“I’ll be home soon, Sam”—he barely got the words out. “Soon …”
Then he gently parted the blanket and gazed one last moment at the infant, bending slightly so that he could softly plant a kiss on the boy’s forehead. In the next moment Seamus raised his face to her, laid his mouth against her full lips moistened with the gush of her tears, then suddenly, brutally, tore himself away from them.
From family. From what clutched most tightly at his heart.
Gone to plunge back into the maw of Hell once more.
* Blood Song, Vol. 8, The Plainsmen Series.
* Trumpet on the Land, Vol. 10, The Plainsmen Series.
Chapter 16
Freezing Moon 1876
The Official Report.
CHICAGO, October 26—The following telegram was received at the military headquarters to-day:
STANDING ROCK, October 25.—To Lieutenant General P. H. Sheridan, Chicago:—Colonel Sturgis left Lincoln on the 20th, and Major Reno on the 21st. Each arrived here on the afternoon of the 22d, and Sturgis immediately commenced dismounting and disarming the Indians at Two Bears Canoe, on the left bank, and Lieutenant Colonel Carlin, with his own and Arendez force, dismounted and disarmed them at both camps this side. Owing partially to the fact that before I arrived at Lincoln, word was sent to the Indians here (it is believed by Mrs. Galpin) that we were coming and our purpose was stated, but principally, I believe, that some time since, owing to the failure of grass here the animals were sent to grazing places many miles away, comparatively only a few horses were found. The next morning I called the chiefs together and demanded the surrender of their horses and arms, telling them that unless they complied their rations would be stopped; also telling them that whatever might be realized from the sale of property taken would be invested in stock for them. They have quietly submitted, and have sent out to bring in the animals and some have already arrived. We now have in our possession about 700. More are arriving rapidly, and I expect to double this number, as I have kept the whole force here till now for the effect it produces. I shall start Sturgis tomorrow morning for Cheyenne, leaving Reno till Carlin completes the work here. Only a few arms have yet to be found or surrendered, but I think our results are satisfactory and not a shot was fired. Of course no surprise can now be expected. At Cheyenne the desired effect will be produced by the same means as those employed here.
[signed] ALFRED H. TERRY
Brigadier General
More than almost anything, he loved the smell of firesmoke on the cold morning air.
But then, he told himself, perhaps that was because he was getting to be an old man.
Young men loved most their fighting, loved their ponies, loved their women too. Oh, how a young man loved coupling with a young woman!
But as a man grew older, he found other things to occupy his thoughts, other matters to consume his days. As he put winters behind him, Morning Star had come to learn life was not all fighting and coupling. There was the silence of the mornings, that first smell of woodsmoke on the breeze, the murmur of a stream beneath a thin coating of ice.
He wrapped the blanket more tightly about his shoulders as he moved through the leafless cottonwood toward the creekbank to relieve himself. A pair of magpies jabbered nearby, noisy above the racks of red meat drying for the winter. A dog appeared suddenly, snapping and barking at the black-and-white thieves, setting them to wing. Too bad, he thought—for the dogs would get very little of that meat they protected, while the magpies would get much, much more by brazen theft.
Moving his breechclout aside, his hand brushed the knife he carried in a sheath at his waist. And Morning Star chuckled. Long, long ago some of the Lakota had begun to call him Dull Knife—because Morning Star’s own brother claimed Morning Star never had a sharp knife. It did not matter, he had decided many a winter ago. Some men lived by a sharp knife, while others lived by sharp wits.
The first cold had come. Then the land had warmed again, as it always did before this freezing moon. But now the weather had turned cold once more, and cold it would stay until spring, when buds burst forth on the willow and the cottonwood leafed. So, so much had happened since last spring.
For last winter’s time of cold, Morning Star’s people had remained at Red Cloud Agency. As he looked back, it seemed the summer sun had barely warmed the land before they had heard the reports of that first big fight with the soldiers on the Roseberry River.*
Then, no more than a few suns after that victory, word drifted in to the agencies of another, even greater fight. It was then Morning Star and the other Old-Man Chiefs decided they could no longer contain the eagerness of their people. They must go north, to join that great village living life in the old way—no more to settle for the white man’s flour and pig meat, his parchment-thin blankets that fell apart with the first hard rain.
What a celebration that had been, all those lodges and the People—starting north to join the others who had twice defeated the soldiers sent out to herd those winter roamers back to the reservations.