The stiff wind was cruel that day. Despite the bright, bright sun. Seamus gathered the ends of his tall collar in one fist and held it over his nose and mouth as he rode slowly through the devastation, past the bodies of men and women already stripped and scalped by the scouts. Everything still too fresh, and the air far too cold for any decay.
Yet the stench of death clung to this place.
Dead cavalry horses and Indian ponies lay here and there, perhaps bunched near a spot where some fierce fighting took a great toll—those dark, stiff-legged lumps frozen on the hoof-churned snow. Some time ago the uninjured animals on both sides had been withdrawn, now protected back in the ravines, behind the snow-laced red ridges where the enemy’s bullets could not find them.
“You there!”
His attention snagged, Seamus turned slightly, finding a young soldier hollering at a handful of Pawnee loosely surrounding the body of an old Cheyenne woman.
“Shit,” Donegan grumbled, and reined his bay in the group’s direction.
“I told you sonsabitches to leave the woman alone!” the frustrated picket cried out more in desperation and disgust than in anger.
The Pawnee held their rifles pointed at the ground for the most part, but they smiled at the soldier as if they could shoot him just as quickly and guiltlessly as they had the woman if he nettled them any further. Not a one of them spoke.
Donegan shouted, flinging his voice over his shoulder. “Frank! Major North!”
The older of the brothers signaled Grouard and Luther to follow Donegan.
Seamus came to a halt, crossed his wrists over the saddle horn, leaning forward so his right hand lay near his pistol. “Frank, you think you can get your boys to leave off the women and the old ones?”
Frank North bristled. “With my own eyes I’ve seen how the Pawnee have suffered at the hands of these people—”
“They ain’t suffered a goddamned thing from that old woman!” Donegan snapped, about ready to pull the gun on those grinning Pawnee scouts.
The major’s eyes glared a moment, then softened, and he turned away from the Irishman, saying something in Pawnee as he shooed them away with his arm. The scouts shot the young soldier and Donegan one last look of derision before they moved off among the plundered lodges.
“I told ’em,” the soldier grumbled morosely, stepping up to the body sprawled on the bloody snow. “Told ’em I found her—in that lodge right there.”
Seamus asked, “What’s your name, son?”
“Private Butler,” he answered, staring down at the woman’s body. Between the bullet hole at close range and the crude scalping, there wasn’t much humanly recognizable about the head. His hands shook as they squeezed his carbine. “S-second Cavalry. I told ’em to leave her be. Said I was coming back with something to tie ’er up with so’s I could take ’er somewheres the general could talk to ’er a bit.”
“I suppose she was armed?” Luther North asked.
Butler looked up at the younger brother. “If you’re asking because you figure that’s why your Pawnee killed her—the answer’s no. The old woman wasn’t armed when I found her hiding under a blanket and some robes. Shaking like a autumn leaf. She could barely walk when I dragged her to her feet.”
“Yeah, lookit that legs of hers,” Grouard replied, kneeling beside the corpse. “She’s had trouble healing that old wound.”
“Likely she got herself left behind,” Frank North surmised.
“And shot before we could take her prisoner,” the soldier growled.
“The army don’t often take prisoners in a fight like this,” Luther North boasted.
“That’s plain as the nose on my face!” Butler snapped. “Look around you! Ain’t a prisoner left in this hull goddamned village, is there?”
The elder North swiped the back of his glove across his cracked lips and said, “I suppose there isn’t, soldier,” then quickly nudged his horse in the ribs and moved past the private and the old woman’s bloodied body. “C’mon, Grouard. Mackenzie wants you and me to put a count to these lodges before we start torching any more of ’em.”
“You going with us?” Luther North asked Donegan.
“Naw. I’ll stay around here for a while,” Seamus replied, easing out of the saddle. For a moment he watched the three civilians inch through camp, counting aloud; then he walked the bay over to some willow, tying off the horse.
Turning, he stepped over to the back of a lodge where the canvas cover had been slashed open at the moment of attack. Parting the fold with his two hands, Seamus peered inside, his eyes adjusting to the dim light. An interior liner of undressed hides hung from a rope strung around the circumference of the lodge from pole to pole to provide more of a wind buffer and insulator. It too had been hacked through at the moment of escape. By the fire pit sat kettles of water and a skillet filled with dried meat. Rawhide parfleches and boxes hung from the liner rope or sat here and there against the liner itself atop the beds. Everything, including the rumpled blankets and buffalo robes, appeared as if the inhabitants might return at any moment.
Here one moment. Driven into the teeth of winter the next.
When he pulled his head from the slit and his eyes had adjusted to the startling sunlight, Donegan watched more of the Pawnee dragging plunder from nearby lodges. Piles of clothing, knives and axes, kitchenware, craftwork, and a few weapons were already being deposited on separate piles destined to be loaded upon the captured ponies and driven home to make a good many Pawnee wives very happy that they had allowed their husbands to go riding off to make war on the Cheyenne.
A high-pitched sudden scream rang out across the camp near the stream—louder and more grating on his soul than the intermittent din of battle. Then a pistol shot. And all fell quiet—except for the rattle of a far-off, long-range gun battle.
As he moved around the side of the lodge, Seamus saw a seventh pile of plunder the Pawnee were collecting. By far the smallest in size, it would nonetheless prove to be the most jarring of the spoils.
Stopping at the edge of the small mound, the Irishman knelt down, picking up the fringed sleeve of a buckskin jacket. He dragged it on out into the light; finding a small, bloody bullet hole in the back. Beneath the coat lay the bright red, white, and blue of a few of the Seventh Cavalry’s regimental guidons. A motley collection of leather gloves and gauntlets, some clean, most greasy, dirty, and stained with blood. Soldiers’ blouses and officers’ coats—gold chevrons and bars and hash marks sewn up the cuff. Here and there a smashed felt or straw hat, even a few old kepis, all having seen their better day.
Besides, there were saddles and currycombs, memorandum books and tiny bundles of letters tied with twine or faded hair ribbons, numerous canteens and wallets still containing a few of the green-and-yellow army scrip the victorious warriors had no use for.
“Hey, mister—it’s time to eat!” a soldier called out from a nearby lodge. “Pack train’s set up camp over yonder near the willows. By the butte where the wounded get took.”
Seamus waved in thanks, then looked back down at the pile at his feet.
Something shiny in the reflected light caught his eye. Plunging his thick glove down into the pile, he pulled out a tarnished pocket watch with vest chain attached. Pressing the release, he opened the watch to find inside the cover a faded brown chromograph of an attractive older woman cracked and wrinkled with age. A cold drop of sweat tumbled down his spine.
Feeling the ghosts of Custer’s dead at his shoulder.
Quickly snapping the watch shut, he stuffed it at the bottom of the pile once more and covered it up with those shirts once worn by the living. How strange he felt—here in this place of the dead Cheyenne, going through the effects left behind on this mortal plane by Custer’s dead.