Seamus stood, disgusted with himself, ashamed. Like a damned grave robber. Like these goddamned Cheyenne. Just like those Lakota they had bumped into at the Slim Buttes.* All these souvenirs stripped from the soldier bodies left on that hill beside the Little Bighorn.
“Goddamned grave robbers!” he cursed under his breath, thinking about that watch and that woman. About the man who loved her and rode off with an army far, far from home.
Then that thought of the watch made him wonder what time of the day it was—thinking on what Sam and the boy were doing right then.
From the hang of the sun, it was likely past noon. Perhaps as much as two hours past. And in that moment he remembered how hungry he was.
He untied the bay and walked it east toward the commotion: men hollering and snapping like starved, gaunt dogs around that pack train. None of the drooping mules had been unloaded nor none of the escort’s bone-weary horses unsaddled for almost twenty-four hours.
“Irishman! Over here!” Frank Grouard called out.
As he came up to the headquarters group, Seamus saw that Mackenzie had turned his complete attention to the swarthy half-breed and place a folded sheaf of paper in Grouard’s glove.
Frank promptly loosened a button, shoved the papers inside his coat and wool blouse, then rebuttoned his buffalo-hide coat as the North brothers turned away and the Irishman came to a stop. “Donegan! I’ll be carrying word to General Crook to bring up the infantry.”
“Good for you, Frank. If you can carry word from the Black Hills to Laramie for Crook, I figure you’re the best man we got for this job. Good luck, you ugly child.”
Mackenzie turned as Donegan held out his hand and shook with Grouard. The colonel seemed to size Seamus up and down a moment, then said, “How would you like to give me a hand yourself, Mr. Donegan?”
“This about them words we had earlier?”
“That? Hell, no—that’s all forgotten.”
Donegan asked, “What you have planned?”
“I figured you’d like to help me see if we can put an end to this long-range sniping and get ourselves a truce worked out with the warriors in the hills.”
“Yeah,” he quickly answered. “I’d like to have the chance to do that. What’s your thinking, General?”
“Go round up Rowland for me—that squaw man who can talk the enemy’s language,” Mackenzie said. “I first thought of using one of the scouts—but I’d always wonder if I was being told the white man’s truth. So go fetch Rowland for me. Bring him here. I want the two of you to see about quieting things down and getting these folks to surrender before night falls.”
Seamus glanced at the sun keeling over into the western quadrant. “We don’t have all that much time, General.”
“That’s why I’m in the hurry I am, Mr. Donegan. If the warriors aren’t going to surrender soon, then I want the infantry getting here on the double to force ’em out of the rocks tomorrow.”
“And?”
“And,” Mackenzie replied thoughtfully, “if the warriors will at least surrender their women and children to me for the night—then not one of the noncombatants needs to die from this inhuman cold.”
From all that Young Two Moon could see, there were only five left on top of that rocky knoll. Before, there had been many, many more. But now so many had retreated as the soldiers had punched through the village and scattered the warriors in the rocks along the northern wall of the valley.
So only five remained. Cut off. And the soldiers were moving in.
Two, three, then four times the Cheyenne made futile attempts to reach the five courageous warriors who continued to make things hot on the soldiers and scouts scampering around in the upper end of the village.
“Do not worry about us!” they shouted down to their friends far away. “We sing our death songs and will take many of the enemy with us this day!”
It was clear they had given up. Almost like the suicide boys whom the elders had paraded through camp the night before the soldiers had attacked that great village nestled alongside the Little Sheep River. But these five were not suicide boys. These were seasoned, veteran warriors who had likely calculated the gamble of being caught where they were when they first went to the top of that hill. From there they would have had themselves a perfect view of the destruction of the gray-horse soldiers by the warriors in the ravine. On the brow of the hill he recognized White Horse, Long Jaw, and Little Horse. Young Two Moon did not know the others.
“Look!” a voice called out behind Young Two Moon. “See who is coming to fight!”
“Yellow Nose!” the cry went up among the warriors at the side of the slope leading up to the breastworks.
“Yellow Nose has come!” the women screamed above them, trilling their tongues and shrieking with renewed passion.
Yes, Yellow Nose—one of the most daring in the fight against the ve-ho-e soldiers at the Little Sheep River. Captured from the Black People* as a child, Yellow Nose had grown to become one of the most courageous warriors among the Ohmeseheso.
Somehow this morning he had rescued his feathered warbonnet, or perhaps he wore that of another man. It did not matter. How magnificent he looked atop the bare back of that pony, wearing only leggings and breechclot. No shirt nor moccasins as he moved the horse slowly through the crowd that clamored about him, touching his leg, calling out his name.
“Who will go with me?” he asked in a booming voice.
Immediately many hands shot into the air, their courage electrifying everyone within hearing.
“Bring your weapons and come with me!” Yellow Nose cried out, pointing the muzzle of his Winchester repeater at the knoll. “Some of my friends are in trouble and I must help them!”
By the time they were streaming across the rugged ground for that slope, Young Two Moon figured there must have been at least three-times-ten streaming out like a flight of geese from Yellow Nose, just as the rest of the long-necked flock veed from the point goose while they winged overhead in the first cold days before winter. Many of them wore bonnets and feathers, skins of wolf and badger and skunk—everyone shouting, raising his hoarse voice into the cold air to frighten the soldiers and give their hearts daring for this charge.
One, then two and three at a time … the guns began to fire around Young Two Moon and the rest. The five warriors on the hill looked over their shoulders and saw their friends coming. Three of them climbed to their knees, waving their rescuers on enthusiastically, whooping and pounding their chests with fists, others shaking their fists at the enemy scouts who yelped and howled in dismay when the five quickly retreated from the hilltop while their rescuers held the soldiers at bay.
At the base of the slope Yellow Nose whirled and pranced atop that pony, shouting at the enemy, calling out instructions to his warriors until it came time to run back to safety.
This time they had rescued the five. They had dared gamble with their lives for their friends.
And they had won.
* Trumpet on the Land, Vol. 10, The Plainsmen Series.
* The Ute.
Chapter 35
Big Freezing Moon 1876
Nearly naked, she had been standing resolutely with the other women, most of them older than her fifteen summers, among the rocks they had piled up along the top of the ridge at the upper end of camp.
Above what was left of their village, now that the soldiers and their Indian scouts had begun to set fire to all that the People possessed in their lives.
After singing so long in that terrible cold—here where none of them found any protection from the winter wind—her voice was all but gone. Her throat so raw, it gave her great pain just to draw in each breath, one after the other, much less to sing with all her might.