Ashes of Heaven (43 page)

Then he heard a sound as he stood there in the wind, bent at the waist heaving, sucking air, gasping like the mare beside him.

Squinting into the night, trying to see something in the misty storm, Seamus wondered if the wind were playing him the fool. Or did he just want this war to be over so badly that he—

There!

By the Virgin Mary—they were coming!

Damned if Miles and his cavalry weren't on the march already!

Down the slope, there in the valley of the Rosebud.

Quickly he turned, feeling the stab of pain in his back muscles as he did, looking to the east. No sign yet of any graying beneath those storm clouds. They might yet make it if he could hurry those horse soldiers on down the Rosebud and up those few miles of the Big Muddy by dawn.

Faint shreds of disembodied voices began to drift up from below, cold and spare against the bare rock of those timeless ridges. Orders were issued first, followed by curses as the word was passed back along the column. And finally the reassuring clatter of iron shoes scraping creekbottom stone. They were crossing the Rosebud to the east. Good, Donegan thought as he gripped the horn and heaved himself into the saddle, shorted his hold on the reins and jabbed the small brass spurs into the claybank's flanks, urging her down the slope toward the creek.

It didn't take all that much convincing—thirsty as the mare was by now, fully ready for a drink after that blow atop the ridge.

“Who goes there!”

“A friend!”

The trio of startled soldiers loomed out of the heaving mist as Seamus bolted into sight at the edge of their noisy gathering—the men watering horses on the bank, tightening cinches, chewing on hard-bread and cheap army tobacco.

“It's the scout!”

The mist was tapering off, perhaps the clouds were blowing over. Donegan asked, “Where's the general?”

“I'm over here!”

Out of the black emerged a half-dozen men strung out behind that big one in the center. At his elbow stood the slight, dark-skinned half-breed with the long straight hair and the old, shapeless, rain-soaked hat pulled down on his head.

“You made it, Jackson!” He stepped up past Miles to offer his hand first to the youngster.

“Is there trouble, Irishman?” the colonel demanded, grabbing the tall scout's upper arm. “Where are the others?”

“They're safe,” Seamus declared. “But I come to say you've got some miles left to go.”

Nodding, Miles pointed to the east. “We've stopped here only to give the animals a little water. No longer than that—”

“We're going to have to ride hard to make it, General.”

The officer's lips closed and tightened into a long, grim line of sheer determination. His eyes narrowed just before he spoke, “We'll make it, Irishman.” Turning to his adjutant, Miles said, “Tell the battalion commander he has five minutes to finish watering up the stock.” Then he wheeled on Donegan. “We're close?”

“You're damned close, General,” Seamus smiled, feeling the sense of hope take wing in him once more. “These horse sojurs gonna be there by dawn.”

“You heard the man, Lieutenant!” Miles bellowed at Baird who was still standing there, mouth agape. “Give the battalion commander my compliments and let's get this outfit moving!”

Minutes later as the colonel himself was climbing into the saddle, Seamus glanced over the officer's shoulder at the horizon.

“General, look.”

Miles turned, some of the cavalry officers turning to look east as well. The sky was graying there beneath those swollen rain clouds.

“Sunup's coming,” Jackson whispered.

Twisting back around to look at Donegan as the Irishman swung into the saddle, patting the neck of his own big chestnut warhorse, the colonel asked, “How many miles?”

“A handful. Maybe more.”

“Lead us out, Irishman.” And he flung an arm forward. “Bring them along, Captain Ball! Column of twos—on the double, goddammit! On the goddamn, ever-living double!”

*   *   *

Dawn was tinting the eastern sky to a bloody rose as Seamus signaled a halt to the cadre of officers riding hard on his tail-root.

Afoot, Robert Jackson lunged onto the flat near Donegan's big claybank, yanked there for the last two miles by the fierce grip he had on the tail of Private Charles Shrenger's mount.

“What happened to your horse?” the Irishman asked in a harsh whisper as he brought the claybank around, while the officers clattered to a halt.

Bent at his waist, Jackson cocked his head and peered up sidelong at the mounted scout, huffing breathlessly, “G-gave … out.”

“How far back?”

“Long … long ways.”

“Should've hollered for me,” Seamus declared, at the same time angry and sympathetic with the young man. “I'd give you a ride behind me.”

Slowly Jackson straightened, still wheezing like a winded animal. He was drenched in sweat, droplets trickling off the end of his nose, his wool britches soaked up past his knees from the damp brush they had plowed through in the last handful of miles. “I knowed I didn't w-wanna … be caught behind our lines where the Lakota might j-jump me. So I just called out … to this s-soldier here,” and he gasped, jabbing a finger at Shrenger.

Miles's orderly nodded. “This scout started out hanging onto my stirrup as he run along aside me,” Shrenger explained. “But after more'n a mile he was getting damned tired of that so he grabbed onto my horse's tail for the last gallop in here.”

“I get left behind when the fight starts,” Jackson growled, “them Sioux find me alone and chew me up.”

“Damn,” cursed Donegan, wagging his head as he pulled free the straps to one of his saddlepockets, dragging out a canteen he handed down to the half-breed scout. “Here, drink your fill. The first dance of the ball is about to begin.”

Up in those heights to their left, William Rowland and the others had waited out the rainy night. Surely from there, those scouts could see the cavalry column as it stabbed out of the creek valley and came clattering to a halt in the new day's first light.

As Donegan tore the big, wet hat from his head and began to wave it at the end of his arm, the sky dribbled its last, the constant patter diminishing in those seconds as if the sky had just sighed itself into a sudden silence. He wasn't sure if the scouts had seen him as he dragged the hat onto his head and turned back to the head of the column with young Jackson.

Because Muddy Creek seesawed back and forth across the narrow valley, he had been repeatedly forced to ford the stream, with the horse soldiers following at every crossing. Now the troopers were coming to a halt on the north bank, upstream from these last of the Sioux, these hostiles who had dared the Bear Coat to catch them.

“General—you're within a mile of the outskirts of the camp.”

“You said the village lies in a wide horseshoe?” Miles asked.

“That's right. A few lodges downstream are on the other side of the creek. But from here you won't have to make another ford.”

Standing in the stirrups, Miles twisted about, his raspy voice raised slightly. “Bring up the battalion commander and his company captains.”

The tension was something real, something tangible, there among those soldiers as Donegan grew aware of the first hint of woodsmoke. He turned to gaze down the valley. In the growing light, he thought he could spot the slowly rising pall of smoke, not near close enough to see any lodgepoles, much less any of the tipis. But make no mistake about it: that gray smoke was lifting far enough from the brushy valley floor to tint itself with streaks of vivid, newborn red as the sun continued its own climb.

He jerked about to watch the cavalry officers among their men as the ranks came front into line, spreading both left and right within the confines of the lush undergrowth bordering the north bank of the Big Muddy and the base of the jagged ridge.

“
Epa-havee-seeve
!”

Turning with a start at that Cheyenne greeting, Donegan watched White Bull and Brave Wolf slip out of the twelve-foot-tall willow thicket on horseback. Donegan raised his hand, smiling as he spotted Rowland on their tail-roots, the others close behind the squawman.

The group came to a halt just as Miles loped up with a big grin.

“By damn, you did get back by sunup, Irishman!” Rowland cried, his eyes darting back over the cavalry forming up.

“I give you my word, Bill,” he said, then nodded his head back at the Cheyenne warriors. “What'd White Bull say to me?”

Rowland smiled, “He said, ‘It is a good day.'”

“I s'pose it will be a damned good day now,” Seamus agreed.

Dragging the back of his hand across his wet, hairless face, Rowland explained, “White Bull and the others—they wanted to get down here quick to tell the Bear Coat the women in that camp are starting breakfast fires.”

“The camp is waking up?” Miles growled, glancing to the east at the brightening sky just then beginning to dome over the creek valley. “Captain Ball!” he bellowed angrily, turning back to his cavalry battalion. “See that your men are ordered to spare the women and children in our attack. I'll have Bruguier and the Cheyenne demand their surrender the moment we make the charge.”

“
If
this bunch'll surrender,” Donegan declared.

Both of the Cheyenne said something sharply to the squawman.

With an impatient gesture, flinging his arm at the village, Rowland bellowed, “General—White Bull and Brave Wolf say it's time for the Bear Coat's soldiers to strike!”

Growing nettled at the interpreter's agitation, Miles wheeled on his officers. “Mr. Casey, form up twenty of your Cheyennes over there with your mounted infantry. You will be the spearhead of the attacking column. Tell your scouts they'll be going after the herd.”

“The herd, sir!” The young lieutenant saluted. “Yes, sir, General!” then reined away, gesturing at his warrior scouts.

The colonel wheeled on the cavalry officers. “Mr. Jerome, isn't it?”

“Yes, General Miles,” said the young officer, urging his horse forward a few yards, coming to a halt close to Miles. “Second lieutenant.”

The colonel asked, “H Company?”

“Right again, sir.”

“You will follow on the heels of Mr. Casey's scouts, charging through the village, continuing downstream until you reach the herd. Together you will stampede them, drive them off so the hostiles can't recover them. Once that's done, you'll be in charge of those captured ponies. Your men are to secure the herd until I decide on their disposition.”

“Very good, General,” Lovell H. Jerome answered. “We're ready to follow Mr. Casey past the village!”

By then the rest of the officer corps had formed a ragged semicircle no more than an arm's length from the colonel, each one of them showing his own brand of anxiousness in these moments before their attack was launched. Kicking at the clumps of grass with a boot-toe, chewing on a lower lip, repeatedly rubbing at the end of a nose, fidgeting with buttons or a gunbelt, or re-creasing the shapeless crown of a rain-soaked slouch hat.

“Captain Tyler,” Miles said, taking a step toward the cavalry officer, “you and Captain Wheelan will serve as the attack squadron. As soon as Mr. Jerome and Mr. Casey are away after the horse herd, you will follow immediately into the village itself. I'm having your companies F and G ride out front in the first wave.”

“The fighting line, sir?” George L. Tyler asked. “Very good, General!”

Then the colonel turned to the last of his cavalry commanders. “Captain Norwood, Company L, isn't it?”

“Yes, General.”

“I'm going to hold your men in reserve,” Miles explained. “We'll see how things shape up in the first minutes of the fight, and I'll throw your men in where they are needed.”

Randolph Norwood saluted and said, “Yessir.”

Now Miles turned to Bruguier. “Johnny, take Hump with you. The two of you will ride in with Casey's scouts—tell the people in that village that they will not be harmed if they surrender. Tell the men their women and children are not in danger. Remind them that we are attacking because they have failed to go into their agencies. I want you both to shout that repeatedly as you ride north through the camp.”

“We tell them, General,” Bruguier promised.

“Now, go catch up Hump and the two of you report over to Casey's auxiliaries,” Miles ordered.

Donegan watched the half-breed turn to go before he glanced at Rowland and Culbertson. “General,” he called as he stepped up to the headquarters group, “since you've got all them Cheyenne going in for the herd, what you intend for the three of us?”

The colonel's eyes quickly flitted over the other two white men who had come up to stand some distance behind the Irishman. “I want you to ride with me. All three of you, Mr. Donegan.”

“Very good,” Seamus said, then found himself saluting the colonel. “Can't speak for them other two, but as for me, I want to be in there to see for myself that this fight is the last we'll have in this war with the Sioux.”

Chapter 36

Moon of Fat Horses
1877

BY TELEGRAPH

The Russians Preparing to Cross the Danube.

Investigating the New York Postoffice Disaster.

DAKOTA.

The Surrender of Crazy Horse.

CHICAGO, May 7.—The official report of the surrender of Crazy Horse puts the whole number of surrendering Indians at 889, of whom 217 were men; 2,000 ponies were also given up, and 117 stand of arms and other firearms are known to be in their possession.

As the Bear Coat turned to take the reins of his horse from one of the little chiefs, White Bull grabbed Long Knife's elbow, spinning the squawman around to face him.

“You must tell the soldier chief I have an idea in my head!”