Trumpet on the Land (21 page)

“This is going to be bigger than any of us could have imagined,” King said. “Sheridan will throw everything he has at them after losing Custer.”

“But, you know, Lieutenant—if we are just now finding out about the battle, one thing's for damn sure: the Indians down at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail already know.”

King snapped his fingers, saying grimly, “Which means if they weren't preparing to jump the reservation and head north—they'll be doing it damned soon.”

With a nod Cody replied, “Hotter'n ever to join up with the war camps that wiped out Custer and half the Seventh Cavalry.”

Sheridan himself would have even hotter plans for the Fighting Fifth.

Later that evening Lieutenant William Hall, acting regimental quartermaster for the Fifth Cavalry, rode in from Laramie with fresh dispatches. A gravely disappointed Merritt learned that he was not to take his eight troops of cavalry and push toward the Powder River country to unite with Crook. Instead Sheridan told him he should either march on to the Red Cloud Agency to bolster the army's force at Camp Robinson, or march back to Fort Laramie to await further orders.

Whichever the colonel should decide was best.

*  *  *

That hour's halt for coffee and hardtack proved itself a deadly delay for Sibley's patrol.

As the soldiers relaxed around their tiny fires there in that grassy glade, Seamus heard more and more of them boast that the Indians would not dare follow them into the mountains. Despite how the scouts appealed, there was simply no convincing the lieutenant's men that danger lay ahead.

Grouard had long ago given up in disgust and joined the soldiers on the ground, dropping on the grass painfully to curl an arm under his head and close his eyes.

“You gonna be all right, Frank?” Seamus asked.

The half-breed whispered low, his eyes flicking down to his belly, “Just this damned woman's weeping sickness.”

“It's gotta hurt.”

He lay on his side, breathing shallow as he made himself more comfortable, knees drawn up. “Worse'n anything I ever had.”

It was early afternoon when Pourier and Donegan decided the soldiers had enjoyed a long enough halt.

Bat went over and nudged Grouard. “Time to go,” he told the other half-breed.

Clearly in pain, Grouard moved stiffly to rise, struggling to climb back onto his horse as the soldiers resaddled. He walked his horse over by Sibley to say, “You just keep your men close together behind me,” as he rose in the stirrups to rub his groin with a grimace. “Tell 'em to ride fast and keep up with me. They gotta keep up and—be ready to fight.”

The patrol moved out behind their scouts in single file, following Pourier, Donegan, and an ailing Grouard, pushing up through the forests thick with lodgepole, dotted with open parks carpeted in tall grass and wildflowers, winding their way through a tumble of boulders as big as railroad cars.

They hadn't gone all that far when Pourier signaled a
halt and slid from his horse. In the middle of the trail lay a pair of crossed coup-sticks.

“Bad medicine,” Big Bat grumbled, picking one up and cracking it over a knee.

As Pourier tossed the pieces aside, Grouard and Donegan twisted this way and that, the hair on the back of their necks fuzzing like a fighting dog's.

“Heap
bad medicine,” Bat repeated as he snapped the second coup-stick over his thigh and tossed it to the side of the trail.

“Let's get off this road,” Donegan suggested. “They know we're coming.”

Grouard agreed. “Damn betcha, Irishman.”

Seamus wagged his head, eyes searching the shadow and light of the timber ahead. “Now we know for sure they're up there—somewhere.”

Grouard led off this time, passing Pourier as Big Bat swung into the saddle. For the next half hour Frank did the best he could to keep them to the right of the well-used trail, hanging as much to the trees as possible. With thickening timber standing to the left and in front, and a jumble of high boulders and trees off to the right, a tangle of deadfall lay directly in their path.

With a jerk Donegan turned in the saddle at the hammer of hooves and the snapping of tree branches on their backtrail.

“The Indians! The Indians!” squawked the packer, “Trailer Jack.”

Both Becker and one of the soldiers who had been lagging behind came whipping their mounts into those who formed the end of the file. At that moment the boulders to their right erupted in gunfire. Warriors appeared behind the rocks, beginning to shout while they fired their weapons, closing the trap.

“To the left—by the saints!” Donegan shouted. “Ride to the left!”

In among the trees and some low-lying rocks Sibley's men flooded in a panic, the three scouts closing the file as
every last one of them leaped from his horse, scrambling to whatever cover he could find, and turned to fight.

“Finerty?”

Seamus knelt over the newsman lying flat on his back among the legs of his mare that stumbled to the side, out of the way, as Donegan came up. Finerty fluttered his eyes open. While the tree branches above them snapped and rattled with bullets, the air whining with lead, Donegan laid a hand on the fallen man's chest and pleaded, “Say you're not hit, Johnny!”

The reporter slowly propped himself up on an elbow, swiping dust and pine needles from his face and hair. “Son of a bitch! That goddamned bastard threw me!”

“Your horse?”

“Gloree, that hurt!” Finerty exclaimed as he rolled onto his knees.

With his first glance Seamus plainly saw the blood slicking the lathered chest, saw the oozing hole. That next moment the animal crumpled onto its forelegs, settled, then kneeled onto its side, big chest heaving.

Donegan said, “He's done for, Johnny.”

“Goddamn good and well too,” he grumbled. “Cursed animal—throwing me the way it did.”

“You dumb shit!” Seamus growled, shoving Finerty backward into the dirt and needles. “The poor thing threw you when it was hit.”

In amazement the reporter just stared at the man standing over him. “I … I didn't—”

“He took that bullet for you!” Seamus bellowed, turning on his heel and flinging himself behind a tumble of deadfall. It hurt something deep within him when a big, beautiful animal gave its life for its master.

Other horses whickered and whinnied, crying out in pain as stray bullets connected, falling among the army's frightened mounts and Trailer Jack's braying mules milling behind them in the timber.

“We gotta get back into the woods, Frank!” Pourier hollered.

“You're right, Bat. Get some cover,” Grouard replied anxiously, and began waving his pistol. “Lieutenant! Take your men into the timber! Back into the timber!”

“Bat!” Seamus bellowed. “Stay with me here and cover the retreat! We gotta make enough lead fly to force them red h'athens to keep their heads down in them rocks. Just long enough.”

For a moment Pourier looked longingly at the retreating soldiers, then flung himself back up the slope to join Grouard and Donegan at a small cluster of boulders.

Seamus slapped the half-breed on the shoulder. “Thanks, Bat. I owe you.”

Pourier winked and shoved his cheek onto the stock of his Springfield carbine, looking for a target.

In no time Sibley got his detail up and moving without having to prod a single man. Latching on to their horses, the soldiers zigzagged down to their left with the mounts, Becker bellowing at the mules, all of them racing through a few trees for some thicker stands of pine and fir a few hundred yards farther down the slope. There among some deadfall the men tied off the animals and turned about, flopping onto the ground behind nature's own breastworks.

“Look on up the trail, Frank,” Seamus huffed after his run as he finally slid in between Grouard and Pourier near the soldiers, pointing the long, octagonal barrel of his Sharps up the slope where the trail wound itself between two high bluffs.

The half-breeds nodded.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “If they got us in there—none of us wouldn't come out with our hair.”

Pushing the Sharps lever down, Donegan ejected the empty cartridge, then replanted a live round in the breech. “Seems those warriors dogging our tails was just a little too anxious to close the trap, don't it?”

“Lucky us,” grumbled Finerty as he crabbed up to join the three, whining lead following the white men into the timber.

Grouard rolled onto his back and found Sibley, then instructed, “Lieutenant, tell your boys not to fire a shot until they got a good target.”

“These men have fought before,” Sibley snapped testily.

“Just remind 'em!” Donegan added. “We're going to need every last bullet we have before this day's done. Maybe by the time we try to get back to Crook.”

Nodding, a grim Sibley responded, “All right.”

“And … Lieutenant,” Seamus said, causing the officer to halt in a crouch, “tell your men it's a good idea to keep one last round in their pistols for themselves.”

Chapter 12
7 July 1876

I
t wasn't as if Seamus had to tell Sibley's soldiers that they might not make it out of that fix alive. They all knew the odds they were facing.

“Men,” the lieutenant raised his strong voice above that clutter of deadfall and low rocks where he had his detail ringed in a ragged crescent, “you can all see that the Indians have discovered us. If we can make an honorable escape from this trap—all together, I might add—we will attempt it. If retreat should prove impossible, let no man among you surrender.”

Seamus looked over a few of the grim faces of those soldiers listening while they peered over fallen trees at the enemy's ground upslope. It looked as if the troopers truly understood.

“You must hear me,” Sibley continued. “There is no surrender. If we can't escape—we must die in our tracks. Those savages will show us no mercy if we're captured. Make every shot kill, men. Make every shot kill.”

Sibley crabbed back toward the scouts and settled in near Seamus.

“You did good, Lieutenant,” Donegan said quietly. “If
they know how bad things are and listen to you—we still might have a chance of getting out of this.”

His eyes narrowing on the Irishman, Sibley asked, “You really think so, or are we just putting off the inevitable?”

“Man can't ever lose hope,” Seamus said. “Man's always gotta try.”

“'Specially when it comes to his own scalp,” Pourier added.

Over the following minutes the screech of war cries and death songs grew as the warriors emerged from the boulders and began to work their way down the hillside toward the soldiers, firing as they came through the timber. Working to the left and right through the standing trees to close in on the white men lying among their breastworks, the Indians eased into rifle range, starting to pour a concerted fire upon their enemy.

“See that fancy son of a bitch?” Seamus asked the two half-breeds, indicating a warrior who appeared to be directing the others: a chief dressed in moon-white buckskins and wearing a long, flowing war bonnet. “Either one of you ever see him before?”

When Pourier shrugged, Grouard said, “Reminds me of a fella called White Antelope.”

Big Bat squinted, looking closer, then replied, “But he's Shahiyena.”

“And a mean one to boot,” Grouard added.

“Cheyenne, eh?” Donegan asked. “So they're mixed in with them Lakota what wiped those soldiers out on the Greasy Grass?”

Frank nodded. “Likely are. All blood cousins.”

“Blood is right,” Seamus murmured.

A soldier yelled off to their left, “Here they come!.”

Twisting about behind the bulwark of the deadfall, Seamus saw the big warrior in the white buckskins waving the rest to follow behind him.

“They're charging!” Sibley shouted.

“Make every shot count!” bellowed Sergeant Oscar Cornwall.