Trumpet on the Land (23 page)

His horse was dead.

Gently he rubbed its muzzle, for a moment remembering the big gray. Remembering how the General had carried him to that sandy island before it fell, more than one bullet in its great and powerful chest.

Fighting back the smarting of tears, he quickly yanked loose the latigo tie lashing the twin bags to the back of the saddle and threw his weight against the dead animal to free the off-side pouch. In the bags were rolled the two long shoulder belts of Sharps ammunition, along with his reloading tools. As he flopped them over his shoulder, Seamus heard the reassuring clatter of a few boxes of cartridges for the pair of army .45s he wore belted over his
hips. It took but a few seconds more for him to tear loose the rawhide tie holding the coil of rope to the saddle, quickly lashing it round and round his waist above the pistol belts.

Under the weight of it all, Seamus turned downhill at a crouch, racing for the Tongue River somewhere below them a mile or more. But suddenly he stopped and gazed once more at the carcasses of more than twenty-five dead horses, gripped with the remembrance of the animals Forsyth's fifty scouts shot to make bulwarks against Roman Nose's charging, screaming, wailing Cheyenne.

He closed his misting eyes a moment, seeing the laughing face of Liam O'Roarke.

Recalling the pain that sank clear to his marrow, here on this timbered hillside, feeling once again the aching, empty hole that had torn through the middle of him with the dying of a beloved uncle on that sandy island turned bloody in the middle of an unnamed river.

Chapter 13
7-8 July 1876

T
hat Friday afternoon the Sibley patrol was fifty miles from rescue.

Their only hope was to help themselves.

It seemed the soldiers understood that—every last yard they bounded down that hill, across a small, open glade before they entered thicker timber where old, leaning trees interlocked with those younger lodgepole pine still standing and an extensive patch of burned trunks testifying to an ancient forest fire, the whole maze conspiring to slow their flight. From that point on the men began to stumble over deadfall, tripping on rocks hidden in the grass, their soles slipping as they tried to clamber over fallen trees. Yet not a single murmur rose from the lieutenant's soldiers as they scrambled back to their feet and kept on running down, down, on down through the timber. The air filled only with the rasps of their burning, swollen lungs as the Tongue River came in sight below them at last.

Sweating beneath his heavy coat that he had refused to take off, Seamus caught up with Pourier. Beside Bat he kept on pushing to reach the soldiers who were gradually passing
Grouard. The half-breed moved in great pain—but he lumbered quickly enough in his wobbling gait, cursing behind teeth he kept gritted all the way down that rugged mile of descent to the river. Racing ahead of Grouard, the first of the soldiers plunged off the bank of the Tongue, into the icy water, without the slightest thought of taking the time to locate a ford.

“Step on the goddamned rocks!” Pourier huffed as he lunged to a halt at the grassy bank. “Can't leave a trail for them to follow!”

Hurrying a few yards downstream, Sibley himself started to cross the river atop a fallen tree while still more of his patrol waded right into the Tongue, not heeding the half-breed scout's warning. Halfway to the far bank the lieutenant's boots slipped on the loose bark of the rotting trunk, and he pitched headlong into the soul-chilling current. Sergeant G. P. Harrington and Corporal Thomas C. Warren leaped in right behind Sibley, pulling the sputtering lieutenant from the swift current and hauling him to the far bank between them as they struggled against the bobbing froth of mountain snow-melt.

“N-never was much of a swimmer,” Sibley gasped on the far side.

“The river's running high and wild,” Donegan said. “So much runoff at this season. Ain't many a man can swim against that current.”

Directly above them stood the foothills, slopes that lay rumpled in one rise and fall after another all the way into the Big Horns themselves. At that moment the forest far above them echoed with a half-dozen volleys of renewed gunfire.

“Won't be long before they find out we're gone,” Big Bat moaned as he bent at the waist, catching his breath, his soggy clothes muddying a puddle at his feet.

Seamus gazed back across the Tongue, his eyes searching the far slope they had just scampered down. A sudden, wild cry of half-a-hundred voices raised a furious, shrill call.

He said, “I think they found out, Bat.”

A few of the soldiers began to chuckle behind their hands. More of them joined in until the entire bunch was laughing, slapping one another on the back, congratulating themselves on their escape downhill—roaring at the disappointment the warriors must be feeling. It was good to laugh, Seamus decided. A good, long laugh, for they had escaped from one peril, yet still faced another, if not greater, danger. Between them and Crook lay fifty-odd miles of mountainside, granite spire, timber, raging river, and narrow canyon precipice.

At a time like this a man surely deserved to laugh in the face of danger, even spit in death's eye.

“Let's get moving,” Sibley ordered, firmly back in control. He pointed at the slope above them. “We're going up, Frank?”

Grouard nodded there in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. “We got to go where no Indian on horseback can go. Go where even no Indian on foot will want to go. It's going to be tough.”

“Only way we're making it out of here and back to Crook,” Sibley said with resolve. “Take us back to camp, Grouard.”

Into the deepening of dusk and on into the brief alpenglow of twilight descending upon those mountains, the scouts led Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley and his twentyfive handpicked veterans. Through the rugged breech of granite walls and dizzying mazes of thick timber, where Seamus thought only a mountain goat could find footing and make itself a trail, first Grouard, then Pourier, led the detail upward toward the crest of the divide, ever working south by west as the sun fell and darkness swallowed that high land. The air chilled within moments of the sun's disappearance. Though not one of them complained just then, from time to time Donegan heard the telltale chatter of teeth, like the clatter of dice in a bone cup.

The moon rose and arched overhead in its slow, hour-by-hour spin toward the western horizon beneath some
clouds congealing like grease scum atop a meaty stew. With full darkness upon them the sky suddenly opened up with explosive charges that lit the entire span of granite spires above them, hurling shards of icy hail and wind-driven rain down upon the hapless wayfarers, drenching them all for a second time that day.

Yet all the while the two half-breeds pressed on, despite the ferocious wind that toppled over the weaker lodgepole and made the less determined of the soldiers whine and whimper, begging to stop. On Grouard and Pourier doggedly led Sibley's patrol ever toward Camp Cloud Peak. Straight on into the teeth of that mountain hailstorm, bent over as they pushed into the mighty gales until even the strongest among them began to lag, soaked to the marrow, chilled to the core, clinging to his last shred of strength.

From the position of the Big Dipper and the North Star once the heavens began to clear, Seamus judged it to be an hour or so past midnight when Baptiste Pourier stopped at the edge of a small, starlit glade near the skyline.

“I gotta rest,” Bat whispered hoarsely, his chest heaving.

“It's all right,” Seamus confided, following the others quickly scurrying beneath a generous outcropping of overhanging rock. “We come far enough, Bat. Let's all rest for a while.”

Beneath the shelf of granite they would be out of all but the strongest wind. Here, where they collapsed ten thousand feet or more above sea level. Here where the hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and frightened men could curl up, clutching nothing more than their rifles, and try to catch a few minutes of cold, fitful sleep.

Once that day they had walked themselves dry in the clothes each of them had drenched in crossing the Tongue. Shoddy boots had begun to crack and split. Agonizing blisters troubled almost every toe, rubbed raw with the wet stockings and spongy, ill-fitting boots.

Now they were soaked again, the ground around them white with icy hail.

But they were alive. Not one of them lost. They had escaped from sure death through nothing more than pure pluck and gumption. And though their miserable bellies cried out for food, though every man lay there through that cold night shivering until he feared his teeth would rattle right out of his head—they were alive.

Nearby some voices rose quickly and boiled into anger. Almost frozen with weariness, Seamus nonetheless rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled past most of the others huddled beneath the rocky shelf. At the far end he found Pourier arguing with Sergeant Day.

“Hey—Donegan,” the soldier said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

Bat growled, “Tell him to leave me be, Irishman!”

Turning to Donegan for help, Day explained, “I told him we shouldn't kindle a fire.”

Seamus strained to make sense out of it in his numbness—weary, hungry as he was. “Why no fires?”

“Lieutenant's orders.”

For a moment Donegan stared down at the first feeble flames Pourier had coaxed out of some dry pine needles he found blown back under the rocky outcrop. “He's probably right, Bat. Fire here at night—”

“Go away, Donegan. Just leave me be.”

“Injins below can spot the light from a long way off—”

Pourier whirled on Seamus, snarling, “I rather be killed by a Injun's bullet tonight, than I wanna freeze to death. Now you tell this goddamned sergeant to get out of my sight, or I just might gut him myself.”

Donegan was relieved when the sergeant began to back away.

Day grumbled, “You ain't gonna listen to me, half-breed—then I'm gonna roust the lieutenant and make my report that you was breaking his orders.”

“Go ahead, for all I care!” Pourier snapped. “Don't make no difference, 'cause I'm gonna have my fire.”

After watching the sergeant shamble off, Donegan thought about going back where he had been. But he promised himself he would do it later. Right now it seemed that such a crawl would take too much effort.

So he asked Pourier, “Mind if I stay right here with you?”

Bat shook his head. “No problem with sharing my fire with you. Every man in this bunch is against lighting a fire, until he can see just how good the warmth feels.”

Turning at the sound of movement nearby, Seamus saw Sibley hobble up on sore feet and sink to the ground.

“Bat—I can't let you have a fire if I've ordered the rest of the men not to start them.”

“Keep your boys warm, it would.”

“But you ought to know better than any of us how dangerous a fire is up here—”

“No more dangerous than anything we done today. No man can see the fire, not with this rock above us, that timber down there.”

“We can be spotted from down there on the side of the mountain—”

“They ain't following us up here, Lieutenant. Besides, the way I built this little fire, no one gonna see the flames. I'm cold—so I'm gonna warm myself. No matter what you say.”

Sibley shook his head. “I'll have to put you on report.”

“I don't give a damn no more. Report me to Crook. Report me to Crazy Horse too!”

In those few minutes Seamus had watched most of the color return to Sibley's face as he sat so close to the cheery flames.

“All right, Bat—you can keep your fire if you think we're in no danger.”

“Nope, none.”

The lieutenant seemed to apologize as he shivered uncontrollably a moment. “I am awfully cold myself.”

“You sit right here with us,” Donegan suggested. Sibley only nodded, spreading his hands over the low flames. “Soak up some warmth while you can. It can make a body feel so much better.”