Ashes of Heaven (30 page)

Chapter 24

Early April
1877

BY TELEGRAPH

BLACK HILLS.

Crazy Horse Coming In.

DEADWOOD, April 5.—Crazy Horse and 1,500 warriors encamped north of Bent Butte creek last night on their way to Spotted Tail agency. They are in a destitute condition and anxious for peace. They state that Sitting Bull will accept no terms of surrender and is making for the British possessions.

The cold, spring breeze teased the loose waves of hair that surrounded Samantha's pale, drawn face that early morning as she and her husband stood against the porch railing at the front of officers' quarters. She wore a look he had come to recognize through so many farewells, so many painful partings. It hadn't gotten any easier. That first time he and Sharp Grover reined away from the old scout's homestead down on the Staked Plain,
*
he could understand why she might convince herself that he wasn't ever coming back.

But he had.
*

And he had given Sam a ring before he said goodbye the next time, marching off on Crook's Powder River campaign
†
that cold winter of 1876. Seamus came back to her a second time, and a third after Crook finally tired of trying to corner the hostiles through a spring campaign that eventually fizzled out as the fickle spirits of earth and sky conspired that autumn.
#
After returning to her- arms from the army's grand winter campaign with Ranald Mackenzie's Fourth U.S. Cavalry,
@
Seamus figured Samantha ought to know that he would ride through hell itself to return to their simple, unadorned life together.

But this morning, unlike so many before, there was not the clamor and clatter of regiments and supply trains, teamsters and troopers and foot soldiers setting off on campaign. No, this morning Fort Laramie went about its normal business as Seamus Donegan prepared to set his life adrift again upon the winds of fate … alone.

“I have something for you before you go,” she said quietly, looking up at him with those red-rimmed eyes of hers.

“I thought you gave that to me last night,” he bent to whisper in her ear. “And again this morning too.”

Samantha's cheeks flushed, and her eyes darted left and right to assure herself no one heard him. “You are so naughty, Mr. Donegan!”

“Only with my wife, Mrs. Donegan.”

He watched her stuff a hand into the pocket gathered beneath those pleats at her waist, there under that muslin apron she had knotted around herself. Sam pulled out a small box, wrapped in a wrinkled butcher paper he knew she must have talked out of Collins at the trading post, and secured both ways with three colors of her knitting yarn for a makeshift ribbon.

“F-for me?” he stammered, aghast as he took the small box in his big right hand, then swallowed. Caught speechless, stunned by the suddenness of this surprise.

For a moment Seamus gazed down at the boy lying across his left arm, looking up at his father.

“Here, let me take him, Seamus,” Sam said, lifting Colin from her husband's arm.

The baby whimpered as soon as his mother put him to her shoulder. Samantha turned Colin around so that he could watch his father tug at the ends of the yarn bows she had carefully tied around the package. For now the infant seemed content, staring at the tall gray-eyed man about to set off for Indian country once more. Although a stranger to his son in many ways, Seamus nonetheless believed that in some unfathomable measure the boy did know him as his father.

Stuffing the strands of multicolored yarn into the left pocket of his heavy canvas-and-blanket mackinaw, the Irishman yanked the paper off and crumpled it in the pocket too. Then he raised the lid of the small box. Inside lay shreds of hemp packing material, the sort that cushioned rifles and pistols shipped from the eastern states to this far western frontier.

His hands came to a rest and he looked up at her. “What is this you've done?”

“You've got to find out for yourself, Seamus,” she replied, lightly bouncing Colin in her arms as he fussed.

“Where'd you get—”

“From Collins!” she shrieked with exasperation. “Will you look at your gift, for God's sake!”

“All right, all right!” he soothed then chuckled as he stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “You've caught me flatfooted, you know that—don't you, woman?”

She dragged a finger beneath a teary eye and said, “See what we've given you.”

“We,
is it now?” he replied, starting to push aside some of that coarse hemp packing, much of it tumbling out of the small box to the porch planks below. “Colin had a hand in this, you're saying?”

“Yes, he did,” she replied, then bent her head to plant a kiss on the boy's short, soft hair tossing in the cold breeze.

“Oh … Sam,” he croaked, unable to shove any more sound from his throat.

“You like it?” she whispered, peering into the box with him. “You really, really like it?”

Seamus snagged his free arm around them both and crushed her against him for a moment. In her ear he said, “I love you so.”

Then he stepped back, winking at the boy who gazed up at his father with wide eyes filled with awe.

Carefully lifting the big pocket watch from its cradle of packing hemp, Seamus found a sixteen-inch silver chain hooked to the watch ring. At the end of the chain hung a small key.

As he inspected the key, she explained in a hurried gush, “It's to wind the watch. To set it too. Don't lose that key. You might need to wind it this morning. Wind it now before you go—”

“I've never owned a watch before,” he interrupted her quietly, gazing into her eyes. “But … how did you buy it from Collins?”

“Your wife's set some money back since last summer's campaign,” Samantha declared proudly. “A few pennies here, a few pennies there—”

“And you've never done without?”

“Only without you, Seamus,” and she pressed her cheek against the front of his coat.

He clutched her to him again, looking down at the face of the watch, reading the tiny words:
Elgin Nat'l. Watch Co.

“Collins gave me a good price on it.”

“He should have,” Seamus grumbled, “as much as we've supported him lately.”

“It's two years old, he told me,” Sam continued.

“Don't matter none to me that it's used.”

“Oh, no—it's not used,” she explained, wagging her head. “Just that it was made in 1874. It's brand new. Only come out here recently.”

Suspending the shiny silver watch from a few inches of its chain, Donegan turned it round and round for the boy who reached out to touch its glittering surface.

“You don't recognize it, do you?” she asked.

“Is it—”

“It's the one Collins told me you've been eyeing ever since you came back from the Yellowstone,” Samantha admitted.

“He told you, did he?” Donegan replied. “Collins shouldn't have told you. Man don't really need a watch where I'm going—”

“If my husband wants something special for himself, then I'll get it for him, by damned!” she shut him up.

“Samantha Donegan!” he chided. “You, cursing, right here in front of our—”

“As if he won't hear the very same from your lips—and likely worse!”

He bent his head and kissed her long, surprising Sam at first—her mouth going slack before she kissed him back hungrily. Then he planted a kiss on the boy's cheek and before Colin, pressed his lips against Samantha's again.

“I'll think of your beautiful face every time I look at this watch's face in the days to come,” he told her, feeling the salty sting betray his eyes.

Moving one step closer to press against him, Sam said, “When you put the watch to your ear and listen, Seamus, I want you to think of the beating of my heart. How it sounds when you lay your ear on my breast.”

His vision was getting fuzzy as he croaked, “And all those stars I'll see up there in the sky each night when I make my camp … I'll remember how your eyes sparkle at this moment.”

Donegan looked down at that watch again now even though the light had grown so dim he could barely read the narrow hands. It didn't really matter what time it was. He had been in the saddle before sunup every day and hadn't made his cold camp until after sunset, for better than two weeks now. Gone from Laramie sixteen days and the aching for the two of them hadn't lessened.

Down the dark slope below him lay the Tongue.

He figured if the horses could find their footing, he'd ride on into the night as long as they had the strength. Then he'd find a place to lay out the day when the horizon started to gray. He hadn't seen much sign of the warrior bands. No fresh trails, no columns of smoke, no restless or stampeding buffalo herds … but this was Indian country after all. Had been Indian country ever since he crossed the Powder.

He was plunging into the bloody maw once more.

Seamus kissed the face of the watch, closing his eyes and conjuring up her face. He squeezed the watch fiercely, then stuffed it back into that pocket sewn inside his mackinaw as the breeze stiffened with twilight's approach. He would hold onto as many pieces of her and the boy as he could through every day of this journey—what he prayed would be the last of this terrible war against the Lakota and Cheyenne.

Praying the eternal God would once again sustain this lonely, simple man and see him back to the bosom of his family.

Sustain him long enough to see this bloody war through one last fight.

BY TELEGRAPH

Dull Knife and His Band Surrender to Crook.

THE INDIANS.

Dull Knife's Band Surrenders.

CAMP ROBINSON, Nebraska, April 21.—Eighty lodges of Cheyennes under Dull Knife and Standing Elk, surrendered to General Crook at 11 a.m. to-day. The village comprises about five hundred and fifty persons, eighty-five of whom are fighting men. They turned in six hundred ponies, sixty guns and about thirty pistols. They are completely destitute of all the necessaries of life, having lost everything when their village was destroyed in November last. They have no lodges, but simple shelters of old canvas and skins, very few blankets or robes and no cooking utensils. Many are still suffering from frozen limbs. It is surprising that they have been able to hold out so long under these circumstances, and their doing so proves the fortitude of the American Indian under privation and hardship. This makes about 780 Cheyennes who have surrendered here since the first of January. The latest advices represent Crazy Horse as still en-route for this agency.

As things turned out, it was a good thing that the half-breed hurried along after White Bull.

When the holy man leaped atop his pony and scampered away for that herd of the white man's spotted buffalo, the soldiers standing guard on those animals couldn't understand a word White Bull tried to say in his pidgin-English, and didn't even comprehend any of the sign he made for them in his utter excitement to be off with those eighteen head.

Why, didn't he wear the same uniform as those
ve-ho-e
soldiers!

Didn't he say the white man's words—
Bear Coat
—well enough in his imitation of the soldier's tongue?

But the herd guards were growing visibly exasperated by the time Big Leggings rode up. The half-breed evidently explained everything well enough to the soldiers by the time he turned to White Bull and said, “Take your eighteen, holy man. And be sure to remind your people they are a gift from the soldier chief who will greet them tomorrow when they reach the fort.”

“Thank you, Big Leggings!” he roared, then urged his pony away toward the spotted buffalo.

In his enthusiasm and eagerness to be under way, it didn't take White Bull long to cut eighteen of the animals from the rest and get them lumbering south toward the low hills. These creatures were dull-witted, he thought. Docile, easily herded. Not at all like the buffalo—a cantankerous, mercurial beast.

He wasn't but four or five arrow-shots from the soldier camp when he heard horses coming up behind him. He was concerned the soldiers had come to reclaim their animals. Both the
ve-ho-e
who approached on his back-trail wore three chevron stripes across the sleeves of their blue jackets. White Bull thought those gold slashes were pretty, and wondered if the Bear Coat might give him some for his own uniform.

As the soldiers drew closer they slowed to match the plodding pace of the cattle, one reining off to the left, and the other flanking to the right. Both began shouting, whistling shrilly, slapping coils of rope against their legs, making as much noise as they could as they urged the animals along the trail. And Big Leggings wasn't far behind them, coming up at a lope. He and these two soldiers ended up staying with White Bull for the rest of the afternoon, all three hollering at the creatures as if it were the most fun in the world. White Bull enjoyed yelling at the dumb animals too. Great fun—this white man way of yelling at stupid beasts.

Only when the first headmen leading the village procession came into view off in the distance did Big Leggings and the two soldiers leave their posts at the side of the herd and ride up to White Bull, all three shaking the holy man's hand in turn.

“These
ve-ho-e
sure do put a lot of value on this matter of shaking hands,” he told Big Leggings when the half-breed held out his own to him.

“It is because you are a soldier like them now,” Big Leggings replied. “We see your people up the trail now. So we go back to the fort for the night.”

As soon as they had touched their soldier caps, the pair turned about and disappeared beyond the trees with the half-breed, all three riding for the fort.

White Bull didn't think he would have any trouble getting these animals the rest of the way by himself.

“Nephew!” cried Black Moccasin from among those in the lead.