Ashes of Heaven (49 page)

“C-come a running,” he repeated in amazement, thinking back on all those miles these doughboys must have put behind them, “Come on the double.”

“That's right, soldier,” the corporal added, dragging a hand beneath the dribble at the end of his nose. “Man can allays count on 'nother good foot slogger come to pull your fat out of the fire: no matter how far, no matter how long it takes.”

Chapter 40

7 May 1877

Though the village had been put to flight and the warriors driven into the hills, the bloodiest fighting of the day was yet to come.

Nearby, Miles and Captain Ball quickly formulated a plan to prosecute their advantage now that Lieutenant Jerome's H Company and the Cheyenne scouts had returned to the camp with the captured ponies. The colonel put Jerome's men in charge of both the village and the horses while he had battalion commander Ball form up his cavalry for a full-scale assault on the heights. Many of the Cheyenne scouts were already making calls on some of the Sioux ponies, in addition to picking out some of those larger cavalry horses and government mules discovered among the herd.

As the three companies dressed right and left into formation for this attack on foot, their horse-holders stepped to the rear, ready to advance right behind the skirmishers. In the center stood the men of Norwood's L Company. On the left flank stood those troopers of Wheelan's G, and to the right, Tyler's F Company. With their mounts arrayed behind them, Ball shouted the order.

“Advance!”

As the troopers moved out at a walk, Seamus Donegan turned to find Miles watching the dismounted cavalrymen advance. He loped over to the colonel.

“General, permission to ride along behind formation?”

“By all means, Irishman!”

He quickly saluted, jabbing heels into the claybank and burst away.

At the center of the horse-holders of Company L, Seamus dismounted and dragged his mount behind him. He joined the movement up the slope about the time the warriors unleashed a furious barrage.

“Hold steady, men! Hold steady!” Ball hollered behind them on horseback, moving first to the right flank to encourage Tyler's men, then loping to the left past Norwood's men to cheer on Wheelan's company.

As soon as the enemy fire became intense, the company commanders and the noncoms were in among their men, moving them by squads, each platoon firing a volley as the others came up behind them, then went to reloading while another squad knelt, aimed, and fired at the enemy concealed among the brush and trees up the slopes. Leapfrogging up the gradual slope, yard by soggy yard.

“Put 'em on the run!” hollered F Company's Second Lieutenant Alfred M. Fuller who was waving his revolver, bringing up the laggers. “We've got 'em routed now—”

The bullet struck Fuller squarely in the right side of his chest, spinning the man off balance so that his pistol flew in one direction as he toppled backward out of the saddle in another, landing under the hooves of the first of that company's horses. Seamus was on the ground with lightning quickness, along with a private who fell out of formation the moment the bullet struck his lieutenant.

Coming to a halt, the horse-holders clustered around the scene protectively.

“That's a bad one,” someone in the group declared quietly.

“Hush yer goddamned mouth!” another snapped.

“Get something on it so the man don't bleed to death—”

“The rest of you!” hollered their sergeant, prodding them all into motion. “Keep moving! Keep moving! The lieutenant don't need none of you to help 'im! He just needs you to flush them bastards off the hill!”

“How I get him back down, Sarge?” asked the private.

The noncom looked up at Donegan. “Mayhaps this man'll help you.”

“Sure as sun, I'll help,” Seamus volunteered. “Bring my horse over, sojur.”

The young private wheeled to go for the reins. As he brought the claybank near and steadied it, the noncom said, “Lieutenant, Lieutenant Fuller? Can you sit?”

When no reply came from Fuller, the sergeant looked up at Donegan and said, “Don't think he can sit your horse, Mister.”

“We'll throw him over the saddle. The man's in bad shape. Better we get him back to one of the doctors fast as we can.”

They had Fuller slung over the saddle in no time and Donegan had started back to the rear with the private, while the sergeant continued up the slope with the rest.

Miles already had doctors Brown and Eman marking out their hospital in a small horseshoe of the stream, across the creek from the village. Two men were already there, John O'Flynn of F Company, and that other form stretched out on the ground beneath a gray army blanket, Private Charles Shrenger.

“This man needs help!” Donegan hollered as he trotted up with the horse.

Assistant Surgeon Paul R. Brown and a steward dashed up to help pull Fuller from the back of the mare, gently laying the lieutenant out to inspect his serious chest wound.

“He gonna make it?” Seamus asked.

Brown looked up, and slowly wagging his head he said, “Odds don't look good right now.”

“Then do what you can to make him rest easy, Doc,” Donegan requested. He stood and took up the reins to his horse.

Swinging into the saddle he brought the animal around and started at a lope for the side of the hill where Norwood's soldiers were all but stopped in their ascent. His L Company had the toughest part of the battlefield to cover: ordered to climb where the slopes were the steepest, to defend themselves and advance offensively, all while struggling to maintain their balance and not slip backward each time their boots lost a grip on the wet, grassy hillside strewn with loose rock.

Back among the first line of horse-holders who had clattered to a halt right behind the fighting men, Seamus watched Tyler's men continue their dogged climb on the west side of the ridge. A yard or two at a time they managed to scramble forward, forcing back the warriors who were putting up a stiff resistance, giving ground only when the odds finally tipped in the army's favor. But despite the intense pressure the Lakota faced from three sides, the warriors managed to keep Norwood pinned down and Wheelan's G struggling to advance up the ridge a foot at a time.

Of a sudden the first handful of Tyler's front ranks broke over the crest, seizing a firm foothold on the top where they began to lay down a murderous crossfire against the warriors who had forced the other two companies to take cover. A cheer went up among Tyler's horse soldiers as more and more of F Company reached the heights, concentrating a devastating fire on the enemy.

With what little ammunition they had begun the morning with, the warriors had no choice but to start falling back, some of the young men on horseback and others on foot fleeing over the top of the ridge where the slope descended into the valley of the Big Muddy. Most hurried upstream, their blood boiling from the rout. In their flight some of them would fall upon the pack-train, while others pinned down a lone horse soldier struggling to repair his busted saddle.

But on the east side of the ridge, where most of the women and children had gathered behind a few of those stalwart warriors making a valiant stand, the story would play itself out to a sadder end.

There the warriors slowly retreated along the heights, clinging to the brush and trees, covering the retreat of the women and children until the slope eventually gentled to their right. Terrain that would allow Wheelan's Company G to remount and charge down upon the screaming, fleeing Indians.

“Horse-holders to the
front
!”

Seamus turned, the hair on his forearms prickling at that order. How many charges had he made with saber? How many had he been part of against these red horsemen of the high plains? He stood with the others in Norwood's company to watch as Wheelan's horse-holders rushed forward with the mounts, quickly passing off throatlatches. Men snapped carbines onto their slings, flung the Springfields to their backs, and leaped into the saddles as G Company went stirrup to stirrup.

“Front into
line!
”

That second command gave him a cold shiver across the broad scar streaking down the great muscles of Donegan's back.

“Charge!”

And Wheelan's men were off with a deafening roar as those half-a-hundred scared, worked-up men jabbed their tiny brass spurs into the flanks of more than fifty matched grays. Whooping and hawing, they raced uphill after the Indians scattering on foot like a flock of wrens with a hawk swooping down.

There on that gentle, open slope turned to killing-ground, Donegan watched it happen. The older ones, those not able to keep up with the strong warriors who ran, turned and fired, then ran again, were the first to fall beneath the onslaught of Wheelan's charge.

“No!” Donegan bellowed, feeling like he'd been gored himself as he watched the slaughter from afar.

There, midway across the slope, he spotted the old gray-head, not sure if it was a man or woman at first. Then as the form stumbled, he saw it was an old woman, gray braids flapping as she scrambled back to her bare feet in her muddy, soaked dress.

A trooper was upon her in the next breath, swinging the barrel of his revolver at the back of her head as he loped past. With the power of that blow, the woman went sprawling. While the soldier yanked back on his reins to wheel his mount in a skid, the stunned woman lurched to her hands and knees, still crabbing up the slope where others called to her.

But the soldier reached her first.

Leaping out of the saddle as the woman continued to labor up the slope on all fours, the young cavalryman lunged over her, grabbing the woman by the braids, and yanked her around.

Surely he had to see she was a woman—not a warrior! Seamus felt the angry bile rising in his throat.

For a moment the soldier held his pistol out as if he was going to slash it across the old woman's face, but instead he flung the woman's head about as he stepped around her and began dragging the old one across the slope to a small copse of stunted pine a few yards off. There he threw her down against a tree, watching how she cowered and peered up at him, blubbering pitiably.

When the soldier turned his back on the old woman, walking away a few steps, Seamus breathed again with relief, his lungs aching while he held his breath.

But the soldier suddenly wheeled, took deliberate aim, and fired a bullet point-blank at the woman's head.

Biting his lower lip in fury, Donegan felt the warmth of the blood ooze across his tongue as his eyes began to sting with rage.

Quickly he turned to look right, twisting to look left—had anyone else seen the murder? But there was no one close enough at that moment for him to grab, no one he could shout to, no one else to protest that killing. Breathing deep while his heart pounded in his ears, a calm started to wash over him as he looked on all sides again, seeing how the officers and their soldiers were intent upon other concerns.

A soldier was a soldier, while a murderer was a beast. A deep gulf existed between the two, a gulf that could never be breached.

Seamus knelt, placing the carbine against his shoulder, bringing up the front blade and seating it within the notch of the back-sight, finding that anonymous, faceless soldier striding back to his horse without a whimper of remorse for what he had done.

Donegan held high, right at the brow-band of the trooper's slouch hat, knowing the bullet would drop some in its travels uphill. Watching the soldier move toward his horse …

Blinking, Donegan suddenly glanced again at that old woman's body. Moving only his eyes he squinted one-eyed at the murderer, placing the front blade against his faceless target. Here was a bastard who brought shame to the Second Cavalry. A blight who had shamed a century of good soldiers.

No one would know. He'd be just another casualty. Another soldier killed by the Sioux. A victim of war like the old woman—they'd say she was just a worthless old Injin woman anyway, he brooded. No one would give a good bleeming damn about her, about any of the non-combatants who had been killed in this last decade of brutality.

The fury in him began squeezing down on that trigger. But the rest of him revolted, preventing that finger from moving, resisting to the point where he found his hand, his whole arm shaking, his vision blurred.

No one would ever know—just one more dead soldier. A dead murderer. A merciless butcher who killed old women, likely slaughtered children too …

An image of Colin bloomed in his mind. What would his boy think of him if he ever knew his father had killed another white man in a battle against Indians? How could he expect his son to look up to him if he sank as low as those who killed for the sake of killing?

Dropping the blade slightly, Donegan squeezed off the shot a yard in front of the soldier's toes. That bullet made it with the cavalryman's next step forward, slamming into the ground inches in front of the horseman's boot, making him leap back, vault toward his horse in panic, then lunge atop the saddle. He kicked furiously, spurring the animal down the hill.

Seamus was grinning with satisfaction when he crawled off the ground, following the soldier's path—fully intending to run down the soldier and pummel the man until his face was a sodden rag of wounds. But just as he did so, the cavalryman reached the forward edges of Wheelan's company. A solitary horseman mingled with half-a-hundred horsemen, every last one of them swirling about, reforming in knots.

G Company swallowed that lone soldier, sweeping him away in the murderous frenzy of battle.

Grinding his teeth in fury, Donegan wondered if he was crazed, gone insane after all these years of fighting, after leaving a war against Confederates to leap into a war against the red men of the plains. Didn't war, after all, have everything to do with killing? Was he a demented, soft-brained creature to think that there must be some honor to the way a man conducted himself in battle?