Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (23 page)

The past spring, Mackenzie's Fourth Cavalry had their share of troubles in town, nothing really that different from the love-hate relationship most fort-side settlements had all across the extent of the frontier west. But Company B saw things in a different light when one of their own was killed in a mysterious way, by a mysterious murderer, in the back rooms of a whorehouse in Jacksboro. When no witnesses stepped forward and it appeared army investigators had come nose-up against a brick wall, Troop B rode into town en masse and burned the building to the ground, standing around boldly as the employees and clientele came pouring out of the smoking, fiery clapboard whorehouse.

There was only the briefest of inquests held by the army in a formal setting at Jimmy Nolan's Dance House, with nothing definite noted about the murder, nor nothing done about the men who had set the fire.

“What would the collapse of those fat railroad barons' financial empires have to do with Texas anyway?” Seamus inquired.

“It's their money builds the railroads, Irishman. Simple as that. And when that money dries up and the railroad pulls out of Texas—stockmen and settlers like me get more'n a little nervous.”

“That what you're worried about, old man? The railroad not getting finished?”

Grover nodded. “I figure it means this part of the territory ain't gonna get itself settled so quickly like some of us were hoping. With no railroad, means more folks won't be moving in as fast as we'd planned.”

“Will you listen to this now?” Seamus asked Stillwell, a wry grin creasing his face. “The once-homeless nomad, Sharp Grover, is now a knee-deep sodbuster!”

Grover shot him a disapproving glare. “And that's such a bad thing for a man getting on in his years and tired of fighting Injuns for a living?”

“So, you're really trying out a new line of work?” Seamus asked, nudging Stillwell with an elbow.

“Try as I do just to raise quality horseflesh, the army keeps sweet-talking me back a'times,” Grover admitted.

“Thought it was a woman who sweet-talked you down here in the first place,” Seamus asked, trying less now to kid the older man.

He nodded. “It was. I mean, she did. Oh, hell—yes … we come down here to give it a try anyway.”

“You told me your wife's sister is down here,” Stillwell said.

“She came down here with us, the truth be known. I ain't sure why she left Kansas—a handsome woman she is, Seamus.”

“Watch out—here it comes, Irishman!” Stillwell warned.

“Sounds to me like Sharp's trying to marry off his sister-in-law in the worst way.”

Grover grew indignant at the ribbing. “She's a good woman, in a lot of ways every bit the equal of my Rebecca—and in a few, better than my wife.”

“Just one thing bothers me now, Sharp—why ain't the woman found herself a man?”

“Why should she, Seamus? Just to settle on any man?”

“Well, from the sounds of it, your sister-in-law is getting on in years. It's one thing for a man to have thirty-three winters behind him like me. But I think it's another thing entirely to find a woman who hasn't corraled herself a man by that age.”

“So where'd you ever get the idea Samantha Pike was as old as you, Irishman?” Grover prodded, the grin now back on his face as quickly as it faded from Donegan's.

“Well … I just assumed … what with you being older—and Rebecca all likely being older too … them two being sisters—”

“That's where you made your first big mistake—is thinking, you dumb mick! Just like your dear departed Uncle Liam, God rest his soul. Samantha is Rebecca's half sister, and she's ain't been of marrying age all that long.”

“Oh,” Jack Stillwell said, some sudden and sincere interest pricking his voice. “Just how old … or young is Samantha?”

“She's twenty-two, Jack.”

Stillwell looked at Donegan and winked. “Sounds to me like she might care for a younger man, Seamus.”

The Irishman shook his head. “Beware, Jack. Something wrong with a woman who couldn't find a husband in Kansas. Best we both stay out of her way.”

Grover wagged his head. “Hard for me to believe I'm hearing you boys say such things. You ever look around you at the quality of fellas coming out to Kansas?”

“Never was much a one for watching the boys—was you, Jack?” Donegan asked. He and Stillwell laughed heartily.

“Them that wasn't married and had a wife and passel of young'uns already was surely a hard lot—not the sort for the likes of Rebecca or Samantha.”

“So, did Rebecca really look over the crop before she decided on you, Sharp?” Seamus asked.

“I suppose she did, and that's why she chose me. The rest was real hard cases—buffalo hunters mostly. Those what was coming in to the western part of the territory to whittle away what they could of the Republican herd.”

“Hide hunters,” Stillwell repeated. “That ain't the sort who's made to settle down with a wife and make a family out of things.”

“Say, Sharp—did we mention we ran onto a hide hunter who knew of you?” Donegan inquired.

“No, you didn't. Who was he and where'd you run onto him?”

“Handsome young fella. 'Bout my age,” Stillwell replied. “Almost as good-looking as me too, come to think of it.”

“C'mon, now—who was he?”

“Name of Dixon.”

“Billy Dixon?”

“That's right,” Stillwell answered. “Met him up at Dodge City.”

“So they ended up having to change the name of the town after all, did they?” Sharp asked. “Yeah, I knew Dixon back to the winter we went marching off with Custer down into Indian Territory.” He looked at Donegan, “When you went off with Carr's Fifth Cavalry and Buffalo Bill Cody, Irishman.”
*

“That's what Dixon told us,” Seamus added. “The young fella thinks the world of you for what you taught him that winter.”

“What I taught him? Hell, I was nothing more'n just a scout riding with Pepoon, under Joe Milner and Jack Corbin, nothing special. And the lad was a teamster. Eager and bright, as I remember him—eager to learn.”

“But he's one of them hide hunters you said wasn't good enough for Samantha,” Donegan said with a smile.

“Oh, but Dixon struck me as being a different sort.”

“No, he didn't smell gamey to me, if that's what you mean,” Jack said, grinning.

“More'n that—it seemed he had something in the way of good horse sense about him, and cared a bit about himself,” Seamus added.

“That does sound like the Billy Dixon I knew who teamstered for Lieutenant Bell of the Seventh Cavalry. Besides hanging out in a saloon in Dodge City and running onto the likes of you two rummies—what else is the lad up to now?”

“I suppose he's waiting to hunt more buffalo,” Stillwell answered. “Said he'd just come in with some hides he'd taken south of the dead line.”

Grover's eyes narrowed. “Billy Dixon's rode south of the dead line to take buffalo?”

“What he told us.”

The old scout wagged his head. “And I just gave Dixon more credit for having good horse sense. Damn. That's suicide work down there across the dead line.”

“The army shoot a man for crossing into Indian Territory for no good reason?” Seamus asked suspiciously.

“No, not the army,” Grover replied. “That country out west of here is the last buffalo ground south of the Niobrara on the whole of the central and southern plains. The very, goddamned
last,
you understand. And now the Kiowa and those bloodthirsty Comanche are dead set on keeping it that way: out of the hands of the white buffalo hunters.”

“Then Billy Dixon's scalp ain't worth much,” Stillwell said quietly.

“No man's is,” Grover replied, “he goes hunting buffalo south of the dead line.”

Chapter 17

October 1873

As much as Seamus might not want Sharp Grover to know, he had to admit, Samantha Pike was a good-looking woman.

In many ways she reminded him of Jennifer Wheatley,
*
although the memories of her were fading.

Samantha was a bit heavier, bigger boned, and most definitely fleshy in all the right places. At least in all those places Seamus Donegan found himself staring when he didn't find Miss Pike staring back at him. The full promise of hips and the curve of her rounded rump molding into the top of her thighs. And those breasts, amply snuggled into a deep cleavage. He imagined how they must be straining against their buttons, as he dreamed of how those breasts might taste. What sheer delights, he considered, getting his hands on their soft, creamy flesh, kissing and burying his face between them as she arched her back to him, commanding him to take her—

Donegan decided he had clearly been too long without a woman, and had determined he would see to that concern once he and Jack rode back through Jacksboro, heading north for the Red River and the Kiowa-Comanche reservation at Medicine Bluff. But as things turned out, Seamus did not find himself with an occasion to slip back to one of Jacksboro's notorious houses of prostitution. One evening at supper instead, he had been told that Jack and Sharp had decided to push north the next morning. So a much embarrassed Seamus was left to try to explain why he was eager to ride into Jacksboro for that last night, a ticklish proposition, what with Rebecca Grover and her young sister in the room as Donegan stammered and stuttered and finally gave up trying to explain.

Especially those eyes, he thought again now, looking back. And the way Samantha used them to bounce from Jack Stillwell to the Irishman and back again. As if measuring them both for a wedding suit, Seamus thought. There weren't many who could even make him think such things—but then, Samantha Pike was altogether a different sort of woman. Much like Jennie had been … almost eight years gone now since last he had seen the fire in her hair high on the Montana Road.

“She's likely long married now and got at least two more children, Seamus,” he told himself that night after the sun had sunk on the far side of the Staked Plains and he sat alone on Sharp's porch, stuffing tobacco into his corncob pipe. It brought him fond remembrance of trader McDonald at Fort McPherson, Nebraska … and Bill Cody. Married himself, to that beauty Louisa. A daughter, Arta—who must be all of eight years old now.
*

Somehow, those thoughts of women and children tugged at a secret, well-hidden place within him, and brought to the rippled surface of his need the lines of verse writ by Irish poets:

A heart made full of thought

I had, before you left.

What man, however prideful,

But lost his perfect love?

Grief like the growing vine

Came with time upon me.

Yet it is not through despair

I see your image still.

A bird lifting from clear water,

A bright sun put out

—such my parting, in troubled tiredness,

From the partner of my heart.

“Do you wish to be alone?”

Seamus turned in the darkness, his face gone hot with embarrassment as he found her shadow at the twilit corner of the porch.

“No,” he finally answered, stuffing the pipe back into his mouth. “I mean—it's all right.”

“I just heard you whispering out here a minute ago,” Samantha said. “I thought you were talking to someone.”

“No one else here,” he admitted the obvious.

She came close, no sign of nervousness to her. “You talk to yourself often, Mister … I'm sorry. Seamus.”

“No,” and he drew angrily on the pipe stem. Ashamed of himself for feeling this way around a woman. A man so assured of himself most of the time, easily moving in the company of hard men and sharp-edged circumstances—made so suddenly uncomfortable around Jennie Wheatley … and now Samantha Pike. She swept behind him on the edge of the porch, the air awash with the smell of lye soap and freshly laundered petticoats hung to dry on the line out back. In private Seamus savored it in spite of himself, then listened as she settled herself at the edge of the porch, a judicious distance from him.

“It's … I was just repeating some poetry I know,” he admitted, then felt the fool for saying it. Why he had babbled that to her, he did not know.

“Poetry,” she said as if trying out the word.

“Yes,” he replied a little too curtly. “Jack and Sharp inside?” Donegan asked, trying to change the subject, embarrassed that he had admitted he recited poetry.

“They're helping Rebecca with the dishes and banking the fire for the night.”

“Sounds like they're going to bed early.”

“Sharp wants an early start in the morning—this trip of yours north to Fort Sill,” she answered.

“It's a good idea, I suppose. Should be finding my blankets meself.”

“Stay,” she said suddenly, a little strongly, then looked away at the night sky.

He was filled at that same instant with a sudden wonder of her, and believed he saw her blush there beneath the pale moonlight of north Texas.

“I mean—” and she stopped cold, her eyes imploring his for understanding. “It's early … and I get … well, there's not many people to talk to around here. I'd like you to stay up and talk to me, Seamus. If you would.”

“By the saints, but you've probably got a lot of young suitors paying you court, Samantha—a pretty girl like you.”

“You really think so?” she asked in a gush. “Really think I'm that pretty that men would want to court me?”

He smiled, more at ease now, warmed by her openness. “I'm certain of you being pretty—one of the prettiest women these eyes have seen in all my days. I find it hard to believe if you're going to tell me you don't have suitors from Jacksboro banging down your door here.”