Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (36 page)

That fourth night after the fire, they were back by the stream where they had been camped the morning the flames pushed them east. Water had never been a problem. Finding wood, even unburnt buffalo chips to heat coffee over, was a different matter altogether. As the horses and mules were turned up, the men would take one along each morning they went out in search, using the mount to carry back to camp any and all firewood and chips they could find at the end of the day.

“A man might do without a lot of things out here,” the old commissary sergeant announced that fourth night as the sky grew as black as the burnt scar of never-ending wilderness they found themselves surrounded by. “But he won't do without his coffee.”

Sure enough, Seamus figured, he could choke down the half-raw salt-pork and hardtack with some water. Time was he had even chewed on some coffee beans for the pure, heady flavor. But nothing in the world could replace the pleasure of a steaming cup of coffee in the morning, and another in the evening when the day was done and he was back among friends and the cold, prairie night closed in about them like a tightening, frosty fist swallowing them up.

They never took the ropes off William Graves. Even though it seemed he had lucid moments, but only in between the increasing fits of laughter and rage, the fits of convulsions. Even in those rational moments when he begged and pleaded and bribed and cried and cursed as sane as the next man, even then no one took the ropes off Graves.

And Jack Stillwell had made sure the lieutenant assigned a man to shoot Simon Pierce first—if Pierce was caught trying to release his companion.

“They have their secrets, Lieutenant,” Donegan had agreed with Stillwell. “And there's no telling what Graves, or Pierce for that matter, might offer a man to get himself released. But the man's done for.”

“It's for the best that all your men stay away from him now. Let Pierce see to his needs until the poison works its way to his heart,” Stillwell suggested, trying his best to explain what he had seen happen to others more than a dozen times since childhood.

“There's no chance he'll heal—no chance that he can fight it off?” Pierce asked, walking up to the group that fourth night after Graves had fallen into a fitful sleep, anchored against a wagon wheel with a short tether.

Stillwell shook his head. “I've seen some of those get bit what don't get hydrophobic until months later. Folks thought they was cured—by some magic potion. But of a sudden one day—they was wild and most of them run off. Never heard tell of 'em again.”

“Damn luck of it all,” Pierce said.

“This change your plans?” asked the lieutenant.

“No, it doesn't. We'll go south to reoutfit, back at Richardson. Then I'm under orders from my superiors so we'll turn right around and come back out here.”

“What about Graves?” Donegan asked.

For a moment Pierce regarded his colleague lashed to the wagon wheel some thirty feet away. “I only hope he'll last until we can get him to a doctor.”

“Don't count on that,” Jack said. “Not a thing a army surgeon can do for him.”

Pierce wagged his head. “At least by getting him back to Fort Richardson he won't be a danger to me any longer.”

“You think he'll do you harm?” asked Lieutenant Stanton.

The civilian's face went grave with concern, his eyes pleading for understanding. “Don't you know how bad it makes me feel to see my friend, compatriot and co-worker in such dire distress? Don't you see how it kills something inside of me to see him tied up like an animal? But what with the way he's been acting—there are times when I wonder if he would not turn on me, turn on any of us. How I pray there was something, even some magic, that could cure William of this curse.”

“I've known some who think there is magic to cure hydrophobic,” Jack said quietly. “They're real hard to find, but some carry mad stones—shaped like an egg, pale-colored like a egg too. A man finds one in the belly of a white doe or white buffalo cow.”

“What good is a stone to a man dying of hydrophobic?” asked Stanton skeptically.

“Word says that a mad stone grabs on to the bite wound if there's hydrophobic poison—and a man can't pull it off while the stone is sucking out all the poison. And when the poison's all sucked out, the stone turns a green color—about like the color of the juice in a gut pile when you get through dressing out a buffalo carcass.”

“My lord!” Pierce exclaimed quietly, his hand over his mouth in astonishment. “I rhetorically asked for magic—but what you've told me is nothing more than pure paganism.”

“The best part of the whole story is the milk,” Jack went on. “I've heard from some of the old buffalo hunters who made their living chopping through the Republican herd that the mad stone had to be cleaned in milk after it had sucked all the poison out of a hydrophobic wound. Some of them hide hunters told me they've killed a wet buffalo cow just to milk her udder dry then drop the green mad stone into that warm milk.”

“Did the stone turn back to white?” Donegan asked in the hushed silence.

Jack nodded. “After some time in the milk, a man can take the mad stone out and she's as good as new. Ready to keep a man safe again.”

Pierce swallowed. “I'm willing to try anything for William. Where do you think we might find such a stone?”

Stillwell glanced at Donegan a moment, then studied Graves tied at the wagon. “Mr. Pierce, your friend there's too far gone. It's been four days now. The poison's gone to his head now—ain't no doubt. You saw how he acted this evening when we pulled him down from the back of the wagon.” He looked into Pierce's eyes. “I'm sorry.”

Pierce bit a knuckle. “Dear God in heaven—poor William.”

Seamus watched the civilian walk away, going over to sit beside Graves as the man slept against the wagon wheel.

“You believe Pierce really cares about saving his partner, Jack?”

Stillwell considered it. “He does make a fine show of it, don't he? But I figure I know enough about men to know when a man's more interested in himself than he is interested in a friend who's done in every bit as sure as if that friend had been bit by a rattler.”

“You ever know anyone bit by a hydrophobic animal before?” asked Seamus.

“Yeah—a fella I hunted with back in 'seventy-one. Lemoy was his name. We was up west of Fort Dodge. Next year, in 'seventy-two, he worked his own outfit. Two of his skinners was bit, so Lemoy went right off and camped by himself on a little sandbar in the middle of the Arkansas River so he'd be safe from the skunks and badgers that was hydrophobic. But he got bit anyway. For all his trouble, he got bit on the cheek. Come the next morning, he built him a fire of some driftwood and heated his knife blade—cauterized the wound before he rode on in to Fort Dodge to see a surgeon. The doctor told him he couldn't done a better job himself.”

“So, Lemoy got healed from cauterizing the wound like we did to Graves that first night?”

Jack's face drained of color. “Lemoy was a good man. Drank a might too much. But a good man all the same. No, Seamus. He died too—even after his face healed up nice where he'd burned out the wound's poison. Always was proud of the fact that he could still grow a beard to hide the scar—but he never had much of a chance to get that beard fully growed. He died less'n three months after he got bit. Tore off his clothes in camp one afternoon and run off onto the prairie. We tried to find him—but never did.”

“Maybe that hydrophobic does something to a man's soul, Jack. Drives him right on back to the wild things.”

“All I know is that last year up on the Arkansas was a bad year for skunks, Seamus. Some fellas put out bait meat with poison—and ended up getting a lot of wolves and coyotes through the summer and into the fall. Hides wasn't worth a whole lot neither. But after last winter, we started to find a lot of dead skunks around—really nothing more'n some dried-up black and white hides and a few bones. Found the carcasses everywhere: in the forts, out by the hide ricks, right at the edge of our camps. Downright spooky, it was.”

“The skunks were all gone? Just up and died?”

“Until now, I thought that was so,” Jack replied. “But now I'm worried this is turning out to be the beginning of another season of them hydrophobic skunks.”

“I suppose we'll never know about them two,” Seamus said, watching Graves whispering in Pierce's ear, and Pierce shaking his head. Graves lunged at Pierce, struggling in vain to get loose from the ropes that tied both wrists to the wagon wheel before he sank in enraged frustration to the ground again.

“I'll be happy when we get back to Richardson with this outfit,” Jack said. “I don't figure Camp Supply is any closer than heading southeast would be.”

“Pierce will turn you back around when you do start heading this outfit in to the fort,” Seamus said. “By the saints, it'll be the dead of winter when he drags you back out here. But you best be prepared for more argument and threats from that one.”

“No—I don't figure Pierce will be able to do that,” Jack replied. “Not with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie having anything to say about what happens to his soldiers and where they go and when they march. No, Mackenzie's the sort will tie that badger-faced Pierce up in knots so tight he and his Washington friends won't be able to get loose until spring anyway. By then—yes, I'll come back out here with Pierce. And so will you … just to see what it is we came out here to do in the first place.”

“You're so damned sure about me joining you, ain't you, Jack Stillwell?”

“I am at that, you bloody Irishman,” he cheered. “Unless you've got marrying on your mind.”

“M-Marrying?”

“Samantha Pike? Ain't you gone soft on her now?”

Donegan choked. “She's a pretty thing and a real joy to smell and hold, she is—but … marrying is a whole different matter now.”

“Best you explain that to Sharp's wife—Samantha's sister. I figure they've all three got you measured for a marrying suit, Seamus Donegan.”

“I'll have no more such talk,” the Irishman protested, clapping his hands over his ears.

“All right then—it's time for me to find my bedroll anyway,” Jack replied, strolling off. “Have yourself some sweet dreams, Seamus—filled with that doe-eyed Samantha Pike.”

“Sweet dreams, indeed,” he growled, dragging out his own canvas bedroll and pulling back the wool blankets inside the waterproof sacking. Winter was come to the southern plains, and all warmth would again be drawn from the ground with another nightfall. The cozy cocoon felt good to him, despite the unrelenting hardness of the ground where his hip and shoulder lay.

And, try as he might to fight it, Seamus did fall asleep thinking on Samantha Pike—thinking on her ravenous hunger that had surprised him there on the blankets and hay in Sharp Grover's lopsided barn.

*   *   *

At the crack of the pistol Seamus was up and kicking at the blankets, his own pistol drawn and cocked as he came awake.

Overhead the sky still domed as black as the inside of a cast-iron kettle, but along the eastern rim of the world stretched a long, gray line of winter's light.

And standing in the dim glow of last night's coals was Simon Pierce, his pistol hung at the end of his right arm, smoke curling from its muzzle. At his feet slumped William Graves, blood oozing from both bullet wounds: the one fired at close range between his eyes, blackened with powder burns; and the messy, bigger exit wound that glistened the back of his head as he sagged against the rope tethers binding him to the wagon wheel.

“What the hell you doing, Pierce?” demanded the lieutenant, pulling on his wool coat against the stiff, bone-numbing wind heavy with the smell of snow. He hurried over and yanked the pistol from the civilian.

“I … I,” he started, then dragged the empty pistol hand beneath his drippy nose. “I had to. He … William asked me.”

“Asked you to do what?” Donegan demanded.

Pierce glanced up, looking for the moment like a wounded animal. Seamus almost felt sorry for him. Then the eyes went cold again.

“Asked me to kill him.” Pierce knelt beside the body, picking up one of Graves's hands in his, stroking it like a sick child's. “He said he couldn't take the pain anymore. He was frightened of the uncertainty. Not knowing when the insanity would come.”

“You're the one what's crazy,” Seamus growled, suspicion eating a hole in his gut. “I've a mind to turn you over to—”

“This is a government expedition, Donegan,” Pierce snapped, glaring up at the tall Irishman. “These soldiers are my personal guard—and you'll do well to act the same.”

“Is he right, Lieutenant?” asked Jack Stillwell.

Stanton nodded grudgingly. “Unless someone prefers charges against Mr. Pierce, there won't be an inquiry into the shooting. You, Mr. Donegan?”

Seamus glanced at Jack. Stillwell shook his head slightly, almost imperceptibly.

“I … I suppose not, Lieutenant,” Donegan found himself saying, as much as the gall rose in his throat to say it.

There was something inside his belly that hammered away at him, something that made Seamus believe Pierce had shot his partner to keep him quiet. Perhaps out of the fear that with Graves slowly growing insane with every passing hour, William Graves would indeed spill his guts about something. To shut the man up … and then Seamus looked at Jack Stillwell again.

Maybe there was a good reason Jack did not want him to protest, to ask for an inquiry. Maybe Jack knew something …

“Very well,” the lieutenant replied, a look of extreme worry crossing his face. He turned and called for two soldiers to abandon their bedrolls, to cut the dead man loose from the wheel and get him wrapped in two blankets.