Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (10 page)

“Only trouble we'll bump up against is winter doings out there. But Seamus and I will take two more along.”

“Take Ziegler and Donovan,” Seamus suggested. “They've got bottom enough.”

“On the Arikaree with you?” Cody asked.

“They'll do to cover my backside any day.”

“Donovan and Ziegler, General Carr,” Cody replied, using the major's brevet rank won during the war. “The four of us—we'll find that trail for you.”

The next morning the civilians pushed their weary mounts into the frozen wilderness, staying close enough together for safety, yet far enough apart to scour a wide chunk of territory. By the second day their search paid off.

“Sure this was Penrose's camp?” asked Eli Ziegler.

Cody stood, dusting his hand after feeling the ashes of several fires. “It's his.”

“How you so sure?” inquired John Donovan.

“It's a white man's fire,” Seamus Donegan replied. “Indian won't build anything that big.” He kicked more of the snow aside to expose the blackened fire-ring.

“Bridger smartened you up right nicely, Irishman,” Cody said, grinning. Then the smile was gone. “I suppose we need to get word back to the major.”

“I'll ride back with you, Bill.”

“No, Irishman. You three stay put.”

“How you—”

“I can damn well follow my own trail coming here.”

“And get those soldiers back here to us? How far you make it we've come?”

“Twenty-five … no more'n thirty miles,” Cody answered, swinging into the saddle. “Best get a fire started, boys. Sky looks bad and we might get snow.”

Seamus grabbed Cody's rein. “You'll be all right on your own?”

“Listen to this, will you, boys? The Irishman worried about me!” Cody laughed easily, throwing his head back in that way that made his blond goatee jut proudly from his chin. “Maybe while I'm gone, you two have Donegan here tell you about his little walk in the snow two winters gone now.”

A curious look crossed the Irishman's face. “That trail I took to Fort Smith?”

He nodded, pulling gently on the reins. “Tell 'em how you done it on foot.”

Seamus watched until Cody disappeared into the scant timber upstream. He turned about to find the two scouts staring at him, expectation clear on their faces.

“What say we get us some firewood first—then I'll tell you the story of my winter's walk along the Bozeman Trail.”

*   *   *

Cody reached Carr's camp long after moonrise that night by picking his way carefully through those cold hours, across those twenty-four miles of frozen wilderness.

“It's eleven o'clock, Cody,” Carr grumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he joined the scout at the fire where a pot of coffee had been simmering all evening.

“Sounds like you didn't expect me.”

“Didn't,” Carr replied. “Figured you'd have enough horse sense to come back in the morning.”

“What? And miss this coffee you've had burning for me?”

“Don't drink enough of that axle grease to keep you up,” Carr said. “I've already sent word to the company commanders that we're pulling out early in the morning. We'll have to push hard—my wagons can't roll through these snow drifts as fast as your scouts moved in the last couple days.”

Cody stood, tossing the rest of the sour coffee into the fire. “May take a couple days, but—I'll get you there, General.”

“With every day, I grow more worried about those men with Penrose.”

“You afraid we won't find 'em in time?”

Carr nodded. “Unless they're eating their boot-soles for rations—I figure they've run out of the rations they packed with them from Fort Lyon. And, in this snow, with this godawful weather—I don't feel all that good about us being able to find those soldiers before they starve, or freeze to death.”

“You get your sleep, General,” Cody said, handing his cup to a picket near Carr's fire. “We'll find Penrose before his brunettes are done in.”

“I'm counting on you, Cody.”

He was up with the first to kick their way out of warm blankets the next morning, pushing and prodding his own civilian scouts. The new snow that began falling sometime after midnight did nothing to raise spirits in Carr's camp.

For hours the soldiers shoveled their way through snowdrifts, cutting passage for the cumbersome supply wagons. Just past noon Cody rode back to the advance guard, his horse heaving through the deep snow.

“Major, this is where me and the others crossed to the west side of the Cimarron,” he explained, pointing across the river.

“Looks like some rough country over there.”

“It is,” Cody replied. “That's why I'm recommending we keep your wagons and men on this side of the river—the going's a little easier up ahead.”

“You're leading the way, Cody.” Carr waved his command into motion once again.

As sundown approached, throwing its gloomy light on the winter countryside, Cody had led Carr's cavalry to a high plateau among the Raton foothills. He waited for the major to come up with the advance guard.

“There's water and grazing aplenty down there, General Carr.”

The major studied the steep slope dropping into the valley of a creek feeding the Cimarron. “Not too big a problem for the horsemen, Cody. But I don't think the wagons can make down. Where can Wilson and his teamsters find a decent grade?”

Cody shook his head. “There isn't one, General. At least, not something fit for wagons for a good thirty miles in either direction. Thirty miles off … then another thirty getting down to the creek below where we found Penrose's camp—that means close to a week you'll lose to lollygagging with these wagons.”

“Lollygagging?” protested wagonmaster John Wilson as he stomped up, curious at the delay. “These are my wagons, by God—and I'll say what's done with 'em, General Carr.”

Carr studied the slope a few moments, then looked at Cody. “We'll gain a week if we drop down to the creek here?”

“Three days off … three days back—six days minimum.”

“You're taking the word of this boy here, General? I'm not asking my drivers to take a chance on that icy slope!” Wilson complained.

“You don't have to, Mr. Wilson,” Carr replied. “I'll have soldiers drive the wagons down if your men won't tackle that ride.”

Wilson drew back, puffing out his chest. “You're forgetting, General—these are my wagons.”

Carr stepped right up to the civilian, his feathers ruffled now. “And you're forgetting, Mr. Wilson—this is an army campaign you're contracted for. Not some ride in the park. You don't want to drive your wagons down there, I'll find someone who will. And, if any are damaged in the process—the army will gladly reimburse you for the cost.”

Wilson sucked on a tooth a moment, thinking on that. “You'll replace any—”

“He said he would,” Cody interrupted and in a hurry. “Now, you want to take the first ride down that slope—run down, slide down or fall down … it's your job to get your equipment down, any way you can.”

“I'm not going down that slope with my ass nailed on a wagon seat —any less taking orders from some wet-eared young rake like you, Cody!”

“Then step out of the way, Wilson—'cause I'll sure as hell take the first seat down that slope, and cut the way for the rest of you.”

Carr turned on his chief of scouts. “You know anything about handling a wagon and team?”

Cody laughed engagingly. “General, for years I ran freight for the top outfit here on the plains.”

“Who was that?” Wilson demanded.

“Russell, Majors and Waddell,” he answered, shutting the wagonmaster up.

Carr waved an arm at the wagonmaster. “Bring up a wagon, Mr. Wilson. We're going to see how Cody gets this done.”

The wagonmaster brought up the mess wagon which rode at the head of the train, halting it at the lip of the steep slope where the mules wide-eyed the drop below their traces.

Following Cody's directions, a group of the teamsters brought out their chains and locked the wheels together on one side, then did the same with the second pair. That completed, the young scout leaped onto the seat, heaved forward on the brake and coaxed his reluctant mules down the slope.

Most of the way down the animals kept the wagon in control, working with Cody as he struggled against the icy slope beneath the locked wheels. But nearing the bottom the mess-wagon gradually worked up on the mules so hard that the animals broke into a run, galloping into the snowy valley in a wild ride that caused Cody to yahoo all the way into the bottom. He brought the mess-wagon to a halt beside the creek, leaped off the seat and waved his hat at the top of the hillside.

Soldiers and teamsters alike cheered and stomped and whistled their admiration.

One by one, each wagon was rough-locked and eased down the slope so that within a half hour, Major Carr and wagonmaster Wilson had the entire column in camp, including the two hundred head of cattle.

“Cody, by Jupiter you've earned yourself a fresh cup of coffee!” Carr hailed, waving the scout to his fire.

He rubbed his hands over the flames. “Hoping you'd offer me something a bit stronger, General. After that ass-puckering ride, I could sure use something of a bracer.”

Carr finally laughed. “Well, now—I suppose we both can at that, Mr. Cody. And I have something along that just might be strong enough to warm the man within.”

Chapter 7

December 21, 1868

Four days until Christmas.

A damned lot he had to be celebrating. He or any of them out in the middle of this wilderness after another cold, wet snow had battered the land before blowing on east into Indian Territory.

Yet Seamus could not help remembering Christmases past, celebrated in that favorite pub of his back in Boston Towne. The memory of the special smells and the tastes, surrounded by fragrant greenery bound up in bright red ribbons, and the air itself rich with simmering spices and pine tar—just the recollection itself made Donegan as warm inside as if he were sipping at the hot buttered rum that was the pub's specialty at this merry season.

How he longed now for something thick and potent and bubbling hot.

Instead, he shivered, not knowing if he would ever be warm again.

Slowly moving across the winter countryside, letting his horse pick its own way through the snow and bramble, willow and bunch-grass. Each day like this he joined Bill Cody riding far ahead of Carr's column. Leaving in the gray of dawn, not riding back until the dark of twilight to the merry fires over which the Fifth Cavalry cooked their supper fare. Without asking, Seamus still knew Cody was feeling his way along more than planning out his route. Sensing through intuition where Penrose's scouts had taken the buffalo soldiers.

It was a gamble any way a man might choose—especially after the countryside had been battered by storms.

This cold in the saddle—he wondered if it were any worse than the winters in his green homeland back across the ocean. It made him smile wryly, that he still thought of Ireland as his home, when a growing part of him had come to believe he would never make it back to Ireland and County Kilkenny before his mother died. If ever.

It had been a year and a half since he had received that letter from her. Could a woman like her last that long or more? Sure it was that she came from strong stock—just look at those two brothers of hers: Liam and Ian. But still she could be the sort worn down with the woes of life, and the loss of a husband was not the least of these. Could she? Was she …

He squeezed the specter out of his mind, pushing a cold pain from his chest as he struggled to latch his mind to something else.

There's been no letters since, Seamus. But, then after leaving the Bozeman Road—you've not been an easy one for a letter to track down …

“What the hell are you doing out here anyway, you bleeming bastird?” he asked himself out loud, startling himself with his own voice amid all the aching silence of the wilderness that made him yearn all the more for the woman he left behind up the Bozeman Road.
*
“You ought to be finding Jenny and making it right with her.”

“What'd you say?”

Of a sudden he snapped to, finding Cody stopped ahead of him, turned in his saddle to peer back at Donegan with a truly quizzical look on his frozen face.

“Nothing, Bill,” he muttered. “Just … talking to meself.”

“Like it better if you talk to me—especially you've got to talk of women.”

“What's the use of talking of women out here, where we have none to look at?”

“Ah, Irishman—that's just it, don't you see? We don't have them to look at … but, what do you remember most about the woman who weighs most heavy on your mind?”

He clamped down hard, not sure if he wanted her to have a grip on so big a piece of him right now. Any time. Yet he could not help himself—for if nothing else, it was truly the smell of her, the feel of her, that haunted him now after all this time.

“The smell of her, maybe.”

“Good!” Cody cheered as together they worked their way down a short slope. “Ah, how I remember Lulu's smell.” He drank deep of the dry, cold air.

It reminded Seamus of a man drinking in a woman's perfume. He tried it himself, drawing a breath, deep, to the full extent of his chest. There was a perfume to it at that. And one that reminded him of Jenny. Was it that she smelled so much like this great land? Or, was it simply that he had no other sweet fragrance to prick his thoughts with remembering?

“God, how I miss Lulu,” Cody said, his voice a little softer now, even plaintive. Then he suddenly straightened in the saddle, as if steeling himself against the hurt.

“Where is she now?”