Ashes of Heaven (39 page)

These people of mine,
he brooded,
they are the last of the brave ones—both Lakota and Shahiyela. Like the last of the leaves clinging against the late autumn winds to the branches of a tree, they are clinging to Lame Deer, the trunk of that tree. They are the last, those who will never surrender. The strong hearts have congregated around me and this last fire of the Lakota nation.

The light from our fire will never be dimmed, never go out. My people will never be conquered. Together,
he swore,
these brave hearts will make their final stand.

Here.

This, our ancient hunting ground. This, the land where the bones of our Lakota ancestors have decayed beneath the cry of the undying winds.

Here, where this heaven of ours will never turn to ash.

Chapter 32

6 May 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

European War News–Very Great Activity.

The Bombardment of Kars to Begin To-day.

Snow at Deadwood–Indian Matters–Washington News.

Indian Affairs.

WASHINGTON, May 5.—Brigadier General Crook had a long conference to-day with the secretary of the interior and the commissioner of Indian affairs, in regard to the removal of the Sioux agencies to the Missouri river, and on the Indian question generally. Secretary Schurz and Commissioner Smith entirely concur with General Crook in his view that the Indians should be compelled to work for their grub, and the conference to-day was mainly with a view to ascertain how the labor of the Indians could be utilized in the interest of both the Indians and of the government. No definite conclusion has been reached as to the precise location of the new agencies, but it seems certain the Indians will not be removed until next autumn, as during the warm season the Indians will be disposed to straggle off on hunting expeditions, but will be easily collected on the approach of cold weather.

The colonel's Indian trackers led them along the enemy's trail that Saturday afternoon, through that narrow cleft in the divide west of the Tongue for some eight-and-a-half miles until they finally crossed over into the valley of Rosebud Creek near the site where General Terry's column had bumped into General Crook's command the August before.
*

Recognizing a few landmarks, Miles had to grin—recalling how he had managed to convince Terry that it was time for the Fifth Infantry to turn back to the Yellowstone and establish their cantonment for the winter just as Sherman and Sheridan had ordered.
Had that ever been a stroke of luck!
he ruminated now.
Freeing myself of the dawdling, pensive, professorial department commander just the way Custer must have chafed to be free from Terry in those days before the Seventh galloped up the Rosebud and into destiny.

“As it's turned out, Armstrong,” he mouthed a whisper now, “I've driven one of your murderers into Canada and the other one is racing to reach his agency before he'll be forced to confront me again. If only they would stand and fight me—I could avenge your death, old friend.”

As it was, Miles prayed this last of the warrior bands would not run. Instead, he pleaded with God to give his men a chance to drench themselves in glory with this last fight of a long and most inglorious Sioux War.

He gave them a brief rest there along the banks of the Rosebud as the afternoon aged and the sun sank toward the west behind darkening clouds. After the horses were watered and the men got their land legs back, Miles ordered them back into the saddle. After moving upstream another three miles, the scouts had them cross the Rosebud and continue west, following another small creek into the increasing gloom that ballooned around them with the coming of night and the approach of storm clouds.

When his weary men had urged their reluctant animals in single file up the creekbank, each man listening for the clank of a tin cup from the man ahead of him, Miles himself was ready to call a halt in the dark.

“What time are you posting in the record, Mr. Baird?” Miles asked his adjutant as he landed on the ground and jarred his knees, both of them sore from the long, tortuous night's ride.

With no moon or starlight to speak of beneath the hoary clouds sluicing sheets of rain upon their column, the young lieutenant desperately tried to light one lucifer after another, until Miles himself went over to provide more of a windbreak. In one brief flare of light, the colonel was able to see the hands on the pocket watch Baird dangled from a soggy, shivering glove.

“Just past 2:30,” Miles reported as he straightened. A gust of wind blew out the match and the darkness swallowed them once more. “You've kept your timepiece wound, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir, General.”

“Then we've been marching for twelve hours since breaking off from our supply wagons,” the colonel replied, weighing their accomplishment in his mind. “I'd estimate we've covered something close to forty miles. Go now, and tell the company commanders to rest their men until it's light enough to resume our search.”

*   *   *

If it hadn't been for those Cheyenne scouts, Donegan knew in his gut this army would have been little more than a wandering band of tinkers and drummers—stumbling about in the rain and the gloom with little chance of following the enemy's trail.

As it was, White Bull, Brave Wolf, and the others led the Irishman, with young Joe Culbertson and Robert Jackson, at the head of the column throughout that drenching ride as the cold sheets of rain lanced sideways at them, carried on the back of a chilling wind. Now Seamus sat huddled in the darkness with the others, reins wrapped around one hand, his other holding that big watch against his ear. Listening to the steady, rhythmic beat of Samantha's heart in his soul.

Somehow that unwavering pulse kept at bay the cold, the blackness, the crushing solitude of the night. Water continued to sluice off the wide brim of his hat, some of it spilling inside his collar, raking down his back like the path of a cold, iron box-nail. The canvas mackinaw coat had nearly soaked through, so steady was the unremitting storm. Frosty vapors clotted in front of every face, creating gauzy streamers at the nostrils of every horse and mule.

The older he grew, the quicker this damp cold stabbed him to the bone, making him weary in the saddle. What with the way it settled in his joints, stiffening them like uncured rawhide, Seamus had begun to wonder just how long he would have the strength to ride out the better part of a day, covering more than those last forty miles in some twelve hours. How long could a less-than-young man take the sort of beating this land dealt those who came to test themselves against it?

Beyond the high ground to the east, over yonder in the country of the Powder and of the Tongue, a thin, mica-shaded grayness was a'birthing, faintly reflected along the edge of the hills. Its coming gave him a small measure of relief. Perhaps the storm had spent itself. With the coming of this new day's light, they could be back at their task of tracking the Lakota. From the trail-sign, he could tell the village wasn't a big one, not like many Seamus had seen. But then, the enemy camp might be as small as the one Reynolds had jumped on the Powder more than a year back. As small as the one Frank Grouard and Captain Anson Mills bumped into last September.

But nowhere near as big as that village Mackenzie destroyed along the Red Fork of the Powder River. Nothing close to approaching the inconceivable size of that string of camps Custer had pitched into beside the Little Bighorn. One huge crescent of tipi rings after another Seamus and Grouard had stumbled across as they probed north, anxious to provide Crook with word of General Terry's and Colonel Gibbon's columns operating south of the Yellowstone.

No, this wasn't a big village—but likely a dangerous camp, what with the many young hot-bloods along for the adventure, those youthful holdouts who were likely to throw in with the last chief to offer them this grab at fleeting glory.

But with help from men like White Bull, the hounds would soon have that den of foxes surrounded, cowed, and on their way back to the reservations.

He almost felt sorry for those Sioux out there—not realizing what they had coming at them: this army, its cavalry spearhead, and these trail-toughened doughboys. Not to mention their commander, a man driven, obsessed to close out a conflict no one else had been able to end.

Seamus felt a pang of regret for the enemy out there in this cold, wet coming of dawn—realizing that, had the circumstances of his birth been far different, he would be out there with them, sleeping in that camp with his wife and son, fully prepared to offer his flesh and bone to protect their lives. As it was, he was born in faraway Ireland, come as a youngster to distant Amerikay. No longer a Patlander was he—now Donegan realized he was as American as any, a yonderer, a plainsman.

Some of the Cheyenne were stirring now, just yards away, slowly getting to their feet, ripping up clusters of grass they used to brush the drenching moisture from the backs of their ponies before replacing the dampened blankets.

“Time for your husband to go back to work,” he whispered, reluctantly taking the watch from where it had grown warm against his ear. For a moment, he stared down at its face, trying to conjure hers cupped there in both of his hands—then he kissed the rain-splattered crystal, as if it really were her warm, wet mouth. And stuffed the watch back inside the vest pocket where it would remain as dry as possible beneath his canvas mackinaw grown heavy with the relentless rain.

Recalling that incomplete map George Crook was forced to use in last spring's campaign to the Rosebud, Seamus remembered that the country west of this creek vaulted itself in a rugged divide separating the waters of the Rosebud from that of a series of streams called Tullock's Forks. They likely spilled on down to the Bighorn, if not the Little Bighorn.

As he stood slowly, becoming accustomed to the stab of damp pain in his joints from sitting too long on the cold, wet ground, Donegan wondered if the Sioux were returning to the seat of their glory—the Little Bighorn. Were they hurrying over these Wolf Mountains to drop down to that valley where they sent Custer and his five companies to their fates?

Or was he only trying to manufacture some dramatic climax for this Sioux War—wanting to believe that this last band of Sioux holdouts was racing back to reach that field of victory, there to make their final, glorious stand against the inevitable?

The men muttered and coughed around him now, grumbling at their sergeants for the lack of sleep, at the kicks from those boot-toes it took to get them off the soggy ground. The men stumbled bleary-eyed and soaked with sweat beneath their India-rubber ponchos to the edge of the brush to relieve themselves, to hack up the night-gather from the backs of their throats, then turning back to tighten cinches and replace bits on protesting horses and balky mules.

Seamus turned to gaze south after he had thrown the saddle blanket on the back of his claybank mare. Surely the Sioux could hear this army coming—so noisy was this band of wet, miserably cold, and weary fighting men. Miles would whip them into line, he figured, then move them out the way Crook kept his column marching through day after day of soaking rains last autumn. That ragged column had first stalked an elusive Indian village, fell to searching for a route to the Black Hills, then ultimately stumbled and lurched southward in hopes of finding its salvation before the men died of starvation, died of despair in the wilderness.

Yanking up on the cinch, jabbing it back down through the cold, steel ring, Donegan knew this army was different. Now they had a fresh trail. And they had Cheyenne trackers. Besides, they had Nelson A. Miles—an Indian fighter if ever there was one. While Crook and Terry might dawdle and ruminate and filly-faddle, the Bear Coat was a man who took the fight right to the enemy.

He was not the sort of man to order men into battle. Instead, like Custer, Miles was a man to
lead
his troops right into that fight.

“Mr. Donegan.”

Turning, Seamus discovered the colonel's young adjutant approaching. “You found me.”

“The general would like a word with you.”

“Only me?”

The lieutenant's eyes flicked over to glance at Rowland. “Said you could bring along the squawman.”

“Bill,” Donegan called out. “Miles wants to see us.”

Rising from the ground where he was retying his wet moccasins, the white man stepped over as the Cheyenne scouts looked on with great interest. “Likely the general's gonna give us our orders for the day.”

*   *   *

As the new light emerged out of the east, White Bull led the other scouts south along the hills west of the Roseberry River.
*

Behind him rode Long Knife and that gray-eyed
ve-ho-e
who possessed a good smile, the sort that caused White Bull to believe the tall one was a fair and open man. But there were enough lines at the corners of the
ve-ho-e's
eyes, creases and crevices that ran from the edges of his nose into the hair on his face that led White Bull to realize the man wore a virtual war-map of his life. Each flaw a story of trial, tragedy, and eventual triumph.

Just the way White Bull was himself marked with the seasons of his life, all those joyous springs … and all those terrible winters.

Of a sudden he remembered Noisy Walking, his son who had chosen to die in the fight they all knew was coming when the soldier chief led his men to attack that village camped beside the Little Sheep River. It hurt anew to remember how a mortally-wounded Noisy Walking had begged his father for water that evening after the soldiers had been wiped off the earth, just as the Everywhere Spirit had promised. But White Bull could not grant his son that simple, yet precious, drink of cooling water. Now White Bull was scouting for the
ve-ho-e
soldiers who had killed his son.