Ashes of Heaven (47 page)

“He's telling Iron Star to turn and fight!” Bruguier announced. “Telling him to fight until they're dead!”

Arm in arm, the two Lakota whirled about, with Iron Star struggling to raise his weapon, having trouble leveling it at the soldiers as bullets sailed at them. Lame Deer fought to maintain his balance each time a new bullet shocked through his body. Brazenly, bravely they both turned their backs to the enemy and started up the hill, trudging wearily, both bleeding terribly from their wounds.

What gallantry, Seamus thought. Instead of fleeing for their own safety, both warriors struggled to save the life of another. What courage in the face of certain death.

They were both done for, Donegan figured, dragging his carbine off the saddle and chambering a fresh round with the lever. Those two can't make it up the hill to safety—not with all those soldiers concentrating their fire on them, even shave-tail soldiers who didn't practice their marksmanship.

Seamus stood there in amazement as the pair trudged farther and farther away as the soldier line roared away. After a few more yards Lame Deer dragged a pistol from his belt and waved that last weapon back toward the soldiers. Crazily, he fired, and fired again, unable to aim the weapon, the explosion of each round a small puff of muzzle-smoke. Yet each bullet did nothing more than smash into the rain-sodden earth a few yards behind the chief.

Another last apt of bitter defiance in the face of death. Lame Deer's last courageous sneer in the face of the enemy.

It was plain the chief couldn't last much longer, not with so many wounds.

Finally, the strength seemed to flush out of Lame Deer. He stumbled and pitched forward onto all fours. Iron Star fell backward beside him, rolling onto his side and crumpling into a ball.

Off to Donegan's left, Robert Jackson kicked his horse into motion, bursting from that group of officers protectively surrounding the colonel. Hunched over his horse's neck, Jackson galloped east toward Captain Wheelan's company.

Shrill shouts drew Donegan's attention back to the escaping pair. Up the slope, Lame Deer was squatting on his knees, trying to yank Iron Star off the ground when he was struck with another bullet that rocked his whole body. Slowly the chief keeled back onto one elbow, then sank for the last time.

Iron Star slowly rolled aside, lumbering to his feet to stand over his dead uncle, one arm clutching his belly wounds and the other dragging the muzzle of his rifle. Surprising Donegan with his stamina, Iron Star lurched around sharply and continued to trudge desperately up the slope.

As Seamus looked aside to find Jackson among Wheelan's men, the troopers started to move out toward the far side of the narrow spur Iron Star was climbing. In moments Company G would be in position on the far side of the low ridge—waiting for the Lakota warrior, nephew of the fallen chief.

The wounded young man appeared to grow more weary the higher he climbed, struggling step by step, one foot falling in front of the other, dragging his weapon by the muzzle as if it weighed as much as a horse.

Already, White Bull and Brave Wolf were hurrying forward, hoping to reach Lame Deer's body, preparing to strike first coup on this enemy who had once been their comrade-in-arms.

What dogs war makes of us, Donegan thought as gunfire erupted from the far side of that spur where Wheelan's men had disappeared to lay in wait for Iron Star.

More desperate cries burst from the far slopes where the women and children watched. They must be able to see it, Seamus thought—to watch Iron Star cut down.

Leaping atop his horse, Donegan kicked it into motion, heading for the far side of the spur. He reached the rising ground just in time to watch Iron Star settle heavily into the grass as if he were merely sitting. There he leaned forward slightly, attempting to reload his rifle from some cartridges in his belt.

By then Robert Jackson was the first to burst away from Wheelan's line. He covered half the distance between the troops and Iron Star before he reined up suddenly and spun out of the saddle. Dashing forward a few paces, he suddenly knelt and took aim, gripping his pistol in both hands.

Iron Star's head popped back violently, his headdress slipping off to the side as the Lakota slowly lay back in the grass, his legs twitching for a moment before the body ceased moving.

Already on his feet, the young half-breed was shouting, sprinting for the body as renewed rifle fire came from the hillside above them. After making no more than a few yards toward his intended quarry, Jackson wheeled about and beat a hasty retreat.

“No scalp's worth losing your own!” Seamus bellowed, spurring his horse up so that he provided some cover for the young half-breed.

“Not just that! I want that headdress too!” Jackson huffed as they both came to a halt among Wheelan's soldiers. “Soon as we start mopping up and burn the village, I'll get that bonnet off that body.”

“Time enough for taking your trophies later,” Donegan reminded sourly. “For now, the general's got his work cut out for him clearing these hills.”

*   *   *

“They're having a time of it!” the young infantryman yelled exuberantly to the others all up and down the line of pack-mules.

“I'd say, my boy,” replied an older foot soldier. “Just listen to 'em banging away at them red-bellies!”

The sounds of battle were well carried up the valley that dawn as this escort struggled to reach the village with their precious ammunition lashed to the mules, struggling over the open ground.

He had already been blooded, as the old files with the Twenty-second called it. Assigned to the Glendive depot last summer, he was with Otis's bunch when the Sioux jumped them on their way with that long bull-train of supplies bound for Miles's Fifth at the mouth of the Tongue.
*
He was blooded already, by damned. Seen men hit, watched army bullets strike the enemy. Heard their shouts and screams and blood-curdling shrieks. He was blooded all right. Not no wet-eared, shave-tail recruit no more.

“Gonna make short work of it, them boys are!” cried a voice, cheery and lustful, as they marched along to a certain victory over these last of the warrior Sioux.

For some time he kept expecting to reach the battle scene, listening to the booms of the big guns rattling closer and closer, the cracks of the smaller carbines the Sioux used. The minutes and yards crawled by as the soldiers struggled to push the mules up and down the broken landscape, stumbling themselves each time they had to cross and re-cross the narrow stream, as it meandered from one side of the valley to the other. After all this time and all that fighting, after all the miles of trying to catch up …

Disgruntled, he grumbled, “We gotta be getting close—”

“Sweet mother of pike!”

At that exclamation from one of the civilians walking ahead of the column, they all jerked to look up at the high ground, just as the first screams and shrieks burst from the throats of the warriors. More than a dozen of them, perhaps as many as twenty.

“Jesus God!” he whispered, filled with sudden panic as the Sioux swept down on them.

Half of the Indians were on foot, the others racing ahead on ponies.

He could see the puffs of smoke from the muzzles of their guns. Had to be Springfields, he thought, captured from dead soldiers.

Then came the first sound of bullet striking bone, the sharp, pained, wordless cry of one of the men up ahead.

Already the mules were balking, yanking this way and that on their leads, tugging against the men, yanking away from one another as if an artillery canister had gone off in their midst.

“Shoot 'em, goddammit!”

A few of the men were yelling at the others; likely the sergeant and some older ones, the youngster thought as he dropped to his knee beneath one of the nervous mules who had gone stiff-legged there on the trail, frozen in fear. He wondered if the mule would piss on him as he huddled there. Then worried if he would piss on himself.

The horsemen swept sideways across the sodden slope above them, firing wildly, full of fury at the soldiers, while those warriors on foot came running straight downhill for the mule-train, shrieking and flapping blankets. The mule he hunkered under shifted sideways, enough so that he was no longer within the cavity of its legs, then the animal suddenly bolted,
hee-raw
ing as it thrashed spraddle-legged into the brush, snared by the wide ammunition boxes in making its escape.

A bullet hissed past, slamming into the mule's rump.

He looked down at his crotch. “Damn,” he muttered as the warmth spread.

No matter, he decided. None of the others gonna notice I pissed on myself. They're too damned busy right now anyway. Blooded was he, but it was still hard to keep from puking as he heard that dying man thrashing, saw the civilian with the lower half of his face blown off, gurgling in his own blood. Drowning slowly, noisily.

He hoped a bullet would find him quick so that he didn't have to go slow and painful like that.

“Hold them goddamned mules, you sonsabitches!” some man ordered.

Another voice bellowed, “You heard the sarge! Hold onto 'em!”

Then a new order, “Save the bloody ammo! Save the bullets!”

He suddenly heard all the voices around him, each and every word distinct, able to put a face to each voice—wondering if that clarity meant that he was going to be all right … or if such clarity came to a man only in those final moments before he was killed.

Either way, he decided, it was going to be fine by him.

“You gonna shoot that rifle of yours today, soldier?”

Jerking about, he found the old corporal looming over his shoulder, grinning. By damned, the man was grinning.

“Y-y-yes, I will—”

“There's plenty of them red buggers for targets,” the corporal bawled, some of his front teeth gone, the rest a pasty brown from his chew. “Pick you one and blow his eggs off!”

The corporal settled in beside him, gave him a wink, and put his Long Tom to work.

By damn if it wasn't gonna be fine now, the young soldier thought as he set his rifle against his shoulder and peered down the barrel at the backs of those warriors who were scampering back up the hill now that the soldiers were getting themselves over that initial shock, beginning to rally and put up a stiff defense.

On either side of them the few on ponies swept by, pouring this way and that, then upon reaching the streambank, they circled back toward the slope. Mules grunted. Men cursed, doing their best to hold onto the frightened, balky animals carrying that precious ammunition, doing their best to hold their urine, to hold back their gorge that threatened to make them puke.

Men who knelt there among the pack-train doing their level best to hold back this ambush.

He knew they would do it. As the minutes crawled by, the Sioux grew less and less brassy and bold. Less willing to take a chance and get too close to those Long Toms these infantrymen carried. He knew they would do it.

If worse come to worst, he figured, they could hold out till just this side of forever with all this ammo. Leastways till them horse soldiers with Miles heard this gunfire and come running to raise this siege.

But that would have to wait for now and he would have to find another target, to hold off these red hellions for a while longer. The cavalry with Miles had their own fight going and until it settled down, none of the horse soldiers was about to hear this little fight going on a valley or two over.

“That'a way, son!” the corporal cried as one of the warriors on foot stumbled and pitched face forward onto the grass.

Two men on horseback saw their companion fall at the same time, wheeling about to rescue the wounded warrior.

The corporal clapped and hooted, “They make a fine target of theyselves!”

The young soldier yanked up the trapdoor of his rifle, ejecting that hot copper cartridge. Stuffing his trembling hand down into the black leather pouch at his belt, he pulled another shell from his kit and stuffed it into the breech. Slamming down the trapdoor, he dragged back the big hammer and nestled the rifle into his shoulder again.

If they were going to be here for a while, he might as well keep himself busy.

Chapter 39

7 May 1877

“Dear Jesus, help me hold 'em back,” whispered Private William Leonard, L Company, Second U.S. Cavalry. “Just help me hold these red bastards back.”

So angry he was close to tears, the young soldier wanted to curse himself for forgetting the prayers taught him in his youth. He dwelled on his mother and father, how they always saw he got to church on Sunday mornings. The remembrance made his eyes smart, and that made Private Leonard even more angry at himself. He swiped at his bleary eyes and shoved his cheek back down on the stock of his Springfield carbine.

Damn if he didn't have all the luck—dragging himself out of one scrape just to plop into another. From the frying pan right into the fire.

How he had looked forward to getting in some fighting with the Sioux hostiles before this war was over. Just like the over-riding eagerness felt by all the others in those four companies of horse soldiers who had followed Major Frank “Grasshopper” Brisbin east from Fort Ellis in April, assigned duty with General Miles's campaign punching south of the Yellowstone. All those rough miles of up and down in the last two days as word along the column had it they were getting close to the village. Then just as Miles had them moving at a trot toward the enemy camp in the dark that morning, his saddle started to slip off the backbone of his big bay gelding.

Quickly Leonard reined out of column and leaped to the ground as the rest poured past in a throbbing, thunderous wave, following Miles's scouts toward the coming dawn. Goddamn that cinch! Why now?

Busted but good, the stitching worn loose. It was almost enough to make a man want to cry. The private stood there with a loose end of that cinch hanging in one hand, staring at the tail end of the column as it disappeared down the creek valley. Damn, but they were going to have themselves a daisy of a scrap. The last scrap there might well be out here.