Ashes of Heaven (48 page)

Forlorn as a man ever was, he felt angry, bitter, and despairing that he wasn't going to get in on the fighting now.

It was to have been a glory ride! Sweeping in at dawn on that last Sioux village to thumb their noses at the army and their Indian agents. Likely the last chance the Second Cavalry would have to cloak itself in honor for a long time to come, what with the Indian wars coming to a close both south and north. Then it would be back to having nothing more to look forward to than endless days of fatigue duty until his enlistment was up.

As the sounds of his comrades faded downstream, Leonard collapsed right there beside the trail, ready to bawl from frustration, when he had a prick of inspiration: he'd do what he could to repair his saddle. He had his folding pocketknife after all, and he might just improvise enough to get that cinch re-attached to the saddle. A few long whangs might work. He could cut those narrow strips of leather from the saddle cover itself. He only needed a half-dozen of them to make his repair, just enough to keep the saddle and cinch together until he made it into that village and that last glorious fight.

So he had gone to work there in the growing light of that cold spring dawn, struggling to drag his pocketknife through the thick latigo leather, carving out the first of the narrow strips. By the time he started on the third one, the distant gunfire had become all but steady. Those sounds and the growing frustration he began to suffer spurred him to work a little faster.

He was poking holes through the braided sisal fabric of the cinch, matching holes in the saddle leather, when he heard the first yelp.

Snapping his head up in surprise, Leonard couldn't believe his eyes. A half-dozen warriors on foot, and another three on ponies, had just reached the top of the ridge behind him—and peering down had discovered the lone soldier. Without losing a step they came rolling toward him, shrieking billy-be-hell and eager for his scalp!

He stood up so suddenly the pocketknife tumbled off his thigh. Leonard scooped it up, clumsily closing the blade as he stuffed it into a back pocket on his wool britches. Already the bay was skittish. Maybe the scent of 'em on the wind. More likely all their hollering.

He hurriedly dragged up the blanket and saddle as one and flung it on the back of the horse. Untying the rein from the brush, he swept up his carbine. Only then did he wonder where the hell he would go. It had to be quick, and it had to be close, because he was heading there on foot. Still couldn't cinch that saddle down, but he prayed it would stay on that bay's back long enough to get him somewhere he could fort up.

“C'mon, girl!” he bellowed as he yanked the horse away, heading sidelong up the slope.

If he could reach the top, he would have the high ground and a good field of fire. Not that he had ever had to worry about having a field of fire before; he and the others never had themselves a good dirty scrap with any Injuns. Could have, if Iron-Britches Custer had decided to take Brisbin up on his offer of these same four companies, back when the Seventh marched away from the mouth of the Rosebud to its destiny. These same four companies that marched east to go campaigning with Miles.

Time now to see if all that stuff they'd filled his head with back at Jefferson Barracks was worth a damn … at least worth one poor soldier's life.

High ground,
he huffed almost out loud. And recognized the paunch-water sounds of the horse behind him as it rattled up the slope.

Turning, Leonard glanced back to see that the saddle was still there, bouncing along on the gelding's broad back. Damn if he didn't need what was in them saddle pockets. Hell, if it come down to it, a man might figure that saddle cost him his scalp, Leonard thought as he neared the crest of the hill. Then again, if he didn't lose his extra cartridges, that saddle might just save his life too.

While hanging onto the gelding's tail for all he was worth, the horse dragged him up those last few yards to the top. He spun around, looked, and gulped. No trees. Only some scrub brush. Nothing big enough for the bastards to hide behind and slip up on him—

He heard the slap of lead. The bay whinnied, twirling and kicking, flinging off the saddle so that it tumbled into the tall grass. A big hole bubbled in its chest, red and glistening, spewing froth. Done for, goddamn.

Leonard dropped his carbine, wrapping both hands around the reins as the horse struggled against him, shoving at first, then pulling the private as he dug in his heels to keep the animal from bolting. Up here in the open, he still needed that gelding.

Lashing the reins around his left hand, the soldier yanked back the mule ear of his holster and dragged out his service revolver. Snapping back the hammer as the horse lunged to the side, Leonard felt all the strength oozing from that arm the gelding had nearly popped out of its socket. The bay almost knocked him over as he leaped close, jamming the muzzle just below the ear, clenched his eyes shut, then yanked on the trigger.

The gelding settled on all fours, then gently keeled onto its side, legs facing the top of the hill.

Snapping off two quick pistol shots at the horsemen who were the closest to him, Leonard spun on his heel and scuttled for the saddle down the slope. Snagging hold of it in his left hand, the private whirled and started back to the dead horse. A bullet whined past him, ricochetting off a small boulder he hurdled in midstride. Skidding in between the dead animal's legs, he dragged up the carbine. Now he had some ammunition, enough to reload his pistol four times, and a hundred rounds for his Springfield.

There wasn't that many of them, so Leonard figured he could hold them at bay long enough with what ammunition he had. Here between some shin-high rocks and this carcass, he hunkered down, settling in to return their fire. Listening to them yell for his blood.

As minutes crawled past, the morning began to wear on and on. Those warriors wouldn't stop yelling, and the distant shooting in the village continued. Neither of them were good signs, the lone private figured. The others wouldn't know he was missing, wouldn't hear his carbine—not with all they had to deal with then and there.

So, he reminded himself, clenching his teeth in resolve, it was going to be up to him for the next hour or so until help came along.

Beneath that cloudy sky as the wind came up, it seemed as if time slowed, then stood still. After what must surely have been an eternity of holding the warriors at bay, he heard the distant rifle fire trickle off, and it grew quiet on down the valley.

Each time the warriors started to get in too close, Leonard did his best to force them back with the long-reaching carbine and its .45-caliber bullets. And the few times they were foolish enough to attempt rushing him, the trooper used the .45-caliber bullets in his pistol.

When next he stuffed his hand into the saddle pocket to pull out some long copper cases for the Springfield, Leonard stared down at his hand. He held the last of them now, with no more than five rounds left in his pistol.

“Save the last for yourself, bunkie,” he said sourly. “Don't let 'em take you alive, not these red devils.”

He figured he would use the Springfield to keep them as far away as he could for as long as he could, then fire the last four shots in the pistol as they rushed in closer the way they had threatened to do all morning.

And when he had only that one last bullet left—

Leonard jerked around as if yanked by a rope. Surprised to hear the voice. Like an answer to his prayer.

Three of them appeared there just this side of the creek, down by the brush at the bottom of the slope.

He couldn't tell what they were yelling, if they were yelling at him or shouting at others who were coming behind—but did those three ever look good to him!

Doughboys! Foot-goddamned-sloggers! Walk-a-heaps! No matter what folks called 'em, they damned well looked like angels of salvation to Private William Leonard then and there.

They were pointing up the slope as more of those uniforms joined the trio. Then there was a horseman. Had to be an officer. The man stood in the stirrups, yanking his horse around, flinging his arm up the slope, bellowing like a stuck pig as two dozen or more of those foot-sore doughboys started out in a dead sprint up the side of that hill toward Leonard.

Tears streaming down his face, the private stood, slamming the carbine into his shoulder and finding the broad, brown back of one of the retreating warriors who were whooping it away on the double. He fired, missed, and cursed his foggy vision. Quickly he ejected that scalded shell and rammed home another. One more shot at the bastards who came close to getting his scalp, the bastards who almost made him use that last bullet on himself.

“Holy mother—” one of the first doughboys exclaimed as he huffed breathlessly to a halt, leaning slightly on his Long Tom rifle to peer down at Leonard. “How … how the hell long you been holed up here?”

“A 1-long time,” Leonard croaked, surprised he could speak around the bitter ball that clogged the back of his throat.

“I hope to shout, soldier,” one of the others commented as the rest began to gather close, gazing down at that litter of strewn copper casings for themselves.

A third one stepped to the side and propped one of his feet on the flank of the dead gelding. “You done you a piece of work here, horse soldier. A fine piece of work.”

“You don't mind,” Leonard said quietly, “I'd 'predate you taking your boot off my horse.”

That third infantryman suddenly looked down selfconsciously, realizing his foot was resting on the dead horse, and dragged it off. “I-I'm sorry, trooper.”

“If it weren't for this horse a'mine,” Leonard explained as he knelt beside the gelding's head, “I'd been red soup long afore you boys come to save my hair.”

“Didn't mean no disrespect, soldier.”

Leonard blinked and nodded at the apology as he turned to watch more of the foot soldiers coming into view now. “You was the fellas stayed with the packs we left on the Rosebud?”

“That's right,” answered the first man. “That down there's Captain Dickey. Coming out of that brush is Captain Poole.”

The third man stepped around the carcass and pushed back his kepi, saying, “Heard us a ton of shooting. Brought us on the double. Didn't figure to find only one poor horse soldier needing rescue—”

“Listen!”

When one of them snapped that command, they all went silent, rigid, listening. Sure enough, just beyond the next rise, they could hear some rifle fire. Not near enough to be a big fight in the village. But surely more than a half-dozen guns.

“You suppose them Injuns we run off got some other poor horse soldier pinned down?” asked the first infantryman, spitting a brown dribble into the grass.

“I s'pose it could be,” Leonard said, stuffing the near-empty pistol back into its holster.

Downhill Dickey and Poole were barking orders, shaping their men back into line as the soldiers descended the hill with that lone cavalryman and his carbine, leaving behind the bay gelding and his busted saddle atop a lonely little hill above the Big Muddy. They were moved out again at a trot, settling into a pace the foot soldiers were told they would have to endure for another mile or so, just long enough to reach the sound of those guns.

Leonard swiped at the drop of sweat hung pendant from the end of his nose and jogged alongside the doughboys in the muggy dampness of that morning.

Damn if that wasn't the way it was with this army.

Officers always yelling at their men to ride to the sound of the guns!

*   *   *

The young infantryman swore he could smell the dead civilian's blood on the chilly breeze that morning.

He had been forced to listen to the mule-whacker gurgle and thrash his last there in the trampled grass beside the creek. Between each shrieking charge of the warriors, between each loud boom of his Long Tom, the man went noisy. And finally died, coughing and gurgling no longer.

That morning wore on and on, and at times the soldier swore he heard gunfire from upstream to their right. But each time he listened, he just figured it was a random echo from the fight downstream to their left, off in that village he might never get a chance to see. Just some echoes as the cavalry mopped things up and drove off those what they couldn't kill in their fight. Those horse soldiers would never know the mule-train was pinned down here until they needed more ammunition.

At the start of this dirty little scrap, the warriors managed to get off with two of the mules, scaring the animals enough that they bolted free of the pack-string, heading tea-kettle-over-biscuits downstream with their boxes of ammunition slapping and rattling like dice in a bone cup. But the old soldiers and the young recruits leaped up and got control of the rest, and with the help of the three other civilians they managed to keep the rest of the mules from running off each time the blankets flapped and the whistles cried and the red-bellies shrieked, close enough he was sure he had only to reach out and yank a breechclout clean off one of them.

Then he had glanced down at his own itchy wool britches, self-consciously, and was relieved to see that the dark stain was fading from that pale blue cloth. He'd leave the warriors their breechclouts, if he just didn't have to display his britches until they were dry.

“Lookee thar'!”

The old corporal poked a fist at his shoulder, pointing off upstream.

“Ain't that the purtiest sight!” someone else called.

“Doughboys!”

“It's Dickey! And Poole's boys!”

Sure if it wasn't. Trotting into view came Captain Dickey. And right behind him came a double column of shuffling foot soldiers struggling to keep up that numbing, ground-eating pace.

“Wasn't they back at the Rosebud when we left 'em?” he asked the corporal.

“They was, son. They was,” he answered thoughtfully, his old eyes beginning to brim. “But, like any good foot soldier, they come a running when they heard there was trouble.”