Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 (37 page)

Seamus glanced at Bill. “I'm game. You'll shoot too, Bill?”

Cody hemmed and hawed a moment, clearing his throat. “Truth is, General—I'm embarrassed for leaving my rifle behind.”

“You left it behind?” Donegan asked laughing.

“All that in leaving Lulu behind … I … it's hard enough to explain.”

“Do you remember where you left it?”

“Yes, General—as near as I can recollect. Night before we pulled out, I was in McDonald's store with Major Brown.”

Duncan turned to the officer. “Major Brown—evidently you had something to do with Cody here leaving his rifle behind at McDonald's store. Dispatch two riders to return to the fort and retrieve Mr. Cody's hunting weapon.”

“Yes, sir, General,” Brown replied, beginning to go.

“And, Major—since you're responsible for our scout's lapse of memory while you were both in the cups—I want you to loan Mr. Cody your rifle for our shooting match.”

The marks were set at fifty, seventy-five and a hundred yards out against the side of a low sand-hill. Seamus used the Henry at the first two marks, but dragged the Spencer out of his saddle boot for the last mark. After the first try at the hundred-yard marks, there were only four competitors left among Duncan's staff and the three civilians. One miss and a man was out. Duncan, Cody, Donegan and a white scout by the name of John Y. Nelson waited a few moments while the morning breeze died before resuming their match.

“He's either damned good,” Cody whispered in Donegan's ear while Duncan toed the line. “Or he's damned lucky.”

“It doesn't matter. You might once consider losing to make the man happy,” Seamus replied.

“You want me to throw the match?”

“What sweat is it off your balls, Cody? You can always say the reason you lost was you weren't shooting with your own gun.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, the thought congealing in his troubled mind.

“And besides—you'll make Duncan one happy officer.”

“I see your point.”

“Cody!” Duncan hollered a few yards off. “Your shot. Seems I just nicked the mark. You hit it square … well then, you're the better shot.”

Cody stepped to the line Duncan had boot-heeled across the sand, licked a thumb and rubbed it over the front blade before shouldering Brown's Spencer carbine. He took a breath, let half of it out when he heard Donegan clearing his throat behind him. The Irishman coughed again, louder.

“You fighting a bit of a frog this morning, Mr. Donegan?” asked Duncan.

The Irishman bowed his head sheepishly. “No, sir. Nothing like that at all.”

Cody pulled the trigger and missed.

“Damn luck of it all,” Duncan said happily, stomping up in that jolly, blustering way of his, pounding the scout on the back. “What with rest of these others out of the way—it came down just the way I wanted it when I came 'round this morning: you and me, Cody. Duncan and the great Buffalo Bill—and I beat you, by grace.”

“Yes, sir—fair and square too.”

Duncan grinned, squinting slightly in the growing light at the tall, blond scout. “Yes, perhaps. I'd like to think I did, Mr. Cody.”

“Call me Bill.”

“Bill, yes. I'd like more than anything to tell my grandchildren that of a time I outshot the great Buffalo Bill Cody.”

*   *   *

“You just missed 'em, mister.”

Jack O'Neill stood there in McDonald's store, staring at the civilian behind the bar. “They're not here? When'd they pull out?”

“Yesterday. Can't be that hard to catch up with 'em—you want to bad enough.”

The mulatto's mind was awash with disappointment and yearning, after all these miles and all the days of sensing he was drawing closer and closer to his prey. He swiped at his nose then pulled out his last ten-dollar gold piece.

“Single eagle,” commented William Reed, McDonald's clerk from behind the bar. “What can I do for that ten dollars?”

“Start by getting me something hot to eat and plenty of it. And bring me a bottle of something cheap and strong.”

“Decided not to follow Duncan's column, eh?”

“They'll be back here, won't they?”

“All in good time, mister.”

O'Neill smiled. “I'll wait. Maybe head over to North Platte. Find me something to do until that bunch gets back.”

Reed nodded, turning back to the bar with a tin bowl full of steaming beans and a side of pork-fat. He cleaved off a healthy chunk of brown bread and laid it in the thick juice that raised a fragrant aroma to O'Neill's nose.

“Here you go.”

“And the whiskey?” O'Neill asked, heading for a small table off in the corner by itself.

Reed brought over a bottle and glass. “Big fella like you won't have a problem finding work in North Platte. If you're of a mind to make some money while you're waiting for Duncan to come back in.”

O'Neill smiled, stuffing beans into his mouth and tearing off a hunk of bread between his teeth. “Yeah, I'll just do that. Something to tide me over while I'm waiting for 'em come riding back home.”

Chapter 32

September 26, 1869

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Duncan marched his cavalry south to Medicine Lake Creek, then followed the stream down to the Republican River. It was there he established a base camp and sent out the first of the scouting parties he ordered to scour the countryside, both upstream and down.

While hunting parties from the main camp hunted among the buffalo herds to augment their daily rations, Pawnee and civilian scouts explored the territory as far south and east as the Solomon, west all the way to Fort Wallace country—intent on finding some sign of the Sioux following Pawnee Killer and Whistler.

Bill Cody sighed deeply, drinking in the chill air of a morning found on the plains in early autumn. At times such as these, that air proved every bit like an elixir. A tonic for anything that could possibly ail a man.

“Pretty, isn't it?” Major Frank North said as he came to a halt on the crest of the hill beside Cody.

“I remember some younger days spent down there along the Prairie Dog,” Cody said wistfully. “Spent a long winter and early spring running a trap line along that creek with a fella named Dave Harrington.”

“I knew you rode mail express across these plains,” North replied. “But I never knew you trapped out here. You're a man of many facets, Bill Cody.”

He smiled. “Man does what a man has to—so he can survive, running out his days.”

“Seems you've always done what you wanted to, though.”

“Agree with you there, Major. No sense in a man wasting his time being unhappy with what he's doing. Time's too damned short to carry a chip on my shoulder the way your brother does.”

North sighed, staring into the distance. “I figure that's a big part of what has made Lute carry that grudge for you—he's never been truly happy standing in my shadow.”

“Why doesn't he go off and do something all his own?”

North wagged his head. “Don't figure it, Bill. In his own way, Lute's always been his own man. But he doesn't see things like you and me.”

“I've done my best to stay out of his way.”

“He won't ever do you physical harm, Bill. Lute isn't made that way. He's just one to nurse a grudge till it's real sore—and he'll nurse it all his life.”

“Like I said, life's too short for a man carrying 'round his own type of unhappiness.”

North was quiet for some moments. His silence eventually prompted Cody to speak. “Believe I'll head back a ways, see if I can spot that advance guard of those bridge-building pioneers. Duncan will need 'em to come up for this crossing.”

North slid from the saddle. “All right. If you don't mind, I'll sit here, enjoying the quiet and the view.”

“Always was a pretty place,” Bill said as he turned Buckskin Joe about and loped northeast in search of the cavalry column probing the countryside for Sioux.

Beneath the climbing of the morning sun he saw the dark snake of their column piercing the grassy hills burnt golden with summer's heat, in recent days kissed by the first frost come and gone like a schoolgirl sharing her first love with a wide-eyed boy.

“We'll wait here, boy,” he whispered to the big buckskin, slipping from the saddle. He dropped the reins, letting the horse eat the grass that snapped and popped as the animal tore it up in grazing.

No sooner had he stuffed a slender shaft between his lips and settled back onto his elbows when three rapid shots rattled beyond the hills he had just left behind.

Without hesitation, Cody was on Buckskin Joe in a fluid leap. Leaning over, he snatched up the reins at the same moment he pounded heels against the mount's flanks. As Cody reached the bottom of the long, grassy slope, Frank North leaped against the skyline of the far hills, coming hell-bent at a lather. A puff of smoke erupted from North's pistol. A heartbeat later Cody heard the crack of the weapon.

At the top of that hill just abandoned by North appeared more than a handful of warriors.

Stuffing his reins between his teeth, Cody yanked the Spencer from its boot and levered a cartridge as it came to his cheek. One, two, then three quick shots before it was time to ride. He had spilled two riders. But in that time, at least forty more appeared on the hillside behind the six who closed on North.

Jamming the carbine back into the leather boot, he hammered the buckskin into a gallop, making a wide arc, as if he were attempting to flank the warriors; but at the last moment, in full gallop, he brought the horse in toward North on an angle. Cody wasn't able to hear the major's words. It all came out only as noise garbled among the shouts and taunts of the Sioux warriors close on their tails. North's mouth moved up and down as he drew close. They joined at a full run.

Just as Cody snugged his hat down on his head, a faint whistle keened past. A telltale sound that at the same time tugged at the hat.

“They're shooting close, boy!” Cody laid over to holler into Joe's laid-back ear. “Don't you dare let 'em close on us now.”

Cody brought back the elk-handled quirt he carried around his right wrist, a souvenir captured from a lodge in Tall Bull's Summit Springs' camp. It splintered, sending a sliver of antler deep into his palm.

The hand grew warm and wet, but without much pain as he looked down at the end of his arm. The quirt hung in fragments that flopped heedlessly on the wind as he struggled to free it from his wrist.

For more than two miles they raced ahead of the screeching warriors, bullets flying overhead like angry wasps.

“Don't they look grand!” North shouted, his words gone as quickly in the breeze.

A half-mile off was the advance guard, complete with Luther North and a small company of his Pawnee scouts.

“It's our turn now!” Cody replied.

They reined up together, which caused the unsuspecting warriors behind them to howl even louder, believing they had won the chase.

“Bastards think our horses are done in!” North shouted. He immediately reined his animal in a tight circle on that hilltop, long a signal on the plains meaning
enemy in sight.

With a wild shout and a flourish, Luther North led the two-dozen Pawnee away from the engineering detachment at a gallop.

North and Cody spurred down to meet the scouts, further drawing the Sioux into their surprise encounter with the Pawnee and cavalry. It was downright amusing to watch, as the first Sioux on the fastest ponies, who had their blood running the hottest, reached the point where they first caught sight of the Pawnee, coming strong on a collision course with them. And behind the Pawnee stretched two companies of soldiers in dusty blue.

Laughing together as they reined up, Cody and the major turned about to watch the Sioux skid to a halt and beat a hasty retreat. Luther and the Pawnee sped on past the two horsemen, hot on the trail of the warriors.

“You wanna follow along and see what happens?” Cody asked.

Frank North shook his head. “Naw, let Lute have his fun.”

“Got 'em on the run now.”

“They've gotta be camped nearby, Cody.”

“I know—out hunting and bumped into us, likely.”

“Let's go on down there and report in to Volkmar. Get his column on the alert tonight when we bed down.”

Just past sunset, Luther North and his Pawnee reached camp. They had scattered the warriors, besides capturing two ponies and a mule. One new scalp dangled from a scout's belt.

*   *   *

Pulling out early the following morning, the column ran across the Sioux campsite beside a tributary of the Prairie Dog. Luther North and the Pawnee eagerly charged down on the lodges standing against the willows. But no gunfire erupted from the camp and no hostiles burst from the abandoned lodges.

“Looks like our Injuns scared Pawnee Killer's Injuns right on out of the country,” commented scout John Y. Nelson as he came to a halt beside Major North, Cody and Seamus Donegan.

“Left in a hurry, didn't they?” asked the Irishman.

“Sonsabitches are scattering again,” North growled. “Like this every time we get on a scent. Few days, the trail will all but disappear. Poof,” and he gestured angrily. “They're gone like snow in a chinook.”

To a degree, North was right. It was five days before any of them next saw a Sioux. And this time, it was a hunchbacked old woman.

She sat in the scanty shade of some swamp willow near Beaver Creek, either deaf or very much unconcerned at the clatter of approaching horsemen.

“I don't speak any Sioux,” Cody said, reining up near the woman and turning in his saddle to signal behind. “Seamus—bring Nelson up here. His woman's Brule.”

“The old one's in bad shape,” Donegan said quietly as he knelt at the woman's side, looking over the well-seamed face and the lidded eyes. “They just leave her here like this?”