Chapter 29

July 28, 1869

“You can read, boy?”

Jack O’Neill looked up at the white man whose shadow had come across his yellowed copy of the Rocky Mountain News dated a week earlier. “I read.”

The white laborer sat down on the loading dock beside the mulatto. “You ain’t just hacking me, are you, boy? I mean—you really read?”

He eyed him, wishing the knife were in his hand and he could open the white man up the way the Cheyenne had taught him to use the knife. The way the renegade opened Emmy up—

Jack quickly hefted the pain of that away with a healthy draught of contempt for the man he had worked beside for weeks now. “My daddy’s people taught me.”

He nodded, taking another large bite of the bread loaf he ate for lunch. “I thought you was high-yellow. White daddy, eh?” When he didn’t get an answer from O’Neill, the white man pressed on undeterred. “Didn’t leave you nothing when the South lost, did he?”

“I like it out here.”

“Shit, niggers like you thought you’d have it better when the Yankees won the war—”

O’Neill snagged the man’s shirt, lifting him off the brick and plank warehouse dock. “You talk a little too much.”

The man’s eyes showed his quail-like fear. “Didn’t mean … just that—ain’t nothing for any of us to go back to after the war.”

He let the man go and went back to his paper. His eyes were scanning the headlines on the bottom half of the sun-bleached paper as the white man self-consciously chattered on with a mouth full of his old bread.

“… a farm and a milk cow. It’s gone too—”

“Shut up,” O’Neill hissed, scratching the new whiskers that itched on his cheek.

His eyes went across the words, being sure of each one. Dark letters, more bold than the others and bigger to boot, announcing the news … what was news days ago. He flipped the paper up—finding the date. Days old now—Lord, how it made his heart pound with something fierce and damp. Like coupling with those Cheyenne women.

FIFTH CAVALRY DEFEAT CHEYENNE

Carr’s Cavalry Strike Tall Bull at Summit Springs

Bold, black words leaped at him off the yellowed, brittle page like the wings of the moths rattling at this very moment around inside his belly. He mouthed most of them, unaware of where he sat or the poor trash beside him as he read.

“… Dog Soldiers driven from the village … fifty-two warriors killed … seventeen prisoners … only casualty was one trooper wounded … two white women held prisoner … laid to rest at the scene of the victory … as just compensation for the horror of her captivity … returning to McPherson … continuing fall campaign from Fort Sedg—”

He looked up at the white man. Jack grabbed the worker by the shirt again, catching him just as he took a bite off the loaf of brown bread.

“Where’s this Fort Sedgwick?”

“S-Sedgwick?” he mumbled around the bread, swallowing, eyes glassing over with moisture as he fought to breathe with the dough swelling on his tongue. He spit it out, swallowing hard. “Up north—”

“Where, up north?”

“North and east some from here … on the South Platte,” he answered, looking at the bite of lumpy bread he had spit out on the yellow dust as if he actually yearned for it.

“South Platte River.”

He nodded enthusiastically, still staring at the lump of moist dough. “You follow it—all the way … can’t miss Fort Sedgwick—up by Julesburg.”

“Still in Colorado Territory?”

“By damned if it ain’t. Still in Colorady—”

Jack stood suddenly, catching the man off balance. He fell back to his elbow on the plank flooring.

“Tell your bossman the nigger don’t wanna work for him no more.”

“You up and quitting?”

“Just like that.”

“He ain’t gonna like it—here’n middle of the day.”

“Tell him he’s gonna have to learn to live with it. The darkie don’t work here no more.”

“What about your pay? You got two and a half day’s coming.”

“Maybe he’ll give it to you, Homer.”

The white man smiled, then it sank in. He wagged his head with disappointment. “Ain’t likely, boy. Ain’t at all likely he’ll do that.”

Jack smiled, thinking of what he had to do as he leaped down from the end of the warehouse dock, avoiding the moist horse apples clustered everywhere. “You’re right, Homer. He’ll keep my money for himself, won’t he?”

“Where you going?”

“Don’t matter, ’cause you don’t need to know,” Jack replied over his shoulder as he hurried down Blake Street, heading for the Elephant Corral, where he had been sleeping the last six nights.

That room with the seven other snoring laborers, most of them white, with one Mexican thrown in, had grown a little too close for the likes of Jack O’Neill. In exchange for mucking a few stalls, he had parlayed himself a bed of soft straw every night in a vacant stall from Robert Teats.

Damn if it hadn’t beat that stuffy room with wall-to-wall bodies covered with old sweat and afflicted with britches crusted with dried urine. At least the Cheyenne knew how to live out on the prairie where the wind blew much of the stench away. And unlike the white man, they bathed.

It made him think on Tall Bull. Wondering how the big copper-skinned man looked in death. The paper had said the chief was killed by someone named Cody. And that was the man leading the civilian scouts for the Fifth Cavalry.

He remembered that much.

Enough to put it together in his mind and set his course. Feeling as if he were closing in at last on the tall gray-eyed killer of Roman Nose … who he knew was riding with Cody’s scouts for something better than a year. This was something solid, something he could almost taste.

Snatching his few belongings and stuffing them inside the single blanket he quickly rolled, Jack slapped the stolen saddle and blanket atop the stolen horse he had ridden here to Denver City. The animal had one more journey to make for him. Didn’t matter that the horse was cow-hocked and ready for pasture, he figured the animal still had enough bottom left in it for this one last, short trip north.

Fort Sedgwick beckoned.

As he left the outskirts of town, pushing along the east bank of the South Platte, Jack O’Neill was sure he could almost make out the gray eyes of the killer in the low clouds overhead that threatened to soak the land with another summer squall.

The gray eyes soon to be filled with fear.

*   *   *

“I’ll be damned if that Buntline ain’t full of talk,” Bill Cody muttered as he came to a squat beside the Irishman’s evening fire.

Supper over, Seamus had a kettle of coffee he had pulled off the flames. “Never at a loss for words, that one.”

Cody twisted his tin cup around and around on a finger. “It ain’t that he’s just making conversation, Seamus—Buntline asks so damned many questions.”

Donegan inched forward to splash a little cold water in the coffee kettle, settling the grounds. “What’s the sort he’s asking you?”

After Cody had skimmed his coffee tin through the kettle and set himself back against his saddle, he let out a sigh. “Stuff about the wagon work I did for Majors and Russell, lots of questions about the mail express I ran for a few months.”

Earlier that day Captain Brown had led them down the South Platte River as far as O’Fallon’s Station, where Ned Buntline hopped the train to continue his trip east. Every day for the better part of a week on the trip up from Fort Sedgwick, the soon-to-be dime novelist pressed Cody for information on his exploits and daring deeds.

“Didn’t ask you anything about hunting buffalo?”

Cody snorted over his cup. “Damn if Buntline didn’t like them stories—riding through ’em or making a stand of it.”

The first day north of O’Fallon’s Station, Cody and his scouts had finally come across the trail of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, who evidently were fleeing across the North Platte, toward the land of their northern cousins.

“For being such a strange sort, Buntline didn’t lack for gumption,” Donegan said.

“You see how he put his horse down into the South Platte all wide and high, swollen with rain?”

Seamus agreed, sipping at his coffee. “He swam the bleeming horse over like he did it every day.”

“Buntline don’t lack for sand and tallow, that’s certain. He sure took a shine to Buckskin Joe.”

“He’s not only in awe of your horse, stupid. I didn’t know better—I’d say the man was clearly taken with you, Bill Cody.”

“Lulu and my little Arta have first call on my heart, you big Irish bastard,” he replied before laughing with Seamus.

“You’ll do to race that big horse of yours, you have a mind to.”

Cody regarded him over the lip of his coffee tin. “You really think Buckskin Joe has the makings?”

“He’s strong of leg—but what’s more, he’s got the right wind to make a runner. Aye, there’s not many like him out here,” Seamus said.

“Frank’s Pawnee been licking their lips every time they come ’round him.”

“You watch them, Bill. They know good horseflesh,” Donegan warned. “Nothing they’d like better than to have you wager the buckskin in a race—and lose the horse to them through some of their Indian magic and underhanded jiggery.”

“You’re a betting man I take it?”

The Irishman nodded. “I wasn’t brought up Catholic for boon, me friend! Let’s race him, what say?”

Cody thought about it for several moments, blowing steam off his coffee tin as he stared at the fire near their feet. All about them the bivouac of men and animals slowed as darkness eased down on the prairie.

“All right, Irishman—we’ll race that big son of a bitch!”

For several days Captain William Brown pushed his command north from O’Fallon’s Station on the South Platte, then crossed the North Platte River, where Cody had the unenviable task of reporting they were not gaining on their quarry.

“Brownie—they were two days ahead of us when we started this run. And they’re at least two days head of us now, if not more.”

Brown ground his teeth a moment. “Telling me we don’t stand a chance of catching them?”

Cody dug a toe into the grassy sand, glancing at the Irishman. “No, we could catch ’em. Might take us until we’re up on the Bozeman to do it … making up all the time.”

Donegan cleared his throat. “They’re running this time, Captain. Not like when they were with Tall Bull, taking their time.”

“Irishman’s right. This bunch knows the soldiers can sting ’em. They’re not going to be caught this way unless we push these men and animals harder than we’ve been doing—harder than the Cheyenne will be punishing their own.”

“Neither the men or their mounts are in that shape,” Brown finally admitted. He sighed, resigned to it. “All right. Let’s turn south.”

“Sedgwick?”

“Yes, Bill. Makes sense—it’s closest. The men are due a payday, and we can call on the paymaster there to wire duty rosters from McPherson.”

“Payday sounds good, Brownie,” Cody replied, winking at Donegan.

Fort Sedgwick had never seen anything like it. While most soldiers normally contented themselves with small bump-poker games, what Bill Cody and Seamus Donegan cooked up was something altogether different. Horse racing brought out the larceny and greed in everyone, soldier and civilian.

Two days after arriving at the post, giving the animals time to rest and recoup their strength, Donegan had arranged some betting sport with Lieutenant George F. Mason. So sure of his horse was Mason and his backers that a flat hundred-dollar bet was laid out on the friendly bar of Reuben Wood’s place. Donegan slapped another hundred dollars of scrip down on the bar, which was quickly covered by Mason’s backers. The sutler himself happily booked another two hundred dollars in side bets. Everyone wanted a dime’s or a dollar’s chance at winning.

Buckskin Joe and Cody had Mason’s horse beat from the starting line, but impressive enough was the margin of victory that several of the Pawnee pushed through the cheering crowd, pressing around the young scout to propose a more interesting bet.

“They want to bet your buckskin against two of their finest,” Frank North interpreted.

Cody glanced at Donegan and winked.

“Their ponies any good at this sort of race?” Donegan asked, his arm waving in an arc over the long oval the soldiers had laid out on the prairie not far from the squat buildings of Fort Sedgwick.

“They think they are,” North replied.

Cody shook his head. “Tell them to make it four horses and to put some money behind it. I don’t want to run Buckskin Joe unless the pot’s right.”

North talked with the Pawnee in low tones before he turned back to the civilians. “How much money you got in mind?”

Cody drew himself up and let it go in a gush. “I’ll bet all of mine if your Injuns really want to race. You gonna ante up with me, Seamus?”

“All of it?” Donegan squeaked, swallowing hard, seeing all the money flying away just moments after it had come to shower them with all its blessings. “That’s bloody four hundred dollars between us, Cody!”

“My horse it’s riding on,” Cody replied from the side of his mouth, keeping his eye on Frank North and the Pawnee.

“But I was the one backed you!”

“I’ll get you your hundred in gold—”

“It’s my bloody two hundred in gold now, Cody!”

Cody wagged his head as North started back over from the Pawnee. “Never seen someone get hard in the way about money like you before.”

“You damned idjit,” Seamus hissed at Cody’s ear, “neither one of us ever seen four hundred dollars at one time before.”

“You got a point,” he whispered as North came back.

“All right. Seems you got yourself a race, Cody. The Pawnee give you pick of their ponies—”

“Four of ’em?”

North nodded. “Four ponies—and four hundred dollars … against your winnings and the buckskin.”

The Irishman clapped a palm against his forehead, seeing it all flying away. “Blessed Virgin Mary!”

Cody turned and smiled. “You feel the need of praying, do you, Seamus?”