Ashes of Heaven (The Plainsmen Series) by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston [Johnston, Terry C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Early April

1877

BY TELEGRAPH

BLACK HILLS.

Crazy Horse Coming In.

DEADWOOD, April 5.—Crazy Horse and 1,500 warriors encamped north of Bent Butte creek last night on their way to Spotted Tail agency. They are in a destitute condition and anxious for peace. They state that Sitting Bull will accept no terms of surrender and is making for the British possessions.

The cold, spring breeze teased the loose waves of hair that surrounded Samantha’s pale, drawn face that early morning as she and her husband stood against the porch railing at the front of officers’ quarters. She wore a look he had come to recognize through so many farewells, so many painful partings. It hadn’t gotten any easier. That first time he and Sharp Grover reined away from the old scout’s homestead down on the Staked Plain,* he could understand why she might convince herself that he wasn’t ever coming back.

But he had.*

And he had given Sam a ring before he said goodbye the next time, marching off on Crook’s Powder River campaign† that cold winter of 1876. Seamus came back to her a second time, and a third after Crook finally tired of trying to corner the hostiles through a spring campaign that eventually fizzled out as the fickle spirits of earth and sky conspired that autumn.# After returning to her- arms from the army’s grand winter campaign with Ranald Mackenzie’s Fourth U.S. Cavalry,@ Seamus figured Samantha ought to know that he would ride through hell itself to return to their simple, unadorned life together.

But this morning, unlike so many before, there was not the clamor and clatter of regiments and supply trains, teamsters and troopers and foot soldiers setting off on campaign. No, this morning Fort Laramie went about its normal business as Seamus Donegan prepared to set his life adrift again upon the winds of fate … alone.

“I have something for you before you go,” she said quietly, looking up at him with those red-rimmed eyes of hers.

“I thought you gave that to me last night,” he bent to whisper in her ear. “And again this morning too.”

Samantha’s cheeks flushed, and her eyes darted left and right to assure herself no one heard him. “You are so naughty, Mr. Donegan!”

“Only with my wife, Mrs. Donegan.”

He watched her stuff a hand into the pocket gathered beneath those pleats at her waist, there under that muslin apron she had knotted around herself. Sam pulled out a small box, wrapped in a wrinkled butcher paper he knew she must have talked out of Collins at the trading post, and secured both ways with three colors of her knitting yarn for a makeshift ribbon.

“F-for me?” he stammered, aghast as he took the small box in his big right hand, then swallowed. Caught speechless, stunned by the suddenness of this surprise.

For a moment Seamus gazed down at the boy lying across his left arm, looking up at his father.

“Here, let me take him, Seamus,” Sam said, lifting Colin from her husband’s arm.

The baby whimpered as soon as his mother put him to her shoulder.

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