Dying Thunder by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

21

Late June–Early July, 1874

In a grove of trees less than three miles from the meadow, Donegan, Dixon and Hanrahan made a startling discovery the third day after the attack. Leggings and moccasins and blankets had been cut to ribbons and left behind. Much of it bloodied.

The ground around the area had been trampled by many feet, many hooves. Dark stains dotted the hammered grass and dust. The sight of so much of it soaking into the thirsty soil reminded Seamus of the fire and thunder of long-forgotten battlefields—of peach-faced boys calling for their mothers, of old men crying out like babies, and not enough unwounded to hold the hands of all the dying.

“Why they cut up their clothes like that?” asked Jim Hanrahan. “Get to the bullet wounds?”

Seamus shook his head. “I figure it’s like Jim Bridger told me: when a warrior dies, the rest divide up what he has worth keeping. And the rest they just cut up because he won’t be needing it where he’s going.”

“We gave ’em billy-be-hell, looks to be,” Dixon said.

To look at the place where the wounded had undoubtedly been brought was enough to give a man pause, and reason to wonder.

“As many of ’em as they were,” Seamus said, “still they didn’t stand a chance against the big guns.”

“If they’d found us asleep,” Hanrahan sighed with that sheepish, boyish grin of his, “we’d all be wolf bait by now. Had ’em a easy time of it running us over.”

“But you saw to it that enough of us was awake,” Dixon replied, also grinning. “I s’pose me and the rest owe you our lives, Jim.”

Hanrahan appeared genuinely embarrassed. “With Rath and Myers and the Mooar brothers skeedaddling north to Dodge when they found out—I had a choice to make. Everything I owned was there in that saloon. I wasn’t about to turn my back on it. If I saved the lives of most every man there—they helped save all that my life’s worth too. I figure we’re all even, in my account.”

Dixon gazed off. “Our guns did make the day, boys.”

“Like yours did yesterday,” Donegan reminded them. “If one shot put a end to that red siege at Adobe Walls, it was yours, Billy.”

“Wasn’t nothing, Irishman,” Dixon replied, wagging it off. “Just a scratch shot.”

Not long past sunup the day before, the third of the bloody siege, more than a dozen feathered horsemen had appeared in the east, on a high, red butte a little less than a mile away from the meadow.

“You figure they’re up to something? After all this time?” Billy Ogg had asked as more of the white men gathered outside the saloon.

“Naw, I doubt they’ll be riding down on us any more—after the drubbing we give ’em,” Donegan had replied.

“Just the same—I’m getting mighty sore at seeing the red devils come and go as they wish,” Dixon had growled, “while we’re holed up here like field mice.” He then turned and snatched up the .50-caliber Sharps.

“You look mad as a spit-on sowbug, Billy.

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