A Cold Day in Hell: The Dull Knife Battle, 1876

Seamus helped as much as he could, often being the one to carry her work downstairs for her to the room where together they would boil the water and do the wash. Each evening he would carry the little child downstairs in his huge arms, clutched so lovingly against his great body, smiling to beat the band as they warmed water in a kettle on the woodstove, preparing the babe’s daily bath. In their time together Seamus had shown her much tenderness with his big, hardened hands—those same hands carefully, lovingly lathering the infant in that washbasin they had set in the middle of that small table right beside the warmth of the woodstove.

“What will we name him?” Samantha had asked him that first morning while they gave their son his very first bath.

“I thought that was best left up to the women in the family,” Seamus had replied, lifting the wriggling child from the water as she draped a towel around its rosy body.

“Not in my family, we’re not,” Sam had declared. “In this family, boys will be named by their fathers.”

“Then I will have to give it some thought.”

“You do that, Seamus Donegan,” she told him as she pressed against him, the child held between them in that embrace. “You give good thought to this matter of naming your firstborn son. For this may well be one of the most important things you 11 ever do in life.”

He had bent to kiss the top of the babe’s head, then bent to brush his lips against hers. Then he said, “Yes, one of the most important things I’ll ever do in this young fellow’s life.”

She heard him on the stairs now. There was no other sound like his boots clattering up those steps, what with their high, two-inch leather heels so they would not slip through a stirrup, a bit of a shelf on the back of the heel to support a spur, and with stovepipes almost tall enough to reach his knees—yes, he had explained the usefulness of it all to her many times. But right now those boot heels announced his return from that conference he and a few others were called to have with Mackenzie and Crook.

It was not until late that night as they lay in the darkness, with the babe nestled snuggly in the hand-me-down cradle set right against Sam’s side of the bed, that she lay against Seamus’s chest and knew he was not sleeping.

In the blackness of their tiny room, she asked him in a whisper, “What’s keeping you from sleep?”

Moments passed before he spoke. “I don’t know what to do. Before … before the babe arrived, I was damned sure that I wouldn’t ever go marching off to make war again.”

She felt him shudder, not knowing if it was from fear, or from a sob. Then Sam suggested, “Mackenzie asked you to ride with him again.”

“Yes. He’s kept after me, he has.”

“And this time you didn’t tell him no.”

“Not exactly, Sam. But—I said I’d tell him in the morning.”

“Seamus, my love: it took me some time before I came to really understand who you were as a man. The sort of husband you’d make. And now the sort of father you will be to our son. I know you will have no peace in yourself if you don’t go off to do what it is that you need to do.”

“Peace,” he repeated that word in a whisper in the dark. “I look at our son. I hold him in my arms. I gaze into his little face as he lies in my lap. And I grow scared.”

“Why are you scared?” she asked, nestling her head in his neck.

“Because I’m afraid that unless I go with Mackenzie, unless I keep going until this terrible matter is done, once and for all—there will be no peace for our son.”

“You do have a job to do, Seamus,” she eventually said, feeling the sting of tears come to her eyes. “Part of that job is being here with me when you can to be a husband. Part of that job will be helping me to raise our new son. And a very important part of your job right now is finishing what you have begun.”

For a long, long time he did not answer her. And when he did, Seamus quietly said, “Thank you for understanding my fear, Sam. And for understanding that I’m the sort of man who must go and look my fear in the eye.”

“Go do this for us, Seamus. Go do this for your son.”

“Yes,” he answered with a long, rattling sigh. “It’s about time that we finished what we started ten long years ago.”

* Present-day Sand Creek.

Chapter 4

14–15 October 1876

Telegraphic

Gen. Merritt Marching

Into Indian Land

THE INDIANS

Merritt on a scout—Bad Indians Still Raiding.

CHEYENNE, October 13.—General Merritt left Custer City with 500 men on a scout to-day. Their destination is not positively known but it is surmised to be the Bell Fourche Fork of the Cheyenne river. The remainder of the command is still at Custer. The party of Indians who killed Monroe near Fort Laramie a few days since also raided the ranch of Nick Jones on the old Red Cloud road, stealing twenty-five horses. Monroe’s body was pierced by eight bullets.