Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Elizabeth was tapping on the windowpane with her knuckle, then pointing with the same finger at the horsemen entering the far corner of the parade. From the northeast. They were ragged. Their horses dusty. Everything about them frightened her. But she was immediately relieved to find that none of those weary, played-out horses dragged a litter behind it.

“It’s Crook!” Mrs. Burt declared. “He’s got his staff with him!”

She turned to Elizabeth, filled once more with hope as she asked, “He’ll have word from the rest, won’t he?”

“Word about Seamus? Is that what you mean, dear?”

Her head bobbed eagerly, sensing the cold knot in her chest. She simply had to know. One way or the other, she had to be told.

“Look, Samantha,” Elizabeth said reassuringly, patting Sam’s shoulder. “You don’t have to ask General Crook about your husband. If you look real closely—you’ll see one of those riders is Seamus Donegan himself!”

^* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 7, Dying Thunder

Epilogue

Early October 1876

How he reveled in the feel of her arm curled in his. So simple a joy this was, her walking at his side as they strolled each evening since his return—twelve of them now—both of them bundled against the chill, bracing air that brought a rose to Samantha’s cheeks as dusk fell and twilight slipped down upon Fort Laramie.

That first night back, well—it was the sort of night that lived on and on in a man’s soul, chiseled deep within the marrow of him. How he had held her and loved her and kissed her and cried with her too; how they laughed now, as they remembered that ache of not seeing one another in four long months.

Right about the time Samantha had reached the landing at the top of the last flight of those narrow stairs, right where she could look down and see Old Bedlam’s front door flung open in one grand sweep, in he burst. And there Seamus had stopped, gazing up at her as she gripped the banister for all the support it could give her. His eyes marveling at the sheer size of her.

So, so different from the woman he had left behind in May. Yet in every way but one—Seamus knew she was still the same.

“Come down,” he had said to her softly as more than a dozen of the officers’ wives filled in the doorway and the landing behind him, most all of them beckoning her. “Feels like an eternity that I’ve been waiting to hold you.”

Glancing at the happy faces of those who stared up at her, Sam could not find a single dry eye among them. Some blubbered unabashedly. But most dabbed their tears away with the corner of an apron or a handkerchief pulled from a cuff or simply whatever it was they could find.

He wagged his head as she began to descend once more, step by step. “You’re simply the most beautiful creature on God’s earth.”

Her eyes had been wet, her cheeks tracked as she reached the bottom step, where he started to enfold her in his arms, then bent to kiss her lips. She had drawn back, her eyes blinking.

“I won’t break, Seamus!” she scolded, taking his big arms still inside that dirty, muddy mackinaw coat of his and looping them around her. “I’m only pregnant. Not made of glass!”

It was then that he did embrace her, sensing the bulk of her against him, the firmness of her swelling breasts. Feeling that arousal he had for so long fought down out there in that wilderness separating him from his mate. Never before had he held a woman who carried a child. Yet here she was, grown in size, brought to full bloom in the time they had been apart.

Late that first night as she had snored on his shoulder, Seamus ran his fingers softly over the changes in her, the heaviness to the breasts to be sure, but more so the taut roundness to her stomach. The way her belly button was stretched so much it even protruded. For now this was the greatest marvel to a simple man—becoming a father for the first time!

The days to follow had simply flowed one into the next with her. Just to enjoy the smell of her, the feel and shape and texture of her, the very nearness of her. To take the cascade of her curls in his hand and smell them, brush them along his cheek, across the lids of his eyes. To experience her in every way he had been deprived of her.

No, he wasn’t going back out there, Seamus vowed. Not now that he had learned just how much she meant to his soul.

So every evening they spent this time together. The air so cold of each twilight come to these high plains that he was certain the next day was sure to bring snow. But instead the leaves began slowly to turn, and frost gathered once more on the inside of that single tiny windowpane beside the bed where they held one another throughout the long nights.

Minutes ago they had left Major Townsend’s quarters, where Colonel Ranald Mackenzie had invited Seamus and Sam to have supper with him and General Crook. A real sit-down meal, the finest a frontier fort could offer. So now after that sumptuous dinner and paying their respects, they strolled on into the coming of twilight as the wind died.