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

He looked at her a moment while she stopped and turned into him. “Yes,” he replied a bit quizzically. “I came back to you.”

“And you came back to me twelve days ago. Which just goes to prove that you will always return, because you love me.”

He bent slightly and kissed her. “Never any doubt of that in my mind.”

“And now I’ve come to realize it too, Seamus. No matter that you went away last winter. No matter that you’ve been gone since spring.”

“All that is in the past because I’m going to stay with you now. This babe will know it has a father. I want to be there when your time comes. No, Sam. Mackenzie can go find the hostiles without me. It will be a cold day in hell before I go marching off to fight again.”

A sudden look of something like pinched confusion crossed her face; then Sam squinted her eyes and murmured under her breath an oath against the pain while she slowly bent at the waist, doubling over. He held on to her the best he could, afraid she was going to crumple then and there in the dried and brittle grasses at the outskirts of Fort Laramie, there at the edge of the timeless, leafless trees.

All he could do was grow more frightened as he steadied her. Breathing in shallow puffs, Sam panted rapidly, like a dog come in from chasing hares across a meadow. This business of women and babes was something he did not understand. Something he doubted men would ever understand.

“Oh-oh-oh-oh!” she grumbled, weaving her body side to side slowly as she groaned, rubbing at her belly.

In moments her breath grew deeper. No longer as fast as it had been. And slowly she straightened.

“I wish I could take the pain from you myself,” he told her.

She glanced up at him as she began to rise, her eyes glistening. “Pain is just part of all the joy this child will bring us.”

“There was times I hurt just like that,” Seamus explained, not knowing what else he could say to make her realize he was trying to understand, “—after eating horse meat day after day. We had us nothing else. Believe me: I know just how bad a bellyache can hurt.”

When she finally straightened and drew back her shoulders, Sam put her two mittens along Seamus’s cheeks and sighed, “Silly man—how I love you so. But I don’t think it’s anything I ate.”

“You had me scared there for a minute. Are you feeling good enough to finish our walk?”

She pulled his face down with her mittens to kiss his lips. Smiling, Samantha gazed into his eyes, saying, “I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to take me back to our room early tonight.”

“Tired, Sam?” Then he shook his head, feeling like a fool. “Of course you are. A woman this close to having a baby is bound to get tired easy enough.”

“No,” she explained softly, letting his cheeks go and taking a secure hold on his left arm. “At least your son waited until his father returned before he made his debut.”

“W-what?”

“You silly, silly goose,” she said, patting his arm. “You better get me back to our room now, so you can go fetch Martha Luhn or Elizabeth Burt.”

She started out again, but he was rooted to the spot. This was confusing him—scaring him really—making him stammer like a schoolboy presenting a handmade valentine to a freckle-faced girl with braids and ribbons and rosy cheeks. “F-fetch them … why?”

“Yes, Seamus—I’m going to need someone there who knows about this sort of thing.”

“S-sort of thing?”

“Don’t you see, Seamus?” she replied as she tugged that tall plainsman back toward the buildings, the parade, and their room beyond. “I think your son is coming tonight.”

Afterword

What began with such bright hope and almost cocky optimism in the winter campaign quickly deteriorated into a disappointing spring after the Powder River debacle, then nearly fell completely apart in the first days of what would turn out to be a disastrous summer.

Back in the fall of seventy-five Sherman and Sheridan had hatched a brilliant plan to take President Grant off the horns of his thorny dilemma: in order to wrest the Black Hills from the Sioux and Cheyenne, the government had to find a way that would compel the tribes to break the law. Then Washington City could send in the army to settle the matter quickly, efficiently. All those who would not obediently return to their agencies would be deemed hostile and subject to annihilation.

That plan was succeeding beautifully in all respects, except one. Instead of convincing the winter roamers— those true, free-roaming warrior bands—to give up their old way of life and return to the reservations, the warrior bands had gone and whipped the army. Yet despite losing so many of its battles, the army was eventually to win the war.