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

Ten years ago. There at the Crazy Woman Crossing it had been—when he watched that first warrior racing in atop his pony, all painted up, hair and a cock’s comb of feathers all a’spray in the wind, the look on that dark, contorted face like no other he had seen since … why, since he saw the etching in the ancient book one of the old Irishmen in the village had shown all the interested young lads. It was the face of a banshee, the like of those what came to wail out of the dark places in the forests, to frighten off but lure at the same time—banshees that would suck the very life from a man’s body if ever they got their hands on you.

Donegan swallowed hard, remembering that very first warrior he had dropped with the Henry repeater. In the dust and sage and sunlight there on the top of a bluff near the Crazy Woman Crossing. For so long he hadn’t believed it had been an Indian at all. No. By the Blessed Virgin—in his sights Seamus had beheld an unholy banshee galloping right out from the bowels of the earth when he pulled the Henry’s trigger.

So was he a Christian? he asked himself now this night. And eventually, as darkness shrouded them while he followed Frank Grouard into the rugged badlands east of the Greasy Grass, in the footsteps of a doomed command riding to its death—Seamus admitted he was not a Christian. Instead, he was what his mother and the priests had made of him: a Catholic. And an Irish Catholic at that.

He had been ever since he had known enough to cross himself and mutter the prayers of his childhood catechism whenever evil lurked just out of reach, as it did throughout that dark ride north into the unknown.

Within an hour the breeze came up and thin veils of clouds wafted in from the west. A few drops fell, big ones the size of tobacco wads. Cold they were. But a few heavy drops were all the sky had in it while the temperature plunged, chilling Donegan as he followed the half-breed. Overhead the moon rose to midsky behind the graying pall of pewter-tinted clouds scurrying east. As if even they knew better than to tarry above this ground forever touched by death’s foul hand.

Then, as they were beginning to climb the dark foreground of a slope that appeared as if it would take them out of a wide saddle toward the top of a long ridge, Grouard’s horse suddenly snorted, jerking its head to the left as if to avoid bumping into something that had loomed right out of the darkness.

Seamus had his hand on the butt of a pistol, half out of its holster, when he demanded in a hush, “What is it?”

“Don’t know,” Grouard growled, fighting the blackcoated animal until it settled and came to a rest. “Never knowed this horse to act this way. To get scared at anything.”

“You see what it shied at?”

“No,” he replied, dropping from the saddle. Standing on the ground, he handed the reins to Donegan. “But I’m fixing to find out.”

As Seamus watched, the half-breed crouched forward, bent nearly on all fours. Grouard had barely gone ten feet when he jerked to an abrupt halt. In the darkness it appeared the scout inched sideways, his arms out, feeling something with both hands.

Swallowing, he quickly glanced around him at the darkness seeming to swell around him. Donegan asked nervously, “What’d you find?”

“Shit!” Grouard squealed, and fell backward on his rump.

“What the hell is it?” Seamus demanded, his raspy voice louder now as he forced the question from a throat constricted in fear. Maybe the gruff edge he could bring to his words would scare away the ancient demons haunting him ever since the fall of darkness.

“It’s a goddamned body.”

“A body?” Donegan asked, dropping immediately to the ground. His own horse caught the scent of the corpse, yanking at the reins. “Man?”

“Yeah.”

He joined the half-breed as Grouard knelt a second time over the dark shape. In what murky light the rind of moon and starlight could strain through the oilcloth covering of clouds, Seamus finally made out the unmistakable human form beneath them. Pale. Naked. White as the dust itself.

“His arms—” Grouard said.

“I see. They been cut off.”

“When I put my hand out first time, I found his head.”

“Ain’t much left of it, is there?”

“No,” the half-breed replied. “Scalped, and they smashed his face in.”

“War club does a pretty job of that, don’t it?” Donegan asked grimly. “A white man?”

“My bet’d be this fella was a soldier.”

“Yeah. One of them what made the trail we been following.” Seamus stood stiffly, feeling the pull in his legs after going so long in the saddle. Up and down the length of his thighs he rubbed with his palms in the way of a horseman gone afoot after hours of crossing rough country, working those leg and rump muscles in partnership with the animal below him.

Grouard stood slowly as well.

“Let’s go,” Donegan said hollowly, holding out Grouard’s rein.