Trumpet on the Land Read Free

of an army on the march, an army intent on fulfilling General Philip Sheridan’s prophecy that the hostiles of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse who had destroyed Custer on the Greasy Grass would soon hear a trumpet on the land.

Prologue
20 June 1876

    â€œI hear water’s better when you mix it with whiskey.”
    Upon hearing the quiet interruption of that familiar voice, the Irishman raised his head from the cool grass that flourished along the bank of Little Goose Creek to watch Frank Grouard slide out of his saddle.
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” Seamus Donegan replied, propped up on one elbow as he kicked his bare feet in the cold water. He had his canvas britches snugged in loose rolls all the way up to his knees to soak in the refreshing current. “You see, I never water down my whiskey.”
    The half-breed with skin the hue of coffee-tanned leather tied off his army mount, then came over to settle in the shade of a huge cottonwood beside Donegan. “Much as you bellyache about missing your whiskey this trip out, you sure as hell done a lot of soaking in water.”
    Seamus grinned, then nodded in agreement as he said, “This tends to take a man’s mind off his real thirst.”
    â€œThe sort a man gets when he has a whiskey hunger, eh?”
    â€œOr the kind of hunger what hits a man when he’s gone without a woman for too long.” Donegan immediately felt bad for the thoughtless words that fell from histongue. “I’m sorry, Frank. Didn’t mean nothing by it. Forgot, is all.”
    Grouard waved it off with a lukewarm grin and a shrug of his shoulder. “Don’t make nothing of it, Irishman. Women been nothing but trouble for me. Whiskey too. Now, a fella like you, he can handle both, I’d wager: all he wants of both. But a man like me gets all buried in a woman, and that makes for trouble with that woman’s brother—so that’s when I go and get all fall-down and underfoot with some cheap Red River trader’s whiskey….”
    He heard the head scout’s voice fade away while watching the wistful look come over the half-breed’s dusky, molasses-colored face. “I figure we ought to talk about what brung you to look me up—”
    â€œIt don’t matter no more, Seamus,” Grouard interrupted. “Something I can talk about now. Hurt for a while. Not so much no more.”
    â€œDamn, but you’ve had your share of dark days. First the trouble with Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas over them whiskey traders. Then you go and get yourself all but scalped and skewered over a woman with Crazy Horse’s band.”
    â€œDidn’t mean for things to turn out so bad with He Dog, that woman’s brother, bad with the rest of them Hunkpatila that way.”
    As much as Crook’s chief of scouts might protest otherwise, Seamus could still read the torment of that lost love carved into the lines around Grouard’s eyes. Just the way it had to be cut into his very soul. “Never knew a man who lost a woman could honestly claim he was meaning for things to turn out that way, Frank.”
    Grouard pulled free a long brilliant-green stem from the grass at his side, placed it between his lips, and sucked absently, gazing at the gurgling flow of Little Goose Creek at their feet. Moment by moment the midsummer sun continued its relentless climb toward midsky, easing back the cool, inviting shadows beneath the overhanging cottonwoods like a woman at her morning chores sweeping against a thickening line of dust across her hardwood floor.
    â€œCrook’s changed his mind, Irishman,” Grouard finally said, sliding the green grass blade from his lips.
    â€œFor sure this time?”
    He nodded. “When he called off us going on our scout last night like he’d wanted original’, I just figured the general wanted time to set his mind on something. But this morning he told me he didn’t want to take