Trumpet on the Land Read Free Page A

the chance of losing me, losing any of us right now.”
    â€œDon’t blame him, do you? What with all but a handful of them Shoshone up and pulling out for home this morning? Why, just two days back even the Crow saw the elephant and left us on the trail so they could hurry back to their villages and have their scalp dances. So now, by God, with the Snakes gone too, the old man’s been left stranded.” He wagged his head dolefully. “Ain’t no wonder that Crook’s afraid the enemy could be all around us, now that he ain’t got his Injun scouts to be his eyes and ears. But there’s no way to know for sure what’s out there, all around us now, if we don’t go out and scout.”
    â€œThem war camps still ain’t strong enough to jump us here,” Frank replied sourly.
    â€œMaybe they won’t jump us, but they sure been making a bunch of trouble for us while we sit and wait. Crook’s gotta know that by now.”
    â€œGeneral knows.”
    â€œSo he wants us just to sit on our saddle galls?”
    Grouard grinned. “Why the hell you complaining, white man? Looks like you’re getting in all the feet soaking you want, Seamus.”
    â€œThink about it. While Crook’s army sits, what you suppose the Injun camps are doing?”
    Grouard’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully on the distance, as if he were attempting to measure somehow the sheer heft to all that danger out there. As if he might actually try to divine the enemy’s intent across that great gulf in time and space.
    â€œThey’re hunting.”
    â€œHunting meat?” Seamus replied. “Or hunting soldiers?”
    â€œBoth. While they’ll hunt for hides and meat to put up for the winter—they damn sure gonna keep an eye on us here. Send scouts down to watch Crook’s camp all the time so they’ll know if we go to marching north again.”
    â€œThat has to be a big camp, Grouard. I can’t figure ’em staying together for much longer.”
    â€œMe neither,” Frank agreed, sweeping the grass aside with his fingers so that he could scoop up a palmful of dirt. “That many lodges, that many people, thousands and thousands of ponies—they’ll need to break up.” With a flick of his wrist he sprayed the dust out from his hand in a wide arc.
    Donegan said, “But Crook’s got it set firm in his mind he’s gonna have to tangle with the whole bunch again.”
    â€œHe does figure on that—so he don’t fed much like moving till he’s got more men and bullets.”
    Donegan rocked off his elbow and eased his head back onto the grass. The sun felt as good as a man could ever want it to feel—every bit as good as he had dreamed the summer sun could feel on his skin while he struggled vainly to stay warm shuddering atop a cold saddle last winter on Reynolds’s long march north to the fight on Powder River. *
    Here in the heart of summer, Seamus sighed with contentment and said, “If Crook’s waiting for men and bullets—then this army of his ain’t gonna be marching anytime soon.”
    â€œDon’t mean you and me won’t be working.”
    At that moment he wanted to crack one of his eyes into a slit so he could weigh the look on the half-breed’s face, to see if Grouard was trying to skin him or not. But Seamus fought the sudden impulse down like it were a real thing, not wanting to move at all from this warm, sundrenchedcreekbank. “Little while back you said Crook’s changed his mind.”
    â€œHe has.”
    â€œBut?”
    Grouard answered, “But it don’t mean Crook can’t go and change his mind again.”
    Thinking back on all the generals he had known since 1862, Seamus had to agree. “Seems like that sort of thing just naturally comes with those stars, don’t it, Frank? Like it’s their duty to up and change your mind. Mither of God! But