Wolf Mountain Moon Read Free

the shadow of Inyan Kara † the Lakota instructed him to cross the Powder after they had parted company, to ascend the divide that would lead him over to Mizpah Creek, take him beyond that to Pumpkin Creek and eventually to the Tongue itself.
    For three and a half days they pushed their ponies through the cold and the snow from dawn till dusk. But the White River Agency scouts would not travel after sundown. Nor could Seamus get them started before light. Which meant the four of them sat out the long winter nights around a tiny fire built back against the overhang of some washed-out bluff, or far up from the mouth of a deep ravine so the glow of the low flames would not reflect their reddish hue so readily against the low clouds and snowy landscape.
    Those nights Donegan found he would doze in fits, remembering how it was to hold Samantha. How he had cradled his baby boy and paced that tiny room above the Fort Laramie parade. Other times he had nightmares of the terrible cold that never warmed during that long day in hell along the Red Fork Valley. Recalling the sounds of war, the inhuman cries ofman and horse, the flitting shadows of a half-naked enemy: women, children, old ones fleeing into the hills. What Mackenzie’s Fourth had started … winter would surely end.
    The destruction of the Northern Cheyenne.
    Only those strong enough would make it, he knew. Where they were headed now in the trackless wilderness, no man could know for certain. But a safe bet would be that the Cheyenne were once more limping for the safety of the Crazy Horse people. Starving, bleeding, freezing—stripped of everything but their pride.
    At least he had a small fire, Seamus consoled himself as he shivered through his lonely watch each night, arms tucked around his legs, chin resting on his knees while the others tried sleeping. And at least he had his heavy winter clothing, along with two thick blankets and that old wolf-hide hat of Uncle Dick’s. He had the clumsy buffalo hides wrapped around his boots while many of the fleeing survivors had no moccasins. He had warm wool gloves he kept stuffed inside the stiff horsehide cavalry gauntlets. He had so much, and Morning Star’s Cheyenne had so little…. How was it they always managed to survive?
    Was it their hatred for him and his kind that kept them warm? Was it that fury smoldering down inside each one of them that allowed the Cheyenne to survive?
    He wasn’t sure just how much the temperatures had moderated since leaving Crook’s command, but he was sure that during the last three days it had finally climbed above zero … before plummeting again as the sun fell each night.
    That’s what he reminded himself now as he turned and glanced to the south one last time. Just keep the sun behind my left shoulder like they told me, he thought that afternoon. Don’t take the first creek flowing south. And he was not to turn off at the second either, Three Bears had reminded him more than once before they had parted.
    Instead, he was to wait until reaching the third—that would be the Tongue River.
    So he was alone again.
    As spooky as they were, the Lakota didn’t like traveling at night. But tonight Seamus figured he would do just that, to make up some ground and time, at least until he and thehorse grew too weary, or it became too dark to pick out good footing from something slick and icy.
    A day and a half,
Three Bears had explained. If
a man is careful and watches over his animal—a day and a half to the Tongue River.
    If he pushed on tonight, and pushed hard come daylight, he might well reach the Tongue sometime around sundown tomorrow.
    How far from there?
    To the Elk River?
The war chief had blinked rapidly, staring off into the cloudy night, calculating, remembering, sizing things up.
Maybe another three days. Four perhaps.
    I’ll make it in three, Seamus had been promising himself. All told, that made it another day and a half