Wolf Mountain Moon

Wolf Mountain Moon Read Free Page A

Book: Wolf Mountain Moon Read Free
Author: Terry C. Johnston
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cross-country to the Tongue, then something on the order of sixty or so miles down to the Yellowstone, where he would run onto the army’s cantonment, deliver his dispatches, fill himself with hot food more than once, and maybe even sleep for the better part of twenty-four hours beside a sheet-iron stove before he resaddled the freshly grained roan and pointed their noses south.
    Each time he dwelled on it, Seamus was struck again with just how far south a journey he would be facing once he started for home. Not just to return all the way to the upper reaches of the Powder, or to the Crazy Woman Crossing, even farther to Fort Fetterman on the North Platte … but much, much farther still to reach Fort Laramie, a final ninety twisting miles beyond.
    The wind seemed all the colder now as the sun continued to sink behind him. The country around Donegan seemed all the more desolate and foreboding, scarred by erosion, cut by coulee and ravine and mud slide—all of it buried now in a mantle of white beneath the leaden dome of never-ending sky. Colder still because he was beginning to realize he would not be home for Christmas, his son’s first. And chances were damned good he wouldn’t make it back to Samantha to celebrate the arrival of a new year either.
    At least the two of them were safe. At least they were warm and had decent food for their bellies. Small comforts like those went a long way to cause him to straighten his back, to stiffen his resolve. He would push as hard as it was prudent to push. Then, tonight, when he finally dropped from thesaddle, Seamus decided he would build himself a warming fire—something big enough to keep him from freezing. After all, he doubted there would be any warriors out and moving in this horrid cold, across this desolate stretch of country after sundown … not even Morning Star’s Cheyenne, or the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.
    Chances were, they’d be keeping an eye on Crook’s column. They’d have no suspicion of a lone horseman slipping through this unforgiving winter wilderness on his lonesome.
    Yet he told himself it could not be a fire big enough that it would warm him too much. He realized he must stay cold enough that deep sleep was impossible. A man who slept too deep in these temperatures never awoke again. Instead, Donegan realized he must stay just cold enough that it was impossible to sleep for long at a stretch: he must arouse himself early enough to move out before false dawn. Mounting up and pushing on beneath the light of the waxing moon, on through the day, past the next sundown until he knew they both could go no farther without some rest. How he would depend on this strong, wide-hipped roan gelding across the next few days.
    They watered together, and they ate together twice a day—as the horse grazed on some ground blown clear by the incessant wind, or a patch of grass where Seamus had kicked aside most of the snow, and he tore at the stringy jerked meat—how it made his mouth water to watch the whitetail, the mule deer, the elk cross his path … knowing he didn’t dare take a shot in Indian country.
    Best just not to think about his belly, or the cold. Or to let his mind slip too far south to Fort Laramie.
    Tomorrow morning he vowed he would have them up and away again after that bright winter moon had slipped from the sky, riding into the darkness for those two hours or so before the sun ever began to make its brief appearance far to the east, climbing into the thick blanket of clouds that hovered over this endless aching land as far as the eye could see.
    For now he pointed them toward the Mizpah in the fading light of that shrinking day. A lone horseman hurrying across a great white landscape like a hard-shelled dung beetle trudging across some cottonwood fluff. The yawning expanse around him swallowing all sound, he found it so eerily quietthe horse’s muted hoof falls were near all he heard, save for the

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