Read Black Sun, The Battle of Summit Springs, 1869 for Free Online Page A

rubbed her down with a handful of dried grass. “Sometimes, quiet is real good.”
    Yet he longed for the company of soldiers with good talk and new ears for his old stories or perhaps new stories from others’ lips. His loneliness would set in once the sky darkened and the stars came out in force, dusting the big canopy from horizon to horizon, with nothing to stop the view or clutter up the night but the full rising moon poking its big egg-yellow head up in the east at the edge of the endless prairie.
    Sitting alone at his small fire and drinking his alkali coffee, it gave Donegan a little comfort to touch the medicine pouch hung at his neck. He pulled it from his shirt, thinking on the old mountain man who gave it to him a year gone now. Jim Bridger was of that breed who had spent a lifetime of nights separated from friends. Yet Seamus could not drive away the memories of one uncle dead on a sandy island—no more than he could resist the despair that he would never find Liam’s brother, Ian.
    Yet having Bridger’s memory there at the fire tonight got Donegan’s feelings all tangled up with his memories of Liam and the kind of man his uncle must have been. Seamus had few regrets in his life, yet one of the weightiest was not having known Liam better.
    Ian—now he was a different matter altogether. The darker of his mother’s two brothers from County Tyrone. Always brooding while younger brother Liam acted like a big leprechaun dancing through life the way sprites glided through the clover. Ian was the older of the two, always acting as if the world weighed on his shoulders. While Liam drew folks to him like magic, Ian took brutal pride in the fact that no man of Eire called him friend. He took no stock in people—telling his young nephew Seamus that friends only caused one heartache. Since Ian did not need people, he could not be hurt.
    Donegan knelt at the fire, dragging the pot from the flames when the first shot rang out.
    Cries erupted from the far side of camp, near the picket-line. A handful of shots rattled the dry night air beneath that rising moon that shed full, silver light on the tableland.
    His coffee cup lay gurgling into the thirsty soil as his legs began churning, just as the first war-whoops sailed over the small encampment. Inside, his belly went cold, his mind working over the numbers and the odds if they were hit by something big. No small war-party this. That old saw that Sharp Grover and the other old-timers always told about Indians not coming at night—well, those old hands would just have to think that over now.
    Seamus figured if the warriors were here after dark, they were here in numbers.
    The growing intensity of their cries seemed to circle the camp as soldiers darted here and there, following orders of a few officers. Major Royall and Captain Taylor and Lieutenant Brady each shouted at once to form up, hold their fire, volley-fire, secure the horses, and get out of the firelight.
    Didn’t matter, the moonlight shone bright enough for a man to stand out plain as day and make himself a good target to boot. But what the moon did to the soldiers, it did every bit as well to the warriors sweeping along the perimeter of the camp, working in and out of the horse herd. There were screams from the horses, and shouts from the soldiers punctuating the war-cries of the horsemen flitting in off the prairie like bat-winged shadows flying beneath the silver light.
    Seamus brought the Henry to his shoulder and set to work on the riders. Most of them stayed upright atop their ponies in the dark, not too concerned with dropping off to the side as they rode in close.
    The first he hit spilled to the sand and skidded to a stop as two more rode close behind, sweeping low and lifting the wounded warrior from the ground as they raced over the body.
    Seamus levered four more rounds at the rescuers while the horsemen disappeared over the hills. There were a few final