Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Epilogue

Early October 1876

How he reveled in the feel of her arm curled in his. So simple a joy this was, her walking at his side as they strolled each evening since his return—twelve of them now—both of them bundled against the chill, bracing air that brought a rose to Samantha’s cheeks as dusk fell and twilight slipped down upon Fort Laramie.

That first night back, well—it was the sort of night that lived on and on in a man’s soul, chiseled deep within the marrow of him. How he had held her and loved her and kissed her and cried with her too; how they laughed now, as they remembered that ache of not seeing one another in four long months.

Right about the time Samantha had reached the landing at the top of the last flight of those narrow stairs, right where she could look down and see Old Bedlam’s front door flung open in one grand sweep, in he burst. And there Seamus had stopped, gazing up at her as she gripped the banister for all the support it could give her. His eyes marveling at the sheer size of her.

So, so different from the woman he had left behind in May. Yet in every way but one—Seamus knew she was still the same.

“Come down,” he had said to her softly as more than a dozen of the officers’ wives filled in the doorway and the landing behind him, most all of them beckoning her. “Feels like an eternity that I’ve been waiting to hold you.”

Glancing at the happy faces of those who stared up at her, Sam could not find a single dry eye among them. Some blubbered unabashedly. But most dabbed their tears away with the corner of an apron or a handkerchief pulled from a cuff or simply whatever it was they could find.

He wagged his head as she began to descend once more, step by step. “You’re simply the most beautiful creature on God’s earth.”

Her eyes had been wet, her cheeks tracked as she reached the bottom step, where he started to enfold her in his arms, then bent to kiss her lips. She had drawn back, her eyes blinking.

“I won’t break, Seamus!” she scolded, taking his big arms still inside that dirty, muddy mackinaw coat of his and looping them around her. “I’m only pregnant. Not made of glass!”

It was then that he did embrace her, sensing the bulk of her against him, the firmness of her swelling breasts. Feeling that arousal he had for so long fought down out there in that wilderness separating him from his mate. Never before had he held a woman who carried a child. Yet here she was, grown in size, brought to full bloom in the time they had been apart.

Late that first night as she had snored on his shoulder, Seamus ran his fingers softly over the changes in her, the heaviness to the breasts to be sure, but more so the taut roundness to her stomach. The way her belly button was stretched so much it even protruded. For now this was the greatest marvel to a simple man—becoming a father for the first time!

The days to follow had simply flowed one into the next with her. Just to enjoy the smell of her, the feel and shape and texture of her, the very nearness of her. To take the cascade of her curls in his hand and smell them, brush them along his cheek, across the lids of his eyes. To experience her in every way he had been deprived of her.

No, he wasn’t going back out there, Seamus vowed. Not now that he had learned just how much she meant to his soul.

So every evening they spent this time together. The air so cold of each twilight come to these high plains that he was certain the next day was sure to bring snow. But instead the leaves began slowly to turn, and frost gathered once more on the inside of that single tiny windowpane beside the bed where they held one another throughout the long nights.

Minutes ago they had left Major Townsend’s quarters, where Colonel Ranald Mackenzie had invited Seamus and Sam to have supper with him and General Crook. A real sit-down meal, the finest a frontier fort could offer. So now after that sumptuous dinner and paying their respects, they strolled on into the coming of twilight as the wind died.

He looked down at her while they walked along, crossing the center of the parade, heading for the big cottonwoods that lined the banks of the river. Sam’s cheeks glowed rosier than ever before, at least what he could remember. It must not all be the cold wind, he thought. Some of it had to do with her condition.

His wife’s hunger had surprised him that first night. And every one of the twelve nights since. Just as he had been a bit afraid to hug her so fiercely in those first moments at the bottom of the stairs, so he was frightened of what might happen if he penetrated her warm moistness— what he had dreamed of night after night for those long months of their separation.

“The other women have told me there is no danger, Seamus,” Sam had whispered in the darkness of their room that night as she had stroked her fingers up and down the hot, hardened length of him.

“You’re sure?” Oh, how he wanted her to be sure!

She giggled, like the flutter of a small bird, and said, “They’ve all had children, Seamus Donegan. I think they ought to know firsthand, don’t you?”

“Just as long as I don’t … you don’t … you’re so big.”

Nudging him over onto his back, Samantha quickly straddled him, almost as nimble as ever despite the size of her. He gasped when she took his flesh into her hand and aimed it true, slowly settling her weight upon his hips.

“I’ll make you a promise, Seamus Donegan,” she said huskily, her eyes half closing as she began to rock upon him in a slow dance. “If it makes you feel any better, I promise I’ll let you know if you hurt me.”

“M-me? F-feel any better?” he stammered. “What could possibly feel any better than this?”

Every night since, they had worked their immense passion around the full bulk of her belly. Right now he remembered again how it felt to kneel behind her, to reach around her widened hips, to stroke his hands across the heaviness of her—as if he were caressing the very womb where she carried their child.

Seamus looked down at her in the silver light of that half-moon just then climbing over the tops of the cottonwoods, stripped daily of their autumn-kissed leaves by strong, gusty, tormenting winds.

How he wanted her again, to feel the great warmth of her, to savor the love he felt when he was in her arms. Just walking beside her as he was now, he knew it wasn’t enough. He had to have more. Never would he get enough of her.

“Oh!” she squealed in a high pitch.

As soon as she stopped, he stopped. Clutching her arm, he asked fearfully, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

For a moment she rubbed her wool mitten across the round expanse of her greatcoat. Her eyes widened in surprise, lips pursed in a little fear. “Oh, oh, oh!”

Her each new utterance of the word alarmed him. As did the way she gripped at his arms, clamped on to them,her fingers like claws. Then it was past. Whatever it was, he could see it disappear, leave her face—tangibly. The way something visible might release her, replaced by the relief that showed there on that rosy face.

Her eyes smiled first.

“Good,” he sighed. “I was afraid something we had for dinner had given your stomach a twist.”

Now her whole face smiled, and she licked her lips in the dry autumn-night air. Looking up at him from the corners of her eyes as she had that very first night they had met back in the Panhandle of west Texas, Samantha straightened.

“I’m all right,” she said. “Let’s finish our walk.”

Minutes later she snuggled even closer to his side as they moved along, both her arms encircling one of his. Sam asked, “Are you going to take Colonel Mackenzie up on his offer and go with him, Seamus?”

“I’m not even going to consider it. Not with the baby due next month. It has been eight months, hasn’t it?”

“Near as I could count, Seamus,” she said with that giggle. “I never was much good at arithmetic.”

“It doesn’t matter. I want to be here when the babe comes. I’ll stay here and Mackenzie can march without me.”

“But—he asked you himself to go along. There at dinner tonight. Seamus, how can you turn him down, with all that you were through together in Texas? After all, he’s the colonel of the Fourth Cavalry, for God’s sake! Asking you to scout for him.”

“I scouted for him one winter already,” Donegan replied with a single wag of his head. “That was enough. So I’ve got a far better plan for this coming winter: to stay close to the home fires when the winter winds come howling off those mountains north of here.”

It took her several moments; then she finally said the words as if she had been rehearsing them: “Seamus, long ago I realized what you were—the sort of man you are. I think I knew what you were before you ever asked me to be your wife. I knew what you had to be before I loved you, what you were when you rode off to fight for Ranald Mackenzie two winters ago.”

“But don’t you see—it took that winter campaign for me to find out just how much I loved you, Sam.”

“And you came back to me, didn’t you, Seamus?”

He looked at her a moment while she stopped and turned into him. “Yes,” he replied a bit quizzically. “I came back to you.”

“And you came back to me twelve days ago. Which just goes to prove that you will always return, because you love me.”

He bent slightly and kissed her. “Never any doubt of that in my mind.”

“And now I’ve come to realize it too, Seamus. No matter that you went away last winter. No matter that you’ve been gone since spring.”

“All that is in the past because I’m going to stay with you now. This babe will know it has a father. I want to be there when your time comes. No, Sam. Mackenzie can go find the hostiles without me. It will be a cold day in hell before I go marching off to fight again.”

A sudden look of something like pinched confusion crossed her face; then Sam squinted her eyes and murmured under her breath an oath against the pain while she slowly bent at the waist, doubling over. He held on to her the best he could, afraid she was going to crumple then and there in the dried and brittle grasses at the outskirts of Fort Laramie, there at the edge of the timeless, leafless trees.

All he could do was grow more frightened as he steadied her. Breathing in shallow puffs, Sam panted rapidly, like a dog come in from chasing hares across a meadow. This business of women and babes was something he did not understand. Something he doubted men would ever understand.

“Oh-oh-oh-oh!” she grumbled, weaving her body side to side slowly as she groaned, rubbing at her belly.

In moments her breath grew deeper. No longer as fast as it had been. And slowly she straightened.

“I wish I could take the pain from you myself,” he told her.

She glanced up at him as she began to rise, her eyes glistening. “Pain is just part of all the joy this child will bring us.”

“There was times I hurt just like that,” Seamus explained, not knowing what else he could say to make her realize he was trying to understand, “—after eating horse meat day after day. We had us nothing else. Believe me: I know just how bad a bellyache can hurt.”

When she finally straightened and drew back her shoulders, Sam put her two mittens along Seamus’s cheeks and sighed, “Silly man—how I love you so. But I don’t think it’s anything I ate.”

“You had me scared there for a minute. Are you feeling good enough to finish our walk?”

She pulled his face down with her mittens to kiss his lips. Smiling, Samantha gazed into his eyes, saying, “I’m afraid I’m going to ask you to take me back to our room early tonight.”

“Tired, Sam?” Then he shook his head, feeling like a fool. “Of course you are. A woman this close to having a baby is bound to get tired easy enough.”

“No,” she explained softly, letting his cheeks go and taking a secure hold on his left arm. “At least your son waited until his father returned before he made his debut.”

“W-what?”

“You silly, silly goose,” she said, patting his arm. “You better get me back to our room now, so you can go fetch Martha Luhn or Elizabeth Burt.”

She started out again, but he was rooted to the spot. This was confusing him—scaring him really—making him stammer like a schoolboy presenting a handmade valentine to a freckle-faced girl with braids and ribbons and rosy cheeks. “F-fetch them … why?”

“Yes, Seamus—I’m going to need someone there who knows about this sort of thing.”

“S-sort of thing?”

“Don’t you see, Seamus?” she replied as she tugged that tall plainsman back toward the buildings, the parade, and their room beyond. “I think your son is coming tonight.”