The Mountain: An Event Group Thriller by David L. Golemon Page B

choosing over the blue cap of a cavalryman. He sniffed, recoiled, and then angrily placed the hat back on his head. He snorted and cast Gray Dog another withering look. He was about to comment when a shot rang out across the prairie. It was quickly followed by another, and then another.
    “What the bloody hell?” Dugan pulled on the reins of his horse. Thomas and Gray Dog had already stopped and were listening intently.
    “Northeast,” Gray Dog said as he spied the sloping land ahead, which afforded no view of the area in front of them. More and more gunfire erupted, and to Thomas gunfire meant white men. These were the first sounds of gunfire he had heard since the battle of Antietam in 1862.
    “I believe that is the sound of Spencers, Colonel boyo,” Dugan said as he turned in the saddle to face the colonel. “Lord knows we heard enough to know.”
    Without a word Thomas reached over and relieved Gray Dog of the mule’s reins and then nodded the Comanche forward. The Indian without command to his small horse shot away as Thomas dismounted and tied off his horse and the pack mule on a scrub brush. He quickly removed his Henry repeating rifle from its scabbard. Dugan, seeing this, did likewise.
    “Come out here in the godforsaken wasteland only to walk head-on into a firefight. Who in the world wants to shoot each other in this heat?” he mumbled as he pulled an older-model Spencer carbine from his saddle. He quickly followed Thomas as he made his way forward in the wake of Gray Dog, who had silently gone ahead to spy the happenings in the valley.
    The two men had only gone a hundred yards when Gray Dog returned and brought his Appaloosa to a brutal stop as he hopped from the old cavalry blanket covering the horse’s back. He immediately caught the extra-heavy Spencer carbine Thomas tossed to him.
    “What do you have?” Thomas asked as he kept moving forward.
    “Soldiers. They are attacking a family of Sioux.”
    “A family, you say?” Dugan asked as he hustled to keep up with the two younger men.
    Gray Dog didn’t respond but only led the way to the ridge ahead. He ducked low and then crawled to the edge. Thomas and then Dugan joined him as the gunfire ceased below. The colonel quickly assessed the scene. Below at about two hundred yards, ten U.S. cavalrymen had dismounted and were checking the bodies of what looked like eight Sioux Indians. Thomas quickly noted the small children and women lying among the dead. He gritted his teeth as he heard a few of the men laughing at the sport of killing the family.
    “Stupid sons of bitches! What did they have to go and do that for?” Dugan asked as he saw that at least the family had gotten off a few defensive shots before dying at the hands of the troopers from Fort Dodge. At least three of the ten men had taken arrows and were being attended to by their comrades.
    “Look,” Gray Dog said, pointing to the three circled buffalo-hide tepees and the meat still roasting on a spit over the undisturbed fire. “The family of Sioux had stopped for a meal by the small, muddy creek. They were doing nothing but eating a meal, John Henry.”
    Thomas remained silent as he scanned the horrid scene below. He was about to comment when a scream sounded in the preternatural silence that always falls after a gun battle. He looked to the left and saw a large man with the three stripes of a sergeant pulling a Sioux woman by the hair and laughing. Thomas became furious as he knew what was going to befall the young woman next.
    “Sergeant Major, disable that trooper … now!”
    “T’would be a pleasure, Colonel Darlin’.”
    Dugan aimed his Spencer. The act of shooting was natural for the man from Belfast, the best shot Thomas had ever seen. He had learned his trade while a guard for the Knights of the Vatican before joining the U.S. Army as a lad of twenty.
    The man was still laughing as the bullet hit before the sound of the blast could echo down to the other men. The large