Centennial (70 page)

“We have no guns,” Lost Eagle said.

“I didn’t mean guns,” Mercy explained. “Skimmerhorn’s a madman. He’ll use any pretext.”

“We’ve done everything General Asher told us,” Lost Eagle said pathetically.

“Steal no cows,” Mercy explained. “If a white man comes through your camp, let him go in peace, no matter what he does.”

“Without arms,” Lost Eagle said, “we couldn’t make trouble if we wanted to.”

Talk turned to more pressing matters. “When will we get food?’ Chief Black Knee of the Cheyenne asked.

“It’s being discussed,” Mercy said lamely.

“Discussed! We’re starving, Mercy. Our shame is as big as the earth.”

Every promise made by General Asher had been frustrated by Colonel Skimmerhorn. Every assurance of supplies that he, Mercy, had given these patient men had been countermanded. Two tribes who had been as faithful to their treaties as any in America were being systematically starved, after first being deprived of their land, their buffalo and their guns. Now they were being bedeviled by a maniacal civilian playing at being a soldier, and no one in authority had the courage or the inclination to call a halt. It was the darkest hour in Mercy’s life, worse even than when he was left alone at Chapultepec, his companions seeing the blood and thinking him dead.

For the first time he was not proud to be an American soldier. The trickery whereby the ample agreement of 1851 was replaced by the niggardly provisions of 1861 could be accepted. Maybe adjustments were necessary. He no longer accused Commissioner Boone of double dealing with the Indians; white men required land, and they wanted to own the streams along which gold was found, and that was that.

But the present behavior of the American government was despicable, and he proposed saying so as soon as he got back to Denver. To coop up more than fourteen hundred Indians in a rock-rimmed meadow lacking water and to leave them there without food was insupportable, and he was convinced that if the real army in Leavenworth or Washington knew of it, they would demand instant reforms. He must bring the facts to their attention.

He told Lost Eagle, “Trust me one more time. Hold off any action till I get back.”

“We listen, Mercy,” the old chief said. The-lines down his cheeks were deeper now, the eyes more sunken, but the rock-like face was still one of surpassing dignity. In recent weeks he had absorbed much abuse thrown at him by young braves who refused to accept starvation any longer, but the only star he knew was to trust the white man. Men like Major Mercy and General Asher would produce food and some kind of control over Colonel Skimmerhorn.

“Until the new year comes, we will trust you,” he said.

“Where are Jake Pasquinel and Broken Thumb?” Mercy asked as he prepared to depart.

“East, toward Julesburg,” Chief Black Knee said, and he gave Mercy two scouts to guide him to where the dissidents were holed up.

It was snowing when Mercy left Rattlesnake Buttes, and at the rise he looked back upon this forlorn collection of tipis, this assemblage of men and women without hope, and swore that he would try to restore some dignity to them.

How beautiful the Platte valley was that day, white with snow along the banks and shimmering black where the dark waters ran. Ice had not yet formed, and the wagon trail which led from Julesburg to Denver would still be passable. In some ways, Mercy thought, this was the Platte at its finest, for its innumerable islands achieved a certain beauty as their sandy faces lay covered with snow.

We should be able to share a river like this with the Indians, he told himself as the guides led him farther eastward, but when he reached the rude encampment where Broken Thumb had assembled his braves and saw their pitiful condition, he realized that arguing intelligently with them would be difficult.

Dismounting, he limped across the snow-crisp ground and asked a woman for Broken Thumb. Insolently she pointed at a gray-brown tipi which had lost its two poles for controlling smoke. No matter, there was no wood for a fire.

Pushing aside the flap, be said, “Broken Thumb, I have come to beg you not to make war against the wagons.”

“We’re starving,” the Cheyenne said. “The wagons have food.”

“The next two months are desperate,” he pleaded.

“We’re desperate now.”

“Where’s Jake Pasquinel?”

“Out trying to find food.”

“Oh, God!” Mercy groaned. He could see Jake doing some foolish thing, bringing the whole wrath of Skimmerhorn down upon him. Jake would come back with beef from a cow he had killed, or beans he had stolen from a rancher who would even now be posting to Denver to complain. As Mercy tried to anticipate the foreboding possibilities, Broken Thumb called for a boy to fetch the piece of paper which the Indians had taken from a wagon heading eastward. One of the young braves had been able to read it, and a summary had passed among all the warriors at the hidden camp. It was a clipping from the
Clarion
:

At last a military officer in this Territory makes sense. At last a true hero has stepped forward to tell us what we have been eager to hear. On a visit to our
fair city Colonel Frank Skim
merhorn told a group of his admirers,
“
The hour is at hand when decency and fear of God shall again return to this Territory. The hour is almost upon us when every stinking, sneaking, crawling, sniveling, filthy Red Man in Colorado will be either killed or driven from our boundaries. At the long-awaited hour we shall expect every red-blooded man who loves his home to join us in exterminating once and forever the menace that has threatened us for so long.
”
Fine words, Colonel. We
’re
behind you. In forthcoming fights we hope our soldiers will not be encumbered with Indian prisoners. And we hope what you said was heard at various stockades around here where Indians are allowed to associate freely with white men and where dastardly plots against our freedom are hourly hatched.

Chief Broken Thumb, now a man of forty-eight without illusions, drew his thin blanket about his shoulders and pointed to the clipping. “Why do you tell me ‘Don’t make war?’ Skimmerhorn makes war, every day.”

“General Asher will take care of Skimmerhorn, I promise you.”

At this the Cheyenne warrior, who knew a good deal about soldiers, burst into derisive laughter. Leaping to his feet and making believe he had but one arm, he minced about the tipi, throwing out contradictory orders and giving a strangely realistic impression of the befuddled general. “He will do nothing,” Broken Thumb said.

“I will,” Mercy promised.

Before Broken Thumb could respond, Jake Pasquinel broke into the tipi, and when he saw Mercy he moved swiftly toward him and embraced him, a most unusual gesture for this unyielding outlaw.

“Mercy, for God’s sake bring some reason into this thing,” he said with anguish. “These people are starving.”

“I know, Jake.”

“They’re ...” The half-breed’s voice choked and for the first time in his life, Mercy saw one of the Pasquinel brothers unable to speak because of an anguish he did not try to hide. “Mercy, I promise you,” Jake said, “if this doesn’t stop,” and here he flicked the clipping with the back of his fingers, “this whole territory is going to explode.”

“You used to want that,” Mercy said compassionately.

“I’m older now,” his brother-in-law said. “It will be our women and children who will be slaughtered.”

Mike Pasquinel entered the tipi, a nondescript sort of man. He listened for a while, then said, “Max, we’re all going to perish—you and Lucinda and Zendt—all of us, if this is not stopped.” And suddenly Mercy saw his brother-in-law as a man of perception, a kind of God’s fool who had watched and laughed all his life and in the end had seen visions of reality. His round, placid face betrayed none of the emotion that marked Jake’s, but he spoke with a sorrow that was more compelling than his brother’s rage.

“Max,” he pleaded again, “you’re leaving us no escape but to die in battle, and we shall die, every man here.” With his pudgy right arm he swept the tipi; and one after the other of Broken Thumb’s men uttered the solemn declaration: “We shall die.”

Deeply shaken, Mercy left the renegade camp for his long trip back to Denver, and for the first part of his journey he was accompanied by his brothers. They spoke of old days, of how happy Lucinda was at the stockade, of Clay Basket and her remarkable life, and of the irony they felt when gold was discovered at the place their father had prospected so fruitlessly.

“Do you wish he’d found the gold ... for you?” Mercy asked.

“No,” Jake said. “Indians don’t need gold. They need space ... and buffalo.”

As Jake left he said, “It will be war,” and he turned on his horse and rode eastward.

Mike lingered, trying to say many things, but they were too confused and terrible to be voiced, so in the end he reached across his horse and embraced Mercy, “You are my brother,” he said in Arapaho, and he was gone.

When Mercy reported to General Asher at army headquarters, two grimy rooms at the rear of a hotel, he found himself in real trouble. The general seemed preoccupied as he gathered papers together, but he took time to say, “Mercy, Colonel Skimmerhorn has preferred serious charges against you.”

“That house arrest,” Mercy said scornfully. “You know it was improper.”

“Listen to the charges. ‘Consorting with the enemy in time of war, disobeying a direct order of a superior officer, fleeing to the enemy with national secrets.’ ”

Mercy brushed aside the inflated accusations: “General Asher, a catastrophe hangs over our heads, yours and mine. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been with both branches of the Indians, the friendlies in camp where they ought to be and the hostiles out hiding.”

“You shouldn’t have been there,” Asher said firmly. “Colonel Skimmerhorn ordered you specifically ...”

“General!” Mercy shouted. “We are one day away from total insurrection. To hell with Skimmerhorn. How dare he tell you, a general in the United States ...”

“Max,” the tired Vermonter said, “look.” He held out a dispatch from Fort Leavenworth:

General Laban Asher

Commanding Officer, Denver

Proceed immediately and by swiftest transport to this headquarters prepared to report fully on steps taken to protect Platte River valley from marauding Indians

S. J. Co
m
ly,

Adjutant Fort Leavenworth

29 October, 1864

It was a shocking message. After having received scores of appeals from Asher for additional troops to control the Platte, Leavenworth was finally responding—not by sending the needed help but by withdrawing the only man who might bring order to the territory.

General Asher accepted this asinine decision with equanimity. If that’s how headquarters wanted to run the Indian war, that’s how it would be. Recovering the dispatch and tapping it with sour amusement, he said, “I’m riding out with six soldiers ... tonight.”

“Tonight!” Mercy exploded. “Who’ll be in command?”

“Colonel Skimmerhorn.”

“General, he’ll destroy everything.”

“And I’m putting you under house arrest, Mercy. You may not leave Denver till I return.”

Mercy was stunned. He could not ignore house arrest imposed by a general of the regular army, ,yet he saw disastrous consequences if Skimmerhorn were allowed to run wild. “General Asher,” he said quietly, “if you turn your troops over to Skimmerhorn, some frightful thing will happen that will damn your reputation forever. The good work you did at Vicksburg with the Vermonters ...”

“You’re under house arrest,” Asher said curtly, and that night, on horseback, accompanied by his guard, he scuttled to the east.

Things could not have worked out better for Colonel Skimmerhorn. He had anticipated that Major Mercy would slip off to warn the Indians, and now he was rid of him, permanently. He had also expected to be placed in command of all troops in the area, and this, too, had happened. But he could not have foreseen General Asher’s vacillation, siding one day with him, the next with Mercy, depending on who saw him last. That Asher was now recalled from the area and sent to a distant post could only be a sign that God approved his plan.

He, Skimmerhorn, now had the command, and he proposed exercising it.

On a cold November morning he assembled his troops, sixty-three regular army men under Lieutenant Abel Tanner, whom he gave a field promotion to captain, and eleven hundred and sixteen militiamen under the tactical command of civilian volunteers. Astride his horse, he addressed his troops in few words:

“
Men of valor! This day we march against the infidel. We are engaged in a noble undertaking. God smiles down upon us as we march forth to rid this territory forever of the Indian menace. Forward.
”

Those in the city who realized what was afoot gathered at the edge of town to cheer the heroes as they marched past, and no eleventh-century band of Crusaders setting forth to battle the Saracen could have been more enthusiastically acclaimed. After Skimmerhorn acknowledged the shouts of his well-wishers he sent small detachments ahead to arrest and hold incommunicado all farmers in areas they would be marching through.

They camped that night at Zendt’s Farm. Next day, during a heavy snowstorm, Colonel Skimmerhorn performed a military miracle, one that would have done justice to a West Point graduate: he moved his entire body of troops, with five cannon, a score of supply wagons and forty ammunition mules across open land to Rattlesnake Buttes and maneuvered them into position at nightfall without being detected.