Reap the Whirlwind (12 page)

Then he himself went down to the good grass by the creek and cut the two pack mules loose so they could wander away as they grazed through the night. With a pair of extra army blouses, Carr had fashioned two dummies,
which he sat on either side of the fire at the edge of the light by the time Grouard returned from the creek.

When twilight had seeped into the black of prairie night, Grouard had Carr’s soldiers mill back and forth around the fire as if nothing were untoward. Then, one by one, the half-breed had the sergeant’s men slip out of the firelight and into the thick willows and timber by the creekbank, where they saddled up and waited until Frank was the last to clear the camp.

Harshly, he whispered his orders, “Tell your men to walk their mounts into the stream, quiet as they can. Single file. Show ’em how to pinch off the horse’s nostrils. Keep a hand on the nose until I tell you we’re clear.”

“What the hell for?” Carr had demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Them horses of yours gonna smell Injun ponies—maybe even the stink of the grease on that Injun hair. They’ll let out a whicker or whinny … and our asses will fall out of the frying pan and into the fire, Sergeant. Now—do you understand what I’ve told you to do?”

“Understood.”

He watched Carr slip back through the nine soldiers and whisper among them, showing the youngsters how to clamp off the hard cartilage bridge behind a horse’s moist nostrils. When the sergeant returned and nodded, Frank led them off the bank and into the cold water. He turned right, moving slowly upstream, heading west. In the opposite direction they had been marching.

It would take that sort of thing, and a long night’s circuitous march, to make it through the net the Lakota wolves had likely thrown up around that soldier camp the eleven were abandoning back there.

That, and one hell of a lot of luck to reach the Powder and back to Fetterman with their hair.

Seamus sang the words to “Stable Call” as the bugler blared the notes while the Irishman headed past the last of the quartermaster’s corrals and began his descent into the valley of the North Platte, down from the bluff where Fort Fetterman was perched above the mouth of LaPrele Creek. As one of the frontier’s larger army posts, Fetterman was home to three infantry companies and four troops of cavalry, along with more than a hundred civilian employees. But for the moment, down in the valley where Donegan gazed, there stood a forest of row upon row of white dog tents, endless crescents of wagons, a sizable herd of beef along with a thousand pack mules, in addition to more than a thousand cavalry mounts—all of it awaiting the beginning of General George Crook’s “Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.”

“Yes, indeed: we’re going to push this column all the way to the Yellowstone River this time out,” John Bourke had explained to him earlier that day.

“To join up with Gibbon and Terry, I hear,” John Finerty had replied. He and fellow newsman, Bob Strahorn, had joined Seamus at the fort that morning after breakfast.

“That’s right,” Bourke said. “Gibbon’s been ordered to hold the hostiles at the river. Terry’s keeping them from running east. So we’ll be beating them north ahead of us. We’ll crush them between us at the Yellowstone—if not before.”

“
If
Crook can get his hands on them before Gibbon and Terry come on the scene,” Seamus commented.

“Don’t you figure the general deserves to have the first crack at Crazy Horse?” Bourke inquired.

The Irishman nodded. “I believe the Second and Third Cavalry are owed first crack at the hostiles, Johnny—for what they endured last winter.”

“Damn right, they are,” Bob Strahorn echoed. “For what we all endured.”

“There’s some who aren’t marching again, Johnny,” Donegan said. “One face in particular I find missing.”

“Teddy Egan?”

“No—you’ve told me his company is protecting the Black Hills Road,” the Irishman explained. “I’ve been asking about for Ben Clark.”

“Clark didn’t stay on with the General,” Bourke explained.

“He going to stay here at Fetterman, then?”

The lieutenant had an inexplicable look on his face as he flicked his eyes about that group and finally back to Donegan’s. “Clark left the service of the army right after we come back from the Powder River, Seamus.”

He shrugged a shoulder, saying, “Yeah. Everybody got mustered out until this summer campaign.”

Bourke finally replied. “No. I mean he left for good. He was pretty upset about what Reynolds didn’t do to protect his men, upset about what Reynolds did to that camp.”

“Why? Ben Clark’s been an army scout for years, John,” Seamus said. “Why did he quit over the army burning that Crazy Horse village?”

“Because Clark says it wasn’t Crazy Horse’s village.”

“Frank Grouard claims it was!” Strahorn said. “That half-breed says he saw some of Crazy Horse’s ponies in the herd.”

Bourke turned back to the Irishman. “Clark steadfastly says that was a Cheyenne village.”

“Cheyenne?”

With a nod the lieutenant continued. “A bunch of Cheyenne heading south to go in to the reservations.”

“Just like the goddamned government officials wanted ’em to in the first place!” Seamus growled. “And we jumped ’em on the way?”

“Whoa!” Bourke said. “There isn’t a shred of proof that was a Cheyenne village, Seamus.”

“There’s something real wrong here.” Donegan moaned. “Grouard is supposed to know the Sioux like no one else. But when it comes to Cheyenne, I’ll trust Ben Clark all the way.”

“He’s a squaw man, isn’t he?” Strahorn inquired.

“Yes,” Seamus answered. “Do you know where he’s gone off to, John?”

“Said to some folks that he was heading south to the Territories. Go back to his wife’s family down there on the reservation.”

“He’ll miss out on all the fun we’re going to have,” John Finerty replied.

“Maybe he’s the smartest one of us all—getting the hell out of here and going back to be with family,” Seamus cautioned. “I’m reminded of what my dear mither taught me when I was learning the ways of God and man at her sainted knee back in County Kilkenny.”

Finerty placed a hand over his heart and snatched his hat from his head in the bright May sunshine. “May God Himself always smile on that sainted green isle!”

“Another bleeming patlander, longing for the soil of Eire!” Seamus roared.

Finerty stuffed his hat on his head and dropped his arms over Bourke’s and Strahorn’s shoulders. “The four of us—Irishmen all! May we be the first to strike the blow against Crazy Horse and that demented medicine man, Sitting Bull!”

“As I was trying to tell you Irishmen,” Donegan continued, “something I learned at my mither’s knee long, long ago—”

With glee Finerty interrupted, “When he was such a wee one!”

“—and what I learned from her is something a man should pay heed to as he goes marching off to make war on the Sioux and Cheyenne in their own bloody hunting ground.”

“Where else would you have us find the bloody savages, Seamus?” Finerty inquired. “Chicago, by God?”

Donegan ignored the chuckles of Strahorn and Bourke. “Mark my words, boys. Mark my mither’s own words if not on my account: ‘What you have sown on the wind—so will you reap on the whirlwind.’”

On 22 May three companies of the Ninth Infantry had marched north from Fort Laramie, bound for Fetterman, which was situated on the North Platte not far from the point where the Bozeman Road headed north to Montana
Territory and the Mormon Trail pushed on west toward Fort Caspar and South Pass. The next day the main horse column of the Third Cavalry out of Fort D. A. Russell near Cheyenne City had crossed the swollen Platte at Fort Laramie using the new iron bridge after enduring a cold soaking in crossing the Chugwater. By crossing downriver the horse soldiers could go into camp opposite the fort without having to make another crossing of the raging Platte upon reaching Fetterman two days later.

“Just look at how they’re beating a path to the Hog Ranch down there!” Strahorn marveled.

The four of them stopped, gazing down the slope at all the throbbing activity swirling around Kid Slaymaker’s saloon and whorehouse.

“Here,” Bourke began, pulling a folded paper from his pocket. “I wrote this yesterday evening about the place: ‘Each of these establishments was equipped with a rum mill of the worst kind and each contained from three to half a dozen Cyprian virgins whose lamps were always burning brightly in expectancy of the coming bridegroom and who lured to destruction the soldiers of the garrison. In all my experience I have never seen a lower, more beastly set of people of both sexes.’”

“Why, Johnny!” Finerty replied. “I’m one of the virgins’ best customers!”

“No, you’re not!” Strahorn growled, slugging Finerty on the shoulder.
“I
am!”

Crook’s expedition was quickly taking shape in the valley below the fort. Besides the three companies of the Ninth, two companies of the Fourth Infantry had been ordered up, all five under the command of Crook’s West Point classmate, Major Alexander Chambers of the Fourth, in whose hands was placed the responsibility for protecting the supply depot Crook was planning on establishing in hostile territory.

Without question the spearhead of the expedition would be fifteen companies of cavalry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall of the Third. Under him would operate Colonel Andrew W. Evans, commanding ten companies of the Third Cavalry, which had marched east to Medicine Bow Station via the Union Pacific
Railroad, north from there on muddy and impassable roads to reach Fetterman, as well as Captain Henry E. Noyes, commanding five companies of the Second Cavalry. Less than a month before Noyes had undergone courtmartial at Fort D. A. Russell, charged with neglect of duty before the enemy during the battle of Powder River. In that trial, during which the captain did not deny that he had allowed his men to unsaddle their horses and boil coffee while other companies were conducting their fight for the village and awaiting reinforcements, Noyes nonetheless repeatedly maintained that it was never a battle in his estimation, nothing more than “a little skirmish.” After finding Noyes guilty as charged, the court determined that he should be reprimanded by the department commander, Crook himself, then returned to duty. Just in time to prepare his troops for a second march on the Sioux and Cheyenne strongholds.

Fifty-one command and staff officers were now in place, most of whom were seasoned Civil War veterans, given charge of 1,002 soldiers who would again press into that last great hunting ground of the wild tribes.

In the camp bounded on three sides by a bend in LaPrele Creek also sat Tom Moore’s 250-mule train and 81 packers, as well as some 106 wagons brought up from Camp Carlin by 116 teamsters, who would soon push their six-mule teams north under the command of wagon chief Charles Russell. Their freshly greased axles would groan under the weight of three hundred thousand pounds of grain for the stock, as well as thousands of pounds of ammunition, along with the standard army fare: pork, beans, coffee, and sugar. Not all the rations were going north in the wagons; some would plod along the Bozeman Road on the hoof—twelve hundred head of commissary beef, which at present competed for pasturage with the mules and cavalry mounts.

From sunup to twilight the ferrymen struggled to muscle every pound of weapons and rations, forage and blankets, beef and bullets across the Platte, constantly repairing the leaking ferry or the worn cable each time it snapped—man and equipment strained to the breaking point without letup by a river running as high and fast as a millrace. Just
that morning one of Russell’s teamsters, a man named Dill, had fallen off the ferry when the cable snapped, sending the ferry keelhauling into the foaming current. Dill was swept downstream before any man could act, and his battered body was later found caught among some snags a half-dozen miles below Fetterman.

“Don’t go getting morose on us now, Seamus!” Strahorn chided the Irishman. “We was to bloody hell and back together last March!”

“Bob’s right,” Bourke agreed. “This will be a lark compared to that Powder River campaign. Why, every officer staying behind down at Russell and Laramie is telling us, ‘Oh, you will have a holiday trip this summer. So different from last winter’s campaign, you know!’”

“Absolutely!” Finerty cheered.

“What the divil would you know about our march on Powder River?” demanded Seamus.

“Nothing,” Finerty replied sheepishly. “But I do know I come at just the right time to enjoy nice warm days and pleasant, cool nights this time into Indian country.”

“Just remember this ain’t going to be no bleeming picnic march, boyo!”

“I’ll remember you said that when General Crook’s got the savage bastards on the run back to their agencies!” Finerty cheered as they all watched a company of infantry march by in close order, rifles at their shoulders, bayonets glittering in the spring sunlight.

Each soldier would be marching north well armed with the Springfield model 1873. A single-shot rifle that fired a .45-caliber bullet, the cavalry model chambered a fiftygrain cartridge and had an effective range of some six hundred yards, while the longer-barreled infantry model, affectionately called the “Long Tom,” chambered a bigger seventy-grain cartridge and could kill out to a thousand yards. In addition the horse soldiers also carried the standard-issue single-action ’73 model Colt’s revolver in .45 caliber.

“And what of these other two columns we’ll rendezvous with when we reach the Yellowstone?” Seamus inquired.

“Gibbon and Terry?” Bourke asked, incredulity crossing
his face. “Forget about them! We’ll be the column to defeat Crazy Horse simply because Crook’s the only one who is showing any conviction to get into the field. Last news we had was that Gibbon’s inching east along the Yellowstone, feeling his way along like a cautious ol’ biddy, almost afraid to come in contact with the hostiles. And word is that Terry’s just departed Fort Lincoln with Custer in tow—with plans to join up with Gibbon before he even tries hunting for the Sioux.”