Trumpet on the Land (39 page)

“Where we going?”

“Northwest along the base of the foothills.”

Grouard slowly got to his feet and stretched, the days of cramping and pain in his groin over with, by and large. “He want us to look for anything special?”

“Just the usual.”

Tapping the brim of his hat, the half-breed grinned and said, “Suppose a ride with Cosgrove is better than sitting here being bored by you, Irishman.”

Seamus blew the half-breed a kiss. “I love you too, Frank.”

This wasn't a snappy army bivouac any longer. All a man had to do to realize that was look around that Tuesday morning, the first day of August. In the weeks since they had marched away from Fetterman to bump into the Sioux at the Rosebud, through all those endless days of waiting here on Goose Creek, this had become a camp of squatters: the very best of them unkempt, wearing only pieces of uniform, their boots gone from shiny black to a dull coffee color, every man of them ragged and shaggy and not giving a good goddamn about it, either.

Why should they? Seamus asked himself. Wasn't going
to make a hill of beans if they sat out the rest of the campaign right here, waiting for autumn and winter to shut everything down like closing the lid on a pauper's coffin. Nail it shut.

The bugle blew again. Another officers' call.

Their days were ruled by the bugle: from reveille at sunup through fatigue and stable duty, noon mess and evening retreat, finally ending in “Tattoo” late each summer night. It seemed that if the boredom didn't kill them, then the rock-solid regularity of the trumpet calls would surely make a man wish he were dead.

So he read her letters over and over until he was afraid the ink would fade and the paper would crumble in his hands. Where once he could smell the scent of her lavender or gardenia perfume she dolloped at the corner of every sheet, now there was only the smell of dust and sweat, only the smear of his dirty, greasy fingerprints at the edges of each page.

He cradled them all in his lap, rereading his favorite lines. Nearby the officers of the infantry were playing the cavalry officers in a well-matched game of baseball. Ringing the field was a crowd not only of enthusiastic enlisted men, but also curious Indians downright stupefied to watch this peculiar pastime of the white man.

“The Fifth is coming!”

At the call Seamus looked up to find Finerty lumbering his way in those clumsy brogans of his, shouting it again.

Grumbling, Donegan said, “I know. We're all waiting for the Fifth.”

“No,” Finerty said breathlessly as he skidded to a stop. “I mean, a courier just came in from Merritt.”

“A courier?”

“Fella named White. Civilian scout. Carried word from Merritt telling Crook his ten full companies of cavalry are less than a day away.”

His heart pounded. “Gonna be here tomorrow?”

Finerty slapped his thigh. “Damn right they are!”

“Blessed Mither of God—that is good news!” Seamus replied thoughtfully. “Now we can be about getting this goddamned campaign over so I can get back to Samantha.”

“You ought to come meet the guy who carried in the messages for Crook.”

“Why?”

“He's over at Tom Moore's camp now, with soldiers and mule skinners hanging on him like flies on a carcass because he's telling 'em the whole story of how on the way here the Fifth ambushed eight hundred Cheyenne over on a creek called the Warbonnet and drove 'em all right back to the Red Cloud Agency.”

“The Fifth had 'em a fight of it, you say?”

“And you've got to hear this Charlie White tell the story of the first scalp for Custer.”

Seamus's brow knitted quizzically. “The first scalp … for Custer?”

“The one took by Buffalo Bill.”

“B-buffalo Bill?”

“Damn right!” Finerty cheered. “Can you believe it? We're going to get to meet the famous frontier scout and master showman of the eastern theater, ourselves! Right here!”

“Bill Cody?”

“None other! Won't it be something for me to tell all my readers about, Seamus—this meeting such a famous man?”

He grinned slightly. “Sure will be, Johnny boy.”

“Won't you want to meet the famous Buffalo Bill yourself now, Seamus?”

“Oh,” Donegan replied, that impish grin growing into a wisp of a warm smile, “for sure and certain I do want to shake hands with Buffalo Bill Cody!”

Chapter 24
3 August 1876

W
ASHINGTON
, July 24—The following dispatch has been received by General Sherman: “The following dispatch from Gen. Crook is transmitted for your information. Gen. Merritt will reach Gen. Crook's camp on August 1, with ten companies instead of eight as at first contemplated. Gen. Terry has moved his depot from north of Powder river to Big Horn, on the Rosebud, and has notified me of his intention to form a junction with Crook.

P. H. SHERIDAN
Lieut. General.

H
EADQUARTERS
, B
IG
H
ORN
AND Y
ELLOWSTONE
E
XPEDITION
, C
AMP ON
G
OOSE
C
REEK
, W
YOMING
, July 18, via Fort Fetterman—To General Sheridan, Chicago: I send in a courier to-day to carry in duplicates of my dispatch to Gen. Merritt, for fear the originals may not have reached their destinations. I send a courier to General Terry to-night to inform him that I will cooperate with him, and where to find me; also, giving him what information I have in regard
to the Indians. It is my intention to move out after the hostile tribes as soon as Merritt gets here with the Fifth. I shall not probably send in another courier until something special shall require me to do so. I am getting anxious about Merritt's not reaching here, and the grass is getting very dry …

GEO. CROOK
Brigadier General

The plan of the campaign is to make a combined movement of three columns with Fort Ellis as a base. Two of the columns will move directly against the Indians, and one against their villages. General Sheridan will, according to the present plan, establish his headquarters in the field at some advantageous point on Goose creek, about forty miles northwest of Fort Phil Kearny, and near the scene of Crook's battle on Rosebud. The force of these three columns will amount in the aggregate to between 4,000 and 5,000.

T
wo days after marching away from Laramie and crossing the North Platte River on the army's new iron span, Bill Cody led the Fifth Cavalry to the mouth of LaPrele Creek, the site of Fort Fetterman, on the afternoon of 25 July.

Waiting there for Merritt was a mixture of strays and civilians, along with a handful of unattached officers who had been on leave or assigned duty at other posts when the news of the Custer disaster reached the outside world. Now they had raced to Wyoming Territory, eager to attach their fates with Crook's column. Even a naval officer, Lieutenant William C. Hunter, presented himself to Colonel Merritt and, like the others, was allowed to accompany the Fifth Cavalry as a “volunteer.”

To Lieutenant Colonel Carr's disgust, the regiment found a few newspapermen hanging about the post, waiting to march off to the Sioux War. A New York
Times
reporter named Talbot, along with an unlikely looking
stringer for the Associated Press, and Barbour Lathrop writing for the San Francisco
Evening Bulletin
, all had been waiting at Fetterman for Merritt's reinforcements to arrive so they could complete their trip to join Crook's Wyoming column.

Immediately crossing the Platte below the fort, Merritt and Carr established bivouac on the north side of the river, checked the post commander for any last-minute dispatches from Chicago, Omaha, or Laramie, then went about drawing any last-minute supplies depleted since leaving Fort Laramie two days before.

At eight o'clock the next morning, a Wednesday, those eight companies of the Fighting Fifth were pushing past Kid Slaymaker's Hog Ranch, marching into the badlands of central Wyoming Territory, a country ablaze with sunlit clouds of alkali dust and sagebrush flats.

It was well past midnight two days later when Cody had the regiment camped and asleep in the rainy darkness beneath the bluffs along the North Fork of the Cheyenne. As if it were a dream, he thought he heard a distant bugle calling out of the cold, drizzling mist.

“Charlie!”

White strode over as Cody put the pistol he had been oiling back in its holster. “What you need, Bill?”

“Listen.”

For a few seconds they both strained to hear beyond the noise of camp, the whickering of their nearby mounts cropping at the good grass.

White asked, “That a bugle, Bill?”

“What I thought,” Cody replied. “Best you go alert Merritt.”

The colonel promptly had one of the company buglers go with Lieutenant Charles King and Cody to the high ground above the riverside camp, with orders to begin playing “Officers' Call,” then wait a minute or two for a response, then play it again, repeatedly in that fashion until Cody could determine if it was an Indian ruse or not.

Even as he, White, the lieutenant, and the trumpeter
were reaching the top of the bluff … there, faintly in the distance, Cody heard it again.

“Blow your horn,” he quietly ordered, his soft words adding all the more drama to the ominous moment.

A few heartbeats after the bugler's last note had drifted out into the rainy darkness, Bill again made out the dim, sodden call from afar.

King said, “Sounds like it's coming from the south.”

“It sure does. Give 'em another blow on that horn.”

Back and forth the trumpeters played the song that would summon all cavalry officers, while closer and closer that other horn came—until Cody thought he could just make out the dull glimmer of brass and bit and carbine below him in the rain-soaked darkness. He lumbered down the gummy slope to the sodden prairie below, stopping a few yards away from a group of officers at the head of a column of weary, wet troops.

“Is that you, Buffalo Bill?”

“It is!” he cheered back, relieved to hear a voice of someone who evidently knew who he was. “Who goes there?”

“By Jehovah—don't you remember me, Bill? It's George Price.”

“Captain Price? That really you?” Bill asked as he strode out of the gloom and right up to the men gathered beneath their rain-drenched guidon. “Damn, but it's good to see you, Captain. Who the hell you got with you?”

“A battalion: my own E Troop, and I brought along Captain Payne's F Company with me. Both of us racing all the way up from Cheyenne in a lightning march.”

“Seven days' worth of march!” J. Scott Payne added.

“Whooo! That's getting high-behind, fellas. We was hoping you'd reach us by Laramie. Then Merritt hoped you'd come in by the time we reached Fetterman.”

“Hell, Bill,” Payne replied, “the way you've had the boys covering ground, we're lucky we caught up with you before you went and captured Sitting Bull!”

Price agreed, saying, “We've been pushing these men
and horses pretty hard for a solid week just to get here— forced marches and all.”

“Merritt's gonna be plumb happy to see you both, fellas!” Cody cheered. “C'mon—let's get your men into camp where they can gather round a fire and get a hot cup of coffee down 'em.”

Two days and two long marches later the Fifth camped near the ruins of old Fort Reno on the Powder River. In the heat of the following day the snowcaps on those distant mountain peaks proved to be a seductive lure for the men. That first day of August, Cody led the ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry across Crazy Woman's Fork and was closing on the Clear Fork just past one
P.M.
In the distance he sighted a few small herds of dark, shaggy buffalo, plain as paint against the verdant green of the nearby hills. Along with a small cadre of eager officers, Bill secured Merritt's permission to make meat for the hungry column. As the buffalo were shot, skinned, and butchered by a detail of men selected from each company, the main body of the command marched on past the mirrored surface of Lake DeSmet, which lay in the midst of a basin of near-naked hills. That night in their bivouac made just south of the ruins of old Fort Phil Kearny, the men ate better than they had in weeks, and their stock had one of its last opportunities to take advantage of unequaled grazing.