Reap the Whirlwind (10 page)

Frank looked up at the reporter from the Rocky Mountain
News
who had accompanied Reynolds’s column to the enemy village on the Powder last March, a newsman who had even charged down on the enemy with Teddy Egan’s K
Company of Second Cavalry. The young, handsome Strahorn was not altogether a city fella who didn’t know the ways of hard men and firearms.

“Likely you’re right, newspaperman,” Frank said quietly, his eyes flashing like dark flints at the agent he detested, although he had known the government man less than a day.

“C’mon. Let’s get some sleep, Frank,” Pourier suggested. “Crook wants to be on the road back to Laramie by sunup.”

“Yeah,” Strahorn agreed. “The general’s got himself a war he wants to fight.”

“And got his enemy to catch,” Grouard said, pulling his slouch hat down on his shoulder-length hair. “Like Crook, I know all about enemies.”

Late May 1876

“B
y the stars—of course, I remember you!” Thomas Moore
declared as he held out his hand to the tall Irishman before him.

They shook. “Was hoping you would,” Seamus replied to the man who had been in charge of George Crook’s mule trains since the days of the first Apache campaigns down in Arizona.

“Hell yes, Donegan! You was all Cap’n Mills and Teddy Egan talked about for some time after we jined back up with you fellas couple days following your fight on the Powder.”

Seamus had begun to feel a bit sheepish, standing there as some of the other packers wandered up, drawn to the conversation between the long-maned plainsman and their grizzled boss.

“If that don’t beat all!”

Donegan turned at the exclamation, finding the gray head of Richard Closter shoving his way through the ring of packers.

“Uncle Dick!” Seamus called out, lapping his arms around the old mule skinner, clapping him on the back with the hand not clutching the Henry repeater the Irishman
had carried ever since his first ride onto the plains of the far west.
^*

Then he held the old man out at arm’s length, admiring the packer’s face well-chiseled by wind and tracked with all the miles he had followed the cantankerous animals that were his life. Faint brown streaks tattooed his white beard, as well as darkening the blue blouse beneath it.

Seamus inquired, “How’s Johnny Bourke?”

Closter’s head bobbed and he smiled even bigger, one that seemed to fill the whole bottom half of his face. “The boy’s just fine. Just fine! Maybe you don’t remember, but Johnny’s going to put me in that book he’s writing. Why, if I ain’t told you about it, c’mon now and I’ll buy you a drink down to the Hog Ranch.”

“Hog Ranch, eh?”

With a devilish glint, Closter winked. “I’ll tell you all about it—and then we’ll give the girls a tussle or two, just ’cause we’re riding out for Injun country again.”

With a chuckle Donegan patted the packer on the shoulder. “I know all about how Johnny’s going to make you as famous as General Crook, Uncle Dick. Bourke told me on that last campaign. You did too. More’n once.”

Closter nodded his head, scratching his cheek absently. “Maybeso I did. Lots of long nights at the fire. Cold son of a bitch, Seamus. That was a march to make its mark on a man.”

“I figure I put on ten rings last winter myself, Dick.”

“So,” Closter said, “what you figure on doing this time out? Going to scout again with Grouard and the rest?”

Moore eased back up by the two, wagging his head. “Don’t figger he will, Dick. General’s made it plain he ain’t hiring no more’n three for this march.”

“That’s right,” Donegan agreed. “And I ain’t one of ’em.”

Closter squinted one eye into the sun, looking up at the tall Irishman. “I’ll bet my next drunk that every one them three are half-breeds.”

“You’re right,” Moore answered, then turned to Donegan. “So why you come back to Fetterman when I hear you got a wife down to Laramie?”

“Need work.”

Moore instantly beamed. “Work? Why I got all the work you can handle.”

“Him?” Closter snapped sourly, rocking back on his heels and appraising the Irishman. “This soft-handed young sprout? Him—a mule skinner? Shit, Tom—that’ll be the day!”

“With a recommendation like that from one of my oldest and best hands,” Moore exclaimed, “you’re hired, Donegan!”

“Whoa! Hold on,” Seamus replied, not really sure he could believe it would be this easy finding work, pay, and a way to feed his family, if only for a few more months till the babe was born. At least until this goddamned war was over and he could take Samantha north to the diggings around Helena up there in Montana Territory. Samantha and … their son.

“What—you too good to work for a living, Irishman?” Closter growled, backing a step, plopping his two hands on his hips and giving Seamus a critical, appraising once-over. “Told you he was soft-handed, Tom. Likely the youngster’s soft-headed too. These mules of ours going to prove smarter’n this mush-brained potato-sucker!”

“Got something against Irishmen, do you?” Moore asked.

“Present company excluded, Cap’n,” Closter apologized with a slight bow.

Then Moore’s face went serious. “You want the work, don’t you, Seamus?”

Donegan grinned. “I
need
the work more than want it. Even damned grateful for it. It’s just … I didn’t figure I would get hired—”

“Wouldn’t get hired?” Moore replied. “Why, we knew you was coming for more’n a week, Seamus.”

“Knew? How’d you—”

“Crook wired up from Laramie. Got there just after you left to ride up here. Spoke with your wife, the way it sounded.”

“Leastways,” Closter broke in, “Crook found out you were headed to Fetterman hoping to find something in the way of work. The general wired up here to Moore—have Tom hire you on.”

Seamus turned to the chief packer. “General wired you about me?”

Moore shook his head. “Crook didn’t wire me. He wired Colonel Royall—told him to let me know you was coming, and that I was to hire you on, no matter what.”

“Seems Crook wants you join us this march north,” Closter agreed.

Donegan wagged his head, sorting out the dangling pieces of it. “Royall?” he asked, feeling a nagging pull of something from memory. “This colonel’s name couldn’t be William, is it?”

Moore shrugged. “I think it is.”

Donegan declared matter of factly, “Can’t be the same Major William B. Royall what was with the Fifth Cavalry back to Nebraska.”

“That’s him!” Dick Closter cheered. “One and the same, Seamus. Only he’s a lieutenant colonel now.”

“I’ll be god-bloody-damned!”

“So you see, you was hired before you ever got here,” Moore stated. “Crook wanted you along even though he wasn’t hiring you to scout for him. And when he informed the colonel to make sure I hired this Seamus Donegan, Royall come to tell me he remembered an Irishman by the same name what scouted for him down when the Fifth Cavalry went in and crushed Tall Bull’s Dog Soldiers at Summit Springs.”
^*

“Royall told us all about you and Bill Cody his own self, scouting for him on that campaign,” Closter added.

Seamus asked, “What you hear of Cody these days?”

“Only what Royall told me when he was remembering back to them days with Carr’s regiment.”

“Sixty-nine, it was,” Seamus said.

“The colonel says Cody’s got himself a good business now,” Moore said.

“Safer’n being a scout in these goddamned Injun campaigns,” Closter growled.

“What sort of business? I remember he used to work teamster for one of the plains outfits.”

“Seamus! You mean to tell me you ain’t heard of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Shows?” Moore asked, his eyes widening.

Donegan shrugged. “S’pose I haven’t. Only thing I know was this Irishman rode with Bill Cody the first time he got called Buffalo Bill.”

“Don’t say?” Closter commented with no little admiration.

“So what’s this Wild West Show of his?” Seamus asked.

“Riding, rope tricks, fancy shooting,” Moore explained.

“Cody would be good at all that,” Seamus agreed. “Knew he’d make something of himself one day.”

“Royall heard Cody even stages how he led the Fifth into that Cheyenne village at Summit Springs and saved them women the savages held prisoner.”

The smile drained from Donegan’s face. “We only saved one of ’em, fellas. Tall Bull put a hatchet in the back of the other gal’s head.”

“But the story goes that Cody kill’t Tall Bull at the end of that battle,” Moore said.

“Cody did. Although Lute North and his brother been claiming otherwise ever since.”

“But you got the other gal out with her life,” Closter added.

“That’s right,” Donegan replied, suddenly prodded to think on a certain woman left behind at Laramie, brooding with a hope that she would never share the fate of Susanna Alderdice, who lay in an unmarked, trampled grave beneath the sands beside Summit Springs in Colorado Territory. Captured at the hands of savage warriors sweeping down on the Kansas settlements, long-suffering prisoner to unspeakable acts … just as Cheyenne and Sioux, Kiowa and Comanche women suffered at the hands of white men and soldiers. Where would it stop? And when?

“Goddamn these Injin wars,” he muttered, turning
away to peer into the distance as he struggled to regain some composure.

“You taking the job, Seamus?” Closter asked, grabbing Donegan’s arm.

He visibly shook the dark mantle of it from his shoulders, his long hair settling like a shawl over the collar of his canvas mackinaw. Then presented his hand to Moore. “Yeah. I’m taking the job. And thank you, Tom.”

“You’d do well to be thanking Colonel Royall too, Seamus.”

“I will. Believe me—I’ll thank him when I can find him. Didn’t know the Fifth Cavalry was going along on this march.”

Moore’s brow furrowed. “The Fifth ain’t got a damned thing to do with this march.”

“But … Royall?”

“He’s been assigned to the Third for some time, and its for certain Royall’s in charge of the Third now—what with Reynolds and Alexander Moore both under arrest and brought up on charges for pulling that boner up on the Powder.”

“Where’s your outfit, Seamus?” Closter asked.

“Yonder there by the quartermaster’s stables,” Donegan replied. “Where’s camp?”

Moore and Closter looked at one another in amazement as most of the other packers in that circle laughed loudly.

Moore slapped a hand on Donegan’s shoulder. “You mean you ain’t an idea where me and my boys put a few hundred head of mules? Why, just give a listen.”

Donegan cocked his head, grinned, and nodded. “I hear ’em now.”

“Ah, the sweet sound of a mule brigade!” Closter cheered.

Donegan replied, “Noisy bastards—ain’t they?”

“Welcome to working for once in your life, Seamus!” the old man said. “No more easy living as a scout for you, you soft-handed, mush-brained, potato-sucking mick Irishman!”

•    •    •

“
T
he hostiles know we’re coming, General,” John Bourke said in George Crook’s office at Fort Fetterman that third week of May.

“It doesn’t make a bloody damn to me if they know now, or when I get this outfit finally on the march. I’ll find them. By God, I’ll find them, John.”

“I can understand you feeling personally about this, sir.”

Crook whirled, worry etched on his fair-skinned, sunburnt features. “Wouldn’t you, Lieutenant? Knowing those Sioux bastards planned to assassinate you? Wouldn’t that make it something personal?”

“But they didn’t get the job done, and now you can return the favor—in a manner of speaking.”

“They did kill that mail courier, John!”

“Yes, sir. A sad thing too.”

“And likely committed that murder as they rode north to raid some other ranches and steal more cattle or a horse here and there.”

“Or worse yet, they went on north after killing the courier, heading for the camps of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.”

He watched as Crook returned to glaring at the tumble of maps skewed across the small table in this cramped office the general had turned into his war room. It was here that the Big Horn Expedition was being whipped into form.

They had pulled away from Hastings’s Red Cloud Agency at first light, four a.m., on the morning of 16 May, riding north and west back toward Laramie through a valley where ran what the Sioux called the White Earth River. An impressive contingent of strength including Crook’s own small escort of a dozen men, with newsman Robert Strahorn, as well as the general’s three scouts for the coming campaign—Frank Grouard, Baptiste Pourier, and a sullen and chastised Louie Reshaw, who by and large kept to himself at the end of the column. But as events would soon prove, it was fortuitous that Crook’s escort had been reinforced by a strong detail accompanying Paymaster Thaddeus H. Stanton, who had just completed his regular pay trip to the agency, as well as escort accompanying the inspector
general for Crook’s Department of the Platte, Major Marshall I. Ludington, who was that morning returning from his own review of troop strength among the far-flung outposts along the departmental border. To this force of sixty-five men was also added the strength of at least a dozen cattlemen who had a vested and personal interest in convincing Crook that he should clamp down hard on the Sioux, who had been making a steady practice of raiding their stock on ranches surrounding the lower Sioux agencies.