Reap the Whirlwind (14 page)

And he wondered if he would ever get a chance to even the score with He Dog and Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila.

When slap dark gripped the prairie, Grouard nudged them all awake and wordlessly motioned them to their mounts. With only a signal, the half-breed reined about and led them up onto the rolling, vaulted tableland cut with the turkey-track coulees and dry washes that stood out like veins across the silver landscape rolling horizon to horizon below the muted starshine. Near sunrise he had brought them to the head of the Dry Fork of the Powder.
^*

“How close are we to that goddamned crossing Crook wants you to scout?” whispered Sergeant Carr.

“A day’s ride. Maybe less.”

“So we’ll ride out come nightfall and reach it tomorrow morning. Decide on a crossing, then get our tails high behind and back to Fetterman,” Carr declared.

Frank wagged his head. “Can’t wait till sundown, Sergeant. I gotta take the chance riding through the day.”

Carr swallowed, but this time he gulped down his anger. Thin-lipped he said, “Why, in the devil’s name, do you want to ride right out there in daylight when there’s those red bastards dogging our backtrail?”

“General asked me to keep a eye out for the Crow he wired to come join him.”

“Crow?” Carr squeaked. “The goddamned Crow?”

He nodded. “Crook says he expects they’ll be coming to join the soldier column—and he wants me to find them.”

“What the hell for?”

“Tell ’em the general is on his way. To sit tight. To say Crook will be here shortly to whip the enemies of the Crow.”

Carr started chuckling softly. “If that don’t beat all! Not only are you going to ride out there in the middle of the day to find a river crossing while we’ve got redskins ready
to lift our hair riding down our ass … but you’re gonna go looking for some other goddamned Injuns to boot!”

Evenly, almost dispassionately, Grouard answered, “That’s about the size of it, Sergeant. You coming with me when these horses had a chance to rest?”

Carr chuckled softly again. “What choices I got, Grouard? To turn around and ride right back into the teeth of those bastards been following us? Or ride on with you, hoping to stay ahead of one war party while we go looking for another war party to join up with?”

“Glad you get the picture, Sergeant,” Grouard said. “Truth is, I’m glad to have you and your men along for the ride.”

After an hour of grazing the horses and watering them at a scummy pool of rain seep, the half-breed ordered the soldiers back into the saddle. Through that morning and into the early afternoon he kept the troopers hugging the bottoms and ravines for the most part while he himself rode on ahead, scouting the country for as safe a route as he could find. Doing everything he could think of so that Carr’s detail would not be spied against the horizon by an enemy that refused to let up, refused to stop for rest, refused to abandon their hunger for soldier blood.

After less than fifteen miles of that arduous ride through the broken countryside, Grouard reined up at the brow of a bluff, hanging back in the shadows as he peered down upon the vast expanse of country tumbling away to the Powder River crossing. He could almost see the river. Almost.

And down there too he caught a glimpse of the first dust rising behind a ridge off to his left.

Quickly glancing behind him, he spotted the soldiers still coming on, down in the coulee and still some distance behind him.

Turning back north, Frank realized the Lakota had figured out where the soldiers might be heading, so had hurried on ahead to cut off the white men at a good place for an ambush. In that country sloping down to the Powder, there would be any one of a handful of beautiful places the enemy could use to lay their trap. And once the soldiers would ride into the snare, there was no coming out alive.

Grouard urged his mount out of the shadows at a hand gallop, feeling the animal spring into life as it was finally given its head and a chance to run. Reaching those hills directly above the Powder River crossing, he dismounted and bellied up to the crest, looking down on the Lakota war party as it prepared its trap for the soldiers. The trail Carr’s men were taking would lead them right down the forks of a creek heading to the Powder. As the soldiers rode toward the snare, the Lakota dispersed along either side of the trail so they would capture the white men in a deadly cross fire.

He turned to look behind the hills to the south and saw the faint smudge of dust against the afternoon sky. He had to act soon—and give up ever reaching the Powder River.

Knowing there was little sense in staying completely silent any longer, Grouard sprinted to his horse, wheeled about, and rode back to meet Carr, signaling for the soldiers to halt.

“Turn ’em back, Sergeant,” he said tersely.

The soldier craned his neck and asked, “Them red bastards up there at the river?”

“Laying in the shadows, waiting for you.”

“Where to now, Grouard?”

“Fetterman.”

“Fetterman?” Carr shrieked. “Goddammit, man, that’s—”

“A hell of a long way. Now get these men riding.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be along shortly, after I take care of something first. Now, get moving and don’t spare the spur if you have to.”

“Grouard—if we live through this, I’ll buy you a drink of whiskey,” Carr growled with a grudging smile. “If we don’t live through it—you’ll see me in hell!”

“You’ll owe me a whole bottle, Sergeant. Now get going—I’ll see you back at Fetterman.”

He watched the soldiers disappear once more into the coulees, then spur the horses up onto the flat, rolling, broken prairieland, their ten mounts kicking up a cascade of dust shimmering like spun gold in the afternoon light. Frank sawed the reins about, let the animal out, and
stopped only when he had reached the top of the hill overlooking the Lakota’s ambush.

Unmoving, Grouard sat there until he was sure the enemy had spotted him silhouetted against the skyline. He sat there a while longer, kept rising in the stirrups and looking behind him as if he were awaiting the soldiers who would come up to the crossing with him. When he felt he had given enough time for the proper effect, the half-breed waved enthusiastically, then signaled expansively to the imaginary platoon to come on. Slowly he left the crest of the slope as if he were going to meet the soldiers and lead them to their destruction.

Once out of sight, however, Frank hammered his moccasins into the flanks of his big American horse. If forced to, he would push Carr’s soldiers and their mounts all afternoon and into the night. It wouldn’t take very long for those Lakota to realize the soldiers weren’t coming—and then they would be following with a vengeance. Blood in their eyes, screeching and ready to put an end to this long chase.

He would just have to keep the soldiers going as long as their mounts held up. And not try to think about how goddamned far it really was back to Fort Fetterman.

Inch by inch he let the horse have more of the rein, let it have its head as it tore up and over and down and around that broken ground, heading south toward LaPrele Creek and Crook’s army.

Tearing flat out, with the soldiers racing for their lives in the middistance ahead of him.

Turning to glance over his shoulder, he saw them. Specks at first, dark as beetles bobbing against the murky haze of the horizon. But they were coming. A whole shit-teree of them too.

Flat out they were all racing now—red and white, and a half-breed too.

The soldiers would likely lose their scalps if they lost this long run back to Fetterman. But the Lakota would likely try to take Frank alive—saving him for some delicious, exquisite torture at the hands of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and He Dog.

Grouard had made enemies, many enemies among those Lakota who were coming behind at a ferocious, screaming tear, whipping their grass-fed, long-winded little ponies hot on the heels of the soldiers.

Once again the half-breed was running for his life.

29 May 1876

“T
hose sons a bitches didn’t give up the chase until they
were within rifle shot of the soldier tents down on the bottoms,” Frank Grouard had told Seamus as he slid from the saddle at the top of the bluff where Fort Fetterman stood. To a young soldier he gratefully handed over the reins to his lathered army mount.

“Came close to getting your hair?”

“My scalp’s tingled a time or two before, Seamus,” the half-breed continued. “But I ain’t never been in as close a scrape as that.”

“Breathing down your neck, was they?” Donegan asked with a grin, trying to cheer up the half-breed.

With a nod Grouard replied, “All the way from the Powder River.”

“That’s a long race of it if ever there was one, my friend! Glad to see you made it back whole … and with your hair still locked on!”

For what must have been the first time in many hours, Grouard finally grinned. “If there’d been a pool to bet on the winner of that race, Seamus—by God, this time I would’ve bet on the Injuns myself!”

It was well after dark that Friday, 26 May, when there arose a commotion down among the teamsters’ and packers’
camps. Voices boomed along the river, men hollered, then echoed with some weary cheering and laughter as the half-breed led the ten soldiers back to the safety of the army’s great gathering on the north bank of the Platte River. Leaving Sergeant Carr and his detail behind, Grouard roused the ferrymen back into service and crossed the river to climb the plateau to the fort itself.

There he finally dismounted, received a hale and hearty welcome from some friends, and then in the company of the Irishman strolled over to have an audience with Crook. While the general wasn’t entirely happy not knowing for certain what sort of a crossing he would have at the Powder near old Fort Reno, Crook was nonetheless expressive in his happiness to have his chief of scouts back in one piece.

Slapping Grouard on the back and winking at Donegan, the general declared, “It won’t matter much in a few days, anyway. I’m ready to start moving this army across the Platte.”

“We should be away on the twenty-ninth after all!” John Bourke added.

Crook nodded agreeably. “We get the cattle herd and the rest of our ammunition across—we’ll march for Crazy Horse country, Grouard. That ought to take some of the sting out of that horse race of yours.”

The half-breed glanced over at Donegan before answering. “It will, General. It sure as hell will. I’m going to do everything I can to catch Crazy Horse again for you.”

By late the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, the personal effects of the officers had been recrated, stenciled, and piled aboard the ferry, on their way back across to the south bank of the Platte, there to be stored in the quartermaster’s warehouse at Fort Fetterman for the duration of Crook’s Bighorn and Yellowstone Expedition. Orders were given up and down the chain of command that every last pound of gear not absolutely necessary to the campaign was to be left behind. The infantry suffered the most, ordered to give up the warmth of an extra blanket these cold spring nights on the high plains. Grumbling at the unfairness of the order, the foot sloggers complained that the horse soldiers would continue to sleep beneath the warmth of the standard issue of one blanket, in addition to the
thick saddle blanket as well as an extra blanket most of the veterans folded under their saddles.

Still, cavalry sergeants were assigned to search every trooper’s equipment carefully, pulling out things like currycombs and brushes, among more of a man’s more personal articles. Time would come, the horse soldiers were reminded, that they would need to pack along extra ammunition, extra rations, an extra fore and rear shoe for their mounts—in every way to live “off the hoof” this time out chasing the Sioux and Cheyenne.

Those who had served under General George Crook before needed no reminding.

From first light until well past twilight each evening, the ferrymen toiled to move ammunition and grain, rations and cattle across the Platte. Time and again the cable snapped, requiring hours of delay in repairing the hausers. Even a new cable hauled up from Laramie was not immune to breaking under the severe strain this campaign was putting it to. And Captain Charles Meinhold of the Third Cavalry, in attempting to swim the horses of his B Company across the swirling river, had problems urging the mounts off the south bank and into the water. As a hundred head of the horses wheeled about and tore away from the riverbank, their handlers were left standing in panic behind them. While some were eventually recovered by Meinhold’s men, a good number never were rounded back up.

“No matter, I’ll still be happy to quit this post at long last,” John Finerty told Seamus on the evening of the twenty-eighth as the multiple camps settled down into their last night before marching out for enemy territory.

“You’ve been working those girls over to the Hog Ranch pretty hard, John,” said Donegan. “Even for a everloving Irishman!”

They laughed together there at the fire; then Finerty sighed as several of them gazed back up the far bluff at the fort buildings in the fading light at dusk. He finally said, “Fetterman is now all but abandoned. It’s a truly hateful post—in summer pure hell, I hear. And in winter no less than the icy slopes of Spitzbergen itself! The whole army dreads being quartered here, fellas.”