Reap the Whirlwind (16 page)

Strange animals, these—thought Seamus Donegan. Perhaps a lot like a soldier: give him a chance to complain and get it off his chest, then he’ll bloody well march himself down to his raw shanks for an officer.

That evening after a twenty-mile march, Baptiste Pourier selected a campsite on the South Fork of the Cheyenne River, a poor excuse for a stream. It struck the Irishman as nothing more than a collection of muddy sinks and gyp-laced pools lined by thriving cottonwoods and a thick tangle of undergrowth along its banks. At the blackened circle where a huge fire had been built, Bat told Donegan he figured this for the place Grouard had Sergeant Carr’s men feed their bonfire and stuff their blankets to resemble dummies. Not one of the bullet-riddled blankets remained, only rocks and tufts of grass scattered about the site by the angry scouting party.

After the packs were removed from the mules and the animals set out to roll and graze in contentment on the poor grass, Seamus returned to the creek and knelt to drink. With that first sip he found the water laced with so many minerals that he dared not drink any more than what he could cup in the first handful. It was here on Crook’s winter march north that the Indians had attacked and killed the young herder, Jim Wright, and spooked the herd to stampede. As the cattle loped south that cold winter night, Crook had expressed real satisfaction, glad that from that point on his campaign would not be encumbered with the slow-moving commissary on hoof.

The night passed without an encore visit from the hostiles here beside the South Fork, so the next morning Crook’s command resumed its march along the Bozeman
Road. It was quickly becoming a broken, brutal country, and would be for many, many days to come.

Twenty more hot, dusty miles and the column reached the North Fork of the Wind River as the wind mysteriously came about, now blowing out of the north. A plainsman’s nose knew the difference, and knew what the gods had in store for this high country where winter was always long and fickle in going. The soldiers could only pull on their standard-issue wool overcoats, turn up the collars, and plod ever northward into the face of the capricious weather. While Crook had ordered the tent stoves left behind at Fetterman, at least for now they had their tents to offer some small solace and shelter. So with little wood to be found, water totally unfit for drinking, even for brewing coffee, and that howling edge of the wind foretelling of snow, the entire Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition turned morose and sullen.

That evening a courier from Captain Meinhold’s battalion came in to report to Crook that a soldier had accidentally shot himself. Crook dispatched the expedition medical director, Surgeon Albert Hartsuff, and an ambulance to bring in the campaign’s first casualty. Late that night they wheeled Private Francis Tierney into camp, suffering greatly from the jolting ride. A member of Meinhold’s B Company on reconnaissance miles to the north, he had shot himself in the thigh earlier that same evening at their bivouac on Seventeen Mile Creek, a dry fork of the Powder itself.

“Poor fella was setting to chopping some wood for the mess fire and unbuckled his revolver belt. Tossed it to the ground,” John Bourke explained to Seamus late that night when the aide-de-camp came round for some coffee and talk with the night owls. “Pistol likely landed butt first, firing right beside him. Bullet went in his leg,” and the lieutenant pointed with a finger well up on the thigh. “About here. Hartsuff says the bullet never came out. But the path it took went on up into his belly. Likely lodged in the man’s kidney.”

Seamus winced. “Ain’t no coming back from a wound like that, Johnny.”

Bourke clucked. “Just a matter of time.”

“Crook going to send him back to Fetterman?” Seamus asked, offering more coffee from the big, blackened pot steaming over Richard Closter’s mess fire.

Bourke shook his head. “General told the surgeon he couldn’t spare a detachment to take the man back to Fetterman at this time. Not when we’re just setting out on our march north. Besides, the fella’s bound to die anyway. Nothing anyone can do to save his life now. So Crook wants him kept as comfortable as possible with some laudanum in one of Russell’s wagons.”

“And the poor sojur will ride north to Injin country with us, eh?”

“The looks of it, Seamus.”

Another slashing gust of wind made Donegan wonder where spring had gone. Here it was, time for summer, and winter was circling back to hammer the plains with one last chilling visit. Truly, March had passed into April on this land, bringing an end to a long, brutal winter, ushering in a spring late in coming. As the seasons turned, the snow had finally disappeared, eventually soaking into the skimpy crust of soil unable since time immemorial to clutch much moisture to its parched breast. Yet like beacons of perennial hope, the buds of the wildflowers and prairie roses had begun to emerge even as Crook set forth from Fetterman.

But with this second day of the march, winter had returned to the northern plains for one last, exuberant gasp of bone-numbing cold.

The coming of dawn that first day of June brought with it a snowstorm careening down from the glaciers on the high slopes of the Big Horn Mountains. Whereas the day before the soldiers had sweated through their long march, now they rolled out, shivering as the slashing gusts of wind drove the icy spring blizzard into their faces. As the sun rose, a pale pewter glob behind the snow clouds, Surgeon Hartsuff’s thermometer registered zero degrees. The hurricane-force gale made it feel inhuman.

Hurriedly moving about camp and their morning chores to prepare for the day’s march, soldiers and civilians fought the wind and shivering hands to light their fires. Water brought up from the creek in kettles and coffeepots began to slick within a matter of minutes. And there was a
lot of talk from those who remembered Crook’s march to the Powder River.

“Damn well didn’t know Crook’s two half-breed guides steered us in the wrong direction, Seamus!” shouted John Finerty, motioning his fellow Irishman over with a steaming cup of coffee. “Look like they’ve gone and taken us all the way to Alaska Territory!”

“Welcome to Injun Country, Mr. Correspondent!” Donegan replied, taking the steaming tin.

“It’s damned well snowing here as hard as it does in Chicago. And there isn’t even a lake nearby!”

No matter the wet, pelting snow given wing on cruel gusts of wind, Crook had the column up and moving out by five a.m. By midday the freak spring storm broke, the skies brightened as the clouds began to part, and some streaks of sunlight burst through the gray ceiling, lifting nearly every man’s spirits. That day the expedition passed three large Indian encampments, evidenced by the tipi rings and blackened circles of fire pits, as well as the refuse of bones and scraps of abandoned hides.

“Recent sign. Likely these were some of the bands moving off the reservations, heading north for the spring hunt,” Donegan told Closter.

“Not that Crazy Horse bunch?”

He shook his head. “They’ll be farther north. Don’t figure they’d come this far south now. Not with soldiers preparing to march up to make war on ’em.”

“Sure it ain’t the camps for them war parties been sending smoke signals about us?”

Donegan waved an arm across the extent of the campsite. “This is too damned big for a war party. Besides, warriors on the scout don’t bring along lodges. They’ll sleep under the stars—or if the weather turns bad like it did yesterday, they’ll fort up under some blankets or hides they can spread over some willows down by a creek.”

“My, my—where’d you go and learn all that about these red devils?” Closter inquired.

“Been out here going on a decade, Uncle Dick. First year I met no less than Jim Bridger himself. But a man has to learn a lot all on his own if he figures to keep his hair in Injin country.”

That afternoon Captain Azor H. Nickerson, one of Crook’s aides-de-camp, raised his field glasses and intently peered into the west for a few minutes. When he eventually took the glasses from his face, the captain tore off to inform the general of what he believed to be a party of Indians massing off the left flank of their line of march. Like wild prairie fire the rumor roared down the length of the entire column. Nearly every man shielded his eyes as he trudged along in formation, straining to make out the faroff enemy. Yet at so great a distance, the unaided eye could discern nothing more than some rapid movement of those faraway objects.

“Dick, you better remind some of the others not to dawdle,” Seamus advised Closter. “Get ’em to hang closer to the column.”

The old packer turned off to scurry among the other eighty packers, shouting his command.

Just as the order to close up ranks was coming back from headquarters at the front of the march, Seamus watched Captain Guy V. Henry’s D Company of the Third Cavalry rein oblique left and form up in column of fours, moving away at a fast trot to reconnoiter.

“Close up! Close up!” a pair of sergeants shouted, echoing one another as they galloped past, one on each side of the trail.

“You figure there’s gonna be a fight of it?” Closter asked Donegan.

“Don’t know for sure, Uncle Dick. But one thing is certain—those warriors would be the dumbest creatures I ever fought if they figure on attacking this column all by themselves.”

“I don’t figure them red bastards for having much sense, anyway,” Closter grumbled under his breath.

He watched Henry’s company loping toward the distant objects that appeared to be coming on without letup. Then the order came down the line of march for the column to halt. Beneath the afternoon sun it appeared to the Irishman as if the unknown riders wore cavalry blue. From time to time sun glinted from reflective objects carried by the oncoming party.

And just when a clash was expected between the hostile
war party and Captain Henry’s company, the whole lot of them stopped on a nearby prominence, stood for a few moments, then re-formed and turned back for the column as one.

“A goddamned fuss about nothing!” Closter grumbled later when word was passed down that the “war party” had turned out to be the Meinhold and Vroom reconnaissance, returning from their scout to the Powder River and Old Fort Reno.

Word had the officers and Grouard reporting that they had found no new trail made to the fort site, nor had they seen any sign of Indians—either friendlies, or the hostiles who had been dogging the line of march.

For the time being Crook said nothing, successfully hiding his great disappointment. Seamus figured that either the Shoshone had been delayed in coming to join up with the column, or worse: the Snakes from Camp Brown weren’t coming at all.

On top of that, all day long the entire command had seen more and more smoke signals rising in the chill air from hills to the north and east. When there was sun, an occasional mirror was flashed from the nearby ridges and bluffs.

After another twenty-one-mile march along the trail that traced a bare backbone of high ground above the ravines and gulches, the column was ordered to bivouac on the Dry Fork of the Powder. What little firewood they could find was located down in the brakes, where the men hacked at what few scrub junipers and greasewood grew there. Still, the grass was improving each day, given more time and moisture. The horses grew stronger, being readied for their moment with destiny and the hostile warrior bands of the north.

“They’re talking about us, ain’t they?” Dick Closter had asked as he came up to Donegan’s mess fire after their march that day.

“Who’s talking about us?”

“Them smoke signals.”

Donegan replied, “Sending word north that the soldiers are coming.”

“Won’t do ’em no good,” Closter growled, then spat a
stream of tobacco juice to the side of the fire pit, where it sizzled and steamed on a rock. “Crook’ll find ’em—then these soldier boys can pitch into ’em real fancy. Makes no matter them gaddurned smoke signals and mirrors.”

Donegan had to agree. The advance warning would likely matter little. If anything counted in fighting Indians, it was in keeping the enemy set in one place long enough to bring the warriors to battle. With a decade of Injun fighting already under his belt, the Irishman knew the real test would be getting the Indians to stand and fight long enough to make a battle of it. Usually they engaged the soldiers only as long as it took to get their families out of camp—then they would disappear like woodsmoke on a strong gust of wind.

If Crook could only get Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse to stop their running, to turn around and engage his cavalry—then the tide of events on the northern plains would thereafter run a far different course. Just get the red bastards to stand and fight.

“Where are these heathens been lighting those signal fires?” Closter asked later as their own mess fires were dying to a red glow in their pits.

“Don’t you worry,” Tom Moore said before anyone else could comment. “If those Sioux want to show themselves, we’ll hear it when and where we least expect it. Right, Seamus?”

“Why, yes,” he answered, surprised that Moore had asked his opinion after the scolding he had gotten over a poorly tied diamond hitch.

“Last trip they serenaded us damned near every evening after we got north of the Platte,” Moore continued. “Not the same this time, is it now, fellas?”

“I remember how one night Johnny Bourke near got so scar’t that he about shat his pants!” Closter roared.

“What’s the story to that?” Donegan asked.

“Johnny was going over some maps in his tent the night we camped on the Crazy Woman last March,” Closter explained. “You remember that place, Seamus?”

“Indeed I do, old man. Go on.”

“A few of his fellow officers come in and said he was a damned fool for having that candle of his lit, what with the
way the Injuns’d been firing into camp every night. But the lieutenant just laughed and was telling them that since they’d gone a few nights with no halloo from the drabbed redskins, he didn’t think the warriors’d be back when—of a sudden—all hell breaks loose! Bullets spitting into camp—and one of ’em, don’t you know, goes right through that tent and snuffs Johnny’s map candle right out!”