Trumpet on the Land (80 page)

Finerty smiled, watching the general tip his ragged,
weather-beaten chapeau, bowing left, then right, then left again, shaking hands as they inched slowly along, waving to those on porches and balconies, throwing a kiss here and there to the second-story working girls of that mining town—all in the manner of a man running for political office.

“Crook could be elected mayor of Deadwood if he wanted,” Finerty had to yell above the pandemonium to the Irishman riding beside him.

Donegan nodded, saying, “Hell—he could damn well be elected governor of the whole bleeming Dakota Territory!”

Drawing up in front of the Grand Central Hotel and gesturing across the street, Mayor Farnum politely offered, “General, should your men wish to make use of our public bathhouse over there, you will find it at your disposal—free of cost.”

It had been the first hot water Finerty sank into since that tiny galvanized tub in a whore's crib at Kid Slay-maker's clear back in May. Going four months between good soakings had become too onerous a habit. After he was done, Donegan stood naked and anxiously ready while the bath attendants dumped Finerty's water.

“Look at that, will you now?” the Irishman exclaimed, pointing at the newsman's bathwater being poured into a wooden sluice that went through a hole in the wall, where it spilled into the creek. “I ain't seen the likes of such filthy, scummy water since we camped beside the Powder River!”

In less than an hour the entire detail had bathed and felt better for it, despite the fact they were forced to climb back into the same mud-crusted clothing the attendants had at least brushed and shaken. Out onto the street, as the sun began to set, they again poked their heads, and at once the town again erupted. Both sides of the long main thoroughfare were lined with saloons and drinking houses, restaurants and hotels, mercantiles and those parlors where the soft flesh of women was daily bartered, all of it closely hemmed in by the timbered hills that looked down on the merry celebrants.

At dusk, after the general's staff had ceremoniously panned for gold along the banks of Whitewood Creek, the town's leaders prevailed upon a reluctant Crook to give a short speech from a balcony of one of the hotels. Lacing his talk with a few jokes, most of them at the expense of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and their Sioux, the general was even more popular when he walked down to supper than he had been when first stepping onto that balcony.

Again the town fathers stuffed their visitors to the gills, then escorted them over to the Langrishe Theater, where Mayor Farnum and his aldermen presided over a spate of formal speeches. When the officials presented the general with a petition signed by Black Hills citizens urging construction of a military post in their country, the general politely declined.

He went on to explain. “The Black Hills are not in my department. General Terry commands here. Your petition should be presented to the secretary of war. Not to me. But I will be honored to carry your petition to Fort Laramie with me and deliver it there to General Sheridan.”

After receiving the crowd's warm appreciation, the general concluded, “When the rank and file pass through here in the days ahead, show that you appreciate their admirable fortitude in bearing the sufferings of a terrible march almost without a murmur, and show them that they are not fighting for thirteen dollars per month, but for the cause—the proper development of our gold and other resources, and of humanity. Let the private soldier feel that he is remembered by our people as the real defender of his country.”

When the crowd clamored and hooted for more from Crook, he instead prevailed upon Captain Burt, who excited the packed house by delivering his impromptu tale of their horrid march. Nonetheless, at every turn he extolled his own personal satisfaction serving under a general “who gets things done.” Burt went on to tell the miners and merchants just how much he “enjoyed the satisfaction of standing in a Sioux village and watching it burn.” Amid the
raucous cheers and thunderous applause in response to those stirring comments, Crook's men were officially handed their “keys” to the city.

One of the crowd hollered out, “You better turn over to us those Sioux prisoners you left back on the Whitewood! If you take them on back to the agency, Uncle Sam will feed them until they want to take the war path again!”

Burt replied, “No, we can't turn them over to you. We won't give you those Indians to kill, and we won't kill them ourselves—provided they show us where there are more to kill.”

By the time Finerty pressed his way out of the theater and onto the street once more with the rest of the general's entourage, he was sure his arm had all but been pumped out of its socket with so much hand shaking.

Taking Donegan by the arm, the pair of jubilant Patlanders strolled down the south side of Main Street until they happened before a likely looking saloon. Inside Johnny Manning's Gambling Hall they were told to put their money back in their pockets.

“Why, hell, fellas,” Finerty bellowed. “We haven't any money anyway!”

It made no matter to the miners, who all were anxious to put up for a round or two, treating those who had helped Crook whip the Sioux at Slim Buttes. For some time they drank and watched the gaming tables, where Finerty was surprised to find that more than half the dealers were women—older, hard-faced women who clearly showed the effects of years at a hard life. They nimbly dealt not just poker, but faro and keno and monte too. Beneath the smoky lamplight, cards and whiskey, colorful chips and coins and gold dust, lay spread across the emerald felt stretched over every table. Scales lined the bar, where for every ounce of dust a man could earn himself twenty dollars' worth of credit at the tables, or right then and there with a miner's choice of whiskey, rye, or gin with bitters.

Then it was out the open doorway and down the boardwalk until they found a second likely saloon, and in
they went for another series of toasts at Al Swerington's. On and on the evening went in just that way until they both staggered, shoulder to shoulder, down the street reaching China Town, where they crossed to the north side of Main, ducking into Billy Knuckle's Belle Union, then next door to drink at the Big French Hook. Finally they stood on the muddy boardwalk before a sixth watering hole.

Back Donegan rocked on his heels unsteadily, squinting, peering intently at the sign above their heads. “Number … Ten? That what it says?”

“Yep—says so right there in plain English, you idjit Irishman!” Finerty burbled.

Wagging his head, Seamus replied, “Who the hell would name a saloon after a god-bleeming-blamed number?”

“C'mon,” Finerty said, grabbing hold of Donegan's arm as the big Irishman suddenly froze. The newsman tugged, saying, “Just one more for a nightcap.” Then he looked up at the scout's face, gone as white as a ghost, and Finerty's belly went cold as January ice.

Turning slowly, the reporter saw what had stopped Donegan dead in his tracks there before the Number Ten Saloon. A big freshly painted sign nailed beside the open doors, announcing to one and all:

NUMBER 10 SALOON
Where Wild Bill Hickok
was murdered by
Jack McCall
on
August 2, 1876

“Will you look at that?” John exclaimed with an excited gush. “Wild Bill, the famous
pistolero
, was killed right here! And just a few weeks ago! My, my—wait till I write about this!”

Like a statue there beside Finerty, Donegan crossed
himself with a trembling gun hand. Eyes welling, he murmured, “B-blessed Mary, Mither of God!”

“What the hell's wrong with you, Irishman?” Finerty asked, sensing the first quiver of fright at the way Donegan stood transfixed, as if he'd just seen a ghost. “Don't tell me you'd be superstitious having us a drink in there now. Just think what you can tell your children—that you drank whiskey in the same saloon where the famous Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down.”

“Murdered.”

“Yeah, that's what I said, Seamus. Wild Bill was gunned down right inside there.”

Donegan shook his head, clenching his eyes, some tears creeping out at their corners. “No—there wasn't a man what could've gunned Bill Hickok down. Just like the sign says: he was
murdered.”

Inching in front of the big scout, Finerty stared into Donegan's eyes. “You—you knew him … knew Wild Bill Hickok?”

Nodding once, he sniffed. “Back to sixty-seven. We scouted a short time together. Me and Cody both.”

“That's right,” Finerty said, remembering. “The winter you fellas hijacked that load of Mexican beer and made a tidy profit selling it to Carr's soldiers. Well. I'll be damned, Irishman. I hadn't put it all together until now. I see. Well. Under the circumstances I can understand why
you
might not be thirsty no more. Maybe we have had us enough and should find a place to sleep off the rest of the night.”

Eventually the Irishman nodded, quietly saying, “Yeah. Someplace else to go but here.”

“My God! Listen to this, Seamus!”

Donegan really wasn't at all interested in what the Chicago newsman found interesting in that copy of
The Black Hills Pioneer.

Ever since he had stared at that sign nailed to the front of Mann's Number 10 Saloon last night, the Irishman had
thought of nothing else but Bill Hickok, fondly remembering their scouting days together, learning of the gunman's meteoric rise to fame as a Kansas cow-town lawman.

Annoyed at the interruption, he dragged his eyes away from gazing out the restaurant window and looked into the face of the reporter seated across the table from him, who was reading a copy of the local newspaper.

Donegan asked, “Does it say anything about Crook's visit?”

“Yes—they've got a really good piece on our campaign and some nice writing on the general's oratorical efforts last night,” Finerty answered that morning of the seventeenth. “But it's this editorial you've got to hear: ‘Some pap-sucking Quaker representative of an Indian doxology mill, writes in
Harper
for April about settling the Indian troubles by establishing more Sunday Schools and Missions among them.' ”

“Just what the Sioux and Cheyenne need,” Donegan grumbled. He took another sip of his steamy coffee, then went back to staring out the window.

“There's more here,” Finerty continued. “‘It is enough to make a western man sick to read such stuff.'”

Without looking at the correspondent, Seamus said, “I never was much of one to read newspapers, anyway. Though I personally have nothing against newspapermen.”

“Now, listen, Seamus—this here is the clencher! ‘You might as well try to raise a turkey from a snake egg as to raise a good citizen from a papoose. Indians can be made good in only one way, and that is to make angels of them.'”

Finally he looked into Finerty's eyes. “By that account, seems Crook's and Terry's armies haven't made too many Indians good, have we?”

For most of the previous night and into the morning, Lieutenants William P. Clark and Frederick W. Sibley had busied themselves pulling all of Deadwood's blacksmiths out of bed and the saloons to work at reshoeing the patrol's horses and unshod Indian ponies. Finally at eight
A.M.
, after
a big breakfast and lots of coffee for those who had unwisely celebrated most of the night, Crook had them climbing back into the saddle for their ride south to Camp Robinson.

On the road to Custer City they passed a growing number of wagons: empty freighters rumbling south to the Union Pacific rail line at Sidney, Nebraska, returning north with those precious goods bound for the Black Hills mining camps. In the early afternoon the general's party met three companies of the Fourth Artillery escorting a wagon train ordered north with supplies for Crook's expedition. For more than an hour the groups stopped there beside Box Elder Creek to exchange news of the world for news from the front.

In their travels the following day they passed by the new community of Castleton on the Black Hills route that led them along Castle Creek and on through the shadow of Harney's Peak. Already the new community was home to more than two hundred hopeful miners and merchants. On the outskirts of town, fields had been plowed and a few small cattle herds grazed in the tall grasses. By noon they had reached a plateau, where they looked down upon Hill City, abandoned save for one hardy hermit.

“Why did everyone go?” Donegan asked the old man.

Came the simple answer, “Indian scare … and no gold dust.”

The sun was settling into the western clouds, igniting them with radiant fire, when Crook's party reached Custer City, aptly named for that one soldier who brought his Seventh Cavalry to explore the Black Hills back in seventy-four, then promptly informed the world of the prospects for finding gold in that land ceded to the Sioux. Here Crook called a halt for the night, and the party reined up outside a likely looking hotel.

“Donegan? Is that really you?”

Seamus turned slowly at the call of his name, unable to recognize the voice. His hand slid closer to the butt of a
pistol. He looked at the clean-shaven soldier bounding off the boardwalk toward him, not able to place the man.

“Seamus Donegan! By the saints—it is you!”

“Egan? Don't tell me!”

The captain stopped and spread his arms widely in a grand gesture, cocking his head to the side slyly. “Teddy Egan, his own self!”

They laughed and hugged and pounded one another on the back as John Finerty came over.

“Still tagging along with this worthless bit of army flotsam, I see, John,” Egan said after shaking hands with the newsman.

“Ever since the three of us went marching with Reynolds down on that Powder River village,” Finerty responded.

James “Teddy” Egan's famous troop of grays, E Troop, Second Cavalry, the same men who had led the charge on the village nestled beside the frozen Powder River which Frank Grouard swore was Crazy Horse's camp back on St. Patrick's Day,
*
had ever since that winter campaign been assigned to protect emigrant and freight travel along the Black Hills Road between Fort Laramie and Custer City.