Heart of the Sandhills (20 page)

“And it gets easier?” Gen said hopefully.

“No. It never gets easier. Not if you love them.” Mrs. Doc sighed. “But, you learn to bear it.”

“Without making a public spectacle of yourself?” Gen looked around her, hoping the cluster of women standing by sutler’s had just arrived.

“Oh, I can’t promise that. But there’s something about a man and wife who love each other that makes an impression on the world, my dear. Too many marriages are built on convenience. Too many are loveless. I like to think God can use those of us who know His love to woo onlookers into the kingdom.” She patted Gen’s arm.

The women started off together, but when Gen headed toward the parade ground, Mrs. Beaumont stopped. “Are you going somewhere, my dear?”

“Just to my room. Captain Willets arranged for a room over on laundress row.”

Mrs. Doctor smiled. “Is that what they told you?”

Gen frowned. “You mean I don’t have a room?”

“Why, of course you have a room. Your husband made the arrangements last week. And I am delighted. You shouldn’t be so secretive about yourself, my dear.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about,” Gen said.

“We have a little school for the native children,” Mrs. Beaumont explained.

“Yes,” Gen replied. “I knew about that.”

“Your husband told us about your background. At Miss Bartlett’s in New York?”

Gen nodded. “But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

“We need a teacher, Mrs. Two Stars. I can’t keep up. We can’t pay you, but Dr. Beaumont and I would be honored if you’d accept our hospitality for as long as you are here.”

“Daniel . . . did this? For me?”

“Now, now, you’re going to start crying again,” Mrs. Beaumont said. “Let’s get you home,” and she took Gen by the arm and guided her toward the lovely, two-story white frame doctor’s residence. As they walked, she maintained a one-sided conversation on the trials of army life, the goodness of God, and the weather.

By the end of the week, Gen had settled into a routine.

By the second week, she had learned Mrs. Beaumont’s life story.

And by Monday of the third week, Mrs. Beaumont had become Libby, Gen’s good friend and personal prayer warrior.

For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counselors there is safety.

–Proverbs 24:6

“Just remember: where you don’t see any Indians, that’s where they’re thickest.”

Zephyr Picotte packed his pipe with tobacco and lit it before settling back against a tree. Aaron considered his advice, looking from Daniel to the other scouts. When he saw them nod and smile, he, too, nodded. Captain Willets joined their campfire. It was three days since they left Fort Laramie, and other than a long-since-abandoned camp and occasional smoke signals, they had seen no signs of Indians, either hostile or friendly. Each night they pitched three tents; first, a large square one with a flap that created a shaded “porch” for Captain Willets; then two Sibley tents, accommodating seventeen men each; and lastly a small tent for Edward Pope and the scouts. They ate in the open air around their campfires and could set up or take down camp in a matter of minutes.

By their fourth day in the field, Elliot was beginning to think he was wasting his own time and the U.S. government’s money. Picotte was inclined to disagree, and said so. “Remember what I said the other day. We don’t see ‘em, but you can be sure they see us.” Picotte’s advice proved true the next morning when it was discovered that several horses had been run off, right from beneath the picket guards’ noses.

They traveled over hills covered with blooming flowers of all colors. Once, after they had crossed a particularly beautiful spot, Daniel dropped back behind the main party just long enough to pull his Bible from his saddlebags and tuck a few blossoms between the pages.
She will know I was thinking of her.
He paused long enough to appreciate the beauty and to envision a little cabin just up on the hillside. But then he saw smoke signals rising from a bluff in the distance. Slipping the Bible back into his saddlebag, he mounted up and galloped back to the column.

Each night they camped by crystal-clear streams filled with fish. The men gorged on freshly caught fish and when they tired of fish they hunted, dining on elk, deer, antelope, or jack rabbit. Aaron declared fresh antelope the finest meat on earth and made it his daily goal to acquire a bearskin “for Miss Whitrock’s Christmas gift.” Although they saw bears every day—one so large Aaron mistook it for a buffalo—he did not succeed in taking one down until Big Amos and Robert Lawrence determined to help. The three brought in a fine specimen and Aaron had his bearskin.

Despairing of any chance to talk to Indians, Elliot decided to make scientific observations and began sketching, trusting Zephyr Picotte to supply the names of plants and wildlife. “I can tell you what the Cheyenne call that,” he said once, when Elliot pointed to a blue wildflower. “But I got no idea beyond that.”

Six days out of Fort Laramie, the expedition crossed Clear Creek, skirted Lake De Smet, and struck the Bozeman Trail. Soon, they were approaching the plateau where Fort Phil Kearney stood above a broad stretch of fertile, grassy meadows and clear mountain creeks. It was impossible to imagine a more ideal location for a military fort.

Intended to house one thousand men, the six-hundred by eight-hundred-foot rectangular fort was enclosed by a pine stockade standing eight feet high. Blockhouses with portholes for cannon at diagonal corners were complemented by flaring loopholes at every fourth log along the entire length of the stockade. All the gates were massive and constructed of double planks with substantial bars and locks. Inside this main stockade were an impressive parade ground and the usual complement of log or lumber buildings including hospital and chapel, bakery and laundry, cavalry yard and stables, officers quarters and battery. The commanding officer’s quarters was a two-story building topped by a watchtower. East of the fort proper, a rough palisade of cottonwoods enclosed the mechanics shops and the teamsters’ mess, more stables, the hay yard, and the wood yard. From this stockade, the “water gates” opened, providing access to the nearby Little Piney Creek.

For natural beauty, Fort Phil Kearney had few equals. To the West rose the Panther Mountains, to the south the Big Horn range, and far to the east, the Black Hills. Only a few hundred yards from the fort rose Pilot Hill, whose conical summit provided a natural watchtower from which the picket guard could signal danger by waving a flag—and, the men heard later, the flag had been waved much too frequently since the Fetterman disaster last December.

Once the company had been welcomed inside, Captain Willets met with the post commander who explained, “The plan seems to be to harass us constantly. They run off the stock. They try to entice my men away from the stockade in hopes of cutting them off. It’s all minor, and there haven’t been any serious battles recently, but hardly a day goes by without some engagement or, at the very least, a threat in the form of smoke signals or war whoops from the hills.” He scratched his beard and shook his head. “We’re spread too thin, Captain.” He looked at Elliot. “You write that to Washington, sir. If they expect us to hold the Bozeman trail, they’ve got to send more men. We’re supposed to house a thousand. I’ve fewer than four hundred.”

The first night, Aaron could not sleep for the chorus of howling wolves outside the stockade. “They come up after the leavins’ in the slaughter yard by Little Piney,” Picotte explained the next morning. “Last year the Injuns caught on to that and came in after sundown under wolfskins.” He pointed up to the wall where a guard was walking toward one of the blockhouses. “Shot a sentry right off that wall before anyone guessed they weren’t all wolves out there.” Picotte paused. “You hear any wolves, Aaron Dane, you listen for the echo. I learned it from Jim Bridger himself. The howl of a real wolf don’t echo in these hills. You hear an echo, you get ready to shoot, ‘cause those wolves got braids and bows under their fur.”

The commander dashed any hopes Elliot had of traveling still further north to Fort C. F. Smith. “There’s not a Sioux chief in this country interested in talking peace, Captain Leighton.” He looked at Willets. “I’m sorry, Captain, but even if there were some men here foolish enough to head off with you under a white flag, I couldn’t spare them. My main concern right now has to be protecting the woodcutters down on Piney Island. We’ve got to get more wood in if we’re to survive the winter.”

“May I offer my men to support you?” Willets said.

“What you ought to do is pack up and take yourselves back down the trail to Fort Laramie.”

“You said you didn’t have enough men to hold the fort. We aren’t many, but my men are hard fighters.”

Powell studied Willets’ face for a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking, Captain, do you have any experience fighting Indians?”

“In Minnesota.”

He jerked his head toward where the Dakota scouts stood listening. “What about them?”

“Do they have experience?”

“If they’re Sioux, they know how to fight. The question is, who will they fight
with
when the shooting starts?”

Daniel stepped forward. “I swore allegiance to that flag, sir,” he said, nodding toward the American flag hanging on the wall. “And I keep my word.”

Big Amos and Robert Lawrence nodded their agreement.

Powell studied the men, who met his gaze. “Well then,” Powell said. “As long as we understand each other.” He nodded. “The woodcutters just got started last week. Already they’re threatening to quit. Can’t say as I blame ‘em. One of ‘em was found scalped yesterday.”

“We’ll go,” Daniel and the scouts said at once.

Powell nodded. “See you at dawn.”

When they arrived at Piney Island, they learned that the woodcutters had been divided into two parties. One group was camping on a bare plain, the other in the thick of the pine woods about a mile away. Powell sent twelve of his men to guard the camp in the woods and thirteen to escort the wood trains to and from the fort, before establishing his headquarters on the open plain. It was here on the open plain he requested Willets and his volunteers build a strange kind of fort.

“The woodcutters only use the running gears to transport logs. Their wagon boxes are over there.” He waved in the distance. “I want those boxes positioned like this.” Holding a long stick in his hand, Powell outlined an oval in the dirt. “Put a complete wagon here,” he scratched an X at one end of the oval, “and here,” a second X went to the opposite end of the oval. “It all needs to be up there,” he indicated the highest point on the plain.

“Do we set ‘em on their sides?” Willets asked.

“No.” Powell shook his head. “I want the men to be able to lay inside them. We’ll drill holes about a foot above the ground.”

“Portholes,” Willets said, nodding.

“You got it. If we end up defending ourselves inside those wagons, I don’t want a man to have to raise his head out of the wagon to shoot.”

Captain Willets and his men got to work, arranging the wagon boxes, piling sacks of grain and logs—anything that might stop a bullet—between the wagons, dragging all the camp supplies inside the corral and distributing rifles and ammunition.

“They don’t know what they’re getting into if they attack,” Powell said, demonstrating the Springfield’s tremendous range and power by firing at a distant target. But what was even more amazing about the Springfield was how fast it could fire. No more long pauses to reload. “Who’s your best shot?” Powell asked Willets.

“Picotte. The man can hit a dollar at fifty yards. I’ve never seen him miss.”

“All right, then. If it comes to a fight, give him the most guns.” Powell nodded at Aaron. “You get beside Picotte and reload as fast as he can shoot. Can you do that, son?”

Aaron nodded. He looked at Daniel and gulped.

High on a hillside overlooking the island, Hawk watched the soldiers get ready for battle. He was painted for war, but he was more concerned about watching the movements below than fighting. He’d joined the warriors recently, having broken away from Spotted Antelope’s band. He’d followed the soldiers to Fort Laramie and then beyond. He was certain they had no idea he was following them, but even so there had been no chance to accomplish his goal until now. One of the first things the warriors would do in an attack would be to run off the mules and some horses. Hawk was perfectly positioned now to do that. He settled back against a tree and waited, confident that by day’s end he would own a white warhorse.

Aaron Dane kicked at a clod of dirt. He knew he was acting like a spoiled child, but Captain Powell had trusted him enough to assign him to load Zephyr Picotte’s guns in the fight, and he resented Daniel’s interference.

“Go help guard the mules,” Daniel had said that morning within Captain Willets’s hearing.

When Aaron protested, Captain Willets’s had made Daniel’s suggestion an order. Aaron couldn’t disobey. And so he went.

“I know what you’re doing,” he told Daniel before he left. “The hostiles will be more intent on running off the herd than shooting, and I’ll have a better chance of getting away. You’re putting me where it’s safer.”

Daniel had looked at him steadily and, without expression said back, “Head for the fort as soon as there is any shooting.”

“I’m not going to run away like a coward,” Aaron said quickly. “I’m not a boy.”