Reap the Whirlwind (6 page)

“They have to break up again,” Bourke echoed.

“Exactly,” Crook confirmed. “We’ll once more be forced to defeat them in detail, piecemeal. Band by band. If I can ever get them to stop and fight at all.”

While the general feared only that the enemy would flee before his column, spring had renewed the frontier, bringing new grass to the plains. As the winter snows retreated,
that road the miners took north into the Black Hills was reopened—making the blood course hot in the veins of the young Lakota. As the weather mellowed along that route to the gold camps, reports of the inevitable clashes began to drift into headquarters at Omaha.

Things were heating up to the point that even John M. Thayer, governor of Wyoming Territory, petitioned Crook for relief for civilians harassed and murdered, set upon and robbed by the lawless warriors roaming beyond the boundaries of their assigned reservations. When Crook did nothing beyond ordering Captain James Egan’s K Company of the Second Cavalry to patrol the Black Hills Road, Thayer hurried to the White House personally, begging for troops to protect the civilians. Grant smiled benignly and informed the governor he had been promised by both Sherman and Sheridan that with summer the coming expedition would remedy the “Indian problem” for all time.

Of late Crook had wind of the complaints but took them in stride as he threw himself into preparations for the campaign. For some unexplained reason early on, he chose to rehire only three of the original thirty-two quartermaster’s scouts he had used on the march to Powder River. Perhaps bristling under the criticism leveled at him from various nonmilitary quarters, the general became convinced using civilians in such a capacity was a mistake. Instead he determined to repeat his success in Arizona Territory. It was there he had hired Apache auxiliaries to stalk Apache hostiles for his troops.

“You’re going to hire Sioux to hunt down Sioux, General?” Bourke had asked on that train ride west from Omaha to Cheyenne.

“Damn right I am. This is one soldier who believes in Indian allies,” Crook growled, pulling the stub of the unlit cigar from his mouth. “Remember, John, what we proved to the doubting Nellies down there: nothing so demoralizes our enemy as having his brother warriors defecting to fight on the side of the army.”

Three days after leaving Omaha, Crook’s entourage reached Cheyenne and proceeded immediately to the outskirts of town to Fort D. A. Russell, where the general was
again embroiled in the quarrels and politics of the Third Cavalry. Emotions were strung taut as a cat-gut fiddle string, morale sunk as low as a latrine pit, here where dissension still reigned following Colonel Reynolds’s disaster on Powder River. Delays in the courts-martial ordered by Crook had left two of the regiment’s top officers hanging in limbo. So it was a chilly reception Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall of the Third Cavalry, acting in the absence of Colonel Joseph Reynolds, provided for the general’s staff. Crook did what he could in that roughened way of his for which John Bourke had a warm affection, the general trying his best to ease the ruffled feathers of the officers who, like Royall, had taken great offense at the insult Crook’s charges brought to the regiment as a whole.

“Tell me, John,” Crook began thoughtfully early the morning after their arrival as he and Bourke were preparing to ride out from Fort Russell with their escort for Camp Robinson, “does it seem Colonel Royall is chafing at having to serve under an expedition commander who brought both a superior and a subordinate officer up on charges?”

Bourke patted the neck of the mount he would ride south toward the Red Cloud Agency. “I suppose he’s got his grounds to be a bit icy with you, General.”

“Does he now?”

“Yes, sir. Speaking frankly?”

“Of course, John. I’ve always wanted you to speak your mind.”

“I can’t say as I blame him. Thinking of a man in his position. Now in charge of the Third—a regiment officered with fighting men the likes of Anson Mills and Guy Henry who you can always count on to do their job and then some, men who have unquestioned careers of gallantry and bravery before the enemy—to have these sorts of charges leveled against two of their highest officers must make them believe the whole world considers them to be poor soldiers at best, cowards at the worst.”

Crook’s eyes narrowed, two deep furrows carved between the bushy blondish brows. “Beginning to sound like you’ve changed your mind on what you saw Reynolds and
Moore do or not do at that hostile village on St. Patrick’s Day, John.”
^*

“No, sir,” he answered quickly. “They were both wrong and I’ll never change my mind on that. I was there to see it with my own eyes. It’s just: I know how the fighting men must feel. So I feel for them. No man out here, asked to do what the army has asked of these soldiers, wants to have his fighting ability ever questioned, much less his courage.”

Crook rose to the saddle, and the lieutenant in charge of escort detail ordered his soldiers to mount as one. Nearby, Robert Strahorn, correspondent for Denver’s Rocky Mountain
News
, settled atop his saddle.

Pulling the brim of his slouch hat down to shade his eyes, the general spoke quietly to his young aide. “It’s precisely because of those fine soldiers in the Third Cavalry that I brought their superior up on charges, John. You let the rest of them know that. You let those soldiers know that George Crook did it for them—so that the world will know that the Third is a fighting outfit. To know that the ranks of the Third Cavalry are filled with brave soldiers not afraid to take on the likes of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. It’s just some of their officers who have smudged their fine reputation. You tell them that, John.”

He watched Crook wheel his horse sharply and give heels as the escort sergeant quickly ordered his detail to move out. It was left up to Bourke to bring up the rear, his belly cold and unsettled that the general had taken offense. How he chastised himself across those first few miles heading southeast, on into the afternoon and that evening as well. He hadn’t said what he had meant to say, and now felt miserable for the unintentional insult.

Yes, he decided, vowing again not to make this mistake in the future. John Bourke promised himself he would tell the men of the Third Cavalry that George Crook had brought Reynolds and Moore up on charges for one reason and one reason only: to protect the courageous fighting reputation of their beloved regiment.

*    *    *

Things had gone to hell with the army in Wyoming Territory.

Since their return from the fight on Powder River, men in the Second and Third Cavalry had been deserting, slipping off the post, disappearing into the crush of civilians flooding toward the Black Hills. It was next to impossible for anyone to catch a deserter if a man truly wanted to disappear. He could sell his uniform, his rig, and even trade his weapons for a grubstake outfit that would get him to Deadwood Creek or one of the many streams feeding the Belle Fourche.

But there wasn’t a soul could look at Seamus Donegan with suspicion. Weren’t many men who looked less “army” than the tall Irishman. He had allowed Samantha to trim the full beard he had cultivated during the winter campaign to the Powder River to a neat Vandyke below his shaggy mustache. That was all she wanted to take the scissors to—adoring the long, wavy hair that hung well past his shoulders like a bushy shawl. Down in the Panhandle country of Texas he had first begun to grow it, at Sam’s gentle nudging, then came to like it himself as he moved in the company of the hide men, those buffalo hunters of the Staked Plain who took great pride in their distinctive and singular appearance. The buffalo men stood out in any crowd.

So no one was ever going to mistake Seamus Donegan for a soldier.

“Here, Seamus—listen to your son.”

He remembered her words now as he reined up below the bluff where Fort Fetterman sprawled beneath the sunny May skies. How Samantha had taken his hand and laid it upon her belly for what they both knew was to be another long absence. Perhaps so long that the great swell of life within her would be born by the time he returned: the infant son she had promised him. A son they had created together.

From the pleasure they had taken in one another’s bodies, they had created this pure wonder of new life. A son!

“Say farewell to him too,” she had whispered into his ear back at Laramie. “There are two of us you part from today. From now on you have family.”

He couldn’t remember holding her any tighter than he had yesterday morning at dawn in the long shadows of officers’ quarters near the parade. How she had shuddered with the spring cold, perhaps trembling in remembrance of how he had held her, caressed her, coupled with her so fiercely in those predawn moments that still gave a blush to her cheeks.

“I’ve never made love to a pregnant woman before,” he had told Samantha.

“Well, I’ve never allowed a man who was a father such liberties with me, Seamus Donegan,” she had replied, wearing that special grin that cast an angelic light across her face. It was all she wore as she lay with him amid the tangle of sheets and comforter on the small bed in that tiny attic room above the quarters peopled by officers’ families.

“Even though you have no promise of work, you still believe you must go?” Samantha had asked him as he held her there beside the big piebald gelding he had saddled, ready for the hundred-mile ride to the northwest.

“There’ll be work,” he had whispered into her hair. “Always plenty of work when the army marches off to make war. Don’t worry—I’ll find something to do to feed my family.”

He recalled how she had choked down a sob before answering. “Family. I suppose we are already, aren’t we now, Seamus? No longer are we just Seamus and Sam. No more are we only a couple. From now on—we’ll be family.”

He had held her out at arm’s length, studying her redrimmed, moist eyes, gazing at the way the salty tears had brightened the blush of her full lips. Even now as he peered over the prairie below Fetterman, blooming with the white of regimental tents, Seamus remembered how looking at her that last time had excited him again, though they had torn themselves from one another’s bare flesh only minutes before he had saddled and prepared to go.

“I’ll find something.” He repeated now the words he had used to promise her. “Don’t you worry—I’ll find something to do when Crook marches north again.”

If not scouting with Grouard, Big Bat, and Reshaw, then he would see if the wagon master could use a strong
man willing to learn to handle the teams. Willing to do what it would take to feed his family.

As he urged the gelding up the dusty, rutted trail toward the top of the bluff overlooking the North Platte, Seamus gazed across the river at the Hog Ranch: three adobe, wattle, and clapboard shanties squatted not far from the mouth of LaPrele Creek. A saloon and dance hall in one, a small hotel with canvas walls in another, and a sizable restaurant in the last of the buildings, all owned by Kid Slaymaker, who had made the Hog Ranch famous for hundreds and hundreds of miles around. It was the first good place east of Fort Bridger in Wyoming Territory, south of Fort Ellis in Montana Territory, and the last place north of Laramie where a man could count on finding those things most dear to a plainsman’s heart.

“A good stove, strong whiskey, and sweet-smelling women what’re willing to pleasure a man! That’s what’s waiting for us at the Hog Ranch.”

Seamus smiled now, the words spoken by one of Thomas Moore’s packers brought to mind as he looked down at the small herd of horses tied up outside the shanties, at all the milling foot traffic moving to and from and around the bustling establishment.

Men going off to war, he thought to himself. Perhaps never to return. What’s wrong with a man having himself a real hurroo, getting blind drunk and climbing atop a chippie or two back in those dank, smelly cribs before Crook’s column pulls out?

It’s for sure the Hog Ranch would be sorely missing the trade of the Second and Third cavalries when the general gave the order to march.

Seamus prayed he would be pulling out with the rest.

Thinking on that little family he had left behind at Laramie.

Moon of First Eggs

M
ost of all, Wooden Leg missed the tobacco.

Only recently had he learned to smoke, joining the other young men, the older warriors and aged counselors, when they talked and enjoyed their pipes. And he truly liked the tobacco.

Sugar and coffee were in pretty short supply too. There was far too little of this and that, most of it of no real consequence to the great encampment of Lakota and Shahiyena that was spread down the east bank of the Tongue River like a gathering of crescents, each of the swelling camp circles opening their horns to the east, toward the awakening sun as the earth warmed, the grass raised its head from the renewed prairie, and the pale-pink buds bloomed on the wild roses along the creek bottoms.

With all that they lacked, that great village did not suffer a shortage of powder and bullets. With every band of warriors who rode into camp from the reservations came more guns, more ammunition, and more horsemen should the soldiers again try to attack a village of women and children.