The Crossed Sabres (7 page)

“Well, Mark, I’m worried about Laurie,” he said finally. “I think a lot of Tom, and he does his best for her—but the life he leads, it’s not for a ten-year-old girl.”

Mark nodded. “Lola and I have often said the same thing.” He took a sip of the water, his mind flickering over the life his brother had led since his wife died. At first Tom had tried to settle down at Belle Maison, but he seemed to live under a cloud of restlessness. When Laurie was a mere child, no more than four years old, he had moved to New Mexico and taken over a small ranch, but remained there for less than a year. He had returned to Belle Maison to visit Mark and Lola, bringing Laurie with him, and they had made an offer to raise the girl. Tom had been adamant, not wanting to give her up. So Mark had used his influence to get a place for his brother with the Office of Indian Affairs. That had not been a good solution, however, as far as the rest of the family were concerned. But Tom was pleased with it, and for the past six years had moved all over the northern plains, meeting with the leaders of the tribes, then bringing recommendations on his findings. There was no man who knew the country or the Indians better.

When possible, he had taken Laurie with him; otherwise he boarded her for short terms with various friends. To Mark and Lola it seemed that Laurie had prospered, at least in a physical way, but they were worried about her future.

“Phil, I want Tom to settle down. Lola and I hoped he’d marry again, but he hasn’t. I want Laurie to have some sort of permanence in her life.”

Delaney nodded. “That’s what Martha and I have said. We offered to take the child, but Tom’s very possessive.” He lifted his hand to stroke his Dundreary whiskers, then said slowly, “Guess I’d be the same in his shoes. She’s all he has, Mark.” Then he asked, “What’s on your mind?”

“There’s going to be trouble with the Indians, Phil. You know that better than I do. That expedition Custer led into the Black Hills is going to set it off, I think.”

“Bound to!” Delaney exclaimed. “We gave that country to the Sioux by treaty.”

“We’ve never kept a treaty with them, and they know we never will,” Mark said. “And all that talk about our troops going in to find a site for a new fort was pretty raw!”

In 1873, General Sheridan concluded that a more strategically located post was needed to discourage the Indians from raiding the Nebraska settlements and travel routes to the south. This new fort would fall somewhere in the vicinity of the Black Hills. These invitingly wooded mountains sprawled over the western portion of the Great Sioux Reservation, remote, mysterious, and not well known to the outside world. The Sioux treasured the Black Hills as their “Meat Pack,” rich in game with sheltered valleys and abundant firewood, ideal for winter camping. Drawn by these resources, they had seized the hills from the Kiowas almost a century earlier and had jealously guarded them against whites and other Indians ever since.

But though Sheridan’s proposal to send a troop to find a site for a fort was backed by President Grant and General Sherman, friends of the Indians felt that the operation was a violation of the Treaty of 1868, which barred whites from the Great Sioux Reservation. Both Sherman and Grant scoffed at such a notion, claiming that the government had a right and an obligation to establish a military post on any site—for the protection of the people, they insisted.

The real purpose of the invasion of the Black Hills, however, was not to find a site for a military fort but to obtain its rich resources. The Black Hills offered the last great mining frontier of the West. For almost half a century rumors of gold in the Black Hills had periodically tantalized the nation, but the region remained unexplored, the haunt of Indians who turned aside all comers.

The Treaty of 1868 infuriated Dakotans, for it unmistakably confirmed the Black Hills as Indian domain, therefore barred to all white settlers and even travelers. The “abominable
compact with the marauding bands,” as a Yankton paper put it, did not dampen enthusiasm for opening the hills. On the contrary, impoverishing thousands, the Panic of 1873 kindled new ardor. “As the Christian looks forward with hope and faith to that land of pure delight,” rhapsodized the
Bismarck Tribune,
“so the miner looks forward to the Black Hills, a region of fabulous wealth, where the hills repose on beds of gold and the rocks are studded with precious metal.”

Nurtured by such seductive visions, when Custer took the Seventh Cavalry into the Black Hills on July 2, 1874, two mining experts, William McKay and Horatio Nelson Ross, went along. And it was a matter of course that these two men would find traces of gold, just as it was certain that their reports would leak out.

Mark shook his head in disgust, thinking of the shoddy behavior of the government. “The Sioux know what’s coming. And they’ll fight this time.”

“I believe they will,” Delaney agreed. Then he asked, “But what’s all this got to do with Tom and Laurie?”

“Phil, you now how Sherman hates Indians. Says the only good Indian he ever saw was a dead one. Well, Grant’s told him to ‘clean up the Indian problem’—and you know exactly how Sherman will understand that!”

“Kill them off!”

“Exactly. Sherman has watched Nelson Miles destroy the tribes of the southern plains, and now he wants Phil Sheridan to do the same in the north.” Mark hesitated, then said, “Don’t spread this around, Phil. I got it from a high official on my promise to keep it to myself.”

“Certainly!” Delaney nodded. “But I still don’t see what all this has to do with Tom and Laurie.”

“Sherman will use the best Indian fighters we have, and that means Custer. He’s a household name and has always been successful in fighting Indians. His brother Tom is a good friend of mine, Phil. I saw him last month and he told me that Custer wants to put together the best group of scouts ever
assembled. He wanted to know if I knew anybody who’d be a candidate for the job—heading up the scouts. And I told him about my brother Tom.”

“Well, he knows more about Indians—and about that country around the Black Hills—than anybody else. But that’s just a short-term affair, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not. Custer wants the scouts to be under military authority—which means the leader will have to be a soldier.”

A startled expression crossed Delaney’s face. “Tom would join the army?”

“That’s what I’d like to see,” Mark nodded. “He’d join as a sergeant, but if he did well, Custer’s brother told me it would be no problem to get him a commission. What do you think, Phil?”

Delaney stroked his luxurious whiskers, sipped his water, then nodded. “It would be good. Tom always liked the army, you know. Bad as that time was, he liked it. And he’d be a good officer. We need men who know the Indians.” He drummed the desk with his fingers, thinking hard. “Think he’ll do it?”

“He’s a pretty stubborn fellow,” Mark mused. “But if I can make him see that it’d be good for Laurie, I think he might.” He got to his feet, asking, “Where’ll I find him, Phil?”

“Probably working on his house. It’s half a mile down the south road—back in a grove of cottonwoods on the right.” He rose and accompanied his visitor outside. As Mark wheeled the mare and rode toward the gate, Delaney called out, “Come by and tell me how it comes out.”

****

Laurie was the first to see the rider turn off the road. She had been playing a game beside the small brook in the shade of the cottonwoods—a game she often indulged in when alone. All her games were played alone, made up from her own imaginative head. Sometimes watching her from afar, her father had seen her people her small area with fictitious characters and act out their parts one by one in pantomime.

She wore a boy’s shirt and a pair of tan overalls tucked into small boots. Her black hair, hanging in two braids between her shoulders, and her shiny gray eyes and tanned face were a foreshadow of her mother’s graphic beauty.

“Daddy, someone’s coming,” she called out to her father, who was working behind the house.

At her announcement Tom Winslow came around the corner with a hammer in his hand. He took one look at the rider, tossed the hammer down, and joined Laurie as he said, “That’s your Uncle Mark. Come for your birthday, I expect.”

Her face brightened with a smile, for her uncle was a favorite. “Aw, c’mon!” she said. “I’ll bet he’s forgot.”

Mark pulled the mare up and dropped to the ground, his face alight with joy at seeing her. “Well, I ran you down! Come here, you gorgeous creature, and give an old man a kiss!” As she came to him, half shyly, he caught Laurie up, kissed her cheek, put her down, then holding her hand, said, “Tie this mare up, Tom. I’m busy with my niece.”

“Good to see you, Mark,” Tom said, taking the reins and tying the horse to an iron ring driven into one of the cottonwoods. “Come on in and cut the dust.”

The house was a plain structure with no pretensions to elegance. The men sat down at the table while Laurie busied herself making tea. Mark watched her, thinking how she had grown in the past year. “You get prettier every time I see you, Laurie,” he smiled, taking the cup from her. “Hate to think what you’ll do to all the young fellows in a few years.”

“Oh, bosh!” Laurie exclaimed, color rising to her cheeks. “Who cares about them?”

“Why, Laurie,” Tom said, giving Mark a sly wink, “I thought you told me that Leroy Blevins was a good-looking young fellow!”

Laurie made a face at him, then drew up a chair, prepared to listen. As the two men spoke of family, Mark bringing them up-to-date on the latest news from his own family and from Belle Maison in Virginia, she sat there quietly. She wasn’t
much for talking. Silence was a habit she had acquired from Tom and from being alone so much. That and the way she had of judging people came from him, as her vivid imagination and the growing beauty had come from her mother.

Finally Mark said, “Well, that’s all the news from home, I guess.”

Tom knew his brother very well. “This isn’t just a visit, is it, Mark?”

“Why, no, Tom, it isn’t.” Mark leaned back in his chair, trying to find the best way to present what was on his mind. He studied his brother for a moment. Mark was thirty-four, Tom two years younger, but they looked much alike. Both had the dark good looks of the Winslow men, black hair and eyes, the same English nose. They were lean and muscular, Tom more so, for he ran every ounce of fat off on his constant travels through the desert, while Mark was forced to spend much of his time at a desk.

“I ran into something you might be interested in, Tom,” Mark remarked, then related the encounter he’d had with Tom Custer as simply as he could, including the invitation to join the Seventh Cavalry. When he had finished, he said, “When Tom Custer told me about the need, I thought it was something you should hear about.” He didn’t need to say anymore, for he knew Tom would think it over.

“Now, to the important thing—” Reaching into his inside pocket, he pulled out a small package wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with a piece of string. Handing it to Laurie, he smiled. “Happy birthday, Laurie.”

“Oh, Uncle Mark!” she exclaimed, her eyes like diamonds. “My birthday’s not for three days!”

“I know that, but I’m here now. Let’s just pretend, okay?”

Laurie glanced at her father, then took off the string. Both men were watching her glowing face as she removed the paper and then opened the small box inside. Tom did not look at the gift, but kept his eyes on his daughter’s face, thinking suddenly of how much she looked like her mother. He watched
as her eyes opened wide with pleasure, then she cried out, “Oh, Uncle Mark—how pretty!”

She took the gold necklace with the single large pearl from the box, held it to her neck for them to admire. “Not as pretty as you,” Mark smiled, “but Lola said it was perfect for you.”

“And earrings, too!” Laurie squealed, putting the necklace on the table carefully. She held them to her ears, demanding, “Daddy, can I wear them today?”

Mark and Tom laughed at her, Mark saying, “I think the earrings are for when you get older—but I don’t see any reason why you can’t wear them when you’re alone, do you, Tom?”

“Not a bit,” Tom smiled. “Things are made to be enjoyed, not shoved back in a drawer someplace.” Then he added, “No sense saying you shouldn’t have done it. You and that stubborn wife of yours are determined to spoil Laurie.”

“We’d like to do more, Tom. She’s a fine youngster.”

The rest of the day Mark spent with Laurie, taking her for a ride. She had her own horse, and rode loose and straight in the deep saddle, unconscious of the horse, yet balanced to anticipate any sudden swing. Her father, Mark realized, had taught her this—that trouble was something she should always be prepared for.

They rode into the small town for supper, wolfing down the steaming hot potatoes and steak as Laurie bubbled over with things she’d been doing, asking questions about Lola and Belle Maison and New York. It was so good to see Uncle Mark again! Afterward they walked around the town, then rode slowly back to the house. Laurie brought quilts outside and they all stretched flat, admiring the stars spangling the velvet black skies. The men talked about the past, of the war, and friends who were still at Gettysburg and Shiloh. Finally Laurie, despite heroic efforts, went to sleep—wearing her necklace and earrings.

The silence of the low-lying hills surrounded them, broken only by the mournful cry of a coyote. Mark lay there, enjoying the sensation. He was an outdoor man by nature,
and he hated the part of his job that kept him in the city and inside four walls.
Maybe Tom’s got the right idea,
he thought.
This is better than anything I’ve had lately.
But he knew he had his own life, which wouldn’t do for Tom or Dan in the least. Both of them were born for something wilder than he himself, so he felt only a fleeting sense of regret as he thought of their freedom.

“I’m going to join the Seventh,” Tom said abruptly. He sat up and stared at Mark. “You knew I would, didn’t you?”

“Well, I hoped you would.” Mark sat up, carefully moving Laurie’s head, which had been resting on his arm. “You were the best soldier of any of us, Tom. I had the rank, but I can remember quite a few times when you got us out of hot water. I think some men are soldiers by nature. Others learn and they try. For you, it’d be a good life. Not as free as what you’ve been doing—but better for Laurie. No matter where the Seventh goes, there’ll be a school of some kind. And there’ll be people for her to tie to—you, too.”