Reap the Whirlwind (15 page)

“Alas, all have to take their turn,” Bob Strahorn commiserated.

“Then it’s one more reason for me never to join up, bucko!” Finerty cheered, slapping Donegan on the shoulder as he pulled out his German silver flask. “A drink to our bidding Fetterman a fond farewell.”

“Yes!” Strahorn echoed. “Here’s to bidding the Hog Ranch a fond farewell!”

“Good show, Robert!” Finerty called to his fellow correspondent. “And on to Indian country!”

“Indian country indeed,” Donegan added, a little less enthusiastically.

Early on the following morning, Monday, 29 May, George Crook ordered that fine-looking Prussian Captain Meinhold with two companies of the Third Cavalry to march ahead to reconnoiter the road north. As well, Captain Frederick Van Vliet had already been sent ahead with his own Company C, joined by First Lieutenant Emmet Crawford’s G Company, both of the Third Cavalry, each man outfitted with eight days’ rations and with orders to keep a watch out for the Crow and Shoshone allies the general was expecting to rendezvous with him somewhere in the vicinity of old Fort Reno.

At long last, shortly after noon that Monday, George Crook gave the orders for Chambers’s five companies of infantry to lead out, taking the van of what was generally believed to be the most efficient, battle-ready fighting force ever put into the field against the Indians of the northern plains.

In addition to a pint canteen, over his right shoulder each infantryman carried the blanket he had rolled up inside a gum poncho, then lashed together at the ends. On his back as well was the haversack where a foot soldier kept his issue of rations and mess utensils. Around each waist hung a canvas or leather belt, its loops clutching the cartridges for the Long Tom Springfield rifle each man carried at port during the march. The soldiers would soon break in their leather bootees, generally called “Jefferson boots,” all dyed black but quickly covered with the fine, talc-like dust of the trail, the soles sturdily fastened with small brass screws. Some wore the standard issue, wide-brimmed black
slouch hat, while others preferred civilian-style headgear and even some straw hats purchased from the post sutler. A few sported the ’72 model kepi with its narrow leather visor, most generally worn only in garrison while on fatigue detail.

Less than a mile north of the Platte along the road to Montana stood Kid Slaymaker’s Hog Ranch. A half-dozen weary, bleary-eyed working girls emerged into the dazzling spring light to wave handkerchiefs and blow kisses at the passing foot soldiers as they trudged along, raising small clouds of dust.

Next came Seamus Donegan in the company of Tom Moore’s pack train—all 81 men and 250 mules. Behind them rumbled Charlie Russell’s 116 teamsters riding in 106 canvas-topped, six-mule wagons. At the rear, eating the dust of all this first short day of march, came Crook’s cavalry. They had been ordered to break camp later than the infantry and had jealously watched the footsloggers pass them by at noon. The horse soldiers were the last to turn out, climb to the saddle, and wave fare-thee-well to Slaymaker’s girls. No matter that the chippies were all a little too old, perhaps a little too fleshy, and for sure a little too crude to secure themselves employment anywhere but here on the utter edge of Indian territory. They had more than worked for their wages in the past few weeks as the expedition gathered in the shadow of the fort, and well earned this vacation now that George Crook was taking his army north.

That long black line snaked away from this last outpost of the frontier army, a column covering more than four miles from van to rear guard. Dust billowed up, made iridescent in the streams of sunlight that May afternoon, sunlight that caught the gleam of carbine and rifle, bridle and spur. Wheels creaked and the overladen beds and axles groaned. Moore’s mule train protested feebly as Donegan and the rest of the packers urged the balky animals up the Montana Road, the mules bellowing loud heeraws to signify they found no happiness in putting to the trail at long last.

Back in Chicago at his headquarters that same afternoon, Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, commanding
the Division of the Missouri, received the telegraphic message from Crook that the expedition was embarking for Indian territory. The general again cautioned Sheridan that his concentration of troops for the campaign had left the settlements with little protection against any marauding raiders.

The fiery Irish banty rooster, hero of the Shenandoah campaign that ultimately brought an end to the Civil War, now danced a bit of a jig before his brother, who had carried the flimsy into the commandant’s office.

“Be damned—I’ve finally got all three of my columns pushing into the field, Michael!” Sheridan gloated. “Now I can whip those sons-a-bitches into subjection and exterminate all the rest who won’t go in!”

Sheridan wheeled and pulled a fresh sheet of foolscap to the center of his writing pad and with a flourish dipped a pen with a metal quill into the inkwell, preparing a telegram he would transmit back to Crook:

“Get that on the wires to Fetterman right now. I’ll see if I can catch George before he gets away.”

“Yes, General,” Michael Sheridan replied, turning to the door.

“I just had a splendid idea,” Sheridan exclaimed joyfully. “I’m going to write Bill Sherman about all this glorious news now too!”

How wrong the coming events would soon prove the little general to be.

A twelve-mile march beneath the afternoon sun had Frank Grouard bringing Crook’s command to a barren flat bottomland at the Sage Creek crossing, where the soldiers went into camp and started their greasewood fires for supper. The beef herd came up beneath a thick cloud of dust and was allowed to graze on the opposite side of the bivouac so that it would not mix with Moore’s mule train. Just after the evening mess, a mail courier arrived from Fetterman, and Crook ordered these last letters handed out among the men while he read Sheridan’s telegram.

Frank Grouard watched the tall Irishman take his envelope, smell it as if it might prove to be a flower, then slip away into the darkness to return to the packers’ camp. As the men read their letters to themselves or shared them with their companions, that first camp grew eerily quiet. Tomorrow they would be marching in earnest—like the point of Crook’s lance being laid against the heart of Indian country. But for now the lowing of the cattle on one side of the bivouac and an occasional bray from the other served to lull the soldiers into restful slumber—a sleep that
was, for the time being, untroubled by anything resembling nightmares of painted, screeching savages.

Before sunrise the morning of the thirtieth, Crook had Bourke fetch up Captains Charles Meinhold and Peter D. Vroom of the Third Cavalry for a brief meeting at headquarters. The general’s half-breed chief of scouts was already there at the fire by the time Bourke returned.

Over coffee Crook instructed, “Meinhold will be in charge of this reconnaissance. Captain Vroom will be second in command. I’m sending Frank here as your guide. I want you to work north, west of our line of march—rejoining us at old Fort Reno.”

“Are we to scout for hostiles, General?” Meinhold asked.

“No, Captain, We’re all but dead certain the hostile villages are to the north and east.”

A veteran of the Apache wars in New Mexico ever since 1868, Vroom beamed as if he knew the answer to Crook’s puzzle. “If we’re not to scout for hostiles, then may I assume that our duty is to reach Reno and locate a suitable crossing for the command?”

Again Crook shook his head. “I’ve already got Van Vliet’s detail up there. I don’t need your battalion to find a crossing for me when he’s already at the Powder.”

“Just what is it you’ve got Grouard taking us to do?” Meinhold inquired.

“The Shoshone, Captain,” Crook replied. “They are coming east from Camp Brown. That’s due west of us now. They have my instructions to meet us at Reno, so I’m expecting them to show up on this road any day now. So as you march north, you will keep your eye out for the Shoshone auxiliaries promised me by their chief, Washakie.”

“How many days do you want us on detached service, sir?” Vroom asked.

“Ration your battalion for four days, gentlemen,” Crook answered. “Should you meet with the enemy, return to the main column immediately after your engagement. If nothing untoward occurs, then I will not see you until we rendezvous with you and the Shoshone at the Reno crossing on the Powder.”

30 May-2 June 1876

“Y
ou gotta tie that son of a bitch tighter, Irishman
,” growled Tom Moore as he slid a thin sliver of plug tobacco he had just cut into the side of his cheek.

“I can do no better,” Seamus Donegan snapped too quickly in reply, disgusted at his failure, furious at the mule, and angry most of all that here he was on this first morning of the campaign—having actually to work rather than riding off to scout and track the enemy.

“You’d damn well better keep trying till you get it right,” Moore answered as he strode off, showing his wide back to the Irishman.

Donegan took a step after the head packer, sputtering, “Just a bleeming minute—”

“Here, lemme give you a hand,” Richard Closter offered as he shouldered up to cut Donegan off.

“He always like that?” Seamus asked. “Back there at Fetterman when he hired me on—seemed he was a nice fella.”

Closter looped the loose end of the rope back through itself to begin forming the second diamond and ran it down into the sawbuck frame.

“When he’s on the trail—he’s a different man,” the old packer answered.

“Not sure I like that a’tall.”

He turned back to watch Closter pulling on the loose end of the rope after lashing a perfect diamond over the canvas-wrapped load. Without a warning the packer suddenly kicked the animal squarely in the belly with his dusty boot toe. As the mule blew and brayed in protest, Closter yanked up all the more savagely, tightening the hitch more than Donegan thought possible.

“You ever had problems with a loose saddle cinch, Seamus?”

“I have.”

“Then you’ll realize why you’ve got to do the same with these gaddurned mules.”

“You’ve got the son of a bitch nearly cut in half now—them ropes is so tight!”

Closter shook the load heartily, then patted it and turned to Donegan with a smile. “You see’d how it was done on this’un. Now go to work on that’un over there, Irishman.”

He watched the white-bearded packer stride off across the ground covered with stunted bunchgrass, scraggly sage, and some varieties of small, cruel cactus. The noses of some of the animals bristled with the flax-colored spines this morning, showing where they had grazed a bit too close to the hearty desert plants.

All around him it was commotion in the first light of that thirtieth day of May as the column prepared to march away from their Sage Creek campsite. The cattle were being wrangled onto the trail by civilian herders as the pack mules continued their chorus of protests. Between the two herds, the infantry was ordered into line for morning inspection before they promptly moved out. Minutes later the cavalry put its hooves on the trail followed by wagon wheels stirring dust into spinning sheets of gold-tinted flecks above that road north to Montana Territory.

Cursing in a blue streak that rose to the heavens above the 250 mules, the eloquent packers lashed their animals into a crude and rudimentary line as they beat and whipped, cajoled and shoved to get the mules moving. All was pandemonium, with the eighty-some packers dashing here and there among the animals and one another, yelling,
screeching their oaths, bringing their rawhide quirts and long, black, shimmering bull-snake whips down on the stubborn backs.

Of a sudden a half-dozen mules lurched into motion, hurrying off so quickly, it caught the lead packers by surprise. And with those first few animals finally moving, the rest brayed their last heer-awww and followed suit. The entire herd would likely remain quiet the rest of the day now that they had gotten their protests out of their systems and been put to the task.