Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (6 page)

Curly's land. Sioux land. A wild, unbridled country as savage and beautiful as the jealous and defiant folk who would hold onto it. And drive from its breast the troopers who were following behind the bearded soldier chief, marching straight into the jaws of death.

*   *   *

“You telling us that if we try to push on up the road on our own, you'll sick your soldiers on us?” Captain Samuel Marr demanded of the army officer seated behind the dusty table that served as a desk. From the looks of Marr, he wasn't the kind of man anyone would want to get on the down side of.

Col. Henry E. Maynadier sized Marr up quickly. “Captain Marr, you seem to know how the army works——”

“All too well.” He ran a hand through the long, gray hair that spilled from his wide-brimmed hat over his collar.

Maynadier found himself almost at the end of his string with the civilians who tramped through his post like a turnstile in a railroad station, heading to the goldfields of Montana with stars in their eyes and a dream in their heart. As the commander of Fort Laramie, Dakota Territory, here in the summer of 1866, the colonel had to be the one to throw some cold water on a lot of those dreams. Most of those in whose breast burned this gold fever saw the good sense in going roundabout to Alder Gulch. Many went on west to Salt Lake's City of the Saints, found their way north from there. A few more took the northern roundabout, up the Missouri as far as steamboats could take them, on mules from there to the Three Forks and thence south to Virginia City.

First came those who had scratched the ground in California then panned in the icy streams of Colorado's high-country. But after the war the colonel began to see more come through Laramie. So damned many of them following last winter. Veterans mostly. Union and Confederate both, who had little alike to return home to. Maynadier knew any dream at all could ignite men such as these.

“Captain Marr, I'm not saying that I'll stop you from traveling north on the Bozeman Road. But the army is here to assure your safety in this part of the world.”

“You yourself told us the Eighteenth Infantry left here a week ago.” The big Irishman standing beside Marr squinted at the well-groomed colonel. “Told us they'd be stationed north of here to secure the road for travel.”

Maynadier sighed. “Do you have a name, sir?”

“Seamus Donegan, late of the Army of the Shenandoah, Colonel.”

“Mr. Donegan, surely someone of your experience and background will understand that the mere presence of our troops won't guarantee safe travel on the road.”

“What the bejesus you send them soldier-boys up there for?” Marr demanded.

“Gentlemen!” Maynadier bolted out of his leather, horse-hair chair, flinging his cigar into an ashtray atop the desk. “I'll say this one last time, and then you'll excuse me. The road is yours to take. Go right ahead!” He flung an arm toward the door.

Both Marr and Donegan regarded the colonel suspiciously. A third man in their party sat unconcerned in the corner of the colonel's office, whittling at a year's crop of black soil buried beneath his fingernails.

“We'll not detain you here,” Maynadier continued. “Instead, all we can do is recommend that you don't attempt any travel north of here using the Bozeman Road without military escort.”

“I suppose you'll be pleased as punch to supply us that military escort, eh?” Marr asked, his old hand slamming down on the desk.

Without taking his eyes off Marr, Maynadier addressed the fifth man present in the room. “Lieutenant, read to our guests the official notification from Departmental Headquarters concerning military parties scheduled for travel on the road——”

“I don't wanna hear any more official clap-trap from your departmental——”

“Captain Marr.” The colonel held up a hand. “You'll want to listen carefully to one particular item. Lieutenant, please.”

As the two civilians and his superior turned their attention on him, the colonel's adjutant began to read. “… Detail traveling north from Fort Sedgwick, destined for final duty station in Mountain District, reporting to Colonel Henry B. Carrington, Eighteenth Infantry. Detail under command of Lieutenant George Templeton. Accompanying party are wives of two officers, two young children, and one colored servant girl. Due Fort Laramie first week of July.” He looked up at the colonel. “Sir, the rest of this message goes on with——”

“I understand, Lieutenant,” Maynadier replied, waving a thick hand to silence his adjutant. “There, gentlemen. You have your military escort. As I recall, there'll be four officers in the group, accompanied by fourteen enlisted men. And, you'll be happy to note, you won't be the only civilians traveling north with Templeton's detail. There're two more gentlemen who've been waiting for close to a week now for an escort north. Three days ago I gave them the happy news that as soon as Templeton arrives here, they can——”

“Bound for the goldfields like us?” Marr broke in.

“No, Captain. On the contrary—a Ridgeway Glover, photographer for Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Weekly,
out of Philadelphia. Came west for camera studies of the land and its wild inhabitants, he tells me. The other gentleman is a man of the cloth. Reverend David White. Methodist. Assigned chaplain attached to the Eighteenth Infantry … wherever Colonel Carrington decides to build his post.”

“You know where we might be finding these two … civilians?” Donegan stuffed his big hands in the pockets of his gray britches, which in turn were stuffed inside the tall, hog-leg boots with mule-ears.

“Lieutenant,” Maynadier asked his adjutant, “can you steer Mr. Donegan in the right direction?”

“They're camped in the cottonwood grove below Bedlam, sir.”

“Bedlam?” Donegan inquired.

“Bachelor Officers Quarters. You'll go out my door, around the building, and down the slope into the trees…”

“Thank you, Colonel.” Donegan presented his hand.

“You're quite welcome.” Maynadier sighed, this ordeal over. “The army's here to protect, gentlemen.”

Marr stopped at the door, July sunlight flooding into the room. “Who're you really protecting. Civilians like us? Or the Indians?”

He wheeled and pushed out into the sunshine with Donegan and Bobby Ray Simpkins on his heels. “Well, Seamus. We're on our way north to the Montana goldfields at last. So close I can smell it.” He drew a deep breath, drinking deep on the dry heat of the high plains.

Donegan measured the older man again. “Still so bleeming sure those Injins won't cause us any trouble, eh?”

“Not since you and me bought those big Henry's.”

“That fancy gun cost me nearly all my separation pay. But what really hurt was it took most of my drinking money to boot.”

“Day'll come you'll be damned glad we got them repeaters.” Marr slapped the big Irishman on the back. “C'mon, boys. I'll buy a drink over to the sutler's. Then we'll go look up these other gents waiting for an escort into the land of milk and honey.”

Chapter 3

Brown pulled the pipe from his mouth, watching the old scout plod his way through the knee-high grass. He didn't know what it was about Bridger that made his belly go sour.

Just a harmless old man dressed like any sod-buster.

Almost laughable, with that floppy hat pulled down over Bridger's silver hair. Brown decided it might be those clear, blue eyes twinkling above the scout's ready grin. Eyes that many times seemed to mock him and his fellow officers, as if Bridger alone knew something the army did not. Whatever it was, the captain was certain Bridger didn't like him a shade either.

“Mornin', Cap'n.”

Brown knocked the dollop of burnt tobacco from his pipe against a boot-heel before he answered, “Mr. Bridger.”

The scout fell silent. Leaning back against the wagon Brown had been working in, his elbows propped up against the side-boards, he stared wistfully at the sunrise daubing rose light across the Big Horns. Jim cleared his throat.

“You have something to say,” Brown blurted suddenly, “why don't you just say it.”

“Well, I do have something what needs some dusting off, I suppose.” Bridger scratched at his gray chin-stubble.

“Be out with it. I'm damned busy these days. Counting our stores. Seeing what we've lost since departing Fort Kearney. Inventory has to be taken, what made it here unbroken … what the mice, rats, or weevils didn't eat. I'm damned busy, Mr. Bridger.” He bent back over a sheaf of papers rustling in an insistent breeze that danced through the tall grass in rolling waves.

“The colonel ever say why he didn't want me along when he rode off to look over that country round the Tongue and Goose Crik for his new fort?”

Brown peered up from his papers. For the first time this morning he smiled. “That's right, isn't it, ol' fella? Carrington didn't take you along with him, did he?”

“It's got me some confused.”

“You wanted him to choose a site farther north, didn't you? But all along the colonel's been set on building his fort right here.”

“That's fair country up to the Tongue. Maybeso, even far up on Goose Crik. Better place for a fort.”

“Now what would an old trapper like you know about building a fort?” Brown scoffed, his eyes raking over his papers.

“Me? Nothing, I suppose, Cap'n. 'Cept, knowing Injuns the way I does. And building that fort of mine down to the Green River country, southwest of here. Picked that spot myself. Good enough for the army, I suppose.”

“What do you mean, it was good enough for the army?” Brown wet the end of his pencil on his tongue.

“Army brass figured my spot good enough for a fort that they bought mine.”

“I … see.” Brown fell back to counting.

Bridger was certain the captain knew nothing about those early days in the Rocky Mountains.
How I had to fight off both marauding Indians and Mormon raiders when Brigham Young got it in his head that this big land weren't big enough for both him and Jim Bridger to boot. No, this stupid captain wouldn't know nothing about how the army kept coming back for my help year after year, campaign after campaign.

He studied the balding officer a moment more, then stared off as dawn's touch of rose faded from the never-summer snows on the Big Horns hulking high above them.
This ain't that bad a spot. But why didn't the colonel take me along? Did Carrington want to be shed of my advice? Damn, if army brass ain't too oft like a cantankerous mule a'times. Never know which face they'd turn on a man with next.

Bridger had led the 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry north from Fort Laramie with all hope for a peace treaty left in tatters. The old scout himself had seen the guns and kegs of powder lashed on the wild Indian ponies as the Oglalla and Miniconjou turned their own noses north, returning to their hunting ground north of the Crazy Woman Fork.

Still, from time to time, he had to remind Carrington, “Them Bad Faces under Red Cloud ain't about to welcome you with open arms, Colonel. Everything points to war.”

For the first few days out of Laramie, Bridger had wheedled and worked on the colonel, the old scout trying to convince him to use the longer but safer trail north. Back in 1864 Bridger had led emigrants to the Montana goldfields up the western slope of Big Horns. Through Shoshone land. “The Snakes aren't out to lift white hair,” Bridger had lectured the officers.

“But John Bozeman evidently didn't think much of your caution, Jim,” the colonel had said, smiling in that administrative way of his. “He blazed his own road north that makes an easier trip of it than does yours. Saving hundreds of miles. That's why ex-soldiers from the war are scurrying along Bozeman's road, despite all the talk of danger from the Sioux.”

“So where the almighty citizen wants to travel … that's where the goddamned government will put its road. Duty bound to keep that road open with soldiers, I suppose.”

Carrington had grinned within his dark Vandyke beard. “Sounds as if you grasp the government mind, Mr. Bridger.”

“I been round enough army brass in my years to know stinkum when I smell it,” Jim had replied. “Come hell or war, them stiff-necked politicians back East get something in their heads, nothing's bound to change it. Even good horse sense.”

Bridger had finally joined Carrington in laughing. If the army wanted to keep this Bozeman Road into Montana open, then by God, Jim Bridger would come along for the ride. Might prove damned interesting before the last dance of the ball was called.

“And you're not a man to pass up something interesting, are you, Jim?”

They laughed harder, together. He didn't know what it was, but Jim felt something appealing about the colonel. Bridger might even think he was growing to like Carrington. Still, he couldn't shake that cold, gut-grip feeling that the colonel no more belonged out here commanding soldiers against angry Sioux than a whore belonged in Sunday service.

Atop his flea-bit gray mare of a mule, the old scout had led them across the North Platte and into the desolate moonscape that swallowed the Montana Road for better than a hundred fifty miles. North by northwest they plodded across the many parched creeks, every face caked with dust, throats parched with thirst. Times beyond counting when they did run across water, they found it so laced with alkali that the mules and horses even turned their noses from a taste.

Overhead a relentless summer sun continued to bake man and beast alike. Every evening's camp brought new reports of more stock collapsed from the heat. Left for dead or the coyotes. Or the Sioux. Each dawn the new recruits marched on, prodded by the old veterans who placed a pebble in their mouths to stimulate saliva. Other old files even showed the youngsters how to carefully open a vein in their wrists. How to suck at their own hot, sticky blood. Quenching an unquenchable thirst that tormented a man almost as much as the visions swimming before their eyes.