Summer Warpath

by Wayne D. Overholser

  He had bought clothes and a Colt .45 before he boarded the train. In his coat pocket he carried a letter of introduction from General Sheridan. Just one thing bothered him. Crook would probably camp all summer somewhere north of Fort Fetterman while Custer was whipping hell out of Sitting Bull and his Sioux. It was O’Hara luck to have a totally unreasonable boss like Samuel Simpson Cunningham. Who else would order him to report to George Crook instead of George Custer?

  But O’Hara luck never stayed bad. Not for long, anyhow. So he settled back in his seat to enjoy the ride and puff on his cigar.

  When he reached Omaha, O’Hara took a hack to Crook’s headquarters, and, even though it was Sunday, he found the general at his desk studying reports from Sioux country.

  O’Hara had been so impressed by the daring and picturesque personality of George Custer that he was prepared to dislike Crook, or at least to resist him. Instead, the instant he shook hands, he gained an impression of cool, calm strength, and innate dignity that commanded respect.

  Crook motioned O’Hara to a chair, and O’Hara watched him as he scanned Sheridan’s letter. The general was not in uniform, a fact that did not detract from his personality. He had close-cropped hair, a heavy mustache, and an unusual beard that seemed to part naturally below the point of his chin.

  The general finished the letter, leaned back in his chair, and studied O’Hara. Funny, O’Hara thought. If I met him on the street in civilian clothes, I’d still recognize him as a soldier.

  Perhaps it was the steady blue-gray eyes. Or possibly the rugged leanness of the man. He gave the impression that he could start out with his infantry at dawn and march them off their feet before sundown.

  “Well, now,” Crook said finally, “I don’t want you to get the notion that we’re headed for a Sunday school picnic. I’m not one to condemn the Sioux for fighting. In fact, I admire Crazy Horse and his braves. They’re worthy opponents for any army. Our job is to whip them and make them go back to their reservation. I do not expect it to be an easy campaign.”

  “I’m not looking for an easy campaign,” O’Hara said, “and I’m not altogether a city man. I’m out of practice, but I’ve done some riding and camping and shooting.” He laughed. “I’ll admit I never hit the bull’s eye.”

  “It’s not that I’m against reporters,” Crook said. “I know they have to write what they see and hear. But some of them tend to be critical and to second-guess the commander. I’ve also met some who groused about the rations and dust and the heat and anything else that came up. The country north of Cheyenne is not a Garden of Eden, so you’ll suffer.”

  “I know what some of it is like,” O’Hara said. “I was with the Cheyenne Leader for a while, but I never got as far north as Fort Laramie.”

  Crook reached for a sheet of paper, then picked up a pen and dipped it into the bottle of ink. He wrote for a time and signed his name at the bottom of the sheet.

  “When you reach Fort D. A. Russell, give this to Colonel W. B. Royall. I suggest that you buy a good horse and saddle when you get to Cheyenne.” He folded the paper and handed it to O’Hara. “As of now, I can’t tell you exactly when you will leave Fort Russell, or even when I’ll return to Fort Laramie, so you will likely have a few boring days on your hands. I can assure you there won’t be many of them.”

  Crook rose and extended his hand. O’Hara shook it, and asked: “Have you ever heard of a plainsman named Walt Staley?”

  “Staley?” Crook smiled. “I’ve already hired him as a messenger. He’s a good man, one of the best on the frontier. You know him?”

  O’Hara nodded. “We were both with the Sir Cedric Smith hunting party in Colorado. I’ve often wondered what happened to him after that.”

  “You’ll meet him again,” Crook said. “He’ll be with the command at least part of the time.”

  O’Hara took the cab back to the depot and caught the next train for Cheyenne.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When O’Hara stepped off the coach at Cheyenne on Monday, he had the impression that the town had doubled or tripled in size since he had left. He had never seen such a crowd at the depot or so many men milling around the tracks.

  Soldiers, miners, cowboys, trappers, freighters, laborers—all bellowing at each other or standing and talking or backing and filling their freight wagons to get a choice position. He saw a couple of Concord coaches waiting beyond the main part of the crowd, and then the truth struck him. The town hadn’t actually grown. It just had more business, partly from the military preparing for the coming campaign, and partly from the gold rush to the Black Hills.

  For a time he stood motionless on the cinders, watching the flow of the crowd and hearing sounds peculiar to a frontier city. Then a big hand slammed him on the back, driving him forward two steps and knocking the wind out of him.

  He labored for a moment to suck air back into his tortured lungs, and then he turned, his fists doubled. He found himself looking up into the grinning face of a big man in buckskin.

  “How are you, you little sawed-off, freckled-faced, red-headed Irish bastard?”

  “I’m fine,” O’Hara said. “And how are you, you wigwam-weaned, buffalo-headed, squaw-loving son-of-a-bitch?”

  They shook hands and pounded each other on the back. “How’d you ever find me?” O’Hara asked. “You’re too dumb to figure out that I might be climbing off a train to cover the campaign for my newspaper.”

  “Way too dumb,” Walt Staley agreed affably. He picked up O’Hara’s bag. “Come on, let’s find you a hotel room. Then I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “I’ve got to get out to the fort,” O’Hara said. “I saw General Crook in Omaha and he gave me a letter of introduction …”

  “No hurry,” Staley was jamming his way through the crowd, O’Hara running to keep up with him. “You’ve got ten days, maybe more, before anything happens. You’re gonna grow calluses on your butt, O’Hara.”

  “I thought we’d be heading out for Fort Laramie in a day or two.”

  “Naw.” Staley shook his head. “It ain’t likely. One wing will go from here, but the supplies ain’t showed up yet. Not all of ’em, anyway. The other wing moves up from Medicine Bow, which is west of here a piece on the UP. They’ll join up at Fort Fetterman, but neither one’s ready yet.”

  O’Hara sighed as he trotted along beside Staley. Walt knew what he was talking about, but even so, he ought to go to the fort immediately and report to Colonel Royall. He heard the pistol-sharp crack of a whip and a moment later one of the big stagecoaches rolled past him on the street, dust lifting around it, clouding its passage. The coach was crowded to capacity, both inside and out. “Damned Black Hillers,” Staley said. “They’re the cause of all this trouble. Chances are they’ll git their hair lifted before they ever see Deadwood. Lot of Sioux and Cheyennes just riding around between here and there, looking for scalps.”

  “Then why doesn’t the Army clean them out?” O’Hara asked.

  Staley shrugged. “You’ll have to ask General Crook. I’ll admit it takes time to get this big an outfit together. Supplies are coming in every day and they’re being hauled to Fort Laramie and then to Fetterman, but, like I said, it takes time. Why it takes so much time I don’t know.”

  Staley grinned, a sudden flash of white across his dark face. “Besides, a few stagecoaches getting stopped and everybody murdered might slow this gold rush down a little. I ain’t heard that the Army ever invited anybody into the Black Hills.”

  That was true, O’Hara knew. Legally the miners had no right to be in the Black Hills, so who could honestly blame the Indians if they did lift a few scalps?

  O’Hara did not fully appreciate the unpopularity of such thinking until he had taken a hotel room and then gone into the bar for the drink with Staley. The crowd there included all of the types he had seen at the depot, plus a number of neatly dressed gamblers and con
men who were trying to get their hooks into the greenhorn Easterners.

  Staley elbowed O’Hara. “Watch this,” he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. Then he cleared his throat and said loudly: “I never have understood why the good Lord put so many damned fools on earth. There’s plenty of ’em right here in this room, thinking they’re gonna find gold in the Black Hills.”

  The conversation around Staley died. The bartender leaned forward anxiously.

  “Better not talk that way in here, mister. It ain’t wise.”

  “I’ll bet it ain’t!” Staley bellowed. “Your Cheyenne storekeepers and freighters and bankers are making a lot of dinero out of this Black Hills gold gab. Well, sir, I never was a man to win popularity contests, but I know fools when I see ’em. Any man’s a fool who takes out for the Black Hills right now with the country full of Indians. They’ll git their hair lifted as sure as hell’s hot.”

  “He’s a squawman,” someone said in disgust, “trying to scare folks away from the Black Hills.”

  And another: “Yeah, probably paid by the Sioux to come in here and talk like that. Let’s throw him out.”

  A slender man in a black broadcloth suit with a gold chain across his chest shouldered his way through the crowd. He said: “Get out of here, mister. We don’t aim to listen to none of your kind of talk around here.”

  “A mite touchy, ain’t you, Slick?” Staley asked. “You know something about Indians, seems to me. Up there on Wind River they tell me there’s a Shoshone girl who’s looking for you to come …”

  The slender man’s face turned pale. He went for his gun. Before it cleared leather, Staley had his knife tip pressed against the man’s throat. “Go ahead,” Staley said. “Give the undertaker a little business.”

  The man’s hand dropped away from the butt of his gun. He muttered: “Get out of here, Staley. Just get out. The drinks are on the house.”

  Staley reached out with his left hand and lifted the man’s gun from the holster. He slipped his knife back into its scabbard, ejected the shells from the revolver, and handed it back. “Thanks for the free whiskey.” Staley jerked his head toward the street door. “Come on, Pat.”

  Outside, O’Hara mopped his sweating face.

  “That was a fool trick, wasn’t it, Walt? He must have had some tough hands all set to gang up on you.”

  “Sure he did, but mostly he just wanted me out of there. Someday I’ll kill the bastard. He married a Shoshone girl several years ago. She had two of his babies. Then he fell into some money and bought this hotel and kicked her out. She’s with her tribe, waiting for him to come back to her. He never will unless he’s starving to death.”

  O’Hara stuffed his wet handkerchief back into his pocket and smiled at Walt Staley. He liked this big, rangy, tough galoot. Walt Staley had a sense of honor that was not shared by the average plainsman.

  Knowing this, he was still shocked when Staley told him he wanted to marry a half-breed girl named Tally Barrone.

  “I never thought much about her till this spring,” Staley said. “She’d always seemed like a little girl who’d had to take over the housework when her ma died. But now she’s a woman. I’m going to get her away from her pa and her brothers as soon as I work a month for the Army. Maybe you’ll see her before you go back to Chicago. She’s one hell of a fine girl.”

  “If she’s your girl,” O’Hara said, “she’s got to be.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Staley had to leave Cheyenne the following morning with dispatches for Fort Laramie, but before he rode away, he took O’Hara to a livery stable that was owned by a man he knew and helped him buy a horse. O’Hara admitted that if he had been left to his own devices, he would have ended up with an old nag that wouldn’t have carried him as far north as Lodgepole Creek.

  They were lucky to find a flat-shouldered, gentle, reasonably young brown gelding. Staley pointed out that the animal was the kind the Army liked. “You’ll be able to sell him to ’em when you’re done with him,” Staley said. “You might make a little money on him. At least you won’t lose much.”

  They bought a second-hand saddle and O’Hara rode several blocks and returned to the livery stable. “You’ll make out all right,” Staley said. “Now I got to get to humping. I’ll probably see you at Fort Laramie.”

  He started to mount his buckskin, then put his foot back on the ground, and turned to O’Hara. “It ain’t often I cotton to a man when I first meet him, but I ran into a soldier at a hay camp afore I got to Fort Laramie that I sure like. His name’s Dave Allison. He’s smart. I keep wondering why he’s only a buck private.”

  “You can be sure there’s a good story back of him,” O’Hara said, “or he wouldn’t be in the Army at all. Maybe I’ll meet him after we get started.”

  “A man like Allison ought to be an officer,” Staley said, “but they’ve got him hauling hay and taking orders from a bone-headed corporal.”

  “Sometimes there’s a reason,” O’Hara said. “Maybe this Allison drinks too much. Or fights discipline and spends most of his time in the guardhouse.”

  “He didn’t strike me as being that kind.”

  “You just reminded me of something,” O’Hara said. “I’m supposed to keep my eyes open for a man named Rice Peters. Ever hear of him?”

  “Don’t think so. Well, I’ve got to ride.”

  O’Hara stood in front of the livery stable, watching Staley ride down the crowded street. Finally, Staley disappeared in the heavy traffic, and for some reason O’Hara felt alone in a strange world.

  When O’Hara reported to Colonel Royall at Fort D. A. Russell, he was told he would mess with the officers of Company E, Third Cavalry. He found a number of reporters at the fort who intended to accompany the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition. They represented newspapers in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Omaha, Denver, Cheyenne, and Chicago. It would, O’Hara thought, be the best-reported campaign in the history of Indian warfare.

  O’Hara did not leave Fort D. A. Russell with Company E until May 19, although a larger force had left two days earlier. Crook had been right about the hardships. O’Hara had not ridden a horse for several years, and when the company bivouacked that afternoon, he was so stiff he could hardly move.

  Another source of discomfort was the alkaline dust, stirred by the horses’ hoofs until the air all along the column seemed to be one great, gray cloud, making breathing almost impossible.

  O’Hara drained his canteen and thought he would go out of his mind from thirst. Captain Hanson suggested that he keep a small stone in his mouth. He did, and found that it helped.

  By the end of the second day he was not only stiff and thirsty, but hungry and tired as well. He spread his horse blanket on the ground and fell asleep, completely worn out. Later, when someone poked him in the ribs and told him supper was being served in Captain Hanson’s tent, he had trouble remembering where he was and why he was here. When he did remember and struggled to his feet, every muscle in his body cried out.

  Time was the answer, Captain Hanson told him. In time he would learn that the less water he drank, the better he could march. He would learn to make the water in his canteen last. In time the soreness would work out of his muscles. Why, in time, he said, he might even enjoy riding with the cavalry!

  Meanwhile O’Hara appreciated the halts that were made, to let the horses graze and to give the recruits a chance to rest. He was the greenest, softest recruit in the column.

  Lashed by rain and slowed by mud, the troops did not reach Fort Laramie until one o’clock on May 24. They made camp on the prairie, and O’Hara, who had chafed at delay back at Fort D. A. Russell, had never been more thankful in his life.

  Captain Hanson sat beside O’Hara in front of his tent and smoked a cigar. Hanson told him the fort was the oldest in the region, having been opened forty years or more ago as a trading post.
Some had called it Fort William, others Fort John, but to most it had been Fort Laramie from the start. Here were the crossroads, Hanson said, with an Indian trail running north and south, and the Oregon Trail coming in from Nebraska and going on to South Pass.

  Mountain men and emigrants and ’Forty-Niners had all gone this way. Here they found grass and cottonwoods and good water with the Laramie and the North Platte coming together below the fort. Beyond, to the west, Laramie Peak tipped up above the horizon, a symbol of the main chain of the Rockies that lay still farther west.

  Now the Army had the fort. Tomorrow the company would cross the North Platte on a bridge that had been completed only a few months before and head on toward Fort Fetterman, which would be the real jumping-off place for the expedition. As far as this day was concerned, O’Hara told Hanson, he was perfectly happy to do as little as he could.

  Walt Staley came out late in the afternoon. He had just returned to Fort Laramie with dispatches from Fort Fetterman. Crook was at Fetterman, and Staley guessed the entire command would be on the move in a few days.

  “But, by God, I don’t savvy why we ain’t moved already,” Staley said. “Eighty lodges have pulled out of the Red Cloud Agency in the last few days. They ain’t on no picnic. You can count on that. From what I hear, the Indians are thicker’n fleas on a dog between here and the Chug. You didn’t run into any on the way up?”

  O’Hara shook his head. “The only enemy was rain and mud.”

  “Well, they were all around you,” Staley said. “They’ve been running off government stock. They killed a Red Cloud mail carrier. A lot of miners on their way back to Cheyenne have lost stock. It’s a hell of a situation.”

  O’Hara studied the scout’s dark face. Normally a pleasant man, good-natured and hard to ruffle, today he was sullen and resentful. O’Hara wondered why. He said carefully: “I don’t understand how this is supposed to work, Walt. Crook expects to move north, but you’re telling me the Indians are active between here and Cheyenne, and that’s south.”