It appeared as if there had only been two thieves, because he saw no one else, but the cattle the thieves were trying to steal were now running. The main herd, though made restless by the flashes and explosions in the night, milled around, but resisted running.
Elmer and Jory appeared then.
“Where are the rustlers?” Elmer asked.
“Only two, I’m thinkin’,” Duff said. “And I got them both. Elmer, stay here with the main herd, keep them from stampeding. Jory, would ye be comin’ with me, lad? We’ll run these down.”
“Yes, sir!” Jory answered, spurring his horse into a gallop toward the fleeing cows.
Duff urged his own horse into a gallop, and within a minute he and Jory were riding alongside the running, lumbering animals.
“We’ve got to get to the front!” Duff shouted.
The cows were running as fast as they could run, which was about three-quarters of the speed of the horses, and that meant it was fairly easy to overtake them. Within a few minutes, Duff and Jory rode to the front, where they were able to turn them. Once the cows were turned, they lost their forward momentum, slowed their running to a trot, and finally to a walk. When that happened, it was fairly easy to turn them around and start them back.
By the time Duff and Jory got the cows that had been cut out back, Elmer, Ford, and Sherman were riding around the standing herd, keeping them calm. The cows that had been cut out seemed happy to be back in the comfortable company of the herd, and within another half hour, all was quiet and things returned to normal.
“Have you seen the rustlers?” Duff asked.
“Yeah,” Elmer answered. “That is, we seen what’s left of ’em. Both of ’em was run over by the herd. They’re cut up pretty good.”
“I don’t suppose you recognized either of them?” Jory asked.
“Jory, their own mama wouldn’t recognize ’em,” Elmer said.
“What’ll we do with ’em, Mr. MacCallister?” Jeff Ford asked.
“We’ll bury them,” Duff said.
“Somehow, it don’t seem right to be burying folks that we don’t know. I mean without no marker or anything,” Ford said.
“Son, I’ve seen hundreds of unmarked graves out here—men, women, and children,” Elmer said. “These here will just be two more.”
“I reckon so,” Ford said.
“I may as well get the biscuits and coffee goin’,” Elmer said. “It’ll be light soon.”
“Go ahead, Elmer, we’ll take care of this business,” Duff said.
When Elmer returned to the encampment, he saw Meagan standing by the tongue of the wagon.
“I take it everything is under control now?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, there ain’t nothin’ for you to be a’worryin’ about now,” Elmer said. “It’s all over with.”
“Elmer, I’m not some dainty schoolgirl. I heard Duff call out that there were rustlers. I just want to know what happened, is all.”
Elmer chuckled. “No, ma’am, I reckon you ain’t exactly no schoolgirl at that,” he said. “Truth is, a couple of fellas tried to run off some of our cows. Then, when they saw that Duff seen ’em, they took a couple of shots at him. That’s where they made their mistake.”
“Duff is all right, isn’t he?” Meagan asked, anxiously.
“Oh, yes, ma’am, Duff is just fine. Like I said, when them two shot at Duff, they made a big mistake.”
“Duff shot them?”
“He shot both of ’em. Two shots, in the dark, and he got ’em both. I tell you the truth, I’ve known some pretty good shots in my day, but I ain’t never seen anyone as good as Duff. He can shoot a gun, pistol, or rifle, like nobody’s business.”
Elmer started pulling out some pans.
“Are you starting breakfast?”
“May as well, it’s too late to try and go back to bed now. Sun will be up in another hour.”
“I’ll help.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know,” Meagan said with a broad smile. “I want to.”
Fort Laramie
Lieutenant Pershing was on temporary duty to Fort Laramie where, along with Lieutenant Holbrook, according to the written orders that assigned him here, he was charged with the following task:
Write a TO&E for a cavalry regiment, and a cavalry troop. Upon completion of the assignment, the finished paperwork, including all information used to make the allocations, will be sent to the Department of Army for final approval and general distribution to every cavalry regiment and troop within the United States Army. Time authorized for this task is two months.
The TO&E, which stood for “Table of Organization and Equipment,” would lay out in the most minute detail the job of every assigned soldier from private, farrier, hospital steward, bugler, corporal, sergeant, first sergeant, sergeant-major, surgeon, lieutenant, captain, major, and lieutenant colonel to be assigned to a cavalry troop. In addition to the personnel requirements, Pershing and Holbrook would also be responsible for deciding upon the equipment to be issued: sabers, rifles, pistols, ammunition, lanterns, field stoves, packs, shelter-halves, ropes, tent stakes, ponchos, web belts, entrenching tools, canteens, mess kits, number of horses, saddles, and wheeled vehicles. The work was detailed and painstaking, and because what they did here would apply to every cavalry unit in the entire United States Army, they had to be very particular.
Lieutenant Holbrook had been “keeping company” with Mary Meacham, daughter of the post surgeon. Then, when Holbrook’s sister, Clara, came to Fort Laramie for a visit, Holbrook invited Pershing to join him, Mary, and Clara for a picnic down by the Laramie River. Pershing accepted.
With a picnic lunch loaded in an army buckboard, the four drove down to the river. The trail passed through a stand of aspens, across a level bench of land peppered with fluttering yellow, red, and blue wildflowers, and then up a small rise. When they reached the top of the rise, Holbrook stopped and set the brake. The four got out, and as the ladies began to spread out the blanket and take out the basket of food, Pershing and Holbrook looked out over the junction of the Laramie and Platte Rivers, both of which were shining silver in the noonday sun. Behind them lay Fort Laramie, where the flag caught a breeze, then lifted out in full spread, a bright patch of color against the pale blue sky. Involuntarily, Pershing stood a little straighter, almost as if he were coming to attention. Clara noticed Pershing’s reaction, and she chuckled.
“You love it, don’t you?” Clara said.
“The West? Yes,” Pershing answered. “I’m from Missouri, and there are parts of Missouri that are as beautiful as any other place in the Union. But there is something about the West, something about the gray light of early morning when it’s quiet. And I like it in the middle of the day, when wildflowers carpet the plains in every color of the rainbow. But I also like it in the evening, when the clouds are lit from below by the setting sun so that they glow pink and gold against the purple sky. And the stars at night? Why, they sparkle like diamonds on velvet.”
Clara laughed, softly. “Why, John Pershing, you’ve a bit of the poet in you. It’s obvious by the way you put it into words that you love this West of yours. But when I said you love it, I was talking about the army.”
“Yes,” Pershing said. “I like the army.”
“That’s not what I said either. I said you love it.”
Pershing chuckled, then nodded. “All right. It’s not something that is easy to put into words. But I guess I don’t have to put it in words, not if you can see it.”
“I don’t see how anyone could not see what the army means to you.”
“All right, people, our lunch is ready,” Mary said.
“Good, I’m hungry,” Pershing said, glad to be pulled away from a conversation he felt was getting much too personal.
The lunch was a bountiful one, consisting of sliced ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, fresh bread, and, for desert, chocolate cake.
As they were eating, the sound of
a distant call floated to them.
“Oh, listen to the bugle,” Clara said.
“It’s not a bugle, it’s a trumpet. Bugles are for dismounted troops,” Pershing said. “Trumpets for mounted troops, each regiment is authorized six trumpets and six buglers.”
“And you want to know why they are authorized six trumpets and six buglers?” Holbrook said. He pointed toward his chest with this thumb. “Because John and I say they are. That’s part of the TO&E.”
“Wait a minute, I don’t understand,” Mary said. “Six trumpets and six buglers? Wouldn’t they be trumpeters?”
“No, they are buglers who play trumpets,” John said.
“Now I’m really confused.”
Holbrook laughed. “That’s the purpose of the army. It is our intention to confuse people, thus such things as trumpets for mounted troops, buglers for dismounted troops, but the man behind the instrument, be he mounted or dismounted, is a bugler. You have to learn how to confuse people when you are doing something like writing a TO&E.”
“That’s the second time you’ve used those initials,” Clara said.
“It’s the table of organization and equipment. It’s like a guidebook for every troop in the cavalry.”
“Oh, my, that’s quite important, isn’t it?” Clara said.
“You better believe it is,” Holbrook said. “When you go back home, you can tell Dad that his son is about to be published.”
“Really?”
Now it was Pershing’s time to laugh. “In a manner of speaking. But you won’t see our names anywhere.”
After dinner, another bugle call floated up to them from the fort.
“What is that call?” Clara asked.
“It’s ‘Fatigue Call,’” Holbrook said.
“‘Fatigue Call’? What an unusual name for a song. What is it for?”
“It tells the men that it’s time for them to begin their afternoon details, stable duty, working on the grounds, that sort of thing,” Holbrook explained. He laced his hands behind his head, then lay back on the cloth.
“Don’t you feel guilty, loafing around up here when you think you should be doing, what is it . . . stable duty? Oh, that sounds very unpleasant.”
“Mucking stalls?”
Clara made a face. “Mucking stalls? I don’t know what that is, but it sounds extremely unpleasant.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know what it is. And it is extremely unpleasant,” Pershing said.
“I can’t believe you would miss doing something like that. I mean, don’t you have to be there?” Clara asked.
Holbrook laughed. “Fortunately, my dear sister, officers don’t actually perform fatigue call. We tell the sergeants what we want done, the sergeants tell the corporals, the corporals tell the privates, and the privates do it.”
“So, what you are saying is, the privates do all the work?” Mary asked.
“Heavens, you don’t expect me to do it, do you?” Holbrook asked, with a laugh.
“I wonder when A Troop will get back,” Pershing said.
“I think they’re supposed to be out for three or four days. That is, if they don’t run into any trouble,” Holbrook said. “I don’t like to talk out of turn, but I feel a lot better about the troop with Captain Kirby in command. Nobody has said anything directly, but I have a sneaky feeling that Scott didn’t exactly shine on his last scout.”
“Yes, I sort of got that feeling as well,” Pershing said. “Although I did read the report he rendered. It was . . . well for want of a better word, I’ll say it might have been a bit embellished.”
Holbrook chuckled. “Don’t tell me that a member of our mess, and your classmate, exaggerated his report.”
“Let’s just say that his prose would have been appropriate if he had been writing a report on the battle of Gettysburg,” Pershing said.
This time Holbrook laughed out loud. “I’ll have to read that,” he said.
“I do pray that all return safely,” Mary said.
“Amen,” Holbrook said, growing more serious.
The picnic party returned to the post just as Sergeant Caviness and his body-retrieval party was returning. The last three horses of the column were pulling hastily constructed travois, and on each travois was a body, wrapped in canvas.
Everyone on the post knew, not only what the objects on the travois were, they knew who they were, and the friends and acquaintances of the dead soldiers—Troopers Jones, Travis, and Calhoun—stood out on the porches of the barracks, the sutler, and the dependent housing to watch as the solemn formation returned.
Sergeant Caviness led them to the parade ground right in front of the flag. Then he halted them, and ordered them to dismount.
“Stand by your horse,” Caviness ordered.
The men dismounted and stood by, as Lieutenant Bond, who was acting as Officer of the Day, took the report.
“Sir, Sergeant Caviness, with a detail of ten detached from Captain Kirby’s command, reporting with recovered bodies.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Bond responded, returning the salute. “Assign three men to deliver the bodies to the post mortician. Dismiss the others.”
“Yes, sir,” Caviness said. He did an about-face. “Schuler, Waters, MacMurtry, stay in place.” These were the three men to whose horses the travois were attached. “The rest of you, dismissed.”
“Me for a beer!” someone shouted, and others joined in the shouts of appreciation for the stand-down.
“Schuler, you, Waters, and Mac, deliver the bodies to the post mortuary. As soon as the mortician receives them, you’re free to join the others.”
The three men who were assigned the gruesome duty nodded, and then led their horses toward the mortuary.
Chapter Fourteen
Pershing was sitting at a table in a cleared-out room of the post supply building. The room was cleared of the normal elements of a supply room, the extra blankets, sheets, pillows, shelter-halves, canteens, tent pegs and poles, and the other items that normally filled a supply room. But that didn’t mean the room was empty, because there were books, reports, paper, pens, and pencils scattered on tables all through the room. At the moment, Pershing was computing the number of rounds of “ammunition, ball, caliber .45” needed for the M1873 carbine that was the standard issue of the enlisted men except for the bugler and guideon bearer. With a basic load of 40 rounds per man, and 95 men, each troop would need 3800 rounds.
Pershing had just made the entry when he looked up to see Holbrook coming in.
“We’re going to have a memorial service and a burying first thing in the morning,” Holbrook said.
“They’re going to bury all three men here, on the post?”
“Yeah. Not one of them have a next of kin listed, so we don’t know how to get hold of anyone.”
“That’s probably just as well,” Pershing said. “If they’re buried here, they’ll at least have some friends at the service. Even if we knew where to send them, like as not they would get a lonely burial when they got there.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much the way I see it as well,” Holbrook said.
Along the Platte River
The Shoshone called Black Crow was on his knees with his arms spread out wide to each side. He was staring up, looking right into the sun. It was necessary that he do this, because he had to prove himself before he could rejoin Yellow Hawk and the warriors who were with him.
When Yellow Hawk had attacked the farmhouse, Black Crow took the scalp of the boy, but Black Crow hadn’t killed the boy. Yellow Hawk banished him because what he did was without honor.
But now Black Crow knew how he could come back to Yellow Hawk with honor. He had seen what he first thought was a herd of buffalo, even though there were no buffalo left. As he came closer, though, he saw that the animals were not buffalo, they were cattle. Though they were a kind of cattle that Black Crow had never seen before. They didn’t have horns, and they were black. Perhaps this was a new kind
of buffalo.
As soon as Black Crow located the herd of cows that looked like buffalo, he began preparing himself for what he must do. He would steal one of the small buffalo and take it back to Yellow Hawk. They would kill the animal and eat it, and Black Crow could tell the story of how he stole it from a herd of many, right from under the eyes of the white man.
Finally, he looked away from the sun, but he couldn’t see. He was not worried. He had chosen this way of purifying himself a long time ago, and he knew that there would be a time when he couldn’t see, and then his vision would return. Unafraid, he lay there with his eyes closed for a long moment until finally, he opened them again, and when he did, he could see.
Black Crow mounted his horse and rode to where he had seen the strange-looking cattle. He would stay out of sight until the sun was gone from the sky.
Meagan waited until she was certain everyone was asleep, then she climbed down from the wagon. They had left the Chugwater and were now on the Platte River and Meagan felt almost as if the river were calling to her. She had gotten hot and sweaty, and she could feel the dirt just caking up on her. She wanted a bath more than just about anything she could think of. But she knew that the only way she could take a bath would be to do so in the middle of the night.
She thought now that it was late enough that she would be able to sneak into the river and bathe, and be back in the wagon before anyone noticed. Of course, there would be a nighthawk working the herd, but since the cattle thieves had attempted to run off some cows the other night, the nighthawk would be so attentive to the herd that she was sure that he wouldn’t even notice her.
Meagan dug through her saddlebag until she found a bar of Pears Soap. She actually sold this soap in her shop and the ladies particularly liked it because it had the scent of lavender.
It was the middle of the night, and she was in the middle of nowhere, so she was certain there was no one around to see her. Stripping out of her clothes, she walked, naked, out into the water, carrying the perfumed bar of soap with her. She began splashing the water on her skin, luxuriating in the wonderful feeling of cleanliness. She was cognizant only of the delightful feeling of the water and the soap, and she paid absolutely no attention to the picture she might be presenting, since she was alone.
MacCallister, the Eagles Legacy: Dry Gulch Ambush Page 11