Maybe it was only that he was almost halfway home. Maybe that’s what made something so simple as a hot meal of pasty white beans, crusty hard bread, and a greasy slab of fatty pork such a king’s feast late that afternoon among soldiers who asked him everything imaginable about the war going on to the north with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.
Why, they acted just the way schoolboys out to recess or old men gathered at the mercantile to whittle and gossip would act, wanting to hear every detail, every last facet of commonplace events like marching up the Tongue, crossing on the ice, burying soldiers, capturing Cheyenne prisoners, and storming an icy ridge when the whole damned outfit was down to its last few bullets. They fed him and coffee’d him and kept him talking until his throat was sore and it had been long dark for hours.
“We best let the man be now,” Pollock finally said.
He turned to peer out at the night. “My horse?”
“We’ve watered and grained him,” a soldier said. “Even rubbed some liniment on a sore on his right flank, just under the pad.”
“I’m obliged,” Seamus said thankfully. “Truly obliged to you men.”
“You can bunk right in here,” Pollock offered.
But the old soldier told Seamus, “Or spread your bedroll with the rest of us. When I cared for your horse, I brung your saddle and gear inside our humble barrack.”
“Yes,” Seamus decided suddenly, a tug at his heart deciding it. “I’ll bunk in with you fellas if it won’t put no one out.”
Yes—to stay a while longer among these men who had cared for him and the horse … feeling so weary.
Captain Pollock said, “From the sounds of all your riding, bet you ain’t had yourself a proper night’s sleep in a month of Sundays.”
Another man added, “I’ll wager you could do with getting some shut-eye in out of the cold.”
“I’ll push on come morning,” Seamus agreed as he stood, feeling the stiffness in near every muscle from being so long in sitting atop the half-log bench.
“After coffee and breakfast at reveille,” Pollock said.
Using the officer’s brevet rank, Donegan asked, “Could you have me up two hours before sunrise, Major?”
“I’ll be sure one of the pickets on the last watch comes in to roust you,” a sergeant offered.
He looked round at them again, slowly, some faces sinfully handsome and some downright mud ugly, the old and the young among them, sallow-eyed veteran and peach-cheeked shavetail too. Soldiers all … every bit like those soldiers he had ridden beside as they’d galloped into the face of Confederate cavalry and the pounding of Rebel artillery; like Captain Butler’s brave men clambering for a foothold on the slopes of an icy hell. Soldiers paid so damned little by an unappreciative country that had scant idea of just what it asked of its fighting men.
Seamus rolled the wolf-hide hat in his hands nervously and told them, “Thank you fellas—for being here when I come riding in. For being here where likely no one else knows you’re here. God bless each and every one of you … for leaving your families to come to this lonely place on the Powder River.”
For a moment they all sat and stood there stunned into silence by his sudden words. One of them coughed selfconsciously. Another turned aside and silently dragged a hand under his nose. And most of the rest found somewhere else for their eyes as they looked away, their own thoughts suddenly far, far from here. Away to loved ones.
Then he cursed himself inside, feeling sorry of that moment, having caused these soldiers to think of home, to think on others so far from this cold, winter wilderness.
“Most of all,” Donegan concluded, his throat clotted, “I wanna thank you fellas for helping me on my way home to my family.”
“W-where are they?” Pollock asked. “Laramie.”
“Laramie,” a soldier repeated almost wistfully as he nodded, then looked away at the flames in the crude fireplace constructed along the outer wall of the hut.
“Y’ ain’t got far to go now,” another declared.
A bearded corporal said, “Less’n two hundred miles by my reckoning.”
The sergeant stood, laying his muskrat hat atop his head, tugging it down over his ears. “I’ve got a night watch to check on right now, Mr. Donegan … but I’ll see you’re up early for coffee and tacks afore lightin’ out.”
Epilogue
17-24 January 1877
Telegraphic Briefs
THE INDIANS
Raid on the Chugwater.
CHEYENNE, January 18.—Intelligence was received here to-day from Chugwater, fifty miles north of this city, that the Indians made a raid on the ranches near Chugwater station, last night, driving off about fifty horses. The Indians were followed by the ranchmen for several miles, but succeeded in getting away with the stock.
“You want me send a word or two on down the wire, so they can let your missus know you’re coming?” the soldier at the key asked him.
“No,” he said, having decided long ago that he would do just as he had promised, wanting her to keep her eye on the hills to the north of the post for sign of him. “Thank you anyway, sojur. But long ago I decided to make it a surprise.”
There at the drafty key shack at Cottonwood Station, Seamus had shared a cup of coffee and a few stories of Miles’s fight with Crazy Horse as three soldiers crowded in around that tiny Sibley stove. The wind gusted old snow outside beneath a lowering sky as his horse crunched on grain that filled the nose bag a kind soldier had draped over the claybank’s ears. Then, with his own belly warmed, Seamus tugged the scrap of wool blanket back over his head, adjusted the eyeholes so he could see, then pulled the wolf-hide cap down over it.
“Welcome back … again,” the key operator said as the three soldiers crowded one another there at the doorway, watching the civilian clumsily rise to the saddle in his heavy buffalo-hide coat and leggings.
Tapping his brow with his fingers, Seamus saluted. “Thank you for the coffee, fellas.”
“You ain’t got far now!” a soldier reminded.
For a moment Donegan gazed to the southeast down the Laramie-Fetterman Road. He had covered more than half the distance between the two posts already. “I got a boy to christen there. My son … to finally give my son a name.”
Miles and hours later, after one more night spent beside a lonely fire, Seamus moved on that morning of the twenty-fourth, hurrying into the fourteenth day of his homeward journey. Snowless gusts of wind battered him and the mare all that day when they could not take shelter by riding down along the courses of the creeks. Then late that blustery afternoon, as he was staring across the changeless landscape, Donegan suddenly realized he was looking at the top of the gigantic flagstaff that stood in the middle of the Fort Laramie parade.
Like a beacon signaling homecoming sailors from the perilous depths and crushing waves … a little farther and he could see the whole of that flag—its stripes: the white like high-plains snow, the crimson blood of those who had laid down their lives to answer their nation’s call. And the blue. Like her own starry eyes as they peered up into his.
Then, finally, he reined up the claybank on the brow of a brushy knoll just north of the post, feeling a tightness wrap his chest from the sweet anticipation as he gazed down at the bustling activity of tiny figures scurrying across the snow, trudging between the buildings, each one scuffing dark as beeties across the white expanse of the parade. A gust of wind kicked up swirls of ground snow around the figures from time to time.
Then Donegan put the weary mare into motion, urging her down the hill, heading for that patch of open ground right below him, between the long row of stables and cavalry barracks. Slowly, as the horse plodded through the snow, picking its way among the crusty drifts, the faraway figures began to loom closer, taking on human form at last despite their layers of heavy garments—every man and woman bundled against the frightening cold.
Closer still … when he realized that among all the soldiers stopping momentarily to give him
a cursory look before continuing with their fatigue details, what with all the others who paid him no attention at all on this busiest of frontier forts—a single figure leaving one of the latrines stopped … turned and gazed to the north … then appeared to start directly for him.
Slowly, guardedly. Although tentative at first, the figure nonetheless stayed its course across the drifted snow as if on a compass heading that nothing would deter.
How he wanted to hope—
By then Seamus could make the figure out to be a woman from the way she moved beneath that long, heavy army wool coat, bundled as she was head to foot. Suddenly she burst into a lope, swinging one arm only, the other clutching some thick wrap)—perhaps a muffler. Ungainly as she was in her heavy boots and long coat, the woman dashed his way resolutely.
Then of an instant he no longer had to hope.
Like a man sensing once more that magnetic pull of his one and only lodestone, Donegan gave the horse a tap with his heels, urging these last two hundred yards out of the animal that had carried him all the way home. Gasping for its breath, spears of frost shooting from its nostrils, a halo of white wreathed the horse’s head—Seamus leaped from the saddle even before the claybank came to a halt.
On foot he stumbled those last five yards, tearing off the wolf-hide cap in one hand, the blanket face-mask with the other, hurling them both aside to enfold her and the bundled child in his arms instantly, sweeping them off her feet despite Samantha’s bulky clothing, despite her giggling, weeping protests, the child clutched between them as he swung her round once, twice, then set her down in the snow. Both of them gasping for air, tears at their cheeks, planting kisses on those faces not seen for so long.
“It’s your f-father, come home as he p-promised,” Samantha squeaked, barely able to get any sound out past the clog in her throat.
Gently he pulled back the top layer of the crocheted blanket, finally able to peer down into the reddened face, the wide eyes that stared up at his. To see again those rosy cheeks, and that unruly curl of auburn hair spilling down the boy’s forehead.
“Is this …,” he began to ask. “Sweet Mother of God—but he’s growed in the time I’ve been gone.”
She nodded, swiping a mitten across her cheek as she stared up at Seamus’s ruddy, bearded face. “They have a way of doing that—so I’m told, Mr. Donegan.”
Then she laid her cheek against his shoulder, closing her eyes and sighing. Despite the bulk of all her layers, he could still feel her trembling. For the longest time he stood there as soldiers and others passed by—content to clutch his family to his bosom, his chin resting atop Samantha’s head. In the midst of that busy fort on the plains they were like a warm, quiet island of serenity for these stolen moments in the bitter cold.
After some time she pulled her red, wet cheek away to stare into his glistening gray eyes. “Happy New Year, Mr. Donegan.”
He felt the tears spill again onto his wind-raw flesh. “Happy New Year to you, Mrs. Donegan.”
She dragged her mitten under her nose, then pulled the blanket back from the boy’s face once more. The babe’s eyes came instantly alive as they focused on the man’s face. Samantha said, “We’ve saved your Christmas for you—so to have one of our own. Together.”
“It’s not too late for Christmas?” he asked, his belly a’roil with so many feelings at once, he felt he might just explode like one of Pope’s cannonballs.
She giggled behind one of her mittens a moment, saying, “It’s never too late for Christmas, Seamus! Especially when a man can be as much a boy as you can!”
The tears were freezing on both their cheeks as he snatched up the reins in one hand, then tugged Samantha around and positioned her beneath the other arm. Husband and wife walked slowly past the end of the cavalry barracks, on toward their tiny room, where they would celebrate their own family Christmas, where they would see in their own festive New Year.
“It will be a Christmas to remember,” he whispered at the side of the wool shawl she had wrapped over her head. “I have me a good deal of money to pick up from post commander Evans for my recent services to the army.”
“Back pay?”
“You might say that, Sam,” he answered, so relieved that no soldier, officer, or chaplain had come to call on her, bearing the terrible news along with that princely ransom paid for carrying Crook’s message all the way up to Nelson A. Miles, alone through the heart of Crazy Horse country.
She laid her head into the crook of his shoulder and closed her eyes, holding the boy tightly in the cradle of her left arm. “Oh, Seamus,” she whispered in a puff of frost, “I’ve feared more in the last three months than I think I’ve ever feared in my whole life.”
He looked down at her, love filling his heart all over again. “Feared what, Samantha? Feared that I would not return?”
She blinked, clearing her eyes as she smiled with those beautiful teeth of hers. “No, you silly goose—I feared most that if you did not come back to us, your son would go through life without a name of his own!”
“You wouldn’t have named him on your own … if I hadn’t come back to you both?”
“Yes,” she admitted, finally. “I suppose I would have—eventually. When I could at last pull all the pieces of my shattered soul back together … I would have named this boy after his father.”
“His … h-his father?”
Samantha stopped him, gazing up into her husband’s face. “Yes, named our son after the bravest, most gentle and selfless father a child could ever have.”
Afterword
Ah, the very stuff of history oft makes for some interesting speculation!
Crook and Miles did not enjoy a mutual respect during their years serving the Army of the West. Simmering animosities begun during this year of war on the northern plains would later boil to the surface during the final Apache campaigns in the southwest when Crook (who had experienced much success during the earlier Apache wars) was eventually “nudged” aside and Miles assigned to replace him.
At the time of this Great Sioux War there was clearly no affection shared between these two great military figures. If they communicated at all, they would have done so through normal military channels, which would have taken an excruciatingly long time. Today we realize just how little one column knew of the disposition of another column back then: their whereabouts, their contact with the roaming warrior bands, the status of their logistical lines of supply.
Back in 1876-77 great distances across the trackless and “wireless” wilderness dictated that Crook operate from the south not knowing what Miles was doing along the Yellowstone. And it meant that Miles continued to operate as he always had: wary of superiors Crook and Terry; seeking to better his own position with Sheridan and Sherman by accomplishing against the Sioux and Cheyenne what Crook had consistently failed to do; and in the end putting all his energies into earning his general’s star.
From my reading of the two men, from giving so much thought to who they were down under their uniforms, and ultimately from trying to walk around in their boots as much as I can on the ground where these professional soldiers plied their deadly trade … if any overture had been attempted between the two armies, I’d put money on its having been Crook trying to get word to Miles.
Completely out of touch on the Belle Fourche in the Black Hills country, knowing that the Crazy Horse camps lay not all that far to the northwest, realizing that just beyond that dangerous country lay the Yellowstone and the mouth of the Tongue, where Miles might well be doing all he could to keep Sitting Bull from joining back up with Crazy Horse—it’s simply not that great a leap of imagination to conceive of George Crook attempting to courier some dispatches to Colonel Miles.
After all, you have to consider what the alternative would have been: sending a rider south to Reno Cantonment, beyond to Fetterman; from there the message could be wired to Laramie, then along the Platte until the electronic impulses in that simple wire reached a point back east, where
George Crook’s questions could start north toward Chicago; from there they would travel across Phil Sheridan’s desk, on to Minneapolis, where Alfred Terry would have his look at them prior to forwarding Crook’s dispatches through a few more miles of telegraph to Fort Abraham Lincoln, and from there they would all rely on a network of overland, horse-mounted couriers because there was simply no paddle-wheel traffic on the upper rivers at that season!
Racing across the upper tier of territories just below the Canadian border, the army couriers might—and I emphasize might—reach Tongue River Cantonment with their leather envelope, barring attack by roving hostiles, a horse breaking a leg and putting a courier afoot, countless flooded or ice-bound rivers, or any of a dozen other reasons that would delay or prevent a rider from reaching the theater of operations against the Northern Sioux.
If any such attempt was made, I believe the smart money would have been on a rider making it from the Belle Fourche region across the Powder River country to the mouth of the Tongue. Look at your regional map in the front of the book. Trace a finger across the route I’ve just described. Then look at a map of the U.S. and trace another route from Minneapolis to Bismarck, on across Dakota Territory to Tongue River Cantonment. If Crook had wanted to find out what campaign Miles was pursuing in those weeks prior to Christmas when he was being forced to disband his own campaign due to supply problems, wouldn’t Crook have gotten himself a volunteer?
Was Miles the sort who would have sent a courier off to communicate with Crook? I don’t think so—not as jealous and thin-skinned as he was.
From the military record we know for a fact that Crook and Mackenzie sent out Lakota scouts (who had been invaluable during the Dull Knife campaign) from the Belle Fourche to the Little Powder, from there down to the Powder to look for any sign of the Crazy Horse village that continued to elude Crook in this most frustrating year of fight-and-chase-and-wait-for-resupply. From that point it wouldn’t take a horseman much more than a week to complete the trip across that frozen winter wilderness. Just how much of a frozen wilderness it is in the winter … well, you’ll have to come up here and see for yourself. That is, if you truly want to experience what these plainsmen, soldiers, and roaming villages endured that winter of record.
Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877 tp-12 Page 43