“Not long after we got back to Camp Robinson, Crook had himself an audience with the chiefs and other headmen,” Seamus said, speaking in a soft voice so that he would not wake the child who lay asleep in the crook of his father’s shoulder.
Samantha watched her husband step slowly across the tiny room, using what floor there was to pace back and forth as his son slept, nestled within his father’s arms while she sat propped up in the rope-and-tick bed, watching them both, her knees drawn up where she rested her chin.
From the moment Crook’s command had returned to Fort Laramie, Seamus had been with them both constantly, forgoing most of his nocturnal visits to the sutler’s saloon, choosing not to join the other scouts and soldiers in their noisy camaraderie in these last few days before embarking on Crook’s Powder River Expedition. Instead, to Sam it seemed that her husband hungered only for the companionship of his family across what hours and days were left him before Mackenzie’s Fourth would plunge north into the winter wilderness, the spear point of George Crook’s desperate last-chance campaign to find and capture Crazy Horse.
“Soon enough I’ll have only male voices around my ears,” he had tried to explain when she asked him why he hovered close, why he didn’t wander over to Collins’s saloon.
Again he had tried to explain the life of an army on the march: only the bray of mules and the snort of horses, the squeak of frozen saddle and the jingle of frosted bit—to touch, instead of loved ones, only the memories of these two most important people in his world, alone and trying desperately to keep himself warm with those memories as a second winter campaign swallowed him whole.*
“If Crook captured the Sioux chiefs,” Samantha began now as she watched him pace with the child, “why would he even bother to talk with them at all?”
Shifting the infant from his shoulder, Donegan laid his little son across his left arm and adjusted the tiny blanket around the boy’s head and face as he said, “What he had to say to that gathering of chiefs was most important, Sam. You see, Crook had the power—then and there, plain as paint before all the headmen and once-mighty warriors—to remove Red Cloud from his throne.”
“Red Cloud? You mean the same chief who commanded all those warriors you fought in that northern country ten years ago … the same chief who you told me drove the army out in sixty-eight? You’re telling me Crook’s made sure he is no longer chief of the Sioux?”
With a slight shrug Seamus nodded. “For all that it matters to the Injins staying close to their agency. Crook told them all he was determined to punish Red Cloud for running off from the reservation, for making his camp a place where warriors could come and go from the Powder River country. And then Crook capped the ball when he announced he was making Spotted Tail chief of all the Sioux.”
“Spotted Tail—isn’t he the one whose daughter died and is buried near this post?”
“The same chief,” Donegan answered. “Long ago, as his daughter was dying, she made him promise her two things: that he would place her scaffold near the white man’s Laramie fort, and that he would remain faithful to the white man’s wishes. Spotted Tail never broke the promise he made to her.”
“What of the other bands you say have been restless at the agency?”
“The Cheyenne and the Arapaho sat in on the conference with Crook. The general figured it would help to impress upon them his power to punish, as well as his power to reward. Crook finished his council by telling the bands what he expected of them from here on out.”
“I imagine he demanded they all stay at home and become farmers,” Sam replied with a sneer, then winked at her husband when he went to scowling at her. “Really, Seamus—I can no more see any of those redskins digging at the ground than I can see you living the rest of your natural years as a sodbuster.”
Finally he grinned at her, then turned at the corner of the room and started back toward the bed with slow steps as he gently rocked the sleeping infant troubled this evening with another bout of colic. “Crook told the chiefs that the government was feeding their people, putting clothes on their backs—so the government and its army was damn well entitled to the tribes’ loyalties. But what’s the government got for all the flour and rifles, bacon and bullets? I’ll tell you: Sioux warriors and all the rest have been acting like murderers and thieves off the reservation, then fleeing back to take refuge on the agency. Now it was time, Crook told them, to show their friendship with more than empty words. From now on the chiefs are going to be held accountable for the actions of their young men.”
“Sounds like Crook enjoyed playing the part of a stern father to them.”
Seamus smiled. “I damn well know he relished the role—telling the chiefs and headmen that if they did not toe the line this time, they would soon rue the day they acted so foolishly. He told them that if they all came in and began their lives as stock raisers, their troubles would end at once.”
“But what of the others you’ve told me about, Seamus?” she asked. “The ones like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull? The ones who have never come in?”
“Crook told the chiefs he was going after the last of the hostiles, those holdouts still roaming the wild country. He vowed the army would find them and drive them in.”
“And those they can’t drive in?” she asked dolefully.
“Yes,” he nodded, gazing down at his son. “Crook told those chiefs that the army would wipe out all those who failed to come in. And he said he would do it with the help of the young men he had just rounded up and brought back to the agency. That’s when Crook made it plain he was counting on the chiefs to convince their warriors to become scouts for him in the coming campaign.”
“When you got back, I remember your saying Crook would be taking hundreds of mercenaries north with the column to help him find the hostiles still with Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.”
“From Spotted Tail’s and Little Wound’s bands Crook has enlisted a small army of Sioux and Cheyenne who will be going after their own kind,” Donegan replied with a doleful wag of his head. “Hard to believe that so many would volunteer to hunt down their own kind still out there in the wild country … especially two of the warriors we captured from American Horse’s village at Slim Buttes in September.* But they were the first to sign up.”
“There’ll be some good come of them going along, Seamus,” she said quietly. “Of that I’m certain.”
He gazed down into the red face of that sleeping infant, saying, “I certainly hope so, love.”
“All the good we do will one day be victorious,” Sam explained, hopeful his coming and going would one day be at an end. “At long last we are finally treating the friendly Indians better than we have cajoled and coddled the stubborn ones who mean us no goodwill.”
“Ah, how right you are, pretty one!” he answered. “Too long the agents have been cowed by the belligerent chiefs and haughty warriors, trying to win over the hostiles with gifts and pleadings, while the agency bands have been neglected as they come close to starving, given only thin blankets with the arrival of every winter.”
“What did Crook have done with all those ponies Mackenzie captured?”
“The North brothers and their Pawnee are bringing them over—likely should get here tomorrow. The stronger ones the quartermaster will turn into remounts for the campaign.”
“I pray to God you won’t have to eat another horse as long as you’re with Crook’s army.”
“My pretty—somewhere south of Slim Buttes, I vowed I’d only sit on a horse from now on—swearing on my mother’s grave that I’d never again take a bite out of one!”
She laughed softly in that way of hers that made his heart leap an extra beat, ever since that first night he had laid eyes on her down in the panhandle of Texas. Looking down at the infant now, he saw so much of the boy’s mother in the child’s face—the kindness, the openness to expressing a wide tapestry of emotions, a ruddy glow that could come only from an earnest spirit.
Seamus continued, “Afte
r seeing to the quartermaster’s needs, Crook will give the scouts their pick of the rest. And what’s left will be sold on the market for what they’ll bring.”
“You said they were all a pretty sorry lot.”
“Aye, Sam—they’ve already had a tough go of it this fall—and the real weather hasn’t even poked its head over the hills to the north.”
“And the guns? What about all the weapons Mackenzie’s men took from the Sioux?”
“They’ve been put under lock in a warehouse at Camp Robinson. Crook’s not sure yet what he’ll do with all the guns: whether he’ll come up with a value for them and pay the Indians, or give them back to the Indians who prove they can remain our allies against the hostiles in the Powder River country.”
She pulled the blankets up under her chin. “Weapons were taken from all the tribes?”
“No. Red Cloud’s Bad Face band was surprised to find out that the Arapahos and the Cut-off Sioux of Spotted Tail were allowed to keep their guns.”
“It wasn’t the first surprise Crook’s given them,” Sam added. “And I sure hope it won’t be the last.”
“Listen to you,” Seamus marveled. “Talking just like a soldier’s wife.”
“Well, I am, aren’t I?”
He grinned at her. “I suppose you are at that, Sam.” Then his eyes came back to rest on the infant cradled across his left arm as Samantha struck a lucifer and lit the solitary oil lamp in the darkening room as twilight began to fade. “The more I’ve thought about things ever since riding with Mackenzie into those camps, I find myself in agreement with what Crook wrote to Sheridan after he had his meeting with the chiefs at Camp Robinson.”
“What did the general say to Sheridan?”
“That old Red Beard said he feels that Mackenzie’s success is the first gleam of daylight we have had in this whole business. So now we must get about the matter of putting to rest what’s left of the hostile bands.”
Disarming the Indians at
Standing Rock.
THE INDIANS
Latest from Standing Rock.
ST. PAUL, October 26.—The Pioneer Press has a special from Bismarck which says: “General Terry was still at Standing Rock last evening. He had succeeded in disarming and gathering in the ponies of all the Indians at the agency, but he believed the Indians have most of their arms, as they had a day’s warning and only about two hundred stands have been found, including shot guns and revolvers. A large number of ponies will yet be brought in and about six hundred have already been surrendered. The Indians seem to take kindly to the removal as they come to understand it, but some were at first disposed to resist. General Terry informed them that the property would be sold and the proceeds invested in cattle and such things as would be most useful for them. None outside of General Terry and those immediately connected with him have any idea as to where he will go next, whether to Cheyenne or to strike the hostiles.
* * *
Now that the government had stolen back the Black Hills, all that remained undone was this nasty business of trespassers.
There were those back east and among the political pundits who said all that was needed was a campaign to herd the winter roamers back onto their shrinking reservations. At the same time, there was also a hue and cry that what was still needed most of all was a crushing defeat for the enemy—a loss so devastating that the hostile bands would have no choice but to return to their agencies in abject humiliation. After Powder River, after the Rosebud, and especially after the burning ignominy of the Little Bighorn, what many in the army wanted most of all as October waned was to whip the enemy holdouts—whip them soundly, whip them once and for all.
The summer campaign that hadn’t fizzled out until autumn was underway had been decidedly indecisive. Although the winter roamers had been hit and their confidence wounded, nonetheless Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the other holdouts remained free and unpunished. There had been but one solution when Sheridan called Crook and Mackenzie to Laramie in September: a winter campaign. Once again the army would attempt to fashion the cold into an ally.
So it was that upon his return to Fort Laramie, George Crook went about putting the finishing touches to prepare for what he was now calling the Powder River Expedition. For the most part, the trials of 1876 had all but used up the forces of the Second, Third, and Fifth cavalries. In their place the general now outfitted six troops of Mackenzie’s Fourth. With new mounts and a healthy sprinkling of fresh recruits popularly known in the press as “Custer’s Avengers,” Crook also called into service four companies of the Third and Fifth—a total of 28 officers and 790 horse soldiers.
Colonel Richard I. Dodge was placed in charge of 33 officers over some 646 infantry and artillery troops (who would be fighting as riflemen). Tom Moore and 65 packers would once more lead their famous pack train north, again attempting to keep tight rein on more than 400 obstinate mules, which would carry the cavalry’s supplies once Mackenzie cut loose from the main column for the attack. In addition, more than 200 teamsters were in charge of a train of 7 ambulances and 168 wagons, which would transport the column’s supplies north to the Reno Cantonment on the Powder River. From there Crook planned on striking out, swift and hard, once his scouts learned the whereabouts of Crazy Horse.
This time into the field the old Red Beard would utilize mercenaries from six tribes: 48 Pawnee riding under the North brothers; 151 Sioux, some 90 Cheyenne, and Arapaho, all of whom had joined up after the Red Cloud confiscation; and in the last month Crook had sent a wire to the Wind River Reservation hoping to again convince chief Washakie to send his Shoshone and allied Bannock warriors. In just the last week word telegraphed from Camp Brown assured Crook that Tom Cosgrove and his eager warriors would meet the column on the march.
Besides, Crook had already dispatched Captain George M. “Black Jack” Randall north along the west side of the Big Horn Mountains to again convince the Crow they should enlist in the army’s struggle. Reports had it that the tribe would be sending two hundred of their best warriors to rendezvous with the expedition at or near the Reno Cantonment, if not by the time Crook reached Pumpkin Buttes.
In all, there would soon be nearly twenty-two hundred men marching north to stalk Crazy Horse.
“You’ve no business bringing him out into this cold,” Seamus scolded Samantha, halting her at the bottom landing there at the front door of Old Bedlam. Outside on the parade, all was a ruckus of men and horses, wagons and mules. “I can say my farewells to you both right here—inside, where it isn’t so bloody cold.”
She looked up at his face with those eyes of hers and said, “If this truly is a son of yours, Seamus Donegan, then he’d best be getting used to this unearthly cold right here and now.”
For a moment he studied the fiery intensity in her big, bold eyes and decided he was not about to talk her out of venturing onto the porch or the parade with the rest of the wives. “All right, then—cover him up best you can. The wind’s kicked up this morning, Sam.” Then, as she pulled the layers of swaddling and blankets over the infant’s face, Seamus tugged at her shawl, bringing the long folds up on her head, tucking it all beneath her chin in a fat knot.
“There, now,” she whispered up to him, her cheeks already rouged with the cold blustering in through the open door, “don’t we two look a sight?”
“Never been a prettier mother.”
“Perhaps your own, Seamus,” she replied quietly as she took his elbow, the babe cradled across her right arm.
He stopped just outside the doorway as officers barked their commands, sergeants bawled out their orders, mules brayed, and horses strained at their wagon hitches, rattling trace chains with the strident squeak of cold axles and hubs.
“Prepare to mount!”
Gazing down into her face, he felt his eyes begin to mist. “My mother would have loved to meet you, Samantha Donegan.”
Gazing at the carefully wrapped child, Sam said, “And to hold her grandson too.”
Sw
iftly he brought her into him, yet gently, ever so gently, as he clutched them both to his bosom, the babe there between them, sheltered in their warmth from the wind and the brutal cold, sensing the tears spill down his cheeks.
“Mount!”
Cherishing this last moment between them, the last time he might hold these precious pieces of his heart for weeks to come. No more than a few weeks, he had promised her in the last days together—pained each time he remembered just how often he had been forced to break that very same vow.
Stirrups groaned as weight came down upon them. Saddles squeaked and horses snorted. The entire parade a fog of cold frost.
“You must go,” she whispered, her voice muffled against the bulk of his blanket and canvas coat.
Blinking his eyes, Seamus looked over the parade, seeing how Dodge already had his infantry well away on their march, followed by the artillery caissons and all those wagons rumbling two by two down to the big iron bridge that would carry them across the North Platte. Only now were the cavalry wheeling about into column, company, by company, by company. Always were they the last in the line of march, and the first into the action. By the luck of the march, horse soldiers were the ones chosen to eat every other man’s dust—and the first thrown against the enemy, the first to spill their blood.
Somewhere miles ahead already were Crook and his headquarters group, likely following the North brothers and their Pawnee trackers. It suited Seamus just fine that he would ride back here with Mackenzie’s Fourth and the rest of the scouts, most of them Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, some of whom were beating on hand drums, all singing in their own tongue to the cold dawn sky.
A Cold Day in Hell Page 19