Seamus watched Crook glance at Mackenzie, then the map, and finally back to look at the Irishman.
“I have been forced to change my plans, don’t you see? With no supplies for me to continue my march into the lower Powder country after the Crazy Horse hostiles—I am compelled to alter my thinking.”
“Can’t you just send out your scouts from here?”
Mackenzie answered, “We can. And we will, Donegan.”
“You’re … no,” and he suddenly saw it as clear as a summer day, causing the hair to stir on the back of his neck, “… you’re not figuring on me going with them scouts, are you? Them Lakota and Cheyenne?”
Crook said, “That’s precisely what I’ve brought you here to propose.”
“But—what about Frank? Grouard’s been in that country. And he knows how to talk Lakota with them scouts.”
“That’s right,” Crook replied quietly. “I could send Frank Grouard—but he won’t be going north, because he’s going to carry some dispatches for me to the Black Hills communities.”
Seamus said, “It seems like you oughtta send Frank out with the scouts, and me to the Black Hills.”
Again Crook looked at Mackenzie before saying, “It’s not just the fact of going out with the scouts, Mr. Donegan. There’s … something more.”
“More?”
“Some … task for which the army will pay a man handsomely. Should he decide to undertake the risk.”
“What risk?”
Mackenzie stepped up, saying, “Bluntly speaking: there will come a time when you will leave behind the Cheyenne and Sioux scouts.”
“L-leave ’em behind?” Then, with his sense of peril really itching, Seamus asked, “Just where in bloody hell would I be going to leave ’em behind?”
“North of here,” Crook replied after a moment’s pause. “On your way to the Yellowstone.”
“Now, why in hell would I want to go back to that country for, says I?”
“Yes—I quite understand you’ve been there before,” Crook said. “We all were last summer. Well, I need you to carry some important messages for me.”
Donegan’s eyes narrowed again. “Messages. To the Yellowstone.”
Mackenzie and Crook nodded.
Donegan’s suspicions were all but confirmed. “To the Tongue River Cantonment?”
“That’s right,” Crook stated. “I wish to communicate with General Miles.”
“Miles is said to also have a supply depot at the mouth of Glendive Creek,” Mackenzie said, rubbing a fingertip at a thin inked line on the map that joined the Yellowstone east of the Tongue.
Seamus studied the faint and meandering inked-in rivers and streams a moment. “No, General. Seems to me that Glendive Creek’s too far east for a man to set his sights on going … at least if he’s coming from here on the Belle Fourche.”
Looking up, he caught Crook giving Mackenzie a knowledgeable nod, something that showed great self-satisfaction.
The son of a bitch thinks he’s got me, Seamus thought.
Then Donegan went on to explain, “Makes far more sense for a man to head down the Powder to its mouth. No more east than that.”
“Yes, yes, exactly,” Crook replied. “The Powder’s about halfway between Glendive depot and the mouth of the Tongue.”
“Then you’ll go?” Mackenzie asked.
“Wait a minute! I ain’t said nothing like that,” Donegan demurred, studying the map, all that unknown, dangerous country between here and there. “How far you figure the scouts will go with me?”
Shrugging, Crook said, “Perhaps as far as the mouth of the Little Powder, Mr. Donegan.”
“I see,” he considered, staring at the convergence of those two lines on the map—the thrill of it beginning to rise from the soles of his feet with the tingle of genuine danger. He looked up at them steadily. “Why me?”
Crook glanced away from Mackenzie, to the map, then into the Irishman’s eyes. “The honest truth of it is that I thought you would want the money.”
It almost made him bristle, to have these men think he could be bought. Instead, he asked, “Why did you figure that?”
Crook answered, “Because … because of your new family, Mr. Donegan.”
“That’s why I recommended you,” Mackenzie said joyfully. “I told the general about your new son—how devoted a family man you are … and I thought—”
“So what is it you’ll pay a fool for riding out on a fool’s errand?”
With the smile of a man who had hooked his catch, Crook said, “I’ve figured out how many days it might take you to get there and back—”
“You better be figuring on me taking twice as long.”
“But even if you moved only at night—”
Seamus interrupted Crook. “How much, General?”
Crook swallowed, stroking his long beard. “A hundred dollars.”
“What?” he snorted, almost ready to laugh. “A hundred dollars is what you brought me here to offer? Wanting me to ride alone into that country and risk my hair for a hundred dollars!”
The commanding general straightened as if stung. “Then tell me—what is the journey worth to you?”
“Nothing is worth getting myself killed for,” he said all too quietly, suddenly souring on the idea that had lit a spark in him.
Mackenzie asked, “Not even the chance to provide well for your wife and newborn son?”
“If I ain’t alive to ever see ’em again …” Seamus muttered, then began to consider an option.
“Two hundred dollars,” Crook suddenly blurted in that silence. “I can offer no more than that.”
For a long moment Donegan closed his eyes, conjuring up in his mind the images he had carried with him of Samantha, and the boy he was still to name. Knowing he had brought her here to this wild north country from the Staked Plain of Texas in hopes of reaching the goldfields of Montana Territory—there to strike it rich, all the better to provide for her. And now there were two relying on him.
He licked his lips as he opened his eyes, staring down at the map that told a man too damned little about that country where roamed the wild hostile tribes. All there were across that expanse were far too few inked lines: river courses, a few streams. Nothing else of any use.
Donegan looked the general squarely in the eye. “You’ll pay me two hundred dollars?”
“I said that, yes,” Crook replied, a bit anxious. He laid his two palms down on the map, rocking forward slightly.
Mackenzie stepped closer to lay a hand on Donegan’s shoulder. “My old friend, will you go?”
For a moment he stared deep into the colonel’s eyes. Over the last two weeks he himself had seen in those eyes, on Mackenzie’s face, the first flickers of madness, the first tattered shreds of severe depression; then as quickly he had watched those eyes clear of imbalance as the man suddenly became as lucid as any man could claim to be.
“I will go—”
“Good!” Crook exclaimed exuberantly, starting to reach for a small stack of foolscap.
“Wait,” Donegan cautioned. “I’ll go on two conditions.”
“What are they?” Mackenzie inquired.
“The first is that you pay me the two hundred dollars before I begin my ride.”
Mackenzie turned to Crook, asking, “Is that possible, General?”
Finally Crook nodded. “Anything is possible. Yes, Mr. Donegan—I can have that arranged. But why would you want to carry that much—”
“That’s the second condition,” Seamus interrupted.
“Yes?” Mackenzie asked, more curious than ever before.
“I’m not going to carry that money on me,” Donegan replied. “I want you to issue my pay to me, but see that it is sent with your next courier to Fetterman, and on down to Laramie.”
It was Mackenzie who asked, “To your wife?”
“No,” he answered. “Not yet. Send it to Colonel Townsend—with my instructions that he is to hold it in secrecy for Samantha
… to guard it safely until I send him word upon my return to this outfit that he can turn it over to my wife … or …”
“Or?” Crook asked.
“Or … Colonel Townsend can give it to my wife and son … when he informs them that I’ve been killed in the line of duty.”
Epilogue
Big Freezing Moon 1876
THE INDIANS
Spotted Tail and His Band.
ST. JOSEPH, December 2.—Spotted Tail, now chief of the Sioux nation, and the ninety-six Sioux braves sent to examine the Indian territory, with a view to the removal of the Sioux nation there, passed through the city this afternoon homeward bound in charge of Col. A. G. Boone and Dr. J. W. Daniels, of the Sioux commission, and disbursing agent Major Howard. They have been five weeks from home. The St. Joe Herald’s interview say the delegation took wagons at Wichita, 424 miles through the territory, to Muskogee, on the M.K.&T. road, driving twenty-five days. At Ockmulgee two chiefs of the Creek nation made speeches, and Spotted Tail replied. The Indians say nothing, being under bonds to those at home to say nothing until their return. The commissioners say they see the Indians are pleased with the country, and think, if the right men are sent to treat with them, the whole of the Spotted Tail and Red Cloud agencies, 2,000 in number, will move to the territory without trouble in the spring. The Indians liked their trip.
After meeting up with Wooden Leg’s group of hunters, the People crossed the Tongue River* and continued down the low ocher benches along the east bank to the mouth of Otter Creek, where they made their cold camp that night.
As the sun came up the following day, Morning Star had the scouts lead the people north by east along Otter Creek into the rising hill country. Sleep and walk. Sleep and walk again. Day after terribly cold day.
Upon reaching the forks of Otter Creek the scouts took the weary, hungry people over the low divide to Box Elder Creek.† It was on this day that the weather turned milder than it had been in a long, long time. For many days now Wolf Tooth had been wearing his frozen coat. Ever since the time when the People had emerged from the mountains and the young hunters had killed the first buffalo, Wolf Tooth had been wearing what he had cut from the soft underbelly of the cow’s hide. Slashing a hole for his head, he had draped the green hide over his naked body to stay warm. But long ago the cold air froze the skin solid, so stiff Wolf Tooth could not get himself out of the hide. Not until today—when at last the temperature rose enough that, with the help of two friends, the old warrior could struggle out of his heavy, icy prison.
At long last, eleven suns after the fight with the pony soldiers and their Indians, the advance scouts came galloping back, yipping in excitement, to the head of the march where Morning Star, Little Wolf, and the other chiefs came to a stop, new snow nearly reaching their knees.
“What is it?” Morning Star demanded of the three excited young men who came skidding to a halt nearby.
“Have you seen more soldiers?” Little Wolf asked. “No!” one of the young scouts answered joyfully. “There! Beyond that hill! We have seen the Crazy Horse people!”
As word shot back through the cold stragglers, the old men began to sing once more the strong-heart songs, and the women trilled their tongues in joy. Once more Ma-heo-o had delivered His People from the hand of disaster.
Hurrying to the crest of that low hill where he could smell woodsmoke, Morning Star peered down, his limbs stiff and wooden with cold. Below, along a bend on the east side of Beaver
Creek, among the leafless cottonwoods where they would be sheltered from much of the winter’s cruel wind, sat the lodges—smoke rising from their crowns of poles. Already there were a handful of young Oglalla warriors and sentries headed their way through the deep snow, and dark, antlike forms of the Lakota people emerged from their lodges below, coming out to see what had caused all the excitement among the camp guards.
“Come, Morning Star,” Little Wolf said quietly as he came alongside, tugging on his old friend’s elbow. “Let us go tell Crazy Horse that the ve-ho-e soldiers have attacked us again.”
For the longest time that afternoon the Tse-Tsehese leaders sat with Crazy Horse and the other Hunkpatila headmen, discussing Three Stars’s attack on their Red Fork village—talking over the why, and considering just what the Oglalla could do for their close cousins, the Ohmeseheso. Just as the two bands had done last winter in the cold moons before deciding to go in search of Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa.
But this time there was a different sound in the throat of Crazy Horse. This time he did not speak with the same voice as he had when the pony soldiers had attacked Old Bear’s village beside the Powder last winter.
This time there was a hardness on the face of Crazy Horse. Nothing soft in the eyes of the Oglalla war chief.
“We have little,” the Lakota leader explained icily to his people as well as the Tse-Tsehese. “After the soldiers chased us from camp to camp to camp since summer—forcing us to keep moving all the time—we do not have many hides to give you to replace your lodges. And we do not have enough meat to feed your people.”
For a long time Morning Star was stunned into silence. Then he finally asked, “What can you give us?”
Wagging his head coldly, Crazy Horse said, “I do not have enough to feed my own people and you as well.”
“What would you have us do?” Little Wolf asked angrily.
Drawing himself up, Crazy Horse said to his old comrades in war, “I will give you what my people can spare … for three days. But no more.”
“Where will we find Sitting Bull?” Morning Star inquired.
“Yes,” Little Wolf said, his face showing his cheer. “Sitting Bull will help us again. Tell us where we can find him!”
As the Oglalla leader’s eyes crimped into resolute slits, he replied, “Sitting Bull is no longer in this country.”
Morning Star asked, “Where can we find him?”
“You will not,” the Lakota mystic answered. “For he is long gone from here.”
“Where?” Little Wolf demanded sharply.
“North of the Elk River—and he is running away from the soldiers too … racing for the land of the Grandmother.”
THE INDIANS
General Crook’s Splendid Campaign.
BUFFALO SPRINGS, WYOMING, December 3.—General Crook’s whole force left Fort Reno this forenoon, his intention being to move down the Little Powder to its junction with the Powder, and there, forming a supply camp, operate against the hostiles as circumstances dictate. This point will be convenient for operations to Tongue River, Little Missouri or Bell Fourche. The latest information is that Sitting Bull has about 400 lodges and Crazy Horse about seventy, equivalent to a fighting force of 1,500 to 2,000. The command is rationed to about January 1st. Grouard, chief scout, is of the opinion that unless surprised the hostiles will not make a stand. The wounded of McKenzie’s fight leave here to-morrow for Fetterman. General Crook’s plan is to feed the Indians on powder.
Valley of the Belle Fourche
Wyoming Terr.
My Dearest Heart—
He got that much written on a small sheet of paper with the lead pencil he had borrowed from Bourke, then sat there in the darkness of that early morning. A Sunday. The tenth of December.
Outside the lieutenant’s tent a few men stirred, mess cooks mostly, those already building up the fires to boil coffee and beginning to wrassle up breakfast for the various companies. But for the most part the troopers and their horses were quiet in the cold of this last hour before sunrise.
It looks to be we’ll be here awhile. Crook’s waiting for supplies to come up from Fetterman. We were supposed to have them before now, but someone else ended up with them. So here the army sits. At least until the supplies come and Crook and Mackenzie can go off on the march again.
He sipped at the coffee going cold in the tin cup at his elbow, then flung the lukewarm dregs at the foot of the canvas tent flap where it would soon turn to ice.
How w
as he going to keep from telling her, without lying to her?
But there wasn’t a damn bit of good sense in telling her what he would soon be about, where he was going, and what he would be facing. No good sense at all. But, he reminded himself, how to keep from saying anything without it being less than the truth?
It promised to fair off this day. To warm above zero. And the wind had yet to come up. Perhaps it was a good omen, this day starting off so fair. They were about due, he thought. What with all those cold days in hell they’d suffered already.
Don’t fear that I’ll grow bored here, Sam. Crook and Mackenzie will see to that. They’ve got scouts going out in this direction or the other all the time. Coming and going. And they plan on having me out too. While we are waiting here for rations and grain for the horses, the generals want to know what the Indians are doing. Where Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are camped, or moving. So the Indian scouts are being sent north toward the Yellowstone, into the Powder River country. It’s there the Indian scouts say Crazy Horse and his warriors have gone.
In a matter of moments he would be mounting up with the Indian scouts and they would be pointing their noses a little west of north. As soon as he had wolfed down his breakfast, washing it all down with some more of that scalding coffee.
He could hear the sound of horses being brought close. It could be Three Bears and some of his men—the ones who would accompany him half the way to the Yellowstone. At least to the mouth of the Little Powder.
So at least I have something to do from day to day. Able to saddle up and ride out rather than hang about camp here with the soldiers, playing cards with no money, fighting, sleeping, and otherwise getting on one another’s backs. I’d rather be out on the back of a good, strong horse that doesn’t talk back. Where it’s quiet enough to hear my own thoughts.
Where I can think about you. And our boy.
A Cold Day in Hell Page 51