What use was there for men like them anymore?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Late August 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
KANSAS.
An Imposing Military Funeral at Fort Leavenworth.
LEAVENWORTH, KS., August 3.—Yesterday evening the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific brought the remains of Captains Yates and Custer, Lieuts. McIntosh, Smith, Calhoun and Worth. The bodies were placed in the Post chapel, and a guard of honor was stationed and remained during the night. This morning a large number of people visited the chapel and viewed the caskets containing the remains of the honored dead … The fact that the lamented dead had lived at this garrison and were well known and honored by our people created an intense feeling of sympathy among the entire community. Five of the bravest soldiers in the army have thus been tenderly placed in their final resting place in the beautiful Leavenworth cemetery with all the honors due to men of noble and daring deeds, and their memory will be cherished by every patriot in the land.
Seamus quietly slid his legs off the low pallet of blankets and buffalo robes, reached over to snag his boots, then slowly stood up. For a moment he gazed down at the two of them, sleeping on their tick stuffed thickly with tall, fragrant grass he had gathered up close to the white bluffs. Sighing with contentment, Donegan silently parted the canvas flaps and stepped out of the tent.
A few yards away he settled on an upturned chunk of cottonwood log and stuffed the cuffs of his britches into the tall stovepipe tops of his prairie boots. He stood, briefly looking over their little camp beside Soldier Creek, then straightened his hat, and started off for Benjamin S. Paddock’s saloon, located north of the laundress’s quarters and the post hospital, where his friend might well be ready for a drink.
“No, I can’t join you right now,” Valentine McGillycuddy said with a real measure of disappointment. “We’ve had us a batch of new ones come on sick call this afternoon.”
“You come over for a drink later?”
The doctor nodded. “Think I can slip away sometime, Seamus. Can’t say when it’ll be though.”
“No matter,” Donegan said. “If it ain’t today, I’ll buy you a drink tomorrow.”
McGillycuddy asked, “How’s Samantha?”
“A little stronger every day,” he said with relief. “Another couple of weeks and she thinks she’ll be strong enough to ride to Deadwood.”
Quickly glancing over his shoulder through the open doorway, McGillycuddy turned back to the Irishman and inquired, “She really going to let you put your hands to digging gold?”
“Fastest way I can see to getting a roof over this family’s heads.”
“Just remember they haven’t driven all the wild Sioux onto the reservation, Seamus.”
“Better them Injins … than tryin’ to drive the wild and thirsty Irish onto some dry and parched reservation, Doc!”
McGillycuddy winked, grinning as he moved away, stepping back through the open doorway, entering the ward where two hospital stewards were bathing soldiers’ faces down both sides of two long rows of tented beds.
Benjamin Paddock’s saloon was cool and shady that afternoon, and damn near empty too. Through the open doorway drifted voices of some officers’ wives discussing the colors of cloth and dress patterns with the trader from the store attached to the log saloon. Paddock had served as post sutler since January, a franchise for which he paid three cents per soldier per month. In turn he could take as much wood as he needed from the ricks of post timber brought in by the enlisted men. It was to the common soldier that he mostly dealt in whiskey, while he carried canned oysters and the latest fashions for the officers’ wives.
Donegan’s eyes adjusted to the shadows as he scanned the room, eventually finding only one thirsty soldier elbowed over his empty glass at a small, wobbly table. When Seamus stepped up to the unmanned plank bar to wait, the soldier spoke.
“Paddock told me he’d be comin’ right back,” he said without looking at the Irishman. “I told him to take his time with them ladies, for it didn’t matter none to me.”
He eyed the much-older man, figuring that he could easily have been a veteran before the War Between the States. But, for some reason, the soldier had climbed no higher in rank than a private. Donegan asked, “This late in the month, I’ll wager you already run outta your whiskey money.”
Finally raising his head to look Seamus in the eye, the soldier said, “Ain’t that. Seems I run outta whiskey.”
“We’ll have him here shortly,” Donegan promised.
“Don’t make no difference to me. Sutler can’t serve me nary a splash for ‘nother three hours.”
Taking a step closer to the soldier’s table, Seamus leaned an elbow on the bar and asked, “What’s with them three hours?”
“The general’s new rule for us soldiers,” he explained, looking back down into the last film of whiskey at the bottom of his cloudy glass. “Been less’n a week since the rule started, as I recollect now. General and his fine officers was havin’ too much a problem with us enlisted boys, so it seems.”
“You in the Fourteenth?”
The private nodded. “Footsoldier I am. F Company.”
“So the post commander got the right to say how much his men can drink?”
“And when we can drink too,” the soldier explained. “Only two drinks a day, an’ there must be three hours atween ’em.”
Seamus wagged his head. “Don’t seem right, not letting a sojur get good an’ drunk when there’s nothing else out here for him to do.”
“That’s a problem, least according to Bradley.”
“Br-Bradley?” Seamus repeated, that name touching a raw nerve.
“General. Post commander, that one,” the soldier declared.
“You know his first name?”
“Don’t think I ever heard it. He ain’t commander of the Fourteenth. Makes no goddamned anyway.… I’m just a footsoldier.”
“Got any idea where this Bradley come from?” Donegan inquired. “Where he served ten years ago?”
With a shake of his head, the old soldier ceremonially raised his cloudy glass and slowly licked at the last dribble of his precious whiskey with his tongue. Closing his eyes, he appeared to enjoy it immensely. When he opened them again, he set his glass upon the rocky table and stood, sweeping up his dusty kepi and plopping it down askew on top of his disheveled graying hair.
“No. Don’t know nothing but walking and shooting. I does some sentry duty. Don’t ever know nothing ‘bout the officers.”
“But you got a name, sojur,” Seamus said, holding out his hand.
For a brief moment the man stared down at the civilian’s big hand, then took it and began to shake. “William Gentles. Private: F Company, Fourteenth Infantry. Born County Tyrone. That’s in Ireland, I’ll have you know.”
He smiled hugely as they let go their grips. “By the by, I’m a lad born in County Kilkenny.”
“You don’t say!” He leaned close and whispered, “You ever serve you a hitch in this goddamned army?”
“Army of the Potomac,” Seamus said proudly. “Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah too.”
“You wasn’t footsoldier, eh?”
“Horse. Took almost two years—then I made my sergeant’s stripes.”
“Officers curse at me a lot,” Gentles admitted. “Maybe why I’m still a private an’ never got no higher in grade. Listen, friend—my fellows call me Willy.”
The tall Irishman said, “So Willy it’s gonna be. I’m Seamus Donegan.”
“I seen you around,” he stated, tugging his kepi down on his unruly hair, then sighed, “Time for me to find my bunk. Standing guard again come dark.”
“Sentry duty is about the worst duty a man can have.”
“Bradley has us stand four two-hour reliefs,” Gentles explained. “Most times I get my eight hours off to have a drink and crawl into my bunk for a nap before I stand another eight hours at one of the other sentry posts.”
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“Two eight-hour walks in a twenty-four-hour day?”
“Yup. It beats digging latrines.” His face went sad, a bit lonely too. “Beats getting hit with a lead ball. I took a wound at Pilot Knob in ‘sixty-two. That’s in Missouri. Damn if them Rebs didn’t give us hell.”
“When you come to Amerikay?”
Gentles’s eyes grew wistful as he said, “I was all of twenty-six, strong as a country ox. Back to ‘fifty-five that was. After I couldn’t find much work, I signed up—come west to serve in the Mormon War under Albert Sidney Johnston. Now there was a general could grind Bradley under his heel any day o’ the week.”
“Thought all of the Fourteenth was tranferred outta here.”
The old soldier’s face went sheepish as he began to explain, “I got in trouble with the whiskey, I did. Landed my arse in the guardhouse for twenty days of hard time.1 When I got out, my company was gone, pulled out, shipped back to Utah. So Bradley keeps me round to stand sentry duty—a lot of it at that guardhouse where I rotted for twenty days and twenty nights of stinkin’ hell.”
“So you been a sojur more’n twenty years now?”
The old man shrugged as he ran the back of his hand under his reddened nose. “It ain’t much, but it’s all I can do. The army, soldierin’… it’s what I am.”
Behind the old soldier at the open doorway Seamus spotted Frank Grouard trudging up on foot.
“Maybe next time I can buy you a drink, Willy.”
The soldier smiled and held out his hand to shake again. “I could tell you was a soldier once.”
“Horse.”
“Don’t make no matter to me,” Gentles replied with a grin. “Just had a notion you was a soldier once.”
He watched the two of them pass just outside the door. Gentles gave no greeting to the dark-skinned half-blood interpreter, and Grouard made no effort to address the soldier as he stopped just inside the doorjamb and looked about, letting his eyes become adjusted.
“Well, I’ll be damned, if it ain’t the Irishman I find squattin’ here in this whiskey hole!”
“C’mon over here, Frank—and help me hold this bar down till the trader gets here.”
“I’m coming right now, fellas,” Benjamin Paddock said as he hurried in from the store. “If it ain’t canned oysters for a captain’s wife, its a bolt of red material for a major’s wife. What can I do for you fellas?”
Seamus turned toward the sutler. “This new rule the post commander put on this place—it mean us civilians too?”
Paddock shook his head. “Naw. General Bradley issued those orders for his soldiers. Maybe gonna cut down some of the wild drinking they do soon as they get their pay. Causing trouble, raising hell, getting thrown in the guardhouse for it. Some of ’em having to stand extra guard duty or dig new latrines.”
That made Seamus shudder. He’d dug enough slip-trenches before in his time. Hands blistered and back aching, standing over a long hole scratched out of the ground, the stench so strong it made a man’s eyes water, slowly filling in the latrine one shovelful of dirt at a time.
“What’s it gonna be?”
He looked at Grouard and said, “My friend and I would like three fingers of your finest whiskey.”
“Finest?” Frank responded in surprise.
“I got hard money,” and Donegan patted the back pocket of his britches.
“Good whiskey it is,” Paddock said, bending down to work at a padlock he kept on a cupboard behind the bar.
For a moment longer Seamus stared at the sutler’s back; then he asked, “This Bradley, your post commander. You know his first name?”
“Luther,” the trader answered. “Why?”
The realization sent a shiver through him. “We met long time ago.”
“You serve under him in the war?” Grouard asked.
“No. We was both up in Montana Territory together. Ten years ago.”
Rising with a bottle in his hand, Paddock asked, “Where was that?”
“On the Bighorn. Post called C. F. Smith.”2
“That’s where you served under him?” Frank observed.
Wagging his head, Seamus said, “I was a civilian there. Haycutter. Bradley wasn’t my boss. That was a fella named Al Colvin. He’d been a Johnny Reb in the war.”
“Damn them southerners anyway,” Paddock growled, pulling the cork out of the bottle.
“Colvin was a good man, the sort I’d want to stand at my back anytime,” he argued. “As for Bradley—”
“Grouard!”
They both turned in surprise to find Lieutenant William P. Clark lunging through the open doorway, squinting as he left the bright sunlight behind.
“Looks like I won’t get to buy you that drink after all, Frank,” Seamus said as Grouard took a moment to peer longingly at his empty glass.
“Pour us,” Grouard ordered the trader, turning his back on the lieutenant.
“General Bradley needs you, Grouard,” Clark instructed as he stepped over to the bar, giving the Irishman a long appraisal.
“To translate during afternoon tea?”
Seamus heard the bottle clink against the rim of Grouard’s glass.
“No, dammit,” Clark growled. “I got He Dog to come in to talk. He’s broke off from Crazy Horse, so I’m gonna try to figure what’s really up with Crazy Horse these days.”
“He Dog?” Seamus asked as Paddock poured him some whiskey.
Frank explained, “He was the one I told you about winter before last. The reason I run off from the Oglala. Been best friends with Crazy Horse.”
“Not anymore. You coming, Grouard?” Clark demanded, standing there with his balled fists on his hips.
“Man can’t finish his whiskey?”
“Not when General Bradley’s got business with He Dog about these rumors Crazy Horse is about to break out,” Clark said snappishly.
“Mind if I come along?” Seamus suddenly asked.
Grouard turned to Clark, then said, “Don’t make me no mind. He can come, can’t he, Lieutenant?”
After appraising the tall civilian down and up, Clark said, “Just so you come now, Grouard.”
With that both of the civilians tossed back their whiskey and slammed their heavy-bottomed glasses on the plank counter, as Donegan scratched into his pocket for the coin.
“I couldn’t do that with the saddle varnish you serve us usual,” Grouard complained. “But that was some fine whiskey, Ben Paddock.” He turned to Seamus as he put on his wide-brimmed hat. “Thanks for a taste of what officers like Lieutenant Clark here get to swallow all the time.”
Through the trees and across the grass they followed the officer in a fast walk across the short distance that brought them to the post commander’s office. As they stepped onto the porch and through the open door, Donegan recognized Bradley immediately. Ten years older, and a bit paunchier too, but it was the same man who had nearly cost the lives of his quartermaster’s employees back in August of 1867. The officer glared at Grouard, but gave only a cursory glance at the tall Irishman, who slipped back to a corner where he could stand out of the way during this parley. There was only one Indian in the office. Dark-skinned, much more so than the one called Crazy Horse, Seamus decided. He could even smell the grease on the warrior’s braids, so close were they in this room.
As Grouard and Clark went to stand between Bradley and He Dog, Seamus noticed the warrior giving him a sidelong look of appraisal.
This had been Crazy Horse’s best friend. Chances were he had been in the same huge war party that pinned them down for a long summer day at the Crazy Woman Crossing back in ‘66. And a few months later, up on that snowy jut of land when the Sioux and Cheyenne massacred Fetterman and eighty brave men. Surely when Crazy Horse got his warriors to fight like disciplined cavalry against Major Royall’s retreating troops at the Rosebud. There was no doubt this He Dog had watched the fall of Custer’s five companies at the Little Bighorn, maybe even led part of the attack on Crook’s cavalry at
Slim Buttes later that summer. And the last time the two of them might have been close enough for Seamus to hit with a bullet could have been at Battle Butte, when Miles’s Fifth Infantry drove off Crazy Horse’s warriors into the teeth of a howling blizzard.
So this was the mighty He Dog.
It was plain to see just how uncomfortable the warrior and Grouard were at that moment, brought so close together after all the shadows of their tangled history were resurrected.
“Make sure he understands that I appreciate him coming to see me,” Bradley was saying. “Can’t be easy slipping away from Crazy Horse’s camp these days.”
Grouard waited for a reply, then said, “Says he don’t live in Crazy Horse’s camp now. When you called for a council, Crazy Horse didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to move like they was ordered to. But He Dog brought his people across the river to camp near Red Cloud—like the White Hat asked him to.”
“So He Dog and Crazy Horse aren’t friends anymore?” Clark asked.
“They’re still friends,” Grouard grumbled. “Shirt Wearers, he wanted me to remind you. But Crazy Horse decided to stay at his old camp, and He Dog decided he would give some talk a chance to work.”
“Talk?” Clark asked.
“He Dog figures talk is better than fighting.”
Bradley nodded, staring at the warrior’s eyes. “Does he know I was the soldier chief who gave Crazy Horse a fine knife in a sheath?”
“He knows of the knife. Crazy Horse wears it all the time now,” Grouard translated.
“Tell him I’ll give him one too,” Bradley offered coyly. “If he’s helpful to us.”
He Dog nodded when Grouard explained that to him in Sioux.
“So ask him my question,” Bradley instructed. “Since Crazy Horse did not obey the orders to move his camp closer to Red Cloud’s village, is it true what Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and many other chiefs fear—that Crazy Horse is planning to make a break off this reservation?”
They all waited while the words were translated into Sioux, then watched how He Dog’s eyes slowly moved to touch Bradley, then Clark, and finally he turned his head sideways to look at the civilian standing back in the corner of the office. Finally the warrior spoke.
Turn the Stars Upside Down: The Last Days and Tragic Death of Crazy Horse Page 21