Climb the Wind: A Journey Into Another Past

by Pamela Sargent

  “I don’t believe it myself,” Finerty said. “Sheridan’s in a brig somewhere in the Washington Naval Yards, according to one of my sources. Even if he isn’t, they must have him locked up somewhere—they’re just using his name to hold the army together.”

  “I want you to get out West and find out what the hell General Crook is up to.”

  Finerty smiled. “I was about to ask for that particular assignment myself.”

  “And don’t cool your heels in Chicago too long,” Snowden said. “You won’t be the only correspondent heading for Fort Laramie.”

  “Fort Laramie?” Finerty asked.

  “Crook’s moved his headquarters there, and Colonel Jeremiah Clarke of Fort Leavenworth is on his way there, too. It might mean war; it might mean Crook intends to break the treaty and present the council with a fait accompli.” Snowden threw a copy of the Chicago Tribune across his desk.

  Finerty picked up the paper and saw that this edition of the Tribune had been published two days ago. He also saw that the byline on the lead was that of R. B. Davenport. Reuben Briggs Davenport wrote for the New York Herald, but apparently was now sending dispatches to the Tribune as well. Davenport had left St. Paul with Brigadier General Alfred Terry, the Commander of the Department of Dakota, and several battalions of infantry and cavalry to meet with General Crook in Fort Laramie.

  “I’ll be on my way before tomorrow morning,’’ Finerty said. The knowledge that his competitor Davenport was already hastening toward Laramie would give wings to his feet.

  Lemuel still dreamed of Katia. Her spirit came into his soul at night, while he slept, and spoke of what he would have to do.

  You cannot stop the war now, she whispered to him, you can only help the Lakota to win it. It will not be enough to have only a new treaty, my people will need a great victory if they are to be safe from the Wasichu.

  Even when he was awake, he sometimes heard her whispering to him. He could hear it now as he slapped water on his face. He was sharing Jeremiah Clarke’s quarters in Fort Laramie; the colonel had given him a major’s uniform and insignia.

  Clarke had already left the barracks. Lemuel dressed quickly and went outside. Tents were pitched on the parade ground, and there were others outside the fort’s walls; there was not enough room in the barracks for all the men who were here.

  Jeremiah was talking to two other officers. He turned toward Lemuel and motioned to him. “Come on,” he said without preamble. “General Crook’s ready to see you now.”

  Lemuel followed the other man across the parade ground to the general’s headquarters. “Do you have any idea of what he’s thinking?” Lemuel asked.

  “None.”

  He had taken a risk by coming here with Jeremiah. Had he left Kansas quickly, he could have been at the camp of Touch-the-Clouds, ready to persuade him not to act rashly. But it would be better to go to the Lakota chiefs as an envoy from General Crook, if he could. There was still a good chance that Three Star Crook would not listen to him, Lemuel knew, and a fair chance that he might consider him a danger and order him placed him under arrest. If that happened, he would try to escape, and if he was shot down in the attempt—well, that would not matter. He would have done all that he could. He would be with Katia once more.

  He went into the room. Three Star Crook sat behind a long table with One Star Terry and several other officers. Lemuel wondered if the presence of those officers was a good sign or not.

  Crook looked up. Lemuel gazed into the general’s pale eyes as Jeremiah took a seat with the other officers.

  “We meet again, Rowland,” Crook said. “Colonel Clarke has told me that you were living in Elysium, Kansas, when it was attacked.”

  “I was staying there,” Lemuel replied. “I was living in Bismarck, but thought my old friend Colonel Clarke—” He swallowed. “My wife came with me to Elysium. She died in the massacre there.” He said those words quickly.

  “So Clarke has informed me. The survivors say that men wearing army uniforms carried out those atrocities.”

  “Perhaps they were United States soldiers, but I wonder about that,” Lemuel said. “If they were ordered to break the treaty, they could have found an Indian camp to attack. Or they could have settled for killing the Cheyenne and Lakota there and left everyone else alone. White people might have shed a few tears over the deaths of helpless Indians, but they wouldn’t now be forming militias and self-defense forces in the towns bordering the Lakota lands if Indians were the only ones who were slaughtered. If the Council of the United States had wanted to assure people in the West that they wished only to protect them from raids by secessionists, they made a tactical error. Settlers out here now have reason to fear Washington much more than to fear any rebel band, or the Indians, for that matter.”

  “I am inclined to agree with you,” Crook said, “but now I must concern myself with how best to protect the western territories and the states bordering them. The treaty has been broken, by the massacre of friendly Indians camped near Elysium, by the slaughter of the settlers there, and by recent hostilities in the Dakota territory, and the Sioux and Cheyenne might seek revenge for that. They may go after everybody, friendly and hostile whites alike. I must decide which presents the greatest danger to the people out here, the new regime in Washington or the Sioux and their allies.”

  Lemuel had not known about any fighting in Dakota. Had Touch-the-Clouds, or perhaps another chief, already gone on the warpath? If so, there might be little he could accomplish here.

  “Hadn’t heard about hostilities in Dakota,” Jeremiah Clarke muttered, saving Lemuel from having to ask about that.

  Crook glanced at Clarke. “A report came over the wire this morning. About forty troopers were seen riding out from Fort Lincoln by several residents of Bismarck from across the Missouri. At about the same time, a telegraph wire running from that town to an encampment of friendly Sioux was cut. When the troops didn’t return to the fort, Colonel Miles declared martial law in Bismarck, stationed soldiers around a workshop and some buildings belonging to an inventor who lives there, had the few Indians living in the town clapped in chains and jailed, and sent out some scouts. Obviously he’s expecting something to happen.” Crook paused. “A rider managed to get out of Bismarck and across the river and got as far as Deadwood. He killed his horse riding there and damned near killed himself. The message was sent to us from Deadwood.”

  Clarke seemed about to speak. Lemuel said, “General Crook, let me ride to Dakota.”

  Crook stared at him for a while in silence. “Why? Do you think you can keep the Sioux from going on the warpath?”

  “I can try,” Lemuel said. “I know Touch-the-Clouds. If he has already decided on war, he’ll be at Fort Abraham Lincoln with his warriors by the time I can get there, and there won’t be a thing I can do. But if he hasn’t—” He shifted his weight on his feet. “Sir, I am willing to ride to the Lakota and tell their chiefs that you gave no orders to break the treaty, and no orders to attack helpless people. The Lakota and their allies have kept the promises they made at Fort Fetterman four years ago. They will continue to keep them if the new government in Washington doesn’t make war against them.”

  “The government,” General Terry said softly. “Usurpers and traitors.”

  Crook narrowed his eyes. “Rowland, tell your Sioux comrades the following. If they will promise not to break the treaty, I will promise to do what I can to protect their territories. But if they decide to go to war, they will find me an implacable foe. If I hear nothing further from you before the end of July, I will assume that a state of war exists between the states and territories of the United States and the Lakota.”

  Lemuel nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Crook leaned forward. “Go. You have very little time.”

  “Virgil,” Jane Cannary said, “looks like we picked one hell of a time to ride to Bismarck.”

  Virgil Warrick reined in his horse and stood up in his stirrups. The two of them had stopped
at an Arikara camp near Killdeer Mountain two days ago, to hear stories of soldiers attacking an Indian camp. The Arikara chief did not seem to know much more than that, and so Jane and Virgil had continued east to the Missouri River and had followed it south.

  From the top of the steep hill where they had halted, Jane glimpsed Bismarck on the other side of the Missouri. On the eastern bank of the river, the rows of plain wooden buildings, the longer and larger structures of the Edison Laboratories and the Lakota Ironworks, and the ramshackle houses on the outskirts of Bismarck looked much as they had when Jane had last visited the town a year ago. South of her, in the distance, along the bluffs overlooking the river valley and Fort Abraham Lincoln, were the tepees and wickiups of well over a thousand Indians.

  “Shit,” Jane muttered.

  Virgil looked through the field glasses that hung from a leather cord around his neck. He had acquired the field glasses from a soldier the last time they had ridden to Bismarck, when Virgil had traded pelts for supplies and Jane had reacquainted herself with whiskey. The liquor had made her vomit afterwards and the tales that she had heard in the saloon had brought her to realize that she no longer had to hide from those who might accuse her of deserting Custer and the Seventh. Custer had decided to live among the Indians, some said; others claimed that he had been adopted by Sitting Bull as a son.

  Better for people to believe that, Jane thought, than to know the truth. No one in Bismarck had guessed who she was, and she had left it that way, but it had bothered her that Iron Butt Custer, that shameless self-promoter, had finally become the legend that he had always wanted to be.

  Virgil lowered his field glasses. “Almost three thousand,” he replied. “That’s my guess. Lakota, Cheyenne, some Crow—all of them men.”

  “A war party,” Jane said.

  “Surely do look that way, ‘cept the warriors ain’t got their war paint on yet, so they ain’t fighting just now.”

  War, she thought, and just when she had made up her mind that it was time to leave Virgil’s cabin and maybe head back to civilization for good. She had been trying to think of how to tell him that she was not going back to his place. During the winters and the long silences, the days that would pass without having to speak a single word to each other, they had become friends. Maybe it was the silences that had made them friends, the way each of them did what had to be done without having to say anything about it to the other. They had hunted together and patched the chinks between the logs of the cabin together and done a hundred other tasks without ever uttering a word, and gradually she had come to a kind of calming silence within herself.

  She had begun to grow restless again that spring. Now, looking at the Indian encampment above the fort, Jane began to think that she had not valued the peace that she had won for herself enough.

  Five braves were already riding toward them from the encampment. Jane rested one hand on her pommel. “Shit,” she said under her breath, then raised her arms, palms out, careful to keep them away from her holster.

  “By Godfrey,” Theodore Roosevelt said, showing his teeth, “a veritable multitude of red men has gathered near Fort Lincoln.”

  Lemuel glanced at the young man. He had ridden to Roosevelt’s cabin, to find him raging over the coup in Washington. Two hired hands Roosevelt had sent to Bismarck for supplies had returned to tell him what they had heard from the townsfolk. Lemuel had been certain that the other man would be sympathetic to his mission, but he had not been prepared for Roosevelt’s insistence that he become part of that mission.

  “We must hasten there at once,” Roosevelt added, squinting through his spectacles at the expanse of tepees and shelters.

  “They’re not yet ready to fight,” Lemuel said. “If they were, they would be doing their war dances by now, singing war songs and making medicine and putting on war paint.”

  Roosevelt turned his head toward him. The man looked faintly ridiculous in his perfectly tailored fringed buckskins and mutton chop whiskers; a mustache had begun to sprout on his upper lip. He seemed unsuited for this land, with his expensive holsters, buckles, and custom- made alligator boots, but he had pushed himself hard during their ride, setting a pace for himself and the men riding with him that had tested Lemuel’s endurance.

  “I never thought,” Roosevelt said then, “that I would find more sympathy within myself for red savages than for men who represent and serve our government.” The man had admitted freely to Lemuel that he had come West in the hope of establishing his own ranch, one that would someday be a profitable venture. Sooner or later, the redskins would be forced to bow to inevitable progress, and the railroad so long promised to this region would come, and those who were ready to take advantage of the resources this land offered would become rich. Young Roosevelt would not be the first to break the treaty, he would abide by the restrictions the agreement placed on his activities, but he was convinced that the unrestrained movement of people to the western territories could not be held back indefinitely.

  The recent coup in Washington had thrown chaos into the midst of his certainties.

  “They have turned us into mere subjects,’’ Roosevelt had muttered back at his cabin, obviously seething. “Those blackguards in Washington have taken a free people, a people who have freely chosen those who govern them, and made subjects of them. They have torn up our Constitution, they have taken our Republic and turned it into an autocracy.”

  Lemuel looked back at the ten hired hands of Roosevelt’s who had ridden there with them. They were a grizzled lot, much given to drinking and the filthiest of curses and mocking remarks about their boss Old Four Eyes in Roosevelt’s absence. But in his presence, they responded to him as enlisted men would to an officer.

  Roosevelt touched his horse’s neck lightly with the crop of his hand-tooled whip. They rode toward the Lakota camp.

  White Eagle rode out to meet the Orphan Rowland and to bring him to Touch-the-Clouds. Other men were with him, but Rowland would not have brought them here if they were enemies.

  “This is Theodore Roosevelt,” the Orphan said as he introduced the man with him. White Eagle stared at the strange-looking man who wore small glass windows on his face. “He has come here as a friend.”

  Rowland had spoken in English. “I am here as an observer,” the four-eyed man said. “Until I know the purpose of these Indians in being here, I cannot call myself a friend.”

  “We came here,” White Eagle said in the same tongue, “because the chief of the Blue Coats here, Bear Coat Miles, sent men to attack us. They rode against my camp.” He kept his gaze on Four Eyes Roosevelt. “They would have killed my young daughter, they would have killed my wife and her son, but the thunder spirits came to our aid and fought with us to defeat our enemy. They helped us kill the bastard sons of bitches.”

  Four Eyes shifted in his saddle. “I see,” he said in a voice that was light for a man’s. “The man is somewhat more expressive than I expected,” he murmured to the Orphan.

  “They came to kill us,” White Eagle continued, “and so we came here to find out why they cut our talking wire and broke the treaty and attacked my camp. If we do not like the answers—” He made a chopping motion with his hand.

  “I have to talk to Touch-the-Clouds,” Rowland said.

  “He wants to speak to you,” White Eagle replied. “I am to take you to him. These men must wait.” He gestured at Four Eyes and his comrades.

  Four Eyes Roosevelt sat up straight in his saddle. He did not look fearful, White Eagle thought, for a man who had to wear a glass mask in front of his eyes in order to see.

  Touch-the Clouds was by himself in his wickiup. White Eagle rode away with his comrades, leaving Lemuel alone with the chief. Lemuel had hoped that other chiefs would be there, men who might listen when he spoke of trying to keep the peace.

  Touch-the-Clouds sat in the shadows, facing the shelter’s opening, not moving, so still that he hardly seemed to be breathing. He wore only a breechcloth and leggings, but
his headdress and a pouch of war medicine and a red war pipe lay on a blanket near him, along with bowls of blue and white and yellow clay for war paint. He wanted to go to war, he was already on the warpath inside himself.

  “I have unhappy news,’’ Lemuel said in Lakota as he sat down in front of the other man.

  “Say it.”

  “The woman who was your wife, whom you gave to me, whom I came to love more than my own life, no longer lives.”

  “I know,” Touch-the-Clouds said.

  “You were told.”

  “No, I felt it. I saw it in a dream some days ago. I knew she was gone. I had her last message from the talking wire, spoken to me by a wire warrior, and when I heard it, I knew that those words would be her last words to me.” Touch-the-Clouds bowed his head for a moment. “I am sorry, Orphan.”

  “I loved her,” Lemuel said. “Blue Coats killed her, Blue Coats came to where she was and broke the treaty and murdered her. So maybe you will listen to me when I say that you must not make war against the Blue Coats now.”

  Touch-the-Clouds lifted his head.

  “I rode here with a message from Three Star Crook,” Lemuel continued. “This is his message. If the Lakota promise not to break the treaty, Crook promises to do what he can to protect your territories. But if you decide to go to war, he will fight you.” Lemuel paused. “And if he hears nothing from you before the end of the Moon of Red Cherries, he will assume that the United States and the Lakota are at war.”

  Touch-the-Clouds held up a hand, a sign to be silent. “White Eagle told me of what has happened in Washington,” he said softly. “President Blaine is dead, and the new Great Father is the Blue Coat McClellan. Does it matter to the Lakota which man sits in the White House? Does it matter to us if it is Sherman, Sheridan, or another man who is war chief of the Blue Coats? Sheridan would have come after us if the Great Father and others had not held him back. Sherman would have rejoiced to see all of us dead. The Wasichu would have broken the treaty sooner or later. Now that they have broken it, we must fight, or else they will keep taking what they want from us until there is nothing left.” His hands tightened into fists. “The Wasichu are weaker now. This is the time to strike at them, before they can decide how best to move against us.”