Sioux Dawn: The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (The Plainsmen Series)

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Fool or no, I promised,” the swarthy rider replied. “Both of us.” Portugee Phillips flung his thumb at miner William Bailey, who busied himself wrapping burlap sacks round his legs before climbing back into the buffalo-fur leggings.

  “We promised the colonel we’d hand his letters to the Laramie commander,” Bailey added. “Personal.”

  Bundled back into their buffalo coats, Phillips and Bailey crawled onto their cold saddles, pointing their weary animals south once more.

  “It’s Christmas Eve, by god!” Friend shouted into the howling wind. “Stay … enjoy the warmth of what cheer I can offer.”

  Phillips waved, never hearing a word Friend flung into the cold. He had promised, after all. Portugee swore a private vow he could stay in the saddle the rest of this day. Until he reached Laramie.

  A few miles north of Horseshoe Station, Bailey had come up on Phillips. For a few minutes there, Portugee had convinced himself a Sioux warrior had been trailing him. From hiding he watched the plodding horseman hove into view, hunched over his saddle horn, frozen to the marrow.

  “Ho!” Phillips had hauled the big Kentucky thoroughbred from the thicket beside the road.

  Bailey jerked up, startled. Yanking back on the reins and nearly tumbling from the saddle. “Who the Sam Hill are you!”

  “Phillips,” he answered. “Who’re you?”

  “Portugee? That you?”

  “Yes. How you know my name?” he asked, searching for something familiar in the shadowed face hidden behind a muffler.

  “I’m Bailey. Bill Bailey, by god! Can’t believe it’s you!”

  “Colonel said you’d be coming down.”

  “Sent me out an hour after you galloped off. Wanted to make sure.”

  “Sure one of us got here,” Portugee echoed as he drew alongside Bailey, slapping the rider’s arm crusted with icy sleet. “C’mon, Bill. We’ll both make Laramie now.”

  “Horseshoe ain’t but a couple miles, Portugee.”

  “They got a key there?”

  “About all there is at Horseshoe. That, and a stove.”

  “Blessed Virgin Mary!” Portugee exclaimed, crossing himself. “Let’s drag our cold bones to Horseshoe!”

  Within the warmth of Friend’s telegraph shack the couriers had talked. Finding they both had ridden south along the Montana Road, yet never venturing onto the road itself. More important, both had survived by traveling only the long nighttime hours, hiding out the day. Come winter on the high plains, a man can eat up a lot of ground riding at night. Keeping a promise.

  Undeterred by Friend’s appeal, both riders pulled away from the telegraph station near Bridger’s Ferry at the North Platte Crossing. With one thought in mind. The same thought that had compelled them across 190 miles of Sioux-infested, blizzard-buried wasteland. To complete the job they had started.

  Portugee welcomed the fish-belly gray of twilight. By now it felt like liquid sand rolled beneath his eyelids. The day’s bright sun glaring off the wall-to-wall prairie white had tortured his eyes. They rolled in a thick, liquid fire.

  Sowbelly snow clouds scudded low out of the west just as darkness swallowed the land. A bright winter moon crawled into the southern horizon below the leaden clouds, beginning to cut its nightly trail across the sky just as snow began its white scurry across the trackless hills. The bottom went out of the thermometer, cold cutting a man to his marrow.

  “Can’t go no more,” Bailey moaned.

  “You must,” Phillips replied. “Wait! Look there! A light, yonder!”

  Bailey squinted against the swirl of buckshot snow. Afraid his eyes deceived him, or that this was some trick of Portugee’s, until he too saw the faint light flickering through the icy mist.

  “Who goes there!”

  Phillips sat straighter in the saddle. He had aimed the thoroughbred’s nose at that faint star of light for the last half hour. And now a dark form emerged from the snowy gloom. Portugee tried to speak. His lips mumbling, teeth chattering. His hands fumbling to say something.

  “Great ghosts, man!” The soldier flung his rifle aside, catching Bailey as he slid from the saddle. “Lieutenant! Goddammit, I need your help out here!”

  “What you screaming about——”

  Lt. Herman Haas leaped from the door to help drag William Bailey into their guard-post. “Get the other’n, Myers. This’un’s ’bout done for.”

  Back out in the blizzard, Myers tried pulling the second rider from his saddle. But Phillips yanked his arm away as best he could, mumbling into the wind. “C-C-Comm … mander.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  “I heard.” Haas stood at the door. “You come watch this one. He’s in a bad way. I’ll take that one up to see Palmer.”

  Without a protest from Phillips, Lieutenant Haas grabbed the thoroughbred’s frozen bridle, leading the horseman toward the lamp-lit buildings of Fort Laramie.

  “Look like you been through hell, friend,” Haas chattered back at the frozen statue on the saddle. “What’s your name? You hear me?”

  “Phillips.”

  “Damnation, Phillips. You’re a sight! Icicles hanging off your eyelashes and beard, by god! It’ll take a week of Sundays to thaw that snow from your coat!”

  “Commander.”

  “I heard you. Just keep your pants on, fella. That’s where I’m taking you right now. Old Bedlam. Having a Christmas Ball tonight. That is, everybody but Lieutenant Haas.”

  As the officer brought Phillips round the corner of the barracks, Portugee heard the first strains of gay music, saw the first bright smudges of yellow light pouring from the windows along the two-story company quarters. Ahead lay the gaily-decorated bachelor officers’ quarters—Old Bedlam.

  Haas tied the wheezing horse at the rail, gazing up at the rider. “Phillips, you said. Well, Phillips—you got any idea what time it is? Didn’t think so.”

  He struggled, pulling Phillips from the saddle where he had sat frozen for some eighteen hours. “It’s after eleven. Christmas night, by god. The rest of the boys better not’ve finished off the rum punch. I think there’s two of us gonna need some … for medicinal purposes, you understand! I figure you earned the first drink too.”

  Haas dragged Phillips up the steps, across the porch, then shoved open the door. Portugee immediately sensed the warmth, his frozen, half-lidded eyes blinking at the bright light. Tiny candles were pinned along the green boughs, festive red garlands draped around the room.

  “Haas!” an officer shouted. “I’ll have you on report for interrupting a full-dress garrison ball!”

  “Major,” Haas answered, struggling to keep Phillips on his feet. “We need to see the general.”

  “General Palmer?”

  “In the worst way, sir.”

  The major studied Phillips’s waxy, frostbitten face. “What the devil’s going on here?”

  “He won’t say. Only he’s got to see the commander.”

  “So?”

  “And one other thing, Major.”

  “Yes?”

  “He keeps repeating the word, ‘Kearny.’”

  The major nodded, turned and disappeared into the main parlor. Minutes later he had Haas lead the horseman into a small sitting room.

  After a warm drink, Phillips began to tell the story of his ride to Laramie’s commander. Then stuffed his hand beneath his three shirts. There, next to his skin, he had carried the narrow, leather envelope. From it, Gen. Innis N. Palmer pulled Carrington’s dispatches.

  After reading them beneath the light of an oil lamp, Palmer gazed at the other officers in the room. “By the saints! That garbled message we got from Horseshoe this morning is true. A massacre of over eighty men at Kearny!”

  “Any casualties among the Second, General?” inquired David Gordon, lieutenant in the 2nd Cavalry.

  “Afraid so,” Palmer answered. He looked back at the dark-skinned horseman huddled by the stove. The general knelt and stared into Phillips’s glassy eyes. “Even though I di
dn’t believe it at the time, I want you to know I forwarded the message you sent from Horseshoe, Mr. Phillips. Sent it on to Omaha myself.”

  “We all thought it nothing but a wild rumor,” Gordon added.

  “Teach us to listen more carefully to our Indian friends staying the winter near our fort, gentlemen.” Palmer sighed and rose. “For the past two days they’ve tried telling us of a big fight at the new post on the Bozeman Road. We’ll know better next time, won’t we?”

  A loud rap rattled the door a heartbeat before a young officer burst in. “Pardon, General.” He swept past Palmer, stopping before Portugee. “That your horse out there, mister?”

  Phillips looked up, blinking. “Yes … no.” He wagged his head. “Carrington’s——”

  “Doesn’t belong to no one now.” The officer gazed at the others in the room. “Dead in the snow, blood gushing from its nostrils.”

  Portugee’s face pinched, tears streaming from his eyes. He hid his face for a moment, sobbing. “Sir?” Phillips asked weakly, turning to Palmer. “Could you find me a bed? Haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in close to a week.”

  “By the saints, Mr. Phillips! We’ll do better than a mere bed! Lieutenant Haas, see that our guest is given a private suite at the post hospital, on the double!”

  Chapter 40

  Cold weather squeezed the land.

  The mid-morning sun edging over the badlands to the east cast an orange glow to the banks of the Tongue River where the wind had swept the snow before it. A brilliant glow of white made his pale eyes tear as he watched the villages scattering. The first of the processions snaked its way to the east, headed for the Powder River country. Black Shield’s Miniconjou. In other camp circles nearby, brown buffalo hides fell from the conical lodgepoles as women packed travois, loading both children and old ones for their journey from this place.

  Directly below him, in the lee of the ridge where he sat in the sun and wind on this last day of the Moon of Deer Shedding Horns, Crazy Horse watched his Oglalla band prepare for their move. First the pony herd would be brought into camp while meat cooked for the day’s journey. With property packed, the lodges would come down. When all was ready for departure, Man-Afraid and Red Cloud would send a runner to fetch the young war-chief who had succeeded in luring the soldiers to their deaths. A great battle, worthy of many songs. A battle to stay on the lips of the old and young alike for winters to come. Painted on tribal robes of winter count. A great victory, this “Battle of the Hundred in the Hand.”

  A hundred, Crazy Horse recalled. Red Cloud says our fight will drive the white man and his soldiers from our hunting grounds for all time. I cannot agree. Instead of scaring the white man away, the “Battle of the Hundred in the Hand” is but the beginning of a long, long war.

  Lo, Wakan Tanka! Behold your son, Crazy Horse! My body is young and strong. My blood runs hot. My people’s fight will be my fight. A long, and ugly war, wind spirits!

  Behold! I do not cower nor hide. Crazy Horse is ready for that fight. May you give me the strength to send many white spirits on the wind before our fight is over. May I wear many white scalps and see fear on many faces.

  May it be said many winters from now—Crazy Horse was the protector of his people!

  * * *

  Carrington worked feverishly through that next month. Straining at first to hold on to the dream that ran through his fingers like sand, then struggling to stand against Cooke and army brass back East.

  With a cold, cramping hand, Henry wrote in his private journal:

  With the arrival of Captain Fetterman, I had sensed this change in command on the winds. But with the massacre, I clung fervently to the belief that Cooke would allow me to stay in charge at my beloved Fort Phil Kearny—the dream I designed and watched rise from the bowels of this unforgiving land.

  While I welcomed Captain Dandy and his reinforcements, I want the record to show I nonetheless required ten times their pitiful number following the massacre. Not to mention ten times the replacement arms and ammunition if I was to raise a powerful hand against the Sioux such as they dealt us on 21 December last.

  From that night of the disaster, our men slept in their clothes, in reach of their arms, in complete readiness for attack on our post. Although, by the advent of the New Year, Mr. Bridger informed me we no longer had to fear surprise from the Sioux. Every trail, valley, and gully lay smothered with snow. My chief of scouts claimed even the most hostile of Red Cloud’s Bad Faces would be slow to take to the warpath in such weather.

  By the fourth of January the weather had tempered so that I could dispatch a mail escort to Laramie. In that long letter to General Cooke in which I agreed to transfer, I firmly stated that the disaster vindicated every report from my pen … vindicated my administration of this Mountain District … vindicated my begging for reinforcements and resupply … proving correct my repeated warning of 1500 lodges of hostiles gathered on the Tongue River.

  Since establishing ourselves on this site, my command has suffered the loss of five capable officers, ninety-one enlisted men, and fifty-eight civilian casualties. I cannot count the wounded.

  My poor soldiers spent joyless holidays and an uncertain new year, knowing not what destiny held for them. Brave soldiers all—dressed in their buffalo coats and leggings, vests of skin to keep them warm beneath winter’s onslaught … at their labors standing guard, hauling water or cutting wood without so much as a word of complaint. The whole garrison shared a common gloom. None of us finding much cause to celebrate January 1—the date our beloved 2nd Battalion of the Eighteenth Infantry became the new 27th Infantry.

  What final, sweet bleeding of my heart came on the sixteenth when the sentries atop Pilot Hill signaled the arrival of soldiers on the south road. Relief! raised our bugle call. Relief! thundered snare drums on parade.

  “Open wide the gates!” shouted some.

  “Admit our deliverers!” shouted others.

  “At last we are saved!”

  “Phillips was saved, saved for us!”

  Though I’ve suffered many indignities, still I found myself at the lookout post, watching that long column led by Lieutenant Colonel Wessels winding its way toward my fort. Replacing me as commander of my beloved Phil Kearny. I now had one short week to prepare for my departure from these walls. One week to close so dramatic yet bitter a chapter in my life.

  The sun creeps over the horizon to the east as I write this sentence.

  23 January, 1867.

  Col. Henry B. Carrington

  formerly commanding

  Mountain District

  Department of the Platte

  Relieved of command. And going home.

  Epilogue

  Seamus Donegan stood on the banquette, high along the south wall of the stockade. There were times he could not help looking down at the crowd clustered in tiny, cold knots near the gate below. Each time, his eyes never failed to find the small form bundled in a long, heavy man’s coat. On either side of her huddled the boys, one under each arm.

  While he had never suffered the death of a lover, the Irishman had endured loss. As a growing, gangly youngster, Seamus recalled the emptiness of his mother’s house following the burial of his father. How he had struggled to be what she needed him to be, his pa gone. What had pulled even more at the sad chords within him was that leaving of Ireland … his mother and family and everything he had ever known left behind.

  No man ever more lonely than when he had reached Town Boston to find his uncles gone. For years now something more sensed than certain had been telling Seamus that those brothers O’Roarke had come west. Perhaps to the gold streams in California. Could be he might find them among the silver camps dotting the high country of Colorado Territory. Maybe even to run across one or the both along that digging of Alder Gulch a man could find at the end of this Montana Road.

  With one man alone had he shared this quest—Sam Marr. Back in Kansas after they had paired up for their trip west, Seamus tol
d the cap’n he was going to the goldfields near Bannack and Virginia City to find his fortune. What he hadn’t shared with Sam until weeks later was that Seamus Donegan marched up the Bozeman Trail to find his uncles. Not until a steamy twilight had settled upon the hills above the Crazy Woman Fork did the Irishman tell the horse-trader that he was, in fact, come here on a manhunt.

  Saying he was bound to find the O’Roarkes wherever a man found gold and willing women and lots of strong whiskey. True enough, his uncles loved adventure almost as much as they did the perfumed whores and red rye. That twilight in the rifle pits, Sam Marr had whispered it did not matter why the Irishman had come along for their trip up the Bozeman.

  What mattered only was that Seamus Donegan had come. That, and if the two would live to watch the sun rise come daybreak over that Crazy Woman Fork.

  Theirs had been a secret Sam Marr vowed never to tell from that dawn they marched away with the Crazy Woman at their backs.

  Should I trust another of me secrets to the cap’n?

  Seamus brooded as his gray eyes once again found her in the crowd below, the big coat slurring the ground at the insistence of the cruel wind sweeping off the Big Horns.

  Trust him now … tell him about her … what I feel?

  Hopes had brought Seamus up the Bozeman, brought him here to this place a’purpose, to his way of thinking. Dreams might hold him here a bit longer.

  ’Tis a cruel hand grips many a life, he thought as he looked down to that crossing at the Little Piney where the long procession of soldiers, wagons and ambulances had broken the ice and was working its way into the rolling hills leading south to Fort Reno. Some, like Carrington, never meant to find what they look for. Meant only to seek. Wasting their life searching for that holy grail of their dreams.

  “By the saints,” Seamus whispered to himself, feeling the press of friends gathered round, “pray, may I soon find the O’Roarkes.”

  And release this death grip the hand of destiny holds on me.

  “Suppose I can give this to you now, Seamus.”