by John Jakes
Back at Fort Harker once more, Charles heard all this and cursed his bad luck at being in the wrong outfit at the wrong time.
The day of the Hayfield Fight turned out to be a day of even greater significance for the Tenth. Captain Armes and thirty-two men of F Company had chased some Cheyennes up the Saline, caught them, then had to shoot their way out in a fifteen-mile running fight. Bill Christy, a popular little man who’d once farmed in Pennsylvania, took a fatal round in the head. Lovetta Barnes snipped up a large cloth dyed black, the old man passed out the strips, and each officer and enlisted man in C Company tied one around his left sleeve. Other companies followed suit. The Tenth mourned the first of its own to fall in combat.
Somewhat better news was that of the impending move of Grierson’s headquarters at Fort Riley. He and his men would escape the bigoted General Hoffman at last.
Although the raids on the rail line, the stage road, and isolated homesteads continued, Charles soon saw opportunity slipping away. The Olive Branchers had prevailed in Washington: a peace commission had been formed, and a huge treaty expedition was scheduled for the fall. Once again he prepared to lead his detachment out, hungering for his chance.
“Better come back for this,” Barnes said on the morning of the detachment’s departure. He gave Charles a handbill printed in circus type on lavender paper.
_________
SPECIAL & ONLY WESTERN TOUR THIS SEASON!
Mr. SAM’L. H. TRUMP, Esq.
“America’s Ace of Players”
In a Full Evening’s Presentation
of Amusing & Stirring
SCENES FROM SHAKESPEARE
(“The Bard at His Best”)
ably assisted by Mrs. Parker
& other members of his world-renowned
St. Louis theatrical troupe
—ADMISSION 50¢—
Program Entirely Suitable for Females
& Children
_________
Charles recalled some remarks of Willa’s about a tour. And for a moment he was amused. The type in which Sam Trump’s name was set was twice the size of Mr. Shakespeare’s. A magnifying glass would have helped him read the line containing Mrs. Parker.
“That is her, ain’t it?” the old man asked. “The one you talked about a while back?”
“It is,” Charles said, his smile fading.
“Well, you got my permission to bring the detachment in the night before, ’less you’re in a jam.” Inked on the bottom of the handbill were the words Ft. Harker Nov. 3—Ellsworth City Nov. 4.
So he rode out that morning with the knowledge that he would see Willa again, and the feeling that he wanted to see her. He wondered what a reunion would be like. Happy? Explosive? Would it give him a worse dose of the pain that had been with him like a toothache ever since he rode away from her in St. Louis?
Come November, he’d certainly find out.
MADELINE’S JOURNAL
August, 1867. Gen. D. Sickles has become the most hated man in the state. He interferes with civil law—puts Negroes on juries and into public conveyances. But worse than that (so runs the argument), he is registering freedmen to vote in the 109 precincts into which S.C. is now divided. Sickles may not last. It’s said that Andrew J. feels him too radical.
… Another Yankee invader! A man named Klawdell has come to the district to start a Union of Loyal League. In the North during the war, I am told, the Union League was formed for patriotic support of Lincoln and his generals. Patriotism is now replaced by politics. The new leagues are to be clubs to educate the blacks in matters of government, the vote, etc. On the face of it, a worthy purpose—but will freedmen be told about the Democratic as well as the Republic Party? I doubt it.
Andy asked what I thought about his attending a meeting. Reminded him that he did not need my permission, but warned him that the white riffraff will be pushed that much closer to renewed violence by this latest instance of Radical intrusion. …
Randall Gettys’s reaction to news of a political organizer in the district was exactly what Madeline anticipated. Fury. He could barely concentrate on the monthly report of profits from his Dixie Store. The report was mailed to an address in Washington, D.C., as were similar reports from all forty-three Dixie Stores now operating in South Carolina.
The firm to which Gettys sent his reports, his orders for goods and twice-yearly bank drafts—the store’s enormous profits—was called Mercantile Enterprises. He knew nothing about the people behind it. Whoever the Yankee owners might be, they stayed well hidden. On two occasions they’d communicated instructions through an attorney who signed himself J. Dills, Esq.
Gettys finished the report and glanced at a poorly printed wall calendar bearing the escutcheon of the reorganized Charleston & Savannah Rail-Road. Today was Saturday. He could anticipate a brisk sale of corn whiskey to Captain Jolly and some of the other whites in the district—perhaps even some lively fun should a darkly foolish venture to the Summerton crossroads on this, the recognized day of the week for the white man to enjoy himself. On the bottom of the calendar Gettys had written Des due on Oct. 1. First thing he’d do when his friend was released was tell him about this new outrage, the club for niggers. Meanwhile, he had other correspondence accumulated from the past couple of weeks. There was a pathetic request from a cousin who needed a loan for an eye operation; Gettys tore it up. Two tatty circulars from German-run junk shops in Charleston advertised the finest goods and the complete libraries of leading Carolina families at sacrifice prices. Gettys threw them out.
At the bottom of the pile he found a wallpaper envelope bearing the address of Sitwell Gettys, another cousin. Sitwell was a schoolmaster, and a loyal Democrat, up in York County, perhaps the most ardently Southern part of the state. Sitwell had enclosed a yellowing clipping from the Pulaski, Tenn. Citizen which you may find of interest.
Indeed he did. The brief paragraphs described a white men’s social or sporting club formed some months ago in Pulaski by several war veterans. What intrigued Gettys was the fact that the members went roving at night in fantastic costumes that concealed their faces. They visited freedmen considered uppity, claiming to be Confederate dead risen to life, and evidently succeeded in terrifying them.
The club had a curious name. If Randall remembered his schooling in the classics, the word kuklos meant circle, and the name of the organization had obviously been derived from that. He re-read the clipping with mounting excitement, then speared it on a nail he used as a wall spindle. When Des got out of jail, he must be told about the new Kuklux Klan. It offered an amazingly simple solution to their very own problem, anonymity. With Des’s approval, he would try to get more details.
To Charleston. Judith home. Marie-Louise was away for a day and from her studies at Mrs. Allwick’s Female Academy, one of dozens of such academies that have opened in the state to offer young ladies and gentlemen a proper Southern education among their (white only) peers. M-L went with her father to inspect the Charleston & Savannah Rail-Road. Cooper is one of a group of investors who have bought the second-mortgage bonds of the insolvent line. Even at $30,000, it is not a bargain. The line remains in ruins, the track runs about 60 mis. down to Coosawhatchie, and at the Charleston end, a ferry crossing is required; the Ashley River trestle is not yet rebuilt.
Nor is much of the lovely old city, I discovered. Windowless gutted buildings still abound. Ragged Negroes idle everywhere, and white men loafing outside Hibernian Hall spit tobacco and lewdly accost women. I slapped one’s face. Had he known of my “racial status,” I would have been in serious trouble.
Tradd Street remains an island of cleanliness and calm, though even in Judith’s kitchen the ripe stench of the night-soil wagons penetrates. We discussed Sickles, prompting Judith to say that she now utterly despairs of Cooper’s political rigidity …
The bell clanged. Under dark gray clouds, in air heavy with dampness, Cooper helped Marie-Louise up the dented metal steps of the single passenger car.
He hated going back in the car. The journey down had been bad enough. Half the car’s seats were gone, and every window glass. The car had been almost empty on its slow chugging journey south to Coosawhatchie Station, but now, from the rear of the car, Cooper saw that every seat was filled with civilian or military passengers.
At the car’s head end, standing beneath one of several huge holes in the roof, an immense black woman with a bundle in hand timidly studied the seats. That damn Sickles had made it permissible for her to board a car with white passengers. But not one man rose to offer his seat.
A rumble of thunder said the clouds would soon spill their moisture. With a lurch and a squeal of rusty iron wheels, the locomotive jerked the car forward. Dense green undergrowth, the fecund forest of the Low Country, slid slowly past the open windows, into which butterflies and insects flew.
“Here, lean against this part of the wall,” Cooper said to his daughter. “It’s cleaner than the rest.”
Marie-Louise thanked him with her dark eyes and started to change position. Just then a young man, a civilian with a boyish pale face, curling mustache, and the vivid blue eyes and light hair of a German or Scandinavian, vacated his seat. He gestured for the black woman to take it.
Over the squealing of the wheels Cooper heard other passengers mutter. The Negress shook her head. The young man smiled and gestured again, urging her. Clutching her bundle, the woman hesitantly approached the seat. The man sitting beside the window immediately vacated it. The timid black woman sat down.
The man who had left gave the younger man a glare. Another passenger across the aisle reached for a knife in his belt. His stringy wife restrained his hand. The young civilian saluted the couple with a mocking tilt of his hat and walked to the front end of the car, crossing his arms and leaning there, showing no sign of regret over his act of courtesy.
As the young man settled himself, he noticed Marie-Louise at the other end of the car. Cooper saw color rush to his daughter’s cheeks. Then he saw the immediate interest on the face of the young civilian.
A thunderclap. Hard rain began to fall through the holes in the roof. “Here, stand closer,” Cooper said, opening the umbrella he’d brought along for such an emergency.
With most of the passengers getting soaked, the train of the Charleston & Savannah line labored northward. Cooper stared at the back of the black woman’s head. He was outraged. What next, then? Mixed marriage? Sickles and the Radicals were intent on destroying Southern civilization.
He didn’t forget the young civilian. Nor did Marie-Louise, though for entirely different reasons.
Sickles is to be recalled. Perhaps it is a good thing. We have quite enough excuses for violence already.
_____________
… Since the treaty of ’65 the Cheyennes have made war against the people of the United States, and having confederated with them the Apaches and Arrapahoes have in part become involved in the troubles which resulted from this course.
Their annuities have been withheld, and they were gradually sinking to their former wild and barbarous ways when they heard that a great Peace Commission was on the way to their country to settle all difficulties, and restore general harmony …
“From Our Own Correspondent”
The New York Times
FRIDAY, Oct. 25, 1867
33
IT WAS THE SEASON of changes. The prairie grass yellowed, and leaves of the elm and persimmon trees began to flame with color.
There were changes in command. Johnson, through General Grant, ordered Generals Hancock and Sheridan to exchange posts. Hancock was being disciplined for his adventure on the Pawnee Fork, Sheridan for his too-strict enforcement of Reconstruction in the Fifth Military District in New Orleans; he was a favorite of the Radicals, but of few others in Washington.
Sheridan came to the Plains for a swift inspection, though he was due for extended leave and wouldn’t assume full command until sometime in late winter. Charles knew a few things about the Yankee, Academy class of ’53. He was small, Irish, ceaselessly and inventively foulmouthed. He was accustomed to waging war and whining. Charles wondered how the command change would fit with this autumn’s peace initiative, what many in the Army sneered at as “the Quaker Policy.”
There were changes in the fates of great enterprises. It was clear that the Union Pacific in Nebraska would reach the one hundredth meridian first, probably in October. The U.P.E.D. had lost the contest, and Charles heard that as many as twelve hundred might be put out of work. This didn’t include the gun-happy security men of J.O. Hartree, some of whom rode every passenger train. Charles also heard the line might change its name to something more individual. Kansas Pacific was mentioned.
There were fundamental changes in the proud but strife-torn Seventh Cavalry. Custer was remanded to Leavenworth, and was there facing court-martial on charges preferred by one of his disgruntled captains, Bob West, and his own commandant, A. J. Smith. The charges were numerous, but the serious ones were the abandonment of his command at Fort Wallace, the dash east to find Libbie, and shooting the deserters. Charles heard that the Boy General was confident of the outcome and talked a lot about his deeply religious nature. Charles was cynical; when caught, scoundrels often mantled themselves in the flag or proclaimed their Christian conversion.
It was, most of all, a season fraught with the possibility of change for the Plains Army. They were held in confined patrol duty while the great Peace Commission, which had already failed to achieve even one successful meeting with the Northern Sioux, turned south through autumnal Kansas to try again with the Southern tribes.
The sky was the color of blued metal the day the cavalcade left Harker. Drums and fifes played one hundred fifty troopers of the Seventh off the post to the melody of their signature march, “Garry Owen.” A detachment of infantry followed, then Battery B of the Fourth Artillery, hauling two of the new Gatling guns. Charles wondered if a Gatling really could fire one hundred fifty rounds a minute from its ten hopper-fed revolving barrels. Ike Barnes said Gatlings overheated quickly, and jammed. The Seventh had not tested a Gatling; Custer called them worthless toys, and A. J. Smith refused to authorize ammunition for test firing, afraid the War Department would dock his pay for it.
High-wheeled canvas-topped Army ambulances conveyed the Commissioners and their retinue of civilians. The commission numbered seven: Senator J.B. Henderson of Missouri who had sponsored the bill establishing it; Indian Affairs Commissioner N.G. Taylor; Colonel Sam Tappan, the first Army man to fight vigorously for a Sand Creek investigation; General John Sanborn, one of the authors of the Little Arkansas Treaty; fastidious General Alfred Terry, in command of the Department of the Dakotas; and General C.C. Augur, Department of the Platte, who had replaced Sherman after the latter made some intemperate criticisms of the commission and got yanked to Washington to answer to Grant. The man in charge was General William Harney, a massive white-bearded soldier with a considerable reputation as an Indian fighter. Certainly, a fine, martial lot to be responsible for damping fires on the Plains, Charles thought as he watched the caravan depart southward toward Fort Larned.
Governor Crawford was with the expedition, and Senator Ross as well. Eleven reporters and a photographer trailed along in the ambulances and supply wagons, which numbered sixty-five. The wagons were loaded with crates of trade goods, including knives and glass beads, surplus Army dress uniforms, campaign hats, and boots, and thirty-four hundred old bugles—a brilliantly stupid inspiration of General Sanborn’s.
The wagons carried less pacific gifts as well: barrels of black powder; boxes of trade rifles, percussion caps, paper cartridges. Civilians and Army men were already at odds over distributing these presents. Olive Branchers said they would only arm the tribes for more war. Others, notably General Terry, said no present was more meaningful or necessary to nomadic people who hunted their food. It was the classic debate, which Charles had heard before, and of which he was contemptuous. The only sure instrument of pe
ace was a gun in the hands of a U.S. soldier.
He watched the caravan disappear, wondering what kind of insolent Indians they would confront. Bands of Cheyenne military society men were still roaming Kansas, destroying the stage stations and attacking trains and work crews. Charles didn’t doubt Scar and his friends were among them. Who would be left to lie to the Commissioners, saying that their few voices spoke for hundreds of others?
His name was Stone Dreamer. He was frail; eighty winters. All his teeth were gone, and his hair resembled a few thin strands of gray wool. Yet he had proud eyes, and his wits hadn’t deserted him, as old men’s wits so often did.
He was called Stone Dreamer because of his youthful vision-seeking. When he went apart, fasting and praying to the One Who Made All Things, his eyes blurred briefly, and then the various-sized stones on the ground rose into the air, hovered before him, and spoke in turn about deep, important matters.
Stones, like so many natural objects, were holy to the Cheyennes. Stones symbolized permanence, the unchanging verities of life, the everlasting earth, and the One who shaped it from nothing. Stone Dreamer’s vision taught him that, compared to these things, the ambitions, loves, hatreds of a mortal were blades of grass tossed by a windstorm. They were as nothing.
When he returned from the wilderness, he told the council of his vision. The elders were impressed. Here was a young man clearly meant for a special life. He was instructed to become a Bowstring, a member of the society of the brave, the pure, and the celibate, who could be equally comfortable slaying enemies in battle or philosophizing on issues of peace and tribal life.
So he joined and rose through the ranks. Bowstring, Bowstring Society leader, village chief when he grew too old for fighting, peace chief when he grew older still. In October of 1867, he put up his tipi with two hundred fifty others sheltering about fifteen hundred Cheyennes at the western end of the natural basin of the Medicine Lodge Valley. This was three days’ ride from the sun-dance ground to be used by the great caravan of white chiefs with guns who were moving down from the north to make peace with the five Southern tribes.