Red Cloud's Revenge

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I have only my personal experience to go on, sir … Obadiah. Mind you, that doesn’t include any fights with the Sioux—”

  “Yet, Lieutenant! You’ll have a crack, as will I, at the red niggers soon enough. But, little matter! Brave men like you and me … and like Major Benjamin Smith himself—we know what needs to be done, without ever fighting those naked, painted bastards.” His face swept close to the lieutenant’s, whiskey sour on his breath. “So, tell me what you think.”

  “I agree.” Jenness gathered his wits, choosing his words carefully. “Yes, these Indians need a sound whipping. They understand nothing else but war.”

  “How perfect!” Dandy slapped a knee.

  “Yes, Obadiah! We must show them a strong hand now—or we’re asking for more trouble. More bodies. More fine officers dead—sacrificed like Fetterman. Other good soldiers as well.”

  Dandy rose. Paced a moment. Then flew back to hover over Jenness like a huge bird in need of a nest, his breath thick and sour in the lieutenant’s face again.

  “Bless you, John. You’ve helped put things in the most perfect light. Red Cloud and his cronies can’t possibly understand the peacemakers and those misguided soldiers like Carrington who handed out blankets and kettles to our enemies! Even poor Wessells himself sits on his hands now. Why is the army losing this fight? Because the red sonsabitches only understand war!”

  He straightened, weaving slightly as he snapped his fingers, “Of course!” With a dramatic sweep he snatched up the bottle, refilling his cup. “We must show these stone-age savages that this post is under new leadership—no longer will Fort Phil Kearny be a haven for those who wish to pacify the warriors harassing the Montana Road. Instead, John, we’ll show Red Cloud and his other banditti that our post alone is, at last, that mighty iron fist of our great Republic. An iron fist shoved down their red throats! If they cannot learn to live with that fist here—by God, then let the ignorant bastards choke on it!”

  Jenness shuddered. Ashamed as quickly as the feeling washed over him. John recognized that fire in Dandy’s eyes. Passion. The same look he remembered seeing on the grim faces of the Confederates he spent four years fighting, from Virginia to Georgia. Yet Jenness was certain that Capt. Obadiah Dandy shared something more than mere passion with those rebel soldiers.

  It troubled Jenness to his core that he couldn’t put his finger on just what that something was.

  “Thank you, John.” Dandy suddenly seemed more relaxed. Calmer now, sipping his whiskey rather than throwing it back in hungry draughts. “You’ve helped me sort out just how I’m going to squeeze my brevet out of that goddamned service review board. Right here—at Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory—I’ll earn my brevet. Earn it—if I have to kill ever last one of the red bastards who murdered Fetterman with my own two hands!”

  Now Jenness knew what it was that had troubled him so deeply. Capt. Obadiah Dandy was every bit as obsessed in getting his promotion, and killing Indians while doing it, as Red Cloud’s warriors were driven to earn their coups and drive the white soldiers from their hunting grounds. Though he shared much in common with the energetic Captain Dandy, Lieutenant Jenness suddenly grew unsure who he actually feared more. The warriors of Red Cloud, or—

  “Captain Dandy!”

  Obadiah wheeled, flinging open the door. “What the devil is it?”

  Over Dandy’s shoulder Jenness saw the whole parade in an uproar. The light from more than half a hundred lamps spilled across the ground in greasy yellow splotches along officers row. Shadows of half-dressed soldiers spilled through those splotches, flitting like frightened starlings against the raw-boarded buildings.

  “What’s going on, soldier?” Dandy demanded again before the breathless sentry began.

  “Thought you’d want to know, sir,” the private heaved, catching his wind. “One of the pickets … up on the walk—murdered. A Sioux, sir. Got him with an arrow. Right through the heart!”

  “A sentry?” Dandy’s voice rose.

  The private nodded, then raced off to spread the word as Dandy turned into his room and the white-faced Jenness. “John, it appears I won’t have to wait that long for Red Cloud and his band of cutthroat, murdering fiends to make my promotion come true.”

  He splashed more whiskey into his cup, then held it out before him in self-congratulation.

  “Here’s to my brevet—and the Sioux scalps Obadiah Dandy will joyfully take in getting that promotion!”

  Drops of whiskey glistened on his lips from swilling down the liquid. Dandy began to giggle, until the sound grew into shrill laughter that slashed across the bustling compound like the squeal of a huge cog set in motion.

  * * *

  “Their guns are poor,” said the young warrior as he drew his pony to a halt beside the war-party leader, reporting his findings while the other Cheyenne tore through the overturned wagons.

  “Powder?” asked the leader.

  “Some.”

  “We will take it all with us,” he said, waving a hand with impatience. “Be about it, quickly. I do not want to stay here long.”

  Roman Nose watched the young warrior nod and turn away to join the others who clawed through the wagons or searched the pockets of the white teamsters they had killed. It was good to be back to raiding once more after a long and very hard winter. These white men who came to scare the game away from this sacred Cheyenne hunting ground must be driven away. If they persisted in using this road to the land of the Sparrowhawks, then those white men deserved to die.

  Moon of Ducks Coming Back. The short-grass time before the summer gatherings for the celebration of the sundance. Red Cloud’s Sioux had migrated slowly eastward for their celebration. For the time, that left the job here along the road to the Cheyenne. At least those who would not be traveling far to the east, to Bear Butte on the northern fringe of the Black Hills, where gathered the Northern Cheyenne every summer for their celebration of renewal and life.

  The young warrior swept back to his side in a spray of dust to report. “We are finished, Roman Nose.”

  “Burn the wagons.”

  The young warrior smiled. “I will use these!” He held up the sulfur-headed matches, his face gleaming with anticipation.

  Roman Nose smiled as well. “Do not use them all. We will find more work for them in the moons to come. There is much to be done before we drive the white man from our lands forever.”

  He watched his young firebrands gleefully set the wagons to the torch, carrying flaming shreds of burlap and canvas from place to place to ignite the entire circle.

  “We are ready,” the young warrior announced as he loped back to the side of his war leader.

  “No,” Roman Nose said, shaking his head. “The white men.”

  “We stripped them. We scalped them too. We cut their arms so everyone knows Cheyenne were victorious. We even put their manhood in their mouths, Roman Nose. We have done every—”

  “Burn them.”

  “Burn?”

  “Throw their bodies in the fire.”

  “Why?”

  “This land must be purified of the white man’s stain upon it. Only fire will purify our land.”

  When the last body had been hurled into the leaping yellow and orange flames in the midst of the wagons, the two dozen leaped atop their ponies and loped up the slope to the crest of the low ridge where their leader awaited them.

  Roman Nose watched the oily smoke billow into the spring sky of robin’s-egg blue. As the wind shifted, he could smell the burning of flesh, the cooking of blood. Time now to leave this place. He stared at the flames a moment more, listening to the heaving of his warriors’ chests as their breathing slowed after the long rush of adrenaline. And as it grew quiet, he heard the crackle of those flames purifying what they had done here.

  “Our land will be cleansed of the white man’s stain.” The tall, muscular Cheyenne leader pulled his pony away, the others following him over the ridge.

  “This time,”
Roman Nose swore, “we will burn them out.”

  Chapter 12

  “Why don’t we just quit beating round the brush here, Judge,” Jim Bridger growled, spitting into one of Judge Jefferson T. Kinney’s shiny brass spittoons. “No sense fooling ourselves either. You don’t like me. That’s plain to see. And I sure as hell don’t like you.”

  “Why, Mr. Bridger—”

  “Don’t go mistering me now. We’ll get this goddamned testifying over and done with … so I can be gone from your place and you don’t have to look at my face no more.”

  Kinney drew his squat, pudgy frame up in his high-backed chair at the opposite end of the table, his watery eyes slewing over the spectators gathered in the chairs behind Bridger. The old trapper figured the Utah judge turned post sutler was filled with his own self-importance. If not full of something a bit more fragrant.

  Kinney pursed his lips, glaring beadlike eyes at the army scout. “All right, Mr. Bridger. You have laid the ground rules well enough. I don’t like being around you any more than you like being here with me. But I didn’t make that trip to Laramie to meet with the other members of the commission … preparing to take depositions—”

  “Just who the hell’s on this goddamned commission looking into Fetterman’s massacre?”

  Kinney smiled. Bridger had just handed him a chance to drop some important names upon the captive, curious audience in his sutler’s cabin here at Fort Phil Kearny.

  “General J. B. Sanborn. General Alfred Sully. General N. B. Buford and Colonel E. S. Parker representing the army—”

  “Sounds to me,” Bridger interrupted, turning half around to fling his voice back to the civilian and soldier spectators in the room, “like the commission’s got its deck stacked against Henry Carrington from the get-go.”

  Kinney cleared his throat, attempting to silence some of the guffaws and sniggers from the onlookers. “You did not give me a chance to mention that besides myself as a civilian member of the esteemed commission looking into the unfortunate slaughter of Colonel Fetterman’s command, there is also serving one G. P. Beauvais, a civilian trader from St. Louis who lived among the Sioux for many years during the height of the fur trade.”

  “Bull.”

  “What was that, Mr. Bridger?” Kinney asked, his pen poised over the paper in a threatening gesture.

  “Spell it right, Kinney. I said bull … as in bullshit. I been better’n forty and four winters out here in these mountains, trapping and trading both. And I ain’t never heard of no Beauvais living with the Sioux. Likely he’s another one of the army brass lick-ups what already made up their minds about Carrington and Fetterman both. Just like you.”

  Kinney tugged at his collar, watching some of the spectators behind Bridger rock forward on their chairs. “I have yet to reach a conclusion—”

  “More bullshit, Kinney,” Bridger replied, spitting again. “You been looking for a way to hurt Carrington, as far back as last summer when he lined up on the opposite side of things from you, Brown, Fetterman, and the rest of you boys full of brag but damned short on the gumption.”

  “Carrington and I never hit it off, that much is true—”

  “Let’s get this over with so I can go get my supper,” Bridger interrupted. “You got better things to do than talk to me. Never did listen to nothing I said before. Why you going to listen to what I gotta tell you now?” He looked out the window, waiting for Kinney’s next move.

  The former federal judge cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “One James Bridger—”

  “That’s Jim Bridger, Judge.”

  “One Jim Bridger, being duly sworn before an official member of this commission, on this thirty-first day of May, in the year of our Lord, 1867, does hereby offer and make the following declaration in the form of affidavit, of his own free will and without prompting.” He waited a moment, staring at Bridger, who continued to stare out the window at twilight descending on the snowy Big Horns. “You may go ahead now, Mr. Bridger.”

  Jim looked back at Kinney and sighed. “As you wanna know about this Philip Kearny massacre, it’s been said that the Injuns didn’t approach the fort with hostile intent, but that the commanding officer—that’s Carrington hisself—mistook their intentions, fired on the Injuns and brought on the fight.”

  He watched Kinney scribbling furiously at his papers, transcribing Jim’s spoken words.

  “All of that’s nothing but so much bullshit.”

  Kinney gazed up, his eyes glaring at Bridger once more. “May I have your permission to alter your wording … so that your statement will read, and I quote: “‘All of that’s preposterous’?”

  “Go right ahead, Judge. But, don’t change nothing else.”

  “I wouldn’t dare, Mr. Bridger,” he growled, and bent over his papers once again.

  “Up to the time of the massacre, the Injuns been hanging ’round the fort every day, stealing stock every chance they had, attacking trains going to the woods. Why, they even stole up at night and was shooting at Carrington’s sentries … down in the valley at the civilians with the trains while they was sitting ’round their campfires at night. No more’n a hundred yards from the post.”

  Bridger waited while Kinney caught up, sipping at his black coffee from a steaming mug, tonguing his chew to the side of his cheek.

  “But, a few days afore the massacre, a train going to the Piney Wood was attacked. In defending the train, Lieutenant Bingham of the Second Cavalry and a sergeant under him—both of ’em lost their lives. Killing white men is the funniest goddamned sign of friendship I seen from Injuns in all my winters out here.”

  Bridger grinned as he listened to more laughter from the spectators.

  “Judge, you best get it outta your mind—and the commission’s too—that the Injuns camped ’round Fort Philip Kearny was friendly. Friendly? I got better chance of being asked to dinner by Red Cloud hisself!”

  “May we proceed, Mr. Bridger?” Kinney snarled, hurling his high voice over the laughter.

  “O’ course, Judge. Every person that truly knows the affairs of this country knows very well that the massacre at Fort Philip Kearny was planned weeks before. Any right-thinking man who comes up for sunshine once’t a while knows that the Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahos had been gathering up, preparing to make their attack from their camp on Tongue River. Where they had better’n some 2200 lodges.

  “They intended to hit Fort Philip Kearny first, and if they was successful in driving the soldiers off, they was going to head north for Fort C.F. Smith.

  “But at the present time, the entire tribe of the Northern Sioux are collecting on Powder River, below the mouth of Little Powder River, and they’ve vowed in blood to attack all three of the army’s posts on the Bozeman Road—and kill every man, woman, and child what tries to use the road as well.

  “Friendly Crow tell us Red Cloud’s bands of Bad Faces are being supplied with ammunition by half-breed traders working for the Englishers’ Hudson’s Bay Company.”

  “I’ve sent word to the hostiles that I want to talk with them, Mr. Bridger. I’ll get their testimony as well before the commission issues its findings.”

  Bridger snorted, causing Kinney to fidget a moment more. “It ain’t no use sending out for any of them with Red Cloud, Judge. If they talk sweet to the army or traders, it’s only to have time to trade for powder and lead to carry on the war against the army here on the Montana Road. Once they have more powder and lead, the next time you see their painted faces will be when they’re lifting your scalp, Judge Kinney. Or what’s left of hair on your bald head.”

  Kinney immediately ran a hand across his half-naked head, glaring at the hooting spectators.

  “No, Judge—and you get this down, every word of it. The only way to settle the trouble with Red Cloud and these forts plopped down on their prime hunting ground is to send out enough troops to completely whip all Red Cloud’s Sioux and Cheyenne … the whole shitteree at once. Make the bastards beg for peac
e.”

  “And if the army chooses not to devote the manpower and the expense to such a punitive expedition?”

  Bridger chewed on that a moment, the way he would bite into a fresh cud of Virginia burley. “If the army ain’t ready to fight a war out here to take this land from the Injuns, Judge Kinney—then by damned, the army better get ready to have itself drove right out of the country and turn it back over to Red Cloud.”

  Kinney looked up from his papers. “What you’re saying is—”

  “What I’m saying is, it’s the Injuns or the army, Judge. Ain’t the both of you gonna stay. It damned well may take a few winters … but army blue and redskins don’t mix. Injuns ain’t gonna give up without the biggest fight of it. And from what I seen, with Cooke and his bosses not ready to give Carrington what he needed to fight the war out here last year … the army just ain’t got the gumption or the nerve to win the fight out here.”

  When Kinney finished writing, he cocked his head and stared at Bridger. “Anything else?”

  He nodded. “I been in this country, among these very Injuns, for forty and four years. I’m familiar with ’em—like I know my own mule. I know their history. What I got to tell your commission is more important than any other testimony you might take. Red Cloud and his bunch won’t respect any treaty until they’ve been whipped into it. And since it appears the army ain’t willing to give a man like Carrington what he needs to do his job, then the army best haul its goddamned tail outta this country, and hole up in Fort Laramie until it works up the courage to back its officers.”

  “You’re done now, Mr. Bridger?”

  Jim stood before he answered, both palms flat on the table, his empty cup between them. “I’m done all right, Judge Kinney. But you mark my words. Red Cloud ain’t done. Not by a long chalk.”

  He pointed a bony, gnarled finger at Kinney. “You can put my money on that. Red Cloud ain’t done with you yet.”