The Mountain

by David L. Golemon

  Lars Ollafson nodded his head and slowly walked beside the president as if the men were only on a nightly constitutional as they continued Lincoln’s journey to see the wounded.

  * * *

  An hour later Lars Ollafson stumbled from the front doors of the old soldiers’ home. He held his hat in his hand as he leaned from the porch railing. He swallowed as he tried in vain to get his emotions and stomach under control. He finally lost his late supper into the bare earth of the garden. Abraham Lincoln stepped from the hospital and hesitated as he took in the night air and sky. He half-turned back to peer inside the home for his wounded soldiers and shook his head as he raised his tall hat. Down below a black private held the reins of the president’s horse and another that had been delivered for Ollafson.

  “It appears we may see some rain before dawn.” The president momentarily placed his hand on the smaller professor’s shoulder, looking into the roadway beyond as if he were searching for something in the darkness. “It’s never an easy thing. The first few times visiting this place shook me to my very soul, Professor. I told myself as I gazed upon those boys in there that what I was doing was the right thing.” The president squeezed Ollafson’s shoulder and then quickly patted it as he broke contact and moved off the porch. “But I lose my convictions most times when I look into some mother’s son’s eyes as he lies dying.” He accepted the reins from the private and mounted his horse awkwardly. He adjusted his long legs into the stirrups and took in a deep breath of the night air. “Healing.”

  Ollafson wiped his mouth with his pocket handkerchief and glanced up to see the president just sitting there. “Sir?” he asked, not understanding the one-word comment. The professor kept envisioning the young boy inside who had no lower jaw and he became aware of his stomach trying to come back up to invade his throat once more.

  “I must find a way to heal this bloody wound I have inflicted upon the nation.” Lincoln looked over at Ollafson and tipped his hat to the smaller man. “You have given me an opportunity, my good professor, and a chance at bringing back together an entire people. Even if we find absolutely nothing in that faraway place, just the attempt should do nicely. The rejoining of two peoples into one would be a salve to the nation.”

  Ollafson saw the sadness, the deep-seated agony that the president was experiencing, and for the first time thought he understood. Mr. Lincoln cared little for what was supposedly buried on that mountain; he was far more concerned about the men being sent to retrieve it. If he could see them return as one, then the voyage would prove that wounds could be bound and a healing could take place. Not for treasure, not for discovery … this was for his country.

  “Professor, please understand, I have to give those boys the best chance possible at returning. Otherwise what is this all about?”

  Lars Ollafson only half-nodded his head.

  “I ride alone back to the White House, Professor.” The president turned his horse as Ollafson stood rooted to the porch. “My company is not warm after my visits to this place, you understand,” he said softly as his horse ambled down the dirt road. “You’ll be contacted soon.”

  The professor watched the president leave and he became saddened for the man who was leading the nation. He placed his hat on his head as he turned back toward the open door of the hospital in time to hear a boy cry out for his mother. The cry was void of hope.

  With determination Ollafson bounded down the steps and took the offered reins from the private. He knew now that bringing back the artifact was the only thing he could do to assist this man. He had come to admire him even though he now knew that the president was wrong. It did matter that they find it. The nation needed the guidance, the inspiration. He mounted the horse and spurred it forward. Lars Ollafson rode hard.

  They needed to know that God was on the American side and there was only one place in the world where that could be accomplished—the Ottoman Empire.

  * * *

  The president slowly moved into the grand hallway and then paused as his eyes looked toward his office. He placed his hat on the small table as he turned toward the window, deep in thought.

  “You should be well asleep by now, young man,” he said without turning from the window.

  John Hay stood silently behind the president. He never knew how his boss was always keenly aware when he attempted to come upon him with stealth. He shook his head in wonder.

  “I have secrets also. I always wait up until you return from the soldiers’ home.”

  Lincoln turned with a small smile on his lined face. “I knew that too.”

  Hay held out a telegram for the president, who looked from his secretary to the yellow paper and then turned back to the window and the brief flash of lightning in the distance. The illumination only caused him to think about General George Meade and his failure to pursue Robert E. Lee into Virginia fast enough to end this damnable war. It was if the lightning had illuminated the future for his thoughts. He knew Meade would fail.

  “You read it, Johnny, my eyes have beheld enough misery for one night. I can’t see anymore.”

  Hay grimaced as he watched the president’s shoulders sag. The young secretary knew that another change in command was forthcoming. Which would mean Mr. Lincoln would soon bring back a general the president despised—George McClellan was the only man capable of getting the grand army back in the war after their victory at Gettysburg. He decided that now was the most opportune time to deliver the message from the War Department and Secretary of War Stanton. Hay read the telegram.

  “War Department to A. Lincoln. Be advised that orders have been transmitted to Fort Dodge, Kansas. Expect delay as subject is not currently assigned to post. Signed Stanton, Secretary of War.”

  Lincoln said nothing as his thoughts were in ten places at once, per his usual mode of mind games.

  “What if the colonel is not found in time? Do we attempt to bring in another commanding officer to lead the expedition?”

  “No,” Lincoln said as he watched another bolt of lightning streak across the sky on the far side of the Potomac. “There is only one man who can do what we are asking.”

  “If you are thinking about relieving General Meade with your old enemy George McClellan, the odds are pretty good that our colonel, if he arrives intact from the west, will meet Little Napoleon here in the capitol, and then you know all hell will break loose.”

  Lincoln finally turned away from the approaching storm and smiled broadly at Hay when the secretary used the derogatory moniker for McClellan.

  “Are you saying the two may kill each other?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Well, they always say there is a bright side to all things.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Inform me when the colonel acknowledges receipt of his new orders.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hay turned to leave.

  Lincoln rocked on his heels momentarily as he thought about his old acquaintance, Thomas. He would love to see the face of the man when he received the orders recalling him to Washington. He would more than likely think he was being recalled to finally be hung for his transgression against his old commander—one George B. McClellan. He smiled.

  “Colonel John Henry Thomas, it’s time to come home.”

  3

  ONE HUNDRED FIFTY MILES NORTHWEST OF FORT DODGE, KANSAS

  JUNE 1864

  There was no decent water, no shade, and no protection from the unrelenting winds of the plains. The sparse trees were windworn and scraggly. The branch of the small creek, dubbed Sandy Creek by an obviously gifted mapmaker ten years before, was nothing more than a ribbon of water in the spring runoff at its height and a muddy wallow for buffalo in the summer months. The site was unappealing to the two men dressed in filthy clothing and even filthier hats, which they used to shade their eyes—eyes that had long felt as if they had half of the Sahara desert embedded in them.

  The larger of the two men took in a deep breath of the stagnant summer air as he gazed upon
the site the experts had chosen from their comfortable offices at Fort Dodge and Washington. The location had either changed dramatically in the past six years since it had been surveyed or someone had outright lied on their field report as to the possible location of a new fort. This was not the place the two men had hoped it would be. The large man with black hair removed his brimmed hat and wiped sweat from his face. The smaller man with the graying beard kicked at the sandy dune from which they spied the small barren valley.

  “You wanna know what I think, boyo,” the smaller of the two said as he too managed to wipe sweat away that immediately reappeared as if the filthy shirtsleeve had never been used. “I think if the buffalo have bypassed this place, we need to look somewhere else.”

  The big man replaced his dirty white hat, glanced at his companion, and slowly mounted his horse. As he adjusted his sore hindquarters into the saddle he finally spared the man the only few words he had uttered that morning.

  “No, this is not the place. No covering trees, no fresh water within three miles, and the winds here would drive your average trooper mad within a month. We’ll go farther north and hopefully find what others may have missed.” He slowly turned his large roan and lightly encouraged the big mount with the taste of his spurs. “And, Sergeant Major, at least add a ‘Colonel’ when you call me ‘boyo.’”

  The smaller man smiled as he too mounted his horse. He laid spurs to the animal and shot forward to catch up.

  “Aye, Colonel Darlin’, that I can do, at least from time to time.”

  United States Army Colonel John Henry Thomas didn’t respond as he kept riding at a slow gait. He was about to pull the old territorial map from his shirt when the third member of their party rode up, pack mule in tow. Thomas nodded to the Indian, who had been waiting for them on the side of the small rise.

  Gray Dog was a Comanche who had been with Thomas for many years when he had found himself in either Texas or New Mexico territories, and long before the start of the madness in the east. They had been separated since 1861 and had no contact until his reassignment to Fort Dodge to assist the war department in locating desirable areas for future army accommodations. Thomas knew the brass in Washington were possibly gearing up for a major push into Indian Territory after brother stopped slaughtering brother in the civilized east.

  Gray Dog was all of twenty summers and Colonel John Henry Thomas had known him since the boy was fifteen years old. The Comanche had been orphaned after hostile Kiowa killed his entire family near the Brazos River in Texas on the very same day that Colonel Thomas had lost his wife Mary to the same band of Kiowa. Now Gray Dog once more joined him on his reassignment to Kansas. After all those years Gray Dog had refused to wear the white man’s clothes and had remained full Comanche, to many a Texan’s discomfort.

  “Is it too soon to say I told you so?” Gray Dog asked in almost perfect, unbroken English as he joined the two men. The coyote-skin cap he wore bobbed up and down as he maneuvered his mount and pack mule in beside Thomas as the sergeant major gave the Comanche a dirty look.

  “Would it stop you if I said it would be?” Thomas said as he pulled the map from his shirt.

  “Yes it would, especially since I already said what was meant to be said,” Gray Dog said with a smirk.

  “Goddamn Indian speaks better English than me,” the sergeant major muttered under his breath. “And in words I never understand.”

  Thomas opened the map to survey rugged terrain ahead. “You’ll have to excuse Sergeant Major Dugan. He’s just thrilled at the prospect of riding farther north.”

  “And why don’t you take that damn dog off your head? It’s starting to get to me.”

  Thomas looked up from the map to eye the filthy bowler hat that Dugan wore. The small Irishman was always mad at the world, and Gray Dog was a frequent target for his frustrations. He had also known the boy from his days with Thomas while riding with the fifth cavalry in Texas.

  “And he’s a jealous sort of Irishman because you wear better headgear than he. You get a coyote, he gets a dirty and very much dead skunk.”

  Sergeant Major Giles Dugan quickly removed the stinky bowler and looked it over. He was happy to be wearing a hat of his choosing over the blue cap of a cavalryman. He sniffed, recoiled, and then angrily placed the hat back on his head. He snorted and cast Gray Dog another withering look. He was about to comment when a shot rang out across the prairie. It was quickly followed by another, and then another.

  “What the bloody hell?” Dugan pulled on the reins of his horse. Thomas and Gray Dog had already stopped and were listening intently.

  “Northeast,” Gray Dog said as he spied the sloping land ahead, which afforded no view of the area in front of them. More and more gunfire erupted, and to Thomas gunfire meant white men. These were the first sounds of gunfire he had heard since the battle of Antietam in 1862.

  “I believe that is the sound of Spencers, Colonel boyo,” Dugan said as he turned in the saddle to face the colonel. “Lord knows we heard enough to know.”

  Without a word Thomas reached over and relieved Gray Dog of the mule’s reins and then nodded the Comanche forward. The Indian without command to his small horse shot away as Thomas dismounted and tied off his horse and the pack mule on a scrub brush. He quickly removed his Henry repeating rifle from its scabbard. Dugan, seeing this, did likewise.

  “Come out here in the godforsaken wasteland only to walk head-on into a firefight. Who in the world wants to shoot each other in this heat?” he mumbled as he pulled an older-model Spencer carbine from his saddle. He quickly followed Thomas as he made his way forward in the wake of Gray Dog, who had silently gone ahead to spy the happenings in the valley.

  The two men had only gone a hundred yards when Gray Dog returned and brought his Appaloosa to a brutal stop as he hopped from the old cavalry blanket covering the horse’s back. He immediately caught the extra-heavy Spencer carbine Thomas tossed to him.

  “What do you have?” Thomas asked as he kept moving forward.

  “Soldiers. They are attacking a family of Sioux.”

  “A family, you say?” Dugan asked as he hustled to keep up with the two younger men.

  Gray Dog didn’t respond but only led the way to the ridge ahead. He ducked low and then crawled to the edge. Thomas and then Dugan joined him as the gunfire ceased below. The colonel quickly assessed the scene. Below at about two hundred yards, ten U.S. cavalrymen had dismounted and were checking the bodies of what looked like eight Sioux Indians. Thomas quickly noted the small children and women lying among the dead. He gritted his teeth as he heard a few of the men laughing at the sport of killing the family.

  “Stupid sons of bitches! What did they have to go and do that for?” Dugan asked as he saw that at least the family had gotten off a few defensive shots before dying at the hands of the troopers from Fort Dodge. At least three of the ten men had taken arrows and were being attended to by their comrades.

  “Look,” Gray Dog said, pointing to the three circled buffalo-hide tepees and the meat still roasting on a spit over the undisturbed fire. “The family of Sioux had stopped for a meal by the small, muddy creek. They were doing nothing but eating a meal, John Henry.”

  Thomas remained silent as he scanned the horrid scene below. He was about to comment when a scream sounded in the preternatural silence that always falls after a gun battle. He looked to the left and saw a large man with the three stripes of a sergeant pulling a Sioux woman by the hair and laughing. Thomas became furious as he knew what was going to befall the young woman next.

  “Sergeant Major, disable that trooper … now!”

  “T’would be a pleasure, Colonel Darlin’.”

  Dugan aimed his Spencer. The act of shooting was natural for the man from Belfast, the best shot Thomas had ever seen. He had learned his trade while a guard for the Knights of the Vatican before joining the U.S. Army as a lad of twenty.

  The man was still laughing as the bullet hit before the sound of the blast co
uld echo down to the other men. The large round caught the sergeant just left of the groin. The man looked shocked and immediately released the woman’s hair. He screamed after his hand went to the wounded area of his leg and he fell to his knees. The other troopers looked stunned until they realized they were under attack. They drew their weapons, aiming in all directions around the small Indian encampment. Thomas spied the man in command as he ordered several of his men to relocate their positions. As the young officer reached for his own pistol in its holster, Dugan’s second shot exploded a geyser of sand and dirt only inches from his feet.

  “Hold your fire!” Thomas yelled, dropping to his knees in case the troopers below became brave enough to fire on an armed and wary attacker, unlike the small group of familial Indians they had just slaughtered.

  The men in the valley looked around in fear as they swung Spencer carbines in all directions.

  “Stupid bastards. If we leave ’em alone, they’ll just shoot each other. Look, they don’t know what to do with someone shooting back at ’em.”

  Thomas finally stood and presented his filthy form to the men below. Gray Dog followed suit and then Dugan, with the still-smoking carbine aimed below.

  “Who are you and why are you interfering with United States Army business?” the young officer called out. Thomas noticed that the man had holstered his revolver.

  “It doesn’t matter who we are, you stupid son of a whore!” Dugan yelled out while still aiming his weapon.

  “Sergeant Major,” Thomas said in rebuke to Dugan.

  “This is the one time I agree with Hair Face,” Gray Dog said. “I think we should shoot them all down like they did that Sioux family.”

  Thomas gave withering looks to both Gray Dog and Dugan.

  “Colonel Thomas, is that you?”

  John Henry Thomas started down the slope, disregarding the frightened troopers below, who were shaking and still aiming their weapons at the three men approaching. As the colonel entered the killing field he felt his stomach roil in his gut. Two of the male Sioux had already been scalped, the hair and skin discarded by the soldiers. Three small children lay within an arm’s reach of the mother who fallen to protect them. Thomas glanced at Dugan and nodded his head in the direction of the woman who had been about to be scalped, which to Thomas would have almost been preferable to being manhandled by the pig of a man moaning and writhing on the ground in front of him, cursing that he needed help.