The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  Sheridan motioned Forsyth to sit. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s not your ability versus Custer’s, Sandy. It’s simply … this job is shaping up to be more than what any one man can handle.”

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “From everything that’s been hitting us since last spring,” Sheridan began, walking over to the office window to gaze out at the Leavenworth parade, “I’m beginning to think I’ve got to fight this war on two fronts.”

  Forsyth joined Sheridan at the window, where he stared out at the hot parade baked by an early August sun. This summer of ’68 had proven itself to be one of record heat … with no end in sight.

  “I have an idea what you mean,” George replied. “Though we know the Cheyenne are striking at our settlements here in central Kansas, still reports have it there are others, proving that two separate groups are involved in all the raiding.”

  Sheridan turned, smiling. “Right. The Southern Cheyenne and Kiowa coming north across the Arkansas from The Territories.”

  “And, the Northern Cheyenne and their Sioux allies raiding south, coming down across the Republican.”

  “You’ve got it, Sandy. Lieutenant Beecher’s scouts have found out that much, by God.”

  “And a helluva lot more, Phil.” Forsyth slipped a cheroot from a pocket, dragged the match-head across the window-sill, and lit his thin cigar. “Beecher’s done one masterful job with those plainsmen he’s hired. Problem is, he doesn’t have enough of them to watch the movements of all the bands, both north and south of the K-P’s line.”

  Sheridan wagged his head, jamming the stump of his well-chewed cigar back between his teeth. He ran a meaty hand over his thinning hair, short-cropped and newly graying. “Telegraph Beecher for me, Sandy.” He continued gazing out at the glaring parade.

  “You want him to come in, sir?”

  “No. Just inform Fred that you and I are considering hiring us … say, fifty first-class frontiersmen. Men good on horseback and good with a gun. Not like these recruits they’re sending us out here to wear a blue uniform and eat army chow.”

  “Fifty, Phil?”

  “Volunteers. Tell Beecher to start sniffing around for the best he can hire.”

  “As civilian quartermaster employees?”

  “That’s right,” Sheridan replied. “That way we can pay them top dollar, to get the best manpower there is to offer on the plains right now.”

  “Why fifty, sir?”

  With his tongue, Sheridan shifted the cigar stub thoughtfully. “Tell Beecher I’m thinking about sending his plainsmen out in pairs … each pair assigned to follow a band … dog its trail, and when they find a band—report back to Wallace or Harker … wherever. Then the army will take over from there.”

  “You’ll have army detachments attack the villages, General?”

  “That’s right. Way I see it, Beecher’s plainsmen won’t have to do a lick of fighting. Just some sniffing around and some tracking.”

  “They’ll find the enemy camps. Then our soldiers will do the rest.”

  “You’ve read my mind, Sandy.”

  Forsyth swallowed, took the cheroot from between his teeth, and licked his lips. “Uh, General.”

  “Yes?”

  “May I impose on you to read my mind, Phil?”

  The shorter Sheridan turned on the stocky Forsyth, almost toe to toe with the square-jawed thirty-one-year-old major. Phil laughed easily, slapping a hand down on Forsyth’s shoulder.

  “Hell! That’s always been the easiest thing to do with either you or Custer.”

  Forsyth nodded. “You understand then, sir?”

  He laughed easily again as he strode back to his desk. “Go on now, Sandy. Send that telegraph to Fred Beecher. Let’s get this campaign rolling before another month goes by.”

  Forsyth stopped by the door, his hand on the cast-iron shuttle latch. “You’ll give me a piece of this, General?”

  Sheridan nodded, his back to the major. All the time his eyes narrowed on the wrinkled map crookedly nailed to the wall behind the general’s chair. “Sandy, I’m beginning to think I want to hammer these red bastards with the best Phil Sheridan can put in the field. That means getting Custer back sooner than any one of us had planned.”

  “Custer?” Forsyth asked, his throat constricting.

  Sheridan turned. “He’ll be my pincer in the south, Sandy.”

  “And … and me, General?”

  The general smiled. But it did little to relieve that anxious, cold stone in Forsyth’s gut.

  “You, Major … you can plan on getting yourself a good piece of the action if you want it.” Sheridan turned back to the map, running a stubby finger west along the route of the Kansas Pacific tracking the flow of the Smoky Hill River … past Fort Harker and Fort Hays … into the rolling wilderness of the Solomon, the Saline, and the faraway Republican.

  “Action? Finally fight some Indians, General?”

  Sheridan looked over his shoulder at Forsyth, smiling. He nodded. “If Fred Beecher and his plainsmen can find ’em, Sandy—you all can fight ’em.”

  Forsyth saluted smartly. “Thank you, General! Thank you——”

  “Get that goddamned message keyed to Beecher now,” Sheridan said as he dropped to his chair and tugged to loosen his damp collar. “What I wouldn’t give to be sitting with Bill Sherman right now, Sandy. Up in Chicago, feeling those lake breezes blowing in my window.”

  “Yessir. I’ll get this off to Fred right now.”

  Forsyth watched Sheridan turn his chair round as the general went back to studying his map, only the top of his bristling head showing.

  Minutes later, Sandy found himself pacing, filled with anticipation as the telegraph clerk tapped out the message Forsyth had scribbled on a pad in the key-shack on the far west side of the parade. The major stopped, the clicking of the key fading in the background as he stared out onto the rolling Kansas prairie where afternoon hung on forever and the whole world shimmered beneath a hazy mirage, giving the land a look of make-believe. A dreamlike quality that suddenly captured and took hold of Maj. George A. Forsyth.

  Running a pale, damp hand through his long, wavy brown hair he kept neatly parted on the left and swept back like a dandy’s behind each ear, Forsyth ruminated on what beckoned to him from beyond those far hills. And what had brought him to this moment.

  Last fall on Medicine Lodge Creek near Fort Larned, nearly five thousand Indians had gathered to talk peace with the white man. Cheyenne and Sioux, Arapaho and Comanche. Even the feared Dog Soldier bands from the south and Roman Nose of the Northern Cheyenne. In return for the promise that the Cheyenne would remain on their reservations in The Territories south of the Arkansas River, the tribes were promised shipments of annual annuities to include food, clothing, blankets, and some trade goods. More important was the matter of weapons and ammunition the warriors demanded were necessary to their annual hunts for the nomadic buffalo.

  In anticipation of the gifts, the Central Plains had quieted for a time with both the coming of the promised annuities and that hard winter of 1867–1868. But by April Lt. Frederick Beecher, working out of Fort Wallace at the far western border of Kansas Territory, reported finding evidence of large Sioux and Cheyenne camps.

  None of the tribes was staying within the confines of its assigned reservation. Civilian scouts and interpreters confirmed for the army that the Cheyenne were moving north-west. Word had it the old chiefs were hoping to avoid contact with whites, both settler and soldier alike.

  But by May 19 young Cheyenne warriors had attacked a trader’s store at Fort Zarah on Walnut Creek near the Arkansas. Seven days later Forsyth and Sheridan received a report that a civilian wagon train bound for Denver had been attacked on the Smoky Hill. That meant one thing—the warriors were migrating north. Not only had they crossed the Arkansas, but they had marched right into the heart of the Kansas Pacific construction and wagon-freight route of the Smoky Hill Road west to Colorado.

  Daring the wh
ite man and his soldiers to punish them if they could.

  Report after report had clicked over the wires from Fort Wallace. Beecher kept Sheridan informed that many of the attacks were most probably the work of young warriors out to prove themselves, perhaps for the first time. But as a consequence of these spring raids, the army denied the Cheyenne their shipments of arms when the annuities were finally handed out in mid-July at Fort Larned.

  Sandy remembered Beecher’s terse dispatch informing Sheridan the Cheyenne had proudly refused their entire shipment of annuities if they were not given the arms and ammunition they had been promised the previous fall.

  Just days ago in a long message, Fred Beecher had ventured a rare opinion, yet one shared by and gathered from a consensus of the plains scouts the lieutenant had working under him on the far Kansas frontier. Beecher did not believe the Cheyenne wanted to start a general war.

  Something inside Sandy Forsyth hoped fervently along with Beecher that a major war with the Cheyenne was not being ignited in the West.

  Yet a part of that thirty-one-year-old soldier who stood staring at the sun setting beyond the rolling Kansas prairie land itched to have just one crack at the Cheyenne, the feared Dog Soldiers.

  Perhaps, if he was lucky, even a crack at Roman Nose himself.

  Chapter 4

  “What’s your name, son?” asked the hard-eyed, thirty-year-old sergeant named William H. McCall, perched behind the wobbly table set in the shade of a Fort Harker awning, some halfway between Fort Riley and Fort Hays on the Smoky Hill Line.

  “Stillwell, sir,” he answered, his voice cracking. He had prayed it wouldn’t.

  “Your full name.”

  “Jack Stillwell.” He watched the hard eyes narrow, the pen poised unmoving above the sergeant’s leather-bound ledger.

  “Your Christian name, son.”

  “Simpson … E.… Stillwell, Sergeant.”

  The soldier smiled. “That’s better, son. Now, how old are you?”

  Jack swallowed. This was every bit as hard too. The others behind the sergeant at the table had stopped and were staring at him. He could hear the whispers behind him in the long line stretching back into the shade. Someone was joking about his curly hair belonging on a girl more than it belonged on someone joining Forsyth’s scouts.

  Stillwell sensed the drop of cold sweat slip down his spine like January ice-water. Another soldier leaned over the sergeant’s shoulder and asked the same question again, with a quiet, reassuring voice.

  “I’ve heard you’ve done some scouting for the army before, Jack Stillwell. But, we still need your age, young man. For the record … and to be certain you’re of age to join up with my expedition.”

  Jack knew who the young, sun-bronzed lieutenant was. No one needed to tell him here stood Fred Beecher, Civil War hero and chief of frontier scouts for none other than Phil Sheridan himself.

  Stillwell straightened. “Nineteen, Lieutenant Beecher.”

  The lieutenant straightened as well, smiling. “Very good, Jack.” He presented his hand. They shook. Beecher had no way of knowing how Stillwell’s knees rattled beneath his canvas duck britches. “You’re officially a part of Forsyth’s scouts. Give the information to Sergeant McCall here, and he’ll get you squared away. I’m glad you’re riding with us.”

  “Thank … thank you, Lieutenant. Can’t figure how to show you what it means——”

  “You’ll have a chance soon enough, Jack. Show me by keeping your nose clean till it’s time for us to march to Fort Hays. There we’ll finish hiring our entire complement and be on the trail to Wallace.”

  “I’ll be glad to be back in the saddle myself, Lieutenant,” McCall advised. “Chasing the Cheyenne, that is.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not like chasing the wind this time, Billy.”

  Stillwell watched Beecher turn and disappear back through an open doorway. He figured it was cooler in there. Maybe not. There wasn’t a breeze stirring anywhere here on the Central Plains. Hotter than any man alive could remember it getting out here. He thought again how lucky the Dog Soldiers were, riding their quick ponies in nothing but breechclout and moccasins——

  “——ask you again, Mr. Stillwell … are you providing your own mount?”

  “Yes … yessir. Sergeant … yes, I am,” he answered nervously, hearing the snickers rising behind him from the long line of volunteers waiting to enlist in Forsyth’s scouts.

  “Sign here … on this page.” McCall turned his ledger book around, facing Stillwell, and indicated a line for the new recruit’s signature.

  Jack carefully formed his letters. Then considered it a moment. He had forgotten to draw a line across the one upright stick-letter. He was always forgetting to do that. Again he considered the words. They were just as much hen scratchings. But his mama had taught him to write that much. Even if he couldn’t read what it said. He was sure all those scratches amounted to Simpson Elmore Stillwell.

  “You’re now a civilian quartermaster employee of the United States Army, Mr. Stillwell. No rank.”

  “None of us wearing uniforms, Sergeant?”

  “Only three will wear uniforms. Major Forsyth. The lieutenant in there,” McCall said, throwing a thumb back into the cool shade of the room where Beecher had disappeared. “And, myself.” He smiled. “Your sergeant.”

  “Yessir. What’s pay?”

  “Since you’re providing your own mount—seventy-five dollars a month. Fifty if we provide for you.”

  “If … if my horse is…”

  “If your horse is killed, Mr. Stillwell—the army will repay you full value for the animal.”

  He liked the sound of that. Loving his horse the way Jack did. Seeing him through these last two years the way the animal had.

  “And, the army will provide full rations, equipment, and weapons for you. Forage for your mount.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Spencer … seven-shot repeater, Mr. Stillwell. A Colt’s army revolver as well.”

  Jack knew the pistol. Heavy things they were. Big too, clamped in a small hand such as his. But, Stillwell fired a weapon with the best of them and rarely missed his mark.

  “Should I bring along my own blanket, Sergeant?”

  “If you need more than the one I’m assigning you.”

  “Summer nights can get cold … west of here, sir.”

  McCall smiled that warm, brown-toothed smile again. Jack decided he liked the sergeant. Liked those eyes that warmed with every smile. It seemed his whole face warmed in fact. “You slept out on the prairie a time or two, Jack?”

  “I have, sir.” He swallowed. “I’ll take your blanket and keep mine along as well.”

  McCall nodded. “Smart lad. But, best you travel as light as you can. And I hope your mount’s a strong one … as Major Forsyth is a fighter and he says we’ll make a fast march of it. General Sheridan figures it may take until first snow for us to catch the red bastards … but the major’s the sort who won’t stop until the job’s done.”

  “I’m glad to be part of this, Sergeant.”

  McCall presented his beefy paw to Stillwell. “Glad you’re with us, Jack. Go with Culver here … he’ll show you where you can draw your truck and rations.”

  Jack saluted self-consciously. “Yessir.”

  The sergeant saluted in turn. “That’s the last one of those you’ll get out of me, son. No need me getting one from you.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  The cackles and laughter of the older men drifted away behind Stillwell as he followed a civilian into the sunlight and across the parade.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow for Fort Hays, you know.” George Culver struck up with a bit of conversation.

  “No, sir. I didn’t.”

  The thin rail of a man stopped, turned. Presented his hand. “Name’s G. W. Culver, that is.”

  “Jack Stillwell.”

  “I know.”

  “Yessir.”

  “Don’t have to call me
‘sir,’ neither.” Culver strode away again. Jack figured he was expected to follow.

  “Major Forsyth’s gonna hire thirty men here, then head to Hays.”

  “Why only thirty, G. W? Thought he needed fifty.”

  “Does need fifty.”

  “But, he’s got more’n that waiting in line back there now——”

  Culver stopped again, his scuffed boots kicking up a small shower of dust that sparkled in the mid-morning sunshine that foretold another steamy day on the plains. “Listen, Stillwell. The major ain’t just picking any nit, prick, or stillbirth walks up to that table, you see.”

  “Nosir?”

  “No, he ain’t. He and the lieutenant hisself both watching the men from the window of that room behind McCall’s shoulder. Beecher comes out if the sergeant’s s’posed to hire a man.”

  “Like he done to me … right?”

  Culver grinned a tobacco-stained smile. “Right, boy. Lord knows what them army fellers see in a young’un like you.” He wagged his head, sucking on his tongue in critical appraisal of Stillwell. “Likely as not, if you don’t run the first time you come eyeball to crotch with a Cheyenne … your kind’ll just piss your pants!”

  Jack felt the first twinges of shame as the older man turned, laughing hysterically at his own humor and strode on beneath the sunshine. Then came the anger. And Jack swallowed it down, staring at Culver’s back, a splotch of dark sweat stained between the older man’s shoulder blades.

  “By damn,” Jack whispered, his fists clenching, “I won’t run … and I never been known to piss my pants neither. Goddamn you, Culver. Goddamn all you sonsabitches. I’m ever’ bit as good as any man of you. And I’ll show you that come the time them Cheyenne wanna fight ’stead of run.”

  He nodded his head once, as if convincing himself of it. And followed George Culver toward the quartermaster’s depot.

  “By damn,” Stillwell repeated, softer now, for he was thinking on his mother back to home, “time comes … I’ll stand with the best of you.”