Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876 tp-10

by Terry C. Johnston

  August 2, 1876

  “Will you look at that?” John exclaimed with an excited gush. “Wild Bill, the famous pistolero, was killed right here! And just a few weeks ago! My, my—wait till I write about this!”

  Like a statue there beside Finerty, Donegan crossed himself with a trembling gun hand. Eyes welling, he murmured, “B-blessed Mary, Mither of God!”

  “What the hell’s wrong with you, Irishman?” Finerty asked, sensing the first quiver of fright at the way Donegan stood transfixed, as if he’d just seen a ghost. “Don’t tell me you’d be superstitious having us a drink in there now. Just think what you can tell your children—that you drank whiskey in the same saloon where the famous Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down.”

  “Murdered.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said, Seamus. Wild Bill was gunned down right inside there.”

  Donegan shook his head, clenching his eyes, some tears creeping out at their corners. “No—there wasn’t a man what could’ve gunned Bill Hickok down. Just like the sign says: he was murdered.”

  Inching in front of the big scout, Finerty stared into Donegan’s eyes. “You—you knew him … knew Wild Bill Hickok?”

  Nodding once, he sniffed. “Back to sixty-seven. We scouted a short time together. Me and Cody both.”

  “That’s right,” Finerty said, remembering. “The winter you fellas hijacked that load of Mexican beer and made a tidy profit selling it to Carr’s soldiers. Well. I’ll be damned, Irishman. I hadn’t put it all together until now. I see. Well. Under the circumstances I can understand why you might not be thirsty no more. Maybe we have had us enough and should find a place to sleep off the rest of the night.”

  Eventually the Irishman nodded, quietly saying, “Yeah. Someplace else to go but here.”

  “My God! Listen to this, Seamus!”

  Donegan really wasn’t at all interested in what the Chicago newsman found interesting in that copy of The Black Hills Pioneer.

  Ever since he had stared at that sign nailed to the front of Mann’s Number 10 Saloon last night, the Irishman had thought of nothing else but Bill Hickok, fondly remembering their scouting days together, learning of the gunman’s meteoric rise to fame as a Kansas cow-town lawman.

  Annoyed at the interruption, he dragged his eyes away from gazing out the restaurant window and looked into the face of the reporter seated across the table from him, who was reading a copy of the local newspaper.

  Donegan asked, “Does it say anything about Crook’s visit?”

  “Yes—they’ve got a really good piece on our campaign and some nice writing on the general’s oratorical efforts last night,” Finerty answered that morning of the seventeenth. “But it’s this editorial you’ve got to hear: ‘Some pap-sucking Quaker representative of an Indian doxology mill, writes in Harper for April about settling the Indian troubles by establishing more Sunday Schools and Missions among them.’ ”

  “Just what the Sioux and Cheyenne need,” Donegan grumbled. He took another sip of his steamy coffee, then went back to staring out the window.

  “There’s more here,” Finerty continued. “‘It is enough to make a western man sick to read such stuff.’”

  Without looking at the correspondent, Seamus said, “I never was much of one to read newspapers, anyway. Though I personally have nothing against newspapermen.”

  “Now, listen, Seamus—this here is the clencher! ‘You might as well try to raise a turkey from a snake egg as to raise a good citizen from a papoose. Indians can be made good in only one way, and that is to make angels of them.’”

  Finally he looked into Finerty’s eyes. “By that account, seems Crook’s and Terry’s armies haven’t made too many Indians good, have we?”

  For most of the previous night and into the morning, Lieutenants William P. Clark and Frederick W. Sibley had busied themselves pulling all of Deadwood’s blacksmiths out of bed and the saloons to work at reshoeing the patrol’s horses and unshod Indian ponies. Finally at eight A.M., after a big breakfast and lots of coffee for those who had unwisely celebrated most of the night, Crook had them climbing back into the saddle for their ride south to Camp Robinson.

  On the road to Custer City they passed a growing number of wagons: empty freighters rumbling south to the Union Pacific rail line at Sidney, Nebraska, returning north with those precious goods bound for the Black Hills mining camps. In the early afternoon the general’s party met three companies of the Fourth Artillery escorting a wagon train ordered north with supplies for Crook’s expedition. For more than an hour the groups stopped there beside Box Elder Creek to exchange news of the world for news from the front.

  In their travels the following day they passed by the new community of Castleton on the Black Hills route that led them along Castle Creek and on through the shadow of Harney’s Peak. Already the new community was home to more than two hundred hopeful miners and merchants. On the outskirts of town, fields had been plowed and a few small cattle herds grazed in the tall grasses. By noon they had reached a plateau, where they looked down upon Hill City, abandoned save for one hardy hermit.

  “Why did everyone go?” Donegan asked the old man.

  Came the simple answer, “Indian scare … and no gold dust.”

  The sun was settling into the western clouds, igniting them with radiant fire, when Crook’s party reached Custer City, aptly named for that one soldier who brought his Seventh Cavalry to explore the Black Hills back in seventy-four, then promptly informed the world of the prospects for finding gold in that land ceded to the Sioux. Here Crook called a halt for the night, and the party reined up outside a likely looking hotel.

  “Donegan? Is that really you?”

  Seamus turned slowly at the call of his name, unable to recognize the voice. His hand slid closer to the butt of a pistol. He looked at the clean-shaven soldier bounding off the boardwalk toward him, not able to place the man.

  “Seamus Donegan! By the saints—it is you!”

  “Egan? Don’t tell me!”

  The captain stopped and spread his arms widely in a grand gesture, cocking his head to the side slyly. “Teddy Egan, his own self!”

  They laughed and hugged and pounded one another on the back as John Finerty came over.

  “Still tagging along with this worthless bit of army flotsam, I see, John,” Egan said after shaking hands with the newsman.

  “Ever since the three of us went marching with Reynolds down on that Powder River village,” Finerty responded.

  James “Teddy” Egan’s famous troop of grays, E Troop, Second Cavalry, the same men who had led the charge on the village nestled beside the frozen Powder River which Frank Grouard swore was Crazy Horse’s camp back on St. Patrick’s Day,* had ever since that winter campaign been assigned to protect emigrant and freight travel along the Black Hills Road between Fort Laramie and Custer City.

  A courier from Laramie reached the general just after supper, bearing a message from Sheridan requesting that Crook hurry on and reach the fort within forty-eight hours. That was all but impossible given the condition of their weary mounts and captured Indian ponies. Yet the general would try to press on with all possible speed. To do so, he would require new mounts, immediately requesting Captain Egan to lend fifteen of his sturdy, sleek horses then and there in Custer City on the following morning of the nineteenth. Leaving behind his escort under Lieutenant Sibley to accompany the pack-train under Major Randall, the rest of the officers climbed atop those strong grays of Teddy Egan’s and set out at sunrise on a forced march. They had over a hundred miles to go just to reach Camp Robinson.

  Glory! But it was good to have a good horse under him once again, Donegan thought. For so many weeks his horse had slowly played out before he finally turned it over to Dr. Clements back at the Sioux village and taken for his own one of the Sioux ponies. But now this was so much better. A fine army mount, surging along with the others on that trail behind Crook, who kept them at a gallop for most of the day. The general shot a deer
for their dinner that noon; then they pushed on, reaching some marshy land at the southern end of the Hills by dusk.

  Not more than a quarter of a mile ahead lay the waters of the South Cheyenne River. As the sun set far to the west, they struck the wagon road blazed from Buffalo Gap in the Black Hills down to the Red Cloud Agency. Pushing the horses back into a lope, Crook soon had them at a gallop once more.

  By ten P.M. they reached a branch of Warbonnet Creek, where they watered the stock and talked of Bill Cody’s first scalp for Custer. Crook then asked if the others would agree to press on, and the entire party went back into the saddle for another four hours, when they finally stopped to picket their horses and lie down in their blankets on the frosty ground to enjoy a few hours of sleep.

  Seamus told himself he must be getting old. He simply couldn’t remember a piece of cold ground ever feeling that good.

  * The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 8, Blood Song.

  Chapter 51

  20-24 September 1876

  The general had them up at four A.M., resaddled, and back on the road within a half hour, without breakfast or coffee.

  Pointing to a ridge still at least twenty miles away to the south, Crook later halted the group as the sun was emerging in the east. “Would anyone care to hazard a guess what that is?” the general inquired.

  “Those box-shaped buildings on the top of that high ground?” Finerty asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Could it be Camp Robinson?” asked Robert Strahorn.

  “Exactly,” Crook replied. “Let’s push on, gentlemen!”

  That last stretch of country before reaching Red Cloud’s reservation took the horsemen through some barren badlands. For the first time in weeks dust rose from the hammering hooves beneath them, covering them all with a fine layer of yellowed talc by the time that dirty detail rode in among the agency buildings. Near the sawmill a fatigue detail was hard at work and turned to watch the band of riders pass by.

  One of the soldiers called out to the dust-caked horsemen, “Where the devil have you fellas been?”

  “In Hades, of course!” sang out Thaddeus Stanton.

  Suddenly a second infantryman slapped the first on the shoulder, exclaiming, “Jesus! They’re soldiers!”

  “N-not just soldiers—officers!”

  With a flurry of salutes to the mud-covered band of officers, the soldiers sheepishly turned back to their work in a great hurry.

  It didn’t take long for more of an audience to gather on the road easing through the agency buildings. At least a thousand Sioux crowded to take a look at Three Stars himself—the soldier chief who had fought Crazy Horse several suns before the Hunkpatila war chief had defeated the Long Hair beside the Greasy Grass. These men with Three Stars must be some of the same soldiers who had attacked the village of American Horse.

  As they moved slowly through the throng of dark-eyed visages, Finerty leaned in his saddle toward Donegan and said, “I wonder if any of these are the warriors we fought at Slim Buttes right before they hurried off to get here ahead of us.”

  Seamus nodded. “I have no doubt, Johnny. You can feel it in the way they look at us. Makes my marrow go cold.”

  By pushing Egan’s horses so hard, Crook had used them up and was forced to remain at Camp Robinson for the rest of the day and into the next until Randall and Sibley showed up late on the afternoon of the twenty-first. That Thursday evening after supper, Major Jordan and his officers gave Crook’s officers a crowded but grand reception held around the stoves in the sutler’s store. For many it was a delightful reunion of old warriors, and though they had only coffee and a dram of brandy to share, there was much to toast and celebrate.

  Together again the entire party prepared to set out behind an anxious Crook early on the morning of the twenty-second. They were leaving behind one of the correspondents, Robert Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain News, who would be going south to Sidney, Nebraska, alone, where he could board a train east.

  “How long’s it been, Bob?” Seamus asked as he dropped the stirrup down, finished tightening the cinch.

  “Since last February when I came north to Cheyenne, Laramie, and on to Fetterman, hoping to investigate the rumors we’d heard that the army was taking the field for a winter campaign,” he replied as the rest of Crook’s party milled about, completing the last of their preparations before putting Camp Robinson behind them.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day beside the Powder River,” Seamus said.

  “I won’t ever forget charging in with Teddy Egan’s boys and John Bourke at my side!” Strahorn replied.

  “You sure you won’t come on to Laramie with us?”

  “No, I’m sure,” the reporter said. “I’ve been wanting to see the Centennial Exposition back in Philadelphia, maybe write a story or two about it for the paper. They’ve got a presidential campaign going on right now too. Good chance for a reporter, you know. Been thinking about both of those things more and more ever since last winter. All through the blasted summer too.”

  “Just make sure you don’t ask for any horse-meat steaks while you’re back there!” Donegan cheered, holding out his hand.

  Strahorn took the Irishman’s in his, and they squeezed more than shook. Then, more quietly than he had been speaking before, the newsman said, “You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you? I mean, now that I’m not going to be around, Seamus?”

  “You watch yourself back there, Bob,” Seamus said, sensing the sting at his eyes. “I’m afraid you won’t quite know how to act with all those civilized folk.”

  Strahorn smiled and clapped a hand on the tall man’s shoulder. “Likely I have picked up some damned crude manners, indeed—what with spending the last half a year with you, Irishman!”

  Pushing their jaded horses and captured ponies as fast as they dared, the general and his men rode long into the evening before halting to graze the horses and grab a little sleep.

  They were back in the saddle before sunrise on 23 September, reaching the camp of Ranald S. Mackenzie’s escort from the Fourth Cavalry that Saturday night. Having left most of his troops behind at Camp Robinson until Wesley Merritt could bring down the Fifth Cavalry to take over the task of disarming the Sioux at Red Cloud, the colonel was already on his way to Fort Laramie, called there to meet with Sheridan and Crook.

  Together, the three of them would plan the prosecution of the Sioux War into that fall, even unto the winter if necessary, hoping to bring a resolution to the thorny “Indian problem.”

  Some time after supper that evening, Donegan made his way to the leadership fire. In that ring of cheery light he recognized a few familiar faces, then carefully measured the back of a tall officer who was talking and laughing with Captain Randall.

  Seamus stepped up and said, “General Mackenzie?”

  The handsome soldier turned. “Yes?”

  Holding out his hand, Donegan pressed on. “You probably don’t remember me, but—”

  “Irishman!” Mackenzie bellowed, grabbing Donegan’s hand and pumping it vigorously with his own right hand that was missing some fingers. “By glory—I sure as hell do remember you!”

  Proud and startled at the same time, Seamus said, “I wasn’t sure you would, General.”

  The colonel put his hand to his cheek. “You don’t look quite the same as you did.”

  Touching his own cheek, Seamus said, “Oh, this? With winter coming it won’t be long and I’ll have that full beard back what I wore that campaign down on the Staked Plain.”

  “You might look a bit older—but we all do! I can’t believe you’d think for one minute I wouldn’t remember you and that time we pitched down the sheer cliff into the Palo Duro to catch the Kwahadi napping.”*

  Crook got to his feet and came to stand at the taller Mackenzie’s shoulder. “You mean this reprobate really was with you when you flushed Quanah Parker’s Comanche into that miserable winter?”

  “When we butchered more than fourteen hundred of th
eir ponies,” the colonel replied.

  “Settlers down that way in the Panhandle talked about that for a long time after,” Donegan said as the four correspondents crowded up to listen in.

  Mackenzie asked, “So what are you doing here? When did you show up?”

  “This evening, with General Crook, sir.”

  Mackenzie glanced at his superior. “Do you have Donegan serving you as a scout?”

  With a nod the general answered, “From time to time he’s made himself quite valuable. Quite valuable—all the way back to the mess Reynolds made of things on the Powder River last March. Yes, this Irishman’s served me admirably.”

  “I should say, General,” Mackenzie replied, gazing at the Irishman. “You sure have covered some ground, Donegan.”

  “I have at that, and haven’t seen my wife since May.”

  “A wife, is it?” Mackenzie roared. “Well, now—when did you decide to settle down?”

  “Not long after you convinced Parker to come in, General,” Seamus answered. “In many ways, though, it seems like it’s been ages. Feels even longer since I’ve seen her.”

  Mackenzie said, “And where is she while you’re out scouting for General Crook here?”

  “Waiting for me at Laramie.”

  “By glory! You’re no more than a good day’s ride from her now, Irishman. I envy you, I do. Getting to see her by tomorrow.”

  Donegan nodded eagerly. “I can’t wait to see how she’s … well, how big she’s grown. She’s carrying … er, we’re expecting our first child, General.”

  “What, ho! Not only do I learn that you’ve married and settled down—but you’re going to be a family man now!” Mackenzie turned to one of his staff officers. “Lieutenant Otis! Bring me that flask of mine. This truly is a cause for celebration and at least one stout toast all around to this father-to-be!”

  Then Ranald Mackenzie turned back to slap a hand on Donegan’s shoulder in that frosty air beside a merry fire. “Who would have thought—Irishman! That I’d go and find one of the finest white scouts ever there was who led my Fourth into battle.”