A Cold Day in Hell

by Terry C. Johnston

  Success, or failure … one thing was certain. It was destined to be another cold day in hell.

  Prologue

  6 October, 1876

  “So when does Sheridan say he wants you riding off for Camp Robinson to keep an eye on Red Cloud’s camp?” asked Seamus Donegan, his gray eyes reflecting the pulsing gleam of that dim-red glow of his pipe bowl as he drew smoke through the stem, those eyes then flicking another anxious look at the building fondly called Old Bedlam by those stationed here at Fort Laramie.

  “He’s give me till the morning,” Frank Grouard answered. Then cleared his throat before he continued in that way of a person about to address a grave matter. “Seems worrying is a man’s part in all of this birthing business, Irishman. ’Specially when it’s his first.”

  The tall man with the thick crop of beard only nodded, sipping from his clay mug of whiskey, frosty streamers rising from his nostrils in the hoary cold of that night. The anxious father-to-be and the half-breed scout had stepped outside the sutler’s saloon to catch a breath of the cold, dry autumn air. “Aye. But it makes it no easier: I wish there were something I could do other’n this bleeming wait and this god-blame-med worrying”

  Close by, a woman’s rising scream raised the hackles on the back of Frank’s own neck. He watched that eerie sound cause Donegan to sputter, drawing down on that last swallow, his gray eyes registering grave concern as he gazed with concentration and smoky intensity on the building right next door.

  Pushing some of his long brown hair back over his shoulder, Seamus murmured, “Maybe there’s something I could be doing—”

  “Come inside with me, Irishman,” Grouard suggested, gently tugging at Donegan’s elbow. “That’s what you can do. She’s got all the help in the world right now.”

  “Dear Mither of God,” Seamus whispered as he turned toward the doorway with Grouard, gazing one last time over his shoulder at Old Bedlam where his wife lay—giving birth to their first born.

  “C’mon,” Grouard urged again. “They’re all mothers with her, every last one of ’em. Ain’t nothing to it—women’s been giving birth this same way ever since the start of time.”

  His bloodshot eyes found the half-breed’s as they turned the corner of the mud-walled building and stepped into the half circle of greasy yellow light splashing from the open doorway at that moment held open by John Bourke.

  “Looks like I showed up at just the right moment,” the thirty-year-old Lieutenant called out, bowing graciously low at the waist and motioning the two civilian scouts inside. “We just got word over at Townsend’s that your wife is about to deliver.” He saluted some soldiers as the men shuffled past him into the warm, bright, lamplit interior of Sutler Collins’s watering hole. “From the look on your face, I figure you could use another drink. Can I buy you one, Seamus?” He pounded the Irishman on the back as the three snaked through the tables toward the bar in the low-roofed saloon that sat beside the sutler’s trading room.

  “I oughtta be doing something other’n drinking,” Donegan grumped as Bourke motioned the barkeep to bring them all a mug of apple beer.

  “Can’t say as any of us ever get good at this, Irishman,” announced Andrew Burt as he moved toward the trio at the bar. “Lord knows I’ve had enough of this waiting myself. But Elizabeth’s there with your woman, and there’s three others besides, Seamus. Things’ll be fine now. Only a matter of nature taking its own sweet time.”

  “See there, Irishman,” Frank replied as cheerfully as he could, not knowing a damned thing about this birthing matter. “The good cap’n here speaks from experience. No need to worry. Time like this, what a woman needs is other women to help out what was always meant to be a natural thing anyway.”

  “Grouard’s right,” Bourke said. “Just look at you, man—those hands of yours, the way they’re shaking. That lip of yours, how it’s trembling. Why, if you poked your nose in there, you’d do nothing but flux things up real good!”

  “Wouldn’t he now?” Grouard cheered, grabbing the Irishman by the nape of the neck and shaking him affectionately. “Seamus is a good man to have along on a scout, or creeping past a Lakota camp—but he’d be a goddamned bull in the parlor around a birthin’ woman!”

  As they all laughed, Captain Burt said, “Why don’t you three come join Captain Wessels and me yonder at our table?” He motioned to the far corner where Henry W. Wessels of the Third Cavalry waved them over. “Seamus can keep his eye on the door, where Elizabeth will be sure to send word once Seamus has become a father.”

  “A f-father,” Donegan repeated as the others ushered him stumble-footed toward the far table where Wessels, Lieutenant Walter S. Schuyler, and two other officers sat sipping at their whiskey or savoring their apple beer, a shipment come up from Cheyenne just that afternoon.

  John Bourke settled into one of the ladder-back chairs, worn down to a warm, yellowed pine, then declared, “Frank—I want to hear about your race with Captain Jack.”

  “Yes!” cried Schuyler, like Bourke, an aide-de-camp to General George C. Crook. He hoisted his glass of pale whiskey into the air. “I’ve heard tell bits and pieces of the tale—but not a chunk of it from the horse’s mouth.”

  Bourke tugged Donegan down onto a half-log bench beside him and turned to tell Grouard, “Start back to when the general gave you the dispatches you were to carry to the nearest telegraph.”

  Frank set his mug of beer down, savoring the sweet tang of it at the back of his tongue as he swiped foam from his mustache and gathered his thoughts. “Seems now like it was forever ago.”

  “I know what you mean,” Donegan agreed with a glance at the door.

  Bourke put his arm around the Irishman’s shoulder, saying, “We haven’t been back here but a few days now, Seamus. G’won, Frank—while our father-to-be is waiting for his grand news—tell us the story of your race with Crawford from the Black Hills.”

  “You want me to start back when I rode off from the command?” Grouard asked.

  “Yes. Back to when the general gave you his dispatches he wanted put on the wire to Sheridan,” Burt added.

  Clearing his throat, Grouard stared at the low ceiling a moment to recapture the chronology of that contest of wills and stamina he had waged against young Jack Crawford. “I was with Colonel Mills when that run for it started.”

  “In Whitewood City, right?” Wessels asked.

  “Right. Gone there with Lieutenant Bubb of Commissary for supplies while the general brung up the rest to the Belle Fourche. Folks in Whitewood treated us good when we got there that night way after dark. With dawn Mills would start out to buy up near every bite those hungry soldiers could eat. Before I went off to find a place to sleep, I told Crawford for him to be on hand come daylight—so he could go with Bubb to help out loading supplies and hauling it all back to Crook’s men. ‘You’re to stay with the command,’ I told him. ‘What’re you off to do?’ Jack asked me. ‘I’ve got the general’s telegrams to get through,’ I says.”

  “Did you know he was buffaloing you then?” Donegan asked, then turned anxiously on his bench as a pair of soldiers bolted into the saloon and hurried to the bar.

  “No,” Frank answered. “But I had my suspicions: just the way he was acting—trying to go off on his own two times when we was in Whitewood Canyon. But, damn, if Colonel Mills wouldn’t let him slip away from us! Then after we got down to Crook City, Captain Jack said he was going off to sleep at a friend’s camp. Made sense to me—I didn’t suspect a thing. Crawford’s been around the Hills for a long time, so I thought nothing more of it when he told me that he’d be back come the break of day.”

  “But you didn’t see him in Whitewood that morning, did you?” Bourke inquired.

  With a shrug Grouard replied, “At the time it didn’t make no never-mind if I didn’t see him. Wasn’t looking for him, I s’pose. All I done was splash some water on my face afore I headed out to find some breakfast. Only one thing on my mind back then: getting to Deadwood wit
h the general’s dispatches.” He patted the front of his shirt.

  “Were you carrying news for any of them correspondents?” Schuyler asked.

  “Three of ’em.”

  Bourke said, “Bet them three each paid you good to get their stories on the wire before any of the rest, right?”

  With a sly grin the swarthy half-breed answered, “Let’s just say those fellas agreed to make a hard ride well worth my while.”

  Laughter rose all around that table, then Burt said, “So, I suppose you’re buying tonight, eh, Frank?”

  As the rest laughed again, Wessels asked, “I know that road as good as any man outside of Teddy Egan. So tell me: where’d you finally find out Crawford was gone on ahead?”

  “Down at Deadwood, it was,” Grouard answered. “I had them reporters’ money to trade in my broke-down army horse and get me a good mount when I reached a livery at Deadwood. So when I went in the stable, what you s’pose I saw?”

  Andy Burt replied, “I heard tell you spotted Crawford’s mule tied up there!”

  “Damn right I did,” Frank said with a scowl. “Asked the stable man where it come from, who brung it there.”

  “He tell you?” Bourke asked.

  “Not at first. Looked right suspicious about it—like he’d been warned to lie through his teeth, most-like. Finally he owned up to that mule coming in about five that morning. So I asked him where the man was come riding that mule into town.”

  “But he’d left already, hadn’t he?” Bourke asked.

  Frank nodded. “On a goddamned horse the livery man sold him. Making tracks for Custer City without so much as a minute’s wait.”

  “That was the first idea you had Crawford was carrying dispatches for Davenport?” Donegan asked as he set his mug down on the table.

  “By that time I was getting real angry, so the livery man owned up to that too. Jack been bragging high and low how he got his five hunnert dollars to get Davenport’s story on the wire ahead of Crook’s official report.”

  Bourke said, “And here you had just galloped off from Crook thinking you had all the dispatches from every reporter with the column.”

  “Including that snake-oil drummer Davenport,” Grouard replied. “What that son of a bitch had done to make out like everything was on the up and up, he give me a copy of what he already sneaked over to Crawford—when he give Captain Jack orders to get his story to the telegraph twelve hours before Crook’s official report.”

  “That son of a bitch wanted an exclusive,” Bourke growled. “Damn his copper-backed hide! Davenport’s made it plain all summer long that he’s had a big bone to pick with the general—but to go behind Crook’s back the way he did like this!”

  “Army business, that’s what Crawford was fooling with!” Burt exclaimed angrily.

  Grouard held up his hands for silence, quieting the rest. “In the end, Davenport got his due, fellas.”

  “That’s right,” Donegan added, glancing at those around the table. “We heard tell he’s down in Cheyenne City this very night, sicker’n a dog.”

  Wessels roared, “Served Davenport right—that puffed-up son of a bitch. Glad you whipped Crawford in the race!”

  “Didn’t look like it was going to come out that way at first,” Frank explained dramatically. “General’s plan was for me to hire another man in Deadwood to get Crook’s dispatches through. But when I found out Crawford had the jump on Crook the way he did—there was only one thing for me to do.”

  “You gotta hand it to Crawford, Frank,” Donegan said with no little admiration. “He took off through some rugged country thick with Injins in the blackest part of night—them Sioux been raiding all around there.”

  Schuyler agreed eagerly. “Just two days before, we heard a war party had jumped a fella no more’n two hundred yards from the main street in Crook City itself!”

  Bourke leaned in, eager expectation lighting his face. “But if anyone was going to overtake Captain Jack, it could only be you, Grouard!”

  “I told that liveryman to lemme have the best horse he had—but he said his best horse went with Crawford. So I grabbed up that bastard by the front of his coat and told him he better bring up the next-best horse or he’d be bleeding out of more holes than he figured possible.”

  “You get yourself a good horse?” Burt asked.

  “Yep. I ended up riding that horse into the ground too,” Frank replied. “But before I left, I told the stable man to get that animal bellied up on oats and saddled. I’d be back, just as soon as I had a local fella, Mart Gibbens, take me over to the bank and fetch me five hunnert dollars on the general’s authorization order.” He patted his breast pocket, then leaned back in his chair as he took another swig on his beer.

  Wessels asked, “You got your money, right?”

  With a nod Grouard continued. “Climbed into the saddle, tugged my hat down tight, and asked Gibbens what time it was. He told me it was ten-thirty. I didn’t say another word. Instead I leaned down low against that horse’s ear, whispering to him that I wanted all the bottom he had—then whipped that son of a big buck right down Deadwood’s main street to beat the band that bright morning. Figuring then and there it was going to be one ugly ride to reach the telegraph at Fort Laramie—two hunnert miles off as the crow flies.”

  Grouard went on to enthrall his listeners as he worked into his story as a man would work up a thick, soapy lather conditioning his saddle or bridle. Explaining that Crawford already had a good jump on him—what with leaving Crook City that evening of 12 September while Grouard slept—Frank said he soon realized there should be soldiers at two places on the Black Hills Road between Deadwood and Laramie. One place or the other he figured he might convince an officer to send a fresh courier on with Crook’s messages.

  “So how far that first horse get you?” Donegan asked.

  “Figure it was something on the order of twenty-five miles,” Frank said as Bourke gathered up the empty mugs with a clatter after setting down some full ones. “Damn if he didn’t give out about five hunnert yards from a road ranch. Packed my saddle and all in by foot from there.”

  “So did you buy a horse from the ranchkeeper?” Bourke inquired.

  With a shrug of no little importance, Grouard replied, “There was three horses out front, all tied up when I walked in there. Looked ’em all over before I decided on the likeliest one. Was starting to throw my saddle on him when the ranch man comes out hollering, asking me what the hell I thought I was doing.”

  “He have a gun pulled on you?”

  “No, didn’t have a gun on him what I could see—but I figured there had to be at least one gun inside pointed my way. Tried to tell the fella I was riding dispatches for General Crook, even pulled out my orders to show him—then tightened the cinch on the horse, asking him how much he wanted for the gelding. Man said he wouldn’t sell it, but he did want to do what he could for Crook and his soldiers—so he told me to give him fifteen dollars for the use, then see that the horse got back to him.”

  Burt asked, “Did you get that horse back to the man?”

  After another swig of the warm beer, Frank said, “That’un dropped dead under me too. By the time I reached the next road ranch.”

  “Sweet Mither of God! How many horses you kill on that race?” Donegan asked, his eyes bouncing back to the doorway.

  “Killed three of ’em. And the other three I used up so bad, they ain’t worth a damn no more,” Frank grumbled sourly. “Damn shameful thing to do to good horseflesh too. Goddamn that Crawford anyway.”

  “What was he doing at this time?” Bourke asked.

  “S’pose he was staying just ahead of me … leastwise through those first four horses I gone and run into the ground.”

  “When did you finally catch up to him?” Wessels asked.

  “First I had to knock a big German off his horse,” Frank boasted.

  Walter Schuyler clapped with excitement. “By damn! Tell us about that part!”

 
“Seems that next-to-last horse I rode was all but done in. For as far as I could see ahead of me, wasn’t a ranch in that piece of country. Horse under me was in a bad way, about to give out when I spotted a rider coming around the hill toward me on the road. I got down right there while he was coming up on me, pulled my saddle off, and let my horse go just before the rider reached me. I grabbed hold of his bridle and told him I wanted his horse. He was a big-boned German, that one was, likely could come close to making two of me—but he didn’t have a gun on him that I could see.”

  “Did he make trouble for you?”

  Frank nodded with a dour chuckle. “I reached right up under his leg, loosing the cinch as he goes to squalling—telling me I can’t have his goddamned horse and cussing me two ways of Sunday. Told him I had to have it, and why. ‘Bout then I needed him off the horse so I could set my saddle on—so I pulled him right off into the road. He started for me, so I finally had to pull my belt gun and hold it on him. All the time I was putting my saddle on, I was telling him I’d pay him for the animal. But he kept on telling me he wasn’t going to sell him. Over and over he said I’d hang for horse stealing. So I told him I’d hire the goddamned horse out. How much did he want—but he’d none of that neither.”

  Andy Burt asked, “You end up just riding off?”

  “Was near to it when he saw that I was about to,” Frank replied. “Told him one last time he had that last chance to get his money before I was gone. Guess he figured that was that, so he said he’d sell for eighty dollars. I throwed him his money right there in the middle of that Laramie Road and kicked that horse in the ribs. It took off something smart.”