by Drury, Bob
And then the cowboys arrived.
31
HIGH PLAINS DRIFTERS
Nelson Gile Story was one of those larger-than-life Old West characters. The youngest son of Ohio corn farmers of flinty New Hampshire stock, Story was eighteen when his parents died in 1856 and soon thereafter he lit out for the Colorado Territory, finding work as a bullwhacker and freight driver. He was a handsome if hollow-cheeked young man with a shock of bear-greased black hair and a thick goatee that hung like Spanish moss. Story met and married his wife, Ellen Trent, around 1860, during a timber-hauling run to Missouri. Back in Denver, in 1863 he purchased an oxen team and a string of pack mules and dragged Ellen over the Rockies to the Montana gold fields. Quick with his Navy Colt and not shy about using it—though according to family lore he preferred pistol-whipping to shooting—he joined a vigilante committee that hanged at least twenty-one criminals, and he once blew the gun hand off a claim jumper who was holding a hostage as a human shield. In the meantime he washed $30,000 worth of dust and nuggets out of a placer claim in Alder Gulch—part of the “Fourteen Mile City” that included the boomtowns of Bannack and Virginia City.
Grubstake in hand, Story looked south to cattle country. Leaving his wife in the care of a local preacher’s family, he struck out for Texas. The Civil War had just ended, the North was clamoring for beef, and south Texas had an overabundance of both wild cattle and rancheros across the Mexican border virtually begging to be rustled. “Beeves” of both varieties eventually found their way to Fort Worth, the preeminent cow town on the Old Chisholm Trail. So did Story. He arrived in April 1866 with $10,000 sewn into the lining of his overcoat, purchased 1,000 longhorns, and hired a trail crew of twenty-seven cowboys. His destination was the busy railhead at Sedalia, Missouri.
On reaching the Kansas line, however, his drive was blocked by armed vigilantes who feared that their herds would contract Texas fever, a parasitic cattle disease that killed almost all other breeds coming into contact with the hardier longhorns. There were too many Kansans for even Story’s crew of rough cowpunchers to fight off, and he faced a decision—double back through the Indian Territory of present-day Oklahoma, or turn northwest along a route no cattlemen had ever before taken. Recalling his yearning for a good beefsteak in the stark, cold Montana mining camps, Story pushed the herd northwest. He had already covered over 300 miles and barely lost a cow. Virginia City was only another 1,000 miles away.
On their trek west Story and his cowboys lay over at Fort Leavenworth, where he stocked fifteen oxcarts not only with supplies for the drive but with crates of tools and bolts of calico to sell in gold country. The drovers then traced the Oregon Trail across Nebraska and into Wyoming until they reached Fort Laramie, where soldiers informed Story that Red Cloud had turned the Powder River Country into a bloody obstacle course. They would be fools to continue on, they were warned; the Lakota, Arapaho, and Cheyenne would raid them and stampede their herd. Moreover, the Fort Laramie garrison commander told Story that the colonel in charge of the Mountain District—another Ohio man, by the name of Carrington—had banned any civilian parties with fewer than forty armed men from overland travel. Story ignored him, purchased thirty new Remington breech-loading rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition from the local sutler, and spurred his outfit up the Bozeman Trail.
Two days shy of Reno Station they were hit. A war party of Sioux boiled up over a frost-rimmed slope, stampeded the herd, and cut out several hundred cows. Two of the drovers suffered serious arrow wounds. That afternoon Story and his men rounded up the bulk of the cows and set a guard to protect them and the wounded men. He then led fifteen or so of his cowboys on a counterattack. The little posse of seasoned trackers followed the Lakota to a camp on the Powder River, where the stolen longhorns had been enclosed by a ring of tepees. They surprised the Indians with a night charge, the barrels of their Remingtons and Colts flaming as the startled braves panicked and fled. They recovered the animals, and one of Story’s hands later said that they wiped out the entire camp, although this seems unlikely. Actually, the cagey Story would never admit to any killing (although years later he did tell his son he had never killed an Indian before that night).
Leaving the two wounded cowboys at Reno Station, the party pulled into Fort Phil Kearny in mid-October. There, Colonel Carrington counted heads and said that Story did not have the requisite forty armed men to move north. Story argued that he and twenty-five cowboys armed with Remingtons equaled the firepower of at least 100 emigrants. The colonel stood firm and offered to purchase the beef at set Army prices. Both men understood that Story could command four or five times that amount from hungry Montana placermen. Story declined to sell. The colonel then ordered the Texans to graze their longhorns some distance from the post and wait to join the next civilian train bound for Virginia City. Story protested against the security arrangements; he did not like camping so far from the fort. Carrington coldly explained that he needed to conserve the prairie grasses on the nearby bottomlands for his own reduced Army herd. Story, perhaps admiringly, sensed a setup. He knew that this late in the season no other emigrant train was likely to roll up the Bozeman Trail, and he suspected that the fussy colonel really wanted to keep his stock in the area until winter iced them in and the Army could buy them cheap.
On the night of October 22 he called his trail crew together and put the matter to a vote—aye to leave, nay to stay. Only one man voted to remain; Story had him covered with his revolver almost before the word was out of his mouth. He hog-tied the dissenter, tossed him into a wagon, and the Texans hitched their oxen. The herd moved out in the dead of night. The next morning the naysayer was turned loose, given a horse and his gun, and told he could return to Fort Phil Kearny. He decided to keep riding for the brand.
Colonel Carrington was apoplectic when he discovered the cow camp vanished. His first instinct was to form a large pursuit detail—and it would have to be large, given the Texans’ firepower. But his legal training got the better of his temper and he instead spent the morning weighing his options. On the one hand he could dispatch a detail to overtake the drovers and force them to return. Story had disregarded a direct order issued by the commanding officer of the territory, the only law in the land. But would the headstrong trail boss obey? Or would the confrontation lead to a shootout between white men that could go either way and could also require an explanation before a military tribunal and lead to embarrassing newspaper headlines? On the other hand, his overriding mandate was the protection of civilians passing through the Powder River Country. In the end, whether from personal prudence or a sense of duty, Colonel Carrington dispatched fifteen mounted infantrymen to find Story and his herd and accompany them to Montana. It was a superficial gesture. The colonel knew as well as the cowboys that the soldiers and their single-shot rifles added little to the endeavor. But with their presence, technically, Story’s expedition satisfied Carrington’s forty-man decree.
The outfit—trailing by night, grazing by day—fought off two more attacks by Sioux raiders, and a cowboy was killed during a battle with Crows. But on a snow-muffled morning in early December the residents of Virginia City, Montana, awoke to find two dozen Texas cowboys flashing Mexican spurs and silver saddle pommels as they guided more than 900 longhorns down the muddy main street. It would be four more years before anyone else dared drive a herd from Texas that far north, and the expedition made Story rich. He became the north country’s first cattle baron, with his Paradise Valley herd growing to over 15,000 head, and soon afterward he was the Montana Territory’s first millionaire. He did not stop pistol-whipping claim jumpers or hanging alleged outlaws; and he also swindled government Indian agents, bribed federal grand juries, and even investigated the mysterious murder of his friend John Bozeman. But meanwhile, like most scoundrels of the Gilded Age, he smoothed his grifter edges by founding a legitimate bank, building a string of flour mills, endowing a hospital, and becoming the town of Bozeman’s largest real estate holder.
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For all of his achievements, however, Story is best remembered for his epic cattle drive, which was one inspiration for the author Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize–winning saga Lonesome Dove. The fact that Story made it from Fort Worth to Montana is said to be no less remarkable than the fact that he tried in the first place. In any case, if Story’s exploits contributed in some small way to McMurtry’s characters Woodrow F. Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae, that may be his true legacy.
• • •
Not long after Nelson Story made history, a courier from Omaha rode into Fort Phil Kearny with orders from General Sherman officially abolishing the Army’s Mountain District. The directive was in the main benign. Colonel Carrington remained in command of the 18th Regiment with the same responsibility to make the Powder River Country safe. The order’s only real impact was to eliminate reams of redundant paperwork. But it served to highlight one crucial difference between the colonel and his primary antagonist. Unlike Carrington, Red Cloud not only executed policy, but made it as well. Generals hundreds if not thousands of miles from Fort Phil Kearny concocted the strategy and tactics to be used against him, and expected their agent on the scene to carry them out. Red Cloud was on the scene, a strategic and tactical genius running circles around the Little White Chief. Although he never mentioned it or wrote of it, Colonel Carrington was probably aware of this.
In part to show his command that the dissolution of the Mountain District was by no means a slight on their (and his) performance, and in part to celebrate the return of the visiting general’s escort detail, the colonel declared the last day of October a holiday. That morning was unusually balmy, and the first order of business was a formal battalion inspection. A day earlier the troopers had been issued new uniforms from the quartermaster’s store to replace the patched, mended rags some had been wearing since the Civil War, and every man, weapon, and mount was lined up for review on the small plain between the stockade and the Big Piney. The soldiers in their smooth new blue blouses and trousers, burnished boots, and spit-shined brass buttons met all the tests. But the remuda left something to be desired; and more than 100 of the old Springfield rifles were found to be “unserviceable,” including twenty of twenty-seven in one company alone.
Still, these problems did not dampen the festivities. Throughout the day the band played, poems were read aloud, Margaret Carrington was hostess at a tea social, cannons were fired, and a moment of silence was observed for those who had lost their lives. When a great luncheon on the parade ground was complete the chaplain stepped forward to offer a prayer and Colonel Carrington signaled to his flag bearers. It was time for the pièce de résistance.
For the past week a pair of enlisted men—one a former ship’s carpenter, the other an expert woodworker—had been putting the finishing touches on the garrison’s crowning achievement, a 124-foot flagpole. It was constructed of two lodgepole pine trunks, each as straight as a ruler, which had been shaved into octagons, painted black, and pinned together like a tall ship’s mast. Now the two enlisted men approached the pole and the regimental band played “Hail Columbia” as they unfurled an enormous American flag, twenty by thirty-six feet; gathered the halyards; and hoisted the Stars and Stripes, to a loud cheer. It was the first United States garrison flag to fly between the North Platte and the Yellowstone, and the vibrant red, white, and blue waving high above the prairie would serve as a beacon to travelers coming up the Bozeman Trail. After the official ceremonies, for the first time since their arrival at Fort Phil Kearny 110 days earlier, the 360 officers and enlisted men of the 2nd Battalion of the 18th U.S. Infantry Regiment were given permission to loaf the rest of the afternoon.
Two hours later they were recalled to their general-quarters posts when Indians flashing mirror signals appeared on Lodge Trail Ridge. Among the Indians were Red Cloud and Crazy Horse.
Part V
THE MASSACRE
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
—Napoléon Bonaparte
32
FETTERMAN
It was the incessant cannon reports that attracted the Indians. Crazy Horse was already in the surrounding hills probing for raiding opportunities when the soldiers ran up their flag and lit off their big guns. He sent messengers to the Tongue with word of this strange behavior, and Red Cloud joined the large, curious group riding south to see what the commotion was about. It was pure chance that so many Indians arrived on the bluffs overlooking Fort Phil Kearny hours before the last emigrant train of the season pulled into the post.
Red Cloud had not sent any war parties south to Reno Station for weeks, supposing the whites were done traveling for the season. For precisely this reason the train had rolled up the Bozeman Trail unscathed, and its security measures were lax. That night, after the wagon master conferred with Colonel Carrington, the emigrants dutifully circled their prairie schooners on the little plain 100 yards from the fort—where, earlier in the day, the garrison had been inspected—cinching them wheel to wheel with hemp ropes and enclosing the stock within. But the travelers’ guard was down. A few of the miners lit campfires and sat around the flames playing cards as a party of Strong Hearts crept close and let loose a volley. One man was killed instantly by an arrow; two more were wounded. The Lakota vanished by the time the panicked emigrants began firing blindly into the darkness. It was good to kill the white trespassers, but the attack so close to the fort also served another purpose. Afterward the Indians lit their own bonfires on the hills overlooking the post and danced furiously, brazenly flitting into and out of shadows cast by the flames. It was a reminder to the soldiers of whose territory they dared occupy. It was also a mistake. The Bluecoats hauled out their guns that shoot twice and bombarded the dancers with grapeshot. Several Indians were killed or wounded.
After the shelling, angry warriors argued that now was the time to strike the Americans in force, to wipe out the post and all within it. The autumn buffalo hunt was completed. The Upper Powder tribes were strong and united. What was Red Cloud waiting for? The blotahunka ataya asked for patience. Not yet, he said. But soon enough. There were, his scouts had informed him, more white soldiers on the way.
• • •
Captain William Judd Fetterman crested Pilot Knob at the head of Lieutenant Horatio Bingham’s company of the 2nd Cavalry on the morning of November 3, 1866. It was two days after the attack on the last civilian wagon train bound for Montana and, in Margaret Carrington’s words, his return to his old battalion had been “looked for with glad anticipation.” The snowbound ravines and coulees the party had just traversed were nearly impassable, and Fetterman may have been puzzled as to why the outpost spread before him at the foot of the Bighorns was merely dusted with snow, and why even less was accumulated on the surrounding hilltops and ridgelines. Actually, just four miles to the west of Fort Phil Kearny four feet of powder covered the lower slopes of the mountains. Despite his unfamiliarity with the frontier, however, he surely admired what he saw. Inside the stout pine walls dozens of buildings had been completed or were nearing completion, and from the top of Pilot Knob the post gave the impression of a good redoubt from which to conduct his hunt for Red Cloud.
Once through the main gate Fetterman, Bingham, and the sixty-three horsemen were greeted with sighs of relief. The incessant Indian attacks over the previous months had left the post’s inhabitants on edge, and the mounted reinforcements led by one of the regiment’s most decorated officers were a welcome sight. Before Fetterman even dismounted he was hailed warmly by his Civil War comrades Fred Brown and Bill Bisbee, his old quartermaster and adjutant from the Atlanta campaign. He had also become close to Captain James Powell on the journey from Omaha, and soon the feisty lieutenant George Grummond fell into his orbit. Together with scores of enlisted men who had followed him through some of the war’s bloodiest battles they would form a clique. These men felt they could clear the hostiles from the territory in a snap if only the ineffectual garrison commander would unleas
h them.
It did not take Fetterman long to identify the obstacles. Like all the officers deployed to the Powder River Country, Captain Brown and Lieutenant Bisbee could recite the disturbing statistics from memory and were anxious to do so for their old commander. Since the Army’s arrival in July there had been fifty-one attacks on the post and its environs. One hundred fifty-four soldiers and civilians had been killed, and at least three times that number had been wounded. Not a single wagon train had reached Montana without violent loss of life. Over 800 head of Army livestock had been stolen, in addition to an untold number of emigrants’ horses, mules, cattle, and oxen. And though it was not yet winter, the government had already ordered the Bozeman Trail closed for the following summer, as too unsafe for civilian traffic. In that time Colonel Carrington had not undertaken one offensive operation against the hostiles. This inaction was embarrassing to the junior officers at Fort Phil Kearny; worse, to the sensibility of the nineteenth-century U.S. Army, it reflected dishonorably on the post and the garrison.
Accompanying Captain Fetterman and Lieutenant Bingham had been two additional officers. Captain Powell, an infantry company commander, was a veteran of the 18th who still carried two musket balls in his body from the Battle of Jonesboro. Major Henry Almstedt was the regiment’s paymaster. Almstedt had come west carrying a satchel of greenbacks, the battalion’s back pay, and James Wheatley’s little restaurant saw an immediate increase in customers. All told, the influx of new men raised the strength of the garrison to some 400 effective troops; but despite the almost 200 additional armed civilian teamsters, hay mowers, and pinery workers, this was a modest number of able bodies, and it surely struck Fetterman as too few to police the vast territory he had just crossed.
