Frontier

by Salzer, S. K.

  FRONTIER

  S. K. SALZER

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Afterward

  Copyright Page

  For my much-loved parents,

  Jean Spicer King, who taught me to love books and history,

  and in memory of my father,

  Paul Thomas King Jr., who taught me to love words.

  Prologue

  Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory

  December 21, 1866

  Rose heard the wagons before she saw them. She began to shiver as the rattle and clang of the iron wheels grew louder. Sounds moved with deceptive clarity through the thin mountain air, especially after sundown, but the wagons were close, only minutes away.

  The other women gathered with their children in one of the officers’ cabins but Rose waited with the men by the quartermaster’s gate, its heavy plank doors open wide to receive the approaching train. They stood without speaking, eyes fixed on the ribbon of road that trailed off into the gathering darkness. The last of the light clung to the snowfields atop the Bighorn Mountains, a gleam in the distance.

  “Riders on the Bighorn Road!”

  The sentry’s voice boomed from the blockhouse moments before Captain Tenodor Ten Eyck and his advance guard emerged on horseback from the gloom followed by foot soldiers lumbering like bears in their heavy greatcoats. As the first wagon rolled through the gate, Rose saw that its bed was filled with naked corpses, stacked head to heel like firewood. Here a stiffened arm protruded, there a leg, white as Italian marble. A second wagon, bearing the same cargo, was close behind.

  Colonel Carrington stepped forward, stopping the wagons. “How many, Captain?” he said.

  “Forty-nine, sir.” Ten Eyck dismounted and walked to Carrington’s side. “Including Fetterman and Brown.”

  “And Grummond? What of him?”

  Ten Eyck shook his head. “I don’t know, Colonel. It was too dark to continue the search. I fear they’ve all gone up.”

  Carrington turned on him, his face contorted with rage. “Dammit, man, you should have taken the road. You might have been there in time, you might have saved them!”

  Ten Eyck’s one good eye opened wide. “Colonel, I needed the higher ground—surely you see that. My men were on foot, most of them, naturally I was concerned that if I marched them through that defile—”

  Carrington raised his hand. “We’ll discuss this later. Now is not the time.” He pulled himself to his full height of five feet four inches, though in Rose’s eyes he had never looked smaller. “Take these men to the hospital. If there isn’t enough room, use one of the unfinished buildings. It doesn’t matter which.”

  Ten Eyck gave the order and slowly men came forward to unload the bodies of fellows they had laughed and worked with just hours before in the unusually warm December sun. Rose gasped when she recognized the seal-gray head of Private Thomas Burke sticking from the pile of corpses in the second wagon. Just that morning he had repaired a leak in her cabin roof. Now his eyes were bloody cavities and a stick protruded from his open mouth.

  She turned her head and wrapped her woolen shawl more tightly around her shoulders. At that moment there was only one place she wanted to be, only one person she wanted to be with. She ran to the stables where the men who rode with Ten Eyck were tending to the mules and horses. Immediately she saw him, Daniel Dixon, taller than the others, unsaddling his horse in the flickering lamplight.

  “Daniel!”

  He turned when she called and walked forward to meet her, taking her hands in his. They were warm, despite the frigid night air.

  “What happened out there?” she said. “What did you see?”

  The surgeon’s angular face was half in shadow. “They’re dead,” he said. “Fetterman and every man who rode with him. Eighty-one men, dead.”

  Rose shook her head, unwilling to believe this, fearing what it meant for her, for each one of them. She saw her dream of a free, unbound life in the West, a life big as a man’s, go all to smash.

  “You can’t be sure of that,” she said. “Grummond and his troop are still out—they might come in yet.”

  The scout, Gregory, joined them, his cigarette glowing orange in the darkness. “Don’t kid yourself, Mrs. Reynolds,” he said. “They’re dead all right—that or worse.” To be taken alive was the greatest fear of every man, woman, and child at the post, the stuff of nightmares. “I’ll warrant Red Cloud and his warriors intend to finish us off too, at first light most likely. We’d best be ready.”

  “How could this happen?” Rose said. Tears stung her windburned face. “How could things go so wrong?”

  Dixon laughed bitterly. “It’s been nothing but wrong, from the very beginning. Fetterman, Grummond, all those men were doomed from the start, from the day the U.S. Army sent us up here. The army used them, used Carrington, used all of us. Sure, the colonel will take the blame for what happened today, but the die was cast long ago. Tecumseh Sherman and his friends sacrificed those men to the god of railroads and commerce. The world will see that someday.”

  Gregory grunted and ground his cigarette into the frozen mud with his boot. “Well, I pray you live to see that day, Doc,” he said. “But right now I wouldn’t lay odds on it.”

  Chapter One

  Fort Stephen Watts Kearney, Nebraska

  May 16, 1866

  Lieutenant General William Tecumseh Sherman arrived in the middle of a windstorm that unsettled the animals, dirtied the freshly cleaned clothes hanging along laundresses’ row, and sent the giant garrison flag to snapping like pistol shots. Women in poke bonnets, children in homemade clothing, shopkeepers in aprons, Mexican teamsters, blanket-wrapped Indians, all gathered shoulder to shoulder on the boardwalk to catch a glimpse of the great national hero and commander of all western armies. Sherman’s visit was a major event for the soldiers of the Eighteenth U.S. Infantry, many of whom had soldiered with “Uncle Billy’” in Georgia, the Carolinas, and
earlier, at Kennesaw Mountain, Peach Tree Creek, and Jonesboro. They loved him as one of their own. No matter how big he got, Bill Sherman never would be too big to sit down with a private and eat a plate of beans at his campfire.

  Rose Reynolds tried to find a place in the crowd. Colonel Henry B. Carrington and the post’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Wessells, stood before rows of sweating soldiers under the hard blue sky as Sherman’s custom-made Dougherty ambulance rolled through the gate at the head of a column that included an overdue supply train. When it stopped the men shouldered their muskets with a rattling clatter.

  A gust of gritty wind grabbed Sherman’s hat as he stepped from the vehicle and sent it bouncing along the ground. A junior officer bolted after it.

  “Welcome to Fort Stephen Watts Kearney, General,” Wessells said, stepping forward. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Sherman returned Wessells’s salute without enthusiasm and surveyed his surroundings. A bustling and important place during the gold rush years, Fort Kearney by 1866 had taken on an aspect of decay. The original sod structures listed to one side like drunkards and even the newer wooden buildings were poorly constructed and in need of paint. The surrounding landscape, in all directions and far as the eye could see, was brown and sere, bare of any hint of green other than the rows of transplanted cottonwoods bordering the parade lawn.

  “My God, Wessells,” Sherman said. “This place hasn’t improved any. What a country.” He accepted his hat from the breathless junior officer and slapped it against his leg, releasing a cloud of dust.

  “It has potential, sir,” Wessells said. He was a small man with bushy white hair and a well-trimmed beard. “All it needs is more water and good society.”

  Sherman laughed without humor. “That’s all Hell needs,” he said. “Damn place is rotting away. I’m inclined to let it go to the prairie dogs.”

  Rose could not believe her ears. To her Fort Kearney was a magic place, far better than her native St. Louis with its dirty streets and foul smells. Kearney was the gateway to an exotic new world of beauty and strangeness and danger. New characters arrived every afternoon at two o’clock, when the heavy Concords of the Western Stage Company rumbled in for a team of fresh horses and to discharge passengers connecting with the Holladay lines out of Missouri. Rose entertained herself by inventing histories for weary, rumpled travelers from faraway places like Denver and Salt Lake City as they climbed down from the carriage and stood blinking in the white sun. Men in suits with waistcoats and top hats were card sharps, Indian agents, or felonious bankers absconding with suitcases full of cash; ladies in fitted traveling suits were heiresses fleeing abusive husbands, actresses bound for San Francisco, or women of opportunity returning to their families for a chance at redemption. The fort’s dusty streets teemed with Indians, scouts, and malodorous mountain men with hair-raising stories of wild red warriors, giant flesh-eating bears, and arctic cold. Let all this go to the prairie dogs? Surely not.

  Sherman moved up the line of men standing at attention, pausing occasionally to greet one he recognized, before he and the high-ranking officers retreated to headquarters for a cool drink and cigars. The ladies of the post hurried back to their quarters to make themselves beautiful for the soiree Wessells would host that evening. It would be a gala occasion, one of the few the families of the Eighteenth Infantry had enjoyed since arriving at Fort Kearney the winter before. The air was charged with excitement, not only because tonight there would be dancing and good food—thanks to an uncharacteristic spasm of generosity from the post sutler—but because Sherman’s presence meant the long weeks of waiting finally were coming to an end. Soon their great adventure would get under way.

  Officers blacked their boots and unpacked epaulettes, plumed hats, and dress coats while their wives pressed the wrinkles from their finest gowns. Rose took extra care, choosing first an Irish poplin of London smoke, with a mandarin collar and leg-o’-mutton sleeves, then putting it aside in favor of a Nile green silk that she knew showed her blue eyes to advantage. Her auburn hair she carefully arranged in a braided coil at the nape of her neck covered with a snood of sparkling silver thread. She was pleased with the effect despite the dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She hoped Mark would not notice. He was critical of women who “used a hardship posting as an excuse to let themselves go,” as he put it, but try as she might there was no escaping the Nebraska sun.

  “Our mission must be very important,” she said, admiring her husband standing shirtless at his shaving stand. “Why else would General Sherman come all this way from St. Louis?”

  Mark turned his head to shave his clean jawline. “It’s probably to do with Carrington,” he said. “Maybe he’s changed his mind about giving Carrington the command. One can only hope. Why couldn’t he have chosen Custer? Or Hancock even?”

  “You should be careful what you say, Mark. Someone may hear you.” Rose could not judge Carrington’s military competence but he seemed to be a kind and intelligent man, and she liked his wife, Margaret, very much. You could tell a lot about a man by the woman he chose.

  “Carrington’s in completely over his head and everyone knows it,” Mark said, wiping traces of lather from his face with a hand towel on which Rose had embroidered his initials. “Someone should have the courage to say it.”

  As he finished dressing, Rose sat on their bed and watched Sam Curry and the regimental band cross the parade ground to Wessells’s quarters, the shining brasses reflecting the last of the golden light. Carrington had insisted the band accompany the regiment on its march up the Bozeman to the Powder River country, despite the disapproval of his officers, who called it frivolous and an unnecessary complication. Carrington said music was good for morale and would not change his mind.

  Only officers and their wives were invited to the reception. Sherman stood in the parlor greeting them as they passed by in a line. Rose was a little disappointed at his appearance. Rail thin with uncombed red hair, a rumpled suit, and dusty shoes, Sherman looked more like a farmer than one of history’s giants.

  By the time Rose and Mark neared him, Sherman was showing signs of impatience, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. But when Rose reached him his hawk-like face brightened. He took her hand and raised it to his lips, giving her a roguish smile. Rose was surprised. The Savior of the Union was a flirt.

  “General Sherman,” Carrington said, “may I present Lieutenant Mark Reynolds? He’s with us on detached service from the Second Cavalry. He’ll have our boys riding like Tartars before we reach Laramie.”

  Sherman pulled his eyes away from Rose and returned Mark’s salute. “Yes, Reynolds, I’ve heard good things about you from my brother-in-law, General Ewing. Tom says you were a great help to him in Kansas City with that border business. He says you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, studied law at the University of Michigan, I understand.”

  They were interrupted by a howl. Carrington’s striker, Seamus O’Reilly, pulled two boys by their ears from their hiding place under the stairs and hotfooted them out the kitchen door. One of the boys was Carrington’s older son, Harry, the other his friend Bill Kellogg. The two had stolen into Wessells’s house to get a glimpse of Sherman.

  Later there was dancing, and Sherman repeatedly sought Rose as a partner. He was not a good dancer and smelled of cigars but Mark was proud of the general’s attentions to his young wife and encouraged her to accept his offers. At midnight when the party ended Mark escorted her back to their quarters, then left to join the other officers for cards.

  Rose lay in bed, anticipating the grand adventure that lay ahead, too excited to sleep. A bar of silver moonlight fell across the foot of her bed, and a cool night wind played with the calico curtains at the open window. Bored with life in St. Louis, sick to death of needlework, painting flowers on porcelain vases, and other polite ladies’ pastimes, she had long dreamed of this. What was waiting for them in the Powder River country? What would a truly wi
ld Indian look like? She had never seen one, only the hang-around-the-forts who struck her as sad and ashamed. How would the mountains be, and the rivers of snowmelt that ran so fast and cold your hands froze when you held the giant fish that swam in them? She had long heard of these things and soon she would know them firsthand. Finally, she thought, her life would truly begin. She was still awake when Mark, smelling of whiskey and cigar smoke, climbed into bed beside her and, to her disappointment, immediately fell asleep. She was still awake when the sentry called the hour at three. At last she drifted off only to be jolted awake by the boom of the morning gun and the sound of breaking glass. Overloaded with powder, it shook the walls and broke her parlor window.

  Chapter Two

  Rose’s head pounded like a blacksmith’s hammer and she burned with fever. She tried to hide her illness from Mark, hoping it would pass. Many officers had disagreed with Sherman’s decision to let wives and children accompany the regiment on campaign. A sick wife, she knew, would be a nuisance to her husband, so she stayed in the wagon—an army ambulance refitted and made comfortable for long-distance travel—all morning with a wet cloth over her eyes. When they stopped at midday she told her black serving woman to make her excuses.

  “Tell them I’m resting, Jerusha. Tell them I couldn’t sleep because of all the noise.”

  A week had passed since they left Fort Kearney. A pack of wolves had shadowed the column since the Old California Crossing, galloping alongside at a distance by day and fighting ferociously among themselves at night. Then at midnight they were startled by a new sound, a deep, rumbling thunder that seemed to flow from the very earth, rocking the wagons and frightening the horses. Women clutched their children and wide-eyed soldiers stumbled from their tents asking each other what was happening and getting no answers. All was confusion until chief scout Jim Bridger climbed up on a wagon tongue to announce the rumble and thunder were not caused by an earthquake but by stampeding buffalo, miles away. The campers returned to an uneasy sleep.