Rose’s spirits took off like a rocket. He had made it to Fort Reno! She felt hope, like the first warming rays of sun after a long, dark winter. Dandy’s arrival had a healing effect on Fort Phil Kearny’s anxious residents. A West Point graduate and experienced Indian fighter who campaigned against the Yakimas in Washington Territory in the 1850s, Dandy projected an air of competence and authority. The night of his arrival, alone in quarters that once were Brown’s, he recorded his impressions of Fort Phil Kearny in his journal:
I found the garrison shut up in the stockade in a demoralized condition from fear and half frozen for want of proper fuel. The extreme severity of winter had been allowed to approach and little or no provision had been made for supplies.
After touring the post the next morning, Dandy’s perception of mismanagement and lack of discipline deepened. He found sawmills in poor repair, neglected wagons, shoddy construction. The warehouses, he noted, were not nearly big enough to hold the stores required for a garrison of its size. Many of the supplies listed in the account books were missing—stolen, Dandy suspected—despite round-the-clock sentinels.
He concluded that the post’s materials and manpower had been misspent. Reluctantly, knowing his comments might later be used against Carrington, whom he liked personally, he noted:
There are no records and the business has been managed without system. The machinery, material, and labor of the post seem to have been confined mainly to two objects, viz—building the stockade and erecting the quarters of the commanding officer.
The snow stopped on New Year’s Day but the cold only deepened. Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to weeks, and still no sign of reinforcements from Laramie, no word of Phillips and Dixon. Food supplies, already short, were strained even more by the addition of Dandy’s men. Privation became a great equalizer. Everyone, regardless of rank or station, existed on the same diet of beans, hard bread, and coffee. Starving mules and horses chewed the bark off the logs of their stables and devoured their leather harnesses.
Fear hung over the post like a lowering storm cloud. The Indians were felt though not seen. The tension was too much for some. Harry Carrington woke one morning to hear a rhythmic banging coming from the kitchen. He went to investigate and found Black George squatting by the kitchen stove hitting his gray head against the wall hard enough to rattle the windows. He kept it up until the colonel put a revolver to his head and said he would shoot him if he did not stop.
People passed the time reading or playing games, chess, checkers, cards. One of Dandy’s men had brought a book, Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s sea adventure, Two Years Before the Mast. Harry read it in two days and passed it along to Rose. She was captivated by the beautiful but terrifying water world Dana described and imagined herself alongside the author on the California coast curing hides on a beach in moony darkness. She copied down a passage in which Dana urged his readers to “come down from our heights and leave our straight paths for the byways and low places of life.” Only by doing this, he said, will we “learn truths . . . and see what has been wrought upon our fellow creatures by accident, hardship, or vice.”
If she survived, Rose vowed to learn all she could about the world and the people who inhabit it. She would explore all aspects of life, the “byways and low places” as well as the grand and uplifting ones; she would discover other cultures, learn from them, improve herself with the knowledge they gave her. Above all, she would never reenter one of society’s cages. She would not become one of its captive women, would never return to the East with its corsets and parlor talk. Even if it meant living alone for the rest of her life like the solitary squaw at Crazy Woman Creek, she would remain in the West with all its beauty and terror, with all its heart and cruelty.
On the afternoon of January 16, Rose was on her hands and knees scrubbing her cabin floor when she heard the bugle and long roll of drums that meant arriving troops. She opened the door to see men running to the quartermaster’s yard. With a thudding heart, she pulled on her coat and buffalo boots and ran with them. Their rescuers had arrived! Companies of men, infantry and cavalry, approached the open gates with General Wessells himself leading the column. Rose surrendered to the hugs of a laughing soldier.
“We’re saved!” he cried.
She searched the parade of tired, unshaven faces for Daniel but did not find him. Her joy turned to dread. Had something happened to him? Would she be denied this last chance at happiness after all?
The last horseman entered the yard. He wore a beard and an unfamiliar gray coat, and she did not know him until their eyes met. He slid from the saddle and started toward her and she began to run, not caring who saw. When they met he wrapped her in his arms and lifted her off the ground and they spun together in a delirious circle. When he kissed her the press of his mouth on hers was the most thrilling, the most intimate, feeling she had ever known.
“I’ll never leave you again,” he said.
“I won’t let you,” she whispered.
After a time he put her down but he kept his hands on her shoulders. “Rose, we’ll have a good life in Bozeman. It will take time and hard work, but you’ll never regret it. I promise.”
“If you’re there I couldn’t be anywhere else,” she said. For the first time in months, the future unrolled before her as something to look forward to and not simply days on a calendar to fill. They went to her cabin, where she prepared a meal of army beans and cornbread. As he ate, he told her of his ride.
“The first stretch, the sixty-five miles to Reno, were the worst. We traveled at night and hid during the day in bushes or ravines, wherever we found cover for the horses. We tied their heads together to keep them quiet but the cold was a greater danger than Indians. That first night it was so bad I thought we’d die. There were times I would’ve welcomed it. It was the thought of you that kept me going.”
She reached across the table to touch his face, brushing the hair from his eyes. It was a small gesture, but one she had wanted to do so many times. Now at last she had the freedom and the right to do it. He took her hand and held it to his lips.
“Only you,” he said. “My greatest fear was never seeing you again. I thought we’d never make Fort Reno, but finally, there it was. God, what a beautiful sight. We rested and warmed up for a couple of hours, then pressed on. We made Horseshoe Station on Christmas day, about ten that morning. The telegraph operator wired the news on to Omaha. I stayed there—my horse was played out. Phillips went on alone to Laramie, with a letter from Wessells and Carrington’s dispatches.”
“But why?” Rose said. “Why didn’t the operator just wire them on?”
“He couldn’t guarantee they’d go through, long as they were, and with the weather as it was, he thought the lines might be down. It was too great a risk, so Phillips went on alone. He’s a brave man.”
Rose said, “I believe he’s in love with Frances Grummond. He came to see her before he left.”
Dixon nodded. “I suspect the widow Grummond will set her sights a bit higher.”
The room was warm, lit only by the glow from the heating stove. Rose got up to pour him a cup of coffee. Her hand shook. She was thrilled, but nervous, at the thought of sharing a bed with him that evening. They would go to his cabin, where there would be fewer ghosts.
“Rose, I’ve got to tell you something,” he said. “Something you might not want to hear.”
Her heart sank. Please, she thought, please don’t say anything to ruin my happiness.
“It’s about Mark,” he said. “About what happened to him. I want you to know before, well, before things go farther.”
She remained at the stove with her back to him. If she was about to be shocked, or disappointed, she did not want him to see it.
“Jack Gregory showed up at Horseshoe Station,” he said, “just after Phillips left. He was riding a mule. He said he’d been following us. Rose, Jack killed Mark. He wants you to know why he did it.”
Rose had suspected Jack
had something to do with Mark’s death, but she did not want to hear about it. Not now.
“Come,” he said. “Sit down.” She obeyed numbly. “What do you know of Mark’s time as Ewing’s adjutant in Kansas City?”
“He rarely spoke of it,” she said. “He said he helped General Ewing clean out the trash. Those were his words—‘clean out the trash.’” She had noticed Mark seemed bitter the few times he mentioned those days. She never questioned him, but she sensed he expected greater reward for his service than he had received. After all, Tom Ewing was Sherman’s brother-in-law. Certainly he could have advanced a junior officer’s career if he chose to.
“Well, if Gregory was telling the truth, and I believe he was, Mark did more than clean up for Ewing. Doc Jennison and his Jayhawkers came to Jack’s farm after the Lawrence raid. They tortured his father because they thought he knew where Quantrill and the boys were hiding. Jack wasn’t there, but his mother and sisters begged a Federal officer with Jennison that day to stop. The officer said Missouri was full of pukes and trash and he didn’t give a damn what happened to any of them. Finally, when it became clear the old man didn’t know anything, he told Jennison to put Jack’s father in the barn and burn it down. He burned alive.”
Rose closed her eyes. “That officer was Mark.”
“Yes.”
“How did Jack know?” she asked.
“His sister pointed Mark out to Jack after the war, in Kansas City. She said he was easy to remember because he was so beautiful to look at. She said she couldn’t believe that anyone so graced by God could be so evil. Jack got his name, vowed to get even. He thought he’d get his chance at Fort Sedgwick but Reynolds left early.”
“Is that why he came back from Bozeman City with you?” Rose asked. “To settle the score with Mark?”
“Partly, I guess, but he had another reason. Turns out Jack did steal that payroll back at the redoubt. He and your driver, Ignacio. Do you remember the body we saw on the mountain last summer, on our way back from the Indian ruin?”
Rose nodded.
“That was Ignacio. Indians found them while he and Jack were burying the money at the old fort. They killed the Mexican but Jack got away.”
“Did he go back for it? After leaving here?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “This is hard for you. Would you like to be alone?”
That was the last thing Rose wanted. She shook her head.
“It was over for Mark and me a long time ago,” she said. “I think it ended when he left me at Fort Sedgwick. Did you know I was carrying his child?”
“I’d be a pretty sorry physician if I didn’t.”
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to have children?”
He smiled and stood up from the table, still holding her hand. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Chapter Forty-nine
Wessells had brought orders from Cooke relieving Carrington of command of Fort Phil Kearny. Wessells himself was to be Carrington’s replacement. Carrington told his officers and his family he expected this, that his reassignment to Fort Casper was in the works even before the massacre, but Harry did not believe him. He knew the men blamed his father for the deaths of eighty-one brothers. No one wanted to serve under him.
Though he did not blame him for the deaths on Massacre Ridge, as Lodge Trail Ridge was now known, Harry understood his father was not a good officer. He saw trees instead of forest, he was too insecure to delegate, he wasted time and money on secondary goals. Worst of all, the men did not respect him. While they would overlook almost any failing in an officer they loved, where Carrington was concerned no shortcoming would be forgiven. Harry saw this clearly.
They would be leaving Fort Phil Kearny soon. Harry felt a growing sadness as the time drew near. The Powder River country was frightening and cruel, he had lost people who mattered to him, he had often been hungry and cold, but even so he did not want to leave. He loved the rolling green valleys, the sparkling streams, and the towering Bighorns against an endless sky. He loved the mystery of the dark woods on the mountainsides and frozen snowfields on their crests, he loved the people he had known here. He was especially sad that Old Jim Bridger was still at Fort Smith and he would not have a chance to say good-bye.
They would leave in a driving snowstorm. Harry, Jimmy, and their mother would travel in a winterized ambulance, which was fitted out with double boarding and canvas just as the Bisbees’ had been weeks before. Dan Dixon and Rose Reynolds came to see them off.
“I’ll miss you,” Margaret said as she hugged Rose. “But I’m so happy for you and Daniel. Write to me, promise?”
“I will,” Rose said. “Of course I will. And you do the same.”
Margaret nodded and wiped away tears, then looked slowly about the post that had been her home for the past seven months.
“It turned out badly here,” she said. “For so many, including my Henry.” She turned to Dixon. “Give my regards to Major Bridger when he returns.” She cleared her throat. “Well, good-bye then. I wish you the best.”
She climbed into the ambulance, where Jimmy was making himself a nest with blankets and buffalo skins close to the little stove. Then she shut the door, leaving Harry alone with Rose and Dixon.
Harry kept his eyes on the ground, his throat too tight for speech. Dixon put his hand on his shoulder.
“Harry,” he said, “this doesn’t have to be good-bye forever. We’ll be settled in Bozeman City by summer. Come stay with us when you can. You’re welcome anytime.”
Harry nodded, still unable to speak. Rose stepped in close and put her arms around him, something he had dreamed of many times but in his dreams he had not felt such pain.
“I’ll miss you most of all,” she whispered. He saw she was crying.
He cleared his throat, trying not to do the same. “Maybe I’ll see you at Fort Casper or back East somewhere.”
She shook her head. “No, you must return to us.”
“I will.” But even as he said it he knew he was looking at her for the last time. There was so much he had never told her. He’d never told her of his love—though he thought she knew—never told her of seeing Mark leaving Jerusha’s tent that night, but maybe she knew that too. These things would never be said now, and maybe it was better that way.
“Good-bye,” he said. He turned his head, unable to hold back his tears, and climbed into the ambulance. The column was starting. He pressed his face to the window, watching until Rose and Dixon were shadows and finally disappeared altogether in the swirling snow. In the roar of the wind Harry heard the voices of the dead and the lost, of Fetterman and Grummond, Bingham and Bowers, Glover and Reynolds, of Indian warriors and their women and black-eyed babies, of bullwhackers and freighters, scouts and hunters, of cattlemen and emigrants and gold-hungry miners.
The snow was falling faster and thicker now, dry and granular as sand. Eventually all was obscured, the black flagpole, the cabins and warehouses, the sawmill, the stockade walls, until all was lost in an impenetrable fog of snow.
Afterward
July 2, 1908
The two men sat in wicker chairs on the porch of a large, two-story ranch house. One was portly and expensively dressed in woolen trousers and a silk waistcoat, the other tall and rawboned, wearing jeans and a faded cotton shirt.
“Thank you, George, for giving the old folks a place to stay,” the stout man said. “It’s an inconvenience, I know, but it’ll only be for the two nights. You know, this has turned out huge for us. We’ve got press from New York and Chicago and St. Louis. Of course, it’s a headache for me, as mayor.” He picked a piece of lint from his trousers. “But it’ll be worth it. This will put Sheridan, Wyoming, on the map.”
He took a pack of cigarettes from his waistcoat pocket and offered one to his companion, rancher George Gier, who shook his head. They watched Gier’s hired man wrestle the elderly couple’s bags from the auto
mobile, a Hewitt Landaulet, provided by the Chamber of Commerce. Gier’s wife had already taken their guests to their rooms.
“Bound to be an emotional time for them,” the mayor said. He struck a match on the sole of his boot and lit a cigarette. “They haven’t been back here since it happened. Almost forty-two years.”
Gier gazed out over the field of alfalfa growing thick on the plateau at the fork of the creeks. “We still find things,” he said, “not like at first, when we first went to ranching, but every now and then. Up on the ridge, too—cartridges, buttons, lance points. Found a ball and chain over yonder. And this.” He reached into his worn jeans pocket and produced a tiny tin soldier in Revolutionary costume, its red, white, and blue colors still bright. “I found it buried out there in the alfalfa field. Carry it around for luck. Say, you think the colonel and his wife would like to see any of this old stuff? We kept most of those things, out in the barn.”
The mayor pulled on his cigarette, his face thoughtful. “I don’t know, George,” he said. “The old man is strung pretty tight, if you know what I mean. He looks sickly. It wouldn’t do to upset him, right before the ceremony. Maybe after.”
He discovered a stain on his waistcoat and worked on it with a wettened finger. “Hard to believe all the things went on back then,” he said. “I was just a boy, but I remember reading about it in the Denver newspaper. Looking back, I guess you might say what happened here started it all—you know, the Indian wars. You don’t hear much about Fort Phil Kearny nowadays but it was big news back then, I’ll tell you that.”
Gier nodded. “I remember. Stories about how those eighty-one men were killed, pounding on the gates, because the soldiers inside the fort were too scared to open them up and let them in. Didn’t matter that none of that stuff was true, the colonel got blamed anyhow.”
Inside the house they heard Gier’s wife asking their guests if they wanted to wash up before dinner. The old man thanked her but said they were tired and would go straight to bed. Perhaps she would be kind enough to bring tea and sandwiches?
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