Hook glanced at others up and down the line, not knowing if the Fort Kearney assignment was blessing, or curse.
The officer went on, “Two more companies assigned to garrison each of the following: Cottonwood Station, Fort Rankin, Junction … and the last companies to report on to Fort Laramie. General Connor is establishing Fort Rankin as regimental headquarters. You Confederates—inside of a month, you’ll be guarding six hundred miles of road.”
Leaving companies A and B at Fort Kearney, then depositing companies C and D at Cottonwood Station, the rest of the regiment marched on into the northeastern corner of Colorado Territory, arriving at Julesburg on 25 April.
Without delaying, two days later companies I and K were formed up and marched north, leaving the rest behind to garrison the South Platte stations and to build the new Fort Sedgwick to replace the aging Fort Rankin. Captains Henry Leefeldt and A. Smith Lybe had their orders minutes after arriving at the sprawling Fort Laramie, like a beacon on those far plains.
“We’re to push on west,” explained Captain Lybe to his I Company that night as the men sopped up the last of their white beans with hardtack, supper in bivouac in the shadow of the Laramie barracks. “K Company will drop off at Camp Marshall, sixty-five miles west of here.”
“So where we going?” asked one of the Mississippi boys Jonah had been captured with at the battle of Corinth.
Lybe turned slowly on the speaker, pursing his lips for a moment in concentration. “We been handed the toughest row of all, boys.”
Some of the Confederates muttered among themselves. Others just stirred their fires with sticks or stared at the coffee going cold in their cups.
“I won’t bullshit you none. We’re all gonna count on each other out there—so I don’t want to start by telling you this is going to be a cakewalk. You all have those down south at Sunday socials, don’t you?”
Lybe smiled, trying to drive home his joke as some of the Confederates laughed self-consciously.
“Those of us what lived close enough to a church!” hollered someone behind Jonah.
The rest of them laughed now. Lybe too. Hook liked the Yankee for trying. The captain just might make this company of ragtag Confederates work, and keep them alive to boot.
“Well, now—we’ve got our orders.”
“Going where, Cap’n?”
Lybe cleared his throat. “We’ll push on to Three Crossings, where we’ll build our post.”
“We all gonna stay there?”
“No such luck, boys. We’re being spread thin along the telegraph. To keep it open.”
“How thin is thin?”
“This company’s got us three hundred miles to watch,” Lybe answered, wiping his palms on the tails of his tunic.
“Jesus God!” someone exclaimed.
“We’ll be spread out from Sweetwater Station, St. Mary’s, and clear up to South Pass itself.”
“The mountains? We going clear up into those goddamned mountains?” squeaked a questioner.
“No. South Pass isn’t in the mountains. You wouldn’t know you had crossed the Rockies if you didn’t pay attention and see the creeks and streams flowing west, instead of east.”
“Don’t say,” muttered the fellow beside Jonah. He smiled at Hook and went back to licking coffee off his finger.
“We won’t be alone though.”
“Hell, no. We’ll have all kinds of redskin company I bet.”
Lybe laughed easily at that. “No, boys. The Eleventh Ohio is out there, waiting for us to come on west.”
“Ohio boys?”
“Yes. I hear they’ve already got a few galvanized Rebs of their own on their rosters. Mostly Kentuckians who served under General John Morgan.”
“Kentucky boys are all right,” Jonah said. His voice carried loudly in the sudden stillness.
“Yes, soldier. I think Kentucky boys are all right. Just like the rest of you: Mississippi and Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee.”
“Don’t forget Ala-by-God-bama!” shouted one of them.
The rest hooted, singing out their home states.
Jonah watched Lybe drag a fist under his nose, not knowing if the man was touched by the homey kinship of these Southerners suddenly getting used to the ill-fitting blue uniforms and these far-flung, wide-open plains dotted with high purple mountains, or if the captain might truly be worried for what he was leading them into.
3
May, 1865
WHEN CRAZY HORSE and Little Big Man rode in at the van of the long procession leading many fine horses swaybacked under all that fine plunder taken in the raids along the Platte River, the eyes of the Bad Face Oglalla warriors grew big as Cheyenne conchos.
By the Moon of First Eggs, Old Man Afraid could no longer talk his people into staying out of the way of the white man. Instead, both Red Cloud and the Old Man’s son were convincing more and more of the Oglalla that the time had come to make war on the white man. Raiding the Holy Road had never been so profitable, nor so easy—what with so few soldiers strung out along the road and the talking wire hung above those deep ruts pointing toward the setting sun.
Beneath the spring moon, Young Man Afraid of His Horses and Red Cloud called for an all-out effort to drive the white man and his soldiers from the North Platte by midsummer. Until then, small raiding parties would strike here and there along the Holy Road, feeling out the strength of the enemy, keeping the soldiers in a turmoil like a wasps’ nest stirred with a stick, and forcing the army to dart here, then there, with what strength the bluecoats could muster.
“These soldiers do not fight like men,” Young Man Afraid told the great assembly of more than fifteen hundred warriors. “We marched north from our raids along the Holy Road. Tell them, Crazy Horse—what happened to those soldiers sent against us.”
The Horse stood, his young frame and light unbound hair etched in firelight. “Southeast of the fort the white man calls Laramie, the soldiers tried to attack us as we crossed the North Platte with our families and herds. There were only two hundred Blue Coats sent against us—a powerful force of Lakota and Shahiyena more than one thousand warriors strong!”
“We pushed the soldiers aside like they were troublesome buffalo gnats!” added Young Man Afraid to the laughter of the Oglalla.
“The next day the soldier chief brought more soldiers riding from the fort, but this time we attacked him,” Crazy Horse continued. “The Blue Coats forted up inside a ring of their wagons and made it hard in a day-long fight to steal any of their American horses. We lost no warriors in either of those battles before moving north once more into the Sand Hills, on farther to the Paha Sapa.”
“This march made in the teeth of winter,” Young Man Afraid reminded the assembly.
“I think that is why Spotted Tail left us and returned to Fort Laramie to join the Loafers,” said Crazy Horse. “The Arapaho went their way as well.”
“But now with two full moons of the young grass in the bellies of our ponies, we are ready once more to ride after the buffalo and lay in the meat our warriors will need for the war trail,” Young Man Afraid said. “Then once we hold our sun dance, we can march south to drive the white man out of our hunting land, for all time.”
“Man’s gotta be careful sitting alone out here,” Shad Sweete said quietly as he came up out of the dark behind the young soldier sitting at the edge of the hill not far from the camp fires, but far enough that only the old plainsman’s experienced eye could make out the dark shape blotting out a piece of the spring nightsky.
The soldier turned to the scout with a withering look. “Didn’t hear nobody make you my nursemaid, old man. Why don’t you go on back with them others and let a fella have some peace to himself out here.”
Shad stood there, staring down at the soldier he took for half his age, measuring the size of the chip the man carried on his shoulder. The scout tried to place the inflection to the stranger’s voice. It had been so many years. He settled down a few feet from the soldier.
>
“You from Kentucky, ain’t you?” Sweete asked.
Again the soldier regarded him like he was meat gone bad. “No, old man. Virginia—for all it matters to you.”
He pulled at some sage, rolled it between his palms, then drank deep of it into his nostrils. “Don’t matter, I suppose. Just come from southern Ohio myself. So long ago I figure it don’t really matter after all.”
“I could’ve told you.”
He held out his hand to the stranger. “Shadrach Sweete. I didn’t catch yours.”
“Didn’t give it.”
Shad withdrew the hand. “I figure someone foolish as you sitting alone out here in the middle of Injun country ought to have himself some company.”
“I ain’t alone—not now,” the stranger replied, and threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Got all the company I can stand back there.”
“Oh, you best understand you are damned well alone out here, son.”
The stranger snorted a quick, humorless laugh. “What—some Injun going to come pluck my hair off here in sight of those fires yonder?”
“Possible.”
“You been out here under the sun and straining at them mountains for too long, old man. We ain’t seen a feather one on this march from Laramie.”
“That’s when you best be watching for brownskins.”
“No, old man—that’s what you’re being paid to do. I’m just here ’cause I gotta put in my time till I can go home to my family.”
Sweete sighed and leaned back on his elbows, watching the dusting of stars overhead, counting two shooting stars before he spoke again to the young soldier.
“Why you come out here anyway, son?”
“You gotta be a fool, you know? I came here to get myself out of that stinking prison where men was dying every day.”
“Anything to get out, that it?”
“Closer to home.”
“Where’s that, son?”
“You’re sure a nosy old woman, ain’t you now?”
“Figure a man what sits alone by hisself out in the dark needs at least one good friend.”
Sweete watched the stranger regard him carefully, then went back to staring at the dark canopy overhead. In the east the big egg yolk of a yellow moon was rising off the horizon.
“Missouri.”
“What’s that?”
“I said—I come from Missouri.”
“Thought you said you was from Virginia.”
“Original. Moved few years back with my wife and oldest child to southern Missouri.”
“That where you got caught up in all this, I’ll bet.”
The soldier hung his head between his propped knees. “Yeah.”
“You wanna go home so bad you taste it, don’t you?”
“I don’t figure I’m any different from any of the rest of them back there in camp.”
“No, I bet you ain’t,” Sweete replied quietly. “But you’re here now. And if you don’t take a notion to watching out for your hair—you’ll never get home to see that family of yours again.”
“What’s it matter to you, old man?”
Shad sensed the chip suddenly back on the shoulder, as if the soldier had realized he was dropping all that veneer of bravado. “Matters only ’cause I’ve got family myself I’m worried about.”
“Back east?”
“Down in Indian Territory. Cheyenne.”
“You’re a squaw man, ain’t you?”
“Suppose you could say that. But there’s a war going on out here too. And it can be every bit as messy as what’s happening back across the wide Missouri.”
“Didn’t come here looking for a fight,” the soldier explained. “Just putting in my time till it’s over back there. And I can go home and pick up where I left off.”
“Sure hope you can pick up where you left off, son.” He held out some of his twist. “Care for a chew.”
The soldier regarded what the scout held in his hand. “Might taste pretty good about now. Yessir. I thankee.”
They chewed together for a while before Shad spoke again. “You keep your ears open—you’ll learn a lot more about this land than you will flapping your jaws.”
“You’re one to tell me,” he said. “I don’t need to learn about this wide-open desert, old man. I’m going back home when I’m done here.”
“Believe I’ll turn in,” Shad said minutes later. He got to his feet and was ready to stroll off the hilltop when the soldier stood.
“Figure I was a little hard on you, Mr. Sweete. Maybe you’ll forgive me—it’ll make me feel better.”
“No harm done.”
“We both got us family we’re worried about, don’t we?”
“I figure we got that in common, son.”
“It’s all I think about these days.”
“Weren’t no different in prison, was it?”
A shapeless grin moved across his wolfish face burled with a new beard. “Think about it all the time.”
“You watch yourself out here, son. You’ll make it back to that family of yours.”
Shad Sweete took two steps before the soldier tugged on the sleeve of the buckskin war shirt the scout wore on the chill of evening. Turning, he found the young man holding his hand out.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Sweete. Man needs a friend out here I suppose.”
He smiled, pine-chip teeth glimmering in the new moonlight splaying silver across the rising tableland stretching to the spine of the continent itself. “I can always use a friend, mister.”
“Name’s Jonah Hook.”
“Let’s go find our bedrolls, Jonah. These bones hollering for rest something fierce.”
“I sleep better out here, Mr. Sweete. Better’n I ever have—if it weren’t for the nightmares about my family.”
“Don’t you let ’em spook you. Don’t mean a thing.”
Shad wished he meant it. But as he walked down the slope into the soldier camp, the old scout shuddered with the chill in remembrance of his own recurring nightmare—that burned and gutted camp of Black Kettle’s on Sand Creek.
And how damned lucky his own wife and daughter were to escape the butchery of madness unleashed.
“Our scout recommends you ride on in with us.” Captain A. Smith Lybe dragged a dusty hand across his cracked lips. He had just ridden up to Willow Spring Creek with his platoon of I Company, along with six horsemen from the Eleventh Ohio, to find the wagon train and its Kansas escort making an early camp of it.
“I figure we’re safe enough here,” answered Sergeant Amos Custard of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry, swinging an arm around their camp. “That scout of yours is a nervous old woman, you want to know what I think.”
Lybe glanced at Shadrach Sweete perched atop his Morgan mare. “When you left Sweetwater Station ahead of us this morning, I was hoping you’d get more ground under you before you stopped for the night.”
“You take care of your own galvanized Johnnies, Captain,” Custard replied. “We’re going home, and we’ll mosey if we wanna.”
Jonah Hook pulled his head back from the cool water of the spring where the rest of Lybe’s small detail had been guzzling, in time to watch the old scout nudge his mare forward until he stood above the sergeant.
“The Sioux been hitting this line regular, Sergeant. But I ain’t telling you anything you don’t already know.”
“That’s right,” Custard said. “If you’re so damned nervous, go on and take the rest of these Confederates with you to Platte Bridge.”
“The farther we come since this morning,” Lybe explained, “the more I feel like I want to make a night march of it into the stockade at Platte Bridge.”
Custard gazed at Sweete a moment more. Then he turned to Lybe. “He suggest you make a night march of it?”
“He did. And I agree. Something’s up, Sergeant.”
“You put in your time out here—like I have, Captain—you won’t be so damned nervous about every shadow or flap of an owl’s wing. And you
won’t be so ready to take the word of a squaw-man scout either.”
Hook watched Shad Sweete gently rein his mare away.
“Let’s be going, Captain,” said the scout.
“See you at the station tomorrow, Sergeant Custard.” Lybe put heels to his horse and brought it around. “Let’s mount up and move out, men!”
Jonah wanted one last drink of that water as he corked his canteen and caught up the reins to his mount. He had to admit, his butt was growing accustomed to the riding when for so long he had either been languishing in prison or walking across the plains. Far better to ride.
And ride they had. Ever since arriving at the Sweetwater Station near South Pass, Lybe’s I Company had been busy almost daily, inspecting the emigrant road for telegraph line needing repair, replacing sections at times a mile or more in length dragged down by the hostiles.
Wire pulled down. Poles burned in blackened scars along the road, the scene blotted with tracks of Indian ponies and moccasined warriors. Yet Jonah Hook had yet to see a warrior. Some of the others in I Company had been blooded in skirmishes. One killed and one dead with First Sergeant William R. Moody. But for all of the excitement, Jonah had never been in the right place at the wrong time.
He kept counting the days until he would be shet of this land and back in the bosom of family in Missouri.
This short trip back down the road to Fort Laramie was just the sort of diversion to keep his mind off so much of the yearning. Captain Lybe needed supplies the Eleventh Ohio and Eleventh Kansas had used up prior to being replaced by the galvanized Yankees of the Third U.S. And the Confederates were owed a payday as well. Lybe said he would accompany some of the Kansas and Ohio troops east to Laramie where he could pick up rations, forage, and pay vouchers.
“Watch yourself, Sergeant Custard,” said the Captain as Sergeant Moody led out the mounted Confederates. “Reports of heavy activity between this spring and the bridge.”
“We’ll take care of ourselves, Captain. We’re strong enough to hold off anything these red bastards can throw at us.”
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