Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  “These Injins wrote down that they were going to jump us here?” Donegan sounded dubious.

  Bridger nodded and swallowed. “Told you. The Sioux painted it on every buffler skull from here clear north to Carrington’s fort. All saying the same thing: ‘Big fight at the Crazy Woman. All come fight the soldiers.’”

  “Painted on buffalo skulls?” Fuller inquired.

  “Yep. The creek here. With pictures of rifles and arrows, son. Rifles broke in half … says the Sioux would whip you soldiers. Sure as sun I knowed there’d be hell to pay here on the Crazy Woman. Almost had to shame that captain into following me here.”

  “We’re damned lucky you nagged Burrowes into marching down.” Wands sighed, leaning back, some of the tension draining from him at last. “I suppose the captain’ll bivouac down by the creek. I, for one, vote that we stay right here for the night … since we’re safe now.”

  “I agree. It won’t do to move some of your wounded yet, Lieutenant,” Glover said.

  “Thank God it’s over.” Frank Noone pulled Abigail close.

  “Yes.” Wands swept young Bobby into his arms. “I think we can thank God for our deliverance from a certain and horrible death.”

  Bridger snorted loudly and pulled a stringy piece of mule haunch from his lips. “Damnation! To hear you all jabbering ’bout thanking your Lord for delivering you from them savages. Wagh!” he snorted again. “Better you thank Jim Bridger, this child thinks. Fact be, better you all thank that hunched-up ol’ Shoshone woman who forty-odd winter ago taught this pilgrim to read Injun!”

  Chapter 15

  “Mr. Donegan!”

  Seamus turned at the sound of his name, finding Lieutenant Wands waving him across the parade toward the wall-tents serving as Carrington’s headquarters.

  “If you’d be good enough——”

  “Can’t be stopped. On my way to see Cap’n Brown. Said he had something for me to help him with this evening.”

  “Perfect!” Wands replied. “That’s just where I’m asking you to take these three men. To Captain Brown. They’ll apply for quartermaster employment.”

  “Aye,” Seamus answered with a quick wave of his arm, appraising the three men and the big rifles they carried. “Come along. To Cap’n Brown i’tis.” He led off.

  Something about the young lieutenant had come to trouble Donegan. Where there should have been a camaraderie, borne of what the two of them had survived at the Crazy Woman Crossing, there was instead something itching in the Irishman’s gut that told him Alex Wands was not the same man now that he had arrived at Fort Phil Kearny. Now that the lieutenant had become one of Capt. Frederick Brown’s inner circle.

  Donegan wheeled suddenly, watching the three newcomers halt in their tracks.

  “You got horses, gear you’ll want to fetch?” he asked of them.

  “Back yonder.” One man, the oldest, threw a thumb. “Six horses and some pack animals. There’s a woman—my wife—and my two boys. We’ll go back for ’em later.”

  “Aye,” Donegan replied, his eyes studying the rifle the older man held close, like it was part of his arm itself. “My name’s Donegan. Seamus Donegan. Currently in the employ of the army once’t again. Cutting … hauling wood. Figured what with the Injuns sealing this post off, making such a scare of the Road and all, it’d be best to lay over the winter here among the army blue. Push on to the Montana diggings come green-up.”

  The older man stepped forward, smiling like he’d made a friend, presenting his hand. “Name’s James Wheatley. My friends and I—we was bound for the Bozeman country ourselves. Down at Laramie the soldiers warned against coming north. Told us there was a passel of trouble clean to Montana. None of us believed it.”

  “Not a soul out there has idea one what’s really going on up here in Red Cloud’s country.” Donegan laughed. “Bleeming idiots back east, every one. Thinking the lion has laid down with the lamb in the shadow of the Big Horns. Horseshit!”

  Wheatley gestured at the other two men. “Just figured that kind of talk was army jitters. Back to Nebraska where we come from, word is the Sioux signed the treaty and took their presents—meaning they won’t trouble the Road no more.”

  “Discovered the truth out a hard way, didn’t you?” Seamus inquired. “Just like the rest of us had to find out how the army lies to civilians.”

  “Our first brush weren’t so bad,” Wheatley went on. “They didn’t get nothing off us. All we done was we pee’d our britches. First time any of us seen a honest-to-goodness war Injun before. Don’t know who it scared more, the missus and my boys … or me! So, we decided right there that if we was going to travel along the Road, it’d have to be after dark. Ride till sunup. Hide out during the day. Only way we made it up to Fort Reno.”

  “Why didn’t you stay there?” Donegan asked, eyeing the octagonal barrel on Wheatley’s rifle again.

  “They tried to talk us into doing just that. What with my woman and boys along. Captain Proctor said another group come through Reno just the week before us, only to get jumped on the Crazy Woman. Had women and kids in their party too. Like us.”

  “I was there.” Donegan said it flat. Like a hand slapping wet wood. “Lucky as not, if Cap’n Marr and me hadn’t carried big Henrys like hangs at the end your arm there, the Sioux would’ve pounded sand up my arse. I’m here to tell you how bleeming lucky you three are—packing your woman and a pair of wee ones along as you did.”

  Wheatley glanced at his partners. They studied the ground sheepishly. “I suppose we pushed on past Reno ’cause we figured we could make it all the way to Montana just the way we’d been doing things—traveling at night. Pulled in here this afternoon. Colonel himself made a believer outta me—that it ain’t smart to push on. We’re staying the winter.”

  Donegan smiled with wide rows of teeth, sticking out his big paw to the second man. “Glad to have some civil company for the winter, my friends! These sojurs not the proper association for a man who’s had his fill of brass, braid and orders.”

  “We all fought,” the second man said. “Missouri Volunteers. Issac Fisher’s the name. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Donegan.”

  “Seamus to me friends!” He presented his hand to the last newcomer.

  “John Phillips,” he offered quietly. His eyes still dug anxiously at the ground, sensing the big Irishman’s appraising gaze. Not much of a social animal. In fact, he seemed almost scared of folks. John Phillips appeared a man yet to be tested. “But I’m known to some as Portugee.”

  “Portegee, is it? How’d you come by that?” Donegan asked.

  “My mother.” He glanced up into the Irishman’s face quickly. “Have more of her blood, so I’m told.”

  Seamus rocked back on his heels. “Gentlemen. ’Tis a pleasure to have some more old sojurs like you here at the new Fort Phil Kearny. We’ll while away our winter regaling each other on our favorite stories. I’ve grown weary already of all the prattle the others can tell. You’ll be welcome in my camp anytime!”

  “Thank you kindly,” Wheatley answered with a big grin. “And likewise you, Seamus Donegan. Any man what carries a Henry rifle can’t be all bad—now, can he?”

  “Aye, James Wheatley,” Seamus agreed. “Nor can he be called a stupid man.”

  * * *

  On the third of August, Carrington bid farewell to Bridger. He wanted the old scout to accompany captains Nathaniel C. Kinney and the impetuous Thomas B. Burrowes in their march north, under orders to establish a third post along the Montana Road, on the Bighorn River some ninety miles north of Fort Phil Kearny.

  “You’ll be pleased to learn that General Cooke’s office has selected a name for the new post to be commanded by Captain Kinney,” Carrington announced to the entire regiment, his voice booming across the parade. In formation on horseback, ready to march, sat the two companies to garrison the new post. “Fort C. F. Smith, in honor of one of our own. A hero of the Eighteenth Infantry during the Mexican War. May his bravery an
d selflessness in service to this grand Republic prove a constant inspiration to us all.”

  Stepping up to Kinney’s horse, Carrington presented his hand. “Captain, I’ve given you and Burrowes what extra mounts I could spare. I’m sorry there weren’t more. We simply lost too many when the Sioux rushed Haymond’s camp last month. You both know what we’ve been through here already. Not a day has gone by that there’s not some alarm. The beef herd attacked, our stock run off. A civilian woodcutter or one of the mowing crews killed.”

  “Red Cloud’s made a damned nuisance of himself, Colonel,” Kinney replied.

  “I pray his warriors won’t harass your men farther north. I’ve tried to make up for the lack of ammunition and stock by sending one of the mountain howitzers along with you.”

  “We won’t have a problem, sir.” Kinney saluted.

  At Kinney’s side Captain Burrowes saluted a bit less enthusiastically, still smarting that he was forced to take Bridger along once more. Nothing had ever eaten at him quite as much as how savvy the old scout had been concerning the Sioux attack at the Crazy Woman Crossing.

  Carrington brooded as he stepped up to the captain, realizing that Burrowes supported Brown’s approach to the hostiles. Burrowes appeared to him no different than so many of his junior officers—believing they knew why he was held back from his unit while they fought the war. They’d never accepted the fact that he was cloistered in the north as the war ground on. Then the War Department had sent him to Indiana to build prisoner of war camps. That done, he was needed to help quash the Copperheads. Secretary Stanton kept him busy in Ohio—yet Lincoln himself sent Carrington to Indiana to capture the traitors in the Northwest Conspiracy, which culminated in hanging.

  “Captain Burrowes.” Carrington presented his delicate hand. “This time it’s your turn to take care of Mr. Bridger. See that you pay heed to his counsel, and that he has all the provisions he requests before he departs the site of your new post for the Crow villages.”

  “Sir.” He answered with barely a whisper, his eyes focused straight ahead, never looking at the colonel.

  Carrington turned toward his chief of scouts. “Jim, you have my complete confidence.”

  “Proud of that, Colonel.”

  “I’ll tell you something now that I wasn’t certain how I was going to handle. About a week back, in departmental dispatches, General Cooke sent his personal order releasing you from service.”

  “You say?” Bridger eyed the colonel, squinting. “This mean I’m fired now, or after I get back from the Big Horn country?”

  Carrington chuckled. “Nothing of the kind. I rely on you like no other.” Carrington felt the eyes of the rest of his officers hot between his shoulder blades as he admitted it. “So, I wrote on Cooke’s order the words, ‘Impossible of execution,’ and sent it back. As long as I’m in command of the Mountain District, Jim Bridger will serve as my chief of scouts. So for now you must learn what you can about the mood of the Crow and the other tribes in the area, what with Red Cloud pressing his war on us. Then hurry back here to give me your intelligence.”

  “You bet on that, Colonel,” he answered, stroking the neck of his old mule. “And by the way, I thankee for your trust. Not heeding Cooke’s order. That fog-headed fool. Seems most of them army brass back East don’t know what the hell’s going on out here. Why, just look at all them traders and miners gathered down in the valley, ready to pull out behind us.”

  Bridger pointed. “While we’re up to our asses in redskins madder’n wet hornets, folks back East being told everything’s plumb friendly out here. Likely as not, folks being told Red Cloud’s waiting for white folks on the road with open arms.”

  Carrington nodded into the rising sun. “One more irritation among many I must endure. Indian Superintendent Taylor spreading his twisted version of conditions out here, claiming relations with the Sioux exhibit a ‘most cordial feeling.’ All that wishful thinking of his has done is lull travelers into a false sense of security. They limp in here by the skin of their teeth. That Merriam train down in the valley lost two men between Laramie and here.”

  “They was damned lucky, Colonel.”

  “The Kelson train down there lost fifteen men, with five more badly wounded already. Why the army continues to tell civilians it’s a Sunday picnic out here, I fail to understand.”

  “I’ll say it again, Colonel—you ain’t like a lot of these other paper-collar soldiers.” Jim threw a thumb back at a knot of men seeing the Kinney command off. Brown, Wands, Powell, and Surgeon Hines sprawled in the shade of a tent. “There’s a few around you who’d poke a stick in a hornets’ nest—if you’d let ’em. Best watch ’em while I’m gone, Colonel. I’ll go see what Red Cloud’s up to. Just don’t you do nothing to invite him and his brown-skins down on your little post here.”

  “I’m afraid nothing more dangerous than construction of a new fort will go on here.” Carrington stepped back, waved his captains into motion.

  Cooke has no idea what’s going on out here. With these troops marching north, I’m left with 220 fighting men. Counting band and clerks, no more than 260. Many of those left here have less than a year of their enlistment to put in! But that’s the way of things with the bloody 18th. At Stone’s River half of the regiment’s officers and enlisted men lay dead or wounded. That pompous ass Cooke has no idea what he’s asked me to do.

  A hand shading his eyes, Carrington watched both companies parade off the plateau, cross the Big Piney and climb the road onto Lodge Trail Ridge. In the dust kicked up by those two hundred horses rumbled a long cordon of wagons. For the past week two civilian trains had camped near the new post, refusing to attempt the road north without a military escort. Now at last they could leave Fort Phil Kearny and the danger of Sioux territory behind.

  * * *

  Overhead a hot August sun tortured those men scattered across the timbered slope of the Pinery, the name given the hillsides above Big Piney Creek here, more than five miles west of Carrington’s plateau. Civilian and soldier alike labored in small crews, whipsawing through the thick trunks of old growth to fell the pines. As a cutting crew moved farther along the slope to a new site, a trimming crew would take its place. Working over each of the fallen trees left behind, the trimmers whaled away with their singing double-bit axes as they topped off the huge trunks and trimmed away all troublesome branches.

  And as if the work itself wasn’t enough for a man to worry himself about, they each kept their eyes roving the higher slopes, watching the Peno Head as well. Those wood-trains hauling timber to the fort site weren’t the only ones needing to keep a sharp eye on the skyline for hostiles. The warriors themselves were becoming as pesky as the troublesome mosquitoes right here in the Pinery itself.

  “Carrington says he can’t send any more men down here,” Capt. Frederick Brown had explained to an angry crowd of woodcutters after the Sioux had made their first successful attack on Pine Island, fleeing with a half-dozen mules. Leaving behind one dead civilian and two wounded soldiers. “We had more troops, the colonel would not be stretched so thin. We’re stretched thin enough as it is, fellas.”

  “Difference is, your soldiers came out here figuring to fight Indians,” James Wheatley said as he stood to draw Brown’s attention. “We’re here only to work, Captain.”

  Brown had nodded as the crowd murmured their agreement. “Yet you each stayed on, knowing the odds, didn’t you, Mr. Wheatley?”

  Seamus remembered how Wheatley’s neck turned crimson.

  “Damn you, Brown! No man gonna call James Wheatley a coward, you strutting cock!”

  “Wasn’t calling you a——”

  “We’ll damn well do the job we contracted to do for you,” Wheatley went on. “For your end, you damn well better provide the protection you told us we’d have when we signed on.”

  Donegan had risen from the rear of the crowd. “Wheatley’s right. Besides, Cap’n Brown, best you remember we’ll get a lot more timber brought to your for
t if we got the protection we need.”

  As he stopped now for a breather, Seamus remembered how Fred Brown had huffed and grown red himself, fuming to a parboil before he responded. “Donegan, isn’t it? Well, Mr. Donegan, we’ll just have to see what protection the fort operations can spare a fella like you, won’t we?”

  “Sounds like a threat, Cap’n Brown.”

  “Oh, it’s no threat at all, Mr. Donegan. Just want you to understand that I figure for the time being, you’ll have to just take care of yourself and keep your mind on your work. Keeping your nose out of army business. That is, if you care to stay on as my employee. Do we understand one another?”

  He recalled smiling at the quartermaster. “Keep my nose out of army business, Cap’n? We most certainly do understand one another.”

  He remembered how Brown had glowered at him in those days since, like a man making a mental mark in a ledger kept always at the forefront of his mind.

  “What you staring at, Cap’n?” Seamus hollered now as his axe came to rest, finding Marr studying him some distance up the slope.

  “Never seen a half-nekked, red-breasted Irish jaybird before!” he answered, chuckling. “Not one for much bird watching.”

  “G’won with your sawyers, old man!” Donegan yelled upslope, flinging his hand in impatience. “Man gets hot swinging this axe, fighting branches aside that all but swallow me up—by the saints, you bet I’m gonna take my shirt off.”

  Marr swiped his brow. “Hot enough to sweat the tallow off a horsefly, you Irish whelp.”

  “Ain’t only that, Cap’n,” he replied, dragging a piece of coarse sacking across the back of his neck. “I go and tear a shirt on these’r branches, it leaves me only one shirt to me name. Not about to buy anither at the sutler’s prices!”