Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  “So,” he gazed up from his coffee, “I didn’t … you say you didn’t see me…”

  “No, you didn’t touch her,” Jack confided. “Besides, I don’t think she’d crawl in the robes with you now, anyways.”

  “H-How’s that?” Seamus inquired, his pride suddenly pricked.

  “She come back to the fire last night, telling all them chiefs how the big whiteman must not really have the donicker of a buffalo bull after all.”

  He swallowed, brow knitting. “She … she did, did she?”

  “Yeah. She said the big whiteman must have him a tiny donicker of the weasel … seeing how the whiteman didn’t have enough of a donicker to share with her!”

  Seamus sipped his coffee in silence while Jack, the chiefs, and the wrinkled old squaw laughed at him round their smoky fire. And he flushed in embarrassment when he caught himself staring down the loose neckline of the woman’s skin dress, gazing at those saggy, discolored dugs of hers.

  As bad as the coffee tasted this morning, Donegan was sure it in no way tasted near as bad as would those flabby, dried-up teats.

  * * *

  Not long after the 2nd Battalion’s veteran bugler, German Adolph Metzger, had blown reveille, the nine Cheyenne chiefs presented themselves at the south gate. For close to an hour they waited patiently while Carrington dressed, sending adjutant Wands to scare up Jack Stead.

  His office filled with aromatic pipesmoke, the colonel had his interpreter begin by asking the whereabouts of the troublesome Sioux.

  “Red Cloud and Man-Afraid,” Jack began, “both are on the Tongue. They’re your biggest threat.”

  “But by no means my only problem, Jack.”

  “A chief goes by the name of Buffalo Tongue—he’s causing trouble for Reno and the Powder River country.”

  “What of the other tribes, Jack?” Carrington rocked forward in his chair. “I want to know if they can confirm any of what Bridger learned from the Crows.”

  Back and forth the interpreter talked in Cheyenne and sign. When at last Jack straightened in his chair, he looked squarely at the colonel.

  “The Hunkpapa and Brule have come in to join the fight. Along with a big band of Arapaho, making war under a white renegade they call ‘One Thumb.’”

  “Do the chiefs have any notion what the Sioux and Arapaho plan against us?”

  The Cheyenne whispered among themselves for several minutes before Two Moons turned to give Stead their gripping report.

  “The Sioux are going all out for a winter campaign against you. When the first snow flies.”

  “That first snow has come and gone, Jack.”

  “Winter, Colonel. You haven’t seen anything like cold yet. When old-winter-man blows the snow right out of the north itself … that’s when the Sioux are planning to cut your post off. That’s when the chiefs say the Sioux plan on one big fight with the soldiers. They’ll raid your herds no more.”

  “One fight?” Carrington sounded doubtful.

  “The Sioux brag that what soldiers they don’t kill in that big fight … will all be driven away. Like snow-flakes before a summer wind.”

  Carrington grew thoughtful, face gray with concern. “Do the chiefs know where the Sioux plan this big fight … where they’ll kill so many soldiers?”

  Jack bit his lower lip. “Over Lodge Trail Ridge, Colonel.”

  Carrington relaxed. He slapped his palms down on his thighs, grinning. Causing Jack to wonder if the man had lost his mind momentarily.

  “That’s good news, Jack!” he explained himself. “All I do now is finish my post as I’ve planned all along … and simply forbid my officers from pursuing any warriors beyond Lodge Trail Ridge!”

  “That might be easier said than done,” Jack said. “Hardest thing to do is stop a man from crossing the Lodge Trail when he’s got his fighting blood up.”

  “Not when its an official order,” Carrington smiled to ease the harsh sound to it. “Official policy.”

  “Won’t stop the Sioux from trying. They get your men riled enough—like they were last night down at the Little Piney—someone will bolt on over the ridge.”

  “I pray you’re wrong about that, Jack. As wrong as you and Bridger were right in your intelligence. What news Bridger himself sent us tallies squarely with what these chiefs are saying. I think I can believe them. And,” he looked up at Lieutenant Wands, “allow them to leave on their hunt for buffalo along the Tongue River.”

  Stead watched the fire smolder in the lieutenant’s eyes, though Wands refused to let his face show his hatred for the Cheyenne—how he despised the colonel for letting the Indians pass on to the Tongue River country where Red Cloud reigned.

  “I must register my protest, Colonel.”

  He gazed at Wands. “You want it for the record you don’t approve of my giving the Cheyenne free passage?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Wands replied, stiffly.

  “Protest registered, Lieutenant.”

  “Time was,” Stead said, “the Sioux and Cheyenne were great enemies. For many generations there was nothing but bad blood between them.”

  “They’ve allied against us as we speak! Allied to kill us!”

  Stead gazed at the adjutant no older than himself. He replied quietly. “The army has no one else to blame but itself for that mistake. No one else to blame.”

  * * *

  October swept down on the Big Horns with the stealth of a mountain cougar. None of the bluster of a silver-tip grizzly. Instead, it crept up on a man so he didn’t realize autumn had come to the valley of the Pineys until he finally noticed his water buckets were crusted with ice every morning. Noticed the lacy cordons of ice-scum along the creekbanks that melted when the sun rose high in the crystalline-blue skies. Across the higher slopes of the mountains the aspen had begun its autumn dance of gold, quaking on breezes that bit and chilled to the marrow.

  The sun rode lower in the southern skies. A man’s breath greeted his every word at reveille. Violet and rose streaked the sky with morning’s chilly arrival. The seasons had turned. And with it, the tide and time of man.

  By now Capt. Fred Brown had lost better than six hundred head of beef to the Indians, meaning Fort Phil Kearny had fewer than a hundred left—a cheerless situation for any soldier worried about fresh meat in his belly with the coming of winter. That wasn’t all the stolen beef meant. While once a common sight on the tables of officers’ families, milk had now become a rare commodity.

  In time the talk among the enlisted men turned to desertion, most amazed that but one man had gone over the wall, taking his “grand bounce.”

  Seamus Donegan chuckled at the idea of soldiers deserting as he leaned against Kinney’s pine-slab bar. Time and again he asked if any man among them would care to pit himself against the wilderness of the Big Horn country. That, and run the gauntlet of the Sioux who flashed mirrors from every hill, or waited in every coulee.

  “Nawww,” Seamus laughed, “safest place for a man to winter is right here. In this post. With a lot of friendly fellows gathered ’round him. Besides, that one fellow deserted had to be daft. That, or the bleeming fool was a Protestant!”

  On the last day of September, Supply Train Number 33 had rumbled through the quartermaster’s gates, ending its tortuous sixty-six day run from Lone Tree, Nebraska. Civilian contractors James Hill and James Henning had hauled up tons of sorely-needed corn and oats for the ribby mounts of the 2nd Battalion. Anxious at first to leave the post on their return trip before winter set hard upon the land, Hill and Henning reluctantly pulled wagons and teamsters south. Damned scared too. Little had they known when they contracted to haul supplies north that in two months the Sioux had killed four soldiers and twenty-six civilians.

  Fred Brown looked over the new grain shipment just arrived.

  Perhaps that sniveling Carrington won’t be able to refuse us our strike at the hostiles now. Every day more and more officers join forces with me against the craven coward! While every day
we get closer to striking back. Yes! With our horses well-fed, we’ll be ready to strike a blow soon, when we can catch the Sioux nestled in their lodges for the winter. Now that their ponies grow gaunt for want of grass. And ours grow strong on oats and corn once more.

  * * *

  “By damned, ain’t they a pretty sight!” Marr shouted, slapping Donegan on the back this bright, chilly November second.

  In silence Seamus suffered a hot knot of sentiment stuck back in his throat.

  “Always did have a soft spot in my heart for cavalry myself, Seamus,” Marr said, more quietly this time. “Think I know what you feel, son.”

  Donegan tried a smile. At least he showed rows of wide teeth and tried to make his misting eyes twinkle. Ol’ Cap’n Marr just might understand Seamus Donegan. Among a crowd of cheering soldiers and civilians, they watched from the stockade gates as two columns of dusty-blue cavalry approached the fort.

  He counted but sixteen men in the first group, yet every one of them sat proud as could be. Backs saber straight. Horse soldiers. Damn, but don’t Mither Donegan’s firstborn son know what it means to be a horse soldier!

  Still, something about the way one of those riders sat his horse tugged at a wee part down inside the pit of him, unsettling Donegan. Causing him to remember things painful and less than sunny. Those bright yellow chevrons the rider wore.

  Maybe, ’tis only that. You sat a sergeant’s saddle once, Seamus Donegan. Was a time you gave shine to no man.

  On the sergeant and his fifteen rode, down to the crossing of the Little Piney. Beside the sergeant pranced the color-bearer, his standard held high in the new breezes rustling off the Big Horns. Over his shoulder the standard-bearer wore his bugle on a braided cord. Horse soldiers. New to this land, but here to stay.

  Something caught his attention. From the corner of his eye. The flashing of small mirrors from first one hillside thick with a carpet of timber. Then a second. A third and fourth. And soon it seemed to him that every slope spat a bright flash into the valley.

  Below him on the parade three small boys stood suddenly still in their play, pointing first to one hill then another slope. Yelling out for others to notice the signal mirrors as well. He recognized one of Carrington’s boys. The oldest.

  “Who’re they?” he asked Marr.

  Marr seemed perturbed that his attention had been drawn away from the cavalry unit riding into the valley. “Oh, just boys.”

  “Whose boys?”

  Marr glowered at him a moment, then gazed down on the parade where the youngsters went back to chasing one another in a wild game of blind man’s bluff. “Carrington’s eldest, Seamus. The other two belong to Jim Wheatley.”

  Wheatley, he repeated to himself. She has two boys, Donegan found himself marveling.

  “By the by, Seamus.” Sam Marr of a sudden wanted to talk again. “You ever make sense of them Injun signals like you was figuring you could?”

  He wagged his head as he turned back to study the boys below. “Not making much headway at all on it, Cap’n. Doesn’t see to be much rhyme nor reason to the signals.”

  “Trouble is, Seamus, you’re trying to figure things out like a white man.”

  Donegan laughed. “Perhaps you’re right, old man. To make some sense of those mirror signals … I’ve got to learn first how to think like a bleeming Injin!”

  “Seamus!” Marr gripped Donegan’s arm suddenly, wheeling him around on the catwalk. “Take a look, boy! You ain’t seeing what I see—are you!”

  Donegan nodded, staring down into the valley at the Reno Road now. Choking on a hot knot in his throat. He had seen. Blinking his eyes free of stinging tears.

  “By god! That’s your old outfit, Sergeant Seamus Donegan,” Marr shouted for all to hear. “That’s the Second Cavalry!”

  By glory if it t’aint, Seamus thought, looking at the proud battle streamers the boy was carrying high in the breeze. Not a man wouldn’t be proud to ride under those banners!

  Colorful streamers like fragments of life itself held aloft for all men to admire. Pieces of history. Moments in time when the clock stood still and man pitted himself against man in a war that no cause won. Gettysburg. The Wilderness. Cold Harbor. Antietam. Spotsylvania. Petersburg. Manassas. The Shenandoah.

  “Faith, and begora!” he whispered at last, reading the red and white flag at last.

  Marr gazed down at the fluttering guidon that announced what company climbed up from the crossing. He turned to stare at the big, keg-chested Irishman and smiled too. Hugging Donegan’s arm and nodding. Knowing how young Seamus must feel.

  “C Company?” the old soldier inquired in a whisper only Donegan could hear.

  “Aye, Cap’n.” He nodded. “C company, i’tis.”

  Silver, bronze and blue bands on the battle streamers told the story. Meritorious service in the face of the enemy. Courage under fire. Time and again—death before retreat. The ring of places now foreign, once as familiar as old friends: Bloody Angle, Five Forks, Shiloh, Harrison’s Landing, Missionary Ridge, Saylor’s Creek, Ashby’s Gap, Beverly Ford, Catlett Station, Dinwiddie Courthouse, Hartwood Church, White Oak Swamp, Tom’s Run …

  On the green parade bandmaster Cully marched with his baton. Brass horns pumped out the familiar, energetic strains of the popular, “Ain’t I Glad to Get Out of the Wilderness.” Carrington’s personal welcome to Fort Phil Kearny.

  “The colonel’s Germans playing sojur music again.” Seamus choked, smiling behind the mist in his eyes. What the call of bugles do to a warrior’s heart …

  “Germans, you say?” Marr asked, smiling as he clapped in time with the music. “Why, I’ll bet there’s two tons of Irishmen in that company.”

  “Aye,” Seamus whispered. “Were it not for we Irish and the Krauts … why, there’d be no bleeming American army!”

  He found his own thoughts drowned beneath the cheers and shouts of glee and welcome rising to a sustained crescendo. Crossing the Little Piney came the second and larger group of 2nd Cavalry. Forty-five enlisted men, led by a young Minnesota veteran, Lt. Horatio S. Bingham. A Civil War veteran himself, leading sixty-one men of C Company to Fort Phil Kearny.

  Bingham and twenty-seven of his number had reached their final duty station.

  A moment more and Donegan understood why the men of the 18th cheered so raucously. Not for the 2nd Cavalry. Not for Company C nor Lieutenant Bingham. Instead, they cheered for a lone officer who had spurred his mount out of formation. Prancing ahead of Bingham and the cavalry. Waving. Standing tall in his stirrups as if he were returning home. To friends.

  Donegan turned to an old soldier nearby. “Is he what all the hurroo’s about?”

  The old soldier eyed Donegan up then down before he answered. “I’ll say.” And he smiled broadly. “You don’t know who he is, eh? Well, you will one day soon, boy!”

  “You care to explain it, we’ll both know,” Marr said.

  The soldier eyed them a moment more, and smiled again around missing teeth.

  “These places mean anything to you fellas? Peach Tree Creek? Jonesboro? Resaca? Corinth? Eh? Didn’t think so. Well, let me tell you they mean something to the Eighteenth and its fighting Second Battalion. While that damned Carrington hisself squatted behin’t a desk back in Ohio, that young officer down yonder led us into and outta every dad-blamed battle. Lord, did the Johnnies try to turn us back time and again! But did we retreat?”

  The old soldier shook his head so hard Seamus feared it might fly off.

  “Not one goddamned retreat! Not with that man leading us—there would dare be no turning back. We dug our earthworks by night and bled by day. But retreat! Not at Stone’s River! Not at Atlanta! By god, not at Kennesaw Mountain! Sweet Jesus, but I’d follow that man into the jaws of hell again, I would.”

  Seamus watched the old veteran swallow hard, shifting his tobacco-cud with his tongue and not caring about the single tear that slipped down his sunburned cheek.

  The soldier glared at Done
gan with the look of a man daring another, challenging. “So, let me tell you boys something—that officer down yonder, that’s Cap’n Fetterman!”

  Chapter 23

  “Barkeep!”

  Every man drinking in Kinney’s cabin turned at the brassy call from the tall man who stooped through the door. It was the way of him. To charge into a room the way he seized Confederates on the battlefield. Without mercy. Taking no prisoners. There was a swagger about him even as he stood with blue-gray eyes slewing over the smoky room.

  “A tankard of your finest corn whiskey,” the tall man ordered. “And pray that it’s better than Bullock-and-Ward offer down at Laramie.”

  Kinney nodded his gray head, eyeing the newcomer suspiciously. “Much better, friend. You’ll not be disappointed.”

  He ripped open his wool coat and bellied the pine-plank bar. “Best that I not be disappointed, my ‘friend,’” he mimicked the trader. “I’ve no liking for you popinjays who trade off professional soldiers.”

  Kinney set the mug before the man. Studying him. Perhaps his mid- to late-twenties. A massive head of curly hair the color of strawberry wheat. Hard, muscular jowls. Clean-shaven but for the bushy mustache that drooped round heavy lips then curled upward once again at his square chin. A big paw wrapped itself around the mug.

  Swallowing, he swiped the back of a hand across his lips and smiled. “Aye, barkeep. You’re a man of your word. I’m not disappointed.” He sighed, turned round to tear the wool coat off his thick arms, slinging it across the bar. Shrugging his shoulders, he leaned back, scanning the room. His glowing, feral eyes came to rest on the dark-haired man seated alone in the corner by a sheet-iron stove.

  “Glory be of glories!” the newcomer boomed in that cannon of a voice. “I’ve heard of God-given miracles before, barkeep. But this is a moment for wonderment. Four days ago I ride into this slip-trench latrine of a post—assigned to the end of the goddamned world itself. Where everything’s new and every man’s a stranger. But this night of nights, I find myself sharing a drink with an old, old friend.”