Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Ain’t got any,” he answered. “’Bout every last horse rode out with Fetterman. So, the colonel dispatched us to help Captain Ten Eyck.”

  “That’s where I just come from.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Up the ridge.” He pointed. “Yonder a ways.”

  “We’ll push on,” Aikens said, turning to fling an arm toward the twenty-seven behind him.

  “Don’t look like there’s none of your cavalry left what rode with Fetterman!” Sample hollered after the dismounted, double-timing horse soldiers.

  When no one answered him, the orderly nudged heels against his fatigued mount, kicking the animal into a hand-gallop once more.

  His mind raced as the cold wind scarred its way across his cheeks. Maybe the colonel seen something from the fort we didn’t see. We was behind the ridge for a long time. Maybe the fellas in the fort watched Fetterman whip them Indians.

  Halfway up from the crossing a rumble of iron-tired wheels clattered over the brow of a hill. Close enough to cause Sample’s mount to shy to the edge of the road. He watched as three drivers sang out to their teams, yanking back on reins, leaning into brakes. Behind two wagons and an army ambulance rode some forty armed men.

  “Ho, son!” the lead driver hollered out. Dressed in civilian clothes.

  “You with Fetterman?”

  “Un-unh,” and he shook his head. “Colonel’s orderly, Private Sample.”

  “Name’s Sam Marr, son.”

  “You coming from Pine Island?”

  “Nope. Me and the rest come outta the fort. Civilians. Your colonel had us load three thousand rounds of Springfield and two cases of Spencer for Fetterman’s men. Where’s the fight?”

  “Ain’t no fight, Mr. Marr. Likely all dead.”

  “Don’t say!” he gasped, glancing round at some of the civilian teamsters and woodcutters who edged close. “Ten Eyck whipping the Injuns now?”

  He shook his head. “If the captain tries, like as not he’ll get his ass whupped something fierce too.”

  Marr looked around again. “Thank you, son. We best skedaddle now. Likely someone’ll need our help up yonder.”

  Except for the pounding of his horse’s iron shoes on the frozen road, the silence shrank in around Private Sample once more. Up the gentle rise, across some trampled snow, and through the main gates on the north wall, all without slowing his lathered mount. Amid shouting sentries and the excited, hopeful screams of dashing children, Sample skidded up in a shower of icy crystals at headquarters steps. Just as Carrington leaped off the porch.

  “Ten Eyck sent me!” he shouted, sliding from the saddle, flinging his reins to another soldier.

  “Tell me!” Carrington ordered.

  “Here, sir.” He slapped the crumpled paper into the colonel’s hand.

  Carrington poured over the scrawl, trying to make sense of it. “I can’t read some of this, Sample! What’s going on up there!”

  “Captain says he can’t see nothing … can’t hear nothing of Fett … Captain Fetterman!” Sample gushed.

  “Where in God’s name!”

  “The Injuns are on the road below him … shouting for him to come down.”

  Carrington shook his head, glancing at the window of his home. Seeing two worried, women’s faces staring back at him. “How many Indians are there?”

  “I don’t rightly know, sir. Just … the valleys for miles ’round filled with the screaming bastards. Don’t see how Fetterman live through it … if he gone down in that valley.”

  “I’ve sent reinforcements. You meet them on the road?”

  “Yessir. Captain Ten Eyck wanted one of them mountain guns of yours.”

  “A howitzer?”

  “Yessir.”

  He brooded a moment longer. “I want you to take a message back to Ten Eyck.”

  “My horse is used up, Colonel.”

  “We’ll get another,” and he waved at a soldier to bring a mount from the stables. Quickly he scrawled his message across the back of a sheet of foolscap.

  CAPTAIN: Forty well-armed men, with 3,000 rounds, ambulance, etc., left before your courier came in.

  You must unite with Fetterman, fire slowly, and keep men in hand; you could have saved two miles toward the scene of action if you had taken Lodge Trail Ridge.

  I ordered the wood train in, which will give 50 more men to spare.

  H.B. Carrington

  Colonel Commanding

  Sample leaned over the message, whispering in the colonel’s ear. “Captain’s afraid Fetterman’s party is all gone up, sir.”

  Carrington straightened, gazing into the orderly’s face. “I can’t send the howitzer. Explain that to Captain Ten Eyck.”

  “I run across some cavalry too, sir.”

  “They should’ve joined Ten Eyck by now.” His voice rang hopeful. “I’m down to forty-nine men in the post … counting myself.”

  A soldier jogged up, holding the bridle of a large, gray stallion.

  “Orderly, you’ll ride my horse,” Carrington announced, handing the rein to Sample. “Off with you, quick! My Gray Eagle will take you back as fast as the wind.”

  “Yessir.” He saluted.

  “Our prayers are with you all,” Carrington called out as Sample turned sharply, putting the stallion into a gallop. Then he whispered when none could hear. “Our prayers … for those God can still help.”

  * * *

  He had to work to keep his breakfast from shoving up around his tonsils. Seamus had seen his fill of death, but nothing so ghastly. Grapeshot and artillery, minié ball and saber … he had seen what weapons did to a human body. Never before had he set eyes on the enraged handiwork of man.

  The naked, half-frozen bodies had that translucent color of old honeycomb beneath a winter-pale sun. As he saw it, the battle had been fought by three groups. Farthest up the hill, Donegan and the others ran across most of the cavalry and mounted infantry, bodies bunched, stripped of uniforms, mutilated and scalped. Many rolled over on their faces after butchering.

  Halfway down the slope around a group of boulders lay even more of the dead men, piled like cordwood, jumbled in a confusion of army horses and Sioux ponies. Inside the rocks they found a couple dozen more.

  “That’s him. That’s Fetterman, all right.”

  Donegan turned. He watched a soldier pull the buffalo bag from the officer’s head. It took a moment, but he recognized the dark, mustached face of Capt. William Judd Fetterman. A hole in what remained of his left temple. After the Sioux finished beating the heads to jelly.

  Tangled in Fetterman’s legs lay another body. Seamus knelt, pulling the buffalo-skin bag from the head. What he had for hair had been left untouched. His dark penis and scrotum hung from his mouth, draped over his bearded chin. A broken lance had been rammed up his rectum, the bloody point dripping with frozen gore like an obscene erection from his belly.

  Seamus felt his own insides draw up as if they’d been salted with alum. No trophy torn from that bastard’s bald head.

  “Looks you won’t settle that matter with Brown now, will you?”

  Donegan turned, seeing Ten Eyck’s droopy eyelid twitching. “No. Look at ’em,” Seamus said. “Two of a kind, aren’t they? Reeky scuts! Shot themselves afore the Sioux get their hands on ’em.”

  “Didn’t want the Indians capture … torture ’em,” Ten Eyck advised.

  “Wrong, me friend. Look ’round you. These Injins wasn’t about to take a single prisoner. There was bloodletting and bloodletting only on the wind this day.” He rose and sighed. “The Sioux put them bags over their heads ’cause the two were cowards.”

  “Balderdash!” an old soldier roared, shouldering Donegan against a rock. “Fetterman’s no coward!”

  “Shot themselves,” Donegan replied. “See yourself. Injins put them bags over their heads—they aren’t brave men, fit to see in the next life.”

  “Butchered by them dirty savages, that’s what!” The old veteran glared at
Donegan.

  “Whatever you wanna believe, sojur. Whatever you have to believe.”

  Seamus turned, for the first time noticing a boot protruding from a buffalo robe near ring of boulders. Pulling the hide back, the Irishman recognized an old friend from the 2nd Cavalry. Company bugler. Veteran soldier.

  “Krauts and micks,” he said like a prayer. Weren’t for Krauts and micks, there’d be no American army.

  “Sojur!” Donegan shouted, wheeling on the old infantryman. “I’ll show you a brave man—braver than any ten of your Fettermans or that bastard Brown. Cast your eyes on a real sojur!”

  In utter disbelief the infantryman stared down at the body of Adolph Metzger. “Why, sweet god, he ain’t touched!”

  “That’s right, you stupid scut! Didn’t touch him ’cause he was brave. Look at that damned horn of his. Last weapon he held. Them red h’athens showed their respect … putting his face to the sky … covering him this way without stripping or butchering him … or scalping.”

  “I … I can’t——”

  Donegan grabbed the soldier’s arm and jerked him back. “Hold on, friend. Don’t want you to forget the face of a real sojur!”

  He ducked as the infantryman swung. But wasn’t prepared for the other two who charged him. Seamus knocked the first aside as Ten Eyck’s voice cracked the air.

  “STOP!”

  Grudgingly, the soldiers released Donegan’s mackinaw.

  “I’ll take the next one of you who swings back to the fort as my prisoner!” Ten Eyck’s eyelid quivered.

  “Come a time, Irishman.” The soldier shoved his friends away. “Come a time, you and me talk about real soldiers, eh?”

  Donegan nodded. “Count on it, Private.”

  “You best stay close to me,” Ten Eyck whispered.

  “I’m not afraid of any——”

  “Fetterman had him many friends here,” the captain interrupted. “Even Brown was well-liked.”

  “Never been one to have a lot of friends, Cap’n. Only good ones.”

  Donegan stomped past the boulders. Downhill he found the last of the soldier dead. From what he could tell of the brief skirmish, Fetterman’s forces had splintered into three groups, none in view or hopes of support from the other. Farthest up the slope lay the cavalry and mounted infantry. Among the boulders, most of Fetterman’s infantry. And in the tiny ring of horse and pony carcasses below lay seven stripped, butchered bodies.

  Fisher, his mind whispered as he recognized what was left of the face. Wheatley too. Seamus stepped over the frozen carcass of a pony, its legs stiff in death, remembering the way sunlight had brought her skin alive there in the water of the Little Piney. Her long, auburn hair. Those perfect breasts …

  Dear, sweet Jennifer. Abby was first alone, left alone and abandoned in death … gone East now. Gawddamn! This cold, unforgiving wilderness is no place for a woman. Now another … another woman, made alone once more …

  He stopped suddenly by a body. “Damn,” he whispered.

  You were a sojur at the last, weren’t you, Eli Garrett?

  Donegan sank to his knees, gazing down into the gray-blue eyes that stared into the darkening sky. He felt an aching emptiness, an incompleteness now that Garrett was gone. A friendship gone awry. With all hope gone now of ever mending the riven circle of their lives.

  Ah, Eli … Eli … He looked about for the dead man’s clothing. Nearby, Donegan found the torn and bloody shirt. With a folding knife he took from his pocket, Seamus set to work on the faded, crimson-stained chevrons sewn to what was left to the sleeves of Garrett’s blouse.

  War changed us both, didn’t it, Eli? All that killing just made some of us predators. The rest of us left behind to wonder why. I suppose it was there at Front Royal that we tore ourselves apart … you like the wolf—just liking the blood of it all. And me, not understanding why a few men tell the thousands they must march off and die.

  He licked at the salty moistness dripping into his mustache.

  From Front Royal we both changed, didn’t we? There I first began to question the hunting of men … like sport it was to soldiers like you and Custer … like sport.

  Finished, Seamus blinked his smarting eyes, glancing over the scene encircling the ring of boulders. More than seventy dark patches marred the trampled snow surrounding the little fortress.

  Took a lot of the bastirds with you, didn’t you, boys?

  Civilians and seasoned veterans alike had been horribly mutilated. Muscles of calves and thighs slashed. Stomachs, breasts and arms hacked. Ribs gashed and exposed; eyes poked out, pendant on cheeks.

  “A damn bloody way to go.”

  Seamus jerked up, surprised. Finding Ten Eyck. “I’tis.” He got to his feet.

  “I’ve something for you to do, Donegan,” Ten Eyck began quietly. “No hurry. When you’re done here.”

  “I’m finished.” Seamus glanced up the hill, seeing the wagons and ambulance arrive.

  “We’ll take back as many as we can,” he explained. “Packing ’em in like butchered hogs. The rest … well——”

  “What you need with me, Cap’n?”

  Without another word, Ten Eyck led him up the slope past the boulders, near the field where the cavalry had fallen. A gray horse lay struggling to rise, its legs flailing. Around it stood a dozen young cavalrymen.

  “What’m I to do with this?” Seamus asked.

  “It’s a cavalry mount, Donegan,” he explained. “Second Cavalry. The rest of these men … they’re just shavetails. You, Sergeant Donegan, served the Second for many years.”

  “What’s that got to do——”

  “These boys decided you’re the one to take care of the horse.”

  “Take care of the——”

  “Sergeant…” One of the young men stepped forward. “Mr. Donegan, this here’s a special horse—name o’ Dapple Dave. Rode by Sergeant Garrett. We … us—figured you’d put the animal outta its misery. Only fitting.”

  Seamus watched his hand accept a pistol from the young private. He knelt by the animal’s head, stroking between the ears as he eased the muzzle against the cold hide. The horse struggled, trying to rise. Closing his eyes, Donegan pulled the trigger.

  Rising, he slapped the pistol into the private’s belly, then pushed his way free of the crowd until he found that big, gray stallion he had killed a rebel officer for. The animal that would carry him back to Fort Phil Kearny.

  Chapter 37

  “I can tell you nothing more,” Henry Carrington explained to the officers’ wives gathered in the Wands’s cabin. “Only to repeat my assurances that you should entertain no apprehension for the safety of the fort itself. I beg you to wait patiently, to be ready for the return of all our troops.”

  Frances Grummond watched him go, duty and his own anxiety calling. What seemed like hours ago, the teamsters and woodcutters from the Pinery had arrived, taking their places along the banquette with what few soldiers remained in the fort. The incessant banging of hammers throbbed in her tortured mind. Across every window and over most doors men nailed boards in the event of the attack every man, woman and child feared. Her mind conjured wild imaginings now that her worst nightmares had sprung to life.

  Frances stared glassy-eyed from the window, watching the final preparations at the corner of the parade ground. Around the large hole the fort used as its powder magazine, soldiers and civilians worked feverishly pulling wagon bodies off running gears. Wagon-boxes tipped on their sides round the magazine in three ever-wider circles.

  “Frances, you mustn’t concern yourself with soldier duties.”

  She gazed up into Margaret Carrington’s grave face. “Have you no words that bite any deeper?” Then she stared out the frosted window once more while the light drained from the sky. “I remember seeing so much war … in that land so far away from us now. So much suffering. So much blood. I remember soldiers throwing up barricades before an attack. Margaret—those men are preparing for the Indians.”
/>   She took Frances’s hand in hers. “You fear too——”

  “Please,” she begged in a whisper. “Tell me the truth.”

  Margaret’s eyes misted over. “Yes,” she whispered. “When the Indians attack, our men will hold out as long as possible. Then, the order will be given to fall back to the wagons-boxes. It’s there our final defense will be made … and when our cause is lost … Henry will order the magazine blown.”

  Her eyes darted back to Margaret’s. “Taking us with it.”

  “You mustn’t say a word to the others … or the children——” She stopped, watching Frances gaze down at her swollen belly.

  “Yes,” Frances replied, caressing the swollen mound, “we mustn’t tell the children.”

  Shouting arose outside. Frances started, fearing the savages had chosen twilight to breech the fort itself. Yet as she and the others crowded to doorways and windows to watch and listen, it became clear from the sentry voices that no Indians had been sighted.

  Instead, the pickets announced seeing Ten Eyck’s forward scouts at the Big Piney Crossing.

  * * *

  With the first shout, bandsman Frank Fessenden hurried over the iron-hard old snow to the gate, hopeful of finding good news to cheer the soldiers who had remained behind in the stockade.

  Darkness curdled over the fort. Beyond the walls he recognized the familiar rattle and squeak of wheels and frozen axles. The first mounted soldiers crept wearily through the yawning portal. Next rumbled the ambulance, followed by the two wagons. No man in the fort uttered a word. Each one suffered in private his own horror, witnessing the ghastly cargo of naked bodies, severed arms and legs frozen in death, bouncing along like butchered hogs come to market. With every bounce of the wagons, bloody arrows trembled from cold flesh. Unashamed, Fessenden began to cry with many who watched old friends coming home.

  “Schmitty had ten days to serve!” one veteran shrieked. “Ten … God … damn … days!”

  “Goin’ home in ten days,” another whimpered, spotting a bunkie.

  “They’re not all here,” whimpered one of the foot-soldiers plodding through the gate. He sighed and stopped, trying to explain it to those who had waited—those who hadn’t witnessed the horror at the base of Lodge Trail Ridge.