Otis’s wagons were long overdue. With rumors that the Sioux were closing on the south bank of the Yellowstone, in all likelihood intent on crossing to the north, it did not bode well for any supply train that might happen upon a massed war party. Luther, along with fellow scouts Victor Smith, an old friend, and half-breed Billy Cross, had accompanied Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and six soldiers on a dangerous scout to the upper reaches of the Tongue and Mizpah Creek, hoping to find the Indian encampment rumored to be in the area. They found nothing. Which could only mean the Sioux had to be farther to the east.
All the more worrisome, the party of Arikara trackers Kelly had sent out with William Jackson more than two days back hadn’t returned. Miles feared they had been discovered by a hostile war party and rubbed out.
So at two-thirty this cold Tuesday morning Miles had the entire Tongue River encampment up to receive fourteen days’ rations. Leaving behind two companies of the Twenty-second U.S. Infantry to protect their cantonment, in that first inky seep of dawn the colonel was ferrying his ordinance rifle and ten full companies of his Fifth Infantry to the north side of the Yellowstone. By eleven-thirty A.M. the other 10 scouts, 15 officers, and 434 soldiers formed up and moved into the cold gray light beneath the low clouds scudding along the Glendive Road.
“Not since the government’s operations against the Mormons in fifty-seven has the Fifth marched as a regiment,” Miles had said with undisguised pride earlier that morning as he’d stood on the north bank of the Yellowstone with Kelly, watching his men ferry over twelve at a time. Then the officer sighed, saying, “There’s trouble out there, and Otis is right in the thick of it. I can smell it.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, General,” Luther replied, slipping his boot into a stirrup. “We’ll be back when I’ve got something to report.”
This was to be Kelly’s twenty-eighth winter—born in the village of Geneva, right in the heart of the Finger Lake region of central New York State, long before made famous by the notorious Red Jacket of the Iroquois Confederation. Many were the times over the years that Luther would claim as an ancestor none other than Hannah Dustin, the courageous backwoods woman who’d been captured by hostiles and conveyed north through the formidable wilderness, eventually making her miraculous and daring escape during the French and Indian War.
He pulled his hat down now, nodding to Miles, and reined his horse around to the east, kicking it in the flanks.
A hell of a lot of water had passed beneath his boots since that day long ago when he had stood gape-mouthed, watching the line of young drummer boys—every last one of them decked out in patriotic bunting festooned with rosettes made from red, white, and blue cloth—marching at the vanguard of the column of volunteers who were stepping off to make war on the rebellious South. Because he was only fifteen when his mother finally consented to his enlistment near the end of the war, Luther had to lie to recruiters about his age. And, in his youthful ignorance as well as exuberant zeal, promptly made the mistake of joining the regular army instead of the New York volunteers.
Before he knew it, he had taken his oath to the Tenth U.S. Infantry for a three-year hitch.
After some duty guarding Confederate prisoners, Kelly’s unit was finally ordered to Fort Ripley on the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. After a few months his company was sent on to Fort Wadsworth, near Big Stone Lake in the Dakota Territory. By the spring of sixty-seven Kelly’s company was ordered to establish Fort Ransome—a small station at the forks of the Cheyenne River, near Bear’s Den Hill, far to the north near the Canadian line. It was the first time Luther had ever seen a buffalo.
“How ’bout it, Kelly?” his sergeant prodded him one of those last nights before his hitch would draw to a close. “You game to sign up for another?”
The handsome Luther smiled, showing his big, bright teeth. “No, sir, Sergeant. Now, don’t misunderstand me, sir: there’s nothing finer for a young fellow than a three-year term in the United States Army, for it teaches him method, manliness, physical welfare, and obedience to authority. But, in all truthfulness, Sergeant—one enlistment is quite enough—”
“Quite enough?” roared the old file.
“Yes, sir,” Kelly replied steadfastly, “unless that man has decided to make soldiering his profession.”
The sergeant looked upon the young man gravely. “And you won’t?”
With a gesture Luther had waved an arm out there to the prairies and the mountains that fine spring day in 1868. “No, sir—I’ll be saying good-bye to soldier life. There’s too damn much I want to see right out there as a free man.”
Back in St. Paul briefly to cash his last pay voucher, Luther quickly turned his face once more to the west, pointing his nose for the Canadian settlement of Fort Garry on his way toward the wild, open country that lay at the headwaters of the Missouri River. By the time he’d reached the Canadian settlements along the Red River, Kelly had run onto several miners escaping north out of Montana. Despite their warnings about roaming war parties on the American side of the line, Luther journeyed on—youth’s bravado running hot in his veins.
At the crossing of the Assiniboine River he ran into some métis with their Red River carts, making their way to the buffalo country. He accepted their invitation to throw in with them. It wasn’t long before he adopted much of their colorful dress, including the hooded capote constructed from a thick blue Hudson’s Bay blanket. With a red sash to hold it closed about him, Kelly felt all the more the part of a high prairie prince.
While moseying south and west with the half-breed traders, he had a chance meeting with a band of Hunkpapa warriors led by Sitting Bull. When the haughty Lakota inquired who the lone white man was among them, the métis said he was their American friend—therefore under their protection. Although they stomped about a bit and made a fierce show of it, Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa soon departed.
In those weeks before he parted ways with the half-breed métis, Luther hunted buffalo, helping the men shoot and skin their kills, watching the women dry strips of the meat, which they eventually put up into rawhide sacks as pemmican they would use in trade at the many wilderness posts dotting that formidable land. Then came the day the old man led him to a nearby rise and pointed into the beckoning distance.
“This is where your adventure continues,” the wrinkled métis said, pointing.
“That means we are to part” Kelly replied sadly.
“There lies the country you seek. Look out for the Sioux, boy.”
Moving south, Kelly reached Fort Berthold, where he met the Gerard brothers who were the post traders. The story went that the Gerards had acquired their initial capital after a party of Montana miners, descending the river in a small bateau with their gold, was attacked by a war party and killed. Having no knowledge of gold, the Indians had emptied the sacks into the boat, which they set adrift, later to be discovered downstream by the fortunate brothers. From Fred Gerard, Lather had purchased a Henry carbine and a supply of cartridges. Just this past summer Fred had been employed as an interpreter and tracker with Custer’s column, assigned to Reno’s battalion when the Lakota had badly mauled the Seventh Cavalry.
From Berthold, Luther trekked upriver on foot, hungry for adventure. Along the way he bumped into a party of wandering Mandan, out to hunt buffalo. From them he learned how to prepare boudins, chopped meat and marrow fat cooked within a casing of a buffalo’s intestine. Later, when he found a little steady employment as a mail carrier between Forts Berthold and Stevenson—journeys on which he would take volumes of Poe, Shakespeare, Scott, and other classical authors into the wilderness for his own entertainment—Kelly met the noted Arikara tracker, Bloody Knife.