Perhaps it was that, he thought now as he turned around once again and peered back at the short, snaking serpent of a column far behind him among the verdant hills, the grass bending and rising in undulating swells beneath the omnipresent breeze. Perhaps it was his dear Kitty’s death as much as the barrage of letters he received all last spring from Colonel Anson Mills, urging Cody to return to the frontier, to return to service for the army— saying this was surely to be the last great fight every frontiersman knew would one day come to these plains.
It took him six long weeks after they had laid the cold sod over his beloved five-year-old son for Bill finally to wrestle a decision out of himself. On the night of June 3, while playing Wilmington, Delaware, he told his audience that he was through with playacting and off to the Indian wars.
Making his way west that Centennial summer at the same time the entire nation’s eyes were beginning to turn east, focusing on the grand Exposition in Philadelphia, Cody stopped at Sheridan’s Division Headquarters in Chicago, where the lieutenant general inquired as to the scout’s plan as he shuffled through a stack of correspondence that day in early June.
“I’m headed to Cheyenne, from there to make my way on to join Colonel Anson Mill’s Third Cavalry.”
“He’s with Crook’s column, just marched away from Fort Fetterman—bound for the villages of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, I’d daresay. Yes, I daresay Crook will strike the hostiles very, very soon.”
“Damn, I was hoping—”
“Don’t get yourself disappointed just yet, Bill.”
Cody had been, couldn’t help it. “I was wanting to attach myself to Colonel Mills and the Third.”
“Ah, yes—here it is,” Sheridan exclaimed as he yanked out a telegraph flimsy. “General Carr has asked for you: ‘Your old position open to you. Join us here.’”
“The Fifth?”
“Yes.”
“I thought they were in Arizona.”
“Lord, no!” Sheridan said, beaming. “Carr’s got them marching off to fight the Sioux as we speak.”
“C-carr wants me to guide for the Fifth?” Cody’s voice rose.
“Your old outfit, Bill. Since the regiment’s been reassigned to the plains, Carr’s written here twice, inquiring as to your whereabouts.”
“He wants me?”
“Bloody right he does,” Sheridan replied. “I’ll see you have orders written before you leave this office. You can meet your old regiment by taking that same train to Cheyenne City.”
Four days later, Bill had stepped off the Union Pacific onto the platform at Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, to shake hands with Lieutenant Charles King of the Fifth Cavalry … whereupon Bill had promptly smelled the air.
Knowing in his heart, in every fiber of his being, that he had returned home.
Chapter 3
Late June 1876
In the saddle out here on the Central Plains with the Fifth Cavalry in pursuit of warriors jumping their reservations, Lieutenant Charles King didn’t figure Brigadier General John Pope had gotten much better at predicting future events than he had been when he was in command of Union forces at Second Bull Run.
Late this past spring Pope confidently proclaimed his assertion that there would be no Indian campaign in seventy-six.
But here they were, pushing north by east about as hard as Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr could push these eight companies of hardened troopers—once more ordered to do the near impossible. Still, as Carr’s regimental adjutant, at least this time King wouldn’t have to ride back in column somewhere. The lieutenant loped along with headquarters, in the lead. Only the scouts and a handful of flankers were out front this warm summer’s day.
Earlier in the month King’s K Company, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, was ordered west from their comfortable barracks at Fort Riley, Kansas, hauled by rail to pitch their tents beside the Smoky Hill at Fort Hays, in preparation for something. What, they did not know at first. But, one thing was certain—the army did not move troops about on trains unless something big was afoot, and they needed those troops somewhere in a hurry. Yet that was still only a matter of speculation, of hushed rumor.
A smallish, wiry man, built on the short side and just barely tall enough out of his boots to meet the army’s required height, Lieutenant King had been out on a three-day hunt on the first of June hoping to round up stampeded horses north along the Saline River when the official word came.
Regimental commander Eugene Carr looked up from the three-page dispatch when King rode up to join the other officers gathered in the lieutenant colonel’s office. Outside, the sun was setting in a clear Kansas sky as the regiment’s band encircled the flagpole for retreat, raising the brassy strains of “Soldaten Lieder” as the Stars and Stripes came down. Some couples interrupted their croquet game on the parade to take up the waltz amid children in their bright dresses and knee britches playing blindman’s buff or rolling hoops along the graveled walks.
Carr grinned toothily, much satisfied with himself. “What did I tell you, gentlemen?”
With his ruddy skin drawn tightly over his cheekbones, King asked, “News from the front?”
Carr rattled the pages with eagerness, saying, “I told you Crook would need the Fifth!”
“Hurrah!” was the immediate cheer raised right then and on through that night in all the barracks and officers’ quarters, sounded with the most proper John Bull, or Irish, or German accents. “We’re going for to join Crook!”
The next morning the lieutenant colonel had fired off a telegram requesting of Sheridan, “Please authorize me Wm. F. Cody at Cheyenne. Could I get Pawnees as Indian Scouts; I had them in sixty-nine.”
Sheridan promptly wired back, “You can employ Cody. Will try to obtain Pawnees, but doubt success.”
On the night of 5 June Companies A, B, D, and K departed Fort Hays, railed west to Denver, then north to Cheyenne, where on the seventh Major John J. Upham met them with his battalion of Companies I, C, and G ordered up from Fort Gibson and Camp Supply in Indian Territory. A day later M Company arrived from Fort Lyon, Colorado Territory. Then on the ninth King was asked to ride in to Cheyenne rail station, there to await the arrival of no less than Buffalo Bill Cody himself, expected on the semiweekly westbound. What a joyous stir that reunion had caused for the veterans of the sixty-nine campaign in the regiment to see the famous scout and their beloved regimental commander side by side once more.
“With them two together,” cheered one of the old noncoms, “the Fighting Fifth is ready to get the jump on all the Sitting Bulls and Crazy Horses in the hull danged Sioux tribe!”
Two days later eight companies of mounted troopers set away for Fort Laramie, where they were told they would receive orders from Division Headquarters.
King hadn’t fought the Sioux or Cheyenne before, only Apache in the southwestern deserts of Arizona Territory, a land of cactus and centipede, where he was seriously wounded and narrowly escaped capture during a fierce skirmish at Sunset Pass. Without question, to a veteran Indian fighter like the lieutenant, the campaign trail was far preferable to fort duty.