This was a fighting outfit, the Fifth Cavalry. First organized in 1855, the regiment saw its initial Indian service across the arid plains of west Texas, fighting Lipan, Tonkawa, and the fierce Comanche until the outbreak of the rebellion in the South.
In 1866 when Albany-born and Milwaukee-raised King graduated from West Point, he was carrying on for his famous father, Rufus King, himself a member of the class of thirty-three. With the first shot fired at Fort Sumter in the Civil War, the senior King quickly set about organizing the legendary Iron Brigade, of which he became major general following the regiment’s defense of Washington City. Young Charles accompanied his father in those early months of the war as a mounted orderly, a volunteer position without pay. Firsthand he watched the formation of the famous Army of the Potomac, but before he could become a part of it, young King received his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy from President Lincoln. He was bound and determined to make something of himself, coming from such a distinguished bloodline: Grandfather King, another Charles, served as president of Columbia College, and Great-grandfather had been a signer of the Constitution of the United States and the last candidate of the Federalist party for President.
On Reconstruction duty in the South after graduation, King’s battery of light artillery was often called out to quell riots. The mere arrival of his platoon with their Gatling guns never failed to disperse the noisy crowds of rabble. Three years later he was assigned to recruiting duty in Cincinnati, where in off-duty hours he played with the Red Stockings, a pioneer professional baseball team.
In 1870 he was promoted to first lieutenant and assigned to the Fifth Cavalry, then stationed at Fort McPherson, where he first saw the famous scout Bill Cody. It was while he was serving in detached duty in New Orleans that King married Adelaide Lavender Yorke. In seventy-four Charles rejoined his regiment at Camp Verde in Arizona. Many were the times he remembered the fierce fights at Diamond Butte and Black Mesa, but nothing awoke him at night like nightmares he suffered remembering that fight at Sunset Pass on the first day of November 1874. If Sergeant Bernard Taylor hadn’t pulled King over his shoulder and carried the lieutenant out of those rocks …
Charles tried hard to think on other things when those vivid, black memories returned to haunt him. The wound kept King from active duty for more than a year, but at least he survived.
About the time he returned to his K Company, the Fifth was being transferred back to the plains, and by the time King arrived back in Kansas, Carr appointed him regimental adjutant as the nation began to murmur rumors of one final campaign to end the Indian troubles on the northern plains.
Now, here at Laramie, in the midst of so many officers’ wives with their husbands already off to the north with Crook, Charles dwelt that much more often on his sweet Adelaide, who had elected to stay behind with her parents in New Orleans. How his heart yearned to walk across this parade with her, to sit beside her, to hold her hand and gaze into her eyes with that longing only youth can know.
How his heart burned to have her with him now, more painfully than ever. Charles knew it would be a long, long while before this business with the hostile bands was wrapped up and put behind them. Something told him that warm evening late in June that this would not be a short summer’s campaign.
Something like a whisper, haunting Charles King. And sitting here in these evening shadows at Fort Laramie, the lieutenant began to fear their business with the Sioux and Cheyenne would not only boil over into the fall and on into the winter, but that the mess it caused would be very, very nasty indeed.
Already Bill missed Lulu, the warm sun causing his skin to sweat beneath the thin shirt. Any breeze at all cooled him as he led the column of fours on and on across the rolling wilderness.
Cody thought on her as he squinted into the sundrenched distance, remembering land like this from that summer they caught Tall Bull at Summit Springs.* Lulu looked so damned good under a sunbonnet, a parasol coyly laid over her shoulder where she could spin it, cocking her head to the side and making him fall in love with her all over again. He remembered the sight of all those children dashing across the Fort Laramie parade, scurrying all about officers’ quarters and Bedlam too, changed from bachelor officers’ quarters to housing the wives and families of men already off to war with Crook’s Wyoming column. Young children made him think on Kitty, wondering if he could have done something different, if he hadn’t been away from home so much, if … but he had to admit that even if he had been around more, he doubted there was much a father could do to protect his only son from the scourge of scarlet fever.
Out here Bill Cody could do something, perhaps even something heroic. But when it came to saving young Kit Carson Cody in those final hours and minutes before he stopped breathing in his father’s arms—William F. Cody would have to live with that failure for the rest of his life.
“There’s a feeder trail, Cody,” Sheridan explained days ago, hunched over the map table where Carr and many of the Fifth’s officers had circled in tight-lipped conference.
“A trail that I imagine goes right from here, and over here,” Bill had replied that fourteenth day of June, jabbing a finger at the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail agencies, then dragging the finger dramatically across the sepia-toned paper, “all the way north to the hostiles raising hell in the Powder River and Rosebud country, right there.”
“General Carr,” Sheridan said, using the lieutenant colonel’s brevet rank awarded for bravery in battle during the civil war, as he straightened, “I’m wanting to use your Fifth to block that trail north.”
Carr appeared dismayed, asking, “But you’re not sending us north to unite with General Crook?”
“No. Jordan down at Red Cloud has been hammering out reports to me every day on his situation there. I want to use your force to block this trail to the Powder River country. I’ve already sent Crook a dispatch detailing my plans to use you to the east of him. You are, after all, the commander of an entirely new district in my department, the District of the Black Hills.”
“Yes,” Carr replied.
In recent days Sheridan had indeed carved out a new military district for Carr and the Fifth Cavalry: embracing portions of western Nebraska and Dakota, along with a slice of eastern Wyoming Territory that ran up to but did not include Fort Fetterman. Carr’s primary task would be protection of the settlers pouring into the Black Hills townships now that the government was seriously going about the business of reclaiming the sacred Paha Sapa from the Sioux and Cheyenne.
“Schuyler?”
“Yes, General?” said Walter S. Schuyler.
Sheridan stood even taller that afternoon days ago, still the shortest man there in that assembly of officers. “Read General Carr my orders.”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant replied, opening up the folded orders pulled from a thin leather valise he carried over one shoulder. Turning to Carr, Schuyler read, “The lieutenant general commanding directs you to proceed, with the eight companies of the Fifth Cavalry, on the road from Fort Laramie to Custer City until you reach the crossing of the main Powder River trail leading from the vicinity of Red Cloud Agency westward to Powder and Yellowstone rivers. Arriving at that point, you will follow the trail westward, proceeding such distances as your judgment and the amount of supplies which you carry will warrant. As little is known about the country over which you will operate, the lieutenant general … does not wish to hamper you with any official instructions, but will leave you to operate in accordance with your best judgment.”
As Schuyler refolded the orders and presented them to Carr, Sheridan asked, “You have any questions, General?”