“Still warm and steamy, Frank.”
They arose together as Seamus wiped the hand off on his wet britches and jammed it back into the glove.
“Can’t be ahead,” Grouard explained to Captain Mills moments later.
“Headed east?” he asked.
“More a little east of south,” Donegan replied. “Almost the same direction we’re aiming to go.”
“Damn,” Mills growled. He sighed, looked back over his short column of twos, then waved Chase close. “Lieutenant—you’re to divide off half of the men.”
“Separate sir?”
“Yes, I believe it’s best that we split up here. Take Crawford with you. He says he knows the Hills.”
Mills then went on to explain that if they should encounter a sizable war party, he wanted one group or the other to be sure to reach the settlements and secure aid for Crook’s ailing column.
Minutes later Donegan watched the lieutenant lead some thirty men away, pointing their noses for Bear Butte as the wind came up and the rain washed over them in gusting sheets.
“Pay heed where you see them going,” Mills instructed Seamus.
He turned to the officer to ask, “Why, Colonel?”
“There may come a time when I will need to have Chase rejoin us. And I’ll need one of my scouts to have a damned good idea where he can find them.”
Through the afternoon and into the murky light of dusk, Mills pushed them relentlessly as the ground below them slowly changed from grass and cactus to grass and sage, becoming grass and cedar just before hillsides loomed out of the fog before them, gentle slopes carpeted with the dark, verdant stands of pine and fir.
They had crossed the wide, clear waters of the Belle Fourche.
Was it only his imagination? Seamus wondered as he shivered with cold, with excitement, with anticipation. Or had they really reached the Black Hills? Drawn by some unseen force, were they really there? How he wanted to believe they had been plucked out of the wilderness perhaps by nothing less than the hand of God itself.
“That’s the Whitewood!” Grouard cheered to the soldiers as he halted them at the northern bank of a narrow creek.
“Where will it take us?” Mills asked.
The half-breed turned on the captain, grinning, “Why—to Crook City. Crawford said once we get here, it can’t be more’n a handful of miles now. And Deadwood’s only ten miles beyond it.”
A couple of hours after dark they reached Crook City, a ragged column of miserable men on captured Sioux ponies. Except for the disciplined order Mills kept in his ranks as they plodded slowly down the center of that stinking, mud-daubed mining settlement, the patrol would have looked like any band of brigands, freebooters, or borderland raiders. One by one and in small knots, miners and bummers pressed against the grimy windowpanes to peer at the column passing by, or poured from the doorways of saloons and watering holes, from the clapboard and falsefronted shops and hotels, pushing aside tent flaps and stepping out into the rainy night to take themselves a good, long gander at what had just marched out of the Dakota wilderness.
“Who the hell are you fellas?” someone asked from a shadow as the captain halted his rough lot of men in a cordon on both sides of the rutted thoroughfare and prepared to dismount.
“Colonel Anson Mills, Third U.S. Cavalry. Attached to the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition under Brigadier General George C. Crook. I’ve brought the general’s commissary officer with me to secure provisions for his troops.”
Another voice from the far side of the street demanded, “Where’s Crook?”
“Yeah,” someone said, stepping into dim lamplight. “Crook hisself with ya?”
“No. Forty miles, maybe less behind us now,” Mills replied, exhaustion written on every word. “Two thousand men with him. We’ve been eating horse and mule for two weeks now.”
“Well, now,” a new voice called out, and a large, rotund man stepped out of the shadows of an awning and clomped through the mud to reach the captain’s side. “I figure you’ve come to the right place, Colonel Mills. This here town is named after the general. And we’re pleased as hell to have the army’s protection, we are.”
Then the first one of them bellowed out a cheer. And suddenly from both sides of the street the civilians pressed in, tearing their hats from their heads, throwing them into the air, shouting, screaming, whistling, and hooting in sheer joy. The Indian ponies fought their bits, and some attempted to rear, but the crowds latched on to them and held them in the center of that muddy, rutted street while everyone shook hands and laughed, and many of the soldiers couldn’t help but cry.
Finally Seamus thought to ask those who stood as close to him as ticks on a buffalo’s hide, “Does any man here know where I might get myself a good beefsteak? And a baked potato? And a bottle of whiskey what won’t soap my tonsils when I pour it down?”
The Irishman was finishing his fifth cup of steaming coffee and was just about ready to pour his first double shot of whiskey when Anson Mills came up and settled in the rickety chair at Donegan’s table in a saloon still fragrant with freshly-sawed lumber. The captain put his hand over the top of the shot glass.
“I’ll leave you to have off at one drink, Irishman.”
“Why, Colonel—I’ve waited a long time to drink my fill. Ever since Fetterman, it’s been.”
“I know you have. But you’ve filled your belly with just what it should have for the work at hand: warm food, good food, and strong, rich coffee too. So, now, before you drink any more than that one glass I’ll leave you have—I want you to remember I’ve still got men out there. Soldiers in that wilderness.”
“Lieutenant Chase,” Donegan replied, suddenly realizing as he stared at the whiskey in the glass held underneath the captain’s open palm.
“I fear they might have been chewed up by some war party, Irishman.”
Donegan nodded, then licked his lips and let his eyes climb up to the officer’s face. “My one drink of this blessed piss-hole whiskey, Captain?”
Reluctantly, Mills removed his hand, gently pushing the glass toward the scout. “Surely. If that’s what you choose to do is drink the rest of the night while I and Lieutenant Bubb procure Crook’s supplies—I can’t stop you. We’ve all been under extreme privation … so I will try to understand.”
Sweeping the two sides of his unkempt, bushy mustache aside with a grimy finger, Donegan licked his lips, staring at the delicate amber color in the smoky glass. Then as he closed his eyes, he gently poured the whiskey on his tongue and slowly tilted his head back, savoring the sweet sting it brought to his throat as the whiskey coursed its warm track all the way down his gullet.
Then he lowered his chin and opened his eyes, licking the last drops of whiskey from his lips and mustache. Rising from the table, he swept his shapeless sombrero from the empty chair beside him and planted it on his head, snugging up the wind-string below his beard.
Gazing down at the captain, Seamus pulled on his heavy coat, still damp. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigar, would you, Colonel?”
“Why … no, I wouldn’t.”
“Here, mister,” said a civilian who rushed forward with a half dozen clutched in his hand. “Take what you want and I’ll put it on your tab.”
Seizing the long, fragrant, rum-soaked cheroots, each one as thick as his own thumb, Donegan replied, “Thank you, sir. You do that.”
Gently inserting the precious smokes within the security of an inside pocket, Donegan dragged his leather gloves from the coat’s pockets and turned back to Mills, saying, “If you’ll be good enough to pay the six bits I owe the proprietor here, Colonel—and whatever else he’s gonna charge for these cigars, I’d be grateful, I.surely would. You see”—he leaned forward and whispered then—“I’m a little short for the moment.”