“S-short?”
Grinning, he pulled on his gloves and said, “It’s been some months since the army’s paid me, which means I ain’t had me any army scrip in my pocket for quite some time. So, Colonel—I’ll let you pay for the meal, my cigars, and that one drink of whiskey. It appears I’ve still got some more scouting to do for you tonight.”
Long after Robert Strahorn left with Mills that morning, the fog remained so thick the captain repeatedly put his compass to use, keeping Grouard leading them a little west of south.
Near late morning they stumbled across a trail of lodgepoles and pony tracks in the mud so fresh that Donegan and the half-breed found horse droppings still steaming in the frosty air. At once Mills grew alarmed.
“Lieutenant Chase,” the captain called. “You’re to divide off half the men.”
“Separate, sir?”
“Yes,” Mills replied, looking off into the murky distance where the enemy’s muddy trail led. “I want to be sure some of us reach the mining towns—someone brings supplies back to the column.”
Chase straightened in the saddle. “Where do you want me to go, Colonel?”
“You’re going to be my ace in the hole, Mr. Chase. I want you to take half of the men with you and ride south by east, ready to keep on moving around the foot of the Black Hills if I’m attacked and can’t complete my mission.”
“East of the Black Hills,” Chase repeated. “And then where?”
“On to Camp Robinson. Get word there that … that the rest of us have been overwhelmed by the Sioux.”
In minutes Mills had his men split in half and Chase was on his way, accompanied by scout Jack Crawford and Denver’s Rocky Mountain News correspondent. Reuben Davenport would remain with Mills and Lieutenant Bubb, their patrol led by Grouard and Donegan.
Chase led them away from Mills late that morning, and by dark his patrol had nowhere better than the lee of some rocks to take shelter in for the long, miserable night.
The following morning they were up and moving before dawn, crossing many small trails of bands headed in to the agencies. That second afternoon dragged on as the compass led Chase and thirty men through the rainy mist that lifted only when dusk began to settle upon the endless prairie. A quarter mile behind them a suckling colt gamely followed a brood mare one of the troopers was riding. Even when darkness fell quickly, the lieutenant refused to give up the march until the night became so black that they could no longer use the compass and landmarks, much less any stars in the overcast sky above. Finally running across a secluded stand of trees nestled at the base of a hill, with a nearby patch of grass, where they picketed their horses to graze, Chase relented to the complaints of his shivering and hungry men—allowing them to build a small fire they kindled at the bottom of a shallow pit.
As the soldiers chewed on a few scanty strips of dried pony meat they had packed along in their saddlebags since morning, the lieutenant and Crawford discussed what they would do if a wandering war party should discover and attack their patrol. Each of the troopers was to have a specific place to go in order for the outfit to make its best defense. Then out of the darkness appeared the suckling colt, which scared the devil out of the men, and elicited a maternal nicker from the mare.
An old sergeant said, “Cap’n, I sure do think that colt’d taste a lot better’n this here cold jerky.”
Chase shook his head. “No. I want you all to understand I’m against killing the animal—better for us to let him tag along in case we need him for a real emergency.”
Back and forth they debated it while chewing on their dried meat until the idea became a bit more reasonable to the lieutenant, and he relented to having their fresh meat then and there. No sooner had Chase agreed when a tall, strapping soldier leaped to his feet, seized the young colt around the neck, and slashed its throat in that ring of firelight.
A quarter of an hour later the men were roasting thin slivers of the meat and wolfing it down all but raw.
Supper was gone when they heard a horse coming through the trees and nearby brush.
“God-damtt,” one of them rasped in a whisper as they all rushed for their chosen positions.
On his belly Crawford quickly scooped some muddy soil into the pit, extinguishing their fire. Nearby Strahorn’s heart pounded just the way it had last winter when they had found themselves pinned down in that Powder River village. Once more he had thrown in with men ready to sell their lives at a great cost that cold night.
“You boys aren’t going to shoot a white man, now, will you?”
Strahorn’s ears pricked. Rising to one knee, he hollered out to the darkness, “That you, Irishman?”
“Bob Strahorn? You bet it’s me, Seamus!” the voice called back from the gloom. “Call off the guards and ease them hammers back down.”
In less than two minutes Donegan was dismounted and stood in their midst, telling them, “Mills sent me to fetch you and your men, Lieutenant.”
Chase asked anxiously, “Where is he now, Irishman?”
“Why, just past seven this evening—we rode into Crook City.”
Strahorn leaned in close to the scout’s face and sniffed for himself. He was smiling when he leaned back. “Is that what I think it is on your breath, Irishman?”
“If you mean whiskey—by the saints it sure as hell is!”
Bob almost wanted to cry as he wrapped his arms around the tall Irishman and hugged. Then he drew back and looked into Donegan’s merry eyes.
“All right, you big goddamned leprechaun—how ’bout you taking me to the closest place you know where I can buy you a drink!”
* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 8, Blood Song.
Chapter 48
13 September 1876
It came as a real blessing when Crook didn’t prod them out of their blankets early that Wednesday morning. In fact, they languished in camp until noon as those boneweary men who had any strength left helped the engineering officers corduroy the north and south banks of Willow Creek in preparation of fording the stream.
But while the soldiers labored, even as those who had collapsed up and down the creekbank finally straggled in to join the others around the smoky fires—every man kept his eager, expectant, hopeful eyes trained on that country to the south.
“I will look unto the hills,” Charles King murmured as he waded in the chilling, waist-deep water of the creek and dropped another log near those soldiers who were filling in the corduroy of steps. “Yes, I will look unto the hills from whence my help comes.”
He closed his eyes and blinked away the tears, remembering that little church back home, and how he and the rest of the children had sat on the floor around one of the lay people each Sunday morning and learned scripture by rote. Psalm by psalm. Hope by hope. Prayer by prayer.
How many times had he asked God to end the rain? And still it fell. Even until this morning. If the Lord kept this up, Crook’s army would have to be about building an ark instead of laying down a corduroy to cross swollen streams.
Merritt himself had asked King to take charge of the work. “Go down to the creek and put the ford into shape,” the colonel had requested. “You will find some fifty infantrymen reporting for duty.”
The men were there—all fifty of them—but no more than a dozen of them were fit to do anything other than sit on the banks of that muddy stream. Those who did have any strength left would have to complete their job without tools. They had been hewing down the saplings and trimming branches with their belt knives. Each man lugged armloads of these into the rushing current, then plunged them under the water, attempting to anchor them any way they could to the shifting stream bottom.