“You looking for someone, Seamus?” Strahorn inquired.
He said, “Yes. Someone … one of Washakie’s warriors. A fighting man.”
“One of the Snakes?”
His eyes misted over and he blinked them unsuccessfully. “Someone I stood back to back with a few weeks ago—not knowing when I would die with all those Sioux charging in to overrun us … sure only that I was going to die.”*
After a moment of reflection Strahorn asked quietly, “Then this should be a joyful reunion for you.”
“Goddamn right, Bob!” he said, turning to the newsman with a wide grin creasing his weathered face. “A bloody joyful reunion it will be for two fighting comrades who escaped death by climbing back out of the mouth of hell!”
*The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 9, Reap the Whirlwind.
Chapter 17
12-16 July 1876
The Utes—Crook
CHEYENNE, July 14—Negotiations have been making for some time through Captain Nickerson, of General Crook’s staff, with the Utes, who are all enemies of the Sioux on account of oft-repeated attacks on them, to secure their co-operation in the present movement against northern hostile Sioux …
Gen. Merritt’s Fifth cavalry arrived at Fort Laramie to-day, and will move north via Fetterman to join Crook, from whom no additional news had been received, although no fears are entertained of the safety of his command.
Custer’s late action has had the effect to take courage out of couriers, and none can be had to make the trip.
Sitting Bull Killed
CHICAGO, July 14—The Tribune has a special from Fort Lincoln, given further details of the Little Horn fight, and says that Sitting Bull was killed and also a white man named Mulligan, Sitting Bull’s chief adviser … It is thought that Sitting Bull’s band obtained nearly $20,000, the soldiers having just been paid.
John Finerty wasn’t going to talk Quartermaster John V. Furey out of a new pair of shoes, much less boots. When the newsman went back to Furey’s wagon camp in the morning to beg even a used pair out of supply, the answer was still no.
Dejected, he clomped back to the bivouac he was sharing with the three other reporters, staring down morosely at the upturned toes on his brogans most all the way. What worked well in the city did not work well out here. But then, back in Chicago a man did not willingly walk mile after endless mile through deep and icy snow as he was forced to do on the Powder River campaign back in March; nor did a Chicagoan repeatedly dunk his shoes in bone-chilling mountain streams and allow them to dry right on his feet—something guaranteed to make the toes curl up on the finest Irish footwear cobbled in that windy city by Lake Erie.
Flies buzzed and droned from sunup to sundown, and this morning of 12 July was no different from all the others endured in Camp Cloud Peak in the weeks since Crook’s fight on the Rosebud. Except for the Sibley scout, it was BOREDOM in a boldface banner headline.
“So you’ve had your fill of scouting for a while, eh?” Baptiste Pourier had asked Finerty earlier that morning.
“Just stay away from me, Bat!”
The half-breed had chuckled. “When I come over here to ask you to go out with me and Frank—I figured you’d tell me you had lots of stories to write for your paper back east. Stories about the time you almost lost your hair with Lieutenant Sibley!”
John had whirled on the scout, growling, “Told you to stay away from me!”
“Easy, Johnny,” Seamus Donegan had cooed. “He’s just trying to pull your leg.”
“So you’re going out to scout again, Seamus?” Finerty had asked his fellow Irishman.
“Sure am. Like Bat told you, the three of us’re going to show Washakie and some of his warriors where we got ambushed in the mountains. Last night, soon as Grouard told him about our fight, Washakie wanted us to take him to the place where we killed White Antelope. Sure you don’t wanna come along?”
“No, thank you,” Finerty had grumbled. “I’ve got some dispatches to catch up on.”
He’d take a little more boredom before he grappled against a wilderness crawling with scalp-hungry hostiles.
Besides bacon, beans, and biscuits, boredom was a commodity in plentiful supply. For literate men like Finerty, the lack of reading matter weighed particularly heavy. Except for two small libraries of paperback books a pair of officers had hauled north in their saddlebags, there was only the dog-eared, grease-stained, three-week-old newspapers that came up from Fetterman with the supply wagons to make the rounds of camp, then make the rounds again and again until the papers fell apart with so much handling. Come night the flies and other winged pests disappeared, but the wolves, coyotes, and now the Shoshone auxiliaries all raised their primal voices to the stars and the moon. Even an inveterate gambler like Finerty found the idea of a game of poker or keno too odious for words.
That Wednesday morning Crook was having his troops prepare to break camp again just as they had been doing every few days, this time for a move to a new streamlet less than two miles to the north. Here the men would try the fishing in some new creekside pools and the horses would luxuriate in new pastures. This periodic changing of camp also accomplished another object lost on most of those soldiers whose task it was to make the moves. While the sergeants did allow the men brief liberty to swim, fish, or hunt, there was no time off that would allow real boredom to set in.
Every other day the tents were struck, to be pitched in a new camp a few miles away. Horses were constantly herded from one patch of grass to another, picketed and hobbled against brazen raids by the enemy. Wagons had to be loaded up for every move, then unloaded when the new site was reached. New sinks near the creeks had to be dug for the mess cooks, and new latrines were a must for an army the size of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition. On those days when camp was not to be moved, the cavalry troops exercised their horses at a walk, trot, and gallop, which kept each man in constant contact with his animal.
This steady rotation of fatigue details made Finerty come to believe that the greenest recruit who had marched north from Fort Fetterman with Crook in May couldn’t help but be a hard-muscled, savvy campaign veteran by the end of the summer.
Like the nightly visits of the Sioux come to try running off some of the horses or Tom Moore’s cantankerous mules, as well as the warriors’ daily attempts to set fire to the grass surrounding the white man’s camp, every afternoon saw a thunderstorm roll across the valley with enough fidelity a man could set his watch. Before the onslaught of today’s downpour, Finerty figured to enjoy this sunny morning by getting in a little fishing, making only a halfhearted effort and using some of the abundant grasshoppers for bait—more an excuse to doze in the shade of rustling cottonwoods than to catch anything. He was nearly asleep when he heard the first voices of those fishing across the narrow creek.
He sat up at the excitement in their voices, shoving his floppy slouch hat back on his head, blinking his eyes, shading them to peer into the distance where many of the other fishermen were pointing off to the north. Already his heart pounded with the memories of his narrow escape from the Sioux, swallowing hard—afraid they were under attack. With the smoky haze clinging to this high country after the hostiles’ last attempt to burn the soldiers out, John couldn’t be sure—but it appeared to be only three of them. Likely only scouts for a larger war party.