A Cold Day in Hell (25 page)

“I think you just may have them this time, General,” Luther said quietly to the colonel.

Miles spoke out of the corner of his mouth in a whisper, “But—goddammit—I’m afraid that if I’m forced to escort this bunch all the way over to the Cheyenne River Agency, I can’t turn about and pursue Sitting Bull.”

The colonel’s adjutant, Hobart Bailey, suggested, “General, what of returning the village to Tongue River with some of the men for an escort while the rest of us keep after Sitting Bull?”

Miles considered that only a short time before saying, “It won’t work. We have limited supplies at our Tongue River Cantonment and this village would tax us beyond our resources. No. Instead I think I may have a plan that will accomplish all I want to accomplish with these chiefs, and still allow me to go after the biggest fish of them all.”

So it was that Miles ended up proposing that the Indians give their vow to turn themselves in to their agents at Cheyenne River. In addition, five of the chiefs would volunteer to stay behind with Miles, those men to be delivered to an army prison in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a means of guaranteeing the surrender of their people.

“I will provide rations for your people to make the trek to your reservation. And I will allow you thirty-five days to make
the trip. In addition, I agree to give you five additional days to stay where you are now presently camped to hunt buffalo.”

For a long time the chiefs talked among themselves, then finally Red Skirt stood to present himself before Miles.

“I will go with the Bear Coat, to show the goodwill of my people.”

One by one the others rose in turn. The older White Bull, a Miniconjou and father of Small Bear. Foolish Thunder, Black Eagle, and Rising Sun, all three Sans Arc. At the same time, Bull Eagle and Small Bear agreed to be responsible for getting their people to the reservation on time. In this, more of the headmen vowed they would not fail: Tall Bull, Yellow Eagle, Two Elk, Foolish Bear, Spotted Elk, and Poor Bear. Better than two thousand Miniconjou, Sans Arc, and Hunkpapa, accounting for some three hundred lodges, had surrendered without the Fifth Infantry firing another shot.

That night of the twenty-fifth Miles had much in which to rejoice as he finished a letter to Mary, apologizing for not having written her sooner, blaming the delay on the rigors of the campaign, declaring that one mistake on his part might cause a massacre the sort of which had overwhelmed his friend Custer. Sleep had been coming fitfully, he reminded her, but boasted that the rigors of the chase had caused him to lose a few pounds.

Next, the colonel wrote a letter to Mary’s uncle, William Tecumseh Sherman, complaining about what he saw as conspiracy within the army against his interests. Because he had seen firsthand that the Sioux were running short on ammunition and staples, Miles wrote, “I believe we can wear them down.” Then he wheedled for more cavalry, blaming his own lack of it on the wastefulness of Crook’s past and present campaigning, saying his lack of horse soldiers was all that stood in the way between him and his victory over Sitting Bull—“It is not easy for infantry to catch them, although I believe we can whip them every time.”

Last on his list of correspondence was a dispatch to General Alfred H. Terry:

“What of Sitting Bull, General?” asked Captain Wyllys Lyman.

After a moment of reflection that dark night as icy points of snow lanced down from a lowering sky, Nelson A. Miles sighed. “Yes. Sitting Bull. He’s still out there waiting for me, isn’t he?”

Captain Edmond Butler inquired, “Will we go after him now?”

“We’ll march the command back to Tongue River, recoup, then set out again—yes. By all means,” Miles replied. “Although my nemesis is still out there, roaming free … I have accomplished one thing I set out to do. I have succeeded in dividing the enemy against itself, whittling away at my enemy’s forces where I can find and engage them.”

“That’s more than the other columns have been able to accomplish in this country,” declared Andrew S. Bennett.

“We won’t name names here, Captain Bennett,” Miles replied, flatly waving off that comment pointed at both Terry and Crook. “From the reports of their disgraceful failures of late, I judge that the nation sooner or later will understand the difference between doing something and doing nothing.”

Luther Kelly refilled his coffee tin, then asked, “Will we fight on into the winter, General?”

Miles turned to regard his chief of scouts. “You’ll have a job for as long as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse are free, Mr. Kelly. I will endeavor to keep the tribes divided and take them in detail. Never more will the hostiles band together. Make no mistake about it—I consider what we have, done to be the beginning of the end for their people.”

“N
ot long after we got back to Camp Robinson, Crook had himself an audience with the chiefs and other headmen,” Seamus said, speaking in a soft voice so that he would not wake the child who lay asleep in the crook of his father’s shoulder.

Samantha watched her husband step slowly across the tiny
room, using what floor there was to pace back and forth as his son slept, nestled within his father’s arms while she sat propped up in the rope-and-tick bed, watching them both, her knees drawn up where she rested her chin.

From the moment Crook’s command had returned to Fort Laramie, Seamus had been with them both constantly, forgoing most of his nocturnal visits to the sutler’s saloon, choosing not to join the other scouts and soldiers in their noisy camaraderie in these last few days before embarking on Crook’s Powder River Expedition. Instead, to Sam it seemed that her husband hungered only for the companionship of his family across what hours and days were left him before Mackenzie’s Fourth would plunge north into the winter wilderness, the spear point of George Crook’s desperate last-chance campaign to find and capture Crazy Horse.

“Soon enough I’ll have only male voices around my ears,” he had tried to explain when she asked him why he hovered close, why he didn’t wander over to Collins’s saloon.

Again he had tried to explain the life of an army on the march: only the bray of mules and the snort of horses, the squeak of frozen saddle and the jingle of frosted bit—to touch, instead of loved ones, only the memories of these two most important people in his world, alone and trying desperately to keep himself warm with those memories as a second winter campaign swallowed him whole.
*

“If Crook captured the Sioux chiefs,” Samantha began now as she watched him pace with the child, “why would he even bother to talk with them at all?”

Shifting the infant from his shoulder, Donegan laid his little son across his left arm and adjusted the tiny blanket around the boy’s head and face as he said, “What he had to say to that gathering of chiefs was most important, Sam. You see, Crook had the power—then and there, plain as paint before all the headmen and once-mighty warriors—to remove Red Cloud from his throne.”

“Red Cloud? You mean the same chief who commanded all those warriors you fought in that northern country ten years ago … the same chief who you told me drove the army out in sixty-eight? You’re telling me Crook’s made sure he is no longer chief of the Sioux?”

With a slight shrug Seamus nodded. “For all that it matters
to the Injins staying close to their agency. Crook told them all he was determined to punish Red Cloud for running off from the reservation, for making his camp a place where warriors could come and go from the Powder River country. And then Crook capped the ball when he announced he was making Spotted Tail chief of all the Sioux.”

“Spotted Tail—isn’t he the one whose daughter died and is buried near this post?”

“The same chief,” Donegan answered. “Long ago, as his daughter was dying, she made him promise her two things: that he would place her scaffold near the white man’s Laramie fort, and that he would remain faithful to the white man’s wishes. Spotted Tail never broke the promise he made to her.”

“What of the other bands you say have been restless at the agency?”

“The Cheyenne and the Arapaho sat in on the conference with Crook. The general figured it would help to impress upon them his power to punish, as well as his power to reward. Crook finished his council by telling the bands what he expected of them from here on out.”

“I imagine he demanded they all stay at home and become farmers,” Sam replied with a sneer, then winked at her husband when he went to scowling at her. “Really, Seamus—I can no more see any of those redskins digging at the ground than I can see you living the rest of your natural years as a sodbuster.”

Finally he grinned at her, then turned at the corner of the room and started back toward the bed with slow steps as he gently rocked the sleeping infant troubled this evening with another bout of colic. “Crook told the chiefs that the government was feeding their people, putting clothes on their backs—so the government and its army was damn well entitled to the tribes’ loyalties. But what’s the government got for all the flour and rifles, bacon and bullets? I’ll tell you: Sioux warriors and all the rest have been acting like murderers and thieves off the reservation, then fleeing back to take refuge on the agency. Now it was time, Crook told them, to show their friendship with more than empty words. From now on the chiefs are going to be held accountable for the actions of their young men.”

“Sounds like Crook enjoyed playing the part of a stern father to them.”

Seamus smiled. “I damn well know he relished the role—telling the chiefs and headmen that if they did not toe the line
this time, they would soon rue the day they acted so foolishly. He told them that if they all came in and began their lives as stock raisers, their troubles would end at once.”

“But what of the others you’ve told me about, Seamus?” she asked. “The ones like Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull? The ones who have never come in?”

“Crook told the chiefs he was going after the last of the hostiles, those holdouts still roaming the wild country. He vowed the army would find them and drive them in.”

“And those they can’t drive in?” she asked dolefully.

“Yes,” he nodded, gazing down at his son. “Crook told those chiefs that the army would wipe out all those who failed to come in. And he said he would do it with the help of the young men he had just rounded up and brought back to the agency. That’s when Crook made it plain he was counting on the chiefs to convince their warriors to become scouts for him in the coming campaign.”

“When you got back, I remember your saying Crook would be taking hundreds of mercenaries north with the column to help him find the hostiles still with Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.”

“From Spotted Tail’s and Little Wound’s bands Crook has enlisted a small army of Sioux and Cheyenne who will be going after their own kind,” Donegan replied with a doleful wag of his head. “Hard to believe that so many would volunteer to hunt down their own kind still out there in the wild country … especially two of the warriors we captured from American Horse’s village at Slim Buttes in September.
*
But they were the first to sign up.”