A Cold Day in Hell (32 page)

“D
on’t you agree, Seamus?” John Bourke asked that Saturday evening at their fire near the packers’ camp as icy shards of snow danced and pirouetted on a capricious wind about their bivouac. “That God is on the side of the heaviest battalions?”

“Sounds like a god-blamed army maxim.” Donegan answered in turn.

“Napoleon,” Bourke replied.

“But it sounds to me that if you have the heaviest battalions—the most men and secure supply lines—then you don’t need to worry about God being on your side, Johnny.”

“My point exactly!” Bourke cried with glee. “Here we are, within sight of the Big Horn Mountains once again, much better equipped than we were last March—ready, willing, and able to catch the Crazy Horse warrior bands laying low in their lodges to wait out the winter. While we have the men, the matériel, the supply lines to make that red bastard’s capture a sure thing.”

Behind them a voice called out, “Is that the Irishman’s voice I hear?”

Out of the dark appeared the swarthy half-breed. It brought a smile to Donegan’s face. “Last I heard of you at Laramie, Crook said you was taken terrible sick and the soldiers hauled your worthless carcass down to Cheyenne City in the back of a wagon.”

Frank Grouard held out his hand to shake, but Seamus promptly pushed it aside and gave the scout a fierce embrace.
The half-breed pounded Donegan on the shoulder, saying, “There and then I figured I should go farther west, maybe back to Utah to get myself on the mend—but what do you know? On the train I laughed myself into a cure.”

“You’re pulling our legs!” Bourke declared, coming over to shake Grouard’s hand.

“The honest truth,” Grouard replied with a smile, holding a hand up in testament to the fact. “A good laugh will always cure what ails you.”

Seamus asked, “So how’d you end up getting here?”

“Rode in with the paymaster from Fort Fetterman.”

“Paymaster?” Bourke almost squealed in excitement. “Damn, but don’t they always show up where a man has no place to spend his money!”

Grouard went on to explain, “You’d been two days gone from Fetterman when I was fixing to take off. So I offered to guide that paymaster in here, protecting all that mail and pay for all you soldiers.”

“You made sure that paymaster reported in to the general so we can all have us a round of drinks, didn’t you, Grouard?” Bourke cheered.

“Sure as hell did,” Frank replied. “If I didn’t, I figure there’s a few hundred unpaid soldiers ready to stretch my neck with a rope!

Is that Frank Grouard out there?” Crook stuck his head out the flaps of a nearby tent glowing with lamps, the small space filled not only with a map-strewn table, two cots, and a Sibley stove, but with Mackenzie and Dodge.

Grouard began moving that way, saying, “It is, General.”

Mackenzie immediately pushed past Crook and held out his hand at the flaps. “Ranald Mackenzie. Commanding, Fourth Cavalry. I’ve heard a lot about you, Grouard.”

“Good to meet you too, General.”

“Well, Frank—what have you seen?” Mackenzie asked as he slipped a glove back on his right hand.

“Seen heaps.”

Mackenzie scratched his chin. “So where are the reds?”

Gesturing with a slight toss of his head to the west, Grouard answered, “I make ’em over in the mountains.”

As Donegan stood there watching the three expedition leaders, he once more noticed the stark contrasts between the men. While Crook seemed oblivious to his dress—wearing worn and dirty wool coats and fur caps naked of any insignia or badge of
office, even to the point of carelessly tying up the long ends of his bushy red beard into a pair of braided points with twine—Mackenzie and Dodge, on the other hand, were the noble specimens of a cavalry or infantry officer: wearing their complete uniforms with pride.

“John,” Crook said, turning to Bourke, “bring Three Bears to see us.”

“Something up, General?”

Crook’s eyes bounced over the small gathering of officers and civilizations at that fire outside his tent. “Yes. This time I’ve decided to keep Cosgrove’s Shoshones as reserves and let the Indians most familiar with this ground do my scouting for me.”

“Makes good sense,” Grouard replied.

“I’m glad you agree,” the general replied. “I’ve put Lieutenant Schuyler over the Snakes, to work with Cosgrove and Washakie’s two sons who came along. But come on inside now, Frank. We’ve got some talking to do before I figure to send some of those Sioux scouts north to feel out where we go from here.”

“Very good, General,” Bourke replied, pulling on his wool gloves and stepping away. “I’ll return shortly.”

Well after moonset eight of the Red Cloud Agency Sioux and six of the Arapaho slipped quietly into the dark, rationed for four days, instructed to scout north by west toward the mountains.

By the time the expedition had reached Reno Cantonment, many of the Indian scouts had sorted out for themselves who were some of the more powerful soldiers. Clearly Crook, Mackenzie, and Dodge, along with those men nominally placed over the auxiliaries … but to the warriors’ way of thinking, one of the soldier chiefs with the biggest medicine was Lieutenant Charles Rockwell, commissary officer for the Fourth Cavalry. After all, it was he who had unquestioned authority and control over such immense stores of the coveted bacon, sugar, and coffee! But try as they might to get Rockwell to trade items of clothing and beadwork for heaps of rations, the young lieutenant remained steadfast in his duty and played no favorites as he and his men kept a lock on the valuable foodstuffs.

With the arrival of the paymaster that night, a spontaneous celebration erupted among the cold men as there was at least a cramped log trading store close by the cantonment where the soldiers could fritter away their meager month’s wages on the sutler’s crude whiskey.

Dawn of the nineteenth found the sky lowering and a new
storm approaching out of the west over the mountains. As soon as the wind quartered out of the north, the temperature seemed to fall ever farther. While most men continued throwing away their pay on wild debauchery, a few in each outfit pooled their money and purchased tinned tomatoes, potatoes, and other delicacies, making for a brief change in their drab and monotonous diet. For miles up and down the Powder River, infantry soldiers and cavalry troopers, teamsters, packers, and scouts caroused noisily.

“If Crazy Horse had any doubt the army’s coming after him,” John Bourke said as half a hundred men hurried to watch a fistfight broken out a few yards away, “that red bastard will be able to hear this bunch all the way to the slopes of the Big Horns!”

Seamus chuckled, sipping at his steaming coffee. He was content and relaxed, lounging on his saddle blanket, his back against a downed cottonwood trunk, feet to the fire. “I know for damned certain this isn’t where the devil was born, but from the sounds of it, Johnny—this seems like the place the devil was sure as hell raised up!”

The lieutenant stood, tossing the last dregs of his coffee onto the snowy ground as dusty flakes tumbled all about them. “You’re coming over to the council?”

“Is it that time already?”

Stuffing his big turnip watch back inside his wool vest, Bourke replied, “Soon enough. I should try to be there before the warrior groups show up.”

After taking another drink of his coffee, Donegan asked, “This council really has to do with the Sioux complaining to Crook?”

Nodding, the lieutenant said, “When the general had Three Bears come to his tent last night to enlist some warriors to go scout the foot of the mountains—the Sioux war chief seized the opportunity to complain to Crook that the Pawnee hadn’t been treating them all that kindly.”

“Kindly!” Donegan shrieked. “Mother of God, but they’re blood enemies—by the saints! Back to their grandfather’s grandfather!”

“C’mon, Irishman—this ought to prove interesting to watch.”

Seamus stood, bringing his pint tin of coffee steaming in his hand. “How right you are, Johnny. Here I been thinking Crook was making himself a reputation as an Injin-fighter … and now
he’s got to go and play diplomat between his own bleeming Injins!”

Crook’s primary purpose in holding this council with the leaders of his four hundred Indian auxiliaries was to have them eventually come to understand his ground rules for the fight that was sure to come.

While the Sioux had come to complain they were being snubbed by their traditional enemies, for the general there were clearly bigger fish to fry. Yet as the Pawnee showed up arrayed in their full uniforms, and the Shoshone arrived wearing their native dress mixed with some white man’s clothing garnered over the decades of friendly relations, the Sioux and their allies came to the meeting in their war paint and scalp shirts. Frank North and Tom Cosgrove hurried to call the open provocation to the general’s attention. John Bourke watched as Crook quickly dispensed with this matter of Indian dress by waving it off with a hand and going to seat himself near the center of the great crescent gathered just outside Captain Pollock’s tiny quarters at Reno Cantonment.

When all had fallen quiet, the general told the Indians, “A new day has come to this land. You, as well as ourselves, are servants of the Great Father in Washington, and we all ought to dress in the uniform of the soldier, and for the time being we all ought to be brothers.”

He waited while the first translations were begun, then continued. “I am here to tell you that your peoples must put aside differences from the past and remain friends with the other bands. We have a job to do, and I hired you to do it. It is most important that when an army goes into battle, we are all in that battle side by side, united in action. So—if you want to fight among yourselves—then you have no place with me. Decide now if you are here to be part of this army.”

He let the many translations finish, the babble of at least eight different tongues rumbling around the crescent where the leaders sat and smoked in their blankets, considering the words of Three Stars. Then Crook continued.

“If, however, it is more important for you to complain and to attack your neighbor, I will take your guns and send you home on foot. You will not have a weapon, you will not have a pony. And you will be every bit as poor as I am going to make the followers of Crazy Horse.”

Firelit copper faces set hard when those words went round
that council, words so harsh that Crook wanted to be certain there was no misunderstanding. “I will ask it again—is there any among you who want to complain about the others? Any among you who want to give up your weapons and ponies right now and turn back for your homes?”

This time many of the scout leaders were quicker to speak, rising to their feet to address Crook and the assembly. All turned to the general to announce that they understood the reason for his remarks, promising that they would put aside their petty differences and remain friends with the others for the sake of the war that was to come. It was particularly moving when Three Bears arose, signaled one of his young warriors to follow him, bringing along a prized pony. The two Lakota walked directly to stand before the Pawnee delegation.

He held his hand out to
Li-Heris-oo-la-shar
, one of the Pawnee sergeants, who was also known as Frank White. They shook, then Three Bears spoke, telling his old enemy and that council, “Brother, we want to be friends—and as a sign of my sincerity I give you this warhorse. From this day on, your fight is my fight.”

White stood, unbuckling his prized revolver from his waist and handed it to the Sioux war chief. “I too wish to bury the past. We are friends now. We are both warriors, with a job to do. I will fight by your side. Your enemies will be my enemies, and my lodge will be your lodge.”

As much as John Bourke had been around Indians in Crook’s Arizona campaigns against Cochise, wherein the general had enticed one band of Apache to track down another band of Apache, the young lieutenant had never in his wildest dreams believed he would truly see these ancient enemies forging a lasting partnership to fight the last of the hostiles. Although the council took on a dreamlike air of friendly festivity, Crook was clearly pleased with how things had turned out.

After more speeches professing friendship were traded among the Pawnee, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, as well as that scattering of Nez Perce, Bannock, and Ute warriors who had come over from the Wind River with Cosgrove’s Shoshone, the general continued, waxing in a most uncustomary eloquence.

“All these vast plains, all these mountains and valleys will soon be filled with a pushing, hardworking population. The game will soon be exterminated. Domestic cattle will take its place. The Indian must make up his mind, and make it up now, to live like the white man and be at peace with him—or be
wiped off the face of the earth. Peace is what the white man wants. But war is what the white man is prepared for.”

Every few words, Crook halted briefly while the translators caught up in their many tongues.

“I want to impress upon you that rule by law is not tyranny. You will come to learn that people who obey the laws of their land are those who in turn have the greatest liberty. It is not the white man, but the Indian, who is afraid when he goes to sleep at night, afraid that he and his family might be murdered before morning by some prowling enemy.”

John Bourke watched the way so many of the dark eyes furtively glanced at the other bands.

“You are receiving good pay as soldiers,” Crook reminded them, “and so long as you behave yourselves, and so long as I can find work for you to do, you shall be my soldiers. But you must never spend your pay foolishly. Save every cent of it that you can to buy cows and broodmares. While you are sleeping, the calves and the colts will be growing—and someday you’ll awake and find yourself a rich man. Then you’ll be ashamed to call upon the Great Father for help. When you capture the enemy’s herds in the coming fight, they will be divided among your peoples. They will be yours to keep. Use those captured horses wisely—not for war, but to make a living for your families.”

Around that crescent many of the Indians grunted their approval.