Reap the Whirlwind (5 page)

“Yes, sir. Very good. It’s just that … I’ve met … weren’t you told that I know General Custer?”

Storey snorted. “I doubt there’s a half-decent reporter working this side of the Missouri River that George Armstrong Custer hasn’t met, Mr. Finerty. Glory hound that he is. Be that as it may, far as I know, for the time being your friend Custer is still cooling his heels down in Washington.” He snorted a little chuckle. “Much as I hated him as a general, Sam Grant’s made himself an interesting caricature as President. Seems, Mr. Finerty, that Sam Grant is exacting his pound of flesh out of Custer for a blunder Custer made with those Congressional bribery hearings.”

It was like the air had gone out of him, slammed to the earth, like falling from a horse on the gallop. Finerty had so hoped to march with the famed lieutenant colonel of the gallant Seventh Cavalry, planned on being in on the kill when Custer’s regiment caught up with the hostiles of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Now his hopes for writing that story of a lifetime were dashed on the rocks of Wilbur Storey’s respect for this other soldier named George Crook.

“Seems there’s a fella who works for the small press out in Bismarck, across the river from Custer’s duty station,” Storey explained. “He’s the one I heard is marching with the Dakota column.”

“Bismarck?” Finerty said, the first syllable a bit squeaky. Pushing a finger down inside his collar grown suddenly tight and damp, he asked, “Custer’s not going to fight the Sioux this summer, sir?”

Storey wagged his head, then shrugged. “Maybe so. Maybe not. Just telling you the last thing I heard out of Washington. General Terry’s the one heading up the Dakota column. And that comes direct from Sheridan’s headquarters here in town.”

Finerty swallowed, wishing now he had refilled the small hip flask he was never without. But he had drained it to the last drop on the way here simply to fortify himself for this visit to Storey’s office. Goda’mighty—but it would
taste damned good about now. His mouth had gone dry with disappointment—not getting to ride with Custer’s regiment into the conquered villages.

And the smooth fire of that rye tracing down the length of his throat just might help calm some of his discomfort at the sudden change in plans, giving him its comfort and serenity as it hit his belly, all warm and rosy where he had neglected to eat breakfast. Time enough for that later.

“Mr. Storey, I suppose I’ll be going with General Crook then, sir.”

The publisher smiled at his young correspondent. “I’m sorry to see you’re disappointed. But you must realize that General Terry commands over Custer anyway. And besides”—he waved a veiny hand in the air as if dismissing Finerty’s concerns—“Crook knows more about the Indians than either of them. It’s Crook who’s likely to do the hard work of things—again. Leave Custer to opt for the cheers from the parade grandstands and the swooning of the ladies. But a man like George Crook—now there’s a solid soldier who gets the job done.”

Finerty was beginning to sweat beneath his high, starched collar. “I’m sure you’re aware of General Custer’s Civil War record—”

“Custer’s a brave man. I’ll give you that. None braver, in fact,” Storey replied. “But Custer’s been out there for eight years already and has not succeeded in bringing those damnable Sioux to a decisive engagement.”

“But this General Crook did well in the Apache campaign?”

“Exactly. Bill Sherman knew what he was doing when he transferred Crook north to the plains, Mr. Finerty.”

“Yes, sir.” There it was again, that soft, mushy sound of it—words that rang with nothing more prissy than bootlicking the boss.

The publisher ripped the page from his tablet and folded it lengthwise. “No matter this discussion of Custer and Terry’s column. Your part in this affair is settled, Mr. Finerty. If you’re working for me, you are going with Crook. He was, you’ll recall, the first into the field after the deadline for those hostiles came and went.”

“But the papers said all Crook accomplished was to scatter the wild tribes.”

Storey flared. “That was that bumbling idiot Reynolds! Senile old hen! Make no mistake about this, Finerty—Crook will be the first into the field this summer. The first again. And mark my word that his column will be the one to strike the Sioux first. And hardest. Here now.”

Finerty took the paper from the veiny hand. “Yes, Mr. Storey?”

“Take it to Mr. Patterson down in warrants. He’ll see that you get what funds you may need to outfit you. Any other expenses you and he may feel you’ll require. Report back to me only when you’re ready to depart by rail for Cheyenne City.”

From the moment he had stepped out of Wilbur Storey’s office, it hadn’t taken long for the young reporter to put together the clothing others advised him he would need for the high plains: rugged britches and cotton shirts, a sturdy coat and a wide-brimmed pinch hat, a gum poncho and those tall boots he would need for those days and weeks, maybe months in the saddle chasing the elusive warriors who always ran away rather than fight. John had wondered if his ass was truly ready for what he was going to demand of it as he purchased blankets and a canvas bed wrapper, a small mess kit and toilet articles. That, and all the pads and pencils his city editor threw at him.

“You write down everything, Finerty,” Snowden instructed him. “Write down everything anyone says or does. Later on you’ll have the luxury of taking the time to decide what to use and what to forget.”

“Everything. Yes, Mr. Snowden,” he had answered, and then went down to the street, turned north to the corner, and pushed into the closest pub near the
Times’s
offices.

Three days later when he was nearing departure, Finerty paid a call on General Philip H. Sheridan, presenting his card at the headquarters of the commander of the Division of the Missouri.

“There—that should do you, Mr. Finerty,” Sheridan said a half hour later as he handed the reporter a signed letter of introduction. “I’ve addressed that to General Crook. As a matter of fact, my signature on that will serve
you well with any officer you should encounter on your way to Fetterman.”

Finerty rose, slipping the letter into an inside pocket. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, General.”

“Mr. Storey and I go back a ways,” Sheridan replied.

“Thank you too for your help, sir.”

“If I may,” Sheridan replied. “A word of advice. Perhaps a word of caution.”

“Caution?” Finerty asked, then he grinned, sensing an inside joke. “You’re going to warn me to watch out for my hair with all those scalping knives around, General.”

A quick smile crossed Sheridan’s face, but faded as quickly. “No. This has to do with General Crook. You will find him a hard campaigner.”

“I’m ready for the march,
sir.
Whatever Crook’s soldiers can take, I can handle.”

This time Sheridan chuckled, seeming to measure the reporter a bit more closely. “Perhaps you can. Very well. Then I won’t feel obligated to say any more.”

“A hard campaigner, this General Crook.”

“Yes. He spares himself no deprivation, Mr. Finerty. He wants the enemy bad enough, he will spare no deprivation to bring the quarry to bay.”

“For the first time, General—I think I just might enjoy this chase going after Sitting Bull’s savages.”

“Then have at them, Mr. Finerty,” Sheridan replied with a full grin, extending his hand.

“I will, sir. Believe me, if General Crook can find them for me, I will have a go at the red bastards myself!”

John Finerty departed Chicago a little before dawn on that Saturday morning, two days later, in the darkness of 6 May with Wilbur Storey’s words reverberating in his thoughts.

“You are now a war correspondent for the
Times.
You’re working for me, Mr. Finerty. You are to spare no expense in getting your story, and by all means use the wires as freely as you deem necessary. Whenever practicable. No matter what it costs—just get me the full, unvarnished story from Crook’s forthcoming march. I want you there at his side when the old braided beard goes in for the kill.”

“Yes, sir,” he had answered on that platform, a gust of lake wind blowing his coat collar against the side of his face as he shook hands with Clint Snowden and Wilbur Storey. “I swear to you I’ll be front and center when the general rides in for the kill.”

Mid-May 1876

E
ver since that Tuesday morning, the ninth of May
, when he had boarded the train that inched west from Omaha in the company of George C. Crook, John Bourke knew he was not going to enjoy campaigning with the general’s other aide.

Azor H. Nickerson was simply everything that Bourke was not: mean-spirited, carping as a New England spinster, a nagging shrew of an officer who derived more pleasure in the security of four walls around him, happier to bed down when clean sheets were to be found beneath his weary head. From the moment Crook informed Nickerson that he was going to accompany the general this time out, Captain Nickerson began his wheedling and niggling, his whining cant raised with most every detail of their pending trip west into the land of the Sioux and Cheyenne.

Unable to help himself, Bourke chuckled about that again, remembering how Nickerson’s face went white, almost apoplectic with consternation, perhaps some downright fear, to learn that he was going to have to suffer the privations, the toil, the outright danger Bourke himself had endured during the Powder River Campaign that had fizzled to an inconclusive finale only that previous March.

It wasn’t that Nickerson was a coward. No man could
ever accuse him of that—what with his record serving the Eighth Ohio Volunteers with commendable bravery during the Battle of Antietam, as well as his extended frontier service with the Twenty-third Infantry. It was just that the captain had put in his time as a stoic and long-suffering soldier and believed he had therefore earned his position in Crook’s Omaha headquarters by judiciously climbing one ladder rung at a time. So it was that he lost no opportunity telling any and all that he deserved to be treated better than to be ordered back into the field. Once more against the goddamned Indians, no less!

As much as he was an accomplished horseman, Azor Nickerson had come to hate being in the saddle. Maybe it was something to do with age, Bourke thought. Old bones and old butts don’t sit well for hours in a McClellan.

Yet Bourke had to hand it to the older Nickerson. At least the captain was savvy enough to understand he was wasn’t plopping down into the same set of circumstances he had encountered when commissioned into the Twenty-third Infantry back to sixty-eight. Now the tribes were much better armed than right after the Civil War, and they even appeared to be acting in some crude congress with one another, and above all else it seemed that with the passing of winter an unusually large migration from the agencies into the unceded territory had left the reservations practically empty this spring. Why, even as late as 27 April, the army had received intelligence that the young warriors at Standing Rock were buying weapons and ammunition, mounting up and heading west in weighty numbers. West to join what the army called the wild tribes. The winter roamers.

That same date saw another report telegraphed to Crook from Captain W. H. Jordan of the Ninth Infantry. As commander of Camp Robinson located at Red Cloud Agency, Jordan requested relief for the agency’s Indians, who were starving after a terribly long and hard winter, their third in a row. If they did not receive their longoverdue beef ration soon, the captain warned, he predicted they would be compelled to jump the reservation and join the free-roaming hostiles where they would unleash their raids on white ranches and settlements.

On more than one occasion this past few weeks Bourke had watched Crook’s face as the general studied the reports. And more than once the lieutenant found himself realizing that Crook was giving that intelligence nothing more than passing consideration.

“With all the doomsayers,” Crook often said, “there’s one agent among the many who denies that his Indians are in a bad way of it.”

On 5 May James S. Hastings contradicted Captain Jordan’s assertions and informed his superiors at the Indian Bureau that his wards at the Red Cloud Agency “had never been more peaceful.”

“It’s not the number of warriors we’ll encounter at all, John,” Crook had told him repeatedly. “You remember what they tried to tell us before we marched to Powder River last March?”

“But what Reynolds ran into wasn’t anywhere near the number of warriors we are supposed to encounter off the reservations this summer, General.”

“Exactly my point, John. The problem we’ll have this summer will not be the number of warriors. That’s always been a matter of conjecture and even some outright rumor. Instead, it will be the tactical problem we’ve always had with Indians: the red sons of bitches just won’t stand and fight.”

“Always running—to fight another day,” John replied.

“And if the warriors are fleeing the reservations this spring because they intend to gather in great numbers for some hunt they have planned … why, mark my words, those bands won’t stay together for more than a few days of hunting at the most. Out there, on the Tongue and Powder and the Rosebud—there’s not enough goddamned game and grass to support a massive village like that for very long at all.”