Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (36 page)

Ironic that Bingham, not Bisbee, had been ripped from this earthly veil, Frances brooded.

Now Bisbee and poor Eleanor leave for Omaha. Soon as we commit these poor soldiers to the ground. God bless her—he's been reassigned, and Eleanor's getting him out of this … this hell that will swallow us all.

A pale December sun had spread milky light while it fell atop the Big Horns that Thursday the sixth. As quickly the temperature had fallen. While women waited, watching from the sentry platform headquarters. Waiting until weary horses brought the soldiers home.

Sergeant Bowers had died before Fred Brown allowed his friend moved. Besides Bingham, Bowers and Noone, a sergeant and four privates had been wounded. For all their trouble, the Indians had gotten their hands on but two horses. The soldiers had abandoned eight wounded animals in the bushes as they escaped the ambush. Carrington ordered five of them destroyed before he turned his angry, wound-licking command back to the post.

A civilian and Pvt. John Donovan were the only men who rode into the ambush with Bingham and rode back out unscathed. Again and again George had tried to soothe his wife's fears, laughing lightheartedly for Frances these past three days.

“Dear girl,” he had said smiling at his brown-eyed daughter of the old South, “were it not that the Sioux wanted horseflesh more than scalps, your George would not be standing here in your arms!”

In hushed whispers she had overheard how close her George had come to joining Bowers and Bingham on this horrid hilltop. She had listened to bitter talk of blunders and mistakes, disobedience, cowardice and recklessness that marked the skirmish with the Sioux on December 6. Almost every man held Carrington accountable. Yet somehow even Frances realized no one man had to shoulder the guilt alone. Wands had joined Fetterman's squad though ordered to ride with Carrington. Bingham dashed ahead of his frightened, confused squad of raw recruits—racing to his death. Even her beloved George had ignored Carrington's order, galloping off alone—for some reason escaping the ambush that took the lives of three soldiers they buried today.

Every day it seemed to her that the men grew more desperate here to end their isolated struggles against the land, against the winter, the calendar, and the Indians themselves. And that unrelenting strain, Francis realized, was showing in those cracks ever widening between Carrington and his officers. At times some of the women even whispered in private that the staff command at Fort Phil Kearny fought among themselves with more tenacity and zest than they fought the Sioux.

When George had returned that cold afternoon, snow lancing out of a ground-hugging, gray sky, Frances found it impossible to speak at first. Instead, they sat arm in arm for the longest time as darkness swallowed their little cabin. Sharing tears at his deliverance.

From that first brutal moment of uncertainty, Frances had been unable to shake the presence of dread that made sleep a fitful, nightmarish torture. Haunted by a recurring dream where she helplessly watched her George galloping frantically away from her, a score of Indians hot on his tail. Awaking each night as she heard him scream out for help. For his life.

There had been other deaths. Soldiers. Noncommissioned officers. But never a widow left behind. Never before … an orphan like Abigail Noone's baby girl.

“Ten-shun!”

The shout of the old line sergeant brought Frances back to the hill. And the cold seeping through her coat. To her marrow.

She watched the seven troopers slap their carbines against their legs as the procession of wagons and mourners topped the rise, drawing to a halt near the three mounds of frozen spoil wrenched from this hard ground. Twelve troopers slid the tin-lined pine coffins from their wagons, lowering the boxes beside the dark holes as the wind swept skiffs of icy flakes along the ground. Nudging dresses and coats, mufflers and hats they struggled to hold.

It's as if the sky itself … this very land, were in mourning for Abigail … alone now.
Frances bit down on her lower lip till it hurt.

Afraid to pay too much attention to Reverend White's religious service, she watched her husband instead. That hard line clenched along his jaw. The press of his thin lips beneath the bushy mustache. Realizing she really didn't know the man all that well. But sensing George fought back his own tears of anger. Fought down the knot of fear at his own deliverance.

Thank you, God,
she prayed.
Thank you for sparing him.
Frances felt the baby move. For the first time. She placed a hand on her belly. A hard kick beneath her ribs, then it slept.

“… as were our fathers, and their fathers, lo—we are wayfarers and strangers before Thee. Our days are but shadows on this bitter earth. None will abide but Thee.”

She listened to Reverend White drone on. Nothing wrong him being a Methodist, she thought.

“… yea, the prairie sea of this earth grips the moldering dust of our fallen heroes. So oft unsung. So oft unhonored. But where a rare stone is placed to honor the name and deed in their passing…”

Better funerals conducted by Baptist preachers.

When White completed his simple service, he nodded to George Grummond. Solemnly the lieutenant stepped to the precipice of the middle hole, pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket which he hung from his coat belt for want of a Masonic apron. As six fellow Masons joined him at the graves, Grummond opened his ritual book, choking through the last rites to be read over fallen comrades.

“Captain Brown?” he asked, finished at last. Turning, he stuffed the book and handkerchief into the pockets of his overcoat.

Fred Brown stepped to the middle coffin, raised its lid. On Sergeant Bowers's breast the captain laid his own medal for bravery awarded during the Civil War. From Stone's River to Fredericksburg and on to the siege at Atlanta, Brown and Bowers had forged a fast friendship. Now Brown's “Army of the Cumberland” badge would rest for all time on the breast of his old friend.

Frances watched Brown swipe angrily at his drippy nose, touch Bowers's gray hand a last time before he lowered the coffin lid and stood.

“Port arms!”

The 18th's old funeral sergeant droned into his commands.

“Ready!”

Frances steeled herself for the coming roar, cradling the muffler over her belly to shield her unborn child.

“Aim!”

She watched the seven step back on their right feet, the dirty-gray barrels pointed forty-five degrees into the heavy sky.

“FIRE!”

She shuddered. Through all those years of war round her home in Tennessee …

“FIRE!”

… she had never grown accustomed to the cruel and obscene …

“FIRE!”

… thumping clatter of gunfire.

“Present arms!”

On the brow of the hill some thirty yards away, Metzger brought the bugle to his frozen lips.
Taps.
Slow and measured—a much-practiced death march.

It's over.
She finally took a breath, afraid now to look at the woman in black.

As the gunsmoke scudded along the frozen ground, a sad chorus sang over the graves. Six of Curry's German bandsmen, Catholics all—their quiet, Teutonic dirge reverberating around the mourners who filed past the coffins, dropping hard clods of spoil atop each pine box.

“Come, Frances,” George whispered as he swept back to her side. “Let's get you in where it's warm … the baby.”

She nodded, then gazed up at him in the pewter half light of early afternoon. A strange glow surrounded George Grummond's head, reminding her of the halos she had seen atop the heads of angels in those childhood Bible storybooks.

Her knees softened. George caught her as she collapsed.

“I'll carry you down to the fort, dear.” He swept her up.

Frances stared, mesmerized at the pale corona surrounding his head.

“The baby, George. Our baby!”

Chapter 28

In his seventeen winters Curly could not remember a robe season any colder. The wooly smother of snow on the land did not dampen winter's bite.

The rivers had begun to freeze while the north winds sculpted every snowdrift into jewel-glittered fans surrounding the gold stubble of prairie bunch-grass. Even now the bullberry along the bottoms stood naked against the onslaught. Across the sunny slopes the willow had surrendered its last red leaves, wind-driven across the frozen hills like bloody arrowheads left behind come this season of sleep upon the land.

For days after their fight with the soldiers, many of the Sioux argued among themselves. Many sided with Yellow Eagle, who had planned and led the main attack on the wood train. He said they had done right in trying to pull the soldiers from their horses rather than shooting them from cover. A growing number of young warriors, however, followed the words of Curly.

“Never again should we let soldiers live merely because we covet their horses,” he had explained around lodge fires in those days following the fight. “We lost the horses … and the soldiers got away.”

“Curly has the heart of a warrior.” Man-Afraid had silenced much of the criticism flung at his young protégé. “I agree. We must kill soldiers. Forget the horses. We must keep our eye on one thing only—death to
all
the soldiers at Pine Woods.”

Each night in those villages stretched like a buffalo-rawhide lariat for some forty miles along the headwaters of the Tongue River, they debated the lessons to be learned from what had taken place in the opening days of this new moon. Argued, yes—yet everyone among them certain they had found the secret to crushing the soldiers who had come to profane Sioux hunting ground.

From late summer through the frosty days of fall, more and more recruits had ridden into the Sioux camps gathering no more than fifty miles north of the soldier fort. Not only the Sioux confederation, but Cheyenne under Roman Nose and Medicine Man. Arapaho under Little Chief and Sorrel Horse. Yet not until that fight in the valley of the Peno was there universal agreement among the chiefs and principal warriors. To all the villages runners had been sent to gather a great council. Tonight they would decide how to kill many soldiers, driving the rest from Sioux land—for all time.

Curly slid to the snow from his pony's back. The wool greatcoat kept him warm. The soldier who wore yellow bands on his arm no longer needed it. Curly had smashed an axe into the back of the soldier's head, leaving him to die because other white men hurried to the ridge-shadows where Curly killed the soldier leader and Yellow-Bands-on-His-Arms. Too many soldiers had escaped.

“Tonight, we have agreed how to assure that no soldiers escape our next attack.” Red Cloud's voice rose over the lodge.

“It is good,” Black Shield of the Miniconjous replied. “We are ready to fight together.”

“So that we will never have to fight the white man again,” Roman Nose agreed. “One big battle.”

“With the white man driven from our land,” Sorrel Horse echoed hope.

“We saw how we can overpower the soldiers … destroy any army sent against us!” Red Cloud roared in a voice that sent fiery chills along Curly's spine. “The first day after the next full moon we will lay a trap of all our warriors.”

“Attack their slow wagons!” Man-Afraid cheered. “They always send soldiers out to protect their slow wagons!”

Red Cloud nodded. “Let a few lure the soldiers to their deaths.”

“Who will lead the decoy?” Black Shield asked.

“Who among our young men should have this honor?” Red Cloud echoed.

Muttering filled the council lodge. Worry crossed their faces. The bands had agreed to a battle plan and when to spring their trap. Now their harmony appeared threatened. Curly grew anxious that all the good done would fall asunder.

“Brothers!”

Man-Afraid's voice rang out, silencing every man in the crowded lodge.

“There is but one among us who should bear the honor of leading the decoy that will lure the soldiers into the trap where the many will wait to spring.”

“Who?” one old Oglalla called out.

Roman Nose stood. “I agree with Man-Afraid. He should lead the decoy!”

The ripple of a cheer began its trickle through the lodge warmed by fire and body heat—until Man-Afraid raised his arms and silenced the chiefs and head men.

“No,” he answered, nodding to Roman Nose. “The Cheyenne chief humbles Man-Afraid by this honor. Yet Man-Afraid himself says there is but one to lead the decoy.”

“Who is better qualified than you?” Sorrel Horse demanded.

“Yes,” Red Cloud agreed. “None is braver than Man-Afraid.”

The Oglalla shook his head with a smile. “In days gone by there was none known braver,” he said, slapping a hand against his warshirt. “Comes a new day—there is one who no longer stands in my shadow. His courage spurs us all! He shall lead the decoy. He shall lure the soldiers to their death like the sage hen draws the wolf. He who has a heart of iron!”

Man-Afraid flung his arm out, pointing across the fire at his young protégé. Surprising him.

The young man stood slowly, unsure at first. Then squared his shoulders as the chant grew louder, and louder still, ringing off the buffalo-hide walls, thundering in his ears with a mystical power all its own. A call for blood.

“Curly!
Curly!
CURLY!”

*   *   *

He hadn't smelled a woman's perfume in … it had been a long time.

The fragrance of her almost made his mouth water as he turned from throwing some wood on the fire in a tiny sheet-iron stove that was her only source of heat in this small cabin. No more than a low-roofed, one-room log hut the army provided for the few families of enlisted men stationed at Fort Phil Kearny. Fortunate for her and the baby, at least, that it did not take much of a fire to knock the December chill off the place.