Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (49 page)

As Frances took the envelope into her trembling fingers, Henry turned to Margaret. “Come, dear—we must excuse ourselves. Give Mrs. Grummond time to herself.”

She watched the Carringtons close the door, then all was silence once more. With quaking fingers she tore at the sealed envelope, finding inside a lock of George's hair. Frances held it to her breast, tears welling from eyes she had believed all cried out.

“George. Dear, dear George,” she whispered with a sob. Then remembered.

The locket I gave you our first Christmas together—only a year ago. The miniature portrait I had done of me so you'd have your Frances to look upon … wherever the army took you.

The tears came easily, sobs welling up from deep in the marrow of her.

Who carries that portrait now, George? Dear God, what dark-skinned savage wears my locket now?

*   *   *

As if held in abeyance by some divine hand, the blizzard that had threatened the land waited until Carrington returned with his grisly cargo. Temperatures plummeted to thirty below as brutal winds drove icy snow across the land. That night the colonel ordered pickets rotated every half hour.

By morning of the twenty-third the snow had drifted so high along the west stockade wall that a soldier could march out of his company barracks, up the icy drift and over the stockade timbers. Starting at first light, soldiers struggled in relays to dig a ten-foot-wide trench outside the wall to make it harder for the hostiles to breech the stockade. As hard as the work became, they made little progress through the day. The keening winds never died, sweeping still more snow into the trench as Carrington's troopers labored on through the endless hours.

Throughout that day and into Christmas Eve, the men prepared the bodies of their comrades for burial in the guardhouse and Horton's hospital. Grim work, assembling mutilated fragments. Identifying the butchered remains. Wrenching what arrows they could from the frozen corpses, cutting off the rest. Cleaning the waxlike flesh, then draping each body in a dress uniform donated by a friend or bunkie.

Half of the headquarters building had been turned over to the carpenters, who sawed and hammered pine planks into coffins. All too quickly they ran out of sheet-tin to line the simple boxes, working day and night. Not until after dark on Christmas Eve did those coopers finish nailing the lid over the last of the Fetterman coffins.

By mid-morning the day after Christmas, two pits it had taken the men three solid days to dig yawned like ugly black scars in the middle of the graveled street along officers' row. One small grave for the three officers killed, each placed in a separate coffin. Along the gaping maw of a nearby fifty-foot hole dug seven feet deep out of the frozen soil, the enlisted dead lay boxed, paired in thirty-nine coffins carefully numbered for future identification.

The sun hung low in the east like smudged, gray ash as Donegan watched solemn troopers lay the pale boxes beside the ugly trenches dug from soil hard as iron plate. His eyes smarted with a biting wind, his face hidden behind the muffler wrapped round his face. Staring at the soldiers, women, children and civilians who trundled up in tiny knots to the edge of the gaping holes.

“… the severity of the weather,” Carrington droned over the mourners, many of his words swept away as quickly as they were spoken in the swift-footed wind, “… brief ceremony … saddened, without benefit of military honors.”

The colonel nodded to Reverend White, who shuffled forward, a gray wool muffler tied beneath his chin, protecting both old ears and white head.

“Here me, O children of the chosen land! Our Republic lives because there have always been men who loved Her more than life itself. Trust in Him who has forced into the nostrils of the living the very breath of life! Trust! For the mighty God of our fathers' fathers will not desert thee! The Lord who led his people from Pharaoh's bondage will not abandon those who march into battle beneath his banner. The God of Hosts will not forget those who have shed their blood in His name's sake.”

White coughed, his dry throat straining to last his prayer through. “Our Grand and Fair Republic likewise will not forget those who are committed to the bosom of this land today. Dust to dust … ash to ash—the flame of freedom burns on! The blood of these now mingle with blood shed by patriots ninety years gone. In this, our cause, no less shining than those who stood at Concord Bridge … waited atop Bunker Hill, or froze in the snows of Valley Forge. My solemn oath to these brave patriots we commit to the soil this day—they'll not be forgotten!”

The reverend opened his eyes, lifting his speckled chin. White gazed a heartbeat longer at the Irishman, then finished, “A-men!”

“Amen,” echoed a hundred other voices, drowning out the embittered sniffle of man or the quiet whimper of woman.

Carrington edged beside White, waving the burial crews to the edge of the pits, where they began lowering the first coffins.

Alone or in small, black knots, the mourners dispersed across the snow like humpbacked beetles scurrying for warmth to one raw-boarded building or another.

“Seamus?”

Donegan turned, finding Sam Marr before him, a woman and two small boys huddled against him. “Cap'n,” and he nodded to the woman. His eyes flicked over the two youngsters who clung like burrs to their mother's dark greatcoat. Seamus recognized it as a man's—oversized, swallowing the woman's small frame as it slurred the ground with every insistent gust of cruel wind.

“Mrs. Wheatley,” Marr began, instantly snagging the Irishman's full attention. “I introduce Seamus Donegan. A Union soldier, like your late husband.”

He yanked his floppy hat from his head and took a step closer, for the first time straining to get a good look at the face hidden in shadow beneath the hooded cowl.

“We … we've met before, Sam,” Seamus said quietly into the cruel wind that flung itself against them all.
Another young widow
 …

As she tilted her head back to look up at the tall man before her, Jennifer's red-rimmed eyes met his for the first time since that midsummer day on the banks of the Little Piney. Though ravaged by countless tears, those green eyes still held an unspeakable magic for him. This close, almost feeling the heat she gave off. Those full lips, rouged by the wind. Somehow, he imagined her imploring him in some unspoken way.

Seamus cleared his throat self-consciously. “I knew James, ma'am. Mightily sorry…” He gazed down at the youngsters. “Sorry he's took from you and the boys. My … deepest condolence.”

Only then did the cowl fall back, taking the face from shadow, allowing Seamus to fully study the dark, liquid, almond-shaped eyes so red and swollen.

Her pale, ivory cheeks rouged with bitter cold quivered a moment longer as her teeth rattled in the wind. Those full, trembling lips stammered, “T-Thank you, Mr. Donegan.”

Glory, but she's even more a beauty up close.

“There's anything I can do,” Seamus found himself saying, “to help you—the cap'n. You call me.”

She extracted a mittened hand from one of the boys, presenting it to the tall Irishman. “I won't forget your kindness, Mr. Donegan.”

He looked down at the mitten, remembering how she had clasped both hands over herself to hide those perfect, freckled breasts that summer day as the sunlight and water teased him every bit as much as she had from afar.

In that moment he touched her hand through the coarse wool now, Seamus sensed a warmth … a warmth the likes of which he hadn't felt in a long, long time.

“Mrs. Wheatley,” he nodded, bowing slightly, seeing her yank at the hooded cowl, once more hiding her face from view.

Marr lead the young widow away.

For several minutes Seamus found himself gazing after her, until they disappeared into the quartermaster's yard. A gust of wind nudged at him insistently, reminding him of the gaping, open wound along officers' row. Seamus Donegan stuffed his hat atop his dark curls, tugged his collar round his neck, then grabbed a shovel to lend his shoulders to the task at hand.

Frozen clods of spoil clattered atop the pine boxes like a hollow thump of an insistent hammer. Seamus dug into the pile of dark earth, again and again and again. Remembering the warmth her touch had bestowed upon him.

*   *   *

“You're a fool to push onto Laramie!” John Friend declared, rising from his warm telegraph key at Horseshoe Station. He had just finished condensing and transmitting the dispatches of Col. Henry B. Carrington to Fort Laramie some forty-five miles to the south.

“Fool or no, I promised,” the swarthy rider replied. “Both of us.” Portugee Phillips flung his thumb at miner William Bailey, who busied himself wrapping burlap sacks round his legs before climbing back into the buffalo-fur leggings.

“We promised the colonel we'd hand his letters to the Laramie commander,” Bailey added. “Personal.”

Bundled back into their buffalo coats, Phillips and Bailey crawled onto their cold saddles, pointing their weary animals south once more.

“It's Christmas Eve, by god!” Friend shouted into the howling wind. “Stay … enjoy the warmth of what cheer I can offer.”

Phillips waved, never hearing a word Friend flung into the cold. He had promised, after all. Portugee swore a private vow he could stay in the saddle the rest of this day. Until he reached Laramie.

A few miles north of Horseshoe Station, Bailey had come up on Phillips. For a few minutes there, Portugee had convinced himself a Sioux warrior had been trailing him. From hiding he watched the plodding horseman hove into view, hunched over his saddle horn, frozen to the marrow.

“Ho!”
Phillips had hauled the big Kentucky thoroughbred from the thicket beside the road.

Bailey jerked up, startled. Yanking back on the reins and nearly tumbling from the saddle. “Who the Sam Hill are you!”

“Phillips,” he answered. “Who're you?”

“Portugee? That you?”

“Yes. How you know my name?” he asked, searching for something familiar in the shadowed face hidden behind a muffler.

“I'm Bailey. Bill Bailey, by god! Can't believe it's you!”

“Colonel said you'd be coming down.”

“Sent me out an hour after you galloped off. Wanted to make sure.”

“Sure one of us got here,” Portugee echoed as he drew alongside Bailey, slapping the rider's arm crusted with icy sleet. “C'mon, Bill. We'll both make Laramie now.”

“Horseshoe ain't but a couple miles, Portugee.”

“They got a key there?”

“About all there is at Horseshoe. That, and a stove.”

“Blessed Virgin Mary!” Portugee exclaimed, crossing himself. “Let's drag our cold bones to Horseshoe!”

Within the warmth of Friend's telegraph shack the couriers had talked. Finding they both had ridden south along the Montana Road, yet never venturing onto the road itself. More important, both had survived by traveling only the long nighttime hours, hiding out the day. Come winter on the high plains, a man can eat up a lot of ground riding at night. Keeping a promise.

Undeterred by Friend's appeal, both riders pulled away from the telegraph station near Bridger's Ferry at the North Platte Crossing. With one thought in mind. The same thought that had compelled them across 190 miles of Sioux-infested, blizzard-buried wasteland. To complete the job they had started.

Portugee welcomed the fish-belly gray of twilight. By now it felt like liquid sand rolled beneath his eyelids. The day's bright sun glaring off the wall-to-wall prairie white had tortured his eyes. They rolled in a thick, liquid fire.

Sowbelly snow clouds scudded low out of the west just as darkness swallowed the land. A bright winter moon crawled into the southern horizon below the leaden clouds, beginning to cut its nightly trail across the sky just as snow began its white scurry across the trackless hills. The bottom went out of the thermometer, cold cutting a man to his marrow.

“Can't go no more,” Bailey moaned.

“You must,” Phillips replied. “Wait! Look there! A light, yonder!”

Bailey squinted against the swirl of buckshot snow. Afraid his eyes deceived him, or that this was some trick of Portugee's, until he too saw the faint light flickering through the icy mist.

“Who goes there!”

Phillips sat straighter in the saddle. He had aimed the thoroughbred's nose at that faint star of light for the last half hour. And now a dark form emerged from the snowy gloom. Portugee tried to speak. His lips mumbling, teeth chattering. His hands fumbling to say something.

“Great ghosts, man!” The soldier flung his rifle aside, catching Bailey as he slid from the saddle. “Lieutenant! Goddammit, I need your help out here!”

“What you screaming about——”

Lt. Herman Haas leaped from the door to help drag William Bailey into their guard-post. “Get the other'n, Myers. This'un's 'bout done for.”

Back out in the blizzard, Myers tried pulling the second rider from his saddle. But Phillips yanked his arm away as best he could, mumbling into the wind. “C-C-Comm … mander.”

“Lieutenant!”

“I heard.” Haas stood at the door. “You come watch this one. He's in a bad way. I'll take that one up to see Palmer.”

Without a protest from Phillips, Lieutenant Haas grabbed the thoroughbred's frozen bridle, leading the horseman toward the lamp-lit buildings of Fort Laramie.

“Look like you been through hell, friend,” Haas chattered back at the frozen statue on the saddle. “What's your name? You hear me?”

“Phillips.”

“Damnation, Phillips. You're a sight! Icicles hanging off your eyelashes and beard, by god! It'll take a week of Sundays to thaw that snow from your coat!”

“Commander.”

“I heard you. Just keep your pants on, fella. That's where I'm taking you right now. Old Bedlam. Having a Christmas Ball tonight. That is, everybody but Lieutenant Haas.”