A Cold Day in Hell Page 10

  “A sign?”

  “Some show of good faith,” William explained.

  “Yes. Of course,” the officer replied, then turned to Smith. “Lieutenant, see that some food is placed over there on that slope for the warriors to see as a sign of my good faith.”

  “Food, colonel?”

  “Certainly. Two sides of bacon and three boxes of that hard bread.”

  “Three boxes—yes, sir.”

  “I think one hundred fifty pounds of hardtack is sufficient,” Otis replied, looking back at Jackson. “Lieutenant Kell, let’s get this wagon train moving to Tongue River!”

  William watched the Standing Rock Hunkpapa step aside with Sitting Bull’s trio of lieutenants as the wagon train jangled back into motion, leaving the five sullen warriors behind with their gifts of bacon and hard bread.

  As a disgusted Elwell S. Otis pulled his wagon train away, the masses of Sioux horsemen hung farther and farther to the rear of the slow-moving column, then eventually disappeared altogether. Throughout the rest of that Monday afternoon, the sixteenth, the column sighted increasing numbers of buffalo and small herds of antelope north of their line of march. With every new mile they put behind them before sundown, William Jackson came to understand all the more why the Lakota were willing to fight to hold on to the rich bounty of these high Montana plains.

  By nightfall he knew with a bedrock certainty that Otis’s officers were fooling themselves.

  Not for a moment did he believe Sitting Bull would give up so easily—backing off, perhaps eventually coming in to talk with Miles at Tongue River.

  Not for a moment did Jackson think Sitting Bull would stop anywhere short of driving the Bear Coat’s soldiers right out of the Yellowstone country.

  Chapter 7

  17 October 1876

  FOREIGN

  The War in Servia

  LONDON, October 16.—The Times publishes the text of the note in which Turkey offered the six months’ armistice … Times’ Paris correspondent points to the fact that this is the first time Russia has clearly sided with Servia and Montenegro, and advising them to reject the propositions.

  “See there, Seamus Donegan,” post trader Collins retorted, stabbing a bony finger against the front page of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News with a rustle of newsprint. “We aren’t the only ones with war falling down about our heads, now are we?”

  The gray-eyed Irishman dragged the pipe from his mouth, regarding it as he blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, then took a sip of Collins’s heady coffee the sutler kept hot in a shiny pot atop that iron stove warming his trading post there at Fort Laramie.

  “But don’t you see? At least there’s talk of peace in the world’s other wars,” Donegan reminded those men gathered there this early-winter morning.

  They could only agree with him grudgingly.

  Outside the air sparkled with hoar frost. Almost too cold to snow. But in there, squatting around the stove with their pipes and their tins of steaming coffee, these men—civilian and soldier alike—basked in the glow of male fellowship and camaraderie. This was exactly what Seamus had been seeking when he’d crept from the tiny upstairs room at the peep o’ day—leaving behind Sam and their son, both of them asleep: Sam’s head deep within the valley of a goose-down pillow, the babe still latched on to mother’s breast. It had been a long haul of it—both worried, frazzled mother and bawling child up and down for most all the night. Then as the first gray fingers of dawn began to creep out of the east, they both fell asleep at long last. And Seamus crept out, quietly pulled the door to, and creaked down the noisy stairs into the cold of that mid-October morning.

  “I’ll bet their war is a big’un,” Collins continued enthusiastically as he pried open the stove door and tossed in some more split kindling. “All cannon and cavalry!”

  Donegan gazed out the window frosted with the pattern of the coming cold, caressing the new Winchester repeater he had just purchased from Collins with an oiled rag. “Aye, and in the bloody meantime, trader—right here ours is just a nasty little war, ain’t it all? Nothing more’n a man here … a poor sojur there.”

  THE INDIANS

  News from Standing Rock.

  ST. PAUL, October 16.—A Pioneer Press special from Bismarck says the Indians at Standing Rock signed the treaty relinquishing the Black Hills on Wednesday. The treaty was so far modified as not to insist on their removal to the Indian Territory. The troops intended for the expedition to go in camp tomorrow, and will probably leave about Wednesday. General Sturgis is en route to join his regiment and will probably command the expedition, unless Terry goes in person.

  With the half-breed tracker riding at his side, Luther Sage Kelly probed east across Sunday Creek north of the Yellowstone, the river that had given him his nickname. Out of the eight-foot-high willows and icy bogs where the horses had slow going, yanking one hoof after another out of the sucking mud, they slowly clambered to higher ground. In that moonless darkness, Kelly knew the soldiers would be crossing farther upstream: where the banks were corduroyed for supply wagons from Glendive and the bottom wasn’t such a maze of sinkholes as it was here.

  Miles’s infantry could afford to take the time to stay with the Tongue River Road right now—but Yellowstone Kelly could not. He had the colonel’s orders to feel ahead of the column: to see if the Indians might have made their crossing of the river; and, perhaps even more important, to find out just what the hell had happened to that supply train long overdue from Glendive Cantonment.

  Otis’s wagons were long overdue. With rumors that the Sioux were closing on the south bank of the Yellowstone, in all likelihood intent on crossing to the north, it did not bode well for any supply train that might happen upon a massed war party. Luther, along with fellow scouts Victor Smith, an old friend, and half-breed Billy Cross, had accompanied Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and six soldiers on a dangerous scout to the upper reaches of the Tongue and Mizpah Creek, hoping to find the Indian encampment rumored to be in the area. They found nothing. Which could only mean the Sioux had to be farther to the east.

  All the more worrisome, the party of Arikara trackers Kelly had sent out with William Jackson more than two days back hadn’t returned. Miles feared they had been discovered by a hostile war party and rubbed out.

  So at two-thirty this cold Tuesday morning Miles had the entire Tongue River encampment up to receive fourteen days’ rations. Leaving behind two companies of the Twenty-second U.S. Infantry to protect their cantonment, in that first inky seep of dawn the colonel was ferrying his ordinance rifle and ten full companies of his Fifth Infantry to the north side of the Yellowstone. By eleven-thirty A.M. the other 10 scouts, 15 officers, and 434 soldiers formed up and moved into the cold gray light beneath the low clouds scudding along the Glendive Road.

  “Not since the government’s operations against the Mormons in fifty-seven has the Fifth marched as a regiment,” Miles had said with undisguised pride earlier that morning as he’d stood on the north bank of the Yellowstone with Kelly, watching his men ferry over twelve at a time. Then the officer sighed, saying, “There’s trouble out there, and Otis is right in the thick of it. I can smell it.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough, General,” Luther replied, slipping his boot into a stirrup. “We’ll be back when I’ve got something to report.”

  This was to be Kelly’s twenty-eighth winter—born in the village of Geneva, right in the heart of the Finger Lake region of central New York State, long before made famous by the notorious Red Jacket of the Iroquois Confederation. Many were the times over the years that Luther would claim as an ancestor none other than Hannah Dustin, the courageous backwoods woman who’d been captured by hostiles and conveyed north through the formidable wilderness, eventually making her miraculous and daring escape during the French and Indian War.

  He pulled his hat down now, nodding to Miles, and reined his horse around to the east, kicking it in the flanks.

  A hell of a lot of water had passe
d beneath his boots since that day long ago when he had stood gape-mouthed, watching the line of young drummer boys—every last one of them decked out in patriotic bunting festooned with rosettes made from red, white, and blue cloth—marching at the vanguard of the column of volunteers who were stepping off to make war on the rebellious South. Because he was only fifteen when his mother finally consented to his enlistment near the end of the war, Luther had to lie to recruiters about his age. And, in his youthful ignorance as well as exuberant zeal, promptly made the mistake of joining the regular army instead of the New York volunteers.

  Before he knew it, he had taken his oath to the Tenth U.S. Infantry for a three-year hitch.

  After some duty guarding Confederate prisoners, Kelly’s unit was finally ordered to Fort Ripley on the upper reaches of the Mississippi River. After a few months his company was sent on to Fort Wadsworth, near Big Stone Lake in the Dakota Territory. By the spring of sixty-seven Kelly’s company was ordered to establish Fort Ransome—a small station at the forks of the Cheyenne River, near Bear’s Den Hill, far to the north near the Canadian line. It was the first time Luther had ever seen a buffalo.

  “How ’bout it, Kelly?” his sergeant prodded him one of those last nights before his hitch would draw to a close. “You game to sign up for another?”

  The handsome Luther smiled, showing his big, bright teeth. “No, sir, Sergeant. Now, don’t misunderstand me, sir: there’s nothing finer for a young fellow than a three-year term in the United States Army, for it teaches him method, manliness, physical welfare, and obedience to authority. But, in all truthfulness, Sergeant—one enlistment is quite enough—”

  “Quite enough?” roared the old file.

  “Yes, sir,” Kelly replied steadfastly, “unless that man has decided to make soldiering his profession.”

  The sergeant looked upon the young man gravely. “And you won’t?”

  With a gesture Luther had waved an arm out there to the prairies and the mountains that fine spring day in 1868. “No, sir—I’ll be saying good-bye to soldier life. There’s too damn much I want to see right out there as a free man.”

  Back in St. Paul briefly to cash his last pay voucher, Luther quickly turned his face once more to the west, pointing his nose for the Canadian settlement of Fort Garry on his way toward the wild, open country that lay at the headwaters of the Missouri River. By the time he’d reached the Canadian settlements along the Red River, Kelly had run onto several miners escaping north out of Montana. Despite their warnings about roaming war parties on the American side of the line, Luther journeyed on—youth’s bravado running hot in his veins.

  At the crossing of the Assiniboine River he ran into some métis with their Red River carts, making their way to the buffalo country. He accepted their invitation to throw in with them. It wasn’t long before he adopted much of their colorful dress, including the hooded capote constructed from a thick blue Hudson’s Bay blanket. With a red sash to hold it closed about him, Kelly felt all the more the part of a high prairie prince.

  While moseying south and west with the half-breed traders, he had a chance meeting with a band of Hunkpapa warriors led by Sitting Bull. When the haughty Lakota inquired who the lone white man was among them, the métis said he was their American friend—therefore under their protection. Although they stomped about a bit and made a fierce show of it, Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa soon departed.

  In those weeks before he parted ways with the half-breed métis, Luther hunted buffalo, helping the men shoot and skin their kills, watching the women dry strips of the meat, which they eventually put up into rawhide sacks as pemmican they would use in trade at the many wilderness posts dotting that formidable land. Then came the day the old man led him to a nearby rise and pointed into the beckoning distance.

  “This is where your adventure continues,” the wrinkled métis said, pointing.

  “That means we are to part” Kelly replied sadly.

  “There lies the country you seek. Look out for the Sioux, boy.”

  Moving south, Kelly reached Fort Berthold, where he met the Gerard brothers who were the post traders. The story went that the Gerards had acquired their initial capital after a party of Montana miners, descending the river in a small bateau with their gold, was attacked by a war party and killed. Having no knowledge of gold, the Indians had emptied the sacks into the boat, which they set adrift, later to be discovered downstream by the fortunate brothers. From Fred Gerard, Lather had purchased a Henry carbine and a supply of cartridges. Just this past summer Fred had been employed as an interpreter and tracker with Custer’s column, assigned to Reno’s battalion when the Lakota had badly mauled the Seventh Cavalry.

  From Berthold, Luther trekked upriver on foot, hungry for adventure. Along the way he bumped into a party of wandering Mandan, out to hunt buffalo. From them he learned how to prepare boudins, chopped meat and marrow fat cooked within a casing of a buffalo’s intestine. Later, when he found a little steady employment as a mail carrier between Forts Berthold and Stevenson—journeys on which he would take volumes of Poe, Shakespeare, Scott, and other classical authors into the wilderness for his own entertainment—Kelly met the noted Arikara tracker, Bloody Knife.

  By the time Luther’s hair had grown to his shoulders and his mustache had become all the shaggier, he had killed his first Lakota: two warriors intent on lifting his white scalp and robbing him of his Henry. Around Fort Peck, indeed all along the Upper Missouri, the story of that fateful encounter was told and retold by his friend Bloody Knife and other Arikara scouts who found work from time to time for the army.

  It was while Kelly made some occasional money as a woodhawk, supplying the few upriver steamboats with fuel, that he was asked to guide for Colonel George A. Forsyth, come to map and explore the Yellowstone as a member of General Sheridan’s Chicago staff on Captain Grant Marsh’s Far West From Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone, the party pushed past Glendive Creek and on to the mouth of the Powder before turning back. Back at Buford, Luther bid the soldiers farewell, then turned back into the country of the Milk, the Judith, and particularly the hunters’ paradise of the Musselshell River, where he cut wood, trapped occasionally, and hunted wolf pelts until late this past spring when it seemed that wandering Sioux war parties became even more troublesome than normal.

  In the Judith basin he had been following wolf sign among the tracks of a small migrating buffalo herd, for those winter-thick pelts brought five dollars American at the nearby posts. From there Luther moseyed farther south toward the Yellowstone that summer, picking the wild strawberries as they came into season until he reached the country near Pompey’s Pillar. Upon those spectacular heights he looked down into the far river valley and caught sight of the white tents of an army camp lining a green bottomland near a bend in the sparkling river. From there to the mouth of the Bighorn, Kelly was rarely ever out of sight of soldiers or supply trains as General Terry prepared to pursue Sitting Bull and General Crook made ready to pursue Crazy Horse into the Black Hills.

  Too many folks, Luther had groaned. Seemed the army was destined to stir up more trouble for itself. Kelly turned away to make his way up the river when he soon ran onto some Montana miners who were easing down the Yellowstone, having heard of the army’s preparations to pursue the Indians who had massacred Custer. It was the following day when he was out hunting that he found himself confronted by a large cinnamon bear he dropped with his needle gun. Because the hide was very poor at that late-summer season, Kelly took only some back fat to use as gun oil, along with one of the big forepaws and all the claws.

  On down the north bank of the Yellowstone, Kelly tramped with the mining party until they reached a sprawling military camp erected about a mile above the mouth of the Tongue River. There they crossed to the south side on a crude ferry the soldiers operated, finding the camp nearly deserted. Quartermaster Randall explained that most of the men were either out working the timber in the hills for their huts, or they were out on
routine patrols of the nearby country.

  “By the Land of Goshen!” Randall gushed as his eyes suddenly locked on that dark object suspended from the horn of Kelly’s saddle and stepped forward to have himself a better look. “What in God’s name is that?”

  Luther untied the rawhide whangs from the saddle horn and handed it over to the captain. “Just the paw of a cinnamon I killed the other day.”

  “Never have I seen anything so huge!” Randall said admiringly of the paw over a foot long without the claws. “You shot this by yourself?”

  “I did,” Kelly replied. “But it wasn’t my first. I’ve been out here for nearly eight years already—”

  Randall interrupted eagerly, “You know this country, do you?”

  “A good deal of it, yes.”

  The captain hefted the heavy bear’s paw and declared, “The general will want to see you.”

  “The general?” Kelly asked. “Who’s the general?”

  “Why, Nelson A. Miles. He’s curious to learn all that he can about this country.”

  At that moment the mischievous thought had struck Luther. He instructed the quartermaster, “There, Captain—take that paw to General Miles for me. Tell him it is my calling card.”

  In the next few moments Randall had the paw in the hands of his own orderly, on its way to the tent of Colonel Nelson A. Miles, commander of the Fifth U.S. Infantry, whose job it was to erect winter quarters there at the Tongue River, as well as patrol the Yellowstone and prevent Sitting Bull’s Sioux from crossing north of the river, fleeing on to Canada.

  Late that afternoon and into the evening, the intrigued Miles questioned Kelly in great detail about the country north of the river, indeed, all the way to the British line; seeking knowledge of it for a field of operations against the hostiles. During their talk Kelly told the colonel about his three-year hitch in the regular army, having seen some of his service in the Dakota Territory.