a rainstorm can overnight turn into a blazing blue norther of a blizzard.”
Lybe straightened as if chastised, then smiled. “Mr. Sweete should know, men. See, we don’t have to worry about Connor being out too long before we can be rotated out and you can be heading home.”
“So what’s the good news you was meaning to tell us, Cap’n?” asked the Georgian.
“Yes—General Connor has ordered that the whiskey be opened for his troops to celebrate one last time before they march out for the Powder and the Tongue. And since we’re here picking up rations and forage, the general agreed Company I could join in the celebrating.”
There was a cacophony of cheering and backslapping as Company I, Third U.S. Volunteers, threw hats into the air and danced around the fires with one another.
Shad was surprised to find Hook not joining in.
“Where’s the whiskey being served, Cap’n Lybe?” Hook asked.
“Why, over there at some tables they’ve set up between the barracks and Old Bedlam. Bring your own tin, boys. It may be the last hurraw we have for some time to come.”
It would prove to be the last celebration of that sort Shadrach Sweete wanted to have himself for the rest of his days. He had gone and had his fill, then wandered back to his bedroll, pleasantly warmed within. The next thing he knew, Bridger was nudging him with his toe, calling softly to Sweete. And everything was black when he opened his eyes.
Shad pulled the robe back from his face. It was still black. No more than a few stars blinked their muted light overhead.
“C’mon, Shad,” urged Bridger. The old trapper had asked Sweete to sign on with General Connor for the impending expedition then assembling at Fort Laramie. “General wants to palaver with you.”
“Can’t it wait till morning, Gabe?”
He dug a bony toe beneath the blankets and jabbed at Sweete’s ribs. “Connor told me to tell you it has to do with that young rebel what’s a friend of yours.”
Shad bolted upright. “Jonah?”
“The one called Hook. Connor wants to see you now.”
“Middle of the goddamned night,” he muttered, clambering out of the robe and blankets he kicked himself free of. “What’d Hook do now, Gabe?”
“A heap of trouble from the way Connor’s acting—like a nose-stung honey bear. But I don’t know no particulars.”
By the time Shad Sweete stood red-eyed before an angry General Connor, the story had emerged full-blown and fleshed out.
“I figured some of the boys would become rowdy if I opened up a whiskey barrel for them,” Connor explained, tapping the top of his desk with the point of a knife, “but never figured it to boil over like this.”
It seems Jonah had poured down a lot of whiskey, and quickly, intent right from the start in tying on a big load.
“He got a bellyful of puggle—then what happened?”
“Sergeant, tell Mr. Sweete,” Connor said, gesturing to the sergeant of the guard at the door.
“The Rebel picked him some fights, busted some heads—then announced he was taking off tonight for home. Hollering out that if any others was of a mind, they could come along home with him. He was done with the army and … and—”
“Say it, Sergeant,” Connor ordered, staring at Sweete.
“The army and its lying, whore-banging ways.”
“That’s what got you riled, Sergeant?”
The old noncom glared back at Sweete. “This army been good to me, mister. And long as I’m serving this army—ain’t no man going to desert if I got anything to say about it.”
Shad turned back to Connor. “You really think Hook was trying to desert?”
“Said he was heading out.”
Sweete slapped both palms down on Connor’s desk. “But—do you believe he was going to do it, in the cups like he was?”
“I can’t have any man deserting now—or even bragging that he’s going to do it.”
“Man what brags he’s going to do something while he’s got a bellyful of saddle varnish, is only letting his whiskey do his talking for him, General,” said Bridger.
Connor sighed, then looked back at the tall mountain scout. “That’s why I called you here, Sweete. You’re his friend. I don’t plan on shooting him for desertion—lord knows I should make an example out of him.”
Shad sensed a flicker of hope fill his cold belly right about then. “So here you sit, General, cogitating on how can you still make a point of him—but get him out of your hair?”
“Right, Mr. Sweete. I can’t send him back to his station with Captain Lybe. He’s a poor influence, shall we say.”
“How ’bout if I take him under my wing, so to speak, General?” Sweete asked.
Connor flicked his eyes at old Bridger, who smiled back with only his eyes.
“You’re heading out with me in two days, Mr. Sweete, are you not?”
“I am, General. And that boy can go with me. I’ll keep him out’n your hair. Just ask Bridger. He’s trained some of the best—like Mitch Bouyer, who’s going along. Right, Gabe?”
Bridger nodded.
“All right, Mr. Sweete,” Connor sighed, laying the knife down and sinking into the horsehide chair behind his desk. “He’s your responsibility. And if he gets one step out of line—it’ll be your ass hanging over the same fire that Confederate’s is slow-roasting over.”
No man could really blame the general for being on the edgy side these last few days as the summer mellowed. The supplies he had begged of Department Commander General Dodge had still not arrived by the first of August after Connor had assembled his troops at Laramie. It seemed that with every day of enforced waiting there since the beginning of July, Bridger had reminded Connor that the army’s campaign season was growing old. The high plains had a way of turning on a man come the autumn of the year. Better get, Bridger told the army—while the getting was good.
Connor decided he was going to wait no longer.
Through all those weeks of waiting he had been planning his expedition, deciding to assemble the campaign in three wings, all of which were to rendezvous the first of September in the Tongue River country.
The very heart of prime Sioux and Cheyenne hunting ground.
The two additional wings of Connor’s assault were already pushing their way across the plains. Colonel Nelson Cole was at the head of two regiments already moving west from Omaha without incident.
Not so with the other wing commander.
After his Sixteenth Kansas Cavalry had become disgruntled because they were forced to serve past the end of the war and threatened to mutiny to the point he had to order artillery turned on them, Colonel Samuel Walker finally got his troops under way and marched north for the Black Hills country of the Sioux.
While Cole and Walker forced their reluctant soldiers into that unknown of the northern plains, Connor could himself boast of marching north at the head of the finest cavalry then to sit a saddle in the West. Besides having enlisted such proven guides as Bridger, Sweete, and Sioux half-breed Mitch Bouyer, Connor also had along a newly formed battalion of Pawnee scouts under the capable Major Frank North, as well as Captain E. W. Nash’s contingent of Omaha and Winnebago scouts.
Using stout discipline each long summer’s day of the march, the expedition covered ground quickly. Despite the problems encountered by a train of 185 wagons, Connor was on the Powder by 14 August. It was there he ordered the first trees felled for what would be a permanent post he christened Fort Connor.
“
He loved to sing—especially this one, a popular song of the Confederacy.
Lemuel Wiser was a handsome man. Most might even say he was more than that: a devilishly handsome
