In this late March there were fourteen hundred soldiers gathering for the coming campaign General Winfield S. Hancock would lead. Besides infantry foot soldiers, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer would ride at the head of eight companies of his Seventh Cavalry: the sword Hancock intended using to punish the Sioux and Cheyenne who had been raiding and killing, stealing, raping and kidnapping up and down central and western Kansas.
Every bit as pressing to the morale of the army itself was the news of a late-December disaster now common knowledge on the high plains. For what was still an inexplicable reason, Captain William Judd Fetterman had disobeyed the orders of his commanding officer and led another eighty soldiers and two civilians to their deaths up on the Bozeman Road, lured into a seductive trap miles from Fort Phil Kearny. Two thousand warriors wiped out the entire command in less than thirty minutes of battle.
The frontier army clearly chafed at the bit, anxious to even the score.
While the military on the plains for the past two years had labored to separate itself from the wholesale slaughter of Indians committed at Sand Creek by some Colorado volunteer militia, the leadership in both the War Department and in the Department of the Missouri were not much concerned now in any distinction between the horse-mounted warriors committing the depredations and the noncombatants back in the villages.
“We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children,” wrote William Tecumseh Sherman to his superior back in Washington City, Ulysses S. Grant.
Indeed, General John B. Sanborn, one of the commissioners appointed to interview frontier officers in his investigation of the Fetterman Massacre found that, “Army officers of high grade openly proclaim their intentions to shoot down any Indian they see, and say that they instruct their men to do likewise.”
Sales of weapons and ammunition to the Indians were suspended in the Department of the Platte in July of 1866. Yet it was not until January of 1867 that General Hancock issued the same order forbidding such sales in his Department of the Missouri. Forever the one given to thoughtful deliberation, Hancock had waited until both his superiors in Washington City, Grant and Sherman, agreed on the need for keeping weapons out of Indian hands.
“
Jonah Hook turned as his cousin came up. “What news?” He went back to lashing his bedroll into a gum poncho.
“About that Dakota Territory where you was last year. The Powder River country and all.”
“What about it?”
“Whole fort’s buzzing about it. Half a regiment wiped out by Injuns up there just afore Christmas.”
He stopped, slowly looking over his shoulder at the man who cast a shadow over him this early morning. “Where?”
“Place called Fort Phil Kearny they say,” Moser explained. “Cap’n named Fetterman marched off over a ridge with his men—and it was over in less’n half an hour.”
Hook wagged his head in disbelief. “Where’s this fort?”
“They say northwest of the Powder. Near a river called the Tongue.”
“I know that country.”
“That’s why I come to tell you soon as I heard.”
A fear suddenly clutched him in its talons. “Any civilians killed with them soldiers?”
“Word has it two was killed. They was all butchered like hogs for slaughter, Jonah.”
“I don’t doubt it, cousin.” He swallowed hard, rising. “I had two friends up there scouting for the army.”
“Bridger and Sweete?”
He nodded. “Lord, I pray they weren’t the ones butchered with those soldier-boys gone off marching where they shouldn’t.”
Moser wrung his hands in front of him, searching for the right thing to say. “Then just what the hell
Jonah gazed off onto the distant prairie, past the fort grounds and buildings and spring-dampened parade. “Let’s just hope this bunch of soldiers is more’n those Injuns wanna tackle right now.”
“Hope, hell, Jonah! I’m all for praying!”
The wagon boss named Grigsby hollered for his men to account for themselves at the wagon yard, where there was no lack of work backing mules and horses into their traces and trees in preparation for this first day’s march from Fort Hays into Indian country. Off Moser went, with Jonah tying his horse near California Joe’s and Jack Corbin’s.
“I’ll be off yonder for a bit,” Hook told them.
“Hancock’s got us pulling out soon,” Milner replied. “We’re leading his column, Hook. So don’t you be late.”
Jonah grinned. “Never.”
He found her minutes later, where he knew he would.
She was sitting near the dugout where they had fared the winter together, squatting on a buffalo robe, her legs tucked at her side as she drove a bonehandled awl through the thin buckskin she had tanned herself that spring. The Pawnee woman did not immediately look up, though Hook was sure she had heard him draw near.
“Grass Singing,” he said as he settled before her. Still she would not look at him.
Jonah took her chin in his hand, raising her face to his. Only then did he understand why she had been reluctant to look at him.
“You’ve been crying,” he said in English.
She gently pulled her chin from his rough palm and blinked her eyes clear, then went back to poking animal sinew strung with large, moss green beads through the hole she had made with the awl.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” he said, himself searching for words that would touch her as his hands moved silently before him in sign. A part of him withered when he realized she was not watching his hands, much less comprehending most of his white man’s tongue.
“Hell, some of this you’ll understand, I hope. The rest—well, the rest I hope you’ll figure out down the road some.”
He reached for her hand. She pulled it away as the first large drop of salty moisture spilled down a cheek, no longer held in check, pooled in those blackcherry eyes. Jonah took her hand in his a second time, and now she did not resist.
“I got to go, Grass Singing.”
“Take me,” she said, her eyes imploring him as they flooded.
“Can’t. This is war.”
“My people take women … families on war path.”
“My people don’t. You’ll stay behind. Go find what’s left of your family in Abilene.” And the cold of it hit him as surely as the rising of the warm spring sun caressed the side of his face. “Maybe you can understand I got to keep moving. If I don’t, I can’t ever hope to find my own family.”
She set her beading down, using her hands to sign. “Your family is no more.”
His mind struggled with the concepts she formed with her hands. “No more family,” he repeated, then comprehended. “It’s not true. Who says this?”
Grass Singing said it aloud. “Moser.”
“He lies, woman,” he said it aloud too, forgetting to sign. “My family is alive. Somewhere. I’ll find them. I’ll find every one of them.”
“You go on a fool’s journey,” she signed. “I have prayed to the Great Everywhere that it would not be your final journey.”
He snorted self-consciously. “Me? No—I’m not ready to die.”
Her eyes moistened more. “There is the smell of death all around you.”
“That’s just the blood you’re smelling—”
“I talk now of the death spirits. Their stench is heavy around you, Hook.” The last word she spoke aloud, as there was no sign for his name.
While the rising sun warmed his face, nonetheless a chill splashed down his spine as she said it. Afraid to
