“Murdered.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, Seamus. Wild Bill was gunned down right inside there.”
Donegan shook his head, clenching his eyes, some tears creeping out at their corners. “No—there wasn’t a man what could’ve gunned Bill Hickok down. Just like the sign says: he was
Inching in front of the big scout, Finerty stared into Donegan’s eyes. “You—you knew him … knew Wild Bill Hickok?”
Nodding once, he sniffed. “Back to sixty-seven. We scouted a short time together. Me and Cody both.”
“That’s right,” Finerty said, remembering. “The winter you fellas hijacked that load of Mexican beer and made a tidy profit selling it to Carr’s soldiers. Well. I’ll be damned, Irishman. I hadn’t put it all together until now. I see. Well. Under the circumstances I can understand why
Eventually the Irishman nodded, quietly saying, “Yeah. Someplace else to go but here.”
“My God! Listen to this, Seamus!”
Donegan really wasn’t at all interested in what the Chicago newsman found interesting in that copy of
Ever since he had stared at that sign nailed to the front of Mann’s Number 10 Saloon last night, the Irishman had thought of nothing else but Bill Hickok, fondly remembering their scouting days together, learning of the gunman’s meteoric rise to fame as a Kansas cow-town lawman.
Annoyed at the interruption, he dragged his eyes away from gazing out the restaurant window and looked into the face of the reporter seated across the table from him, who was reading a copy of the local newspaper.
Donegan asked, “Does it say anything about Crook’s visit?”
“Yes—they’ve got a really good piece on our campaign and some nice writing on the general’s oratorical efforts last night,” Finerty answered that morning of the seventeenth. “But it’s this editorial you’ve got to hear: ‘Some pap-sucking Quaker representative of an Indian doxology mill, writes in
“Just what the Sioux and Cheyenne need,” Donegan grumbled. He took another sip of his steamy coffee, then went back to staring out the window.
“There’s more here,” Finerty continued. “‘It is enough to make a western man sick to read such stuff.’”
Without looking at the correspondent, Seamus said, “I never was much of one to read newspapers, anyway. Though I personally have nothing against newspapermen.”
“Now, listen, Seamus—this here is the clencher! ‘You might as well try to raise a turkey from a snake egg as to raise a good citizen from a papoose. Indians can be made good in only one way, and that is to make angels of them.’”
Finally he looked into Finerty’s eyes. “By that account, seems Crook’s and Terry’s armies haven’t made too many Indians good, have we?”
For most of the previous night and into the morning, Lieutenants William P. Clark and Frederick W. Sibley had busied themselves pulling all of Deadwood’s blacksmiths out of bed and the saloons to work at reshoeing the patrol’s horses and unshod Indian ponies. Finally at eight A.M., after a big breakfast and lots of coffee for those who had unwisely celebrated most of the night, Crook had them climbing back into the saddle for their ride south to Camp Robinson.
On the road to Custer City they passed a growing number of wagons: empty freighters rumbling south to the Union Pacific rail line at Sidney, Nebraska, returning north with those precious goods bound for the Black Hills mining camps. In the early afternoon the general’s party met three companies of the Fourth Artillery escorting a wagon train ordered north with supplies for Crook’s expedition. For more than an hour the groups stopped there beside Box Elder Creek to exchange news of the world for news from the front.
In their travels the following day they passed by the new community of Castleton on the Black Hills route that led them along Castle Creek and on through the shadow of Harney’s Peak. Already the new community was home to more than two hundred hopeful miners and merchants. On the outskirts of town, fields had been plowed and a few small cattle herds grazed in the tall grasses. By noon they had reached a plateau, where they looked down upon Hill City, abandoned save for one hardy hermit.
“Why did everyone go?” Donegan asked the old man.
Came the simple answer, “Indian scare … and no gold dust.”
The sun was settling into the western clouds, igniting them with radiant fire, when Crook’s party reached Custer City, aptly named for that one soldier who brought his Seventh Cavalry to explore the Black Hills back in seventy-four, then promptly informed the world of the prospects for finding gold in that land ceded to the Sioux. Here Crook called a halt for the night, and the party reined up outside a likely looking hotel.
“Donegan? Is that really you?”
Seamus turned slowly at the call of his name, unable to recognize the voice. His hand slid closer to the butt of a pistol. He looked at the clean-shaven soldier bounding off the boardwalk toward him, not able to place the man.
“Seamus Donegan! By the saints—it is you!”
“Egan? Don’t tell me!”
The captain stopped and spread his arms widely in a grand gesture, cocking his head to the side slyly. “Teddy Egan, his own self!”
They laughed and hugged and pounded one another on the back as John Finerty came over.
“Still tagging along with this worthless bit of army flotsam, I see, John,” Egan said after shaking hands with the newsman.
“Ever since the three of us went marching with Reynolds down on that Powder River village,” Finerty responded.
James “Teddy” Egan’s famous troop of grays, E Troop, Second Cavalry, the same men who had led the charge on the village nestled beside the frozen Powder River which Frank Grouard swore was Crazy Horse’s camp back on St. Patrick’s Day,* had ever since that winter campaign been assigned to protect emigrant and freight travel along the Black Hills Road between Fort Laramie and Custer City.
A courier from Laramie reached the general just after supper, bearing a message from Sheridan requesting that Crook hurry on and reach the fort within forty-eight hours. That was all but impossible given the condition of their weary mounts and captured Indian ponies. Yet the general would try to press on with all possible speed. To do so, he would require new mounts, immediately requesting Captain Egan to lend fifteen of his sturdy, sleek horses then and there in Custer City on the following morning of the nineteenth. Leaving behind his escort under Lieutenant Sibley to accompany the pack-train under Major Randall, the rest of the officers climbed atop those strong grays of Teddy Egan’s and set out at sunrise on a forced march. They had over a hundred miles to go just to reach Camp Robinson.
Glory! But it was good to have a good horse under him once again, Donegan thought. For so many weeks his horse had slowly played out before he finally turned it over to Dr. Clements back at the Sioux village and taken for his own one of the Sioux ponies. But now this was so much better. A fine army mount, surging along with the others on that trail behind Crook, who kept them at a gallop for most of the day. The general shot a deer for their dinner that noon; then they pushed on, reaching some marshy land at the southern end of the Hills by dusk.
Not more than a quarter of a mile ahead lay the waters of the South Cheyenne River. As the sun set far to the west, they struck the wagon road blazed from Buffalo Gap in the Black Hills down to the Red Cloud Agency. Pushing the horses back into a lope, Crook soon had them at a gallop once more.
By ten P.M. they reached a branch of Warbonnet Creek, where they watered the stock and talked of Bill Cody’s first scalp for Custer. Crook then asked if the others would agree to press on, and the entire party went back into the saddle for another four hours, when they finally stopped to picket their horses and lie down in their blankets on the frosty ground to enjoy a few hours of sleep.
Seamus told himself he must be getting old. He simply couldn’t remember a piece of cold ground ever feeling that good.
* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 8,
