Troop under a dark cloud of suspicion. Cody learned from Lieutenant King that Wilson had long been a shirker who had conveniently wrangled himself periods of leave during the regiment’s roughest duty in Arizona during the Apache campaign. But until the long, arduous scouts Merritt had demanded of his men, as well as the soul-crushing news of the Custer disaster, no one had wanted to believe the captain was in reality a coward.
“Surgeon Powell told me in confidence that Wilson gave himself a nosebleed and swallowed the blood,” King declared to the Fifth’s scout after dark that night. “Seems he intended to go on sick call and spit it back up to make the physicians think he was bleeding from the lung.”
“How did the surgeon know Wilson was shamming?”
King whispered, “Powell says blood brought up fresh from the lungs looks a lot different. So on checking him over, they found where Wilson had cut the membranes inside his nose. Found out, he immediately broke down and admitted the ruse.”
No longer considered an officer of the Fifth, Wilson was compelled by Merritt and Carr to resign his commission as soon as the regiment returned to Fort Laramie, one short day’s march to the south—or take his chances with a court-martial. Wilson again chose the coward’s way out.
But instead of marching for Laramie the morning of the fourteenth, at reveille the colonel called his officers together to inform them of the dispatches he had received late the night before. Cody stood nearby, every bit as expectant as any of those veterans in blue.
“I’ve received news from the agencies, via Major Townsend at Laramie. He in turn received word from Major Jordan at Camp Robinson—wired on the eleventh— that states the Indians intend to make a mass break for the north in a matter of days.”
“That means they could be fleeing north any day now, General,” Carr advised.
“Exactly,” Merritt replied.
“With the general’s permission?” Cody said sourly. “Of course the Injuns are going to jump their reservations—I’ll bet they already heard we’ve abandoned their Powder River trail and left the way wide open for them.”
Several of the other officers murmured their agreement with Cody that they should never have marched south, away from the Cheyenne River.
Raising his hand, Merritt quickly quieted them. “I want to break camp on the double this morning. General Carr and I have determined to march southeast rather than directly south toward Laramie.”
“What about our orders to march north to reinforce Crook?” asked a clearly disappointed Captain Julius W. Mason.
“May I answer that, General?” Carr inquired, using Merritt’s Civil War rank. When the colonel nodded, Carr continued. “We’ve discussed this and are both of the same mind. It seems our most pressing urgency is to stop the flow of warriors north, to prevent them from reinforcing the hostile camps that crushed Custer’s Seventh. To do that, in our opinion, takes higher precedence over reaching Crook for the present time.”
“Remember, gentlemen,” Merritt drove home his point in the gray light of dawn, “there are between eight hundred and a thousand Cheyenne warriors still on those two agencies. We could have our hands more than full right here, without having to march north to the Big Horns to join up with Crook for a fight. At the moment, those warriors think their highway is open. I intend to take the Fifth and close the trap on them.” After a minute’s thoughtful pause the colonel concluded, “If there are no further matters to discuss at this time, let’s be marching east.”
By noon the Fifth came upon the place where the Camp Robinson-Fort Laramie Road crossed Rawhide Creek. Merritt immediately dispatched Major Thaddeus Stanton to press on to Camp Jordan, there to determine the present situation at Red Cloud Agency. Captain Emil Adams’s C Troop was to accompany Stanton as far as the trail’s crossing at Running Water Creek, a branch of the Niobrara River, at which point the old German’s men were to begin patrolling along the Robinson-Laramie Road. While awaiting Stanton’s report, the rest of the regiment would remain in bivouac at Rawhide Creek, sixty-five miles southeast of the Red Cloud Agency—ready to ride at a moment’s notice.
How long they would have to wait, no one could say. Some men fished, others caught up on sleep, but just about all debated what should be Merritt’s next move to stem the outgoing tide of warriors from the reservations.
They wouldn’t have to wait long for word that the Cheyenne were coming.
In a matter of hours those troopers of the Fighting Fifth would vault back into their saddles, and they wouldn’t climb back out for something on the order of thirty-six hours.
But waiting was about all they did in Crook’s camp.
Every interminable hour that dragged by seemed to bring renewed grumbling from Crook’s officer corps that the army ever relinquished its three posts along the Bozeman Trail. If Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith were still manned, they argued, chances were Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would have never gained a foothold in this hunting ground. And even if the Sioux had made just such an attempt despite the presence of the army, then any campaign by Crook or Terry would be able to operate that much closer to supply depots.
Now with this Sioux campaign grinding on much longer than any military man would have thought possible, it was abundantly clear at every campfire discussion that the officers of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition believed the army should immediately set about erecting its three posts in the heart of the hostiles’ country: perhaps first to reactivate old Fort Reno or a new post somewhere on the headwaters of the Tongue; another in the Black Hills to protect the miners, settlers, and growing businesses flocking there; and a third somewhere on the lower Yellowstone, ideally at the mouth of the Tongue River.
“If the army did that,” Captain Anson Mills told his compatriots that eleventh day of July, “the army would thereby maintain its presence and military influence over the wild tribes so that no hostile elements on the reservations would ever again seek to flee for what the Indians claim as their land, to recapture what they remember of their old life.”
“Their old life is over!” John Finerty snarled. “This is beautiful land—and emigrants damn well ought to come in and snatch it up, take it away from these savages.”
John Bourke asked the newsman, “You don’t think we can live with the red man if the Indian stayed to his agencies?”
“No,” Finerty said flatly, plainly still suffering from his harrowing escape. “Better if the whole tribe of Indians, friendly and otherwise, were exterminated.”
“Johnny boy,” Seamus said at their noon fire, “you’re sounding just like General Sherman—even Phil Sheridan himself!”
“Damn right I agree with them!” Finerty growled. “And a lot of these men do too, Seamus. We all detest the red race! Don’t you?”
Donegan’s brow knitted as he brooded on that a moment, then pulled the stub of his briar pipe from his lips and said, “It’s true that the red man’s done his best to raise my hair—that much is for sure, Johnny. But to paint them all with that same black brush—why, I’m not about to do it. I’ve seen too much good in some Injins, scouts and trackers and others, to condemn the whole of them. I could have stayed back east in Boston, even your Chicago, and not seen a single Indian for all my life. Maybe some white men brought this on themselves—taking what ain’t theirs.”
“Wait a minute, Irishman,” said Frederick Van Vliet of the Third Cavalry. “So what should become of those good, God-fearing folks who want to come out here to settle, raise a family, and make a new life for themselves?”
Seamus wagged his head. “You’re asking the wrong man, Captain. I’m for sure no politician, and I don’t have any easy answers on the tip of my silver tongue.”
“Then perhaps you should think things over,” Finerty advised, “until you know what you want to believe in.”
“Oh, I know what I believe in, Johnny boy. I damn well know what I believe in,” he replied, his bile rising at the challenge. “Seems to me what should happen to folks who come out to settle on land that belongs to other people should be what happens to any folks who steal something that don’t belong to ’em.”
“What?” Finerty demanded in a shrill voice. “You’re saying white folks should pay those black-hearted savages for the land they want to farm?”
“Can’t you see, Donegan?” Mills jumped into the argument. “That’s exactly what the land commission is
