“Can’t you just send out your scouts from here?”
Mackenzie answered, “We can. And we will, Donegan.”
“You’re … no,” and he suddenly saw it as clear as a summer day, causing the hair to stir on the back of his neck, “… you’re not figuring on me going with them scouts, are you? Them Lakota and Cheyenne?”
Crook said, “That’s precisely what I’ve brought you here to propose.”
“But—what about Frank? Grouard’s been in that country. And he knows how to talk Lakota with them scouts.”
“That’s right,” Crook replied quietly. “I could send Frank Grouard—but he won’t be going north, because he’s going to carry some dispatches for me to the Black Hills communities.”
Seamus said, “It seems like you oughtta send Frank out with the scouts, and me to the Black Hills.”
Again Crook looked at Mackenzie before saying, “It’s not just the fact of going out with the scouts, Mr. Donegan. There’s … something more.”
“More?”
“Some … task for which the army will pay a man handsomely. Should he decide to undertake the risk.”
“What risk?”
Mackenzie stepped up, saying, “Bluntly speaking: there will come a time when you will leave behind the Cheyenne and Sioux scouts.”
“L-leave ’em behind?” Then, with his sense of peril really itching, Seamus asked, “Just where in bloody hell would I be going to leave ’em behind?”
“North of here,” Crook replied after a moment’s pause. “On your way to the Yellowstone.”
“Now, why in hell would I want to go back to that country for, says I?”
“Yes—I quite understand you’ve been there before,” Crook said. “We all were last summer. Well, I need you to carry some important messages for me.”
Donegan’s eyes narrowed again. “Messages. To the Yellowstone.”
Mackenzie and Crook nodded.
Donegan’s suspicions were all but confirmed. “To the Tongue River Cantonment?”
“That’s right,” Crook stated. “I wish to communicate with General Miles.”
“Miles is said to also have a supply depot at the mouth of Glendive Creek,” Mackenzie said, rubbing a fingertip at a thin inked line on the map that joined the Yellowstone east of the Tongue.
Seamus studied the faint and meandering inked-in rivers and streams a moment. “No, General. Seems to me that Glendive Creek’s too far east for a man to set his sights on going … at least if he’s coming from here on the Belle Fourche.”
Looking up, he caught Crook giving Mackenzie a knowledgeable nod, something that showed great self- satisfaction.
The son of a bitch thinks he’s got me, Seamus thought.
Then Donegan went on to explain, “Makes far more sense for a man to head down the Powder to its mouth. No more east than that.”
“Yes, yes, exactly,” Crook replied. “The Powder’s about halfway between Glendive depot and the mouth of the Tongue.”
“Then you’ll go?” Mackenzie asked.
“Wait a minute! I ain’t said nothing like that,” Donegan demurred, studying the map, all that unknown, dangerous country between here and there. “How far you figure the scouts will go with me?”
Shrugging, Crook said, “Perhaps as far as the mouth of the Little Powder, Mr. Donegan.”
“I see,” he considered, staring at the convergence of those two lines on the map—the thrill of it beginning to rise from the soles of his feet with the tingle of genuine danger. He looked up at them steadily. “Why me?”
Crook glanced away from Mackenzie, to the map, then into the Irishman’s eyes. “The honest truth of it is that I thought you would want the money.”
It almost made him bristle, to have these men think he could be bought. Instead, he asked, “Why did you figure that?”
Crook answered, “Because … because of your new family, Mr. Donegan.”
“That’s why I recommended
“So what is it you’ll pay a fool for riding out on a fool’s errand?”
With the smile of a man who had hooked his catch, Crook said, “I’ve figured out how many days it might take you to get there and back—”
“You better be figuring on me taking twice as long.”
“But even if you moved only at night—”
Seamus interrupted Crook. “How much, General?”
Crook swallowed, stroking his long beard. “A hundred dollars.”
“What?” he snorted, almost ready to laugh. “A hundred dollars is what you brought me here to offer? Wanting me to ride alone into that country and risk my hair for a hundred dollars!”
The commanding general straightened as if stung. “Then tell me—what is the journey worth to you?”
“Nothing is worth getting myself killed for,” he said all too quietly, suddenly souring on the idea that had lit a spark in him.
Mackenzie asked, “Not even the chance to provide well for your wife and newborn son?”
“If I ain’t alive to ever see ’em again …” Seamus muttered, then began to consider an option.
“Two hundred dollars,” Crook suddenly blurted in that silence. “I can offer no more than that.”
For a long moment Donegan closed his eyes, conjuring up in his mind the images he had carried with him of Samantha, and the boy he was still to name. Knowing he had brought her here to this wild north country from the Staked Plain of Texas in hopes of reaching the goldfields of Montana Territory—there to strike it rich, all the better to provide for her. And now there were two relying on him.
He licked his lips as he opened his eyes, staring down at the map that told a man too damned little about that country where roamed the wild hostile tribes. All there were across that expanse were far too few inked lines: river courses, a few streams. Nothing else of any use.
Donegan looked the general squarely in the eye. “You’ll pay me two hundred dollars?”
“I said that, yes,” Crook replied, a bit anxious. He laid his two palms down on the map, rocking forward slightly.
Mackenzie stepped closer to lay a hand on Donegan’s shoulder. “My old friend, will you go?”
For a moment he stared deep into the colonel’s eyes. Over the last two weeks he himself had seen in those eyes, on Mackenzie’s face, the first flickers of madness, the first tattered shreds of severe depression; then as quickly he had watched those eyes clear of imbalance as the man suddenly became as lucid as any man could claim to be.
“I will go—”
“Good!” Crook exclaimed exuberantly, starting to reach for a small stack of foolscap.
“Wait,” Donegan cautioned. “I’ll go on two conditions.”
“What are they?” Mackenzie inquired.
“The first is that you pay me the two hundred dollars before I begin my ride.”
Mackenzie turned to Crook, asking, “Is that possible, General?”
Finally Crook nodded. “Anything is possible. Yes, Mr. Donegan—I can have that arranged. But why would you want to carry that much—”
“That’s the second condition,” Seamus interrupted.
“Yes?” Mackenzie asked, more curious than ever before.
“I’m not going to carry that money on me,” Donegan replied. “I want you to issue my pay to me, but see that it is sent with your next courier to Fetterman, and on down to Laramie.”
It was Mackenzie who asked, “To your wife?”
“No,” he answered. “Not yet. Send it to Colonel Townsend—with my instructions that he is to hold it in secrecy for Samantha … to guard it safely until I send him word upon my return to this outfit that he can turn it over to my wife … or …”
“Or?” Crook asked.
