laying low in their lodges to wait out the winter. While we have the men, the materiel, the supply lines to make that red bastard’s capture a sure thing.”
Behind them a voice called out, “Is that the Irishman’s voice I hear?”
Out of the dark appeared the swarthy half-breed. It brought a smile to Donegan’s face. “Last I heard of you at Laramie, Crook said you was taken terrible sick and the soldiers hauled your worthless carcass down to Cheyenne City in the back of a wagon.”
Frank Grouard held out his hand to shake, but Seamus promptly pushed it aside and gave the scout a fierce embrace. The half-breed pounded Donegan on the shoulder, saying, “There and then I figured I should go farther west, maybe back to Utah to get myself on the mend—but what do you know? On the train I laughed myself into a cure.”
“You’re pulling our legs!” Bourke declared, coming over to shake Grouard’s hand.
“The honest truth,” Grouard replied with a smile, holding a hand up in testament to the fact. “A good laugh will always cure what ails you.”
Seamus asked, “So how’d you end up getting here?”
“Rode in with the paymaster from Fort Fetterman.”
“Paymaster?” Bourke almost squealed in excitement. “Damn, but don’t they always show up where a man has no place to spend his money!”
Grouard went on to explain, “You’d been two days gone from Fetterman when I was fixing to take off. So I offered to guide that paymaster in here, protecting all that mail and pay for all you soldiers.”
“You made sure that paymaster reported in to the general so we can all have us a round of drinks, didn’t you, Grouard?” Bourke cheered.
“Sure as hell did,” Frank replied. “If I didn’t, I figure there’s a few hundred unpaid soldiers ready to stretch my neck with a rope!
Is that Frank Grouard out there?” Crook stuck his head out the flaps of a nearby tent glowing with lamps, the small space filled not only with a map-strewn table, two cots, and a Sibley stove, but with Mackenzie and Dodge.
Grouard began moving that way, saying, “It is, General.”
Mackenzie immediately pushed past Crook and held out his hand at the flaps. “Ranald Mackenzie. Commanding, Fourth Cavalry. I’ve heard a lot about you, Grouard.”
“Good to meet you too, General.”
“Well, Frank—what have you seen?” Mackenzie asked as he slipped a glove back on his right hand.
“Seen heaps.”
Mackenzie scratched his chin. “So where are the reds?”
Gesturing with a slight toss of his head to the west, Grouard answered, “I make ’em over in the mountains.”
As Donegan stood there watching the three expedition leaders, he once more noticed the stark contrasts between the men. While Crook seemed oblivious to his dress—wearing worn and dirty wool coats and fur caps naked of any insignia or badge of office, even to the point of carelessly tying up the long ends of his bushy red beard into a pair of braided points with twine—Mackenzie and Dodge, on the other hand, were the noble specimens of a cavalry or infantry officer: wearing their complete uniforms with pride.
“John,” Crook said, turning to Bourke, “bring Three Bears to see us.”
“Something up, General?”
Crook’s eyes bounced over the small gathering of officers and civilizations at that fire outside his tent. “Yes. This time I’ve decided to keep Cosgrove’s Shoshones as reserves and let the Indians most familiar with this ground do my scouting for me.”
“Makes good sense,” Grouard replied.
“I’m glad you agree,” the general replied. “I’ve put Lieutenant Schuyler over the Snakes, to work with Cosgrove and Washakie’s two sons who came along. But come on inside now, Frank. We’ve got some talking to do before I figure to send some of those Sioux scouts north to feel out where we go from here.”
“Very good, General,” Bourke replied, pulling on his wool gloves and stepping away. “I’ll return shortly.”
Well after moonset eight of the Red Cloud Agency Sioux and six of the Arapaho slipped quietly into the dark, rationed for four days, instructed to scout north by west toward the mountains.
By the time the expedition had reached Reno Cantonment, many of the Indian scouts had sorted out for themselves who were some of the more powerful soldiers. Clearly Crook, Mackenzie, and Dodge, along with those men nominally placed over the auxiliaries … but to the warriors’ way of thinking, one of the soldier chiefs with the biggest medicine was Lieutenant Charles Rockwell, commissary officer for the Fourth Cavalry. After all, it was he who had unquestioned authority and control over such immense stores of the coveted bacon, sugar, and coffee! But try as they might to get Rockwell to trade items of clothing and beadwork for heaps of rations, the young lieutenant remained steadfast in his duty and played no favorites as he and his men kept a lock on the valuable foodstuffs.
With the arrival of the paymaster that night, a spontaneous celebration erupted among the cold men as there was at least a cramped log trading store close by the cantonment where the soldiers could fritter away their meager month’s wages on the sutler’s crude whiskey.
Dawn of the nineteenth found the sky lowering and a new storm approaching out of the west over the mountains. As soon as the wind quartered out of the north, the temperature seemed to fall ever farther. While most men continued throwing away their pay on wild debauchery, a few in each outfit pooled their money and purchased tinned tomatoes, potatoes, and other delicacies, making for a brief change in their drab and monotonous diet. For miles up and down the Powder River, infantry soldiers and cavalry troopers, teamsters, packers, and scouts caroused noisily.
“If Crazy Horse had any doubt the army’s coming after him,” John Bourke said as half a hundred men hurried to watch a fistfight broken out a few yards away, “that red bastard will be able to hear this bunch all the way to the slopes of the Big Horns!”
Seamus chuckled, sipping at his steaming coffee. He was content and relaxed, lounging on his saddle blanket, his back against a downed cottonwood trunk, feet to the fire. “I know for damned certain this isn’t where the devil was born, but from the sounds of it, Johnny—this seems like the place the devil was sure as hell raised up!”
The lieutenant stood, tossing the last dregs of his coffee onto the snowy ground as dusty flakes tumbled all about them. “You’re coming over to the council?”
“Is it that time already?”
Stuffing his big turnip watch back inside his wool vest, Bourke replied, “Soon enough. I should try to be there before the warrior groups show up.”
After taking another drink of his coffee, Donegan asked, “This council really has to do with the Sioux complaining to Crook?”
Nodding, the lieutenant said, “When the general had Three Bears come to his tent last night to enlist some warriors to go scout the foot of the mountains—the Sioux war chief seized the opportunity to complain to Crook that the Pawnee hadn’t been treating them all that kindly.”
“Kindly!” Donegan shrieked. “Mother of God, but they’re blood enemies—by the saints! Back to their grandfather’s grandfather!”
“C’mon, Irishman—this ought to prove interesting to watch.”
Seamus stood, bringing his pint tin of coffee steaming in his hand. “How right you are, Johnny. Here I been thinking Crook was making himself a reputation as an Injin-fighter … and now he’s got to go and play diplomat between his own bleeming Injins!”
Crook’s primary purpose in holding this council with the leaders of his four hundred Indian auxiliaries was to have them eventually come to understand his ground rules for the fight that was sure to come.
While the Sioux had come to complain they were being snubbed by their traditional enemies, for the general there were clearly bigger fish to fry. Yet as the Pawnee showed up arrayed in their full uniforms, and the Shoshone arrived wearing their native dress mixed with some white man’s clothing garnered over the decades of friendly relations, the Sioux and their allies came to the meeting in their war paint and scalp shirts. Frank North and Tom Cosgrove hurried to call the open provocation to the general’s attention. John Bourke watched as Crook quickly dispensed with this matter of Indian dress by waving it off with a hand and going to seat himself near the center of
