Telegraphic Briefs
Pay of Indian Agents
WASHINGTON, January 10.—The house committee on Indian affairs agreed this morning to report for passage the bill offered by Mr. Seelye at the last session, which authorizes the secretary of the interior, whichever in his discretion it seems wise, to add $100 yearly to the salary of each Indian agent, accruing after two years of continuous service. This increase to continue yearly, until the salary shall reach $2,000 a year, which shall be the agent’s salary thereafter as long as he holds the place.
WYOMING
New Diggings Discovered
GREEN RIVER, January 10.—Eleven miners came into Camp Brown on the 6th instant for supplies from the head of Wood river, and bring coarse gold with them. They report about thirty men now in the diggings, working with rockers, making $10 per day and upwards. One man found a nugget weighing $30. The party report no snow on the route and very little in camp. They return immediately.
That first morning alone again, Seamus climbed onto the bluffs that bordered the eastern rim of the Tongue River Valley, pausing for a moment to watch the soldiers at work below. Some threw stacks of folded tents into the wagons, others hitched the balky, braying mules into their traces, while others kicked out their fires and began to fall into formation for the drudgery of the day’s march.
Somewhere in the midst of those four-hundred-some men were those who had become friends in the space of less than a month, along with those nameless soldiers he had joined in climbing the icy slope, shoulder to shoulder. Faceless men, all but their eyes hidden behind the crude wool masks. Soldiers young, soldiers old— ordinary men called upon to exercise extraordinary bravery: out of ammunition, when many might have retreated, those three companies fixed bayonets and kept on moving beneath the galling fire of the enemy.
The wind smelled of snow up there—a sharp tang wafting off that broken land to the north. Donegan pulled up the collar to his heavy buffalo coat, then slowly put his fingers to his brow in salute.
“To good sojurs,” he said quietly. “For service beyond the call of duty.”
Turning the claybank aside, the Irishman put the Tongue River at his back and continued his climb up the divide. Hours later, at the crest, he looked back—finding the top half of the Wolf Mountains obliterated by low slate clouds. More snow before the night was done. He knew the Bighorns arose from the plains somewhere to the southwest, but for now they were hidden by distance, by storm clouds, by winter itself. He prayed to see them off to his right one day real soon.
Down into the valley of Hanging Woman Creek they dropped, that claybank mare and he, following the frozen stream south by east until twilight. Wary and watchful all that day, he had stayed down from the skyline, constantly watching the horizon to the west for enemy horsemen. At the edge of a frozen stream piercing a small grove of cottonwood saplings, Seamus took shelter as the sun continued to drain its light from the west. He decided not to build a fire, no matter how small. Instead he took the horse to the creek, broke a hole in the thick slate of ice, and let the animal drink its fill from the narrow trickle as he loosened the cinch.
Then Seamus looped the reins around a wrist, settled back down against the brush, and closed his eyes.
It was well past slap dark and snowing when the horse tugged on the reins enough to wake him in its search for some fodder to eat. It hadn’t been enough sleep to make him feel rested, but he hoped it would be enough that he could ride on through till morning. After tightening the cinch Donegan cut himself a thin sliver of tobacco and laid it inside his cheek. It always helped to give him a little stir, the better to keep himself awake for what he had to do.
He covered the fifty-some miles of that southeastern bee-line to the Powder River in two and a half days, traveling at night in the most bitter conditions while temperatures once more dropped out of the bottom. At times he allowed himself a little fire, not really the sort for boiling coffee or frying his salt pork, just something small—the sort of fire that could cheer a man while a dull pewter sun came up in the east after a long night’s ride, the sort of fire that could keep company with a lonely man as he stirred restlessly in his blankets throughout the day, dragging kindling together from time to time to keep that small fire going until it grew dark enough for them to move out again.
He watered them both twice a day—at morning and again at dusk. And never did he remove the saddle, choosing instead only to loosen the cinch while he dozed and the horse cropped at what grass it could find. There were times the animal nuzzled him during the day, awakening him from the light, fitful slumber Seamus allowed himself. Donegan stirred, stiff and cranky, untying the horse and moving it to another spot where it could dig and tear at more sustenance before he settled himself again. Much of the time the Irishman passed out in his blankets, sitting up with the Winchester across his lap and the Sharps laid out along his right leg. Other times he allowed himself the luxury of lying curled up on his side atop the dried mattress of some windblown grass at the base of a tree, or wrapped fetally atop some spongy sagebrush that kept him above most of the drifted snow.
When the light began to fade and he found himself too cold and stiff to sleep any longer, Seamus began to move again, slowly. Scrounging about for more kindling, anything dry enough for him to use one of his few remaining lucifers. Build himself a fire just big enough to rub his bare hands over, flames only high enough that he could yank off the army’s buffalo overboots, then tug off the calf-high boots, just to hold his damp stockings and cold feet there by the flames for a few minutes while he wiggled his toes and the sky went to dark.
Each time he gazed at those first stars coming out to announce the coming of night, he remembered the way her eyes had glimmered by a fire’s light on their honeymoon ride north from the Staked Plain of Texas, across the wilds to Colorado Territory, and on north to find a roost for her, eventually, at Fort Laramie. Many nights spent camping beneath the stars themselves as new bride and groom, rolled and twisted together, leg in leg, for warmth beneath the layers of canvas and wool blankets, staring up at a black dome not far different from this.
He wondered if she ever came out at night down to Laramie, to look up at the sky and think of his being somewhere beneath those same stars. He wondered if it helped the loneliness for her the way it helped his. Like a warming balm a man would knead into a sore muscle or open wound—this looking up at the same sky she was under at that same moment. It made Seamus feel that much closer to her, not near so far away, as he finally stood, kicked snow onto the tiny pile of burning sticks, then tightened the cinch and rode off under that endless black dome.
Surely she looked up at those same stars. He was all the closer to her because of it. Donegan was certain she must feel his presence, too, when she gazed at the sky that looked down upon them both. How it brought him comfort.
Upon striking the Powder after those first fifty-some miles, he figured he had his way home. Follow the river south. Past the mouth of the Crazy Woman Fork—where he had begun ten long years of fighting the Lakota and Cheyenne in this land, coming to know why they guarded this country so jealously. He had left childhood roots in Ireland to sail to Amerikay but found no home in Boston Towne, far less among the mobile, rootless, roaming camps of the Union cavalry. But once that terrible business was over back east, Donegan had wanted to be as far from all that had been as he could put himself.
Little had he expected that he would find a home in the west, to fall in love with the sheer immensity and rugged beauty of its towering mountains and endless prairies. Little had he expected he would ever find someone he so desperately wanted to share that home with.
“Stay warm, Samantha,” he would whisper to himself each dawn as he closed his eyes and put himself to sleep thinking of the two of them waiting for him at Laramie. “Soon …”
How far would it be? he asked himself. How many miles down the Powder to Reno Cantonment from here? Fifty? No farther. He figured it had to be more than seventy, as much as eighty, miles from where he’d first struck the Powder. But what with the twists and loops of the river, it was hard for a man to tell just how many miles for sure.
At times he would pass a bare buffalo skull lying akimbo along his trail, a horn and skull plate half-in, half-out, of a dirty skiff of snow. When the shimmering winter moonlight shone bright enough on the landscape, Seamus recognized the tracks of an occasional coyote or deer or antelope crisscrossing the wind-sculpted snow as the two of them rose and fell, climbed and descended, the vaulting, heaving country. Day before yesterday a few prairie dogs poked their heads up from their dark holes, emerging into the bitter cold and strong wind to bark in protest
