Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (22 page)

To die would be immeasurably better than being forced to endure the indignity of working as a slave for the white man, forced to build the white man's railroad—a smoking monster that was destroying not only the buffalo herds and the buffalo country, but the land of the Kiowa as well.

But instead of hanging at the end of the white man's rope at Dall-ass, he and Big Tree had been put on a rocking stage to continue their trip north. From the windows of that stage, the chiefs had looked beyond the cordon of their armed escort to the banks of the Red River, familiar like the face of an old friend. For the space of a few heartbeats their spirits had soared like the bounding leaps of a little yellow buffalo calf, playful and happy, for they both had believed they were heading home to their people.

But on the north bank of the river there was a short stop while a second group of soldiers took over for the first, who themselves turned back across the Red River and headed south to Dall-ass with the empty stage. Among the shade of the trees on the riverbank, the chiefs had their heavy ankle and wrist shackles removed, then were shown to remove their striped prison uniforms and were given the white man's civilian clothing in its place.

Instead of heading northwest to the reservation, Satanta and Big Tree were taken northeast, once dressed and mounted on horseback. For another three days they rode, handcuffed only but still surrounded by their new escort. On the third they arrived at a small settlement on the Choctaw reservation. There at Atoka the chiefs were placed on board one of the smoking horses at last. Still not told where they were heading and why, Satanta knew only that they were going east. Farther and farther into the land of the white man. Farther and farther from the land of his birth.

How cruel it would be, he had thought, to be taken so far from one's homeland to die. Where your bones would have to lie among the bones of strangers.

Then on the twenty-eighth of September, the two chiefs were secreted from a railroad station, through the streets of a large city, to a hotel where they spent the night sleeping on the floor of their room, refusing to lie on the white man's too-soft bed.

And that next morning came the biggest surprise of all: they were ushered into a large room of that fancy building called the Everette House in St. Louis, there to be greeted by a dozen of their fellow chiefs and head men who had brought along clothing for Satanta and Big Tree to wear during the two-day reunion visit. Such joy was this! All was hugs and happiness, tears and the singing of chants for the surprise occasion. Many times the pipe was smoked among the old friends brought all the way here from the reservation, all this way east to visit with the two prisoners.

From here the others were to continue on east farther still to meet with the Great White Father himself. But for some reason, the white man had decided to allow this special visit between the two chiefs and their friends. The chiefs sang and smoked, took their meals seated on the carpeted floor and slept rolled in their blankets among the parlor furniture. The second day, the whole delegation was given a scenic tour of the great city, where the curious faces stared back from the sides of the roads and the fronts of the white man's tall, stone buildings.

It was meant to impress him, Satanta knew—this transparent show of the white man's wealth and strength of numbers. Yet it made him only crave his homeland all the more. Far better the prairie and rivers, the buttes and bluffs and high plains of his home. Better the wild game of Kiowa country than all this cobblestone and granite and coal-smoke that made him cough and his eyes burn. He would in no way give up what had been his the day he was born a free man, in return for all that the white man had to offer in the way of material wealth.

Oh, for the clean, free wind of the open prairie!

Again and again those two days, as he peered into the faces of his old friends, Satanta harkened for the old days. So afraid they were now gone and never to be again.

And then that last night, the chiefs discussed the serious matter of the white man's anger aroused each time the young men rode away from the reservation for raids into Texas. Each one understood that Satanta and Big Tree would never be freed as long as Kiowa warriors continued crossing the Red River into the land of the Tehannas. So it was decided by that council that upon the arrival of the head men back home, both Lone Wolf and Kicking Bird would form a police society to patrol the fringes of the reservation both day and night, to prevent any young hot-blood from riding south for scalps and horses.

Coming all too quickly, the third morning dawned with immense sadness. Again the hugs and chants in parting as the others went east to meet with the Great White Father, while Satanta and Big Tree were taken back to the terrible, degrading labor on their chain gang, once again wearing the striped clothes and the heavy iron shackles.

Back again into the land of the hated Tehannas, forced to build the railroad that would be not only the death of the buffalo, but the death of the Kiowa who hunted them as well.

Chapter 16

September 1873

“We'll see you when you ride back here next month,” said Reuben Waller as he waved to them both.

“Till then, Sergeant!” shouted Seamus Donegan as he followed Jack Stillwell, the two civilians and their military escort south from Fort Sill, I.T.

Seeing Captain Louis Carpenter again confirmed for Seamus that there were and always would be good officers in the army—as much as meeting Lieutenant Colonel John W. Davidson had convinced the Irishman there were and always would be small, petty and mean-spirited officers in that same Army of the West.

Given the task of commanding Fort Sill and the Tenth Negro Cavalry while Colonel Grierson was on temporary assignment back east, Davidson had quickly proved himself a martinet. Becoming a leader of men brought out the good in some, the very worst in others.

So it had been for the new commander of Fort Sill, a man clearly not popular among his white officers, and especially among the Negro enlisted who served on this Indian frontier. To attempt a sure-handed control of his subordinate officers, Davidson had tried through transfer and outright removal to oust most of Grierson's handpicked officers. And among the rank and file, the lieutenant colonel became quickly unpopular with his harsh and capricious rulings against gambling and restrictions against alcohol on the military reservation.

Not long after the winter campaigns led by Custer and Evans against the hostile tribes, the Tenth Cavalry had been transferred from Kansas Territory to Camp Wichita, soon thereafter to the new post General Philip H. Sheridan himself had named for an old friend of his killed in the war, Joshua Sill. Four companies of the Tenth were assigned to garrison the new post, while two would garrison Camp Supply to the north on the Southern Cheyenne reservation. The six troops of Negro cavalrymen were now expected to keep corraled thousands of free-roaming buffalo-hunting nomads, in addition to running herd on white interlopers and whiskey peddlers, as well as provide escorts along stage routes and for the frequent trains of freight contractors.

On top of that, the Tenth still eked out time to build Fort Sill from the ground up once an old sawmill was dismantled and brought in from old Fort Arbuckle. In the nearby Wichita Mountains, labor gangs of black soldiers cut and dressed stone from the quarries they worked, slowly erecting the buildings that would stand near the clear, sparkling streams called the Cache and the Medicine Bluff.

But even more than all the overwhelming evidence clearly showing Seamus that the regiment had poured its sweat into this outpost in the very heart of Indian Territory, a regiment still troubled by more than what were considered normal conditions in the frontier army—it was more the state of readiness among the Tenth Cavalry that astounded the thirty-three-year-old veteran of the Army of the Potomac and Sheridan's Army of the Shenandoah.

That these Negro soldiers should be asked to do so much, given so little, and to come through guarding the Texas frontier as effectively as they had, was no small miracle to the Irishman.

Down in the stables, a proud Reuben Waller had given a dollar tour to his old friends from the siege on the Arickaree. As brushed and curried as those mounts were, Seamus could tell the horses were the hand-me-downs of the Army of the West. Saddles, bits, cruppers, everything here was secondhand and passed down from white regiments when it was too old or worn or no longer serviceable for those outfits. Instead of spending the money for new equipment on the Negro regiments, the Ninth and Tenth cavalries were instead given the dregs and ordered to make it once more serviceable.

For the most part, Colonel Grierson's Tenth Cavalry had done just that. Passed down a motley collection of nags good only for glue from white units, the Tenth had nursed the last ounce of strength and use from horses who had seen service in the War of the Rebellion.

“That's more than thirteen, maybe fourteen years these horses been used hard,” Seamus had muttered angrily, inspecting the teeth of some of the better-looking stock. “And these are your best, Reuben.”

“We do what we can, Seamus—with what the army give us.”

It had stung the Irishman's soul to have to look into that newly-striped sergeant's black face, reading there the clear and evident pride of accomplishment made against great odds, and not be able to tell Waller what he thought of this continuing injustice to the former slaves and freed men, many of whom had served themselves during the war, men who now served their country in this foreign land, protecting white citizens and settlers from a hostile red race.

“These saddles aren't fit to go on the back of any animal,” Seamus had declared there in the shadows of the stables. “They'll likely damage a mount forced to carry a sojur in one of these. These riggings ought to be thrown out—good for nothing more than the wolves to chew on the rawhide trees!”

“We expecting some better ones soon,” Waller had explained. “General Augur's inspector come through here a couple months back and saw what a state we was in. The department commander's ordered us to get replacements soon as the army can find some to send us.”

“More bleeming hand-me-downs, Sergeant Waller!”

“We'll take what we get, and do with it what we can—like I told you.”

Damn, but if that didn't make Seamus proud of Waller, his Captain Carpenter and the whole of the Tenth U.S. Negro Cavalry, forced to fight not only the bloodthirsty Kiowa and Kwahadi Comanche, but forced to struggle for a decent saddle to strap atop a decent horse that could carry a man into battle and back out again.

“Your men any good with your weapons?” Seamus had asked, then found Waller could only look at the earth floor in the stable.

He did not meet the Irishman's eyes directly when he answered, “We don't get a chance to shoot our weapons much.”

“You low on ammunition?”

Waller nodded. “When we got it, and our rifles work, we might get in a little practice.”

Donegan gazed from the shadows of the stable into the sunshine of the Fort Sill parade where the regimental standard fluttered in the late-summer breeze. It was clearly tattered and badly in need of repair, faded as it hung beside the stars and stripes. Below the proud banner, Waller had stopped them on their way to the stables and proudly declared that some of the men in his H Company had sewn this, their only regimental standard, from cloth begged off some white officers' wives.

“The Tenth wasn't issued the regulation silk-embroidered standard?”

Reuben had shaken his head, eyes glistening. “Never. So we made our own—proud as we are to be soldiers, Seamus. Proud as we are.”

“By glory—your men are fighting more than one enemy out here, Sergeant.”

“We proud of our record, Seamus. The Tenth Cavalry got the lowest rate of desertion for any regiment, white or black, foot or horse—in the whole goddamned army. And we proud because we got the lowest courts-martial for drunkenness and unseemly behavior.”

Donegan shook his head and embraced the Negro soldier, proud to call a man like Waller friend. “By the saints, you black orphans done right well. The Tenth Cavalry gives sojuring a good name, Sergeant. A good … and honorable name.”

In leaving Fort Sill, Stillwell pointed them almost due south for the Red River, a wide and lazy thing this time of the year, wild and crazed during the turbulent springs come to the southern plains. It was still the shank of the summer in this country, with only the faintest hint of autumn come to the evening air.

“This is the new home of Sharp Grover,” Jack said as they splashed up the south bank of the Red River. “Texas.”

“That old man really settled down?”

Stillwell grinned. “I suppose Sharp hasn't told you about the power of a good woman over a man, has he?”

With that said, Donegan grinned. “I see. You suppose she keeps him hobbled good and nosed on a tight rein?”

“Old or not, Sharp Grover would be a handful for any woman to keep a tight rein on, Seamus. Almost … almost as much a handful as you're likely to be one day soon.”

*   *   *

“What's any of that claptrap of these railroads failing back east got to do with us out here?” Jack Stillwell asked Sharp Grover after they had pulled chairs up to a lopsided table in a sunlit corner of Jimmy Nolan's Dance House in Jacksboro, Texas, the settlement built near the outskirts of Fort Richardson.

Grover shrugged. “All I know is when these railroad fellas get sour-faced and down in their brew about something—it can't be good tidings for us out here.”

Upon depositing the two government men and their escort out at Fort Richardson, Jack Stillwell had led the Irishman into the little frontier town of Jacksboro. Like so many other wild and woolly places on the fringe of the white man's civilization, Jacksboro had remained relatively small, populated by no more than two hundred at any one time, mostly by those who followed the fortunes of the frontier army: whiskey peddlers, drummers, snake-oil and love-potion salesmen, gamblers and bummers, along with the women who plied their trade in the stinking cribs at the back of some twenty-seven saloons—the Gem, the Emerald, Island Home and more.