Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (31 page)

Once beyond the tattling ears of the stockade, Fetterman had turned to his friends and confided, “I want you to be the first to know that Carrington's not long for this command.”

Bisbee laughed and slapped his thigh, gushing. “I knew it! Tell me more!”

“Just before I left the East for this assignment, a friend at the War Department informed me of some changes in the wind.”

“I want to hear all of it!” Brown begged.

Fetterman grinned. “There's a reorganization under way … a postwar thing. And, so I'm told, that reorganization will place me as the new commander of Fort Phil Kearny.”

“What of old yellow britches himself?” Brown growled.

“Carrington?” Fetterman asked with a smile. “I suppose the army will find something suitable for a man of his talents. A desk job. Recruiting for the new army. While the fighting men of the old army are given new fields to conquer!”

“Gad, Judd!” Bisbee cheered. “Tell us when.”

“Soon, is all I know. Back in Washington City they're burning to have Congress enlarge the frontier army. Plans are to use our Second Battalion of the Eighteenth as the core for building the new Twenty-seventh Infantry!”

“With Captain Fetterman in command!” Bisbee roared.

“No, Bill,” he corrected. “
Colonel
William Judd Fetterman.” He clenched his gloved fist. “Colonel Fetterman, in charge of crushing the Sioux.”

Brown reined up. For a moment the three officers sat, staring down into the valley of Peno Creek as Metzger had dismounted, letting his horse chew at the winter-dried grass blown free of snow.

“Such wild, pretty country,” Fetterman admitted at last. “Let's ride down and take a look.”

“Can't,” Brown grumped. “Orders.”

“Whose?”

“Carrington's,” Bisbee answered. “Who else?”

“Why?”

“We aren't to cross this ridge,” Brown answered.

Fetterman pointed down the north slope. “What lies there?”

“Sioux!” Brown shouted, flinging his fist into the frosty air. “Twenty-five hundred of them, Judd! Waiting for us.”

Fetterman grinned with that look of a timber wolf catching its first whiff of prey on the breeze. “Boys, those red bastards won't have long to wait!”

After dark on the eighth, as Metzger sat drinking his gill of whiskey, Fetterman, Brown, and their eager recruit, Lt. George Grummond, had led a detail of enthusiastic soldiers down to the Big Piney, where they staked out some mules to graze, certain their bait would draw warriors into their trap. In the cold and snow along the creek, Fetterman's heavily armed troopers waited. And shivered. Wishing they lay warm in their bunks or stood at Kinney's bar with the rest.

Those left behind passed the long winter evening rereading worn newspapers from the last mail brought north from Laramie. Others played with soiled, greasy decks of cards. Some gambled next payday's wages on a race or two of lice across a warm tin plate. Most drank and talked, and waited too. Listening for rifles to crack from the Big Piney.

When the guns bark, Adolph thought, Fetterman's caught his Indians.

Beside a stack of calico and flannel on the bar, Jim Bridger sat, rocking back and forth in his chair, half dozing at times while he listened to others boast of what Fetterman would do to the Sioux once he got his hands on some of the slippery devils.

“Won't stand and fight like men!” one old soldier barked.

“Exactly what the colonel told Fetterman,” Metzger said. “Told the captain he could not figure to fight Indians the way he fought the rebels.”

“What would Carrington know about fighting Johnnies?” the old veteran growled at the bugler. “Colonel knows even less 'bout fighting Injuns!”

By midnight most had abandoned the trading post for their bunks and blankets. A pale moon shed milky light along the Big Piney, revealing Fetterman's inviting bait. Down in the tangle of brush and snow, the eager detail struggled to keep their chattering teeth quiet. A lucky few dozed. But most shuddered in the cold, nursing their first doubts in Fetterman's scheme to whip the Sioux.

As the gray of dawn slithered out of the east, Fetterman led his shivering detail back to the fort. The captain crawled beneath his warm blankets just as bugler Metzger blew reveille.

Chapter 24

November was eleven days old. The weather continued bright as a polished brass button, the air cold and crisp. Overhead hung a sky as incredibly blue as the water of high-country beaver pond.

Ever since his arrival nine days ago, Captain Fetterman stole every spare moment to drill infantry and cavalry alike. Carrington, on the other hand, had a fort to build. He ordered every waking hour of these shrinking autumn days to be used for construction. To assure that the men would remain soldiers, Fetterman ordered his troops out before reveille and kept them drilling long after the last notes of retreat had echoed across the parade.

For over a week the men had struggled to maintain the pace, serving two taskmasters. One ordered them to raise a post before snow blanketed the land. The other ordered them to be soldiers, first of all.

“The snow be damned!” Fetterman had growled more than once. “Let the colonel worry about the weather. I want Red Cloud to worry about losing his scalp!”

They were cheering words to men who too long had suffered one embarrassing defeat after another. Fetterman's words bristled with bravado. Easy enough for Donegan to realize why old veterans and new recruits alike harkened to the captain's siren call.

There's a boon of courage among most warriors, he thought to himself, until the hell of battle begins.

Leaning back against a raw-boarded wall outside officers' quarters, Seamus dreamily watched soldiers drill back and forth across the parade. He sighed, enjoying the high-morning sunlight. A Sunday off. On the autumn breeze floated the tinny piano pounding out an old hymn, “There Is a Light in the Window.”

Reverend White at it already, he mused. Calling his flock to worship.

From time to time even the strident notes of the out-of-tune piano disappeared, drowned beneath the profane curses of the tall, blond-bearded sergeant of Company C. Donegan closed his eyes, vowing neither Methodists nor cavalry sergeants would intrude upon the peace of his Sunday morning.

Eventually he found himself in that warm pool where a man swims halfway down into sleep. Half dreaming, yet still able to make some sense of what his ears overhear. The noise on the parade grew to a chanting roar. The sort of rumble Seamus Donegan recognized. The sound of men making sport of a fight. Goading one combatant or the other. Cheering for the winner. Catcalls for the bloodier man.

Doubting he should, Seamus cracked his eyes open into the bright light caressing his face. Sorry just as quickly that he took measure of the brawl. For what he saw was not at all to his liking.

Eli Garrett, Sergeant, Company C, danced easily as a cat back and forth within the ring of soldiers who had broken off their close-order march to watch their drill-master lay into a hapless green recruit. What began with a severe tongue-lashing now found Garrett shoving the private back, back, back into the swelling mob. Time and again the private ducked away from Garrett, who pursued the recruit like a cat toying with a mouse.

Seamus eased down off the porch, slow to shake the kinks from his shoulders. Shame it had to be the likes of Eli Garrett to ruin a fine Sunday morn, he brooded.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Garrett spat into the private's face. “Never be a soldier! Knew it I first laid eyes on you at Jefferson Barracks!”

This time Eli swung a big fist and connected. Squarely on the breastbone. Knocking the private down, making him gag for wind. With an arm like an oak fence post, Garrett swept down and locked hold of the youngster's tunic. Yanking him to his feet like a wet rag-doll, still gasping for air.

“No-no-no!” he sputtered, bubbles spurting from his lips as he threw his hands up.

“I'll show you, Burke!” Garrett shouted. “You'll not frig up again in my unit!” His eyes swept the growing crowd, his words meant for all in his company. “You each see what awaits the soldier what frigs up in Eli Garrett's troop!”

He whirled, shaking the private at the end of one arm. “Gonna make an example outta you, boy! Watched you frig up one thing after another … for the last time, Burke!”

When Garrett's fist connected against the youngster's jaw, it reminded Donegan of the crack of a wood chopper's axe against a hardwood tree. Solid. Destructive. Still, Seamus hung back at the edge of the crowd.

Army business, he tried convincing himself. Best to stay far from it.

“You been trying to make a fool of me ever since you joined, ain't you, Burke?” He scraped the semiconscious private off the brittle autumn grass of the parade.

Burke tried mumbling something, his eyes fluttering, spitting some blood from his lip as he stared up into the new-day sun, watching the shadow of Garrett's arm swing his way again. Eli connected under the jaw. Burke sank to the ground like a sodden rag.

“We're not done yet, Burke!” Garrett screeched. “Been waiting just as long as you to settle this. 'Cause you're no soldier!”

Standing over Burke, Garrett looked to his left, seeing Fetterman among others atop the porch in front of headquarters. Bisbee, Wands, Powell, Brown, and others watched too. Yet Fetterman made no move to stop the beating. Nor did any other officer. Garrett nodded to Fetterman. Instead of nodding in reply, the captain merely crossed his arms and leaned against a porch timber. That simple gesture told the cavalry sergeant all he wanted to know. With the approval of Capt. William Judd Fetterman, wasn't a soldier on this post going to stop Eli Garrett from giving Pvt. Thomas Burke the beating he so richly deserved.

He savagely drove a dusty boot-toe into Burke's ribs. Donegan listened to the familiar crunch of bone as Garrett struck a second time. Grunting in agony, the private rolled over, struggling to crawl onto his knees, with one arm protecting his ribcage. With his fist driven like an oak mallet, Garrett smashed the back of Burke's neck. Driving the private's face into the dust and dried grass.

Donegan parted the men before him like sheaves of wheat, paying no attention to the faces or the uniforms they wore.

“Fact be, you frigging bastard!” Garrett screamed as he snatched the back of Burke's collar, yanking him off the ground, swinging his limp body around. “I think I'll finish the job 'stead of waiting for Red Cloud to do it for me. I'll finish you first my——”

The cheering stopped. Fell silent. As Eli Garrett slowly turned round, his huge right fist held aloft, ready to swing at Burke—but imprisoned for the moment in the grip of the dark-haired Irishman.

A look of surprise, then shock. Finally something like raw pleasure crossed Eli Garrett's face as he came face to face with Seamus Donegan. The Irishman recognized the crazed, feral eyes. Seeing something in their raw, red depths that told him not only had Garrett been punishing the whiskey early this morning, but something even more frightening and foreign lay behind them. Something Seamus had only rarely seen. That look of a timber wolf as he closes in on a hamstrung buffalo calf.

“Seamus!” he bellowed, happy to see Donegan. “Surprised you're out of your blankets this early to a Sunday morning. Going to church, are you?”

Donegan gripped Garrett's fist all the tighter as the sergeant struggled to wrench his arm free. “Ought to let the boy go, Eli,” he said calmly, squeezing. “Youngster like him don't go a hundred fifty pounds, what with a sackful of old horseshoes in each hand. I figure you can find something better for your darty hands to be doing.”

“If I ain't whoring, I'm drinking,” Eli replied, struggling to free his fist. “And if I ain't drinking, I'm fighting.”

“Smells of you holding Sunday service atop Judge Kinney's whiskey barrel this morning. You been burning your goozle with his saddle varnish already, eh?”

“Was a time we drank and fought side by side, Seamus Donegan,” Garrett replied. “Afore you lost your taste for fun and soldiering. Afore you growed a yellow band down your spine.”

Donegan flung Garrett's arm backward, spinning the sergeant off balance. Eli recovered on the balls of his feet instantly, rubbing the fist Seamus had crimped.

“Taken me better than two years now,” Donegan said as his left hand popped the horn buttons from their holes on the front of his mackinaw overcoat. “Think now I figured out about you and me … and that grove of hangman's oak at Front Royal in the Shenandoah back to 'sixty-four.”

“You're yellow! Plain and simple!” he roared, listening as many of the soldiers laughed with him. “Didn't hang that rebel leader. Didn't raise your gun to shoot the rest of Mosby's raiders neither. Admit it, Seamus Donegan—you gone coward!”

Donegan sighed, his gray eyes flitting over the crowd for an instant. Even at his young age, a man found Donegan's face etched with the fine seams of experience a long and bloody war had given him. A lifetime for any fighting man.

“No, Eli Garrett,” he replied quietly. “You're the coward.” He waited while the sergeant quit laughing. “You're afraid to stand before a man on equal terms, aren't you? Like Mosby's men who you hung and shot for Custer at Front Royal. You're a mighty big man when the enemy can't fight back, eh, Eli?”

“Goddamn you! I'm no cow——”

“That's it, ain't it? You screamed long and loud about me being a yellow-back,” he said as he flung his coat down. “But, Eli Garrett can only work up the nerve to kill when the enemy's already beaten. Like those bushwackers you and Custer had strung up and shot. And,” he glanced at Burke slumped in the grass, “like that poor sojur there. Ain't got no more a chance against you than a boy.”

“By the gods, I'll cleave you, Donegan!” he shouted, trembling.