Trumpet on the Land (38 page)

“That … New York seems so far away,” Samantha

said.

He nodded, lips pursed beneath that brush-straw mustache. “Yes, but even when Lulu waited back at McPherson for me—it was all the same to me. A mile or ten thousand. A day or a whole campaign. When a war comes between a man and his woman, it matters not how far they are apart, nor does it matter for how long, Samantha. What remains important is that those two people keep one another in their hearts.”

“Yes,” she said, suddenly deciding. “You can remind him of that, Mr. Cody.”

“Bill, please.”

“Bill, yes. Remind Seamus of what I've told him and written him so many times: that there are times that I think of him, almost feel him draw near just through the power of what I feel in my heart—and that makes this lonely ache a little more bearable.”

Cody slipped the wide-brimmed sombrero from his head and held it over his own heart as he took up the reins to the big buckskin. Beyond them the bugles were blaring the notes that formed up the ranks. Then with the rattling noise of a child's wind-up wooden toy clattering across an uneven floor, the sergeants in every one of those cavalry
companies yelled and shouted and bawled and hollered out their one-word order.

“Mount!”

Cody leaned close for a moment. “To feel him near you with the power of your love for him—ah, that will make a man like Seamus more happy than you could ever know, Samantha. I am dead certain that your words will drive all the lonely ache from his heart, believe me!”

He planted the hat back atop his long curls, then slipped one tall, knee-high boot into a stirrup.

“Tell him …” Then she suddenly felt shy as Cody turned there in midmounting, waiting for her to continue. She held her fingertips against her lips as she whispered, “Tell Seamus that I love him.”

He nodded and rose to the saddle, bowing slightly at the waist when he said, “By all means, Samantha. To Seamus that will mean the most.”

She came forward a step, her fingers lacing around the reins just short of the buckskin's bit. Important that here in these last few moments she could stand close to a man who would soon be standing this close to Seamus—she wanted to say so much but could not think of where to begin, how to get it all out.

“Mr. Cody—”

“Bill. I asked you please, Samantha.”

With one hand holding the shawl around her, she now took her other hand from the buckskin's reins and placed it softly on her swollen belly, rubbing it slightly the way she liked to sense the contact on her taut skin below the layers of clothing, the way she knew the child must like to feel her touching, caressing.

“Yes, Bill. And tell him … tell Seamus that
we
both love him.”

Cody smiled with his lips pursed for a moment, then blinked his eyes, moving his lips before any words came out. He turned away briefly, swiping his eyes clear. When he turned back to look down at her, the plainsman had to
clear his throat before he could say, “That, Samantha …
that
will mean
everything
to him.”

She watched him tap the brim of his hat as he squeezed his knees against the buckskin's ribs and the horse moved off.

“Column of fours!” bawled a loud voice that carried over the entire width and breadth of the grassy parade. “By the right—turn!”

Easing quickly into a lope, the plainsman reined away toward the head of the column that was making its turn four by four by four, the blue-starred and red-striped guidons barely troubled in the still, cold air of that dawn this twenty-third day of July.

Then the infantry band started up. Oh, how she had come to hate the song.

Something gripped her chest more every time she heard it. Forced to watch more and more men marching off to this God-blessed war against the Indians.

How she hated hearing the brass horns, rattling drums, and reedy clarinets pitch into the notes of that mournful song.

Hated even more how some of the women sang the words aloud as they waved their hankies and trotted along beside the departing column, blowing kisses at the mounted soldiers, hated how the little ones clutched their mothers' breasts, hated how the toddlers stumbled through the grass and gravel beside the prancing horses, hated how some of the older ones beat on toy drums or only a tin pie plate held before them by a loop of yellow twine around their necks … all of them saying good-bye to the husbands of other wives, to the fathers of other children, that cheering, banging, singing crowd saying good-bye to those men who had no wives and children to bid them farewell, to wish those soldiers all Godspeed.

Good Lord—she bit her lower lip as the tears came down—how she hated this song!

C
HEYENNE
, July 21—The courier who left General Crook's camp on the eve of the 16th inst. has not reached Fort Fetterman. As in former instances, his horse may have given out. Seven companies of General Merritt's Fifth cavalry arrived at Fort Laramie to day, and will leave for Fetterman tomorrow or the day following, together with three additional companies of the same regiment, ten in all.

C
HEYENNE
, July 22—The courier who left
Goose Creek
on the 16th arrived at Fort Fetterman to night. His delay was caused by having met at
Powder river a body of 200 Indians, from whom he escaped, hiding himself in the timber for twenty-six hours. One Indian followed his trail 9 miles. He says they were evidently waiting for him and fears that the couriers who were sent from Fetterman on the 16th instant with despatches for Crook have been interrupted, as he saw their trail this side of the river, but not beyond. His delay ran him out of rations, compelling him to fast two days.

He left all quiet in camp. The hostile Sioux are believed to be north of Goose creek, about forty miles, and not far from the scene of the late massacre on the Little Big Horn. They have not fired into camp lately nor attempted to burn it out, although the parched condition of the grass rendered this somewhat easy …

The command moved seven miles north on the day of the courier's departure, to another branch of the Tongue river, near the Big Horn mountains, where they will camp until the 5th cavalry—which will leave Fort Laramie on Monday—reaches it, about the 5th of August. Gen. Crook will make no aggressive movement until this event, and when— if the couriers he dispatched to Terry advising him to join him reach that command—he will have made a junction with Terry, and the next action will prove a decisive one.

Sun and sweat, dust and mud, mosquitoes and flies, rain and heat. And waiting.

Seamus had read those three letters Samantha wrote him, brought up with the rest of the mail and newspapers in an irregular schedule of couriers and supply trains. Life was going on in the world around them. Hell, chances were that even the Sioux campaign was going on without them!

The general chafed more than normal at the wait he himself had imposed on the command. Word was that Merritt should have arrived by now. Where was he? Crook
asked, plainly restless, even to the point of anxiety. Sheridan's messages told Crook that he had ordered the Fifth Cavalry north to reinforce the expedition. So what was taking them so long to get here?

There was no action taking place south of Camp Cloud Peak, that much was for sure. It was all to the north, between them and the Yellowstone where the Montana and Dakota columns waited out reinforcements as well. Somewhere in between them were the Sioux. What Seamus feared most, however, was that while the generals were playing mumblety-peg over what to do with their armies, the enemy was slipping away to the east, right out of their grip.

Back and forth Crook and Terry were dispatching couriers, holding a regular correspondence between Camp Goose Creek and the Rosebud Landing on the Yellowstone. Debating just what to do, and when to do it. To combine their commands? If so, where? What was heard of the hostiles? Was it better to chase with a smaller, more mobile column? Or merely to follow with thousands of men and simply herd the Indians back to their agencies?

Crook wrote to Sheridan:

One way or the other, Crook soon determined that he would once again strike out with his mule train, abandoning tents and all extra comforts. It was the only way to track the Indians, to move as fast as the Sioux, to be as mobile as his enemy.

And now that Sheridan had concurred with Crook that the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition should wait until Merritt brought up his Fifth Cavalry, Seamus would be sitting right here on his saddle galls with the rest of them.

The Fifth! And Colonel Carr—the fighting turk of the Summit Springs campaign!

At times he squeezed his memory really hard and could remember some of the faces, a few of the names, and even the dim recollection of a woman's face—the one captive they did get out of Tall Bull's village alive there at Summit Springs seven summers before.

Eight days back, on the twenty-fifth, Crook ordered out his first formal scouting party of Shoshone. The warriors made it only some four or five miles to the South Fork of the Tongue when they ran into a roaming war party of Sioux and both sides exchanged insults before the Snake returned to camp.

Two days later Crook had camp moved again, five more miles to the northwest, locating some grass that had been too green for the Sioux to burn.

The next afternoon, the twenty-eighth, dispatches arrived from Sheridan, telling Crook that the Fifth was on the road and could be expected by the first of August. Back in Chicago, Sheridan prodded Crook into resuming full-scale scouting operations, urging him to have his camp ready to resume the campaign at the very moment Merritt's column arrived. As well, the division commander informed the leader of the Wyoming column that Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and six full companies of his Fourth Cavalry had been ordered up from Fort Sill in Indian Territory to plug the void left at Camp Robinson and the Red Cloud
Agency when Merritt's troops departed to reinforce the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.

The afternoon of the thirtieth Crook finally got his Ute scouts. For better than two weeks they had been held up at their agency in Colorado Territory because the bureau agent would not allow them to answer Washakie's plea for assistance against their mutual enemy. But then Sherman finally saw to it that some substantial evidence of bribery and fraud against the agent was made available to his superiors in the Indian Bureau. It wasn't many days before the War Department was given control of all western agencies, whereby Sheridan promptly removed the agent and placed him under arrest, freeing the thirty-five Ute to hurry north.

Upon reaching the Wind River Reservation, however, they discovered Washakie had grown impatient waiting on them and gone ahead. The Ute crossed the Big Horns and rode into Camp Cloud Peak without Crook's usual pomp and fanfare, due to the fact that at that time most soldiers and Shoshone alike were fighting a grass fire whipped out of control by the wind muscling right through Washakie's camp of willow-and-blanket wickiups.

Soldier and Shoshone alike used blankets, blouses, and branches to slap at the spreading flames until the meandering wall of fire reached a war lodge where the auxiliaries stored their ammunition. As bullets began whining and whistling through camp, everyone dived for cover until the cartridges had all exploded and they could get back to the dirty job at hand. After a fight of over three hours a change in the wind-finally saved the day, as well as saving the rest of camp plainly in danger if nature had enforced its will that day.

On Monday morning, the thirty-first, Louie Reshaw took a dozen Shoshone on his climb over the Big Horns to investigate an Indian rumor that the Sioux had crossed over the mountains and were firmly planted in the Big Horn Basin. The half-breed returned the next afternoon after suffering through a severe snowstorm among the high summits,
reporting to Crook that they had found no evidence of the hostiles in the mountains, much less in the western basin, except for small parties gone to hunt for game or lodgepoles.

“They didn't see no buffalo either,” Baptiste Pourier explained to the rest what he had heard when Reshaw reported to Crook.

“Bad sign, Bat,” Grouard grumbled.

Seamus nodded in agreement. “Plain as the nose on your face that the Sioux won't be hanging around here— not if the buffalo have wandered to the east.”

“That's where the Sioux went,” Grouard said. “Follow the buffalo east.”

Minutes later Tom Cosgrove came to fetch Grouard, saying, “Crook wants you to guide for me and some of the Snakes.”