Squint nudged Joe gently with his heels when the horse hesitated on the bank of a small stream, unsure if they were crossing or just drinking. “Let’s go, Joe. I’m tired too, but we ain’t got more’n a couple of hours’ ride. Then you might get a little grain tonight before you bed down.” He had been making good time for the last two days since he had left Waddie Bodkin in the Black Hills and headed for Fort Lincoln. Waddie had done his best to talk him into staying on to prospect for gold but Squint had made up his mind that it was time to try something else.
Thoughts of Waddie made him laugh. “Damn crazy little Irishman,” he chuckled. Two years in Montana and they didn’t raise enough color to pay for the whiskey Waddie drank. Well, he thought, I wanted to try my hand at panning for gold and I reckon I got that notion out of my head. The work was too hard to suit him. After a year, he found himself staring at the mountains in the distance and wondering what was beyond them. He and Waddie had tried their luck at the Grasshopper Diggings before they moved on to Alder Gulch where they raised a little color, but not enough to make two men rich. So, when word came that there was gold discovered in the Black Hills, Waddie made up his mind to go there. Squint decided to go with him that far but then to continue on to Fort Lincoln and go back to scouting for the army. He’d had his fill of prospecting but he was also aware that the Black Hills were smack-dab in the middle of Sioux hunting grounds and that fact didn’t appeal to his sense of self-preservation. So he took his share of the small amount of dust they had collected, bade farewell to Waddie and pointed Joe toward Lincoln.
* * *
“Hey, you old muskrat! Are you lost?”
Squint turned in the direction of the voice. There was a familiar ring to the voice but he couldn’t identify it immediately. His face lit up with a wide smile when he spotted the short barrel-like body coming around the corner of the stable on legs so bowed he looked like a duck out of water. “Well, skin me if it ain’t Andy Coulter!” He slid down off of Joe. “Hell, pardner, I thought you was kilt long ago.”
“I thought your hair was decorating a lance up in the Wind River country,” Andy returned. “What brung you into Lincoln?”
Squint tied Joe and his mule Sadie to the hitching post and walked around to shake Andy’s hand. “I reckon I’m looking for a job,” he said. “Thought I’d see if the army’s hiring any scouts.” He grinned and added, “But I reckon if they got you, they likely don’t need any more.”
Andy laughed. “I reckon I’m the only one they got. They got about fifty more on the payroll that calls theirselves scouts but I reckon if they hired you, then they’d have two. Come on, I’ll take you to see Captain Benteen. I could dang shore use some help.”
There was very little hesitation on Benteen’s part after Andy’s recommendation that Squint Peterson was probably the best dang scout in the whole territory with the possible exception of himself. He and Squint had trapped the Yellowstone country before the first prospector’s wagon had made it to Montana so he was damn sure qualified to scout the area. Benteen seemed glad to have another experienced scout so Squint was welcomed to the regiment and turned over to Andy to get himself settled in.
“You can throw your bedroll in with me if you want to,” Andy told him as they walked across the parade ground. “They let me have a little room next to the quartermaster. It’s a little ways away from the soldier boys so it ain’t so dang noisy.”
“Who’s the head man of this outfit?”
Andy chuckled before answering. “Colonel George Armstrong Custer,” he announced.
“Custer? Hell, I thought he was shipped back East a while back for disobeying orders or something.”
“He was. But he’s back now, struttin’ bigger’n ever. Says he’s gonna clean all the Injuns out of the Yellowstone country.”
“He’s a mite ambitious, ain’t he?” The news was not especially pleasing to Squint. He had had no personal relations with the man, but he didn’t like some of the things he had heard about him. Of course, he had to consider that some of the stories might be just that, stories, and he reckoned he would have to see for himself. “What’s the job like?”
“Patrols mostly, chasing Sioux raiding parties”—he paused to spit a stream of chewing tobacco at a lizard scampering up a pole on the porch—“and burying prospectors.”
Squint threw his pack up on the porch and turned to Andy. “Correct me if I’m wrong, ’cause I’ve been up in the mountains for a spell. But last I heard, there was a treaty that guaranteed all that country from the Black Hills to the Big Horns was Injun territory.”
Andy snorted. “Hell, Squint, you know as well as I do them treaties don’t mean nothin’. Besides, I reckon you heard there’s some talk about finding gold up in that country—and where there’s talk of gold, there’s plenty of damn fools to risk their hair to git it.”
“I can guarantee that. I just left a little Irishman back up in the hills.”
After they had settled Squint’s belongings, they walked back outside and sat down on the edge of the porch to have a smoke. Squint took out a well-worn cherrywood pipe he had carved four winters before in the Wind River Mountains. He watched as Andy tore off part of a twist of tobacco and stuffed it in his mouth then handed the twist to him. Taking his time, Squint tore off a piece of the twist and slowly ground it up in his hand. When it was right, he filled the pipe with it. He reached up and struck a match on a porch post and lit the pipe, drawing deeply until the tobacco was burning well. After a few puffs, he tamped the load down and relit it. Satisfied that it was working right, he leaned back against the post to talk.
“Andy, things might be fairly peaceful with the Injuns right now, but if the army don’t quit letting settlers and prospectors go anywhere they damn please, it’s gonna be more than a few killings here and there. It’s gonna be all-out war. I’m satisfied the Sioux ain’t gonna stand still for it much longer. Hell, look at what old Red Cloud did to the army. He damn sure closed up Bozeman’s trail. And already old Sitting Bull is calling all the Sioux and Cheyenne together up in the Big Horns. Part of Red Cloud’s people have joined up with him. At least that’s the story I hear.”
Andy shrugged his shoulders and launched a long stream of tobacco juice in the direction of a horsefly that landed on the step below him. “I reckon I can’t argue with that. They’s gonna be war all right but I think the army’s made up its mind that it’s gonna win this one. Hell, you know as well as I do they ain’t gonna stop folks from moving in on that land.”
There was a pause in their conversation while they watched a young officer walking in their direction.
“Here comes one of the few good officers in this whole damn outfit,” Andy commented and punctuated the statement with a stream of brown juice.
“What are you doing, Andy, holding that porch down so the wind won’t blow it away?” There was a wide friendly smile on the officer’s face.
“Nah, I’m just settin’ on my brains so the army don’t see ’em and want to make me a lieutenant.” They both laughed. “Say howdy to Squint Peterson. He’s signed up to do some scouting for us. Me and Squint go way back. Squint, this here’s Lieutenant Allred.”
The young officer smiled and extended his hand. “Tom Allred, Mr. Peterson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.” Squint got up to shake hands.
“Damn!” Tom exclaimed. “You’re a big one.”
Squint simply shrugged his shoulders, not knowing how to respond. Finally he said, “I reckon.”
Tom placed one foot up on the second step and leaned on his knee. “If it wasn’t for ole Andy here, I wouldn’t be around today. He pulled my fat out of the fire for sure.”
Andy almost blushed. “Hell, Lieutenant, when them bastards caught us in that crossfire, I was grabbing for anything. It just happened to be you. Tell you the truth, I thought you was dead. I was just using you for cover while I floated downstream.”
Tom and Squint glanced at each other. Both were grinning broadly at Andy’s modesty. Both knew he was lying. Squint spoke up, “Why, I reckon the little ole runty varmint has saved my hide a time or two, like the time up on the Yellowstone when them three Crow bucks jumped me. I was up to my belly button in water with forty pounds of beaver plews in one hand and trying to keep my possibles dry in the other.”
Andy laughed. “If you wasn’t so damn tight, I would’na had to help you.” He turned to Tom and explained. “He wasn’t about to turn loose them pelts and he couldn’t let his powder and shot go, so he was just kicking at them Injuns with both hands up in the air. He looked like a moose trying to chase off a pack of coyotes. It was hard for me to steady my aim, I was laughing so hard.”
Tom laughed then straightened up and took his leave. “Well, Squint, glad to have you with us. I’ve got to go see if my horse is going to be ready to travel tomorrow. He picked up a bad stone bruise on that last patrol and I’m not sure he’ll be fit.”
Andy called out after him as he walked away toward the stables. “We going out in the morning?”
“Yeah,” Tom called back over his shoulder. “Captain Benteen said to draw rations and ammunition for ten days. He’ll call for a briefing sometime this afternoon.”
Andy was pleased to see that Squint and Tom had seemed to hit it off pretty well. He had grown quite fond of the young lieutenant and he felt the addition of Squint would help keep them all out of trouble. He may have saved Squint’s hide a time or two but he knew that if the account was balanced, he’d be the one owing.