Chapter 30

August 1869

Cody won the race.

But it wasn’t the easiest thing to do.

The Pawnee apparently realized it was wiser not to try anything underhanded, and most of the soldiers who had put their money on Buckskin Joe gladly helped Donegan assure that no one got near the horse until the morning of the race that first day of August.

It raised a cold sweat along the Irishman’s spine, he told Cody afterward, to see the way that little Pawnee leaped out first atop that high-spirited war-pony of his. But by the time the two animals were making the final homeward-bound leg of the race, Buckskin Joe and William F. Cody showed what they each were made of.

“I just let ’im have his head,” Cody gushed afterward, out of breath as he reined the buckskin up in the middle of a ring of cheering soldiers. “God in Heaven—did it remind me of carrying mail to Sacramento!”

“Injins hot on your tail!” Donegan shouted, a whiskey-thirst grin splitting his leathery face in two.

Money was being passed, backs being slapped and a few raucous songs getting ground to sand by dry throats. Then Reuben Wood, post sutler, raised his voice above the clamor.

“C’mon, boys—the sun’s climbing high, so let’s find us some shade and something cool to drink!”

Wood led them to the fragrant, earthy haven of his watering hole, where huge clay crocks of his special grog sweated in the heat. It was there the Pawnee turned over their wagers to Cody and Donegan. The money represented nearly half of what the Indian scouts had been paid for their services on the campaign. Yet what pained them the most was allowing the white men their pick of the horses.

First choice for Cody was the hard-boned white pony that got the jump away from the starting line on Buckskin Joe. Donegan chose a sturdy, big-headed cayuse with a wild pair of eyes that watched the Irishman’s every move. More than the gleaming brown-and-white-spotted coat, it was those eyes that captured Donegan’s heart. After Cody chose his second pony, Seamus picked a big-haunched packhorse that looked like she had some bottom in her.

With the condition of their throbbing skulls, neither Donegan or Cody were ready when Junior Major Eugene W. Crittenden found them sleeping off their night’s revelry in the shade of a crude lean-to they had pitched against the side of Wood’s saloon.

“Go ’way,” Cody grumbled. His head hurt just for the talking.

“Don’t you both look the sight,” Crittenden replied, smiling, then went back to tapping Cody’s boot-sole. “C’mon, boys. Sun’s on its way up, and Major Royall wants you both at the front of the column.”

“Front of what bleeming column?” Donegan asked, dragging himself off the musty saddle blanket and gum poncho rumpled beneath him.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Cody muttered, just remembering as he dragged a thick tongue over his gritty teeth.

“You know something about this?” Donegan asked him, his voice squeaky. “What I wouldn’t give for a—”

Cody was pulling on the Irishman’s shirt and vest. “I forgot, dammit. Yeah,” and he turned to Crittenden, “tell Royall we’ll be there before the column moves out.”

“What bloody column I ask!”

“The one going after some Sioux.”

“Sioux is it?”

“Pull yourself together, Seamus,” he pleaded. “I’m heartily sorry—forgetting to tell you.”

“Tell me? Like I’m going with you?”

“Aren’t you?”

Donegan wagged his throbbing head, reminded of the big bass drums the regimental bands used to pound out a stirring military air, his elbows suspended over his knees like green willow limbs. “Another ride after some red h’athens who only disappear on us like smoke on the wind … ghosts they are, Cody! And we’ll chase ’em till we’re old men. Goddammit, but I feel like a old man a’ready!”

“You look fine to me,” Cody replied, yanking Donegan up to his feet, dusting him off. “Grab your gear—let’s get the horses saddled.”

Donegan turned at the first notes of “The General.” When the bugle’s final notes had drifted off, he said, “I suppose we can’t let them leave without us.”

“Next they’ll blow ‘Boots and Saddles’… c’mon, Irishman!”

That morning of 2 August, Major William B. Royall led seven full companies of the reorganized Fifth Cavalry from Fort Sedgwick in the absence of Major Eugene Carr. In addition to Cody’s civilian scouts, Major Frank North and most of his Pawnee Battalion were entrusted with tracking the enemy. The entire outfit was rationed for a ten-day pursuit, having received word that hostiles were wreaking havoc with settlers south of the post.

On the basis of those reports, Cody led the long column directly for Frenchman’s Fork. He figured he would follow it down to the Republican then work northward back to Fort McPherson over the next ten days. Some eight miles out from Sedgwick, Cody’s plans changed.

“What’s he saying?” he asked North’s interpreter, Lt. Gustavus Becher, while eyeing the half-dozen Pawnee who had galloped back to the head of the column with some news.

“Says they ran across some lodges of Sioux up ahead.”

Cody turned to Major Royall. “Put your men on alert, Colonel,” he said, using the officer’s Civil War brevet rank. “Looks like we’re striking pay-dirt early.” He looked back at Becher. “These boys have any idea what band the Sioux are?”

“Pawnee Killer’s,” Becher replied with a smile.

Cody thought that worthy of a grin himself. “Imagine that, Seamus. These trackers gonna get a chance at the chief that gave old Hancock and Custer himself trouble two summers back. Pawnee Killer—I’ll be plucked!”

“How far?” Royall asked.

After less than two miles the advance guard came across the first sign of the village. The Sioux had been camped no more than a dozen miles from Fort Sedgwick for the past several days. But having spotted the Pawnee on their back-trail, the Sioux were at the moment covering ground.

Cody stood from inspecting the wide trail of grassy prairie scratched by hundreds of travois poles. He let some of the sandy soil slowly drop from his glove like grains through an hourglass. “Long as I live, Colonel Royall—never gonna cease to amaze me how quick those people can pack up and travel with an army nipping at its tail.”

“We have a chance of catching them, Cody?”

He pursed his lips, figuring not only on what their chances were but on what Royall wanted to hear. “Maybe if we keep some of the advance guard out a little farther, rotating horses for ’em twice a day … we might catch up to Pawnee Killer’s rearguard by the time your rations run low.”

“By God, that’s good enough odds for me. Let’s march!”

Cody followed the trail that led the Fifth Cavalry on a direct line, southeast for Frenchman’s Fork. At twilight three days later Becher and his Pawnee rode in while Royall’s troops were going into camp on the north bank of the fork. Cody took Becher along with him when he went to pass the news on to the major himself.

“Your men ready to fight some Sioux?”

That got Royall’s attention. “We’re breathing down their necks, is it?”

Cody nodded. “They’ve spotted our trackers. Yonder across the fork. In their camp, but they’ve busted down and are on the run already.”

“Heading where?”

“South—away from us, Major.”

Royall hollered at his adjutant, the camp instantly coming to a buzz all around them. “I want ten of the best men from each company—mounted on ten of the best horses each troop can muster. Ready to go to saddle in five minutes … better make that fifteen from each troop, Mr. Montgomery.”

Cody watched the lieutenant go to pass along the orders.

“We stand a chance of catching them, Cody?”

“Slim—but making a hard run at it right now is the only chance you’ve got.”

The hundred soldiers joined by a complement of civilians and Pawnee splashed across Frenchman’s Fork as an orange ball disappeared behind the pale purple of the far mountains. The stars came out and the buttermilk-gold of the moon dressed the night sky before the trackers figured out the Sioux were sweeping back around to the northeast. Pawnee Killer was leading his village back across Frenchman’s Fork.

Royall sent back a trio of riders to inform Major Crittenden of the pursuit, with orders to continue on the north side of the river until they struck the trail. The column and its supply train was to follow their trail north, wherever it led, with Royall’s promise to remain in daily contact with his support.

In a big, graceful curve, Pawnee Killer’s band looped northward toward the South Platte, crossing the river halfway between Forts Sedgwick and McPherson. It was near the time the Fifth made their crossing that Major Frank North rode out from O’Fallon’s Station to rejoin his Pawnee Battalion after taking a short leave.

In all, Royall had to abandon ten exhausted and played-out horses in the drive his troops made coming north from Frenchman’s Fork to the South Platte. He would lose another seven between there and the Niobrara River close by the Dakotas.

“This grueling chase is taking the same toll on the hostiles, goddammit,” Royall cursed late one evening as his staff assessed their situation. “Forty-two Sioux ponies captured.”

“We didn’t capture them,” Frank North reminded. “The Sioux abandoned them because they were too poor to walk.”

Royall fumed a moment, then sighed. “For us the choices are more difficult, gentlemen. Appears we’re not making any ground on Pawnee Killer’s bunch.”

“Looks like they’re running north to join Red Cloud’s Bad Faces for the winter,” Donegan said.

“You agree, Cody?” asked the major.

“That’s the safest place for them and those Cheyenne Dog Soldiers we scattered in July. With the whole Bozeman country shut off from army or civilian travel—they know it’ll be a safe winter.”

“What’s your choices, Major?” asked Frank North.

“We’re down to eating boot-leather, men. And I can tell you a lot of these men don’t like the prospect of that, what with two fruitless campaigns already under their belts.”

“We’re in bad shape as it is—not having anything to eat on the march back to McPherson—unless we bump into some game or buffalo,” North said.

Cody watched Royall wag his head. “Major, there’s no other choice I can suggest than to let Pawnee Killer go this time. We can point our noses west to Fort Robinson … resupply there with what they can spare. Then we can limp this outfit back to our home station.”

Royall stood, holding his hands over the fire. Once more it was that season on the plains. Hot enough to broil a man’s brains in his hat during the day—cold enough to smite him with frostbite once the sun went down.

“All right, gentlemen. Pass the word—we’ll break out at four and be on the march by five. No sense getting the men up any earlier than that: we don’t have coffee left to brew.”

*   *   *

Jack O’Neill shivered under the same cloudless sky that sucked every bit of heat out of the exhausted land.

He threw some more greasewood on the flames. He had built the small fire in a hole scooped out of the ground so that the firelight would not be so readily spotted by the night eyes of any Cheyenne or Sioux roaming this land northeast of Fort Sedgwick.

The mulatto had reached the squalid post on the South Platte only to find that the entire seven companies of the Fifth Cavalry had moved out on campaign. Word at Reuben Wood’s saloon had it that the soldiers were off chasing Pawnee Killer’s Sioux northward to the Niobrara.

“That’s a piece of country,” trader Wood told O’Neill as he leaned over the bar in his place, lazily watching the big mulatto suck at a warm beer. “Wouldn’t recommend any man riding in there alone. You riding alone, mister?”

O’Neill nodded, enjoying the caress of the ale on his tongue and the back of his throat, parched as it was.

“That bunch coming back here when they’re done?”

“Not if they can help it.” Wood laughed. A few others down the bar laughed with him, then went back to their own drinks. “They’ll head home, likely.”

“Home,” he said quietly. “Where is that?”

“McPherson, of course.”

“Yes, McPherson. The best way I’d get there?”

“Just stay on the South Platte—all the way,” Wood answered. “You won’t miss it.”

“They’ll be going back there, you say?”

Wood smiled genuinely. “Got to now. Colonel and lieutenant colonel of the whole damned regiment showed up there, from what I’ve heard. If nothing else, them boys’ll come in to reoutfit and rotate units.”

“Their scouts too?”

“Yeah, I suppose the scouts come back in with the unit,” Wood replied. “You fixing on hiring on?”

He regarded his beer. “Might do that. Who’s the leader of the bunch?”

“Chief of scouts is a fella named Cody. Rides a fast horse and likes to wager on it.”

“Gimme another,” the mulatto said, pushing his chipped mug toward the barkeeper. When Wood brought the mug back and set it in front of O’Neill, Jack asked, “You ever run into a tall, gray-eyed man riding with this Cody’s bunch?”

Wood stood back and with a smile winked at some of the other patrons. “Run into him? I’ll say. That’s the drinkenest, hell-roaringest Irish sonuvabitch I’ll ever know!”

“Irish?”

“And his brogue gets thicker the more he’s in the cups!” Wood cheered.

“This Irishman have a name, mister?”

“Surely do, and one I’ll not soon forget. Donegan, it is. Seamus Donegan is that lucky bastard’s name.”