“Right in the heart of the country haunted by the Sioux and Cheyenne hostiles!” Crook exclaimed, slamming a fist down into his left palm. “Squarely in the country where our deadliest enemies clung tenaciously and have likely taken refuge from our two columns.”
“Two columns?” Donegan asked, perplexed.
“Ours to the south, and north of the enemy—General Miles and his Fifth Infantry.”
“But they’re all the way up yonder on the Yellowstone,” the Irishman replied.
“Exactly,” Crook said.
Mackenzie moved up to explain, “Don’t you see—our intelligence tells us that the Crazy Horse hostiles are somewhere between us.”
From the sound of things in that tent, Donegan decided Crook and Mackenzie had grown tired and frustrated of the past two weeks of teetering back and forth between bouts of sulking despair and fits of self-righteous exultation over the Red Fork fight. On the one hand, at times they brooded: with the escape of most of the Cheyenne, had it been no more than a hollow victory? But at other times the two commanders cheered themselves in thinking: by destroying all that meant wealth to that powerful warrior band, hadn’t they in fact delivered a solid thumping to a steadfast enemy?
Then yesterday a courier had arrived from Fetterman, giving Crook real cause to rejoice: receiving a telegram from Sheridan, forwarded on from William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the U.S. Army.
Please convey to Generals Crook and Mackenzie my congratulations, and assure them that we appreciate highly the services of our brave officers and men who are now fighting savages in the most inhospitable regions of our continent. I hope their efforts this winter will result in perfect success and that our troops will hereafter be spared the necessity of these hard winter campaigns.
But in that same leather courier packet lay some less than happy news. In a short and apologetic dispatch from Major Caleb H. Carlton, commandant at Fetterman, Crook and Mackenzie learned that bureaucratic bungling had further delayed supplies in reaching the Sydney, Nebraska, depot, much less getting them to the Medicine Bow depot by rail where they were to be off-loaded into wagons and freighted up to Fetterman, on from there to the Powder River Expedition. Not only rations and ammunition for the men, but the desperately needed grain for all those horses and Tom Moore’s mules.
“And with Crazy Horse’s hostiles wintering somewhere between here,” Crook said, jabbing a finger at the Belle Fourche River on the map below him where his own expedition sat in bivouac, “and General Miles up here on the Yellowstone,” as Crook slid his finger across all that unknown hostile territory to the north of them that cold night, “I’m mad as hell that I can’t go get him here in the heart of the winter.”
“For no other reason than the delay in getting our supplies brought up to us,” Mackenzie snapped.
“What … what does all this have to do with me?” Donegan asked, growing more confused by these two military commanders confiding their frustrations in him. “I’m afraid I don’t under—”
“Look here,” Crook said, tracing a finger in a small circle around that country to the north and west of their position on the Belle Fourche. “I had hoped to move over to the Little Powder, march down from there to the Powder itself, and upon reaching that stream send out our Indian scouts—the Sioux and the Cheyenne, who know this country so well.”
“We had planned to lie in wait,” Mackenzie explained, “until the scouts located the Crazy Horse village, and then we could go after them with our cavalry and pack train.”
Crook cheered, “Just as Mackenzie’s battalion did so splendidly against the Cheyenne!”
The Irishman wagged his head slightly, still not all that sure what they were trying to tell him. “Sounds like it will work. But why me … just where are you fitting me in with all of this?”
Seamus watched Crook glance at Mackenzie, then the map, and finally back to look at the Irishman.
“I have been forced to change my plans, don’t you see? With no supplies for me to continue my march into the lower Powder country after the Crazy Horse hostiles—I am compelled to alter my thinking.”
“Can’t you just send out your scouts from here?”
Mackenzie answered, “We can. And we will, Donegan.”
“You’re … no,” and he suddenly saw it as clear as a summer day, causing the hair to stir on the back of his neck, “… you’re not figuring on me going with them scouts, are you? Them Lakota and Cheyenne?”
Crook said, “That’s precisely what I’ve brought you here to propose.”
“But—what about Frank? Grouard’s been in that country. And he knows how to talk Lakota with them scouts.”
“That’s right,” Crook replied quietly. “I could send Frank Grouard—but he won’t be going north, because he’s going to carry some dispatches for me to the Black Hills communities.”
Seamus said, “It seems like you oughtta send Frank out with the scouts, and me to the Black Hills.”
Again Crook looked at Mackenzie before saying, “It’s not just the fact of going out with the scouts, Mr. Donegan. There’s … something more.”
“More?”
“Some … task for which the army will pay a man handsomely. Should he decide to undertake the risk.”
“What risk?”
Mackenzie stepped up, saying, “Bluntly speaking: there will come a time when you will leave behind the Cheyenne and Sioux scouts.”
“L-leave ’em behind?” Then, with his sense of peril really itching, Seamus asked, “Just where in bloody hell would I be going to leave ’em behind?”
“North of here,” Crook replied after a moment’s pause. “On your way to the Yellowstone.”
“Now, why in hell would I want to go back to that country for, says I?”
“Yes—I quite understand you’ve been there before,” Crook said. “We all were last summer. Well, I need you to carry some important messages for me.”
Donegan’s eyes narrowed again. “Messages. To the Yellowstone.”
Mackenzie and Crook nodded.
Donegan’s suspicions were all but confirmed. “To the Tongue River Cantonment?”
“That’s right,” Crook stated. “I wish to communicate with General Miles.”
“Miles is said to also have a supply depot at the mouth of Glendive Creek,” Mackenzie said, rubbing a fingertip at a thin inked line on the map that joined the Yellowstone east of the Tongue.
Seamus studied the faint and meandering inked-in rivers and streams a moment. “No, General. Seems to me that Glendive Creek’s too far east for a man to set his sights on going … at least if he’s coming from here on the Belle Fourche.”
Looking up, he caught Crook giving Mackenzie a knowledgeable nod, something that showed great self-satisfaction.
The son of a bitch thinks he’s got me, Seamus thought.
Then Donegan went on to explain, “Makes far more sense for a man to head down the Powder to its mouth. No more east than that.”
“Yes, yes, exactly,” Crook replied. “The Powder’s about halfway between Glendive depot and the mouth of the Tongue.”
“Then you’ll go?” Mackenzie asked.
“Wait a minute! I ain’t said nothing like that,” Donegan demurred, studying the map, all that unknown, dangerous country between here and there. “How far you figure the scouts will go with me?”
Shrugging, Crook said, “Perhaps as far as the mouth of the Little Powder, Mr. Donegan.”
“I see,” he considered, staring at the convergence of those two lines on the map—the thrill of it beginning to rise from the soles of his feet with the tingle of genuine danger. He looked up at them steadily. “Why me?”
Crook glanced away from Mackenzie, to the map, then into the Irishman’s eyes. “The honest truth of it is that I thought you would want the money.”