As they all laughed, Captain Burt said, “Why don’t you three come join Captain Wessels and me yonder at our table?” He motioned to the far corner where Henry W. Wessels of the Third Cavalry waved them over. “Seamus can keep his eye on the door, where Elizabeth will be sure to send word once Seamus has become a father.”
“A f-father,” Donegan repeated as the others ushered him stumble-footed toward the far table where Wessels, Lieutenant Walter S. Schuyler, and two other officers sat sipping at their whiskey or savoring their apple beer, a shipment come up from Cheyenne just that afternoon.
John Bourke settled into one of the ladder-back chairs, worn down to a warm, yellowed pine, then declared, “Frank—I want to hear about your race with Captain Jack.”
“Yes!” cried Schuyler, like Bourke, an aide-de-camp to General George C. Crook. He hoisted his glass of pale whiskey into the air. “I’ve heard tell bits and pieces of the tale—but not a chunk of it from the horse’s mouth.”
Bourke tugged Donegan down onto a half-log bench beside him and turned to tell Grouard, “Start back to when the general gave you the dispatches you were to carry to the nearest telegraph.”
Frank set his mug of beer down, savoring the sweet tang of it at the back of his tongue as he swiped foam from his mustache and gathered his thoughts. “Seems now like it was forever ago.”
“I know what you mean,” Donegan agreed with a glance at the door.
Bourke put his arm around the Irishman’s shoulder, saying, “We haven’t been back here but a few days now, Seamus. G’won, Frank—while our father-to-be is waiting for his grand news—tell us the story of your race with Crawford from the Black Hills.”
“You want me to start back when I rode off from the command?” Grouard asked.
“Yes. Back to when the general gave you his dispatches he wanted put on the wire to Sheridan,” Burt added.
Clearing his throat, Grouard stared at the low ceiling a moment to recapture the chronology of that contest of wills and stamina he had waged against young Jack Crawford. “I was with Colonel Mills when that run for it started.”
“In Whitewood City, right?” Wessels asked.
“Right. Gone there with Lieutenant Bubb of Commissary for supplies while the general brung up the rest to the Belle Fourche. Folks in Whitewood treated us good when we got there that night way after dark. With dawn Mills would start out to buy up near every bite those hungry soldiers could eat. Before I went off to find a place to sleep, I told Crawford for him to be on hand come daylight—so he could go with Bubb to help out loading supplies and hauling it all back to Crook’s men. ‘You’re to stay with the command,’ I told him. ‘What’re you off to do?’ Jack asked me. ‘I’ve got the general’s telegrams to get through,’ I says.”
“Did you know he was buffaloing you then?” Donegan asked, then turned anxiously on his bench as a pair of soldiers bolted into the saloon and hurried to the bar.
“No,” Frank answered. “But I had my suspicions: just the way he was acting—trying to go off on his own two times when we was in Whitewood Canyon. But, damn, if Colonel Mills wouldn’t let him slip away from us! Then after we got down to Crook City, Captain Jack said he was going off to sleep at a friend’s camp. Made sense to me—I didn’t suspect a thing. Crawford’s been around the Hills for a long time, so I thought nothing more of it when he told me that he’d be back come the break of day.”
“But you didn’t see him in Whitewood that morning, did you?” Bourke inquired.
With a shrug Grouard replied, “At the time it didn’t make no never-mind if I didn’t see him. Wasn’t looking for him, I s’pose. All I done was splash some water on my face afore I headed out to find some breakfast. Only one thing on my mind back then: getting to Deadwood with the general’s dispatches.” He patted the front of his shirt.
“Were you carrying news for any of them correspondents?” Schuyler asked.
“Three of ’em.”
Bourke said, “Bet them three each paid you good to get their stories on the wire before any of the rest, right?”
With a sly grin the swarthy half-breed answered, “Let’s just say those fellas agreed to make a hard ride well worth my while.”
Laughter rose all around that table, then Burt said, “So, I suppose you’re buying tonight, eh, Frank?”
As the rest laughed again, Wessels asked, “I know that road as good as any man outside of Teddy Egan. So tell me: where’d you finally find out Crawford was gone on ahead?”
“Down at Deadwood, it was,” Grouard answered. “I had them reporters’ money to trade in my broke-down army horse and get me a good mount when I reached a livery at Deadwood. So when I went in the stable, what you s’pose I saw?”
Andy Burt replied, “I heard tell you spotted Crawford’s mule tied up there!”
“Damn right I did,” Frank said with a scowl. “Asked the stable man where it come from, who brung it there.”
“He tell you?” Bourke asked.
“Not at first. Looked right suspicious about it—like he’d been warned to lie through his teeth, most-like. Finally he owned up to that mule coming in about five that morning. So I asked him where the man was come riding that mule into town.”
“But he’d left already, hadn’t he?” Bourke asked.
Frank nodded. “On a goddamned horse the livery man sold him. Making tracks for Custer City without so much as a minute’s wait.”
“That was the first idea you had Crawford was carrying dispatches for Davenport?” Donegan asked as he set his mug down on the table.
“By that time I was getting real angry, so the livery man owned up to that too. Jack been bragging high and low how he got his five hunnert dollars to get Davenport’s story on the wire ahead of Crook’s official report.”
Bourke said, “And here you had just galloped off from Crook thinking you had all the dispatches from every reporter with the column.”
“Including that snake-oil drummer Davenport,” Grouard replied. “What that son of a bitch had done to make out like everything was on the up and up, he give me a copy of what he already sneaked over to Crawford—when he give Captain Jack orders to get his story to the telegraph twelve hours before Crook’s official report.”
“That son of a bitch wanted an exclusive,” Bourke growled. “Damn his copper-backed hide! Davenport’s made it plain all summer long that he’s had a big bone to pick with the general—but to go behind Crook’s back the way he did like this!”
“Army business, that’s what Crawford was fooling with!” Burt exclaimed angrily.
Grouard held up his hands for silence, quieting the rest. “In the end, Davenport got his due, fellas.”
“That’s right,” Donegan added, glancing at those around the table. “We heard tell he’s down in Cheyenne City this very night, sicker’n a dog.”
Wessels roared, “Served Davenport right—that puffed-up son of a bitch. Glad you whipped Crawford in the race!”
“Didn’t look like it was going to come out that way at first,” Frank explained dramatically. “General’s plan was for me to hire another man in Deadwood to get Crook’s dispatches through. But when I found out Crawford had the jump on Crook the way he did—there was only one thing for me to do.”
“You gotta hand it to Crawford, Frank,” Donegan said with no little admiration. “He took off through some rugged country thick with Injins in the blackest part of night—them Sioux been raiding all around there.”
Schuyler agreed eagerly. “Just two days before, we heard a war party had jumped a fella no more’n two hundred yards from the main street in Crook City itself!”
Bourke leaned in, eager expectation lighting his face. “But if anyone was going to overtake Captain Jack, it could only be you, Grouard!”