Reap the whirlwind, p.10
Reap the Whirlwind, page 10
“What you got in you? Nigger blood?” Louie Reshaw had asked him last winter when they were signing up to scout for Crook’s march to the Powder.
“I’ll kill him,” Grouard had said quietly to the chief of scouts, Ben Clark. “You tell him he ever talks about nigger blood to my face, behind my back—I’ll kill him and take his scalp straight to his father.”
Frank’s own father had been black-skinned, an escaped slave with a flair for talk and knack for weapons in the early part of the century. A fur trapper in those first days in the far west. One of the handful of dark-skinned ones who came west as freedmen—men like James P. Beckworth and Edward Rose. His mother was a Gros Ventre captured as a child and raised among the Shoshone, where the coffeeskinned trapper eventually made her his wife. As beaver began to sink in value, he took his family south toward the land of Brigham Young’s Saints. It wasn’t long before Frank took a different trail from his family, and set about inventing his own family tree—enough of a tall tale to convince an upstanding Mormon family to take him in as a helpless orphan.
After educating him with the finest of books and the strictest of their spiritual teachings, the Pratts tearfully let Grouard go when it came time for the fifteen-year-old to make his own way in the world. He hauled freight north into the gold camps of Idaho and Montana territories—a fitting occupation for a youngster already six feet tall and weighing over two hundred pounds. Not only could he handle animals and a gun with equal skill, but he could read and write as well.
It wasn’t until six years later, however—in January of 1870—that Frank’s adventure of a lifetime began.
He was carrying contract mail from Fort Hawley to Fort Peck up Montana way that hellishly cold winter, forced to point his nose into the brutal wind, when he was knocked from his horse—finding himself face-to-face with a small war party. What tribe they were, he had no way of knowing right then. But what they wanted wasn’t near so hard to figure out. They had taken his rifle and pistol, and they were leading his horse away. They began yanking on his big, heavy buffalo coat. That was the last straw. He’d die out here in the blizzard without that coat of his. So if they killed him for fighting to keep it—it didn’t seem to make that much difference.
As a brash warrior was lowering his rifle muzzle to press it against Grouard’s chest, another warrior rode up in a swirl of snow to knock Frank’s attacker aside. After a stiff argument, then due deliberation between all thirteen of the war party, Frank’s rescuer strode up and handed Frank the reins to his horse, motioning for the prisoner to follow the war party.
All the time they were riding to the Milk River, Frank had had no idea just how important his captor was among his people. All he knew was the Lakota’s name was Sitting Bull.
For those next two years he traveled the high plains with the Hunkpapa, learning everything it took to become a Lakota warrior, learning the language, sign, and customs. Sitting Bull even bestowed a special name on his adopted son: “Grabber,” as the Hunkpapa chief recalled how Grouard had looked when they first met—like a huge bear in that buffalo-hide coat, reaching out to embrace its victim.
Little more than a year later, Frank’s idyll with the Hunkpapa was destined to take an evil turn when Grouard agreed to help the soldiers and civilian trader at Fort Peck put an end to the illegal trading going on between the warrior bands and the Red River Metis, who slipped south across the Canadian border with their contraband of weapons and whiskey.
When Sitting Bull learned of Grouard’s duplicity, the chief grew angry enough to kill the one who had betrayed his Hunkpapa. Grouard saved his hide only by seeking the safety of the great medicine man’s mother before moving on, this time going to live with Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila just before the Long Hair’s Seventh Cavalry was protecting a party of surveyors along the Elk River* in 1873. With Crazy Horse and his brother Little Hawk, Grouard roamed and hunted, raided for ponies and courted women. Then Frank fell desperately in love with He Dog’s sister.
It was at times like these, heading back into that great hunting ground he had roamed with the Lakota for six winters, that Grouard again felt that cold, empty hole ache inside him. Forced again to remember that woman—the feel and smell and taste of her skin as she grew damp each time they mated. Here again to remember the hate-filled eyes of her brother, the warrior friend of Crazy Horse … the one called He Dog.
In the end Grouard chose to leave the Lakota rather than face the coming showdown with his brother-in-law. Telling everyone he was going on a hunt by himself, Frank slipped away to the south, where he had shown up at the White Rock Reservation—the place the white man called the Red Cloud Agency. It hadn’t been long before word of this Frank Grouard and what he knew spread; last February, General George Crook had called the half-breed in for a talk.
“How long were you with the Sioux, Frank?”
“Six winters, this one, General.”
“Well—now, why don’t you tell me just why in the goddamned blazes you ended up leaving the blanket and coming back among civilized folk.”
“You’re suspicious of me?”
“No. Never was suspicious of a man I can look in the eye and he can look right back at me when I asked him a troubling question.”
Frank had never taken his eyes off Crook’s as he began to tell the general why he left the Hunkpatila. About a woman and her crazed brother named He Dog. To tell Crook that he would do anything to guide the general’s soldiers north to hunt down the warrior band of Crazy Horse.
Moving out of that copse of trees now with Carr and his platoon behind him just before daybreak, Grouard figured he had pushed them far enough west to trust in reining north once more. They rode out at a lope against the rising sun, ten soldiers following the half-breed scout who was angling back toward the east in a great arc. Heading for the Powder River.
He had a job to do for the general. Even more—Frank had something he had to do for himself. At the Reynolds’s fight on the Powder River in the Sore-Eye Moon he had called out to Crazy Horse and He Dog, challenging them to come forth from the captured village and fight him like warriors. They had not appeared. So now it was once more up to The Grabber to lead the soldiers back into Lakota country. Back to the land of the Hunkpatila. Where he prayed he would at least be granted his chance to put his hands around the throat of the woman’s brother—He Dog.
Yes, Frank vowed. He would take untold chances to reach the Powder River crossing once more. To find a way for Crook’s soldiers to get across and plunge into that last hunting ground where the wild tribes roamed. He would do all that he had to do just so he could once more come face-to-face with the Hunkpatila warrior who had vowed to take his life.
By the time the rising sun caused the prairie light to balloon around them, Grouard led the ten soldiers across some rocky ground where their big American horses would not make tracks on the rain-softened earth, guided them down into a narrow, dry ravine, and ordered Carr to wait.
“Where you going now?” the sergeant demanded.
“I’ll be back. Soon.”
To the side of a hill, just below the crest, Frank crawled on his belly and peered between the new grass, damp and heady with the richness of the new season. After a long time he saw them. The Lakota scouts had run across the iron-shod hoofprints where he had led the soldiers out of the creekbed. In the distance he could see them moving along slowly, watching the trail the eleven had left behind in making their escape.
He hoped this rocky ground the soldiers had just crossed would be enough to throw the war party off. And prayed the iron horseshoes had not scraped the rocks, leaving behind the telltale scar of a white man’s passing.
He held them in that ravine for the rest of the day, the weary soldiers at the ready should their trail be discovered. Twilight brought a cool breeze that nuzzled its way down the low places, past the soldiers who were dozing, unable to fight sleep any longer. Frank kept himself awake thinking on the woman, wondering about her—had she remarried? What of the child she said she carried in her belly just before he left? His child? He might well be a father by now.
And he wondered if he would ever get a chance to even the score with He Dog and Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila.
When slap dark gripped the prairie, Grouard nudged them all awake and wordlessly motioned them to their mounts. With only a signal, the half-breed reined about and led them up onto the rolling, vaulted tableland cut with the turkey-track coulees and dry washes that stood out like veins across the silver landscape rolling horizon to horizon below the muted starshine. Near sunrise he had brought them to the head of the Dry Fork of the Powder.*
“How close are we to that goddamned crossing Crook wants you to scout?” whispered Sergeant Carr.
“A day’s ride. Maybe less.”
“So we’ll ride out come nightfall and reach it tomorrow morning. Decide on a crossing, then get our tails high behind and back to Fetterman,” Carr declared.
Frank wagged his head. “Can’t wait till sundown, Sergeant. I gotta take the chance riding through the day.”
Carr swallowed, but this time he gulped down his anger. Thin-lipped he said, “Why, in the devil’s name, do you want to ride right out there in daylight when there’s those red bastards dogging our backtrail?”
“General asked me to keep a eye out for the Crow he wired to come join him.”
“Crow?” Carr squeaked. “The goddamned Crow?”
He nodded. “Crook says he expects they’ll be coming to join the soldier column—and he wants me to find them.”
“What the hell for?”
“Tell ’em the general is on his way. To sit tight. To say Crook will be here shortly to whip the enemies of the Crow.”
Carr started chuckling softly. “If that don’t beat all! Not only are you going to ride out there in the middle of the day to find a river crossing while we’ve got redskins ready to lift our hair riding down our ass … but you’re gonna go looking for some other goddamned Injuns to boot!”
Evenly, almost dispassionately, Grouard answered, “That’s about the size of it, Sergeant. You coming with me when these horses had a chance to rest?”
Carr chuckled softly again. “What choices I got, Grouard? To turn around and ride right back into the teeth of those bastards been following us? Or ride on with you, hoping to stay ahead of one war party while we go looking for another war party to join up with?”
“Glad you get the picture, Sergeant,” Grouard said. “Truth is, I’m glad to have you and your men along for the ride.”
After an hour of grazing the horses and watering them at a scummy pool of rain seep, the half-breed ordered the soldiers back into the saddle. Through that morning and into the early afternoon he kept the troopers hugging the bottoms and ravines for the most part while he himself rode on ahead, scouting the country for as safe a route as he could find. Doing everything he could think of so that Carr’s detail would not be spied against the horizon by an enemy that refused to let up, refused to stop for rest, refused to abandon their hunger for soldier blood.
After less than fifteen miles of that arduous ride through the broken countryside, Grouard reined up at the brow of a bluff, hanging back in the shadows as he peered down upon the vast expanse of country tumbling away to the Powder River crossing. He could almost see the river. Almost.
And down there too he caught a glimpse of the first dust rising behind a ridge off to his left.
Quickly glancing behind him, he spotted the soldiers still coming on, down in the coulee and still some distance behind him.
Turning back north, Frank realized the Lakota had figured out where the soldiers might be heading, so had hurried on ahead to cut off the white men at a good place for an ambush. In that country sloping down to the Powder, there would be any one of a handful of beautiful places the enemy could use to lay their trap. And once the soldiers would ride into the snare, there was no coming out alive.
Grouard urged his mount out of the shadows at a hand gallop, feeling the animal spring into life as it was finally given its head and a chance to run. Reaching those hills directly above the Powder River crossing, he dismounted and bellied up to the crest, looking down on the Lakota war party as it prepared its trap for the soldiers. The trail Carr’s men were taking would lead them right down the forks of a creek heading to the Powder. As the soldiers rode toward the snare, the Lakota dispersed along either side of the trail so they would capture the white men in a deadly cross fire.
He turned to look behind the hills to the south and saw the faint smudge of dust against the afternoon sky. He had to act soon—and give up ever reaching the Powder River.
Knowing there was little sense in staying completely silent any longer, Grouard sprinted to his horse, wheeled about, and rode back to meet Carr, signaling for the soldiers to halt.
“Turn ’em back, Sergeant,” he said tersely.
The soldier craned his neck and asked, “Them red bastards up there at the river?”
“Laying in the shadows, waiting for you.”
“Where to now, Grouard?”
“Fetterman.”
“Fetterman?” Carr shrieked. “Goddammit, man, that’s—”
“A hell of a long way. Now get these men riding.”
“And you?”
“I’ll be along shortly, after I take care of something first. Now, get moving and don’t spare the spur if you have to.”
“Grouard—if we live through this, I’ll buy you a drink of whiskey,” Carr growled with a grudging smile. “If we don’t live through it—you’ll see me in hell!”
“You’ll owe me a whole bottle, Sergeant. Now get going—I’ll see you back at Fetterman.”
He watched the soldiers disappear once more into the coulees, then spur the horses up onto the flat, rolling, broken prairieland, their ten mounts kicking up a cascade of dust shimmering like spun gold in the afternoon light. Frank sawed the reins about, let the animal out, and stopped only when he had reached the top of the hill overlooking the Lakota’s ambush.
Unmoving, Grouard sat there until he was sure the enemy had spotted him silhouetted against the skyline. He sat there a while longer, kept rising in the stirrups and looking behind him as if he were awaiting the soldiers who would come up to the crossing with him. When he felt he had given enough time for the proper effect, the half-breed waved enthusiastically, then signaled expansively to the imaginary platoon to come on. Slowly he left the crest of the slope as if he were going to meet the soldiers and lead them to their destruction.
Once out of sight, however, Frank hammered his moccasins into the flanks of his big American horse. If forced to, he would push Carr’s soldiers and their mounts all afternoon and into the night. It wouldn’t take very long for those Lakota to realize the soldiers weren’t coming—and then they would be following with a vengeance. Blood in their eyes, screeching and ready to put an end to this long chase.
He would just have to keep the soldiers going as long as their mounts held up. And not try to think about how goddamned far it really was back to Fort Fetterman.
Inch by inch he let the horse have more of the rein, let it have its head as it tore up and over and down and around that broken ground, heading south toward LaPrele Creek and Crook’s army.
Tearing flat out, with the soldiers racing for their lives in the middistance ahead of him.
Turning to glance over his shoulder, he saw them. Specks at first, dark as beetles bobbing against the murky haze of the horizon. But they were coming. A whole shit-teree of them too.
Flat out they were all racing now—red and white, and a half-breed too.
The soldiers would likely lose their scalps if they lost this long run back to Fetterman. But the Lakota would likely try to take Frank alive—saving him for some delicious, exquisite torture at the hands of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and He Dog.
Grouard had made enemies, many enemies among those Lakota who were coming behind at a ferocious, screaming tear, whipping their grass-fed, long-winded little ponies hot on the heels of the soldiers.
Once again the half-breed was running for his life.
* Yellowstone River
* Present-day Salt Fork, or Salt Creek, of the Powder River
29 May 1876
“Those sons a bitches didn’t give up the chase until they were within rifle shot of the soldier tents down on the bottoms,” Frank Grouard had told Seamus as he slid from the saddle at the top of the bluff where Fort Fetterman stood. To a young soldier he gratefully handed over the reins to his lathered army mount.
“Came close to getting your hair?”
“My scalp’s tingled a time or two before, Seamus,” the half-breed continued. “But I ain’t never been in as close a scrape as that.”
“Breathing down your neck, was they?” Donegan asked with a grin, trying to cheer up the half-breed.
With a nod Grouard replied, “All the way from the Powder River.”
“That’s a long race of it if ever there was one, my friend! Glad to see you made it back whole … and with your hair still locked on!”
For what must have been the first time in many hours, Grouard finally grinned. “If there’d been a pool to bet on the winner of that race, Seamus—by God, this time I would’ve bet on the Injuns myself!”
It was well after dark that Friday, 26 May, when there arose a commotion down among the teamsters’ and packers’ camps. Voices boomed along the river, men hollered, then echoed with some weary cheering and laughter as the half-breed led the ten soldiers back to the safety of the army’s great gathering on the north bank of the Platte River. Leaving Sergeant Carr and his detail behind, Grouard roused the ferrymen back into service and crossed the river to climb the plateau to the fort itself.
There he finally dismounted, received a hale and hearty welcome from some friends, and then in the company of the Irishman strolled over to have an audience with Crook. While the general wasn’t entirely happy not knowing for certain what sort of a crossing he would have at the Powder near old Fort Reno, Crook was nonetheless expressive in his happiness to have his chief of scouts back in one piece.
