GONE TO GLORY
Although up to that point I had been suitably ruthless in discarding various odds and ends I found myself brought to a standstill by my almost forgotten copies of the Bismark Weekly Tribune, variously dated in June and July of 1876.
With muttered apologies to sleeping dogs everywhere, I eventually undid the latch and opened the musty trunk. Glinting dully in the light cast by my lantern, just as I had left it 20 years and more ago was a tarnished brass bugle with a frayed yellow cord. The raised insignia on the top was that of crossed sabers and the “U” and “S” to either side and the numeral 7 above.
With a clarity I had hoped never again to experience I recalled an expedition to the Powder River area of what later became the 41st State of Montana.
During that more adventurous period of my life I was bitten by the gold bug and my late brother Seth and I joined an expedition in May of 1875 and we set off with high hopes and a limited budget to seek our fortunes.
Montana Territory was remote but beautiful. It was by recent treaty the home of the Sioux Nation who had been promised by President Ulysses S. Grant that they could live there undisturbed so long as the sun rose and the rivers flowed.
Unlike the White man the Indians believed that a promise given by a chief was to be respected.
Perhaps they would have been left to themselves but a trapper who had also done some prospecting around Sutters’ Mill in the 50's found some “color” as we called gold dust in those days.
Seth and I were in Rapid City that summer and full of piss n’ vinegar, so when the opportunity to join Ed Bismark’s group presented itself we quickly agreed.
We wouldn’t have recognized a gold bar if it had dropped on our toes but we had some time on our hands and the Indians were said to be down Laramie way keeping the Buffalo Soldiers on the hop.
We stopped by the dry goods store and got some extra rounds for our.44's and started west on our 130 mile journey.
So many things went wrong with that trip that after only 7 weeks we were down to just five in the party, the others having had enough of the rattlesnakes and the baking heat of the hottest summer known in those parts since the White man had come, most had decamped for the saloons of Silver City and Deadwood.
We resolved to try just one more spot, a tributary of the Yellowstone, west of the Rosebud. It wasn’t much of a river, only knee high at the deepest, tho to judge by the river banks it would in most years, be considerably higher.
The 24th of June that year was only memorable for being extremely hot and also Seth’s 30th birthday.
We had as much of a celebration as 5 people could reasonably expect to have with 2 bottles of whiskey and the nearest town 100 miles away. None the less the next day I was the only one frisky enough to want to do any prospecting.
So as not to annoy my companions with a show of my enthusiastic gold panning I left the camp quietly.
After several grueling hours of working steadily up river I was a good three miles from camp, not a particularly smart more in Indian country and I had resolved to start back when I thought I heard faint shouted commands and the jingle of harness which was caused, I felt certain, by the passage of a considerable body of men further up the river.
Having been without sight of any but our own party for almost two months I was anxious to get news of what was happening in the world. I hastily emptied my pan and snatched up my Sharps Buffalo Gun and legged it for the bend in the river, beyond which I was hoping to find some new faces and perhaps even news of any new gold strikes.
No more than a stones throw from the bend I came to the place where several hundred shod horses had forded the river. I pressed on in their wake and shortly came upon a small but hastily deserted Indian encampment. Several Tee pee's, a still smoldering fire and a divergence in the tracks, the larger group going North and a somewhat smaller group heading South.
Plainly I could not keep up with mounted men so with a second glance at the recently abandoned Indian camp I prepared to start back the four miles or so to our own camp site.
A scattering of shots got my instant attention. I dropped to the ground before I realized that no one was firing at me. In the distance a bugle called, more shots, a cheer and a second call which I clearly recognized as the charge. Intense and sustained firing now to the north. It was four miles to the dubious safety of my four companions or just over the hill to what must surely be several hundred U.S. Cavalry.
Not much of a choice in the suddenly hostile countryside. I was up and running Northward in a flash. Breasting the rise I looked down at the banks of the river and saw a sight that would forever be etched in my memory. Engulfed in a swirling sea of mounted Indians was a rapidly diminishing knot of blue uniforms struggling up the slopes of a gentle hill towards the high ground at the top. Seeing no chance of help from that quarter I quickly turned to retrace my route, but in my haste I stumbled on a half buried rock and I felt my feet going out from under me.
It could have been hours or minutes later when I felt a hand shaking my shoulder and Seth was asking if I was all right. I croaked out a reply about my throbbing headache, grunted and haltingly got to my knees. I pointed feebly towards the river and after a quick glance Seth said that it was a real nice view but that if I was finished with my nap we should start back for the camp or not expect anything to be left from dinner.
Seth helped me up, handed me my Sharps, then picked up my hat and from under it produced a dented brass bugle which he admired briefly before commenting that I was suppose to be looking for gold, not lost army property.
With a final look North to the placid and empty hillside by the river I followed Seth. By the time we got back to camp I had decided not to say anything about what I thought I had seen. I got some good natured ribbing about the dangers of sleeping on the Job with Indians about.
As we had no luck in finding any “color”, the 25th of June was our last day and we packed it in. Seth went back to our folk’s place in Council Bluffs and I sent the bugle back with him.
I remained in Wheeler that winter and put my Sharps to good use doing some hunting for the army at Ft. Peck. They hadn’t gotten any contracts let for the supply of beef, so except for the supplies coming up the Yellowstone by steam boat, the only fresh meat for the fort was what buffalo and elk I brought in.
The talk that Winter was all about the Indian troubles. The Sioux and Cheyenne had been raising Hell as close as 10 miles from Laramie and enough was enough. Gen. P. N. Sheridan was told to round them up and to make sure they stayed on their reservation.
My having recently been out in the Yellowstone and Black Hills areas it was natural for the army to offer me a job as civilian scout for a 90 day term. I signed on in mid-March.
Units of the 5th and 7th cavalry assembled at various frontier outposts and after considerable delay we rode out of Camp Cook on the Little Missouri in mid-May to the 7th Cavalry tune of “Gary Owen”.
For over a month 1,200 men and horses, in 3 columns followed one trail after another without finding more than small encampments of women and children. Finally our Cree Indian scouts came across the tracks of several very large groups moving North from Wyoming into the Rosebud area.
By now my contract had expired and I was simply riding along for a few more days until I could find a likely place to try my luck just one more time in panning for gold.
And so it was that on the 24th of June 1876 I was again in the Big Horn/Powder River area. This time with 9 troops of the 7th Cavalry. At my recommendation we stopped that night at the same camp where Seth and I had been prospecting the year before.
The final evening I spent with the troops I was invited to eat with the Colonel and I was able to give him a good commentary on the surrounding countryside based on my wanderings the previous year.
However, I decided not to make mention of my hallucination or dream of the year past. The Colonel was an educated man and a graduate of West Point, not a man likely to appreciate such campfire stories from a departing civilian scout.
The next morning the bugler sounded “Boots and Saddles” and I watched my former comrades ride out. Gathering my meager belongings I started out after them at a more leisurely pace, better suited to my new civilian status.
A few miles later I forded the river after them and almost immediately came to a small but deserted Indian encampment.
The command had divided here as I knew they had planned. Capt. Benteen taking 4 troops South to join Maj. Reno, while the Colonel continued North with 5 troops consisting of about 265 men.
I continued on westwards at a good pace anxious to reach the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. I cut many sign of large and small groups of Indians moving Northeast. Whole villages were on the move and had passed by only a few days previously. My luck held and I saw not a living soul, White or Red.
June faded into July, August came and went, in early September the first bite of Winter was in the air and I decided to head on over to Deadwood in the hopes of getting on with Bill Hickok as a deputy or even riding shotgun for the Overland State.
It was by then obvious to me that my fortune was not to be made as a prospector.
A weeks ride brought me to the fringe of civilization in the form of a fence line and I followed that to a line shack which looked promising for a hot meal and some civilized company. Anyone out of work or riding the fence line as they say, was always welcome to drop by for a free meal at any ranch or line shack. So I was welcomed by a grizzled old cowboy and we swapped lies and inquired of mutual friends.
A pile of dated issues of the Bismark Weekly Tribune newspaper was stacked next to the pot bellied stove and pointing to them I asked what was going on in the world? He replied that he was a bit shy of ‘book learnin’ but I was welcome to help myself as he was just using scraps of them to light fires in the stove.
I picked up the top paper which had been torn across and wadded up, I was going to pass on to the next paper but the heavy black border of a death notice caught my eye and I read with interest: “. . . was the youngest Brevet Major General of the Union’s Michigan Cavalry Brigade at Gettysburg, accompanied Gen. Sheridan on his last great cavalry raid. He led the last charge at Appomattox Court House which stopped Lee’s army and personally accepted Gen. Lee’s flag of truce.
Accepting a lesser rank of Lt. Colonel in the regular army at the end of the war, he served in the frontier Indian Wars, winning numerous victories and defeating Chief Black Kettle. In his final battle, Sunday June 25, 1876, he was beaten by Chief Crazy Horse and died alongside his brother Tom, a Captain in his command and 265 others in a fierce and bloody battle in the Black Hills, Montana Territory. He is survived by his wife Elizabeth.”
The papers I saved from the stove that day in September 1876 I had put with the dented bugle in my parents attic where they remained all these many years. I’ve often wondered if I should have mentioned my hallucination or vision to the Colonel that final evening, but perhaps he wouldn’t have thanked me for telling him what I thought I saw over the hill that day on the bank of the Little Bighorn river.
With a start I realized that the afternoon had gone and I quickly replaced my mementos in the old trunk, just before the lid slammed down my eyes were drawn for the final time to the last line of the obituary, “Gone To Glory: George Armstrong Custer, R.I.P.”
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Author: C. W. Harris, aka:‘Davey Crockett’, this 5 page short story was started in London in 1991 and put away until April 2017 when I found a copy, did some minor edits and finished it off.
I guess you could say that I am a pretty slow writer, but like the story of the
tortoise and the hare, I finally got it finished.. Of possible interest is this site:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6R8OzY6_1M
Contact via: Consumerissues@aol.com
