Cry of the Hawk

Without delaying, two days later companies I and K were formed up and marched north, leaving the rest behind to garrison the South Platte stations and to build the new Fort Sedgwick to replace the aging Fort Rankin. Captains Henry Leefeldt and A. Smith Lybe had their orders minutes after arriving at the sprawling Fort Laramie, like a beacon on those far plains.

“We’re to push on west,” explained Captain Lybe to his I Company that night as the men sopped up the last of their white beans with hardtack, supper in bivouac in the shadow of the Laramie barracks. “K Company will drop off at Camp Marshall, sixty-five miles west of here.”

“So where we going?” asked one of the Mississippi boys Jonah had been captured with at the battle of Corinth.

Lybe turned slowly on the speaker, pursing his lips for a moment in concentration. “We been handed the toughest row of all, boys.”

Some of the Confederates muttered among themselves. Others just stirred their fires with sticks or stared at the coffee going cold in their cups.

“I won’t bullshit you none. We’re all gonna count on each other out there—so I don’t want to start by telling you this is going to be a cakewalk. You all have those down south at Sunday socials, don’t you?”

Lybe smiled, trying to drive home his joke as some of the Confederates laughed self-consciously.

“Those of us what lived close enough to a church!” hollered someone behind Jonah.

The rest of them laughed now. Lybe too. Hook liked the Yankee for trying. The captain just might make this company of ragtag Confederates work, and keep them alive to boot.

“Well, now—we’ve got our orders.”

“Going where, Cap’n?”

Lybe cleared his throat. “We’ll push on to Three Crossings, where we’ll build our post.”

“We all gonna stay there?”

“No such luck, boys. We’re being spread thin along the telegraph. To keep it open.”

“How thin is thin?”

“This company’s got us three hundred miles to watch,” Lybe answered, wiping his palms on the tails of his tunic.

“Jesus God!” someone exclaimed.

“We’ll be spread out from Sweetwater Station, St. Mary’s, and clear up to South Pass itself.”

“The mountains? We going clear up into those goddamned mountains?” squeaked a questioner.

“No. South Pass isn’t in the mountains. You wouldn’t know you had crossed the Rockies if you didn’t pay attention and see the creeks and streams flowing west, instead of east.”

“Don’t say,” muttered the fellow beside Jonah. He smiled at Hook and went back to licking coffee off his finger.

“We won’t be alone though.”

“Hell, no. We’ll have all kinds of redskin company I bet.”

Lybe laughed easily at that. “No, boys. The Eleventh Ohio is out there, waiting for us to come on west.”

“Ohio boys?”

“Yes. I hear they’ve already got a few galvanized Rebs of their own on their rosters. Mostly Kentuckians who served under General John Morgan.”

“Kentucky boys are all right,” Jonah said. His voice carried loudly in the sudden stillness.

“Yes, soldier. I think Kentucky boys are all right. Just like the rest of you: Mississippi and Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee.”

“Don’t forget Ala-by-God-bama!” shouted one of them.

The rest hooted, singing out their home states.

Jonah watched Lybe drag a fist under his nose, not knowing if the man was touched by the homey kinship of these Southerners suddenly getting used to the ill-fitting blue uniforms and these far-flung, wide-open plains dotted with high purple mountains, or if the captain might truly be worried for what he was leading them into.

3

May, 1865

WHEN CRAZY HORSE and Little Big Man rode in at the van of the long procession leading many fine horses swaybacked under all that fine plunder taken in the raids along the Platte River, the eyes of the Bad Face Oglalla warriors grew big as Cheyenne conchos.

By the Moon of First Eggs, Old Man Afraid could no longer talk his people into staying out of the way of the white man. Instead, both Red Cloud and the Old Man’s son were convincing more and more of the Oglalla that the time had come to make war on the white man. Raiding the Holy Road had never been so profitable, nor so easy—what with so few soldiers strung out along the road and the talking wire hung above those deep ruts pointing toward the setting sun.

Beneath the spring moon, Young Man Afraid of His Horses and Red Cloud called for an all-out effort to drive the white man and his soldiers from the North Platte by midsummer. Until then, small raiding parties would strike here and there along the Holy Road, feeling out the strength of the enemy, keeping the soldiers in a turmoil like a wasps’ nest stirred with a stick, and forcing the army to dart here, then there, with what strength the bluecoats could muster.

“These soldiers do not fight like men,” Young Man Afraid told the great assembly of more than fifteen hundred warriors. “We marched north from our raids along the Holy Road. Tell them, Crazy Horse—what happened to those soldiers sent against us.”