Killdeer mountain, p.10
Killdeer Mountain, page 10
“Who do you think he is?” I demanded.
“A sly-tongued miserable person of no importance,” she answered evenly. He had said that of himself, I remembered. I am no one of importance.
I poured another cup of the lukewarm coffee. “I think he is of importance to both of you,” I said. “Otherwise you’d not concern yourselves with his presence in my stateroom.”
To my surprise Towanjila pressed one of her small hands gently against the back of my hand that was resting on the table. Her voice in English was metallic, forced out like the sounds of those hollow Indian-rubber dolls that little girls squeeze to make whistling noises. “He is father of child,” I thought she said. She tapped her breast with one finger. “My child.” She was wearing earrings with tiny blue-and-red stone pendants that moved like fluttering butterflies when she spoke.
“Yes,” Nettie said. “For that reason he must be looked after.”
Towanjila held the fingers of one hand together, and pointing them upward in front of her forehead, she began spinning her hand gracefully at the wrist. “Foolish,” she said in that mechanical tone of hers. “Foolish in head.”
Nettie was pushing her chair back from the table. “He’ll go back to Bell’s Landing on the first downriver steamboat,” she promised. She and the Indian girl excused themselves and went off toward the ladies’ cabin.
After they’d gone I took one of the unused napkins from the end of the table, unfolded it, placed some muffins and a generous slice of ham upon it, and tied the ends together. Thrusting the napkined packet into my side pocket, I turned and started toward the exit to the outer promenade. Smiling at me from a chair beside the melodeon was Kathleen Hardesty, her red hair neatly coiffed, her green eyes looking into mine. She was holding some music sheets in her lap. I had no idea how long she’d been there; I’d thought the central lounge was empty.
“A pleasant morning to you, Mr. Morrison,” she greeted me. I mumbled a reply.
“Don’t tell me you’re a secret gormandizer,” she went on gaily, her eyes fixed upon the bulge in my side pocket. “Or do you have a pet that must be fed, hidden away in your stateroom, a dog perhaps?”
I wanted to tell her it was none of her damned business, but I did not. Fortunately the exit door was flung open before I found words to reply, and Captain Adams stepped in, bringing with him a gust of fresh Dakota air. “Ah, Sam Morrison. And Mrs. Hardesty.” He rubbed a finger over his drooping moustache. “Mrs. Hardesty and I missed you at breakfast, Sam.”
“Yes, I’m as slow as the Roanoke this morning.”
“Current’s strong and winds contrary,” he replied in a defensive tone. “But Mr. Allford assures me we’ll make it to Fort Standish—Fort Rawley, that is, by tomorrow afternoon.”
Mrs. Hardesty put the music sheets aside and stood between us, her eyes shining as she kept her gaze on me. “Captain Adams has invited me to visit the pilothouse,” she said in the manner of a young girl boasting about a special favor.
The captain bowed, his face flushing slightly. “Ah—Sam,” he said to cover his embarrassment, “Doc Lieber and Emilie have been looking about for you. They’re both up by the texas.”
“I’ll join them after a moment.”
“Yes. Advise you to wear a heavier jacket. Wind’s brisk and rather chilly up there.”
With his usual exaggerated air of courtliness, Captain Adams ushered Mrs. Hardesty out upon the promenade. I followed them as far as the door of my stateroom.
Everything seemed to be as I’d left it except I could no longer hear the soft snoring of my guest. He was not in the upper bunk. The pillow and blanket had been neatly smoothed and folded. “Selkirk,” I called quietly. The closet door was ajar and no one was in there.
“The damn fool,” I said aloud, and pulled the tied napkin from my pocket and placed it on top of one of the biscuit tins beside the wall. My sympathies for that strange hollow-eyed man began to ebb. He would not stay put either in my stateroom or in my mind. Yet again I had an odd feeling that if I did not keep close track on him, he would become no more than vapor, an illusion of my own imagining.
Before going up to the hurricane deck, I made a quick circuit of the Roanoke, peering into nooks and crannies, searching around the boilers and engines, and opening the doors of unlocked closets, but I found no sign of my missing guest. I left the hurricane deck for the last. As I came up the front companionway, Kathleen Hardesty shouted a greeting to me from the pilothouse. All I could see of her was her smiling face above the twelve-foot wheel, one edge of which she held with both hands. Captain Adams and Henry Allford stood at her sides, both wearing tomcat grins from ear to ear.
On the deck below the open window of the pilothouse, Dr. Lieber and his wife Emilie were seated in one of the double chairs. Emilie was bundled into a white blanket coat with a red scarf over her head and ears.
“Quite a change in the weather,” I said.
“It’ll warm up soon enough,” she replied. “We’re enjoying the invigorating air while we can.”
Lieber nodded. “Delightful. If only our female pilot”—he rolled his eyes upward to indicate Mrs. Hardesty at the wheel—”keeps us afloat.”
Emilie laughed. “Konrad is saying that only for my benefit, Mr. Morrison. He’s as silly about that woman as are Captain Adams and Mr. Allford. Not to mention that jaunty young lieutenant colonel.”
“Sam has paid her far more attention than I,” Lieber protested. “Put him on the list.”
“Mr. Morrison is too worldly-wise to be taken in by specious coinage—” She stopped, her head turned to listen. The object of our gossip, escorted by Captain Adams, had descended from the rear of the pilothouse and in a moment she rounded the corner of the texas, her musical voice never ceasing. “Time for charades,” she cried enthusiastically. “Come along, you three.”
“I do enjoy charades,” Emilie responded. “Konrad? And you, Mr. Morrison?”
Lieber glanced at me. “I believe I promised to give our journalist a bit of information he is seeking.”
“Can’t it wait?” Mrs. Hardesty asked.
“Shan’t take long,” I said. “We’ll join you later.”
She shook her head impatiently. “Oh, well, we have the captain. And Lieutenant Colonel Harris promised to gather a few of his acquaintances. We need men, you know.” She tried to lock her green eyes into mine, but I turned deliberately to gaze at a distant herd of antelope running far out on the plain.
After they’d gone down the companionway, Lieber smiled. “I must be getting old,” he said. “When I was courting Emilie back in Saint Louis, I loved charades. Now they tend to bore me.” He rubbed his hands together. “I suppose you want me to tell you about Killdeer Mountain.”
“No, I’d rather you told me about Major Rawley, after he was put under arrest and confined to the area of your ambulance.”
“Ah. Did I mention that? Well, he was in a state of black dejection the first few hours. My young hospital steward and I had more than we could do—you see, General-La Prade left all his wounded with us when he dashed off in pursuit of the fleeing Indians. Not too many serious wounds, but they all had to be looked after. I soon realized that what Major Rawley needed was to be kept busy, to force his mind off his despondency. I put him to helping me with two nasty arrow penetrations. The arrowheads were in his cavalrymen so he had a personal interest in seeing that I removed them with as little flesh damage as possible. One was a hip wound to the bone, the other deep into a shoulder. As beautiful a pair of arrowheads as I ever saw, splendid workmanship, tooled and attached to the shafts in such a way as to cause the victims to slowly bleed to death if not removed. I have both in my collection. Be pleased to show them to you sometime in Saint Louis.”
At dawn of the day following the battle, Lieber told me, Colonel Herrick assigned a small detail to bury the nine soldiers who had died in the fighting and during the night. He ordered Major Rawley (or Selkirk) to take charge of the burial party. More than half the dead were from the major’s cavalry company, and Herrick made that point, quite cruelly, Lieber thought. The major stood by while the graves were dug deep, the bodies carefully covered, the surfaces leveled, and horses marched across the ground to conceal their presence. He tried to find a drum and bugle to formalize the final rites, but all the musicians had gone with General La Prade’s pursuit column.
During the morning, Colonel Herrick ordered his troops to move up to the site of the Indian village and destroy what was left of it. There they found several dead Sioux, a few wounded ponies, and a large number of dogs that had been left behind in the precipitate retreat of the Indians. Herrick ordered the dogs and ponies shot and the Sioux buried under stones. Although Lieber’s ambulance and wagon followed the column up the slope, both he and the major were occupied in keeping the wounded men as comfortable as possible and they took no part in the final action at Killdeer Mountain. Instead, during the last hour or so they were quiet spectators of the total destruction of what remained of the tipi village. Everything that would burn—poles, skins, buffalo robes—were heaped into piles and set to blazing. Large quantities of dried meat and berries that had been collected by the Indians for use during the coming winter, and hundreds of buffalo bladders filled with marrow and other fats and oils were added to the fires. Kettles and pots were smashed or punched full of holes. Occasionally a soldier or one of the scouts would keep a robe or a bladder, attaching it to his pack.
During this time, Dr. Lieber and the major relaxed in the shade of the ambulance, chewing on stale hardtack and trying to swallow coffee made from exceedingly unsavory water.
“They had a white woman captive,” the major said suddenly, turning to look directly at Lieber. “That’s why I could not bring myself to give the command to fire.”
Lieber said nothing for a few moments. He rummaged in an old leather bag that lay beside one of the ambulance wheels until he found a half-empty brandy bottle. He held the bottle up and when the major nodded he poured a few drops into his coffee cup. “The scouts told me about her,” the surgeon said then.
“She was Nettie Steever,” the major declared. “I caught only one glimpse of her. I keep seeing her in my mind’s eye, like a brightly lighted magic-lantern picture, frozen there. She was bent forward, her hair hanging over her face, something on her back. It’s not clear.” He stared helplessly at Lieber. “I did not want to believe what I saw. I refused to accept it—until it was too late to fire on that mob—of humanity.”
At the time Lieber did not know whether the major was imagining more than he had actually seen. But three days later the vision was given some substantiation when Colonel Herrick’s troops arrived at Heart River to resume escort duties for the civilian wagon train bound for Montana. One of the Iowa mounted infantrymen informed Lieber and the major that the Steevers’ wagon had slipped away from the corraled train soon after General La Prade left, and nothing had been heard from them since. “So far as old man Steever’s concerned, I’d say good riddance,” the infantryman added. “But I do feel sorry for the woman. If the redskins took her.”
“Did you see any Indians about?” the major asked anxiously.
“They harassed us in the mornings the first two days,” the man replied. “Then they went off.”
Lieber and I were bathed in full sunlight now in our chairs below the Roanoke’s pilothouse, and the pleasant coolness of the morning was rapidly being displaced by warm humidity. “Colonel Herrick’s orders were to escort the wagon train west to Flat Top Butte on the Little Missouri,” he said, “and await a rendezvous there with General La Prade. We spent a week getting to the Little Missouri, and then had to wait another week before La Prade came back down from the north.”
“How did the major behave during this time?” I asked.
“Very well, although he had little to do. He was deliberately shunned by his fellow officers and had no one to talk with except the hospital steward and me, and oh, yes, Sergeant O’Hara came around frequently. The major could not keep his mind off his failure to order his men to fire that afternoon at Killdeer Mountain. At least once a day he would tell me of seeing the woman, Nettie Steever, in the midst of the fleeing Indians, a bright magic-lantern picture in his mind, he would say. He described everything about her in the most minute details.
“He was quite nervous the day General La Prade rejoined us, spending much of his time in the ambulance or the canvased wagon. La Prade had chased Spotted Horse’s Sioux to the Canada line, but there the general was forced to halt. He was forbidden to cross into the British possessions where the Indians found refuge. La Prade was in a foul mood because he had been unable to overtake the Sioux, and I was relieved to learn from Colonel Herrick that at next daylight we should be prepared to start the long march back to Fort Standish. It was a pleasure to escape the presence of such a martinet as La Prade, as well as being rid of responsibility for the civilian wagoners. A greedy, inconsiderate, impatient lot, most of those gold-seeking low-lifers were. As for La Prade he soon afterward was recalled to the East, for some sort of supererogatory assignment to General Grant’s rear headquarters. He was replaced by General Sully, a far more effective commander, and events gradually settled down out here. The departure of La Prade from Dakota probably saved Major Rawley from dismissal by the army, or worse, but there is no way of knowing that for certain.
“The march back to Fort Standish was an unpleasant business. We had so slender a stock of hard bread that we were on one-third rations the last few days. Water was also in short supply, and what we could find was unpalatable. We had no grain for the horses, and grasshoppers had consumed all vegetation except for the very coarsest bottomland grass and leaves of willow trees along drying stream beds.”
A crosscurrent of wind caught the blue-gray wood-smoke pouring from the steamboat’s stacks above our heads, sending swirls of it down upon us. “I suppose we’d better make an appearance for Mrs. Hardesty’s charades,” Lieber said without enthusiasm. He held a handkerchief over his face against the smoke, and we started for the companionway.
“The hearings on the major’s conduct at Killdeer Mountain?” I asked as I fell into step beside him. “What was the outcome?”
“Nothing really happened in the end. To keep himself in the clear Colonel Herrick questioned and crossquestioned everyone who was in any way remotely connected with Major Rawley at Killdeer Mountain. Herrick ran the hearings in rigid military fashion. They went on well into the month of November. On the last day, when he announced solemnly that in his opinion no further proceedings were necessary in the case, he informed young Rawley that he must remain under garrison arrest at Fort Standish until the record of proceedings could be transmitted to the judge advocate general in Washington for a decision on further action.
“At Herrick’s request I read the final record that he carefully composed. There was nothing in it that could possibly bring the major a reprimand from higher command. Herrick was quite aware that the powerful Senator Rawley sat on important congressional committees relating to the War Department, that he was a self-appointed adviser to high government officials, possibly even to the judge advocate general. The colonel was not a man to drop hot irons into anybody’s lap. So there was no reason for Major Rawley to remain at Fort Standish. He not only had been removed from command of the Minnesota cavalry company, he had been replaced as commander of the Galvanized Yankee battalion which remained through the autumn and winter down at Fort Rice.”
We turned into the promenade that would lead us to the central lounge. “What did he do with himself all those days of waiting?” I asked.
“I brought him books to read. He was allowed to ride within the stockade. We talked for hours in the late evenings.”
“What did you talk about?” I persisted.
“Damn you newspaper scribblers. I remember he was especially interested in Colonel Herrick’s obsession, which I told him about.”
“What was—”
“The obsession?” Lieber smiled, somewhat derisively, I thought. “Herrick was determined to capture old Spotted Horse. Capture the chief and take him personally to Saint Paul for a public hanging. He went so far as to send a cavalry patrol far up near the Canada border. For a while he was convinced that Spotted Horse would bring his people back across the line before winter. I have no proof of it, but I sincerely believe that Herrick employed a fur trader to go to Fort Manitou, the British outpost near where Spotted Horse was said to be camped. At any rate the trader reported to Herrick—along in November as I recollect—that Spotted Horse and his followers were in tipis a few miles west of Fort Manitou. From that day, Herrick spent all his time planning a raid into Canada to seize Spotted Horse and bring him back to Fort Standish. Much of what he was planning was done in secret. He and the trader—Fromboise his name was—were always talking together in the colonel’s office, their voices low and indistinct. Yet Herrick was so full of his scheme he had to tell some of it—mostly to me, I gather.”
“And you passed the story on to the major?”
“To keep him alive.”
We were nearing the door that led into the central lounge. I caught Lieber’s arm and pulled him to a stop beside the guardrail. “Why didn’t he run away?” I asked quietly. “Just leave the damned fort?”
The doctor’s mouth opened in surprise. “He’d have sooner given up his own life. I’m surprised you’d ask that, Sam—the honor of the Rawleys—you must know as much about that as I.”
I still held on to his arm. “Are you certain the major was Charles Rawley?”
His eyes stared into mine for a moment before he laughed. “Why in heaven would he not be?”
“Did he write to his family?”
“I’m certain of it. A letter or two came for him on almost every upriver steamboat. From a sister, from his mother, probably from the senator. Yes, I recall writing a brief letter for him to the senator, also one to the sister.”
