Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

“Samantha!”

Sam turned back to the window, looking down on Elizabeth again, flagging the handful of yellow telegraph flimsies at the end of her arm. And she calmed herself, thinking that Mrs. Burt wouldn’t be hurrying so, shouting out at her, if it was bad news she carried.

With a swallow Samantha turned and gazed down at her belly, patting her bulk reassuringly a moment before she dashed from the room and lumbered ungainly down the narrow stairs to the landing, where more than a dozen women poured through the front door onto the porch in an eager crush of skirts and bodices, all swishing below a cacophony of voices excited yet etched with dread.

For a moment Sam held at the last step, gripping the newel in her right hand, wishing him back here with all her might. She licked her lip as the others flooded onto the porch, where Elizabeth Burt began passing out the telegram pages on which the key operator had scrawled each message.

Word from the war.

They already knew there had been a big fight—something on the order of a week ago now. By the time word of that battle reached Fort Fetterman and was relayed down the telegraph wire to Fort Laramie, already the Indians camped all about the post spoke of hearing on the moccasin telegraph of a great fight wherein the army was bested. Those rumors were only whispered, conveyed in hushed tones, until Crook’s official report of the fight reached Laramie, disproving the worst fears that the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition had suffered a massacre. From that moment on it was only a matter of waiting out the agonizing days until each wife learned if her husband would be among the cold, sterile numbers Crook listed for Sheridan’s headquarters: was a loved one among the dead or wounded, a casualty of that great fight?

Taking a moment at the landing to tug down her bodice, Samantha straightened the apron over her belly and quartered through the open doorway as if she were bigger than she really was. More and more every week it seemed she was having to learn all over again how to move around in a body that always seemed to conspire against her.

“Here’s yours, Samantha,” Elizabeth said, rattling the yellow page aloft over others’ shoulders. “Oh, dear,” she said, sudden worry in her voice as she moved through the crush toward Samantha. “It’s good news! Trust me—he’s all right.”

Sam crumpled the flimsy telegram to her breast, daring not to read it just yet. Wanting to trust in Elizabeth’s eyes, those eyes that peered into Sam’s at this moment. “He’s … Seamus is all right?”

“Read it yourself. They can’t say much. None of them, not even my Andrew, an officer, dear Lord—not a single one is allowed to say much to us. But Seamus says there’s a letter coming, Sam,” she reassured, her finger tapping that flimsy that Sam held against her breast. “Read it and see he’s fine. Just fine.”

“F-fine?”

“He’ll be coming back here before your little one makes his debut at Fort Laramie. You can count on that, Sam.”

“Yes, I want to count on that,” she murmured softly as she turned away into the crush of women and Elizabeth was once more swallowed by anxious wives and clamoring voices.

At the edge of the porch Samantha stopped, pulled the yellow page from her breast, and smoothed it in her hands, then held the paper up to the sunlight, squinting at the telegrapher’s crude scrawl. In the open space that comprised nearly two thirds of the telegraph.

As Sam’s eyes misted, she brought the crumpled page to her breast and finally breathed one long sigh. She didn’t think she had breathed since she first heard Elizabeth call out from parade ground below her window. But now, at last, she could breathe again. As she did, Samantha felt the baby turn, a foot, a hand, or an elbow jabbing up beneath her ribs. And that sudden blow took her breath away a moment. She had to smile at that.

“Yes, little boy—your father is unharmed. And he says he’ll be coming home to us both real soon.”

Smoothing that pale-yellow paper again, instead of looking at the telegrapher’s handwriting, this time she peered at the printed form.

The rules of the Company require that all messages received for transmission shall be written on the message blanks of the Company, under and subject to the conditions printed thereon, which conditions have been agreed to by the sender of the following message.

Date Bank of South Fork Tongue River, 20th inst 1876

Received of Via Foit Fetterman 23^rd

To Mrs. Seamus Donegan, Fort Laramie

I am not hurt. Casualties light.

Be coming home when this business is done. Letter to follow.

S. Donegan