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

“It’s our very best, General Crook,” the businessman swore. “Nothing but the best for you and your men.”

What was in those bottles proved to be some of the strongest whiskey Finerty had ever tasted, even stronger than what had made him sputter when he had first come to Wyoming Territory and Kid Slaymaker’s saloon near Fort Fetterman.

“Good God! Is this what they call forty-rod?” the newsman asked, wheezing and wiping his watery eyes.

“Indeed it is,” Donegan said, pouring Finerty another drink. “If Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse knew how to make this stuff and sell it to the white man, why—the Sioux could whip the whole frontier army in less than a week!”

Once the party emerged from the saloon back onto the street to find their horses watered and well fed, the wild cheering erupted again. But when they left Crook City behind, they could plainly see the town had already enjoyed its short-lived glory. Founded in May, it was already suffering a long downhill slide as the richest gulch had quickly played out and every day more and more miners headed for other nearby strikes or to build their sluices farther upstream.

Quartz and timber were both in abundance—that much was apparent from their ride up the graded wagon road that would take them another ten miles to Deadwood. Every mile saw more teamsters and packers, as well as assorted horsemen, each one of them sporting a pair of spurs with rowels as big as tea saucers, jingling like hawk’s bells as they bounced along. A few miles out from Deadwood they came upon a handful of riders who wore the finest in bowlers and claw-hammer coats, brocade vests and fine silk ties—the sort of haberdashery that made Crook’s seedy, tattered, unkempt bunch look all the more like a wandering band of Nordic raiders.

“General Crook, I presume?” one of the citizens asked, removing his hat.

“I am George Crook, yes.”

“Good day, sir!” The speaker smiled, as well as all those with him. “My name’s E. B. Farnum, Deadwood’s first mayor. Welcome, may I say. Welcome, indeed, to a grateful town!”

After shaking hands all round with the mayor’s aldermen, Farnum reined about and led the party on through Montana City, Elizabeth Town, China Town, then Lower Deadwood, and finally in to Deadwood itself, where the whole town had turned out, waiting expectantly for the general’s arrival. No sooner had Crook reached the edge of what was then the business district than thirteen small field pieces erupted in a grand martial salute. Smoke hung lazily over the street as a wonderful breeze teased the red, white, and blue bunting strung from awnings and porches and second-story balconies in a festive salute to the man the town regarded as their savior. Cheering, dancing, shooting handguns—the noise was deafening.

Finerty smiled, watching the general tip his ragged,weather-beaten chapeau, bowing left, then right, then left again, shaking hands as they inched slowly along, waving to those on porches and balconies, throwing a kiss here and there to the second-story working girls of that mining town—all in the manner of a man running for political office.

“Crook could be elected mayor of Deadwood if he wanted,” Finerty had to yell above the pandemonium to the Irishman riding beside him.

Donegan nodded, saying, “Hell—he could damn well be elected governor of the whole bleeming Dakota Territory!”

Drawing up in front of the Grand Central Hotel and gesturing across the street, Mayor Farnum politely offered, “General, should your men wish to make use of our public bathhouse over there, you will find it at your disposal—free of cost.”

It had been the first hot water Finerty sank into since that tiny galvanized tub in a whore’s crib at Kid Slay-maker’s clear back in May. Going four months between good soakings had become too onerous a habit. After he was done, Donegan stood naked and anxiously ready while the bath attendants dumped Finerty’s water.

“Look at that, will you now?” the Irishman exclaimed, pointing at the newsman’s bathwater being poured into a wooden sluice that went through a hole in the wall, where it spilled into the creek. “I ain’t seen the likes of such filthy, scummy water since we camped beside the Powder River!”

In less than an hour the entire detail had bathed and felt better for it, despite the fact they were forced to climb back into the same mud-crusted clothing the attendants had at least brushed and shaken. Out onto the street, as the sun began to set, they again poked their heads, and at once the town again erupted. Both sides of the long main thoroughfare were lined with saloons and drinking houses, restaurants and hotels, mercantiles and those parlors where the soft flesh of women was daily bartered, all of it closely hemmed in by the timbered hills that looked down on the merry celebrants.