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

Turning slowly, the reporter saw what had stopped Donegan dead in his tracks there before the Number Ten Saloon. A big freshly painted sign nailed beside the open doors, announcing to one and all:

NUMBER 10 SALOON

Where Wild Bill Hickok

was murdered by

Jack McCall

on

August 2, 1876

“Will you look at that?” John exclaimed with an excited gush. “Wild Bill, the famous pistolero, was killed right here! And just a few weeks ago! My, my—wait till I write about this!”

Like a statue there beside Finerty, Donegan crossed himself with a trembling gun hand. Eyes welling, he murmured, “B-blessed Mary, Mither of God!”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Irishman?” Finerty asked, sensing the first quiver of fright at the way Donegan stood transfixed, as if he’d just seen a ghost. “Don’t tell me you’d be superstitious having us a drink in there now. Just think what you can tell your children—that you drank whiskey in the same saloon where the famous Wild Bill Hickok was gunned down.”

“Murdered.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, Seamus. Wild Bill was gunned down right inside there.”

Donegan shook his head, clenching his eyes, some tears creeping out at their corners. “No—there wasn’t a man what could’ve gunned Bill Hickok down. Just like the sign says: he was murdered.”

Inching in front of the big scout, Finerty stared into Donegan’s eyes. “You—you knew him … knew Wild Bill Hickok?”

Nodding once, he sniffed. “Back to sixty-seven. We scouted a short time together. Me and Cody both.”

“That’s right,” Finerty said, remembering. “The winter you fellas hijacked that load of Mexican beer and made a tidy profit selling it to Carr’s soldiers. Well. I’ll be damned, Irishman. I hadn’t put it all together until now. I see. Well. Under the circumstances I can understand why you might not be thirsty no more. Maybe we have had us enough and should find a place to sleep off the rest of the night.”

Eventually the Irishman nodded, quietly saying, “Yeah. Someplace else to go but here.”

“My God! Listen to this, Seamus!”

Donegan really wasn’t at all interested in what the Chicago newsman found interesting in that copy of The Black Hills Pioneer.

Ever since he had stared at that sign nailed to the front of Mann’s Number 10 Saloon last night, the Irishman had thought of nothing else but Bill Hickok, fondly remembering their scouting days together, learning of the gunman’s meteoric rise to fame as a Kansas cow-town lawman.

Annoyed at the interruption, he dragged his eyes away from gazing out the restaurant window and looked into the face of the reporter seated across the table from him, who was reading a copy of the local newspaper.

Donegan asked, “Does it say anything about Crook’s visit?”

“Yes—they’ve got a really good piece on our campaign and some nice writing on the general’s oratorical efforts last night,” Finerty answered that morning of the seventeenth. “But it’s this editorial you’ve got to hear: ‘Some pap-sucking Quaker representative of an Indian doxology mill, writes in Harper for April about settling the Indian troubles by establishing more Sunday Schools and Missions among them.’ ”

“Just what the Sioux and Cheyenne need,” Donegan grumbled. He took another sip of his steamy coffee, then went back to staring out the window.

“There’s more here,” Finerty continued. “‘It is enough to make a western man sick to read such stuff.’”

Without looking at the correspondent, Seamus said, “I never was much of one to read newspapers, anyway. Though I personally have nothing against newspapermen.”

“Now, listen, Seamus—this here is the clencher! ‘You might as well try to raise a turkey from a snake egg as to raise a good citizen from a papoose. Indians can be made good in only one way, and that is to make angels of them.’”

Finally he looked into Finerty’s eyes. “By that account, seems Crook’s and Terry’s armies haven’t made too many Indians good, have we?”

For most of the previous night and into the morning, Lieutenants William P. Clark and Frederick W. Sibley had busied themselves pulling all of Deadwood’s blacksmiths out of bed and the saloons to work at reshoeing the patrol’s horses and unshod Indian ponies. Finally at eight A.M., after a big breakfast and lots of coffee for those who had unwisely celebrated most of the night, Crook had them climbing back into the saddle for their ride south to Camp Robinson.

On the road to Custer City they passed a growing number of wagons: empty freighters rumbling south to the Union Pacific rail line at Sidney, Nebraska, returning north with those precious goods bound for the Black Hills mining camps. In the early afternoon the general’s party met three companies of the Fourth Artillery escorting a wagon train ordered north with supplies for Crook’s expedition. For more than an hour the groups stopped there beside Box Elder Creek to exchange news of the world for news from the front.