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

In their travels the following day they passed by the new community of Castleton on the Black Hills route that led them along Castle Creek and on through the shadow of Harney’s Peak. Already the new community was home to more than two hundred hopeful miners and merchants. On the outskirts of town, fields had been plowed and a few small cattle herds grazed in the tall grasses. By noon they had reached a plateau, where they looked down upon Hill City, abandoned save for one hardy hermit.

“Why did everyone go?” Donegan asked the old man.

Came the simple answer, “Indian scare … and no gold dust.”

The sun was settling into the western clouds, igniting them with radiant fire, when Crook’s party reached Custer City, aptly named for that one soldier who brought his Seventh Cavalry to explore the Black Hills back in seventy-four, then promptly informed the world of the prospects for finding gold in that land ceded to the Sioux. Here Crook called a halt for the night, and the party reined up outside a likely looking hotel.

“Donegan? Is that really you?”

Seamus turned slowly at the call of his name, unable to recognize the voice. His hand slid closer to the butt of a pistol. He looked at the clean-shaven soldier bounding off the boardwalk toward him, not able to place the man.

“Seamus Donegan! By the saints—it is you!”

“Egan? Don’t tell me!”

The captain stopped and spread his arms widely in a grand gesture, cocking his head to the side slyly. “Teddy Egan, his own self!”

They laughed and hugged and pounded one another on the back as John Finerty came over.

“Still tagging along with this worthless bit of army flotsam, I see, John,” Egan said after shaking hands with the newsman.

“Ever since the three of us went marching with Reynolds down on that Powder River village,” Finerty responded.

James “Teddy” Egan’s famous troop of grays, E Troop, Second Cavalry, the same men who had led the charge on the village nestled beside the frozen Powder River which Frank Grouard swore was Crazy Horse’s camp back on St. Patrick’s Day,* had ever since that winter campaign been assigned to protect emigrant and freight travel along the Black Hills Road between Fort Laramie and Custer City.

A courier from Laramie reached the general just after supper, bearing a message from Sheridan requesting that Crook hurry on and reach the fort within forty-eight hours. That was all but impossible given the condition of their weary mounts and captured Indian ponies. Yet the general would try to press on with all possible speed. To do so, he would require new mounts, immediately requesting Captain Egan to lend fifteen of his sturdy, sleek horses then and there in Custer City on the following morning of the nineteenth. Leaving behind his escort under Lieutenant Sibley to accompany the pack-train under Major Randall, the rest of the officers climbed atop those strong grays of Teddy Egan’s and set out at sunrise on a forced march. They had over a hundred miles to go just to reach Camp Robinson.

Glory! But it was good to have a good horse under him once again, Donegan thought. For so many weeks his horse had slowly played out before he finally turned it over to Dr. Clements back at the Sioux village and taken for his own one of the Sioux ponies. But now this was so much better. A fine army mount, surging along with the others on that trail behind Crook, who kept them at a gallop for most of the day. The general shot a deer for their dinner that noon; then they pushed on, reaching some marshy land at the southern end of the Hills by dusk.

Not more than a quarter of a mile ahead lay the waters of the South Cheyenne River. As the sun set far to the west, they struck the wagon road blazed from Buffalo Gap in the Black Hills down to the Red Cloud Agency. Pushing the horses back into a lope, Crook soon had them at a gallop once more.

By ten P.M. they reached a branch of Warbonnet Creek, where they watered the stock and talked of Bill Cody’s first scalp for Custer. Crook then asked if the others would agree to press on, and the entire party went back into the saddle for another four hours, when they finally stopped to picket their horses and lie down in their blankets on the frosty ground to enjoy a few hours of sleep.

Seamus told himself he must be getting old. He simply couldn’t remember a piece of cold ground ever feeling that good.

^* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 8, Blood Song.

Chapter 51

20-24 September 1876

The general had them up at four A.M., resaddled, and back on the road within a half hour, without breakfast or coffee.

Pointing to a ridge still at least twenty miles away to the south, Crook later halted the group as the sun was emerging in the east. “Would anyone care to hazard a guess what that is?” the general inquired.

“Those box-shaped buildings on the top of that high ground?” Finerty asked.

“Yes.”

“Could it be Camp Robinson?” asked Robert Strahorn.

“Exactly,” Crook replied. “Let’s push on, gentlemen!”