Half an hour farther on, they halted at the edge of the pinewoods, before the sandy banks of Spring Creek. The meandering water was deceptively low, and more than a hundred yards wide. The late-afternoon sun glowed off the slow, peaceful ripples. On the far bank, the pinewoods were thick and dark.
They watched the river silently for several minutes. Finally, Johnson poked his head out to ask why they were waiting. Morgan Earp, on top of the stage, leaned over and tapped him on the head, and held his finger to his lips, to be silent.
Johnson sat back in the coach, rubbed his head, and looked questioningly at Miss Emily.
Miss Emily shrugged, and slapped a mosquito.
Several minutes passed before Wyatt Earp said to Tiny, “How’s it look to you?”
“Dunno,” Tiny said.
Earp peered at the tracks on the sandy riverbank. “Lot of horses passed here recently.”
“That’s usual,” Tiny said. “Sheridan’s just a couple of miles south on the other side.”
They fell silent again, waiting, listening to the quiet gurgle of the water, the wind in the pines.
“You know, there’s usually birds hereabouts at Spring Creek,” Tiny said finally.
“Too quiet?” Earp said.
“I’d say too quiet.”
“How’s the bottom?” Earp asked, looking at the river.
“Never know till you get there. You want to make a play?”
“I guess I do,” Earp said. He swung down off the box, walked back, and looked into the coach at Johnson and Miss Emily.
“We’re going to try to cross the creek,” he said quietly. “If we get across, fine. If we get trouble, you stay down, no matter what you see or hear. Morg knows what to do. Let him handle things. Okay?”
They nodded. Johnson’s throat was dry. “You think it’s a trap?”
Earp shrugged. “It’s a good place for one.”
He climbed back onto the box and cocked his shotgun. Tiny whipped up the horses, and they started across at breakneck speed, the coach lurching as the wheels hit the soft sandy banks, and then splashing and jouncing over rocks in the riverbed.
And then the shooting started. Johnson heard the whinny of the horses, and with a final lurch the coach stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the river, and Tiny shouted, “That tears it!” and Morgan Earp began firing rapidly. “I’ll cover you, Wyatt.”
Johnson and Miss Emily ducked down. Bullets whined all around them, and the coach rocked as the men moved above them. Johnson peeked over the sill and saw Wyatt Earp running, splashing through the river toward the far shore.
“He’s leaving! Wyatt’s leaving us!” Johnson cried, and then a fusillade sent him diving for cover again.
“He wouldn’t abandon us,” Emily said.
“He just did!” Johnson shouted. He was completely panicked. Suddenly the coach door swung open and Johnson screamed as Tiny threw himself in, landing on top of them.
Tiny was gasping and white-faced; he pulled the door shut as a half dozen bullets splintered the wood.
“What’s happening?” Johnson asked.
“Ain’t no place for me out there,” Tiny said.
“But what’s happening?”
“We’re stuck in the middle of the damn river, that’s what’s happening,” Tiny said. “They killed one of the team, so we ain’t going nowhere, and the Earp boys are shooting away like blazes. Wyatt took off.”
“They have a plan?”
“I surely hope so,” Tiny said. “’Cause I don’t.” As the gunfire continued, he clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. His lips twitched.
“What’re you doing?”
“Praying,” Tiny said. “You better, too. ’Cause if Black Dick takes this stage, he’ll just naturally kill us all.”
In the reddish afternoon light, the stagecoach sat immobile in the middle of Spring Creek. On top of the stage, Morgan Earp lay flat and fired into the trees on the opposite shore. Wyatt made it safely to the far bank, and plunged into the pinewoods opposite.
Almost immediately, the shooting from the far side diminished: the Curry gang had something new to worry about now.
Then from the far shore there was a shotgun blast and a loud scream, agonizing. It trailed away into silence. After a moment, another shotgun blast, and a strangled cry.
The Curry gang stopped firing at the coach.
Then a voice cried, “Don’t shoot, Wyatt, please don’t—” and another blast.
Suddenly half a dozen voices on the far shore were shouting to each other, and then they heard horses galloping off.
And then nothing.
Morgan Earp knocked on the roof of the coach. “It’s finished,” he said. “They’re gone. You can breathe now.”
The passengers inside struggled to their feet, brushed themselves off. Johnson looked out and saw Wyatt Earp standing on the far bank, grinning. His sawed-off shotgun hung loosely in his hand.
He walked slowly back through the stream toward them. “First rule of a bushwhacking,” he said. “Always run toward the direction of fire, not away.”
“How many’d you kill?” Johnson asked. “All of them?”
Earp grinned again. “None of them.”
“None of them?”
“Those woods’re thick; you can’t see ten feet ahead of you. I’d never find ’em in there. But I knew they were spread out along the bank and probably couldn’t see each other directly. So I just shot my gun a few times, and made a few hideous cries.”
“Wyatt can really make hideous cries,” Morgan said.
“That’s so,” Wyatt said. “The Curry gang panicked and ran.”
“You mean you just tricked them?” Johnson said. In a strange way he felt disappointed.
“Listen,” Wyatt Earp said. “One reason I’m still alive is I don’t go asking for trouble. These boys are none too quick, and they got an active imagination. Besides, we got a bigger problem than getting rid of the Curry boys.”
“We do?”
“Yeah. We got to get this coach out of the river.”
“Why is that a problem?”
Earp sighed. “Boy, you ever tried to move a dead horse?”
It took an hour to cut the animal loose, and float it downstream. Johnson watched the dark carcass drift with the current until it had disappeared. With the five remaining horses of the team, they managed to haul the coach out of the sand and onto the far shore. By then it was dark, and they drove quickly to Sheridan, where they obtained a fresh team.
Sheridan was a small town of fifty wooden houses, but it seemed everyone had turned out to greet them; Johnson was surprised to see money changing hands.
Earp collected a lot of it.
“What’s going on?”
“They were wagering on whether we’d make it,” Earp said. “I had a few bets myself.”
“Which way’d you bet?”
Earp just smiled and nodded to a saloon. “You know, it would be sporting for you to go inside with me and buy a round of whiskey.”
“You think we should drink at a time like this?”
“We won’t see any more trouble until Red Canyon,” Earp said, “and I’m thirsty.”
Red Canyon
They reached the town of Custer at ten o’clock at night. The night was dark, and Johnson was disappointed; he couldn’t see much of the most famous place in the Black Hills, the Gordon Stockade at French Creek.
Just one year before, in 1875, the first miners of the Gordon party had built log cabins surrounded by a wooden fence ten feet high. They had entered the Black Hills in defiance of the Indian treaty, and they intended to pan for gold and hold off the Indians with their stockade. It had taken a cavalry expedition from Fort Laramie to get them out; in those days the army was still enforcing the Indian treaty, and the stockade stood deserted.
Now, everyone at Custer was talking about the new Indian treaty. Although the government was still fighting the Sioux in the field, the cost of the war was hi
gh—already in excess of $15 million—and it was an election year. Both the expense of the fighting and the legitimacy of the government’s position were hot campaign issues in Washington. Therefore, the Great White Father preferred to conclude the war peacefully, by negotiating a new treaty, and to this end, government negotiators had arranged to meet with Sioux chieftains in Sheridan.
But even specially picked chiefs were disgusted by the new proposals. Most of the government negotiators agreed with them. One of them, now on his way back to Washington, said to Johnson that it was “the hardest damn thing I ever did in my life. I don’t care how many feathers a man wears in his hair, he’s still a man. One of them, Red Legs, looked at me and said, ‘Do you think this is fair? Would you sign such a paper?’ And I could not meet his eyes. It made me sick.
“You know what Thomas Jefferson said?” the man continued. “In 1803, Thomas Jefferson said that it would take a thousand years before the West was fully settled. And it’ll be settled in less’n a hundred years. That’s progress.”
Johnson recorded in his journal that “he seemed an honest man sent to do a dishonest job, and now he could not forgive himself for carrying out the instructions of his government. He was drunk when we arrived, and drinking more when we left.”
Morgan Earp left them at Custer, and they went on without him. By midnight, they had passed Fourmile Ranch, and headed into Pleasant Valley. They passed Twelvemile Ranch, and Eighteenmile Ranch in the darkness.
Shortly before dawn, they reached the entrance to Red Canyon.
The Red Canyon coach station had been burned to the ground. All the horses had been stolen. Flies buzzed around a half dozen scalped bodies, evidence of Persimmons Bill’s depredations.
“Guess they didn’t hear about the new treaty,” Earp said laconically. “I reckon we won’t be eating here.”
They proceeded immediately through the canyon. It was a tense journey, slow because they had no fresh team, but they made it without incident. At the far end of the canyon they followed Hawk Creek toward Camp Collier, which marked the southern entrance to the Black Hills.
Now, in the morning light, they stopped for an hour to graze the horses, and to breathe a long sigh of relief. “Not long now, Mr. Johnson,” Earp said, “and you’ll be owing me half those bones.”
Johnson decided it was time to tell him the truth. “Mr. Earp,” he began.
“Yes?”
“I appreciate everything you have done to help me get out of Deadwood, naturally.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“But there’s something I have to tell you.”
Earp frowned. “You’re not backing out on your deal?”
“No, no.” Johnson shook his head. “But I have to tell you, the crates really are just fossil bones.”
“Uh-huh,” Wyatt Earp said.
“They are just bones.”
“I heard you.”
“They are of value only to scientists, to paleontologists.”
“That’s fine with me.”
Johnson smiled wanly. “I only hope you won’t be too disappointed.”
“I’ll try not to be,” Earp said, and winked, and punched him on the shoulder. “You just remember, boy. Half those bones are mine.”
“He had been a strong friend,” Johnson wrote, “and I suspected he would make a dangerous enemy. Thus it was with some trepidation that I resumed the journey to Fort Laramie, and the first civilization I had seen in many months.”
Fort Laramie
Fort Laramie was an army outpost that had grown into a frontier town, but the army garrison still set the mood, and its mood was now bitter. The army had fought the Indians for more than eight months, and had suffered serious losses, most especially the massacre of Custer’s column at the Little Bighorn. There had been other bloody engagements as well, at Powder River and Slim Buttes, and even when they were not fighting, the campaign had been harsh and arduous. But all the news from the East told them that Washington and the rest of the country did not support their efforts; numerous articles criticized the military conduct of the campaign against “the noble and defenseless red man.” For young men who had seen their comrades fall, who had returned to a battle scene to bury the scalped and mutilated bodies of friends, who had seen corpses with their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths—for these soldiers, the Eastern commentary made for difficult reading.
As far as the army was concerned, they had been ordered to undertake this war, without being asked their opinion of either its feasibility or its morality; they had followed orders as best they could, and with considerable success, and they were angry now to be unsupported, and to be fighting an unpopular war.
The fact that the politicians in Washington had underestimated both the difficulty of a campaign against “mere savages” and the outrage that it would cause among the liberal establishment of the Eastern cities—uninformed writers who had never set eyes on a real Indian, and who had only fantasies of what the Indians were like—was no fault of the army.
As one captain put it, “They want the Indians eliminated, and the lands opened up to white settlers, but they don’t want anybody to get hurt in the process. That just ain’t possible.”
Added to this was the ugly fact that the war had now entered a new phase. The army was engaged in a war of attrition with the Indians, in which they planned to kill all the buffalo and thus starve the Indians into submission. Even so, most military men expected the war to drag on for at least three more years, and to cost another $15 million—although nobody in Washington wanted to hear that.
The arguments, back and forth, raged in the coach station on the outskirts of town. Johnson had an unappetizing lunch of bacon and biscuits, then sat in the sun outside the station. From where he sat, he could see the iron bridge crossing the Platte.
For more than a decade, the Platte River valley had been trumpeted by Union Pacific brochures as “a flowery meadow of great fertility clothed in nutritious grasses, and watered by numerous streams.” In fact, it was harsh, god-awful country. Yet the settlers were coming.
From the earliest pioneer days, the Platte River itself was known as especially treacherous and difficult to cross, and this new iron bridge represented one small improvement in a series of changes that were opening the West to settlers, making it more accessible.
Johnson dozed off in the sun and awoke when a voice said, “Hell of a sight, ain’t it?”
He opened his eyes. A tall man was smoking a cigar and staring at the bridge.
“That it is,” he said.
“I remember last year, that bridge was just talk.” The tall man turned. He had a scar running down his cheek. The face was familiar, but the recognition came slowly.
Navy Joe Benedict.
Marsh’s right-hand man.
Johnson sat up quickly. He had only a moment to wonder what Navy Joe was doing here before a familiar heavyset figure emerged from the coach house and stood beside Benedict.
Professor Marsh glanced at Johnson and said in his formal way, “Good morning to you, sir.” He gave no sign of recognition and immediately turned to Benedict. “What’s the delay, Joe?”
“Just hitching up a new team, Professor. We’ll be ready to leave in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes.”
“See if you can quicken it,” Marsh said.
Navy Joe left, and Marsh turned to Johnson. He appeared not to recognize him, for Johnson looked very different from the last time Marsh had seen him. He was leaner and more muscled, with a full beard, and hair that had not seen scissors since leaving Philadelphia more than three months before. It hung down almost to his shoulders. His clothes were rough and dirty, caked in mud.
Marsh said, “Just passing through?”
“That’s right.”
“Which way you going?”
“To Cheyenne.”
“Come from the Hills?”
“Yeah.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Deadwood.”<
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“Mining gold?”
“Yeah,” Johnson said.
“Strike it rich?”
“Not exactly,” Johnson said. “What about you?”
“In point of fact, I myself am going north into the Hills.”
“Mining gold?” Johnson asked, to his private amusement.
“Hardly. I am the professor of paleontology at Yale College,” Marsh said. “I study fossil bones.”
“That right?” Johnson could not believe that Marsh had not recognized him, but it seemed he had not.
“Yes,” Marsh said. “And I hear there are some fossil bones to be had in Deadwood.”
“In Deadwood? That right?”
“That’s what I hear,” Marsh said. “Apparently a young man has them in his possession. I hope to obtain them. I am willing to pay well for them.”
“Oh?”
“Yes indeed.” Marsh took out a fat roll of greenbacks, and inspected them in the sunlight. “I would also pay for information about this young man and his whereabouts.” He looked closely at Johnson. “If you take my meaning.”
“I don’t reckon I do,” Johnson said.
“Well, you’ve just come from Deadwood,” Marsh said. “I wonder if you know anything of this young man.”
“This man got a name?” Johnson asked.
“His name is Johnson. He’s quite an unscrupulous young fellow. He used to work for me.”
“That right?”
“Indeed. But he left my company and threw in with a band of thieves and robbers. I believe he’s wanted for murder in other territories.”
“That right?”
Marsh nodded. “You know anything of him?”
“Never heard of him. How you going to get those bones?”
“Buy them if necessary,” Marsh said. “But I intend to have them, by whatever means may be required.”
“You want ’em bad, then.”
“Yes, I do,” Marsh said. “You see,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “these bones I’m talking about are actually mine. Young Johnson stole them from me.”
Johnson felt rage sweep over him. He had been enjoying this charade, but now he was flushed with anger. It took every bit of self-control he could muster to say laconically, “That right?”