Buffalo War (The Dragoons #1) Read online

  “Then, he didn’t have no business signing that damn treaty!” Planter said.

  Coburn chuckled. “That don’t mean nothing, DeWitt. If them Kiwotas even look cross-eyed at somebody, this here hunk o’ paper gives us the legal right to turn Major Devlin and his dragoons loose on ’em!”

  Devlin had noticed the two men during the treaty talks. “Were you gentlemen acquainted with each other before?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Coburn said. “We’re both from the same county in our home state. We knowed each other as tads.”

  “You bet,” Planter said. “And we was appointed to the Injun Bureau by Senator Osmond Torrance hisself.”

  “His family runs things where we’re from,” Coburn said. “We kinda helped him in the elections now and again. So we got these good jobs out of it.”

  “The positions you gentlemen have seem rather challenging,” Devlin observed. “You may not think you’ve been done any favors before all this is said and done.” He glanced at Planter. “Didn’t one of your surveying party fall to his death during your work out there?”

  “Sure did,” Planter said. “It was a geologist. The feller went too far on the edge o’ one o’ them cliffs up in the Medicine Hills.” He shook his head. “Maybe them Injuns got a curse put on the place.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it,” Devlin said.

  The three men and the others of the party reached the campground. Sturdy wall tents had been set up for the civilian officials while the dragoons lived in more humble circumstances a half mile away. Numerous cooks and servants kept the government men from having to dirty their hands with common camp chores.

  “I’ll leave you gentlemen until in the morning,” Devlin said. “Tomorrow we’re going to have to begin building our new garrison and agency.”

  “Why don’t you move over here with us?” Coburn asked. “We got plenty o’ room for you and your cap’ns and lieutenants.”

  “Thank you very much, but I must decline,” Devlin said. “My officers and I have developed a closeness with the men. We prefer to share their lifestyle as we do the danger we all face. Thank you again, and good evening.”

  The major continued his walk across the prairie country until he reached the dragoon camp. After exchanging a salute and a few words with a seasoned trooper on guard duty, he went to his tent, where the captains who commanded the two companies in his squadron waited.

  Captain Bernie Blanchard, a dark Louisianian who commanded Company A, greeted him with a lazy grin. “Are we at peace, sir?”

  The other captain, a lanky fellow named Paul Teasedale, led Company B. Like Blanchard, he relaxed in a camp chair while sipping coffee.

  “Yes, sir. Tell us the truth, Major,” Teasedale requested. “May we unload our carbines now?”

  “We’re technically at peace, but I wouldn’t clear those weapons yet,” Devlin said. He took an empty chair. “War Heart has the fight out of him for right now. But if something goes wrong, then we’re going to be right back where we started.”

  Devlin’s orderly got a cup of coffee for his commanding officer. He limped over and served the hot brew. “I don’t give a damn what he does, as long as we get a permanent garrison set up, sir.” He was an old, rheumatic-ridden soldier named Thomas Kubelsky.

  “We’ll see that you have a comfortable winter, don’t worry, Tommy,” Devlin assured him.

  “The army pays next to nothing to old troopers like me,” Kubelsky lamented. “The least it can do is see that I got a warm place to sleep.”

  The orderly’s complaints and disrespectful comments were tolerated by the officers because of his faithful and meritorious past service prior to being crippled by the disease that racked his joints. Another reason was the gastronomic miracles he could produce even on the limited field rations provided by a stingy government to an over-worked, spread-out little army on the frontier.

  Blanchard glanced toward the pot simmering on the fire. “What’s for supper tonight, Tommy?”

  “Sage hen and rabbit stew,” Kubelsky answered. “And I got some bread baked outta flour I got from one o’ them civvie cooks over in the other camp.”

  “You’re a miracle worker, Tommy,” Teasedale said.

  “All us dragoons got to be,” Kubelsky said, limping back to tend to his cooking. “This damn army’s been running on short rations since the Revolution, I reckon.”

  “I’ll bet you were at Valley Forge, Tommy,” Blanchard remarked with a grin.

  “Hell, sir! Even I ain’t been in the army that long,” Tommy said as he went about his chores.

  Blanchard took out his pipe and began filling the bowl. As he applied a match, he looked through the smoke at the commanding officer. “You haven’t said much, sir. What’s your conception of the situation we have out here on the Buffalo Steppes now?”

  “It’s precarious,” Devlin said. “Even after we’ve established our garrison and the men and horses have a chance to rest up, there is still a good chance that we’ll see plenty of action by the time next summer is on us.”

  “So you’re expecting a quiet winter at least, are you?” Teasedale asked.

  “I think so,” Devlin remarked. “As far as I can determine, the primary issue of beef to the Kiwotas is going to be a most generous one. That meat combined with what they’ve garnered from this year’s buffalo hunts means they can pass the cold months in relative comfort.”

  “With both the Indians and Tommy Kubelsky wintering well, we can all be at ease,” Blanchard said with a laugh. He took a few puffs off his pipe. “I have to admit I’ll be glad to be in permanent quarters for a change.”

  “Amen!” Teasedale said. “What about the Indian agent? What’s his name—Coburn?”

  “Wheeler Coburn,” Devlin said. “He’s a political appointee, but so are all the people running the agencies. So I don’t suppose we’ll be any the worse for that. The funny thing is that the surveyor for the treaty boundaries and Coburn were sent up by the same man, a senator with plenty of influence. I hope that doesn’t mean the politician has got a special hold on the Indian Bureau. Somebody with that much power who is far away can be neglectful. Or worse yet, manipulative.”

  “No matter, we’ll still have to be good little soldiers,” Blanchard said.

  Over by the pot, Tommy Kubelsky hollered out, “Hot chow in another fifteen minutes.”

  With the thought of a good meal now dominating their thoughts, the three officers settled back in their chairs and waited for their supper.

  Chapter Two

  The United States was slightly more than fifty years old at the time the treaty with the Kiwota Indians was signed, making it an infant among the other nations of the world. Unfortunately, its capital city, being even younger, was an ill planned, worse built, and poorly located community.

  Rather than establish their seat of government in an existing city, the squabbling politicians of early America compromised by decreeing that the seat of government should be newly built. Thus, Washington, D.C.—known as Washington City in those days—had been laid out in the wilderness along the Potomac River.

  The final selection of the site had been made by the first president, George Washington. He’d liked the location because the waterway was navigable to Georgetown, a community that was an important tobacco market at the time. Also, a canal had been planned that would go from the new city across the Cumberland Gap to give access to the wide-open frontier in the West.

  What resulted, unfortunately, was a crude settlement with a swamp in the middle, numerous huts and other rustic buildings, and a reputation as a “mud hole” among the people living and serving their government in the area. The road to becoming a beautiful, thriving metropolis would prove to be a long and bumpy one. Needless to say, foreign diplomats were not pleased with their postings to the locale. They considered such an assignment an exile to hell itself.

  When the surveyor DeWitt Planter arrived in the capital on a fall mid-morning a couple of weeks following the signing of
the treaty with War Heart of the Kiwotas, Washington City could boast many unfinished public works with great promise and damned little else. But Planter scarcely took notice of his surroundings as he hurried across dirt and cobblestone streets and past unattractive buildings on his way to visit Senator Osmond Torrance’s office in the Willard Hotel.

  His arrival at the senator’s chambers was not unexpected because of a telegram he’d sent at the first opportunity when he reached Minneapolis after leaving the wilds of Dakota Territory. The politico’s secretary, a rather effeminate, well-dressed young man named Harvey Puffer, responded quickly when Planter presented himself.

  “The senator said to notify him immediately when you arrived, Mr. Planter,” the secretary said. “Please have a seat while I inform him you are here.”

  Planter didn’t bother to make himself comfortable. He was too agitated. He paced back and forth, glancing toward the office door during the ten minutes he waited.

  Finally, Puffer reappeared, saying, “The senator asks you to step inside, Mr. Planter.”

  Planter rushed past the startled young man, slamming the door shut to ensure privacy. He found the senator seated at a writing desk facing the window.

  “Damn, Senator!” Planter exclaimed. “I got news!”

  Osmond Torrance turned and looked at his guest. The politician was a portly man, with mutton whiskers growing thickly from his heavy jowls. Bald, with thick eyebrows and a scowl on his face that would only disappear through conscious effort, Torrance was not a man to be trifled with. He found excited constituents a source of irritation and threats to his political career.

  “I received your telegram, DeWitt,” Torrance said. He reached in his pocket and retrieved the crumpled missive. “I’ll be damned and double-damned if I can understand what you’re trying to tell me in it. As far as I can see, you’ve said practically nothing here.”

  “Well, sir—”

  “You got to speak up plain and loud, son,” Torrance said. “Or, in this case, write it out plain and simple. I have a lot on my mind. If you’re upset about something, you’ll have to come right to the point.”

  “Senator—”

  “A plain and simple approach gets things done, son,” Torrance said. “You can’t do a thing if folks don’t know what sort of information you’re trying to send on to them. I’m a busy man, DeWitt, and I don’t have the time to spare trying to solve an enigmatic telegram sent by you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Planter said. “I’m—”

  “Now simmer down and tell me what this is all about,” Torrance said. “I can tell from looking at you that you’re still flustered as hell. Choose your words carefully, DeWitt, and enlighten me as to what you wish me to know.”

  Planter took a deep breath, then forced himself to speak as deliberately as he could. “There’s gold in the hills where them Kiwota Injuns got land in that treaty and I know ’cause I seen it and I couldn’t say nothing about it in the telegram because I didn’t want nobody else to find out about it.”

  Torrance smiled, now speaking even slower than his normal drawl. “Well, sit down, DeWitt! Take a load off your dawgs. Gold is a hell of a subject to talk about, DeWitt. That’s a precious mineral that can make fortunes for folks that handle the situation right.”

  “Goddamn! I know that, Senator!” Planter exclaimed.

  “Do you understand that talk about new gold—the kind that nobody else knows about—is something that calls for the strongest regard to secrecy?” the senator asked.

  “I do, I do!” Planter said. “Oh, indeed, I do!” He rushed to a chair across the room and dragged it over in front of the senator. He plopped down on it and said again, “There’s gold in the hills that them Kiwotas got in the treaty.”

  “I understood you to say that,” Torrance said. When he sensed something important, he always became most attentive and careful. “You’re talking about the agency where I got ol’ Wheeler Coburn a job, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir,” Planter said. “And where you had me sent to survey the place to mark out the boundaries for the treaty.”

  “I understand, DeWitt,” Torrance said. “Now get on with what you want to tell me.”

  “Well, sir, I had just set up my crew to take sightings and note azimuths and was able to step back and watch the work progress. The geologist—”

  “Geologist? What geologist?” Torrance interrupted.

  “The one that came along to write up his own report for the Department of the Interior,” Planter explained. “When he saw I was pretty much caught up and didn’t have much to do at the time, he invited me to go along with him while he did some exploring and note taking.”

  “I didn’t send a geologist,” Torrance said.

  “Listen to me, Senator,” Planter pleaded. “I just told you he was assigned to the job by the Department of the Interior. He was supposed to write out a report on the type of rocks and dirt in the area, and all that sort of stuff. Him and me become sort o’ friendly over the course of the job.”

  “It’s not good to have an outsider in on something like this,” Torrance said. “It can complicate matters.”

  “I knew that from the start, Senator,” Planter assured him.

  “That’s good to hear, DeWitt,” Torrance said. “Get on with what happened, please.”

  Planter related how he and the geologist tramped around most of the morning while the fellow gathered rock samples and bits of earth to take back to Washington City for his report. Things were pretty uneventful up to the time they took a rest to eat the food they’d brought with them. After sitting around a bit and smoking their pipes, they went back to exploring the terrain.

  “Toward the end of the afternoon, he found a rock formation that really caught his attention,” Planter said. “He took that li’l ol’ hammer o’ his and started chipping away at the side of a hill near the edge of a cliff.”

  “Did he make any particular remarks?” Torrance asked.

  “Not for a few minutes, but he was getting agitated as hell,” Planter said. “Then he held some of the stuff in his hand and turned to me and said, ‘By God, Planter! This is gold!’ I walked over and he showed me. I asked him if there was much.”

  Torrance slowly rubbed his hands together. “Just what did he answer, DeWitt?”

  “He said it appeared to him that the yield in that mountain was enough to make ten thousand men rich beyond their wildest dreams,” Planter said. “That’s when I thought o’ you.”

  “How’s that?” Torrance asked.

  “Well, Senator, there wouldn’t be no way I could swing getting that gold out on my own,” Planter said. “Especially since it was on Injun land give ’em by treaty. I knowed if there was one feller that could work out the details to make him and me rich, it would be you.”

  “That was real intelligent of you, DeWitt,” Torrance said in a tone of approval. “But don’t forget that geologist friend of yours.”

  “He died,” Planter said. He hesitated, searching for words, finally saying, “He kind o’ slipped and fell off’n that cliff right after he told me about the gold.”

  “I see, DeWitt,” Torrance said in a calm manner. “I take it you didn’t tell anyone else about the lucky find.”

  “I sure didn’t, Senator,” Planter assured him. “Not even Wheeler Coburn. You and me’re the onliest people that know about it.”

  Torrance smiled. “You did good, DeWitt.” Then he was silent for a few moments as he mulled over the information just relayed to him. “Could you find the place again?”

  “I can do better’n that, Senator,” Planter said. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I went back up there with surveying instruments and laid out the exact location by latitude and longitude, and wrote her down on one o’ them government land claim forms we got to carry around with us.”

  Torrance took the document and studied it. “In order to claim this land, we must simply file this form at the proper government land office, true?
”

  “It’d prob’ly work out better if it was in your name, Senator,” Planter said. “If my name is on it, somebody would figger out something wasn’t quite the way it should be.”

  “That’s good thinking on your part because eventually, after a while and the news of the gold got out, someone might even get suspicious about the geologist’s death, DeWitt,” Torrance said.

  “Yeah, that’s another reason for it to be in your name,” Planter said. “O’ course, it might not do us any good anyhow since that land is part o’ the Buffalo Steppes treaty.”

  “Yes it is, but I don’t believe the government ever meant any agreement with savages to be permanently binding,” Torrance said. “So action can still be taken.” He reached over and tinkled the bell on his desk.

  The door opened, and the secretary stepped inside. “Yes, sir?”

  “Harvey, I wish to file a claim on some land out west,” Torrance said. “Bring me a pen and ink so I might sign the proper government form.”

  “Right away, Senator,” the secretary said. He went back outside and returned with the writing instruments.

  “Use that fancy handwriting of yours to put my name at the top in the proper place, Harvey; then I’ll sign the document,” Torrance instructed.

  The politician and the surveyor watched as the secretary tended to the chore. When he finished, the senator signed the document with a flourish.

  “Now take this down to Frederick Mullhouse’s office in the Department of the Interior, Harvey,” Torrance said. “Tell him it is a claim that I wish to file on land in the Dakota Territory. Tell Mr. Mullhouse that we would appreciate it if the job was done quickly, quietly, and with the utmost discretion. Do you understand, Harvey?”

  “I understand perfectly, Senator,” Harvey replied. “Don’t worry, sir. I’ll see to it immediately.”

  The young man made a hurried exit. Planter watched him leave, then turned to the senator. “Just how’re you planning on working this?”