scouts strode across the encampment to see for themselves. Unbelievably, it had been done. The two warriors had been beheaded and their heads mounted on high poles. Daniel turned around before he got very close and hurried away, his stomach churning.
The next morning as the troops packed up, Jensen and some of his cronies made it a point to saunter by the scouts’ campfire. “Guess that’ll send a message what they can expect if they keep killin’ whites.”
Daniel pretended not to hear. He and a few of the other scouts exchanged glances and went about their business. They were headed out of camp when Captain Willets rode up. “General says to offer you that renegade’s rifle and horse if you want them.”
“Is it a Spencer?” Daniel asked.
“Nope,” Willets said, looking down, at the rifle. He grinned. “If it was, I’d have to be asking the general to reward the scouts’ commanding officer instead of the scout.” He held the weapon out for Daniel’s inspection. “Looks pretty worn out.”
Daniel cocked the rifle and looked down the barrel. “It’s better than no rifle.” He handed it back to the captain. “Give it to Edward Pope,” he said. “I owe him for some help he gave me at Fort Ridgely.”
Willets nodded. “What about the horse?”
“The gray stallion?” Daniel asked.
“He won’t let anybody get near him this morning. Kicked Jensen in the rear twice.”
Daniel climbed into the saddle. “He just needs someone that speaks his language,” he said and headed toward the herd.
The news that General Sully had beheaded two warriors at the Little Cheyenne spread like a prairie fire through every Dakota camp from the Platte up into Canada. But instead of discouraging further bloodshed, the mutilation only convinced the Santees and Yanktonais to withdraw farther west where they ended up in a vast encampment with several other tribes in the Badlands. From camp, they sent out their own scouting parties to monitor Sully’s plodding march westward through Dakota.
The scouts found old camps, buffalo carcasses, and bones, but no Indians. And yet they knew Indians were all around them. During the day mirrors flashed in the distance as the army’s progress was signaled between bands.
At night, while the soldiers sat around their campfires smoking pipes, rolling chews of tobaccos, reliving the battles they had fought back east, burning arrows in the sky communicated their location.
Finding water was a constant challenge. More than once they marched thirty miles before finding water. Sweat soaked through their uniforms, their tongues swelled, and horses died. Some days they rose at two in the morning and marched until noon, trying to avoid the heat of the day. Once they marched along a river where the grass had been burned for ten miles all around.
One particularly awful day the men rode over a ridge and down into a creek bed only to find a narrow puddle of muddy water frill of tadpoles and lizards. In desperation, Edward Pope jumped off his mule and started digging. He became a hero when, about four feet down, he struck a vein of clear, cold water. The men threw their hats into the air, shouting and singing and making such a racket Brady Jensen, now a lieutenant, came tearing down the hill, shouting angrily, “Do you want to bring the entire Sioux nation down upon us?!”
Daniel looked up at him, laughing, “With all respect, Lieutenant, I assure you the entire Sioux nation knows exactly where we are.” He scooped a hatful of water and poured it over his head, “They don’t want to fight, Lieutenant. They are hoping the Great Father’s soldiers will get tired and go home and leave them in peace.”
“They will discover,” Jensen said harshly, “that the Great Father’s arm is very long when his children have been murdered.”
For all the army’s talk of glory, little happened throughout the weeks of July other than the loss of a few stragglers, picked off by small roving bands of warriors. They moved at a pace so slow the scouts wondered if they would find any Indians at all before winter set in. Several bridges had to be built to get mule trains across creeks. Broken wagon tongues, locked wheels, and the ever present search for water plagued the days, while the nights were one long battle with mosquitoes, oppressive heat, and poisonous snakes.
One night Daniel joined Edward Pope at his campfire. Edward looked up at the starlit sky and said, “You know what I think, Two Stars? I think when God Almighty