Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 by Terry C. Johnston Page A

camp brought new reports of more stock collapsed from the heat. Left for dead or the coyotes. Or the Sioux. Each dawn the new recruits marched on, prodded by the old veterans who placed a pebble in their mouths to stimulate saliva. Other old files even showed the youngsters how to carefully open a vein in their wrists. How to suck at their own hot, sticky blood. Quenching an unquenchable thirst that tormented a man almost as much as the visions swimming before their eyes.
    With great relief they reached the valley of the Powder River, that flat ribbon of yellowed water crawling over beds of shifting sand and coarse gravel. It was here they stopped at the garrison of Fort Reno. A sterile, wind-scoured, hellish place. But Bridger cheered them all by telling the soldiers as they set about making repairs to wagons that they had passed the worst of it.
    â€œJust look at you! The men. Your stock,” Capt. Joshua L. Proctor, Carrington’s new commander at Reno, had scolded the colonel in private, discussing the march beyond the Powder. “You can’t possibly go on, sir. The animals and men have had nearly all they can take.”
    â€œWe must push on,” the colonel had replied.
    â€œFor God’s sake, leave the women and children with us here. We’ll get them back to Laramie where they’ll be safe,” Proctor had begged.
    â€œI’m afraid it’s too late to send them back now,” Carrington had confessed.
    Is it too late to send Margaret and the boys back with the rest? the colonel wondered. Lord knows I’ve asked her time and again if she thought it best to return to Laramie, back to Fort Kearney where they’ll be safe and comfortable. Time and again she had refused his offer. She had married a soldier, she told him. So a soldier’s life she would share with him. That put an end to it every time.
    Yet the colonel still wondered now as he argued with Proctor. Would the time ever come that I’ll regret my decision to march on with the women and children of this regiment in tow? Would the time ever come that I’ll regret not standing strong in sending them back? At Reno his resolve quivered, like a muscle flexed and worked, beaten and abused too many times.
    Carrington had simply stared at Proctor with those dark, brooding eyes of his. As if pleading for someone to understand the compulsion pulling him north. “We must go on. All of us.”
    For ten days he had allowed the command to tarry at Reno. Not because Carrington had wanted to—but because he had to. Making repairs to the ambulance and freight-wagon tires that split in the dry, searing heat. Repeatedly scanning the hills to the north for some sign of Lt. John Adair and his men chasing the Sioux who had roared down on Reno their very first day in camp and driven off some horses, mules and beef. Day after day they waited by the Powder, gathering strength sapped in the long march, fortifying themselves for what lay ahead. Carrington worried that Adair’s men had become his first casualties until the lieutenant’s detachment limped back in. Adair had located some of the stock after a long and costly chase. But no sign of feather nor bow.
    Not a trace of the warriors who had welcomed Carrington’s men to the ancient hunting ground of the Sioux.
    â€œBut they’re out there,” Bridger had chided the young soldiers, all strut and cocky for a fight with the young, naked warriors. “You best understand they’re watching you boys every step of the way. When you don’t see a Injun in this part of the country, then it’s high time you start worrying. Like smoke in the wind. Them red niggers gone afore you see ’em. Soon enough, howsomever, you’ll see more of them bastards than you’d ever care to lay eyes on.”
    With repairs made, Bridger had led Carrington’s soldiers away from Fort Reno. Almost from the moment they climbed out of the valley of the