Dragon Teeth Page 6

  “I know who is behind this,” Cope said angrily. He was turning purple in the face.

  “Now, Professor . . .” Sternberg said.

  “I’m fine,” Cope said stiffly. He turned to the sheriff. “I propose to pay the telegraph costs to verify that the charges against me are untrue.”

  The sheriff spat tobacco. “That’s fair enough. You get your father to cable me back, and I’ll apologize.”

  “I can’t do that,” Cope said.

  “Why not?”

  “I already told you, my father’s dead.”

  “You think I’m a fool,” the sheriff said, and grabbed Cope by the collar, to drag him into the jail cell. He was rewarded by a series of lightning-swift punches from Cope that knocked him to the ground; Cope proceeded to kick the sheriff repeatedly while the unfortunate man rolled in the dust and while Sternberg and Isaac cried, “Now, Professor!” and “That’s enough, Professor!” and “Remember yourself, Professor!”

  At length, Isaac managed to drag Cope away; Sternberg helped the sheriff to his feet and dusted him off. “I’m sorry, but the professor has a terrible temper.”

  “Temper? The man is a menace.”

  “Well, you see he knows that Professor Marsh sent you that telegram, along with a bribe to arrest him, and the injustice of your behavior makes him angry.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the sheriff sputtered, without conviction.

  “You see,” Sternberg said, “most places the professor goes, he encounters trouble from Marsh. Their rivalry has been going on for years now, and they are both able to spot it readily.”

  “I want all of you out of town,” the sheriff shouted. “Do you hear me, out of town!”

  “With pleasure,” Sternberg said.

  They left on the next stage.

  From Franklin, they faced a six-hundred-mile journey on Concord stagecoach to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. Johnson, who had thus far experienced nothing more arduous than a railway carriage, was looking forward to the romance of a coach ride. Sternberg and the others knew better.

  It was a horrible journey: ten miles an hour, day and night, with no stops except for meals, outrageously expensive at one dollar each, and awful. And at every coach stop, everyone would talk of the Indian troubles, and the prospect of scalping, so that if Johnson had had any desire for the coach stops’ moldy army-surplus bacon, the rancid butter, and the week-old bread, he lost his appetite.

  The landscape was uniformly dreary, the dust harshly alkaline; they had to walk up all the steep ascents, day or night; in the rattling, bouncing coach, sleep was impossible; and their chemical supplies leaked, so that at one point, “we were subjected to a gentle rain of hydrochloric acid, which drops etched a smoking pattern on the hats of the gentlemen, and elicited elaborate curses from all involved. The coach was stopped, and the driver accorded our left-over curses; the offending bottle stopped, and we were on our way once more.”

  Besides their group, the only other passenger was a Mrs. Peterson, a young woman married to an army captain stationed in Helena, Montana Territory. Mrs. Peterson seemed none too enthusiastic to be rejoining her husband; indeed, she cried frequently. Often she opened a letter, read it, wiped tears from her eyes, and tucked it away again. At the last coach stop before Helena, she burned the letter, dropping it to the ground to dissolve into ash. When the stage reached Helena, she was formally met by four army captains, their demeanor grave. They escorted her away; she walked erectly in their midst.

  The others stared after her.

  “He must be dead,” Toad said. “That’s what it’s about. He’s dead.”

  At the coach station, they were told that Captain Peterson had been killed by Indians. And there were rumors of a recent major cavalry defeat at Indian hands. Some said General Terry had been killed along the Powder River; others that General Crook had narrowly escaped death on the banks of the Yellowstone, and that he had suffered blood poisoning from the arrows removed from his side.

  In Helena they were urged to turn back, but Cope never considered it. “Idle talk,” he said, “foolish talk. We will go on.” And they climbed back aboard the coach for the long trip to Fort Benton.

  Located on the banks of the Missouri River, Fort Benton had been a trappers’ refuge in the early days of the Montana Territory, back when John Jacob Astor was lobbying in Congress to prevent any legislation to protect the buffalo, and thus interfere with his lucrative trade in hides. Northern Montana was the source of other hides as well, including beaver and wolf. But now the fur trade was declining in importance, and the fastest-growing towns were located farther south, in the mining regions of Butte and Helena, where there was gold and copper. Fort Benton had seen better days, and looked it.

  As their stagecoach arrived on July 4, 1876, they saw that the army stockade gates were closed, and there was a general air of tension. The soldiers were gloomy and distressed. The American flag flapped at half-mast. Cope went to see the commanding officer, Captain Charles Ransom.

  “What’s the trouble?” Cope asked. “Why is your flag lowered?”

  “Seventh Cavalry, sir.”

  “What about it?” Cope asked.

  “The whole of the Seventh Cavalry under General Custer was massacred at the Little Bighorn last week. More than three hundred army dead. And no survivors.”

  Fort Benton

  George Armstrong Custer remained as controversial in death as he had been in life. Ol’ Curly had always been the focus of strong feelings. He had graduated last in his class at West Point, accumulating ninety-seven demerits in his last half year, just three short of dismissal. Even as a cadet, he was making enemies who would dog him all his life.

  But the insubordinate cadet proved a brilliant military leader, the Boy Wonder of Appomattox. Handsome, dashing, and reckless, he went on to earn a reputation as a great Indian fighter in the West, but his reputation was debated widely. A dedicated hunter, he traveled with greyhounds wherever he went, and it was said that he took better care of his dogs than he did his men. In 1867, he ordered his troops to shoot deserters from his company. Five men were wounded, and Custer refused them medical aid. One subsequently died.

  Even for the army, this was too much. In July 1867, he was arrested, court-martialed, and suspended for a year. But he was a favorite of the generals, and he was back ten months later at Phil Sheridan’s insistence, this time fighting the Indians along the Washita, in the Oklahoma Territory.

  Custer led the 7th Cavalry against Black Kettle. His instructions were clear: to kill as many Indians as possible. General Sherman himself had said: “The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next year for the more I see of these Indians the more I am convinced they will all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”

  It was a particularly vicious war. The Indians had been taking white women and children as hostages, whom they ransomed back to the settlers; whenever soldiers attacked an Indian village, the white hostages were summarily executed. This circumstance excused the kind of dashing bravado that was, in any case, Custer’s trademark.

  Forcing his troops on extended marches, forgoing food and rest, he ran down Black Kettle, killed the chief, and destroyed his village. Only then did he realize that Indians from surrounding villages were gathering for a massive counterattack, and that he had overextended himself and endangered all his troops. He managed to pull out, but left behind a company of fifteen men, presuming them to be already dead.

  Later, the entire battle became embroiled in scandal. The Eastern press criticized Custer for his harsh treatment of Black Kettle’s tribe, saying that Black Kettle was not a bad Indian but a scapegoat for military frustrations; this was almost certainly untrue. The army criticized Custer for his hasty attack and his equally hasty abandonment of the cut-off company; Custer was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for his behavior in the crisis, but he felt, with justification, that he had only done what the army had
expected him to do, to run down the Indians with his usual dash and bravado.

  His personal style—his long curly hair, his greyhounds, his buckskin clothes, and his arrogant manner—remained notorious, as did the articles he wrote for the Eastern press. Custer had a peculiar affinity for his enemy, and often wrote admiringly of the Indians; this was no doubt the source of the persistent rumor he had fathered a child by a beautiful Indian girl after the Battle of the Washita.

  And still the controversy continued. In 1874, it was Custer who led a party into the sacred Black Hills, discovered gold, and thus precipitated the Sioux War; in the spring of 1876, he had gone to Washington to testify against the corruption of Secretary of War Belknap, who received kickbacks for supplies from every army post in the country. His testimony had helped start impeachment proceedings against Belknap, but had not endeared him to the Grant administration, which ordered him to remain in Washington and, when he left without permission in March, demanded his arrest.

  Now he was dead, in what was already being called the most shocking and humiliating military defeat in American history.

  “Who did it?” Cope asked.

  “Sitting Bull,” Ransom said. “Custer charged Sitting Bull’s camp without scouting it first. Sitting Bull had three thousand warriors. Custer had three hundred.” Captain Ransom shook his head. “Mind you, Custer would have been killed sooner or later; he was vain and hard on his men; I’m surprised he wasn’t ‘accidentally’ shot in the back on the way into battle, as often happens with his type. I was with him in the Washita, when he charged a village and then couldn’t get himself out; luck and bluff saved the day, but luck runs out eventually. He almost certainly brought this one on himself. And the Sioux hated him, wanted to kill him. But it’s going to be a bloody war now. This whole country’s red-hot now.”

  “Well,” Cope said, “we’re going to search for fossil bones in the Judith badlands.”

  Ransom stared at him in astonishment. “I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “There’s trouble in the Judith River basin?”

  “Not specifically, no, sir. Not that we know of.”

  “Well then?”

  “Sir, most all the Indian tribes are on the warpath. Sitting Bull has three thousand warriors somewhere in the south—nobody knows where for sure—but we figure they’ll head for asylum in Canada before winter, and that means they’ll pass through the Judith basin.”

  “That’s fine,” Cope said. “We’ll be safe for a few weeks during summer, for the reasons you just said. Sitting Bull isn’t there.”

  “Sir,” Ransom said, “the Judith River is the shared hunting grounds of the Sioux and the Crow. Now, the Crow are usually peaceable, but these days they’ll kill you as soon as look at you, because they can blame your deaths on the Sioux.”

  “That’s not likely,” Cope said. “We’re going.”

  “I have no orders to prevent you from going,” Ransom said. “I’m sure nobody in Washington ever imagined that anyone would go. To go out there is suicide, sir. For myself, I wouldn’t go out with less than five hundred trained cavalry at my side.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Cope said. “You have done your duty in informing me. But I left Philadelphia with the intention of going to the Judith, and I will not turn back within a hundred miles of my destination. Now, can you recommend a guide?”

  “Certainly, sir,” Ransom said.

  But over the next twenty-four hours, the guides mysteriously became unavailable, as did horses, the provisions, and everything else that Cope had expected to obtain at Fort Benton. Yet he was undaunted. He simply offered more money, and more on top of that, until supplies began to become available after all.

  It was here they had their first glimpse of the famous iron will of Professor Cope. Nothing stopped him. They demanded $180, an outrageous sum, for a broken-down wagon; he paid it. They wanted even more for his four “wheelers” and his four saddle ponies, “the meanest ponies that ever picketed together,” in Sternberg’s estimation. They would sell him no food except beans and rice and cheap Red Dog whiskey; he bought what he could. All together, Cope spent $900 for his motley outfit, but he never complained. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination—the fossils of the Judith basin.

  Finally, on July 6, Ransom called him into the army stockade. It was the scene of bustling activity and preparation. Ransom told Cope that he had just received orders from the Department of War in Washington that “no civilians were permitted to enter the disputed Indian lands in the Montana, Wyoming, or Dakota Territories.”

  “I’m sorry to put a stop to your plans, sir,” Ransom said politely, setting the telegram aside.

  “You must do your duty, of course,” Cope said, equally politely.

  Cope rejoined his group. They had already heard the news.

  “I guess we have to go back,” Sternberg said.

  “Not yet,” Cope said cheerfully. “You know, I like Fort Benton. I think we should stay here a few days more.”

  “You like Fort Benton?”

  “Yes. It’s pleasant and agreeable. And full of preparations.” And Cope smiled.

  On July 8, the Fort Benton cavalry set off to fight the Sioux, the column riding out while the band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Later that day, a quite different group quietly slipped out. They were, wrote Johnson, a “particularly motley crew.”

  At the head of the column rode Edward Drinker Cope, United States paleontologist and millionaire. On his left rode Charlie Sternberg, occasionally bending to massage his stiff leg.

  On Cope’s right rode Little Wind, their Shoshoni scout and guide. Little Wind was proud in his bearing, and he had assured Cope that he knew the Judith River area like the face of his own father.

  Behind these three came J.C. Isaac, who kept a sharp eye on Little Wind; with him were the students, Leander Davis, Harold Chapman, George Morton, and Johnson.

  Bringing up the rear was the wagon pulled by its four stubborn horses, and driven by the teamster and cook “Sergeant” Russell T. Hill. He was a fat, weathered man whose girth had persuaded Cope that he could cook. Teamster Hill was distinguished not only by his size and proficiency at swearing so common among his trade, but also by his nicknames, which seemed to be endless. He was called “Cookie,” “Chippie,” “Squinty,” and “Stinky.” Hill was a man of few words, and those were most often repeated again and again.

  So, for example, when the students would ask him why he was called Cookie or Stinky or another of his names, he would invariably reply, “I reckon you’ll see soon enough.”

  And when confronted with an obstacle, however minor, Hill would always say, “Can’t be done, can’t be done.”

  Finally, tethered to the wagon was Bessie, the mule that carried all Johnson’s photographic supplies. Bessie was Johnson’s responsibility, and he grew to hate her as the expedition went on.

  An hour after they started, they had left Fort Benton behind, and they were alone on the empty vastness of the Great Plains.

  Part II

  The Lost World

  Night on the Plains

  The first night they camped in a place called Clagett, on the banks of the Judith River. There was a trading post here, surrounded by a stockade, but it had been recently abandoned.

  Hill cooked his first dinner, which they found heavy but otherwise acceptable. Hill used buffalo chips for fuel, thus explaining two of his nicknames: Chippie and Stinky. After dinner, Hill hung their food in a tree.

  “What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.

  “That’s to keep the food away from marauding grizzlies,” Hill said. “Now go get ready to sleep.”

  Hill himself stamped the ground with his boots before laying out his bedding.

  “What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.

  “That’s to stop up the snake holes,” Hill said, “so the rattlers don’t climb under the blankets with you at night.”

  “You’re jobbing me,” Johnson s
aid.

  “I ain’t,” Hill warned. “You ask anyone. Gets cold at night and they like the warm, so they crawl right in with you, coil up against your groin.”

  Johnson went to Sternberg, who was also laying out his bedding. “Aren’t you going to stamp the ground?”

  “No,” Sternberg said. “This spot isn’t lumpy, looks real comfortable.”

  “What about rattlesnakes crawling into the blankets?”

  “That hardly ever happens,” Sternberg said.

  “It hardly ever happens?” Johnson’s voice rose in alarm.

  “I wouldn’t worry over it,” Sternberg said. “In the morning, just wake up slow, and see if you got any visitors. Snakes just run away, come morning.”

  Johnson shuddered.

  They had seen no sign of human life all day long, but Isaac was convinced they were at risk from Indians. “With Mr. Indian,” he grumbled, “the time you feel safest is the time you aren’t.” Isaac insisted they post guards throughout the night; the others grudgingly went along. Isaac himself would take the last watch, before dawn.

  This was Johnson’s first night out under the great domed sky of the prairie, and sleep was impossible. The very thought of a rattlesnake or a grizzly bear would have prevented any sleep, but there were too many other sounds besides—the whisper of the wind in the grass, the hooting of owls in the darkness, the distant howls of coyotes. He stared up at the thousands of stars in the cloudless sky, and listened.

  He was awake for each changing of the guard, and saw Isaac take over from Sternberg at four o’clock in the morning. But eventually fatigue overcame him, and he was soundly asleep when a series of explosions jolted him awake. Isaac was shouting, “Halt! Halt, I say, halt!” as he fired his revolver.

  They all jumped up. Isaac pointed east across the prairie. “There’s something out there! Can you see it, there’s something out there!”

  They looked and saw nothing.