“Damn if you’re not a bigger fool than I thought you were! Who else’d be—”
Isaac fell silent. The cloud was now close enough that they could resolve the riders into individual figures. Blue-coated figures.
“Might still be red men,” Isaac said. “Wearing Custer’s jackets. For a surprise attack.”
“Not much surprise if they are.”
Little Wind squinted at the horizon. “Not Indians,” he pronounced finally. “Saddle ponies.”
“Damn!” Cookie shouted. “The army! My boys in blue!” He leapt up shouting, waving his hands. A fusillade of lead sent him diving back beneath the wagon.
The army horsemen rode around the wagon, whooping Indian-style, firing their pistols into the air. Finally, they stopped, and a young captain pulled up, his horse snorting. He aimed his revolver at the figures huddled beneath the wagon.
“Out, you slime. Out! By God, I’ve a mind to finish you right here, every last man of you.”
Cope emerged, purple with fury. His fists were clenched at his sides. “I demand to know the meaning of this outrage.”
“You’ll know it in hell, you blackguard,” the army captain said, and he shot twice at Cope, but his rearing horse threw off his aim.
“Wait, Cap’n,” one of the soldiers said. By now Cope’s party had all crawled from beneath the wagon and stood lined up along the wheels. “They don’t look like gunrunners.”
“Damn me if they’re not,” the captain said. They could see now that he was drunk; his words were slurred; his body rocked precariously in the saddle. “Nobody but gunrunners’d be out in this territory now. Supplying Mr. Indian with arms, when just last week six hundred of our own dear lads have fallen to the savages. It’s slime like you make it—”
Cope drew himself up. “This is a scientific expedition,” he said, “undertaken with the full knowledge and authorization of Captain Ransom at Fort Benton.”
“Balls,” said the captain, and discharged his gun into the air for punctuation.
“I am Professor Cope of Philadelphia, and I am a United States paleontologist and—”
“Kiss my calico-covered arse,” the captain said.
Cope lost his temper and leapt forward, and Sternberg and Isaac hurried to intervene. “Now, Professor, control yourself, Professor!” Sternberg yelled as Cope struggled, shouting, “I want him, I want him!”
In the ensuing confusion, the army captain fired three more times, and wheeled on his horse. “Light ’em up, boys! Light ’em up!”
“But Captain—”
“I said light ’em up”—more gunshots—“and I mean light ’em up!”
There were still more gunshots, and Toad fell, shrieking, “I am hit, I am hit!” They rushed to help him; blood poured freely from his hand. One of the soldiers rode up with a torch. The dry canvas of the wagon burst into flames.
They turned to put out the fire, which roared fiercely. The cavalry wheeled around them, the captain shouting, “Teach ’em a lesson, boys! Teach ’em in hell!”
And then, still firing, they turned and rode off.
Cope’s journal laconically notes:
Have experienced first open hostilities today at the hands of U.S. Cavalry. Fire put out with minimal damage although we are without protective covering for wagon and two of our tents are burned. One horse shot dead. One student received flesh wound in hand. No serious injuries, thank God.
That night it rained. Torrential cracking thunderstorms continued all the next day and all that night. Cold and shivering, they huddled beneath the wagon, trying to sleep with the intermittent glaring flash of lightning showing them each other’s haggard faces.
The next day it rained again, and the trail was turned to mud, bogging down the wagons. They made only two miles of painful, soggy progress. But in the late afternoon, the sun burst through the clouds and the air became warmer. They felt better, especially when, climbing to the top of a gentle rise, they saw one of the great sights of the West.
A herd of buffalo, stretching as far as the eye could see, dark shaggy shapes clumping on the yellow-green grass of the plains. The animals seemed peaceful, except for occasional snorting and bellowing.
Cope estimated there were two million buffalo in the herd, perhaps more. “You are lucky to see it,” he said. “In another year or two, herds like these will be only a memory.”
Isaac was nervous. “Where there are buffalo, there are Indians,” he said, and he insisted they camp that night on high ground.
Johnson was fascinated by the indifference of the animals to the arrival of men. Even when Sternberg went out and shot an antelope for dinner, the herd hardly responded. But Johnson later remembered that Cookie had said to Cope, “Shall I unhitch the wagon tonight?” and Cope looked at the sky and said thoughtfully, “Better not tonight.”
Meanwhile the antelope was butchered, and the flesh was found to be crawling with maggoty parasites. Cookie announced he had eaten worse, but they decided on a meal of biscuits and beans instead. Johnson recorded that “I am already thoroughly sick of beans, with six more weeks of them still before me.”
But it was not all bad. They ate, sitting on a rocky outcrop beside the camp and watched the buffalo tinge with red as the sun set behind them. And then, in the light of the moon, the shaggy shapes, and the occasional distant snorting of the creatures, made “a vision of great majesty stretching away peacefully before us. Such were my thoughts as I turned in for a much-needed sleep.”
Lightning cracked the sky at midnight, and the rain began again.
Grumbling and swearing, the students dragged their sleeping outfits under the wagon. Almost immediately, the rain stopped.
They rolled on the hard ground, trying to get back to sleep. “Hell,” Morton said, sniffing. “What is that smell?”
“You’re lyin’ in horseshit,” Toad said.
“Oh God, it’s true.”
They were laughing at Morton’s predicament, with the steady rumble of thunder still in their ears. Then suddenly Cope ran around the wagon, rudely kicking them. “Up! Up! Are you mad? Get up!”
Johnson glanced up, and saw Sternberg and Isaac hastily loading the camp equipment, flinging it into the wagon; the wagon began to move over their heads as they scrambled out beneath. Cookie and Little Wind were shouting to each other.
Johnson ran to Cope. His hair was matted down by the rain; his eyes were wild. Overhead the moon raced among storm clouds.
“What is it?” Johnson shouted over the rumbling thunder. “Why are we moving?”
Cope shoved him roughly away. “The lee of the rocks! Get in the lee of the rocks!” Isaac had already gotten the wagon near the rocky outcrop, and Cookie was struggling with the horses, which snorted and reared, agitated. The students stared at each other, not understanding.
And then Johnson realized the rumble they were hearing was not thunder. It was the buffalo.