Little Phil Sheridan was a compact, energetic man of forty-five, with a fondness for plug tobacco and tart expression. He had assembled the army staff now waging the Indian War—Generals Crook, Terry, and Custer, all of whom were in the field, hunting out the Sioux. Sheridan was particularly fond of Armstrong Custer, and had risked the disapproval of President Grant by ordering Custer back into service along with Generals Crook and Terry in the Indian Wars.
“It’s no easy campaign,” Sheridan said. “And we need a man with Custer’s dash. The Indians are being driven from their homes, whether we care to see it that way or not, and they’ll fight us like devils. And the fact that the Indian agency supplies ’em with good rifles doesn’t help, either. The main conflict promises to be in Montana and Wyoming.”
“Wyoming,” Marsh said. “Hmmm. Will there be problems for our group?” He did not seem the least perturbed, Johnson noticed.
“I can’t see why,” Sheridan said, spitting with remarkable accuracy at a metal basin across the room. “So long as you stay out of Wyoming and Montana, you’ll be safe enough.”
Marsh posed for a photograph, standing rigidly beside General Sheridan. He then obtained letters of introduction to the three generals, and to the post commanders at Fort Laramie and Cheyenne. Two hours later, they were back at the train station, ready to continue westward.
At the departure gate, a rough-looking man, very tall, with a peculiar slanting scar on his cheek, said to Johnson, “How far are you going?”
“I’m on my way to Wyoming.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he remembered he should have said Colorado instead.
“Wyoming! Good luck to you then,” the man said, and turned away.
Marsh was beside Johnson a moment later. “Who was that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“What did he want?”
“He asked how far I was going.”
“Did he? And what did you say?”
“Wyoming.”
Marsh frowned. “Did he believe you?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Did he seem to believe you?”
“Yes, Professor. I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I am fairly sure, Professor.”
Marsh stared off in the direction of the departed man. The station was still crowded and busy. The echoing din was loud, pierced by departure whistles.
“I have already warned you about talking to strangers,” he said finally. “The man you spoke to was Cope’s favorite foreman, Navy Joe Benedict. A brutal thug of a human specimen. But if you told him we were going to Wyoming, that is all right.”
“You mean we are not going to Wyoming?”
“No,” Marsh said. “We are going to Colorado.”
“Colorado!”
“Of course,” Marsh said. “Colorado is the best source of bones in the West, though you can’t expect a fool like Cope to know it.”
Going West
The Chicago and North Western Railway carried them across the Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa, over a twelve-span iron bridge nearly a mile long. The students were excited to cross the largest river in America, but once its great muddy expanse was behind them, their lethargy returned. Iowa was a region of rolling farmlands, with few landmarks and points of interest. Dry heat blew in through the windows, along with an occasional insect or butterfly. A dreary, perspiring tedium settled over the party.
Johnson hoped to glimpse Indians, but saw none. A passenger beside him laughed. “There haven’t been Indians here for forty years, since the Black Hawk War. You want Indians, you have to go west.”
“Isn’t this the West?” Johnson asked.
“Not yet. ’Cross the Missouri.”
“When do we cross the Missouri?”
“Other side of Cedar Rapids. Half a day on.”
But already the open prairie, and the fact of having crossed the Mississippi, had an effect on passengers. At each station and refueling stop, men would step onto the platform and fire their pistols at prairie dogs and prairie fowl. The birds would go screeching into the air; the little rodents would dive for cover, chattering. Nobody ever hit anything.
“Yep,” said one passenger. “They’re feeling the wide-open spaces now.”
Johnson found the wide-open spaces extraordinarily tedious. The students amused themselves as best they could with cards and dominoes, but it was a losing battle. For a while, they would get out at each station and walk around, but eventually even the stations became monotonously the same, and they usually remained inside.
At Cedar Rapids, the train stopped for two hours, and Johnson decided to stretch his legs. Rounding the corner of the tiny station, which stood at the edge of wheat fields, he saw Marsh talking quietly to the scarred man—Cope’s man, Navy Joe Benedict. Their manner seemed familiar. After a time, Marsh reached in his pocket and handed something to Benedict; Johnson saw a flash of gold in the sunlight. He ducked behind the corner before being spotted and hurried back to the train.
When the train resumed, Johnson’s perplexity increased as Marsh immediately came to sit beside him.
“I wonder where Cope will go this summer?” Marsh said, as if thinking aloud.
Johnson said nothing.
“I wonder where Cope will go?” Marsh said again.
“Very good question,” Johnson said.
“I doubt that he, like us, is going to Colorado.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Johnson was beginning to tire of this game, and allowed himself to stare directly into Marsh’s eyes, holding his gaze.
“Of course not,” Marsh said quickly. “Of course not.”
They crossed the Missouri in early evening at Council Bluffs, the terminus for the Chicago and North Western Railway. Across the bridge, on the Omaha side, the Union Pacific Railroad took over and continued all the way to San Francisco. The Union Pacific depot was a great open shed, and it was packed with travelers of the rudest sort. Here were rugged men, painted women, border ruffians, pickpockets, soldiers, crying children, food vendors, barking dogs, thieves, grandparents, gunfighters—a great confused mass of humanity, all fairly glowing with the fever of speculation.
“Black Hillers,” Marsh explained. “They outfit here before they go to Cheyenne and Fort Laramie, and from there travel northward to the Black Hills in search for gold.”
The students, impatient for a taste of the “real West,” were delighted, and imagined that they, too, had become more real themselves.
But despite the fevered excitement, Johnson found the sight sad. In his journal he recorded, “The hopes of humanity for wealth and fame, or at least for creature comfort, can delude them so easily! For surely only a handful of the people here will find what they are seeking. And the rest will meet with disappointment, hardship, sickness, and perhaps death from starvation, Indians, or marauding robbers who prey on the hopeful, questing pioneers.”
And he added the ironic note: “I am most heartily glad that I am not going to the dangerous and uncertain Black Hills.”
The West
Beyond Omaha the real West began, and aboard the train, everyone felt renewed excitement, tempered by the advice of older travelers. No, they would not see buffalo—in the seven years since the transcontinental rail lines opened, the buffalo had disappeared from view along the rail side, and indeed the legendary great herds of animals were fast disappearing altogether.