“I tell you, there’s a man, a lone man!”
“Where?”
“There! Out there!”
They stared at the distant horizon of the plains, and saw nothing at all.
Cookie unleashed a stream of epithets. “He’s Injun shy and he’s crazy, too—he’s going to see a red man behind every bush long as we’re out here. We won’t get a lick of sleep.”
Cope quietly said that he would take over the watch, and sent the others back to bed.
It would be many weeks before they realized that Isaac had been right.
If Stinky’s food and Isaac’s guarding left something to be desired, so did Little Wind’s scouting. The Shoshoni brave got them lost for much of the following day.
Two hours after they set out, they came across fresh horse manure on the plains.
“Indians,” Isaac gasped.
Hill snorted in disgust. “Know what that is?” he said. “That’s manure from our horses, that’s what it is.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You think so? See the wagon tracks over there?” He pointed to faint tracks, where the prairie grass had been pressed down. “You want to bet I put the wheels of this wagon in those tracks and they line up exactly? We’re lost, I tell you.”
Cope rode alongside Little Wind. “Are we lost?”
“No,” Little Wind said.
“Well, what do you expect him to say?” Hill grumbled. “You ever heard an Indian admit he was lost?”
“I’ve never heard of an Indian being lost,” Sternberg said.
“Well, we got one here, purchased at great expense,” Hill said. “You mark my words, he’s never been in this part of the country before, no matter what he says. And he’s lost, no matter what he says.”
For Johnson, the conversation filled him with strange dread. All day they had been riding under the great bowl of the sky, across uniformly flat country, a great vista without landmarks except for the occasional isolated tree or line of cottonwoods that marked a creek. It was truly a “sea of grass,” and like the sea it was trackless and vast. He began to understand why everyone in the West talked so familiarly of certain landmarks—Pompey’s Pillar, Twin Peaks, Yellow Cliffs. These few recognizable features were islands in the wide ocean of the prairie, and knowledge of their locations was essential for survival.
Johnson rode alongside Toad. “Can we really be lost?”
Toad shook his head. “Indians are born here. They can read the land in ways we can’t begin to imagine. We’re not lost.”
“Well, we’re going south,” Hill grumbled, staring at the sun. “Why’re we going south, when every man here knows that the Judith lands are east? Can someone tell me that?”
The next two hours were tense, until finally they came upon an old wagon track running east. Little Wind pointed. “This road for wagons to Judith lands.”
“That’s what the problem was,” Toad said. “He’s not used to traveling with a wagon, and he had to find the track for our wagon to use.”
“The problem,” Hill said, “is that he doesn’t know the country.”
“He knows this country,” Sternberg said. “This is the Indian hunting lands we’re in now.”
They rode on in sober silence.
Incidents on the Plains
In the middle of the still hot afternoon, Johnson was riding alongside Cope, talking quite peaceably to him, when his hat suddenly flew away in the air, although there was no wind.
A moment later they heard the snapping report of a long rifle. Then another, and another.
Someone was shooting at them.
“Down!” Cope shouted. “Down!”
They dismounted and ducked for cover, crawling beneath the wagon. In the distance they could see a brown swirling dust cloud.
“Oh God,” Isaac whispered. “Indians.”
The distant cloud grew in size, resolving into many silhouetted horsemen. More bullets whizzed through the air; the fabric of the wagon ripped; bullets spanged off pots and pans. Bessie brayed in alarm.
“We’re done for,” Morton moaned.
“Any minute now we’ll hear those arrows whistling,” Isaac said, “and then, when they get closer, out come the tomahawks—”
“Shut up!” Cope said. He had never taken his eyes off the cloud. “They’re not Indians.”
“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.
Terrorized by the lightning, the buffalo stampeded past the men in a wet, dense river of flesh that flowed around the rocks on both sides. They were all spattered by copious quantities of mud; for Johnson, it was a peculiar sensation, in that “the mud covered our clothing, our hair, our faces, and we grew heavier as we became transformed into mud-men, until finally we were all bowed over by the immense weight of it.”
They eventually could see nothing, and could only listen to the thundering hooves, the snorting and grunting, as the dark shapes hurtled past them, ceaselessly. It seemed as if it went on forever.
In fact, the herd had stampeded past them, without interruption, for two hours.
Johnson awoke, his body stiff and aching. He was unable to open his eyes. He touched his face, felt the hard caked mud, and peeled it away.
“I was greeted by a sight of utter desolation,” he later recalled, “as if a hurricane or a whirlwind had struck us. There was only choppy mud as far as the eye could see, and our pitiful human party picking their way through it. Whatever of our camp outfit had been protected by the rocks was safe; everything else was gone. Two tents trampled into the mud so deeply we could not locate them in the morning; heavy pots and cook pans dented and twisted by the passage of thousands of hooves; tattered fragments of a yellow shirt; a carbine shattered and bent.”
They were greatly discouraged, particularly George Morton, who seemed to be in profound shock. Cookie argued to turn back, but as usual Cope was indomitable. “I am not here to excavate trifling possessions from mud,” he said. “I am here to excavate prehistoric bones.”
“Yes,” Cookie said. “If you ever get there.”
“We will.” He ordered them to break camp and pull out.
Little Wind was particularly grim. He said something to Cope, and then galloped off to the north.
“Where’s he going?” George Morton asked in alarm.
“He doesn’t believe the buffalo stampeded because of lightning,” Cope said. “He says they don’t do that.”
“I’ve known ’em to do it,” Isaac said, “in Wyoming. Stupid and unpredictable, buffalo are.”
“But what else could it be?” Morton said, still alarmed. “What does he think?”
“He thinks he heard gunshots just before the stampede began. He is going to look.”
“He’s going to contact his fellow red men,” Isaac muttered, “and tell them where to find some nice white scalps.”
“I think it’s all ridiculous,” Morton said petulantly. “I think we should give it up and stop these wild chases.”
The shock of the stampede must have unnerved him, Johnson thought. He watched Morton poke through the mud, looking for his sketch pad.
Little Wind was gone an hour, and he came back riding hard.
“One camp,” he said, pointing north. “Two men, two or three ponies. One fire. No tent. Many rifle shells.” He opened his hand, and a cascade of copper jackets tumbled down in the sunlight.
“Well, I’ll be!” Sternberg said.
“It’s Marsh’s men,” Cope said grimly.
“Did you see them?” Morton asked.
Little Wind shook his head. “Left many hours.”
“Which way did they go?”
Little Wind pointed east. The same direction they were going.
“Then we’ll come across them again,” Cope said. He clenched his fists. “I’d enjoy that.”
Badlands
The Judith River, a tributary of the Missouri, flowed from the Little Belt Mountains and connected with large creeks in a confusing meander of waterways.
“There’s damn good trout in those waters,” said Cookie. “Not that I expect we will be fishing.”
The Judith River basin itself consisted of badlands, rocky outcrops that formed, for the eye, into mysterious shapes, demons and dragons. A place of gargoyles, said Toad.
Toad’s arm was now swollen and red; he complained of pain. Sternberg said privately he thought Toad would have to be sent back to Fort Benton, where the army surgeon could amputate his arm with the benefit of whiskey and a bone saw. But nobody mentioned it to Toad.
The scale of the rock formations in the Judith badlands was enormous; great cliffs—Cope called them “exposures”—reaching hundreds of feet into the air, in places towering more than a thousand feet above them. With pastel bands of pink and black rock, the land had a stark and desolate beauty. But it was a harsh land: there was little water nearby, and it was mostly brackish, alkaline, poisonous. “Hard to believe this was a great inland lake, surrounded by swamps,” Cope said, staring at the soft sculpted rock. Cope always seemed to see more than the others did. Cope and also Sternberg: the tough fossil hunter had the practiced eye of a plains
explorer; he always seemed to know where to find game and water.
“We’ll have water enough here,” he predicted. “It won’t be the water that troubles us. It’ll be the dust.”
There was indeed an alkaline bite in the air, but the others did not mind it so much. Their immediate problem was to find a campsite near a suitable place for excavation, and this was no mean task. Moving the wagons over the terrain—there were no wagon trails here—was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.
They were also nervous about Indians, because they saw plenty of signs around them: pony tracks, abandoned cook fires, the occasional antelope carcass. Some of the cook fires looked recent, but Sternberg professed complete indifference. Even the Sioux weren’t crazy enough to stay in the badlands for long. “Only a crazy white man’d spend all summer here,” he laughed. “And only a crazy, rich white man would spend his vacation here!” He slapped Johnson on the back.
For two days they pushed the wagons up hills and braced them down hills, until finally Cope announced that they were in a suitable bone region, and they could make camp at the next good site they found. Sternberg suggested the top of the nearby rise, and they pushed the wagons up a final time, coughing in the dust of the wheels. Toad, unable to help because of his swollen arm, said, “Do you smell fire?” but no one did.
As they came to the top of the rise, they had a view over the plains and a meandering stream, with cottonwoods growing alongside it. And stretching as far as they could see were white teepees, each with a thin column of smoke issuing from them.
“My God,” Sternberg said. He quickly estimated the number.
“What do you make it?” Isaac said.
“I make it more’n a thousand teepees. My God,” Sternberg said again.
“I am persuaded,” said Isaac, “that we are dead men.”
“I reckon,” said Cookie Hill. He spat on the ground.
Sternberg didn’t think so. The question was what tribe of Indians they were. If they were Sioux, then Isaac was right; they were as good as dead. But the Sioux were supposed to still be farther south.