Once he saw cattle standing silently in the moonlight and wondered at the stupidity of the settler who had left his herd untended. The Crow would feast well if they found them.
It was on the fourth morning of his trek that he saw the fort. He had camped on a knoll and as the sun rose he saw the fort in the foothills of the West Pryor Mountain. He studied it for an hour, alert for signs of life, the blare of a bugle on the wind, the smoke rising from the troopers’ chow house. But there was no sign. As the sun rose he withdrew into the shade of a clump of bush and slept.
Over his evening meal he thought what he should do. This was still wild country and a man travelling alone was in constant danger. Clearly the fort was newly built. It had not been there the previous autumn. So the army was extending its control of the tribal lands of the Crow people. A year earlier the nearest forts had been Fort Smith to the east on the Bighorn River and Fort Ellis to the north-west on the Bozeman Trail. To the latter he could not go; they would recognize him there.
But if the new fort was not occupied by the Seventh, or men of Gibbon’s command, there was no reason anyone would know him by sight, and if he gave a false name . . . He saddled Rosebud and decided to scout the new fort during the night and remain unseen.
He reached it in the moonlight. No unit flag flew from its pole, no chink of light came from within, no sound of human habitation. Made bolder by the si
lence, he rode to the front gate. Above it were two words. He recognized the first as ‘Fort’ because he had seen it before and knew its shape. The second word he could not recall. It began with a letter made of two vertical poles with a sort of crossbar. On the outside of the high double gates was a chain and padlock to keep them closed.
He walked Rosebud round the twelve-foot-high stockade walls. Why would the army build a fort and leave it? Had it been attacked and gutted? Were all inside dead? But if so, why the padlock? At midnight he stood on Rosebud’s saddle, reached up and locked fingers over the palisades. Seconds later he was on the walkway five feet below the parapet and seven feet above the ground inside. He looked down.
He could make out the quarters for the officers and the troopers, the livery stable and kitchens, the armoury and water barrel, the trade goods store and the forge. It was all there, but it was abandoned.
He came soft-footed down the steps inside, rifle at the ready, and began to explore. It was new, all right. He could tell by the joinery and the freshness of the sawcuts across the beams. The post commander’s office was locked, but everything else seemed to be open to the touch. There was a bunkhouse for the soldiers and another for travellers. He could find no earth latrines, which was odd. Against the back wall, away from the main gate, was a small chapel and beside it in the main wall a door secured on the inside with a timber bar.
He removed this, stepped outside, walked round the walls and led Rosebud inside. Then he rebarred the door. He knew he could never defend the fort alone. If a war party attacked, the braves would come over the walls with the same ease as he. But it would serve as a base for a while, until he could discover where the clan of Tall Elk had gone.
In daylight he explored the livery stable. There were stalls for twenty horses, all the tack and feed a man could need and fresh water in the trough outside. He unsaddled Rosebud and gave her a brisk rub with a stiff brush while she feasted off a bin of oats.
In the forge he found a tin of grease and cleaned his rifle until the metal and wooden stock shone. The trade store yielded hunter’s traps and blankets. With the latter he made a comfortable niche in the corner bunk of the cabin set aside for passing travellers. The only thing he was short of was food. But in the trade store he eventually found a jar of candies, so he ate them for his evening meal.
The first week seemed to fly by. In the mornings he rode out to trap and hunt, and in the afternoons he prepared the skins of the animals for future trade. He had all the fresh meat he needed and knew of several plants in the wilderness whose leaves made a nourishing soup.
He found a bar of soap in the store and bathed naked in the nearby creek, whose water, though icy, was refreshing. There was fresh grass for his horse. In the chow kitchen he found bowls and tin plates. He brought in dry fallen winter-wood for his fire and boiled water in which to shave. One of the things he had taken from Donaldson’s cabin was his old cut-throat razor, which he kept in a slim steel case. With soap and hot water he was amazed at how easy it was. In the wilderness or on the march with the army he had perforce used cold water and no soap.
The spring turned to early summer and still no-one came. He began to wonder where he should turn to ask where the Cheyenne had gone and where they had taken Whispering Wind. Only then could he follow. But he feared to ride east to Fort Smith or north-west to Fort Ellis, where he would surely be recognized. If he learned the army still wanted to hang him, he would take the name of Donaldson and hope to pass unknown.
He had been there a month when the visitors came, but he was away in the mountains trapping. There were eight in the party and they came in three long steel tubes that rolled on spinning black discs with silver centres but were drawn by no horses.
One of the men was their guide and the other seven were his guests. The guide was Professor John Ingles, head of the faculty of Western History at the University of Montana at Bozeman. His chief guest was the junior senator for the state, all the way from Washington. There were three legislators from the Capitol at Helena and three officials from the Department of Education. Professor Ingles unlocked the padlock and the party entered on foot, staring about them with curiosity and interest.
‘Senator, gentlemen, let me welcome you to Fort Heritage,’ said the professor. He beamed with pleasure. He was one of those lucky men to possess limitless good humour and to be hopelessly in love with the very activity from which he made his living. His work was his lifelong obsession, a study of the Old West and the detailing of its history. He was steeped in knowledge of Montana in the old days, of the War of the Plains, of the native American tribes who had warred and hunted here. Fort Heritage was a dream he had nursed for a decade and coaxed through a hundred committee meetings. This day was the crowning moment of that decade.
‘This fort and trading post is an exact replica, to the last and tiniest detail, of what such a place would have been at the time of the immortal General Custer. I have supervised every detail personally and can vouch for them all.’
As he led the party round the timber cabins and facilities he explained how the project had had its birth in his original application to the Montana Historical Society and the Cultural Trust; how funds had been found in the dormant Coal Taxes fund held by the Trust and allocated after much persuasion.
He told them the design was inch-perfect, made from local forest timber as it would have been, and how, in his pursuit of perfection, even the nails were of original type and steel screws banned.
His enthusiasm overflowing and infecting his guests, he told them: ‘Fort Heritage will be an involving and deeply meaningful educational experience for children and young people not only from Montana but, I expect, from the surrounding states. Tour bus parties have already booked from as far away as Wyoming and South Dakota.
‘At the very edge of the Crow Reservation, we have twenty acres of paddocks outside the walls for the horses and we will take a hay crop in due season to feed them. Experts will scythe the hay in the old-fashioned way. Visitors will see what life used to be like on the frontier a hundred years ago. I assure you this is unique in all America.’
‘I like it, I like it a lot,’ said the senator. ‘Now, how will you staff it?’
‘That is the crowning glory, Senator. This is no museum but a functioning, working 1870s fort. The funds run to the employment of up to sixty young people throughout the summer, right through all the main national holidays and above all the school vacations. The staff will be mainly young, and drawn from the various schools of drama in the principal cities of Montana. The response from the students wishing to work through the summer break and fulfil a worthwhile task at the same time has been impressive.
‘We have our sixty volunteers. I myself will be Major Ingles of the Second Cavalry, commanding the post. I will have a sergeant, corporal and eight troopers, all students who know how to ride. Mounts have been loaned by friendly ranchers.
‘Then there will be some young women, pretending to be cooks and laundresses. The mode of dress will be exactly as it was then. Other drama students will play the roles of trappers in from the mountains, scouts from the plains, settlers moving west to cross the Rockies.
‘A real blacksmith has agreed to join us, so the visitors will see horses being shod with new shoes. I will take services in the post chapel over there and we will sing the hymns of those days. The girls will of course have their own dormitory and a group chaperon in the form of my faculty assistant, Charlotte Bevin. The soldiers will have one bunkhouse, the civilians the other. I assure you, no detail has been overlooked.’
‘Surely there have to be some things that modern young people cannot do without. How about personal hygiene, fresh fruit and vegetables?’ said a congressman from Helena.
‘Absolutely right,’ beamed the professor. ‘There are in fact three areas of subterfuge. I will not be having any loaded firearms on the post. All handguns and rifles will be replicas, save a few that fire blanks and only under supervision.