For the Strength of the Hills
Lee Allred
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Rookhouse Inc.
Cover Photo by WilliamSherman/istockphoto
The resupply column reached the blackened remains of Fort Bridger, flags flying, brass bands playing. Even the brackish dust billowing majestically across the prairie behind them joined the celebration. Fifteen hundred US Army Regulars marched west across the vast Utah Territory toward Fort Bridger. A line of ox-drawn wagons, two thousand strong, followed behind. The line curved eastward over the sage-dotted horizon—the first supplies to reach Fort Bridger since the snows of autumn.
From the dugout revetment on the banks of the tiny Black Forks Creek, just outside the fort proper, the starving men of 'B' Battery watched the column approach.
"Cap'n?" The soft, timid voice belonged to young Private Danby, of course—young enough his face was still as smooth as the brass cannon barrel he stood polishing. The twelve-pounder Napoleons gleamed in stark contrast with the rest of the muddy, derelict fort.
Captain Peck turned and looked down from atop the mud-plastered log wall of the revetment. Peck's once proud blue army uniform had faded. Patched and patched again, his ragged tunic hung loose over his starved frame. Three disastrous marches down Echo Canyon and three hellish Bridger winters had chiseled a cragginess to Peck's face until it seemed carved out of the same rocks that lined the Echo.
"Supposing they're here to spell us off, Cap'n? Take us home, I mean. Or at least Ft. Leavenworth, maybe?"
Peck remained silent. He looked back toward the approaching wagons.
"They are here to spell us off, I mean, aren't they, Cap'n?" Danby persisted.
Rufus Ferguson, the battery's grizzled sergeant-major, pushed back his threadworn cap with a dirty-looking thumb, tattooed by years of burning gunpowder. He squinted at the billowing dust clouds. "Too many wagons, boy." He spat on the ground and rubbed it around with a worn boot. "Too many wagons. Too much food in 'em. Naw, they ain't taking us back."
Danby looked first at Ferguson then back at his captain. "Too much food!" he sputtered at last. The look in his eyes said it all: too much food for Johnston's Army? How could anyone who wintered in Bridger ever consider there being such a thing as too much food again?
Peck slowly eased himself from the top of the revetment wall back down into the muddy gun pit. He laid a steadying hand on Danby's trembling shoulder. "He means, son, that there are more supplies coming in than we'd ever need if we were simply pulling out."
Peck stopped there, wanting to be kind to the boy. Ferguson, however, had never been sanguine about a soldier's feelings. "Hmpf," the old sergeant snorted. "Too much food to pull back with and not enough to go ahead with. Not enough by a jugful. Not if Johnston has us make another try down the Echo—not and still have any food left when winter sets in, even if we do push through."
Peck slowly shook his head. "No. Not if the Mormons keep their pledge to burn the city to the ground if we do make it through to Salt Lake."
Ferguson nodded and spat again. "Danby, you remember how much food you brung with you last spring, boy?" Danby had arrived the year before in a procession even grander than the one they watched today. "How many sacks of them beans are left?"
Danby nodded dully. The beans had run out in December, the mules and the oxen that freighted them had run out in February. Corn meal paste mixed with bark and what scarce game they could shoot had been the only food they'd eaten these past few months. A tear trickled down Danby's cheek. He wiped at it with a grimy, bandaged hand. "You mean we—we—oh, Cap'n! Another winter, Cap'n?"
Peck turned away. He looked to the west, past the Mesa, toward the Echo where the Mormons waited patiently, hidden, fortified in the narrow sheer-walled canyons, their hands poised on the cranks of their mechanical Browning repeating rifles. "Worse, son. Far worse. Another summer."
***
Hours later, Peck and his men were still at their post, manning their guns. Drunken laughs and shouts and camp songs echoed from inside the walls of the fort. Mercifully, the bitter west wind kept the smells of the cook fires away from the starving men. The first wagons to arrive had passed out some beef jerky to the starving men while they started the cook fires going. Peck had kept his men from eating theirs. As starved as they were, the jerky would do little good—only cause their empty stomachs to swell up painfully and render them unfit to man their guns.
Eventually an orderly strolled out to the revetment. The orderly was almost as young as Danby. He saluted Peck clumsily, his hand buried deep inside an oversized tunic sleeve of a crisp new uniform. The sleeve unrolled as he saluted. "General Johnston's compliments, sir, and you're to report to him soonest." The boy's breath hung heavy with the smell of cheese.
Peck returned the boy's salute. He turned to Ferguson. "I was wondering how long before our esteemed Albert Sidney sent for me. Take charge of the battery, Rufus." He glanced at the setting sun. "I imagine you've still time for one more practice drill."
The young orderly looked up from rolling back his sleeve. "Oh, I almost forgot the next part of the message." He screwed his face in concentration. His voice took a sing-song quality as he parroted: "'B' battery is to be hereby relieved from duty until further notice on my—I mean General Johnston's—authority."
"He what—?" exploded Ferguson.
Peck motioned him to be quiet. "Relieved? By whom?" Peck asked.
The orderly gulped. "Uh, my guess'd be nobody, sir. Truth is, you're the only ones left at their post. Everybody else is beginning to celebrate, like. All the other men, well, they think you're crazy sitting out here in the wind and not joinin' in the doings."
"Crazy are we? Crazy? Well, someone's crazy around here, and it ain't us," snapped Ferguson. "These guns we're crazy enough to keep manned are the only things keeping the Mormons from swarming over the flats and taking this ramshackle excuse for a fort."
The boy gave an adenoidal snort. "Reckon' they'd be fools to try anything now, what with two whole fresh infantry regiments marching in. And nearly as many cavalry troopers as well."
Ferguson took a deep breath and sighed. "Son, when Buchanan started this Utah War, there were only eight regiments in the whole US Army. The Mormons have chewed up four already and lost nary a man doing it. What makes you think they're going to be a-scared of a mere regiment or two?"
"No need to chew at the boy, Rufus," Peck said. "It's not his fault our 'second Napoleon' hasn't an ounce of sense."
"'Second Napoleon,'" Ferguson hooted. "Albert Sidney Johnston ain't nothin' but a sawed-off Texas horse colonel—light colonel at that!—brevetted over his head. Curse the day Jeff Davis and the War Department ever saw fit to promote that skunk."
The poor orderly glanced nervously in the direction of Johnston's headquarters. "Excuse me, sir, but the general did say 'soonest.'"
Peck looked at his guns, then at his starving, ragged men. Ferguson followed his gaze. He spat, then pushed back his cap and hitched up his britches. "Don't worry about us, Cap'n. Figger me and the rest of the boys'll join in the doin's sitting right here. Sunset ought to be mighty purty tonight."
Peck nodded a curt thanks.
"'Course," Ferguson, said, clearing his throat, "maybe you should send Danby to bring us some of that there grub. And some plug." He grinned. "Oh, an' something stronger than crick water to fill our canteens with—some moral suasion to rinse this joe-fired prairie dirt outa our craw. An' some blankets to keep the night chill off'n us. An' some new boots. Ones with the soles stitched on, not glued with that Connecticut glue that washes out when it gets the tiniest bit wet. And…" his voice trailed off as he grinned even wider.
"Something else?" Peck almost smiled.
"Not unless they brung a Kansas City woman in one of those wagons," winked Ferguson.
A red flush crept up the orderly's face. "Uh, best not wait to get them boots or new uniforms, 'cause they're going real fast."
"Naw." Ferguson spat in the direction of the large cemetery outside the stockade. "I'm thinkin' the War Department planned on a few more of us being here than what there is. There'll be more than enough extry new uniforms to go around." He turned to Peck. "Go on, Cap'n. We can handle things here."
"As soon as I straighten this mess out, Rufus, I'll have a proper relief sent out to you—that is if our Albert Sidney doesn't throw me in irons first, now he most likely has a replacement for me."
Ferguson wiped the corner of his mouth and grinned. "Haw. That ain't too likely, what with you being the Army Chief of Staff's godson. Johnston's too promotion happy. He'll gum ya a bit, but he ain't gonna bite much." He frowned. "Can't say the same about them trucklin' pea wits around him, though." Ferguson stared down at his boots and scuffed them around in the mud. "Best watch yer back, Cap'n, just the same. And your temper. You're worse'n I am sometimes," he grinned.
Peck smiled and clapped the old sergeant on the shoulder. "Only around Johnston." Peck climbed out the revetment and followed the orderly toward the fort.
***
Peck pushed his way through the camp, possibly the only man inside the fort sober, and possibly the only one not signing some camp song or another at the top of his drunken lungs. The most popular, of course, was that Brigham Young song some reporter from Back East had brought out a couple years ago with the '58 expedition.
I drug the Saints to the desert here
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
Just crickets and seagulls, no 'baccy or beer.
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
I grew a beard to cover my face
To hide the shame of choosing this place.
I'm building a Temple to cap the whole case.
A profi'ble prophet am I!
Peck headed for the crude adobe cabin slumping against the low stone wall the Mormons had built when they'd bought the fort from Bridger himself. The cabin served as Johnston's headquarters. The closer Peck got to it, the thicker the drunken mob he had to push through. Next to the cabin, however, the crush of singing, shouting men abruptly thinned. A picket of armed guards, new arrivals from the look of their full, beefy faces, had cordoned off the cabin and the northeast corner of the fort as well. Peck shook his head. Most likely Johnston didn't want any of the enlisted rabble disturbing him while he and his bootlickers sat smoking cigars while their dinners cooked.
A peculiar gun carriage sat in front of the cabin. Prairie mud, cracked and dry, coated its wheels a goodly way up to the hubs. The mud shouldn't have been that deep, thought Peck. Then he noticed both wheels and carriage were too small by half. Small, but heavy. The canvas tarp draped over the gun bulged oddly, not the shape cannon should bulge at all. Peck had never seen the like of this gun before.
Peck wondered what new deviltry President Buchanan's munitioneering cronies had foisted upon him. Hopefully, the strange gun would be of more use than those white elephantile Parrot guns the War Department had tried sending them last year. The huge five-ton siege guns had been abandoned somewhere near the North Platte. The Indians—assuming they could ever budge them—were welcome to them as far as Peck was concerned.
Imagine trying to drag those siege guns down Echo Canyon once they'd made it to Bridger, Peck snorted to himself. What was the War Department thinking anyway? 'Blast the doors off the Mormon Tabernacle' indeed. No doubt whatever was under that tarp probably would turn out just as useless as the Parrot guns.
If only the Army would send something practical, like a couple dozen mountain howitzers. Peck could throw one on the back of a mule and its carriage on another mule or two—or if necessary, his men could carry them up mountain slopes and flank the Mormons' positions. That would be only way they'd ever break through to the Salt Lake Valley. They certainly weren't going to do it going up against Brownings with only muskets.
One wife's a horrible, mortible sin
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
Us Mormon tomcats, we spread ourselves thin.
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
So come join my harem, it's not a bad place,
I send off to Europe for converts and lace.
If the devil wants sinning—"This-is-the-Place!"
A profligate prophet am I!
A sentry posted at the door of Johnston's cabin snapped to attention as Peck stepped up on the flimsy wooden porch. The porch swayed and groaned with the added weight, but held somehow. Peck pulled on the door's crude rope latch and stepped inside.
The Army is coming to learn us a lick.
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
Johnston's a sly one, but I'm Brigham Slick.
(A profi'ble prophet am I!)
I'll block off the canyons and dig up the dirt,
Jump in a big hole and then lie there inert,
And just hope my harem don't gossip and blurt.
A pitiful prophet am I!
***
Inside the cabin, the air hung heavy with the homey smells of cigar smoke and coffee as General Johnston and his gathered staff gratified vices denied for far too long. Gathered around Johnston were his various toadies 'come to teach the Mormons a lick': Ben Butler, the Massachusetts politician somehow still corpulent after a Fort Bridger winter; spit-and-polish George McClellan, the Napoleon of the dispatch paper; Texan cavalry cronies from Johnston's earlier days; and several scruffy Missourians out to avenge the Francher party.
Three new faces sat to one side of the room: a colonel, a youngish major, and a fat greasy-looking civilian in a butternut jacket. The blue tobacco smoke was so thick, Peck could hardly see their faces.
General Johnston bent low over his dispatch papers. His face was all frown and moustache, a weasel face jutting out from beneath a head of hair borrowed from Stephen A. Douglas. Too bad Johnston hadn't borrowed the rest of Douglas' shrewd head as well. When the Creator had fashioned Albert Sidney Johnston, He'd set a pigmy-sized head atop a massive torso. Ferguson once said the reason Johnston hadn't had a new idea in years was on account of there being no room for one to squeeze inside his tiny skull.
Peck latched the door behind him, stepped forward and saluted. "Captain Peck, reporting as ordered, General."
Johnston looked up from his papers. A glass of brandy and cigar sat in one hand, a copy of his new orders in the other. "Ah, gentlemen." However pedantically precise Johnston's speech was, his Texas drawl was red clay thick. "Our illustrious, if somewhat tardy, Captain Peck has arrived. Captain Peck, actually Lieutenant Peck, has been acting as artillery commander since Johnny Phelps' unfortunate demise. Brevetted to captain, I should say. His promotion is only temporary. Very temporary."
The major, an artillery major Peck now noticed, turned sharply to stare at Peck. "I shouldn't wonder. A lieutenant commanding a battery?"
"Hobson's choice, I'm afraid," smiled Johnston. "Until your arrival, Major Willis, Peck here was the only artillery officer I had in my command, regardless of what, ah, irregularities exist up his family tree. Oh, how careless of me. I forgot introductions. Peck, Major Willis here is your new artillery commander—"
"Major," Peck said stiffly.
"—And this is Colonel Stuart, Second Cavalry. Colonel Stuart will be keeping the lines of communication back to Ft. Leavenworth open for us."
Peck's face brightened. Stuart had been a classmate at the Point. Class of '54. Peck started to step forward to shake hands, slap his old friend on the back, but a cold, icy glare from Stuart caused Peck to step back. "Colonel," he said stiffly.
Stuart didn't answer.
Johnston chuckled. He pulled a quick draw off the cigar. "Now, Colonel Stuart. No need for that. When I mentioned those family irregularities, I didn't mean the kind that would rightly shame any son of the South. No, Peck here has a sister that went and ran off with the Mormons a few years back. Tends to make him here a bit softheaded towards them."
"I do my duty."
"Perhaps—after a fashion. You do your duty—but only that." Johnston drew on the cigar again. "Colonel, we've much to discuss tonight. Shall we act like gentleman and finish the introductions so we can get on with it?"
Stuart looked at Peck. "I'm not sure I'd sooner his family not had the other kind of irregularities."
Smoke curled from Johnston's smirk. "Come, Colonel. You're a better man than he."
Stuart's eyes flicked towards Johnston and back. "Lieutenant."
Johnston nodded, satisfied. "Now then, Peck, this distinguished looking civilian gentleman is Mister Agar. He's connected with the War Department, you might say."
Peck eyed the man's silk shirt and well-fed middle. "Well connected, I should say."
A broad grin snaked its way across Johnston's face. He turned to the major. "You see, Major Willis, what I've had to endure from our Captain Peck? Major, the most pleasant aspect of your arrival—and that includes fresh victuals and these wonderful cigars—is that I no longer have to pay any heed to Hobson or his horse at all—or to Peck's high-horsery, either."
Peck stiffened. Johnston held up a hand, sloshing his brandy a bit as he did so. "I believe our captain is about to protest my ordering his men from their posts, an order I'm sure he's already ingeniously circumvented. Peck here is quite conscientious about his duty. At least, conscientious with what he feels his duty to be. Sometimes—rarely—his self-assigned duty even manages to match my direct orders."
"General," Peck said slowly. "I must indeed protest. Those wagons lined up like ducks for the shooting, my men to be pulled off their guns, that drunken brawl outside. Surely you know the Mormons can see everything that goes on in this camp from the Mesa."
The Mesa was really three small mesas clumped together about four miles from the fort. It jutted up from the prairie like an inverted 'T,' giving any spyglass-carrying Mormon atop it a commanding view down into the camp. Old cantankerous Jim Bridger had died trying to chase them off it. He'd been found face down, a Mormon Bowie knife stuck in his gut. Camp rumor held that the knife had belonged to none other than Porter Rockwell himself, but Peck knew better than to believe in that supernatural Danite nonsense. That was for fools and Back East reporters. Mormons were only human—once you took away their Brownings.
Johnston smiled and nodded. "Of course the Mormons'll see it. And they'll also see the two regiments of fresh infantry troops that arrived today. And that strong cavalry screen of Colonel Stuart's. Peck, the camp is in no danger whatsoever from a couple of Porter Rockwell's boys sitting up on that mesa with homemade spyglasses."
An empty bottle shattered against the outside wall of the cabin. A large whoop from a drunken group of soldiers accompanied it.
Peck jerked a thumb at the noise. "If the rest of camp is as drunk as that, a couple of men is all it'd take to overrun the fort."
Johnston leaned back and laughed. "Peck, stop your fretting. Major Willis' men will take over your guns tonight."
The major squirmed. "Ah, General, with all due respect, Peck and his troops do know the local situation better than I do. Wouldn't it be better if his men got together with mine and—"
Johnston fixed his eye on Willis, his voice suddenly low. "Don't you ever question my orders again, Major Willis. Understand?" He stubbed his cigar out and smiled sardonically. "Now, some reporters Back East have also questioned me, asked why I haven't tried to go around Echo Canyon. This only demonstrates their vast ignorance. The Rocky Mountains are part of a great mountain chain that stretches from the arctic to Panama. We're on this side of that chain, the Mormons on the other. Here, and only here, is a gap—a cone-shaped gap that narrows down to only one small mountain ridge between the Great Plains and the Great Basin: Echo Canyon. We can't go north to get at the Mormons. We can't go south. We have to go through that canyon."
He tapped a forefinger at the dispatch papers. "Gentlemen, my orders are to march down the Echo and take Salt Lake City and crush Brigham Young's vile rebellion against the Union. To do so, it is my duty—our duty—to put the drive, the determination, the fire in the belly that will enable the men of our army to do so. I aim to do just that using any and every means possible. That drunken scene outside, as distasteful as it is to we gentlemen of proper breeding—" his men around him smiled and nodded to themselves "—is necessary to raise the common soldier's common spirit. Gentlemen, you have my word that tonight's celebration and my liberal disbursal of spirits will prove the key to inspire our army to victory." A cold smile crossed his face. "The key. My solemn word."
Johnston pushed himself out of his chair. "And now, gentlemen, shall we retire outside? I believe Mr. Agar has something to show us."
***
Agar proudly whipped the tarp off the strange-looking gun. It wasn't a cannon—that much was certain—but Peck, for all his years as an artillery officer, had never seen a gun quite like it. A long, slender gun barrel protruded from a gear-filled mechanical box with a hand crank on its side and a tin hopper on its top. Through a complicated gear arrangement, the gun could swing side to side as well as up and down.
McClellan brushed his moustache with the back of finger and sniffed. Butler grunted, "Looks like a coffee grinder with a gun barrel sticking out of it." Of course Butler would compare it with something edible or potable.
Instead of being offended, Agar took that as a compliment. "Precisely," he beamed. He patted the tin hopper on top. "Gentlemen, may I present the War Department's answer to the Mormon's miracle gun: the Agar Rapid-Fire—or, as we like to call it, the Agar 'Coffee Mill.' The world's finest mechanically operated repeating rifle." He had to shout a little over the yelling and singing nearby.
Johnston examined the end of his cigar. "Major Willis, I must confess that you were at least partially correct: Peck, here, is the closest thing to an expert on the Mormon's Brownings I have." He jammed the cigar in his mouth. "Peck, inspect the weapon."
Peck stepped over to examine it. He ran his hand down the slim barrel. It looked so delicately attached that the slightest touch would snap it off, but it held firm. "Only a single barrel?" he asked Agar. "The Mormon gun has six barrels; the barrels rotate as the handle's cranked."
Agar frowned. "Richard Gatling out of North Carolina tried that approach, Captain. Alignment problems in trying to synchronize feeding in the cartridges caused him to have to scrap the design."
"Funny, the Mormons don't have seem to have that problem. Or if they did, they solved it."
Agar's face reddened. "The War Department judged my uncle's design superior."
"Try lasting a winter on the sort of rations Secretary Floyd's cronies sell the Army and then see what you think of the War Department's so-called 'judgment.'"
"Captain Peck!" snapped General Johnston. "You're appraising the weapon, not the War Department. My apologies, Mr. Agar." Agar signified gracious forgiveness with a flutter of his hand.
Peck peered into the open crank mechanism. "How do you keep the grit out?" Agar hemmed and hawed. Peck ran his finger across the hopper's interior and extracted gritty black grime. "Just as I thought: you don't. Ammunition?"
Agar handed him a steel-cased cartridge from his pocket. "Uses a .58 caliber. Dump a whole box into the hopper. Fires one hundred and twenty rounds a minute."
"If it fires."
"Oh, it fires. Indeedy it does." Agar snapped his fingers. A private nervously approached with a small wooden box of ammunition. He pried it open and dumped the cartridges into the hopper.
Johnston pointed at the charred east wall of the stockade where the planked logs had started to tumble down. "Aim there," he ordered. They wheeled the carriage into position. Johnston had the milling troops shooed out of the way. Agar removed his butternut jacket and rolled up his silk shirt sleeves with a showman's flair. He spun the elevation and traverse wheels furiously to aim the gun.
"Never mind that," Johnston barked. "Just fire."
Agar cracked his knuckles and grabbed the crank handle. He stood waiting for Johnston's signal.
Johnston nodded at McClellan who drew his Navy Colt and began firing into the air. As if on cue, the drunken men in camp cut loose with their own weapons, firing volley after staggered volley, whooping, and yelling. Above it all, however, a deafening racket arose from the Agar as the fat man cranked it: a steady clack-clack-clack of the machine gears and the chug-chug-chug of the shells. A stream of bullets traced a pattern on the log wall, throwing flame-blackened splinters flying. "Has a range of a thousand yards," Agar yelled over the din. While he cranked steadily, methodically, the private kept the hopper full. A small pile of expended steel cartridge shells formed at Agar's feet.
Agar cranked a full minute, a minute-and-a-half, then suddenly there was clang and a crash of metal parts grating on each other and the Agar stopped firing. The intoxicated random firing by the men in camp dwindled away. Agar nursed a set of bloody gear-chewed knuckles in his mouth. With his good hand he slapped the private away from meddling with the hopper. "Keep away, you fool! Want to blow your fool hand off? It could be another hang-fire."