Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

Red Canyon
They reached the town of Custer at ten o’clock at night. The night was dark, and Johnson was
disappointed; he couldn’t see much of the most famous place in the Black Hills, the Gordon Stockade
at French Creek.
Just one year before, in 1875, the first miners of the Gordon party had built log cabins surrounded
by a wooden fence ten feet high. They had entered the Black Hills in defiance of the Indian treaty, and
they intended to pan for gold and hold off the Indians with their stockade. It had taken a cavalry
expedition from Fort Laramie to get them out; in those days the army was still enforcing the Indian
treaty, and the stockade stood deserted.
Now, everyone at Custer was talking about the new Indian treaty. Although the government was
still fighting the Sioux in the field, the cost of the war was high—already in excess of $15 million—
and it was an election year. Both the expense of the fighting and the legitimacy of the government’s
position were hot campaign issues in Washington. Therefore, the Great White Father preferred to
conclude the war peacefully, by negotiating a new treaty, and to this end, government negotiators had
arranged to meet with Sioux chieftains in Sheridan.
But even specially picked chiefs were disgusted by the new proposals. Most of the government
negotiators agreed with them. One of them, now on his way back to Washington, said to Johnson that it
was “the hardest damn thing I ever did in my life. I don’t care how many feathers a man wears in his
hair, he’s still a man. One of them, Red Legs, looked at me and said, ‘Do you think this is fair? Would
you sign such a paper?’ And I could not meet his eyes. It made me sick.
“You know what Thomas Jefferson said?” the man continued. “In 1803, Thomas Jefferson said that
it would take a thousand years before the West was fully settled. And it’ll be settled in less’n a
hundred years. That’s progress.”
Johnson recorded in his journal that “he seemed an honest man sent to do a dishonest job, and now
he could not forgive himself for carrying out the instructions of his government. He was drunk when
we arrived, and drinking more when we left.”
Morgan Earp left them at Custer, and they went on without him. By midnight, they had passed
Fourmile Ranch, and headed into Pleasant Valley. They passed Twelvemile Ranch, and Eighteenmile
Ranch in the darkness.
Shortly before dawn, they reached the entrance to Red Canyon.
The Red Canyon coach station had been burned to the ground. All the horses had been stolen. Flies