Dakota Diary -19 - Back to the Lawyer, and the Party

On Friday, our appointment to see Mr. Stoyall. the lawyer, was scheduled for 2 p.m. but he called round and left a note saying that he was free at lunch time, and would be pleased if we would meet him for lunch, and he would tell us then what he had learned.

So at 11.45 we left the hotel and made our way to the Okay Diner, which is where he said he would meet us. It turned out that his wife, Maud, was there too, and John introduced us to her.

We ordered, and while we were waiting for the food to come, John told us what he had been doing.

“I’ve had some ex-official conversations with various people, and I think I can assure you that what I am saying is correct. The black satchel which your dad took with him to the battle scene came back on the Far West, and was given to the Dunns. Everyone agrees on that. Nobody knows what
happened to it after that, so the surmise is that it is still there.”

“Mrs Dunn told us they gave it away to a charity for Indians.”

“Well, if that happened, nobody seems to have known about it but her.”

“As far as the writings that he did, it seems to be agreed that there were two notebooks. One was left on the Far West and came back with the satchel, so it would have gone to the Dunns. That
was his rough notes from which he wrote his various reports that got sent off.

“Then there was a second set of notes which Dr. Porter picked up and gave directly to Colonel Lounsberry, and it was those that he used for his newspaper article about the massacre. He might or might not still have them. They might or might not contain material that Lounsberry doesn’t want revealed - but they are his, and you can’t do anything to force his hand on those.

“Now as far as the coal mine goes, I think the most likely coal mine that he might have been involved with was owned partly by a man called Arthur T. Packard, and he at the moment is in Medora - trying to set up a newspaper there. So you might be able to find out more from him, if you can get a hold of him. The only other coal mine that I looked into was the one owned by the Northern Pacific, since Mark worked for them for awhile, but their mines were mostly in Montana and the west coast, and he specifically said that the one he had shares in was from around here.

“So that is about all I can tell you. If you can find out who has the gold stake or coal shares, I can help you try to get them off them. But I have no clues at all as to who it might be, unless it is the
Dunns, or somebody who lived at the same boarding house he did. He certainly never gave them to me, and I was as close a friend as any he had in Bismarck at the time. He would have trusted me with them - but then again - he didn’t give me your address either.”

“Well, thank you Mr. Stoyall for all that research, and at least we have a few more things to work
on. We, in fact, intend to go to the Badlands on Sunday, so we will see if we can find out anything about Mr. Packard.”

“Oh another thing I wanted to mention to you. It was about your Pa in the summer of 75. It was a
really hot summer and so little rain fell that the farms that were supplying Fort Lincoln fell down in their orders. So I volunteered to organise a threshing crew - to get the grain in early, and I hired
your Pa to be my foreman. The hay camp was in the bottoms south of Painted Woods. You won’t know it - but it is a pretty part of the area. Joseph Taylor, another newspaperman from Yankton, and somebody your dad knew well, worked for us too, by supplying us with game to eat. One morning at daybreak, while trailing a wounded deer, Taylor came across a fleshless skeleton of a large man. He recognised the remains as those of French Joe, a local deranged but harmless man. He came back to report this to the camp and we started an informal jury to investigate. Your father, having had experience of this sort of thing, kindly agreed to accompany us back to the site and assist at
the inquest and burial. He made an impassioned speech, which those few of us who heard it have long remembered. He said, 'This is a hard end. I hope and pray that my end - and our ends may be different, that we can hope for a good Christian burial.'”

“Oh, how sad that is,” said Cora Sue. “If he had only known that his end was going to be very hard indeed, not only for him, but for all of us.”

“He was then asked to be at the post mortem. They had recognized Joe by his clothing. The remains would have proven nothing, as the turkey buzzards had stripped all the flesh from his bones as clean as if done with a knife.

“In one of Joe’s pockets were $3 and nearby another 60 cents. Your dad said, “This man must
have suffered a terribly agonizing death. Three miles from the nearest homestead, a mile from any water, with no companions, this robust man was cut down and died friendless and alone, with no eye, save that of his maker on him.”

“Joe was a known alcoholic and your dad surmised that he had been drinking hard, and had wandered into the forest, became lost and eventually died of thirst and starvation.”

“That is such a sad story, and even more poignant when you compare it with what happened to Pa and the soldiers,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Stoyell, for telling us about it.”

After lunch we went home, to try to make sense of all we had learned about Pa and about his friends
during this first very full week.

 

We knew that Saturday was going to be the big occasion. We were going to be on display before all these people - people who had known our Pa. People who knew things about him that we didn’t know - that we could never know - like that business that Linda was telling us about him and her providing information for the conviction of the government official for fraud.

We spent Saturday morning writing letters, and reading through the information we had borrowed from the Capitol office about the Badlands.

We decided not to wear our very best frocks for the party - because the idea had been mooted that we might be asked to perform and that would be the time to be seen in all our finery. But we have very pretty pastel dresses that were appropriate for a summer party, and we both felt quite pleased with how we looked.

We arrived early at the Lounsberrys. We were invited in and met the family. His wife, Lucretia, seemed rather stressed by the event - perhaps due to their children, who were quite rowdy. We were introduced to them - Hattie, 16, George 14, Wells, 12, Fredrick 9 and William (the only one who had
been born in Dakota, who was 7). Apparently Lucretia was unwell, due to his birth, which was one of the reasons who Mr. Lounsberry had not gone with Custer, rather than Pa.

But soon after this, the children were sent off to bed, and Lucretia seemed to relax. Next to arrive were Mr. Dunn and his wife, Christina, and we greeted them warmly.

But then people came right, left and center, and we had little hope of keeping people straight or
anything. Luckily I have quite a good memory for names. It just seemed one blur. There was Mr. Dara and Mr. Lombard - who both said they had worked with Pa briefly. They were printers at the paper. Then, Mr. Hananer, who owned a clothing store. Mr. John Day, another printer came over later.

We recognized Mr. Fisher, the bank manager, and he introduced us to his wife Addie.

Dr. Porter - and his wife came with Linda and Frank.

Somebody called James Emmons came up. He was the editor of the rival paper, the Bismarck
Daily Advertiser, and he said that he knew our Pa really well too.

They all had nice things to say about him. One said, “He was an outstanding example of a frontier reporter - a cheery, friendly, neighborly, honest and upbeat guy.”

Another said he was “well liked, held strong standards of personal conduct and immersed himself
in the social and political life of his community.”

A third person said he had a “bold, adventurous spirit, and was greatly fascinated with pioneer
life.”

But then a rather shy man came up to us, and said, “I’m very pleased to meet us. I was the man
who had had the dreadful job of sending you the telegram about your Pa’s death. It was the hardest thing I had to do, but he said to me before he went, he said, 'John, I want you to have my girl’s
address - so if anything happens to me you can let them know.' So I knew I had to do it.”

“Thank you so much John. What is your other name?”

“Oh, sorry Miss. I plumb forgot my manners. I’m John Carnahan and I'm the telegrapher at the Tribune office. Your pa and me had a lot in common - with us both coming from La Crosse and him having been a telegrapher too. We did lots of things together. We went to the saloon and hunting sometimes, and all sorts.”

“Thank you again, Mr. Carnahan, for telling us that you were the one who sent the message. We never knew who it was - just that it came from the paper. Mr. Lounsberry said that he never knew where we lived - but we knew that somebody knew, and now we know why you knew. Did he
really think, when he left, that he might die there?”

“I don’t think he was thinking like that at all. He was so much looking forward to it - like a great adventure - and he was sure that the Army was going to have no trouble at all giving those Indians a
lesson or two. No, I think he only did it because he was the sort of man who liked things wrapped up neatly. And he thought that just in case that was the outcome - somebody should know where you were.”

“Didn’t Colonel Lounsberry or Mr. Dunn ever ask you about us?”

“No, I can’t say that they did - not that I remember anyway.”

Then, we met with another lawyer, Mr Utley Pratt and his wife Minnie, and we tried to chat with
them but it was noisy we couldn’t hear ourselves think, much less carry on any sort of conversation.

It was so hot that many people from the party were going out into the garden for some fresh air. We
were kept plied with drinks - beer for the men and lemonade for the women. And the servants brought around plates of little sandwiches and cakes.

Mrs. Lounsberry came rushing up to us and saying that folks were leaving, so we should go back inside to say good bye to them.

So we stood by the door and said goodbye to the dozens of people we met - most of whom we had hardly spoken to.

Before the last guests, the Fishers, left, Mrs Fisher said, “I hear you girls are professional
musicians.”

“Mattie is,” said Cora Sue. “I only do it for fun.”

“Well, the thing is, we have just had a new house built - and we wanted to have something special
to launch it. We have asked some of the professional actors who are in town to do a turn for us, and there will be some other music, I hoped you girls might agree to sing and play. We do have a grand
piano.”

“Yes, of course, we will,” I said. “I would love to play your piano, and Cora has a lovely voice, and sometimes we sing duets. How many pieces would you want?”

“Well, perhaps 15 minutes all told.”

“And when will that be?”

“Well the plan is for the 4th of July. Is that too soon for you? The performance is at 2 p.m. with it
being a public holiday and all. We plan to let people bring picnics and have them on the lawn before hand and then come into the main room for the performances.”

“No, that will be fine. I'll look out some music. Thank you for asking us.”

So our introduction to Bismarck society was over. It had been a success. We had found the man who let us know about our Pa which was very important. Pa must have liked and trusted him.

We had been invited to sing and play for the July 4th party, and tomorrow we were off to the Badlands to see the area that Pa thought was the most remarkable that he had ever seen.