Haunted Wyoming: Soldier was ambushed and buried…

It was December 21, 1866, when an entire command was wiped out in a battle against the Plains Indians in Wyoming Territory. The Fetterman battle and the loss of the lives of 76 enlisted men, three officers and two civilians shocked the nation.

The facts of the battle are shrouded in mystery, as is the strange story of a soldier in the same fort who risked his life to deliver important messages from his commander.

Journalist and Civil War veteran Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce shared the story in his story “A Man with Two Lives.” He said that David William Duck told him a strange story about the Wyoming border when Duck was traveling alone through enemy country.

Bierce himself was in the Great Plains during this time and knew all the men involved in the Fetterman Fight.

In mid-1866 he had joined General William Babcock Hazen as part of an expedition to inspect military outposts in the Great Plains.

The expedition traveled by horse and buggy from Omaha, arriving in San Francisco in December, the same month of the Fetterman Fight.

Bierce was promoted to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army and eventually finding a successful career as a journalist and author.

‘Dead Duck’ tells his story

“Duck is an old man who lives in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally respected,” Bierce wrote in 1893 in his book “Can Such Things Be?” decades after the Fetterman battle. “However, he is commonly known as ‘Dead Duck.'”

This is the story as told by Duck to Bierce.

“In the fall of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth Infantry. My company was one of the companies stationed at Fort Phil Kearney, commanded by Colonel Carrington. The country is more or less familiar with the history of that garrison, especially with the massacre by the Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers—not one of whom escaped—by disobedience to orders from its commander, the courageous but reckless Captain Fetterman .

“When that happened, I was trying to get important messages to Fort CF Smith, on the Big Horn. While the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and hid myself as best I could before breaking through. To do this better, I went on foot, armed with a Henry rifle and with three days’ rations in my duffel bag.

“For a second shelter I chose what seemed in the darkness a narrow gorge leading through a range of rocky hills. It contained many large boulders, loose from the slopes of the hills. Behind one of these, in a grove of sagebrush, I made my bed for woke up in the morning and soon fell asleep.

“It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, although in reality it was almost noon, when I was awakened by the sound of a gun, the bullet hitting the rock just above my body. A band of Indians had followed me and almost surrounded me; the shot had been fired with terrible aim by a fellow who had spotted me from the hill above.

“The smoke from his gun gave him away, and as soon as I was on my feet he was off his and rolling down the slope. Then I ran in a crouched stance, dodging among the groves of sagebrush in a storm of bullets from unseen enemies.

Captured

‘The thugs didn’t get up and chase, which I thought was quite strange as they must have known from my trail that they were dealing with only one man. The reason for their inaction soon became clear. I had gone less than a hundred meters before I reached the limit of my run: the head of the gorge that I had mistaken for a canyon. It ended in a hollow rock chest, almost vertical and devoid of vegetation. I was trapped in that dead end street like a bear in a cage. Pursuit was unnecessary; all they had to do was wait.

‘They waited. For two days and nights, crouched behind a rock covered with mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, aching with thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the fellows at a great distance, occasionally firing at them . the smoke of their guns, as they did mine. Of course, I did not dare to close my eyes at night, and the lack of sleep was severe torture.

“I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew would be my last. I remember, rather vaguely, that in my despair and delirium I jumped out and started shooting my repeating rifle without seeing anyone to shoot at. And I don’t remember anything about that fight.

Escape

“The next thing I remember was pulling myself out of a river just at nightfall. I had no rag of clothing and knew nothing of where I was, but all night I traveled, cold and sore in my feet, towards the north. I found myself at Fort CF Smith, my destination, but without my messages. The first man I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very well. You can imagine his surprise when he saw me in that condition, and mine when he asked who the devil was.

“‘Dave Duck,’ I replied; ‘who am I supposed to be?’

‘He stared like an owl.

“You really look like that,” he said, and I noticed him turning away from me a little. “What’s going on?” he added.

‘I told him what happened to me the day before. He heard me through, still staring; then he said:

“My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck, I must tell you that I buried you two months ago. I was out with a small reconnaissance party and found your body, full of bullet holes and freshly scalped – otherwise somewhat mutilated. I’m sorry to say it too – right where you say you fought. Come to my tent and I will show you your clothes and some letters I received from you, the commander has your messages.’

‘He has fulfilled that promise. He showed me the clothes which I resolutely put on; the letters I put in my pocket. He made no objection, and then took me to the commander, who heard my story and coolly ordered Briscoe to take him away. me to the guardhouse.

“On the way there I said, ‘Bill Briscoe, did you really bury the dead body you found in these clothes?’

“Of course,” he replied – “just as I told you. It was Dave Duck, okay; most of us knew him. And now, you damned cheater, you better tell me who you are.”

“I’d like to know something for it,” I said.

‘A week later I escaped from the guardhouse and left the country as quickly as I could. I have been back twice, looking for that fateful spot in the hills, but could not find it.’

The Journalist

The author of this story, Bierce, was a Union soldier during the Civil War and fought several battles, including the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. This terrifying experience became a source for several short stories and the memoir “What I Saw or Shiloh.”

During his lifetime, Bierce was better known as a journalist than as a fiction writer. He wrote realistically about the terrible things he saw during the war and helped pioneer the psychological horror story.

Due to his reputation as a journalist, many of his ghost and war stories, including ‘The Man With Two Lives’, were received by some as fact rather than fiction, blurring the lines between real and fake.

In 1913, 71-year-old Bierce told reporters that he was traveling to Mexico to gain firsthand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. He was never seen again and his own disappearance became legend.

Bierce left this strange story about the territory of Wyoming, leaving readers to ponder what was real and what was this former soldier’s imagination.

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at [email protected].