It was Dec. 21, 1866, when an entire command was wiped out in a battle against the Plains Indians in the Territory of Wyoming. The Fetterman Fight, and its 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 tale of a private at the same fort who risked his life to deliver important dispatches from his commander.
Journalist and Civil War Veteran Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce shared the tale in his story “A Man with Two Lives.” He said that David William Duck had told him a strange tale from the Wyoming frontier when Duck was traveling alone through hostile country.
Bierce himself was in the Great Plains during this time and was familiar with all the men involved in the Fetterman Fight.
In mid-1866, he had joined Gen. William Babcock Hazen as part of an expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains.
The expedition traveled by horseback and wagon from Omaha, arriving by December in San Francisco, the same month of the Fetterman Fight.
Bierce was awarded 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 living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally respected,” Bierce wrote in 1893 in his book “Can Such Things Be?” decades after the Fetterman Fight. “He is commonly known, however, as ‘Dead Duck.’”
This is the story as told by Duck to Bierce.
"In the autumn of 1866, I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth Infantry. My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil Kearney, commanded by Colonel Carrington. The country is more or less familiar with the history of that garrison, particularly with the slaughter by the Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers — not one escaping — through disobedience of orders by its commander, the brave but reckless Captain Fetterman.
“When that occurred, I was trying to make my way with important dispatches to Fort C.F. Smith, on the Big Horn. As the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and concealed myself as best I could before break. The better to do so, I went afoot, armed with a Henry rifle and carrying three days' rations in my haversack.
"For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the darkness a narrow canyon leading through a range of rocky hills. It contained many large boulders, detached from the slopes of the hills. Behind one of these, in a clump of sagebrush, I made my bed for the day, and soon fell asleep.
“It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet striking the boulder just above my body. A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside above.
“The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity. Then I ran in a stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sagebrush in a storm of bullets from invisible enemies.
Illustration of Fetterman’s Fight from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Most of the Plains Indians as seen here were armed with their traditional weapons, including bows, lances and clubs. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Private David William Duck was identified as a private in the Eighteenth Infantry at Fort Kearny in 1866. Artist Remington often sketched these soldiers as they went about their work. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Brevet Major Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce’s literary reputation is based primarily on his short stories about the Civil War and the supernatural. (Getty Images) 
The Fort Fetterman State Historic Site in Douglas, Wyoming. (Getty Images)
Trapped
“The rascals did not rise and pursue, which I thought rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that they had to deal with only one man. The reason for their inaction was soon made clear. I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the limit of my run — the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a canyon. It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute of vegetation. In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in a pen. Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait.
"They waited. For two days and nights, crouching behind a rock topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke of their rifles, as they did at that of mine. Of course, I did not dare to close my eyes at night, and lack of sleep was a keen torture.
"I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to be my last. I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation and delirium I sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating rifle without seeing anybody to fire at. And I remember no more of that fight.
Escape
"The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of a river just at nightfall. I had not a rag of clothing and knew nothing of my whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and footsore, toward the north. At daybreak I found myself at Fort C. F. Smith, my destination, but without my dispatches. The first man that I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very well. You can fancy his astonishment at seeing me in that condition, and my own at his asking who the devil I was.
"'Dave Duck,' I answered; 'who should I be?'
"He stared like an owl.
"'You do look it,' he said, and I observed that he drew a little away from me. 'What's up?' he added.
"I told him what had happened to me the day before. He heard me through, still staring; then he said:
"'My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform you that I buried you two months ago. I was out with a small scouting party and found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped — somewhat mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say — right where you say you made your fight. Come to my tent and I'll show you your clothing and some letters that I took from your person; the commandant has your dispatches.'
"He performed that promise. He showed me the clothing, which I resolutely put on; the letters, which I put into my pocket. He made no objection, then took me to the commandant, who heard my story and coldly ordered Briscoe to take me to the guardhouse.
“On the way I said: 'Bill Briscoe, did you really and truly bury the dead body that you found in these togs?'
"'Sure,' he answered — 'just as I told you. It was Dave Duck, all right; most of us knew him. And now, you damned impostor, you'd better tell me who you are.'
"‘I'd give something to know,' I said.
"A week later, I escaped from the guardhouse and got out of the country as fast as I could. Twice I have been back, seeking for that fateful spot in the hills, but unable to find it."
The Journalist
The recorder of this tale, Bierce, was a Union soldier during the Civil War and fought it 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 of Shiloh."
During his lifetime, Bierce was better known as a journalist than as a fiction writer. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war and helped pioneer the psychological horror story.
As a result of 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, the line becoming blurred between what was real and faked.
In 1913, 71-year-old Bierce told reporters that he was travelling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He vanished without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. He was never seen again, his own disappearance becoming a legend.
Bierce left behind this strange story of the Wyoming territory, leaving readers to ponder, what was real and what was the imagination of this former soldier.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
