Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877 tp-12

by Terry C. Johnston

  He glared at his junior officers and noncoms, those men who nervously shifted from foot to foot in the cold and the snow. The rising wind was brutal, and it smelled of even more snow here after midnight in the darkness of 7 December as Baldwin’s battalion stood shivering on the north bank of the Missouri River.

  He grew more frustrated because of their silence, because of the darkness of the night, because of this bone-numbing cold that made even a strong man want to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up again … because he had just been told by one of his new scouts, eighteen-year-old Joe Culbertson, that they had likely passed by the enemy village in the dark less than an hour ago.

  “All right,” Baldwin said quietly, fighting down his own despair at letting the Hunkpapa slip through his fingers. “Let’s turn this battalion about and see if we can’t still catch the Sioux napping.”

  Culbertson and Edward Lambert, hired on by Baldwin just hours ago at Fort Peck, both led the column toward the bottomland where the Porcupine dumped into the Milk River. Even in the snowy darkness as Baldwin led his cautious troops into the village, they could tell it was abandoned. The cold, quiet night made the men spooky about an ambush. So quiet that Frank knew better. Plain too that the Hunkpapa had fled in very great haste. Fires still smoldered and some actually burned. Camp gear and hides lay scattered and abandoned on their route of retreat.

  Baldwin glared into the distance along that trail taken by the fleeing Sioux toward the Missouri—a path more than thirty feet wide—knowing his quarry expected him to follow. Sensing the irresistible urge to go charging after … knowing that sort of thing had killed many a soldier and their impetuous officers.

  “Look there, men!” he called out above the soldiers as his horse stamped and pawed at the snow, snorting jets of frost from its wide nostrils. “We can see-where they’ve gone. A wide trail for us to follow. Put out flankers and see that we aren’t surprised. Move out!”

  G, H, and I companies found the going much easier on the trail now, what with all the hooves and feet that had beaten down the snow in that hasty retreat toward the frozen Missouri. Baldwin marched them until they reached the Milk River just after three A.M., where he allowed them to fall out and prepare a meal. If he was going to keep his men up and possibly pitching into a fight, then they best have something in their bellies.

  Just before dawn, as the lieutenant stood staring at the faint outline of the bluffs on the south side of the river, yelps and screeches made the hair stand on the back of his neck.

  At first fearing they had stumbled into an attack, he ordered his officers to prepare the men to face a frontal assault, moving some soldiers here, deploying others there, to protect his flanks. But for all the alarm it turned out to be only a dozen or so cocky warriors racing past the column in an attempt to spook the mules in his supply train. Rifles cracked and men bellowed as the warriors sang out their courage. While mules brayed, the last of the shots died and the warriors were gone. At least one of them lay across the withers of his pony as the Hunkpapa disappeared through the timber.

  “We got one, sir!” a voice in the darkness boasted.

  “I saw it, soldier,” Frank replied. “Son of a bitch is riding off.”

  “Must’a got us two of ’em, Lieutenant,” an old veteran asserted. “The boys cutting the hair off a body back yonder right now.”

  “We got two of ’em, did we?” Baldwin said, taking what small satisfaction he could.

  Still, he could not allow his men to tarry long. Baldwin got them re-formed and moving out once more within a matter of moments, pushing on for the river. They didn’t have far to go.

  At the banks of the frozen Missouri he halted his battalion and gave them permission to fall out, to make themselves as comfortable as they could without starting any fires in these coldest moments of the day. Then Baldwin turned to look east a moment, searching the horizon for that gray band foretelling sunrise.

  “If we’re going to catch Sitting Bull,” Baldwin vowed, “then let it be this day, gentlemen.”

  A horseman loomed out of the darkness. Culbertson.

  “General—the Yanktons—there’s at least four camps of ’em back there to the north.”

  “What of them?”

  “Figgered you oughtta know,” the young man replied. “There’s Injuns you’re hunting, and Injuns you’re not.”

  He chewed his lip in frustration. “How close?”

  The young scout threw his thumb over his shoulder. “Not far.”

  Muttering something to himself, Baldwin called his officers together and gave them a final, strict order. “I’ve just learned we’ve got some friendly agency bands camped nearby. Inform your men that there’ll be hell to pay if they fire on the Yanktons. Make sure of your enemy. Dismissed.”

  After deploying his 112 men along the riverbank—G Company taking up the left flank and I on the right, with H to act as the rear guard—the lieutenant waited for the sky to lighten, for the Sioux to do something, anything. Pacing and watching the eastern horizon, he would then turn and gaze to the west for a few minutes.

  He didn’t have long to wait.

  Baldwin and some others suddenly saw them—out there on the ice. Dim forms moving slowly in the murky dawn light: the rear guard of the Hunkpapa still making its crossing of the river.

  Now his men were beginning to stir. In the ashen darkness they could just begin to make out the ghostly, shadowy images of the enemy too. Farther still, beyond the warriors, against the stark grayish-white of the hillsides, Frank could discern the winding caravan of the women and children: the rest of the village on the run.

  Sitting Bull was at hand!

  Baldwin turned so fast, so suddenly in the snow, that he nearly stumbled. His eyes shooting over the men, his officers, determining who was closest to the bank.

  “Battalion!” he bellowed as he lunged into the saddle, then leaped his horse down by the edge of the ice himself, waving them on as he rode parallel to the river—pointing at the Hunkpapa rear guard. “There’s the enemy! Follow me—on the double!”

  At once the entire line of his skirmishers were hustling out of the trees back to the trampled Fort Buford Road, trudging, stomping, stumbling upriver through the snow. As he neared the mouth of Bark Creek, the lieutenant halted his men, watching the village scurrying into the bare timber on the far side of the frozen Missouri.

  “Culbertson,” he instructed, “I want you to take these two men—make a crossing and see what you can find out about the enemy’s position on the south bank.”

  He watched the scout motion to the pair of mounted infantrymen, then move down to the trampled crossing.

  Baldwin said to his officers, “Tell your men they may fall out and fix breakfast while we’re waiting for our scouts to return.”

  Chapter 8

  7 December 1876

  As the soldiers began to snap dry branches off the bare Cottonwood, the lieutenant turned to watch the three horsemen cautiously pick their way across the ice. Minutes passed as Culbertson followed in the wake of the Hunkpapa village. Then, just as the trio neared the south bank, rifle fire erupted from the far trees. Orange flames spewed from the Sioux guns as the three riders fought to control their horses, wheeling and whipping them back across the frozen river.

  Frank Baldwin was back up the north bank himself, yelling among the men clambering to their feet, scooping up their weapons. “Companies form up, goddammit! Volley fire by platoon! First squads into position—now!”

  As soon as the initial dozen soldiers from G and I dropped to their knees, threw those long Springfields to their shoulders, and pulled the trigger on command, the rest of the two companies spread out in a ragged skirmish formation, prepared to move forward and fire their volleys.

  “H Company!” Baldwin hollered. “Lieutenant Hinkle!”

  “Sir?” the officer came huffing up.

  “Bring your men up through the lines and advance across the river at all possible haste. Smith—I wan
t you with them!”

  Hinkle glanced at the civilian scout, then at the south side of the Missouri, before turning back to gaze at Baldwin. “Charge the far bank, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, by God! Drive those goddamned redskins from the timber over there!”

  The constant crack of the lighter carbines was growing now, broken by the intermittent boom of the infantry Long Toms—heavy .45-caliber weapons that could shove a lead bullet across a good distance, and with impact.

  “Very good, sir!” Hinkle replied, turning and wheeling away. “H Company—form up!”

  “Keep at them, boys!” Frank bellowed as he wrenched the horse around, kicking it back up the bank toward the other two companies, who formed a disorderly line of foot soldiers clustered in the cottonwoods. “Pin those bastards down until H can cross the river!”

  North and south the firing continued as the other officers barked their orders and the men shuffled back and forth along the skirmish line on their frozen feet. Frank Hinkle’s H Company pushed through them on the right, moving onto the ice, double-timing it across the Missouri, still wobbly on cold, unforgiving legs, muttering their curses or their thanks to be moving again. For whatever reason it was, they were sure to be warm again real soon.

  The timber on the south bank exploded with even more fire as H Company advanced, returning fire. Then slowed to a walk now as they ejected one shell and slammed home another. Slowing more, reloading, inching forward as they reloaded. Then, as Frank Baldwin watched, Hinkle’s men were scrambling up the south bank.

  By damn, they must have driven the warriors off!

  At that moment Baldwin became certain his battalion could overwhelm this rear guard and have those warriors routed. That accomplished, it would only be a matter of chasing after the fleeing village scattering in those hills yonder. A footrace … just him and Sitting Bull.

  More confident now, Baldwin brought I Company together to his right and G to act as reserve for H Company in the thick of things.

  The minutes passed, and the firing grew hotter. Then the better part of a half hour slipped by before he suddenly heard a massive amount of rifle fire erupt from the far bank. Within moments he saw the first of Hinkle’s men appearing again out of the timber, slowly being forced back to the river again. From the sheer number of muzzle flashes, it was easy to tell that the rear-guard warriors had been reinforced—now that the women and children were safely on their way.

  “Pull back!” he hollered across the Missouri.

  But he didn’t have to give that order to the men of H Company. They had been in the timber and against the hillsides, close to the enemy. Baldwin didn’t need to tell them this was their one and only chance to pull back or be swallowed up whole.

  Hell—with as many warriors as there were swarming down the ridges toward the river crossing, streaming out of the timber after Hinkle’s men, Baldwin felt his stomach pinch with genuine apprehension.

  From the looks of it, at that moment the Sioux had him outnumbered four, maybe as many as five, to one. And they had his men on the run.

  Baldwin was in among I and G, ordering the rest of his men to fire over the heads of H Company to try holding back the countercharging Hunkpapa. Screaming warriors. Screeching red devils. Yelping as they drove the soldiers across the ice. The first few of Hinkle’s company were getting close enough that Baldwin could see the fear on their faces.

  “They laid a trap for us!”

  The panic was quick to spread through the battalion.

  “Trap us like they done to Custer!”

  In the gray light of predawn the shadows of the enemy horsemen and those warriors fighting afoot on the frozen river seemed ghostlike and ethereal to Baldwin: unreal, with a quality of everywhere at once as the bullets from their weapons smacked through the snow-laden branches of the cottonwood and yellow pine.

  More and more of that red rear guard exploded off the far bank, lining themselves along the shore as they advanced, returning shot for shot in a brisk firing that bogged down Baldwin’s battalion for the rest of that morning near the mouth of Bark Creek. Not getting to chase Sitting Bull nettled Frank like an itch he couldn’t scratch. His stomach churned in fury just listening to that rifle fire from the enemy on the far bank. Winchesters, Henrys … government-supplied rifles, firing government-supplied ammunition.

  Hour by hour, ever so steadily, that pressure from the Sioux continued to mount. All along his front Baldwin listened to the reports of his officers as the skirmishing heated up. The Sioux were too strong. As simple as that. And now in the gray light of early morning he could see that the enemy was intent on crossing over, upriver and down, slinking past his battalion on both flanks.

  “Sir!”

  Baldwin wheeled on his heel.

  The soldier reported, “Sir, the Yanktonais—they just showed up at our rear!”

  “They’re shooting at us?”

  “N-no, sir. No shooting yet.”

  “Damn,” Baldwin muttered. “Tell Lieutenant Rousseau to turn his men around and hold those Yanktonais where they are. Let there be no doubt that he will fire on the Yanktonais if they do not withdraw immediately. I repeat: if they make any trouble—shoot. Understood?”

  The soldier nodded, saluted, and dashed off through the deep snow that swirled up in cascades around his knees.

  Now not only did he have the Hunkpapa hostiles to worry about on his front, but he had these Yanktonais to worry about at his rear. Although they were considered friendly upriver at their agency, he wasn’t about to gamble that the red bastards wouldn’t leap at this chance to help out their distant relatives.

  “Damn!” he muttered under his breath.

  He had been surprised, a third of his men caught in the open on the frozen Missouri, with no telling just how many were facing him and no telling how many ready to jump his rear.

  Jesus! What a dilemma.

  If he pursued, he had only two companies to engage the hostiles, because one company had to watch their rear for the Yanktonais.

  And if he countercharged and forced his way across the frozen Missouri, engaging the hostiles in close quarters … what if it turned out he had bitten off more than his three companies could chew? After all, he remembered suddenly, there had been rumors at Fort Peck that Sitting Bull now had close to two hundred lodges gathered around him once more—which made for some six hundred warriors.

  After he had limped away from the Yellowstone with no more than thirty lodges only a month ago!

  The firing was growing steadily heavier on his front. The Sioux were again attempting another sweep across the Missouri on his left flank, but I Company was holding strong. For how long, no man could say right then.

  What if he pushed back and got his men over to that south bank, then got them pinned down and the river ice broke up again? His battalion would be cut off from their supply base at Fort Peck—burdened with their wounded and hamstrung by a limited supply of ammunition. It could be a Little Bighorn all over again.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of Grace.”

  Baldwin listened to a nearby soldier from Lyman’s I Company begin reciting his rosary. And then Frank knew what he had to do.

  He had no choice but to retreat.

  The very word caught in his throat the way a chicken bone might get stuck in a dog’s gullet.

  He turned and looked upstream, then down. And once he had spotted the right place, he remembered that his duty lay not just to his commander; he was the sort of soldier who knew his duty rested with his men.

  He could hear them cry out in fear or frustration, hear the old files curse, doing what they could to buck up the shavetails as the bullets whistled in among them. Frank owed these men more than to let them get chewed up like Custer’s bunch.

  “Withdraw!” he suddenly bellowed, whipping his horse around and shouting it again.

  Many of the men turned around to look at Baldwin, surprised.

  Pointing downriver, he gave his order. “To the high ground!�
��

  “The high ground!” a sergeant repeated somewhere upstream on the right flank. “You heard the lieutenant—now, get your ever-living arses humping for the high-by-God ground!”

  By some favor of fate’s fickle hand, Baldwin’s battalion made it to that thumb of high bluff on the north bank, fighting their way through the thick, leafless brush as much as they fought a rear-guard action against the warriors who dared venture out on the ice and those who kept up a continuous barrage from the far bank.

  At the top the lieutenant spun around on those first few who followed him. “Breastworks!”

  That one-word order was immediately taken up by other officers, the sergeants directing their men to drag what logs, deadfall, and river trash they could get up the icy slope behind them. In less than twenty minutes they had themselves a substantial barrier that would stop many of the Sioux bullets.

  Yet as good as that accomplishment made him feel, Baldwin took a good look at his men. They had now gone more than twenty-four hours without sleep, without much rest to speak of. And their march hadn’t been a country walk, either. If these men had been on their feet, they had been moving, and moving meant struggling through snow anywhere from their ankles all the way up to their knees.

  No two ways about it—this battalion that had jumped the rear guard of Sitting Bull’s fleeing village was at the end of its string: no sleep nor food in more than a day. There seemed to be no end to the torture as the temperature continued to drop.

  “Gentlemen,” Frank quietly instructed his fellow officers as they gathered about him, most kneeling wearily on one knee, “rotate the men in your companies. Put half at picket duty at the breastworks. Relieve the others for an hour to build fires and eat what they still have along in their haversacks.”

  “Thank God!” Lieutenant Hinkle gushed in a whisper. Then his eyes found Baldwin’s, and there was a smile where before there had been only despair.

  “Yes,” Frank croaked, his voice cracking with emotion. The wind burned his eyes, making them water. “Thank God we got here when we did, gentlemen. If the men wish to sleep during their hour at ease, they can do so—but in an hour we rotate to allow our pickets to have a chance at the warmth of the fires, and something hot in their bellies.”