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

by Terry C. Johnston

  On a patch of ground lying in the gentle saddle between two rounded knolls, it was clear even from a distance that the snow had been disturbed. They waited a few moments there, smelling the air, listening for more gunshots, watching the hilltops. Only then did they inch forward to stop on that patch of ground where it appeared a small herd of buffalo had sought shelter during the recent blizzard.

  One of the Crow motioned the others over, pointing to the ground across the side of the hill. A recent set of boot prints. Then a second set, the tracks coming around the brow of the hill to join the first.

  These were definitely white men. And Luther figured the only white men out and wandering about had to be soldiers.

  After mounting up and pushing on with the Crow for close to a mile, Kelly found he could smell woodsmoke before he ever saw its wispy trail rising beyond the ridge. The three rode as close as they dared with the horses, then dismounted and crept in the rest of the way on foot.

  Around the base of a low ridge crusted with wet, frozen snow, the three dropped to their bellies, staring at the distant figures. Slowly they made out the scene: no lodges; a heap lot of wagons and mules; and the men all wore soldier clothes. It was clear from all the activity around the wagons, what with the teams being backed into their hitches, that this bunch was preparing to break camp.

  “Bear Coat,” Luther said out loud as he stood, his hands making sign.

  The Crow followed him back to their horses, where they mounted up and rode on in to the soldier bivouac, frightening the first of the outlying pickets as they appeared at the top of the snowy hill. In a moment more soldiers were being deployed, readied for attack, until they realized there were only three horsemen coming slowly toward the camp.

  “Kelly!” roared Miles as the three approached. “By Jupiter, it’s good to see you!”

  “Haven’t froze yet, General,” Luther replied. “Though it wasn’t for want of a blizzard trying.”

  “We were caught in it too. Had to leave a few of our mules behind, but we didn’t lose a man in all that muck,” Miles explained, extending an arm to point at one of the last fires still going. “Care for a cup of coffee?”

  “Don’t mind if I do, General.”

  “How’s Captain Snyder’s battalion faring?”

  “We lost a lot of our stock. But he was just a day shy of making it back to post when I lit out to find you.”

  “You came from Snyder’s battalion?”

  “No,” Kelly replied. “He sent me on in for grain. I’ve come out from the cantonment.”

  Miles sipped at the last of his coffee. “You and Snyder have any luck—any contact with the Sioux?”

  “Nothing, General.”

  Miles wagged his head. “Damn. I was sure you’d catch him in the Big Dry.”

  “Not so much as a track. No sign.”

  “So with Snyder going in—how do you come to be out here, Kelly?”

  Luther smiled. “Come looking for you, General. Started on your backtrail.”

  Rubbing his bare hands over the fire, Miles said, “How’d you find us?”

  “We—that pair of boys and me—were having our breakfast when we heard gunshots from this direction.”

  “Likely the hunters I’ve had Captain Ewers send out this morning before we put back on the trail.” The colonel glanced at the two scouts standing by their ponies, watching the white men at the fire. “What band are they?”

  “Crow.”

  Miles clapped his bare hands exuberantly. “So Hargous got me some Crow, did he?”

  “Tom Leforge brought ’em in. Couple weeks back now.”

  “How many, Kelly?”

  “I was told Leforge brought eighty warriors with him. There’s a few women came along.”

  Miles waved a hand for the pair of scouts to join them at the fire. “That’s what I told Hargous to convince the Crow to join us: bring their women and families if need be. If that’s what it took to bring in some Crow, then so be it.”

  “You need that many scouts?”

  “Hell, I don’t need any of ’em for scouts, Kelly,” Miles said, holding out his tin for more coffee.

  Luther watched the colonel’s dog-robber pour coffee in all four cups, then asked, “If you don’t need ’em for scouts, why did you send for the Crow?”

  “Fighting men, Kelly. Simple as that: fighting men. Congress has cut the army’s budget again—so Washington’s cut down the total number of scouts to less than three hundred.”

  “How you going to pay them?”

  Miles grinned over the edge of his tin cup. “There’s plenty of Sioux ponies and plunder to raise—plenty of Sioux scalps for the taking, I figure. For Leforge’s Crow that ought to be pay enough.”

  Kelly nodded. “True enough that there’s many winters of bad blood between the Crow and Lakota,” Kelly agreed. “So you don’t figure you have enough soldiers to take on Sitting Bull fixed just the way you are, General?”

  “Never know,” Miles admitted. “And that’s the rub, Kelly. The army sure as hell won’t send me the help I’ve requested. Not cavalry. Not a proper battery of artillery. And they sure as hell aren’t shipping me reinforcements.”

  “You s’pose they need those men somewhere else?”

  Miles licked the drops of coffee off his mustache and said, “I hope the men I need aren’t being sent to help George Crook and Ranald Mackenzie … that’s for damned sure!”

  The army’s strength the previous spring had been a little over 25,000 men out of a U.S. population of 46,246,000. Then came the Custer disaster—which meant that the call went out for more enlistments and larger company strength. Throughout the summer “Custer’s Avengers” signed on, enthusiastically trained at places like Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, then marched off to fight Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

  Within weeks a nervous Congress got into the act.

  Since they had ultimate control over the purse strings for Sam Grant’s and Bill Sherman’s army, Capitol Hill started paring things down. With as bad as the economy was suffering in the country, one sure way to save was to hack away at the size of the army. After all, Congress believed they were doing nothing more than carrying on the long-held American predisposition against standing armies. Unlike Britain, Prussia, France, and Russia, the U.S. had never had itself a need to support a large “peacetime” army.

  Finishing his coffee, Kelly declared, “Despite the miles and the weather, these men look to be in fighting trim, General.”

  “Yes, I suppose we’re fortunate that we’ve come through the last weeks as well as we have, considering. What else is news down at Tongue River?”

  “Lakota and Cheyenne horsemen raided a couple of nights back,” Kelly explained. “Rode in right after the blizzard.”

  “Raided? What’d they come for?”

  “The beef, General. That herd you had brought down the Yellowstone from Fort Ellis came in. The civilian wranglers had it near the post.”

  “All of the beeves?”

  “Maybe half.”

  “Damn,” the colonel muttered. “Where’d those warriors come from—”

  “Riders coming in, General!”

  Interrupted, Miles stood immediately, accompanied by Kelly and the Crow trackers as he moved away from the fire. “More riders?”

  A soldier turned and shouted, pointing. “From the northeast, sir!”

  Turning quickly to Kelly as the two horsemen appeared on the crest of the nearby hill, Miles said, “I’ll bet that’s some word from Mitchell. He’s agent up at Fort Peck. I told him to let me know as soon as he had any news on where Sitting Bull was going … where I could find that red son of a bitch.”

  Kelly squinted into the glare, asking, “General, isn’t that the half-breed?”

  Miles shaded his eyes with a hand as he peered into the middistance, watching the two horsemen approach. “Half-breed?”

  “Bruguier.”

  The dark rider called, “General Bear Coat!”

&nbs
p; The colonel sang out, “Johnny Bruguier? Is that really you?”

  The half-breed and his companion came to a halt nearby but did not immediately swing out of the saddle. “Johnny Bruguier. Here to tell you I done what you wanted from me, Bear Coat.”

  “How’s that?”

  Bruguier pointed back to the north. “At the fort I told your soldier chief where he would find Sitting Bull before he send me here to find you.”

  “My soldier chief?” Miles asked. “You mean agent Mitchell?”

  Kelly interrupted, “I figure it must’ve been Baldwin, General.”

  “You told Baldwin where Sitting Bull was camped?” Miles asked with gusto. “Hot damn!” He slapped his hands together again, then went back to rubbing them over the fire. “He go pitch into ’em, right?”

  With a shrug Bruguier replied. “Maybeso. He send me here with these.”

  Miles watched the half-breed reach inside his coat and bring out a small, flat leather parcel he handed the colonel. Untying the rawhide strings, Miles pulled out the two sheets of paper and began reading.

  “By Jupiter—Baldwin’s probably got that old warhorse already rounded up by now!” Miles exclaimed, shaking the papers once he was done reading.

  “Baldwin went after them, General?” asked Hobart Bailey.

  “Damn right. He says here that after Bruguier told him where the Sitting Bull camp was to the east on Porcupine Creek, he was planning to march straight for it and engage the hostiles. Tells me to expect word as soon as he has destroyed the village and has something conclusive on the disposition of Sitting Bull himself.”

  Kelly turned to Bruguier, asking, “You fellas want some coffee?”

  They both nodded, starting out of the saddle while Miles motioned forward his dog-robber with a pair of cups. “Have you boys eaten lately?”

  “Last night,” Johnny admitted.

  “Here, eat what’s left here,” Miles offered. “We’re breaking camp, but I’ll see that my mess sergeant issues you two some rations for the next four days.”

  “Four days?” Johnny asked.

  “Yes,” Miles replied. “I’m turning you right around with a message I want you to take back to Baldwin. Besides, Bruguier—I can’t wait to hear what’s become of his attack on Sitting Bull!”

  That morning of the eleventh, before he put his battalion back on the trail to Tongue River, Nelson Miles composed his dispatch to Lieutenant Frank Baldwin, known to be somewhere east of the Fort Peck Agency.

  If you meet with ill-success I can take the responsibility of the movement; if you are successful it will be very creditable to you.

  Then, knowing how the Sioux villages always fled once attacked, he urged that Baldwin notify him as soon as the lieutenant might know the direction the Sitting Bull people were taking in their escape.

  If I get the information in time [I] will endeavor to intercept them.

  “Get these back to Baldwin as soon as you can, Bruguier,” he instructed the half-breed. “You’ve been on the army payroll since the middle of November—so I expect you to keep on earning your pay.”

  “I take this for the Bear Coat to the little soldier chief.”

  “You find him and tell him to stay on Sitting Bull’s tail until I can rendezvous with his battalion to help.”

  With a nod Bruguier and the other scout rose to their saddles and reined away.

  “All right, gentlemen!” Miles bellowed, kicking snow into the fire pit of hissing limbs. “Let’s get this column back to Tongue River, where we can reoutfit ourselves to surround Sitting Bull!”

  The following day they awoke to another heavy snowstorm. Breaking camp without taking time for fires and coffee, the men pushed on through the cold, dancing veil of white. The clouds continued to lower throughout the morning, but they nonetheless managed to locate Snyder’s in-bound trail early that afternoon of the twelfth. Miles’s foot soldiers fell grimly silent as they began to pass by one dead animal after another, all abandoned where the creatures had dropped out of hunger and utter exhaustion. As the storm thickened, the Jackson brothers and the staff officers often resorted to using their compasses to stay their course homeward.

  Twilight came and still Miles pushed on. When darkness fell the trail became more difficult to follow, every man having nothing more to see than the soldier in front of him. Miles kept marching, with William and Robert Jackson to lead them south through the swirling darkness. From time to time the scouts would fire their pistols in the air to signal those coming behind at the head of the command. And so the firing would continue back along the column, other men clinking their noisy tin cups to alert those following on their rear in the dark.

  Through most of that day and into night’s woolly cloaking of the land, the first men marching at the front of each company would plow through the snow until they became absolutely weary. Then they would fall to the rear of their company, and the next pair of men would break the icy snow and waist-deep drifts for the rest to follow. On and on in that way the men moved up to take their turn, falling back when they had little strength left them.

  By eight P.M. the colonel himself grew too weary to sit the saddle or spell his horse by walking beside it. They had reached the divide above the headwaters of Sunday Creek. Here Miles gave the order to bivouac where they were. Those men not so utterly done in scrambled through the greasewood and stunted pine of that high country to scrounge up what firewood they could. While the snow tapered off sometime after midnight, the wind continued through the night, torturing man and beast and playing havoc with their sputtering sagebrush fires.

  That Tuesday they managed to put another twenty-four torturous miles behind them by forging on through the howling storm without once stopping nor slowing their grueling pace. But the lack of proper forage was plainly telling on the livestock. Later that night, after the snow stopped falling, Miles heard one of the drivers boasting with his gallows humor that his team of mules had grown so thin, he could almost read a newspaper through them.

  Not long after the men pulled themselves out of the snowbanks the next morning and rolled up their blankets for the day’s march, moving off below the clouds hovering over that divide, Miles was plodding through the deep snow when he heard the Jackson brothers fire pistol shots beyond the nearby hills. His heart hammering with dread, the colonel immediately kicked his horse into motion, getting no more than a rolling lope out of the weary, ill-fed animal. More pistol shots, followed by a ragged volley; then the firing tapered off. Dread became fear: certain that his forward scouts had been caught in an ambush.

  Quickly looking behind him, Nelson found some of his staff on their own poor horses, straining to keep up with him as he reached the top of the hill, pistol drawn, prepared to signal the column of the attack.

  Instead—farther down the slope of that branch to Sunday Creek, he spotted his half-breed trackers circling their horses: both of the Jackson brothers whooping, waving their hats in the air. And on the far side of the valley, another group of horsemen did the same, brandishing their pistols in the freezing air, gun smoke drifting above them all in tattered remnants. Men on horses. In the next moment, there at the ridgetop, appeared the first team and its wagon. And another. Then a third, all of them escorted by a line of foot soldiers slogging along on either side.

  Miles wanted to yell the announcement to those behind him but found his voice could only croak, so thick did he find the ball of sentiment in his throat. Soldiers. His own gallant foot soldiers. Bringing out from Tongue River those wagons that would keep his battalion alive until they reached the post.

  Now the cold mattered little. Let the skies rage and drop even more snow on them. For now the men would have more than hardtack to eat. Now his battalion’s poor animals would get the grain that would keep enough of them alive to pull the emptied wagons back to that cluster of cabins and stables on the south bank of the Yellowstone.

  He wiped his eyes hurriedly as his staff caught up to him on the hilltop. And before he kn
ew it, they too were whooping and hollering. A small group of four horsemen broke from the head of the far column and headed his way behind William and Robert Jackson.

  “Captain Dickey!” Miles roared, saluting, his eyes misting with the cold and the relief.

  Charles J. Dickey of the Twenty-second Infantry returned the salute and smiled. “General! Reporting as requested, sir! We have rations for your men and forage for your animals, as you asked.” His arm swept to the far side of the creek valley, where the wagons were beginning to wind down the side of the slope—escorted by men from D and I companies, Twenty-second Infantry, who had been left to garrison the cantonment during the Fifth’s absence.

  “By damn, if you aren’t a sore sight for these eyes!” Captain Andrew S. Bennett yelled exuberantly as he saluted and held out his hand to shake with Dickey.

  “General Miles”—Dickey turned back to the colonel—“with your permission I’ll halt my train there in the valley below and we can bivouac—the better to allow your men to eat while my battalion feeds your stock.”

  “Perfect, Captain!” Miles replied.

  “I regret to inform you that a load of potatoes you had brought over from Bozeman City arrived completely frozen.”

  “That’s a loss I didn’t count on,” the colonel grumbled.

  Dickey went on, “But Major Hough’s delivered tons of hay brought upriver from Buford and Glendive to feed the stock.”

  Miles clapped his hands once. “Forget those spuds. With that grain at Tongue River, Captain—I can continue to chase Sitting Bull.”

  The men ate and drank coffee at fires where they joked, learned of news from the east, and raised their spirits. The soldiers of the Twenty-second moved among them as they fed the stock, reminding the Fifth that they were close to home. Just a few more miles down Sunday Creek. Just one more night on the trail … and then they would be back in those leaky, cold, mud-chinked log cabins that they called home.