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

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Considering the foul mood the Crazy Horse people must be in,” Miles explained, “I suppose I can’t blame those Yankton couriers for not making much of an effort. But since they didn’t succeed in getting my message and presents to the chiefs, Crazy Horse and the others have no way of knowing that those murders weren’t the fault of this army. So now the Sioux are raiding and stealing again simply because they don’t think my word is any good?”

  Donegan pushed himself away from the log wall and said, “They’ve got nothing else to believe, General.”

  “Don’t you think their spies would know that I’ve stripped near all the Crow of their weapons and ponies and sent even the innocent ones back to their agency with their tails tucked between their legs?”

  This matter of the Crow ambush was still clearly a sore point with Miles. A day after the murders, the colonel sent a courier to the Crow agency with word that he demanded the arrest of those guilty, then requested the return of at least seventy-five of the innocent Crow warriors to serve as scouts.

  “All the Crazy Horse camp knows is that they had five of their chiefs killed,” Kelly repeated. “Which means they’re going to do everything they can to avenge those deaths.”

  “If they don’t see fit to trust me,” Miles fumed, “then—by God—they’ll taste my steel until they’re good and ready to surrender!”

  “I don’t think surrender’s what they have in mind, General,” Donegan observed.

  Miles’s eyes narrowed on the Irishman; then as quickly the furrow in his brow softened, and he replied, “So be it. I’ll be happy to oblige Crazy Horse … and give him the fight he wants.”

  Beginning early the day before on Christmas morning, soldiers and scouts had started celebrating with what spirits the post sutler and a pair of whiskey traders could provide: some potato beer, a peach brandy, a heady apple cider, and a little cheap corn mash. By midafternoon the guardhouse was so overcrowded that Miles issued an order forbidding the sale of any more liquor on the post. The sutler and those two savvy entrepreneurs had only to pack up boards, barrels, and tent, then move their saloons a few hundred yards to put themselves beyond the army’s reach—just outside the boundaries of the military reservation.

  With what little hard money he had left in his pocket, Seamus had joined Kelly and the old plainsman, John Johnston, for a few drinks. While most of the conversations among the soldiers were consumed with topics of the East and the hotly disputed presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, Seamus and other civilians talked more of hearth and home, of loved ones far, far away from this snowy, frozen land where the Sioux hunted buffalo and scalps.

  Their holiday revelry was over all too soon, however, when horse-mounted warriors swept down on the snowy fields south of the cantonment that Christmas afternoon, successfully driving off a few horses and mules before the surprised soldiers gathered enough numbers and with their far-shooting Springfields scattered the fifty-some horsemen. A second attempt was made right at twilight.

  From their manner of dress and hair ornamentation, it was plain to Seamus that the Sioux were not alone in that Christmas Day raiding party. “Luther, there’s Cheyenne riding with ’em.”

  Kelly came jogging over as the last of the enemy disappeared into the fading light with another half-dozen army mules put out to graze and thereby recoup their strength after Baldwin’s battalion returned from its long, cold march on the twenty-third. “I’ve heard the Cheyenne are particularly close to the Crazy Horse Oglalla. But how can you be so sure?”

  “I was with Mackenzie, remember?”

  With a nod Kelly said, “I suppose by now a fella like you would be able to tell the difference between a Sioux and a Cheyenne.”

  “What this means is that the bunch Mackenzie’s Fourth drove off into the mountains has somehow managed to survive, Luther,” Seamus surmised. “Shows they’ve joined up with the Crazy Horse bands.”

  Kelly nodded. “Like they did last winter and spring before they wiped out Custer’s Seventh.”*

  “And damn near rubbed out Crook’s army a week before on the Rosebud.”†

  “Not a good sign, is it?” Kelly asked.

  Donegan wagged his head. “A bloody bad omen, if you’re asking me.”

  Then at dawn on the twenty-sixth the half a hundred horsemen were at their serious mischief again. Another strike at the mules and horses working hard to nuzzle the deep snow aside and crop at the autumn-cured grasses in that bottomland south of the post. A second foray near midday netted the warriors more than a dozen animals. Then, late in the afternoon, the Sioux and Cheyenne pulled off their greatest surprise.

  This time they sent in about ten of their horse thieves to rustle, once again, more of the cantonment’s riding stock. And after three raids the officers and soldiers performed exactly as the warriors had hoped they would.

  As soon as the alarm was raised and the white men came rushing toward the scene of the attack in overwhelming numbers to fend off the decoys, the majority of the Sioux and Cheyenne had already slipped across the frozen Tongue River and at that moment were busy driving off more than 250 head of the white man’s spotted buffalo. By twilight on that Tuesday, Crazy Horse’s fifty warriors were headed south, herding before them more than sixty horses and mules in addition to those beeves.

  Many miles and at least four days away on the upper Tongue River the chiefs and the village waited in the cold for their young men to make their way south once they knew for certain that the soldiers were following. More than anything—they wanted the Bear Coat and his men to follow them up the Tongue.

  For Miles’s Fifth Infantry the painful, throbbing heads suffered in celebrating their lonely little Christmas with the trader’s grain alcohol was all but forgotten there at the mouth of the Tongue River. With more than a foot of snow on the level before the wind began to drift it, once more the mercury in the surgeon’s thermometers plummeted to thirty-five below zero—and no man stayed out in the wind if he could avoid it.

  Besides, it soon became common knowledge that their commander was not about to keep them forted up. That very night after the beef herd disappeared into the bluffs south of the Yellowstone, Miles called together his officers and scouts to begin laying plans for following the thieves.

  “Baldwin caught Sitting Bull twice,” he told those gathered in that stuffy, smoke-filled cabin that served as his office. “And now we’ll catch Crazy Horse.”

  As soon as Baldwin’s wagons had returned three days ago, the colonel put his men to work using all those tanned buffalo hides the lieutenant’s battalion had captured from Sitting Bull’s camp to fashion heavy coats and leggings. In addition, on Christmas Eve a wagon train of supplies from Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone arrived. Among the cargo was even more winter-survival clothing.

  While Miles and Baldwin had been chasing Sitting Bull’s Sioux across northern Montana Territory, Colonel William B. Hazen’s men at Fort Buford had been busy constructing winter overcoats, leggings, and mittens from tanned buffalo robes traded from Yanktonais villages at the nearby Fort Peck Agency. As autumn had approached, Miles was specific in placing his order with army quartermaster officials, stating that the coats he wanted for his men be made “of large sizes, long, coming below the knees, double breasted, and high rolling collar, such as can be turned up about the ears.” The leggings, he ordered, were “to come above the knees, sewed at the sides, to buckle or tie over the instep and buffalo overshoes, and to be sustained at the sides and top by a strap attached to the waist belt.”

  In addition to buffalo caps and gauntlets, the soldiers of the Fifth Infantry sewed up crude underwear from extra woolen blankets. Snatching up the leftover wool scraps, many of the men cut masks or hoods to protect the bare flesh of their faces from the brutal windchills expected in the coming campaign to find and destroy Crazy Horse. From Quartermaster Randall every soldier got his hands on at least two, and sometimes three, pairs of trousers made from heavyweight ke
rsey wool.

  And from those crates shipped up the icy river to Fort Buford, then brought overland to Glendive, freighted west to the Tongue River from there, the quartermaster issued each soldier his regulation woolen mittens, buffalo overshoes, and a visored sealskin or muskrat cap complete with earflaps. For those foot soldiers who were not assigned the overshoes, they were issued what the frontier army called “arctics,” vulcanized rubber boots.

  Whenever a man could get his hands on an empty burlap feed sack, he would immediately hide it away in his haversack, where the coarse sacking would eventually be put in service: cut up to wrap around his feet before they were stuffed into his boots, the better to prevent frostbite.

  Near midmorning on the twenty-seventh Miles watched the first of his winter-clad soldiers start south up the Tongue River in hot pursuit of the raiders. Following squaw man Tom Leforge and the last two Crow scouts brave enough to stay on with the soldiers, Captain Charles J. Dickey led his own Company ? as well as Company F of the Twenty-second Infantry, along with D Company of the Fifth.

  Later on that afternoon Dickey’s command managed to catch up with the hostiles’ rear guard moseying comfortably behind the cattle herd. In a short, hot skirmish the soldiers managed to retake more than a hundred beeves. Just after dark the captain sent a courier north to inform Miles of the good news.

  Elated with Dickey’s initial success, the colonel continued with his plan the following dawn when he dispatched First Lieutenant Mason Carter’s ? Company of the Fifth Infantry to follow Dickey’s trail with the bronze twelve-pounder Napoleon gun hidden beneath a sheet of canvas stretched over iron bows to make it resemble a supply wagon. Buffalo Horn, a Bannock, served as their scout.

  And early on Friday morning, the twenty-ninth, Nelson Miles himself started upriver with Companies A, C, and E, led by the remainder of Kelly’s scouts, these last troops bringing the total of officers and enlisted to 436. In the last few days Miles bolstered each company to a fighting strength of fifty-eight men by drawing from the four companies Miles was leaving behind for garrison duty. While most of the soldiers walked south, some forty men commanded by Second Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous rode ponies confiscated from the Sioux during the Cedar Creek skirmish in October.

  Owing to the poor condition of what mules the Sioux hadn’t driven off, Miles was able to field only a few company wagons drawn by six-mule teams. To strengthen his supply logistics, he had recently commandeered a civilian bull train of eight wagons, each drawn by a team of a dozen oxen. Four of those huge freight wagons would be headed up the Tongue, laden with corn for the stock, rations for the men, and extra ammunition for the coming fight. In addition, Miles’s battalion was accompanied by a second piece of artillery: the three-inch rifled Rodman gun, its carriage, like Dickey’s Napoleon gun, fitted with canvas stretched over iron bows to make it resemble the company supply wagons. This ordnance rifle was placed under the command of Second Lieutenant James W. Pope.

  “No matter this cold, gentlemen,” Miles told his officers that frigid, blustery morning as a new snowstorm whipped into their faces and those last three companies were about to set off up the Tongue. “The Fighting Fifth Infantry has been stationed on the frontier continuously since the days following the end of the Civil War. That’s a glorious heritage. And now we have the opportunity to add to our regiment’s battle banners. Let it be understood by every man in your units that we’ll follow the enemy until they turn around and fight … or they decide to surrender. One way or another—we’ll damn well do our best to end this Sioux War before the next Chinook.”

  Through the morning and into the afternoon the column marched up the timbered valley that stretched about a mile in width between the tall, austere bluffs that bordered either side. Each time Seamus peered around him at the other scouts, the officers, and the foot soldiers, he wondered if he looked anything like them: pairs of dark-ringed eyes peeking out at him from beneath the brims of their fur caps, there above their thick, woolen mufflers slicked with a solid layer of thick frost. A dense, low cloud lay over the entire length of the column, man and beast alike. By and large that day’s march was a quiet one, most of the soldiers trudging along, deep in their own thoughts.

  And Seamus in his. Four days after Christmas. Two more until the New Year. And here he was again—marching through the snow after Crazy Horse. Would this third journey be his charm?

  After struggling through occasional snowdrifts for some eleven and a half miles, forced to cross the frozen river twice during that long day while the temperature never climbed above fifteen below, the colonel’s battalion went into bivouac among the cottonwood on the west bank just before three P.M. By twilight the cold began to seep into the bones of every man.

  Seamus watched Kelly trudge up to the fire, stomp his thick pair of buffalo moccasins, then rub his mittens over the whipping flames that seemed to lose their heat immediately in the numbing cold and the stinging wind.

  “Aren’t you bunking in with the headquarters bunch tonight, Luther?”

  The handsome scout shook his head. “Poor Tilton.”

  “The chief surgeon?”

  “Right. He and most of the other fellas on Miles’s staff just cracked their tents out of the shipping crates.”

  Seamus asked, “Not enough room for all of them?”

  With a snigger Kelly replied, “Some dumb son of a bitch of an army quartermaster clerk back downriver shipped the Fifth Infantry summer-duty tents!”

  “Summer duty?”

  “Linen tents.”

  “Not heavyweight canvas?”

  Kelly roared with laughter. “Summer duty, Irishman!”

  “Sweet Mother of God!” Donegan declared. “If the weather ain’t gonna be hard enough to deal with already. Them poor foot-slogging souls. My heart ached for ’em today as I rode to the top of each hill and looked back at the column, Luther. Step by step, they were dragging their haversacks, and rifles, and frozen canteens through this deep snow.”

  “I think Miles is working these men to death already,” Kelly said quietly so his words would not be overheard. “First that campaign up to the Missouri River country. Now he’s turned them around after no more than a few days of rest.”

  “We can both remember the war, Luther—when men fought day after day and units marched into battle bone weary.”

  “From what I can see of the soldiers who served with Baldwin’s battalion,” Kelly continued, “both men and officers are disgruntled.”

  Seamus grinned. “There’s always a little grumbling in every army.”

  Luther Kelly wagged his head and stared at the flames for a long moment before he said, “I’m just afraid that if we meet up with all the warriors we know Crazy Horse has at his command, these soldiers just won’t have any bottom left to make a fight of it.”

  * Seize the Sky, vol. 2, Son of the Plains Trilogy.

  † Reap the Whirlwind, vol. 9, The Plainsmen Series.

  Chapter 21

  30 December 1876

  BY TELEGRAPH

  Reported Indian Massacre.

  WASHINGTON, December 22.—No information has been received in regard to the reported massacre of Major Randall and party, but it is thought the report may be true. Major Randall is with General Crook’s command, and it is feared may have been sent on a mission to obtain scouts and ran into Crazy Horse’s band, for which Crook has been looking for some time past.

  CHICAGO, December 22.—The report that Major Randall and entire party has been massacred by the Indians in the Big Horn mountains is discredited at General Sheridan’s headquarters. The report is discredited from the fact that Randall was at Fort Reno on the 14th of December, 400 miles from Fort Fetterman from which point the report should have been first received had there been any truth in it.

  Could Seamus be with Randall?

  Samantha looked down at her trembling hands, the way they made the newsprint rattle so.

  The instant she started to read that news story about the
reported massacre, Samantha remembered how often Seamus had talked about Major “Black Jack” Randall—Crook’s chief of scouts.

  Stifling a sob, she quickly glanced at the babe sleeping in his tiny bed made from a crate Elizabeth Burt had talked the post quartermaster out of—afraid she had awakened the child with her anguished cry. Holding her breath, a quaking hand over her mouth, Sam waited, watching the infant.

  When she saw that the boy still slept, Samantha turned away, her mind racing with the horror of possibilities. Then her eyes darted aimlessly here and there over the room. And at last, on instinct alone, she literally dived onto the tiny rope-and-tick bed, plunging her hand beneath the overstuffed goose-down pillow.

  Her fingers touched it, seized the pages, brought his letter out into the light.

  Barely breathing, Samantha opened the folds. Her eyes danced over her husband’s words. Did he mention riding off with Randall?

  How her heart leaped into her throat, her breath suddenly stilled like river ice in her chest as the seconds stretched into moments … as she desperately searched for some clue to just what Seamus was doing in that country, some mention that he might possibly be with Black Jack Randall’s company of scouts.

  Valley of the Belle Fourche

  Wyoming Terr.

  My Dearest Heart—

  It looks to be we’ll be here awhile. Crook’s waiting for supplies to come up from Fetterman. We were supposed to have them before now….

  Her eyes searched farther down the page.

  Don’t fear that I’ll grow bored here, Sam. Crook and Mackenzie will see to that. They’ve got scouts going out in this direction or the other all the time. Coming and going. And they plan on having me out too. While we are waiting here for rations and grain for the horses, the generals want to know what the Indians are doing. Where Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull are camped, or moving—