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

by Terry C. Johnston

  “General, there’s our real problem now,” Donegan declared, pointing into the valley south of the long ridge.

  Many, many more horsemen were appearing out of the cold fog, coming downstream on the east bank of the river behind the line of rugged bluffs.

  “Just look at them,” Miles marveled as hundreds of ponies carried warriors up the back slopes, where the Indians began dismounting in the snow, brandishing their weapons, shouting and yelling at the soldiers below.

  Gunfire suddenly crackled west of the river. Those men gathered beside Miles atop the knoll spun on their heels to watch small knots of Indians down among the cedars and clumps of leafless willow open up a sporadic fire upon Carter’s K Company. Within moments close to a hundred warriors burst out of hiding, all of them sprinting on foot, waving their weapons and screaming—headed straight for those fifty infantrymen.

  Carter held them, held them in the face of that charge, ordering his first platoon to advance three paces, where they dropped to one knee to return fire, when the lieutenant coolly ordered up his second platoon to advance and fire three paces farther on. The Indians were no farther than fifty yards from the lone company, inching forward on both sides, threatening to sweep Carter’s men on one flank or another. Still, ? Company held their ground as Carter barked his orders, rallied his men, steadied them in their advance platoon by platoon, turning back every attempt the warriors made to sweep past him to the river.

  No more than fifty scared soldiers, alone and by themselves, all but cut off across the frozen Tongue—as Carter moved among them on horseback: assuring them, shouting his orders, keeping them together, preventing them from having time to think of the danger, so busy did he keep them that they could think only of loading, firing, advancing. Loading, firing, advancing. Loading, firing, advancing—

  “Mr. Pope!” the colonel hollered down to the gun position, “Put that Napoleon to work on those Indians across the river and take the pressure off Carter’s outfit!”

  “Very good, General!” the lieutenant replied, turning immediately to the officer assisting him with the mountain howitzer.

  As Lieutenant Edward W. Casey barked his orders and elevation, the gun crew quickly snapped to, adjusted the caisson, rechocked the wheels, cranked the elevation, then stepped back in a flurry.

  Young Casey cried, “Fire!”

  The first twelve-pound shot was on its way across the foggy Tongue.

  But Casey was already giving the order: “Reload! Be quick about it! Reload!”

  Frantically his men shuffled in and out of position, first to jam the swab home down the howitzer’s huge brass muzzle; then a second soldier jumped forward to ram home the pouch of coarse black powder. Then a third soldier hobbled forward with the ball clutched in both hands as another spiked the powder pouch through the touchhole, preparing the ignition of that second shot.

  “Fire!” Casey yelled the instant his men jumped back from the muzzle.

  Again the brass weapon rocked back on its carriage in the snow, belching even more gray-black smoke, which hung heavy on the cold air, its stench burning every man’s nostrils downwind.

  “Reload!” again cried the young lieutenant just three years out of the academy—even though his men were already leaping into position. This was no drill.

  Across the river the second round collided with earth and snow, exploding among the brush at the mouth of a ravine where half a hundred warriors scattered as cascades of ice and red dirt came showering down from the sky above them.

  In the disappearing echo of the cannon came the shrill, sudden call of Crazy Horse’s warriors.

  Behind Miles on the knoll floated those first shrieking whistles. The sort of sound that once a man hears it on the field of battle, he will never forget, if he lives to remember.

  High-pitched, like the shriek of hawk or war eagle. First a handful, then a dozen … and finally more than a hundred of those whistles from the hundreds of warriors arrayed along the top of the ridge to the southeast of the soldiers.

  Casey kept at his work: “Fire!”

  That third round from the twelve-pounder crashed just beyond Carter’s men, driving off the last of those warriors who might still threaten to ride over ? Company and sweep across the river, flanking the entire outfit behind Butler’s battalion.

  “Whooeee! We’ve got that bunch on the run, General!” Pope cheered, turning immediately to pound Lieutenant Casey on the back.

  “Yes,” Miles answered approvingly, yet he did not celebrate long. Instead, the smile disappeared with the next gust of cold wind as the colonel turned back to the ridge to the southeast, where Donegan and the rest of the scouts were watching the enemy massing.

  “General!” Hobart Bailey roared enthusiastically. “The artillery have broken their charge!”

  But as the aide-de-camp’s words were spilling from his lips, Bailey could already see that Miles was not listening, nor was he ready to celebrate.

  Instead, the colonel’s eyes narrowed, a deep furrow in his brow as he peered at all the warriors bristled above them along the snowy ridges like hair along the backbone of an angry dog. “Lieutenant, that bunch we just ran off over there across the river is the least of my worries now.”

  *Present-day Battle Butte Creek.

  † Soon to be shown on maps of the northern plains as Battle Butte.

  *Beecher Island, The Stalkers, vol. 3, The Plainsmen Series.

  Chapter 30

  Wiotehika 1877

  Most often his people called this time the Moon of the Terrible Cold.

  Crazy Horse shuddered—not so much because it had been an unending period of such terrible cold, but because his Titunwan Lakota people sometimes called this winter moon by another name.

  Wiotehika. The Moon of Hard Times.

  In the gray darkness of that morning-coming, Crazy Horse could smell the smoke from the many soldier fires. And every now and then gusts of that wind coming out of the north brought to his sensitive nostrils the smell of wasicu coffee boiling. There had been no coffee in the camp of his people for a long, long time. Perhaps as long ago as last summer, when they had destroyed the soldiers and took a little from the leather pouches on the big American horses. Maybe a little coffee stolen here and there from the crazed wasicus who scratched in the ground for the yellow rocks they found in the sacred He Sapa.

  No, there hadn’t been any coffee in the village for a long time now. There hadn’t been much to truly celebrate either. With soldier armies roaming on either side of them, north and south, it had been only a matter of time before the white man would come to raid the hunting camps. As far back as he could remember, the buffalo had been chivied—stirred up, driven here and there, right on out of the traditional hunting grounds. No longer could his Hunkpatila count on finding the huge herds that used to blanket this country between the Shifting Sands River* and the Greasy Grass.†

  What good days those had been! Hides and meat and happy times when men and women courted, babes were born, and the old ones took their last breath knowing their bones would bleach beneath the sun that blazed down upon their homeland as the endless hoop of the seasons turned.

  All that celebration was gone now. Like ash from a long-dead fire, like the ash he had smeared on his face after his young daughter had died of the wasicu’s dreaded spotted sickness. All the celebration gone now, gone like the dust of this land he would toss into the wind. The dust of this land—the very bones of his ancestors.

  Spotted Tail, Red Cloud, and the others … they had sold the land that was the bones of his ancestors! How could one sell that to the white man?

  But Crazy Horse knew the white man would take it anyhow.

  The wasicu was just that way, he thought as he drank deep of the numbing cold wind and sent off another group of warriors to cross the ice and join those on the west side of the river. Eleven summers ago the white peace talkers were at the Laramie fort speaking the words of treaty with the Lakota peoples, asking that white man could
use the thieves’ road# north along the White Mountains.@ But at the same time that the peace talkers were trying to buy safety along that road, the white man’s government was also sending soldiers to seize it by force.^

  The wasicu always came to take what he wanted, no matter that the Indian did not want to sell … no matter that it was not the Indians’ to sell.

  Where was there left to run now? With Three Stars troubling the land north from the Holy Road, and now this angry Bear Coat punching his way south from the Elk River—there would be little peace for the Crazy Horse people. Too few buffalo left for meat to dry and hides to make their lodges. Too little time to savor the joy in life … what with having to pack up and flee, running all the time. Just tattered shreds and broken pieces of the old life left.

  Was the Land of the Grandmother the only place to go now where the soldiers would not follow, fight, and kill his people? He wondered if the runner would find Sitting Bull, if the Hunkpapa chief would bring the rifles and bullets and his warriors south again to join the Crazy Horse people in taking another stand against the wasicu.

  But maybe Sitting Bull was already gone—fleeing north instead of fighting. More and more Crazy Horse believed he was the last fighting Lakota left.

  His wife, Black Shawl, had turned away from the great gathering around him last night in that moment Crazy Horse prepared to lead the others away from their camp to do battle with Bear Coat’s soldiers. She had disappeared, pushing away through the crowd, dropping her wet eyes in sadness, going off to pack up their few belongings without saying a word to him before Crazy Horse led the warriors north. How heavy that had made his heart; how cold it was still. Black Shawl and so many other wives and mothers, sisters and daughters, all had turned away in resignation, knowing they must be about their packing, calling together the children and catching up the ponies, lashing the travois to the horses’ backs, dismantling the smoke-blackened lodges and loading everything up so they would be ready to flee when the soldiers came.

  No matter that the warriors were riding out to fight the Bear Coat’s soldiers. The women knew that even if the warriors defeated the wasicus this time … more would come. There would be more packing and running and frightened dreams in the night.

  “The soldiers are coming! The soldiers are coming!”

  More running. More blood. More dead to mourn.

  Just before dawn that morning the young, hot-blooded decoys did exactly what the decoys had done that first winter morning at the Pine Woods Fort when they had become too anxious, too eager to count the first coup and lift the first scalps … and the trap did not work.

  They should have stayed hidden longer from the Bear Coat’s soldiers. Waited longer, tucked away and out of sight behind the ridge until the soldiers were lured south past Belly Butte into the narrowing throat of the canyon.

  So the grand design of the war chiefs had turned to so much ash. All that was left now was to hold the soldiers back from the village while the camp of women and children fied upriver into the Panther Mountains.* Unless … by some blessing of the Great Mystery these warriors could stop the Bear Coat’s soldiers and turn them back to their Elk River post with their tails tucked between their legs like whipped dogs.

  For a moment his heart leaped with hope … then Crazy Horse once more remembered the admonishment of Sitting Bull. In his vision at the Deer Medicine Rocks last summer Wakan Tanka had told the Hunkpapa leader that the Lakota people were to take nothing from the soldier dead at the Greasy Grass. If they disobeyed, then the blessings of the Great Mystery would not surround the Lakota peoples for the rest of their days upon the earth.

  Instead, in a fever of blood lust, the Hunkpapa, the Oglalla, the Sans Arc, the Miniconjou, and all the bands had joyously collected the spoils of that battle beside the Greasy Grass.

  Now the Titunwan must all suffer for disobeying the Great Mystery.

  At dawn the walk-a-heaps crossed the frozen river to confront the ten-times-ten horsemen Crazy Horse sent up the west bank along the foot of the buttes and ravines. Those men could have eventually swallowed up the soldiers on their own, but the Bear Coat fired both of his wagon guns as the cold fog rose off the river. Earth and snow and a dusting of frost blown from the grass every time a big shell exploded—the way a man would hold a handful of flour in his palm, then blow on it.

  Warriors scattered, tried again to regather, only to hear the whistle of another shell from the wagon guns. Was there any way to silence the loud, booming roar of those weapons?

  Finally he knew there was no heart in fighting those soldiers Bear Coat sent across the river, so Crazy Horse called his warriors back and they hurried to join the many others who were just then spreading out along on the hilltops looking down at the wasicus and their wagons and their tents.

  For the moment there would be no thoughts of the reservation land, no thoughts of the agencies. For now there could be no thoughts of surrendering to the white man’s ways.

  Still, Crazy Horse wondered if Hump and Little Big Man, if White Bull and Two Moon, all felt these first real pangs of doubt the way he had suffered them this winter. Perhaps they, like he, had decided in their own hearts that the best path now was to protect the women and children … just as many of the chiefs were saying the wisest path might eventually be for them to take their women and children into the agencies.

  Better that than to watch the faces of the women grow sunken and old before their time. Better that than to watch the eyes of the children grow hollow with despair, their bellies swollen from hunger, their fingers and toes blackened with winter’s cold.

  There were no buffalo left anyway.

  This would be a good day to die.

  For all the gunfire coming from the warriors gathered on the heights above the soldiers, there had been only two casualties so far—a couple of mules wounded by stray bullets fired from those Indians across the river from the supply train. The noisy animals brayed and bawled, kicking in their harness there among the wagons until some men came to calm them.

  Seamus brooded there on the knoll over just how ineffective this sort of long-distance fighting truly was—for either side. Most of these soldiers weren’t worth a tinker’s dam at shooting their unfamiliar weapons—especially under battle conditions and in the horrid cold—and the majority of warriors simply never had enough ammunition to practice in order to become good shots themselves.

  But the arrows were nettlesome.

  From time to time some soldier would call out a shrill warning, and the rest would quickly look into the sky feathered with heavy gray storm clouds. There above them, falling out of the steady snow, would be half a hundred arrows given flight by the warriors dappling the crest of the flat-topped butte. Down, down, down in a deadly arc the shafts would hiss silently out of the low, cold clouds. Landing with a puff in the deep snow without much of a sound, sometimes clattering against the iron wheels of the wagon guns, or thwanging into the wood of the gun carriages, a noisy, bothersome clatter against steel and bronze and iron cannonball, nicking the flesh of those who hadn’t taken shelter fast enough.

  It was clear that Miles was growing exasperated at having to take refuge beneath the Napoleon gun’s caisson.

  “Get those prisoners up here!” he barked at his staff. “On the double!”

  Frank Baldwin and Hobart Bailey sprinted away down the slope.

  “More goddamned arrows coming, General!” some man railed.

  A covey of the iron-tipped whispers wobbled down from the gray clouds—smacking, clattering, thunking … and then Seamus watched a detail af soldiers hurrying the women and children up the gentle slope of the low plateau, like flushing and herding a gaggle of geese across a snowy barnyard. Their sudden appearance among the wagon guns and the soldiers’ position immediately angered the warriors arrayed on the north and east sides of the butte. Those fighting men close enough to recognize their own people cried out a warning to the women, and the prisoners shouted back to the hills just before the c
aptives began to shrink behind the soldiers and their artillery.

  The old woman ducked last of all, pulling down a young child with her, hunching over the girl like a protective hen as hail would slash out of the cruel clouds.

  Seamus squinted into the sky beneath the edge of the wolf-hide cap, seeing the arrows just being released, climbing in a graceful arc. The old woman must have known. They must have told her it was coming.

  Down below among the supply train this time he didn’t hear the brassy bawl of the mules for the moment … instead he heard the frightened cries of the women around him on the knoll.

  The instant the last of that wave of arrows had clattered to the ground, the captives sang out to the heights in shrill panic, perhaps telling the warriors that their arrows were not only falling in among the soldiers, but among their own people as well.

  Instead of halting their aerial attack, the Sioux and Cheyenne shouted their warnings to the women, again and again.

  With the next flight iron war-points clattered in among the white men, and a lone soldier called out, one of the arrows sinking into the back of his leg. Others leaped on him before the man could try yanking on the bloody shaft—a dangerous proposition with sinew-tied arrow points. An officer bawled for two men to take the soldier down the knoll, ordering them to have a surgeon see if the arrow had embedded itself in bone or not. Clumsily rising out of the snow and into the arms of his fellows, the wounded man limped between two comrades, heading for Dr. Tilton’s improvised hospital there among the squared wagons of the supply train.

  By now Lieutenant Carter’s men were all back across the ice to the east side of the Tongue, moving up the slippery bank in single file, while some turned and stood watch to make sure no warriors darting back and forth on the west side of the river got close enough to take a shot. Minutes before, Miles had ordered ? Company to rejoin the regiment on the east bank now that the warriors were concentrating along the bluffs to the south. The colonel stationed Carter’s gallant men in the exposed position in the river bottom, where they would protect the west flank of the supply train.