“But those are only the bodies which fell into our hands, General,” Wirt Davis had coaxed.
“How well we all know that the Indian drags off most of his comrades,” said John Lee.
“Perhaps,” answered a perplexed and clearly agitated Mackenzie as his men went about settling on the official accounting of the enemy dead.
The Pawnee had taken six scalps. Two soldiers had taken another pair of scalps. Frank Grouard himself had lifted one scalp. While one lieutenant reported he had personally killed one warrior, Captain Davis stated his company had killed six to eight more. Then Cosgrove’s Shoshone stated they had dropped four Cheyenne warriors. A one-eyed civilian scout claimed to have killed another warrior. And the combined Sioux and Arapaho scouts tallied another dozen enemy killed.
That cold, snowy morning as Mackenzie penned his official report, gray clouds hung low along the silvery mountaintops ringing the red valley. While the men stomped their cold feet and trudged about through six inches of new snow, enjoying their coffee around the cooking fires, Mackenzie sent out some of his Cheyenne and half-breed scouts to make contact again with the enemy—perhaps now to coax them into surrendering after the awful cold of last night.
But as much as the scouts called out to the hills in their native tongue, there was no answer but their echo. Cautiously they inched up the slopes toward the breastworks at the upper end of the valley, fully ready to encounter an ambush. Instead, the snow only became deeper, nearly covering all the tracks. The Cheyenne had been gone for some time.
Returning to the valley at midmorning, the scouts reported to Mackenzie what they had discovered. The numerous black rings of long-dead fires had been drifted over with new snow. Deep trails showed how the many had struggled single file up the rugged slopes for more than five miles into the mountains. The broad scoops of old snow told of many travois used to carry the dead and wounded warriors as the defeated Cheyenne disappeared into the wilderness. And they did not forget to mention the occasional patches of blood not yet covered by snow at the tops of the mountainsides.
But what spoke most eloquently were more than a half-dozen pony carcasses found here and there along the trail. Once the tribe’s most prized possessions, those horses were now the Cheyenne’s only food.
“You say they did what with the entrails?” Mackenzie asked the scouts for a clarification.
Interpreter Billy Garnett repeated, “It’s what a Injun’ll do, General. They’ll shoot the pony and slit it open soon as it’s dropped. They pull everything right out of the belly so the old ones getting froze up can stuff their hands and feet into the gut piles to keep from dying.”
“Dear God in heaven!” Mackenzie gushed in a whisper. “How … how many of those fresh carcasses did you find?”
“At least six, General. But we turned back—likely more on over the top. We didn’t dare get up that far. They had themselves a strong rear guard forted up and ready for us.”
“The enemy’s gone—you’re sure?”
Garnett nodded, saying, “’Cept them what’s staying behind to keep a eye on your army.”
“Yes,” Mackenzie replied as if his mind were elsewhere. “Now that I have stripped them of their pony herds and destroyed everything they own … the enemy will want to know what more I’m up to. Yes, by all means: let them flee through these mountains if that’s what they want. And for now, we’ll let the forces of ‘General Winter’ deliver the final blow to the Cheyenne.”
Late the night before, while the snow had fallen as thick as cottonwood fluffs drifting down from the low-slung clouds, Young Two Moon had stealthily crept toward the camp where the soldiers continued their destruction of their village. Far from the firelight that lent an eerie, otherworldly crimson glow to the bellies of those snow clouds, the young warrior waited, and watched, as the ve-ho-e cooked and ate, talked and slept.
It was long after that soldier camp grew quiet enough to hear the moans of their wounded that Young Two Moon suddenly remembered the few lodges that had been pitched some distance away from the main camp—across the creek and closer to the base of the red bluff where the soldiers had dragged all those who had fallen in battle.
There were no fires burning, no flames casting their glow upon the undersides of the clouds from that direction. Perhaps …
Alone, Young Two Moon slunk back up the slope of that western hill into the thick, soft, icy cold of that snow-cloud before he began traversing the hillside. It took him a long time to pick his way toward the site of those abandoned lodges, in and out of the shallow ravines, crossing from willow clump to willow clump in the darkness—stopping every few steps to listen to the sodden, silent night for the breathing, the boot sounds of any soldier-camp guard standing his rotation.
What a wonder! For some reason the Everywhere Spirit had seen to it that these lodges had been spared. Ma-heo-o had not completely turned his face from his People!
Yet, despite the fact that the lodges were still standing, for the most part the white man’s scouts had already plundered the dwellings. Growing less hopeful as he entered first one, then the second, Young Two Moon found only three old buffalo robes among them all—hides so poor and bare-rubbed that the enemy scouts had thought them all but useless.
Still, they had proved to be a valuable treasure to a people who had nothing.
As he had gathered up that third thin robe, someone downstream cried out sharply, in a language Young Two Moon did not understand. A shot was fired in the darkness—then a long rattle of gunfire was punctuated by shouting among the white men.
One of their camp guards must have thought he heard something, the young warrior brooded as he slipped away into the darkness.
Quickly he retraced his steps, dragging those three robes back up the mountainside to the first fire, where he helped wrap an old woman and two of her grandchildren within one of the robes. At the second and third fires up the slope, he watched the abandoned robes enwrap several little ones huddling together to share their mutual warmth. For the most part, the adults were too cold to utter any thanks as they crouched by the fires, rubbing bare hands together over the flames, kneading the frozen flesh of their naked feet, gazing up at the young warrior with eyes pooling with gratitude.
And at the edge of the dim light thrown out by each of those fires sat young mothers slowly rocking back and forth on their haunches as they softly keened their mournful death prayers. The first of the tiny infants had begun to die one by one—children so small and nowhere strong enough to survive the brutal cold of that long, terrible day now stretched into an endless winter night.
Other women murmured their death songs for fallen husbands and brothers and sons as they hacked off clumps of their hair, dragged knives and pieces of sharp red chert across their arms and down their legs, mutilating themselves again and again throughout that long, horrid night while the oozing blood froze until the ugly wounds were repeatedly reopened by the mourners.
Here and there in the shadows flickering on the frozen snow lay the wounded warriors, some with a peeled branch between their teeth, others grinding their pain into strands of wrapped rawhide or twisted fringe so these stoic ones would not cry out in their private agony.
Some of these would surely die this night.
The dead. Already there were three-times-ten on the battlefield, young and old warriors who had fallen too close to the soldier lines to recover their bodies. They would be scalped by the enemy’s scouts.
But among these who had been brought to the fires in the breastworks and this mountainside, even more had died after Young Two Moon and the handful of others who would remain behind had crept back into the darkness of the ravines and coulees, slipping silently toward the soldier camp.
There the young warriors had waited in the first cold streaks of day-coming as the white man and his Indians finally saddled, formed up, and began their retreat from the valley.
The ve-ho-e having stripped a once-powerful and very proud people of everything … ev
erything but their lives.
* Pike’s Peak.
† Southern Cheyenne Indian Agency, Darlington, Indian Territory.
Chapter 39
26 November 1876
Early on the afternoon of the battle, Second Lieutenant Homer W. Wheeler had been ordered to take his men of G Troop, Fifth U.S. Cavalry, and establish a guard outpost on the heights south of camp where the Shoshone scouts had remained throughout the fight.
Some two hours later one of Mackenzie’s orderlies had ridden up the narrow game trail to those heights.
“Lieutenant Wheeler?”
“That’s me.”
“The general commanding sends his compliments—”
“Forget the formality, soldier. What is it?”
“He requests to see you at once.”
“My troop?”
“Sir, he said nothing about that. Just that he wants to see you.
Flinging himself into the saddle, Wheeler led the pink-faced private back down that winding, narrow path to the site on the south slope overlooking what that morning had been the Cheyenne village, where Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie was overseeing the final mop-up of the enemy camp.
The young officer dismounted, handing his reins to the orderly, then stepped up, clicked his heels together, and saluted.
“General. Lieutenant Wheeler: G Troop, Fifth Cavalry. Reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Mr. Wheeler. Very good,” Mackenzie replied, returning the salute as the muscles along one side of his jaw convulsed. “I have an important duty for you.”
“Yes, sir. Anything to help.”
The colonel nodded, turning away to look across the decimated camp where scouts and soldiers were busy at that moment dragging plunder from the lodges, stripping the lodgepoles of their hide-and-canvas covers. Wheeler stepped up at the tall Mackenzie’s elbow to look down upon the scene.
“Do you see our hospital?”
“Yes, General.”
“The surgeons certainly have had a time of it today.”
“I can quite imagine, sir.”
Now Mackenzie momentarily glanced at Wheeler. “Lieutenant—I’m placing you in charge of transporting our casualties back to our wagon camp on the Powder.”
“Y-yes, General,” he said, his shoulders snapping back proudly. “It is an honor, sir!”
“What will you require?”
His mind burned with adrenaline as it raced over what he needed. “Twenty men, General.”
“Certainly.”
“And as many packers as the mule train can spare to handle the animals.”
“You have my authority.”
“With the general’s permission: can I inform you later just how many civilians I will require?”
“Yes, by all means. Now you must speak to the surgeons and see to things at the field hospital yourself.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll go there now, with your permission. Thank you.”
“Very well, then,” Mackenzie said quietly, almost too quietly to be heard above the commotion of the destruction being pursued downslope at their feet. “Do you have any further questions of your assignment?”
Wheeler turned on his heel, coming to attention, saluting smartly. “None at all, General. Thank you, sir. Thank you!”
Mackenzie saluted, murmured, “Good day, Lieutenant.” Then the colonel wheeled about on his heel, his shoulders sagging as he returned to his headquarters group—looking more like a man who had just suffered a defeat than a man who had just claimed a major victory in this long and indecisive campaign.
For a few moments more, Wheeler stood there, rigid—letting the personal triumph of it wash over him, enjoying this singular honor.
When he finally realized he must look a sight standing there by himself, staring from that outcrop of rocks at the village and the valley beyond, Wheeler quickly took his reins from the young orderly and remounted. Going to Tom Moore, he requested four packers at that time to lend a hand to the twenty troopers from his own company who could construct the travois they would need from the Cheyenne lodgepoles.
They had found it no easy task that late in the afternoon to scrounge up enough poles, rope, and robes or blankets for those travois. Most everything had been cut up and was in the process of being consigned to the leaping bonfires crackling throughout the village. Throughout the rest of that afternoon and on into the night, the two dozen men under Wheeler went through the grueling work of constructing thirty travois by firelight, using rope and strips of hide and canvas beneath those robes they had saved from destruction.
Because of the twenty-six enlisted men who had been wounded, as well as three more men so sick they could not ride in the saddle on their own, the surgeons reported to Wheeler that they would have no trouble filling those thirty travois. Dr. LaGarde and the others had decided to bury one of the six privates who had been killed there on the battlefield. Because his transport detail could not come up with material to construct more travois, Wheeler and the surgeons decided they would have to carry four of the dead unceremoniously slung over the backs of Tom Moore’s mules.
As each of the travois was finished, it was immediately taken to the hospital, where it was placed in a slightly inclined position and another wounded soldier was gently lifted onto it. In that gray light of Sunday morning, 26 November, the last casualty was put to rest on his travois, joining all the rest who faced one another in two long rows on either side of a string of fires that had kept them from freezing throughout that frightful night.
A cold gust of wind slashed across Wheeler’s face when he turned slowly, thinking he had heard Mackenzie’s voice. The lieutenant shivered suddenly as he rose to greet the commander, his stomach growling hungrily, feeling the stupor of having gone without sleep for a second night.
“Lieutenant Wheeler.”
“Yes, General. Good morning.”
“Morning. Yes. Mr. Wheeler, I came to see how you were getting along. We’ll be moving out before noon.”
“I’ll be ready.”
“I see.” Then the colonel pointed down to the end of the row of travois. “Why are your men standing there holding those travois and wounded?”
“I have only four packers, General,” Wheeler said. “It takes two packers to lash up the travois to a mule. So some of my men are waiting with the wounded men who will be the next to have mules brought up for them.”
“Your men can’t get this done any quicker?”
In utter exhaustion he looked down at his boot caked with snow and ice. “No, General. My boys don’t know a thing about a proper mule hitch. But if I had—”
“—more packers,” Mackenzie interrupted, “you could hitch them all up at once. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir. About the size of it, exactly.”
The colonel turned to his regimental quartermaster as they started away. “Mr. Lawton—see that Wheeler gets the help he needs. Immediately. And then we’ll leave him alone. He seems to know what he is about.”
Wheeler watched Mackenzie’s back for a moment more, his weary mind sliding here and there in unconnected thought … wondering if he would have time to grab a nap before they would be moving out.
Morning Star ached to the bone with fatigue and cold.
Through that long night he had kept moving from fire to fire with the others as his people trudged step by frozen step more than five miles into the mountains. As wounded as was his own heart with his personal loss, Morning Star did what he could to console the relatives of those warriors who had been killed, their bodies fallen into the enemy’s hands.
Too, he sat for a time with each one of the mothers who had lost their infants to the incredible cold. And he joined those who were rubbing warmth back into the hands and feet of the old ones too frail and sick to move about and warm themselves.
Again and again he instructed this group or that to sacrifice one of their ponies not only for food they could roast over the tiny fires, but so that the old people could stuff their hands and f
eet among the warm organs and blood.
Still, the Ohmeseheso had suffered greatly that first night after the battle. Many of the old ones, the sick, the weakest—they had simply given up their spirits in the great cold, unable to keep the frightful temperature from their hearts.
Up ahead of him on the slope that gray-skinned morning as the sun blurred the eastern horizon to a narrow band of bloody red, a mother held the hand of one of her young children as they stumbled along, stiff-legged … while in the other arm she carried the frozen body of her infant who had died while struggling to nurse at its mother’s breast throughout the night.
How heavy his heart had become, for it seemed the very young and the very old were being ripped from the People. Perhaps all that would be left to his band would be those old enough to suffer the cold without dying, those young enough that the cold could not weaken their frail bodies.
All these winters of his life—through the battles and the migrations, in all that greatness and feasting, the women he had loved and the children who had sprung from his loins—so many winters that had flecked his hair with their snow … his heart had never been so heavy.
And he had never been quite so cold.
Last night he had squatted at a fire beside his missing son, Bull Hump, and some of the other old warriors, talking quietly while the keening surrounded them and the groans of the wounded reminded them all that there would be more to die.
Softly, Bull Hump had said, “The only thing that saved the lives of any of us was the smoke from so many guns—smoke which hung so low in the ravines and gulches, smoke which clung to the mountainsides so that the soldiers could not see us clearly as we fought. Had there not been so much gun smoke—more of us would have fallen.”
Now, as Morning Star reached the top of the icy, slippery slope and turned, the dry, cold air scratching his lungs with the torment of a porcupine-tail hairbrush, the chief gazed down through the bottom of the snow clouds at the valley below. Watching the last of his people struggling up the long slope through the timber, many crawling up hand over hand, barefoot, dragging tiny ones and the old with them through the depth of that new snow as they pushed ever onward into the soft underbelly of those clouds.
A Cold Day in Hell Page 45