All around him the wind skipped, whittling its way across a desolate country scarred by winds of a thousand centuries, a thirsty land veined by the erosion of countless springtimes that brought moisture, only to have that moisture sucked right out of the ground come the bake-oven summers.
Plodding slowly, letting the roan pick its own way, Donegan kept the Tongue to his left, winding northward into that afternoon, sensing the path the sun took at his back all the while, until it finally rested for another day near the far, far mountains somewhere beyond the back of his left shoulder. A Sunday, he had figured out. One long week since he had finished that letter to Samantha in those moments before he’d ridden away from the Belle Fourche with Three Bears.
At the muffled crack Donegan pulled back hard on the reins—so hard, it startled him, realizing he must have been half-asleep in the saddle again. A dangerous thing to do, even in this cold. A man who counted on its being far too cold to bump into a hunting party of Lakota might well be a dead man in this country.
Nudging the horse into the trees, where he might have a chance to see them before they saw him, Seamus waited and listened. Another muffled crack. Then more, all muffled, in a ragged rhythm. And in the space between some of those cracks, he imagined he heard voices.
Straining his eyes through the bare, snow-slickened branches of the trees, he studied the far side of the Tongue, the slope leading up from the river. The sounds came from beyond that rise of ocher earth mantled in patches of dirty white. He decided he had to know.
Leading the horse out of the brush, Seamus moved to the riverbank, plopped one boot down on the ice, thumped it good with a heel to test it, planted both feet down and jumped several times, then yanked on the reins. Slowly, deliberately, measuring each step, Donegan began to cross, eyes flicking from the opposite bank to the place where he would plant each foot. Yard by yard he moved across the opaque, shimmering ice, where he could sometimes make out the Tongue River bubbling beneath its thick, protective coat.
Now the voices grew louder, one voice more so than the others, sternly snapping; then more of that clack-clunk of wood against wood. In minutes Seamus was at the top of the hill, brazenly putting the skyline at his back because he knew, he remembered, he recognized those sounds. Donegan held his breath as he stared down on the wood detail. A dozen soldiers wrapped in heavy buffalo-hide or wool coats, muskrat caps tied under their chins, axes and saws in their mittens, and a sergeant standing up on a pile of wood in the first of two wagons, bellowing his orders as the men finished filling the bed of the second wagon up to the gunwales.
Each of those resounding clunks of wood like a step taken closer to home for a lonely wayfarer.
Then he blinked, not really sure his ears weren’t playing tricks on him. Suddenly those faint, brassy notes floating his way on the cold wind.
“God-blessit!” the sergeant bawled in his mass of gray-and-black whiskers. “I tolcha idjits! Said they’d blow retreat afore you’d get this detail done, din’t I, you slackards! Now we have to bust our ever-livin’ humps to get back afore dark!”
Again the trumpet blew those homecoming notes. And Seamus felt the cold tighten his throat, remembering the sound of that call at Fort Laramie just before they would fire the sunset gun. Retreat for the day. Which meant supper, and shelter for the coming of night.
Below him now sharp commands cracked above the six-mule teams, whips snapped, and the loads groaned as wagons lurched into motion with a creaking rumble across the hard, icy ground. Beside both wagons the dozen soldiers strung out on both sides, having laid their long Springfields at a shoulder now.
Grabbing hold of the horn, Seamus swung himself into the saddle with an ungainly grunt, settled his coat and the thick buffalo-hide leggings, then hurried the roan into motion along the ridgetop, watching the first of the soldiers at the back of the procession turn to look up his way, suddenly stumbling, regaining his footing, and pounding on the back of the man in front of him.
They both whirled about, beginning to yell and point, and a moment later the wagons shuddered to a halt as the whole outfit turned about to watch the lone rider lope down the hillside, cutting this way and that around the snowy turnip heads of greasewood.
“S-sojurs!” he sang out as loud as he could in joy, finding his voice a croak after so many days of not using it.
“Just who the hell you be?” the slit-eyed sergeant demanded. “Keep a eye on this’un, fellers. And that hill too. Might be more of ’em.”
“Just me,” Seamus pleaded as he reined up. “Donegan’s the name.”
“Where the blazes you come from?” asked the soldier closest. “Up from Glendive by the south bank?”
With a wag of his wolf-hide cap Donegan grinned, for the moment just letting his eyes dance over the faces raw and chapped by the brutal wind and cold. How good it was to see such faces, men, soldiers. Even if they all had guns pointed at him.
“No, not Glendive,” he answered with an unused voice. “Over from the Belle Fourche. And the Crazy Woman Fork of the Powder far to the south. Beyond that—I come all the way from the Red Fork Canyon where Mackenzie’s Fourth drove the mighty Cheyenne into the snow.”
“Y-you from Crook’s bunch?” the sergeant squeaked in disbelief. He wiped a dribble of tobacco juice from his lower lip.
“None other,” Seamus said, sliding out of the saddle clumsily with those thick buffalo-hide leggings. He stomped over to stop in front of the sergeant, pulled off his horsehide gauntlet, and held out his bare hand in the cold. “I’ve got a letter from Crook for your General Miles.”
They shook and the old file muttered, “I’ll be go to hell, boys … if this feller don’t look like he’s come through hell to get here.”
“You really come from Crook?” another soldier gasped, shuffling up close to look the Irishman up and down as if he had to be an apparition.
With a shudder of his head the sergeant asked, “That ain’t no bald-face? It true you come right up through all that country down yonder?”
“I been eight days doing it, fellers,” Donegan replied, licking an oozy lip, then shoved the wolf-hide cap back from his forehead a bit. “And I sure got me a hankering for a hot cup of coffee right about now.”
“By God, if we all don’t have such a hankering our own selves!” roared an old soldier who shoved his way into the knot around Donegan.
“Lookee there under his hat, Sarge!” another man piped up. “He come up from Crook’s country … an’ still got him his hair!”
The sergeant’s eyes finally began to twinkle as he pounded the Irishman on the shoulder. “So, you gol-danged civilian—maybeso while we finish our li’l walk back to the post yonder … you can tell us how come your scalp ain’t hanging from Crazy Horse’s belt right about now.”
Chapter 16
18 December 1876
BY TELEGRAPH
THE INDIANS
The Latest from General Crook.
CHEYENNE, December 14.—NORTH FORK BELLE FOURCHE, December 10.—Crook’s force left Buffalo Springs on the 6th, arrived here on the 9th, and is now in camp here. The train leaves to-day to bring up rations and forage from Buffalo Springs. The trail over which the army marched was a very bad one. There is no information as to the exact location of the hostiles. Crook will remain here several days to rest and recuperate the animals, and then move to the mouth of the Little Powder. Weather mild, and not much snow has fallen.
After a miserably cold night suffered down in the snowy bottomland of Ash Creek, Lieutenant Frank Baldwin had the men of his battalion awakened for their breakfast of quarter rations. That meant they ate not much more than a corner of one of their hardtack biscuits and a bite or two of frozen salt pork the soldiers could let thaw inside the warmth of their mouths, savoring the taste of the animal fat and grease.
As the last of his lieutenants came up to form a tight knot around Baldwin, each man huffing a thick cloud of hoarfrost, Frank quickly looked at the half-breed who had walked his
horse up to the pickets in the subfreezing darkness some two hours before dawn. Johnny Bruguier had just covered a lot of country in a very short time.
After taking Baldwin’s message to Miles, whom he found in the country north of the cantonment, the scout turned back around with a dispatch from the colonel. He found Baldwin’s battalion already gone on its chase across the Missouri when he reached Fort Peck. By that time scout Billy Cross was all but done in and elected to stay behind at the agency while the half-breed mounted up to follow the soldier trail east, slipping south across the frozen river, then cross-country to the Redwater, traveling fast, and damn near nonstop.
“Bruguier here comes with word from the general,” Baldwin announced to his officers now, once they were gathered close. “Miles confirmed our orders to track Sitting Bull and pitch into his camp. The general reports that he’ll bring the rest of our regiment up to support. So I’m sending Bruguier back to Tongue River, where the general was taking his battalion.”
“When do you suppose we’ll find the Sioux?” asked Lieutenant Hinkle with an edge of impatience.
“Smith and our other scouts tell me chances are good we’ll run onto the village sometime in the next two or three days,” Frank said in a way calculated to buoy the flagging spirits of those men who had spent long days of marching and long nights of cold, all in an attempt to catch up to the warriors who had nearly wiped them out ten days before.
Looking at their faces for a moment that gray dawn of the eighteenth while the battalion stomped around to work up circulation in their feet and legs, Baldwin added, “And that village should be somewhere this side of the Yellowstone if we’re lucky.”
“I want to have a crack at them myself, sir,” said Lieutenant Rousseau. “Sooner us than the companies with General Miles.”
The rest of the officers echoed that sentiment.
Ever since they had crossed the Missouri near the mouth of Bark Creek, those three companies of foot soldiers had been slogging through the snow and frozen mud in the wake of Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa village. For all that they had endured in silence, Baldwin prayed it would be theirs to capture the greatest of the Sioux chiefs and drive the rest of his people back to the reservation.
His men deserved it for all they had suffered, for all they had gone without, for the way they had stood off the Hunkpapa back on the seventh.
Just past seven A.M. he watched Bruguier climb back into the saddle and point his nose south by west, toward the Tongue River Cantonment, carrying word to Miles of Baldwin’s present location, his direction of travel, the battalion’s condition, and their disposition to fight any and all Sioux encountered. With the half-breed on his way, Frank ordered the men out, on Sitting Bull’s trail once more.
Through that morning they first marched east, then eventually south, keeping to the bottoms of the tiny tributaries feeding Ash Creek, doing all that they could to stay hidden from any enemy rear guard. Despite all their efforts after some five hours, close to one P.M. a solitary horseman appeared on the brow of a hill ahead of the column, watched the soldiers for a few moments, then disappeared.
Frank was certain they had been discovered.
“Keep up the pace now, men!” he cheered them. “This is the time to show the enemy what we’re made of!”
Within minutes a flight of ring-necked doves burst from the leafless branches of a nearby grove of cottonwood saplings, causing Baldwin to notice the sky beyond the hilltops. “Look there.”
“I see it, Lieutenant,” replied Lieutenant Whitten.
A few columns of smoke poked wispy fingers into the air.
His throat constricting, Frank held up his arm and gave the command to halt the column. “Perhaps it’s not too much to hope for,” he told the officers at the head of the march.
Hinkle asked, “What’s that, sir?”
“I’m praying that smoke means they haven’t broken camp and fled when they learned we were coming.”
“If that scout of theirs spied us,” Rousseau warned, “and the village isn’t running … that can only mean they’re lying in wait for us.”
“And have an ambush ready,” agreed Whitten.
Baldwin nodded. “What say I go have a look for myself?”
Taking only Whitten with him, Frank crept ahead on foot a quarter of a mile, a half mile, then reached the brow of a ridge close to a mile from the head of his battalion. At that point the two officers were less than two miles north of the divide that separated the drainages of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers.
Here above the frozen, sandy bottom of Ash Creek the two officers lay on their bellies—surprised to look down at Sitting Bull’s village.
A few horsemen moved in and out of the cluster of 122 lodges situated beneath a bluff on the east side of the creek, women going about their work and children staying close to the camp circle that midday. None of the canvas or hide lodges and tents were coming down in a panic to flee. Indeed, Baldwin was shocked to find that there did not seem to be any great anxiety or alarm in the village.
Perhaps they’re not afraid, Baldwin thought as he looked over his enemy. They figure they beat us once, so they can do it again.
“It’s no wonder the Sioux would feel like they could whip us on a rematch,” Frank whispered to Whitten at his side. “When we last heard of Sitting Bull’s strength after Cedar Creek, all he had was thirty lodges.”
“And look at them now,” Whitten said. “Enough warriors in there to make this a good scrap for us, sir.”
“I’ll wager every last one of those warriors is loaded for bear.”
Baldwin and Whitten hurried back to the column, where the lieutenant quickly issued his orders for the attack, then had young Joe Culbertson and Lambert lead the battalion around to the left, where he could approach the camp from the more favorable ground northwest of the village. He deployed his three companies much as he’d prepared for his attack against Gray Beard’s Southern Cheyenne at McClellan Creek: with one company attacking as skirmishers in front of his wagons advancing four abreast, his other two companies deployed along either side of the train, with a small rear guard to protect his supplies and ammunition from a flanking maneuver by the Sioux.
Culbertson and Lambert rode at the point of attack with Baldwin, all three of them growing even more astounded to confirm they had crept up on the village—so certain had they been that the lone horseman had galloped off to raise the alarm.
“Bring that caisson and limber up!” Frank ordered the moment the tops of the lodges came into view.
Beyond the trees the village began to bustle now.
They must surely know we’re coming, know we’re at their door, he thought as the artillery crew dragged the Fort Peck howitzer around the wagons, right up to the head of the columns, where some of the crew unhitched the pair of mules while others scurried to wheel the cannon about in a half circle.
“Gauge elevation the best you can, men,” Baldwin ordered as his gun squad went through its paces, loading the cannon’s throat with a satchel of black powder and a solid ball weighing twelve pounds.
“Ready, Lieutenant!”
Frank glanced at the nearby lodges. “Fire!”
Punk was laid against the touchhole, where it fizzed; then the howitzer suddenly belched spears of bright-orange flame from its muzzle, heaving itself backward off its makeshift carriage.
“Help me get that back up there, dammit!” the gunnery sergeant growled at his crew.
In less than a heartbeat a half-dozen men were scooping the howitzer tube out of the snow, shuffling forward to perch it atop its wobbly carriage once more.
Frank cried, “Fire two more, Sergeant!”
The old file cheered, “That oughtta soften the red bastards up, sir!”
“Damn right!” Baldwin replied, turning to the commander of his front line. “Mr. Hinkle! Prepare to pitch in when the third salvo is fired!”
“Very good, Lieutenant!” answered H Company’s lieutenant.
Th
en the second shot belched from that cannon, which again pitched itself backward off its wooden carriage with a great, spewing, tumbling velocity. Suddenly small arms cracked to their left and right upstream. Not that far away. Enemy guns.
Frank whirled to look in that direction, finding a trio of warriors on horseback cresting the top of a hill to his left. He snapped off a shot with his pistol as the three bolted out of sight, just as the yelling and screeching exploded from the camp upstream.
The last of those three howitzer shells whined in over the snowy brush, crashing in among the village, sending up a spray of ice, water, and creek-bottom sand.
Women and children were screaming as the cannon’s roar faded from the nearby bluff.
“Come on, men!” Hinkle yelled to his company.
At long last Baldwin felt at the marrow of him that it truly was to be their day. Time for him to pitch into the enemy. Seize the day, once and for all. Just as he had at Gray Beard’s camp on McClellan Creek.
“C’mon, men!” Frank hollered at the rest as Hinkle’s men started away. “Remember the seventh of December!” He waved his pistol overhead. “Now we can pay our respects to Sitting Bull himself for that terrible day!”
As the first warriors appeared in their front, Hinkle’s skirmishers slowed their advance until Rousseau’s G Company came up. Then they noticed how the horsemen began to fall back under the pressure.
In the village beyond, pandemonium reigned. Screaming women and crying children scattered like dung beetles from beneath an overturned buffalo chip on the prairie, all of them beginning to scurry upstream through the waist-deep snowdrifts toward the far end of the elongated camp.
Less than fifty yards out from the first of the Hunkpapa tents, Baldwin ordered his wagons to halt. Leaving a small force of Whitten’s I Company behind for the protection of their dwindling supplies and that precious ammunition, Frank quickly moved the bulk of G and I companies forward in support of Hinkle’s H. Back, back, slowly back the warriors fell.
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