All too easily, Frank feared.
Trying his best to fight down his suspicion of an ambush that might well immobilize his advance, cut him off from his wagon train and ammunition at a crucial moment, Baldwin worried that he could see far too few warriors attempting to hold back his troops. Where were the others?
His skin prickled with apprehension as Hinkle’s men continued into the village.
Looking about, he decided there were simply too many lodges and tents and wickiups covered with blankets and green hides for these few warriors. Perhaps no more than a hundred making a valiant but feeble stand against his soldiers when there had been at least five times that number just days ago. As the seconds crawled by, Frank grew more convinced it simply had to be a ruse to pull his battalion into the village, where the Sioux would snap the jaws shut on their trap.
Swallowing down his doubt, he hollered out encouragement to his men again and again—shouting down his private fears each time his threatened instincts began to whisper in his ear.
There among the wagons he saw the first of them from the corner of his eye: a pair of soldiers lifting themselves from their places in the wagon beds assigned to bear the sick, the frostbitten, the severely fatigued—any of those men so done in they could no longer move about on their own. But there those two were, lumbering over the rear gate of one of those wagons, calling out to their comrades to join them.
Then a handful of others in three more wagons shoved aside their blankets, fighting to get to their knees, clutching their rifles to spill over the back gate onto the snowy, trampled ground. They cheered one another, waving the rest of those forty ailing soldiers out of the wagons.
“C’mon, boys!” cried one of them. “You won’t have another chance like this’un!”
“I’m a’comin’,” shouted a soldier who wobbled shakily on leaden legs, righting himself against a wagon bed. “To hell with my frozen feet—I’m gonna shoot Sitting Bull in the ass for myself.”
One by one the others rose from the wagon beds now to rejoin their units, bringing a sour ball of pride to the back of Baldwin’s throat as he watched those sick, injured, hurting men tumble out to join the attack. Frank turned away, knowing at that moment they had won the day. No matter what the Sioux might throw at them—if these men refused to give up, if these men fought so selflessly, then Sitting Bull had better be on the run.
He turned back to the village to find Culbertson and Lambert loping toward the column driving at least a dozen ponies and mules before them.
“The rest of the men must be out hunting!” Culbertson announced with boyish enthusiasm as he came skidding to a halt in the icy sand near Baldwin.
“Out hunting?”
“Best time of a winter day,” the youngster replied. “Your soldiers attacked at dawn, or late in the winter afternoon—this village be crawling with fighters.” Culbertson grinned widely. “You’re one lucky man, Lieutenant Baldwin!”
In less than a half hour after the first cannon salvo, the village was deserted. Sitting Bull’s people had squirted out of the south end of camp, then crossed to the west bank of Ash Creek, fighting the deep snow every step of the way, floundering and falling down in the crusty drifts, scrambling back to their feet again as they clambered into the icy bluffs beyond. Now that the women and children had escaped, the few warriors were falling back. And back. Crossing the creek themselves. Following their families—none of the Hunkpapa carrying very much, no more than what they had on their backs and what little they could snatch into their arms when that first shot was fired.
For the next three hours, until the last shreds of light began to fade at sundown, some of Baldwin’s battalion rounded up more than sixty Indian ponies and mules while other soldiers pulled weapons, ammunition, dried buffalo meat, and blankets from the lodges and tents. Then they began their destruction of Sitting Bull’s camp. First one fire, then a second, and finally more than twenty pyres were blazing, each with its ring of soldiers merrily pitching tons of agency-issued goods—sugar, tea, flour, and calico—into the flames that warmed those soldiers for the first time in days.
It was about time he allowed himself some of the congratulations too, Baldwin figured. Although they still had to worry about their livestock suffering without army grain, the battalion no longer had to concern itself with running out of food. Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa hunters had seen to that. His hearty infantrymen could sustain the rest of their campaign chasing the Sioux all the way to the Yellowstone.
But what gave Frank the deepest sense of pride was the fact that in another forced march of at least a hundred miles after departing Fort Peck, his three companies had routed the fierce warriors who, eleven days before, had forced his battalion to fort up and fight for their very lives. On top of that was the fact that Baldwin’s battalion had put the entire village to flight, forcing the Sioux into the wilderness without food, robes, blankets, and very little clothing in subzero weather.
“If anything, Father Winter might well finish the job we’ve started here today,” Frank told his officers late that afternoon as the mercury began its hoary descent, eventually to fall beyond forty below after nightfall. “Though we only killed one warrior in our fight—the enemy has no choice now but to scamper on back to their agency, where we damn well know the Indian Bureau will feed and clothe and protect these murderers until we can catch up to them again.”
Chapter 17
18 December 1876
“The hand of God Himself delivered you through that Sioux-infested country, Mr. Donegan!” Nelson A. Miles roared as he motioned for the tall Irishman to take a seat on one of the half-log benches in the colonel’s cramped, crude office. “Wouldn’t you agree, Kelly?”
The regiment’s chief of scouts stepped forward, holding out his hand. “Luther S. Kelly.”
“Some call him Yellowstone,” Miles announced as he himself settled in his canvas chair behind his cluttered desk awash with maps, far too many sheets of foolscap, scattered ink packets and bottles, as well an assortment of nibs, pens, and pencils lying about in the utmost clutter.
“Seamus Donegan,” he said, shaking the handsome Kelly’s hand as he pulled off the wolf-hide cap.
“That’s a nice head of hair you have there, Mr. Donegan.”
“Yours ain’t so bad either,” Donegan replied. “Call me Seamus.”
“Yes, Seamus,” Kelly said with a grin. “So how did you manage to keep so much of it on your ride north along the Tongue?”
Donegan liked the civilian immediately. Standing there, he could not remember having met a man more handsome than Luther S. Kelly. “Didn’t come all the way down the Tongue.”
“That explains it, Kelly,” Miles snorted. “Where’d you strike the Tongue, Mr. Donegan?”
“Mouth of Pumpkin Creek.” Seamus watched Kelly wag his head. He grinned with those huge teeth of his. “Damn luck of the Irish, t’ain’t it?”
“I think what we’re trying to say, Mr. Donegan,” Miles began, “just yesterday we had ourselves … an ugly incident with some Sioux who came in to talk over terms of surrender with me.”
“Let’s call it what it was, General,” Kelly said abruptly with that rare impatience of his, turning to Donegan. “The Sioux camps south of here along the Tongue sent in some chiefs to talk with Miles.”
“And?” Donegan asked. “What’s the incident?”
“Some of our Crow scouts got to five of the Sioux before they reached the post,” Miles admitted morosely. Then he raised his face, his eyes lit with a smoldering fire. “Damn, if I could have gotten my hands on just one of Leforge’s yellow-bellied Crow.”
“Did … did any of them Sioux escape?”
“Most,” Kelly replied. “Right after they watched the five get murdered in cold blood. They turned right around and hightailed it back up the Tongue. So you can understand our amazement: here you just slipped downriver while they were escaping upriver to their camps.”
Miles asked quickly, “Yes—did you se
e any sign of Indians?”
“No, none.” Donegan’s head swam, thinking that it had been only a matter of a day that Providence put between him and those escaping Sioux. “The Crow killed the chiefs coming in to talk surrender?”
“Some damned good men among those delegates,” Miles
said.
Kelly added, “And now the Crow have skedaddled back to their agency—what ones the general here hasn’t already punished.”
“Punished?”
“Taken away their army weapons and horses.”
Scratching at his thick beard, Donegan said, “Damn, if that ain’t rotten luck, General Miles. You get them Lakota ready to listen to terms of surrender—then your Crows cut up five of their chiefs. By the saints! There’s gonna be hell to pay now.”
“Ain’t that the gospel?” Kelly concluded.
“I couldn’t blame them if they didn’t trust me enough to talk peace, to come in and surrender to us now,” Miles admitted quietly, staring at the floor a moment until he suddenly looked up at Seamus. “So what of this message you say you have from General Crook?” Miles asked, the fingers of one hand drumming rhythmically atop the clutter on his desk. “Verbal or written?”
“Written, of course, General,” Donegan said, politely using Miles’s brevet rank.
“Let’s see it.”
“Of course,” and Seamus reached inside his three shirts to where he carried the flat leather dispatch envelope against the last layer of clothing, a gray wool undershirt. He watched Miles rise, take the leather envelope, then sit again to work at the leather thong.
“Perhaps Crook is planning on waging a campaign again this winter?” Miles asked as he spread apart the leather flaps and pulled the folded pages from the case. “He wants me to operate in concert, I suppose.”
“He was … er, has already waged his campaign,” Seamus corrected himself.
“Don’t say?” Miles muttered, concentrating on the pages he was unfolding. He looked up momentarily. “What do you know of Crook’s last fight?”
Seamus straightened. “I was there, General.”
“I see,” the colonel replied, his eyes returning to the pages covered with Crook’s scrawl.
Kelly inquired, “You say Crook has waged his campaign?”
“Over and done. Likely the outfit is already back at Fetterman by now.”
“Getting ready for Christmas, I’ll wager,” Wyllys Lyman said.
Donegan said, “I figure there won’t be any celebrating for Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry until they reach Fort Robinson again.”
“Ranald Mackenzie?” Miles asked as he looked up from the papers. “What I wouldn’t give to have his cavalry! What I couldn’t do with his cavalry along!” Then the colonel went back to reading his messages.
“We pitched into a big village of Northern Cheyenne the last week of November,” Donegan explained to Kelly and the other officers. If he hadn’t had the room’s attention until then, the Irishman sure had it now. The place became hushed.
Hobart Bailey asked, “Cheyenne?”
“Little Wolf, Morning Star,” Seamus answered the aide-de-camp’s question. “Proven warriors and veterans, all. That was a long day in hell, it was.”
“No doubt,” Kelly replied.
Miles looked up again. “Says here Mackenzie drove them off before he destroyed the village that fell into his hands.”
“We drove the survivors into the mountains, and Mackenzie’s boys burned everything to the ground. But before they did, we found more than enough plunder from the Custer fight to show that village was at the Little Bighorn when the Seventh met its fate.”
Miles laid the messages down atop his maps with a dry rustle and slowly rose from his canvas chair. “Damn, but I’d give a year’s salary to have a regiment of cavalry like that at my disposal. And now Crook tells me he’s booking it in for the rest of the winter, when I could put those soldiers to bloody good use.”
“Going in for the winter is just what I hope to do my own self,” Donegan said.
Miles came to the side of his desk. “Plan on heading south, are you?”
“I’ll stuff myself with all the warm food and coffee I can, sleep for a good twenty-four hours, then get what dispatches you want me to carry back to Fetterman for you, General.”
Miles looked at Kelly. “Is that a wise course?”
“No, sir,” the chief of scouts replied, his grin fading as his face went somber. “Not by a long shot.”
“It’s your choice,” Miles declared, staring at Donegan as he settled back on the side of his desk. “I take it you’re on Crook’s payroll.”
“Yes, General.”
“Then you can decide, Mr. Donegan. I won’t seek to advise you one way or the other—”
“But I will,” Kelly interrupted. “Listen, Donegan. You go south up the Tongue, by yourself or with a battalion of soldiers … you’re going to run into trouble. That’s where the Sioux are.”
“Then I’ll jump east to the Powder,” Donegan argued. “It’s a better route for where I need to go anyway.”
Miles crossed his arms and asked, “Back to Fetterman?”
“Then on to Fort Laramie from there,” Seamus answered, watching Kelly wag his head and turn to the window.
“So, Mr. Donegan,” Miles said, “does this mean you’re giving up scouting for the army?”
“Didn’t say that, General. It’s just … there ain’t all that much work for a man when Crook’s got his army disbanded for the winter. And, besides …”
“I should have known you’d be the kind of man who would have a sweetheart tucked away down there!”
“No, sir. A wife.”
The colonel’s eyes softened. “Children too?”
“A babe. Our first. A boy—born seven days into October.”
“More than anything you’d love to see him again, wouldn’t you?” Kelly said suddenly, turning abruptly at the window to fix Donegan with his stare. “More than anything to hold that woman of yours in your arms.”
Donegan swallowed hard. For a moment he thought he was reading something in the civilian’s eyes that had the look of brass-cold certainty. Trying hard to keep his voice from cracking, Seamus replied, “I can’t think of anything I could ever want more than to hold the two of them.”
Kelly declared, “Then you don’t dare ride south from here alone.”
“But I told you I come north alone.”
The chief of scouts asked, “From where?”
Instead, Miles answered, “From the Belle Fourche.”
“East of here, isn’t it?” Kelly asked.
“That’s right,” Donegan replied.
“Which is why you wouldn’t make it riding south from here by way of the Tongue or the Powder or the Rosebud or any of the rest of them,” Kelly said emphatically, pounding a fist into his open palm. “You didn’t lose your hair because the route you used to get here from the Belle Fourche took you around the country where the Crazy Horse bands are wintering.”
Seamus felt that first pinch of despair. “I want to go home.”
“Home, Mr. Donegan?” Miles asked.
But that despair quickly turned to the first flare of irritation at the colonel and his chief of scouts. “Fort Laramie, General.”
“From what I can tell—it’s the closest thing you have to home, isn’t it, Mr. Donegan?” asked Kelly.
“Where my wife and boy are—that’s where home will always be … yes.”
Miles pushed himself away from the rickety desk. “You want to live to see them?”
“Yes—”
“Then you’ll pay heed to what Kelly here has to tell you,” and the colonel turned back to his canvas stool behind the desk.
“Seamus, you strike me as a man smart enough to read sign,” Kelly said, taking a step closer.
“I had my first fight with the Sioux on the Crazy Woman in the summer of 1866,”* Donegan told the room. “I’ve seen my share, Kelly.”
“
Call me Luther or call me Yellowstone,” the civilian replied. “So if you’ve seen your share, you ought to take it from another man who knows, Seamus. Take it for gospel from a man who’d like nothing more than to have a family of his own one of these days. Because of that—I can’t stand by and watch you ride off to the south by yourself.”
His empty belly pinched in warning again, rumbling for lack of fodder. How he wanted that promised cup of coffee a young soldier had been sent to fetch minutes ago as they’d walked into the colonel’s office. As that long, wide scar itched in apprehension across the width of his back, Donegan’s mind tumbled round and round with despair and dilemma at having all that he had planned upon suddenly dashed upon the rocks of—
“Ten years of scouting for the army out here?” Miles asked.
“Off and on, General.”
Kelly turned to gaze at Miles. “Can I put him to work, General?”
“I want to go home,” Seamus groaned, closing his eyes and wagging his head.
“You’d never make it,” Kelly echoed.
Then Miles said, “You’ll be on my payroll, Donegan.”
“Yours?”
“Already on Crook’s, aren’t you?”
“It’s the dead of by-God winter,” Seamus growled, wanting to protest in the worst way as he settled back to the half-log bench. “What in hell do you think you’re going to accomplish against the Sioux with your infantrymen between now and spring?”
“I’m waiting on my last battalion to make it in from the field,” Miles explained, pointing off across the Yellowstone. “Baldwin’s men have been chasing Sitting Bull down.”
“Any luck?” Donegan asked, sensing a twinge of excitement flutter within him as he looked from Miles to Kelly.
“We nailed him once on Cedar Creek, back in October,” the civilian explained to Seamus. “And already Baldwin’s caught the old fox back up near Fort Peck.”
“He slip through your fingers?” Seamus asked.
“Through mine,” Miles admitted, “and a second time through Baldwin’s grasp.”
“A courier brought me word from the lieutenant that his battalion has been following Sitting Bull south from the Missouri and they expected to engage his village within a matter of days,” Miles declared proudly.
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