Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Yep.” Kelly smiled.

  “That’s one brave Injin got himself in a scrap,” Seamus declared. “C’mon, we can’t let him take ’em on all by himself!”

  Jabbing spurs into their mounts, the two civilians shot into the snowstorm as the voices of the retreating Crow trackers disappeared behind them. More pistol shots, followed by what was clearly the ring of a carbine.

  “That Bannock’s having himself all the fun!” Kelly roared.

  From behind them there came a clatter of hoofbeats. Turning in the saddle suddenly, not sure whether to expect an ambush by a war party of Sioux who had suckered them, or the arrival of the Crow trackers who had somehow worked up their nerve again, Seamus found John Johnston and Johnny Bruguier racing up on their tails about the time all four reached the edge of a small clearing.

  There on foot near his skittish pony stood Buffalo Horn, the long reins looped around his left wrist, slowly levering one cartridge after another through his repeater. He whirled in a crouch at the sound of the hoofbeats, ready to fire at the white scouts; then a big smile cracked his dark face. He turned again and snapped off another shot at the ten or more horsemen disappearing into the blinding storm with a clatter of hooves and shouts to one another, taunts flung back at their enemy.

  Snatching up his pony, the Bannock leaped onto the animal’s bare back and rolled into motion to join the others as they all set off again at a lope after the Sioux. In less than a mile the ground started to rise. Ahead of them the enemy horsemen reached the brow of the ridge, halted in a spray of snow, and circled in a tight formation.

  Just as the white scouts and Buffalo Horn reached the bottom of that slope, the sharp edge of the terrain above them suddenly sprouted more than two dozen warriors. He couldn’t be sure in the snowstorm, but Donegan figured there had to be more than thirty-five or forty Lakota horsemen up there now—all of them pretty much motionless, eerily motionless, for some reason content for the moment to watch the bottom of the bluff, where Kelly hollered out for all of them to halt.

  Then Seamus added, “Take cover, dammit!”

  Instantly wheeling their mounts in a corkscrew, the civilians shot back some twenty yards into a tiny grove of old Cottonwood. Among all the old deadfall Donegan was sure they could make a stand of it, once the guns started cracking and the bullets flying, until Miles sent a company of foot soldiers on the double time.

  But no sooner had the scouts dismounted on the fly, sliding in the snow behind the thick cottonwood trunks that lay rotting across the grove, than the warriors on that snowy ridgetop disappeared into the snowy mist … as if they had never been there.

  “You see what I saw?” Kelly asked.

  Bruguier nodded. “They’re sneakin’ round on us?”

  “We’ll wait,” Donegan said. “Keep your ears open.”

  They did wait, but heard nothing more than the snort of their horses, their pawing at the icy ground to find something to eat. Ten minutes, twenty, then after a half hour they finally decided that the Sioux weren’t doubling back on them.

  “I don’t get it,” Johnston said. “They wanted to sucker us into their trap with them damned decoys. Why didn’t they just wait a shake more when they’d have us in a corner, then rub us all out?”

  “They weren’t out to do anything to us with no decoys,” Donegan claimed as they mounted up and started back to the command.

  “They had us dead to rights,” Johnston protested.

  “Wasn’t us they was wanting,” Kelly advised.

  “That’s right,” Donegan agreed. “Not when Crazy Horse wants the whole damned outfit with one big fight.”

  Buffalo Horn nodded his head, but not a word did he say. He didn’t have to; he showed how much he agreed with the big Irishman by suddenly sliding one flat mitten across the other—violently.

  “That’s right, Buffalo Horn,” Donegan echoed. “Doesn’t take a smart Injin like you to know Crazy Horse will be patient enough until he can rub us all out.”

  Just past four P.M., with the snowstorm still raging, Miles decided to call in his scouts, station his pickets, and go into camp on a relatively flat piece of ground just above Hanging Woman Creek. By sheer refusal to give in, the column had managed to scratch out another fifteen miles that day with the storm wailing at their backs.

  As twilight closed around them, the wind came up and began to howl, bringing with it even more snow. By the time it was completely dark just past five P.M., the encampment was being battered with periods of sharp, icy hail, gusting and flying horizontally like the snow it accompanied. The men did what they could to find shelter out of the wind as the thermometer steadily dipped far below zero.

  Try as he might, Seamus could not recall any such godforsaken weather in any more godforsaken camp pitched in any more godforsaken a patch of wilderness—wind, sleet, hail, and snow.

  What, pray you, Sweet Virgin Mother of God, will you throw at us next?

  “That’s all I can feed you tonight,” the corporal apologized. “General’s already got us on half rations.”

  “I’ll be fine, sojur,” Seamus said, looking down at the soupy remains of the white beans in the cook’s blackened kettle.

  The soldier looked in both directions, then said, “Maybeso I could slip you another spoonful—”

  “Nawww,” Donegan interrupted self-consciously as he glanced around the camp. “There’s more of these fellas been slogging through water and ice and mud today—they need them beans lot more’n me.”

  Instead of using his spoon this time, he brought the tin cup to his mouth and licked what he could of the bean juice from it, then abruptly handed it to the soldier. “You’ll have some coffee for me when I get back, Cawpril?”

  “I will, Mr. Donegan. Count on that!”

  “Many’s the time I’ve gone days with nothing but army coffee to eat a hole in me belly—so keep that pot steaming for me.”

  “I’ll make sure to hold you some back!”

  Seamus snapped a salute of respect to the old soldier with the peppered beard, then turned, slapping the front of his coat with one of his horsehide gauntlets, knocking some of the snow and ice from the thick canvas.

  “How many?” Miles was asking as Donegan approached the colonel’s fire.

  Leforge asked his Crow trackers again. Then Buffalo Horn agreed in his pidgin English. The squaw man nodded to Seamus as Donegan came to a stop at the fire ringed by Miles’s scouts. “They make it more than a thousand warriors, General.”

  “How much more than a thousand?” asked an anxious Frank Baldwin.

  Leforge said thoughtfully, “Maybe couple hundred more.”

  “Twelve hundred,” Miles repeated. “That many, eh?”

  “That’s got to be counting every two-legged critter with a man-sized prick big enough to handle a gun, and them who aren’t too old to stay on his feet!” Kelly snorted.

  “These here Crow been following the trail and walking through those damn villages same as the rest of us,” Leforge defended his trackers, taking a step toward Kelly. “You got any better idea, go right ahead and tell the general what answer you wanna give to his question.”

  “Well, Kelly?” Miles asked after a moment of hesitation. “Do you think Leforge’s Crow are far wrong on their estimation of just how many warriors we might be facing?”

  It took him a moment, but Kelly finally shrugged and said, “I suppose it’s always better for us to be prepared to fight off more than we’ll likely ever encounter.”

  “I’ll take a crack at it, General,” Donegan declared suddenly.

  The eyes turned to him. Miles said, “All right. How many do you think we’re facing?”

  Seamus said, “I don’t figure Crazy Horse has no twelve hundred warriors. But I do figure you’ll be facing at least two-to-one odds.”

  Miles turned slightly to acknowledge the appearance of the civilian. “So you agree more with Leforge than you do with Kelly?”

  “Not taking sides in anything,”
Seamus explained. “Just speaking my mind. But like Luther said: be prepared for the worst of it. Either way, I’m only telling you what the sign tells me. That’s what you hired me for, isn’t it, General?”

  “By Jupiter if it isn’t,” Miles replied. He banged his thick mittens together. “I suppose you all know by now that we might have to stretch out our rations some.”

  “Half rations already,” Captain Casey added.

  “Because this campaign’s running longer than I figured it would at first,” Miles explained, staring into the wind-whipped fire. “I had calculated hitting the village far north of here, exacting our punishment, then being on our way back to base. But it appears the enemy is retreating and we’re playing catch-up.”

  “How long can we go, General?” asked Captain Butler.

  “I’d like to tell you that we could go on till spring if need be … but that’s not the truth,” Miles admitted. “I’ll be damned if my food shortages will force a premature end to this campaign!”

  “The men will understand,” said First Lieutenant Robert McDonald.

  And Donegan thought, These poor soldiers have no choice, do they? They never do—because you officers always make that choice for them. If they don’t like the choice you’ve made for them, then they can march on and grumble with the rest, or try to slip off and desert. But who in hell is going to desert in this country? And in a blizzard like this?

  Miles suddenly seemed cheered. “I know we can whip them, gentlemen. We can whip Crazy Horse and the rest of his henchmen, even if they’ve got us down three or four to one!”

  “Just give the men something to fight on, General,” Donegan reminded. “Something, anything, in their bellies is better than an officer’s empty promises when it comes to fighting these red h’athens.”

  *Run!

  Chapter 25

  7 January 1877

  BY TELEGRAPH

  WYOMING

  Military News and Orders

  CHEYENNE, January 5.—The court martial for the trial of Colonel J. J. Reynolds and Captain Alexander Moore, both of the Third Cavalry, convenes here tomorrow. It consists of Brigadier Generals Pope and Sykes, and Lieutenant Colonels Bradley, Huston, and Beckwith.

  Temporary headquarters department of the Platte are established here, and troops composing the late Powder river expedition are distributed from this point. The Ninth infantry goes to Omaha, Twenty-third infantry to Fort Leavenworth, battalion Fourth artillery returns to the Pacific coast, and the Fourth cavalry to Red Cloud agency, where Colonel Mackenzie will take charge of the Department. Headquarters of the Fifth will remain at Fort Russell and the Third at Fort Laramie.

  As cold, weary, and miserable as the soldiers were, to Luther Kelly it seemed as if General Miles wasn’t all that anxious to order them onto their feet in the predawn darkness. The continued subzero temperatures and half rations, along with the bone-chilling rain and hail that had soaked them to the skin in the past days, continued to wear away at every man’s wick.

  Luther wondered just how long this chase could go on—with Crazy Horse and his chiefs withdrawing the village farther and farther up the Tongue, making sure his scouts who kept a constant eye on the column’s movements did not engage the soldiers … maintaining only enough contact to keep luring, taunting, seducing Miles and his officers farther and farther into the river canyons.

  Maybe it was just as that tall Irishman had said: the enemy village will drop back, little by little, until Crazy Horse finds the ground where he will make his stand against a half-fed, half-froze, beat-down, ragtag bunch of soldiers too damned far from their supply base.

  Later than usual, it was just past seven-thirty A.M. when Miles sent out his scouts and ordered his men into formation to begin their day’s march through five more inches of new snow.

  Twisting and turning, the river continued its relentless attempt to make things as hard as it could on the foot soldiers and their wagons. Hugging first one side of the valley, then the other, the Tongue confounded and tested the most tolerant man’s patience. It took more than five hours to cover the first two and a half miles that snowy, blustery day—most of the time eaten up with the three crossings the men were forced to perform in that short distance.

  With what had clearly become a growing sense of frustration, Miles ordered Kelly’s men to probe ahead while he rested his column there at midday … now better than 115 miles from their Tongue River cantonment.

  “Find me something—anything—that will tell me what the hell the enemy is doing besides retreating!” Miles growled with exasperation as he twisted the long leather reins in his leather mittens. “See if you can find out how far away they are … I’ve got to know if the hostiles are in striking distance.”

  “We’ll push on ahead a few miles, General,” Luther replied sympathetically. “See what the sign holds for us.”

  He led his scouts away from that cottonwood grove where the last of the wagons were coming to a noisy halt, mules braying and oxen grunting after that last cold crossing to the east side of the river. There in a loop of wide, sloping bottomland the soldiers were in the process of falling out right where they were in the snow, collapsing against trees and deadfall while a few began to scrape together some kindling, snapping twigs and branches off the leafless trees.

  Several hundred yards to the south stood a long treeless ridge, at the middle of which rose a pointed, cone-shaped butte.

  His small band of civilians and Indians rode through the gray, cold midday light in silence. From time to time across the next two miles Kelly signaled a halt at some high point of ground where the rest hunkered out of the biting wind to listen while Luther patiently scoured the country ahead with his field glasses.

  The country all about them was awash with winter’s brush, painted with a blur in a limited palette of colors. Beneath the monochrome gray of the low, ice-laden clouds, the monotonous white of the new snow was marred only by an occasional streak of ocher along the slopes of striated buttes, dotted by huge clumps of sage and those stands of fragrant cedar growing here and there in pockets where roots could be sent down deep.

  He let out a sigh and pushed the focus wheel with a bare right finger. With the rising of the cold wind his hand was starting to tremble a little, so Kelly held the field glasses with only the left hand still encased in its wool mitten stuffed down inside the horsehide gauntlet. He was looking mostly off to the southwest, peering all the way to the distant foothills of the Wolf Mountains. He and many of the others expected they would find the Crazy Horse camps in that direction, figuring the hostiles were leading the army farther and farther up the Tongue, eventually around the southern end of the Wolf Mountains and on to the Bighorns in an endless, draining chase.

  That is, if Miles didn’t run out of rations and grain for his animals before then … if Crazy Horse hadn’t forced the issue. A long chase it would be if the Sioux didn’t choose to stand and fight—

  As he was slowly scanning the far countryside from west to east, a beetlelike movement caught his attention, and he quickly moved his field of focus back to the southeast. There against the snow, inching along a hillside, black forms. Half a dozen?

  Yes, at least six. Some were shorter—children, he decided. But at least some were adults. And those grown-ups would have answers to Kelly’s questions.

  Still, why were they on foot? Without ponies … perhaps they were part of the bunch who escaped Mackenzie’s attack.

  “Look at this, Seamus,” he said, handing the field glasses across to the Irishman. “There, halfway down the slope. Better than a mile off, I’d say. Sight down from the saddle.”

  “Don’t see what—”

  “In the saddle,” he repeated. “Look for some movement, about halfway down from that rocky outcrop that looks like a—”

  “I see ’em,” Donegan exclaimed in a gush. “But what the bleeming hell are they doing on foot?”

  “Injuns?” asked George Johnson, flicking a grin at James Parker and
John Johnston, who sat their horses on either side of him.

  Kelly took the field glasses back from Donegan. “Yes—Injuns.” Then he took one last look at the distant figures, just to be certain. “Fellas—that isn’t a hunting party we’ve spotted.”

  Seamus nodded. “I’m sure as sun the general will want to talk with what Injins they are. Maybe they can tell us where we can find Crazy Horse.”

  In the background Tom Leforge was whispering from the side of his mouth, translating for his two Crow trackers, Half Yellow Face and Old Bear.

  Kelly grinned. “Exactly what I’m hoping they’ll be able to tell us, fellas.” He got to his feet, immediately shoved sideways a step by the cold wind. Stuffing the glasses back into a saddlebag, he said, “Let’s go round up some prisoners for General Miles.”

  With her head bent into the strong wind blowing at their faces, Old Wool Woman struggled on, breaking a path for the younger ones who followed her through the drifting snow—especially the two children. Each time the wind drew in its breath and she dared look up, the distant wisps of smoke she saw on the far side of the ridge in the valley of the Tongue promised that their struggle would soon be over.

  It had been a tough journey on foot from the Pretty Fork* country near Noaha-vosey,† where they had gone for a short visit among Tangle Hair’s band of Dog Soldiers. Big Horse, a scout for Little Wolf, had come to visit friends and relations too. But, like Old Wool Woman, they all quickly came to miss their families and friends among Morning Star’s people now traveling with the Crazy Horse village somewhere in the valley of the Tongue. Another widow, Twin Woman, as well as Old Wool Woman’s own daughter, Fingers Woman, and her niece, Crooked Nose Woman, all decided to ask Big Horse if they could return with him when he started on his way back to their people.

  Including Twin Woman’s son and daughter, Red Hat and Crane Woman, along with an adolescent boy named Black Horse, the group set off overland on foot, what ponies they had each dragging a travois carrying their tiny lodge and other baggage. They did not have all that much after Three Finger Kenzie’s soldiers had destroyed everything and driven them into the wilderness.