Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  Bullets sang against the rocks, but it was impossible to see where they were striking: both wind and snow had whipped themselves into an angry torrent that cut down a man’s visibility to no more than the fifty yards between warriors and soldiers at that moment. Through the thick, flying snow Seamus saw the three Indians wheel about and hurry for cover. The soldier fire must have been enough to drive them away from the body.

  Donegan laid his head on the crusty snow, closing his eyes a moment, of a sudden feeling the weary ache that pierced him to the marrow of every one of his bones, sensing the cold settling into the core of him despite the thick layers of clothing. Oh, how he only wanted to rest for a few minutes, maybe even to sleep—eyelids so heavy. Perhaps just a few winks …

  Across the open ground the Napoleon gun boomed again. This time the whistle was a sodden, muffled one. It was snowing but good now, blowing at a man sideways. And if he lay there any longer, Donegan realized he might never get up. Fall asleep and freeze to death.

  “Bastards!”

  At some man’s cry of frustration Seamus groggily raised his head, finding a young soldier crawling past. Behind them Butler and his noncoms were stirring the men, forcing them to move about in the ground swirl of snow whipped round and round like tiny tornado cones as the currents careened off the slopes. He peered again up the hill.

  “They got ’im!” the soldier growled. “Bastards!” Then he looked at Donegan. “I wanted that scalp, you know.”

  “Ever you take a Injin’s scalp?”

  “Never—but I wanted that one’s,” the soldier admitted. “Brave one … wasn’t he?”

  Donegan could hear the ring of admiration in the man’s voice. His own voice clotted with emotion as he replied, “Yes, sojur—that one was as brave as they come.”

  “Just leave me here,” Big Crow pleaded with a voice sounding as hollow as cured horn. “I am going to die anyway. Go on home.”

  Wooden Leg watched Big Crow’s eyes begin to mist with a terrible pain as he knelt over the wounded man. A Lakota man crawled up behind Wooden Leg to help.

  With his soldier rifle and plenty of cartridges, the young Tse-Tsehese warrior had been fighting near the courageous and able war chief throughout the long, cold morning. And when it came time that Big Crow went out to taunt the soldiers by dancing in full view of the enemy, making his four courage runs—Wooden Leg knew better than to try to convince the man otherwise. When the war chief ran out of bullets and came back to the breastworks to ask others for some of their cartridges, no one spoke a word to try discouraging the brave man. After all, they knew Big Crow’s was a powerful medicine.

  Once he had his cartridge belt loaded again, the war chief gave a mighty shout and leaped over the breastworks again, singing and yelling at the enemy, dancing and shooting at the soldiers. While some among the Ohmeseheso might one day say that he was a shaman, a medicine man—Big Crow was in reality nothing more than a very brave warrior, as courageous a fighting man as Wooden Leg had ever known.

  Big Crow was clearly moving his lips, but no words were coming out. Snow was gathering on his dark eyelashes, on the side of his face where the wind blew the flakes into a hardened crust. Then the pain glazing the dark eyes was gone for but a heartbeat, and they stared into Wooden Leg’s face. For no more than a single, strong heartbeat—then the mist began to thicken over the eyes once more, and they half rolled back into his head.

  “Come on!” the Lakota growled to another warrior approaching behind Wooden Leg.

  Together the three of them huddled over the wounded man for a moment longer—as if none of them knew what to do—then Wooden Leg tore the blanket from his own back and laid it over Big Crow, tucking in the sides, down against the drifting snow and harsh wind. Not until that moment did Wooden Leg see the bullet holes that pocked his own blanket.

  “Forget that!” one of the Lakota snorted. “We must pull him out of here!”

  “Now the soldiers will charge up the hill!” agreed the other Lakota.

  “Go if you wish!” Wooden Leg growled at them.

  They looked at one another, shame showing on their faces. “No, we will help,” one of them said.

  Crabbing around on all fours, Wooden Leg stationed himself between Big Crow’s feet. “Both of you—take his hands and pull him out!”

  Without another word of protest the two Lakota warriors each snatched an arm and hauled the war chief off the ground. The three of them lumbered away with the wounded man’s deadweight between them like a sack of wet flour.

  Bullets were smacking the rocks, kicking up the ground all around them by then.

  “See!” one of them shrieked in terror. “There—the soldiers are charging us!”

  “No, the soldiers aren’t coming!” Wooden Leg snapped at the two older men, shaking his head violently in despair as they began to settle Big Crow to the ground.

  “But their bullets are coming!” the first one whimpered as he ducked away, belly-crawling into the rocks for safety.

  The other turned and fled in a crouch without a word.

  Wooden Leg collapsed alongside the war chief, breathing hard. “I’l1 come back,” he promised quickly, his lips brushing the wounded man’s ear, words spoken in a whisper against the howl of the wind, the rattle of the guns, the shattering, slamming, singing racket of the ricochets of lead and red rock.

  In that next instant Wooden Leg heaved himself up, diving headlong, flopping onto his belly, crawling to reach the breastworks where many of the Ohmeseheso warriors had gathered to fire down on the soldiers, joined by a good number of Lakota who had followed Crazy Horse to this far southern end of the long ridge.

  With Big Crow’s three rescuers no longer making targets of themselves, the rifle fire coming from the ve-ho-e slowed to a trickle.

  “Listen to me!” Wooden Leg called out above the whine of the wind. “I do not ask that any of you come with me to bring Big Crow back to safety … but help me by drawing the soldiers’ bullets away.”

  One of the frightened ones shook his head. “Big Crow had powerful medicine—so strong the ve-ho-e bullets should not harm him … but he is dead!”

  “Aiyeee!” cried another one with desperation in his voice. “There is no hope if the soldiers can kill the most powerful among us!”

  Wooden Leg pushed the two doubters aside. “Run! Run far away if you want—but Big Crow did not run! Big Crow did not believe we would lose this fight!”

  “Yes!” Yellow Weasel shouted. “Big Crow was the bravest among us all! We must save him now!”

  Another, Strange Owl, cried, “It is our turn to be as brave as Big Crow would want us to be!”

  “Big Crow lost many relatives in the fight at the Red Fork Valley!” Wooden Leg explained. “And now, like me, one of his own relations is a captive of the Bear Coat’s soldiers. He is loyal to his people! We must be as loyal to him!”

  Of a sudden more than two-times-ten were on their feet, popping up and down, bursting into sight to draw the bullets, then falling behind the rocks once again. More leaped to their feet until half a hundred of them all along the top of the high knoll moved like the undulations of a prairie diamondback.

  With immediate response the soldiers’ guns began to boom again as the snow thickened into a white paste like the cattail gum Wooden Leg would smear on insect bites to draw the poison from the tiny wounds.

  As he rose from his knees, Wooden Leg motioned to the two Lakota who huddled at his elbows. All three dashed faster than ever to the wounded Big Crow. Crouching between the war chief’s knees, Wooden Leg looped his arms beneath the man’s legs and lifted in concert with the others. Big Crow grunted from low in his belly as he was hoisted from the snow, his head slung back, wagging loosely in semiconsciousness.

  Huffing in exertion, the trio fought the deep snow and uneven terrain, slipping a few times on rocks, dropping Big Crow once but picking him back up—until they had him behind the breastworks where Wooden Leg’s brother suddenly appeared out of the
blizzard.

  “Yellow Hair!”

  “Yes, Wooden Leg!” he called out, leading his horse up the slope. From its nostrils came great jets of steam.

  “The fight here is over!” cried a Lakota voice behind them.

  They both turned with the many others, surprised to find Crazy Horse shouting to his warriors, his arms outstretched in supplication to the skies.

  “Shahiyela! We come to carry your brave man away,” a Lakota fighting man called out, coming up to Wooden Leg and Yellow Hair with another, both of them holding on to a frightened pony between them.

  “Help me, Yellow Hair,” Wooden Leg ordered his brother. “We must put Big Crow on the back of their pony.”

  The younger man asked, “Is he dead?”

  “No … but he will be soon.” As Wooden Leg bent down to grab an arm and a leg, he paused a moment, looking at the war chief’s blood on his own hands. When they lifted Big Crow and draped his body across the pony’s backbone, the snow below the warrior was smeared with bright crimson. So very much blood. He stared and stared, and by the time Wooden Leg looked up again, the two Lakota warriors were moving down the slope with Big Crow’s body.

  He turned with the crush and clamor of ponies and fighting men, watching Crazy Horse leading his Lakota north along the brow of the ridge, a few of them beginning to catch up their ponies and disappear down the slope, slowly swallowed by the blizzard. Yet most doggedly fanned out toward the big cone, kneeling in the snow behind a clump of cedar, or finding a rest for their rifles behind a pile of snow-covered stones. They were preparing …

  Turning to peer down the slope through the blizzard, Wooden Leg could barely make out the blackened forms inching up the side of the hill toward them, figures without real definition in the storm: blurry, fuzzy, out of focus.

  In a blinding rush of fury Wooden Leg darted away, racing back to the place where Big Crow had been dancing, taunting the soldiers. Sliding to a stop in the snow, he dared not look down at the white men. If he saw them coming, his courage might disappear on a strong gust of wind.

  Instead he turned his back to the soldiers and went right to work stuffing his bare hands into the icy snow, scrounging with his fingertips, pulling up one piece of red shale after another. Digging with all his might to pull more free, slab after slab until he had the pile high enough.

  Then he realized he was crying.

  This memorial would last longer than a man’s bones bleaching on the prairie. It would always mark the spot where a brave man fell. Where Big Crow gave his life for his people.

  Then he sprinted back along the ridge.

  “Come, Wooden Leg!” his brother shouted as he approached. Yellow Hair grabbed Wooden Leg’s arm as he dashed back to the pony’s side. “We are going away from here now!”

  As Yellow Hair tugged on him, Wooden Leg stumbled through the deepening snow—peering one last time at the soldiers below as they continued their assault up the slope. Out of the dancing mist he spotted a single horseman suddenly among the soldiers on foot, a box pitching from that rider’s grasp, splitting apart in the snow.

  For a moment longer Wooden Leg stood there, watching in amazement as the thick-coated furry figures lunged out of the storm toward what the horseman had dropped, collapsing to their knees in knots here and there to dig at the snow around the broken box.

  Farther down the ridge more Tse-Tsehese and Lakota warriors were still fighting as they slowly withdrew, dropping back a few steps at a time—still firing their rifles, shooting their silent arrows in the howl of the blizzard. For memory of Big Crow’s bravery, for his sister held captive by the soldiers … for them Wooden Leg wanted to join that fight, the last of this battle as the winter storm brought its heavy heel down upon them all.

  That, and he wanted to know what it was the lone horseman had brought that the soldiers went after like such crazed madmen.

  Chapter 35

  8 January 1877

  How these cold, frightened, hungry soldiers held their ground and did not turn and flee would one day be a wonder to all of those who would hear their tale of heroism.

  Time and again Seamus himself had watched ordinary men stand against daunting odds, flinging their bodies against grapeshot and canister, or holding the line—waiting for the charge of cavalry’s slashing sabers, men who withstood the cruel bombardment of artillery on little food and no sleep.

  But never had Seamus Donegan witnessed such uncommon bravery as he did that day in the face of a Montana blizzard.

  He was a man working for his wages—let no man ever accuse the Irishman of giving anything less than his steadfast best. What he had expected to be a terribly long and cold ride north to Tongue River Cantonment had instead turned out to be an even longer and much colder chase after Crazy Horse’s village. There was little doubt he was earning his army pay, and every last dollar of that bonus George Crook had promised him.

  But how these wretched five-year-hitch recruits held the line and gritted their teeth to keep them from chattering right out of their heads as they ducked Sioux bullets and arrows for no more than a paltry thirteen dollars a month … Seamus realized he would never know.

  Without fail it always made his heart swell with pride to be fighting shoulder to shoulder among such brave men. Men as common as dirt—unlettered, ill-mannered in the presence of the gentler sex or their superior officers, more often than not unwashed, and most as lacking in the common graces as any of their species might be … but every last one of them made brave by circumstance and the events that caught them up and hurtled them along into history. Common, ordinary, everyday soldiers who many times back at their post didn’t exhibit the good sense to pour piss out of a boot … soldiers who became something altogether different in the face of the enemy.

  Ordinary men who showed their extraordinary courage in the face of extraordinary circumstances.

  As soon as the war chief fell up there on that snowy ledge above them, two—then three—warriors darted out to attempt to retrieve his body. Now the soldiers had themselves a new target. But while the men fired one round after another without much thought, Seamus began once more to brood on just how much ammunition was being wasted.

  “Captain Butler!”

  At the call Donegan twisted about in his clumsy coat, finding the colonel’s young aide-de-camp galloping up to the rear of the skirmish line C Company had dotted across the deep snow, perforated with Edmond Butler’s fighting men.

  “Over here!” the captain called.

  “Sir! The general sends his compliments,” Lieutenant Bailey gushed breathlessly. “Yes? Yes, soldier?”

  “The general respectfully wonders if you’ve bogged down, Captain. He asks me to communicate that he would like to see your line advance up the slope, sir.”

  His horse pawed at the snow anxiously. Butler glanced at the hillside with a knowing squint. “Up … up the slope?”

  “Yes, Captain. The general extends his wishes that we don’t get bogged down because the Indians are in control of the battle.”

  “Well, the goddamned Indians are in control of the heights!” Butler roared, exasperated.

  Some of the men twittered behind him but shut up the instant Butler heeled around on them, fixing them all with his glare. He wheeled back on the orderly just as quickly.

  “Captain—General Miles wishes to attack those heights—”

  “Very well,” Butler interrupted. “Give the general my compliments and tell him it will be our honor to charge the slopes that lay in my front.”

  With a salute Hobart Bailey started to rein aside, but Butler leaned over and snagged the soldier’s bridle, stopping the horse with a jerk.

  “Mr. Bailey, please convey to the general my immediate and crucial need for ammunition. My men are nearly out, and if we are to face the muzzles of those enemy guns … I’ll need resupply.”

  “Ammunition, sir?”

  “Yes”—and Butler pointed an arm right at the heights—“if the general asks us to d
o the impossible, at least give us more bullets.”

  “Ammunition—yessir!”

  Butler freed the lieutenant’s reins and slapped the mount at the same time, sending the young officer off toward the knoll where Miles would likely be standing among his gun crews, surveying the battlefield as a whole. Meanwhile, with the way the snow was beginning to come down in heavy, dancing sheets, Seamus realized Miles wouldn’t have a bloody idea what was really going on this far to the south. If anything, Butler’s men were no more than tiny, fuzzy specks of flotsam indistinct against the snowy hillside the general expected them to assault.

  Calling his officers to the side of his mount, Butler told them in his thick brogue, “Gentlemen, you likely heard our orders.”

  “We’re expected to take the summits,” grumbled one of the sergeants.

  “Prepare the men,” Butler told them succinctly. “Get them up out of the snow and ready to move forward.”

  A soldier asked, “We aren’t going to wait for the ammunition, sir?”

  “We’ve been ordered to advance, Corporal,” Butler snapped. “Now, pass the order along and see that your men are instructed to be conservative with their shots. Any more questions?”

  When there were no further questions, the others turned away, moving quickly among the half a hundred, ordering the soldiers off their bellies and their rumps, to stand in the freezing wind, nervously awaiting the next command from the man who sat on horseback.

  “Advance!” Butler cried, yanking back on the reins so his horse jerked to a halt.

  Seamus found himself admiring this Edmond Butler—not just because they both were Irish born and therefore brother Patlanders. But Donegan couldn’t help but admire the officer this Butler was turning out to be under fire. In this era of a clear class distinction between officers and their enlisted, Edmond Butler appeared to be one of the few who did not rub his company’s nose in it.

  Glad was he to find himself among the men of C Company for the dirty little task that lay before them this stormy morning.