Trumpet on the Land

by Terry C. Johnston

  “C’mon,” Pourier grumbled to Donegan as they leaped to the saddle and rode to the tree where Grouard had tied his big black.

  “Looks like bad news,” Donegan whispered as he slid down onto his belly beside Grouard.

  “Here, Bat—take this glass and look and see if those are Injuns or just rocks over on that hill.”

  “My God—we are gone!” Pourier complained once he had himself a look. “Shit, Frank. The whole damn country’s nasty with the red bastards!”

  “Of course it is,” Grouard replied, then added optimistically, “but—maybe they’re Crows.”

  As quickly, Big Bat grumbled, “Remember last month? I’m the son of a bitch what knows the Crows. And them are Sioux.”

  “How you know for sure?” Seamus asked.

  “When a war party of Crow are on the warpath, no man ever goes ahead of the leader,” Bat explained. “But with the Sioux—it don’t matter. Look yonder. See? That bunch closest down there ain’t riding in no order. That’s Sioux, I tell you.”

  “Lemme have a look,” Donegan demanded, reaching for the field glasses.

  Indeed, it did appear the whole valley of the Tongue far to the north of their ridge was blanketed with Indians already on the march—heading south toward the main channel of the river. But closer still was that war party of half a hundred, pushing south in advance of the main village.

  Donegan gave the field glasses back to Grouard. “You remember the elk we saw last night, Frank?”

  The half-breed nodded.

  Pourier looked at them both, back and forth, then said, “Wasn’t no elk, was it, fellas?”

  “We been found out,” Donegan said.

  “That bunch right down there is heading this way to rub us out right now,” Grouard declared.

  “They won’t find us on the river,” Donegan said, his mind working fast. “The way they’re headed right now.”

  “But they’re bound to pick up our tracks easy enough,” Pourier added.

  “You go get those soldiers moving,” Grouard said. “I’ll stay up here and watch those Injuns—see when they come on our tracks. Take the lieutenant’s men up the ravine into the hills.”

  With Big Bat, Donegan whirled about and slid back down the steep slope to reach their horses. Not long after they returned to Sibley’s patrol and got the soldiers started up the narrowing ravine, he saw Grouard wave his hat again.

  “I figure that means they’ve crossed our tracks, Irishman,” Pourier grumped.

  “Yeah—Frank’s beating a retreat now.”

  Seamus said, “We stand a better chance of getting away in the hills—”

  “Or even holding ’em off,” Pourier interrupted.

  Seamus said, “I’m with you: let’s see what we can do to stay out of their way.”

  By the time they reached the bottom of the trail that the Indians had used for years to go into the Big Horn Mountains to cut lodgepoles,* Grouard was no more than a hundred yards behind them … the war party screeching only a half mile behind him. The next time Donegan turned to look down their backtrail, he found the warriors streaming off the trail, along the side of the slope.

  “They’re going for the head of Twin Creek,” Grouard said, the morning’s breeze nuzzling his long hair across his eyes.

  Seamus asked, “Gonna try to cut us off?”

  “Yeah,” answered Pourier. “Some of ’em are waiting there on the trail so we don’t go back down the mountain.”

  Sure enough, a dozen or so of the war party had halted and milled about on the soldiers’ backtrail.

  “You figure they got us shut in, Frank?” inquired Big Bat.

  “Good as they can.”

  Sibley reined about and rode back to join the three scouts, asking, “What chance do we have to outrun them, Grouard?”

  “That’s our only chance. You keep your men moving as fast as the horses will carry them. Tell your boys not to save anything—those horses have to run and climb faster’n those Injun ponies!”

  Putting heels to his mount, Grouard was soon out of sight, headed into the thick timber as Pourier and Donegan urged the soldiers on up the lodgepole gatherers’ trail.

  After a rugged climb of more than five miles in the space of some two hours atop the wearying horses, Sibley remarked to the scouts, “I haven’t seen any Indians for some time now.”

  “Me neither,” Bat admitted.

  “Doesn’t mean they’re not down there,” Donegan said.

  Sibley sighed, slowing his mount at the top of the low rise, where he peered into a wide, grassy bowl. “We’ll halt over there.”

  “Halt?” Big Bat exclaimed. “For what?”

  “We’ve got to make some coffee for these men— they’ve had nothing to eat for more than a day and a half. At least a little coffee—”

  “I’d advise against it, Lieutenant,” Donegan grouched. And as he watched, Sibley and his sergeants slid from their mounts, beginning to unsaddle. “No—don’t take them saddles off, fellas!”

  “You won’t be ready if we get surprised and gotta ride out in a hurry!” Pourier advised.

  The savvy advice did not matter. It didn’t take long for the soldiers to have their horses unsaddled and coffee fires smoking. Donegan took a few sips of the offered brew, his anxious eyes nonetheless prowling the backtrail where it emerged from the line of timber below them. He expected to hear gunshots at any moment, announcing the arrival of the warriors—perhaps war cries on the slope above them from those who had jumped Grouard at the Twin Creek trailhead. A few minutes later, to Donegan’s great relief, the half-breed appeared.

  Reining up, with wide eyes, Grouard demanded, “You stopped for coffee?”

  Sibley asked, “Care for some?”

  “Might as well join us, Frank,” Donegan said with a shrug.

  As Grouard slid painfully from his saddle, Pourier turned to Finerty, saying, “You came along to have yourself a big adventure, didn’t you, John?”

  Finerty nodded, peering at the half-breed over the lip of his cup.

  Seamus nudged the reporter and declared, “That’s what you told us, Johnny boy. Have yourself a big adventure.”

  Big Bat continued. “You know why we haven’t been caught here drinking coffee, don’t you, John?”

  The newsman’s brow crinkled suspiciously. “No— why?”

  “Because the Sioux are waiting up there, on up where they got a ambush laid for us.”

  “An ambush?” Finerty squealed. “God-damn! Quit pulling my leg!”

  Donegan said, “I figure Bat’s probably right, Johnny.”

  Finerty grew fidgety, his hands flitting, spilling some coffee. “Ambush! This’ll bloody well be the last scout I ever come on!”

  “Tried to tell you,” Grouard said with a nod. “I’m afraid Bat’s right: we likely got a warm time coming.” “But don’t you worry, Johnny boy,” Donegan cheered, slapping the newsman’s knee, “when this is all over—you’ll have lots of good stories to send back to your readers in the East.”

  “If he makes it out alive,” Bat added with a grin. “I got a feeling Finerty’s big adventure in Injun country is only starting.”

  *Just above the present-day town of Dayton, Wyoming.

  Chapter 11

  First Week of July 1876

  THE LITTLE HORN MASSACRE

  THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

  Fruits of the ill-advised Black Hills

  Expedition of two years ago—

  Ability of the army to renew

  operations effectively discussed—

  the personnel of the charging

  party still undefined.

  Special Dispatch to the New York Times

  WASHINGTON, July 6—The news of the fatal charge of Gen. Custer and his command against the Sioux Indians has caused great excitement in Washington, particularly among Army people and about the Capitol. The first impulse was to doubt the report, or set it down as some heartless hoax or at least a greatly exaggerated st
ory by some frightened fugitive.

  VIEWS AT THE WAR DEPARTMENT

  The confirmatory dispatches from

  Sheridan’s headquarters in Chicago—

  feeling among Custer’s friends.

  WASHINGTON, July 6—Not until late this afternoon did the War Department receive confirmatory reports of the news published this morning of the terrible disaster in Indian country.

  MISCELLANEOUS DISPATCHES

  A list of officers killed—feeling over the disaster—a regiment of frontiersmen offered from Utah.

  SALT LAKE, July 6—The citizens here are very much excited over the Custer Massacre, and several offers have been made to the Secretary of War to raise a regiment of frontiersmen in ten days for Indian service.

  SAN FRANCISCO, July 6—A dispatch from Virginia City reports great excitement at Custer’s death. Ameeting has been called to organize a company.

  TOLEDO, July 6—A special to the Blade from Monroe, Mich., the home of Gen. Custer, says the startling news of the massacre of the General and his party by Indians created the most intense feeling of sorrow among all classes … The town is draped in mourning, and a meeting of the Common Council and citizens was held this evening to take measures for an appropriate tribute to the gallant dead.

  Escorted by Captain James Egan’s hard-bitten K Company of the Second Cavalry, Bill Cody had accompanied the youthful, baby-faced Colonel Wesley Merritt on that ride north to take over field command of the Fifth Cavalry on the first day of July. Besides being an act of utter humiliation to Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr, Bill figured Merritt had no business taking over what had long been regarded as “Carr’s regiment” in the field.

  Why, the “Old War Eagle” had led the Fighting Fifth since sixty-eight, for God’s sake!

  No two ways about it—Merritt had been in the right place at the right time: already out west as lieutenant colonel of the Ninth Cavalry, and perhaps even more important, in the field acting as inspecting cavalry quartermaster for Sheridan’s Division of the Missouri when the lieutenant general decided to use the Fifth to block reinforcements to Sitting Bull’s hostiles.

  Upon graduation from the U.S. Military Academy in 1860, Merritt was first assigned to the Second Dragoons. But as soon as Fort Sumter was fired upon less than a year later, his career began to parallel Custer’s closely: both had become brigadier generals at the same time, just prior to the Battle of Gettysburg, and both had commanded victorious cavalry divisions under Sheridan during the Shenandoah campaign in the final weeks of the Civil War.

  Everybody wanted to have a crack at the Indians who had defeated the Seventh Cavalry, Cody figured. Even Wesley Merritt.

  When the terrible news from Montana Territory caught up with Sheridan, he was visiting Camp Robinson, planning to do what his department could to stop the flow of warriors off the reservations at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail. Almost immediately the lieutenant general hurried back to Fort Laramie—where for days on end he remained angry, hurt, confused, and stunned as all get-out by the Custer disaster.

  Still, Bill had learned one thing was certain about that little Irish general: he wasn’t going to sit around licking his wounds. Sheridan was the sort who would strike back— and strike back with everything he had.

  “By God—those red sons of bitches will hear a trumpet’s clarion call on the land!” Sheridan vowed, slamming a fist down on Major E. F. Townsend’s desk at Laramie hard enough to stun every other officer into utter silence. “If it takes every man in my department, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse will pay dearly—and I’ll make sure they keep on paying until I think they’ve been brought to utter ruin!”

  Cody had no doubt that Sheridan would make good on his word.

  Accompanying Merritt from Laramie was another correspondent hurried into the field by an editor eager to beat the competition, another reporter chomping at the bit to snatch some new angle on the Sioux War suddenly exploding across the nation’s papers with banner headlines: Cuthbert Mills, who was sending copy back east to the New York Times.

  Cody recognized Mills as a tenderfoot from way off, but he did not join in “laying for” the reporters the way the rest of the entourage did, both soldiers and civilians. Nevertheless, Bill did have himself a few laughs at Mills’s expense, what with the way the others “stuffed the greenhorn.” What a caution that slicker from the East had turned out to be!

  But it was not the prose of those tenderfooted reporters Bill figured he would long remember. Instead, the most lasting impression was made by the verse composed by his friend, the amiable John Wallace Crawford, widely known as the “poet scout” of the prairies. More of a nimble rhymester than a poet in the truest sense of the word, Crawford nonetheless entertained one and all every evening with his offhand recitations and impromptu circumlocutions involving the day’s march and the personalities along for the campaign.

  Born in 1847 in County Donegal, Ireland, Crawford’s parents emigrated to America while Jack was still a boy. Almost immediately the youth went to work in the Pennsylvania coal mines. Bereft of any learning, totally illiterate, Jack was only fifteen when he enlisted in the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania Volunteers with his father. After young Crawford was wounded at the Battle of Spotsylvania, he convalesced at the Saterlee Hospital in West Philadelphia, where he was taught to read and write by a Sister of Charity.

  A few years after the end of the war, both his parents died—causing Jack to decide he would start life anew out west. With the discovery of gold by Custer’s expedition in 1874, Crawford headed for the Black Hills, then the following year worked a mail contract between Red Cloud and the rail depot at Sidney, Nebraska. As one of the founders of Custer City in the Hills, he was selected to serve as chief of scouts for their volunteers with the outbreak of the Sioux War—a group called the Black Hills Rangers. It was at this time that Crawford acquired the title of “Captain Jack,” as well serving as the region’s correspondent for the Omaha Bee.

  Time had come for the Fifth to get over its outward suspicion of its new colonel commanding and get back to business. On the second of July, Merritt marched his troops four miles to the east, so they could bivouac on better grass that much closer to the well-beaten Indian trail Little Bat had discovered. The men remained confident and their mounts well fed—not only on the grasses of those Central Plains, but on seventy-five thousand pounds of grain that had arrived from Laramie nine days earlier.

  Then on the morning of 3 July a small war party was sighted by outlying pickets no more than a mile from the regiment’s South Cheyenne base camp. Captain Julius W. Mason’s veteran K Company was ordered in pursuit as they were beginning their breakfast.

  “Saddle up, men! Lively, now!” was the shout from the company’s lieutenant, Charles King, as Cody leaped into the saddle with Jack Crawford at his side.

  “Lead into line!” King ordered. “Count off by fours!”

  “By fours, right!” Mason gave the command while Cody and Crawford galloped away, hoping to eat away at what lead the warriors already had.

  The day before, Mason had been informed that he’d been promoted to the rank of major, with a transfer to the Third Cavalry, which was presently serving with Crook’s Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition. Yet Mason had told Colonel Merritt that he intended to stay with the Fifth until such a time as the present campaign was brought to a completion.

  Down into the trees at creekside the two scouts led K Troop, through the deep sand, then finally a climb back up onto the grassy hillsides where the race could begin in earnest.

  “Here comes Kellogg’s I Company, fellers!”

  Cody heard a soldier from K make the announcement behind him as they tore after the distant horsemen. Merritt had ordered out a second troop for what was hoped would be the first action of the campaign.

  But after a frustrating and circuitous chase of some thirty miles lasting several hours, all of it spent following nothing more tangible than a trail of unshod ponies, and then finding the war party splitti
ng off onto diverse trails, all leading in the general direction of the Powder River country, Mason ordered Lieutenant King to take their company and return to camp at four o’clock, empty-handed. However, because Bill and Jack Crawford, riding far in advance of K Company, had managed to fire some shots at the fleeing horsemen in the early stages of the chase, the affair went down in the official record of the Fifth Cavalry as “the fight near the south branch of the Cheyenne River, Wyo.”

  If the soldiers hadn’t killed any of the enemy or taken any prisoners, at least the Fifth was credited with forcing those fleeing Cheyenne warriors to abandon their slower pack-animals burdened beneath agency supplies plainly being carried to the hostiles in the north.

  Still, by the time the troopers returned to Merritt’s camp, there were casualties to be tallied from the thirty-mile chase. A dozen horses were so badly used up that Carr decided it best to have them returned to Laramie. Worse yet, the mounts carrying two heavy troopers did not even make it back to camp, having dropped dead under their weighty burdens during the Fifth Cavalry’s first pursuit of the enemy that season.

  Those two horses would not be the last animals to drop in their tracks before the summer’s Sioux campaign was out.

  On the following cloudy, dismal morning, that of the Centennial Fourth, Merritt ordered the regiment to strike camp, begin a countermarch, and scout back to the south, in the direction of Fort Laramie. The colonel realized that the Indians now knew of the presence of his troops and that further patrolling along the Mini Pusa would prove fruitless. Two companies with worn-out horses accompanied Merritt and the supply wagons due south along the valley of the Old Woman’s Fork, with the colonel’s intentions to rendezvous all battalions forty-eight hours later at the army’s stockade erected at the head of Sage Creek. Meanwhile the regiment’s commander dispatched Major John J. Upham with three companies to march to the northwest, up the Mini Pusa for one last scout of the Cheyennes’ possible crossing. At the same time, Carr was sent off east to the Black Hills with another three companies, again to look for recent signs of activity.