“This is our day! Should we get in close quarters, you men must remember to form by fours and stay together at all costs. Use your rifles as long as possible to defeat our enemy, and under no circumstances are you to use your service revolvers unless you are out of rifle ammunition and have no other choice.”
He took his hat off and swiped a finger inside the headband, preparing to lead the charge himself. “You must endeavor to make every shot count, but each of you must be ever mindful of leaving one shot for yourselves. Rather than fall into the hands of the hostiles, use that last shot for yourself—as it will be preferable to falling into the hands of these savages who have killed up and down the length of Dakota.
“Very well, men. This is our day!”
11
August–September, 1865
AS HOOK FOLLOWED Sweete out of the ravine behind the hundred Pawnee scouts, the level ground where Wolf Creek poured into the Tongue River sprouted close to three hundred lodges, most already nothing more than skeletons bare of buffalo–hide lodge covers.
“They’re breaking camp a’ready!” Sweete hollered as the pony herd began to whinny alarm. The frightened animals bolted in all directions as the soldier columns poured out of the ravines like columns of black ants across the brown landscape.
The village erupted with the shrieks of women, cries of children, and shouts from warriors hustling for their weapons. Every throat rang with alarm as ponies were caught up. Dogs barked and howled, a thousandfold. A frightening cacophony more fitting to hell itself.
Connor’s battalion burst from the ravine, wheeled left into line.
“Charge!” shouted the general.
Up and down the long line of 250 troopers, officers echoed the order. Now the soldiers raised their throaty roar to the sky, matching that of the warriors waiting to take the blow of the coming charge.
At four hundred yards officers ordered the first volley.
“Look at all them sonsabitches!” Hook muttered, just loud enough for Sweete to hear.
“These soldiers are outnumbered, Jonah. We best hope Connor can put the fear of God in these Injuns.”
“Bunch of ’em running already.” Jonah pointed to the north where those on ponies and on foot were struggling up the bluffs into the surrounding hills along Wolf Creek.
“Mostly old women and young’uns, Jonah. Scattering whilst the warriors cover the retreat. You’re gonna find a lot of the younger squaws hanging back in the village—fighting ’longside their men as these soldiers charge in—”
“Shad!”
They both found Bridger reining for them at a gallop, his bony, arthritic hands gripping the reins like life itself.
“This is Black Bear’s bunch!” cried the old trapper as he came alongside the two horsemen. The three reined up in a swirl of dust as the Pawnee surged on, yelling their own war cries.
“Arapaho? You sure, Gabe?”
“You never questioned me afore, you idjit!”
“You always been right as I recollect. But this bunch can’t be Arap.”
“They are—and Connor’s making him one big mistake.”
“How you gonna get him to stop?”
“No way. Blood’s spilled now,” Bridger groaned.
“What’s the difference?” Hook asked. “This bunch made trouble for the settlers and soldiers, haven’t they? Time they paid.”
“This is a ragtag band compared to the Bad Face fighting bands we ought to be hunting down,” Shad said.
Ahead of them the first soldiers were now among the lodges, forced into a fierce firefight with the warriors and half again as many squaws who shot rifles, pistols, and bows, then ran and dodged before they would wheel and fire again behind another lodge or some concealing brush. The ground lay littered with robes and blankets and bodies of those men and women who had fallen in their fight or flight.
A light rain of arrows fell short of the trio’s horses, some sticking in the ground, others clattering against brush and rocks noisily.
“We can’t be sitting here!” Bridger shouted.
“You figure to fight now?” asked Sweete.
“If we don’t—it’s our hair, you old pilgrim!”
“C’mon, Jonah!” Sweete hollered as Bridger tore off into the fray, flailing the sides of his army mule with his moccasins.
In the time it takes the sun to move from one lodgepole to the next, the Arapaho were driven from their village, into the rough, brushy country upstream along Wolf Creek. For ten miles Connor and his men pursued the fleeing band. Yet with every mile more and more of the soldiers were forced to drop out and turn back, their horses exhausted from the forced march of the past two days.
“General!”
Connor finally turned, clearly surprised to find only Sweete, Bridger, and Hook—along with no more than a dozen soldiers still capable of maintaining the chase. He threw up an arm and ordered a halt.
“Bridger! My God—where’s the rest of my command?”
“You damned well outrun ’em, General.”
“What man among you has paper and pencil?” Connor inquired. A corporal raised his hand, patting his tunic. “Good, soldier. Take the names of every trooper here who was capable of keeping up with the chase. I want a commendation written for each man.”
“You ain’t got time to take names and hand out your congratulations!” Sweete warned in a blistering tone.
Connor twisted in the saddle. He and the rest of the soldiers saw them coming.
It hadn’t taken the Arapaho long to realize the soldiers had slowed their pursuit. The warriors doubled back on the trail and found the soldiers greatly outnumbered. In a screeching, angry mass, like a disturbed nest of hornets, the warriors swarmed back down the creekbank in a rattle of rifle fire and the hiss of stinging arrows.
“Let’s get—”
A soldier yelped in pain as an arrow caught him in the leg.
Jonah felt his horse jerk, then wheel suddenly, around and around in a wild circle. It collapsed on its front legs as he dismounted to keep from falling, yanking free the carbine from its shoulder sling.
“Up here, son!”
He turned. The old mountain man held out a hand. In a fluid leap, Jonah was atop the big Morgan mare behind Sweete, who whirled the horse about as the last of the soldiers lit out.
As they raced downstream, Connor picked up more and more of the soldiers who had been forced to turn back. Slowly, by adding small groups of troopers here and there along the way, the white men were able to hold off the counterattacking Arapaho.
By the time they reached the mouth of Wolf Creek where the rest of the general’s men were mopping up the defenders, the Arapaho held back from pushing their attack. Instead of pursuing into the village, the warriors fought from long-distance, and when they didn’t fire at the soldiers, they flung their curses and rage at the white men preparing to put the village to the torch.
“Burn it—all!” Connor ordered.
Lodges, blankets, buffalo robes, clothing, abandoned weapons, kitchen goods, and a winter’s supply of dried meat—all of it sputtered into fitful flames, eventually rising twenty feet and more into the sky, puffs of oily black smoke climbing heavily into the hot summer haze.
“I s’pose we all have to admit it when we’re wrong, Gabe,” Shad said as Bridger wagged his head beside him. “You had no way of knowing this bunch was Arapaho—or that they’d been raiding down on the Platte with the Sioux.”
“Come out on the lucky end of the deal of these cards, didn’t we, Shad?”
“Since these soldiers found some greenbacks and other plunder stole off the ranches and the Holy Road—I’d have to say this bunch of Black Bear’s needs taught a lesson.”
“Lucky for me, nigger,” Bridger growled. “I don’t like killing Injuns just for the sake of killing Injuns. Gawd-damned, Shad—you and me is married to Injuns!” The old trapper turned and shuffled off, muttering to himself.
“The Pawnee having themselves a grand time of i
t over there, Jonah,” Shad explained, pointing to the far side of the camp. “The Arapaho warriors know they haven’t a chance of getting anything from the village now—but, by damn, they sure do want their ponies back.”
“The Pawnee good fighters?”
He squinted in thought. “I never had much use for ’em. Neither did Gabe. Pawnee didn’t turn friendly toward white men till they saw the writing on the wall. Besides, I think they figured out they could get more plunder by raiding enemy camps with the soldiers behind ’em instead of fighting the Sioux and Cheyenne in the old way—on their own.”
By middle of the afternoon, Connor’s officers had convinced the general it was time to cash in their chips and make good their escape. As for casualties, the general’s own orderly and bugler had been seriously wounded in the first charge on the village. A lieutenant and a sergeant with one company had been wounded in the thick of it. A young soldier had been hollering at his comrades, goading them on into the village when an arrow had entered his open mouth and pierced the back of his tongue. For the longest time his friends debated cutting the soldier’s tongue off to free it, until an old-line sergeant came along and held the tongue down, slowly slicing away at the red meat until the glistening iron arrow tip was freed.
“General’s given orders to pull out, Shad!” hollered Bridger as he came hobbling up, snagging the reins Sweete handed him. “He’s got some wounded … and he’s taken prisoners. We best get too.”
“Let’s ride, Gabe. This place’s getting a mite too warm for my way of thinking.”
As Connor pulled his forces off, the Arapaho became bolder. Not only had they watched the destruction of their village and seen sixty of their fellow warriors killed by the soldiers, but they were now forced to watch as eight women and thirteen children were herded into the wagons and driven off, surrounded by soldier columns. Using what few ponies they had taken with them at the time of the first charge to flee the village, or what they had recaptured during the soldier retreat, the warriors now dogged both sides of the army’s backtrail down the Tongue River.
At the head of the march rode a hundred Pawnee, driving before them a herd of more than seven hundred rangy Indian ponies they claimed as the spoils of battle.
“Don’t fire your weapons at the hostiles!” shouted a lieutenant riding down the long columns. “General’s orders: preserve your ammunition!”
“Don’t shoot? How the hell does Connor expect us to keep ’em off of us if we don’t shoot?” Jonah asked.
“You heard the man, Jonah. Keep your weapon ready—but don’t use it.”
“I don’t use it—what good is it to me?”
“Right now the Arapaho don’t know we’re desperate short on ammunition,” Bridger explained.
“If they stay afraid of what they think we can do to them—they won’t get too bold,” Sweete added.
For the next five hours of march northeast along the Tongue, the Arapaho warriors harassed, dogged, and deviled the retreating column. But as soon as the sun sank behind both the Big Horns and Connor’s soldiers, the warriors trickled off and disappeared. In a matter of minutes, all that could be heard above the squeak of leather and the jangle of bit chain was the distant howl of wolf and cousin coyote floating in from the nearby hills.
Connor rode ahead to catch up with his advance scouts near twilight as the warriors drifted away into the evening.
“Bridger, what do you think of my volunteers now?”
He unloaded a stream of tobacco juice and smiled.
“General, your boys done good today. Riding hard the way they did, on no food for so long—and fighting near six hours steady was something too. They didn’t buckle like I was afeared they would. Rest assured, your soldiers acted like men today.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, Mr. Bridger,” Connor replied.
“Well, ain’t you gonna compliment me and Shad here on finding that camp for you, General?”
Connor chuckled mysteriously. “You can’t be serious, can you, Mr. Bridger? You don’t expect me to swallow that you two actually saw smoke from this camp from fifty miles away, do you?”
Sweete and Bridger glanced at one another, both growing angry.
“We spotted that smoke and told you where to send North’s trackers,” Sweete growled.
“A lucky hunch. Why don’t you two old trackers just admit it and stop trying to pull the wool over my eyes?” Connor reined back to his place in the column, riding with his staff.
“If that don’t beat all,” Bridger hissed.
“Careful, Gabe.”
“Yeah—if that don’t beat all,” Jonah echoed. “Goddamned stupid paper-collar soldiers.”
Bridger’s expression slowly changed as he gazed at the Confederate. “Yeah—couldn’t say it better myself, Jonah.”
Connor’s trail-weary, battle-ragged command did not reach its wagon camp until about two A.M.
Every man had been in the saddle riding and fighting for the past thirty hours.
Two days later, Connor ordered a pony given to each of the Arapaho prisoners and set his captives free with gifts of hardtack and a little tobacco. Along with Bridger’s sign-language instructions that should the Arapaho chiefs now be interested in making peace with the white man, they should come to Fort Laramie in the Moon of Leaves Falling for a big parley with the soldier chiefs.
For the next week, the general’s massive column inched down the Tongue, hoping each day to make the scheduled rendezvous with his other two wings. Then on the morning of 1 September, as the troops were preparing to break camp, the advance guard heard the distant boom of a howitzer. Because of the confusing and broken texture of the land, no two men could agree on the origin of the sound.
Yet the boom of that distant cannon was enough to remind the general that today was the date he himself had chosen for the planned rendezvous with both the Missouri cavalry under Cole and the Kansas cavalry riding under Walker. The general ordered Major North and a detail of twenty Pawnee to ride out with an escort from Captain Marshall’s E Company, scouting to the northeast for the missing columns.
By the sixth of September, growing concerned about the fate of both Cole and Walker, Connor received the discouraging news from North and his Pawnee scouts. No sign of the missing troops.
Disgusted, Connor finally gave the order to turn about and begin a march back up the Tongue to find a place with sufficient graze for his sizable herd. On the morning of the eighth, the general again ordered North’s Pawnee out toward the Powder River, while Captain J. L. Humfreville would take his K Company to scout toward the Rosebud under Shad Sweete.
Four hours out, a light rain began to fall. Two hours after that the wind shifted, shouldering out of the north and bringing with it a taste of winter. Within another hour, a wet snow was plastering man and mount alike with a thick coating of ice. They pushed on into the mouth of that storm quickly becoming an early plains blizzard and reached the Rosebud late on the afternoon of the ninth.
After four days of struggling through the blinding, swirling snow, Shad led Captain Humfreville’s men back to Connor’s camp on the eleventh. He reported to a dejected general they had found no sign of the other two wings of the Powder River Expedition.
Yet not more than a handful of hours later North’s Pawnee scouts rode in with news not in the least welcomed by any of Connor’s command. The trackers had run across a large recent encampment of white men. The ground was littered with hundreds of dead horses, some of which had been shot. Most, however, had evidently frozen to death on their picket lines, their carcasses lying as orderly as they were.
North gravely informed Connor, “General, each of those dead horses looked like it had been damned near starved to death before that blizzard came in to finish them off. Animals run hard and not given time to graze or forage. When that norther hit—wasn’t a owl hoot of a chance any one of those mounts had enough fat on its ribs to keep from freezing.”
12
Fall, 1865
“SOME OF THOSE men offered me five dollars for a single tack,” Jonah Hook said in wonder to Shad Sweete. “Even up at Rock Island where most of us was rotting away—never saw a man in that bad a shape.”
“More’n just hunger, Jonah. That bunch of raggedy beggars was lucky to get out of Injun country with their hair.”
“All had to walk out—some of ’em in boots falling apart.”
“Never knew a boot anywhere as good as a Cheyenne moccasin, son.”
For days before the Pawnee scouts had finally discovered the location of the desperate columns, the Walker and Cole battalions had been under a constant state of siege, able to move very little on foot, able to do nothing more than hold back the thousands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors by judicious use of their mountain howitzers.
“Injuns hate those big wagon-guns,” Shad had explained. “They call them the guns that shoot twice: once when they are fired and a second time when the shell explodes.”
Once he had the demoralized, ragged remnants of the two lost wings rejoined with his own command, General Patrick Connor had turned his force south and returned to Fort Connor on the Powder River to recuperate the men, arriving the last week of September. But the second day of that much-needed recuperation brought an early end to the Powder River Expedition.
“Connor’s madder’n a wet hornet.” Bridger settled in the riverbank shade where Sweete and Hook had been watching the lazy ripples of the murky river.
“Why’s that redheaded Irishman mad now?”
“Got dispatches up from Laramie, Shad.” Bridger sighed. “You remember hearing that wolf-howl days back.”
Hook watched the two old mountain men exchange a mysterious, knowing look.
“Howl like that always means some bad medicine coming, Gabe. Sure didn’t think it’d hit this soon.”
“What’s this you two are saying about a wolf-howl means bad medicine?” Jonah asked.
Sweete looked at Bridger. “We aren’t exactly talking about a real wolf-howl, Jonah.”
“Go ’head and tell the lad,” Bridger prodded.
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