Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866

by Terry C. Johnston

  She turned as footsteps crunched on the gravel walk.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Hopkins, Colonel.” The soldier saluted. “Three mountain howitzers readied, one field piece—twelve-pounder—all in place, charged with canister or grapeshot. Awaiting your orders.”

  “We all wait, Sergeant,” Henry replied. “Keep your crews at ready, for whatever might betide.”

  “Henry,” she whispered when the gunnery sergeant had dashed off. “Frances fears her worst nightmare’s come true.”

  “It is a nightmare.” He sighed, letting Margaret slip her gloved hand around his bare fingers. “Were it not for you——”

  “Hush!” she whispered. “So many rely on you. I more than any, Henry.”

  “I … I never knew——”

  “Both of us had hoped your new post would be a new beginning,” she said. “I shared that dream with you.”

  “So much … too late now.”

  “Go do what must be done, Henry.” Margaret kissed his bearded cheek. “So many depend on you.”

  “Yes,” he answered weakly. “My fort won’t fall. I can’t let it.”

  With a squeeze to her hand, Henry turned and sped across the parade toward the powder magazine. I must get back to Frances, Margaret thought, wrapping the muffler around her face so only her eyes peeked out. We’ll wait together.

  She set out across the parade to fetch Frances. To bring Frances to her home.

  I knew Fetterman would ruin things for Henry. She leaned into a gust of wind as strong as any cruel slap could be. He intended to bring Henry down, one way or the other. To be post commander … even district commander. Now, even unto his death—Fetterman’s accomplished what he set out to do.

  “Damn him!” she whispered into the muffler. “Captain William Fetterman … hero of the Eighteenth. Damn him!”

  She had seen the reports on Henry’s desk. More important, she had watched her husband brood over Fetterman’s record. While Henry had been stuck recruiting in Ohio or Indiana throughout the war, Fetterman gained glory and honor. In combat.

  As early as the spring of ’sixty-two, Fetterman rode at the head of Company A, 2nd Battalion of the 18th Infantry, making a name for himself at the siege of Corinth. From there he rode to glory at Stone’s River, cited for gallantry after more than thirty-six hours of continuous fighting. Fetterman had been the hotspur that saw the 2nd Battalion through Sherman’s march to the sea: Peach Tree Creek, Jonesboro, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain, and Atlanta itself.

  Margaret had watched Henry read and reread Fetterman’s record in those days and weeks before her husband called the gallant captain up from Fort Sedgwick. She understood how that record destroyed a little more of Henry with every reading:

  “Captain Fetterman’s command marched to my assistance with great promptness…”

  “… displayed great gallantry and spirit…”

  “… conspicuous for gallantry and bravery…”

  “… the conduct of Captain Fetterman in throwing up a salient and maintaining his positions against repeated attempts to dislodge him by the enemy, is worthy of particular notice.”

  “… breveted Lieutenant Colonel for bravery…”

  Chapter 34

  “Goddamn these bastards!” Fetterman roared. “I’ve stormed rifle-pits, laid siege, held men under artillery bombardment … but I’ve never seen anything like this!”

  Moments ago the captain had halted his entire force at the western lip of Lodge Trail Ridge. As soon as the decoys saw the soldiers stop, they turned and swept back along both brows of the ridge. Taunting, slipping behind their ponies or waving blankets to frighten soldier horses. Trying to draw fire from the skirmishers, Fetterman had deployed on both flanks of his march up the bare rib of ground, climbing into a thickening, gray sky. Back and forth the young Sioux warriors urged their little ponies, yelping like coyotes, luring, seductive.

  “Shoot!” he shouted at his infantry skirmishers. “What the devil you waiting on? They get close enough, knock the bastards outta the saddle!”

  With each volley of rifle-fire the decoys fell back. As soon as the shooting ended, they surged back toward the foot-soldiers.

  The Montana Road itself snaked up from the Big Piney Crossing toward this spur of bare ground that extended northwest from Lodge Trail Ridge. Near the saddle that separated the spur from the east side of the Ridge, the Road angled to the right, curving north along the crest of the spur for little more than a mile. At the northern tip of the spur the Road dropped into the valley of Peno Creek.

  Where the warriors circled and taunted, urging the soldiers off the high-ground.

  “Captain, request permission to engage the bastards your infantry can’t hit.”

  Fetterman wheeled, seeing Eli Garrett’s wolfish grin. “No,” he snapped.

  “We’ll damn well do better at it than your infant——”

  “As you were, Sergeant! I’ll have no insubordination.”

  “Judd!”

  Fetterman found Fred Brown darting up atop the calico pony.

  “There go more of the devils!” Brown pointed out a group of more than thirty warriors racing along the brow of the ridge, up from the Big Piney, joining the decoy party beckoning from the Bozeman Road below. As they watched the warriors dance about in their front, some random shots echoed from the rear of the column.

  “Sergeant Garrett,” Fetterman turned and growled. “Those shots came from the cavalry. Find out what the devil’s going on!”

  Eli tore back along the infantry to rejoin C Company and Grummond’s mounted infantry. He was no more than halfway back when the brow of the hill exposed more than two hundred warriors. They had crept up from the south side of the ridge, hidden for the most part, until they began taking shots at the white horsemen.

  “I damn well see for myself!” Fetterman exclaimed as Garrett slid to a stop beside him.

  “They’re moving down the ridge, Judd!” Brown shouted, straining to control the excited pony. “They’ll join the others in no time.”

  “I can see that, Fred!”

  Garrett watched Fetterman brood on it, his eyes squinting into the distance, attempting to catch a glimpse of something that … perhaps no man could see.

  “We’ll hold here,” Fetterman announced.

  “Hold!” Brown screeched. “Dammit, Judd—you don’t strike that bunch in front of us now … those other bastards on our tail can join up——”

  “Shuddup, Fred!” He swung a fist in the air. “I’ll hold here.”

  “We can cut ’em up quick, you gimme a chance!” Brown demanded.

  “Captain’s right, sir,” Garrett agreed. He liked Brown’s bravado. “We charge, they’ll run anyway. Have to fight ’em in pieces eventually. Let my twenty-seven men show you how it’s——”

  “Sit tight, Sergeant!” Fetterman hollered, hearing the shouts and yells of soldiers all along the column exposed atop the ridge.

  “Dammit, Judd, you——”

  “Don’t bully me, Fred!”

  “Bully you?” Brown shrieked, pointing at the warriors. “You may not get another chance like this in your life!”

  “Chance for what?”

  “Your damned promotion, Judd. Mine too!”

  “Is that why you’re so hot to chase on down there——”

  “Yes, goddammit! Aren’t you willing to risk a little something to be a soldier again, Judd? Hell, I remember the warrior you were at one time. Now you and Carrington are two old ladies——”

  “I’ve a notion to order you back to the——”

  “You won’t send me back, Judd. ’Cause I’m one of the few real soldiers you got riding with you. And I know you well enough too … know you’re itching to lay into ’em, just like me.”

  “I’m ordered not to cross the ridge.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “You know whose goddamn——”

  “That sniveling coward Carrington? You’re gonna listen to that doddering old fool?” Br
own laughed, throwing his head back in the crude way he had that showed off his tonsils. “He isn’t a fighting man like you or me! We’re soldiers, Judd. By damned, let’s go do what soldiers do best!”

  Minutes ago the decoys had watched the soldiers halt, deploying skirmishers on their flanks. Time and again young warriors dashed along the fringes of the column, attempting to seduce the troopers down the ridge. The shivering soldiers didn’t budge.

  In desperation, one young warrior sitting atop a pony painted with lightning bolts and hailstones flung his blanket coat to the ground. To him had been given the honor of drawing the soldiers into the trap below. Now he embraced this challenge of luring the white men off the ridge. Wheeling, he shouted courage to his companions. In turn they sang out their prayers for him as he galloped headlong for the soldier lines. Unlike the rest, who zigzagged to escape the soldier bullets, intent only on taunting the troopers, this solitary warrior sped on a collision course with the spear-point of the enemy columns. To force the day.

  “By damn, that buck’s mine!” Eli Garrett shouted, cocking his Spencer repeater.

  “No such luck today!” Fred Brown swung, knocking aside the sergeant’s rifle. “He’s mine, Sergeant!”

  The captain raised his Starr carbine, watching the young warrior on the earth-painted pony steer directly for him over the blade at the end of his barrel. Brown squeezed. The warrior skidded to a stop, threw up his hands then screamed at the soldiers. Fifty feet away. And still alive.

  “Goddamn, you missed!” Fetterman cursed as the warrior pranced his pony to the side, urging the chase.

  “I bloody well won’t miss again!” Brown shrieked. “If you’re not man enough to fight these bastards, Judd, I sure am! Go ahead, sit here like that desk-soldier Carrington ordered—I’ll have that bastard’s scalp and he’ll scream in hell before this day’s out!”

  Brown savagely flayed the little pinto’s ribs, tearing after the solitary warrior. Instead of fleeing immediately, the Sioux turned his back on Brown, raised his rump in the air, exposing his bare, brown flesh to the soldiers. Brown’s maddened cry hung suspended on the cold breeze as the calico charged downhill.

  “Captain Fetterman, you can’t let him go alone!” Garrett prodded.

  He growled, “Those goddamned orders of——”

  “Blood’s the only thing those bastards understand!” Garrett fumed. “Give ’em a taste of what they want!”

  “By damn, Sergeant,” Fetterman growled back, “William Judd Fetterman never was a coward! And he won’t start now! Let’s give those bastards a taste of steel and blood!”

  “Whaaaa-hoooo!” Garrett flung his arm in the air, signaling his cavalry enthusiastically.

  “At a walk, dammit!” Fetterman ordered. “Keep my infantry in sight!”

  “At a walk, Captain!” Garrett cheered. “Long as we gut some of these devils in the process!”

  Garrett watched his soldiers strain at the bit, controlling their nervous mounts. The screaming. Gunfire. Waiting for action.

  “Front into line, goddammit! By fours … guide center, forward at a walk—HO!” Garrett shouted to his horse soldiers.

  The last he saw of Fetterman, the captain was glancing back at Fort Phil Kearny far across the valley. A moment later, as they dropped down off northern rib of Lodge Trail Ridge, both Garrett and Fetterman could no longer see the fort.

  For the moment, neither Carrington nor his orders mattered anymore.

  * * *

  By the time Grummond and Garrett caught up with Fred Brown, the captain sat reloading, grumbling at his poor weapon. All three stared after the seductive decoys flitting farther and farther down the ridge, in the next breath cursing the plodding infantry Fetterman prodded down the windswept ridge on the double. Straining to catch the mounted soldiers.

  Off the spur raced the decoys. Time and again they stopped, turned, taunted and hollered. Urging the soldiers on. Watching the cavalry surge against itself restlessly. Following the decoys obediently, Brown led the mounted troops onto that snowy rib pointing like a bony, skeletal finger to the northwest, down into the valley of Peno Creek. Down, down into the maw of the valley they plunged, the infantry winded, struggling to keep up. Past a field of huge boulders, chasing the warriors who circled and jeered down near the creek itself.

  Once Grummond’s horse soldiers plunged off the end of the spur, the Sioux whirled, hollering among themselves. Their ponies broke ice scum to the north bank of the Peno. Fetterman’s infantry thumped along at a ground-eating double-time, plodding after the eager cavalry inching farther and farther away.

  As the foot-soldiers entered the maw of the valley itself, the decoys across the creek split into two groups. Each band dashed away like scattering quail, suddenly turning, doubling back, crossing the path of the other.

  With that signal the valley instantly sprang alive. Two thousand shrieking Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho leaped from bushes and tall grass. From hiding places behind rock and tree. Shouting. Shooting guns. Firing arrows. Screaming. Hurtling lances. Wielding axes and clubs.

  Garrett yanked back on the reins. His mount stumbled, pitching over. His mouth went as dry as if he’d swallowed trail-dust. He clambered to his feet, reins still in his hands, his ears pounding with demon shrieks. Back up the spur behind Fetterman’s foot-soldiers the trap slammed shut. Across the creek ahead the hillside throbbed with warriors leaping from hiding. From both sides of the spur sprang hundreds. Eli realized they were outnumbered better than twenty to one. Gotta make a stand of it.

  “Holy shit!” he hollered, whirling as a bullet struck the soldier beside him, brain splattering hot blood across Eli’s cheek.

  Nearby, Brown’s pony crumpled, pinning the captain’s leg. Amid the crush of warriors and the panic-ridden raw recruits, Garrett pulled Brown free. By the time Eli turned round seconds later, his own horse had dashed across the creek, several arrows bobbing in its withers and flanks.

  “Get back to Fetterman!”

  Garrett looked up, finding Grummond in the saddle, pistol in hand, pointing, shouting orders. Urging soldiers back up the spur where Fetterman was having a hot time of it. From all sides the warriors swarmed like maddened red ants.

  Grummond raced among the soldiers, kicking, shouting, shooting. Covering the retreat as best he could. Closing the file as the cavalry dragged their wounded with them. Most soldiers horrified at the terror of battle. Some going to pieces and screaming. A few throwing useless weapons away.

  Into their midst plunged the two civilians. Firing their repeaters coolly, Wheatley and Fisher held fast, blunting the first wave of Black Shield’s Miniconjou who were given the honor of making this first assault.

  Eli whirled, sweeping an abandoned carbine from the frozen ground, running in a crouch back to the civilians and a handful of soldiers kneeling in a small fortress of boulders and horse carcasses.

  “Glad you could join us, Sergeant!” James Wheatley hollered above the clamor.

  “No place like home!” Garrett slid behind a horse still jerking in its death throes.

  “Don’t waste time,” Issac Fisher growled. “More’n enough for us all, soldier!”

  Garrett swept his sights to the left and fired. Then swung right. Seeing Grummond drive the cavalry up the spur, joining Fetterman’s infantry at the foot of the ridge. As he turned back, one of Eli’s young cavalrymen buckled, crumpling into the snow, thrashing on the ground a moment. Until he lay still. White powdering his back.

  Private Burke, Eli thought, and pulled his trigger again. By god, the boy was a soldier after all!

  Lead slammed into the horse carcasses about them, going home with the flat thud like a hand slapping wet putty. None of the carcasses moved anymore. Arrows hissed through the grass. Bullets hummed overhead. Behind it all rose the constant drone of eagle-wingbone whistles keening for white blood. Soldier blood.

  Out of the swirl of Sioux flitted blurred forms. One moment atop their ponies, the next gone. Arrows whispering thr
ough the cold air: whit. Whit. Whit-tukk! Swiss-thung!

  Garrett watched the last soldier in the little horse-fort sink over a carcass, a shaft buried deep in his throat. A moment later he could no longer hear that wet gurgle in the trooper’s throat. Fisher, Wheatley, and Eli Garrett remained. In the span of five minutes the Sioux had killed Burke and four seasoned veterans around him.

  His gun jammed. Garrett ducked, dragging another Spencer from beneath a cavalryman’s body. Once, twice, three times he aimed and fired. Watching a warrior fall for each bullet. Those last three marksmen exacted a terrible toll on the Sioux that day beneath a milk-pale sun hidden behind the thickening, snow-swollen clouds.

  “My gun … God … dammit!”

  Garrett whirled, watching Wheatley catch Fisher. A long shaft quivered from the base of Fisher’s neck, the bloody iron point dripping from the other side.

  “I’ll pull it——”

  “No!” Fisher shouted. “Give the soldier … my gun. Give ’im my…”

  Wheatley looked up, imploring Garrett. “Take his rifle, goddammit!” he growled, tears clouding his eyes. “He don’t need it no longer.”

  Eli pulled the weapon into his shoulder and fired. Until it clicked empty. His hands dug through Fisher’s pockets, finding the loose .44/40 shells. Four. Five. Six he jammed into the rifle. Then sprang upright to fire.

  Looked down at his chest. Seeing the iron tip poking like a stickpin from a gentleman’s tie. Dripping with his own fluid.

  “You reloaded yet, soldier?” Wheatley hollered, his back turned, pumping and firing. Knocking a warrior from the saddle with every round. Deadly with his Henry. “C’mon, goddammit—you ain’t got all day to reload the sonuvabitch!”

  Eli turned slowly, jaws pumping, trying to speak. Say anything. He put his cold, bloody hand on Wheatley’s shoulder. Then sank in silence. The eagle-wingbone whistles ringing in his ears.

  As his eyes locked on the dirty sky overhead.

  Chapter 35

  Little Adolph Metzger, eleven-year veteran, filled one hand with his tin bugle, his revolver clamped in the other. Time and again he galloped back to fight at Grummond’s side.