The young infantry lieutenant rawhided the cavalry like cattle, driving them back toward Fetterman up the ridge. Warriors swarmed over him. Falling away as quickly.
His saber slashed through the cold air with a whistling hiss. Grummond lopped off the head of an attacker. Fired his pistol into the breast of another, so close the warrior’s blanket coat smoldered.
The Sioux rolled over him again. Grummond swung the saber. It bedded itself deep in the shoulder of a warrior who galloped away, already dead. Grummond ran out of luck. His saber gone. Pistol empty.
The lieutenant sank slowly from his saddle. A stain like dark gravy moist across his chest. Sinking slow and thick from his horse, as if he were tired. His legs buckled as he hit the ground. Sitting in the muddy snow beside his horse, reins still clutched in his glove.
Metzger raced up, easing Grummond back onto the trampled snow. He stared up at Adolph’s face coming into focus over his.
“Tell Frances——”
Metzger had heard that gurgle too many times before. “You’re a brave soldier, Lieutenant. Your wife will know you hung back to cover the retreat. I make that promise to you,” Adolph whispered. His fingers pulled the pasty eyelids down.
Metzger fired his pistol. One, then a second warrior tumbled out of the saddle before Adolph realized he was alone. Not a single horse left. He had a choice. Race down to the little rock fortress where Garrett and two civilians worked their devastation on the Sioux with every shot. In a scattered ring surrounding the fortress lay the bodies of better than fifty dead or dying Sioux. Some trying to crawl away. Most still as stone while other horsemen surged toward the fortress.
Or he could run the gauntlet to rejoin Fetterman. Chances better with the more soldiers, he thought, bursting off on a dead run, hunched over like a crab as he scrambled through grass and brush.
Metzger suddenly sensed his heart leaping in his chest like a slippery fish breaking water in the mountain streams of his boyhood. Germany … my beautiful Germany. So much like these mountains.
“Gottamn dem!” Adolph cursed under his breath, watching the mounted troops clatter uphill, abandoning Fetterman’s infantry.
Leaderless and confused, they plunged through the infantry, headed up the ridge, where they were stopped a hundred yards beyond a group of huge boulders. Milling about like some headless, crazed beast while the warriors swept around them, among them. Over them. Knocking the green recruits from their saddles with shrieks of bloody glee.
A blood-chilling scream rose down the slope. Adolph wheeled, fired. Dropping one warrior close enough to touch him with a lance. Metzger watched Wheatley stand. Alone now in his little fortress. Swinging his rifle like a club. Knocking warriors aside like sheaves of wheat until they swarmed over him. A second later Wheatley stood alone again. Bloody from a hundred wounds. A warrior swung a cruel, nail-studded war-club, taking the top of the civilian’s head with it. Metzger’s stomach pushed up against his tonsils. He turned away. Racing. Gulping cold air.
He neared the boulders as the cavalry farthest up the ridge dismounted like ragged tin soldiers. Leading their horses onto the crest of the ridge. He glanced to the south. Figuring the horsemen hoped to cross the top and retreat back to the fort. Adolph watched them draw up on the glazed, icy snow, short of the top.
The south slope of Lodge Trail Ridge erupted hundreds more mounted, screaming warriors.
Any hope of escape cut off like a last whimper of wind.
* * *
Pvt. Ephraim Rover whirled and fired again. Downhill from where he stood, a solitary cavalry soldier scrambled on foot. Rover aimed and dropped another warrior. He would cover the soldier, the way he had covered the retreat of his infantry bunkies. Swinging and firing the carbine he had picked up along the slope, Rover recognized the irony in his joining the army to escape a family and trouble in Chicago—hungering for excitement. At the moment he had more than a lifetime’s staring him cold in the face.
As the little soldier neared Rover, a warrior on horseback swung alongside. Ephraim fired, dropping the Sioux on top of the trooper. The fallen man dragged himself from beneath the Indian’s body and scrambled alongside Rover.
“Sank you,” he growled with a thick accent.
“Let’s go!” Ephraim shouted, watching the old soldier scamper up the slope toward the boulders and the rest of the waiting infantry. He leaped to his feet, running backward, stumbling over brush and snowdrifts, firing as the Sioux surged up the hillside. His throat hurt.
Ephraim realized he was yelling at the top of his lungs.
* * *
Miniconjou warrior White Bull snugged the war-shield along his wrist, swinging the feathered lance through the air, urging his pony up the snowy slope. Bursting through puffs of gray gunpowder that stung his nostrils. The reek of death and voided bowels profaned the cold air. Three more joined him. While they carried bows, White Bull preferred his lance.
Though he was closest to the solitary soldier, an arrow from one of those who rode at his side struck the trooper first, bringing him to his knees. Slowly the soldier crumpled backward. White Bull charged in, the first to count coup. As he galloped over the soldier, the Miniconjou warrior slapped his lance point across the enemy’s head, knocking off the blue hat.
Crazy Horse reined up beside White Bull, bullets hissing about them like mad hornets. The young Oglalla whirled as warriors nearby shouted. Word came that more soldiers were marching from the fort. Already they were crossing the first creek on the valley side of the ridge.
“We must finish these quickly—now!” Crazy Horse commanded. “Fight! Sweep these soldiers from the face of our mother!”
“Aiiyeee!” White Bull shouted, following the young Oglalla’s courageous charge up the hill toward the boulders.
Spurred by Crazy Horse’s exhortation, his brothers in war charged from all directions. Down from the ridge. Up from both sides of the road along the narrow spur. And closing the circle rode those joining Crazy Horse in a wild assault charging up the hill. Throwing themselves against volley after volley of soldier fire, the Sioux pressed closer. Yard by bloody yard, closer still, caring not for the bullets singing overhead or hissing into the frozen ground at their feet.
On the outer fringe of the low boulders soldiers stood to meet the Sioux charge. Flailing away with their rifles while warriors swung clubs, jabbed with lances, slashed with scalping knives, hacked with axes.
Crazy Horse trampled over warriors riddled with arrows. On all sides of the boulders lay the scattered bodies of his brothers sacrificed in the cross-fire of a savage attack. Already this place stank of death. Blood turning black on the trampled snow. Hair clotting the nails of his war-club, he swung again and again. Screeching his wild cry of death.
His moccasins slipped and he nearly fell. Across the ground wriggled coils of greasy blue gut streaming from a soldier’s belly. Steaming. Stinking. He stared down into the wide eyes full of fear and pain. Then slammed his war-club into the face.
Pict. Pict. The bullets rang off the rocks around him. He swung again. The side of another soldier’s face disappeared in a halo of red spattering Crazy Horse like hot grease. He wheeled, looking for another, his blood lust feverish. Watching brave soldier spirits rising to the heavens like breathsmoke from a dying man’s mouth in winter.
Many of his brothers died around him, paying for this victory before the other soldiers could arrive. Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho died bravely. Their deathsongs in their mouths.
Many dead, for they fought not with guns. But close, staring their enemy in the eye.
* * *
Yard by yard Adolph Metzger fell back, reaching the center of the tiny ring of boulders. He realized it was only a matter of minutes, perhaps only seconds now.
“Fred!”
Behind him he recognized Fetterman’s voice. Brown lumbered past the German bugler. Only a handful remained now, surrounded. Adolph wheeled, watching a warrior fly off the rocks overhead, landing on a soldier, swin
ging a club. Back against the rock he stumbled.
Just beyond, Fetterman and Brown pressed their pistols against each other’s temple.
“One…” Fetterman rasped.
“Two…” Brown quickly echoed.
“NO!” Metzger shouted, leaping.
“THREE——”
He flinched as both heads flung backward, spraying red coronas as bullets slammed through bone and brain. Brown and Fetterman gone.
Cowards lead other men to their deaths, he thought. Then realized he was thinking in German.
Click.
The hammer fell. Again he pulled the trigger. Click His .44-caliber revolver empty. Metzger hurtled it at a warrior crouching on the boulder overhead, about to leap.
He backed up, searching for a weapon. Scooping up Fetterman’s pistol, he pulled the trigger. Click Empty.
Saved the last bullet for himself.
Adolph stumbled over bodies, searching. His back slammed against the rocks. The bugle jabbing his ribs. He yanked the braided cord over his head, gripping the bugle like a short club. Swinging. Swinging. Listening to that whistle of the dry breeze in the horn’s bell. Hearing startled grunts from warriors he hit as they swarmed over him. His tin bugle a shapeless thing in his hands.
Dear Gott—I’m the last!
Left to right, then back again, little Adolph swung, battering his enemies with that dented horn. It sang in his hand, as beautiful as any call to Boots and Saddles. Thinking now only of twilight … and taps.
No suicide, he thought in German. I have always been a soldier. I will die a soldier. Recalling the mountains of his boyhood home. Hearing the sweet, sweet notes of a distant bugle call.
Bringing the soldiers home at last.
* * *
Crazy Horse heard the others hollering from the top of the spur, shouting that soldiers had reached the crest of the ridge.
Like fevered ants the warriors set about their grisly work. Shouting. Laughing. Cutting and hacking. Stripping bodies. Cutting off hands and feet. Gashing legs. Disemboweling. Scalping forehead to nape, including ears. Firing one arrow after another into the naked soldiers. Every corpse stiffening in the cold. Each body looking helpless, like the pale, white-belly of fish snagged from a summer stream.
Crazy Horse jerked, hearing the iron-hoofs clatter up the frozen slope. Only a soldier horse, chased by two young Miniconjou. A big, white soldier horse. Reins dragging from its jaw. Saddle swaying beneath its belly. Arrow shafts quivering from its withers and rear flanks. It clattered over the hill, the boys in joyous pursuit.
The warrior next to him screeched his victory song, holding aloft a soldier’s manhood parts in his bloody hand. The Oglalla danced a moment with his trophy, then stuffed them into the soldier’s gaping mouth. Next he pried apart the white man’s belly, hauling the entrails across into the dirt and trampled snow. Blood turned the ground black and slick. Quickly freezing.
Crazy Horse watched the first soldiers appear along a brow north of Lodge Trail Ridge. Unmoving. They dared not ride into the valley.
“Brothers!” Crazy Horse exhorted his friends, “Invite these soldiers to come and join these!”
Many laughed, jeering the soldiers—urging, taunting these new troops. Each warrior feeling they could defeat anything the soldiers might throw at them this day. Unafraid. Daring. Mighty.
The dog darted past him. Crazy Horse leaped back, hand clamped to his mouth. Blindly scurrying in and out of the warriors, the animal scampered for the top of the ridge.
“Kill the soldier dog!” one warrior shouted. “I saw it march into the trap with the soldiers!”
“No,” shouted White Bull. “Let it go. We have our dead. Let the dog carry his news to the soldier fort.”
“No!” Crazy Horse screamed, surprising himself. From the wolfskin quiver at his back he ripped his bow and a single arrow. His arrow struck the dog midstride. It toppled over, legs a’quiver. Then lay still.
“Nothing!” Crazy Horse glared at White Bull. “Nothing shall live this day. No one is to allow even a dog to escape our great victory!”
With no more whitemen to butcher, the warriors retrieved every arrow that had not been broken, blunted or bristled from a soldier’s body. Although he had no way to accurately count, Crazy Horse marveled that so many arrows had been fired in so short a time. More than two thousand warriors, each having more than twenty arrows in his quiver … all that in the space of time it takes the sun to move two lodgepoles. A very short battle.
Below him, near the creek, others dragged their dead and wounded aboard ponies or travois. Marching back across the icy creek. Over the hills to their battle-camp. Leaving nothing but their dead ponies behind.
Dark smears upon the cold ground to mark the fall of each warrior.
While it had been a great victory, Crazy Horse realized theirs had been a costly fight. He nosed his pony toward the creek, assured he was the last to abandon the battlefield. Steam from soldier wounds tissued like filmy gauze into the cold air. A trooper’s horse struggled in death, legs flailing. His nostrils stank with death.
As he gazed over his shoulder at the soldiers waiting atop the bare spur of ground, the young Oglalla warrior sensed that his people had won but the first battle of a long, long and ugly war.
Chapter 36
At the Big Piney, Ten Eyck’s soldiers removed their shoes and wool stockings. After crossing the ice-swollen water, they put the warm, dry socks and shoes on once more. Forming into columns. Seventy-six in all. Captain Ten Eyck and Lt. Winfield Scott Matson, along with surgeons C. M. Hines and Jeremiah Ould. Seventy-six, that is, plus one Irishman.
To Seamus it had seemed like a dreadfully long time, but Ten Eyck had moved his troops out in less than a quarter hour, the foot soldiers jogging double-time down the road to the icy crossing.
As they left the creek behind, Donegan listened to the distant rifle-fire echoing beyond the ridge. Shots growing more scattered. No longer any volleys. Sporadic. And fading.
He looked at Ten Eyck.
“I hear it, Donegan. Sounds like Fetterman’s beat off the attack … run the savages off.”
Donegan wagged his head. “That, or it’s all over, Cap’n.”
Ten Eyck steered clear of Fetterman’s route along the base of the Ridge. Nor did he stay on the Bozeman Road. Instead, the cautious Dutchman led his rescue detail to the right.
“Captain, why’re you taking us way off over here?” Lieutenant Matson demanded, galloping up.
“The high ground ahead’s better for a defensive stand. I’ll take the men——”
“Defensive stand?” the lieutenant snorted. “Better to show these red bastards we’re ready to attack … or we’ll need rescuing ourselves!”
“I want something from you, I’ll ask for it!” Ten Eyck snapped.
“The colonel said you were——”
“Carrington isn’t here, is he, Lieutenant?” Ten Eyck snapped. “I’m taking the advice of Donegan here—leading the men to the safety of that high point ahead. From there we can see what lies before us … and defend ourselves if need be.”
The young lieutenant glared icy daggers before he wheeled away.
The last gunshots echoed from the heavy sky as Ten Eyck’s soldiers reached the crest. He signaled a halt. Like black, maddened ants scurrying over the snow, the valley of the Peno below swarmed with warriors.
“Dear God! There’s not one of Fetterman’s men in sight!” Surgeon Hines gasped, bringing his horse to a halt beside Ten Eyck.
Up the slope raced some young warriors, slapping and thumbing their buttocks. Yelling obscenities. Taunting. Urging these new soldiers down into the valley.
“Fetterman’s men’re down there.” Donegan sighed. Both Ten Eyck and Hines glanced at him, disbelieving. “We just don’t see what’s left of ’em yet.”
“Orderly!” Ten Eyck cried out.
“Captain?” Pvt. Archibald Sample raced to Ten Eyck’s side.
As he dragged a smal
l tablet from his tunic pocket and licked the end of his pencil, Ten Eyck ordered, “I want you to take this message to the colonel. Fast as that horse will carry you.”
Sample blinked, seeing only the officers and surgeons on horseback, realizing he was handed the dangerous assignment because he had left the fort mounted. Archibald swallowed.
“Mark the time, orderly,” Ten Eyck demanded.
“Twelve forty-five, sir.”
“Very good,” and he saluted Sample. “God’s speed, son.”
Sample bolted away, across the spur to the crest of the ridge, heading for the Big Piney Crossing and Fort Phil Kearny.
“Cap’n,” Donegan announced, “looks like the Injins done with your boys down there.”
Ten Eyck followed the Irishman’s arm. Like a wave ebbing from the shore, the Sioux fell back from the slope. Still taunting. A stunned gasp swept over Ten Eyck’s foot-soldiers as they witnessed the first of the carnage. Long distance.
Naked bodies—starkly white in the hazy, winter light. Mottled with dark, black patches. Bits and pieces of once-warm humanity freezing beneath a sky that spat loose an icy flake now and again.
Seamus Donegan had seen his fill of death. Yet nothing like this.
Gettysburg had been about the worst of it. The rains coming like a blessing from heaven at the end of that final, third day—settling the dust that choked every man’s nostrils … washing the blood and brains from the rocks and leaves. Settling the stench of young lives snuffed by the gods of war. He had seen his fill of death.
Yet even Seamus Donegan was unprepared for what he found at the bottom of Lodge Trail Ridge.
* * *
Just past the Big Piney Crossing, orderly Sample watched twenty-eight soldiers jogging down the road from the fort. He reined up as the soldiers ground to a halt.
“Where you coming from?” a young private demanded of Sample.
“And who’s asking?”
“Private Seth Aikens, C Company, Second Cavalry—that’s who.”
Sioux Dawn: The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (The Plainsmen Series) Page 34