Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876 tp-10

by Terry C. Johnston

  It would take until the end of summer, but by then all that Bourke and Finerty and the rest of Crook’s crippled Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition would have to eat would be their broken-down, played-out horses as the animals dropped one by one by one into the mud of the northern plains.

  That, and Crook’s men could always eat their words.

  They had a great victory on their shoulders.

  So it was that Miniconjou war chief American Horse danced with all the rest in this Moon of Ripening Berries, Wipazuka Waste Wi. At times the Lakota called this the Moon of Making Fat.

  Truly, this was a time of great feasting, of living off the fat of the land for the people of American Horse.

  “Now the soldiers will stay away!” Dog Necklace growled every bit as tremulously as any grizzly boar as they gathered near one of the many leaping bonfires fed throughout that second night following the great battle against the soldiers, Snake, and Sparrowhawk People. “Surely they know we will never again wait for them to attack our camps of little ones and women.”

  Red Horse echoed, “They now know we will hunt them down!”

  “Yet—what of the great mystic’s vision?” asked Iron Thunder.

  “Yes,” agreed Antelope Tail, worry cracking his voice. “What of Sitting Bull’s talk with Wakan Tanka?”

  American Horse smiled. He had fought these white men many, many summers. Even winters too. In fact, thirty winters before his own father, Smoke, had met the famous white man Francis Parkman there beside the white man’s Holy Road that paralleled the Buffalo Dung River.*

  “The soldiers will return,” he told them confidently.

  Dog Necklace disagreed, still sour as gall. “The soldiers would not dare try themselves against our strength! As powerful as the mystic’s dream was, I nonetheless still find it very hard to believe soldiers will come to fall into our camps now.”

  “But his vision was so vivid, in such detail,” American Horse protested. “The Hunkpatila warrior called He Dog has told me Sitting Bull says we should expect another fight.”

  “Let us savor this victory first, old one,” Red Horse chided the aging war chief.

  “Yes,” agreed Dog Necklace as he chuckled with disdain. “Even as stupid as the white man is, none of our people can seriously believe the soldiers would still be marching on our villages. Chasing us after the beating we gave them.”

  “It will be a long, long time before we have to worry about any soldiers marching on us now,” Red Horse said.

  “Yes. I think they have learned their lesson well and are running away far to the south, never to fight us again this summer,” Dog Necklace boasted. “The Great Mystery has taught the soldiers a painful truth: never again come to attack a village of women and children. If they ever try, only death and destruction await them.”

  “But that’s just what the shaman Sitting Bull saw in his vision,” American Horse scolded the young warriors for forgetting. “Soon he reminds us—the soldiers will return to fall headfirst like grasshoppers into our camp.”

  “Never again will we retreat!” Iron Thunder roared.

  Antelope Tail joined in. “On the Rosebud we learned a mighty lesson! Never again will we merely fight long enough to cover the retreat of our women and children, protecting those weaker than ourselves!”

  Once again American Horse sensed the stirrings of his own warriorhood—as it always stirred when his people were threatened, rising as surely as did the guard hair on the neck of the wild wolf when a challenger presented himself. It had been as Crazy Horse promised them when he led the hundreds south to meet Three Stars. Indeed, it had been a new kind of fighting for the Lakota and their cousins, the Shahiyena of the North. In that one day-long battle with the confused, retreating, frightened soldiers, the Lakota bid farewell to their old way of waging war wherein each man fought on his own for coups and scalps and ponies; each man riding out ahead of the others to perform daring, risky, and often foolish deeds in the face of the white enemy.

  There was much talk of how Crazy Horse had orchestrated their great victory over Three Stars and his soldiers. Much talk that from now on the Lakota would never retreat—would instead stand and fight any army come against their villages in this new way Crazy Horse had taught them: to ride knee to knee in massed bunches, swarming together over the white man as the bee flies in swarms that blackened the sky, flinging themselves against the soldier lines in numbers that could not help but roll over every one of the helpless blue-shirted enemy soiling their pants in abject fear.

  While most of the warriors turned north with the wounded late in that day of fierce fighting, American Horse and other Lakota, as well as some of the Shahiyena, stayed behind to keep watch on the soldier camp through that first night following the battle. They were as hungry and tired as the rest, for it had been a good day, a great fight, and only one of American Horse’s Miniconjou had been wounded seriously enough that he might die.

  What a great victory over Three Stars and his soldiers!

  The next morning the white men rose early and straggled south out of the valley, finally disappearing among the green hills. With the soldiers gone, the young warriors waiting on either side of American Horse atop a high hill kicked their ponies into motion, racing down to the trampled grass pocked with hundreds of tiny fire smudges, a creek valley dotted with the droppings of so many horses and pack-mules. Here and there they found an abandoned prize: a worn-out hat, a good pair of gloves, a belt pouch, a piece of bloody blue cloth cut from a wounded soldier’s trousers or shirt, and even such treasure as some bacon and crackers, along with coffee wrapped in waxed paper packets!

  It wasn’t long before the young Oglalla called Black Elk after his father discovered the patch of earth the white man had dug up the night before, then trampled with many hooves to hide the digging.

  “This is surely the ground where they buried their dead!” Dog Necklace shouted.

  Almost at once the two dozen or more fell to their hands and knees, scratching and scraping at the pounded soil, howling like a pack of coyotes expectant of a feast. From the unearthed bodies the warriors took scalps, tore off the thin gray blankets, then stripped clothing and finger rings.

  Later that morning they discovered the body of that wounded Lakota butchered by the Sparrowhawk People who scouted for Three Stars as the army retreated out of the valley.

  “Wrap our brother warrior in one of those soldier blankets,” American Horse demanded angrily as he gazed down at the dismembered remains.

  “Not mine!” protested Red Horse, clutching the gray army blanket.

  “Then I will use my own,” the Miniconjou war chief said. “But I will ask your help.”

  Three others dismounted to help American Horse gather the scattered flesh and bone of the mutilated warrior identifiable only from the porcupine quillwork decorating shreds of his bloody leggings.

  “And you, Red Horse,” he said sternly, training his wide-browed glare on the young warrior who had refused to relinquish his army blanket for a death-wrap, “it is you I want to build me a travois so that we can return this man’s bones to his family.”

  By the time American Horse and the others reached the great encampment the following day, most women in the many circles were already at moving camp, dropping smoked hides rich with fragrance from their darkened lodgepoles, loading travois with a family’s possessions, with the little ones still too young to walk or ride atop the backs of gentle ponies—travois that might also transport the aged whose numberless winters prevented them from walking or riding. Camp was being moved downstream a few more miles west toward the Greasy Grass.

  There the great gathering of circles would have nothing more to worry about than where to find the buffalo and antelope the young men would hunt for meat and hides to put up against the coming winter. Winter always came to this land, and with its arrival always came the retreat of the soldiers. American Horse hoped that by whipping Three Stars and his men on Rosebud Creek, the soldiers would
abandon Lakota hunting ground even sooner this season.

  From the valley of the Greasy Grass the villages would move slowly southwest toward the Big Horn Mountains, where the hunting was always good. In those days to come the camp circles would slowly break apart, warrior bands and family clans drifting off on the four winds as the summer season slowly aged.

  Just as a man aged with the seasons of his own life.

  Across the seasons the Miniconjou had known him first as American Horse, later as Iron Plume and Iron Shield, later still as Black Shield because of a dream in which a spirit told him to make a shield he should paint black so that it would protect him from bullets. But even though he was nowhere near so well-known to the whites as Rain-in-the-Face or Gall; American Horse was well regarded among his own Miniconjou for his unquestioned bravery in battle and his steadfast protection of his people.

  For a moment American Horse turned to look back at the lone tepee his people were leaving behind as they migrated a few miles farther down the creek toward the valley of the Greasy Grass. A mourning family left it standing in the summer sun as a tribute to the warrior whose body lay inside—a warrior wounded grievously in the hips during the fight against Three Stars, one of those returned on travois to die among his kinsmen. With its smoke flaps wrapped tightly one over the other and the lodge door sewn shut against the elements, none who respected the dead would dare enter. Beside the body within the darkness lay the warrior’s favorite weapons—his true wealth in life—as well as his pipe and tobacco pouch, along with some venison soup to feed him on his journey toward the Star Road.

  The past two days had witnessed even more new arrivals reaching the great encampment as the immense village eased down toward the Greasy Grass. Summer roamers, these late arrivals were called. Like American Horse’s band of some three dozen lodges, the summer roamers were those who fled the reservations when spring warmth caressed the northern plains, where they intended to hunt in the ancient way until autumn turned the buffalo herds south, when the clans would again turn back to the agencies to suffer through another winter.

  Already there was much talk that this was to be the last great hunt, perhaps the greatest of all summers for the seven campfires of the Lakota Nation. Washtay! Hadn’t they defeated Three Stars and sent his soldiers scurrying south with their tails between their legs like whipped dogs? The hunting had never been better here in the timbered valleys among the Wolf Mountains.

  With all that, they still had Sitting Bull’s prophetic vision yet to come!

  American Horse was glad he had urged his people off the reservation early this year, happy to be included in the great strength all Lakota felt this summer. If what Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the rest said was true—this Season of Making Fat might well hold the last great fight they would have with the white man.

  And forever after the soldiers would dare not enter Lakota hunting ground.

  Forever after the white man would stay far away.

  No more would American Horse’s Miniconjou have to return to their agency to eat the white man’s moldy flour and rancid pig meat.

  Life would be as it once was when American Horse was but a boy and he saw his first white man along the Holy Road.

  Life would be so good again, with the wasichu gone forever and ever, gone forevermore.

  *The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 9, Reap the Whirlwind.

  *The North Platte River.

  Chapter 2

  Late June 1876

  God! But the air out here smelled better than it did in those closed-in places back east.

  William F. Cody drank deep of it this summer morning, chest swelling as he drew it into his lungs as one would drink a life-giving elixir. With that prairie air seeping through his body, Bill remembered his youth as teamster, those months as mail rider for the pony express, and finally his years as army scout. All of that adventure and fun, all that unfettered life crammed into his youth before he had gone and followed the siren song of fame and fortune, pursuing a career on the stage.

  Now, as he led General Philip Sheridan and his headquarters staff toward Camp Robinson near the Sioux’s Red Cloud Agency in the heart of these Central Plains, his keen eyes squinting into the distance from beneath the expanse of his broad-brimmed sombrero, searching the horizon for smoke, or dust, or the dippling of human forms atop fleet ponies breaking the skyline at the crest of some hilltop, Bill Cody couldn’t for the life of him remember what had been so damned seductive about that career on the boards before the footlights that it had lured him away from the West Away from these wide and open places.

  Lord, but he loved this life! A good horse beneath him, his favorite rifle—the one he had long ago affectionately named Lucretia Borgia—stuffed securely in the saddle pocket across the pommel, and the sweet smell of the tall grass trammeled beneath his buckskin’s hooves. This had to be the essence of living! Something few men would ever experience, or so Bill had long ago determined.

  Leaving behind Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr’s Fifth Cavalry at Fort Laramie for a few days before the regiment would once again begin searching these hills and swales like an inland sea of grass, looking for any Indians trying to make it north to join the roaming hostiles, Cody itched to be shed of Phil Sheridan. He wanted to be back with the Fifth as they scoured this land for warriors fleeing the reservations. But not just any warriors. This summer they were hunting the young fighting men who were jumping the reservations to the south: the hotbloods who were stirring things up as they fled the agencies and rode out for the northern camps of those winter roamers, to join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.

  Maybe Custer would get his chance, Bill thought. Maybe ol’ Yellow Hair will finish off those Sioux hostiles in one fell swoop like everyone back east thought only Custer would. Damn, but Bill wanted Carr’s Fifth to be the outfit that would have a crack at the action before this Indian war was nothing more than a few footnotes in dusty history books schoolboys would be reading in the decades to come.

  God, how he hoped Custer and the rest of them up north left some of the fighting for the Fifth Cavalry.

  He looked at the sky, wondering about God. If He really did listen to man. To a lone individual, anyway. Bill thought he’d pray, just in case God was listening right then and wasn’t too busy with other matters of more pressing concern. Out here, Cody had found, it was about as easy to pray as breathing. Out here it was damn sure as easy as breathing to know down in his marrow that there was for certain-sure a God. Just to look around him in all directions, why—a man had to realize some great hand had been at work here.

  So Bill prayed, not at all embarrassed that he asked the Almighty to leave some of the hostiles for the Fifth Cavalry to fight.

  After all, Bill figured—the Fifth Cavalry always had been an Injun-fighting outfit. And no matter where life might lead William F. Cody, no man—nor woman—would ever be able to take the magic of these plains from him.

  He had been twenty-three years old that fall of eighteen and sixty-nine, following the summer he led the Fifth down on Tall Bull’s village of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers at Summit Springs. That first year of scouting for the army was crammed chock-full of adventure and even some downright belly-busting fun—like that time he had talked Wild Bill and that gray-eyed Irishman into stealing a shipment of Mexican beer bound for another regiment wandering the Staked Plain of the Texas Panhandle in search of Cheyenne and Comanche. After hijacking the load of foamy brew, the trio of scouts instead took their contraband back to their own camp and immediately set up shop for the boys of Carr’s Fifth Cavalry.

  But now … well, now he couldn’t dare get away with such a stunt. Now that Buffalo Bill was the darling of the boards and theater lights back east. But Wild Bill? Well, Cody had heard Hickok had become quite the army scout before he turned lawman down in Abilene, Kansas, then finally had retired to become a knight of the green felt: ofttimes making his day’s wages over a single turn of the cards. And Donegan? Damn—Bill didn’t know what had ever
become of the Irishman after that evening he plucked Donegan’s hash from the fire back behind the sutler’s bar at Fort McPherson in November sixty-nine.

  For some reason it seemed most reasonable to think Seamus Donegan could not possibly still be alive, not the way that man lived. But in the next moment Bill decided that it was every bit as reasonable to believe that the Irish man would still be very much alive. A man who pushed out at the edges of his Ufe with as much vitality and zest as did that Irishman—why, you didn’t easily kill off that sort of man.

  Not the sort of man as was William F. Cody.

  Likely, it was Edward Zane Carroll Judson who got the whole damn thing started what had pulled Cody off the plains to begin with. The stocky little prairie cock called himself Ned Buntline. Whatever name he wanted to use, in whatever company, it had been that fall of sixty-nine Cody first ran onto the dime novelist who was out to write the glories of the opening of the West. Bill instantly took a liking to that Buntline fella who had been hanged of a time, but the rope broke; some said the rope was cut by an accomplice. Still, it took some stewing, Buntline’s ideas did, before Bill seriously considered leaving these plains. But that chance meeting with Buntline that fall of sixty-nine was to come back to haunt Cody more than once. The first time was that very Christmas when an officer at Fort McPherson ran over to show him a copy of Buntline’s latest dime novel just arrived with a shipment of tinware at the sutler’s: Buffalo Bill the King of the Border Men.

  Cody promptly bought up what all copies the sutler had and gave them away over whiskey and cigars for a chuckle or two, along with the feeling it gave him to see his very own name in print. To think of it! Buffalo Bill in print back east—even though Buntline’s story was nothing short of pure horse pucky—to think that his name in that tale was being read by thousands of eyes. Thousands upon thousands!