Cody took the bottle from Crawford, and Donegan hovered at his shoulder to get a read on the label.
Bill asked, “Who’s this from?”
“Colonel Jones.”
“Proprietor of the Jones House?” Cody asked.
Crawford nodded. “None other.”
“You mean to tell me you brought this all the way up from Cheyenne for me?”
“He give it to me a while back, weeks as a matter of fact. Said to run you down when I had a chance.”
Donegan wagged his head in amazement and asked, “And you haven’t thought once in all those weeks, all those long, thirsty days and cold nights riding north to Sioux country, not once did you consider pulling that cork and having yourself a taste of that beautiful whiskey?”
Cody turned to Seamus with a look of amused consternation on his face and pointed the neck of the bottle at Crawford, saying, “You’re a dense one, Irishman. This here Captain Crawford is about the only scout who could pull off that journey without draining the bottle Colonel Jones sent for me.”
“Hard to believe, it is, it is,” Seamus said wistfully, staring at the lovely hue of that whiskey.
“Not hard to believe at all, Irishman,” Cody replied. “You see, Crawford’s just the man for such a job—he’s got to be the only teetotaling scout I ever met!”
Late that afternoon the Shoshone returned with news of more Sioux trails coming in from the west to join the main route. Crook had the command remount at six and during that night’s march many of the cavalrymen sang Negro melodies learned during the recent war, as well as some popular Irish songs. They did not camp at the bend of the Rosebud until long after the moon had set at 2 A.M. and the wind had quartered around, heaving right out of the north.
On the following day’s cold march into the teeth of a wind-driven drizzle that steadily became a slashing, galedriven rain by midmorning, the column passed several old camps littered with the bones of dogs and ponies: more ample evidence that the warrior bands clearly were no longer living off the fat of the land as they moseyed toward the northeast. Throughout the twenty miles made that morning and into the afternoon, the age of the trail freshened. What had at first been a trail some two weeks old became ten days old, then shortened to a week, and by the time the column made bivouac on the Rosebud below Lame Deer Creek, it was believed they had compressed the enemy’s lead to no more than four days.
“The goddamned heat and dust and breathing all that ash was bad enough,” Donegan grumbled at the smoky little fire he and some of the other scouts somehow kept burning in the fury of the storm that visited itself upon them that night. “But rain and mud and wet wool blankets can take the starch right out of a strong man.”
With only one thin gray army blanket in addition to his saddle blanket, Seamus shuddered with the cold that pierced a man to his marrow. He was not alone, for that August night in the valley of the Rosebud, Surgeon Bennett’s thermometer fell far below freezing by dawn on the tenth.
Captain Emil Adams strode through the bivouac of his C Troop, Fifth Cavalry, rousting his men from the hard, cold ground by telling them exactly what they did not want to hear in that thick Prussian accent of his.
“Vake up, boys! Surgeon tol’t me his termometer says it was zero few minutes ago.”
“What thermometer?” asked Second Lieutenant Edward L. Keyes.
For no more than a moment that question confounded the old German. Then he smiled wryly and replied in that colicky bullfrog accent of his, “Veil—any tammed termometer t’at vas tammed fool to get here! Und’stan’t?”
The laughter that greeted Adams’s declaration served to warm many of the men as they rolled from their frost-covered blankets and stomped about on frozen limbs to greet the sunrise and to water their horses at the banks of the Rosebud, where they discovered a thick rime of ice crusted along the creek.
After marching a few miles north that Thursday morning beneath a most welcome sun, with all those hooves and boots kicking up great columns of dust and stifling ash, Washakie’s scouts discovered a recent campsite, its sun-dance lodge as well as some buffalo-hide lodges still standing. Naw at last they were getting close enough that the scent of their prey was strong in their nostrils.
At noon Crook ordered a brief halt at the mouth of Greenleaf Creek, right where Grouard’s detail of scouts found the hostiles’ trail turning due east—headed for the Tongue. The half-breed stood with Donegan, Cody, and many of the others while Crook, Merritt, and Carr debated their next move. A murmur of no little excitement came rippling through their midday bivouac from the north.
“Indians!”
“By the devil!” Crook growled, slapping his gauntlet against his leg, whirling on his battalion commanders. “Form up! Form up!”
No one really needed to shout orders—the infantry was already coming into line and the cavalry were already catching up their horses. Panic and fear, the jingle of harness, and the slap of carbine against McClellan thundered through that valley as noncoms barked and screamed and formed up the commands, making them ready to receive the enemy’s charge.
Behind that racket rose the screeches and war cries, the drone of war songs and the beating of hand-held drums, as the allies quickly made their medicine before they would ride off to fight their ancient enemies. Washakie’s scouts and the Ute were leaping atop their ponies, whipping the animals in a merciless gallop to the north hoping to catch a glimpse of the Sioux who had stymied the Three Stars Crook, then killed the Long Hair named Custer.
Bile clogged the back of Donegan’s throat. God-and-bloody-damn, he thought. This was just as things had been that morning Crook’s command had made their halt along the banks of the Rosebud back on the seventeenth of June.
Here we are again: not just caught flat-footed with our pants down again—but caught completely napping!
*The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 7, Dying Thunder.
Chapter 27
10 August 1876
Later from Crazy Horse
CHEYENNE, July 29—Previous reports via the Missouri River agencies are in part confirmed by news received at Fort Laramie from Red Cloud today. Runners have arrived at that agency, said to have come from Crazy Horse’s band of Menneconjous, and stating that that chief, with a portion of his band, had left Sitting Bull’s domain and are en route to the agencies avowedly to treat for peace. The turning over of the agencies at Red Cloud and Spotted Tail has not been without difficulty. While a majority of the Indians are disposed to submit gracefully there is quite a number who express dissatisfaction at having soldiers placed over them, and a final council is being held at Red Cloud today.
Some dissatisfaction is felt by the Indians at the meager supply of food, which consists entirely of corn, flour and beef. They insist on sugar, coffee, and tobacco, in fulfillment of stipulations, and further attributing the departure from the agencies of those who have joined the hostiles to this fact rather than a desire for war.
If Crook had put Eugene Carr in charge of this column with himself as scout, brooded an unhappy Bill Cody, why—they’d likely be about the business of catching the fleeing Sioux by now. But, he considered with a sigh, even though he and the Fifth’s lieutenant colonel shared the same mind in that respect, and even though Crook had him assigned as chief of scouts, no one had thought to ask Cody for anything more than the most minimal advice.
Thank God for the sun that had warmed the air by midmorning.
On either side of Cody the valley began to widen, the scorched hills rolling away toward the striated bluffs that rose like yellow-and-red walls on the east and west. Far to the north, perhaps as much as ten miles or more, Bill spotted the wisps of a distant dust column. He would keep his eye on it as he probed far ahead of the marching infantry, Merritt’s cavalry bringing up the rear behind them. Keep his eyes moving across the slopes of the timbered hills dotted with pine and juniper and stunted cedar. Once again the breeze came in company with the dawn that morning to clear the air of the ash and sm
oke. How good it was to breathe this elixir of the high plains.
Just before beginning their march earlier that morning, Carr himself had commented, “The grandest country in the world for Indian and buffalo now. Two years hence it will be the grandest place for cattle.”
After covering some twelve miles since leaving last night’s bivouac, Cody began to feel suspicious about that column of dust rising from the northern horizon. After loping the buckskin back so that he could quietly report his discovery to the general, Crook ordered him ahead to determine what the expedition’s column might be facing.
Atop the next rise Bill halted, pulled out his field glasses, and trained them on the distance. Sure enough, whatever moved beneath that thick cloud of dust and ash was slowly covering ground. He waited a few minutes, watching the cloud, unable to see anything but the dust column for the intervening hills.
Hearing the yips and hammer of hoofbeats behind him, Bill turned to find some oncoming Shoshone. They too had spotted the strangers in the distance and come racing forward. Behind them charged the handful of Crow. Farther back more of the Shoshone, the Bannock, and a dozen or more of the Ute. On either side of Cody they came to a halt and fell silent. For a long, eerie moment, they regarded that cloud now rising no more than six miles in the distance. Then with a sudden, concerted explosion, the entire group yelped and savagely wrenched their ponies about-face, kicking moccasins into the animals’ flanks and sprinting back toward the head of the column. There Bill figured the allies would hurriedly make their medicine: painting, taking covers off shields, checking weapons, and singing their medicine as they prepared to ride into battle.
As he again brought the field glasses to his eyes, Cody made a little sense out of the distant, antlike figures, figuring them to be feathered and fringed horsemen charging about. Behind them came many, many more—some moving left, others speeding to the right, those in the center circling up, all clearly in preparation for battle. But as those feathered horsemen out in front were joined by units forming up row by row by row, it gradually dawned on Cody that they might in fact be Terry’s command.
For several more minutes he continued to watch in that warmth of the morning’s sun, studying the middistance through his field glasses until at last he saw the wheeled caissons of the Gatlings and the Rodmans brought up to center, their gun crews deployed in readiness. On the rise and fall of the gusty wind Bill caught faint snatches of blaring bugles about the time he saw far to the rear of the artillery those dirty canvas bows of white-topped wagons hurrying into a defensive corral.
“I’ll be go to hell right here!” he exclaimed. Then turned with a start as the hammer of hooves interrupted his muses.
Coming up strong behind him were at least three dozen of the allies, by this time fully painted and decked in their finest battle array. In a clatter of noise and billowing cloud of ash, they skidded to a halt around the renowned Buffalo Bill.
“Not the Sioux,” he announced with an impish smile on his face.
But when they returned only quizzical looks of total disbelief, he realized none of them understood. Stuffing the field glasses back into a saddlebag, Bill put his hands to work with sign talk for the allies.
“Not Sioux. Soldiers. Walk-a-heaps. Pony soldiers. Their scouts—Sparrowhawk and Corn Indian scouts.”
For a moment they seemed dubious of his assertion. Then suddenly one of the Shoshone laughed and nodded, saying something to the others as his hands signed.
“Good joke the white soldiers do on us! This good joke for us to make war on soldiers—and not on Lakota!”
When the rest of them all had their laugh, cheering behind them at new arrivals reaching the scene, Cody told them, “You stay. I go. I go talk to their soldier chief.”
“We come with you,” signed the big Shoshone.
“No,” and Bill shook his head too. “The soldier scouts think we are Lakota. I want no shooting.”
The Snake grinned hugely and bobbed his head. “Yes—they think we are Lakota. We think they are Lakota, and we ready to fight. Good joke the white man do on us!”
Leaving the allied scouts on the crest of that hill, Cody put spurs to the big buckskin and loped north toward the distant figures. As he drew nearer, he clearly made out the Indian trackers riding back and forth, back and forth in the vanguard, giving their little ponies their second wind. Immediately behind them he saw the guidons snapping on the sharp breeze. Company by company, ten in all.
Second Cavalry to the right. Those would be Brisbin’s men. And covering most of the ground on the left, brought front into line for battle, were the remnants of Reno’s Seventh.
How they must be smarting, Bill brooded as he closed on a mile of the distant horsemen. They were butchered, they lost half of their officer corps—and when they saw us, they figured they were finally going to get their revenge. How disappointed they must be seeing me instead of Crazy Horse making for their Unes. All those men mauled by the Lakota—chomping at the bit to get in their licks.
Three quarters of a mile out he saw the wide front of cavalry bring their carbines forward on the black leather slings. Fragments of distant orders bawled over the cavalry units floated his way on the warming winds. In throbbing cadence with the buckskin loping beneath him, Bill rose in the stirrups, tore the wide-brimmed, cream-colored hat from his curls, and began to wave it at the end of his arm like a semaphore.
In a matter of heartbeats a half-dozen riders broke away from the cavalry front and headed in his direction under a single headquarters flag. Bill slapped the hat back on his head and put the spurs to the buckskin. The horse leaped away, racing into a ground-dizzying gallop. In moments he reined up, raising dust and ash, as the officer in the lead signaled a halt.
“Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Cody asked, looking over the men for any familiar face.
“Captain Thomas B. Weir, Seventh U.S. Cavalry,” the dark-eyed man replied with a snap. “Just who the hell are you?”
Bill swept the hat from his head once more and made a graceful showman’s bow of it. “William F. Cody, Captain. At your service. I bring General Crook’s compliments.”
“Buffalo Bill Cody?” asked the standard-bearer in a gush.
Weir silenced the soldier with an obsidian glare and immediately demanded, “What are you doing out here?” “Guiding Crook’s column, Captain.”
Weir attempted to peer over Cody’s shoulder. “General Crook? That’s his column coming along behind you?”
“So it was the Wyoming column raising the dust yonder,” a second officer said. He nudged his horse forward and held out his hand. “Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey. Seventh Cavalry.”
“Thank you for your courtesy, Lieutenant,” Cody said as he shook the offered hand. “Sorry to hear how the Sioux butchered your regiment on the Little Bighorn.”
“We’ll have our revenge,” Godfrey swore.
“Only a matter of time, ain’t it?” Bill sat back in the saddle. “Looks like you fellas were ready for battle.”
“Our scouts reported seeing what they took to be the enemy south of us—marching our way,” Weir explained.
With a grin Bill replied, “And we saw what we first took to be the Sioux north of us, heading straight for our line of march. So that leaves one big question unanswered, fellas: just where in bloody hell did the Sioux go?”
Troops Coming Forward
NEW YORK, July 29—Three hundred soldiers for the Sioux country will leave tomorrow morning.
WASHINGTON, July 29—One hundred and twentyone recruits are to be forwarded to regiments in Dakota and Colorado, and 44 to General Terry’s command.
The Secretary of War has sent to the House a dispatch of General Sheridan, recommending the increase of companies of Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Seventh Cavalry to one hundred men each, as was done for two regiments on the Rio Grande.
Gen. Sheridan estimates that the number required to fill the regiments of cavalry on the frontier and in Texas to the
maximum of 100 men to each company will raise 2,500 men, at the expense of ․1,534,800. Gen. Sherman prefers the regular enlistments to volunteers.
“General—Terry’s got wagons enough to move at least a corps,” Cody growled as he eased out of the saddle near Crook’s waiting command.
“What do you mean?” John Bourke asked, watching the showman and scout wag his head.
“Were they really gonna try to catch the Sioux hauling around lumber like that?”
Cody put into words a lot of the sentiment felt among the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition when the two columns finally joined there in the valley of the Rosebud where the Indian trail turned sharply to the east at the mouth of Greenleaf Creek. The enemy had squirted out between the jaws of Sheridan’s nutcracker. The Sioux and Cheyenne were running free.
Angry to discover that his prey had escaped, perhaps even more nettled that he had been captured by General Alfred Terry, Crook ordered his command into bivouac and sat down to await Terry’s arrival. Bourke agreed—let Terry come to Crook.
“This command is now too large,” the general grumbled as he sat in the shade to wait. “We won’t find any Indians while a force like this sticks together.”
Within the hour a headquarters contingent from the Dakota and Montana command rode into camp under their guidons and regimental banners. Crook’s personal cook, Private Phillips, gathered up what eating utensils he could beg off the officers and, upon a strip of canvas spread upon the ground, served Terry’s staff a lunch of the best Crook could offer—hard bread and salt pork—as the two field commanders talked of what they must now do. That evening Terry returned the favor and played host, spreading before Crook’s staff a banquet feast, complete with a variety of meats as well as canned vegetables.
When the frank discussions began in earnest after supper, Terry pointedly asked, “General, why didn’t you in form me that you were changing your plan of action, going to sit out a wait for reinforcements?”
Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876 tp-10 Page 30
