“I’m afraid I forgot my cup,” Royall whined.
“No matter,” Crook cheered. “We’ll pass the flask until it’s empty!”
“Hear, hear!” some of them cried as Crook put the flask to his lips and drank.
“A happy birthday to you again, General!” Merritt added when he was handed the flask.
“And a joyful round of thanks for sharing your liquor with us!” Carr said. “You’ve been keeping this quite a secret, eh?”
“I knew there’d come a day to celebrate,” Crook replied. “If I hadn’t caught the Sioux by the time my birthday rolled around, then I figured I’d have myself one happy little celebration anyway.”
Sitting there that night in the glow of the firelight reflected from the rock shelf, watching the warmth flickering on those beaming faces, John again marveled at George Crook. He willingly suffered everything the most common soldier suffered. He ate no better, slept no warmer. Perhaps because he had never considered himself above the privations he asked of his men, General Crook never failed to silence most all the criticism leveled at him for making just this sort of rugged, grueling march.
Once more Bourke felt proud to be part of the general’s staff, prouder still that Crook had asked him to “club it” together—to share their blankets for shelter, share their blankets for warmth.
Late that night after the others had gone and the rain beat down on the rock shelf above them, John tried to sleep, his back against Crook’s.
“General?”
“Yes, John.”
“You think those Sioux ahead of us are as hungry as we are?”
Crook didn’t answer right off. When he did, he said, “We’ve seen evidence that they’ve been eating their own dogs, their ponies, John. But it really doesn’t matter how hungry they are now. Only thing that matters is how hungry they’re going to be after we destroy their villages and drive them off with nothing else but the clothes on their backs.”
Near one A.M. that Saturday morning, 9 September, the sergeants passed among Mills’s command, giving the order to resaddle and mount up in the cold and darkness. With chilled, trembling hands the troops completed the tasks and formed up, finally moving out close to two-thirty. A thick fog roiled along the damp ground as the men inched ahead through a swirling, misting rain.
Grouard halted Mills a mile out from the village, where the captain explained their organization for the dawn attack, then deployed the troops.
Emmet Crawford was to lead fifty-six dismounted troopers to the right flank, while Adolphus H. Von Luettwitz would take another fifty-two dismounted men to the left flank, both wings to spread out with skirmishing intervals between each soldier.
With the village thus securely “surrounded” from the north, Frederick Schwatka would move forward with his twenty-five mounted troopers, accompanied by reporter Robert Strahorn, and once it was light enough to see the front sights of their carbines, they were to charge with their pistols drawn—straight through the heart of the enemy camp, stampeding the enemy’s ponies as they went, planning to re-form on the far side.
John Bubb and the remaining twenty-five soldiers acting as horse-holders would remain in the rear with Tom Moore and his fifteen packers, along with newsman Reuben Davenport—all with orders to dash forward at the first sound of gunfire to close the noose around the village.
If their surprise-attack was a success, they would drive off most of the warriors and capture some of the hostiles, and they could start plundering the village for its food supply to be used by Crook’s column before putting the rest of the Sioux property to the torch. As those men sat in the rainy darkness waiting for dawn, each one knew this could well be the first victory over the enemy for the U.S. Army in the Sioux campaign, a war begun back in March along the ice-clogged Powder River.
“But should the enemy prove too strong for us,” Mills said before he deployed his officers, “you are to unite and take a high piece of ground, somewhere that we might put up a strong defense until relieved.”
“Relieved by Crook, Colonel?” asked Schwatka.
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
The prospect made Donegan shudder, recalling that bare ridge, the high ground above the Little Bighorn where he and Frank Grouard had stumbled across the carcasses of more than a hundred horses, where they had had to thread their way through that graveyard of a butchered battalion of fighting men.
“Take the high ground and hold it,” was how the captain repeated his order.
And with that Mills moved his three wings into the dark.
Canapegi Wi. The Moon When Leaves Turn Brown.
A season when the buffalo berries were ripe and the women gathered them to begin making pemmican for those winter months when the hunting would be hard and the bellies empty.
Their bellies were already very empty, brooded American Horse. The more they wandered this direction and that to stay out of the way of the two soldier armies, the less game they found. Already the men had to kill most of the dogs, and a few of the poorer ponies. Just so that the little ones would have something to eat.
More and more there was talk about going south, all the way back to Red Cloud’s agency. There, more argued every day, the old and the sick and the very young could find something to eat. The white man’s flour and his pig meat. No real choice to a Lakota warrior.
Still, with each new day American Horse found himself thinking more on it, for the sake of these people.
Such a thing was all but laughable to a warrior. To run before the soldiers now was all but unthinkable. To retreat back to the agencies?
The soldiers had come probing into Lakota hunting ground from two directions. But his people had stopped the soldiers of Three Stars on the Rosebud. Then they had defeated Limping Soldier’s army on the Greasy Grass. Yet the white man did not leave them alone.
Even now the army marched on the backtrail of this little village, harrying his people the way buffalo wolves will follow along in the wake of a herd, waiting for a calf to be abandoned by its cow, waiting for an old bull to fall, unable to rise.
Although the seven great circles had begun slowly to separate days after defeating the soldiers along the Greasy Grass, nonetheless most of the clans and warrior bands had migrated in the same general direction. First to the south toward the mountains, then veering off east toward the Tongue, and finally setting a course for the north once more. After crossing Pumpkin Creek the bands had splintered, by and large, for the first time along the Powder near the mouth of Blue Stone Creek. Here the Shahiyena of the North broke off and continued for the White Mountains* under their chief Dull Knife.
Hunting as they continued east, the Lakota warriors set fires in that country they were abandoning not so much to deprive the soldier horses of something to eat but more because it helped the new grass grow early the following spring. Every summer they had done the same, for as long as American Horse could remember. It always meant good grass next year for their strong little ponies as well as for the buffalo, who would migrate to this country once more on the winds. Most of the Lakota bands wandered on east, fording Beaver Creek and on to the Thick Timber River† as they slowly ambled toward the various agencies close by the Great Muddy River itself.
Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa, Crazy Horse’s Hunkpatila, the Sans Arc under Spotted Eagle, even American Horse’s own Miniconjou—other chiefs too—like Black Moon, Four Horns, and No Neck—all the bands had maintained contact throughout the last two moons of migration. In the nearby country even now those other bands remained ready to lend assistance in the event of an emergency, though they must travel and hunt separately. Better to break into small camps for hunting now that game was becoming scarce.
There was still a long way to go before his people would reach Red Cloud’s agency.
Before then perhaps they could force the white man to give up the chase, to clear out of Lakota country for good. Without a fight—this would be all anyone could ask!
After two long, hard fi
ghts on the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass they did not have that many bullets left. Even with the number of weapons and bullets taken from the soldier bodies—the Lakota did not have enough to make another big fight of it against the white man. Better to stay out of his way if they could.
But while they avoided the soldiers, it made sense to remain ready and watchful. And arm themselves for that day they might use up all their bullets. So it was that many of the older warriors taught the young men how to cut iron arrow points from old frying pans and iron kettles.
A good fighting season this had been—driving off Three Star’s soldiers from the Rosebud, crushing the rest who came to fulfill Sitting Bull’s great vision. Among all the bands the Lakota had lost fewer than ten-times-ten warriors altogether in both great battles! So even though the lonely women had mourned, the camps had much more to celebrate.
Those had been good days to die! The very best his people had ever known.
Now roaming scouts kept the camps informed of where the two armies were marching. They knew each time the two armies were reinforced by more soldiers. And they knew when the two joined into one. It wasn’t long, however, that reports came saying that half of the soldiers were staying along the Elk River.* And the others were coming east, heading for the Owl River,† led by the traders’ sons‡ who were scouting for the soldiers. Traitors such as they would likely follow any trail they could find.
It was not a hard thing to find a trail, American Horse scoffed. After all, all the big clans were here. Crazy Horse’s people were but a few miles away to the south. Even Sitting Bull had come down from Killdeer Mountain in the north with his Hunkpapa faithful, camped close by to the east a ways, where the old medicine man mourned the death of a son who never recovered after he was kicked in the head by a pony during the waning of the last moon.
In his Miniconjou camp of more than twenty-six-times-ten, the chief even included a handful of Shahiyena who had splintered off from Dull Knife, a few Oglalla under war chief Roman Nose, and even some Brule lodges— all drifting south for Bear Butte in the Paha Sapa.* Among these other bands he was known as Iron Plume, sometimes called Iron Shield or Black Shield. But among his people, his own familial clan, he had long been known as American Horse. While his mother had been Miniconjou, his father, Smoke, had been Oglalla. Long ago in the dawn of the white man’s Holy Road far to the south, Smoke had been one of the first Lakota met by Francis Parkman. After his father’s death American Horse had remained with his mother, living with her people.
Not long ago at twilight he had gone out to look over the village, to look beyond the hide lodges and brush wickiups at the knotting of the ponies here and there on the surrounding hillsides. American Horse liked this time of day best, when the lodges lit up from inside, beckoning a man into their warmth—like a woman raising the buffalo robe to show her naked body to her man. Three-times-ten, plus seven more … those buffalo-hide lodges stood close together in a narrow, three-pronged depression of coulees running toward the Rabbit Lip Creek, all of it sheltered from the cold north winds by a grassy ridge. Across the timbered stream to the south another grassy embankment rose into the broken countryside at the base of steep clay and limestone buttes. For the most part the lodges themselves would stand concealed from soldier eyes, hidden by the chalk-colored ridges that rose on the north, west, and south of their camp. Those bluffs*lay in a near perfect north-to-south line for some twenty miles, and spreading anywhere from two to six miles in width, all of them covered for nearly half their height with an emerald cap of pine and cedar. Here in the bottom his people camped out of the wind, with good timber for their fires, plenty of grass for their horses, and cold, clear water flowing down from the high places.
In this camp on the Mashtincha Putin† lived warriors who like hundreds of others had made one by one the hundreds of the soldiers of Sitting Bull’s vision fall on that sunny ridge back in the Moon of Fat Horses. Here lived Miniconjou war chiefs named Red Horse, Dog Necklace, and Iron Thunder. Men who in these greatest days of their people were at the peak of their power.
But why was it that American Horse saw little future in fleeing to the reservations for the harsh winter and escaping to the free prairie come spring? How long could they go on like this? The great herds were shrinking, just as the clear, pure water holes in the last hot breathless days of summer shrank to muddy wallows.
American Horse shuddered with the chill gust of wind here on this high ground where he looked down upon the lamplike lodges, beckoning him with their warmth. The cold and the wet had driven his people south toward the agencies earlier than usual this hunting season. Unrelenting storms and drenching rain had convinced them they should make for Bear Butte, from there an easy journey on to Red Cloud’s and Spotted Tail’s agencies to make ready for winter.
To go in and beg the white man for flour and pig meat for their families … what utter humiliation that was for warriors whose eyes had witnessed such greatness in turning back Three Stars on the Rosebud, such victory in crushing the nameless soldier chief who brought his white men prancing down on their great village beside the Greasy Grass.
With the rise of the wind American Horse pulled the heavy buffalo robe about his shoulders, enjoying the sensuous feel of its hairy warmth on his cheeks. Into his lungs he drew the fragrance on the wind, smelled the smoke from those many fires below him, kettles on the boil, supper warming.
Up from the creek bottom floated the agonized cry of Little Eagle’s daughter.
Her time had come. Her child ready to be born. What pain he heard in her cries drifting all the way up here, where they reverberated from the chalky walls. This was the only crying he wanted to hear from the lips of his people: the birth of their children into freedom. No more did American Horse want to hear the wails of women in mourning, the whimper of little children so hungry and cold that their eyes sank into their sockets. No more did he want to hear the cries of the old ones unable to keep up on their bloodied feet as the villages fled from the marching soldiers.
Never before had they so soundly defeated the white man. Perhaps it was true that these were their finest days. But, he thought, if this was indeed their finest season, then it could mean only one thing: that from here on life would only get worse for the Lakota.
The wind shifted again, a strange sound carried on it.
American Horse looked back to the north, smelling that wind a moment, wondering. Then peered to the west. No, not from the west. Only from the north. If they ever came at all, he convinced himself, they would come out of the north.
Then he pulled the buffalo fur over his ears and trudged down the sodden hillside to that small gathering of lodges. Thinking, hoping, and praying to the Great Mystery that His people had not yet seen their zenith.
Knowing in the pit of him that perhaps they had already visited the last of those finest days.
* The Big Horn Mountains.
† The Little Missouri River.
* The Yellowstone River.
† The Moreau River.
‡ Baptiste Garnier, Frank Grouard, and Baptiste Pourier.
* Slim Buttes
† Rabbit Lip or Hairy Lip Creek, present-day Gap Creek, a tributary of Rabbit Creek, itself a tributary of the nearby Moreau River
Chapter 38
9 September 1876
His nose felt like it was as big as his boot. Dribbling, Seamus wiped it on the sleeve of his canvas mackinaw.
God, did that hurt!
Raw and angry, sore beyond belief. His nose itself was as red as these buffalo berries clinging to the nearby bushes.
But at least he wasn’t so sick that he couldn’t climb into the saddle. Not so immobilized with pain that the only way he could move was to lie on a travois pulled along by one of Tom Moore’s mules.
“Ready, boys!” whispered Lieutenant Schwatka as he rode along their front.
Atop a sloping ridge formed by two shallow coulees that eventually united at the north edge of the village, the cavalr
y horses pawed the earth. Weary, all but done in—the animals wanted to move, or get the damned weight off their backs. One or the other. The animals had waited out most of the night grazing. They should have enough bottom in them to make this short charge through the village.
“Coming light, Lieutenant!” some trooper said down to Donegan’s right.
“Steady now! Steady!”
He watched Schwatka look to the east. Von Leuttwitz was in position somewhere over there, somewhere still out of sight in the murky light. Over where the dawn was just beginning to balloon around them. Then the lieutenant glanced to the west, as if he expected to catch a glimpse of Crawford’s men.
Minutes ago all three units of Mills’s attack had come to a halt after using up more than an hour to grope their way out of the deep ravine and quietly inch forward together across the sticky, muddy prairie beginning at the foot of Slim Buttes, a long, craggy ridge that dominated and towered over the entire landscape. Frank Grouard led them through the frosty darkness toward the village he had scouted, where he had stolen two ponies. When the half-breed had Lieutenant Schwatka halt his twenty-five, the scout disappeared for a few minutes before he reappeared with another half-dozen Sioux ponies.
“More of ’em up there,” Frank said in a low hush as he drove the six ponies to the rear right through the midst of Schwatka’s mounted troopers. “You go on, Lieutenant. I’ll be back soon as I hide these away in a coulee for safekeeping.”
With the coming light Seamus recognized the outlines of more ponies grazing here and there in their front. Still some distance off, the bulk of the herd cropped the wet grass, completely indifferent to the soldiers. Raising his face into the cold breeze that tortured his nose, he found the wind was still in their favor.
They moved up a bit more, halted again, nearing the fringe of the herd now. Beyond, farther still, rose the tops of the first lodges. Silent. Hulking. Only the barest wisps of firesmoke stealing from the upper swirl of lodgepoles. Schwatka deployed his twenty-five about the time Grouard reappeared. He rode up and stopped somewhere on the far left flank. From where Donegan sat atop his horse at the right end of the formation, he wasn’t sure he could pick out the half-breed in the dim light.
Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876 tp-10 Page 41
