Wolf Mountain Moon

by Terry C. Johnston

  Then an old sergeant hollered from among H Company’s soldiers, “And we ain’t seen one of them bastards on the far bank in over a hour—pardon my French, sir!”

  “You’re damn well excused, Sergeant!” Baldwin declared. “Officers’ call! Officers’ call!”

  They came out of the swirling, brutally icy mist to surround him like half-white, half-woolen ghosts, shivering and stamping, slapping their arms around themselves, most faces no more than a pair of eyes peeking out from above a wool muffler.

  With one of his muskrat gauntlets Baldwin pulled down his thick scarf so he could speak again. “Gentlemen—I’m of the mind that the Hunkpapa are no longer a threat should we elect to retreat from our breastworks.”

  “W-where to, Lieutenant?” Hinkle asked plaintively.

  “Only one place to go, men.”

  Rousseau inquired, “Back to Fort Peck?”

  He turned to answer the officer. “That’s right. We don’t have near enough food, nor did we bring any shelters along. I’m afraid our fires won’t last much longer in this wind. And our steward tells me the mercury in his thermometer’s frozen at the bottom of the bulb. That means it’s forty below … or worse. So I’ve come to the decision that if we don’t move now—we never will get out.”

  “N-never … never get out?”

  Baldwin spoke more quietly now. “I don’t want any of you to alarm your men, but I’ve been told these high-plains blizzards can last two—maybe three—days.”

  Hinkle tucked his head against the wind, saying, “W-we’d be dead by then, sir!”

  “That’s why I want you to prepare your men to move out,” Frank explained. “The first thing is for your companies to use what fires we still have going so the men can cook and eat all the food that’s left among your outfits.”

  Rousseau shook his head. “You want us to eat, sir? B-begging pardon—”

  “Yes, every man must stuff himself until he can eat no more,” Baldwin said emphatically. “Your lives may depend upon just how much food you have in your belly to keep the furnace going inside once we start our return march … which means facing into that wind.”

  The officers knotted around him began to murmur and nod, understanding.

  “And …,” Baldwin started, then paused a moment as he struggled with the thick ball of sentiment at the back of his throat, “I want each of you to tell your companies how proud I am of them this day. How damned proud I am to be leading this battalion.”

  “P-proud, s-sir?” Rousseau asked in a quaky voice, teeth chattering.

  “Yes,” Frank replied. “Tell all the men they can be most proud of themselves for driving the enemy out of its village and into this terrible storm. Tell them they’ve held off the warriors who butchered Custer’s command. And … tell your men they’ve started the beginning of the end for Sitting Bull and the rest of Custer’s murderers.”

  Chapter 9

  7 December 1876

  Ever since the death of his friend, Mitch Bouyer, at the hands of the Lakota last summer at the Greasy Grass, Tom Leforge had been performing the duties of guide and interpreter around the old Crow agency. Like Bouyer, Leforge was a squaw man, known to his adopted tribe as Horse Rider.

  In early fall he had ridden with “Braided Beard” Crook when the army went looking for the Indians who had slaughtered Custer’s soldiers. But after the sour-tasting victory at Slim Buttes, when Crook’s campaign fizzled in the relentless autumn rains and they had to survive on horse meat, Tom had ridden back home to his wife, Cherry.

  Now he poured himself another cup of that awful rebrewed coffee the soldiers made for themselves here at the Tongue River post. Leforge carried it to the frosted window and peered out at the winter night, blowing steam off the top of his coffee tin. Outside, a real prairie norther was whipping itself up. Folks from back east would call it a blizzard.

  But out here they just called it winter hell.

  As Leforge blew on the surface of his coffee, the window-pane clouded up momentarily, and when it slowly began to clear, the first thing Tom saw was his reflection in the glass.

  Yes, some might call him a squaw man. But those were the sort of men who had never come to the Yellowstone Valley, never spent any time among the River Crow, the sort of man to whom money was more important than happiness. Tom Leforge was a happy man with a beautiful wife and a young son to boot.

  That autumn in Montana Territory the days were balmy and the nights crisp in preparation for winter. While Cherry crushed the chokecherries, pit and all, within her seasoned meat to make her special pemmican, Tom rocked their boy and talked over war exploits with warriors who visited their lodge—just generally busting at the seams, so happy was he.

  Then a few weeks ago Second Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous had shown up with an impressive escort from the soldier post down the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Tongue.

  “Leforge, I am looking for you!” the officer called out as soon as he spotted the squaw man among those crowding the agency grounds.

  Not all that sure why the soldier would be looking for him, Leforge asked suspiciously, “What I supposed to done?”

  “Seems you haven’t done enough, Leforge,” Hargous replied.

  “I ain’t done enough?”

  The lieutenant licked his lips and said, “General Nelson Miles is requesting more Crow scouts. And I knew you’d be the man to act as interpreter—perhaps even lead the brigade yourself. If it makes any difference to your boys, General Miles says it’s all right with him for ’em to bring their women and young’uns along too.”

  “Who you gonna fight this time?” Tom asked.

  “Same as last time, Leforge—the Sioux.”

  “Got more soldiers than Custer this time?” he asked. “Got enough to kill off with hunger like Crook done?”

  Hargous had just grinned at that, his eyes dancing over the buffalo-hide and canvas lodges a moment before coming back to rest on Leforge. “You don’t need thousands of soldiers when you got the right man leading you. We’ve got the right man this time, Leforge.”

  The lieutenant went on to explain that Crook had retired from the field after his disastrous horse-meat march and might well not be putting another column into the field that season. Which was just as well, Hargous claimed, because the Fifth Infantry was on the Yellowstone now and would stay on through the entire winter. They planned to pursue the hostile bands of Sitting Bull, giving the Sioux no rest. But to do that, Miles needed some scouts.

  “How many?” Tom asked.

  “How many can you round up quick?”

  “Army pay the same as before?”

  Hargous nodded. “Yep.”

  “Shouldn’t take me more’n a day or two. You care to wait?”

  “I’ll wait, Leforge. You get me some good scouts for General Miles.”

  Two days later the whole outfit started for the Tongue River Cantonment to work for the Bear Coat and his walk-a-heaps. A few women ended up coming along with their men, but Cherry had decided to stay behind at the agency, with the boy being so young and all. Tom had been lonely for her ever since.

  Working with the army had its good days of scouting and fighting, and it had its bad days of poor food, lousy coffee, cold and drafty cabins, and long periods of next to nothing to do. Back among the River Crow he could be chewing on a buffalo rib and drinking good agency coffee, not to mention that Cherry kept their lodge warm and homey no matter how hard the wolf-winds howled outside at the smoke flaps.

  But here he stood at the frosted window, the winds beginning to whip and howl outside, thinking on the young Crow scout named Curly—remembering how the youngster had shown up across the river from Colonel John Gibbon’s troops after the Greasy Grass fight, saying he was one of the last to see Custer alive. And that made him think again on his good friend—Mitch Bouyer, gone the way of the Star Road now, killed with Custer’s bunch in the Long Hair’s last fight.

  Had it not been that Tom was nursing a broken collarbone, G
ibbon would have chosen him to go off with Mitch and the other Crow scouts who had ridden with Custer into that hot valley … that one very good friend never rode out of.

  Chances were, Tom knew, he would not be standing here this cold winter night looking through that pane of isinglass at the snow swirl across the sky, blotting out a thin rind of moon. Chances were damned good he would never dream of seeing Cherry ever again—much less holding her.

  Chances were …

  What the hell was that out there coming down to the ford on the north side of the river?

  With his bare hand he quickly swiped the fog and frost from inside the windowpane. Tom blinked, squinting, trying to focus across the distance in those first terrifying moments of a winter blizzard settling upon the land.

  A lone horseman!

  Leforge watched him dismount stiffly and wave. And when he hadn’t gotten the attention of the soldiers operating the ferry in the cold and the dark, the stranger pulled out his pistol and fired. The muzzle flash was bright as a falling star in that darkness. He fired again—then things began to happen. A trio of soldiers yanked and pulled, getting their ferry over to the north bank, where the horseman stepped on, then pulled his reluctant horse on behind him. The soldiers turned right around and started pulling for the south bank of the Yellowstone.

  Over his shoulder Leforge called out, “Coffee, soldier.”

  “What’s that?” asked the man with a three-day growth of beard.

  “Get me another mug of your rotten coffee.”

  “Rotten, you say?”

  Tom drained the last of his and slammed down the tin on the plank table behind him. Wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, he held out his other hand to receive the steaming cup the unkempt soldier had just poured. “Damn right it’s rotten. But your coffee might just be what that rider out there needs right about now.”

  The horseman caused no little stir with his surprising arrival late that cold night as the blizzard thundered down upon the Yellowstone country. Soldiers bundled in their long coats, or with wool blankets pulled over their shoulders and heads, appeared here and there at the doors to the log barracks, some holding aloft candle lanterns and Betty lamps whipped in the sharp wind.

  Then the rider’s voice croaked from the darkness, “Word from Captain Snyder!”

  “Snyder? Same Snyder out with General Miles?”

  The horse and rider came closer. “The same, soldier.”

  Then an officer pushed into the flickering light to demand, “Who carries this word?”

  “Kelly.”

  A moment more and the rider stepped into the light of lamps and a single sputtering torch wavering in the icy wind. Shards of frozen snow blew sideways. No longer was it coming down. It was snowing sideways.

  Funny, Tom thought now. All along he had it figured for Yellowstone Kelly. Wasn’t many a man who had the bottom and the grit to tackle a prairie blizzard. The horseman’s entire face was a layer of ghostly frost, pale as a civilized-folks’ bed-sheet—eyebrows and eyelashes frozen solid. That huge bearskin hat of his was pulled down about as far as he could get it. Only the chertlike eyes were visible above the frost-caked beard until the horseman pulled away the length of muffler wrapped from chin to nose.

  “Here—you could use this, Kelly.” Tom stepped through the others, holding up the coffee tin, a wispy banner of steam trailing off the dark, glittering surface of the liquid.

  Dropping his reins, Kelly accepted the tin, cupping it in both his horsehide gauntlets. Blowing the steam off quickly, he brought it to his lips as the snowstorm grew in intensity around them and the soldier fiddle-footed in the cold, anxious to know what was news with Miles and his bunch. The steam went a long way to melting the frost on his mustache, turning it from white to auburn, drops of water forming on the whiskers, then spilling into his cup.

  “B-bless you, Leforge,” Yellowstone said. He sighed, his eyes half closing. “Ahhh, m-my kingdom for some c-coffee.”

  “A mite cold out, ain’t it?” Leforge asked.

  Kelly blew across the surface of his cup. “Just a mite. Is it true what I heard from the general?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You were to bring in some Crow.”

  “I’m that man,” and Leforge smiled.

  Sipping at more of the coffee, Kelly asked, “How many you bring with you?”

  “Enough to go chasing a war party or two of them Sitting Bull Injuns.”

  “When’d you get here?”

  “Almost two weeks ago, the soldiers tell me.”

  “Hasn’t been busy around here, has it, Leforge?”

  “If you call picking soldier lice out’n my clothes keeping busy—we ain’t been real busy at all.”

  Kelly smiled and kicked his right leg to the left, dropping out of the saddle, still cradling the coffee cup with both hands. “See to my horse, will you, soldier?”

  The young private leaped at the opportunity. “Glad to, Mr. Kelly.”

  Now the scout stopped, turned to pat the animal’s neck with one glove. “Grain him down good, for he deserves the best of care. I was afraid he wouldn’t make it all the way in here with me.”

  “I’ll treat him right, Mr. Kelly!”

  They watched the soldier lead the snow-crusted animal away; then Tom pointed, and the two of them turned toward the low-roofed mess hall with a small gaggle of others. Leforge asked, “How far you come to get here so long after dark—and in this storm?”

  “Been riding for two nights and a day,” Kelly replied with a weary shudder. “Snyder’s battalion needs forage in a bad way, so I came riding. Wasn’t all that terrible most of the way. This blizzard just hit a few miles back.”

  Quickly they all retreated into the sudden warmth of that log hut, where Kelly tore the bearskin hat from his head and shook out his long hair, ice crystals showering like spun sugar.

  Leforge settled on the closest half-log bench, saying, “Listen, Kelly—you tell me just where we can find them soldiers, I’ll send some of my Crow out with that grain for Snyder.”

  Waiting until he had forced down the last of the hot liquid, Kelly declared, “Bless you, Leforge. And your Crow boys too. For that would be a curse of a ride for any man to face on a turnabout.”

  Leforge leaned over to slap the white scout on the back. “You sit, eat, and warm yourself. We’ll get these Paddy soldiers up and about getting Snyder’s grain ready. Then my boys can ride out at first light.”

  An older officer appeared at the doorway and stomped into the mess hall, pulling a sealskin cap from his head. “Heard you was back, Kelly. All this hubbub you stirred up.”

  “Colonel Whistler,” Kelly replied, standing to accept the lieutenant colonel’s hand. They shook.

  Whistler dragged a hand over his face to sweep some of the icy snow from it and said, “We’ll have your battalion’s feed ready shortly. Say, are you a voting man by any chance?”

  Luther Kelly looked up from his coffee. “What’s to vote for, Colonel?”

  “Not no copperhead, are you?” the officer asked, one eye squinting suspiciously.

  Kelly held up his cup in his red, trembling hands as the grizzled soldier filled it with more coffee. “Blue through and through, that’s me. I fought for the Union cause and would fight again if the call came out from my president.”

  “Then you’ll likely be mad as me,” Whistler grumbled. “Word just in from downriver has it the Democrats put Tilden in the White House.”

  “Tilden?” squeaked a soldier rubbing his bottom by the fireplace.

  “Samuel J., soldier,” continued Whistler, who turned to the squaw man. “Those boys you send out to find Snyder, you make sure to tell him about Tilden when they carry that grain out come morning, Leforge.”

  “Why tell Snyder that?” Kelly asked.

  “Because he’s a mossback like me, and I’d love to be there to see the look of disgust on his face when he hears another Democrat is going to rule in the White House!”
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  The soldiers had forced his village of 190 lodges to the south side of the river in those first blustery moments of the blizzard. Perhaps that was a good thing, Sitting Bull wanted to think. Maybe if he could keep them moving south, they would get themselves out of the storm, escape its fury.

  Here in the Midwinter Moon he was sure all these terrible happenings were part of Wakan Tonka’s warning not to remove any of the belongings of the soldier dead from the battlefield at the Greasy Grass. His people had been warned—he had told them himself when he’d awoken from his startling vision at the foot of the Sun Dance pole beside the Deer Medicine Rocks.

  But they did not listen—and so time and again, ever since the Lakota had been forced to run for their lives with little but the clothes on their backs and a few lodges to hold all of them.

  Maybe if they kept going south to the Elk River, across and beyond … maybe they would eventually locate the camps of the Crazy Horse people. The Hunkpatila and Bad Faces should be wealthy this winter. They had not been fighting the soldiers all through the autumn.

  Across the last few weeks Sitting Bull had been trading with the Red River Slota for what he needed even more than blankets and food—rifles and bullets, along with more than twenty mules to carry the fifty heavy boxes of ammunition his warriors would use to fight the soldiers to a decisive conclusion come spring.

  So with those mules and those bullets and guns, with his people and their few meager belongings, Sitting Bull had headed away from Fort Peck, crossing the frozen river and plunging into the breaks south of the Minisose, back toward the Redwater River country. Day by day they would have to march south and east, climbing toward the divide that would eventually drop them into the valley of the Elk River. From there it would be a few short sleeps until they found Crazy Horse somewhere on the Powder, perhaps on the Tongue.

  Then, with the ammunition and weapons the Hunkpapa had traded from the northern metis, the reunited Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull bands would be ready for that final war ágainst the wasicu soldiers come the spring, when the new grass filled the bellies of their fattened horses and brought the buffalo herds back once again.