Looking down at the mucky floor below his boots, Seamus said, “So you’ll keep hammering away at them, no matter that it’s the dead of winter.”
Miles brushed the question aside, saying, “Mr. Donegan, I’ll pay you scout’s wages, but understand that Kelly here will make you work for that pay.”
Drawing in a deep breath, he let half of it out slowly, the way he would when he was trying to squeeze off a tough shot. “If that’s the way it’s to be, I’ll stay on till I stand a chance riding south again.”
“You can head home before spring.”
Donegan looked at Miles with sudden hope. “I thought you just told me the country south of here was crawling with Crazy Horse’s warriors!”
“They are,” Miles said, pushing himself erect from the desk, rubbing his two big hands together.
“Mother of Christ—I’d promised my wife I’d be back by Christmas,” Seamus explained with a doleful wag of his head. “New Year at the latest. Now you wanna promise me I’ll be heading home before spring?”
“As soon as Baldwin gets his battalion in here and we’ve reoutfitted this regiment, I plan on letting my men celebrate a merry little Christmas right here,” the colonel instructed.
Not understanding, Donegan shook his head and shuffled his feet, stretching his aching, cold, saddle-hammered back muscles. “I don’t know how that can help me ride south before spring, General.”
“Mr. Donegan, before the New Year has arrived,” Miles said as he came up to put one hand on the tall Irishman’s shoulder, “I plan on marching my Fifth Infantry, with you joining Kelly and his company of scouts … the whole lot of us headed south to corral Crazy Horse once and for all.”
Seamus began to grin within his thick beard. “Once you’ve beaten Crazy Horse, then I can ride back to my family.”
Miles grinned in turn. “Once I’ve beaten Crazy Horse, Mr. Donegan … you can damn well ride anywhere in this country you bloody well want!”
*Sioux Dawn, vol. 1, The Plainsmen Series.
Chapter 18
18-23 December 1876
Having finished the fiery destruction of some ninety canvas and hide lodges abandoned by Sitting Bull’s people close to sundown, Vic Smith, Joe Culbertson, and Edward Lambert led Frank Baldwin’s column south, following Ash Creek into the coming twilight. Just shy of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide the lieutenant gave the order to bivouac at dusk.
After drawing their wagons into a square and bringing within its protection their mules and some sixty captured Sioux ponies, the men pulled from the wagons everything they could use for breastworks: their last sacks of grain and crates of hardtack. That done, the captured buffalo robes were hastily distributed among the companies as the men settled in the snow around their greasewood fires, the sky above cold and clear as a bell jar, black as tar and sprinkled with a million frosty pricks of light. Once every man had a robe for himself, the extra hides were laid over the backs of the bone-weary mules.
Late that night of the eighteenth the Hunkpapa fired into the soldier camp from long distance and without causing injury to Baldwin’s men. Just before dawn on Tuesday, Frank and his officers inspected the captured ponies and from them selected enough to replace what mules had died of exposure or want of grain.
“We’ll kill the rest before we push on,” he explained.
“Shoot them, Lieutenant?” asked Joe Culbertson.
“Only the ones my soldiers can’t hold still enough to slash their throats,” he said dryly. “I won’t turn my fighting men into herders, and I sure as hell won’t turn these ponies loose for the Sioux to get their thieving hands on again.”
Mounted warriors, and many on foot, were spotted in the middistance along the hilltops as soon as there was enough light to see. No telling how long they had been waiting through the cold night to look down on the soldier camp.
An hour later more than fifty horse carcasses lay on the bloody snow, going cold in the wind on that high, treeless divide as Baldwin’s men finally pushed south that cheerless Tuesday morning. On the far side they located a narrow gap for their wagons and rumbled on down an upper fork of Cedar Creek toward the Yellowstone Valley. Their sprits buoyed to be nearing home, the soldiers reached the Tongue River-Fort Buford Road on the north bank of the Yellowstone late that afternoon.
Warriors had been in sight all day, dogging the path of the column, always staying to the hills at a respectful distance from those far-shooting Springfields. But just before sunset as the soldiers began squaring their wagons for the night, the Sioux rushed in from the nearby ravines and coulees, screaming and firing their weapons.
Though gallant, their effort was too little, too late.
Baldwin quickly formed his companies into squads and turned away one halfhearted charge after another before the attack was over less than twenty minutes after the warriors had launched it.
Well after moonset Baldwin shook hands with Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and scout Vic Smith as the two stood beside the strongest animals left with the battalion.
“Mr. Smith here figures we ought to be at the cantonment by sunrise,” Hinkle said.
“’Pendin’ on the road, snow, an’ Injuns,” the civilian added.
Baldwin turned back to Hinkle. “Just get there when you can—safe and whole. Doesn’t do us any good if you don’t make it—we don’t get word to the general about the grain.”
“I’ll see to it that the corn for the animals is sent back to Custer Creek just as you’re requesting,” Hinkle replied, then stepped back and saluted. He clambered up to his saddle, then quietly urged his mount between two wagons where a pair of soldiers held aloft the long wagon tongues as the two riders disappeared into the snowy darkness.
“God be with you both to see you through,” Baldwin said almost under his breath. “And God be with us if you don’t.”
It was to be another near sleepless night for the lieutenant. Like those gone before on this expedition, he was up and moving about, always prowling, walking the perimeter, checking on his pickets to assure they hadn’t fallen asleep, making sure they wouldn’t freeze.
The following morning Baldwin’s men continued their struggle to hack a way through snowdrifts and to block up the wagons to keep them from careening down every slippery slope as the sky began to spit an icy snow down at them. Throughout the day the column had to halt briefly now and again to free a broken-down mule from its harness, each time turning the animals loose before they pushed on. By midafternoon the weary battalion had reached the banks of Custer Creek, where Baldwin ordered them to bivouac. When it wasn’t snowing that night, the wind was howling, making it next to impossible to keep their fires going.
“Tell your men to keep warm,” Baldwin ordered the morning of the twenty-first. He was more weary than any of them. “We’re laying to.”
“You trust that Hinkle got through to Tongue River?” asked Lieutenant Rousseau.
“Yes,” Baldwin answered with some of the last of his optimism. “The grain will get here, or we’ll have to abandon the rest of the mules and wagons where they are. I don’t think there’s a single one of these animals can make it on in to the cantonment—”
They all turned at the rapid, scattered gunshots downriver, coming from the direction where Joe Culbertson and a mounted soldier had gone in search of those mules abandoned the previous day.
In less than five minutes Baldwin was in the saddle and leading a mixed company of men out at double time along their backtrail, heading toward the sound of the guns. They hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when two horsemen appeared ahead on the road, whipping their animals for all they were worth.
As the pair drew closer, Frank recognized Culbertson’s youthful face, saw the graying fear written clearly on the young soldier’s. On the road just behind the scout and soldier suddenly materialized more than two dozen mounted warriors screeching after their quarry.
“Skirmish order! Full left!” Baldwin cried, wheeling his horse and watching th
e infantrymen—for the moment no longer cold—scurry into formation across the width of the snowy Fort Buford Road.
“Second and third squads, prepare to advance,” Frank ordered, struggling with his anxious horse in the deep snow. “First squad—advance!”
After he had marched them only another five yards, Baldwin watched the warriors emerge from a wide bend in the road beyond some leafless cottonwood. Just as the Sioux spotted his soldiers, they hurriedly began to rein up in confusion and surprise.
“Fire!”
That first volley ripped through the center of the horsemen, causing ponies to rear and men to scream in pain. But by and large most of the warriors had pitched to one side or another of their horses and were now turning their animals around on either side of the trail.
“Second squad—advance!”
Following their corporal, those soldiers raggedly trotted up and knelt just beyond the first squad, going to their knees to steady the long rifles.
“Fire!”
Baldwin did not have to call up the third squad that late Thursday morning. Already the Sioux had retreated beyond the trees at the bend of the road, pulling back to a safe distance from those soldier rifles.
With no mules recovered Baldwin moved his men back to their bivouac at Custer Creek to continue their wait for relief, which meant enduring the intense cold through the rest of the day. An hour before sundown the pickets on the west side of their camp began hollering out. Over a hundred men stood shivering in their buffalo robes at their smoky fires and watched expectantly as the first forms appeared out of the west, where the sun was falling in a frosty haze.
A handful of horsemen accompanied by the squeak of some twenty wagons hoved around the bend of the road leading from Tongue River. Captain Ezra P. Ewers led a detail of forty soldiers to man and escort those wagons carrying grain for Baldwin’s ailing battalion.
Frank was certain it was the fact that he was facing the cruel west wind that made his eyes begin to tear as he watched his comrades and friends coming to the relief of his men.
“Lieutenant Baldwin!” Ewers cried out as he brought his prancing horse to a halt and saluted. Then he held down his hand. “Well done, sir. Well goddamned done!”
“T-thank you, Captain!” Baldwin replied self-consciously.
“From Mr. Hinkle we hear it was just like McClellan Creek!” Ewers gushed with enthusiasm.
“I’m very proud of my men,” Frank boasted, really feeling the sting at his eyes.
“And well you should be,” Ewers replied while Baldwin’s battalion lumbered forward to greet the new arrivals who marched in two rows down the extent of the short wagon train. “We hear you drove Sitting Bull into the night without food or shelter!”
“Yes,” Baldwin said as Ewers dropped from his horse. “I only wish I could have gotten my hands on that flea-bitten scalp of his for the general.”
Ewers declared, “He wants you to return immediately.”
“Im-immediately?” Frank stammered.
“To report to him personally,” the captain answered. “Hinkle told him some of the story, but the general gave me orders to have you start out posthaste. We’ll take the strongest horses I have with me.” Then the captain handed Baldwin a folded note.
I am delighted to learn that you have been successful in your engagement & without loss. I sent Capt Ewers out with supplies for you. I want to see you as soon as you can get near enough. Take what mounted men you want and come in in the night.
Frank looked up from that note written by Miles. “Now?”
“Yes, goddammit!” Ewers roared, slapping a hand on Baldwin’s shoulder. “The general couldn’t be more proud of you!”
“The men,” Frank tried to explain.
“Yes—he’s most proud of your battalion. None of the rest of us has done near what you’ve accomplished, Lieutenant. Just think of it: if Sitting Bull doesn’t starve this winter … he’ll damn well have to make a run for Canada of it!”
Just past sundown Baldwin mounted the horse he had named Redwater several days before and rode west with Ewers and a small escort, reaching Tongue River at five A.M. on the twenty-second to find that Miles had left orders to be awakened as soon as the “fightingest lieutenant in the Fifth” had arrived. Over hot coffee and more food than Frank had laid eyes on in a month, Baldwin told the colonel and that crowd of soldiers everything about that first fight where he’d ordered a retreat to save the lives of his men, and then told the group how not one of his battalion had given up when they’d fought that blizzard all the way back to Fort Peck.
Told them how his men had hitched up their britches, straightened their backs, and pitched back into the wilderness to track down Sitting Bull again. How they’d caught the Hunkpapa sleeping that time and destroyed everything the band owned.
Late the following afternoon of 23 December, Companies G, H, and I of the Fifth Infantry limped into the Tongue River Cantonment, slowly parading down a long gauntlet of clapping, shouting, hurrawing soldiers who couldn’t wait to pound on the back those heroes of the prairie winter and welcome them back home.
Not one man lost.
It brought a sting of sentiment to the throat of Frank Baldwin as he watched his loyal troops march proudly back among their fellows, three full companies who had suffered unspeakable cold, men who gaped and smiled and laughed now despite the blackened, frostbitten flesh every one of them suffered, men who had empty grain sacks, pieces of green hides, and bands of rawhide thongs tied around their feet to hold together their shoddy army boots.
Men who had marched more than 716 miles on short rations, across some of the most unforgiving terrain on the entire continent, right through the very heart of winter.
Soldiers who nonetheless had still beaten Sitting Bull.
By bloody damn: they had beaten the man who had orchestrated the destruction of Custer.
Now all they had to do was find Sitting Bull’s most powerful general … and destroy the Crazy Horse bands forever.
Chapter 19
Wanicokan Wi 1876
BY TELEGRAPH
Gen. Crook’s Opinion
WASHINGTON, December 19.—Gen. Crook, in his annual report, says the miners in the Black Hills did not violate the Sioux treaty until the Indians had ceased to regard it. He also calls attention to the fact that his command, less than a thousand, fought and defeated Sitting Bull’s band on the Rosebud, a week before the Custer disaster. He thinks the government has treated the Sioux with unparalleled liberality, which they have repaid by raids along the border of reservations.
The heart of Crazy Horse turned cold.
Just when he was beginning to believe the other chiefs that they could trust the Bear Coat, the soldiers’ Indian scouts murdered five Lakota leaders.
“Do you see now what peace means to the wasicu?” he roared at the many who hastily gathered as soon as the entire delegation raced back to the village days after the killings.
His heart had never been colder, here in the Midwinter Moon. Never had it been colder to the white man.
Spotted Elk’s eyes were sad. “We cannot trust the word of the soldier chief.”
“He sends his Psatoka out to kill our peace talkers!” yelped He Dog, barely able to contain his fury.
“Packs the Drum was a good man,” Crazy Horse told them. “He believed he was doing right by our people. But he made the same mistake we have made time and again: he trusted in the wasicu”
“And that was his undoing!” bellowed Roman Nose.
“Bull Eagle!” whimpered Touch-the-Clouds, wagging his head. “They murdered Bull Eagle when he came to talk peace to the soldier he trusted!”
All about them now women shuffled aimlessly through the snow, pulling blankets over their heads to hide not just their red-rimmed eyes, but the ashes of mourning they had scooped from fire pits to smear on their tear-streaked faces, some of the young and old angrily ripping knives from their scabbards and screaming at the sky while they slowly slash
ed their arms and legs, each row of crimson ribbons not taking long at all to freeze in the shocking cold of that winter afternoon. Dogs barked, wailed, and whimpered—not knowing the cause of this great disturbance. And all the while children cried, hugging the legs of their mothers, or standing alone and abandoned, quietly sobbing as the adults around them poured forth their bitter, private fury, their unrequited rage welling like a fevered boil.
“They will not die in vain,” Crazy Horse explained to the crowd.
Young Bad Leg shouted, “Let us attack the soldier fort!”
But Red Cloth disagreed. “We could not force the wasicu out to fight us. They would be like gophers in their burrows. So many tunnels that the wolf cannot ever catch one.”
“Red Cloth is right,” Crazy Horse declared. “The soldiers would hide behind their log walls, and we would never dig them out.”
“Then we must lure them out!” Long Feather suggested.
“Yes, that is just what we should do,” Crazy Horse replied, his voice rising in hope. “We can lure the white men out—just as we lured the wasicu soldiers to their death at the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand ten winters ago.”*
No Neck asked, “With some decoys?”
“Yes, I will pick five-times-ten of them myself,” Crazy Horse replied. “And we will ride to the soldier fort, where we lure the wasicu out, taunting and teasing the Bear Coat all the time as he brings his soldiers south farther and farther until we reach the place where all of our warriors will be waiting to crush the Bear Coat’s puny army.”
“But the soldiers must not come close to the villages!” protested the old Rising Sun.
“They won’t have a chance of getting close to our villages,” Crazy Horse snapped, anxious to shut off all debate.
“It is good to keep the soldiers far from our village,” He Dog declared. “The women and children, our old and our sick, would panic if they knew the soldiers were close to our camp!”
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