by Tim Champlin
"All of it bad," Cathy added.
"At least to our ears it is."
"If you'd like, I can give you a detailed history of their culture," a voice behind us said.
I looked around to see the smiling face of Major Zimmer. The man seemed to have the oily facility of sliding, unseen and unheard, into the most private conversations. Cathy returned his smile politely, but glanced curiously at Wilder. His expression had clouded at seeing his superior officer. But, unable to avoid the situation, he replied, "Cathy Jenkins, this is Major George Zimmer."
"Hello, Major."
"Miss Jenkins. It's a pleasure and an honor to have you with us."
Wilder's face had set in a mask.
"May I show you around? Perhaps tell you something of these rituals and these Indians who will be our allies?"
"Well . . ." she glanced around uncertainly. "Captain Wilder was taking care of that just now. Thank you, anyway."
"Maybe later?" he persisted, smiling again.
"That would be nice," she replied, obviously sensing the tension between the two men, but not wanting to appear impolite.
"Pardon me, sir," an orderly approached and saluted Major Zimmer.
"Yes. What is it?" Zimmer snapped, apparently irritated at being interrupted.
"General Buck would like to see you in his tent right away. Captain Wilder, you are to come, too." The orderly saluted again and walked away.
Wilder started to say something to Cathy before she left, but held up since Zimmer was still standing there. Cathy and Wiley excused themselves and left, then Major Zimmer hurried away toward the headquarters tent.
"C'mon, Matt," he said when we were alone again, "You and McPherson should probably sit in on this."
"What's it all about?" I asked as we fell in beside him.
"Probably a council of war. Normally, General Buck isn't too eager to include reporters in his briefings, since he's seen himself misquoted so many times in print, but I think he'd want you to know what's going on now. Besides, he seems to like and trust you two."
"What do you think of Cathy Jenkins?"
"Beautiful girl. Seems to be intelligent and charming. And the fact that she's out here proves she's no parlor flower. Still, I'm surprised her father let her come--he must know how dangerous it is in these hills: this is hostile territory."
"From what I can gather, the young lady does pretty much what she wants to do. With the encouragement of Mr. Jenkins. According to Wiley, she rides and shoots as well as any man and has always gone everywhere with her father."
"He's a damn fool to bring her here, regardless," Curt responded shortly. "This is supposed to be a military campaign—not a fandango with every officer dancing attendance on her!"
McPherson and I exchanged glances and kept our mouths shut. It was obvious Captain Wilder and Major Zimmer had found a new, and potent, bone of contention.
Chapter Nine
"Men, tomorrow actually marks the beginning of this campaign," General Buck began in his usual abrupt way. "We've been seeing smoke signals every day since the Dry Fork of the Powder, so there's no chance of anything like a complete surprise. That small war party that jumped us probably spread the alarm anyway. We haven't been able to get a courier through to the north, but I just found out from the Crows that Colonel Gibbon's column is on the banks of the Rosebud near the Yellowstone, but unable to cross because of the Sioux holding him at bay. The Crows tell me the main body of the Sioux are encamped on the Tongue River at the mouth of Otter Creek. And they think the village of Crazy Horse is located on the Tongue River as well." He paused to let this information sink in to the officer corps in the crowded tent. A lantern suspended from the ridgepole provided the only light, keeping most of the faces in shadow, so I couldn't judge their reaction, if any.
"In the morning, our wagons will be repacked so they can be easily defended by the teamsters and civilians attached to the Quartermaster Corps. They'll be parked on the island in the middle of Goose Creek here and left behind. For mobility, the infantry will be mounted on mules. Each man will carry only the bare necessities—hard bread, sugar, coffee, bacon, and some beans. Each man, besides the clothes on his back, will carry one overcoat and one blanket. There will be no tents. Each man will carry at least a hundred rounds of ammunition—more if he can manage it. Spare ammunition and some food will be loaded on pack mules. We have a strong force. I want to be mobile so we can strike, fast and strike hard. Most of you were with me on the Powder River campaign last March. We had all the advantage of surprise, but we were less than completely successful. This time we will get the village of Crazy Horse. I want his hide! That's all."
The officers filed out of the big tent and headed for bed. "Brief and blunt as usual," I commented to Wilder as the three of us stretched out on our buffalo robes in our tent. Lieutenant Shanahan was already snoring quietly nearby.
"General Buck doesn't show much emotion, but you can bet he wants Crazy Horse badly. He's really spoiling for a fight so he can put to rest all that public criticism about his so-called failure in the winter campaign." He pulled off his boots and shrugged out of his galluses. "At least Cathy will be relatively safe with the wagons and the miners. 'Night, Matt." He turned the lantern down and blew it out.
It was past midnight. I stretched my grateful muscles on the soft buffalo robe, wondering how long it would be before I would have a bed this soft again. I especially wondered about the rigors of the trail taking their toll on the fifty-year-old consumptive beside me. I had come to admire McPherson for his wit, his quiet acceptance of things, but most of all for his toughness; he never asked for any special treatment, even though all of us would have accorded it to him.
The last thing I remember was the muffled drumming and chanting that blended into the noises of the night.
The men on watch told me the racket had kept up all night, but the Indians were up early in the morning to receive rations, ammunition, and, for those who needed them, new government guns. They sat in a huge semicircle around the quartermaster's wagons and tents and received the handouts with no emotion other than an occasional grunt of satisfaction.
The morning was spent overhauling gear in preparation for the next day's start. Arms were cleaned, horses reshod, saddlebags packed, and ammunition stowed wherever it could be carried. Since General Buck was determined to have the infantry mounted so they could keep up, about two hundred mules were brought to a flat grassy area a few hundred yards from camp just after lunch. McPherson and I were among the crowd of cavalry and Indians who gathered to watch the fun.
"From the looks on some o' those poor bastards, I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Mac remarked to me as the mules were being caught and saddled.
"The mules or the infantry?"
Mac laughed.
The braying, bucking, and squealing of the unbroken mules made it hard to carry on a conversation even though we were standing next to each other. The regulation cavalry bridle was first put on each animal, then the McClellan saddle cinched tight. As each mule was saddled, he was released to vent his indignation by running and bucking and rolling on the ground. They gradually quieted down and the infantry soldiers were brought up to mount them.
"Yeeeooouuu! !"
Several bodies shot straight up over the steel-shod hooves, as all hell broke loose when the heads of the mules were let go.
"Oh, God, I can't look," Mac laughed, as the thudding of bodies and hooves mingled with braying squeals, curses, and yells. Even the normally stoical Indians were slapping each other on the back and howling with laughter at the sight. Now and then an Indian would grab a runaway mule, leap on its back and demonstrate to the command what truly magnificent riders they were.
"Now, that's the way it should be done.”
"Seeing and doing are two different things," I answered, looking at some of the battered and disgusted soldiers. Some mules ran and bucked, some bucked in place, some tried falling down, some leapt and twisted. As quickly as the
poor soldiers were thrown, they got back up and chased down their animals for a remount. "They're a game bunch, Mac."
"I don't think they have much choice." He nodded at the officers who were standing by to supervise. "This is what you might call a 'crash course in riding.'" The course continued for the better part of two hours until the men and animals just about wore each other out and eventually came to a truce.
"Gonna be some sore muscles in the morning," Mac said as we walked back to camp to get our own gear together for the start. "That deep grass is probably the only thing that saved some broken bones."
In the afternoon, the wagons were brought across to the wide, flat island in the middle of the stream and formed into a large oval. About a hundred men, both military and civilian, were detailed to stay behind and guard them. Some were relieved at the news, other irritated that they would miss out on any action.
I knew Wiley Jenkins would accompany the column, since he was one of the mule packers who had to handle the supply train, but he had disturbing news for me. "All the Montana miners are going, including Cathy," Wiley told me that evening when I sought him out after supper. "God knows we tried to talk the stubborn little so-and-so out of it, but she insisted. And she is twenty-one. Just had a birthday." He shrugged disgustedly as he handed me a cup of hot chocolate. We sat down on two campstools.
"Doesn't she realize what we may be riding into?"
"I'd say she knows it, just like I know it, but she doesn't realize it. She's never experienced a war any more than I have."
"What did your father have to say about it?"
"Not much—as usual. He left it to Cathy, as he always has."
"What about the military?"
"She didn't exactly broadcast the fact that she was going, but in any case their position seems to be that she can come along at her own risk just like any other civilian. She and the chiefs' squaws will be the only women there. She's looking forward to it, like some big lark, if you can imagine that."
"Aren't we all?"
He looked at me steadily and thoughtfully for a moment. "I see what you mean, Matt. To a lot of these men, this is just a big adventure. Something exciting to stave off boredom."
Later, when I mentioned Cathy's decision to Wilder, his face tightened perceptibly but he said nothing. There was, after all, nothing he could do.
Mac and I spent the rest of the evening writing up our dispatches in final form and getting them ready for the courier. A tough, thirty-year-old frontiersman named Jed Moreau was going to make a round-trip ride to the nearest telegraph point—Fort Fetterman. All the correspondents pitched in to come up with his fee—$300. It was high, but, so were his chances of not living to spend it. It was a fairly common occurrence for someone to come across the dismembered body of a mail courier on some remote trail in this region.
The bugles were silent the next morning, but the whole command was up two hours before dawn. Even so, the soldiers didn't beat the Indians out of their blankets. The chiefs of the Snakes and Crows were haranguing their warriors in their native tongues for at least an hour before we had breakfast. The exhortations finally ended and they all gathered around their cooking fires to feast to satiety on the rations that had been issued the day before. It was common practice, Wilder told me, for Indians on the warpath to feast at every opportunity. Apparently, the thought of battle didn’t affect their appetites.
As for the rest of us, it was black coffee and hardtack before we were in the saddle and moving out. There were fifteen companies of the 2nd and 3rd Cavalry, followed by the mule pack train. Bringing up the rear were about two hundred of the sore, but game, infantrymen mounted on the mules. The Indians, headdresses nodding, eagle feathers blowing, steel lance heads flashing in the rising sun, rode strung out along our flanks. Counting the miners and packers, we totaled just over thirteen hundred—enough, as Lieutenant Shanahan put it, to "rout any damn bunch of renegade Sioux or Cheyenne."
"I can see why the Sioux want to protect this region," I remarked to Mac, as the morning sun sparkled on the dew of the greenest grazing land I had seen since we left Cheyenne. We rode along the top of a broad ridge in a northeast direction, bearing slightly away from the Big Horn range on our left.
About noon we rode up to the top of a grassy ridge and the sight that greeted us was breathtaking. A herd of several thousand buffalo was grazing in the shallow valley below us. They looked like a black, furry mat covering several square miles.
"Easy, men. Hold your ranks," came back the order from the officers as several troopers reached for their carbines and their horses began prancing and edging out of column.
A hideous yelling split the air as the Indians, who were under no restriction, tore down the slope after the buffalo. The startled herd lumbered away into a gallop as the Indian ponies ran quickly alongside. The yelling continued as the heavy caliber guns boomed, and the brown, shaggy bodies, one by one, began to stumble and fall. The thundering herd shook the ground beneath us, and several of the younger men looked pleadingly at the officers, silently begging for permission to join the chase. But the word was not given and their sparkling eyes and nervous grip on their horses were the only signs to betray their frustration.
Then I saw General Buck riding back toward us on his black horse. And if looks could kill, there would have been a lot of dead Indians below us at that moment. Whatever chance remained of us surprising the camp of Crazy Horse on the Rosebud, was now gone.
"Colonel Wellsey!"
"Sir?"
"Take some men and . . ." The general reined up his horse with a vicious jerk on the reins that made me wince at the pain the bit must have caused the black's mouth. The general sat, gritting his teeth without finishing the command. Apparently he was remembering his promise at the council fire to let the Indian allies regulate themselves and set their own pace. "Never mind," he snapped at Colonel Guy Wellsey and spurred his charger back toward the head of the column.
I looked out over the valley and watched the herd fading away from us in a thin veil of dust. Most of the Indians were dropping away from the flanks of the herd to go back to the brown lumps that lay scattered here and there on the prairie. But some Indians continued the chase, and I could see the sun flash on the steel arrowheads once or twice.
"Forward!" The command was given and we moved off at a walk, leaving the Indians to the slaughter.
"Damned if I don't think this is probably the closest I'll come to paradise," Mac proclaimed to me as we rode along, side by side. He took a deep breath of the fresh air, made even more fragrant by the smell of the thousands of prairie flowers being crushed underhoof. "Look at this grass, and these clear little streams running down through here everywhere. And these clumps of trees." He swept his arm at the scene around us, and I followed his glance as he looked up at the blue sky arching overhead. A hawk or a golden eagle soared high above us on the silent thermal currents.
The column wound over hills and through small valleys at a quiet, easy pace. Once the scouts, riding a couple of miles in advance, reported they had sighted, and been seen by, a hunting party just over the divide between the Tongue and Rosebud rivers. Since we had already lost the element of surprise, the sighting did little harm. We rode a total of thirty-five miles that day and finally came to a swampy lake about five hundred yards across that formed the headwaters of the Rosebud. We bivouacked in a huge circle near this lake, with the horses and mules in the middle as a precaution against surprise attack. Pickets were thrown out on the low bluffs surrounding the lake. General Buck passed the order that no campfires were to be lighted. But while the soldiers ate cold suppers, the Indians started what fires they wanted and gorged themselves on fresh buffalo tongue and hump.
When Lieutenant Shanahan remarked to one of the Indians about the waste of all those buffalo, the Indian answered back, through an interpreter, "Better kill buffalo than have him feed the Sioux." This sounded strangely like the reasoning I had heard from some of the whites.
I
had no time or opportunity to look for Wiley or Cathy that night. With no fires or lanterns allowed, and after a long day in the saddle, Wilder, McPherson, Shanahan, and I stretched out under our single blankets shortly after dark.
"Damn, it gets cold at night in these high plains," Mac shivered, "even in June."
"Think what it's like in January."
"Oh, don't even talk about it." He wrapped the blanket tighter around his fully dressed body and drew his legs up.
Wilder stretched out, with a weary sigh, under his blanket on the other side of me. He settled his head on the saddle he was using for a hard pillow. The indefatigable Crows and Shoshones were intoning their weird war chants again farther down the campsite, as usual. "Matt," Wilder remarked in a low voice, "we'll have a fight tomorrow. Mark my words. I feel it in the air."
That was the last thing I remember before sleep took me.
Chapter Ten
False dawn had not even begun to lighten the eastern sky when we rolled out the next morning, stiff and cold from sleeping on the hard ground. No bugle sounded, and no one had awakened us; the whole command seemed to come awake on its own. Up and down the line small cooking fires were lighted, and we had our usual scalding black coffee, bacon, and hardtack.
The general ordered his half-breed scouts to instruct the Indians to send out some of their braves as scouts. But most of them were very reluctant to go. Finally, Grouard and Big Bat were able to convince the little Shoshone, Humpy, and a few of his tribesmen to go. Then, out of shame, a few of the Crows also rode out to look for the village of Crazy Horse, but they weren't happy about it.
"They'll do a lot of chest thumping and chanting, but when it comes right down to tangling with the Sioux, they get mighty sober," Wilder remarked to me as he saddled his horse. An orderly held his horse's head in the semidarkness. Some of the troops who were already mounted, leaned forward on their horses' necks, and catnapped before the word was given to move out.
