by Tim Champlin
"Matt! What happened to your leg?"
I tried to pick out the familiar voice in the group of twenty or so, as I crawled painfully into the partial shelter of the jutting boulders. "Wiley Jenkins!" I almost dropped my rifle in astonishment when I looked up at the familiar youthful face. "By God, you never cease to amaze me." I hitched myself into position behind a cleft in the rocks. "Apparently what you say and what you do aren't necessarily the same. Who's minding the mules?"
He looked away from me. "Well, I thought since I had come this far, I might as well get a closer view at what it was all about."
I acknowledged the nods of greeting from some of the men then crawled into a more comfortable position and checked my rifle for dirt. "Looks like some of the miners and packers made this their fight,” I remarked to Jenkins.
"They volunteered as sharpshooters.”
"And you? Oh, that's right, you came along for the show."
Then I noticed he was carrying a Spencer repeater he had borrowed somewhere, but it looked like a broomstick in his hands. I took a snap shot at a mounted Indian who was nearly out of range. Wiley crouched behind me, peering over the rocks. I laid my hand on the rifle barrel. It was cold. "Got any cartridges for that thing?" I asked, without looking at him. I busied myself squeezing off another shot.
"Yeh, it's loaded. And I've got some more in this ammunition box one of the soldiers gave me."
None of our conversation could be overheard by the other men around us in the semicircle as they kept up a sporadic fire, the flat crack of the .44 Winchesters mingling with the heavy boom of the .50 caliber Sharps. Now and then one of them would yell as an Indian toppled from his horse.
"My Dad's up here, too," Jenkins said.
I turned in surprise to see him point at a tall, lean back a few yards from us. He was facing the other way and firing from one knee.
"He has nothing to win or lose up here, does he? And don't tell me he's protecting his interests in the Black Hills," I said. "The army can do that for him."
"Sailors aren't the only ones who bail when the ship is sinking," was his retort.
"Don't tell me you actually think this command is in danger of sinking!"
He brushed the wavy brown hair back from his forehead. "Have you taken a good look at how many savages are out there?" he asked. "I may not be experienced in battle, but I am good at estimating numbers, whether it be mules or buffaloes or Indians."
"I'd say about eighteen hundred to two thousand."
"More like twenty-five hundred or better. And they're not just armed with bows and arrows."
I took a more careful look at all the scattered skirmishes I could see and thought of the waves of warriors I had first seen. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Outnumbered more than two to one. Must be a helluva big village that . . ."
Zing!
Bullets striking the rock about two feet from our heads sent chips flying. We flattened out behind our meager cover.
"By the way, what brings you up from the river? Reporters aren't supposed to be combatants."
"Patriotism, maybe?" I grinned.
He snorted derisively.
The intermittent sniping dragged on for another twenty minutes or so. At the end of that time, I noticed the battalion that included Wilder's Company B was apparently being withdrawn from the fight down toward the Rosebud River. Here, they turned and rode east, disappearing below the hills. Even though we were on a high ridge, some of the other scattered action was cut off from our view by the intervening knobs and hills.
It was after eleven by my watch. The sun was getting higher and hotter, and I was getting dehydrated. My lips felt glued together, my mouth cottony. I wasted less and less effort on conversation. My leg felt swollen, but no longer sore.
"Whew! Wish I had an ice-cold beer right about now," Wiley grunted, leaning his head on his arms. "In fact," he lifted a red face toward me and attempted a grin, "I'd take that one last beer that constituted one too many back in Cheyenne. Too bad a man can't even out the good things of life."
Apparently no one had anticipated being here very long, since there wasn't one canteen among the score of packers and miners who hugged the jagged teeth of rock that afforded only scanty protection from bullets and none at all from the sun. Some of the other men were still firing, but I had stopped to save ammunition because I only had long-range, moving targets to shoot. Since I’d lost my horse, all the cartridges I had were what I carried in my belt. My Colt was also missing.
“Where’d all those soldiers go?” Wiley asked me about thirty minutes after the battalion disappeared.
"Beats me. Not much telling what General Buck's got up his sleeve."
Wiley was eyeing the same thing I was—the ominous massing of hundreds of Sioux and Cheyenne near the positions recently abandoned by the withdrawing troops. I borrowed a pair of field glasses from one of the miners and studied the Indians. I was impressed not only by their numbers, but also by how many of them seemed to be armed with the 1866-model Winchester carbines. The sun glinted off the brass receivers of the "yellow boys" as they waved them in the air. "How far away are those mules?" I asked, lowering the glasses. "We may need to get out of here in a hurry."
"Too far."
The metallic taste of sudden fear was in my mouth again, as I saw the warriors massing like a black thunderhead on the far ridge crest for a concentrated attack. And I had been under fire before. I pitied poor Wiley who had not—who abhorred violence. I glanced sideways at his profile. His face betrayed no emotion, but I knew he must be suffering a gut-wrenching fear.
The firing of our little group had nearly stopped as the men's attention was drawn, by twos and threes, toward the spectacle. One burly miner, with salt-and-pepper hair bristling from under his broad-brimmed hat, voiced a common feeling. "By God, that's an awesome sight. No matter how many times I see it, it still gives me the quivers."
The attack started with a burst of high-pitched yipping and howling, like a shrill, wolfish barking, that no white man could duplicate. I could feel the hair stand up on the back of my neck as I watched the savage line, as orderly as any cavalry charge, sweep down the far hill against our troops in the valley below us. The thudding of thousands of hooves and the cracking of hundreds of rifles gradually rose to a thunderous roar.
The Sioux under Crazy Horse struck our column on the right and the Cheyenne under Dull Knife struck our troops on the left, lower down toward the river. Our cavalry fell back under the shock of the furious charge. The Sioux pressed their advantage and were attempting to skirt our flank and come in behind us. All of the packers and miners were now manning the west side of the ridge that was unprotected by any rocks, and we were firing over the heads of our troops at the hostiles. Even Jenkins had begun shooting, but with what effect, I couldn't tell.
I paused to reload, slipping the brass cartridges out of my belt and sliding them into the receiver by touch as I glanced downhill to the left to see if the Cheyenne were also trying to circle our troops there. I could pick out Colonel Guy Wellsey sitting his horse to one side, directing the defensive line. Just as I looked, he reeled in his saddle, and even at this distance, I could see a dark stain begin to cover the lower part of his face. It seemed as if an icy hand clutched my heart as I watched, fascinated, for him to fall. A head wound of that dimension almost had to be fatal. He sat his horse for several more seconds before finally falling slowly forward and slipping to the ground.
The Cheyenne saw the leader fall and rushed in with greater fury. But again the Crow allies were quicker, as several of them on foot surrounded his body and disappeared into the melee of hand-to-hand fighting.
"Matt! They've gotten behind us!"
I whirled at Wiley's shout to see several Sioux struggling up the ridge on foot. The ridge face was too steep for a horse. We fired point-blank, but they came on. They were too close and too many for us. Our group now instinctively and desperately fought back-to-back, firing out on three sides. Wiley's father had
worked his way to his son's side, while I was crouched on the other. We were firing continuously; there was no time for talk or reloading. Finally, three Indians reached the crest and rushed at us from a few yards away. Wiley’s father blocked the downsweep of a war club with his empty rifle.
“Shoot!” I yelled at Wiley, and swung my own empty gun at the first brave. The stock cracked into solid bone and he fell. In a split second I shot a glance at Wiley. He seemed rigid as a statue, staring ahead. The second brave levered his carbine and fired from the hip..
Mr. Jenkins whirled and fell.
I grabbed the Spencer from Wiley, praying it was loaded, and pulled the trigger. The Spencer and the brave's carbine crashed as one. At the instant the Indian staggered back I felt as if someone had raked a live coal across the back of my hand. I yelled in surprise and pain. But before my hand could instinctively open to let go of the Spencer, a roar next to my head momentarily stunned me, and the third Indian fell dead about five feet away.
The miners and packers had turned their attention to our side of the ridge, and withering fire drove the remaining braves back down the east side of the ridge to their tribesmen who were holding their ponies. The immediate danger was past, but we were still surrounded.
From what I could see with a quick look around, General Buck had thrown two cavalry companies and about three infantry companies into the fight. The steady, accurate fire of the infantry was the only thing saving us from being overrun.
I turned my attention to Wiley and Mr. Jenkins. The elder Jenkins and another wounded miner had been dragged back into the center of our tiny circle. Two men were bending over Mr. Jenkins. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. The slug had taken him in the left shoulder and had possibly broken his collarbone. One of the packers had slit his blood-soaked shirt away at the shoulder with his hunting knife. Then he turned him over and found where the bullet had exited farther down near the shoulder blade. Even this slight jarring of the wound made Jenkins grimace, and sweat poured down his red face. Apparently he was still conscious enough to feel the pain. Lacking any kind of bandage, the packer then cut and tore off his own shirttail and the tail of Jenkins's shirt as well to use as a set of front and back compresses to staunch the flow of blood. No one was attending the other man. Someone had determined he was already dead.
Wiley was still standing and looking around, vacantly, as if unable to comprehend what was happening. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Only then did I notice blood dripping slowly from a streak where the brave's bullet had plowed a shallow furrow across the back of my left hand. Now that I noticed it, it began to sting like hell.
"What's wrong? What're you shaking me for?" His eyes finally focused on mine.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, sure."
But I knew he was reacting and talking automatically. He was in a state of shock. I had seen many cases just like it during the war.
He looked around at the bloody bandage on his father's shoulder, at the dead man stretched out with his hat over his face, green flies already buzzing around the drying blood at the base of the feathered shaft protruding from his chest. Wiley went deathly pale and his eyes glazed. I caught him as his knees buckled and eased him to the ground.
Just then the tempo of the battle seemed to change.
Whether it was a change in the noise level or what, I wasn't sure. But something arrested my attention and I looked up sharply, forgetting Wiley and everyone else in our group for a moment. A phalanx of blue-uniformed cavalry was attacking in force from the high ridges to the north. They had somehow come in behind the foe and had caught the Indians in an enfilading fire with the infantry. The warriors were fleeing in confusion, whipping their horses toward the west, the only opening left for them. I let out a shout of pure joy and relief and was suddenly aware of several other men doing the same. The attacking troops were part of the battalion that had been withdrawn almost an hour earlier.
“By God, that old fox, General Buck, outsmarted ‘em this time!” one of the packers yelled. Apparently, the Indians were going to call it a day. They were riding in large numbers over the ridge crest to the north, hotly pursued by the troopers. The field was ours.
With the sudden release of tension, my own knees began to feel a little wobbly and I sat down cross-legged and hung my head. The heat and the dust and the stench of burnt gunpowder and death and sweating horses all around me had made me a little queasy. What really made me feel sick was the sudden realization that I had twice come extremely close to meeting my Maker this day. The pain in my hand and my thigh seemed to return with a vengeance. Slowly, and with a great fatigue settling over me, I eased my gold Waltham out of the watch pocket of my pants and opened it. The slender hands, pointing at the Roman numerals, told me it was 1:47. Surely it was later than that! I held it to my ear. It was ticking as steadily and reliably as my own heart. How a delicate piece of machinery could take a pounding like I had given it today and still keep time was beyond me. Maybe the white man's culture was superior, after all.
Chapter Eleven
"Why don't you take a look for your horse in that rope corral," Wilder suggested about an hour later, pointing at the herd of stray animals, including some Indian ponies, that had been rounded up and were in a temporary holding pen.
"Will do."
Wilder moved off, leading his unsaddled mount whose drooping head and lathered coat told of his weariness. McPherson and I were lolling, fully clothed, in the shallow waters of the Rosebud, trying to cool off and wash some of the sweat, dust, and grime from ourselves and the smell of battle from our nostrils, all at the same time.
"Lemme see that wound, Matt."
I held out my left hand, palm down, clean and dripping. The water had washed off the caked blood and dirt but had also started it oozing blood again. He examined it critically. "Can you move your fingers all right?"
I opened and closed the hand. "Hurts some, but it still works."
"Good. No tendons were cut and, apparently, no major blood vessels. You're lucky."
"Don’t I know it. But my leg hurts worse than my hand. And it's swollen so much I can't get my trousers off to look at it."
"You were lucky again ‘cause that horse didn't kick you in a vital spot." He grinned. "One of the surgeons will take a look at it when they’re not so busy."
"Mac, what the hell happened, anyway? How did the battalion get in behind those Indians?"
"Well, we were ordered off the line and made a wide detour down here by the river and started north along the bottom of a canyon about a half-mile from here.
Don't know where we were going. There weren't any Indians in sight, except a handful on the tops of the bluffs. I guess we'd followed that narrow canyon about three miles, maybe four, and here comes Burke, General Buck's aide-de-camp, riding hell-bent and gives Major Zimmer some message. And then we made a sharp left and defiled out of the canyon. The canyon wasn't as steep right there, but it was pure hell getting up outta there. A lot of us had to get off and lead our horses up through those pine trees. When we finally got out on top again, we could see what was happening and were in a perfect position to come in behind them."
"And not a minute too soon, I might add."
"It still seems strange to me, though, that they took off and ran like they did, instead of regrouping for a counterattack. They still had us outnumbered at least two to one."
"I don't know, but I’m sure glad they did. I was exhausted."
"Maybe they were too."
He grabbed the base of a bush growing by the bank and pulled himself up from the water. "Whew! It's hotter now than it was at noon. These wet clothes sure feel good."
I retrieved my watch, rifle, and boots, and we started toward the holding corral Wilder had indicated about a hundred yards away. The afternoon sun was sliding gradually toward the west, but the heat waves still shimmered from the valley floor as I looked up the ravines and ridges that had been the scene of so much turmoil onl
y an hour or so before. The hillsides were littered with at least a hundred dead horses and ponies, their bodies swelling in the heat. The sky was beginning to fill with buzzards, wheeling silently on the afternoon thermals, waiting their chance.
"Wonder how many thousand rounds of ammunition were fired today?" I mused aloud.
Mac glanced sharply at me as if making sure I wasn't beginning to come apart after the shocks of the day. "Oh, I don't know," he replied, looking up toward the main battlefield himself. "A lot. Maybe twenty, thirty thousand. Takes a lot of lead to send even one Indian to join his ancestors. Apparently, horses are a lot easier target than men. Don't think we lost more than about two dozen killed and probably twice that many wounded."
"I wonder about the hostiles?"
"Sergeant Killard mentioned a little while ago that they found only thirteen bodies on the field. The rest of their dead and wounded must've been carried off by their friends."
The two surgeons, aided by several volunteers, were working feverishly on the more seriously wounded, who were lying on folded blankets in the open, near the river's edge. There was no shade. The merciless sun was tormenting those who had lost blood. As we walked past, the smell of carbolic and alcohol drifted to my nose on the stifling air, as well as the sound of some weak voices pleading for water. There were some groans, and a smothered cry as a probe struck an exposed nerve. My gaze swept over the pitiful sight. The wounded Crows were bearing their pain as stoically as they had their pleasure earlier.
"Mac, there's Colonel Wellsey! I thought he was dead. I happened to be looking when he was hit. After he fell, the Sioux tried to get at his body to demoralize the men. I lost sight of him, but didn't see any way he could live.”
We walked over to the pallet where he lay propped up. Green summer flies were buzzing around the bloody bandage that swathed his head and eyes. A private soldier stood close by, holding a horse that provided shade for the wounded officer—the only shade anywhere around. The horse was stamping and swishing its tail at the biting flies.
