by Tim Champlin
"Looks like we almost have adjoining suites tonight," Wiley Jenkins said, striding up, his boots squishing. Cathy was beside him in a hooded poncho.
"Well," Wilder said, looking up, "the roof leaks a little, but the price is sure within my budget. Welcome. Pull up a chair."
Cathy sat down next to him and Wiley found a spot of grass close by.
"Since fires are out of the question tonight, I brought something from the pack train that might beat chewing on raw bacon." Wiley produced some strips of beef jerky and handed them around with some hardtack.
"Wiley, You're a wonder."
"It helps when you ride alongside the pack train all day. Gives you time to ponder all the choice delicacies we're carrying and to select a menu for the evening repast."
"Speaking of food, I wonder what the boys from General Terry's command are eating tonight?" I asked.
"I don't even want to think about it," Wilder said, trying to gnaw off a piece of the jerky.
"Now that we've joined commands, where do we go from here?" I inquired. The question had a familiar ring—I seemed to have asked it on several earlier occasions.
Curt did not reply immediately. Eventually he said, chewing thoughtfully, "It's my guess the Indians have dispersed into smaller bands, packed their belongings and trailed off in about fifteen different directions. They're sure not going to stand and fight an army the size of this one. We have upwards of four thousand fighting men. The Indians may be encumbered by their families, horses, and all their worldly goods, but we're even more heavily encumbered by Terry's wagons, our own slow infantry, weak horses, and tired men. I'd say the Indians have the edge. They knew we'd be mad after that Custer thing, so they've gone elsewhere so they can fight another day."
"Looked to me like General Buck was deferring command to General Terry."
"Right. General Terry is his senior. More a matter of military courtesy, though. The next move is up to them."
We sat there in the deepening darkness, the rain running off our hat brims, and tested our teeth on the hard bread and beef. A gloom as dismal as the night was settling over us. But I noticed Curt's hand steal out to grasp Cathy's in the darkness. To be in love in such a place would take a lot of the misery out of this night. I thought of my own girl in Chicago and almost wished myself back there, sharing some warm, dry restaurant with her, enjoying a big steak, a salad, a glass of wine. My mental picture veered off the girl and onto the food, and my stomach growled.
Chapter Eighteen
The next several days blur in my memory like a bad dream. There was no question of writing dispatches or even of keeping notes. It was simply a nightmare of cold rain, mud, hunger, and, fatigue, of riding and marching numbly, constantly soaked to the skin, unbathed and unshaved, infested with lice.
Horses staggered along until they finally collapsed and had to be shot or abandoned. All the spare mounts were in use due to the attrition of the line horses. Many cavalrymen led their horses to save what was left of the shambling beasts. The dozens of men who lost their horses either had to leave saddle and gear or pack it on a mule. Many of the cavalrymen who were set afoot straggled painfully along, far in back of the column, trying to keep up.
The infantry who had joined us recently from Fort Fetterman held up best, marching along easily and quickly, usually beating everyone else into camp. It was very unusual for infantry to outdistance a cavalry column, but we were averaging only about two miles per hour. Most of the new infantry were seasoned veterans. For many of the others, the recruits in particular, it was a different story. Their feet and legs swelled; many of them fell out of ranks and had to be carried on the backs of spare Indian ponies or pack mules, and some of the worst cases were dragged on travois. This was the only transportation available since General Terry had agreed with Buck that we could travel lighter and easier with only a pack train and, consequently, had sent all of the wagons back to Rosebud Landing under the escort of Nelson Miles and the 5th Infantry.
We traveled northward along the Tongue for two more days until we reached Pumpkin Creek. There we turned east toward the Powder River. Here we found the skeleton of a murdered miner, with bullet holes in his skull and shoulder blade. He had apparently been killed by Indians, since his skull and remaining hair showed the marks of a scalping knife. We judged by the state of his clothing that he had died in early June, and it appeared that coyotes had eaten his body and part of his horse that lay nearby in a suffocating stench of decomposition.
We finally struck the Powder River and slowly marched along its valley, full of deep, rich grass, until on the afternoon of August 17, we at last sighted the Yellowstone. And here we went into camp on the level area where the two rivers formed an angle. As if in welcome, the rain stopped and the sun actually broke through the heavy overcast. Quite a few of the men made for the river to bathe and wash the mud from their clothes.
About the time we were getting settled into camp, the steamer Far West came up the Yellowstone and the men rushed to see it like a bunch of children. It was the first sign of civilization they had seen in three months. Some neatly dressed infantry were on deck, and a young black girl who was the cook stuck her head out of a door. The fact that most of the men in the water were stark naked fazed her not at all. The men washed their clothes as best they could without any soap, wrung them out, and laid them on the riverbank to dry in the sun. Wilder, Jenkins, and I were among them. Cathy, however, had to wait until after dark.
The next day I went to interview General Buck. Since there were no tents, it was pretty hard to locate him. But I finally found him sitting on the wet grass under a cottonwood tree with several members of his staff. They all looked like tramps. I wasn't able to get much information from him and came away from the interview with a distinct feeling of frustration. The vague plan seemed to be to follow the Indian trail to the Little Missouri, and after that, nobody seemed to know for sure. The theory was that most of the Sioux and many of the Cheyenne had headed for the sanctuary of the Canadian border. Many of the followers of the expedition began preparations to leave. The correspondents of several papers decided to give it up and take passage on the Far West. The general feeling was that this campaign was fizzling out, and we would see no more action for the rest of the summer. Chief Washakie, his sons, and the rest of the Shoshones also decided that this was a good time to leave us. And the next morning, with a few words of farewell to the general, they were gone, knowing they were safe from the Sioux who had left the area. All of our Crow allies were next to go.
As dirty and miserable as I was, I had no great desire to leave and return to Chicago and a stuffy office, even though I felt I had seen all the action this campaign was likely to produce. Besides, I hated to leave my newfound friends, the two Jenkinses and Wilder in particular. So I resolved to stick it out for the time being, wrote up my dispatches to go down with the riverboat on its next trip, and settled myself for whatever might come. What came was more pelting rain and cold. It almost seemed that an early fall had set in. We were now paying for all those beautiful, hot, dry days we had enjoyed during June and July. The night of August 23 was one
of the worst of my life. The rain had set in steadily again just before nightfall. Wilder and I lay down under our blankets to sleep with our ponchos over us. Just as I
was falling into an exhausted doze, listening to the rain pattering on the gum coating of my poncho and the rumbling of thunder, something stepped on me that felt like an elephant. I gave it a shove and the next second a frightened mule kicked the saddle under my head.
Thunder and lightning had started booming and cracking like cannon fire, scaring the animals, who reared and pulled their picket pins out of the sodden ground and began plunging wildly through the camp. When most of them had been caught and secured again, we went back to try for some sleep. And I actually managed to doze off for about an hour but woke up with water running all around and under me. I looked over at Wilder, who was awake. I just shook my head and said no
thing. To get up was useless, so we just lay there until morning.
When we finally got ourselves up and stirring, we packed fifteen days' rations at the order of General Buck. General Terry had decided to split from our command and cross to the left bank of the Yellowstone. At 10 A.M., with little or no fanfare, we moved out to follow the Indian trail to the Little Missouri, and however much farther it might lead.
And the misery continued, even with our smaller command. Every step of the way was painful for both man and animal. My horse's back was a mass of scabs and blood from the galling of the wet saddle. I had to walk and lead him about half the time to keep him from falling. Under normal circumstances I would have felt sorry for him, but he was in comparatively great shape; we had left dead horses and mules every mile of the way.
On the twenty-seventh we reached O'Fallon Creek and camped in the usual shower. As I unsaddled my horse, I caught sight of the lanky Sergeant Killard working on a lifted forefoot of his horse.
"Is he lame, Sarge?"
The tough noncom looked up, a lump of tobacco bulging in one whiskered cheek. "Naw, Matt. Just makin' a few repairs to my boots."
"What?"
"Yeh. Water's causin' the soles and heels to come loose. Just pullin’ a nail here and there outa these horseshoes to fix’em.”
I left him to his work and joined Wilder, Shanahan, and Jenkins who were trying to start a fire. Shanahan straightened up with a groan as I walked up. A grimace twisted his pink, clean-shaven face. It suddenly registered on me, as I looked at Lieutenant Brad Shanahan, that somewhere along the route, he had shaved off his stylish mustache and goatee. I hadn't even noticed it before. I guessed he had done it for convenience in the field.
"What's wrong, Brad?"
"Back is killing me."
"How'd you hurt it?"
"My saddle's been wet so long, the wooden saddle-tree's warped. It's making me sit in an awkward position."
We finally got a small fire started, after several failures. It was just barely enough to warm our hands and make some coffee and heat up some bacon and beans. But it was heaven. I never knew coffee could taste so good. Cathy joined us for supper as usual. She looked pale and hollow-eyed—almost as bad as she did just after her father died. Her hair was stringy and damp, and she had it tucked back under her hat. Her shoulders sagged with fatigue. But her eyes were bright and cheerful, and she never let on that she was about done in. By her manner, one would have guessed this was the greatest place in the world and that she would rather be here than anywhere else she knew of.
As she stood staring, hypnotized, into the flames, her face went somber, and I could tell her mind was many miles away. Wilder noticed her reverie also and spoke up.
"Cathy, if you could have one wish for anything in the world right now, what would it be?"
She blinked, and her face became animated again, but there was no hesitation in her answer. "A hot bath," she grinned.
After supper I left the smoky fire to sputter out and walked around the camp to see how everyone else was faring. It was more of the same. Some of the men were wringing out shirttails and socks. Others, including me, were not able to get their boots off due to shrinkage from water and the heat of campfires. One lieutenant was sitting on a rock, scraping several pounds of sticky mud from his boots with a knife. He was completely soaked, his nose was a bluish purple, and his teeth were chattering. Some of our horses and mules were sinking up to their knees in mud, the earth was so thoroughly saturated.
Several of the men were beginning to show signs of sickness due to prolonged exposure, improper diet, and fatigue. Rheumatism, fever, and stomach problems were cropping up. But one thing was in our favor. Here, like manna from heaven, the men discovered wild plums, small black cherries, and buffalo berries growing in profusion. The buffalo berries were a lot like red currants but were more acidic. All three of these fruits grew on bushy trees that were less than ten feet tall and formed dense thickets along the riverbank. Not only was this a help to our general health, but was also a good preventative for scurvy. I ate as much of the delicious fruit as I could hold and then filled my pockets for my friends. We made a feast of our fresh dessert when I got back. My body must have been craving something like this. Apparently the others had been feeling the same, judging by the way they were stuffing themselves. In fact, we all made another trip back to the thicket before dark to pick and eat.
"Haven't heard much from Major Zimmer lately," I remarked to Wilder, my mouth full of buffalo berries.
"No, thank God," he replied, licking his purple-stained fingers. "He's been keeping quiet, and I've been avoiding him as much as possible. Only speak to acknowledge an order, or troop movement—something like that. A couple of times, I could've sworn he'd been drinking."
"Is there anything around to drink?"
"It'd be easy enough for him to have a couple of canteens full in his saddlebags. I think he and General Buck were about the only ones, outside of the-quartermaster, who had access to that peddler’s whiskey while the wagon train was still with us.”
"Why would he be drinking on duty and jeopardize his position and career?" I asked.
"Who knows? He's been doing it ever since I've known him. Maybe he's hooked on the stuff and can't leave it alone. Quite a few officers are."
"Think you could somehow catch him drunk on duty and turn him in?"
"Not unless I could catch him in some obvious violation. And then I'd better have some witnesses who would be willing to testify. When you accuse a superior officer of something, you'd better have the evidence to back it up, or it'll backfire on you. I've seen it happen a couple of times before."
"Would you do it if you could?"
He finished chewing some wild cherries and swallowed them before he answered. "If the circumstances were right, I would. But it would have to be to protect myself or some of my men."
"You wouldn't bring charges against him just for the good of the service? A man that full of hate and ambition can't be too good for the U.S. Army."
"No. It would have to be something specific. I could spend a career trying to get rid of hateful, ambitious officers."
We moved out early the next morning and marched another ten miles east before camping in a level area among many cone-shaped bluffs. Since General Buck thought a village might be located at the headwaters of either Glendive or Beaver creeks, he sent out the scouts under Grouard to investigate. They were gone over thirty hours, forcing us to lay over for an extra day. But then they returned to report no Indian village in either area, so we took up the march again, following the trail that was leading directly toward the Missouri.
On the 31st we halted on Beaver Creek after a short march of twelve miles, so the men could have their bimonthly muster for pay. We were in another beautiful, grassy area where all our animals fed to satiety. Timber was fairly scarce, but there was plenty of coal in the area. The men broke off chunks of it from exposed seams for campfires. It made a great substitute for the wood and grass that was too wet to burn, anyway. The smell of coal smoke reminded me strongly of the smell of a city in the winter. And from where we sat, cooking our supper, we could see a smoldering seam of coal in the face of a small bluff, where the creek had cut down through it. No telling how many years this natural phenomenon had been burning.
We made two marches north on Beaver Creek for a total of about thirty-two miles, and, finding no Indians, turned east and marched about twenty miles along Andrews Creek. General Buck had convinced himself that the fleeing Indians had made straight for the Little Missouri, so we marched directly there, arriving on September 4th. To our surprise, we found quite a lot of corn growing there, with stalks as high as four feet and more. We finally deduced that this crop had sprung up from the seed dropped by Terry's wagon train in May when they had passed this same spot. Several soldiers were put to work picking and shucking the ears to give our animals a little grain to eat.
The Little Missouri was running bank full and muddy fr
om all the rain. We crossed the river at two P.M. at a fairly shallow ford, the water coming up to the waists of the infantry, and marched along the opposite bank until dark. The next day we made a long march of thirty miles to Heart River.
"Damn, Curt, where are we now?" I asked as we sat down, tired, to supper that night. "And how much longer are we going to be chasing around out here?"
"We're well into Dakota Territory now. In fact, we crossed over into it a few miles before we hit the Little Missouri. Since we left Fort Laramie last spring, we've made a giant semicircle around the Black hills." He went over to his saddlebags on the ground and pulled out an oilskin pouch containing a map. Unfolding it, he held it up off the damp ground and traced our summer route with a forefinger.
Our usual group of Shanahan, Wiley and Cathy Jenkins, Wilder, and I were grouped around our small cooking fire. Wiley was feeding the flames with a bunch of twisted grass, which was about the only thing we could find to burn.
"Do you think the government or the people appreciate what we're doing out here?" I asked of the group in general. -
"Only the few whites who live out here, and the miners we're protecting," Wilder answered. "Nobody back East gives a damn."
"The government knows what we're doing and are directing us in this effort for the benefit of all the people, whether they know it or not," Shanahan said. He sounded pompous.
"Just who is the government?" Wilder shot back. "Not the people, in spite of all this ballyhoo we're reading this centennial year. It's a bunch of fat politicians who are out to line their pockets and bask in the luxury of their own power."
