Trumpet on the Land (59 page)

No matter what was on the menu that morning, it had been more of the milky, bitter water for all, and a matter of tightening one's belt another notch.

After no more than an hour the gaunt animals again began to falter, and the troopers went afoot. On either side of the straggling cavalry, foot soldiers plodded by in their gummy brogans, as cheerful as any man could be, calling out to their comrades in the cavalry.

“Say, yez boys! You want us give you a tow!”

“Yeah,” cried another footslogger, “for a small fee, why—we'll be happy to tow you and your bag-of-bones horse there all the way to the Black Hills!”

For most of that morning the horse soldiers struggled to keep their animals going. But by noon the shooting began once more, and soon the backtrail was littered with carcasses, the bony dead over which the men clustered like predatory scarecrows, like flocks of robber jays, each with his own knife, hacking free a choice flank steak he would suck and chew on as he trudged forward in the wake of George Crook, doggedly making for the Black Hills.

They put twenty-four miles behind them that day, through the fog, across the muddy wilderness, dragging their weapons and what horses did not fall, what carcasses were not left behind to mark the passing of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition. That day at least the wind pummeled them from behind—not straight into their faces.

When the advance reached a tributary of the South
Fork of the Grand River, they went into camp. It was a blessing to find that here there was wood, albeit wet wood. But the first firewood they had run across in something on the order of ninety miles. In no time hundreds of smoky fires smudged the twilit sky as the commissary officers selected the three poorest animals from each company to be shot, butchered, and fed to the men. For tonight Crook's soldiers would not have to haunt the backtrail like thieves and shammers, butchering the fallen horses for the best steaks after the column had marched on.

Horse tenderloin wasn't on the menu for Surgeon Clements's sick cases that evening. At sundown the scouts brought in five antelope. There were plenty of plums as well as bullberries to be found with a little hunting along the banks.

Once some of the deadfall in that riverside camp began to dry out near the fires despite the continuing rains, and once the men started cooking their stringy meat on the end of sharpened tree limbs, John Bourke saw the spirits of most lift a few notches. He had never thought he would see morale sink as low as it had the past two days. What more they would have to face before Mills got back from Deadwood, he dared not consider.

For most it was impossible to sleep again that night, forced to hunker close to the fires they would keep feeding with damp, smoky wood until dawn. Amazing, John thought sometime after ten o'clock that night, how a little warmth could give a man a bit of pluck.

“Happy birthday, General!”

Coming up out of the dark was Wesley Merritt, along with Eugene Carr and William Royall, Alexander Chambers and ten more battalion officers.

“Gendemen,” Crook called out. “Come in out of the rain.”

Bourke and the general scooted shoulder to shoulder to allow the others room under the overhanging shelf of rock they had located along the riverbank.

“No birthday feast tonight, General?” Carr asked with a great smile.

“No, but a man won't have a problem quenching his thirst!” Crook roared.

“I'm a hippophagist at last!” Carr said, then rocked with laughter.

“What's that, sir?” Bourke asked. “I've never heard the term.”

“It means he eats horses,” Merritt answered grimly. Carr nodded and said, “I've become a real connoisseur.”

“I expect we won't have to eat our horses too much longer,” Crook explained. “If our scouts are correct in the distance remaining to Deadwood City, we should expect to meet Bubb's pack-train coming back sometime on the eleventh.”

Royall said, “Tonight let's just be thankful we found some wood for the men.”

“That truly is a blessing,” Crook replied as he stuffed a hand inside his worn wool coat to pull out a sixteen-ounce German silver flask.

“Is … is that what I think it is, General?” Carr asked, flushed with anticipation.

Twisting loose the cap, Crook held it beneath his nose, then said, “Yes, gentlemen. A man's due on his birthday, don't you think? Especially when he's celebrated as many birthdays as I have.”

“I'm afraid I forgot my cup,” Royall whined.

“No matter,” Crook cheered. “We'll pass the flask until it's empty!”

“Hear, hear!” some of them cried as Crook put the flask to his lips and drank.

“A happy birthday to you again, General!” Merritt added when he was handed the flask.

“And a joyful round of thanks for sharing your liquor with us!” Carr said. “You've been keeping this quite a secret, eh?”

“I knew there'd come a day to celebrate,” Crook replied.
“If I hadn't caught the Sioux by the time my birthday rolled around, then I figured I'd have myself one happy little celebration anyway.”

Sitting there that night in the glow of the firelight reflected from the rock shelf, watching the warmth flickering on those beaming faces, John again marveled at George Crook. He willingly suffered everything the most common soldier suffered. He ate no better, slept no warmer. Perhaps because he had never considered himself above the privations he asked of his men, General Crook never failed to silence most all the criticism leveled at him for making just this sort of rugged, grueling march.

Once more Bourke felt proud to be part of the general's staff, prouder still that Crook had asked him to “club it” together—to share their blankets for shelter, share their blankets for warmth.

Late that night after the others had gone and the rain beat down on the rock shelf above them, John tried to sleep, his back against Crook's.

“General?”

“Yes, John.”

“You think those Sioux ahead of us are as hungry as we are?”

Crook didn't answer right off. When he did, he said, “We've seen evidence that they've been eating their own dogs, their ponies, John. But it really doesn't matter how hungry they are now. Only thing that matters is how hungry they're going to be after we destroy their villages and drive them off with nothing else but the clothes on their backs.”

Near one
A.M.
that Saturday morning, 9 September, the sergeants passed among Mills's command, giving the order to resaddle and mount up in the cold and darkness. With chilled, trembling hands the troops completed the tasks and formed up, finally moving out close to two-thirty. A thick fog roiled along the damp ground as the men inched ahead through a swirling, misting rain.

Grouard halted Mills a mile out from the village, where the captain explained their organization for the dawn attack, then deployed the troops.

Emmet Crawford was to lead fifty-six dismounted troopers to the right flank, while Adolphus H. Von Luettwitz would take another fifty-two dismounted men to the left flank, both wings to spread out with skirmishing intervals between each soldier.

With the village thus securely “surrounded” from the north, Frederick Schwatka would move forward with his twenty-five mounted troopers, accompanied by reporter Robert Strahorn, and once it was light enough to see the front sights of their carbines, they were to charge with their pistols drawn—straight through the heart of the enemy camp, stampeding the enemy's ponies as they went, planning to re-form on the far side.

John Bubb and the remaining twenty-five soldiers acting as horse-holders would remain in the rear with Tom Moore and his fifteen packers, along with newsman Reuben Davenport—all with orders to dash forward at the first sound of gunfire to close the noose around the village.

If their surprise-attack was a success, they would drive off most of the warriors and capture some of the hostiles, and they could start plundering the village for its food supply to be used by Crook's column before putting the rest of the Sioux property to the torch. As those men sat in the rainy darkness waiting for dawn, each one knew this could well be the first victory over the enemy for the U.S. Army in the Sioux campaign, a war begun back in March along the ice-clogged Powder River.

“But should the enemy prove too strong for us,” Mills said before he deployed his officers, “you are to unite and take a high piece of ground, somewhere that we might put up a strong defense until relieved.”

“Relieved by Crook, Colonel?” asked Schwatka.

“Yes, Lieutenant.”

The prospect made Donegan shudder, recalling that bare ridge, the high ground above the Little Bighorn where
he and Frank Grouard had stumbled across the carcasses of more than a hundred horses, where they had had to thread their way through that graveyard of a butchered battalion of fighting men.

“Take the high ground and hold it,” was how the captain repeated his order.

And with that Mills moved his three wings into the dark.

Canapegi Wi. The Moon When Leaves Turn Brown.

A season when the buffalo berries were ripe and the women gathered them to begin making pemmican for those winter months when the hunting would be hard and the bellies empty.

Their bellies were already very empty, brooded American Horse. The more they wandered this direction and that to stay out of the way of the two soldier armies, the less game they found. Already the men had to kill most of the dogs, and a few of the poorer ponies. Just so that the little ones would have something to eat.

More and more there was talk about going south, all the way back to Red Cloud's agency. There, more argued every day, the old and the sick and the very young could find something to eat. The white man's flour and his pig meat. No real choice to a Lakota warrior.

Still, with each new day American Horse found himself thinking more on it, for the sake of these people.

Such a thing was all but laughable to a warrior. To run before the soldiers now was all but unthinkable. To retreat back to the agencies?

The soldiers had come probing into Lakota hunting ground from two directions. But his people had stopped the soldiers of Three Stars on the Rosebud. Then they had defeated Limping Soldier's army on the Greasy Grass. Yet the white man did not leave them alone.

Even now the army marched on the backtrail of this little village, harrying his people the way buffalo wolves will follow along in the wake of a herd, waiting for a calf to be
abandoned by its cow, waiting for an old bull to fall, unable to rise.

Although the seven great circles had begun slowly to separate days after defeating the soldiers along the Greasy Grass, nonetheless most of the clans and warrior bands had migrated in the same general direction. First to the south toward the mountains, then veering off east toward the Tongue, and finally setting a course for the north once more. After crossing Pumpkin Creek the bands had splintered, by and large, for the first time along the Powder near the mouth of Blue Stone Creek. Here the Shahiyena of the North broke off and continued for the White Mountains
*
under their chief Dull Knife.

Hunting as they continued east, the Lakota warriors set fires in that country they were abandoning not so much to deprive the soldier horses of something to eat but more because it helped the new grass grow early the following spring. Every summer they had done the same, for as long as American Horse could remember. It always meant good grass next year for their strong little ponies as well as for the buffalo, who would migrate to this country once more on the winds. Most of the Lakota bands wandered on east, fording Beaver Creek and on to the Thick Timber River
†
as they slowly ambled toward the various agencies close by the Great Muddy River itself.

Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa, Crazy Horse's Hunkpatila, the Sans Arc under Spotted Eagle, even American Horse's own Miniconjou—other chiefs too—like Black Moon, Four Horns, and No Neck—all the bands had maintained contact throughout the last two moons of migration. In the nearby country even now those other bands remained ready to lend assistance in the event of an emergency, though they must travel and hunt separately. Better to break into small camps for hunting now that game was becoming scarce.

There was still a long way to go before his people would reach Red Cloud's agency.

Before then perhaps they could force the white man to give up the chase, to clear out of Lakota country for good. Without a fight—this would be all anyone could ask!

After two long, hard fights on the Rosebud and the Greasy Grass they did not have that many bullets left. Even with the number of weapons and bullets taken from the soldier bodies—the Lakota did not have enough to make another big fight of it against the white man. Better to stay out of his way if they could.

But while they avoided the soldiers, it made sense to remain ready and watchful. And arm themselves for that day they might use up all their bullets. So it was that many of the older warriors taught the young men how to cut iron arrow points from old frying pans and iron kettles.

A good fighting season this had been—driving off Three Star's soldiers from the Rosebud, crushing the rest who came to fulfill Sitting Bull's
great
vision. Among all the bands the Lakota had lost fewer than ten-times-ten warriors altogether in both great battles! So even though the lonely women had mourned, the camps had much more to celebrate.

Those had been good days to die! The very best his people had ever known.

Now roaming scouts kept the camps informed of where the two armies were marching. They knew each time the two armies were reinforced by more soldiers. And they knew when the two joined into one. It wasn't long, however, that reports came saying that half of the soldiers were staying along the Elk River.
*
And the others were coming east, heading for the Owl River,
†
led by the traders' sons
‡
who were scouting for the soldiers. Traitors such as they would likely follow any trail they could find.