Wolf Mountain Moon (13 page)

“Likely so,” Woods agreed. “Best we keep our eyes skinned here on out.”

Not long after pushing on up Snyder's trail, at the base of the ridge where they had spotted the lone horseman, the scouts entered a rough, broken country slashed with brushy ravines and cutbanks jaggedly scarring their way down from the high ground.

A single shot suddenly rang out … then a ragged volley of rifle fire spat orange from nearby bushes just ahead of them.

It was all Kelly and the others could do to control their horses at that moment as the animals reared and kicked, doing their best to twist about and flee. Cross and Luther were the first to get their rifles up and pointed at the brush where the gun smoke hung among the leafless branches. Both of them fired.

From the vegetation across the coulee burst at least five figures, breechclouts swaying like flags, feathers flapping as the warriors turned tail and fled up a wide ravine.

Likely they've got their ponies hid up there, Luther thought.

For the next few minutes the scouts loped up and down that piece of broken ground, trying to find some way round to get at the fleeing warriors—but in the end could not because the ravine was too wide and deep to cross.

“They picked their spot good,” Woods announced breathlessly as they gathered once more.

Their eyes were still watchful and wary, their weapons still at the ready.

“Bet that son of a bitch we spotted back up yonder on top of the ridge give the rest of 'em the word we was coming through,” Cross declared.

“A good spot for an ambush,” Kelly agreed. “Place where they could get us close enough to do us all in—and be quick at it.”

Johnston said, “I figger one of 'em got a itchy finger afore we was all in their trap.”

“You can thank your lucky stars for that,” Kelly told them. “If they'd all been patient men—”

“We'd all be
dead
men,” Woods interrupted.

“C'mon, fellas,” Kelly said, sawing his horse back to the northwest again. “Time we pushed hard to catch those soldiers. This country's turned out to be a mite less than friendly.”

They didn't catch up to Snyder's battalion until the following evening, Friday, the twenty-fourth, far to the northwest up that tributary of the Big Dry. And for the next three days the column marched and camped, marched and camped, suffering the slush and mud during the day, then enduring the galling cold at night, without once encountering an Indian trail nor any sign of the warriors who had ambushed the scouts. On the twenty-seventh Snyder's battalion finally reached the rendezvous site at Black Buttes.

“It's like Sitting Bull's village just up and disappeared,” Billy Cross said the night of the twenty-seventh at their fire.

“Maybeso they crossed over the Missouri,” Johnston declared.

“We'd a'seed the place where they crossed, don't you figger?” Jim Woods argued.

“Doesn't make much sense, that much is true,” Kelly explained. “If the Sitting Bull people were running west, why—one of these battalions should have bumped into 'em by now.”

Woods slapped his knee, saying, “At least seen some hide or hair of 'em!”

On the following day, Tuesday, the twenty-eighth, Snyder ordered F and ? companies to remain in camp while Irish-born Captain Edmond Butler was directed to lead C and D on
a patrol up that north fork of the Big Dry with Kelly as their guide. Just past noon it began to snow, then quickly thickened into a howling storm before Butler's detail turned back to their bivouac, emerging ghostlike out of the whipping, cavorting snow behind their scout, who successfully brought them in without losing his way in the blizzard.

“You find anything?” Woods asked as Kelly dragged saddle and blanket to the ground.

Luther collapsed right beside his gear. “Not a feather, Jim. Can't tell you what we might've seen if the weather hadn't closed in on us.”

Cross walked up to ask, “You think Sitting Bull's out there?”

Luther took a moment, then wagged his head. “I don't think we'll find him. Maybe Miles will. But as for us—I got a strong feeling we're poking down the wrong rabbit hole.”

The fierce wind had sculpted the snow into huge icy drifts by dawn the following morning. Nonetheless, Snyder was of a mind to try to break a trail and continue his push north. His column struggled no more than two miles in more than five hours of grueling march. The captain conferred with Butler, then decided they would bivouac right there. At the order weary men fell to either side of their narrow foot trail hammered through the snow, collapsing back into the icy drifts, exhausted, shuddering with the tremendous cold as a relentless wind continued to blow ground snow about them.

On Thursday, the thirtieth, National Thanksgiving Day, Captain Snyder called Luther over to his windbreak formed by an outstretched gum poncho.

“Kelly, I want you to pick two men. Leave the others with us.”

“You want me to go back out to scout for the Indians who aren't there?”

“I understand your position perfectly,” Snyder replied. “And, frankly, I'm beginning to agree with you.”

“Where are you sending me, if not to look for the Hunkpapa?”

“Find Miles,” Snyder requested. “Maybe he's bumped into the hostiles north of the river for some reason and can't rejoin us here as he planned.”

“You afraid he might have pitched into something more than he could handle?”

Snyder looked away and shrugged slightly. “All I know is that the time for our rendezvous here at Black Buttes has come and gone—and I have no idea where the general is.”

“How long can you hang in here, Captain?” Kelly asked.

“My quartermaster sergeant tells me we're running low on everything. I can cut the men's rations—but we're damn well out of forage for the stock already.”

“Which means you'll have to turn back for the Tongue before too long.”

“Give yourself two more days, Kelly.” Snyder said it almost like a prayer as he shuddered, pulling his blanket more tightly under his chin. “Go see what you can find out about Miles—then get back here by December second.”

On the evening of the thirtieth of November, Colonel Miles separated his command from a battalion he would have led by his most trusted officer. That night Frank Baldwin and Companies G, H, and I camped apart with their scout, Vic Smith. Just after sundown they drew their rations and the forage for their complement of six-mule teams, loading it and their ammunition into thirteen wagons, then spent their first night apart from the rest of the regiment.

Before dawn on the following morning, 1 December, Lieutenant Frank D. Baldwin led those three companies of 112 men beneath the light of a full moon, their noses pointed east on a chase after Sitting Bull's swelling camp of hostiles last reported to be gathering somewhere on the Redwater River … even if that chase would take him all the way to Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone.

There were no written orders. After seven years of serving Miles on the southern plains, the commander of the Fifth Infantry trusted Baldwin's judgment implicitly in the field. After all, Baldwin was a non-West Pointer, like himself. Forget all that politics and book learning, Miles believed. If he wanted a job done, turn it over to a man like Frank Baldwin: pure gumption, grit, and fighting tallow.

In the meantime Miles himself planned to continue upstream with the remaining two companies, A and E, along with the Napoleon gun, making for Fort Hawley, where he
would cross the Missouri ice to the south bank, explore the upper drainage of the Big Dry until his rendezvous with Snyder's battalion. Together the two battalions would then march south to the Tongue River Cantonment for resupply.

Sloshing through thick mud, which at times turned into a quagmire of quicksand, forced to hack their way through a thick maze of brush and deep snowdrifts in those rough breaks north of the Missouri, Miles's battalion finally limped into bivouac late that Friday night after a torturous nineteen miles. At dawn the next morning the command continued on upstream, cutting a path through the underbrush for their wagons and digging out a serviceable road until they reached a point opposite Fort Hawley, abandoned for some seven years. After they had corduroyed the riverbank, the wagons and men crossed the groaning ice to the south bank.

For a few moments Miles dismounted to stand among the ruins of the post—now nothing more than a few charred timbers sticking from the new snow like blackened broken bones jutting from a wound, an iron stove broken and turning to rust, and the fort cemetery. Nelson removed his hat and silently mouthed the words of a short prayer as he stared at all those faded, graying, faceless wooden headboards leaning a'kilter between earth and sky.

With the crossing of the frozen Missouri at the Hawley ford complete, the column was immediately faced with a new predicament. On the south side of the river the banks rose like an abrupt wall before them.

At first Miles tried hitching a double team of twelve mules to one of the nearly empty wagons to get his supplies up the bluffs. Yet the animals could not struggle up the sharp-pitched trail. Left with little choice, the soldiers emptied the wagon beds once more, then removed the boxes from their running gear—so box, running gear, and small loads of supplies could be dragged up on ropes by the men working in concert with the mule teams. Even as cold as it was, what with the way the wind blustered at the top of the bluffs, the soldiers sweated their way through the lion's share of that day and into the coming of night.

By ten
P.M
. the battalion finally settled into their bivouac on the top of the prairie, high above the Missouri River among the pine and cedar that provided a little windbreak to
their cookfires, where juicy slabs of venison roasted, in a spot the foot-sloggers affectionately named Camp Elevation.

As twilight deepened into night, the pickets were the first to spot some fires glowing on the north side of the river.

“In the morning,” Miles told William Jackson, “I want you to find out if that is friend or foe.”

“I think your captain—the one my brother Robert took to Carroll City.”

Miles nodded glumly. “Yes, I suppose you're right, Jackson. What with the reports of Sitting Bull being far to the east of us, it's not very likely that he's camped over yonder, is it? Not when he's eluded me a second time in as many months.”

Nelson was morose enough that night that he found it hard to sleep—thinking and rethinking how Sitting Bull had outsmarted him not just once, but twice now—brooding how chasing the Hunkpapa was like chasing after wisps of winter smoke. Close enough to smell his prey, near enough to see, perhaps, but nothing to grab hold of—not a damned thing in your hand once you opened it.

At dawn the next morning the men found the view glorious from that lofty plateau above the rugged Missouri Breaks. Everywhere ran the deepest of ravines and coulees, perpendicular bluffs and cotton-topped ridges, every landform striated with varicolored sandstone and draped in winter white. Here and there long borders of pine and cedar in emerald-green threaded across the landscape. Far to the northwest rose the snowcapped Little Rocky Mountains, while to the south and west in the cold, clear winter air stood the magnificent splendor of the Judith and Moccasin Mountains, beyond them the ever loftier Snowy range.

On south by east Miles led his column, trudging through the ankle-deep snow and icy drifts along the twisting ridgetop above the aptly named Crooked Creek before the column was forced into the valley to cross and recross the creekbed many times during the day. Curious deer bounded up along both sides of the march as the men continued downstream. Late in the afternoon of the fourth Captain Bennett's ? Company finally rejoined Miles, having crossed the Missouri upriver that morning. Camp was made that night where the men could find shelter from the wind.

Late the following morning of the fifth, Miles reached the
mouth of Crooked Creek in the lush, timbered, grassy valley of the Musselshell River. While hunting details were sent out, Miles dispatched the Jackson brothers to press upstream to determine the best route while the colonel saw the column across the thick ice on the Musselshell.

Early in the afternoon the half-breed scouts delivered their disappointing news to a frustrated Miles. Because of the ruggedness of the country and the snow depth they had encountered farther up the Musselshell, the soldier column would have to turn back to the Missouri. Once on the south bank, they would then continue along the river until reaching the mouth of Squaw Creek.

It was there that the going became even tougher. Not only were the teams and wagons breaking through the thin ice crusting every little shaded slough, but now some of the men were forced to use spades and picks to carve a crude road out of the side of a bluff for their wagons, while the rest of the soldiers unloaded those wagons and hauled on their backs what supplies they had left them up the steep sides of the bluff like a team of industrious ants at a country-fair picnic. Other men somehow persuaded the balky mules to pull the wagons up the precarious slopes by sheer muscle and rope power alone. It took the last of them until after sundown to reach the top of the prairie once more—putting no more than seven short miles behind them for the day.

On the sixth the men dropped down into more solid terrain in the Squaw Creek drainage, realizing that their forage for the wagon stock was running desperately low. Miles overheard a lot of the grumbling as both officers and enlisted men worried with the darkening skies, knowing that they weren't prepared to sit out any more bad weather, realizing that another snowstorm just might do them in.

Shortly past midday on the seventh, Miles brought his command into sight of the Black Buttes rising just beyond the grassy, wooded valley of Big Dry Creek. Here the Jackson brothers returned with more depressing news for the colonel. They had discovered evidence that Snyder's battalion had been there—and gone. From the swath cut through the thick, tall buffalo grass, it was clear that Snyder's four companies had already turned southeast from the Buttes and were making for the cantonment.