Wolf Mountain Moon (16 page)

“They laid a trap for us!”

The panic was quick to spread through the battalion.

“Trap us like they done to Custer!”

In the gray light of predawn the shadows of the enemy horsemen and those warriors fighting afoot on the frozen river seemed ghostlike and ethereal to Baldwin: unreal, with a quality of everywhere at once as the bullets from their weapons smacked through the snow-laden branches of the cottonwood and yellow pine.

More and more of that red rear guard exploded off the far bank, lining themselves along the shore as they advanced, returning shot for shot in a brisk firing that bogged down Baldwin's battalion for the rest of that morning near the mouth of Bark Creek. Not getting to chase Sitting Bull nettled Frank like an itch he couldn't scratch. His stomach churned in fury just listening to that rifle fire from the enemy on the far bank.
Winchesters, Henrys … government-supplied rifles, firing government-supplied ammunition.

Hour by hour, ever so steadily, that pressure from the Sioux continued to mount. All along his front Baldwin listened to the reports of his officers as the skirmishing heated up. The Sioux were too strong. As simple as that. And now in the gray light of early morning he could see that the enemy was intent on crossing over, upriver and down, slinking past his battalion on both flanks.

“Sir!”

Baldwin wheeled on his heel.

The soldier reported, “Sir, the Yanktonais—they just showed up at our rear!”

“They're shooting at us?”

“N-no, sir. No shooting yet.”

“Damn,” Baldwin muttered. “Tell Lieutenant Rousseau to turn his men around and hold those Yanktonais where they are. Let there be no doubt that he will fire on the Yanktonais if they do not withdraw immediately. I repeat: if they make any trouble—shoot. Understood?”

The soldier nodded, saluted, and dashed off through the deep snow that swirled up in cascades around his knees.

Now not only did he have the Hunkpapa hostiles to worry about on his front, but he had these Yanktonais to worry about at his rear. Although they were considered friendly upriver at their agency, he wasn't about to gamble that the red bastards wouldn't leap at this chance to help out their distant relatives.

“Damn!” he muttered under his breath.

He had been surprised, a third of his men caught in the open on the frozen Missouri, with no telling just how many were facing him and no telling how many ready to jump his rear.

Jesus! What a dilemma.

If he pursued, he had only two companies to engage the hostiles, because one company had to watch their rear for the Yanktonais.

And if he countercharged and forced his way across the frozen Missouri, engaging the hostiles in close quarters … what if it turned out he had bitten off more than his three companies could chew? After all, he remembered suddenly,
there had been rumors at Fort Peck that Sitting Bull now had close to two hundred lodges gathered around him once more—which made for some six hundred warriors.

After he had limped away from the Yellowstone with no more than thirty lodges only a month ago!

The firing was growing steadily heavier on his front. The Sioux were again attempting another sweep across the Missouri on his left flank, but I Company was holding strong. For how long, no man could say right then.

What if he pushed back and got his men over to that south bank, then got them pinned down and the river ice broke up again? His battalion would be cut off from their supply base at Fort Peck—burdened with their wounded and hamstrung by a limited supply of ammunition. It could be a Little Bighorn all over again.

“Holy Mary, Mother of Grace.”

Baldwin listened to a nearby soldier from Lyman's I Company begin reciting his rosary. And then Frank knew what he had to do.

He had no choice but to retreat.

The very word caught in his throat the way a chicken bone might get stuck in a dog's gullet.

He turned and looked upstream, then down. And once he had spotted the right place, he remembered that his duty lay not just to his commander; he was the sort of soldier who knew his duty rested with his men.

He could hear them cry out in fear or frustration, hear the old files curse, doing what they could to buck up the shavetails as the bullets whistled in among them. Frank owed these men more than to let them get chewed up like Custer's bunch.

“Withdraw!” he suddenly bellowed, whipping his horse around and shouting it again.

Many of the men turned around to look at Baldwin, surprised.

Pointing downriver, he gave his order. “To the high ground!”

“The high ground!” a sergeant repeated somewhere upstream on the right flank. “You heard the lieutenant—now, get your ever-living arses humping for the high-by-God ground!”

By some favor of fate's fickle hand, Baldwin's battalion made it to that thumb of high bluff on the north bank, fighting their way through the thick, leafless brush as much as they fought a rear-guard action against the warriors who dared venture out on the ice and those who kept up a continuous barrage from the far bank.

At the top the lieutenant spun around on those first few who followed him. “Breastworks!”

That one-word order was immediately taken up by other officers, the sergeants directing their men to drag what logs, deadfall, and river trash they could get up the icy slope behind them. In less than twenty minutes they had themselves a substantial barrier that would stop many of the Sioux bullets.

Yet as good as that accomplishment made him feel, Baldwin took a good look at his men. They had now gone more than twenty-four hours without sleep, without much rest to speak of. And their march hadn't been a country walk, either. If these men had been on their feet, they had been moving, and moving meant struggling through snow anywhere from their ankles all the way up to their knees.

No two ways about it—this battalion that had jumped the rear guard of Sitting Bull's fleeing village was at the end of its string: no sleep nor food in more than a day. There seemed to be no end to the torture as the temperature continued to drop.

“Gentlemen,” Frank quietly instructed his fellow officers as they gathered about him, most kneeling wearily on one knee, “rotate the men in your companies. Put half at picket duty at the breastworks. Relieve the others for an hour to build fires and eat what they still have along in their haversacks.”

“Thank God!” Lieutenant Hinkle gushed in a whisper. Then his eyes found Baldwin's, and there was a smile where before there had been only despair.

“Yes,” Frank croaked, his voice cracking with emotion. The wind burned his eyes, making them water. “Thank God we got here when we did, gentlemen. If the men wish to sleep during their hour at ease, they can do so—but in an hour we rotate to allow our pickets to have a chance at the warmth of the fires, and something hot in their bellies.”

“A little sleep,” said Lieutenant Rousseau, “some coffee, and a hot fire. Why, there ain't nothing can go wrong now, sir!”

Throughout the rest of that morning and into the afternoon the Sioux ventured forth from time to time to try the stalwart soldiers in their riverbank fortress. Most times the warriors scampered back out of range whenever a platoon here or there fired a volley, scattering the enemy like a covey of flushed quail. It was cold work, lying there in the snow, hunkered down behind the cottonwood deadfall, watching the icy river and that far bank, shivering with one's rifle cradled between one's arms—teeth chattering uncontrollably as the thermometer continued to slide past zero.

Then, at midafternoon, the worst that could happen loomed on the lowering western horizon. For long minutes the soldiers watched the dark front race closer and closer as the sky seemed to drop visibly with that incoming wave of grayish-white clouds. The first flakes they spat were icy, like shards of splintered glass hurled against the men, stinging their faces and flesh as they hunkered down in the collars of their wool coats, making themselves as small as they could behind the breastworks walls as the wind gave its call.

In the space of twenty minutes a prairie blizzard suddenly howled about them.

Should a man find he could stand to open his eyes in that gale of icy splinters, he discovered his visibility cut to less than ten feet, if that far. Frosty, frozen snow built up layer by layer on the western side of their fortress, thickly crusting the windward side of every hat, face, and coat until it looked as if Baldwin's battalion had been given half a coating of whitewash.

By the time Frank stared down at the face of the turnip pocket watch trembling in his mitten—seeing the hands closing on five o'clock in the waning daylight—he finally realized it had been more than half an hour since the Sioux had last fired at his position.

“Companies, report your status!” he cried out against the wailing of the rising gusts, turning his back to the wind that shouldered him this way, then that.

“I Company, left flank, Lieutenant,” Lyman's voice cried out downstream. “No sign of the enemy from here!”

“Company G,” came the call from Rousseau near the center of their breastworks. “No firing on our position, Lieutenant!”

“H Company, sir!” Hinkle's voice sang out from Frank's right as Baldwin turned slowly into the wind now, the better to hear the report. “Not a goddamned redskin in sight.”

Then an old sergeant hollered from among H Company's soldiers, “And we ain't seen one of them bastards on the far bank in over a hour—pardon my French, sir!”

“You're damn well excused, Sergeant!” Baldwin declared. “Officers' call! Officers' call!”

They came out of the swirling, brutally icy mist to surround him like half-white, half-woolen ghosts, shivering and stamping, slapping their arms around themselves, most faces no more than a pair of eyes peeking out from above a wool muffler.

With one of his muskrat gauntlets Baldwin pulled down his thick scarf so he could speak again. “Gentlemen—I'm of the mind that the Hunkpapa are no longer a threat should we elect to retreat from our breastworks.”

“W-where to, Lieutenant?” Hinkle asked plaintively.

“Only one place to go, men.”

Rousseau inquired, “Back to Fort Peck?”

He turned to answer the officer. “That's right. We don't have near enough food, nor did we bring any shelters along. I'm afraid our fires won't last much longer in this wind. And our steward tells me the mercury in his thermometer's frozen at the bottom of the bulb. That means it's forty below … or worse. So I've come to the decision that if we don't move now—we never will get out.”

“N-never … never get out?”

Baldwin spoke more quietly now. “I don't want any of you to alarm your men, but I've been told these high-plains blizzards can last two—maybe three—days.”

Hinkle tucked his head against the wind, saying, “W-we'd be dead by then, sir!”

“That's why I want you to prepare your men to move out,” Frank explained. “The first thing is for your companies to use what fires we still have going so the men can cook and eat all the food that's left among your outfits.”

Rousseau shook his head. “You want us to eat, sir? B-begging pardon—”

“Yes, every man must stuff himself until he can eat no more,” Baldwin said emphatically. “Your lives may depend upon just how much food you have in your belly to keep the furnace going inside once we start our return march … which means facing into that wind.”

The officers knotted around him began to murmur and nod, understanding.

“And …,” Baldwin started, then paused a moment as he struggled with the thick ball of sentiment at the back of his throat, “I want each of you to tell your companies how proud I am of them this day. How
damned
proud I am to be leading this battalion.”

“P-proud, s-sir?” Rousseau asked in a quaky voice, teeth chattering.

“Yes,” Frank replied. “Tell all the men they can be most proud of themselves for driving the enemy out of its village and into this terrible storm. Tell them they've held off the warriors who butchered Custer's command. And … tell your men they've started the beginning of the end for Sitting Bull and the rest of Custer's murderers.”

Chapter 9
7 December 1876