Wolf Mountain Moon (30 page)

“Yes—”

“Then you'll pay heed to what Kelly here has to tell you,” and the colonel turned back to his canvas stool behind the desk.

“Seamus, you strike me as a man smart enough to read sign,” Kelly said, taking a step closer.

“I had my first fight with the Sioux on the Crazy Woman in the summer of 1866,”
^*
Donegan told the room. “I've seen my share, Kelly.”

“Call me Luther or call me Yellowstone,” the civilian replied. “So if you've seen your share, you ought to take it from another man who knows, Seamus. Take it for gospel from a man who'd like nothing more than to have a family of his own one of these days. Because of that—I can't stand by and watch you ride off to the south by yourself.”

His empty belly pinched in warning again, rumbling for lack of fodder. How he wanted that promised cup of coffee a young soldier had been sent to fetch minutes ago as they'd walked into the colonel's office. As that long, wide scar itched in apprehension across the width of his back, Donegan's mind tumbled round and round with despair and dilemma at having all that he had planned upon suddenly dashed upon the rocks of—

“Ten years of scouting for the army out here?” Miles asked.

“Off and on, General.”

Kelly turned to gaze at Miles. “Can I put him to work, General?”

“I want to go home,” Seamus groaned, closing his eyes and wagging his head.

“You'd never make it,” Kelly echoed.

Then Miles said, “You'll be on
my
payroll, Donegan.”

“Yours?”

“Already on Crook's, aren't you?”

“It's the dead of by-God winter,” Seamus growled, wanting to protest in the worst way as he settled back to the half-log bench. “What in hell do you think you're going to accomplish against the Sioux with your infantrymen between now and spring?”

“I'm waiting on my last battalion to make it in from the field,” Miles explained, pointing off across the Yellowstone. “Baldwin's men have been chasing Sitting Bull down.”

“Any luck?” Donegan asked, sensing a twinge of excitement flutter within him as he looked from Miles to Kelly.

“We nailed him once on Cedar Creek, back in October,” the civilian explained to Seamus. “And already Baldwin's caught the old fox back up near Fort Peck.”

“He slip through your fingers?” Seamus asked.

“Through mine,” Miles admitted, “and a second time through Baldwin's grasp.”

“A courier brought me word from the lieutenant that his battalion has been following Sitting Bull south from the Missouri and they expected to engage his village within a matter of days,” Miles declared proudly.

Looking down at the mucky floor below his boots, Seamus said, “So you'll keep hammering away at them, no matter that it's the dead of winter.”

Miles brushed the question aside, saying, “Mr. Donegan, I'll pay you scout's wages, but understand that Kelly here will make you work for that pay.”

Drawing in a deep breath, he let half of it out slowly, the way he would when he was trying to squeeze off a tough shot. “If that's the way it's to be, I'll stay on till I stand a chance riding south again.”

“You can head home before spring.”

Donegan looked at Miles with sudden hope. “I thought
you just told me the country south of here was crawling with Crazy Horse's warriors!”

“They are,” Miles said, pushing himself erect from the desk, rubbing his two big hands together.

“Mother of Christ—I'd promised my wife I'd be back by Christmas,” Seamus explained with a doleful wag of his head. “New Year at the latest. Now you wanna promise me I'll be heading home before spring?”

“As soon as Baldwin gets his battalion in here and we've reoutfitted this regiment, I plan on letting my men celebrate a merry little Christmas right here,” the colonel instructed.

Not understanding, Donegan shook his head and shuffled his feet, stretching his aching, cold, saddle-hammered back muscles. “I don't know how that can help me ride south before spring, General.”

“Mr. Donegan, before the New Year has arrived,” Miles said as he came up to put one hand on the tall Irishman's shoulder, “I plan on marching my Fifth Infantry, with you joining Kelly and his company of scouts … the whole lot of us headed south to corral Crazy Horse once and for all.”

Seamus began to grin within his thick beard. “Once you've beaten Crazy Horse, then I can ride back to my family.”

Miles grinned in turn. “Once I've beaten Crazy Horse, Mr. Donegan … you can damn well ride anywhere in this country you bloody well want!”

Chapter 18
18-23 December 1876

H
aving finished the fiery destruction of some ninety canvas and hide lodges abandoned by Sitting Bull's people close to sundown, Vic Smith, Joe Culbertson, and Edward Lambert led Frank Baldwin's column south, following Ash Creek into the coming twilight. Just shy of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide the lieutenant gave the order to bivouac at dusk.

After drawing their wagons into a square and bringing within its protection their mules and some sixty captured Sioux ponies, the men pulled from the wagons everything they could use for breastworks: their last sacks of grain and crates of hardtack. That done, the captured buffalo robes were hastily distributed among the companies as the men settled in the snow around their greasewood fires, the sky above cold and clear as a bell jar, black as tar and sprinkled with a million frosty pricks of light. Once every man had a robe for himself, the extra hides were laid over the backs of the bone-weary mules.

Late that night of the eighteenth the Hunkpapa fired into the soldier camp from long distance and without causing injury to Baldwin's men. Just before dawn on Tuesday, Frank and his officers inspected the captured ponies and from them
selected enough to replace what mules had died of exposure or want of grain.

“We'll kill the rest before we push on,” he explained.

“Shoot them, Lieutenant?” asked Joe Culbertson.

“Only the ones my soldiers can't hold still enough to slash their throats,” he said dryly. “I won't turn my fighting men into herders, and I sure as hell won't turn these ponies loose for the Sioux to get their thieving hands on again.”

Mounted warriors, and many on foot, were spotted in the middistance along the hilltops as soon as there was enough light to see. No telling how long they had been waiting through the cold night to look down on the soldier camp.

An hour later more than fifty horse carcasses lay on the bloody snow, going cold in the wind on that high, treeless divide as Baldwin's men finally pushed south that cheerless Tuesday morning. On the far side they located a narrow gap for their wagons and rumbled on down an upper fork of Cedar Creek toward the Yellowstone Valley. Their sprits buoyed to be nearing home, the soldiers reached the Tongue River-Fort Buford Road on the north bank of the Yellowstone late that afternoon.

Warriors had been in sight all day, dogging the path of the column, always staying to the hills at a respectful distance from those far-shooting Springfields. But just before sunset as the soldiers began squaring their wagons for the night, the Sioux rushed in from the nearby ravines and coulees, screaming and firing their weapons.

Though gallant, their effort was too little, too late.

Baldwin quickly formed his companies into squads and turned away one halfhearted charge after another before the attack was over less than twenty minutes after the warriors had launched it.

Well after moonset Baldwin shook hands with Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and scout Vic Smith as the two stood beside the strongest animals left with the battalion.

“Mr. Smith here figures we ought to be at the cantonment by sunrise,” Hinkle said.

“'Pendin' on the road, snow, an' Injuns,” the civilian added.

Baldwin turned back to Hinkle. “Just get there when you
can—safe and whole. Doesn't do us any good if you don't make it—we don't get word to the general about the grain.”

“I'll see to it that the corn for the animals is sent back to Custer Creek just as you're requesting,” Hinkle replied, then stepped back and saluted. He clambered up to his saddle, then quietly urged his mount between two wagons where a pair of soldiers held aloft the long wagon tongues as the two riders disappeared into the snowy darkness.

“God be with you both to see you through,” Baldwin said almost under his breath. “And God be with us if you don't.”

It was to be another near sleepless night for the lieutenant. Like those gone before on this expedition, he was up and moving about, always prowling, walking the perimeter, checking on his pickets to assure they hadn't fallen asleep, making sure they wouldn't freeze.

The following morning Baldwin's men continued their struggle to hack a way through snowdrifts and to block up the wagons to keep them from careening down every slippery slope as the sky began to spit an icy snow down at them. Throughout the day the column had to halt briefly now and again to free a broken-down mule from its harness, each time turning the animals loose before they pushed on. By midafternoon the weary battalion had reached the banks of Custer Creek, where Baldwin ordered them to bivouac. When it wasn't snowing that night, the wind was howling, making it next to impossible to keep their fires going.

“Tell your men to keep warm,” Baldwin ordered the morning of the twenty-first. He was more weary than any of them. “We're laying to.”

“You trust that Hinkle got through to Tongue River?” asked Lieutenant Rousseau.

“Yes,” Baldwin answered with some of the last of his optimism. “The grain will get here, or we'll have to abandon the rest of the mules and wagons where they are. I don't think there's a single one of these animals can make it on in to the cantonment—”

They all turned at the rapid, scattered gunshots downriver, coming from the direction where Joe Culbertson and a mounted soldier had gone in search of those mules abandoned the previous day.

In less than five minutes Baldwin was in the saddle and
leading a mixed company of men out at double time along their backtrail, heading toward the sound of the guns. They hadn't gone more than a couple of miles when two horsemen appeared ahead on the road, whipping their animals for all they were worth.

As the pair drew closer, Frank recognized Culbertson's youthful face, saw the graying fear written clearly on the young soldier's. On the road just behind the scout and soldier suddenly materialized more than two dozen mounted warriors screeching after their quarry.

“Skirmish order! Full left!” Baldwin cried, wheeling his horse and watching the infantrymen—for the moment no longer cold—scurry into formation across the width of the snowy Fort Buford Road.

“Second and third squads, prepare to advance,” Frank ordered, struggling with his anxious horse in the deep snow. “First squad—
advance!”

After he had marched them only another five yards, Baldwin watched the warriors emerge from a wide bend in the road beyond some leafless cottonwood. Just as the Sioux spotted his soldiers, they hurriedly began to rein up in confusion and surprise.

“Fire!”

That first volley ripped through the center of the horsemen, causing ponies to rear and men to scream in pain. But by and large most of the warriors had pitched to one side or another of their horses and were now turning their animals around on either side of the trail.

“Second squad—
advance!”

Following their corporal, those soldiers raggedly trotted up and knelt just beyond the first squad, going to their knees to steady the long rifles.

“Fire!”

Baldwin did not have to call up the third squad that late Thursday morning. Already the Sioux had retreated beyond the trees at the bend of the road, pulling back to a safe distance from those soldier rifles.