Wolf Mountain Moon (31 page)

With no mules recovered Baldwin moved his men back to their bivouac at Custer Creek to continue their wait for relief, which meant enduring the intense cold through the rest of the day. An hour before sundown the pickets on the west side of
their camp began hollering out. Over a hundred men stood shivering in their buffalo robes at their smoky fires and watched expectantly as the first forms appeared out of the west, where the sun was falling in a frosty haze.

A handful of horsemen accompanied by the squeak of some twenty wagons hoved around the bend of the road leading from Tongue River. Captain Ezra P. Ewers led a detail of forty soldiers to man and escort those wagons carrying grain for Baldwin's ailing battalion.

Frank was certain it was the fact that he was facing the cruel west wind that made his eyes begin to tear as he watched his comrades and friends coming to the relief of his men.

“Lieutenant Baldwin!” Ewers cried out as he brought his prancing horse to a halt and saluted. Then he held down his hand. “Well done, sir. Well goddamned done!”

“T-thank you, Captain!” Baldwin replied self-consciously.

“From Mr. Hinkle we hear it was just like McClellan Creek!” Ewers gushed with enthusiasm.

“I'm very proud of my men,” Frank boasted, really feeling the sting at his eyes.

“And well you should be,” Ewers replied while Baldwin's battalion lumbered forward to greet the new arrivals who marched in two rows down the extent of the short wagon train. “We hear you drove Sitting Bull into the night without food or shelter!”

“Yes,” Baldwin said as Ewers dropped from his horse. “I only wish I could have gotten my hands on that flea-bitten scalp of his for the general.”

Ewers declared, “He wants you to return immediately.”

“Im-immediately?” Frank stammered.

“To report to him personally,” the captain answered. “Hinkle told him some of the story, but the general gave me orders to have you start out posthaste. We'll take the strongest horses I have with me.” Then the captain handed Baldwin a folded note.

Frank looked up from that note written by Miles. “Now?”

“Yes, goddammit!” Ewers roared, slapping a hand on Baldwin's shoulder. “The general couldn't be more proud of you!”

“The men,” Frank tried to explain.

“Yes—he's most proud of your battalion. None of the rest of us has done near what you've accomplished, Lieutenant. Just think of it: if Sitting Bull doesn't starve this winter … he'll damn well have to make a run for Canada of it!”

Just past sundown Baldwin mounted the horse he had named Redwater several days before and rode west with Ewers and a small escort, reaching Tongue River at five
A.M
. on the twenty-second to find that Miles had left orders to be awakened as soon as the “fightingest lieutenant in the Fifth” had arrived. Over hot coffee and more food than Frank had laid eyes on in a month, Baldwin told the colonel and that crowd of soldiers everything about that first fight where he'd ordered a retreat to save the lives of his men, and then told the group how not one of his battalion had given up when they'd fought that blizzard all the way back to Fort Peck.

Told them how his men had hitched up their britches, straightened their backs, and pitched back into the wilderness to track down Sitting Bull again. How they'd caught the Hunkpapa sleeping that time and destroyed everything the band owned.

Late the following afternoon of 23 December, Companies G, H, and I of the Fifth Infantry limped into the Tongue River Cantonment, slowly parading down a long gauntlet of clapping, shouting, hurrawing soldiers who couldn't wait to pound on the back those heroes of the prairie winter and welcome them back home.

Not one man lost.

It brought a sting of sentiment to the throat of Frank Baldwin as he watched his loyal troops march proudly back among their fellows, three full companies who had suffered unspeakable cold, men who gaped and smiled and laughed now despite the blackened, frostbitten flesh every one of them suffered, men who had empty grain sacks, pieces of green hides, and bands of rawhide thongs tied around their feet to hold together their shoddy army boots.

Men who had marched more than 716 miles on short
rations, across some of the most unforgiving terrain on the entire continent, right through the very heart of winter.

Soldiers who nonetheless had still beaten Sitting Bull.

By bloody damn: they had beaten the man who had orchestrated the destruction of Custer.

Now all they had to do was find Sitting Bull's most powerful general … and destroy the Crazy Horse bands forever.

Chapter 19
Wanicokan Wi
1876

T
he heart of Crazy Horse turned cold.

Just when he was beginning to believe the other chiefs that they could trust the Bear Coat, the soldiers' Indian scouts murdered five Lakota leaders.

“Do you see now what peace means to the
wasicu?”
he
roared at the many who hastily gathered as soon as the entire delegation raced back to the village days after the killings.

His heart had never been colder, here in the Midwinter Moon. Never had it been colder to the white man.

Spotted Elk's eyes were sad. “We cannot trust the word of the soldier chief.”

“He sends his
Psatoka
out to kill our peace talkers!” yelped He Dog, barely able to contain his fury.

“Packs the Drum was a good man,” Crazy Horse told them. “He believed he was doing right by our people. But he made the same mistake we have made time and again: he trusted in the
wasicu”

“And that was his undoing!” bellowed Roman Nose.

“Bull Eagle!” whimpered Touch-the-Clouds, wagging his head. “They murdered Bull Eagle when he came to talk peace to the soldier he trusted!”

All about them now women shuffled aimlessly through the snow, pulling blankets over their heads to hide not just their red-rimmed eyes, but the ashes of mourning they had scooped from fire pits to smear on their tear-streaked faces, some of the young and old angrily ripping knives from their scabbards and screaming at the sky while they slowly slashed their arms and legs, each row of crimson ribbons not taking long at all to freeze in the shocking cold of that winter afternoon. Dogs barked, wailed, and whimpered—not knowing the cause of this great disturbance. And all the while children cried, hugging the legs of their mothers, or standing alone and abandoned, quietly sobbing as the adults around them poured forth their bitter, private fury, their unrequited rage welling like a fevered boil.

“They will not die in vain,” Crazy Horse explained to the crowd.

Young Bad Leg shouted, “Let us attack the soldier fort!”

But Red Cloth disagreed. “We could not force the
wasicu
out to fight us. They would be like gophers in their burrows. So many tunnels that the wolf cannot ever catch one.”

“Red Cloth is right,” Crazy Horse declared. “The soldiers would hide behind their log walls, and we would never dig them out.”

“Then we must lure them out!” Long Feather suggested.

“Yes, that is just what we should do,” Crazy Horse replied,
his voice rising in hope. “We can lure the white men out—just as we lured the
wasicu
soldiers to their death at the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand ten winters ago.”
^*

No Neck asked, “With some decoys?”

“Yes, I will pick five-times-ten of them myself,” Crazy Horse replied. “And we will ride to the soldier fort, where we lure the
wasicu
out, taunting and teasing the Bear Coat all the time as he brings his soldiers south farther and farther until we reach the place where all of our warriors will be waiting to crush the Bear Coat's puny army.”

“But the soldiers must not come close to the villages!” protested the old Rising Sun.

“They won't have a chance of getting close to our villages,” Crazy Horse snapped, anxious to shut off all debate.

“It is good to keep the soldiers far from our village,” He Dog declared. “The women and children, our old and our sick, would panic if they knew the soldiers were close to our camp!”

“Bear Coat's soldiers will never reach our village,” the Horse repeated. “We will lure them to the place
we
want to fight, where we will have our warriors waiting. There the task of our decoys will be over—and the killing can begin!”

“You will lead the decoys yourself?” asked The Yearling.

“No, this time I will pick a young warrior,” Crazy Horse answered. “As I was given that honor by Red Cloud and Afraid of His Horses when I was a young warrior.”

“They have become tired old women now!” shouted Bad Leg.

“Yes,” No Neck agreed. “Both of them are like old women before the
wasicu”

“Whipped dogs!”

“But they were not always whipped dogs!” Crazy Horse attempted to defend his old friends. “They drove the soldiers away from the Pine Woods Fort,
^†
and from the Mud-Wall Fort
^#
in those days. Remember what they did—because the
Titunwan
Lakota have never again forced the soldiers to empty any of their forts.”