Wolf Mountain Moon (34 page)

Their holiday revelry was over all too soon, however, when horse-mounted warriors swept down on the snowy fields south of the cantonment that Christmas afternoon, successfully driving off a few horses and mules before the surprised soldiers gathered enough numbers and with their far-shooting Springfields scattered the fifty-some horsemen. A second attempt was made right at twilight.

From their manner of dress and hair ornamentation, it was plain to Seamus that the Sioux were not alone in that Christmas Day raiding party. “Luther, there's Cheyenne riding with 'em.”

Kelly came jogging over as the last of the enemy disappeared into the fading light with another half-dozen army mules put out to graze and thereby recoup their strength after Baldwin's battalion returned from its long, cold march on the twenty-third. “I've heard the Cheyenne are particularly close to the Crazy Horse Oglalla. But how can you be so sure?”

“I was with Mackenzie, remember?”

With a nod Kelly said, “I suppose by now a fella like you would be able to tell the difference between a Sioux and a Cheyenne.”

“What this means is that the bunch Mackenzie's Fourth
drove off into the mountains has somehow managed to survive, Luther,” Seamus surmised. “Shows they've joined up with the Crazy Horse bands.”

Kelly nodded. “Like they did last winter and spring before they wiped out Custer's Seventh.”
^*

“And damn near rubbed out Crook's army a week before on the Rosebud.”
^†

“Not a good sign, is it?” Kelly asked.

Donegan wagged his head. “A bloody bad omen, if you're asking me.”

Then at dawn on the twenty-sixth the half a hundred horsemen were at their serious mischief again. Another strike at the mules and horses working hard to nuzzle the deep snow aside and crop at the autumn-cured grasses in that bottomland south of the post. A second foray near midday netted the warriors more than a dozen animals. Then, late in the afternoon, the Sioux and Cheyenne pulled off their greatest surprise.

This time they sent in about ten of their horse thieves to rustle, once again, more of the cantonment's riding stock. And after three raids the officers and soldiers performed exactly as the warriors had hoped they would.

As soon as the alarm was raised and the white men came rushing toward the scene of the attack in overwhelming numbers to fend off the decoys, the majority of the Sioux and Cheyenne had already slipped across the frozen Tongue River and at that moment were busy driving off more than 250 head of the white man's spotted buffalo. By twilight on that Tuesday, Crazy Horse's fifty warriors were headed south, herding before them more than sixty horses and mules in addition to those beeves.

Many miles and at least four days away on the upper Tongue River the chiefs and the village waited in the cold for their young men to make their way south once they knew for certain that the soldiers were following. More than anything—they wanted the Bear Coat and his men to follow them up the Tongue.

For Miles's Fifth Infantry the painful, throbbing heads
suffered in celebrating their lonely little Christmas with the trader's grain alcohol was all but forgotten there at the mouth of the Tongue River. With more than a foot of snow on the level before the wind began to drift it, once more the mercury in the surgeon's thermometers plummeted to thirty-five below zero—and no man stayed out in the wind if he could avoid it.

Besides, it soon became common knowledge that their commander was not about to keep them forted up. That very night after the beef herd disappeared into the bluffs south of the Yellowstone, Miles called together his officers and scouts to begin laying plans for following the thieves.

“Baldwin caught Sitting Bull twice,” he told those gathered in that stuffy, smoke-filled cabin that served as his office. “And now we'll catch Crazy Horse.”

As soon as Baldwin's wagons had returned three days ago, the colonel put his men to work using all those tanned buffalo hides the lieutenant's battalion had captured from Sitting Bull's camp to fashion heavy coats and leggings. In addition, on Christmas Eve a wagon train of supplies from Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone arrived. Among the cargo was even more winter-survival clothing.

While Miles and Baldwin had been chasing Sitting Bull's Sioux across northern Montana Territory, Colonel William B. Hazen's men at Fort Buford had been busy constructing winter overcoats, leggings, and mittens from tanned buffalo robes traded from Yanktonais villages at the nearby Fort Peck Agency. As autumn had approached, Miles was specific in placing his order with army quartermaster officials, stating that the coats he wanted for his men be made “of large sizes, long, coming below the knees, double breasted, and high rolling collar, such as can be turned up about the ears.” The leggings, he ordered, were “to come above the knees, sewed at the sides, to buckle or tie over the instep and buffalo overshoes, and to be sustained at the sides and top by a strap attached to the waist belt.”

In addition to buffalo caps and gauntlets, the soldiers of the Fifth Infantry sewed up crude underwear from extra woolen blankets. Snatching up the leftover wool scraps, many of the men cut masks or hoods to protect the bare flesh of their faces from the brutal windchills expected in the coming campaign to find and destroy Crazy Horse. From Quartermaster
Randall every soldier got his hands on at least two, and sometimes three, pairs of trousers made from heavyweight kersey wool.

And from those crates shipped up the icy river to Fort Buford, then brought overland to Glendive, freighted west to the Tongue River from there, the quartermaster issued each soldier his regulation woolen mittens, buffalo overshoes, and a visored sealskin or muskrat cap complete with earflaps. For those foot soldiers who were not assigned the overshoes, they were issued what the frontier army called “arctics,” vulcanized rubber boots.

Whenever a man could get his hands on an empty burlap feed sack, he would immediately hide it away in his haversack, where the coarse sacking would eventually be put in service: cut up to wrap around his feet before they were stuffed into his boots, the better to prevent frostbite.

Near midmorning on the twenty-seventh Miles watched the first of his winter-clad soldiers start south up the Tongue River in hot pursuit of the raiders. Following squaw man Tom Leforge and the last two Crow scouts brave enough to stay on with the soldiers, Captain Charles J. Dickey led his own Company ? as well as Company F of the Twenty-second Infantry, along with D Company of the Fifth.

Later on that afternoon Dickey's command managed to catch up with the hostiles' rear guard moseying comfortably behind the cattle herd. In a short, hot skirmish the soldiers managed to retake more than a hundred beeves. Just after dark the captain sent a courier north to inform Miles of the good news.

Elated with Dickey's initial success, the colonel continued with his plan the following dawn when he dispatched First Lieutenant Mason Carter's ? Company of the Fifth Infantry to follow Dickey's trail with the bronze twelve-pounder Napoleon gun hidden beneath a sheet of canvas stretched over iron bows to make it resemble a supply wagon. Buffalo Horn, a Bannock, served as their scout.

And early on Friday morning, the twenty-ninth, Nelson Miles himself started upriver with Companies A, C, and E, led by the remainder of Kelly's scouts, these last troops bringing the total of officers and enlisted to 436. In the last few days Miles bolstered each company to a fighting strength of fifty-eight
men by drawing from the four companies Miles was leaving behind for garrison duty. While most of the soldiers walked south, some forty men commanded by Second Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous rode ponies confiscated from the Sioux during the Cedar Creek skirmish in October.

Owing to the poor condition of what mules the Sioux hadn't driven off, Miles was able to field only a few company wagons drawn by six-mule teams. To strengthen his supply logistics, he had recently commandeered a civilian bull train of eight wagons, each drawn by a team of a dozen oxen. Four of those huge freight wagons would be headed up the Tongue, laden with corn for the stock, rations for the men, and extra ammunition for the coming fight. In addition, Miles's battalion was accompanied by a second piece of artillery: the three-inch rifled Rodman gun, its carriage, like Dickey's Napoleon gun, fitted with canvas stretched over iron bows to make it resemble the company supply wagons. This ordnance rifle was placed under the command of Second Lieutenant James W. Pope.

“No matter this cold, gentlemen,” Miles told his officers that frigid, blustery morning as a new snowstorm whipped into their faces and those last three companies were about to set off up the Tongue. “The Fighting Fifth Infantry has been stationed on the frontier continuously since the days following the end of the Civil War. That's a glorious heritage. And now we have the opportunity to add to our regiment's battle banners. Let it be understood by every man in your units that we'll follow the enemy until they turn around and fight … or they decide to surrender. One way or another—we'll damn well do our best to end this Sioux War before the next Chinook.”

Through the morning and into the afternoon the column marched up the timbered valley that stretched about a mile in width between the tall, austere bluffs that bordered either side. Each time Seamus peered around him at the other scouts, the officers, and the foot soldiers, he wondered if he looked anything like them: pairs of dark-ringed eyes peeking out at him from beneath the brims of their fur caps, there above their thick, woolen mufflers slicked with a solid layer of thick frost. A dense, low cloud lay over the entire length of the column, man and beast alike. By and large that day's march was a quiet
one, most of the soldiers trudging along, deep in their own thoughts.

And Seamus in his. Four days after Christmas. Two more until the New Year. And here he was again—marching through the snow after Crazy Horse. Would this third journey be his charm?

After struggling through occasional snowdrifts for some eleven and a half miles, forced to cross the frozen river twice during that long day while the temperature never climbed above fifteen below, the colonel's battalion went into bivouac among the cottonwood on the west bank just before three
P.M.
By twilight the cold began to seep into the bones of every man.

Seamus watched Kelly trudge up to the fire, stomp his thick pair of buffalo moccasins, then rub his mittens over the whipping flames that seemed to lose their heat immediately in the numbing cold and the stinging wind.

“Aren't you bunking in with the headquarters bunch tonight, Luther?”

The handsome scout shook his head. “Poor Tilton.”

“The chief surgeon?”

“Right. He and most of the other fellas on Miles's staff just cracked their tents out of the shipping crates.”

Seamus asked, “Not enough room for all of them?”

With a snigger Kelly replied, “Some dumb son of a bitch of an army quartermaster clerk back downriver shipped the Fifth Infantry summer-duty tents!”

“Summer duty?”

“Linen tents.”

“Not heavyweight canvas?”

Kelly roared with laughter. “Summer duty, Irishman!”

“Sweet Mother of God!” Donegan declared. “If the weather ain't gonna be hard enough to deal with already. Them poor foot-slogging souls. My heart ached for 'em today as I rode to the top of each hill and looked back at the column, Luther. Step by step, they were dragging their haversacks, and rifles, and frozen canteens through this deep snow.”

“I think Miles is working these men to death already,” Kelly said quietly so his words would not be overheard. “First that campaign up to the Missouri River country. Now he's turned them around after no more than a few days of rest.”

“We can both remember the war, Luther—when men fought day after day and units marched into battle bone weary.”

“From what I can see of the soldiers who served with Baldwin's battalion,” Kelly continued, “both men and officers are disgruntled.”

Seamus grinned. “There's always a little grumbling in every army.”

Luther Kelly wagged his head and stared at the flames for a long moment before he said, “I'm just afraid that if we meet up with all the warriors we know Crazy Horse has at his command, these soldiers just won't have any bottom left to make a fight of it.”

Chapter 21
30 December 1876