Wolf Mountain Moon (46 page)

“I'll lay odds they're working their way in on us,” Parker declared.

“Yep,” Kelly agreed. “Soon as they get some redskins worked into position, I figure the rest will open a real warm fire on us again, to hold us down while the others snake on up close enough to finish us off with one good rush.”

Wringing his hands around his carbine, George Johnson cried, “Jesus! We can't just sit here till they come in to—”

“Shuddup!” John Johnston bellowed. “Your crying don't make a man's dying no easier!”

“Ain't none of us gonna die,” Donegan snapped. “Now, sit there, Johnson—and keep up the work with your rifle.”

“I figure they'll make their rush at us over that ledge,” Kelly said a moment later, pointing with the long barrel of his carbine.

“It's your call, Kelly—but looks to me that you and the Bannock are the ones to flush 'em out,” Donegan stated.

“Let's just hope it is a flush, Irishman,” Kelly replied. “And not a full house.”

Then Kelly bent close and whispered to Buffalo Horn before the two of them slid on their knees to the rocky bulwark of the sandstone ledge. There the white scout counted to three when they both rolled into view. As soon as they landed on their bellies, rifles ready, a trio of Sioux exploded from the rocks and sage, sprinting away. The moment Kelly and Buffalo Horn began firing, the three warriors dived onto their bellies and continued their escape by crawling, snaking their way through the sagebrush.

In that moment it seemed that half a hundred guns or more opened up on the two scouts, causing them both to flatten against the icy snow behind no more cover than some stunted oakbrush.

“Get your arses back in here and quick!” Donegan cried.

Bullets kicked up snow and bits of sandstone rock as the pair shoved their way into a retreat. Then Buffalo Horn stopped behind a low pile of rock and fired back at his tormentors.

“A flying exit of feathers, legs, and arms, boys!” Kelly called out when he started his slide back into the rocky hollow.

Bullets banged and zinged off the layers of nearby stone, splattering lead and sharp rock fragments as the Sioux continued to do their damndest to hold down the scouts until they could figure out how to flush their prey from its burrow.

“God
damn!”
the old trapper muttered, turning slowly, putting some fingers to the side of his head.

“You're hit?” Parker asked, immediately crawling to Johnston's side.

Johnston pulled the fingers away from the side of his scalp above the ear and peered at them carefully. The smear of
blood was already freezing. “Take a look at it for me,” he ordered the younger man.

Parker pushed the fur cap up, parted some of the old man's long, greasy hair, and studied the wound. “Damn if you ain't lucky.”

“It ain't luck saved this scalp all these gol-danged years,” Johnston replied with a snort, tugging the side of his fur cap back down over the oozy wound. “I've had slim escapes afore … but that there was a close'un.”

Suddenly Kelly hollered, “Buffalo Horn! Get in here!”

They all turned from Johnston, seeing that the Bannock had not retreated all the way back with Kelly. Instead, Buffalo Horn had slid into a narrow crevice where spring runoff had eroded away enough of the sandstone that he could lie down within the gap. There he could fire his rifle while remaining hidden from the Sioux until they were all but on top of him.

“Goddamn, if that Injun don't have some
huevos!”
James Parker said with no little admiration.

“Give 'em hell, Buffalo Horn!” cheered John Johnston. “Give them bastards bloody hell!”

They had been pinned down for the better part of two hours, Luther Kelly calculated, noticing the fall of the dim globe behind the thick clouds. For better than half of that time they could only hear what must have been a stiff fight of it taking place across the river, on the west bank of the Tongue.

From the looks of things, Miles had eventually ordered up some troops to rescue the white scouts. Captain James S. Casey had crossed the frozen river with his A Company and the Rodman gun that Casey's men had used with such success against Sitting Bull's village of Hunkpapa during the Battle of Cedar Creek back in October.
^*

In addition, through the bare skeletal cottonwoods, Kelly could make out what he believed was Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous's detachment of mounted infantry coming up to support Casey's men as dismounted skirmishers. They had been in the process of advancing toward a point opposite where the white scouts were pinned down on the east bank when Casey's relief was suddenly confronted with a bold show of force from
more than 150 mounted warriors charging up the west bank of the river.

Kelly watched as Casey ordered a halt. Then Hargous's men rolled out of the saddle and deployed in a long skirmish line among Casey's men as the captain's tried-and-tested gun crew rolled the field piece into position and prepared to fire rounds of deadly solid shot into the hard-charging horsemen.

The sun sank from the twilit sky by the time the first round belched out of the muzzle of the Rodman, spewing jets of fire and a thousand sparks that lit up the snow with an eerie orange glow. The charge landed among the horsemen—scattering some, pushing most back in confusion.

Kelly, Donegan, and the rest immediately joined Casey's men in a cheer as the gun crew reloaded and quickly adjusted the altitude on the Rodman's carriage. A second charge whistled into the darkening mist forming off the frozen river. It too exploded in a great burst of noise as earth and snow erupted where it exploded in the midst of the enemy horsemen.

More ponies cried and warriors yelled, scattering in three directions.

Again the skirmish line of soldiers cheered as Casey advanced them another twenty yards toward the enemy.

Back and forth the two sides skirmished for the better part of another half hour: the stalwart warriors gathering themselves up and charging in after each shell from the Rodman had exploded, taking advantage of the lull it took to reload. Against each screaming flurry from the Sioux, Casey's and Hargous's men valiantly held their line—firing back into the teeth of each charge, giving the gun crew time to adjust the limber, reposition the altitude, draw the windage, and ignite each round of shot they sent whistling, whining, spewing fire into the dusk of that coming night.

“Damn, if that ain't a fine sight!” James Parker observed within that rocky hollow.

Kelly and the rest roared their approval each time Casey inched his skirmishers forward another few yards.

Then suddenly the white scouts and Buffalo Horn turtled their necks into their shoulders as a round whistled low right over their heads and slammed into the open ground just beyond their position.

Warriors who had been creeping up through the shrinking
light and oakbrush shrieked in surprise and pain as the icy snow and earth came showering down around them in hard clumps. Those not hurt began to gather up the wounded and the dead, pulling them away in retreat.

A second round whined low over the scouts' heads, exploding a little farther away from the rocky hollow, once again scattering the warriors and sending shards of sandstone and red earth into the deepening purple hues of twilight.

Now the Indians were moving back in full force on the east side of the river, yelling out to one another, carrying those who could not retreat on their own, some mounting horses but most trudging away from the battlefield on foot—retreating from the persistent and accurate shooting of the white scouts. As far away as possible from the soldiers' big gun that fired its shells from across the river.

On Casey and Hargous's skirmish line gunfire began to wither, tapering off until it grew quiet. Even deathly quiet, as night crept over the ridges to the east of the Tongue.

“I think we're done for the day, fellas,” Kelly declared, warily getting to his knees and waving Buffalo Horn in from his crevice.

“They'll be back,” John Johnston groaned. “And when they do, there'll be more of 'em than ticks on a strop hawg's back.”

“Amen to that,” Donegan said as he dusted the snow from the elbows of his canvas mackinaw and slapped the knees of his thick buffalo leggings. “Get what sleep you can tonight, boys. I figger tomorrow's fight's gonna start early … and last just as long as Miles can hold 'em off.”

Chapter 28
8 January 1877

J
ust how did a man sleep when he knew that dawn would bring him battle with Crazy Horse?

It was a restless camp that cold night beside the Tongue River as patches of stars appeared between the snow-laden clouds. Fires burned every few yards throughout the bivouac, sleepless soldiers huddled around the flames in their blankets, every man taking his turn at the double guard Miles had put out on the picket line. Because of the extreme cold, a soldier could stand no more than an hour of running guard duty out there in the darkness, where every clump of sage and oakbrush was sure to conceal a skulking warrior sneaking in for a scalp.

Certain that Tom Leforge lay dead somewhere on the battlefield, Kelly gave the order to fall back to the soldier camp when the Sioux and Cheyenne retreated at dusk. But try as he and the others did, they weren't able to convince Buffalo Horn to retreat with them. The Bannock wanted the chance to pick off a stray Sioux or two as the enemy turned its tail. One way or the other, Seamus figured, there was no man who could question the courage of that Indian.

About an hour after dark Leforge slipped in, shuddering from his hours of lying in the snow somewhere between the
Indians and the scouts on the battlefield. He hadn't dared to show himself, so close to the warriors was he. The squaw man gulped down his supper and coffee, then immediately rolled up in his blankets and fell fast asleep, back in the bosom of the soldiers.

Buffalo Horn himself finally showed up at the scouts' fire later that night, long after it had become fully dark.

“You shot two more?” Donegan said, asking in sign as well.

The Bannock nodded, then began to motion with his hands, speaking English words when he could remember how to put those words together in some understandable fashion.

“Cheyenne. Two,” he explained, patting his belt where the two fresh scalps hung—their flesh frozen hard. “Two follow you to soldier village.”

Kelly asked, “These two Cheyenne warriors—you say they were following us back here?”

“I wait by tree. Cheyenne no see Buffalo Horn,” he explained, nodding. “I see Cheyenne. I shoot two.”

“Some of them get away?” Donegan asked with his hands.

“One, maybeso,” Buffalo Horn answered, and accepted the cup of coffee the Irishman picked up and handed him.

Seamus turned to pour himself another cup, finding the eyes of the old woman burning like coals into Buffalo Horn. He held up the pot for her, and she nodded. He poured her more coffee. She took a sip, then nudged the young girl closer to her side beneath the old blanket and stared into the fire to show that she no longer wished to acknowledge the white man standing at her elbow.

“You can hate him,” Seamus said to her quietly in English. “But he is a warrior. Just like your husband and sons and nephews. They are warriors and they make war. They take scalps of their enemies who are brave. Those two scalps came from Cheyenne warriors brave enough to follow us back to camp.”

Only once did her eyes flash up to his, just for a fraction of a second as she brought the tin cup to her lips and drank.