Wolf Mountain Moon (59 page)

Marching into the face of enemy guns until they could get close enough to throw rocks, close enough to turn their Springfields around and use them for clubs.

Suddenly Butler called again, “Fix bayonets!”

Seamus had none, so he stuffed a hand inside his buffalo coat, down into the side pocket of his mackinaw. That pocket was empty. He did have the skinning knife. If it came down to that—

Up and down the line the soldiers yanked their bayonets
from the black-leather slings, jamming them over the muzzles of their Long Toms. Down, twist, and lock.

He quickly pulled the mitten from his left hand and stuck it into his other mackinaw pocket—searching. He sighed his prayer; then his fingertips touched them. All he had left was … a handful. Less than a full load for the tube nestled beneath the Winchester's barrel.

A voice steady and sure cried out, “Bayonets fixed, Major!”

“Come on, you doughboys!” Butler shouted against the screeching of the enemy, waving his pistol. “Show 'em the stuff you men are made of!”

“Permission to take Captain Butler his ammunition, General!” Frank Baldwin said enthusiastically as soon as Lieutenant Hobart Bailey came galloping up the plateau to report to Miles.

“How in the hell do you expect to—”

But Baldwin interrupted. “I'll take a case of it myself, sir.”

“Those men need more than one case!” the colonel retorted. He started to turn aside, searching for Baird. “I'll order some men from the supply train to pack up some cases on the backs of our mules—”

“We don't have time, General.”

Miles jerked around. That was the second time in as many seconds that the lieutenant had interrupted him. “We don't have time, Mr. Baldwin?”

“Begging pardon, General—I meant to say that Butler's men don't have time,” Baldwin tried to explain. “You can order up the mules with more cases to come behind me. But—please allow me to go to their aid immediately.”

The colonel began to shake his head, saying, “Perhaps it would be far too dangerous—”

“You've always depended upon me to do my duty, no matter how dangerous, General. In all those years you've known me.”

For a long moment Miles considered the man standing before him. Then he pursed his lips in resignation and said, “Permission granted, Lieutenant.”

Frank wasn't about to wait on Miles to change his mind.

With a salute to the colonel Baldwin turned immediately
and snatched the reins away from Bailey. “I'll leave your horse down at the wagon yard, Lieutenant!”

In one motion the lieutenant was stuffing an arctic boot into the stirrup, rising to the saddle, and wheeling away at a lope. As he came down on the McClellan, and stuffed the right boot in the hooded stirrup, Baldwin gave the animal a kick. It had worked hard all morning, racing back and forth across the open ground through the deep snow. Not only were the men on short rations, these animals were too.

He would leave the horse among the others, grabbing one already saddled if it was handy. At the same time he would get one of the supply sergeants to pull him a box of cartridges from the tailgate of a wagon, hoist it up to him, and then he would be on his way.

Swinging out of the saddle at the wagon corral, Baldwin was already yelling for Carter's soldiers into double time. “Get me the strongest horse you've got saddled, pronto!”

A handful of them stopped and turned on their heels immediately. The high-pitched wailing and keening of the women and children nearby raked a fingernail of dread down his spine. He watched a sergeant racing up.

Frank asked, “How long they been singing like this?”

“That?” the sergeant replied with his salute. “Ever since the fight started, sir.”

As he landed in the snow and looped the reins to Bailey's horse around a wagon wheel, the lieutenant returned the sergeant's salute. “Grab me the first case of rifle ammo you can pull from the wagons, Sergeant.”

“Yessir,” he replied with enthusiasm, starting to turn.

“Sergeant,” Baldwin said, reaching out to grab the man's arm, “I need more than that one case.”

“Lieutenant?”

“As soon as you help me get that first case loaded up, I want you and your boys to pack up a couple of mules with two cases each and hurry them double time to the foot of the ridge.”

Quickly glancing at the distant ridge where the action was clearly the hottest, the sergeant echoed, “The ridge, sir?”

“Follow me with the four cases just as quick as you can get them loaded up and yourself on a mule to ride.”

“Yessir,” the soldier answered this time without hesitation.

“Now, get me that case I'll be carrying.”

In a matter of moments two soldiers reappeared with what appeared to be a strong piebald, saddled and ready to ride. Frank walked around the animal one time, flipped up the stirrup fender, and tugged on the cinch. He lifted a front hoof, then a rear hoof, and by that time the sergeant was leading another pair of soldiers back to the scene. They had between them a heavy wooden crate of Springfield ammunition, .45/70 caliber.

“All right, soldiers,” Frank said as he took up the horse's reins and stuffed the bulky arctic boot into the stirrup, rising eagerly to the saddle, “pass that box up here to me.”

The sergeant flinched, glancing at the two men who carried the crate. “Pass … pass it up to you, Lieutenant?”

Baldwin gestured impatiently for them to hand it over. “Here, c'mon. I've got to ride, and now.”

“Sir, couldn't you wait and I'll get a pack animal for you to lead—”

“Give me the goddamned box of ammo, Sergeant!”

“Yes, sir!” the man replied, stepping aside and waving the pair forward.

The two soldiers clumsily manhandled the heavy weight of it up to the lieutenant, helping the officer center it on the front of the hornless McClellan saddle. Frank brought his legs up, feet still stuffed in the stirrups, so that his thighs could help balance the crate as much as a man could with one arm.

He only nodded, unable to salute the soldiers. “You've done well, men. Now, get those four cases coming behind, me just as fast as you can! Lives depend upon it! Hep, hep-a!”

He got the reluctant horse started away, sideways at first, then cantering out of the wagon corral, rolling into an uneasy lope onto the open bottom-ground, heading due south along the gently rising slope toward the far left of the battlefield.

Despite the thickly falling flakes, ahead of him the snow lay trampled by the prints of many boots so that Baldwin was able to avoid the deep drifts for the most part. He eased the animal back to a fast walk as it struggled beneath the weight over its withers, about all he figured he should expect out of the horse, and certainly the fastest he wanted to travel with the
wobbly, unwieldy, clumsy weight of the ammunition crate balanced precariously across the front of the saddle and his lap, one arm looped over it, locking it down in the only way he could secure it.

From time to time Frank glanced up to take a look at the soldiers pushing up the first rise of ground toward the Indian positions, but for most of the ride he concentrated solely on the few yards of icy terrain right in front of his horse's nose, especially as the creature began to show signs of weariness from fighting the deep snow and struggling beneath the shifting weight rocking back and forth across its withers.

Then he was close enough to the back of the skirmish line … and recognized the dark carcass in the snow.

An officer's horse.

The snow trampled all around it.

Frank passed by the carcass close enough to see the hole in the head, the glistening, frozen blood. A gust of wind laid a dusting of new snow in the open, glazed eyes as he moved around it. Frank shuddered and looked away.

Twenty yards away Butler's skirmish line stumbled forward ahead of him. They had their bayonets fixed, and they were yelling like demons. Just like banshees ripping out of the maw of hell as they lunged and fell, picked themselves back up, and kept crawling up that icy slope, scrambling for a foothold, something, anything.

He hammered his heels and calves against the mount's ribs. Then he realized his heart was in his throat. His teeth clenched all this time. How hard it was to open his mouth, to work his jaws, so tight was the unprotected skin from the cold wind and whipping snow without that blanket mask.

“Am … ammunition!” he cried into the wind, the word torn away from his lips the instant it was uttered.

At first they didn't hear him, so he called out again as the horse lunged within ten yards of their rear.

“Ammunition!” he got the word out at once, the sound of it again whipped off his tongue by the brutal slash of wind.

But, quite unexpectedly, one man turned, his wool mask dangling loosely, his breath puffing from beneath it in explosions of frost. The man stumbled back a step, surprised, then righted himself as he took a step forward—back toward Baldwin.
Suddenly the soldier stopped, turned, shouting to the others.

“Ammunition! Ammunition!”

Another soldier turned so quickly, his legs got caught up in his long buffalo coat, spilling him into the deep snow. He leaped out of the drift as quickly as he had gone down. Now there were two of them yelling at the others close enough to hear over the howl of the wind, yelling over the crazed hollering they were all doing as they flung themselves against the ridgeline.

Bullets sang around them now. And the horse snorted, ears perked, frightened. Frank hadn't allowed himself the luxury of being frightened.

The third man recognized him. “It's Lieutenant Baldwin!”

Then a fourth soldier turned around, there beside the first as Frank urged the reluctant horse through the deep drifts. Right above them the small arms and carbines of the enemy crackled like a pine-pitch fire.

“He's got ammunition, boys!” another old soldier croaked in a broken voice as he jammed the butt of his Springfield down into the snow, weaving in the strong wind as he hung on to the muzzle of the weapon. “By God—Baldwin's got ammo!”

At that moment they all seemed to turn as a whole, more than half a hundred of them with their Long Toms at the ready, long, sharp, spearlike bayonets, or those with trowel bayonets fixed for their gallant charge. The first of them began to stumble Baldwin's way as his horse sidestepped away from the rush into a depression.

The animal stumbled, pitching to the side, then got its legs back under them both. But Baldwin could hold the crate no longer, his arm gone numb with the cold, more so with the cramping of the muscles as he lunged out with the rein hand. Frank felt it slip beneath his fingertips, felt the crate going, but there was nothing he could do except watch it tumble into the snow.

No matter now. They were around him in a dark circle of cheering, throbbing, swirling soldiers, each one diving in to rake up a box of cartridges, yelling at the others, bumping and falling and some of them even laughing.

“Crazy Horse is mine now!” one man called as he
scooped up a mitten filled with snow and glittery copper cartridges.

“Lemme at them red bastards!” another shouted.

Butler was suddenly there beside the horse, holding up his hand to Baldwin. His goddamned bare hand! “Lieutenant Baldwin?”

“Yessir, Captain!” Frank said, saluting, yanking off his horsehide gauntlet into the frighteningly cold windchill.

Butler's mouth moved wordlessly a moment as he shook Baldwin's hand. “T-thank you, Lieutenant.”

“For the Fifth, Captain,” Baldwin replied, feeling the tug of sentiment rise in his throat like a filmy knot.

Some of these men might well have followed Frank into Gray Beard's village on the Staked Plain to rescue those two little girls. Or they might have fought another high-plains blizzard to stay on Sitting Bull's trail if he had asked that of them. They were all Miles's men. The Fighting Fifth, by God!

Frank ripped his sealskin hat from his head, waving it aloft in a wide circle, shouting.

“The Fifth never gives in, Captain! The Fifth never gives up! Have at them, men! Follow me and have at them!”

Captain Butler turned away suddenly, dragging his bare hand under his dribbling nose, his eyes misting from the cold blast of air that scoured every face. Baldwin surged ahead suddenly on that weary horse—yanking on the reins, waving, urging them all to follow, rallying them from above on the back of that rearing animal as they shoved cartridges into their pockets, some stuffing them into their mouths.

They threw themselves against the heights. Against the rocks and snow and icy bluffs. Against Crazy Horse's finest.

“All right, you doughboys!” Butler cried as he waved his men onward, trudging ahead beside Baldwin's prancing horse. “By God, let's go finish this fight!”

Chapter 36
8 January 1877