Ashes of Heaven (51 page)

“That's the one, Irishman,” the colonel sighed. “Twice now, I've had a bullet aimed at me pass by to take another man's life.”

“Where was the first?” Seamus asked.

“Spottsylvania Court House,” Miles explained. “The Richmond Campaign. Lee threw everything he had into that fight.”

Blowing on his coffee, Seamus said, “I remember hearing of a piece of ground there called the ‘Bloody Angle.'”

“That's the fight. Bullets and canister falling around us like bees,” Miles declared, then went pensive. “I received my brevet of brigadier general of volunteers for gallantry in that battle. And I've never come so close to death in all these years since … until Lame Deer fired at me this morning.”

“As you said, perhaps fate didn't truly mean that bullet for you,” Seamus said.

“Perhaps Lame Deer's bullet wasn't really meant for me,” Miles replied. “I suppose I'm to believe that I was meant to live, and Lame Deer was meant to die.”

After taking a cup of coffee from Lieutenant Baird while Rowland translated, the Cheyenne holy man turned to the Bear Coat and said, “I want to give you something—a gift from one warrior to another.”

From his belt White Bull pulled one of the two fresh scalps and held it out to the soldier chief.

Miles didn't say anything at first. Instead, he swallowed hard, and finally asked Rowland, “Which one is that?”

“Iron Star,” White Bull replied.

Then Rowland explained in English, “Among the Cheyenne people, it's good manners for a warrior to offer a scalp to the leader of his war party. It's an honor for you to accept it.”

Wagging his head, the colonel apologized, “Tell White Bull I appreciate his offer to share his war trophies with me, but I want him to keep both scalps. They are his to give his children, to his grandchildren.”

After taking a sip at his own coffee, Miles settled on a log next to the Cheyenne holy man.

“White Bull, do you remember what I told you when you agreed to become a scout for me?”

“The Bear Coat promised me horses,” Rowland translated White Bull's answer.

“Yes, I promised you horses. Now you can have your pick of these horses we have captured. My soldiers will need a few for our trip back to the Yellowstone, but I give you your pick to give away to the other scouts who have helped my soldiers win this great victory.”

Rowland's eyes narrowed thoughtfully, “You aren't going to kill any of the captured ponies, General?”

With a shake of his head, Miles answered, “No. I decided not to. The horses belong to my good friends, my Cheyenne scouts now.” Then the colonel reached over and tapped the Springfield carbine the holy man had carried since leaving Tongue River Cantonment on their campaign. “And this rifle—I want you always to keep this gun that you've been shooting at our enemy.”

Patting the dark wood of the stock, White Bull said, “I will keep this rifle, and the ponies too. My people will know the Bear Coat as a man of his word.”

With a smile, the colonel asked, “What else can I do to repay you for all the help you have been to me and my soldiers?”

The holy man was pensive for some time, then Rowland translated for him. “I do not need much. But I will say that the only thing I want more than what you have already given me is for my people to continue to live on in this northern country.”

Miles nodded. “Tell White Bull this: I will do everything in my power to give him what he wants for his people, to give them a home where they can live now in peace.”

Chapter 42

8 May 1877

BY TELEGRAPH

A Finding and Sentence in the Reno Court Martial.

WASHINGTON.

The Reno Case—Verdict of Dismissal Modified to Suspension.

WASHINGTON, May 8.—Following is the result of the proceedings of the court martial at Fort Abercrombie, which recently tried Major Reno on a charge of having made improper overtures to the wife of Captain Bell, and taken means to cast slurs on her character:

WAR DEPARTMENT, May 8.—The proceedings in this case having been forwarded under the 106th article of war to the secretary of war have been most carefully considered, and have been submitted to the president, who approves the finding and the sentence, but is pleased to mitigate the latter to suspension from rank and pay for two years. Major Reno's conduct toward the wife of an absent officer, and in using the whole force of his power as commanding officer of the post to gratify his resentment against her, can not be too strongly condemned, but after deliberation upon all the circumstances of the case as shown on the record of the trial, it is thought that his offenses, grave as they were, don't warrant the sentence of dismissal, and all its consequence upon one who has for twenty years borne the reputation of a brave man, and has maintained that reputation upon the battle fields of the rebellion and in contests with the Indians. The president has modified the sentence, and it is hoped Major Reno will appreciate the clemency thus shown him, as well as the very reprehensible character of the act of which he was found guilty.

Signed, G.W. McCrary,

secretary of war.

That show the colonel's doughboys put on the next morning was the best—and most bruising—entertainment Seamus had seen in a long time.

The afternoon of the seventh, as the destruction of the village began, Miles ordered that two hundred of the very best of the captured ponies be selected so that he could mount his foot soldiers for the return march. Yet the animals would serve more purpose than mere transportation back to the Yellowstone. The colonel had designs on forming a permanent mounted battalion composed of four companies of his Fifth Infantry.

After the strongest and fittest of the captured horses were separated out, and after White Bull, Hump, and the other warrior scouts had picked over the rest to take what they wanted as the spoils of battle, Miles reversed himself and began the destruction of the remaining animals.

While the arriving infantrymen helped pull everything of value from the lodges, the officers instructed their men to separate every usable saddle and halter for later use before the leaping flames began their growling destruction. At sunup that Tuesday morning, as more robes and lodgepoles and blankets were tossed on the smoldering ash heaps from the day before, the circus began. Those recaptured cavalry horses branded with
7th U.S.
on their rear flanks had been assigned to soldiers who had little or no experience on horseback. But the rest of the infantrymen? Why, they were about to have themselves the ride of their lives.

“You ever wonder why a soldier enlists for the infantry instead of the cavalry, Mr. Donegan?” Miles asked as he came up to stand beside the civilian, sipping at a cup of coffee.

On either side of them in a great arc stood the officers, Cheyenne and Lakota scouts, along with those cavalry troopers watching this indoctrination of the foot soldiers to the frightening, unpredictable world of a half-ton of mean-spirited animal.

“I s'pose that foot soldier don't want to have him nothing to do with a horse, General?”

Miles nodded with a grin bending one side of his face. “These lads never knew they'd have me volunteer 'em for the Eleventh Cavalry!”

That joke the colonel made referred to the fact that there were only ten official regiments of cavalry. This so-called “eleventh” was the oft-tried, but most times ill-fated, attempt of infantry commanders to put their men on the backs of captured horses and mules, perhaps as a means of saving wear and tear on the doughboys. But in the end, such a decision usually meant more in the way of pain, bruises, and bloodied wranglers.

“Prepare to mount!”

Those laughing at Miles's joke quieted and watched as the long lines of foot soldiers draped their Long Toms off the right sides of their Indian saddles. Short loops of rawhide rope taken from the captured lodges were used to suspend the long Springfield rifles from the tall horns adorning the Lakota saddles. In hopes of giving his newly mounted infantry a chance at controlling the contrary animals, Miles had ordered each of Captain Ball's cavalrymen to donate one of their brass spurs to an infantryman.

At this moment the two-hundred-some soldiers stood stiffly beside their wary mounts, ready to put their one spur to use, nervously awaiting the next order. At least one, and sometimes two, cavalrymen assisted by holding onto the bridles as the infantrymen prepared to—

“Mount!”

In ragged order the doughboys stuffed a foot in those Indian stirrups, clumsily pulling themselves atop the Indian saddles strapped around the bellies of those Indian ponies.

Miles bobbed his head, saying, “So far, so good.”

Eventually every man got himself up. Some of the ponies did not stand still in formation for long. In fact, that formation didn't last but a heartbeat or so until the first two dozen horses coiled up their backbones like the cocking of a gun-spring, then unleashed their fury on their hapless, unprepared riders. Far too many of the infantrymen figured the spur's purpose was to help them hold on to their thrashing, convulsing animal—they dug in all the harder with that brass spur.

To the roaring laughter of the officers and cavalrymen alike, hats flew from the heads that snapped up and back, up and back. Those Long Tom rifles suspended from the saddlehorns pistoned up and down with deadly accuracy, battering not only the ponies' front flanks, but smacking the doughboys in the face, along the sides of their heads, and right under their chins.

The hapless foot soldiers began to fly right off what Miles had hoped would be their transportation back to Tongue River Cantonment. Catapulted into the dawn sky that eighth of May, the colonel's infantry landed in heaps among the grass and sage as the ponies bolted, heading in as many directions as there were routes of escape.

But Lieutenant Casey had foreseen this disintegration of the Eleventh Cavalry and had positioned his Cheyenne scouts here and there around the circus grounds. He used Miles's warriors to race after the escaping ponies, returning them to that field of battle between man and animal before setting off to recover another horse making for the hillsides in a wild burst of freedom.

All across that meadow beside Big Muddy Creek, foot soldiers began to peel themselves off the ground, hands held to heads or on hips, depending on just where a soldier collided with the damp Montana soil. One by one the runaway horses were returned to the infantrymen as their officers goaded the soldiers to remount. This time both pony and rider were even more wary of one another. Big, saucer-sized eyes glared back at the bruised doughboy as he once more climbed atop the animal and settled into the crude saddle, only to feel the pony come uncorked again as he dug in with that one spur and the other mud-soaked brougham, clutching the reins, saddlehorn, even the horse's mane to prevent another brief flight through the air.

Again the crazed ponies bounded stiff-legged into midair, twisting and thrashing as those men put to flight screamed, then groaned the instant they smacked the ground.

What a sight to behold: some four hundred men darting and dodging this way and that across that patch of meadow, every one of them attempting to catch and restrain, subdue or remount those two hundred horses!

Donegan laughed until his sides ached, then turned back to the colonel's fire when Miles returned to his breakfast, giving instructions to captains Charles Dickey and DeWitt Poole.

“Gentlemen, Mr. Casey's scouts have already separated off the captured ponies that we won't be herding north,” he began, stuffing a thumb inside his waistband. “By midday, I hope to have the newly mounted battalion secure enough that we can assign your men to the destruction of those horses.”

“Destruction, General?” Dickey repeated.

“That's correct. We need to kill what animals we aren't taking with us for the mounted battalion, those that Casey's scouts don't want. The poor, the lame—I don't want a one of them falling back into the hands of Lame Deer's warriors.”

Poole asked, “Where do you propose we conduct this … this destruction, sir?”

For a moment, Miles considered it, then pointed. “There, across the creek in the narrow pocket formed by those two fingers of the ridge. It should be easy enough for your troops to throw up a cordon across the fourth side of that natural corral, while some of your men commence shooting the remainder of the captured herd.”

As the two captains departed for their units, Seamus realized he had to be gone from there before the killing began. He'd seen enough Indian ponies slaughtered to last him half-a-dozen lifetimes. And although he knew that putting a mounted warrior on foot was the surest way to bring this long fight to a close, the Irishman had simply endured enough of the eerie, humanlike screams and cries of the horses as they fell … one by one by one. Their carcasses left to lie in heaps as the predators—both four-legged and winged—came to feast, drawn here by the stench. Until there was nothing much but piles of bones to bleach beneath the endless seasons of sun and snow, the only monument to mark this sacred patch of ground where the Sioux War whimpered to a close.

“General, could I have your permission to draw upon your stores for enough rations to get me back to Laramie?” Donegan asked.

“You're not going to travel with us to rendezvous with the bull-train we left on the Tongue?”

“No, sir,” he said. “Figured I'd head south from here.”

Miles set his cup down. “So this is something you've got to do today?”

“You're planning to get underway this afternoon, aren't you?”

The colonel nodded. “Yes, just as soon as the ponies are killed and everything else is burned. Of course, just tell Quartermaster Douglass you have my permission to draw what you need for rations and ammunition for your weapons.”

“I don't need much, sir,” Donegan explained. “Didn't get in that much shooting—nothing near what your men did in driving the Sioux into the hills.”