Trumpet on the Land (36 page)

C
HICAGO
, July 19—The following official report of Colonel Merritt was received at military headquarters today:

R
ED
C
LOUDA
G
ENCY
, July 18, via Fort Laramie, July 19—As indicated in my last dispatch I moved by forced marches to the main northwest trail on Indian creek, and in thirty-five hours my command made about seventy-five miles, reaching the trail Sunday evening about 9 o'clock. The trail showed that no large parties had passed north.

At daylight yesterday morning I saddled up to move on toward the agency and at the same time a party of seven Indians were discerned near the company, moving with the intention of shooting and cutting off two couriers who were approaching Sage creek. A party was sent out to cut these off, killing one of them. The command then moved out at once after the other Indians in this direction
and pursued them, but they escaped, leaving four lodges and several hundred pounds of provisions behind.

After scouring the country thoroughly in our vicinity, we moved at once towards the agency. At a distance of twenty-five miles to the northwest of the agency the Indians broke camp and fled so that we did not succeed in catching any of them. The trail was much worn, and the indications were that hundreds of Indians were driven in by our movement. From the repeated reports which I can't give in this dispatch, I was certain of striking the Cheyennes, and to accomplish this marched hard to get on the trail, taking infantry along to guard the wagons and to fight if necessary … I am certain that not a hundred Indians—or rather ponies—all told, have gone north on the main trails, in the last ten days.

The Cheyennes whom we drove in yesterday, took refuge on the reservation toward Spotted Tail … Our appearance on Indian and Hat Creeks was a complete surprise to the Indians in. that vicinity, but those farther in were informed by runners so that they got out of the way.

I have just received your dispatches of the 15th. I will move without delay to Fort Laramie and as soon as possible move to join Crook. My men and horses are very tired, but a few days reasonable marching with full forage will make them all right.

M
ason, Montgomery, and Kellogg held their three companies at the top of that ridge, waiting for Merritt and Carr to come up with the rest of the regiment after it had secured enough rations from Hall's wagons to provision the men for two more days.

“It's going to be a stern chase,” Merritt told his company commanders in those minutes before they set off on
the trail of the fleeing Cheyenne. “And I don't really know just when we'll see our wagons again.”

Some six miles south of the Warbonnet the Fifth Cavalry marched through the site where Little Wolfs people had been camped the night before. Besides a dozen lame ponies the soldiers found nearby, the escaping Cheyenne left four lodges standing among the jumble of lodgepoles and burned smudges of their fire rings. Scattered for hundreds of yards in all directions lay burlap sacks, canvas pouches, grease-stained blankets, and the heaviest of castiron cookware: all of it discarded in the haste of their flight.

Neither did Merritt's troopers tarry long.

For another two dozen miles of rolling, nearly treeless, grassy plain they pursued the enemy. Then only four miles short of the northern boundary to the Red Cloud Agency, the Cheyenne trail turned abruptly east.

“They're skedaddling for Spotted Tail, General,” Cody told Merritt and the rest of those at the head of the column when he rode back up with scouts White and Tait.

“We might still catch them, sir!” Lieutenant King said optimistically.

For several long moments Merritt stared east into the afternoon shadows along that hoof-chewed, travois-scarred trail. Then the colonel turned to his staff.

“No, Mr. King. We likely won't catch them now.” There arose some quiet grumbling from those in the ranks within earshot near the head of the column. “These men are weary. We pushed hard to reach the Warbonnet on time, and we got there, by damned.”

“Yes, we did that, General,” Carr agreed.

“Besides, the fact is that by now those Indians are already within the control of the Indian Bureau. So—after punishing these men and horses with hard chases for three solid days—I'm taking this regiment south to Red Cloud.”

“Then what, sir?” Lieutenant Forbush asked.

Taking his hat from his head and swiping a gloved finger inside the brow band, Merritt replied, “Why, then we join up with Crook to go whip the Sioux.”

“At least we won't have to face those Cheyenne warriors,” King said.

“Damn right,” Cody added, pointing off to the southeast. “Yonder goes a few hundred Cheyenne who won't be joining up with Crazy Horse and ol' Sitting Bull!”

“I think it's a job well-done, gentlemen,” Merritt exclaimed, clearly proud of himself. “We can feel good not only that we've prevented the Cheyenne from going north, but that now the word will spread: the Sioux will learn that it isn't wise to break from their reservations. All in all, it was a good day.”

Carr snorted caustically. “But we killed only one of the enemy.”

“Nonetheless it was a successful battle,” Merritt argued.

Eugene Carr shook his head. “With your permission, General—it wasn't a battle. More of a minor skirmish.”

For a moment Merritt appeared shocked by the stinging criticism. Finally he said with even iciness, “I will extend you the courtesy of reading my report before I submit it. Be that as it may, you can write your own subreport exactly as you see it, General Carr.”

The lieutenant colonel replied with a forced, stony civility, “Thank you. I will.”

After the troopers made camp that night, several brazen Cheyenne warriors cautiously visited the fringes of the Fifth Cavalry bivouac, contrite and far from belligerent while they actively sought out the tall scout dressed in the black velvet costume decked with scarlet braid—that warrior with the long brown curls who had conquered their war chief called Yellow Hair.

While the fight was still fresh in every man's mind that Monday evening and on into the morning of the eighteenth, Merritt set his officers to penning their separate reports. That duty done, many of the company commanders, as well as the enlisted personnel, took this first opportunity in many days to write home—telling loved ones and friends of their grueling forced march, of the
daring surprise they laid for the fleeing Cheyenne, and of Cody's shoot-out with the warrior whose name Little Bat incorrectly translated as “Yellow Hand.” With every new rendition told around their mess fires or expanded in writing home, the skirmish became a battle, and Cody's fight with Yellow Hair became Buffalo Bill's glorious and deadly duel with Yellow Hand, the most fearsome Cheyenne chief on the plains.

On Tuesday morning Merritt marched his column on to Camp Robinson, where he and the rest of his command expected to enjoy as much as two days of layover while they waited for their wagon train to catch up before having to resume their journey to Fort Laramie. Captain Emil Adams's Company C rejoined the regiment at Red Cloud Agency after Merritt had detached them on 14 July to watch over the crossing of the Running Water. The colonel used his time that night of the eighteenth to compose a report of the fight of the Warbonnet he would telegraph the following morning to Major Townsend, commander at Laramie. From there Townsend wired the news to headquarters in Omaha, the report flying on to Chicago and points east where everyone waited impatiently for any crumb of news about a victory—no matter how small—something good to come from all the disappointment and disaster that so far had greeted the nation that Centennial summer.

It was there at Red Cloud that the Fifth's famed scout penned his own letter to wife Louisa, back at home with their children in Rochester, New York.

Merritt was indeed still under Sheridan's explicit orders to reinforce Crook's expedition languishing in the lee of the Big Horn Mountains. Every one of those troopers figured the wait at Camp Robinson for their supply wagons would give the regiment a welcome chance to recoup themselves. Instead, the surprising Lieutenant Hall hoved into sight at noon that Tuesday, leading his short column of his white-topped company wagons, a scant few hours behind the hard-marching cavalry.

Their reports complete, Merritt gave his company commanders no more than two hours to reoutfit, draw rations and ammunition from Hall's train, then at two-thirty
P.M.
put the Fifth back on the trail to Fort Laramie. After a march of ten miles on the eighteenth, making another twenty-five miles on the nineteenth, they pushed a tiresome twenty-eight miles on the twentieth. Putting the last thirty miles behind them, the regiment marched into Fort Laramie just after three o'clock on the afternoon of the twenty-first.

That Friday evening Bill Cody found King at his mess fire, enjoying a cup of coffee and relishing some of the sutler's tobacco in his battered pipe.

“Ho, Bill!” King called out cheerily. “Come join us!”

“You're just the man I was hoping to find,” Cody replied, settling on a cottonwood stump at the fire.

The lieutenant said, “The fellas here would like you to tell us again of your fight with Yellow Hand.”

Cody leaned back, rubbing his palms across his thighs, and nodded. “All right—but with one guarantee from you, Lieutenant.”

“What's that?” King asked.

“You write down what I tell you—since it happened to me and I'm the one ought to know.”

“Write it down?” the lieutenant inquired.

“Yes. That's why I came to find you: wanted to ask you if you'd write a newspaper story.”

“A newspaper story?”

Cody nodded, again rubbing his hands expectantly on his buckskin britches. “There's others—these correspondents and such—they're going to write their own stories their own versions of what happened … but I want to be sure there's one story written just the way it really happened, Lieutenant.”

“Why, sure!” King answered enthusiastically. “I can do that, Bill. I'd be
honored
to do that for you, in fact. Have you got a paper in mind you want me to see gets your own story?”

“The
Herald.”

“New York?”

“That's right.”

King got to his feet, anxious. “I'll get some paper from my tent and be right back.”

After that first night the lieutenant, that famed scout, and the Fifth Cavalry did not have long to tarry at Fort Laramie. Sheridan was ordering up the rest of the regiment to join in the march to reinforce Crook. Dispatches awaiting Merritt with post commander Townsend stated that Captain George F. Price's E Company was already on its way from Fort Hays by rail. F Company under Captain J. Scott Payne was to join Price along the Smoky Hill line so that both companies would ride to Cheyenne together.

But after Sheridan had Company H coming from Fort Wallace, Kansas, and L Troop on its way from Fort Lyon in Colorado, the lieutenant general changed his mind. Instead of sending them on north with Merritt to reinforce Crook, Sheridan decided that once they arrived at Laramie, both companies were ordered east to bolster the defenses at Camp Robinson in the wake of the Cheyenne's attempt to flee the reservation.

After resting no more than twelve hours at Fort Laramie, Merritt and Carr had the men up at first light on the twenty-second, intending to use only one day to take on
supplies from the post quartermaster for Hall's wagon train, as well as force the fort's and regimental blacksmiths to work overtime at their fires, anvils, and hammers, reshoeing every animal that needed work before heading north to the Big Horn country.

Before the Fighting Fifth would again march into harm's way.

This time against Crazy Horse and that Hunkpapa visionary known as Sitting Bull.

It wasn't women.

But the supply train those seven companies of Chambers's infantry escorted up to Camp Cloud Peak from Fort Fetterman had brought with it the most seductive lure just shy of rounded breasts and full thighs.

Whiskey.

A civilian peddler had lived up to his reputation and become a bummer, talking Major Alexander Chambers into allowing him to bring his own wagon and two teamsters along for the trip north with the army's supply wagons. Having learned that Major Arthur, the district's temporary paymaster, would accompany Chambers north to pay Crook's men in the field, this wily civilian realized he'd have a captive market all to himself: soldiers with nowhere to spend what little money they might have in their pockets after seeing to it some of their pay was sent back east, home to loved ones. No matter what army scrip those soldiers would have left, that whiskey trader was bound and determined to relieve them of every last farthing.