Trumpet on the Land (47 page)

Frank Grouard shrugged his shoulders, gazing off into the distance where the trails scattered like a covey of quail
busted out of the brush, only to disappear. “Don't know for sure, Irishman. What I do know is the Little Missouri is good wintering ground. Sitting Bull's Hunkpapa use it year after year.”

“Wintering ground? This early?”

“No, they won't winter up this early—but they're for sure headed for the Little Missouri.”

After slogging more than thirty miles through the bone-chilling mud of that morning followed by the blazing sun appearing in a clearing sky that afternoon, Chambers's infantry were the first to go into camp. To everyone's amazement the major's command hadn't suffered a single man to drop out through the day-long ordeal. In fact, Crook's foot soldiers were the first to reach camp that night, arriving long before the cavalry trudged in, half of the horse soldiers dragging their led mounts behind them.

That night another storm moved in, and the heavens opened up again for the fifth night of cold misery in a row.

Chapter 29
16-18 August 1876

C
HICAGO
, August 1—Capt. Holland, of the Sixth Infantry, commanding the station at Standing Rock Agency, writes to General Ruggles that seven Sioux Indians who were in the battle of June 25th have arrived at Standing Rock and give the following account of the battle: The hostiles were celebrating the sun dance when runners brought news of the approach of the cavalry. The dance was suspended, and a general rush followed for the horses, equipments and arms. Major Reno first attacked the village at the south end, across the Little Big Horn.

Their narrative of Reno's operations coincides with the published account, how he was quickly confronted and surrounded, how he dismounted, ran in the timber, remounted and cut his way back over the ford and up the bluffs with considerable loss, and the continuation of the fight for a little
time when runners arrived from the north end of the village or camp with the news that the cavalry had attacked the north end, some three or four miles distant. A force large enough to prevent Reno from assuming the offensive was left, and the surplus available force followed to the other end of the camp, where, finding the Indians successfully driving Custer before them, instead of uniting with them, they separated into two parties and moved around the flanks of his cavalry. They report that a small body of cavalry broke through the line of Indians in their rear and escaped, but were overtaken within a distance of five or six miles and all killed.

After the battle the squaws entered the field to plunder and mutilate the dead bodies. General rejoicing was indulged in, and a distribution of arms and ammunition was hurriedly made….

Sitting Bull was neither killed nor personally engaged in the fight. He remained in the council tent, directing operations. Crazy Horse, Large Band, and Black Moon were the principal leaders … The fight continued till the third day, when runners, kept purposely on the lookout, hurried into camp and reported a great body of troops, General Terry's command, advancing up the river. The lodges having been previously prepared for a move, a retreat in a southerly direction followed, towards and along the Rosebud mountains. They marched about fifty miles, went into camp, and held a consultation, when it was determined to send into all the agencies reports of their success, and call on them to come out and share the glories that they were expected to reap in the future.

… They report for the especial benefit of their relatives here that in the three fights they had with the whites, they have captured over one hundred stand of arms, carbines and rifles (revolvers not
counted), ammunition without end, and some sugar, coffee, bacon and hard bread. They claim to have captured from the whites this summer over 900 horses and mules. I suppose this includes their operations against the soldiers, Crow Indians, and Black Hills miners.

… I have since writing the above heard from the returned hostiles, which they communicated as a secret to their friends here, information that a large party of Sioux and Cheyennes were to leave Rosebud mountain, the site of the hostile camp, for this agency, to intimidate and compel the Indians here to join Sitting Bull. If these refuse, they are ordered to beat them and steal their ponies.

B
y that Wednesday morning of the sixteenth, finding and catching the fleeing hostiles had become secondary. For Terry's men as much as for Crook's command, with the Sioux plainly two weeks ahead of them, it had now become a matter of survival. Simply to find food and blankets, someplace where they could recoup and sort out what to do next.

General Alfred Terry convinced a dejected George Crook that their combined columns should limp on downstream the twenty-four miles it would take them to reach the mouth of the Powder River at the Yellowstone. While the Montana and Dakota columns set up their tents and cots, Brussels carpets, and rocking chairs on the west bank of the Powder, the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition made their miserable camp in the mud on the east bank with nothing more than what they had with them the day they marched away from Camp Cloud Peak. While Terry's men eagerly cut open tins of meats, vegetables, and canned peaches, Crook's impoverished soldiers had to relish the same old fare of salt pork, hard bread, and coffee. Why, Terry's men even shaved at marble-topped washstands with mirrors!

With no tents to shelter them, the Wyoming column
could only build bonfires around which they dried their stinking blankets and campaign coats like bands of ragged, wretched thieves. For the horses of the Second, Third, and Fifth cavalries, however, their lot had improved. Not only did the animals now feed on some sixty thousand pounds of grain, but in addition the horses and mules reveled in the abundant and luxurious buffalo grass found at the mouth of the Powder. The hostiles hadn't been there to torch their backtrail.

Several hours after they had reached the Yellowstone, Bill Cody and Seamus Donegan watched a rescue party of Crow scouts return from upstream. Alfred Terry had been late in learning that Private Eshleman, an officer's cook with the Ninth Infantry, had thrown in the towel and given himself up for dead.

“I may be forced to abandon or shoot some horses,” Terry grumbled. “But I won't allow myself to lose one more man if I can help it.”

As soon as he became aware of Eshleman's plight, the general had dispatched a half dozen of Gibbon's Crow to backtrack up the Powder and find the lost soldier. Eshleman was nearly crazed when the Indians brought him in, trussed up hand and foot like a Christmas turkey and lashed atop one of the barebacked ponies.

“As mad as a March hare,” was how Seamus Donegan put it when together they watched the surgeon's stewards pull the raving soldier down from that pony, screaming and snapping at his handlers.

“He might well be one of the fortunate ones,” Cody groaned, seeing how they lashed the soldier down to a hospital cot to keep him from injuring himself in all his thrashing.

“I'll never understand the workings of humankind,” Donegan said quietly. “Either him or you: for saying a madman may well be more fortunate than those of us who made it here whole.”

Bill turned to the Irishman. “Are we really whole,
Seamus? Oh, we may appear to be, despite our ordeal. But are we really whole?”

In addition to the deranged cook, a few of the officers and more than a handful of soldiers had been so incapacitated by the grueling march, their constitutions weakened beyond repair by diarrhea, acute dysentery, and inflammatory rheumatism, that the surgeons ordered those cases put aboard the
Far West
as soon as it arrived, to be transported on the steamer's next scheduled run downriver to Fort Buford at the mouth of the Yellowstone. In addition, there were others who were going to leave of their own volition—some of the newspapermen who had decided days back that there simply wasn't going to be a Sioux campaign that year, and to trudge overland with Terry or Crook in a fruitless and exhaustive search for the hostiles would be nothing short of sheer lunacy.

The noisy appearance of the
Far West
at five o'clock that afternoon of the seventeenth brought out every one of Washakie's warriors. Wide-eyed, some with their hands clamped over their mouths, they stared and gaped as the stern-wheeler heaved around the far bend in the river and chugged toward the mouth of the Powder, putting in against the north bank of the Yellowstone. This had to be the most wondrous sight to the Shoshone, who had never before seen a river steamer in their part of the west. That day and for many days to come, the mighty “smoking house that walked on water” would be the sole topic of discussion in the Snake's camp, and upon their return to the Wind River Reservation.

The Shoshone were not the only warriors excited to see the steamer. Nearly four thousand soldiers crowded the banks to view this singular reminder of civilization brought here to the wilderness. Captain Grant Marsh's cabin girl, a Negress named Dinah, had modestly covered her eyes or diverted them as the steamer drew in sight of the camp, what with so many naked soldiers frolicking in the sunlit river after all those days of rain and gloom.

Even Lieutenant Adolphus H. Von Luettwitz, E Troop, Third Cavalry, was caught unawares of the power of the stern-wheeler as he was laundering some of his clothing at the edge of the water. The steamer's powerful wakes tumbled one right after the other against the bank and caused the lieutenant to topple into the river, shouting his untranslatable German oaths as he sputtered up from the choppy Yellowstone, having lost half his uniform to the mighty river's current.

That following morning, Friday, the eighteenth of August, the sky dawned clear and mercifully blue as Crook's men went aboard the
Far West
to unload two days of forage and very little rations for two large armies. It wasn't long before the men began to spread the rumor that they might well be resuming their chase of the hostiles at any moment—rumors seemingly given official credence in dispatches brought up from Fort Buford. General Sheridan was instructing his two field commanders to construct stockades in the heart of the hostiles' hunting ground.

Sheridan wrote:

“At first light Terry's Rees come back from scouting those trails scattering to the east of the Rosebud and found the grass burned off,” Donegan told Bill that Friday afternoon. “Only thing that means is the hostiles moved through this country at least a week ago.”

Nodding, Cody replied, “Right. Shows the Sioux crossed over that ground before these heavy rains started.”

“So tell me what Crook and Terry hope to learn by sending you down the Yellowstone on that riverboat.”

“Crook doesn't want any part of this,” Cody stated, blowing on his tin of coffee. “He only wants that boat to go up to the Rosebud and get his supplies.”

“But Terry has the rank,” Seamus said. “And even more important: it's Terry's boat, and Terry's supplies—so Crook's got to go along with everything Terry wants.”

“Including Terry's idea to send me and Louie Reshaw down to the mouth of Glendive Creek to see if we can figure out what the hostiles are planning to do.”