Trumpet on the Land (52 page)

“Och! Be-jaysus!” grouched George. “If this isn't the most god-damnblest outfit I ever struck in my twenty-five years of sarvice!”

“Aye,” agreed Tim as the sergeants ordered the units into a column of fours. “Devil shoot the generals and the shoulder straps all around! Sure and they have no more compassion on a poor crayture of a soldier than a hungry wolf has on a helpless little lamb!”

The horse soldier behind Tim hollered out, “A tough old lamb you'd be, Timmy! A wolf would have to hold his head a long way from the wall afore he could eat you.”

“No coffee till night,” Tim continued to complain. “And we'll likely eat our bacon raw again come supper— for the sagebrush won't burn worth a lick, even if the rain would let up!”

The Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition put its nose down to the trail, on the hunt once more.

But while Crook, Bourke, Finerty, and many of the other soldiers and civilians who would chronicle this leg of the expedition all wrote that they took up the “Indian trail” that dreary, sodden morning of 26 August—the column was instead following the heavy wagon trail that General Terry's engineers had graded and bridged on their westbound march back in May.

Grouard, Donegan, and Charlie White all had their own suspicions early on, but it was a pair of Ree Terry had loaned the expedition who weren't long in confirming Crook's mistake. After all, those Arikara trackers should know: they had been part of that great forty-plus force who had marched out of Fort Abraham Lincoln with a hopeful Terry and an ebullient Custer on the seventeenth of May.

Later that Saturday morning the Ree came to Grouard, plainly confused, wondering why Three Stars was merely backtracking a soldier road instead of pursuing the Sioux trail.

“Sweet Mither of God! If this isn't a glorious start,”
Donegan grumbled. “We're told we're giving stern chase to the enemy, when all we're about is going on a grand fishing trip!”

“Ain't you ever fished for Sioux?” Grouard asked, looking disgusted. “Terry and Gibbon done a lot of it lately. The secret is, you just don't ever bait your hook.”

With a nod Seamus replied, “Yeah—so you don't ever have to worry about catching something.”

Stripped to the bone, packing along two days' less rations than that pitiful fifteen days' supplies would have allowed them, and without bringing along a single nose bag of grain for their gaunt, worn-out animals, they pointed their column to the northeast. Crook had his men marching into fire-blackened prairie, a country cut with a hundred muddy, alkaline creeks, making for the Little Missouri badlands.

That afternoon about four o'clock the command settled into the adhesive mud along the West Fork of O'Fallon's Creek after marching more than twenty miles, a camp made all the more miserable by a wind-driven rain. At sundown many of the command saw signs of abundant game, but the general had issued strict orders against firing any weapon. Even the company trumpeters had been instructed to pack away their bugles. The enemy was out there, came the explanation.

Just where, it was any man's guess.

North by east the infantry led them out at seven
A.M.
the following Sunday, the twenty-seventh, marching into a rolling country that showed no evidence of timber. Near noon they reached the main branch of O'Fallon's Creek, where the packers had a problem forcing some of their mules across. In two more hours Crook had them in bivouac on the East Fork of O'Fallon's, a small blessing for those older veterans who were already showing signs of approaching sickness: rheumatism and neuralgia.

Late that afternoon eight Arikara scouts rode in from Terry's command with his instructions to the Ree that they
were to serve the Wyoming column, as well as carry a letter for Crook.

Beginning to worry about the prospect of scurvy running rampant through the command, Crook met with his officers and instructed them to have the men eat the cactus and Indian turnips found in abundance along the line of march. That night a few soldiers pulled the spines from some prickly pear and tried frying it in their skillets over greasewood fires sputtering in the incessant drizzle. Most tried a single bite, then turned away to spit out what they had in their mouths.

“I'll chance the scurvy,” one old file growled after hacking up the slimy pulp.

The sun put in an appearance at dawn on the twentyeighth, lifting the men's spirits. Throughout the day the air stayed cool and the column covered a good piece of ground, finally going into camp on high ground that overlooked the valley of Beaver Creek still off to the east, and the sun-scoured badlands of southern Montana, with Cabin Creek just below them.

Grouard and Donegan took the eight Arikara scouts to look over the country around the Little Missouri still in their front. They hadn't gone far when they began to run
across recent sign. The farther they pushed to the east, the more nervous grew the half-breed and the Ree. Smoke was seen off in the distance behind the rise and fall of the land, great, smudgy columns spiraling into the sodden air.

“These Corn Indians seen with their own eyes what the Sioux did to Custer's men,” Grouard said, trying to explain why he was choosing to return to Crook's camp.

“You're ‘bout as jumpy as they are, Frank.”

He pressed his thick lips together and nodded, turning his horse about. He pointed, saying, “I'm laying there's more'n three hundred lodges down there. Over there and there too. All together, that makes more warriors than you and me wanna tangle with. You remember that graveyard beside the Little Horn, don't you?”

Seamus nodded. “I remember.”

Many of the officers refused to believe Grouard's report that night when the scouts wandered in close to dark, just as the rain blotted out the first stars. But it wasn't just the rain that soaked them all again that night of the twentyeighth. A prairie hailstorm, with stones half the size of a hen's egg, hammered man and beast, chilled the air more than twenty degrees, and left every last one of them frozen to the gills.

With the advent of a fierce lightning show, followed by the frightening hail, a few of the Fifth Cavalry's horses broke free of their picket pins and started their run. Most of them floundered in the creek. Some died, others had to be shot after breaking their legs in that mad dash to freedom.

As far as Seamus Donegan was concerned, the only good thing to be said about that night was that the storm hadn't succeeded in stampeding all their stock. Instead of breaking free, most of the horses and mules huddled in packs, frightened, making the most pitiful of humanlike noises throughout that long, miserable night.

It was already becoming clear to any horseman in that command that most of their animals simply didn't have
enough strength to stampede. All those horsemen could do was pray the stock would have enough strength to last out Crook's chase.

Later the Irishman learned that the lightning had struck the prairie not far from their southernmost pickets, starting a grass fire that was whipped along in savage style by the wind but was as quickly extinguished as soon as the hailstorm blew in and the rains arrived.

On Tuesday, the twenty-ninth, the column awoke to another beautiful dawn coming in the wake of another terrible night. As the sun came up, it found most in the command using their folding knives to peel the thick gumbo from their shoes and boots.

“Can hell be much worse than this?” asked Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the Third Cavalry, his teeth chattering, as Donegan walked his weary mount out of camp.

“No, not at all. Hell would be a lot warmer, Lieutenant.”

“Good point, Irishman! A grand point! Warmer indeed!”

Off the infantry plodded, with the cavalry bringing up the rear behind Tom Moore's pack-train. This day Seamus rode the right flank, ranging far ahead, allowing the horse to have its head as much as he dared. This act was a little kindness that made his heart feel better, what with the way he had stared at the horse's ribby sides that morning, stared at the bony flanks as he flung the saddle blanket over its galled spine.

“You remember that deal we struck back on the Powder a couple weeks back,” he whispered to the animal now, though there was not another human ear within miles of him. “You just remember that now.” He patted the horse's neck. “Just stay under me and don't go down … and I promise I won't let you fall.”

Reining up atop a ridge to let the horse blow, Seamus watched the winding progress of the infantry far off to his left. “Soon enough, ol' boy—there'll be plenty of your kind
falling what won't get back up. But you just remember our bargain.”

His eye drawn by a glimmer of distant movement, Donegan turned to the east, finding Grouard and three of the Ree miles off in the van but loping back toward the head of the column. In the middistance, scout Jack Crawford reined up, waiting. Grouard's group halted momentarily where Charlie White sat atop his horse; then together the five kicked their mounts into a lope for Crawford.

“Looks like they found something,” Seamus mumbled to the animal below him as he nudged the reluctant horse down the easy slope toward the valley below. “Bringing in all the scouts now.”

On the far side some of the Fifth Cavalry, riding in the vanguard of the column, were dismounting among the tumble of deadfall at the bottom of a five-hundred-foot bluff. Each soldier was laying claim to a log. While some tied their lariats around the largest trunks and had their mounts begin dragging them up the rugged slope, most simply hoisted the unwieldy logs onto the backs of their horses.

“Look at them crazy sojurs, will you?”

From the left Wesley Merritt came tearing up at a hard lope with two of his aides and a color-bearer beneath the regiment's standard. The headquarters flag snapped and fluttered in the chill east wind as Merritt halted at the bottom of the bluff. Far off, Seamus saw the normally unflappable cavalry commander gesturing like a madman, but could hear only scattered fragments of his angry voice float across the narrow valley on the simpering rise and fall of the wind.

“… violation of the first principle—”

Almost to a man the troopers dropped their logs together, the rest of the timber spilling to the ground as the lassos came free.

“—of a cavalryman: to care better for his horse than he does anything else!”

The colonel continued to berate his men, forming
them up and getting the troopers back in column for the climb up the far ridge as Grouard reached headquarters and halted among Crook's officers. The Ree pointed back to the east, then a little south of east. Grouard gestured too. Then Crook pointed to the top of the ridge the infantry was ascending.

It was there the command finally halted for the night, the cavalry dismounting and the foot soldiers breaking out of formation to settle wearily to the ground on this picturesque divide between Beaver and Cabin creeks.

“What's Crook got on his mind?” Seamus asked as he rode up to Grouard and Crawford more than a half hour later.

“Irishman—I was wondering if you'd wandered off!” Crawford called with his usual cheerfulness.

“Just taking it easy on the horse,” Donegan explained.

The half-breed said, “General's going to camp here for the night.”

After glancing at the position of the sun in the sky, Seamus asked, “Why so soon?”

“Crook's sending all of us out to cover a big piece of ground,” Crawford explained, “while he keeps his troops here.”

Turning to Grouard, Donegan asked, “Saw you head back—sounds like you and the Ree found something ahead.”

Morosely, the half-breed shook his head. “That's just what's real strange about it, Irishman—we didn't see a damn thing. Rode more'n ten miles out and didn't find any sign of the trail.”

Seamus asked, “You think Crook finally understands what he's been following is a wagon trail and not an Injin trail?”

“Looks like he does now,” Crawford replied.

“C'mon, Irishman,” Grouard said as he tugged on his reins and turned his tired horse about to lead him through the bivouac. “We're all going out for a little ride.”

Patting the neck of the weary animal beneath him, Seamus asked, “How little a ride you got in mind?”

Frank looked back over his shoulder at Donegan, his eyes as dark as they'd ever been as he said, “We're going to stay out until we find a trail Crook can follow. A trail that will lead him right to the Sioux.”

Chapter 33
29 August-3 September 1876