Trumpet on the Land (56 page)

Yet by some miracle, or by the grace of God Himself, they had slogged through another thirty miles that day. Still, with the coming of dark that Thursday night, the
disembodied whispers and grumbling swelled to epidemic proportions. More and more of the men voiced their undeniable despair in the anonymity of that dark night. No longer were they merely questioning their commander. Now they were demanding his head.

“Crook ought to be hanged!” was the call raised in the rainy gloom.

Seamus knew these men were the sort who could stare adversity in the eye, even smile in the face of sudden death if told the reason why. No, it was not the hardship, starvation, and endless toil that brought the expedition to the brink of mutiny—it was the general's tight-lipped silence. Surely, his soldiers told one another, Crook has no idea what he is doing, no idea what to do to save them.

They had reached the bitter end … and the general's only choice was to provision his men from the Black Hills settlements.

As night squeezed down on the land and the stragglers continued to lumber in from the miles upon miles of barren landscape littered with the carcasses of dead horses and mules, George Crook sent John Bourke to fetch Captain Anson Mills.

Seamus had a good idea what was afoot.

He prayed he would be allowed to go.

Chapter 35
7 September 1876

C
HEYENNE
, August 26—From all indications on the movements of the hostiles it appears Generals Crook and Terry will be unsuccessful and the troops will probably return to the mouth of the Tongue river on the 25th inst. The command will then refit for another dash, which it is hoped will be more successful …

Thus the campaign will be extended late in the season, and if necessary resumed early in the spring. It is thought sufficient supplies can be forwarded for the troops before winter sets in. The fall campaign will be full of hardships, but not so dangerous as another season's murderous work …

A still later dispatch, dated August 23, says Crook and Terry, after following the trail discovered on the 12th, moved thirty-six miles down the Rosebud. The northern trail was abandoned on the 14th, and the command pursued the southern trail,
crossed Tongue river to Goose creek, thence returned to Powder river and followed it to its mouth, which they reached on the night of the 18th, where they went into camp and will remain until the 24th. The wagon train and all the supplies at the mouth of the Tongue river are being shipped to the mouth of Powder river …

The Indian trail diverged from the east bank of Powder river about twenty miles from its mouth south toward the Little Missouri, whence the command will follow speedily. The entire command is short of supplies, and unless otherwise ordered Terry will march such as are not needed to Fort Lincoln. Crook's command will scout toward the Black Hills and via Fetterman. Crook and Terry both think it is too late for extending field operations. The Indians on the southern trail are believed to be moving toward the agencies … The campaign is therefore practically closed, unless further instructions come from the lieutenant general.

A
fter delivering General Alfred Terry's messages to Lieutenant Colonel Whistler of the Fifth Infantry, Bill Cody waited with the steamers
Josephine
and
Carroll
on the Yellowstone. In leaving Crook's column behind farther up the Powder on the twenty-sixth, Terry's men reached the Yellowstone the following day, then used the two steamboats to transfer all personnel and equipage to the north bank.

That evening the general asked Cody to guide a selected force on a scout to the north. The following morning of the twenty-eighth they set out for the Big Dry Fork of the Missouri and in the next two days began to run across fresh sign that the Indians had been hunting buffalo north of the Yellowstone. Always the cautious one, Terry determined that Miles or First Lieutenant Edmund Rice at the Glendive cantonment, eighty miles away, should be alerted to the discovery. Cody volunteered to make the ride, start
ing at ten o'clock on the soupy night of the thirtieth, plunging through the dark across a piece of country he had never crossed before.

At daybreak, after putting only thirty-five of the eighty miles behind him, Cody decided to wait out the day in hiding because of the wide stretches of open prairie that lay before him. Tying his horse in the brush of a steep-walled ravine, he curled up on his arm and went to sleep.

The sun was high when he was suddenly awakened by the thundering of the ground beneath him. Crawling to the mouth of the ravine, he saw a herd of buffalo charging past on the prairie just beyond where he lay, the lumbering animals raising clods from the wet prairie—pursued by at least thirty warriors armed with rifles.

Quickly he turned back into the ravine and hurried to his horse, throwing blanket and saddle onto its back, prepared to take flight should he be discovered—but as luck would have it, the hunters were too involved with their buffalo and hadn't paid any notice to Cody's trail crossing the prairie. In less than ten minutes they circled back, dismounting not far from the mouth of the coulee where he sat in hiding to claim their animals and begin butchering for meat, tongues, and hides. With these loaded onto some extra horses Bill swore had to be cavalry mounts, the Sioux rode off to the southeast.

Damn. Just the direction he had been taking to reach the mouth of Glendive Creek.

With the coming of that night, and not having seen another sign of the hunters, Bill felt secure enough to slip out of the ravine. This night he pushed due east, making as wide a detour as he felt he could to avoid a brush with the warriors or their village, wherever it might be to the southeast. The sun was coming up as Cody rode up to the stockade and hollered out that he had dispatches for Rice.

Over a cup of coffee and some fried beef, Bill told the soldiers all about the happenings upriver. Then Rice told Cody he wanted to get a message to Terry as well—to in
form the general that his stockade was suffering daily attacks and harassment from the Sioux in the immediate area. On his third cup of coffee Cody volunteered to follow his backtrail to Terry's command, which he expected to have returned to the Yellowstone from its foray to the north.

Without incident Bill headed west, running into the column east of the Powder, when he turned around to guide Terry's entire command back to Glendive. Three days later a steamboat put in at the stockade. Cody realized it was high time to go.

“One hundred eighty … and two hundred dollars,” said Captain H. J. Nowlan of the Seventh Cavalry, acting assistant quartermaster for General Terry. “That should be all your pay, Mr. Cody.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

The officer saluted, then held out his hand. “Believe me, the pleasure is all mine, Colonel Cody! General Terry is awaiting you at the gangplank.”

Sure enough, Terry stood waiting with most of his staff and that gaggle of reporters in the midst of a great crowd of onlookers as Cody prepared to shove off downriver, this time for good.

After a round of shaking hands and good wishes, Bill finally climbed the cleated gangplank to the lower deck of the
Far West
and shook hands with Captain Grant Marsh. Overhead pilot Dave Campbell hung from the window of his wheelhouse surrounded by iron plate and hollered down.

“Good to have you aboard again, Mr. Cody!”

“Good to be onboard, Mr. Campbell!” Bill replied, taking his hat from his head and waving it at the pilot. “How bout this time we really do get me down the Yellowstone?”

“Let's cast off!” Campbell roared, pulling on his steam whistle three times.

The stevedores on deck hollered at the soldiers on
shore to heave them the weighty hawsers while the pilot hollered down the pipe to his engine room, then stuck his head out the window once again.

“You're headed home now, Mr. Cody! Ain't a thing going to turn us around again!”

Along the bank that sixth day of September the soldiers whipped themselves into a frenzy, bidding the scout and showman farewell from the Indian wars.

For the last two weeks serving with General Terry's command, Bill had earned two hundred dollars—the most he had ever been paid for scouting. Not that he didn't deserve it, mind you. Why, he had been in the saddle almost constantly, pushing through foreign country filled with hostiles day in and day out. But as good as it was, it still wasn't the sort of pay he figured he could make once he got back east again.

Cody watched the bluffs of the Yellowstone fall away behind him. Ahead lay Lulu and the children. And a future of his own making.

William F. Cody had made his last ride as an army scout.

C
HEYENNE
, August 31—A courier who left the camp of Crook and Terry on the 20th, at the mouth of Powder river, arrived at Fort Fetterman to-night. The command was then on the trail which was estimated at 10,000 ponies. The camp fires indicate seven distinct bands. There is reason to believe that the Indians are almost destitute of food, and traces left in the deserted camps indicate that they are reduced to the extremity of using raw hides for food. All the Snake allies have gone home, the Crows remaining. General Crook fully expects to strike Sitting Bull in a few days.

Despite the condition of his horse, Donegan knew he had to go with Mills. He had to do something more than march along in that column of half-dead men and all-but-dead animals another day.

Late in the afternoon of the seventh of September, Crook had halted them on the banks of the Palanata Wakpa, the white man's Grand River. At dusk the general called an officers' meeting and told the men what he had decided.

In the hearing of all, Lieutenant John Bourke read the general's concise orders to the Third Cavalry's Anson Mills: “The brigadier general commanding directs you to proceed without delay to Deadwood City and such other points in the Black Hills as may be necessary and purchase such supplies as may be needed for the use of this command, paying for the same at the lowest market rates.
You
are also authorized to purchase two ounces of quinine, for use of the sick.”

“I discussed my plan with General Merritt and Colonel Royall before calling Colonel Mills in to inform him,” Crook explained. “Immediately following this conference Mills will come among the commands and select the fifteen healthiest men from each of the ten troops of the Third Cavalry. Every company commander is to make available to the colonel his fifteen strongest horses as well. Make no mistake on this, gentlemen. Mills's relief column must be mounted on the best we have left us.”

“What's to be done with the rest of us, General?” arose a question.

“We will remain in bivouac tomorrow, and the following day we will take the command on Mills's trail as he hurries south with Quartermaster Bubb.”

A captain asked, “We're going to continue marching after only one day of rest, General?”

Ànd a lieutenant chimed in, “Why not sit it out until Mills returns, sir?”

“We could do that: just sit down here and wait,”
Crook replied. “But if we keep moving south, our men will be that much closer to relief when Mills brings supplies back from the Deadwood merchants.”

“How's Mr. Bubb going to bring the provisions back?”

“Good question,” Crook answered. “I've already told Tom Moore he's to select fifty of what he has left of his mules, along with fifteen packers, to accompany Colonel Mills to the south.”

Crook went on to explain the command structure of the relief expedition: with scouts Grouard, Crawford, and Donegan he was sending along Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, who would act as Mills's adjutant, as well as Lieutenants George F. Chase, Emmet Crawford, and Adolphus H. Von Leuttwitz, with assistant surgeon Charles R. Stephens. In addition, both Robert Strahorn and Reuben Davenport volunteered to go along. Mills's relief patrol was to depart that evening as soon as the men and horses were selected.