Trumpet on the Land (66 page)

“Is that the other trader's son out there?” demanded the angry voice in the ravine. “The one who came with Grabber bringing soldiers to destroy our camps, to kill our women and children?”

Grouard told them, “The soldier chief wants to let your women and children come out before they are killed.”

The warrior replied, “But you send bullets to prove the lie in your words.”

“No—the soldier guns are quiet now,” Grouard answered.

“We do not worry about the soldier guns, Grabber. Very soon Crazy Horse will be here to take every one of those guns from your soldiers!”

Grouard turned and slid back down the slope with Pourier. At the bottom he signaled Crook with a shrug. The frustrated general waved his arms, shouting his command. In turn his officers ordered their men to resume their bombardment of the ravine.

“By Jupiter,” Crook grumbled to his staff, “when will those Sioux see just what will happen if they don't surrender?”

Bat hunkered low on the cold ground with Grouard while the renewed barrage continued, wishing he had a cup of hot coffee. After more than an hour the general again called a stop to the noisy siege. As the gunfire died off, Crook asked his half-breed scouts to take up negotiations once more. While Grouard started talking to the hostiles again, Pourier crept up the slope, inching along the edge of the ravine on his belly beneath the thick brush, hoping to get himself a look at its occupants.

Suddenly, to his surprise, right below Bat huddled a woman who muttered as if she was talking to herself.

Leaping down the side of the coulee, Pourier found her very frightened, shivering with cold and painted with sticky mud. Although she immediately lunged away from him, Bat spoke softly to her.

“Come with me. Meet the soldier chief. See that he will not harm you if you surrender now.”

For a moment more her wild, wide eyes held abject fear. But when she began to babble, pleading for her life, tears streaming from her eyes, Bat knew he had convinced her. If he could get one of the Sioux out safely, the rest would come as well.

Slowly he reached for her muddy hand when the brush behind her parted. Through the branches appeared a warrior with a pistol in his hand, pointed at Pourier. Between the two of them huddled the squaw.

Bat grabbed the woman's hand, whirling her around, shoving her in a heap toward the warrior. As he dived to get out of the woman's way, the warrior yelped in anger, finding himself suddenly without his pistol. Pourier had
ripped it from his enemy. Now Bat had them both covered. The woman argued with the man, but he said nothing. Only his hate-filled eyes spoke volumes.

While the half-breed debated with himself how he was to get his two prisoners out of the ravine without the soldiers shooting them all, a very old woman appeared from the brush. Under her arm was a young girl he supposed could be no more than nine or ten summers. Grandmother and granddaughter were both splattered with mud and blood and gore.

Pourier quickly motioned with a pistol barrel, pointing to the mouth of the ravine. “Go. We show you now the soldier chief is a man of his word. Honor. He will not kill those who surrender.”

Near the brushy mouth of the coulee Pourier ordered his captives to halt. Then he hollered so the soldiers could hear. “Get me General Crook!”

“Who the hell is that in there?”

“Pourier!”

“The scout?”

“Yes—get me General Crook!”

“How the hell did you get in there with the goddamned hostiles?”

“It don't matter—just get me Crook. I come out if I talk to him!”

“C'mon out, Bat!”

Relief flooded over him. It was the general's voice. “I got some prisoners for you, General. Some of those what wanna give up.”

Cautiously he pushed through the brush into the open, his chest hammering like a steam piston as he looked at all the muzzles of those rifles and pistols pointed his way. But Crook was there, extending his hand. Urging him on.

Turning slightly, Bat reached back into the brush and took the hand of the old woman. Even though her face registered her immense fear, she was the first to walk toward Pourier. Then the young girl, and at last the young
woman came forward at a crouch, as terrified as a snow-shoe hare surrounded by prairie wolves.

“This cannot be Three Stars,” the old woman said to the half-breed. “The soldier chief?”

For a moment Pourier looked at Crook, then understood the woman's confusion. The general wore no finery. In fact he had nothing on to indicate any rank at all. His boots were as muddy as any soldier's, his long caped wool coat as ragged as those worn by the Montana Volunteers, and his nondescript hat was shabby protection from the rain that dribbled through his beard.

Pointing at Crook, he told her, “Yes, this is Three Stars.”

Almost immediately the old woman's face drained of fear, and her expression reverted to one of relief when she realized she was under the care of the soldier chief. When she lunged forward to grasp Crook's hand in a flurry, nearby soldiers jumped in, seizing her, scared for the general's safety: But the old squaw only petted Three Stars's hand, gripping it for her life, murmuring quietly at the soldier chiefs side.

When Crook motioned his soldiers back, Bat said, “She says they are from Spotted Tail, General.”

“The agency?”

“Yes. Says they was going in to get food.”

Crook blinked a moment, then asked, “I suppose we're all hungry, aren't we?”

Assured of safety now, the young woman went to stand on the other side of the general. From the folds of her blanket she took an infant whom she had hidden through the entire tense ordeal with Baptiste at the bottom of the ravine. Hardly half a year old, the baby's face was a picture of pain—yet the stoic child, surrounded by so many hairy faces, did not cry as its mother brought it into the light and the cold. She gripped one of the child's ankles in a crimson-drenched hand, -attempting to stop the flow of blood. There was no foot below that hand: shot off by one of the soldier bullets.

“How many more are in there?” Crook asked in a quiet voice, his eyes registering his own pain as he looked over his four new captives.

Bat wagged his head. “Don't know for sure.”

“Then tell the others, talk to them in their language— and convince them that these will be cared for. Convince them that all will be safe if they just surrender now.”

Singly and in pairs nine more women and four more children soon emerged, seeing for themselves that the soldiers did not immediately shoot their prisoners as they had expected. In all, seventeen surrendered, crowding in a circle about the red-bearded soldier chief. One of the young women, shot through the hand and bleeding on the muddy ground, paid no attention to her wound, but instead huddled close so she could understand all Bat's assurances— when three shots cracked the discussion, bullets whining overhead. The soldiers and Sioux captives all scurried for cover like an overturned nest of field crickets.

“Looks like the rest ain't gonna give up,” Pourier declared to the general.

“Then I'll just have to convince them that they have to surrender,” Crook said, “or die.”

After his prisoners were taken back to safety into the village, Crook ordered his officers to bring a concentration of fire from both his infantry and cavalry on the mouth of the ravine. For close to an hour Bat watched the soldiers pour more than three thousand rounds into the brush. As clouds of gunsmoke hung above the whole scene in the sodden air, the general called again for the assault to stop.

“Tell them again that I will grant them my mercy,” Crook told Baptiste. “But they must come out now.”

Once more Pourier crawled to the mouth of the coulee with Grouard, and they called out to the Sioux warriors. For close to an hour they appealed to the warriors, and just when it seemed all efforts were about to fail, one of the squaws rejoined Crook on the hillside, asking for the chance to talk to the warriors. In moments she joined the half-breeds at the ravine opening, calling out to the men
barricaded within. It wasn't very long before one young warrior came out, holding a carbine across his chest.

“This one, her husband,” Bat explained.

Crook accepted the man's rifle and took his hand, shaking it before he directed the warrior to stand beside him and call out to the others. A strong voice answered from the ravine.

“They will come out,” Baptiste translated, “if their lives will be spared.”

The general asked, “Who is that in there?”

“The chief—one what wants to come out,” Grouard explained.

“Tell him I want no more killing today,” Crook replied.

Cautiously, Pourier and Grouard crept farther into the ravine and waited. Then waited some more, listening as muffled voices argued. More long, interminable minutes. At last a tall warrior inched forward stoically, one arm clutched at his middle, a bloody sash tied around his lower belly, and his other arm slung over the shoulders of a younger warrior.

Bat exclaimed, “You are wounded.”

The tall one pulled part of the damp sash from his belly, showing the half-breeds his terrible wound. He had been shot in the abdomen, and part of his intestine was already protruding from the gaping wound.

As the older one replaced the sash around his wound, the young warrior looked at the two scouts and asked, “You are the traders' sons?”

“Yes,” Pourier replied. “What is your name?”

“I am Charging Bear.”

Unable to take his eyes off the older man for long, Big Bat turned back to the tall warrior, marveling at his immense courage. “Are the others coming?” he asked in Lakota.

“Only two,” Charging Bear responded.

Again Pourier looked into the older man's eyes, the warrior's face ashen with agony—with each flush of pain,
grinding down on that small stick shoved between his teeth. “And you—your name—who are you?”

Slowly the handsome warrior dragged the stick from his mouth and drew himself up proudly. “I am American Horse. Chief of the Miniconjou.”

As Seamus watched, American Horse gave his rifle to the soldier chief with solemn dignity. Through the half-breed interpreters the Sioux leader told Crook he would surrender if the lives of the last two warriors in the ravine would be spared.

Amid angry shouts of “No quarter!” from the soldiers looking on, Crook gave his guarantee, and American Horse called to the holdouts. When the younger warrior attending the chief was turned over to Colonel Chambers's guard detail, Surgeon Clements and his stewards took charge of the wounded American Horse.

Slowly the doctor pulled back the bloody sash from the sticky wound. More of the intestine escaped the hole. Gritting on the stick between his teeth, the chief immediately poked and shoved the best he could, pushing the bowel back into the ragged hole in his belly. But it was no use.

“I'm sorry, General,” Clements told Crook. “The wound is mortal.”

Crook turned to Grouard and said, “Tell the chief he will die before morning.”

American Horse made- no reply when told. His face registered nothing more than the pain already visited upon him. Clements led the chief away, hobbling slowly toward the small fire nearby, where the rest of the captives warmed their cold hands and feet. The chief settled among the women and children, his teeth still clamped on the stick. The surgeon left to return to his hospital tent, explaining that there was nothing else he could do for one so seriously wounded. It was but a matter of time.

Charging Bear stayed with Crook for a few minutes,
talking to the soldier chief through the half-breed interpreters.

“Very soon Crazy Horse will come to free our village,” the warrior warned the general. He went on to express convincingly his belief that word of the attack had already reached the other villages in the surrounding countryside, and a great fighting force was then on its way, likely to arrive before nightfall.

Crook said, “You tell this man that's just what I've hoped. I've prayed for nothing less than a good fight with Crazy Horse for a long, long time.” Then he had the infantry guards take Charging Bear away.

It did not take long before the last two warriors appeared from the tangle of brush farther up the ravine. One of them wore a corporal's tunic, taken from Custer's own L Company. He was eager to shake hands all around with the scouts and the officers—in fact, with any soldier who would shake hands as he grinned, relief washing over his face.

With the surrender of those last two warriors, Frank Grouard counted what the holdouts had left in ammunition. Six cartridges each. When the prisoners were escorted from the scene, Sergeant Von Moll of the Third Cavalry brought in a squad of his soldiers from Private Wenzel's own A company to claim the body, the rifle still gripped in the dead man's cold hands. Two empty cartridges lay near his right side, a live round still in his carbine, cocked and ready to fire.

As the angry troopers carried away their comrade, Donegan followed the half-breed scouts into the ravine. They found the walls of the coulee riddled, tracked, and scarred with the paths of thousands of bullets. Twisting, brushy yards from the entrance they discovered five bodies: three women, a warrior shot in the head, and an infant.

Bullets had repeatedly found one woman's body; what was left of her clothing crusted over with muddy slime and coagulated blood. Her neck was nearly severed by one shot, three more had torn open her chest and shoulder. Two
more grisly holes in each arm and leg. The bodies of the other two women had suffered nearly as many wounds— one with her head blown completely in half, clear down to the upper palate. From what Seamus could see, it appeared the warriors had used the bodies of their dead to hide behind during the onslaught of soldier lead.

Curious himself, Captain Anson Mills entered the ravine behind the three scouts, accompanied by the young girl who had been discovered in a lodge hiding beneath a pile of robes and who had attached herself to the officer. At the sight of one of the dead women, the girl rushed forward to fall upon the body, crying pitifully. She hugged the body, brushed the matted hair from the bloody face, her little tears falling upon the cold cheeks as she wailed.