for Crook. Although he likely outgunned the warriors, estimated by his officers to number between six and eight hundred, he could claim, nonetheless, a victory. Sitting Bull had attacked a Three Stars twice stronger than Crook had been on the Rosebud, leading his warriors into battle this day against a soldier force three times stronger than that of Custer’s five companies destroyed along the Little Bighorn.
In the first confusing moments of attack the warriors had captured the high ground—but with able officers and diligent soldiers, the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition had regained the battle’s momentum, retaken the heights, and eventually driven off the enemy as night fell.
John Bourke took a quick tally early that evening, reporting to the general that the units counted a total of eight soldiers wounded. For most of the battle the warriors had been firing down upon the soldiers, and that “factor of terrain” had caused most of the Sioux bullets to sail harmlessly over the heads of the white men. As was normally the case, enemy casualties were entirely unknown, but Carr estimated that they had killed or wounded as many as seven or eight of the Sioux. Another officer reported off the record that fourteen warrior bodies were found on the battlefield, while another four had been carried off—nothing more than an educated guess made from an examination of the pools of blood found on many of the rocky ledges where the Sioux had made their stand.
“That Reuben Davenport needs someone to take him down a notch or two,” Crook’s young adjutant complained as he came up to kneel at the captives’ campfire beside Donegan.
“What’s that pain-in-the-ass reporter saying now?”
“The wag is saying Crook’s soldiers missed a grand opportunity by not following up and capturing the warriors.”
“With this bunch of worn-out men and what we’ve got left of horses?” Seamus asked, incredulous. He snorted a sour laugh. “You’re serious? He wanted us to traipse after them Sioux and squash ’em, eh?”
“I bet ol’ Crazy Horse figured he would find just Mills’s men here,” the lieutenant said.
“He and the rest got themselves a good surprise, then, didn’t they?” Seamus replied.
“Those Sioux were wise to retreat when they did after running into more soldiers than they counted on.”
“Wasn’t but an hour’s scrap, was it?” Donegan asked, trying to coax a young child to his knee with the offer of a hard cracker.
“She’s a tough one, Irishman,” Bourke replied. “A real screamer. You get anywhere close to her, she’ll shriek your ears off.”
“You wanna try?” Donegan asked, holding the cracker to the lieutenant.
“Maybe I have something that’ll help.” Bourke pulled his field haversack off his shoulder and fished around inside until he pulled out the small tin of fruit preserves. “Lemme see your belt knife.”
With Donegan’s knife the lieutenant spread the wild-currant jam atop the hardtack, then held it out for the young girl, who could be no more than five years old.
“Take it, it’s
No matter—at first she refused even to consider the offered treat, but eventually crept forward, snatched the cracker out of the soldier’s hand, then darted back to her place among the other captives. There she squatted in the smoke of the fire and took her first bite of the sweet. Her eyes lit up, and her tongue swirled across her lips so that she wouldn’t miss a morsel. Seamus chuckled at just how fast the youngster devoured that cracker.
As she stuffed the last crumbs into her mouth, the girl crawled right over to Bourke’s knee and squatted as if completely unafraid, looking up at the lieutenant with imploring eyes, her hand held out.
“Looks like you’ve made you a friend at last, Johnny!”
“It does, at that,” Bourke replied. “Have you any more tacks?”
“This is my last,” Donegan replied, pulling the cracker from his mackinaw pocket.
“We don’t have to take your last.”
“Go ahead. I’ll rustle up some more of that pony meat for supper tonight. Hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to grow quite fond of four-legged riding stock.”
Fitting that a crimson sunset flared for but an astonishingly beautiful moment over those pale-gray buttes dotted with emerald evergreens: an appropriate requiem, perhaps, for a people who had already witnessed the zenith of their greatness.
Below the chalky terraces glowed the remains of some three dozen bonfires, each one what had once been a Sioux lodge. Across the hillsides flickered much smaller dots of reddish embers where gathered the battle-weary soldiers once more wolfing down the dried meat and berries they had captured and held on to as victors. On the heights as well as down across the eastern flats Crook posted a strong line of pickets while silence crept in once more to rule this wilderness. As a soft rain returned to patter on blankets, coats, and gum ponchos, some of the camp guards heard strange noises and cried out their challenges, only to find they had captured a riderless enemy pony abandoned in the Sioux retreat and now wandering in to the sound of humans.
Unlike the miserable bivouacs of the last two weeks, tonight one heard songs, jokes, and laughter. Once more men were eager about their prospects. Many of those who days before had been grumbling that the general ought to be hanged were this night heard to boast, “Crook was right, after all!”
They ate their fill in the rain, gathered at their hissing fires, caring not about the morrow.
“C’mere and try some of this, Seamus,” John Finerty called out.
“What’s on the menu there, newsman?” Donegan asked.
“Pony.”
“Had me some already,” and he squatted near the reporter.
“Not cooked fresh you haven’t,” Finerty replied. “See? I’ve become quite a connoisseur, Seamus. Cavalry meat, played out, sore-backed, and fried without salt is stringy. Leathery, and tasting just like a wet wool saddle blanket too. Downright nauseating.”
“I’ve tasted my fill of that too, thank you.”
Again Finerty offered the Irishman a piece, saying, “Now, a full-grown Indian pony has the flavor and appearance of the flesh of elk.”
“And you’re an expert on elk, are you, now?”
“I’ve been hunting many a time with Crook, haven’t I?” Finerty protested. “But perhaps best of all—a young Indian colt tastes like antelope, Seamus. Or mountain sheep.”
“So what of mule meat?” asked Robert Strahorn from across the fire with a full mouth.
The reporter from Chicago shuddered. “Mule, eh? Fat and rank, perhaps best described as a combination of all the foregoing—with a wee taste of pork thrown in.”
“There’s some that think a mule loin is just about the best thing in the way of prairie victuals,” .Seamus told them, “second only to buffalo.”
Finerty sneered, “And what sort of dunderhead would that be?”
“They’re called Kwahadi Comanche, Johnny boy,” Donegan replied, standing to stretch out his cold, cramping muscles. “And pray you don’t ever have to campaign down on the Staked Plain of west Texas against those devils incarnate.”
Chapter 43
9-10 September 1876
Not long after the last echoes of gunfire faded from the nearby bluffs, a pair of sore-footed troopers from the Fifth Cavalry limped out of the darkness, hailing the pickets surrounding infantry camp. They had been some of the first forced to abandon their played-out horses that morning when the entire column followed in the wake of Crook’s rescue, which placed the pair as the last stragglers on the trail.
As they approached the northern end of Slim Buttes, the weariness of the muddy trail overwhelmed them, and they decided to lie down and nap among the shelter of some rocks they found in a ravine. At the moment the Sioux chose to launch their attack, the two hapless soldiers were awakened rudely. It didn’t take them long to
