With each new crest gained, brown-skinned horsemen swarmed over the hill the soldiers had just abandoned: screaming, charging, shooting—keeping up every bit of pressure they possibly could as the troopers attempted to hold them off, if not scatter them like chaff.
“Make your shots count, boys!” a stalwart, bearded sergeant hollered above his platoon as the rattle of gunfire reverberated from the buttes like hail off a snare drum. He was outlined against the sky by the black smudges of smoke drifting up from what was left of American Horse’s village. “Don’t throw your lead away without making them red bastards pay!”
It was one thing for a soldier to stand and hold off the enemy. Altogether different was it for a soldier to be asked to do the same while falling back.
Atop a grassy rise a lieutenant abruptly reined up his horse beside that old Irish sergeant conspicuously moving up and down his line of kneeling men, exhorting his platoon as they held off the screaming onslaught, gun smoke thick as thunderclouds about their heads. “Sergeant!”
“Yessirlieutenant!”
“How many goddamned times have I got to tell you to keep down?”
“Sir, I—”
“Now, by God!” the lieutenant interrupted. “I want you to keep your head down. So do it—now!”
“B-but, sir—”
“Sarge,” the officer said, his tone a bit softer as he leaned forward to confide, “if I lose you—I just might lose this whole damned outfit. Now, just do as I ask and keep your blessed head down.”
By and large the cavalrymen on that last line remained quiet in that cold morning’s fight, perhaps only speaking low to the bunkie beside them, sharing a handshake and a quick, guttural cheer when one of their number spilled a warrior from his pony, maybe even issuing a yelp of pain or a call for aid when a Sioux bullet found its mark and the soldier crumpled into the mud and grass, clutching a leg or arm or belly while his fellows rushed to carry him along in their ordered retreat.
“What … what day is it, sir?” a wounded man asked of the officer bending over him.
“Sunday,” Charles King answered as two soldiers came up to lift their wounded comrade between them.
“Sunday,” the soldier repeated with a pained grimace as he was raised. “I imagine back home it’s about time Ma is leaving for church.”
For a moment King just stared at the wounded trooper’s back, forced to think on Sunday and church and home. Forced to recall what had happened to Custer and his men on a bloody Sunday not long ago.
Had it not been for Carr’s skillful batdefield maneuvers and his ability to hold his men under what might have otherwise been overwhelming pressure during one attempt to outflank his command, the troopers of the Fifth Cavalry might have suffered a rout. But the lieutenant colonel spun Kellogg’s I Company on the right so they were there waiting when the galloping horsemen came over the rise— straight into the teeth of more than fifty Springfield carbines.
What really took most of the starch out of the warrior charges, however, was Carr’s order for each unit to leave a half dozen of its best shots lying concealed just behind the brow of the next hill while the rest of the companies continued in retreat, acting as bait to pull the Sioux into a headlong rush. On the horsemen charged; then with a single word from the lieutenant colonel, two dozen marksmen rose from the mud and onto their knees, slamming rifles into their shoulders and aiming point-blank at the mounted, painted, feathered, and screaming enemy within spitting distance. Ponies reared in the face of those exploding muzzles, men cried out in pain, others dashed in to pull bodies from the no-man’s-land as soldiers flipped up the trapdoors and slammed in another copper case while the angry screams haunted that thin line and the eagle wing-bone whisdes keened like a banshee’s wail off the pale buttes above them.
When the Sioux retreated, the fight was all but over.
In this hot, grimy, hour-long skirmish—that fourth of the Battle of Slim Buttes—Carr’s dismounted Fifth cavalrymen turned back every one of the Sioux charges, knocking down five of the enemy while the soldiers themselves suffered three wounded before the warriors were eventually turned back into the pine-covered hillsides. From the flanks of the troopers’ slow, foot-by-foot withdrawal, the hostiles had kept up a withering fire for the better part of an hour as the troops retreated up and down for more than two miles.
It was proof enough for even the hardiest veteran that they had failed to dampen the Sioux’s fighting spirit.
It was only then that Sitting Bull’s warriors drifted away and let off their attack. At long last Mason’s battalion was freed to step out in a lively effort to catch up to the retreating column and their led horses, now long out of sight.
But if the Sioux had shown they were still full of fight, so had Carr’s Fifth Cavalry.
Yet now it appeared Crook was hardly interested in consolidating his minor victory, not the least bit in bringing the enemy to a full-scale fight.
The general may have believed he was marching his expedition south.
To the Sioux, Three Stars was retreating.
Chapter 44
10-11 September 1876
Camp Owl River, Dakota
September 10, 1876
General Sheridan, Chicago.
Marched from Heart River passing a great many trails of Indians going down all of the different streams we crossed between Heart River and this point … Although some of the trails seemed fresh our animals were not in condition to pursue them.
From the North Fork of the Grand River, I sent Captain Mills of the Third Cavalry, with 150 men mounted on our strongest horses, to go in advance to Deadwood and procure supplies of provisions.
On the evening of the 8th he discovered near the Slim Buttes a village of thirty odd lodges and lay there that night and attacked them by surprise yesterday morning, capturing the village, some prisoners and a number of ponies and killing some Indians. Among the Indians was chief American Horse, who died of his wounds after surrendering to us …
In the village were found, besides great quantities of dried meat and ammunition, an army guidon, portions of officers uniforms and other indications that the Indians of the village had participated in the Custer massacre.
Our main column got up about noon that day and was shortly after attacked by a considerable body of Indians, who, the prisoners said belonged to the village of Crazy Horse … The attack was undoubtedly made under the supposition that Captain Mills’s command had received no reinforcements.
The prisoners further stated that most of the hostile Indians were now going into the agencies, with the exception of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull with their immediate followers. Crazy Horse intended to remain near the headwaters of the Little Missouri and about one half of Sitting Bull’s band … had gone north of the Yellowstone … with some Sans Arcs, Minneconjous and Incappas had gone to the vicinity of Antelope Buttes, there to fatten their ponies and trade with the Rees and others …
We had a very severe march here from Heart River. For eighty consecutive miles we did not have a particle of wood; nothing but a little dried grass … During the greater portion of the time were drenched by cold rains which made traveling very heavy. A great many of the animals gave out and had to be abandoned. The others are now in such a weak condition that the greater number of them will not be able to resume the campaign until after a reasonable rest.
