since morning, the lieutenant and Crawford discussed what they would do if a wandering war party should discover and attack their patrol. Each of the troopers was to have a specific place to go in order for the outfit to make its best defense. Then out of the darkness appeared the suckling colt, which scared the devil out of the men, and elicited a maternal nicker from the mare.
An old sergeant said, “Cap’n, I sure do think that colt’d taste a lot better’n this here cold jerky.”
Chase shook his head. “No. I want you all to understand I’m against killing the animal—better for us to let him tag along in case we need him for a real emergency.”
Back and forth they debated it while chewing on their dried meat until the idea became a bit more reasonable to the lieutenant, and he relented to having their fresh meat then and there. No sooner had Chase agreed when a tall, strapping soldier leaped to his feet, seized the young colt around the neck, and slashed its throat in that ring of firelight.
A quarter of an hour later the men were roasting thin slivers of the meat and wolfing it down all but raw.
Supper was gone when they heard a horse coming through the trees and nearby brush.
“God-damtt,” one of them rasped in a whisper as they all rushed for their chosen positions.
On his belly Crawford quickly scooped some muddy soil into the pit, extinguishing their fire. Nearby Strahorn’s heart pounded just the way it had last winter when they had found themselves pinned down in that Powder River village. Once more he had thrown in with men ready to sell their lives at a great cost that cold night.
“You boys aren’t going to shoot a white man, now, will you?”
Strahorn’s ears pricked. Rising to one knee, he hollered out to the darkness, “That you, Irishman?”
“Bob Strahorn? You bet it’s me, Seamus!” the voice called back from the gloom. “Call off the guards and ease them hammers back down.”
In less than two minutes Donegan was dismounted and stood in their midst, telling them, “Mills sent me to fetch you and your men, Lieutenant.”
Chase asked anxiously, “Where is he now, Irishman?”
“Why, just past seven this evening—we rode into Crook City.”
Strahorn leaned in close to the scout’s face and sniffed for himself. He was smiling when he leaned back. “Is that what I think it is on your breath, Irishman?”
“If you mean whiskey—by the saints it sure as hell is!”
Bob almost wanted to cry as he wrapped his arms around the tall Irishman and hugged. Then he drew back and looked into Donegan’s merry eyes.
“All right, you big goddamned leprechaun—how ’bout you taking me to the closest place you know where I can buy you a drink!”
* The Plainsmen Series, Vol. 8,
Chapter 48
13 September 1876
It came as a real blessing when Crook didn’t prod them out of their blankets early that Wednesday morning. In fact, they languished in camp until noon as those boneweary men who had any strength left helped the engineering officers corduroy the north and south banks of Willow Creek in preparation of fording the stream.
But while the soldiers labored, even as those who had collapsed up and down the creekbank finally straggled in to join the others around the smoky fires—every man kept his eager, expectant, hopeful eyes trained on that country to the south.
“I will look unto the hills,” Charles King murmured as he waded in the chilling, waist-deep water of the creek and dropped another log near those soldiers who were filling in the corduroy of steps. “Yes, I will look unto the hills from whence my help comes.”
He closed his eyes and blinked away the tears, remembering that little church back home, and how he and the rest of the children had sat on the floor around one of the lay people each Sunday morning and learned scripture by rote. Psalm by psalm. Hope by hope. Prayer by prayer.
How many times had he asked God to end the rain? And still it fell. Even until this morning. If the Lord kept this up, Crook’s army would have to be about building an ark instead of laying down a corduroy to cross swollen streams.
Merritt himself had asked King to take charge of the work. “Go down to the creek and put the ford into shape,” the colonel had requested. “You will find some fifty infantrymen reporting for duty.”
The men were there—all fifty of them—but no more than a dozen of them were fit to do anything other than sit on the banks of that muddy stream. Those who did have any strength left would have to complete their job without tools. They had been hewing down the saplings and trimming branches with their belt knives. Each man lugged armloads of these into the rushing current, then plunged them under the water, attempting to anchor them any way they could to the shifting stream bottom.
Finally at noon King reported to Merritt and Crook.
“I’ve done my best, General.
Merritt nodded. “I’m sure you have. All of you.”
Crook stood to bellow at his officers. “Let’s get this column across the creek!”
The general was the very first to try the ford. Twice his weary horse slipped, almost spilling Crook into the water. But in a moment more the old soldier was across the stream and on the south bank, waving the rest on as his mount stood there shivering, dripping, head hung in exhaustion.
It took more than two hours for the expedition to clamber across that shifting ford—down one corduroy, into the deep water, then up the far bank. First infantry, followed by the travois and litters, with several handlers posted on either side of every wounded man. Then came the dismounted troopers, and finally what was left of Crook’s cavalry brought up the rear. Just past two P.M. they marched away from the Willow, making for the Belle Fourche little more than a handful of miles away.
Nonetheless, it took them another two hours to reach that wide, clear-running stream fed by the snows of the nearby Black Hills. Although the banks were muddy, they weren’t steep, and the bottom appeared rocky and solid. No engineering required here. Crook waved his hat to spur them on and was the first into the Belle Fourche. Again the infantry formed an escort for Clements’s wounded in crossing the rapid stream. Then the dismounted cavalry clustered around their own mounted companies, moving into the water clinging to a horse’s tail or latching on to a comrade’s stirrup as the animals pulled them to the south bank.
And when they reached the far shore, emerging from the icy cold, the saddles were taken off and the horses picketed on the lush green grass of these prairie highlands. Great fires were started. As some men stood warming themselves right there in their steamy clothing, others stripped off everything and rubbed their purple flesh until it turned rosy.
They had reached the Belle Fourche. Here, if not before, Mills was to meet them. Just gazing at that southern bank of the river made King proud: these two thousand ragged men who appeared to be more a great motley band of ruffians and unkempt scoundrels than what had once been the greatest army ever to take the field on the frontier—they had torn horse meat raw from the bone, and every one of them had a mouthful of teeth loosened with scurvy—they hadn’t shaved or bathed in weeks—and not one of them had enjoyed a change of clothing in months. What they had on their bony frames hung in faded tatters. While their faces might be liver-colored with weeks of unending fatigue, their eyes nonetheless glowed with hope.
As if in answer to that hope, a lone trooper rode in from the south not much more than an hour after their arrival on the Belle Fourche—carrying word from Mills that he and Bubb were on their way back! With a herd of beef and thirteen wagons!
