One of the others nodded and said, “James Bell, E Company, Captain Mills. Yes, sir. We come from General Terry’s camp on the Yellowstone.”
“Mouth of the Rosebud, sir,” the third gushed. “William Evans, I’m with E Company too.”
“The three of you … rode down from the Yellowstone?”
“Yes, sir,” Stewart answered. “We have dispatches from Terry. We’d appreciate you taking us to see General Crook.”
Lieutenant Charles King was one of the first to be electrified by the news from Captain Thaddeus Stanton that reached Colonel Wesley Merritt by courier just past noon, the fifteenth of July.
Camp Robinson
Saturday July 15 1876
General
A considerable number of Sioux Warriors left here for north this morning. The Cheyennes are also going … The Indians think you are still at Sage Creek & along there, and count on getting by you easily … The agent here is thoroughly stampeded by the threatening bearing of the Indians since the Custer fight … Thinks there are not troops enough to protect the agency in case of trouble.
I will wait here until I hear from you. Send a small escort when you wish me to join you …
Stanton
General Merritt
P.S. 12. m. It seems now that the Cheyennes left last night—all except a few old men & women. So you will have to hurry up if you catch any of them. About 100 Indians, wounded in Crook’s fight, are reported to be distributed among their friends here … Indians leaving here will doubtless scatter in any direction in small parties, to get by you. Let me know where & when to join you.
Stanton
The Cheyennes have disposed mostly of their lodgepoles, and take their families on ponies.
“The Cheyenne are breaking!”
Through their bivouac now the word spread like wildfire through the Fifth Cavalry: the colonel had decided to postpone their march north to reinforce Crook for the week it would take to countermarch and catch the escaping Cheyenne in a trap. Surely his superiors would understand that such an action must take precedence over Sheridan’s orders to join the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.
Two things were clear from Stanton’s dispatch: the agency Cheyenne still believed the Fifth was off to the northwest, blocking the route they must travel to reach Sitting Bull’s confederation; in addition, the Cheyenne appeared fully confident in their ability to elude the pony soldiers.
Much shorter but every bit as urgent was Major Jordan’s own dispatch to Merritt:
I have the honor to report that I have just received reliable information that about 800 Northern Cheyenne / men women and children / containing about 150 fighting men, and a good many Sioux all belonging to Red Cloud Agency are to leave here tomorrow for the north … it is my belief that a good many Indians have been leaving since the receipt of the news of the disaster of Lieutenant Colonel Custer.
“Now we’ll slam the door shut on them,” King vowed.
“We better,” said Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr. “If we don’t get there in time, those Cheyenne will join with the hostile Sioux who already wiped out half the Seventh. And once together, no telling what trouble the united tribes could cause. Why, I can imagine how easily they would roll right over the settlements in the Black Hills.”
Carr had reason to be concerned. Only a few weeks had passed since Sheridan had appointed him the commander of a new “Black Hills district” carved out of Crook’s Department of the Platte.
“Deadwood, Custer City … all the rest,” King agreed, imagining what slaughter there would be should the warrior bands strike the far-flung settlements and small pockets of miners and prospectors.
According to Major William H. Jordan, commander at Camp Robinson, at least eight hundred Cheyenne were moving north to join Sitting Bull’s hostiles. But this would be something different: this time the regiment was not chasing the Indians; now their task was instead to cut across the warriors’ trail. Here they were no more than a day’s ride from Fort Laramie at that moment, so it would take what Merritt called a “lightning march” if there was to be any hope for the Fifth turning on its heels to be far to the northeast when the Cheyenne showed up.
“To get there,” King said with exasperation as he looked at the old map Carr had spread across the scarred top of his field desk, “these eight companies will have to remain undiscovered while we march across three sides of a square, riding like the wind itself.”
“Yes,” Carr agreed, dragging his fingertip across the paper, “while the enemy traverses the fourth side.”
“And,” King said, looking into the eyes of that veteran campaigner, “when this weary outfit finally gets there— we’ll still have to be ready to fight the very devil.”
Within an hour of receiving the dispatches from Stanton and Jordan, trumpeters blew “Boots and Saddles” over that camp at Rawhide Creek. In a matter of minutes the regiment was on the march. Merritt had waited long enough. And though they realized they might well be outnumbered at least two to one, his men had nonetheless been itching for this moment.
The Fifth would again prove its mettle.
Merritt was leaving a small guard of the Ninth Infantry to escort his wagon train under the command of the regiment’s own Lieutenant William P. Hall, with orders to come on at all possible speed, even to catching up after the rest of the troops had gone into bivouac after dark. At the same time that the column of fours set out for the west, to fool any lurking scouts into believing that they were merely heading for Fort Fetterman country and not backtracking for the Niobrara, the colonel dispatched a courier racing toward Camp Robinson with orders recalling Stanton, and yet another horseman sent galloping south to Laramie to inform Sheridan of Merritt’s intentions and reasons for disobeying his commander’s orders.
Into the shimmering heat of that afternoon the troopers pushed their animals. The Cheyenne would have no more than a short twenty-eight-mile journey to the northwest to reach the crossing come Monday morning. On the other hand, after a trip of thirty-five miles with what they had left for light that day, the Fifth would still have to endure a forced march of more than fifty miles on Sunday to be there before their quarry had flown.
Fourteen miles later a short halt was called at Rawhide Creek. While the men watered their horses by companies, some of the soldiers waiting their turn filled their bellies with the hardtack they had stuffed into their haversacks from Hall’s wagons. In half an hour they were back in the saddle, this time riding north by west. When the sun keeled over toward the far mountains at five P.M., Bill Cody turned their noses square north for the Niobrara, reaching the river by sunset.
Finally at ten P.M. the order was given to halt, picket the horses, and go into bivouac for what they had left of that night’s darkness. They unsaddled under the tall, naked buttes at the mouth of the Running Water near the Cardinal’s Chair. They had completed their grueling thirty-five-mile march as planned.
After Carr assigned Captain Edward M. Hayes of G Troop to post pickets around the herd and establish a running guard through the night, the rest of Merritt’s command lay upon the cold ground and huddled under their blankets. Come morning those four hundred troopers realized they still faced the daunting prospect of putting in a march of more than fifty miles. If in the next few hours their horses could just get enough of the skimpy buffalo grass to eat …
“The Fifth’s done it before,” Eugene Carr reminded the veterans at officers’ call that night. “You men who were with us in sixty-nine when we tracked down the Cheyenne that time can tell the new boys. This has always been the sort of outfit that can do the impossible. We’ve always put in longer marches than any other outfit—and popped up where the enemy didn’t expect. And now, men—we’re going to do it again. By damn, we’re going to do it again!”
Just as King was drifting off to sleep at midnight, Lieutenant Hall rolled in with his train, traces jangling like sleighs, mules snorting with the smell of water in their nostrils, and an entire company of infantrymen bellowing in hunger, rubbing sore rumps as they clambered down from the wagons. The young lieutenant laid his head back down on his arm, filled with a renewed and respectful awe at what those men of Hall’s had just accomplished: the way they had kept those vital and cumbersome supply wagons moving across that broken, rugged ground, no more than two hours behind the cavalry.
It wouldn’t be the last of William P. Hall’s surprises.
Beneath the stars at three o’clock that Sunday morning the men were rousted from their blankets by sergeants growling commands up and down the rows of sleeping troopers. The men awoke to find breakfast waiting
