The plan of the campaign is to make a combined movement of three columns with Fort Ellis as a base. Two of the columns will move directly against the Indians, and one against their villages. General Sheridan will, according to the present plan, establish his headquarters in the field at some advantageous point on Goose creek, about forty miles northwest of Fort Phil Kearny, and near the scene of Crook’s battle on Rosebud. The force of these three columns will amount in the aggregate to between 4,000 and 5,000.
Two days after marching away from Laramie and crossing the North Platte River on the army’s new iron span, Bill Cody led the Fifth Cavalry to the mouth of LaPrele Creek, the site of Fort Fetterman, on the afternoon of 25 July.
Waiting there for Merritt was a mixture of strays and civilians, along with a handful of unattached officers who had been on leave or assigned duty at other posts when the news of the Custer disaster reached the outside world. Now they had raced to Wyoming Territory, eager to attach their fates with Crook’s column. Even a naval officer, Lieutenant William C. Hunter, presented himself to Colonel Merritt and, like the others, was allowed to accompany the Fifth Cavalry as a “volunteer.”
To Lieutenant Colonel Carr’s disgust, the regiment found a few newspapermen hanging about the post, waiting to march off to the Sioux War. A New York
Immediately crossing the Platte below the fort, Merritt and Carr established bivouac on the north side of the river, checked the post commander for any last-minute dispatches from Chicago, Omaha, or Laramie, then went about drawing any last-minute supplies depleted since leaving Fort Laramie two days before.
At eight o’clock the next morning, a Wednesday, those eight companies of the Fighting Fifth were pushing past Kid Slaymaker’s Hog Ranch, marching into the badlands of central Wyoming Territory, a country ablaze with sunlit clouds of alkali dust and sagebrush flats.
It was well past midnight two days later when Cody had the regiment camped and asleep in the rainy darkness beneath the bluffs along the North Fork of the Cheyenne. As if it were a dream, he thought he heard a distant bugle calling out of the cold, drizzling mist.
“Charlie!”
White strode over as Cody put the pistol he had been oiling back in its holster. “What you need, Bill?”
“Listen.”
For a few seconds they both strained to hear beyond the noise of camp, the whickering of their nearby mounts cropping at the good grass.
White asked, “That a bugle, Bill?”
“What I thought,” Cody replied. “Best you go alert Merritt.”
The colonel promptly had one of the company buglers go with Lieutenant Charles King and Cody to the high ground above the riverside camp, with orders to begin playing “Officers’ Call,” then wait a minute or two for a response, then play it again, repeatedly in that fashion until Cody could determine if it was an Indian ruse or not.
Even as he, White, the lieutenant, and the trumpeter were reaching the top of the bluff … there, faintly in the distance, Cody heard it again.
“Blow your horn,” he quietly ordered, his soft words adding all the more drama to the ominous moment.
A few heartbeats after the bugler’s last note had drifted out into the rainy darkness, Bill again made out the dim, sodden call from afar.
King said, “Sounds like it’s coming from the south.”
“It sure does. Give ’em another blow on that horn.”
Back and forth the trumpeters played the song that would summon all cavalry officers, while closer and closer that other horn came—until Cody thought he could just make out the dull glimmer of brass and bit and carbine below him in the rain-soaked darkness. He lumbered down the gummy slope to the sodden prairie below, stopping a few yards away from a group of officers at the head of a column of weary, wet troops.
“Is that you, Buffalo Bill?”
“It is!” he cheered back, relieved to hear a voice of someone who evidently knew who he was. “Who goes there?”
“By Jehovah—don’t you remember me, Bill? It’s George Price.”
“Captain Price? That really you?” Bill asked as he strode out of the gloom and right up to the men gathered beneath their rain-drenched guidon. “Damn, but it’s good to see you, Captain. Who the hell you got with you?”
“A battalion: my own E Troop, and I brought along Captain Payne’s F Company with me. Both of us racing all the way up from Cheyenne in a lightning march.”
“Seven days’ worth of march!” J. Scott Payne added.
“Whooo! That’s getting high-behind, fellas. We was hoping you’d reach us by Laramie. Then Merritt hoped you’d come in by the time we reached Fetterman.”
“Hell, Bill,” Payne replied, “the way you’ve had the boys covering ground, we’re lucky we caught up with you before you went and captured Sitting Bull!”
Price agreed, saying, “We’ve been pushing these men and horses pretty hard for a solid week just to get here— forced marches and all.”
“Merritt’s gonna be plumb happy to see you both, fellas!” Cody cheered. “C’mon—let’s get your men into camp where they can gather round a fire and get a hot cup of coffee down ’em.”
Two days and two long marches later the Fifth camped near the ruins of old Fort Reno on the Powder River. In the heat of the following day the snowcaps on those distant mountain peaks proved to be a seductive lure for the men. That first day of August, Cody led the ten companies of the Fifth Cavalry across Crazy Woman’s Fork and was closing on the Clear Fork just past one P.M. In the distance he sighted a few small herds of dark, shaggy buffalo, plain as paint against the verdant green of the nearby hills. Along with a small cadre of eager officers, Bill secured Merritt’s permission to make meat for the hungry column. As the buffalo were shot, skinned, and butchered by a detail of men selected from each company, the main body of the command marched on past the mirrored surface of Lake DeSmet, which lay in the midst of a basin of near-naked hills. That night in their bivouac made just south of the ruins of old Fort Phil Kearny, the men ate better than they had in weeks, and their stock had one of its last opportunities to take advantage of unequaled grazing.
“We ought to be getting near Crook’s camp, aren’t we, Bill?” Merritt asked after they had stuffed themselves on buffalo tenderloin.
“Real close, General. I could take a ride out tomorrow and likely reach the forks of Goose Creek by afternoon.”
Merritt shook his head. “I want to keep you with me, so we’ll choose someone else.” He looked over at White. “How about him, Bul?”
“Chips?” and he grinned. “Sure. He’ll find Crook’s camp with no problem.”
White stood, eager to please. “You want me to carry a message, maybeso a dispatch to Crook, General?”
“Yes. I’ll write it first thing in the morning and send it with you right after you’ve had breakfast. We’re going to let General Crook know to expect the Fifth for supper day after tomorrow.”
The general had been so excited when White had delivered Merritt’s note, absolutely buoyant to learn that the Fifth was only hours away, that on the following morning of August 3 he had his Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition strike camp and countermarch eighteen miles to the south along the foothills of the Big Horns so that they might unite with Merritt’s 535 officers and men that much sooner.
So it was that something on the order of a mile off Cody spotted horsemen, perhaps a dozen, no more. They weren’t Indians, that much was for sure, not the way they rode in a column of twos, with a couple of spare fellows off to the side. Scouts, he thought to himself. Behind them, as far as the eye could see, the horizon lay smudged with smoke. At times the smudge to the air was enough to sting the back of his tongue.
Halting at the top of the next rise, Bill turned in the saddle and took his hat from his head to wave to Merritt and Carr still a quarter mile behind him at the head of the column. Then he sat and waited. This would be as good a place as any, he decided. He stretched his back, pulling at some stiff muscles, and watched the riders move out of a walk into a ragged lope. They had spotted him. Some pointed in his direction.
