By noon that Tuesday the sun broke through the clouds and the humid air grew stifling as the scouts gazed down into the widening valley of the Powder River, called Chakadee Wakpa by the Sioux. The Crow and Arikara guided the columns down Four Horn Creek* to its mouth, making a ford where the clear and swift- running creek joined the Powder from the southwest to mingle its waters with the milky, muddy, alkaline river. On the column continued its numbing march down the east bank of the Powder. It wasn’t long before the last of the barebacked horses led by each company had been put in service, replacing those that had played out in the climb up from the Pumpkin. Those soldiers who were thereafter forced to abandon their animals simply left everything behind: saddle and blanket, bit and bags. A trooper put afoot carried away only what he could on his back, trudging along beside the faltering column of horses.

Yet even the infantry did not have an easy go of it that fifteenth of August. One can imagine how it must have conspired to ruin a foot soldier’s healthy state of mind as hour by hour he watched powerful, gracefully strong animals giving up and going down: tramping endlessly through brutal country, mud sucking at one’s heavy and unforgiving brogans, their leather already cracked and split from days and nights of incessant rain—feet become two bloody stumps of raw and blistered flesh, ankles and calves swollen from the cold and the exertion and the stream crossings.

When they had no more travois for the sick and lame, the officers begged the Indian allies to double up and carry those soldiers who could not go on by their own steam. Yet there was one who was left, unnoticed, as he scrambled up beneath some concealing brush along the bank of the Powder and hid himself as the rest of the column lumbered past. There that Ninth Infantry cook named Eshleman intended to die by the hand of a hostile warrior or give himself to a predator of the high plains—anything but press on with the rest.

Just before dawn that terrible gray day, Seamus had in fact discovered that his horse’s shoulder was a mass of oozing wounds. The animal actually shuddered as Donegan chewed a sliver of tobacco and rubbed pieces of the moist wad into the open wounds before he lay the saddle blanket back over the lesions. And throughout that long and terrible day the Irishman would lean forward against the great beast’s shoulder, whispering again what he had whispered that dawn before setting out with the other scouts.

“I’ll strike a bargain with you,” and he stroked its powerful neck. “You will carry me and I will keep you from going down. Just remember that if you go down, I am simply too weary to get you back up again. And I’ll have to leave you, or … or worse. And—I don’t even want to think of that happening.”

Hour by hour man and beast both held up their end of the pact. When it seemed the horse was close to collapse, Seamus dismounted and led the animal, off and on, for what seemed like half the day.

Early that afternoon the Shoshone found the trail dividing once more, with the deepest and widest road that remained after the pounding rains still pointing eastward toward the Little Missouri River.

As some of the Indian allies halted at that fork in the trail, Donegan came to a stop beside the dark-skinned half-breed who had once roamed this land as an adopted Hunkpapa. For a moment Seamus wiggled a loose back tooth with his tongue, realizing that was a first sign of scurvy—one of the most dangerous afflictions of an army on the march.

“How far east you think they’ll run?” Seamus asked his old companion.

Frank Grouard shrugged his shoulders, gazing off into the distance where the trails scattered like a covey of quail busted out of the brush, only to disappear. “Don’t know for sure, Irishman. What I do know is the Little Missouri is good wintering ground. Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapa use it year after year.”

“Wintering ground? This early?”

“No, they won’t winter up this early—but they’re for sure headed for the Little Missouri.”

After slogging more than thirty miles through the bone-chilling mud of that morning followed by the blazing sun appearing in a clearing sky that afternoon, Chambers’s infantry were the first to go into camp. To everyone’s amazement the major’s command hadn’t suffered a single man to drop out through the day-long ordeal. In fact, Crook’s foot soldiers were the first to reach camp that night, arriving long before the cavalry trudged in, half of the horse soldiers dragging their led mounts behind them.

That night another storm moved in, and the heavens opened up again for the fifth night of cold misery in a row.

*Present-day Mizpah Creek.

Chapter 29

16-18 August 1876

Graphic Account of Custer’s Fight From the Hostile Band.

CHICAGO, August 1—Capt. Holland, of the Sixth Infantry, commanding the station at Standing Rock Agency, writes to General Ruggles that seven Sioux Indians who were in the battle of June 25th have arrived at Standing Rock and give the following account of the battle: The hostiles were celebrating the sun dance when runners brought news of the approach of the cavalry. The dance was suspended, and a general rush followed for the horses, equipments and arms. Major Reno first attacked the village at the south end, across the Little Big Horn.

Their narrative of Reno’s operations coincides with the published account, how he was quickly confronted and surrounded, how he dismounted, ran in the timber, remounted and cut his way back over the ford and up the bluffs with considerable loss, and the continuation of the fight for a little time when runners arrived from the north end of the village or camp with the news that the cavalry had attacked the north end, some three or four miles distant. A force large enough to prevent Reno from assuming the offensive was left, and the surplus available force followed to the other end of the camp, where, finding the Indians successfully driving Custer before them, instead of uniting with them, they separated into two parties and moved around the flanks of his cavalry. They report that a small body of cavalry broke through the line of Indians in their rear and escaped, but were overtaken within a distance of five or six miles and all killed.

After the battle the squaws entered the field to plunder and mutilate the dead bodies. General rejoicing was indulged in, and a distribution of arms and ammunition was hurriedly made….

Sitting Bull was neither killed nor personally engaged in the fight. He remained in the council tent, directing operations. Crazy Horse, Large Band, and Black Moon were the principal leaders … The fight continued till the third day, when runners, kept purposely on the lookout, hurried into camp and reported a great body of troops, General Terry’s command, advancing up the river. The lodges having been previously prepared for a move, a retreat in a southerly direction followed, towards and along the Rosebud mountains. They marched about fifty miles, went into camp, and held a consultation, when it was determined to send into all the agencies reports of their success, and call on them to come out and share the glories that they were expected to reap in the future.

… They report for the especial benefit of their relatives here that in the three fights they had with the whites, they have captured over one hundred stand of arms, carbines and rifles (revolvers not counted), ammunition without end, and some sugar, coffee, bacon and hard bread. They claim to have captured from the whites this summer over 900 horses and mules. I suppose this includes their operations against the soldiers, Crow Indians, and Black Hills miners.

… I have since writing the above heard from the returned hostiles, which they communicated as a secret to their friends here, information that a large party of Sioux and Cheyennes were to leave Rosebud mountain, the site of the hostile camp, for this agency, to intimidate and compel the Indians here to join Sitting Bull. If these refuse, they are ordered to beat them and steal their ponies.

By that Wednesday morning of the sixteenth, finding and catching the fleeing hostiles had become secondary. For Terry’s men as much as for Crook’s command, with the Sioux plainly two weeks ahead of them, it had now become a matter of survival. Simply to find food and blankets, someplace where they could recoup and sort out what to do next.

General Alfred Terry convinced a dejected George Crook that their combined columns should limp on downstream the twenty-four miles it would take them to reach the mouth of the Powder River at the Yellowstone.

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