Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

out to reconnoiter, but finding the Indians were endeavoring to cut them off, they turned and started as fast as was possible for the boat. Seven Sioux had circled as to intercept them, and it became a race for life. The horse of one of the scouts began to fall behind and was soon shot, when the rider started on foot, but it was no use. The same Sioux who had killed the horse soon reached him and put a bullet through his lungs. Dave Campbell heard the shot. Looking behind and seeing the wounded scout laying on the ground, he said to the other scout, “We must go back and get that man.”

Although it was as much as their lives were worth, they turned, and as they did so they saw the Sioux dismounted from his pony, fired, and the Indian fell with his scalping knife in his hand. Dave and the Ree then scalped the Sioux and started with the wounded man for the steamer. During this time Col. Moore, although with three companies, sent no one to the relief of these three men. Finally Grant Marsh, captain of the Far West called for one hundred volunteers, and fifteen soldiers immediately offered their services, but Col. Moore ordered them not to leave the boat. However, eight of them, contrary to orders, went with Capt. Marsh and brought in Campbell and the two scouts. Colonel Moore threatened to courtmartial these eight men then and there, and the steamboat men don’t hesitate to pronounce Col. Moore’s conduct cowardly in the extreme.

Terry has fallen back eighty miles from his camp on the Big Horn, and is now camped near the mouth of Rosebud. A scout from Gen. Crook reached Gen. Terry July 22, barefooted and almost destitute of clothing. Crook was but seventy-five miles from General Terry’s command and trying to reach him. The Indians, however, kept picking off his men, driving in his scouts, and stealing his stock, so that his advance was very much retarded, only being about six miles a day. The men in both commands are reported very much disheartened.

On the afternoon of the eighteenth Seamus sat on the south bank of the Yellowstone and watched as a Bozeman City trader floated downriver in his Mackinaw boat, hailing the soldiers.

“Homemade ale and dry goods!” the peddler bellowed as he rose to his knees in his rickety craft. “Come and get what’s left of my homemade ale!”

As he came in sight of the army’s encampment, the civilian proclaimed that he had sold half his wares to the soldiers left to garrison the depot at the mouth of the Rosebud and wished to sell the rest of his heady beer and dry goods before pushing back upriver for home.

Like a flock of goslings swarming around a farmwife’s ankles as she scatters corn, officers and enlisted alike nearly swamped the poor man’s little boat as they rushed into the water to be the first to have call on his ale, as well as his other goods.

“Yeah, I’ve got a frying pan,” he answered one officer’s request.

“How about a coffeepot?”

“Yes, one of them too.”

“You have any canned fruit?”

“A little. Got more of tinned vegetables.”

“Shirts? You got any?”

“A few hickory shirts left. And some canvas britches too.”

“Give me one of each!”

“Save a pair of them pants for me!”

The bearded, sunburned men huddled round that trader’s boat, exchanging what little money they had for what the Bozeman merchant sold at exorbitant prices, men forced to buy with their own funds clothing that the army hadn’t seen fit to provide its ragged, nearly naked soldiers.

While they waited for Cody and the Far West to return from his scout downriver to the mouth of Glendive Creek, Crook and Terry held a curious correspondence, discussing just how ready Crook really was to resume his chase, since he steadfastly repeated that he still required a full fifteen days of rations and forage. The latter was proving to be the most crucial—plainly there wasn’t enough grain to recruit Crook’s broken- down horses.

Early on the evening of the eighteenth, Terry wrote to Crook, saying:

Since I saw you, I have found that our supplies of subsistence are larger than I supposed … your commissary still needs 200 boxes of hard bread. Of these, I can furnish 100 boxes … The difference between this amount and the 15 days’ rations, of which you spoke, is so slight that I think it ought not to detain us. But perhaps your animals are in such a state that a further supply of forage and a longer rest would be desireable for them. If such be your wish, I am certainly willing to wait until the forage can be obtained.

P.S. Col. Chambers mentioned to me today that his men need shoes badly. If the steamer goes to the Rosebud, I can give him the shoes which he needs.

This correspondence presented a most unusual circumstance—to find the cautious Terry suddenly impatient to be at the chase once more; and to discover that the tenacious Crook had begun to find excuses to delay.

But as far as Seamus Donegan was concerned, the wily George Crook was merely maneuvering so that once he had what he considered enough supplies, he was going to break free of his superior, Alfred Terry.

Exactly as the survivors of the Seventh Cavalry said Custer had talked of doing before they left Gibbon and Terry behind at the mouth of the Rosebud and marched south for their rendezvous with destiny.

That was enough to give a brave man pause.

Donegan prayed Crook was not about to march his Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition into the very same maw of hell that had devoured Custer and five companies of cavalry beside the Little Bighorn.

Chapter 30

19-26 August 1876

Work Suspended

ST. PAUL, August 7—In consequence of low water in the Yellowstone and the inability of troops at this time to afford protection to building parties, the order for the construction of new forts on the Yellowstone has been countermanded.

Terry About Ready to Move

NEW YORK, August 7—A correspondent telegraphs that Gen. Terry hopes to be able to begin his march by the 9th inst. Under date of July 31st, the correspondent says: “We have just met the Steamer Far West, on her way down to bring the supplies left at Powder river, which we found in possession of the Indians. Capt. Thompson, of the Second cavalry, committed suicide just before the troops left the Big Horn river.”

Late in the morning of the nineteenth, Bill Cody surprised everyone by riding in alone on his buckskin instead of returning on the Far West, having made the dangerous trip upriver on horseback so that he could more closely study any sign he might come across along the south bank of the Yellowstone.

After receiving the scout’s unproductive report, Terry sought out Crook, finding the general seated on a rock at the edge of the river, scrubbing his only pair of longhandles in the muddy water.

“I’ve decided to send the boat upriver to fetch forage and supplies for you at the Rosebud,” Terry told him. “And the shoes Chambers requested.”

“Once I’m reprovisioned, I’ll set out at once,” Crook vowed.

A few hours later the Far West reappeared, chugging beneath afternoon skies to tie up against the north bank. Even from the vantage point of the steamer’s wheelhouse, Louie Reshaw hadn’t spotted any sign that the hostiles had crossed the Yellowstone. Terry ordered Captain Grant Marsh and pilot Dave Campbell to leave at once for, the mouth of the Rosebud, where they were to take on all the supplies previously left in depot there before returning to the Powder. That evening many of the newspapermen went along to enjoy the moonlit trip upriver.

“It was beautiful,” John Finerty gushed as he strode up to Lieutenant Bourke’s fire at Crook’s headquarters the next morning. “Nearly a full moon—”

“I don’t have time to listen to stories about your riverboat ride right now,” Bourke interrupted snappishly,