the hailstorm blew in and the rains arrived.
On Tuesday, the twenty-ninth, the column awoke to another beautiful dawn coming in the wake of another terrible night. As the sun came up, it found most in the command using their folding knives to peel the thick gumbo from their shoes and boots.
“Can hell be much worse than this?” asked Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the Third Cavalry, his teeth chattering, as Donegan walked his weary mount out of camp.
“No, not at all. Hell would be a lot warmer, Lieutenant.”
“Good point, Irishman! A grand point! Warmer indeed!”
Off the infantry plodded, with the cavalry bringing up the rear behind Tom Moore’s pack-train. This day Seamus rode the right flank, ranging far ahead, allowing the horse to have its head as much as he dared. This act was a little kindness that made his heart feel better, what with the way he had stared at the horse’s ribby sides that morning, stared at the bony flanks as he flung the saddle blanket over its galled spine.
“You remember that deal we struck back on the Powder a couple weeks back,” he whispered to the animal now, though there was not another human ear within miles of him. “You just remember that now.” He patted the horse’s neck. “Just stay under me and don’t go down … and I promise I won’t let you fall.”
Reining up atop a ridge to let the horse blow, Seamus watched the winding progress of the infantry far off to his left. “Soon enough, ol’ boy—there’ll be plenty of your kind falling what won’t get back up. But you just remember our bargain.”
His eye drawn by a glimmer of distant movement, Donegan turned to the east, finding Grouard and three of the Ree miles off in the van but loping back toward the head of the column. In the middistance, scout Jack Crawford reined up, waiting. Grouard’s group halted momentarily where Charlie White sat atop his horse; then together the five kicked their mounts into a lope for Crawford.
“Looks like they found something,” Seamus mumbled to the animal below him as he nudged the reluctant horse down the easy slope toward the valley below. “Bringing in all the scouts now.”
On the far side some of the Fifth Cavalry, riding in the vanguard of the column, were dismounting among the tumble of deadfall at the bottom of a five-hundred-foot bluff. Each soldier was laying claim to a log. While some tied their lariats around the largest trunks and had their mounts begin dragging them up the rugged slope, most simply hoisted the unwieldy logs onto the backs of their horses.
“Look at them crazy sojurs, will you?”
From the left Wesley Merritt came tearing up at a hard lope with two of his aides and a color-bearer beneath the regiment’s standard. The headquarters flag snapped and fluttered in the chill east wind as Merritt halted at the bottom of the bluff. Far off, Seamus saw the normally unflappable cavalry commander gesturing like a madman, but could hear only scattered fragments of his angry voice float across the narrow valley on the simpering rise and fall of the wind.
“… violation of the first principle—”
Almost to a man the troopers dropped their logs together, the rest of the timber spilling to the ground as the lassos came free.
“—of a cavalryman: to care better for his horse than he does anything else!”
The colonel continued to berate his men, forming them up and getting the troopers back in column for the climb up the far ridge as Grouard reached headquarters and halted among Crook’s officers. The Ree pointed back to the east, then a little south of east. Grouard gestured too. Then Crook pointed to the top of the ridge the infantry was ascending.
It was there the command finally halted for the night, the cavalry dismounting and the foot soldiers breaking out of formation to settle wearily to the ground on this picturesque divide between Beaver and Cabin creeks.
“What’s Crook got on his mind?” Seamus asked as he rode up to Grouard and Crawford more than a half hour later.
“Irishman—I was wondering if you’d wandered off!” Crawford called with his usual cheerfulness.
“Just taking it easy on the horse,” Donegan explained.
The half-breed said, “General’s going to camp here for the night.”
After glancing at the position of the sun in the sky, Seamus asked, “Why so soon?”
“Crook’s sending all of us out to cover a big piece of ground,” Crawford explained, “while he keeps his troops here.”
Turning to Grouard, Donegan asked, “Saw you head back—sounds like you and the Ree found something ahead.”
Morosely, the half-breed shook his head. “That’s just what’s real strange about it, Irishman—we didn’t see a damn thing. Rode more’n ten miles out and didn’t find any sign of the trail.”
Seamus asked, “You think Crook finally understands what he’s been following is a wagon trail and not an Injin trail?”
“Looks like he does now,” Crawford replied.
“C’mon, Irishman,” Grouard said as he tugged on his reins and turned his tired horse about to lead him through the bivouac. “We’re all going out for a little ride.”
Patting the neck of the weary animal beneath him, Seamus asked, “How little a ride you got in mind?”
Frank looked back over his shoulder at Donegan, his eyes as dark as they’d ever been as he said, “We’re going to stay out until we find a trail Crook can follow. A trail that will lead him right to the Sioux.”
Chapter 33
29 August-3 September 1876
Crook and the Indians.
WASHINGTON, August 15—General Sheridan states that he has received a similar report from another direction to that published yesterday, stating that a terrible battle had taken place between Crook and the Sioux and that the latter had been almost annihilated. It was thought to be true at Red Cloud agency, and sent to him from Laramie. Therefore, he says, there seems to be more substance in the squaw’s story than was at first considered probable.
From Crook Direct.
CHICAGO, August 15—The
The cavalry average about forty-five men to a company, and the infantry forty, or a sum total for the present campaign of 1,400 cavalry, 400 infantry, and 250 Indian scouts—total 2,050. Buffalo Bill comes with the Fifth cavalry as a scout and guide.
“Blessed Mither of God—kill that fire!” Seamus snarled as he dived toward the coals.
It had rained earlier in the morning that Tuesday before Crook halted his column and sent out the scouts, so it wasn’t all that easy for the three scouts to find some loose dirt to cover the glowing embers. On either side of the Irishman, Crawford and Grouard were instantly aware of just where the danger lay, all three of them landing on their bellies, guns ready as they peered against the horizon where the night sky would silhouette the intruders Donegan had heard approaching.
High clouds had rolled in at dusk, blotting out most of the stars, and the moon had not yet put in its appearance.
Donegan’s chest heaved with apprehension as the first two riders broke the crest of the hill no more than a hundred yards away. A moment later the night sky behind them dippled with another pair. Then four—no, five more.
