without good feed, forced to scrounge for grass where the Sioux haven’t burned it off—these animals are starving to death. One by one, by one.”
For the past few days Seamus had remained committed to his horse, although more and more of the men knew they would likely all be reduced to eating horse meat just to survive. Like Tom Moore’s packers, the Irishman religiously rubbed bacon grease on the horse’s open sores and wounds, situating the saddle blanket just so in hopes it would not aggravate the oozy wounds suffered by the bone-bare creature.
At reveille the next morning word came down from command headquarters: abandoned horses were to be shot and butchered for food.
This was nothing short of unthinkable for a horse soldier!
Beneath clearing skies the column stumbled out that seventh day of September, and in less than an hour all but a dozen of the cavalrymen had dismounted and were pulling their reluctant horses along, cajoling, begging, pleading with the animals to keep moving—just so the troopers would not find themselves forced to shoot their animals, the companions they had relied upon for many months.
By afternoon many of the men were collapsing with the animals beside the trail as rain clouds rumbled back over the land and released their torrent. At one point the expedition was stretched out for more than twenty miles. Every now and then Seamus heard the sodden report of some soldier’s weapon.
He flinched with every gunshot, turning every time to look over his shoulder at the horse plodding on his heels, its hooves caked with gumbo plastered clear to its hocks. On and on Seamus trudged, every fifth step forced to yank on the reins to keep his horse stumbling behind him. Each one of those echoing gunshots killed a little piece of the horse soldier that was Donegan, each bullet ripping through the heart of a horseman.
Along both sides of that march the skeletal soldiers jumped on the animals just shot, skinning back the hide and carving away the warm, juicy meat even before the heart of horse or mule had ceased its beating.
Here and there every few yards sat another man, trooper or foot soldier, his rifle lying in the mud beside him, his head slung disconsolately between his hunched soldiers as the heavens rained down upon them all. Some of the men openly cried as they rolled over onto their sides and curled up into fetal balls, giving in until others, those a bit stronger, came along and hauled their weaker comrades out of the mud. Once pulled up, the most weary and desperate among them dragged their feet through the endless mud, often supported between a pair of comrades, unable to go on without help.
Late that afternoon an Arikara courier rode in to give Crook a dispatch from Terry, reporting that supplies awaited the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition at the Glendive cantonment.
The news was too late to do them any good. They had long ago passed the point of no return.
As the head of the column went into camp that afternoon of the seventh, Crook stood guard over a half- dozen wild rosebushes, the hips of which he would allow only Surgeon Clements’s sick to use. Lieutenant Bubb had several of the hard-bread boxes broken up and the thin wood distributed through the command to start their pitiful fires.
Yet by some miracle, or by the grace of God Himself, they had slogged through another thirty miles that day. Still, with the coming of dark that Thursday night, the disembodied whispers and grumbling swelled to epidemic proportions. More and more of the men voiced their undeniable despair in the anonymity of that dark night. No longer were they merely questioning their commander. Now they were demanding his head.
“Crook ought to be hanged!” was the call raised in the rainy gloom.
Seamus knew these men were the sort who could stare adversity in the eye, even smile in the face of sudden death if told the reason why. No, it was not the hardship, starvation, and endless toil that brought the expedition to the brink of mutiny—it was the general’s tight-lipped silence. Surely, his soldiers told one another, Crook has no idea what he is doing, no idea what to do to save them.
They had reached the bitter end … and the general’s only choice was to provision his men from the Black Hills settlements.
As night squeezed down on the land and the stragglers continued to lumber in from the miles upon miles of barren landscape littered with the carcasses of dead horses and mules, George Crook sent John Bourke to fetch Captain Anson Mills.
Seamus had a good idea what was afoot.
He prayed he would be allowed to go.
Chapter 35
7 September 1876
Wyoming Indian Campaign Over.
CHEYENNE, August 26—From all indications on the movements of the hostiles it appears Generals Crook and Terry will be unsuccessful and the troops will probably return to the mouth of the Tongue river on the 25th inst. The command will then refit for another dash, which it is hoped will be more successful …
Thus the campaign will be extended late in the season, and if necessary resumed early in the spring. It is thought sufficient supplies can be forwarded for the troops before winter sets in. The fall campaign will be full of hardships, but not so dangerous as another season’s murderous work …
A still later dispatch, dated August 23, says Crook and Terry, after following the trail discovered on the 12th, moved thirty-six miles down the Rosebud. The northern trail was abandoned on the 14th, and the command pursued the southern trail,crossed Tongue river to Goose creek, thence returned to Powder river and followed it to its mouth, which they reached on the night of the 18th, where they went into camp and will remain until the 24th. The wagon train and all the supplies at the mouth of the Tongue river are being shipped to the mouth of Powder river …
The Indian trail diverged from the east bank of Powder river about twenty miles from its mouth south toward the Little Missouri, whence the command will follow speedily. The entire command is short of supplies, and unless otherwise ordered Terry will march such as are not needed to Fort Lincoln. Crook’s command will scout toward the Black Hills and via Fetterman. Crook and Terry both think it is too late for extending field operations. The Indians on the southern trail are believed to be moving toward the agencies … The campaign is therefore practically closed, unless further instructions come from the lieutenant general.
After delivering General Alfred Terry’s messages to Lieutenant Colonel Whistler of the Fifth Infantry, Bill Cody waited with the steamers
That evening the general asked Cody to guide a selected force on a scout to the north. The following morning of the twenty-eighth they set out for the Big Dry Fork of the Missouri and in the next two days began to run across fresh sign that the Indians had been hunting buffalo north of the Yellowstone. Always the cautious one, Terry determined that Miles or First Lieutenant Edmund Rice at the Glendive cantonment, eighty miles away, should be alerted to the discovery. Cody volunteered to make the ride, start ing at ten o’clock on the soupy night of the thirtieth, plunging through the dark across a piece of country he had never crossed before.
At daybreak, after putting only thirty-five of the eighty miles behind him, Cody decided to wait out the day in hiding because of the wide stretches of open prairie that lay before him. Tying his horse in the brush of a steep- walled ravine, he curled up on his arm and went to sleep.
The sun was high when he was suddenly awakened by the thundering of the ground beneath him. Crawling to the mouth of the ravine, he saw a herd of buffalo charging past on the prairie just beyond where he lay, the lumbering animals raising clods from the wet prairie—pursued by at least thirty warriors armed with rifles.
Quickly he turned back into the ravine and hurried to his horse, throwing blanket and saddle onto its back, prepared to take flight should he be discovered—but as luck would have it, the hunters were too involved with their buffalo and hadn’t paid any notice to Cody’s trail crossing the prairie. In less than ten minutes they circled back,
