dismounting not far from the mouth of the coulee where he sat in hiding to claim their animals and begin butchering for meat, tongues, and hides. With these loaded onto some extra horses Bill swore had to be cavalry mounts, the Sioux rode off to the southeast.
Damn. Just the direction he had been taking to reach the mouth of Glendive Creek.
With the coming of that night, and not having seen another sign of the hunters, Bill felt secure enough to slip out of the ravine. This night he pushed due east, making as wide a detour as he felt he could to avoid a brush with the warriors or their village, wherever it might be to the southeast. The sun was coming up as Cody rode up to the stockade and hollered out that he had dispatches for Rice.
Over a cup of coffee and some fried beef, Bill told the soldiers all about the happenings upriver. Then Rice told Cody he wanted to get a message to Terry as well—to in form the general that his stockade was suffering daily attacks and harassment from the Sioux in the immediate area. On his third cup of coffee Cody volunteered to follow his backtrail to Terry’s command, which he expected to have returned to the Yellowstone from its foray to the north.
Without incident Bill headed west, running into the column east of the Powder, when he turned around to guide Terry’s entire command back to Glendive. Three days later a steamboat put in at the stockade. Cody realized it was high time to go.
“One hundred eighty … and two hundred dollars,” said Captain H. J. Nowlan of the Seventh Cavalry, acting assistant quartermaster for General Terry. “That should be all your pay, Mr. Cody.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
The officer saluted, then held out his hand. “Believe me, the pleasure is all mine, Colonel Cody! General Terry is awaiting you at the gangplank.”
Sure enough, Terry stood waiting with most of his staff and that gaggle of reporters in the midst of a great crowd of onlookers as Cody prepared to shove off downriver, this time for good.
After a round of shaking hands and good wishes, Bill finally climbed the cleated gangplank to the lower deck of the
“Good to have you aboard again, Mr. Cody!”
“Good to be onboard, Mr. Campbell!” Bill replied, taking his hat from his head and waving it at the pilot. “How bout this time we really do get me down the Yellowstone?”
“Let’s cast off!” Campbell roared, pulling on his steam whistle three times.
The stevedores on deck hollered at the soldiers on shore to heave them the weighty hawsers while the pilot hollered down the pipe to his engine room, then stuck his head out the window once again.
“You’re headed home now, Mr. Cody! Ain’t a thing going to turn us around again!”
Along the bank that sixth day of September the soldiers whipped themselves into a frenzy, bidding the scout and showman farewell from the Indian wars.
For the last two weeks serving with General Terry’s command, Bill had earned two hundred dollars—the most he had ever been paid for scouting. Not that he didn’t deserve it, mind you. Why, he had been in the saddle almost constantly, pushing through foreign country filled with hostiles day in and day out. But as good as it was, it still wasn’t the sort of pay he figured he could make once he got back east again.
Cody watched the bluffs of the Yellowstone fall away behind him. Ahead lay Lulu and the children. And a future of his own making.
William F. Cody had made his last ride as an army scout.
Indian Matters.
CHEYENNE, August 31—A courier who left the camp of Crook and Terry on the 20th, at the mouth of Powder river, arrived at Fort Fetterman to-night. The command was then on the trail which was estimated at 10,000 ponies. The camp fires indicate seven distinct bands. There is reason to believe that the Indians are almost destitute of food, and traces left in the deserted camps indicate that they are reduced to the extremity of using raw hides for food. All the Snake allies have gone home, the Crows remaining. General Crook fully expects to strike Sitting Bull in a few days.
Despite the condition of his horse, Donegan knew he had to go with Mills. He had to do something more than march along in that column of half-dead men and all-but-dead animals another day.
Late in the afternoon of the seventh of September, Crook had halted them on the banks of the Palanata Wakpa, the white man’s Grand River. At dusk the general called an officers’ meeting and told the men what he had decided.
In the hearing of all, Lieutenant John Bourke read the general’s concise orders to the Third Cavalry’s Anson Mills: “The brigadier general commanding directs you to proceed without delay to Deadwood City and such other points in the Black Hills as may be necessary and purchase such supplies as may be needed for the use of this command, paying for the same at the lowest market rates. You are also authorized to purchase two ounces of quinine, for use of the sick.”
“I discussed my plan with General Merritt and Colonel Royall before calling Colonel Mills in to inform him,” Crook explained. “Immediately following this conference Mills will come among the commands and select the fifteen healthiest men from each of the ten troops of the Third Cavalry. Every company commander is to make available to the colonel his fifteen strongest horses as well. Make no mistake on this, gentlemen. Mills’s relief column must be mounted on the best we have left us.”
“What’s to be done with the rest of us, General?” arose a question.
“We will remain in bivouac tomorrow, and the following day we will take the command on Mills’s trail as he hurries south with Quartermaster Bubb.”
A captain asked, “We’re going to continue marching after only one day of rest, General?”
And a lieutenant chimed in, “Why not sit it out until Mills returns, sir?”
“We could do that: just sit down here and wait,”Crook replied. “But if we keep moving south, our men will be that much closer to relief when Mills brings supplies back from the Deadwood merchants.”
“How’s Mr. Bubb going to bring the provisions back?”
“Good question,” Crook answered. “I’ve already told Tom Moore he’s to select fifty of what he has left of his mules, along with fifteen packers, to accompany Colonel Mills to the south.”
Crook went on to explain the command structure of the relief expedition: with scouts Grouard, Crawford, and Donegan he was sending along Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, who would act as Mills’s adjutant, as well as Lieutenants George F. Chase, Emmet Crawford, and Adolphus H. Von Leuttwitz, with assistant surgeon Charles R. Stephens. In addition, both Robert Strahorn and Reuben Davenport volunteered to go along. Mills’s relief patrol was to depart that evening as soon as the men and horses were selected.
As far as Seamus Donegan was concerned, Crook had to be given credit. Unlike most of those armchair generals who had commanded the Union’s armies during the early years of the war, George C. Crook had always suffered no less than the greenest recruit in his command.
As much as other, lesser men might snipe and find fault in the general’s decisions, for the most part the Irishman believed Crook had done what he thought best. The general had marched and countermarched his expeditionary force on just about every trail he came across after the fleeing hostiles.
He had put his men on half rations, then reluctantly approved of butchering the horses.
And without fail Crook had always deployed his scouts to prowl in all directions to scare up a fresh trail for his men to pursue.
But now, to look at the man, Seamus knew even Crook was close to the end of his string. This was no longer an army campaign. This was no longer a matter of catching the enemy and driving them back to the agencies.
This had become nothing less than pure survival.
Another Trail Discovered.
ST. PAUL, September 4—A special dated bank of the Yellowstone, August 27, via Bismarck, 4th inst., says: The latest intelligence received concerning the movements of the Indians lead to the belief that Sitting Bull’s band of Unkpapas are trying to cross the Yellowstone and reach their proper hunting ground on the dry fork of the Missouri. Acting upon this belief General Terry directed General Crook, with his column, to move eastward to the Little Missouri, following the trail leading from the Rosebud, while General Terry with the Dakota column has crossed the Yellowstone and marched north and east to cut off any parties moving toward Fort Peck. You will hear no end of extravagant stories about the attack on the steamer
