9 September 1876
“Mills has his back to the wall,” Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr told the officers of the Fifth Cavalry in the hearing of his troopers, who pressed close when he returned from the head of the column. “And Crook’s ordered us to save him.”
He then went on to inform his men that a third courier had reached headquarters with a second dispatch for the general. “At the time the rider left, Mills already had one dead, and six wounded. He’s called for more surgeons, as well as reinforcements and ammunition.”
Ordering his company commanders to break out all those men incapable of making the race, leaving behind every horse unable to carry its rider at a trot, the officers were told to stand what was left by companies and prepare for inspection. As the word spread through them like Sioux prairie fire, those once dejected, disgusted, and demoralized men within moments became alert and eager, rejuvenated and ready for whatever toil might be asked of them.
Even the lieutenant, whose old Arizona arrow wound was daily growing more aggravated by the continuing cold and dampness.
After their long and fruitless chase Charles King could understand that radical change of spirit overcoming every man as the lieutenant began working down the line of what troopers still had horses. It was going to be damned disappointing for a man to learn he was being left behind, King brooded. Hell, it hurt him when he ended up having to tell the lightest man in the whole regiment that he wasn’t going to make that ride.
“But, Lieutenant King—”
“No more complaints, Lieutenant London,” King snapped, moving down the line.
The next trooper and horse were no better a pair, except that soldier weighed twice what wiry Second Lieutenant Robert London weighed.
“Sorry, Mullins. You’re staying back. Fall out.”
“Lieutenant!” cried London, leaping to King’s side. “Lemme ride Mullins’s horse.”
King shook his head, saying, “I just said he wasn’t going.”
“Look,” London pleaded, “I can’t make my own horse carry me any ten miles, sir. But I can ride Mullins’s horse: he’ll carry my weight there, every inch of the way.”
“Take him, Lieutenant London,” Mullins said, handing the small man his reins.
The wiry trooper asked, “It’s all right, Lieutenant?”
“If Mullins doesn’t mind—you can ride in with us.”
“Hurrah!” London cheered as King stepped away, on down that pitiful front of scarecrow soldiers and their bone-rack horses.
One by one the officer inspected the readiness of Carr’s men and horses, ordering more than a third to fall out and come along with the infantry. By the time he was done, King turned and looked over those who would be making the dash, what men and mounts Carr would lead in that race south to rescue Mills. For a moment doubt gripped his heart. Maybe it was the sight of those bony horses. Perhaps it was those scarecrowlike soldiers. King wasn’t sure … but then, all around the lieutenant, up and down the entire column, men began to cheer and spirits rose higher than they had been in many a week.
“We’ll get in our licks now!”
“Hope Mills saves some action for us!”
“I’ll take a scalp of my own!”
“I’ll take Crazy Horse’s hair myself!”
In less than fifteen minutes Merritt had 17 officers and 250 men selected from the three regimental battalions, in addition to a pair of doctors—Medical Director Bennett Clements and Assistant Surgeon Valentine McGillycuddy— who would accompany the relief column with their trio of pack-mules laden with medical supplies.
Just past seven o’clock that dreary, cheerless morning, the rescue began.
“Column of twos!” rang the command that bounced back from the nearby hills. “At a trot! Forward!”
Into the teeth of a cold rain they set out on that desperate charge at double time, loping across the gumbo- laced landscape, those starving troopers clinging to the McClellan saddles cinched around the ribs of pitiful, played- out horses. But for the moment, for the next few hours, for the rest of this glorious day—these men had something other to think about than their aching bellies.
It wasn’t long before those cavalry officers who were left behind organized their remaining men and animals, then marched out on foot with Major Chambers’s infantry, dogging the backtrail of Merritt’s rescue command. How little it mattered that earlier that morning they all had awakened hungry, wet and cold, utterly weary, discouraged, and disheartened.
All that was suddenly forgotten now that their privations had served a purpose. The enemy was but a few miles ahead.
At long last they would get in their licks.
“Here, Irishman—take part of what I found,” one of M Company’s troopers said as he handed a chunk of the agency tobacco to the civilian.
Seamus answered, “Thanks. I’ll keep it for later.” He slipped it down into a pocket of his rain-soaked mackinaw.
Besides some meat, in those first few minutes that the soldiers claimed possession of the village, they also found a good supply of reservation tobacco—the worst grade of the product there ever could be—but it was tobacco nonetheless, and the soldiers had been without for far too long. Most of the men stuffed a chunk inside their cheek before the officers got them hurrying off to the skirmish lines Mills was establishing around the captured lodges.
Grouard said, “One of the soldiers rooting through the lodges come up with some money.”
“Money?”
“Army scrip—pay bills,” Grouard replied.
“A lot?”
The half-breed grinned. “Fella told me he counted more’n eleven thousand.”
“Dollars?” Seamus exclaimed. “Sweet Mither of Heaven!”
“Custer’s money.”
Donegan nodded, remembering. “Took off all them dead we run onto.”
“And another bunch of soldiers just come across a little girl,” Grouard went on to explain. “They was digging through the lodges looking for army ammunition, and when they pulled back a big stack of robes and blankets, up jumps this little girl—no more’n eight or nine winters old—crying and screaming so hard she flushed all them soldiers right out of the lodge!”
“Why the hell did the troopers get scared off by a little girl?”
“I suppose they figured she was screaming so hard there had to be bigger Injuns in the lodge—so she could warn others she was found.”
“What’d the sojurs do with her?”
Grouard answered, “Mills come over and took her back by the hospital tent, where he gave her something to eat, make friendly with her. Says he’s gonna adopt her.”
At the moment Lieutenant Von Leuttwitz had fallen beside Mills, scout Jack Crawford had rushed up and torn off his colorful bandanna, quickly tying it above the right knee to act as a tourniquet. Then the biggest man in the village, Sergeant John A. Kirkwood, gamely looped the semiconscious Von Leuttwitz’s arms around his own shoulders, and righted himself with the lieutenant on his back for a clumsy, lumbering ride into camp to find Dr. Clements.
For a precious few minutes the firing died off. And the men felt cocky enough to believe they had control of the village, believing they had driven off the Sioux they hadn’t been able to capture. The quiet wasn’t to last very long.
It didn’t take the warriors more than a few minutes to get their families out of danger before they turned back to snipe at the soldiers, harassing the white men not only from the rocky walls west of the village, but from just about any point of ground high enough where they could take a shot or two at the white men busy among the
