For Richard I. Dodge, it was just about the best news he had heard through this whole insufferable campaign.
Then at eleven A.M. that Thursday, 30 November, one of Crook’s men came by to pay a courtesy on the colonel, informing Dodge that the general was dispatching twenty-five of the best men on the strongest horses to follow up the rumor that there was a large band of Cheyenne warriors in the neighborhood under a chief called White Antelope, ready to attack the wagon camp. Earlier that morning Crook had sent out Luther North and four Pawnee to push north through the deep snow to Clear Creek, where they were to look for sign of the fleeing village.
Then at noon what cavalry wasn’t on guard duty turned out to solemnly commit five of their number to the frozen, rock-hard Wyoming ground. Between two long double lines of silent mounted men, the thirty pallbearers trudged with their blanket-wrapped corpses to the common grave. Nearby sat the sad-eyed spectators—Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Shoshone and the others—in all their wild finery as they witnessed this most final of the white man’s rites.
All morning long soldiers had struggled in relays to force open the breast of the earth just enough to admit these five young soldiers. As the hundreds fell silent, two officers read from the Book of Common Prayer, then Crook said a few words over the grave. In the end seven guns were fired in three relays, the last sharp rattle disappearing over the windswept hills before a lone trooper took up the mournful notes of “Taps.” As the quiet returned to the valley of the Crazy Woman, one of the men from the Third played a sad dirge on his tin fife, each plaintive note quickly carried off by the stiffening wind.
Lieutenant McKinney’s body rested in the back of a freight wagon—to be returned east by way of wagon and rail, there to be buried among his people.
Yet for all the excitement of Mackenzie’s return, and later the melancholy of the burial, for once there wasn’t all that much for his infantry to do that afternoon but rotate the guard and watch the cavalry troops grain and water their horses, besides wolfing down their poor Thanksgiving dinner of fried bacon and flapjacks.
Clutching a cup of steaming coffee, Dodge returned to his tent and his diary, where he confided his first intimations of a troubled Ranald Mackenzie, who seemed to be plagued by second thoughts about the success of his Dull Knife fight.
Altogether it has been a very successful affair. It might have been much more so had McKenzie possessed as much administrative and political sagacity as he has gallantry in the field. Still it is no time, nor is there any cause for grumbling. The affair stamps our campaign as a success even if nothing more is accomplished. I only regret that my portion of the command had no share or lot in the affair. All say that had the Doboys been there not an Indian would have escaped. If I had been allowed to go, we would have had a more complete story to tell.
Indeed, for much of last night and into today, Dodge found Mackenzie consumed with chastising himself for not pressing the warriors once the Cheyenne encapsulated themselves in the rocks. While both Crook and especially Dodge offered their words of encouragement, the cavalry commander nonetheless appeared to be snared in a deepening well of despair, delusion, and melancholia.
Dodge went on to pen in his diary:
We found [Mackenzie] very downcast—bitterly reproaching himself for what he called his failure. He talked more like a crazy man than the sane commander of a splendid body of Cavalry. He said to an officer that if he had courage enough he would blow his brains out. [The other officers present] went out soon, and Mac opened his heart to me. He is excessively sensitive. He said he had often done better with a third of the force at his command here—that he believed he degenerated as a soldier as he got older—that he regarded the whole thing as an utter failure. He even stated that he was sensitive lest someone might attribute cowardice to him—and much more of the same kind.
He was so worked up that he could hardly talk and had often to stop and collect himself. I bullied him and encouraged him all I could—told him that he was foolish and absurd to talk so, that we all regarded the affair as a grand success and that his record was too well known for anyone to attribute cowardice to him. I left him feeling much better, but he was in such a state that I thought it right to tell General Crook about it. The General was greatly worried and soon left my tent, I think to send for Mac and get him to play whist or something.
Those bitterly cold days in the wake of his fight on the Red Fork of the Powder River would mark the last campaign of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie … as well as the beginning of his slow and agonizing mental disintegration.
*
* What the white man today calls Clear Creek.
† Lake DeSmet.
† Present-day Prairie Dog Creek.
Chapter 43
Big Freezing Moon 1876
For many days now, more than two-times-ten by the count of notches on the stick in his belt pouch, Wooden Leg had been out hunting with a small party of other young warriors. The last they had seen of Morning Star’s village, it was moving south slowly toward the Red Canyon of the White Mountains.* There Wooden Leg and the others expected to find their people camped a few days from now as the young men began turning about, slowly working their way back to their village.
That morning as the sun rose pale and heatless in a cold blue sky, Wooden Leg’s party was moving upriver along the western bank of the Tongue River, slowly working the game trails before them as they eased along.
“Look!” one of those in front called out.
Quickly they all halted—putting hands to their brows, frost curling from their faces as they squinted into the distance.
“They are walking,” Wooden Leg declared.
“A few ride,” said Stops in a Hurry. “Why do they have only a few horses?”
“Yes. Who are these people?” Wooden Leg wondered aloud. “Why would they be so poor that they are not riding?”
“Indeed, they are very poor,” commented Fox, another of their warriors. “You see they have few robes and no blankets to speak of.”
“Let us go closer and take a good look,” Wooden Leg suggested. “Then we might know if these are friends of the
Quickly retreating down the slope into the long, wide ravine, the young hunters hurried their pack animals south by east in the direction of the strangers. Then, upon leaving their horses in a coulee, some of them went to the brow of a snowy hill to have themselves a closer look at the slow procession inching its way below like a dark worm wriggling against a white world.
The more he studied the people, the more confused he became. Few wore moccasins. Most had stiff, frozen pieces of raw hides lashed crudely around their feet. Some helped old women and men hobbling along between them. Small children rode in the arms of the women, or on the shoulders of the men. There were no travois. These strangers had nothing to carry from place to place!
“These …” Wooden Leg gulped in shame, feeling the burn of sadness sting his heart, “these are the poorest people I have ever known.”
“Perhaps we should take them to our village,” Fox suggested. “We are prosperous and we can share all we have with those who have nothing.”
Then both of them heard the breath catch in the throat of Stops in a Hurry. He had the far-seeing eyes. And with them he stared at the strangers in shock.
Wooden Leg demanded, “What do you see?”
