been wanting that red son of a bitch for the better part of a year now.
“Sweet Mither of God! Crook ain’t gonna find Crazy Horse anywhere near them Slim Buttes or the Black Hills country.”
“Shit!” Garnett scoffed with a grin. “So, mister know-it-all, why don’t you tell me why in the hell Crook’s gonna take us off in this direction if he doesn’t expect to find Crazy Horse in this here country?”
But for the life of him … Donegan couldn’t come up with a single good answer.
* The Big Horn Mountains.
*
*
Chapter 44
8 December 1876
THE INDIANS
Mackenzie’s Official Report—What Crook Says.
CHICAGO, December 1.—The official report of Colonel Mackenzie was received to-day. It states that about noon on the 24th, while marching in a southwesterly direction towards the South Pass of the Big Horn mountains, five advance scouts met him, reporting the main camp of Cheyennes about fifteen or twenty miles distant. About sunset the command began moving toward the hostiles, reaching the village after daylight, completely surprising the Indians, and compelling them to vacate the village suddenly, taking refuge in a ravine. After a brisk fight, lasting an hour and skirmishing until night, they capitulated. The entire village, having 173 lodges, was destroyed, 500 ponies captured, and 25 Indian bodies found. It is almost certain that a much larger number were killed. Five soldiers and one officer were killed on our side, and twenty-five wounded, besides one Shoshone scout belonging to the United States. Fifteen cavalry horses and four horses of the Indian scouts were killed. The command moved to the camp on Powder River, whence this report was made on the 26th instant. Lieutenant McKinney, of the Fourth cavalry, who was killed, was one of the most gallant officers and honorable of men. General Crook, in transmitting the above report, says: “I cannot commend too highly this brilliant achievement and gallantry of the troops. This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as the Cheyennes were not only the bravest warriors but have been the head and front of most of the raids and deviltry committed in this country.”
What or who George Crook was relying upon for his information about where he would find the Crazy Horse people was as much a mystery as anything in the world. Perhaps he was doing no more than grasping at straws in his hope of finding his archnemesis.
But for some reason the general clearly had grown satisfied that the Oglalla warrior bands had now abandoned the country of the Rosebud and Tongue River and were wandering east toward the country of the Little Missouri and the Moreau.
In explaining his intent to prolong the campaign, the general wrote Sheridan:
I shall endeavor to ascertain these points before leaving here, so that in case they leave the Rosebud country, I will not make that march as it would unfit the horses of the command for any further service this winter, and in case Crazy Horse has gone to Slim Buttes, I will go there via the Black Hills.
“You see, Mr. Donegan,” Crook explained in his tent that night of 8 December along the frozen banks of the Belle Fourche, “General Mackenzie and I have decided against pursuing the defeated and impoverished Northern Cheyenne.”
Mackenzie himself cleared his throat, then stated, “Instead we think better of marching the expedition down the Little Powder, where the general desires to establish a temporary base of operations.”
“Right in the heart of the country haunted by the Sioux and Cheyenne hostiles!” Crook exclaimed, slamming a fist down into his left palm. “Squarely in the country where our deadliest enemies clung tenaciously and have likely taken refuge from our two columns.”
“Two columns?” Donegan asked, perplexed.
“Ours to the south, and north of the enemy—General Miles and his Fifth Infantry.”
“But they’re all the way up yonder on the Yellowstone,” the Irishman replied.
“Exactly,” Crook said.
Mackenzie moved up to explain, “Don’t you see—our intelligence tells us that the Crazy Horse hostiles are somewhere between us.”
From the sound of things in that tent, Donegan decided Crook and Mackenzie had grown tired and frustrated of the past two weeks of teetering back and forth between bouts of sulking despair and fits of self-righteous exultation over the Red Fork fight. On the one hand, at times they brooded: with the escape of most of the Cheyenne, had it been no more than a hollow victory? But at other times the two commanders cheered themselves in thinking: by destroying all that meant wealth to that powerful warrior band, hadn’t they in fact delivered a solid thumping to a steadfast enemy?
Then yesterday a courier had arrived from Fetterman, giving Crook real cause to rejoice: receiving a telegram from Sheridan, forwarded on from William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the U.S. Army.
Please convey to Generals Crook and Mackenzie my congratulations, and assure them that we appreciate highly the services of our brave officers and men who are now fighting savages in the most inhospitable regions of our continent. I hope their efforts this winter will result in perfect success and that our troops will hereafter be spared the necessity of these hard winter campaigns.
But in that same leather courier packet lay some less than happy news. In a short and apologetic dispatch from Major Caleb H. Carlton, commandant at Fetterman, Crook and Mackenzie learned that bureaucratic bungling had further delayed supplies in reaching the Sydney, Nebraska, depot, much less getting them to the Medicine Bow depot by rail where they were to be off-loaded into wagons and freighted up to Fetterman, on from there to the Powder River Expedition. Not only rations and ammunition for the men, but the desperately needed grain for all those horses and Tom Moore’s mules.
“And with Crazy Horse’s hostiles wintering somewhere between here,” Crook said, jabbing a finger at the Belle Fourche River on the map below him where his own expedition sat in bivouac, “and General Miles up here on the Yellowstone,” as Crook slid his finger across all that unknown hostile territory to the north of them that cold night, “I’m mad as hell that I can’t go get him here in the heart of the winter.”
“For no other reason than the delay in getting our supplies brought up to us,” Mackenzie snapped.
“What … what does all this have to do with me?” Donegan asked, growing more confused by these two military commanders confiding their frustrations in him. “I’m afraid I don’t under—”
“Look here,” Crook said, tracing a finger in a small circle around that country to the north and west of their position on the Belle Fourche. “I had hoped to move over to the Little Powder, march down from there to the Powder itself, and upon reaching that stream send out our Indian scouts—the Sioux and the Cheyenne, who know this country so well.”
“We had planned to lie in wait,” Mackenzie explained, “until the scouts located the Crazy Horse village, and then we could go after them with our cavalry and pack train.”
Crook cheered, “Just as Mackenzie’s battalion did so splendidly against the Cheyenne!”
The Irishman wagged his head slightly, still not all that sure what they were trying to tell him. “Sounds like it will work. But why me … just where are you fitting me in with all of this?”
Seamus watched Crook glance at Mackenzie, then the map, and finally back to look at the Irishman.
“I have been forced to change my plans, don’t you see? With no supplies for me to continue my march into the lower Powder country after the Crazy Horse hostiles—I am compelled to alter my thinking.”
