“Ain’t it the truth, Soul!” Smith groaned, mimicking again the big Irish sergeant’s brogue. “Ain’t it the truth!”
The cavalry and Indian scouts had been camped down there, already across the North Platte, with a toehold at the edge of enemy territory. Every one of the six days they waited there after marching north from Laramie, the sky had seemed to lower that much more, spitting cruel, sharp-edged ice crystals out of the belly of those clouds. While the cold Canadian winds came sweeping out of the north, the troops sat out their boredom.
Each having a winter campaign of his own under his belt, both Crook and Mackenzie understood the importance of equipping their men properly for the task at hand. Sheridan had promised them that the men of the Powder River Expedition would want for nothing. For once that was a promise kept.
Back at Laramie they had taken on their heavy underclothing, fur caps, wool gloves—since Crook was most unsatisfied with the poor quality of the horsehide gauntlets used on the March campaign—in addition to the normal issue of wool leggings, arctic overshoes or felt liners for their boots, along with two blankets apiece. That winter equipage would get a true test, for in the last two days the temperature had not once risen above zero.
There was an A-tent assigned to every four men. The soldiers pitched these so that two tents faced each other, a lightweight Sibley stove then placed in the narrow opening and the flaps of the two tents then pinned together to seal in the modest warmth. Outside each tent stood piles of sagebrush and grease-wood stacked taller than the tents themselves. Some of the officers sported sealskin hats and long underwear made from perforated buckskin, pulling over it all a heavy overcoat with fur collars and cuffs.
Personal belongings were crated, marked, and left in the custody of the post quartermaster. Mackenzie had them down to fighting trim, ready to be off in as light a marching order as Crook could afford as they stared into the teeth of a brutal winter storm already working on its second wind. Each cavalry company would carry two hundred rounds of ammunition for each man, while in the wagons were freighted an additional three hundred more per soldier.
Last night at nine P.M. Mackenzie had come back from a card game and a conference with Crook and infantry commander Dodge. All evening it had been trying to snow, when the sky suddenly cleared and the bottom went out of the thermometers.
“We’re going at dawn,” Mackenzie announced to his orderlies as he stomped up through the fresh snow. “See that the company commanders are informed.”
Then the mercurial colonel disappeared into his tent for the rest of what was left of that horrid night.
Chapter 18
14–18 November 1876
Bloody Fight Between
Shoshones and Sioux.
THE INDIANS
Sioux vs. Shoshones—A Village of the Latter Wiped Out.
SALT LAKE, November 2.—A report from Camp Stambaugh, Wyoming, says a village of fifty lodges of Shoshones was attacked October 30, by a large Sioux war party, estimated at 1,300 lodges, at Pointed Rock, near the scene of Captain Bates’ fight, July, 1874, and about ninety miles from Camp Stambaugh. As far as learned only one Shoshone escaped by the name of Humpy, who was the Indian that saved the life of Captain Henry, in Crook’s second fight this summer.
The last of Dodge’s infantry was finally ferried across the North Platte that Tuesday morning in the overloaded wagons easing down the ice-coated banks, the teamsters doing their best to dodge the floating ice that bobbed along the surface of the swift and swirling river some fifty yards wide at the ford, each cake of the ice thrown against the ferry’s sideboards with a resounding and forceful collision.
Even Richard I. Dodge had confided to his personal diary, “The river is my terror.”
Almost as much as he wanted to keep his foot soldiers warm and dry, the colonel had itched to get a leap on the younger Mackenzie—but already the cavalry was moving away into the sere hills streaked with snow. Dodge didn’t have the last of his men across and on their way until 11:30 A.M. At stake each day in this unspoken race between foot and horse would be the best camping spots come sundown. Being second to get away from Fetterman put Dodge in a foul humor that would last for the next two days.
After days of intermittent snow, the sun was out that morning, hung in the sky like a pale, pewter glob behind the thin clouds. The temperature hovered at fourteen below zero.
To Seamus it didn’t seem it could get any colder as he mounted up, tucked the tail of his long mackinaw about his legs, and set out with some of the other scouts, waving farewell to Kid Slaymaker and those of his whores still up after the expedition’s last carouse before plunging into the Indian country.
A little west of north. Into the Powder River country searching out the Hunkpatila. The Crazy Horse people.
Donegan knew it was going to get a hell of a lot colder before he could once more hold Samantha in his arms. Before he would look into the face of his son and give the child a name.
Far in the advance he could see the dark column slowly snaking up what had become a familiar road that would lead them to old Fort Reno, like a writhing animal twisting across the white, endless landscape. On and on the bare hills and knolls and ridges lay tumbled against one another, each new one as devoid of brush and trees as the last, stretching into the gray horizon. For all any of them might know, Seamus thought as he pulled the wool muffler up to cover his mouth and nose, they could be marching across the austere, inhospitable surface of the moon.
Ahead of him and behind as well stretched Crook’s Powder River Expedition, perhaps the best prepared and equipped force ever to plunge into this forbidding wilderness. Especially at this season. It made quite a sight: far out on each flank the hundreds of Indian auxiliaries, the neat column of infantry, ahead of them the wagon train and Tom Moore’s four hundred mules, then the white scouts riding with Crook’s headquarters group, and in the lead marched Mackenzie’s cavalry.
As the day aged, the weather warmed too much to make for good marching. The wind had piled the snow too deep at the sides of ridges and hillocks for easy passage, while the sun continued to relentlessly turn the snow to slush in open places, making for treacherous footing for the infantry following in the wake of all those wagons sliding this way and that as the drivers barked and cajoled, whipped and cursed their teams.
Dodge halted his infantry at the camping ground on Sage Creek after slogging eleven grueling miles. Mackenzie and the teamsters were obliged to push on another four miles before they could find sufficient water in Sage Creek for their animals—what there was had collected in ice-covered pools of brackish, soap-tinged water. As soon as the horses were unsaddled, the men spread out to scare up what they could of firewood. All they found was the smoky greasewood. Nor was there much in the way of grass for the animals. Fortunately, Crook had freighted both firewood and forage.
Shortly after taking up the march the morning of the fifteenth, some of the Pawnee discovered the tracks of three horses. Due to the condition of the ground, it proved difficult to determine if the animals wore iron shoes or not—so the trackers put their noses to the trail and took off at a lope.
“Cant help but think we’re being watched by Crazy Horse’s scouts,” Crook mused that afternoon as they kept an eye on the horizon, watching for the return of those Pawnee.
In the afternoon two of the soldiers riding on the right flank were run in by four Indians, who gave the pair quite a fright with all their whooping and gunfire, but it wasn’t until after the column made camp on the South Fork
