“Is he south of the river, where Snyder can get to him?” Baldwin inquired.
“No. This report says the Hunkpapa never moved west at all!” Miles fairly shrieked in fury and dismay. “The Yanktonais told Lieutenant Day that the Sitting Bull camp is some thirty miles
“Downriver?” asked Second Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous.
“Damn right. Somewhere on the Redwater. About halfway between Peck and Buford!”
First Lieutenant George W. Baird stated, “Then that means Snyder won’t get a chance at them either.”
“Exactly,” Miles fumed, crumpling the foolscap message in his hand. “There’s reports that Sitting Bull’s at least a hundred seventy lodges strong now, expecting to hunt buffalo between the Missouri and the Yellowstone all winter. But what’s worse than Sitting Bull pulling a fast one on us is that the Fort Peck Indians say the Hunkpapa village is moving south from our country toward the Powder.”
“That’s where they say Crazy Horse is wintering!” Baldwin cried.
“Exactly, Lieutenant. And if those two ever get together again, we’ll have hell to pay,” the colonel growled, flinging the crumpled dispatch into the fire. “Even if they don’t rejoin … the fact that Sitting Bull is moving south, perhaps seeking to cross the Yellowstone, can bode no good for the Fifth.”
“Why, General?” asked Hargous. “Shouldn’t we be happy that we’ve made sure that Sitting Bull hasn’t started north for Canada?”
Miles’s eyes narrowed into slits. “No, Lieutenant. Because if Sitting Bull slips south of the Yellowstone, whether he joins Crazy Horse or not … it means that neither of them will be my prize. Instead—they’ll likely fall right into the lap of George Crook!”
The following day the soldiers cheered one another at their breakfast fires with something William Jackson knew nothing of, banging their cups together and otherwise making merry beneath clearing skies.
“Happy National Thanksgiving Day!” they shouted to one another in celebration around the flames.
“A day to give thanks!” others would cry.
William looked at the Lakota half-breed named Bruguier and shrugged. “I’ll give thanks they ain’t asked me to go across that river.”
“Not yet, they haven’t,” Big Leggings said.
Just after breakfast Miles called for scout George Johnson to carry another dispatch to Bennett at Carroll City while the rest of the command waited for the ice build up in the Missouri. Then around noon Robert Jackson and Lieutenant Bailey returned from Carroll City, having met Johnson on the road. Captain Bennett informed Miles that he had been successful in securing the trader’s ammunition and would start back the following day, a Friday.
But the best news on that National Thanksgiving Day came from an unexpected source. Within the hearing of Nelson Miles, half-breed Robert Jackson just happened to mention to others that the Missouri was frozen solid no more than eighteen or so miles upriver.
Miles whirled on his heel, asking, “No farther than that?” Enthusiasm was back on his face.
Robert nodded.
“Must be near Fort Hawley,” William instructed.
“Right near there, brother,” Robert agreed.
“What’s this Fort Hawley?” demanded the colonel.
“Old fur-trading post,” William explained.
Miles asked, “Anyone still there?”
Wagging his head, William said, “Not recent. Everyone’s been gone a long time. All gone. Empty place now.”
Slapping his mittens together, Miles wheeled back to some of his staff. “Officers’ call, Mr. Bailey! Lieutenant Baldwin—help Bailey get everyone in here now! We must make ready to break camp!”
“Where to, General?” Baldwin asked when he trotted up.
“Upriver to an abandoned post called Hawley,” Miles declared, smiling in that dark beard of his. “I’m told the river’s solid up there and we can cross tomorrow.”
“C-cross tomorrow,” Baldwin sputtered. “What about the rafts we’ve built—all that work … the men we’ve shipped to the other side, sir?”
“Yes, well,” and a look of consternation clouded Miles’s face. “Yes: see that we signal word for them to march upstream along the south bank, and we’ll soon be reunited once we reach solid ice!”
*The term used by the Lakota Peoples for Slim Buttes,
†The “Muddy Water River,” the Missouri River.
*The Yellowstone River.
†International border.
#Canada.
Chapter 6
22 November-7 December 1876
Wasn’t a lick of sense in pushing on east, Luther Kelly figured. Not with all the new snow falling to obliterate the tracks he and the other three had been following to see just where the Sioux might be scampering off to.
That Wednesday, the twenty-second, the four of them put Wolf Point at their backs and pointed their noses west, intending to do what they could to eat up that distance between them and Captain Snyder’s battalion somewhere up the valley of the Big Dry.
Climbing the ridges to the south of the Missouri, the scouts kept to the high ground—the better to see over the surrounding countryside for great distances: watching not only for the soldier column, but wary for any of the Sioux sure to be in the area. But the only thing moving besides them that gray, somber day were some antelope cavorting atop the snowy heights.
Shadows were lengthening late that afternoon when Jim Woods spotted a half-dozen buffalo grazing down at the bottom of a bowl where a few cottonwood saplings promised the men would find a spring at best, some seep at worst. When Kelly’s men agreed that there would be nothing finer than buffalo meat to roast at that evening’s fire, Woods loped on down and dropped a two-year-old bull.
“Can’t be too wise for us to be moving on now,” John Johnston said.
Luther nodded, regarding the west. “Sun’s headed to bed, and it sure wouldn’t be healthy for us to show ourselves along the skyline after Jim’s shot. We best camp in here.”
After pulling the saddles and blankets from their horses, the men took out their small camp axes and began chopping down the smallest and most tender of the cottonwood saplings. From them the scouts trimmed the branches, then laid the trunks in a pile before their horses. Although cattle would most times chew on cottonwood buds in the spring, they wouldn’t gnaw on the bark itself the way a horse would when hungry enough.
Stepping back, Kelly crossed his arms in satisfaction as their mounts took right to nibbling on the cottonwood. “Nothing a horse likes better than this here green bark of the yellow cottonwood, boys.”
While Kelly and Billy Cross scrounged through the cottonwood grove for some squaw wood and kindling, Woods himself went to work on the butchering. Plainsman tradition dictated that the tongue and hide went to the man who had killed the animal. So with the tongue laid near the fire pit, Woods staked out the green hide near their fire, fur side up, right where he planned to make his bed for the night—then spread his blankets on that layer of thick insulation that would protect him from the cold ground.
By the time the first stars were twinkling into sight, the scouts had their peeled cottonwood wands prepared. From the ends of them hung juicy red pieces of buffalo the men suspended over the merry flames, grease dripping and sputtering into the fire. After dinner the coffee was boiled and the pipes came out as the air continued to cool, sliding past the freezing point.
