“No, but some Yanktonais were,” Jumping Bull said. “They came in search of me, found me out hunting, then told me the soldiers were marching—even now into the dark of night.”
“That never means any good will come of the next few days,” Sitting Bull commented quietly. His fingers slowly played up and down one braid.
“I went to see for myself, brother,” Jumping Bull continued. “In the dark at the agency, and bundled in my blanket coat, I must have been taken by the soldiers as one of their own scouts. I came up behind the
Suddenly Sitting Bull was decisive. “Let there be no delay! Tell everyone we are leaving. Now! Take down the lodges and tents. Men must ready their weapons to protect the women and children if the soldiers find us while we escape in the dark.”
Already the chiefs were moving from his lodge with the Bull’s instructions. In minutes the covers were slipping from the lodgepoles and the travois attached to rib-gaunt ponies were loaded with what the Hunkpapa still possessed.
In less time than it takes for a hungry man to eat his breakfast, the warrior bands who owed allegiance to Sitting Bull had slipped away from the mouth of Porcupine Creek, following the east bank of the Milk toward the frozen
There in the predawn darkness of 7 December they planned to cross to the south bank a few at a time, horses and dogs, women, children, and old ones first. As the temperature had continued to drop over the last few days, new ice had formed on the river. For now the black of night rumbled with the muffled sounds of frightened children crying, women wailing their despair at being driven from their homes once more, and old men resolutely chanting their strong-heart songs to give courage to the young ones who would cover their retreat.
Those sounds seemed to be swallowed by the cold, clear night, buried beneath the creak and groan of the new snow as it strained beneath the weight of so many hooves, so many moccasins.
As the warriors took up positions in the timbered breaks overlooking the crossing so they could delay the soldiers sure to come … the first of the Sitting Bull band stepped out of the skeletal trees, onto the icy
“Why the hell didn’t any of you say anything?” Frank Baldwin demanded, feeling his gorge rise.
He glared at his junior officers and noncoms, those men who nervously shifted from foot to foot in the cold and the snow. The rising wind was brutal, and it smelled of even more snow here after midnight in the darkness of 7 December as Baldwin’s battalion stood shivering on the north bank of the Missouri River.
He grew more frustrated because of their silence, because of the darkness of the night, because of this bone-numbing cold that made even a strong man want to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up again … because he had just been told by one of his new scouts, eighteen-year-old Joe Culbertson, that they had likely passed by the enemy village in the dark less than an hour ago.
“All right,” Baldwin said quietly, fighting down his own despair at letting the Hunkpapa slip through his fingers. “Let’s turn this battalion about and see if we can’t still catch the Sioux napping.”
Culbertson and Edward Lambert, hired on by Baldwin just hours ago at Fort Peck, both led the column toward the bottomland where the Porcupine dumped into the Milk River. Even in the snowy darkness as Baldwin led his cautious troops into the village, they could tell it was abandoned. The cold, quiet night made the men spooky about an ambush. So quiet that Frank knew better. Plain too that the Hunkpapa had fled in very great haste. Fires still smoldered and some actually burned. Camp gear and hides lay scattered and abandoned on their route of retreat.
Baldwin glared into the distance along that trail taken by the fleeing Sioux toward the Missouri—a path more than thirty feet wide—knowing his quarry expected him to follow. Sensing the irresistible urge to go charging after … knowing that sort of thing had killed many a soldier and their impetuous officers.
“Look there, men!” he called out above the soldiers as his horse stamped and pawed at the snow, snorting jets of frost from its wide nostrils. “We can see-where they’ve gone. A wide trail for us to follow. Put out flankers and see that we aren’t surprised. Move out!”
G, H, and I companies found the going much easier on the trail now, what with all the hooves and feet that had beaten down the snow in that hasty retreat toward the frozen Missouri. Baldwin marched them until they reached the Milk River just after three A.M., where he allowed them to fall out and prepare a meal. If he was going to keep his men up and possibly pitching into a fight, then they best have something in their bellies.
Just before dawn, as the lieutenant stood staring at the faint outline of the bluffs on the south side of the river, yelps and screeches made the hair stand on the back of his neck.
At first fearing they had stumbled into an attack, he ordered his officers to prepare the men to face a frontal assault, moving some soldiers here, deploying others there, to protect his flanks. But for all the alarm it turned out to be only a dozen or so cocky warriors racing past the column in an attempt to spook the mules in his supply train. Rifles cracked and men bellowed as the warriors sang out their courage. While mules brayed, the last of the shots died and the warriors were gone. At least one of them lay across the withers of his pony as the Hunkpapa disappeared through the timber.
“We got one, sir!” a voice in the darkness boasted.
“I saw it, soldier,” Frank replied. “Son of a bitch is riding off.”
“Must’a got us two of ’em, Lieutenant,” an old veteran asserted. “The boys cutting the hair off a body back yonder right now.”
“We got two of ’em, did we?” Baldwin said, taking what small satisfaction he could.
Still, he could not allow his men to tarry long. Baldwin got them re-formed and moving out once more within a matter of moments, pushing on for the river. They didn’t have far to go.
At the banks of the frozen Missouri he halted his battalion and gave them permission to fall out, to make themselves as comfortable as they could without starting any fires in these coldest moments of the day. Then Baldwin turned to look east a moment, searching the horizon for that gray band foretelling sunrise.
“If we’re going to catch Sitting Bull,” Baldwin vowed, “then let it be this day, gentlemen.”
A horseman loomed out of the darkness. Culbertson.
“General—the Yanktons—there’s at least four camps of ’em back there to the north.”
“What of them?”
“Figgered you oughtta know,” the young man replied. “There’s Injuns you’re hunting, and Injuns you’re not.”
He chewed his lip in frustration. “How close?”
The young scout threw his thumb over his shoulder. “Not far.”
Muttering something to himself, Baldwin called his officers together and gave them a final, strict order. “I’ve just learned we’ve got some friendly agency bands camped nearby. Inform your men that there’ll be hell to pay if they fire on the Yanktons. Make sure of your enemy. Dismissed.”
After deploying his 112 men along the riverbank—G Company taking up the left flank and I on the right, with H to act as the rear guard—the lieutenant waited for the sky to lighten, for the Sioux to do something, anything. Pacing and watching the eastern horizon, he would then turn and gaze to the west for a few minutes.
He didn’t have long to wait.
Baldwin and some others suddenly saw them—out there on the ice. Dim forms moving slowly in the murky dawn light: the rear guard of the Hunkpapa still making its crossing of the river.
Now his men were beginning to stir. In the ashen darkness they could just begin to make out the ghostly, shadowy images of the enemy too. Farther still, beyond the warriors, against the stark grayish-white of the hillsides, Frank could discern the winding caravan of the women and children: the rest of the village on the run.
Sitting Bull was at hand!
Baldwin turned so fast, so suddenly in the snow, that he nearly stumbled. His eyes shooting over the men, his officers, determining who was closest to the bank.
“Battalion!” he bellowed as he lunged into the saddle, then leaped his horse down by the edge of the ice himself, waving them on as he rode parallel to the river—pointing at the Hunkpapa rear guard. “There’s the enemy!
