He turned to answer the officer. “That’s right. We don’t have near enough food, nor did we bring any shelters along. I’m afraid our fires won’t last much longer in this wind. And our steward tells me the mercury in his thermometer’s frozen at the bottom of the bulb. That means it’s forty below … or worse. So I’ve come to the decision that if we don’t move now—we never will get out.”
“N-never … never get out?”
Baldwin spoke more quietly now. “I don’t want any of you to alarm your men, but I’ve been told these high- plains blizzards can last two—maybe three—days.”
Hinkle tucked his head against the wind, saying, “W-we’d be dead by then, sir!”
“That’s why I want you to prepare your men to move out,” Frank explained. “The first thing is for your companies to use what fires we still have going so the men can cook and eat all the food that’s left among your outfits.”
Rousseau shook his head. “You want us to eat, sir? B-begging pardon—”
“Yes, every man must stuff himself until he can eat no more,” Baldwin said emphatically. “Your lives may depend upon just how much food you have in your belly to keep the furnace going inside once we start our return march … which means facing into that wind.”
The officers knotted around him began to murmur and nod, understanding.
“And …,” Baldwin started, then paused a moment as he struggled with the thick ball of sentiment at the back of his throat, “I want each of you to tell your companies how proud I am of them this day. How
“P-proud, s-sir?” Rousseau asked in a quaky voice, teeth chattering.
“Yes,” Frank replied. “Tell all the men they can be most proud of themselves for driving the enemy out of its village and into this terrible storm. Tell them they’ve held off the warriors who butchered Custer’s command. And … tell your men they’ve started the beginning of the end for Sitting Bull and the rest of Custer’s murderers.”
Chapter 9
7 December 1876
Ever since the death of his friend, Mitch Bouyer, at the hands of the Lakota last summer at the Greasy Grass, Tom Leforge had been performing the duties of guide and interpreter around the old Crow agency. Like Bouyer, Leforge was a squaw man, known to his adopted tribe as Horse Rider.
In early fall he had ridden with “Braided Beard” Crook when the army went looking for the Indians who had slaughtered Custer’s soldiers. But after the sour-tasting victory at Slim Buttes, when Crook’s campaign fizzled in the relentless autumn rains and they had to survive on horse meat, Tom had ridden back home to his wife, Cherry.
Now he poured himself another cup of that awful rebrewed coffee the soldiers made for themselves here at the Tongue River post. Leforge carried it to the frosted window and peered out at the winter night, blowing steam off the top of his coffee tin. Outside, a real prairie norther was whipping itself up. Folks from back east would call it a blizzard.
But out here they just called it winter hell.
As Leforge blew on the surface of his coffee, the window-pane clouded up momentarily, and when it slowly began to clear, the first thing Tom saw was his reflection in the glass.
Yes, some might call him a squaw man. But those were the sort of men who had never come to the Yellowstone Valley, never spent any time among the River Crow, the sort of man to whom money was more important than happiness. Tom Leforge was a happy man with a beautiful wife and a young son to boot.
That autumn in Montana Territory the days were balmy and the nights crisp in preparation for winter. While Cherry crushed the chokecherries, pit and all, within her seasoned meat to make her special pemmican, Tom rocked their boy and talked over war exploits with warriors who visited their lodge—just generally busting at the seams, so happy was he.
Then a few weeks ago Second Lieutenant Charles E. Hargous had shown up with an impressive escort from the soldier post down the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Tongue.
“Leforge, I am looking for you!” the officer called out as soon as he spotted the squaw man among those crowding the agency grounds.
Not all that sure why the soldier would be looking for him, Leforge asked suspiciously, “What I supposed to done?”
“Seems you haven’t done enough, Leforge,” Hargous replied.
“I ain’t done enough?”
The lieutenant licked his lips and said, “General Nelson Miles is requesting more Crow scouts. And I knew you’d be the man to act as interpreter—perhaps even lead the brigade yourself. If it makes any difference to your boys, General Miles says it’s all right with him for ’em to bring their women and young’uns along too.”
“Who you gonna fight this time?” Tom asked.
“Same as last time, Leforge—the Sioux.”
“Got more soldiers than Custer this time?” he asked. “Got enough to kill off with hunger like Crook done?”
Hargous had just grinned at that, his eyes dancing over the buffalo-hide and canvas lodges a moment before coming back to rest on Leforge. “You don’t need thousands of soldiers when you got the right man leading you. We’ve got the right man this time, Leforge.”
The lieutenant went on to explain that Crook had retired from the field after his disastrous horse-meat march and might well not be putting another column into the field that season. Which was just as well, Hargous claimed, because the Fifth Infantry was on the Yellowstone now and would stay on through the entire winter. They planned to pursue the hostile bands of Sitting Bull, giving the Sioux no rest. But to do that, Miles needed some scouts.
“How many?” Tom asked.
“How many can you round up quick?”
“Army pay the same as before?”
Hargous nodded. “Yep.”
“Shouldn’t take me more’n a day or two. You care to wait?”
“I’ll wait, Leforge. You get me some good scouts for General Miles.”
Two days later the whole outfit started for the Tongue River Cantonment to work for the Bear Coat and his walk-a-heaps. A few women ended up coming along with their men, but Cherry had decided to stay behind at the agency, with the boy being so young and all. Tom had been lonely for her ever since.
Working with the army had its good days of scouting and fighting, and it had its bad days of poor food, lousy coffee, cold and drafty cabins, and long periods of next to nothing to do. Back among the River Crow he could be chewing on a buffalo rib and drinking good agency coffee, not to mention that Cherry kept their lodge warm and homey no matter how hard the wolf-winds howled outside at the smoke flaps.
But here he stood at the frosted window, the winds beginning to whip and howl outside, thinking on the young Crow scout named Curly—remembering how the youngster had shown up across the river from Colonel John Gibbon’s troops after the Greasy Grass fight, saying he was one of the last to see Custer alive. And that made him think again on his good friend—Mitch Bouyer, gone the way of the Star Road now, killed with Custer’s bunch in the Long Hair’s last fight.
Had it not been that Tom was nursing a broken collarbone, Gibbon would have chosen him to go off with Mitch and the other Crow scouts who had ridden with Custer into that hot valley … that one very good friend never rode out of.
Chances were, Tom knew, he would not be standing here this cold winter night looking through that pane of isinglass at the snow swirl across the sky, blotting out a thin rind of moon. Chances were damned good he would never dream of seeing Cherry ever again—much less holding her.
Chances were …
