Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

side.

Miles wanted to yell the announcement to those behind him but found his voice could only croak, so thick did he find the ball of sentiment in his throat. Soldiers. His own gallant foot soldiers. Bringing out from Tongue River those wagons that would keep his battalion alive until they reached the post.

Now the cold mattered little. Let the skies rage and drop even more snow on them. For now the men would have more than hardtack to eat. Now his battalion’s poor animals would get the grain that would keep enough of them alive to pull the emptied wagons back to that cluster of cabins and stables on the south bank of the Yellowstone.

He wiped his eyes hurriedly as his staff caught up to him on the hilltop. And before he knew it, they too were whooping and hollering. A small group of four horsemen broke from the head of the far column and headed his way behind William and Robert Jackson.

“Captain Dickey!” Miles roared, saluting, his eyes misting with the cold and the relief.

Charles J. Dickey of the Twenty-second Infantry returned the salute and smiled. “General! Reporting as requested, sir! We have rations for your men and forage for your animals, as you asked.” His arm swept to the far side of the creek valley, where the wagons were beginning to wind down the side of the slope—escorted by men from D and I companies, Twenty-second Infantry, who had been left to garrison the cantonment during the Fifth’s absence.

“By damn, if you aren’t a sore sight for these eyes!” Captain Andrew S. Bennett yelled exuberantly as he saluted and held out his hand to shake with Dickey.

“General Miles”—Dickey turned back to the colonel—“with your permission I’ll halt my train there in the valley below and we can bivouac—the better to allow your men to eat while my battalion feeds your stock.”

“Perfect, Captain!” Miles replied.

“I regret to inform you that a load of potatoes you had brought over from Bozeman City arrived completely frozen.”

“That’s a loss I didn’t count on,” the colonel grumbled.

Dickey went on, “But Major Hough’s delivered tons of hay brought upriver from Buford and Glendive to feed the stock.”

Miles clapped his hands once. “Forget those spuds. With that grain at Tongue River, Captain—I can continue to chase Sitting Bull.”

The men ate and drank coffee at fires where they joked, learned of news from the east, and raised their spirits. The soldiers of the Twenty-second moved among them as they fed the stock, reminding the Fifth that they were close to home. Just a few more miles down Sunday Creek. Just one more night on the trail … and then they would be back in those leaky, cold, mud-chinked log cabins that they called home.

At noon the following day Miles and his column of wagons and foot soldiers limped on down to the north bank of the Yellowstone and began the long process of ferrying across to the cantonment. In that five long weeks of fruitless search and endless wandering, suffering blizzards and murderous ice floes, running desperately low on food and forage, Nelson Miles’s battalion had logged more than 558 miles under their boots and wheels and hooves.

But now they were home again.

How sweet it was to hear the men cheer and yelp as they came in sight of that ferry, as they looked across the Yellowstone at those squat log cabins these brave men called home.

Chapter 12

Wanicokan Wi 1876

How he yearned to be without the responsibilities of a Shirt Wearer. Let He Dog and the chiefs of the Hunkpatila Oglalla find another to carry on his shoulders such a burden.

Better it was, Crazy Horse thought, to hunt and fight and couple than it was to have so many look up to him with their hungry eyes.

Again the Shahiyela had come trudging through the deep snows to find his camp close by the mouth of Otter Creek.^* Again the soldiers had made war on them, driving the Shahiyela into the winter. And again the Crazy Horse people did what they could—but his Hunkpatila had so little to share compared to last winter after the attack on Old Bear’s camp.^† Not near enough dishes and needles, much less robes, blankets, and lodge skins, to go around, to shelter these visitors from the wrath of winter.

Now Crazy Horse not only had the responsibility of holding his people to the old way, to prevent them from fleeing back to the agencies, but he had to protect the Shahiyela of Little Wolf and Morning Star. Sometimes he wondered if it would not have been better if he had died from No Water’s bullet winters ago.

But such a thought always made his veins run cold with fear … because Crazy Horse would remember that his vision had told him he would not die in battle with the wasicu—but at the hand of one of his own people.

Six hundred lodges^* allied themselves with him now. Although winter usually caused the Titunwan Lakota^† to take separate trails due to the scarcity of game, each band finding its own place out of the wind along some river valley, this winter was far different. Last autumn, after it was learned that Three Stars was marching his soldiers here and there north of the Bear Butte country in search of villages,^# many of the warrior camps began to come in search of Crazy Horse on the Maka Blu Wakpa, or Shifting Sands River.^@

Not long after that it was reported that the soldier chief who many called the Bear Coat started to talk peace with Sitting Bull while his soldiers came marching up to fight.^? From all that was going on around the Crazy Horse people, it was plain to see the soldiers would not rest this season of cold. They would continue to make it hard to hunt, difficult for the Lakota to live the old way.

With so much relentless pressure, most of those chiefs who had been in the Sitting Bull village when Bear Coat attacked quickly promised the soldier chief they would go into their agencies as soon as their horses were strong enough and they made enough meat to last them through the cold moons. But, instead, within days those same chiefs grew too frightened to consider surrendering their people. Once out of sight of Bear Coat’s soldiers, they promptly scampered south into the country of the Tatonka Ceji Wakpa, the Buffalo Tongue River, where their wolves reported they would find the swelling camp of the Crazy Horse people.

Old Lone Horn, head chief of the Miniconjou, had died just before his people had started their journey south to unite with the Hunkpatila. Now his sons each had their own band: Touch-the-Clouds, Spotted Elk,^* and young Roman Nose. Not to mention the Miniconjou clan of war chief Red Horse, a veteran of many battles against the wasicu soldiers.

They, as well as a growing number of his own Oglalla, had begun to talk openly about making peace.

Especially Packs the Drum.

A few winters older than Crazy Horse, Packs the Drum had been one of the bravest of the young warriors who had joined in their attack on the white settlement of Julesburg. Then again at the fight with Caspar Collins’s soldiers at Platte River Bridge.^† But over the last ten summers, this courageous Oglalla warrior had been listening more and more to the wasicu agents. Why, the white man had even taken to calling him “Sitting Bull the Good,” to contrast him to Sitting Bull the Hunkpapa, who wanted nothing to do with whites.

Packs the Drum even became one of the Oglalla leaders at the White River Agency.^# As such, he had been taken back east just last year to visit the wasicu’s Great Father on a long journey. He returned with a repeating, lever-action rifle engraved with his name, presented to him by the Great Father Grant in appreciation of his good work with the white man’s government.

But despite his long history of friendliness, Packs the Drum vigorously opposed the sale of the Black Hills. Although others like Red Cloud, Old Man Afraid, and Spotted Tail had touched the pen and given up the sacred He Sapa, Packs the Drum grew disgusted, and a little ashamed of his trust in the white