days’ rations for his men, Baldwin’s battalion began moving across to the south bank of the Missouri—without White Dog’s fifty Assiniboine warriors. Because of the warming weather Baldwin could no longer trust the ice beneath the heavy wagons. Instead, he unhitched the teams and sent the mules across first. That done, he had teams of men station themselves on the south shore to drag the wagons across by rope in the event their weight broke through the softening crust. Successfully reaching the far side, the mules were rehitched and the battalion was again on its way for that Thursday, marching up the boggy bottoms to the headwaters of Sand Creek, where they ascended the low divide that eventually took them over to Wolf Creek and finally down to the drainage of the Redwater.
Here the weather began to turn again, forcing the weary, shivering men time and again to cut passage for the teams and wagons through the snowdrifts still untouched by the recent thaw. By their Herculean efforts the battalion managed to put more than sixteen difficult miles behind them before they went into bivouac, built fires, and huddled beneath a frightening wind for the night.
By dawn on the fifteenth the wind of the previous night brought with it a thickening blanket of snow. With heads bowed the determined battalion marched another fourteen miles, yard by yard by yard at a time through a barren, high, exposed piece of country. At last, near sunset, Baldwin located some sparse vegetation, where his men squared their wagons, brought the mules within the corral, and struggled to build their pitiful greasewood fires in the keening winds that again buffeted them while they tried vainly to sleep.
In his pocket journal that night Frank noted that he had taken an assessment of his rations and found them once more running dangerously low. He began to hope they would encounter some game along the way. In addition, the unshod mules were having a hard time of it finding proper footing on the icy terrain, tiring quickly in their exertions.
Through the sixteenth the conditions only worsened; then, near midday on the seventeenth, scouts Smith, Culbertson, and Lambert finally located an Indian trail of unshod ponies and travois they figured to be no more than a week old. Through the rest of that day the temperature continued to drop, sliding quickly and refusing to rise above zero. That day Baldwin finally lost his last shred of hope of sighting game. Chances were not good, Vic Smith informed him, that they would find any deer or elk up and about during the brutal storms. Besides, the young eighteen-year-old Culbertson reminded Baldwin, what game there might have been in that country was more than likely either already harvested, or it had been driven out as the Hunkpapa had passed through only days before them.
“I have no other choice,” Frank confided his private thoughts only to his journal that bitterly cold Sunday night. “We’re somewhere between Wolf Point and Tongue River. Countermarching offers me little hope of accomplishing anything. I have but one option open to me now: I’ll take the battalion on into this storm, keeping my nose to the enemy’s trail—and trust Providence to provide for the men what I cannot.”
Then he said a prayer asking that God grant him just one more crack at Sitting Bull.
*Lake DeSmet.
†Present-day Prairie Dog Creek.
#“Those Who Are Hearted Alike.”
@The Northern Cheyenne.
^Present-day Beaver Creek.
*The Yellowstone River.
Chapter 14
In those first days of the Midwinter Moon, Spotted Elk joined the other chiefs and headmen of those bands of Shahiyela, Hunkpatila, Sans Arc, Miniconjou, and Hunkpapa who chose to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another that winter—against the soldiers, against the great cold, against starvation, as they continued their hunt for buffalo in the valley of the Buffalo Tongue.
Some young warriors from the migrating camp rode north to learn what they could of the soldier fort. In two days the riders returned, driving before them a small herd of cattle and some soldier horses. It was a good thing, because the farther the village wandered up the river valley, the fewer buffalo they encountered. As strong as they felt together, Spotted Elk knew no man could remain untouched by the sight of the hungry children, their gaunt wives, the way the once-proud war ponies hung their heads in starvation.
Not even the great Crazy Horse.
So it was that by the time the village reached the mouth of Suicide Creek,* even the stoic Strange Man of the Oglalla went along with the rest of the headmen in deciding they would at least talk to the Bear Coat, who was making war on them from his Elk River fort. With the hunting become so poor and the cold grown so deep, it surely could not hurt for a delegation of their people to go look the Bear Coat in the eye and see if this soldier chief spoke the truth when he did not just demand their surrender but offered the
Spotted Elk, middle son of Old Lone Horn of the Miniconjou, knew his father would expect nothing less of him—for it was a chief’s first responsibility to care for his people.
“I will go to the soldier fort,” Spotted Elk told the assembly of chiefs deciding on who would join the delegation.
Packs the Drum nodded approvingly. “This is good. What other brave men are there who will join me on our journey into the land of Bear Coat’s soldiers?”
Hollow Horns volunteered, “For the Sans Arc I will go.”
“And for my band of Miniconjou, I will join you,” declared Fat Hide.*
In the end Red Cloth,† Tall Bull, and Bull Eagle agreed to go for their Miniconjou clans. Then two more stood to offer themselves.
“I must go with you,” Bad Leg told the council. “But I will go along to take back the stolen horses to the soldier fort at the mouth of the Buffalo Tongue.”
The Yearling stood in agreement. “Just as Crazy Horse and He Dog have said today: we are honorable men and cannot go talk with the
In the end more than two-times-ten joined Packs the Drum that blustery morning when they dressed in their finest, mounted their strongest ponies, feathers fluttering in the steady wind, buffalo robes tugged tightly about them, and set off north to talk peace to the Bear Coat. Even Crazy Horse and He Dog decided they would ride along to represent the Oglalla.
Oh, what a glorious morning that was for Spotted Elk! The women pouring from their lodges into the bitter cold to trill their tongues, making good wishes upon this endeavor all hoped would bring an end to the slow starvation. Children raced about, laughing for the first time in so, so long as they dodged in and out among the delegates’ ponies.
Stoic but expectant friends watched from the hillside across the creek while the village said its farewells. When the delegates had moved out of the tall, stately cottonwoods along the banks and were heading down the Buffalo Tongue, Bad Leg and The Yearling, along with four others, filed in at the rear, keeping their soldier horses bunched together in the deep snow.
From early morning, when the cold was its most bitter, until the night sky turned completely dark overhead, the peace delegates pushed toward the soldier fort on their mission of great urgency. How weary the ponies became on that journey, carrying these men a long way each day, animals forced to dig down through the snowdrifts at night in search of grass to eat. Four long days … but on the morning of the fifth Spotted Elk and Tall Bull reached the low rise of a bluff and looked down upon the valley of the Elk River.
Below them stood the squat log huts gathered in among the old cottonwoods. Wagons stood about, mules
