After drawing their wagons into a square and bringing within its protection their mules and some sixty captured Sioux ponies, the men pulled from the wagons everything they could use for breastworks: their last sacks of grain and crates of hardtack. That done, the captured buffalo robes were hastily distributed among the companies as the men settled in the snow around their greasewood fires, the sky above cold and clear as a bell jar, black as tar and sprinkled with a million frosty pricks of light. Once every man had a robe for himself, the extra hides were laid over the backs of the bone-weary mules.
Late that night of the eighteenth the Hunkpapa fired into the soldier camp from long distance and without causing injury to Baldwin’s men. Just before dawn on Tuesday, Frank and his officers inspected the captured ponies and from them selected enough to replace what mules had died of exposure or want of grain.
“We’ll kill the rest before we push on,” he explained.
“Shoot them, Lieutenant?” asked Joe Culbertson.
“Only the ones my soldiers can’t hold still enough to slash their throats,” he said dryly. “I won’t turn my fighting men into herders, and I sure as hell won’t turn these ponies loose for the Sioux to get their thieving hands on again.”
Mounted warriors, and many on foot, were spotted in the middistance along the hilltops as soon as there was enough light to see. No telling how long they had been waiting through the cold night to look down on the soldier camp.
An hour later more than fifty horse carcasses lay on the bloody snow, going cold in the wind on that high, treeless divide as Baldwin’s men finally pushed south that cheerless Tuesday morning. On the far side they located a narrow gap for their wagons and rumbled on down an upper fork of Cedar Creek toward the Yellowstone Valley. Their sprits buoyed to be nearing home, the soldiers reached the Tongue River-Fort Buford Road on the north bank of the Yellowstone late that afternoon.
Warriors had been in sight all day, dogging the path of the column, always staying to the hills at a respectful distance from those far-shooting Springfields. But just before sunset as the soldiers began squaring their wagons for the night, the Sioux rushed in from the nearby ravines and coulees, screaming and firing their weapons.
Though gallant, their effort was too little, too late.
Baldwin quickly formed his companies into squads and turned away one halfhearted charge after another before the attack was over less than twenty minutes after the warriors had launched it.
Well after moonset Baldwin shook hands with Lieutenant Frank S. Hinkle and scout Vic Smith as the two stood beside the strongest animals left with the battalion.
“Mr. Smith here figures we ought to be at the cantonment by sunrise,” Hinkle said.
“’Pendin’ on the road, snow, an’ Injuns,” the civilian added.
Baldwin turned back to Hinkle. “Just get there when you can—safe and whole. Doesn’t do us any good if you don’t make it—we don’t get word to the general about the grain.”
“I’ll see to it that the corn for the animals is sent back to Custer Creek just as you’re requesting,” Hinkle replied, then stepped back and saluted. He clambered up to his saddle, then quietly urged his mount between two wagons where a pair of soldiers held aloft the long wagon tongues as the two riders disappeared into the snowy darkness.
“God be with you both to see you through,” Baldwin said almost under his breath. “And God be with us if you don’t.”
It was to be another near sleepless night for the lieutenant. Like those gone before on this expedition, he was up and moving about, always prowling, walking the perimeter, checking on his pickets to assure they hadn’t fallen asleep, making sure they wouldn’t freeze.
The following morning Baldwin’s men continued their struggle to hack a way through snowdrifts and to block up the wagons to keep them from careening down every slippery slope as the sky began to spit an icy snow down at them. Throughout the day the column had to halt briefly now and again to free a broken-down mule from its harness, each time turning the animals loose before they pushed on. By midafternoon the weary battalion had reached the banks of Custer Creek, where Baldwin ordered them to bivouac. When it wasn’t snowing that night, the wind was howling, making it next to impossible to keep their fires going.
“Tell your men to keep warm,” Baldwin ordered the morning of the twenty-first. He was more weary than any of them. “We’re laying to.”
“You trust that Hinkle got through to Tongue River?” asked Lieutenant Rousseau.
“Yes,” Baldwin answered with some of the last of his optimism. “The grain will get here, or we’ll have to abandon the rest of the mules and wagons where they are. I don’t think there’s a single one of these animals can make it on in to the cantonment—”
They all turned at the rapid, scattered gunshots downriver, coming from the direction where Joe Culbertson and a mounted soldier had gone in search of those mules abandoned the previous day.
In less than five minutes Baldwin was in the saddle and leading a mixed company of men out at double time along their backtrail, heading toward the sound of the guns. They hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when two horsemen appeared ahead on the road, whipping their animals for all they were worth.
As the pair drew closer, Frank recognized Culbertson’s youthful face, saw the graying fear written clearly on the young soldier’s. On the road just behind the scout and soldier suddenly materialized more than two dozen mounted warriors screeching after their quarry.
“Skirmish order! Full left!” Baldwin cried, wheeling his horse and watching the infantrymen—for the moment no longer cold—scurry into formation across the width of the snowy Fort Buford Road.
“Second and third squads, prepare to advance,” Frank ordered, struggling with his anxious horse in the deep snow. “First squad—
After he had marched them only another five yards, Baldwin watched the warriors emerge from a wide bend in the road beyond some leafless cottonwood. Just as the Sioux spotted his soldiers, they hurriedly began to rein up in confusion and surprise.
That first volley ripped through the center of the horsemen, causing ponies to rear and men to scream in pain. But by and large most of the warriors had pitched to one side or another of their horses and were now turning their animals around on either side of the trail.
“Second squad—
Following their corporal, those soldiers raggedly trotted up and knelt just beyond the first squad, going to their knees to steady the long rifles.
Baldwin did not have to call up the third squad that late Thursday morning. Already the Sioux had retreated beyond the trees at the bend of the road, pulling back to a safe distance from those soldier rifles.
With no mules recovered Baldwin moved his men back to their bivouac at Custer Creek to continue their wait for relief, which meant enduring the intense cold through the rest of the day. An hour before sundown the pickets on the west side of their camp began hollering out. Over a hundred men stood shivering in their buffalo robes at their smoky fires and watched expectantly as the first forms appeared out of the west, where the sun was falling in a frosty haze.
A handful of horsemen accompanied by the squeak of some twenty wagons hoved around the bend of the road leading from Tongue River. Captain Ezra P. Ewers led a detail of forty soldiers to man and escort those wagons carrying grain for Baldwin’s ailing battalion.
Frank was certain it was the fact that he was facing the cruel west wind that made his eyes begin to tear as he watched his comrades and friends coming to the relief of his men.
“Lieutenant Baldwin!” Ewers cried out as he brought his prancing horse to a halt and saluted. Then he held down his hand. “Well done, sir. Well goddamned done!”
“T-thank you, Captain!” Baldwin replied self-consciously.
“From Mr. Hinkle we hear it was just like McClellan Creek!” Ewers gushed with enthusiasm.
“I’m very proud of my men,” Frank boasted, really feeling the sting at his eyes.
“And well you should be,” Ewers replied while Baldwin’s battalion lumbered forward to greet the new arrivals who marched in two rows down the extent of the short wagon train. “We hear you drove Sitting Bull into the night without food or shelter!”
“Yes,” Baldwin said as Ewers dropped from his horse. “I only wish I could have gotten my hands on that
