Chapter 22
30 December 1876-3 January 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
MISSOURI
Another Radical Outrage
ST. LOUIS, December 27.—In accordance with orders from Washington, all ordnance stores at the St. Louis arsenal, formerly Jefferson Barracks, are to be removed, the cannon, over 800 in number, to Rock Island, and the guns, and pistols to the New York arsenal. The removal will commence at once. The arsenal here is to be converted into a cavalry recruiting station.
NEW MEXICO
Big Strike of Mineral at Silver City
SILVER CITY, December 27.—A large body of first-class ore was uncovered in the “Seventy-six” mine on the 23rd inst…. The first ten tons of ore were broken from the mass in a few hours by one drill, and is estimated to be worth from $500 to $1,000 per ton…. The miners and all the citizens of this place are greatly excited.
On Saturday the thirtieth the column was forced to cross and recross the frozen Tongue more than ten times. The order of the march issued by Miles dictated that the column begin its journey for the day shortly before or at first light. Each morning a new company would take its place at the head of the march in rotation, while other companies moved along the flanks, and a rear guard protected the wagon train.
That afternoon they forded Pumpkin Creek, which flowed in from the east, and made their bivouac for the night in a spot that not only offered water and wood, but was easily defensible if the Sioux should decide to turn about and attempt an attack. At each camp the colonel established a tight ring of pickets, allowed the animals to graze the best they could until dark, then brought the horses, mules, and oxen within the corral of wagons for the night, where the men continued to feed the animals on strips of cottonwood bark.
During their march on the morning of the thirty-first they found the valley growing wider, the spare, naked bluffs on either side of them now topped with stunted pine and cedar. Nonetheless, the twisting path of the Tongue required Second Lieutenant Oscar F. Long’s engineering detachment to work far in advance preparing the banks for the supply wagons to cross the frozen river several times throughout that short winter day. Along the trail they passed more than a dozen dead cattle before finally catching up to Captain Dickey’s and Lieutenant Mason Carter’s battalions. At this point they had put forty-six miles behind them since leaving the Tongue River Cantonment.
That New Year’s Eve there was little to celebrate, and most of the weary men were asleep well before midnight, quietly wrapped in their two blankets, back-to-back with their bunkie not long after dark had gripped the land. About all that any of them had cause to rejoice in before they fell into a cold, fitful, exhausted stupor was the fact that they were all together again—seven companies of infantry—along with those two pieces of artillery, a handful of scouts, and a hot trail left behind by the cattle thieves.
Miles had reveille sounded at four-thirty A.M. on the first day of 1877.
In that high-plains darkness most of the men stomped circulation back into their cold feet and legs around fires nursed throughout the night. Despite the bitter subzero temperatures most men did their best to act merry, toasting one another New Year’s wishes with their steaming coffee tins. At five-thirty they were marching south beneath a brilliant moon still reflecting silver light off the icy-blue snow.
Not long after sunrise it was plain to every man that the wind had shifted out of the southwest, warming in the process. By midmorning the first of the gray rain clouds moved in, turning the frozen, snowy trail into a slimy slush. Man and animal alike fought for a foothold, sliding this way and that every yard they slogged up the valley of the Tongue. It was a wet and sullen bunch of soldiers that neared Otter Creek late that Monday afternoon.
As Seamus rode off the muddy slope of the ridge and back across the bottomland toward the column marching on the far side of the valley, he remembered none too fondly the endless days and nights of rain and mud and soul-sapping despair as he and others led Crook’s stumbling, lunging command toward the Black Hills settlements. His stomach jerked with a twinge of nausea; those were memories that knotted a man’s belly with the stringy taste of horse meat—
The first gunshot echoed like a dull crack from the far ridges across the Tongue. Then there came a scattering of shots. Donegan quickly looked over his shoulder at the hilltops behind him—relieved to find them empty—then jabbed his small brass spurs into the roan’s flanks. The gelding burst into a lope, its hooves tearing up rooster-tail cascades of powdery snow.
On the far side of the frozen river he watched the lines of soldiers knot and unfurl, officers on horseback whirling and shouting, the wagon train brought to a sudden halt. Farther to the south at the head of the march, across the river past the naked willow and in among the cottonwoods, Seamus saw the flash of movement. Lots of horsemen. Now their foreign cries cracked the cold, bursts of frosty breath jetting from each dark hole in their faces as they screamed back at the soldiers.
Leforge and his last two Crow, along with Bruguier, were hammering heels to their ponies, darting into that cottonwood grove. From the south end of the trees exploded at least two dozen horsemen, feathers fluttering, shields clattering, voices yapping as they fled upriver.
Seamus yanked back on the reins with his left hand, and the roan shuddered to a halt in the snow. With his right hand he dragged the Winchester carbine from its leather boot beneath his right leg. Knowing there was already a shell in the breech, he dragged back the hammer with his thumb as he shoved the butt into his shoulder and peered down the barrel. Squeezing off a shot at the escaping horsemen, he levered another round into the chamber and fired a second time before he figured the Sioux were simply too far for him to make any good of a third shot.
On the far side of the river Kelly had Leforge and the Crow on the way with Bruguier and Buffalo Horn close behind, all of them yipping and yelling as if they were an entire company. Thirty yards to their rear Miles stood in his stirrups, watching expectantly, ordering some of Hargous’s mounted company into the chase.
Then, flinging an arm to the right and the left, the colonel bellowed orders no more than a muffled echo to Donegan. But as quickly the nearby officers were scurrying like ants among their outfits. While some instantly spread their men into a skirmish line on that eastern side of the river, others led their men cautiously onto the ice, across, and up the snowy bank on the far side, where they deployed the companies in a tight skirmish formation extending across the valley floor and up the slope of some slimy, icy bluffs, each man no more than five feet from the next.
Occasional gunshots cracked upstream, and from moment to moment Seamus spotted a glimpse of either the Sioux horsemen or Kelly’s outfit, all of the riders bobbing in and out of sight as they rode up and down the rolling landscape. Quickly dragging his field glasses from his off-hand saddlebag, Donegan twisted the wheel and attempted to focus on the far scene. More than a mile away, the enemy disappeared beyond a far bend in the river. The only riders visible now were Kelly and the rest. Luther flung his arm into the air, stopping those behind him as it appeared he bellowed out his orders to Leforge and the Crow in front of him.
“Good man, Luther,” Seamus said in a whisper, his breath huffing in a great cloud above his face as a cold mist continued to fall. “Those red bastards suck you into a mess of quicksand before you know it.”
He sighed audibly when he saw the entire bunch turn and head back to the column behind Kelly. Maybe there wasn’t any coup to count this afternoon, but at least the Sioux hadn’t sprung any trap—no ambush, no casualties, for that short, hot, running fight of it.
“By Jupiter, we could use Crook’s cavalry, couldn’t we, Donegan?” Miles roared as Seamus pushed the roan off the ice and into a grove of old cottonwood.
“As hard as these men might want to catch Crazy Horse,” Donegan replied, “it’s like a tortoise and a hare for your foot soldiers to stay up with red h’athens on horseback.”
“Just give me Mackenzie’s Fourth, and I’ll show you better than he accomplished with the Cheyenne!”
“Mackenzie did all that Crook expected of him—and more,” Donegan protested, suddenly sensing the
