immense, unflappable ego of the soldier before him.
Those words were just sharp enough that it appeared they brought Miles up short, stung by the civilian’s observation. Chewing a lip for a moment, Miles finally looked north, finding his scouts returning.
When he finally turned back to Donegan, Miles said, “Then the Fighting Fifth will just have to do on foot what Crook failed to do with Mackenzie’s cavalry.”
“Find and catch Crazy Horse?” Seamus asked as more of the headquarters group brought their horses to a halt around them.
“You forgot one very important part of the equation,” Miles corrected. “Find and catch—and
After suffering that cold night at the mouth of Otter Creek, where the rain soon turned into a frozen sleet that coated man, animal, and equipage with a layer of ice, Miles had his men up in the dark, gulping coffee and wolfing down their hard crackers. With the command up and about the colonel ordered that the teams of slow-plodding oxen not be hitched to their wagons.
“Mr. Bowen, it’s my belief we can cover the ground a little faster if the oxen don’t have to pull their wagons,” Miles explained to the second lieutenant he had placed in charge of his supply train.
William Bowen asked, “We’re leaving all the wagons behind, General?”
“No, Lieutenant. We’ll take the company wagons along.”
“The ones pulled by mules,” explained Frank Baldwin.
“So what will become of the civilian’s oxen?” asked Captain Casey. “Leave ’em behind?”
“I think it best that we don’t,” Miles replied. “Unhitch them and drive them along with the column. We might just need those big brutes for food before this chase is over.”
“Damn right,” grumbled Edmond Butler, a tough forty-nine-year-old Irish-born captain. “In a pinch tough beef is better than no rations at all.”
Leaving behind the four huge freight wagons the oxen had struggled to drag through the snow, slush, and mud for the better part of four days, Miles trudged on, leading his infantry south on the trail clearly marked by the stolen cattle and all those unshod hoofprints. They had marched better than fifty-five miles already and would have at least that much more ground to cover before they reached the ground Crazy Horse had chosen for his battle.
“Was that a war party we bumped into yesterday?” Kelly asked the morning of the second after the blood-red sun began to rise low along the southeastern horizon. “Or was it only a hunting party?”
With a shrug Seamus replied, “Either way, Luther. I figure the h’athens knew we were coming—they have to have scouts hanging back to keep track of us.”
“Yeah,” Johnny Bruguier said, nodding.
“Or that bunch could’ve been out hunting to feed a lot of empty bellies,” Donegan continued.
“A big village like Crazy Horse got,” the half-breed stated, “it need lots of meat.”
Kelly turned to Donegan. “And we haven’t run across much in the way of any game at all, have we?”
“One way or the other, let’s just say that bunch of Sioux was out hunting,” Seamus declared, shaking off a cold shiver as the wind picked up. “Hunting four-legged game … maybe hunting two-legged enemy.”
Early that afternoon the advance party was forced to divert the line of march far to the eastern side of the valley, where the going wasn’t so tough but where the men were forced to march some distance from the Tongue. It wasn’t long before they came across an abandoned camp of rustic shelters erected from slabs of wood, poles, and rocks, along with some sections of sod and thick boughs of cedar and evergreen.* Here and there among the makeshift hovels lay the carcasses of butchered cattle.
“Smell that, Irishman?” Kelly asked.
Seamus put his nose in the wind and sniffed. Then sniffed again. “Tobacco smoke.”
“That isn’t soldier smoke,” Kelly declared. “The column hasn’t gotten anywhere close yet.”
“Warriors were here this morning, I’d wager,” Seamus replied.
“Keeping a close eye on us, aren’t they?” Kelly asked. “Even returning here to these shanties to do it.”
“What you make of this, Luther?” Donegan asked as they both climbed out of the saddle. He hadn’t seen anything quite like these heart-wrenching hovels since he’d been a young boy in poor famine-ravaged Ireland.
“I figure you’d be the one to know better’n any of us, Seamus,” Kelly answered as he knelt before one of the shelters and peered into its dark, snowy interior.
“How’s that?” he asked, straightening as he bristled, thinking Kelly was marking him down because of his Irish roots.
The chief of scouts got to his feet and turned. “Why don’t you tell me what Injuns with Crazy Horse wouldn’t have their own lodges along?”
“Wouldn’t have lodges?”
“What Injuns did Mackenzie run off into the countryside not so long ago?”
Donegan wagged his head dolefully, his eyes studying the pitiful hovels where human beings had actually taken shelter from the brutal weather. “Cheyenne,” he answered quietly. “Morning Star’s Cheyenne.”
“A proud people,” Kelly said with complete admiration, dusting the snow and mud from his knees and gloves.
“A damned
He turned away before his eyes betrayed him, and stuffed a big buffalo moccasin into the stirrup. Swinging into the saddle, Donegan said, “I’ll go fetch up the general. He’ll wanna see for himself just what sort of warrior we’re following.”
“What do you mean?” Kelly asked, catching up his reins. “What sort of warrior?”
“I think Miles needs to know that he’s following a bunch of iron-riveted hard cases what can live out here under rocks and scrub brush, running about on foot, eating what they got when they got it.”
Kelly nodded, his eyes fired with admiration. “Damn right I think Miles should know. He and his soldiers won’t be going into battle with a bunch of young sprouts who’ll fight only as long as it takes for their women and young’uns to pull out.”
“No, this outfit we’re scouting for is due for a fight of it, Luther,” Seamus responded as he eased his horse around and Kelly came into the saddle. “Some of them ain’t got nothing more to lose.”
Kelly nodded. “And that makes a man one hell of a tough bravo in a fight—when he hasn’t got anything left to lose.”
“This bunch Crazy Horse has got around him now ain’t the kind give up easy. These warriors are all breechclout and balls, Luther. I figure Crazy Horse is going to pick the ground where he’ll stand and fight. Just like he done us at the Rosebud.”
Kelly slapped the end of his reins down on the horse’s flank to put it into a lope, saying, “And just like General John Buford picked the ground to make his stand at Gettysburg.”
There had been times in the last five days when the scouts had turned about and reported to the head of the column that the easiest route was that provided by the river itself. Their slow, tortuous march of the second was again that sort of day where the foot soldiers and the wagons made their way off the bank onto the ice to follow every twisting curve and corkscrewed turn of the Tongue, always on the lookout for soft ice and narrow stretches of open water where a warm spring fed the otherwise ice-choked river.
Due to weakening ice the column was forced to cross the Tongue four times with their exhausted, played-out animals. In the end they put no more than another five miles behind them that second day of 1877. Perhaps because they believed the overtired stock were not likely to wander astray, Lieutenant Bowen’s detail soldiers did not corral the huge oxen.
At dawn on the third it was clear they had made a mistake.
It was also plain from examining the tracks of the cloven-hoofed beasts that the oxen hadn’t been stolen— they had merely wandered away on the backtrail through the night. In the dim half light Robert Jackson was assigned to lead four of Hargous’s mounted soldiers back to the north to round up the wayward stock while the column formed up and pushed off for the day.
No sooner had the five horsemen disappeared downstream and the rear guard marched out of sight than some twenty warriors kicked their ponies into a gallop, streaking off the hillsides in a blur, thundering down on
