wolves had huddled in a cottonwood grove through the night as the winds shifted and the rain changed to an icy snow.
As soon as it grew light enough to see the far bank of the river, they moved out—quietly on the soggy, sodden, snow-covered ground. Watching the veil of snow and foggy mist until they saw signs of the
The weather this morning would slow the soldiers down even more, Wooden Leg thought. It was good, because the chiefs had calculated that the Bear Coat’s men should be within attacking distance of the village by that very afternoon. But while the ponies and travois could disappear quickly over broken ground, up the mouth of a coulee and into the far reaches of a distant canyon, the
All the wolves had to do today was stay just out of sight, but right in front of the army in its worming march. Close enough to keep track of the Bear Coat’s progress, but far enough away that they would not be discovered again as they had been a few days before. Those were their orders from Crazy Horse. In fact, Sits in the Night’s wolves were instructed to build the fires in those campsites the soldiers had come across the last two days: let the scouts find the fire pits still warm; leave behind a few old ponies ready to die anyway … all those sorts of enticements that would draw the Bear Coat farther and farther into their trap.
The white man always went for the bait.
Wolf Tooth, another leader of their scouting party, threw up his arm just ahead of them. They all halted. Listening, straining their eyes into the snowy middistance. A thin layer of wispy fog clung to the leafless willow, surrounding the copse of cottonwood. They waited. Then suddenly Wolf Tooth pointed. And Wooden Leg saw.
There, not very far away, came the three, no four … now five horsemen—their animals with their heads bowed, plodding slowly into the fog and surging snowstorm.
“Go back,” Sits in the Night ordered sharply.
The others turned their ponies quickly at the command. But Wooden Leg was the last. He wanted to get himself a little better look. After all, he hadn’t seen such creatures since last winter on the Powder River.
Out of the swirling, wind-whipped gloom they appeared again. Just as they had on the southern edge of Old Bear’s camp that morning only heartbeats before the soldiers had charged in with their pistols drawn.
Army scouts.
Oh, how he yearned for the trap to close!
Wooden Leg hoped that this time the ones who led the soldiers to the villages would be the first to die.
By the time it was light enough to see on that sixth day of January, it was plain there was a prairie snowstorm in the process of working itself into a lather up and down the Tongue River Valley.
Snow whirled in this direction and that—up, down, and sideways on a cutting wind that made it all but impossible to keep the fires lit. Men stood about in their blankets at breakfast fires—grumbling, stomping cold feet back into frozen boots that had never fully dried out, never come close to warming, snowflakes readily clinging to the damp weave of their wool coats or matting on the wet, stringy buffalo hair of their winter overcoats and those heavy leggings lashed to their belts. At least it warmed the blood to curse a man’s officers, his commander, and perhaps even the unseen, taunting enemy who kept on disappearing farther and farther up the valley.
An enemy who was always just out of sight. Just beyond reach. Nothing more than a wisp of smoke—like that smoke needling off the puny fires they had eventually abandoned early that Saturday morning.
From time to time just below the hulking clouds Seamus got himself a glimpse of those distant gray-and- purple-shaded Wolf Mountains once more being dappled in white with the approaching storm. Throughout that morning and into the afternoon the column was again forced to cross the Tongue several times as the sandstone buttes closed in on one side; then a mile or so farther they shoved themselves close to the other bank. Hours were consumed with excruciating physical labor as relays of men were ordered up to join Lieutenant Oscar F. Long’s engineering crew in chopping away at the frozen mud of the banks, to lay down as much deadfall as they could find to corduroy the approach, and to hack away at the creaking, splintering ice before the mule and ox teams were able to trudge through the shallow water of the Tongue with each crossing.
First one, then a second, and finally a third Indian camp they passed through. That dreary afternoon in the midst of the icy snowstorm, the scouts came across some gaunt, wolfish, half-starved Indian ponies the village had evidently abandoned. Nearby in the midst of some lodge rings a half-dozen small fires still smoldered in the driving snow.
Late in the day Donegan halted and stared south into the dance of white against the ever-changing background of leafless bush and striated sandstone butte. He watched the Crow trackers and Buffalo Horn disappear ahead of them in the white smear.
“Luther, there’s a reason they’re letting us get this close.”
Kelly stopped beside him, for a long moment staring into the swirl of snow as he raked the hoarfrost from his mustache. “We’re catching up with ’em, that’s all. And they surely know we’re on their tails.”
Wagging his head, Seamus continued, “The ground … what Crazy Horse has chose to make his stand—it can’t be all that far now—”
The sharp crack of carbines shattered the snowy stillness of the air, answered by a half-dozen yelps, cries, and squeals of surprise.
No more had Donegan and Kelly kicked their mounts into motion and yanked pistols from their holsters than two horsemen appeared in front of them, heading straight for the white scouts. Both the Irishman and Kelly raked back the hammers on the pistols as the two warriors started screaming while they kept on coming.
“Hold it!” Seamus hollered. “It’s Leforge’s boys!”
“Damn if it ain’t,” Kelly growled.
The pair shot past, crying out in their tongue, their long hair flapping out from beneath the wool hoods of the blanket coats.
Kelly shook his head, asking, “Where the hell’s—”
Another shot, this time a pistol … then a second.
“Where’s Buffalo Horn?” Donegan asked.
“Yep.” Kelly smiled.
“That’s one brave Injin got himself in a scrap,” Seamus declared. “C’mon, we can’t let him take ’em on all by himself!”
Jabbing spurs into their mounts, the two civilians shot into the snowstorm as the voices of the retreating Crow trackers disappeared behind them. More pistol shots, followed by what was clearly the ring of a carbine.
“That Bannock’s having himself all the fun!” Kelly roared.
From behind them there came a clatter of hoofbeats. Turning in the saddle suddenly, not sure whether to expect an ambush by a war party of Sioux who had suckered them, or the arrival of the Crow trackers who had somehow worked up their nerve again, Seamus found John Johnston and Johnny Bruguier racing up on their tails about the time all four reached the edge of a small clearing.
There on foot near his skittish pony stood Buffalo Horn, the long reins looped around his left wrist, slowly levering one cartridge after another through his repeater. He whirled in a crouch at the sound of the hoofbeats, ready to fire at the white scouts; then a big smile cracked his dark face. He turned again and snapped off another shot at the ten or more horsemen disappearing into the blinding storm with a clatter of hooves and shouts to one another, taunts flung back at their enemy.
Snatching up his pony, the Bannock leaped onto the animal’s bare back and rolled into motion to join the others as they all set off again at a lope after the Sioux. In less than a mile the ground started to rise. Ahead of them the enemy horsemen reached the brow of the ridge, halted in a spray of snow, and circled in a tight formation.
Just as the white scouts and Buffalo Horn reached the bottom of that slope, the sharp edge of the terrain above them suddenly sprouted more than two dozen warriors. He couldn’t be sure in the snowstorm, but Donegan figured there had to be more than thirty-five or forty Lakota horsemen up there now—all of them pretty much
