Chapter 25
7 January 1877
BY TELEGRAPH
WYOMING
Military News and Orders
CHEYENNE, January 5.—The court martial for the trial of Colonel J. J. Reynolds and Captain Alexander Moore, both of the Third Cavalry, convenes here tomorrow. It consists of Brigadier Generals Pope and Sykes, and Lieutenant Colonels Bradley, Huston, and Beckwith.
Temporary headquarters department of the Platte are established here, and troops composing the late Powder river expedition are distributed from this point. The Ninth infantry goes to Omaha, Twenty-third infantry to Fort Leavenworth, battalion Fourth artillery returns to the Pacific coast, and the Fourth cavalry to Red Cloud agency, where Colonel Mackenzie will take charge of the Department. Headquarters of the Fifth will remain at Fort Russell and the Third at Fort Laramie.
As cold, weary, and miserable as the soldiers were, to Luther Kelly it seemed as if General Miles wasn’t all that anxious to order them onto their feet in the predawn darkness. The continued subzero temperatures and half rations, along with the bone-chilling rain and hail that had soaked them to the skin in the past days, continued to wear away at every man’s wick.
Luther wondered just how long this chase could go on—with Crazy Horse and his chiefs withdrawing the village farther and farther up the Tongue, making sure his scouts who kept a constant eye on the column’s movements did not engage the soldiers … maintaining only enough contact to keep luring, taunting, seducing Miles and his officers farther and farther into the river canyons.
Maybe it was just as that tall Irishman had said: the enemy village will drop back, little by little, until Crazy Horse finds the ground where he will make his stand against a half-fed, half-froze, beat-down, ragtag bunch of soldiers too damned far from their supply base.
Later than usual, it was just past seven-thirty A.M. when Miles sent out his scouts and ordered his men into formation to begin their day’s march through five more inches of new snow.
Twisting and turning, the river continued its relentless attempt to make things as hard as it could on the foot soldiers and their wagons. Hugging first one side of the valley, then the other, the Tongue confounded and tested the most tolerant man’s patience. It took more than five hours to cover the first two and a half miles that snowy, blustery day—most of the time eaten up with the three crossings the men were forced to perform in that short distance.
With what had clearly become a growing sense of frustration, Miles ordered Kelly’s men to probe ahead while he rested his column there at midday … now better than 115 miles from their Tongue River cantonment.
“Find me something—anything—that will tell me what the hell the enemy is doing besides retreating!” Miles growled with exasperation as he twisted the long leather reins in his leather mittens. “See if you can find out how far away they are … I’ve got to know if the hostiles are in striking distance.”
“We’ll push on ahead a few miles, General,” Luther replied sympathetically. “See what the sign holds for us.”
He led his scouts away from that cottonwood grove where the last of the wagons were coming to a noisy halt, mules braying and oxen grunting after that last cold crossing to the east side of the river. There in a loop of wide, sloping bottomland the soldiers were in the process of falling out right where they were in the snow, collapsing against trees and deadfall while a few began to scrape together some kindling, snapping twigs and branches off the leafless trees.
Several hundred yards to the south stood a long treeless ridge, at the middle of which rose a pointed, cone- shaped butte.
His small band of civilians and Indians rode through the gray, cold midday light in silence. From time to time across the next two miles Kelly signaled a halt at some high point of ground where the rest hunkered out of the biting wind to listen while Luther patiently scoured the country ahead with his field glasses.
The country all about them was awash with winter’s brush, painted with a blur in a limited palette of colors. Beneath the monochrome gray of the low, ice-laden clouds, the monotonous white of the new snow was marred only by an occasional streak of ocher along the slopes of striated buttes, dotted by huge clumps of sage and those stands of fragrant cedar growing here and there in pockets where roots could be sent down deep.
He let out a sigh and pushed the focus wheel with a bare right finger. With the rising of the cold wind his hand was starting to tremble a little, so Kelly held the field glasses with only the left hand still encased in its wool mitten stuffed down inside the horsehide gauntlet. He was looking mostly off to the southwest, peering all the way to the distant foothills of the Wolf Mountains. He and many of the others expected they would find the Crazy Horse camps in that direction, figuring the hostiles were leading the army farther and farther up the Tongue, eventually around the southern end of the Wolf Mountains and on to the Bighorns in an endless, draining chase.
That is, if Miles didn’t run out of rations and grain for his animals before then … if Crazy Horse hadn’t forced the issue. A long chase it would be if the Sioux didn’t choose to stand and fight—
As he was slowly scanning the far countryside from west to east, a beetlelike movement caught his attention, and he quickly moved his field of focus back to the southeast. There against the snow, inching along a hillside, black forms. Half a dozen?
Yes, at least six. Some were shorter—children, he decided. But at least some were adults. And those grown-ups would have answers to Kelly’s questions.
Still, why were they on foot? Without ponies … perhaps they were part of the bunch who escaped Mackenzie’s attack.
“Look at this, Seamus,” he said, handing the field glasses across to the Irishman. “There, halfway down the slope. Better than a mile off, I’d say. Sight down from the saddle.”
“Don’t see what—”
“In the saddle,” he repeated. “Look for some movement, about halfway down from that rocky outcrop that looks like a—”
“I see ’em,” Donegan exclaimed in a gush. “But what the bleeming hell are they doing on foot?”
“Injuns?” asked George Johnson, flicking a grin at James Parker and John Johnston, who sat their horses on either side of him.
Kelly took the field glasses back from Donegan. “Yes—Injuns.” Then he took one last look at the distant figures, just to be certain. “Fellas—that isn’t a hunting party we’ve spotted.”
Seamus nodded. “I’m sure as sun the general will want to talk with what Injins they are. Maybe they can tell us where we can find Crazy Horse.”
In the background Tom Leforge was whispering from the side of his mouth, translating for his two Crow trackers, Half Yellow Face and Old Bear.
Kelly grinned. “Exactly what I’m hoping they’ll be able to tell us, fellas.” He got to his feet, immediately shoved sideways a step by the cold wind. Stuffing the glasses back into a saddlebag, he said, “Let’s go round up some prisoners for General Miles.”
With her head bent into the strong wind blowing at their faces, Old Wool Woman struggled on, breaking a path for the younger ones who followed her through the drifting snow—especially the two children. Each time the wind drew in its breath and she dared look up, the distant wisps of smoke she saw on the far side of the ridge in the valley of the Tongue promised that their struggle would soon be over.
It had been a tough journey on foot from the Pretty Fork* country near
