under battle conditions and in the horrid cold—and the majority of warriors simply never had enough ammunition to practice in order to become good shots themselves.
But the arrows were nettlesome.
From time to time some soldier would call out a shrill warning, and the rest would quickly look into the sky feathered with heavy gray storm clouds. There above them, falling out of the steady snow, would be half a hundred arrows given flight by the warriors dappling the crest of the flat-topped butte. Down, down, down in a deadly arc the shafts would hiss silently out of the low, cold clouds. Landing with a puff in the deep snow without much of a sound, sometimes clattering against the iron wheels of the wagon guns, or thwanging into the wood of the gun carriages, a noisy, bothersome clatter against steel and bronze and iron cannonball, nicking the flesh of those who hadn’t taken shelter fast enough.
It was clear that Miles was growing exasperated at having to take refuge beneath the Napoleon gun’s caisson.
“Get those prisoners up here!” he barked at his staff. “On the double!”
Frank Baldwin and Hobart Bailey sprinted away down the slope.
“More goddamned arrows coming, General!” some man railed.
A covey of the iron-tipped whispers wobbled down from the gray clouds—smacking, clattering, thunking … and then Seamus watched a detail af soldiers hurrying the women and children up the gentle slope of the low plateau, like flushing and herding a gaggle of geese across a snowy barnyard. Their sudden appearance among the wagon guns and the soldiers’ position immediately angered the warriors arrayed on the north and east sides of the butte. Those fighting men close enough to recognize their own people cried out a warning to the women, and the prisoners shouted back to the hills just before the captives began to shrink behind the soldiers and their artillery.
The old woman ducked last of all, pulling down a young child with her, hunching over the girl like a protective hen as hail would slash out of the cruel clouds.
Seamus squinted into the sky beneath the edge of the wolf-hide cap, seeing the arrows just being released, climbing in a graceful arc. The old woman must have known. They must have told her it was coming.
Down below among the supply train this time he didn’t hear the brassy bawl of the mules for the moment … instead he heard the frightened cries of the women around him on the knoll.
The instant the last of that wave of arrows had clattered to the ground, the captives sang out to the heights in shrill panic, perhaps telling the warriors that their arrows were not only falling in among the soldiers, but among their own people as well.
Instead of halting their aerial attack, the Sioux and Cheyenne shouted their warnings to the women, again and again.
With the next flight iron war-points clattered in among the white men, and a lone soldier called out, one of the arrows sinking into the back of his leg. Others leaped on him before the man could try yanking on the bloody shaft—a dangerous proposition with sinew-tied arrow points. An officer bawled for two men to take the soldier down the knoll, ordering them to have a surgeon see if the arrow had embedded itself in bone or not. Clumsily rising out of the snow and into the arms of his fellows, the wounded man limped between two comrades, heading for Dr. Tilton’s improvised hospital there among the squared wagons of the supply train.
By now Lieutenant Carter’s men were all back across the ice to the east side of the Tongue, moving up the slippery bank in single file, while some turned and stood watch to make sure no warriors darting back and forth on the west side of the river got close enough to take a shot. Minutes before, Miles had ordered ? Company to rejoin the regiment on the east bank now that the warriors were concentrating along the bluffs to the south. The colonel stationed Carter’s gallant men in the exposed position in the river bottom, where they would protect the west flank of the supply train.
“Major Casey?” Miles called out, using the captain’s brevet rank.
The officer stepped forward and saluted. “Your orders, General?”
Miles pointed to the tallest point of the ridge with that short peeled shaft of cottonwood. “You see that cone, Major?”
“Yes, sir. High ground if ever I saw it.”
“To take the top would be a tough climb for the men, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it would be, General.”
“Those slopes are crawling with Sioux,” Miles explained, not taking his eyes off the butte.
Casey straightened his back like a ramrod. “General—if it’s to be done, I request the honor of leading A Company into the attack.”
Miles turned now to look at the captain. “A Company it will be, Major. Push as far up the side as is humanly possible. It’s up to you to take some of the pressure off our gun emplacements.”
“Very good, General! With your compliments,” Casey replied, moved back one step and saluted as he slapped his heels together.
Miles and the rest watched the captain hurry off to gather his officers, who then formed up their men at the top of the knoll and quickly told them of the task at hand. The sky was continuing to lower minute by minute as the clouds scudded out of the west, and the wind was coming up as Casey eagerly moved out at the head of A Company. Their neat formation quickly became a ragged square as the sixty-some men pushed around the base of the high knoll and onto the long, narrow neck of the plateau that gradually rose toward the cone.
Of a sudden Casey and his officers stopped, whirled about, and cried out in warning.
As a group the entire company dropped to their knees, hunched over as the arrows began to whisper down among them. Miraculously no man was seriously hurt as the officers carefully peered up from beneath their sealskin caps, rising immediately to order the men to their feet again. Every one of them yanked the arrows from a man next to him, the iron points barely penetrating the thick buffalo-hide coats and layers of wool. Some men had been grazed, scratched, or poked—but none complained of serious wounds as Casey bawled for them to strike out again.
In those long, thick, heavy buffalo-hide coats and leggings the men of A Company lumbered on across the uneven, broken ground and slick snow, that shifting square of soldiers crawling forward at an insect’s pace like some dark many-legged creature inching over the clumps of sage and crusty snowdrifts.
Again the officers sang out as the arrows arched into the air, calling for the men to halt and hunker there at the base of the butte where the slope began to rise more sharply. Just above them more warriors clustered suddenly, yelling, taunting, shaking their weapons in the falling snow. A few knelt to take aim with their carbines.
Half sliding, half falling to one side as he struggled back to his feet, an angry Casey bellowed the order for his first ranks to fire a volley up the side.
A dozen men stepped forward by rank and closed file.
“Sergeant! Fire on those Indians! Push those red buggers back!”
“Clear that slope of the bastards!” an old noncom hollered as he waved the next rank up to fire their volley.
Waving his pistol over his head, Casey repeated, “Sweep that slope clean of the bloody demons!”
Slowly, three short paces at a time, the warriors fell back and A Company continued to move forward a foot at a time. Men stumbled, spilled, sprawled across the sharp slope, then pulled themselves out of the snow clumsily in their heavy winter gear. Throwing open the trapdoors on the Springfields the best they could with their bulky mittens, more often than not each soldier spilled at least one or sometimes two .45/70 cartridges into the deep snow before they got a fresh round chambered and the trapdoor locked down.
On the heights the racket of cries and shrieks and taunts grew in volume. For the first time that morning the warriors recognized that the Bear Coat was not just defending his position but was instead beginning to take the offensive. Shouts of derision and dismay were hurled down on the soldiers, no matter where they were on that battlefield.
“Lieutenant Bailey!” Miles cried out as soon as Casey moved his company away from the knoll and began their ascent.
“Sir!”
“My compliments to Captain Butler. Tell him he is to bring his company and McDonald’s D up to this knoll.”
