“Your … orders … Major?” Robert McDonald huffed as he lumbered to a halt a good twenty yards ahead of his D Company.
Casey slapped a hand against McDonald’s shoulder, sending up a small eruption of dry snow collected on the buffalo fur. “Lieutenant, deploy your men in light skirmish order on my right.”
“Yes, sir,” McDonald responded. “How far to the right do you need us to deploy, Major?”
For a moment Casey studied the tall volcanic butte. “Hang your right flank in the air opposite that highest point.”
“The bastards are spreading out clean across the high ground,” Butler grumbled thick as peat as they watched McDonald move off, waving and ordering his men to the right of the increasingly rugged slope.
Donegan’s ears immediately perked at the sound of that voice clearly come from the Emerald Isle. He started to inch his way over toward the ground where the two officers stood—getting himself a good, close look at the forty-nine-year-old Butler.
“And that means they’re spreading us too damned thin to boot,” Casey replied, turning back to Butler. Then he spoke quietly, almost in confidence. “Look, Captain—I’ve saved the toughest job for you. I know what you’re capable of doing in the field. You see, if those reds keep massing on our left, they could damn well roll right around us.”
“You want me on the left flank, Major?”
Casey nodded.
Butler straightened, his lips grim with determination as he said, “They won’t get around us, sir. Count on that.”
Casey stepped back, saluted. “Good to have your men in this with me.”
“Very good, Major,” Butler replied. “We all want a piece of it today.”
“I’ve waited long enough myself,” Casey declared. “Deploy your company, then send word back to me should you find any in your outfit running low on ammunition.”
Edmond Butler turned away to shout his orders, commands echoed down the line through the lieutenant, and finally to the old noncoms, who did their best to keep the trembling soldiers lined up as they started across the broken ground, old files struggling to keep every man’s spirits up despite the cold, despite the bulky clothing that hampered a man’s movements, despite the arrows that strayed far enough to land among them in the snow.
By the time McDonald was deployed on Casey’s right, and Butler had spread his men left toward the base of a high timbered knoll south of the steep volcanic butte, the entire front line of battle now extended for more than a thousand yards, a thin blue wall running from the Tongue River on the north, down along snowy ridges to the steep hillsides above Butler, where it seemed more and more of the warriors were beginning to flock.
From these heights the Cheyenne and Sioux could easily rush down and sweep around behind Casey’s entire battalion—all three companies—therein threatening the gun positions, the supply-wagon corral, even Nelson A. Miles’s escape route north … back to the Tongue River Cantonment.
You’re a bleeming fool! Seamus thought to himself as he started forward, easing over toward Butler’s company. Miles was far from even considering a retreat. No matter that the soldiers were facing odds better than three to one. No matter that they were all but out of rations. Why even worry that they were more than a hundred miles from their base?
Miles simply wasn’t the sort of man to tuck tail and run.
No matter that he might very well lose half his men, hurling them against these steep, icy slopes.
Back and forth the warriors danced in and out of the thickening snow along the ridgetops. Gray smoke hung heavy, sleepy, refusing to rise from the many fires the Indians fed. At times as the soldiers stumbled and trudged across the slowly rising ground from the meadow, the warriors would huddle around their fires for a few minutes, then return to the edge of the bluffs in rotation. But as soon as three companies reached the sharp-sided coulee cutting the base of the bluffs, all the warriors suddenly bristled atop the slopes together.
“How deep is that snow down there?” someone growled behind Donegan as the first of them reached the lip of the ravine.*
“Can’t be much deeper’n any of this,” Seamus said as he started easing himself over the side.
The racket from the hilltops was growing, as if those heavy snow clouds rolling in amplified the shrieks and screeching from the warriors.
“There water down there?” one of the soldiers asked, down on his hands and knees at the lip of the ravine as Donegan slid, stumbled to the bottom.
“How deep is it?” Casey asked, suddenly appearing at the edge of the ravine.
Overhead more bullets whined. Once more Seamus was thankful that the Indians were shooting downhill— which caused most of their shots to sail harmlessly over the soldiers.
Hammering down one of his boots encased inside the thick buffalo-hide outer moccasin, Donegan found the snow deep enough to spread out the long tails of his buffalo coat as he sank up to his crotch.
“’Bout this deep, Major!”
“Any water?”
Wagging his head, Seamus answered, “None—it’s all froze. Bring ’em on!”
In a heartbeat Casey had turned his horse at the lip of the ravine above the Irishman, signaling, calling out, moving his men up through the sagebrush and tall grass that tripped the men, snagged the long tails of their heavy coats. As Donegan began to wade through the snow, inching across the narrow ravine bottom, then started to clamber his way up the far side, the soldiers dropped over the north side by the dozens. Sliding, slipping, spilling into the deep snow, standing once more to dust ice from their Long Tom Springfields, holding their rifles overhead to push ahead the way a man would wade through water in a waist-deep stream.
Hurtling themselves against the far side, most slipped more times than not against the ice-slickened, snowy side. Then Donegan was at the top, turning, crouching low as he barked down at those right below him.
“Use your rifle butts, fellas!” he called out to them, first to one side, then the other, along the ravine wall. “Jab yourself a foothold,” and he started to pantomime in the air with his own Winchester. “Jab yourself some handholds in the side.”
By the dozens they cocked their rifles back over their shoulders, lunging forward violently against the frozen ground, the rifle butts sinking into the hard, unforgiving Montana soil. Foot by foot by foot they carved tiny niches into the side of the ravine for their hands, for their frozen toes encased within the clumsy arctics they wore. Leaning down to offer an empty hand, Seamus pulled the first man over the top.
Then as the warriors above them screamed louder, that soldier turned round, his back to the enemy on the ridge, crouching down as bullets whined past them. He too pulled up another soldier. Two became four, and those four grew to eight, hands going down, men grunting, scrambling, slipping and falling, rising to climb again in those tiny footholds on the side of that dry-bottomed ravine. Sixteen became thirty-two.
Hands rose, gripped by hands coming down … hauling, straining, cursing their way out.
Then Casey and Butler were down in the snow, McDonald heaving himself over the side, tripping and sliding on his back to the bottom like a child on a wooden toboggan. A pair of soldiers helped the lieutenant to his feet, and together they wobbled to the far side—the last of the battalion to close the file.
Ten or more at a time these clambered up the side, pulled over the lip by their comrades as the shrieks from the hilltops grew more strident. The snow was growing thick as Casey snapped a look left and right.
“Form up! Form up!”
Officers and noncoms barked commands as the three companies deployed themselves once more. Every now and then a bullet sang among them, causing the soldiers to flinch, some to duck aside. A stray arrow might hiss into the snow and sage in front of them.
It made Seamus shudder as the battalion started forward again. Those arrows landing in front of them now meant one thing: in a matter of moments, in no more than a few steps, these soldiers would be within range of the enemy’s deadliest weapons. They had reached the foot of the slopes that would carry them right into the arms of the enemy.
To be hit with a bullet was one thing, Donegan brooded as he lunged and stumbled clumsily through the deep, drifted snow while the earth tilted slowly toward the sky. Quick and clean a bullet was—and if it hit a bone, that arm or leg was sure to come off. Although he did remember how Major Sandy Forsyth had refused amputation after nine long, hot days on a sandy scut of ground in a nameless fork of a high-plains river.
Oh, how the sawbones were kept busy in the Civil War, he remembered—for there was simply no repairing