They both turned with the many others, surprised to find Crazy Horse shouting to his warriors, his arms outstretched in supplication to the skies.
“Shahiyela! We come to carry your brave man away,” a Lakota fighting man called out, coming up to Wooden Leg and Yellow Hair with another, both of them holding on to a frightened pony between them.
“Help me, Yellow Hair,” Wooden Leg ordered his brother. “We must put Big Crow on the back of their pony.”
The younger man asked, “Is he dead?”
“No … but he will be soon.” As Wooden Leg bent down to grab an arm and a leg, he paused a moment, looking at the war chief’s blood on his own hands. When they lifted Big Crow and draped his body across the pony’s backbone, the snow below the warrior was smeared with bright crimson. So very much blood. He stared and stared, and by the time Wooden Leg looked up again, the two Lakota warriors were moving down the slope with Big Crow’s body.
He turned with the crush and clamor of ponies and fighting men, watching Crazy Horse leading his Lakota north along the brow of the ridge, a few of them beginning to catch up their ponies and disappear down the slope, slowly swallowed by the blizzard. Yet most doggedly fanned out toward the big cone, kneeling in the snow behind a clump of cedar, or finding a rest for their rifles behind a pile of snow-covered stones. They were preparing …
Turning to peer down the slope through the blizzard, Wooden Leg could barely make out the blackened forms inching up the side of the hill toward them, figures without real definition in the storm: blurry, fuzzy, out of focus.
In a blinding rush of fury Wooden Leg darted away, racing back to the place where Big Crow had been dancing, taunting the soldiers. Sliding to a stop in the snow, he dared not look down at the white men. If he saw them coming, his courage might disappear on a strong gust of wind.
Instead he turned his back to the soldiers and went right to work stuffing his bare hands into the icy snow, scrounging with his fingertips, pulling up one piece of red shale after another. Digging with all his might to pull more free, slab after slab until he had the pile high enough.
Then he realized he was crying.
This memorial would last longer than a man’s bones bleaching on the prairie. It would always mark the spot where a brave man fell. Where Big Crow gave his life for his people.
Then he sprinted back along the ridge.
“Come, Wooden Leg!” his brother shouted as he approached. Yellow Hair grabbed Wooden Leg’s arm as he dashed back to the pony’s side. “We are going away from here now!”
As Yellow Hair tugged on him, Wooden Leg stumbled through the deepening snow—peering one last time at the soldiers below as they continued their assault up the slope. Out of the dancing mist he spotted a single horseman suddenly among the soldiers on foot, a box pitching from that rider’s grasp, splitting apart in the snow.
For a moment longer Wooden Leg stood there, watching in amazement as the thick-coated furry figures lunged out of the storm toward what the horseman had dropped, collapsing to their knees in knots here and there to dig at the snow around the broken box.
Farther down the ridge more
That, and he wanted to know what it was the lone horseman had brought that the soldiers went after like such crazed madmen.
Chapter 35
8 January 1877
How these cold, frightened, hungry soldiers held their ground and did not turn and flee would one day be a wonder to all of those who would hear their tale of heroism.
Time and again Seamus himself had watched ordinary men stand against daunting odds, flinging their bodies against grapeshot and canister, or holding the line—waiting for the charge of cavalry’s slashing sabers, men who withstood the cruel bombardment of artillery on little food and no sleep.
But never had Seamus Donegan witnessed such uncommon bravery as he did that day in the face of a Montana blizzard.
He was a man working for his wages—let no man ever accuse the Irishman of giving anything less than his steadfast best. What he had expected to be a terribly long and cold ride north to Tongue River Cantonment had instead turned out to be an even longer and much colder chase after Crazy Horse’s village. There was little doubt he was earning his army pay, and every last dollar of that bonus George Crook had promised him.
But how these wretched five-year-hitch recruits held the line and gritted their teeth to keep them from chattering right out of their heads as they ducked Sioux bullets and arrows for no more than a paltry thirteen dollars a month … Seamus realized he would never know.
Without fail it always made his heart swell with pride to be fighting shoulder to shoulder among such brave men. Men as common as dirt—unlettered, ill-mannered in the presence of the gentler sex or their superior officers, more often than not unwashed, and most as lacking in the common graces as any of their species might be … but every last one of them made brave by circumstance and the events that caught them up and hurtled them along into history. Common, ordinary, everyday soldiers who many times back at their post didn’t exhibit the good sense to pour piss out of a boot … soldiers who became something altogether different in the face of the enemy.
Ordinary men who showed their extraordinary courage in the face of extraordinary circumstances.
As soon as the war chief fell up there on that snowy ledge above them, two—then three—warriors darted out to attempt to retrieve his body. Now the soldiers had themselves a new target. But while the men fired one round after another without much thought, Seamus began once more to brood on just how much ammunition was being wasted.
“Captain Butler!”
At the call Donegan twisted about in his clumsy coat, finding the colonel’s young aide-de-camp galloping up to the rear of the skirmish line C Company had dotted across the deep snow, perforated with Edmond Butler’s fighting men.
“Over here!” the captain called.
“Sir! The general sends his compliments,” Lieutenant Bailey gushed breathlessly. “Yes? Yes, soldier?”
“The general respectfully wonders if you’ve bogged down, Captain. He asks me to communicate that he would like to see your line advance up the slope, sir.”
His horse pawed at the snow anxiously. Butler glanced at the hillside with a knowing squint. “Up … up the slope?”
“Yes, Captain. The general extends his wishes that we don’t get bogged down because the Indians are in control of the battle.”
“Well, the goddamned Indians
Some of the men twittered behind him but shut up the instant Butler heeled around on them, fixing them all with his glare. He wheeled back on the orderly just as quickly.
“Captain—General Miles wishes to attack those heights—”
“Very well,” Butler interrupted. “Give the general my compliments and tell him it will be our honor to charge the slopes that lay in my front.”
With a salute Hobart Bailey started to rein aside, but Butler leaned over and snagged the soldier’s bridle,
