Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

With a wag of his head a weary-looking Miles said, “Follow them as long as the two of you deem it practical with this hellish weather closing down on us. We’ll have camp ready below for your return.”

Seamus watched more than a hundred men march out on the double, plunging into the ground blizzard, trudging on the trampled backtrail of retreat, grunting with exertion as the snow billowed around them, led after an undefeated enemy by a handful of officers on horseback. It did not take those two companies long to disappear into the storm.

The Irishman wagged his head at the futility of their mission: to chase on foot after Indians escaping on horseback.

“I hope they’ll turn back before long.”

Seamus turned to find the old soldier coming up to stop beside him. “The fight’s over,” Donegan replied. “Now all Miles has to do is stay alive until he gets back to the Yellowstone.”

“Sounds like you ain’t counting yourself in.”

“I’m not,” Donegan admitted. “Heading south.” The man’s thick brows beetled up. “Follering them Sioux?”

Shaking his head, the Irishman replied, “Got a family waiting for me down to Laramie. I ain’t seen ’em in too damn long already.”

The soldier asked with disbelief, “Going through Crazy Horse country?”

“I made it once already. I figure I can do it again.”

“Man can do anything,” the soldier agreed, “if he wants it bad enough and sets his mind squarely on it.”

“My heart’s set on it.”

“C’mon, then,” the old soldier said, turning Seamus away from the ridgetop. “If you’re leaving come morning on such a fool’s ride south, then let’s feed you some proper victuals this last night you’ll spend with the Fifth!”

Wooden Leg hung back for the last of the fighting, with those last warriors to abandon the ridge with Crazy Horse.

Some wanted to stay and fight the soldiers hand against hand … but once the ve-ho- e began to break over the lip and land on the top of the ridge in ones and twos, it was plain to see that their battle was lost.

The final few warriors gathered just south of the steep slope of Belly Butte and fired into those first soldiers to pursue them across the top of the bluff. With more and more of the white men pouring over the breastworks, firing their guns so hot and so fast that they just surely had to have all the ammunition in the world, Crazy Horse and Hump, Little Big Man and Little Wolf, began to shout for everyone to pull back.

“We will fight these soldiers another day!”

That cry burst from every throat.

“Another day!”

Down below on the southern slope where the young boys held on to the last of the war ponies, Wooden Leg found his horse. Sweeping the crusty snow off its back, he flung himself across its foreflanks. Turning once, he saw that the chiefs had fanned out on foot across the south slope—the last to retreat—assuring that all the wounded had been gathered up and carried from the ridge. Just since leaving the top of the butte, the clouds had tumbled in. Overhead, the storm had grown so thick that the cone of Belly Butte had disappeared in the blinding white swirl.

Sick at heart with another retreat, Wooden Leg sawed the rein and kicked the pony into motion. It snorted as it leaped away, perhaps in more of a hurry than Wooden Leg to be far from this terrible place.

His heart lay heavy and cold in his chest, remembering another winter battle, another winter retreat, another journey into the wilderness to escape the soldiers.^*

With the next beat of that weary heart he heard the distant, muffled boom of the big wagon gun.

Hopo! The soldiers were still shooting, even though there were no more warriors on the ridge to shoot at.

But a moment later Wooden Leg understood. The incoming whistle rushing out of the blizzard clouds warned him.

No longer was that big-throated gun aiming for the ridge. Now the soldiers were shooting at the retreating Indians.

Off to the right near the riverbank where no horsemen rode, the shell exploded harmlessly, but with enough clatter and a shower of rocks to hurry on any of those who believed they could tarry behind for long. As the ridge disappeared behind him in the swirling fury of the storm, Wooden Leg listened to another boom of the wagon gun. He rode a little farther. And heard another boom, more distant. Finally the last of the gun’s roars—muffled and sodden through the thickening storm.

Then there were no more. And the quiet that wrapped itself around the young warrior was deafening.

Quiet enough to hear the howling, wolfish wind and the groans of the wounded carried across the backs of ponies, cradled by horsemen if possible, any way the wounded could make this journey back toward the village that was sure to be on the move already.

Out of the dance of snow Wooden Leg suddenly recognized the two Lakota who had been with him to rescue Big Crow. He hurried his pony toward their horses. Between them walked another pony, Big Crow astride the animal, but bent over and tied against the horse’s neck. The Lakota rode knee to knee with the wounded war chief, each of them holding on to Big Crow so he would not fall.

“He is dead?”

One of the Lakota shook his head. “I think he is alive.”

“Big Crow!” Wooden Leg said with excitement from just behind the wounded man’s pony.

Without raising himself up or twisting around, without so much as moving his head, the war chief mumbled, “Is that you, Wooden Leg? I cannot see.”

“It is me,” he answered. “I am here with you, Uncle.”

“Good,” he said with a fluid-filled cough. “Then you tell these Ho-ohomo-eo- e^* that they must let me go and leave me behind.”

“Leave you behind?”

He gasped in pain. “You must leave me here, Wooden Leg. I am going to die anyway.”

“This is what you truly want?”

“It is my last wish,” Big Crow declared bravely. “Carry me no farther.”

After explaining to the two Lakota that a warrior must not ignore a dying man’s last wish, Wooden Leg led the others a little ways up the now-dry fork of a creek that in spring would flow down to the Tongue River. After no more than four arrow-flights in distance, Big Crow spoke again.

“Here. No farther. Find a place. Then leave me.”

“Yes—the rocks are good here,” Wooden Leg told the dying man.

When his pony came to a stop beneath him, Big Crow said quietly, “Go back to the rest of the warriors. Go on to the village. Tell my people that I have done my share to rescue the prisoners taken by the soldiers.”

“I will tell them,” Wooden Leg promised, his throat tasting sour with this parting from a great warrior. “For many generations to come, unto my grandchildren’s grandchildren, the Ohmeseheso will know that an honorable man has died fighting for his people.”

Not far ahead stood some large sandstone rocks on the north side of the ravine. Among them the three found a narrow crevice and therein made a place for the dying man.

Wooden Leg sighed with the heavy weight of a boulder on his chest. “You Lakota choose to bury a man on the open prairie,” he explained to them as they cleared the last of the loose shale from the floor of that crack high in the tall rocks. “Tse-Tsehese warriors prefer to be buried among the rocks of this earth. The quicker to return our bodies to the dust of our Earth Mother.”

Across the floor of that narrow crevice they spread a buffalo robe; then all three gently carried Big Crow up to that crack far up the side of the sandstone formation. With a valiant struggle Wooden Leg finished the task by himself, inching the war chief’s body back into that crevice the width of his hand at a time.

“Big Crow, can you hear me?” Wooden Leg asked when he could move the man no farther.

For a long time there came no answer. He feared Big Crow had died while he’d been placing him in the death position. At long last the young warrior touched the war chief’s face. It was cold. He sighed, ready to leave this