spread out in a wide skirmish formation that extended from the hills on the west side of the Tongue all the way across the river to the bluffs on the east bank. Miles led them out at a cautious pace, no man certain when they might encounter the enemy’s rear guard or an ambush.
Instead, all they came across near midday that Tuesday was a campsite the enemy had abandoned sometime before the battle. Because of all the recent snow and rain, it proved impossible for the scouts to tell just how old the site truly was. For the better part of a quarter of an hour, the men all watched Miles silently move among the now-dead fire pits until he stopped, staring south for the longest time.
When he finally turned, the colonel told his staff, “Inform the company commanders that we are doing an about-face.”
Baldwin argued with his characteristic enthusiasm, “But, General—they can’t be that far ahead of us!”
Wagging his head with resignation, Miles replied, “That may well be, Lieutenant. But I don’t think we’re going to catch them again this time out. Not
“We’ll march back to bivouac?” asked James Casey.
“Yes,” and Miles nodded.
“Let me volunteer to pursue them with a battalion,” Baldwin offered. “I can follow their trail and catch Crazy Horse unawares just like I caught Sitting—”
“No, Lieutenant,” Miles interrupted as Baldwin was warming up to his appeal. “From the looks of things the hostiles are trying to make their way to the Bighorns.”
“I can follow them even there,” Baldwin pleaded. “You just give me the men and some animals—”
“And your men would eat what, Lieutenant?” Miles paused a moment to let that sink in for all of them gathered around him. “I don’t have enough in the wagons for this outfit to have full rations on our march back to the Yellowstone, much less to supply a battalion that might be in the field for God knows how many days. And the weather, Mr. Baldwin … this goddamned weather! No man can say with any certainty just what the sky is going to do to us next in this country! No, Lieutenant—let’s all just say we’ve done our damage, and that we’re going home.”
Kelly stepped up with his reins in hand. “As chief of scouts, I agree with the general,” he told the officers. “The Crazy Horse people are done for. It’s just a matter of time—no more than weeks at the most—before he has no choice but to take his people in to the reservation.”
The colonel nodded with that support. “Yes, I think Crazy Horse is finished, Kelly. If he doesn’t turn his village around and come in to surrender very soon, I’m certain a lot of his people are going to die from a cruel recipe of hunger and bitter cold.”
In the icy bottomland of the Tongue River, Miles ordered his six companies to turn about and march north to their bivouac.
The weary, hungry foot soldiers reached their wagon camp near dusk.
* * *
A crusty layer of new snow greeted the soldiers on the morning of the tenth as they rolled out to another day promising more subfreezing temperatures, in addition to a long march north and repeated crossings of the Tongue River.
In the last few predawn hours no groans were heard from the surgeons’ tent. Seamus figured Dr. Tilton had finally put enough laudanum down Private Bernard McCann to put the poor soldier completely out. For the last two nights McCann had clearly been in tremendous pain from the bullet wound that had smashed through his upper right femur, the heaviest bone in the body.
Merciful God, if you plan on taking the man, make it quick, Seamus had asked through the long hours of the past two nights when he could not sleep for listening to the soldier’s pain. Let him go in peace, I pray you.
“We’re eating with the general this morning,” Kelly announced as he came up out of the cold dawn to the sheltered place where Donegan had hunkered out of the wind between a couple of fallen cottonwood.
As Seamus finished wrapping his blankets inside the thick, waterproof canvas ducking of his bedroll, he asked, “What’s on the menu?”
“Same as yesterday. Same as the day before,” Kelly replied. “Same as we had the day before that.”
Standing, Seamus rubbed his stomach with one hand in mock delight. “You sure know how to get a man’s appetite up, don’t you?”
Then the grin washed from Kelly’s face. “You’re still serious about this morning, are you? Still set on leaving us to ride south?”
With a nod Seamus said, “I’ll light out after breakfast with Miles. Go see for myself how the country looks southeast from here.”
“Injun sign?”
Donegan got to his feet and tossed the bedroll atop his saddle and blanket, lying there at the bottom of the tree where the two rifles stood ready. He wagged his head in resignation, then sighed, “This army’s flushed ’em … again. No telling where they’re scattering now.”
Miles turned at the sound of their approach, along with most of those staff officers and a few of the scouts who had bedded down at a nearby fire. The colonel stepped away from his headquarters group, once again looking massive in his buffalo coat and dark, bushy beard.
“So, Kelly—have you convinced Mr. Donegan here to stay on with us?”
“I don’t think there was ever a chance of that, General,” Kelly replied, shrugging in apology.
“You could have a dangerous ride ahead of you,” Miles said, holding his hand out to welcome Donegan to the fire.
Seamus shook the colonel’s hand. “Not the first one of those I’ve had.”
Miles let go of Donegan’s hand and leaned back. “I get the feeling this won’t be the last.” Then the colonel turned to step between Kelly and Donegan, pounding a hand on each shoulder, nudging them toward the fire. “Bring these men some coffee, will you, Bailey? And let’s get some meat cooking. Mr. Donegan is going to need something to stick to his ribs, something to last out this first day.”
Donegan asked, “How will you fare on what you’ve got for rations, General?”
“We’ll make it back,” he answered stoically. “These men are made of the finest stuff…. There’s no better soldiers on the plains.”
Accepting a cup of coffee from Hobart Bailey, Seamus responded, “I’ve had the signal honor to fight alongside them, General.”
“It’s been an honor having you along for the march, Mr. Donegan. Perhaps you can join us again.”
Blowing the steam off the coffee’s surface, Seamus took a scalding sip, then said, “I’d like to tell you that hell itself would have to freeze over before I ever rode north to fight Injins with you in the winter … but twice now I’ve already seen how certain things can change my plans.”
“I mean to go back to the cantonment, straightaway. And while the men and stock recoup their strength, I’m planning to attempt some diplomacy with the warrior bands,” Miles explained as the slabs of pork were speared out of the blackened cast-iron skillets and flung onto the tiny oval tin halves of a soldier’s mess kit. “By now I must surely have convinced the hostile chiefs that they must surrender—or I will dog them until their villages are totally destroyed, until their people are completely destitute.”
“Diplomacy, General?” Kelly inquired around a mouthful of bacon. “You’re going to send emissaries of peace out to those warrior villages?”
Miles nodded, chewing a piece of meat, his eyes flicking at the swarthy half-breed. “Bruguier here is the man I’ll depend on to do it. With Sitting Bull roaming to the north of the Yellowstone, and Crazy Horse still at large here in the south, it stands to reason that I’m the one and only man who can bring either one—or maybe even both—to talk about surrendering and going into their agencies.”
“Bruguier will no doubt have his hands full,” Donegan said. Then he turned to the half-breed to ask, “You sure about this? Sure you can expect to find anything besides the end of a scalping knife waiting for you in those Lakota camps?”
“What are you asking him?” Miles demanded.
“Just that I’d be real surprised, General … surprised if Johnny Bruguier found himself welcome in those enemy villages after he came over to the army.”
Johnny Bruguier looked at Miles impassively, as if he expected the colonel to do his talking for him.
