Reap the Whirlwind (36 page)

“Crook will not see my face again until he personally apologizes to me before the entire command! He can fight the goddamned red savages by himself for all I care now, after this indignity!”

Having directed his soldiers not to light any mess fires, but finding that his order had no effect over the Crow, Shoshone, and even some of the civilians, Crook issued instructions for a double rotation of pickets to be posted on nearby hills and bluffs, as an attack by the hostiles might prove a very real possibility.

The anxious bivouac settled down to fitful sleep while the weary stock grazed on what grass had been left behind with the passing of the buffalo herd. It wasn’t long before the allies resumed their nocturnal celebrations, complete with drumming and war chants. Before turning in, the general sent Grouard and Cosgrove to the Crow and Shoshone
to ask that some scouts ride out under cover of darkness and feel their way into the country immediately ahead. Grouard returned to headquarters to tell Crook the Crow refused to go.

Tom Cosgrove did little better, but finally convinced a half dozen of his Snakes to join him on his probe into the night as the wind died and the sky clouded up, rank with the smell of summer moisture. Off to the west, the Irishman watched the distant flares of green phosphorescent heat lightning hurled into the night sky as he finished his late supper.

About the time Seamus turned in, it began to rain, nothing more really than a light drizzle that seemed to swirl mistily around a man, although there was no breeze to speak of. Still, all in all, the moisture came as a relief after the heat they had suffered that long day marching north from Goose Creek.

He was still awake when Finerty returned to camp and hurriedly climbed under his single blanket.

“This goddammed thing isn’t worth a piss at keeping a man warm in this rain!” the newsman grumbled as he spread his gum poncho over his blanket and flung his sopping hat on the far side of his damaged saddle.

“Lay still, Finerty,” Donegan growled. “You’re bound to get warmer.”

The correspondent sighed. And in a moment replied, “Sutorious says we’ll have a fight tomorrow. What do you think, Irishman?”

“Doesn’t take a side-show fortune-teller to sort it out, John. We’ve spotted the enemy hunting buffalo. The Sioux can’t be far now.”

“How much farther we got to march?”

“Not far.” Donegan sighed, suddenly thinking on Samantha. “Whether Crook pitches into their village, or they pitch into us—Sutorious is right. It’ll be tomorrow. I can smell a damned bloody fight in the air.”

17 June 1876

“R
out order!”

    One by one the company sergeants echoed the call back down the long column of cavalry. When the order reached the infantry, Captains Burt and Luhn were there to explain.

“Means we’re to march in close order!” Andy Burt bellowed into the predawn darkness.

Gerhard Luhn amplified Burt’s explanation. “Four feet from your mule’s head to the croup of the mule in front of you!”

“Croup?” cried a plaintive voice somewhere down the line that disappeared into the darkness. “What’s a croup?”

“A mule’s ass! At least the ass of the mule in front of you, soldier!”

Then even the infantry sergeants were taking up the call.

“Close it up! Close it up—rout order!”

Crook had stirred them from their blankets at three, so he could be marching by five. Tom Cosgrove’s handful of Shoshone scouts had returned after midnight in the cold drizzle to report finding a large wickiup, an old gum poncho within, as well as the ashes of a warm fire outside.
A temporary shelter likely used by the buffalo hunters they had bumped into earlier that day, Crook surmised.

Over a quick breakfast of coffee and hardtack, Donegan and Grouard had agreed: the column was being watched by the occupants of that wickiup, likely had been watched from the time the soldiers left Goose Creek, until they were driven off by Cosgrove’s Shoshone.

The first muddy streaks of dawn were staining the east as Crook’s camp came reluctantly to life. While the soldiers joked and talked around their tiny fires, it became painfully evident that those wild celebrations the Crow and Shoshone had shared the past few nights were now over. In the darkness of this fateful morning, Lone Star’s allies were instead stonily silent.

An hour behind Crook’s schedule, the infantry was the first to move out at six. They were soon followed by the cavalry, then the packers, with the Montana miners bringing up the rear. Marching down one of the Rosebud’s narrow forks, the scouts soon picked up the main channel of the South Fork of the Rosebud itself and led the soldiers on through the hills where the creek flowed almost due east before making a sharp turn back to the north. It wasn’t long before the rapidly moving cavalry had overtaken the infantry and assumed the lead that early morning. Where the Rosebud tumbled north as crooked as a corkscrew, the march slowed somewhat, the surrounding terrain growing more rugged with every mile. First the column was forced to hug the base of piney bluffs, a mile later forced to squeeze through a perilously narrow defile, unable to see more than fifty feet in any direction. Then suddenly the river valley would open, giving the troops a good view of a sizable piece of country ahead before another mile would drive them once again to skirting the base of another harrowing ridge, pinching George Crook’s command through the eye of another narrow canyon.

Just past seven-thirty Crook’s vanguard, both Mills’s and Noyes’s lead battalions, had come a full three miles north, marching down both sides of the narrow creek, finally to skirt an impressively high ridge that rose to their immediate right.

Off to his left Donegan spied the weaving course of the north fork as it came tumbling in to join the south fork to carve out the pebbled bed of the main channel. The widened Rosebud took another sharp turn to the east, flowing nearly another three miles through a valley that widened slightly about half a mile before it again abruptly turned back to the left at a place well-known on the northern plains as the “Big Bend of the Rosebud.” From here the famous creek flowed almost due north by the compass needle, straight for the Yellowstone.

Reaching a midpoint between these two bends in the creek, Crook decided to order a brief halt that would allow his scouts more exploration beyond the hills rising to his front. After Grouard found hostiles out hunting buffalo before noon yesterday, surely—the general reasoned—he must be getting close to the enemy village. Best to feel their way carefully north from here. Especially now that one of the Crow had reported seeing earlier this morning what he took to be Sioux herding some ponies ahead of the column on a path that would take them into the hills to the north.

Where everyone knew the enemy villages would be found. If not today, then they would reach them tomorrow. And attack the following dawn.

Go carefully from here on out, Crook had to reason. He had already pushed his expedition some five miles through very rugged country this morning. And it was getting close to eight A.M. Besides, the general had to notice that the stock hadn’t recovered from the wear and strain suffered in yesterday’s thirty-five-mile march.

Dispatching some two dozen Crow scouts, along with a lone Shoshone warrior named Limpy, to push into the hills to the north, looking over the ground for more signs of the enemy camps, Crook ordered his cavalry to dismount there in the gently sloping bottomland, allowing them to loosen the cinches on their saddles and relax. Then he dispersed some pickets to take up position on the hills a few hundred yards to the north of the stream where the rest of the troops went into temporary bivouac.

Anson Mills rode by Donegan, nodded, then stopped at Crook’s impromptu headquarters, where the general stood
shuffling a deck of worn cards as he peered at the country immediately in front of their line of march. There by a spring that fed the Rosebud, Crook finally became aware of the captain and looked up at the mounted Mills as if discomfited by this interruption to his deepest thoughts.

Saluting, the cavalry officer asked, “Permission to make coffee, General?”

Crook looked away again, absently shuffling the cards as he continued to gaze to the north, then put a flat hand up to shade his eyes. He turned back to Mills. “Permission granted.” Watching the captain rein about and move back downstream to his company, the general hollered for one of his aides. “Nickerson—pass the word. The command can unsaddle and put the stock out to graze. We might well be here awhile waiting for those scouts.”

It was eight A.M.

Not waiting for the general’s orders, many of the old files among the cavalry and infantry had already scurried down to the willow and alder lining the creek, scrounging the grass and reeds for kindling to start their small fires. Kettles were dipped in the clear, rushing waters. Lucifers were struck and coffee rations combined by the messes gathering around each fire in small knots. After removing the saddles from their mounts and picketing their horses and mules, soldiers and civilians alike stretched out in the grass, lounging in the sunshine, eager to enjoy the relaxation in what was turning out to be one of the most beautiful days of the campaign.

Noyes’s lead battalion of five companies of the Second Cavalry relaxed on the north side of the stream. To the west of them sat Van Vliet’s two companies from the Third. The entire “Mule Brigade,” all five companies of mounted infantry, along with Tom Moore’s packers, were west of them, including most of the Crow and Shoshone, who preened their ponies, freshened their war paint, and watchfully eyed the surrounding hills.

On the south side of the Rosebud, across from Noyes’s troops, lounged Mills’s battalion of four companies of the Third Cavalry. Immediately west of Mills sat Guy Henry’s four companies of the Third.

It had taken some time for the last of the expedition to reach the valley after Crook, who rode at the head of the column, ordered his halt. By the time they were all making coffee, the entire command stretched for more than a mile along the clear, sluggish creek.

Finerty strode up pulling a pad and pencil from the pocket of his mackinaw and plopped nearby. “By mercy, Irishman—I just remembered that it’s the anniversary of Bunker Hill.”

“What’s this Bunker’s Hill?”

“
Bunker
Hill,” John Bourke corrected as he squatted among the rest at Donegan’s fire. “The day of a great battle the colonials had with the British.”

“Colonials? In the Revolution, eh?”

Finerty nodded, turning to Reuben Davenport. “An anniversary to celebrate, right, Davenport? When we began in earnest to throw bloody King George out!”

“Here’s to freedom!” Bob Strahorn echoed, then peered at Donegan suspiciously. “What’s with you, Seamus? Don’t care to salute this day of freedom?”

With a shrug Donegan replied, “Not sure how I feel. Seems like we’ve got no right.”

“Got no right?” demanded Finerty in that grating voice of his. “Got no right to celebrate freedom?”

“That’s what I’m saying, newsman,” Seamus growled as he clambered to his feet. “Here you are celebrating
freedom
when this army is about to take away what these hostiles love most:
their
freedom.”

Rising in a whirl, Donegan stomped away, pounding the grass and dust from his canvas britches with his gloves, his eyes turning west, back up the valley until he spotted the half-breeds. Better, perhaps, for him to have his coffee and this stretch among those men. Strange, too, to think on it now as he moved through the grazing horses and mules, skirted the tiny knots of civilian and soldiers clustered at their smoky fires—he realized he was becoming less and less used to the company of those who called themselves civilized … more and more comfortable in the company of achingly honest, unadorned, unpretentious, and straightforward men of these high plains. Men
who could not fail to make the distinction between the right and the wrong in a course of action.

The day was too perfect, the air too clean and the sky too bright, pristine of the merest hint of clouds, for Seamus to allow any man to ruin it for him.

“I knew the one called Clifford,” Frank Grouard was saying to Big Bat as the Irishman came up to the fire where the half-breeds sat with a handful of the miners. “Met him of a time, back when I was hauling up to Fort Hawley.”

“He’s a scout for some time now,” Pourier went on with his story as Seamus settled among them. “Mostly been around the wild tribes. You ever run onto him while you was with them up here, Frank?”

“Nope, not while I was with Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse.”

“Got him a Lakota squaw. Lived with one band or another for some winters now. Anyways, I heard him say that if it ever come down to a big war between the white man and the Sioux, the warrior bands know of some country up hereabouts where they could go and take refuge and never be pulled out. Never get beaten.”

“Country like that? Where?” Louie Reshaw asked, doubtful and disdainful.

Bat replied, “Hank Clifford said it was on the Rosebud. Yonder to the north somewheres. Deep canyons and high cliffs, rough country where the Lakota say they can hold off three or four times their number in soldiers.”