Reap the Whirlwind (42 page)

“Not us,” Alexander Chambers retorted, whirling on the lieutenant. “Not this officer corps, Mr. Bourke!” He flung his arm out, pointing up the ridge to the solitary figure slump-shouldered atop his black horse. “Your Brigadier General George Crook—that’s who’s gone and got our bangers caught on a rock!”

John shut up, more than a little concerned—downright scared with the way the enemy swarmed over the pickets and those two hundred Crow and Shoshone who were barely holding their first and only line of defense against a total massacre for the moment.

“Caught with our pants down,” grumbled Thomas B. Dewees. “Down around our ankles!”

Though Bourke would never confess it to another soul, from the look he had seen cross Crook’s normally impassive face as the general leapt into the saddle to tear off up the slope, the old man was more than a little worried himself.

Not that Crook could be scared of the Sioux. Not really
scared of having a tough fight of it either. More likely, John figured, the general suffered a numbing dread that he would relive the one great mistake, the one horror of his military career: Cedar Creek—a dozen years before—when Phil Sheridan himself had to come pull Crook’s hash out of the fire after Jubal Early slipped in through his lines during the Shenandoah campaign.

And now, by God, Crazy Horse had gone and done the same damned thing!

In that vacuum caused by Crook’s absence, much to Bourke’s dismay, Captain Azor Nickerson swaggered about, shoulder to shoulder with Chambers and Evans to begin barking orders, running here, then there, among the commands for those first few minutes that stretched into half an hour. When Colonel Royall finally rode up to find out why he hadn’t received instructions from Crook and immediately wrenched control of things from Nickerson’s novice paw, John felt nothing short of relief.

Sending Nickerson off in one direction and Major Andrew Evans in another to mobilize the cavalry, Royall calmly, coolly began to issue orders designed to wrest victory from what clearly had the appearance of the jaws of defeat.

The first matter was to dispatch Van Vliet’s battalion to take the high bluffs south of their position on the far side of the creek—to get soldiers there before the warriors could sweep across the Rosebud and secure that high ground. Van Vliet was to hold that position pending further instructions.

Gazing up the slope to the flat top of those bluffs, Bourke again realized that Van Vliet had the most perfect and commanding view of the battle just then beginning: his very own “orchestra seat.” Still, here in the thick of it was exactly where John wanted to be, and nowhere else.

Just how long it would take these men beside the Rosebud to get saddled and formed up to go on the defensive, never mind making a counterattack, Bourke had despaired, sensing a darkness seep into his jubilant mood as each long and noisy, frantic minute passed, waiting for his general while the allies struggled to hold the enemy at bay.

And he found himself praying this would not be the
Powder River all over again: the Indians taking the heights, pinning the troops down below, fighting so fiercely that the soldiers were driven off, abandoning some of their dead and wounded.

John cursed the evil of that despair, scolding himself sharply for allowing the return of those frightening memories. This was, after all, a different fight. And for God’s sake—George Crook himself was here!

To the shouts and cheering of many, the general was suddenly back among them.

“These red savages wouldn’t be attacking us if we weren’t within striking distance of the villages, men!” Crook bellowed, his voice like strikes of cold iron above the bedlam. “They came upon us from the north. Because of that I divine they mean to delay us, to cover the retreat of their village.”

In a matter of seconds he spat his orders like a Gatling gun. Most important, he dispatched Chambers to push ahead to the base of the slope with his infantry in support of the Crow and Shoshone who were having a hot and noisy time of it. The foot soldiers were the first to be ready, the first to move out.

Immediately Companies G and H of the Ninth Infantry under Captains Thomas B. Burrowes and Andrew Burt hurried forward to secure the ridges just north of the spring where minutes before Bourke had been playing whist with Crook and Nickerson. At the same time, the remaining three companies of infantry, D and F of the Fourth under the command of Captains Avery B. Cain and Gerhard Luhn, as well as Company C of the Ninth Infantry, with Captain Samuel Munson in the lead, moved north in the same general direction, throwing out an active skirmish line. Traipsing along on their far left flank came the ragged and undisciplined civilians—packers and miners—all hurrying forward in the shadow of the infantry like hangers-on, carrying their big-bore weapons.

“Nickerson, you’ll go with the infantry,” Crook shouted above the noise and confusion.

“General?” Nickerson squeaked with clear disappointment.

“Go with the goddamned infantry!” Crook snapped. “If I need something—I’ll send for you.”

The wounding crossed the older man’s face. “Very well … General.”

Nickerson turned on his heel to scurry off to join Captain Luhn’s F Company. After twenty yards he glanced back over his shoulder at Bourke, plainly glaring his dark disapproval in not being left behind with Crook, who had ordered Captain Henry E. Noyes and his dismounted cavalry up to augment Chambers’s infantry, moving the dismounted troopers off to act as skirmishers along Cain’s right.

Wheeling about, the general dispatched Captain Guy Henry off to the left to hold a low rise south of the Rosebud. At that very moment the three companies of able skirmishers in Captain Cain’s battalion were firing by volleys into the onrushing warriors swarming against the allies in their front: feathered bonnets streaming and faces painted, dust and clods and tufts of the new grass thrown up by hundreds of hooves along the brow of the slope, as first one squad, then another and another, dropped to a knee, aimed, and fired, then reloaded while another squad moved forward and halted, knelt and fired, maintaining the pressure on the noisy hostiles, who were struggling in a seesaw duel against the Crow and Shoshone.

Finding they could not easily penetrate the stiff resistance of the allies, the hostiles flowed to their left for a few moments, there to encounter resistance not only from Noyes’s skirmishers, but also from the new pressure of Anson Mills’s troopers inching up toward the gap after securing that first ridge.

Crook’s entire battle front was stretching now, thinning to something more than a mile across the entire face of that pine-studded ridge beside the Rosebud.

By damn, Bourke cheered himself, we just might have this thing wrapped up before any man can work up a sweat!

Their long-distance battle raged back and forth with little damage done to either side while Mills brought his dismounted cavalry across the rise of the first ridge to the
base of the second. Bourke watched Mills push on, his skirmishers crawling toward ever-higher ground—which left the gap behind them. Unprotected.

The warriors must have seen the very same thing as opportunity dropped right in their laps. Once more the gap—that funnel that poured into the creek bottom where the soldiers had been resting—was open and uncontested.

Crook realized it almost as quickly as did his enemy.

“Captain Dewees!” he cried, summoning the Second Cavalry officer to his side. “Take your A Company forward as dismounted skirmishers and bring along G and H of the Ninth. Inform Captains Burrowes and Burt that you’re taking all three companies east … over there.” The general was pointing.

“That gap, sir?” Dewees asked, nodding.

“Exactly. Seal that son of a bitch off for good, and sit on it until you receive further orders. Do not leave your post without my personal instructions.”

Dewees saluted, his back snapping into a rigid shaft. “Understood, General.”

Bourke turned away for a moment, sensing—more than really hearing—the growing volume of gunfire coming from the south. On those tallest of heights overlooking the valley of the Rosebud, Van Vliet’s men were having a lively time as the warriors repeatedly attempted to overwhelm the two cavalry companies. And now, with Dewees going east and Henry’s cavalry riding west, that long mile of front was stretching even more.

In the time it took to get the battalions mounted and moving out from headquarters, Crook’s battle with Crazy Horse had strung itself thin as a cat-gut fiddle string along a front nearly three miles wide.

At first Wooden Leg, like others, thought the scouts for the soldiers were Snakes and Pawnee. It wasn’t until the Shahiyena were in the thick of it, riding around, among, and through the enemy warriors, that he and the others discovered they were not fighting the Scalped Head Pawnee. Instead, these were People of the Raven. The ones the white man called the Crow.

For as long as it would take a man to eat his breakfast and smoke his pipe, Wooden Leg had hung close to the Lakota, who fought the Snakes and Raven people up and down the rugged slope while the first of the blue walk-a-heaps marched forward and finally brought their far-shooting rifles into play.

He had a soldier gun, captured in the Sore-Eye Moon battle on the Powder River—but the barrel on his was not as long as the barrels on the guns carried by these soldiers hurrying up from the meadow below the ridge. During that early part of the fight, Wooden Leg leveled his soldier rifle at one of the enemy’s scouts, killing a Snake who wore a spotted war bonnet. He did not try for the bonnet and scalp: the enemy’s body lay too close to those walk-a-heap guns.

Within minutes of the arrival of those far-shooting soldiers, most of the Shahiyena and many of the-Lakota were forced to withdraw from the ridgetop. As they dropped back, they rode off in a wide circuit that took them east toward the gap between two of the tall bluffs.

“This will take us right down to the creek,” war chief Little Wolf cheered them just before making their charge. “We will ride down upon the soldiers and attack them from behind!”

But about the same time as those warriors were beginning to burst through the gap, the soldiers were climbing up from the creek bottom, many of their big American horses stumbling, spilling on the rough terrain, pitching riders in their colorful, noisy charge. Once the soldiers were stopped, it came down to making bravery runs—racing back and forth in front of the soldiers on their sprinting ponies. Although both sides shot at one another without much effect, Wooden Leg was most proud that the Shahiyena and Lakota were courageous and wild enough to ride close to the enemy, dropping to the far side of their ponies until the last moment. And with each retreat after such a bravery run, many of the younger men would suddenly spring back into full view of the enemy and bare their bottoms.

It was the worst of taunts to make before any adversary,
white or red. To expose such a defenseless part of one’s body—as if to say those soldiers could not even hit that broad, brown target. As each subsequent wave of warriors circled back toward the second ridge rising beside from the gap, the others would cheer and the laughter would be great. For now the battle seemed like such great fun. Even Buffalo Calf Road Woman, who had come from the village with her husband, Black Coyote, and her brother, Chief Comes in Sight, rode in among the soldiers, taunting them with her bare buttocks, then retreated to laugh with the rest of them.

Such a good day—only ponies had gone down so far.

Then the soldiers regrouped for a charge on that second ridge. A great cry arose above the warriors, and again they rushed the pony soldiers. In this furious countercharge the Shahiyena and Lakota forced the white men to dismount and send their big horses to safety behind them. As they did, a few brave warriors closed in and began making coup, striking where they could, clubbing soldiers as they dropped from their saddles.

Even Wooden Leg emerged out of the dust and gun-smoke, swinging his bow to come between a soldier and his big gray horse, striking the white man across the shoulders. The young warrior rode off in triumph, knowing he had dented the shiny brass horn the soldier carried behind his left arm.

During these fierce moments among the soldiers and their mounts, one of the enemy’s horses became frightened and ran away with its rider, carrying the soldier right toward the Shahiyena and Lakota lines. As much as he tried to rip back on the reins, the horse continued on, fighting the bit, its head turned nearly backward as the scared, bareheaded soldier plummeted toward certain death. As it galloped ever closer, one of the warriors shot the horse in its chest. Gradually the animal slowed its race as it neared the Shahiyena where the warriors swarmed out to pull the soldier from the horse and club him, a dozen or more racing in, each to count coup and stab the white man.

Hot was their blood that day.

Dismounted, the soldiers dug in behind the rocks and
humps and coulees scattered across that rough ground. And now the battle changed. What had been fun quickly turned grim. What had been reason for laughter now elicited cries of despair and anger as they all watched friends fall, some attempting to crawl away, out of range of the soldier guns. As the sun climbed in the sky, more and more ponies lay dead and dying on the ground. From time to time one of the Shahiyena rode in to rescue another warrior hurled from his pony, perhaps a friend who lay wounded in the grass. They dared not leave a single body on that battlefield, knowing how the Snakes and Raven People would mutilate their enemies.

Chief Comes in Sight was one of those Wooden Leg saw fall.

On horseback Chief Comes in Sight and White Elk had passed one another dangerously close to the soldiers twice before, and now they began another death-defying race before the enemy guns—White Elk riding in from the east and Chief Comes in Sight from the west nearest the gap. Just after they had passed, taunting the soldiers, a bullet struck Chief Comes in Sight’s pony. The animal started down in a blur, hurling its rider over its neck as it fell, tumbling in a heap—less than four arrow flights away from the enemy’s scouts. Bullets immediately began to fall around the dazed warrior, kicking up tiny spouts of dust, splattering leadenly against the face of the bluffs behind him.