Reap the Whirlwind (47 page)

Charging straight toward a weak place in Captain Avery Cain’s skirmish line, the hostiles clearly intended to ride right on over the infantry and tumble the foot soldiers down into the creek bottom, fragmenting Crook’s troops even further. In a fury the Sioux plunged past the miners and packers back in the rocks, toward the infantry down the slope, clearly headed for the boggy flats near the Rosebud.

Riding with Cosgrove’s Shoshone, Bourke joined the Snakes who poured into the breech along that left flank at the absolute last moment—crashing right into the enemy’s front lines, pony ramming pony, war club swung against coup stick, muscle straining against muscle, the air filled with screeches and war cries as the Crows came up with Randall, throwing their weight into the snarling countercharge.

Coming under sniping fire from the enemy last March in the Powder River fight, even fighting Apache down in Arizona Territory—none of that had begun to prepare John Bourke for the ferocity of the fighting as the outnumbered Crow and Shoshone hurled themselves into the naked Sioux horsemen. Across a front of some two hundred yards of grassy ridgetop the antagonists clashed, many of them dismounting, others spilled in that first noisy collision, on their feet now to fire into the opposing ranks, while still more of Crazy Horse’s cavalry came up from the rear, continued racing toward, then in and among, the enemy, dropping to the far sides of their ponies.

John decided this had to be the pit of hell itself: not only the shrieks and cries of the men—red-skinned all—but the wails of the ponies struck by bullets as well. Above the clanging of metal and wood, bone and iron, rose the occasional racket and rattle of gunfire. Still, what struck the most fear in him in those few frightening minutes was the fact that the majority of the fighting was done close
enough to see your enemy’s eyes, close enough to smell his sweat.

Closer than John Bourke had ever been to a hostile warrior.

Then Randall had his Crow flowing to the left flank—pushing, jabbing, breaking through the Sioux charge with a renewed countercharge of their own.

Bourke turned and waved, rallying the Shoshone with Cosgrove, leading them toward the right flank of the Sioux, along the edge of a trough immediately to the southwest of the conical hill. The hostiles fell back, then turned to flee. But in the space of a few heartbeats the enemy suddenly wheeled and flung themselves back at the outnumbered Shoshone.

At that moment Bourke realized he had been joined by a handful of soldiers who were in that charge with the allies. Third Cavalry bugler Elmer A. Snow from Anson Mills’s own M Company spurred his mount into the fray.

“Lieutenant!” Snow hollered, coming alongside.

“Snow!”

“General says for you to get your b—,” but the trumpeter quickly swallowed down the epithet. “General Crook says for me to tell you that you got no business charging in with our Injun scouts, sir.”

“Too late now, Private!” he answered, flicking a look back down the far slope to where Crook likely was watching the whole clash of red man against red man. “What the hell are you doing at headquarters anyway? You’re Mills’s bugler!”

Snow gulped. “General’s ’bout ready to send Colonel Mills’s battalion downriver to attack the village.”

“Damned right!” John cheered. “Let’s get these Sioux pushed back, bugler—then we’ll go back to headquarters together and march on the village!”

With a grim attempt at a grin, the trumpeter nodded. “Y-yes, sir.”

How quickly the dust rose on the warming air, stinging Bourke’s eyes, burning his throat as they rode in to push back the Sioux. The white men and the allies were all yelling orders, and John wondered just who the hell was really listening. Yet all that was important for the moment was
that the Snakes around him were flinging themselves into the veils of dust kicked up on every side by skidding, sliding, slashing pony hooves.

Just how the allies knew who was the enemy, Bourke did not guess. It was bedlam. To him every last one of these Indians looked the same. Despite the red arm bands given out to the friendlies, the lieutenant found it hard to make them out in the billowing clouds of dust, in the heated fury and the adrenaline surging through his veins, the mind-numbing confusion and color-graying blur of the hand-to-hand skirmish. Nigh onto impossible to tell Crow from Sioux, Shoshone from Cheyenne.

So sudden was the allies’ charge, so fierce was their fighting, that the Shoshone were once more able to turn the Sioux around, even though they found themselves pitted against odds of two or three to one. With mighty cheers and the cries of their victorious blood songs, the Snakes harassed the rear guard of the retreating Sioux as the hostiles fled on past the conical hill now secured by the allies. On, on to the west Crazy Horse’s warriors were forced to retreat toward the next high ground, that farthest point reached earlier by Captain William Andrews’s I Company with Royall’s battalion before the colonel had ordered Andrews to retreat and rejoin his command.

Ever on Bourke and Snow and the Shoshone pushed, firing into the backs of the distant and retreating enemy, until the lieutenant reached that high point far west of the conical hill. Here he could suddenly look down on the enemy milling about on the broad slopes to the northwest, and was instantly impressed with their numbers. There was no real confusion among them, for to the lieutenant they seemed to re-form for another countercharge. With the noise of the battle quieting some as the hostiles retreated, Bourke had time now to sense the pounding of his own heart.

What exhilaration from the chase! he thought. To have the enemy on the run at last!

But as he turned about in the saddle there on the high ground, the young lieutenant was shocked to find himself with but bugler Snow and a half dozen of the bravest of the Shoshone.

They had outrun their support. Indeed, as he watched, the rest of the allies were already returning to Crook’s skirmish lines more than a thousand yards away, having accomplished their task of repulsing the Sioux charge. His zeal had once more landed John Bourke in the fire.

He wheeled about again, looking back at the hostiles—this time the hair stood on the back of his neck. Along the slope to the northwest where the hundreds had been chased, those uncounted Sioux now cried out as one, kicking their war ponies into motion. They had spotted their outnumbered quarry.

Adding to the danger, more enemy horsemen suddenly appeared to his immediate left, likely having wheeled away from Royall’s right flank. In but a matter of heartbeats those fifty or more screaming Sioux would threaten to cut them off from ever reaching Crook’s lines.

On nothing more than instinct the two soldiers and the handful of Shoshone put their carbines to work until the Springfields were emptied and the onrushing enemy was no more than thirty yards off, still coming at a full gallop.

“We’re going to have to run for it!” Bourke shouted, waving, spurring his mount savagely as he and Snow took off among the Snakes.

Crouching low in the saddle, John hadn’t covered much ground when he heard the familiar sound of lead smashing through bone.

Snow groaned audibly.

Turning, the lieutenant found the bugler’s face gone white, his reins fallen, flapping in the wind. Hauling back on his own reins, Bourke wheeled his horse alongside the bugler’s, finding that a Sioux bullet had smashed through both of Snow’s elbows at the moment they set off. Now unable to hold his reins, Snow draped across the withers, weaving faintly, desperately holding on to consciousness and clutching his mount the best he could—when suddenly Bourke slapped the animal’s rump, flogging it again and again and again, driving it ahead of him until they crossed the infantry skirmish line with the Sioux screeching like unleashed demons on their tails.

Only when Andrew Burt’s boys opened with a devastating fire from their Long Toms did those hostiles turn aside
and beat their own retreat, a spare few yards from the heels of those two soldiers’ horses. Grabbing Snow’s reins just short of the bridle, Bourke finally brought both animals skidding to a halt near headquarters.

“You there! Get him down!” barked the lieutenant at some of the foot soldiers. “You—get me a surgeon! Get a surgeon up here on the double!”

Then Bourke was crouching over Snow, the young bugler’s face grown even pastier, a color that reminded John of the dough rising in his mother’s bread pans back home. Quickly his nervous fingers slipped some of the buttons from their holes on the front of Snow’s tunic.

Then he whispered down to the trumpeter, “We got a surgeon coming, soldier.”

The private’s eyes fluttered closed as he groaned, then slowly opened once more. He tried out a brave smile.

Bourke turned to gaze up at the crowd of infantry gathering around him. Through their crush he saw Crook coming on foot at a lope along the side of the hill.

“Is that goddamned surgeon coming?” John bellowed.

He tore his folding knife out of his pants pocket and began to slash open the bugler’s right sleeve. Soggy, bloodied wool always made for a hell of a mess.

“That was some ride,” Snow murmured softly. “Wasn’t it, Lieutenant?”

Tearing his eyes off the shattered elbow, purplish bone protruding from the oozing wound, Bourke looked down into the bugler’s green eyes, trying his very best to grin. “A fine, fine charge you made, Private. Damn—but you’re right. That was a fine, fine ride indeed. A finer one I’ve never seen!”

In such fierce fighting, with bullets flying this way and that, Plenty Coups was almost glad the soldiers with Lone Star did not shoot from behind their rock barricades.

They would not be able to tell who was good Indian. Who was enemy.

Already one of his childhood friends was seriously wounded, shot by the Lakota while he repeatedly made his victory runs back and forth in front of the enemy positions near the conical hill.

But Bull Snake was far from being out of the fight. After he was shot through the thigh, just above the knee, the Crow warrior dragged himself from the carcass of his dead pony to a nearby tree, where he propped himself up to watch the ongoing battle. There he sat, yelling encouragement to his fellow Apsaalooke warriors as if it did not matter that his leg was irreparably shattered, did not matter that he was slowly bleeding to death.

It was such bravery that Plenty Coups vowed long to remember.

He himself had lost his pony a few minutes ago, as the Lakota fell back into the ravine, then suddenly wheeled about to countercharge the Crow and Shoshone. A bullet struck the animal just behind Plenty Coups’s thigh. After nothing more than a twitch, the pony began to ease down, staggering to its front legs before it collapsed completely. Then, by thrashing with its forelegs, the animal attempted to rise.

He knew its back was broken. Shattered by a Lakota bullet.

He had listened while the noise of the enemy’s war cries grew as they swarmed back onto Randall’s Crow. For those few warriors still out front, there was barely enough time for retreat. Among the rocks at the edge of the bluff, Plenty Coups spied a small hole and began sprinting for it. Bullets snarled around his flying feet, slapped the rimrock where he dived for protection. In that hole he stayed as the Crow and Shoshone swept back down on the Sioux in ferocious hand-to-hand fighting, driving them back out of the ravine.

When he finally emerged, he found ponies and soldier horses scattered across the battlefield, some standing here and there while dead and wounded animals littered the rolling terrain where Indian had struggled against Indian. As Plenty Coups hurried to catch up one of the abandoned animals, the Sioux again put renewed pressure on the allies, converging from the high ground to the west. Scout chief Randall ordered a retreat, bringing his warriors with him, sweeping past Plenty Coups, running for the soldier lines.

As the high slope cleared in the wake of his tribesmen, for the first time Plenty Coups saw the lone soldier on foot
—left behind as the others retreated. Now the white man turned, finding himself alone as the Sioux began to rush forward in increasing numbers above the soldier on the grassy slope.

Halting near Plenty Coups, Randall whirled, realizing he had one last-soldier to extricate from danger. “Von Moll!” he bellowed like a wounded bull. “Get out of there, Sergeant—now!”

John Von Moll took off on a dead run.

Sweeping in suddenly from behind a nearby rise, the enemy horsemen enveloped the lone soldier as surely as the fading echo of the scout chief’s words was swallowed up by the Sioux cries of victory. Plenty Coups turned, ready to leap into the saddle at the same moment he was rocked by the thunderous approach of pounding hooves.

Like the darting flight of a wasp, the lone horseman shot past Plenty Coups.

It was Humpy, one of the bravest of the Apsaalooke warriors, lashing his little pony with that elk-handled quirt, riding straight for that knot of Sioux that had completely encircled the lone soldier, who held them momentarily at bay with his carbine.

Through the enemy ring Humpy dashed, and in that moment of confusion reached the sergeant as Von Moll fired his last cartridge at his screeching tormentors. Frantically throwing open the trapdoor breech on his Springfield to extract the empty cartridge, the soldier discovered he had no ammunition left.

Watching Humpy’s gallant rescue, scout chief Randall shouted, “C’mon! Now’s our chance!” as he motioned the Crow back toward the stranded sergeant.

Patting the back of his war pony, Humpy held a hand down to the soldier, who tried to leap aboard.

By now the scattered Sioux had regrouped and were closing in again. Von Moll flung aside the dead weight of his carbine and made it up on the pony’s flanks, looping his long arms around the small Crow warrior’s chest as Humpy sawed the animal’s head about in a tight circle, kicking it in the ribs as he brought it around.

While the war pony struggled back toward the Crow lines with its burden, soldier chief Randall ordered his Apsaalooke
warriors to retreat, following the Snakes who were falling back in face of the renewed Lakota offensive.

The enemy had indeed begun to press hard once more, pushing east across the open ground as the allies fell back. It filled Plenty Coups with regret to look behind him and see the terrain they were now forced to give up, thereby letting the enemy regain the slopes of that conical hill once more.