Reap the Whirlwind (50 page)

“Yes.” He took the damp scalp from the narrow thong
around his waist where he had hung it. Long black hair, tied with a few small significant ornaments, the flesh a dark, angry red as the blood dried in the hot summer wind.

In the beginning only the white man’s scouts came out to fight against the Shahiyena and Lakota. Finally the white soldiers came themselves. Eventually, at that most crucial point in the battle, the Raven People and Snakes again threw themselves into the bloodiest fighting—pony to pony and hand to hand. Face to face against ancient enemies.

Wooden Leg still had the smells in his nostrils: the stink of a pony’s riven entrails as they spilled across the dusty ground; the fetid odor of the Snake’s sweat-slicked body as he and Wooden Leg grappled at the bottom of the ravine gorged with dust and powdersmoke and the noise of men dying. Then the Snakes and Raven People and four white men had turned and hastily retreated. The Lakota joined the Shahiyena in flowing back upon the fleeing enemy. They counted many coup on that chase near the tall, round hill.

With the soldiers’ scouts chased off again, they returned to the fight with the soldiers far to the west.

Like a cradleboard swinging from a tree limb on a gentle spring breeze, this fight in the west flowed first one way, then the other. All along the slope the soldiers lay huddled where they could take cover, strung out in a thin line. A few of the blue-clad men moved among the others on horseback. It was those daring soldier chiefs that Wooden Leg and Goose Feather tried hardest to hit. The courageous ones who shouted orders to the others as they rode back and forth, back and forth among their men. Surely, to have the scalp of so brave a soldier chief would be a great thing, Wooden Leg thought.

“Look!” White Shield yelled nearby, pointing as he arose behind a rock, exposing the top half of his body to the soldier guns.

For the most part the soldier guns did not fire in his direction. Amazed, Wooden Leg and the others stared at the white men. Then he knew why.

Someone announced, “They are moving their horses!”

“I want a horse!” cried another.

“Don’t let them take the horses away! They belong to us!”

The young men called back and forth to one another as they waited those precious heartbeats—perhaps trying to sort out what it was the soldiers were doing for certain. Then it became as clear as mountain runoff.

“They are retreating!” Brass Cartridge bellowed, waving his arm in the air, in his hand the soldier rifle he had taken from one of the Raven People scouts he had killed early that morning.

“Quickly now! After the soldiers!”

Behind them and on all sides of the Shahiyena came the foreign Lakota tongue, a smattering of which Wooden Leg understood, having spent time off and on among the Hunkpatila Oglalla, known as the Crazy Horse people.

They were among the Shahiyena now, hurrying forward as the long line of soldiers inched backward across the open, rugged ground. Sometimes the white men knelt and fired back at the warriors. But they always clambered to their feet and backed up a little farther until they stopped and wheeled and fired their guns again, each muzzle making a little puff in the hot air of this midday. Firing repeatedly until a murky gray cloud hung just over the white men, staining the summer blue of the wide domed sky here on this ridgetop.

As the Shahiyena and the Lakota swept down on the soldiers from three sides, it was as if the warriors had the white men spewing out between the jaws of a great, menacing beast. And nothing so fired the heart of a fighting man as the sight of his enemy fleeing in the opposite direction. Everywhere the air filled not only with gunfire—but also with exultant shouts of victory.

“Do not let them get back to the others!”

Recognizing the voice, Wooden Leg whirled about, finding the unadorned Oglalla war chief reining up among them on his pony, waving his repeater in the air.

“Keep them from reaching that hilltop!” Crazy Horse shouted.

Instantly a wide throng of warriors swept sharply to the east to cut off the intended path of retreat. Going with
them, Wooden Leg fired and ran, fired and ran some more. Slowly, slowly it was working. The white man’s retreat was grinding to a halt. He could even see the horses and their struggling holders now at the center of that tightening bunch of soldiers milling about near the southern end of the ridge. They weren’t moving near as fast as they had been. Come grinding to a halt now.

Having met with the stiff, fierce, bloody resistance of the Lakota and Shahiyena warriors Crazy Horse threw squarely into the path of their retreat.

The white men were surrounded.

“
G
ood God, Colonel Mills—but you’ve covered some ground!” Azor Nickerson exclaimed, his voice raspy as his horse splashed out of the Rosebud, having crossed the creek to reach the battalion commander charged with attacking the village of Crazy Horse.

“At least five miles, Captain,” Anson Mills replied peevishly. He quickly eyed the orderly dismounting beside Crook’s aide-de-camp, a youngster rubbing his buttocks and thighs. “What the hell are you come to tell me?”

“The general’s compliments—”

“What the hell word do you bring? More companies? Is Crook in my rear as he promised?”

Nickerson swallowed, his brow knitting with worry. “No, Colonel. Crook sent me to check your advance.”

“Check? Check my goddamned advance?”

“Don’t listen to him, Colonel,” Henry Noyes suggested acidly.

There arose a murmuring of assent to that.

For the moment Mills ignored them. He glared at the soldier dressed in showy buckskins. “Turn back, Captain Nickerson? Are you absolutely certain that’s what you and your orderly galloped five miles, alone through country crawling with Indian horsemen, to tell me?”

“Yes,” Nickerson replied, wiping the back of a hand across his parched lips.

“Why, pray tell?”

“As soon as your battalion detached itself, the enemy resumed its attacks on the middle of the line—”

“Where Crook is fighting?”

Nickerson nodded. “Yes. But the greatest strength has been thrown against Royall. The colonel’s getting cut up something bad. He and Henry and Vroom—all severely pressured and taking great casualties. That’s convinced the general that Crazy Horse had thrown his reserves into the fight on Royall’s front.”

“Reserves? Crazy Horse has reserves?”

“Yes—with every minute there seems to be more and more Indians riding back and forth across our front. If he leaves to come reinforce your rear, the general doesn’t think he can protect his wounded much longer with what forces he has to leave behind.”

“The situation has changed that much since we left?” Mills asked.

“Yes,” Nickerson replied. “Crook says he won’t be able to follow you, to support you with the rest of the command. Right now—it’s all he can do to hold the enemy at bay. Therefore, the general respectfully countermands his previous order to you and requests that you come reinforce his weakening front.”

“Royall’s?”

With a shrug Nickerson replied, “Crook said nothing about going to Royall’s aid. The general wants you to come reinforce his position at the middle of the ridge.”

“But the village!” Mills began to protest. “We almost have it. I’m certain we can hold it—even without Crook’s reinforcement.”

Nickerson stiffened. “I have clearly stated the general’s orders, Captain. Are you in need of clarification?”

“I am not in need of clarification, Captain Nickerson!” Mills grumbled, finding himself perched at the top of the horns of a dilemma.

“We can’t go back, Captain!” Sutorious growled. “We got the goddamned village in our reach!”

“To hell with Crook’s orders!” Dewees echoed.

Rawolle argued, “But the savages have an ambush laid for us up there!”

“To hell with you! And Nickerson too!” Elijah Wells bellowed. “I say let’s march on the Crazy Horse camp!”

“I can smell that village—it’s so damned close!” agreed
Swigert. “Don’t go back when we can end this war right now!”

“Shut up! All of you!” Mills snapped, his eyes lidded, breath coming quick, his heart already climbing to his throat.

This was exactly the sort of position in which he had never dreamed he would find himself. On the brink of victory, a good and gallant soldier following orders with aplomb and dispatch—only to receive new orders that made little or no sense, orders from a commanding officer miles and miles away, someone who, for all intent and purpose, knew little about what was possible, what was probable, what could be just within reach.

“Grouard!”

The half-breed rose slowly, sidled up to the circle easily as if he did not care the slightest for what he knew was to be asked of him. “Colonel?”

For a moment as the rest of them buzzed and mumbled behind him, Mills stared north, down the valley of the Rosebud. Then he pointed and asked, “You’re sure the hostiles could find a place to ambush us up yonder?”

“The canyon narrows, like I told you.”

“Yes,” Mills answered quickly. “With the deadfall and brush, you said. Yes. Yes.” Then the captain turned on Grouard, his nose inches from the half-breed’s. Gripping the scout’s upper arm, Mills pleaded, “So what you’re really telling me is that if we tried going this way, we never would reach the village?”

Grouard nodded, opening his mouth to say something when Mills brushed right on past him and returned to the crescent of officers.

“All right, gentlemen,” the captain said, and removed his hat to swipe his brow before returning the hat to his head. “I have no idea why we are being recalled at the moment of our greatest victory for the Third Cavalry. And for the Second Cavalry. For total victory on the northern plains against the wild tribes. Be damned, I haven’t the slightest notion—but I am a soldier who follows orders.”

Turning, Mills flung his voice over his shoulder. “Grouard. Get up here. I want you to tell me what you think of climbing over those hills there to the west of us.”

“Into those? Those hills?” Nickerson asked, pointing. “The general wants you to return by—”

“By damned, I am returning, Captain Nickerson!” Mills barked. “By what I believe to be the fastest route possible.”

“I misunderstood you, Colonel,” Nickerson retorted. “The general does indeed intend for you to take the fastest route, over the hills if possible.”

“He said that?”

“He did,” the adjutant answered. “Crook needs you to fall on the rear of the savages who are ready to swallow up Royall and Henry.”

“Hot damn!” Sutorious exclaimed, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “A rear-guard fight!”

“Let’s ride, Colonel!” Wells cheered as more of the officers voiced excitement at the prospect of riding in to catch the unsuspecting enemy by surprise from the rear.

“Get these men mounted!” Mills bawled above the hubbub.

“Prepare to mount!”

The squeak of stirrup fenders and the rattle of bit-chains rose above the quiet summer gurgle of the Rosebud as eight companies of horse soldiers prepared to charge on a new enemy.

“Mount!”

They swung into the saddle and moved out, five companies joining the three after crossing the shallow stream, the droplets flung into the hot air like tiny crystals of dew that darkened the coats on all the horses, slapped the dusty boots that rose nearly to the knees of those men who would ride to the relief of George Crook’s beleaguered and overtaxed front.

These were the dusty, sweaty men who would eventually raise the bloody siege of those weary, harried, frightened soldiers who were at that moment preparing to make a second frantic retreat behind Colonel William B. Royall.

“
I
must go, Colonel Royall,” Azor Nickerson had declared more than an hour ago just after the colonel’s battalion had retreated to their second position along the bluff.
“General Crook wants me to carry orders to Mills’s battalion marching on the village.”

“Marching on the village!” Royall had fumed. “For God’s sake! When we could use those men? If Crook doesn’t get us help soon—”

“Colonel,” Nickerson interrupted, “that’s precisely what the general has in mind: I’m to recall Mills and Noyes from their march on the village so that they can fall on the rear of the warriors who have applied all this pressure to your left. Lieutenant Lemly is with your command?”

“I asked that my adjutant stay after he delivered the general’s orders to connect with his left flank.”

Nickerson nodded grimly. “Crook was concerned when the lieutenant did not return.”

“It was on my own responsibility that I kept Lemly here. If nothing else, he is to be commended for taking his place along our skirmish lines.”

Crook’s aide-de-camp sighed, peering down at his hands a moment, then asked, “If I may be excused, Colonel?”

Royall saluted and turned away, not watching Nickerson and his young orderly swing into the saddle and kick their mounts into a fury as they sped southeast down the slope into the Kollmar Creek drainage. With deep regret the Irishman wished he were riding off with Crook’s couriers—even if it proved to be suicide.

Through every one of those long, agonizing minutes that had swollen into more than an hour, Seamus Donegan peered to the north and east in the direction of the Rosebud lying just beyond the green-blotched hills. If Mills was indeed marching north when he was recalled, that was the country where he would appear with his eight companies.

Eight companies
, Seamus marveled.

And here Royall sits while the fringes of his command are chewed on just the way coyotes chewed on rawhide rope and packsaddles and latigo. Nibbling all the way around the edges as the colonel’s three remaining companies shrank, drawing closer and closer together like drying rawhide itself, the sun beginning to slip past midsky.

After the warriors had spotted Meinhold’s company escape toward the Kollmar Creek drainage, they swiftly invaded
that portion of the ridge, pressuring Royall’s right, effectively sealing off that route to further escape. Now the red waves loomed nearer to the northeast as well, there at the head of the ravine running down toward the Rosebud.