Trumpet on the Land (27 page)

“No, sir,” one answered. “We got permission to go hunting this morning. Break up the monotony at camp.”

“M-monotony?” Finerty repeated. Then he broke out in a crazy, hysterical laugh.

“Told you while back, newsman,” Bat chided. “Said you'd have lots of good stories to tell your readers, you decide to come with us.”

“Damn you, Bat!” Finerty roared, whirling on the scout. “Leave me be about it!”

Sibley said to one of the pair, “Private, I want you to ride back to camp. Get some horses from your troop, any troop. And ask Captain Dewees or Rawolle for that matter—” The lieutenant caught himself and remembered his academy courtesy. “With my compliments, of course—ask them to supply an escort to return with those horses.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said, and trotted up the slope to his mount.

Sibley hollered as loud as he could, “Tell them we've left three men behind who can't come in on foot.”

The private reached his horse, turning to reply, “I will, Lieutenant.”

Seamus came forward to stand beside Sibley. “And, Private?”

“Yeah?” the soldier answered as he rose to his saddle.

“Before you go, empty your saddlebags of everything you have to eat.”

He seemed confused. “Everything I have to—”

“You heard the man,” Sibley instructed. “These men … my men—they haven't had anything to eat … to eat in—”

“A long goddamned time!” Finerty roared for them all.

Chapter 16
8-13 July 1876

Another Indian Agent Heard From—
A Piteous Appeal

W
ASHINGTON
, July 14—Indian Inspector Van Derveree reports that at a council with the Indians of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail Agencies, June 30, the chiefs and others expressed a willingness to relinquish the Black Hills country on the terms offered by Van Derveree. The chiefs promised to keep their people at home, and to remain about the agencies. They declare, and the evidence here sustains their declaration, that the only Sioux who are absent are the Cheyennes who have committed depredations in the neighborhood and who have gone north to join the hostiles …

Appended to the report is the following statement of Bear Stands Up, an Indian of the Spotted Tail agency, who arrived from Sitting Bull's camp June 25th … Sitting Bull sends word that he
does not intend to molest any one south of the Black Hills, but will fight the whites in that country as long as the question is unsettled and if not settled as long as he lives … He does not want to fight the whites—only steal from them. White men steal, and Indians won't come to the settlements. Whites kill themselves and make the Black Hills stink with so many dead men … Sitting Bull says if troops come out to him he must fight them, but if they don't come out he intends to visit this agency and he will counsel his people for peace.

C
olonel Wesley Merritt did not choose to march east to the troubled agencies that eighth day of July.

Nor south to Laramie.

Instead he decided on a third option: to stay put right there on Sage Creek, where he felt more mobile, closer to the agencies, and unquestionably closer to the northbound trail used by any hostiles fleeing the reservations. From that stockade he could respond quickly to trouble in either direction—Fort Laramie or Red Cloud.

Through the next four days the regiment sat, fighting the thumb-sized horseflies that tormented man and beast alike. Scouting parties were sent out, but none returned having sighted any war parties or any fresh trails. Then on the evening of 11 July, the night the Fifth drew its first beef ration of the campaign, more orders arrived.

“We're marching back to Laramie,” King explained to Cody.

On the lieutenant's face it was plain to see the ardent fervor to get in his licks against the enemy. Ever since learning of the Little Bighorn disaster, that feeling was something tangible and contagious: Bill was himself every bit as eager to get a crack at those who had wiped George Armstrong Custer and half his regiment from the face of the earth.

“From there we're going north to Fetterman,” King went on to explain Sheridan's new orders. “Then we can
finally be on our way to reinforce Crook camped somewhere near the Big Horns.”

At dawn the next morning, Wednesday, the command marched away from Sage Creek, heading back to the Cardinal's Chair on the headwaters of the Niobrara River, sixteen miles closer to Fort Laramie. That evening brought exactly the sort of furious thunderstorm that midsummer had made famous on the western plains, complete with deafening thunder and a great display of celestial fireworks, accompanied by a generous, wind-driven mix of rain and hail that painfully pelted the regiment, soaking every soldier to the skin.

Beneath overcast skies on the morning of the thirteenth, the Fifth plodded eighteen more miles and went into camp by another prominent landmark in Wyoming Territory, Rawhide Butte. Sundown brought with it another drenching thundershower.

That very night it was whispered that Merritt had relieved Captain Robert A. Wilson from command of his A Troop under a dark cloud of suspicion. Cody learned from Lieutenant King that Wilson had long been a shirker who had conveniently wrangled himself periods of leave during the regiment's roughest duty in Arizona during the Apache campaign. But until the long, arduous scouts Merritt had demanded of his men, as well as the soul-crushing news of the Custer disaster, no one had wanted to believe the captain was in reality a coward.

“Surgeon Powell told me in confidence that Wilson gave himself a nosebleed and swallowed the blood,” King declared to the Fifth's scout after dark that night. “Seems he intended to go on sick call and spit it back up to make the physicians think he was bleeding from the lung.”

“How did the surgeon know Wilson was shamming?”

King whispered, “Powell says blood brought up fresh from the lungs looks a lot different. So on checking him over, they found where Wilson had cut the membranes inside his nose. Found out, he immediately broke down and admitted the ruse.”

No longer considered an officer of the Fifth, Wilson was compelled by Merritt and Carr to resign his commission as soon as the regiment returned to Fort Laramie, one short day's march to the south—or take his chances with a court-martial. Wilson again chose the coward's way out.

But instead of marching for Laramie the morning of the fourteenth, at reveille the colonel called his officers together to inform them of the dispatches he had received late the night before. Cody stood nearby, every bit as expectant as any of those veterans in blue.

“I've received news from the agencies, via Major Townsend at Laramie. He in turn received word from Major Jordan at Camp Robinson—wired on the eleventh— that states the Indians intend to make a mass break for the north in a matter of days.”

“That means they could be fleeing north any day now, General,” Carr advised.

“Exactly,” Merritt replied.

“With the general's permission?” Cody said sourly. “Of course the Injuns are going to jump their reservations—I'll bet they already heard we've abandoned their Powder River trail and left the way wide open for them.”

Several of the other officers murmured their agreement with Cody that they should never have marched south, away from the Cheyenne River.

Raising his hand, Merritt quickly quieted them. “I want to break camp on the double this morning. General Carr and I have determined to march southeast rather than directly south toward Laramie.”

“What about our orders to march north to reinforce Crook?” asked a clearly disappointed Captain Julius W. Mason.

“May I answer that, General?” Carr inquired, using Merritt's Civil War rank. When the colonel nodded, Carr continued. “We've discussed this and are both of the same mind. It seems our most pressing urgency is to stop the flow of warriors north, to prevent them from reinforcing the hostile camps that crushed Custer's Seventh. To do that,
in our opinion, takes higher precedence over reaching Crook for the present time.”

“Remember, gentlemen,” Merritt drove home his point in the gray light of dawn, “there are between eight hundred and a thousand Cheyenne warriors still on those two agencies. We could have our hands more than full right here, without having to march north to the Big Horns to join up with Crook for a fight. At the moment, those warriors think their highway is open. I intend to take the Fifth and close the trap on them.” After a minute's thoughtful pause the colonel concluded, “If there are no further matters to discuss at this time, let's be marching east.”

By noon the Fifth came upon the place where the Camp Robinson-Fort Laramie Road crossed Rawhide Creek. Merritt immediately dispatched Major Thaddeus Stanton to press on to Camp Jordan, there to determine the present situation at Red Cloud Agency. Captain Emil Adams's C Troop was to accompany Stanton as far as the trail's crossing at Running Water Creek, a branch of the Niobrara River, at which point the old German's men were to begin patrolling along the Robinson-Laramie Road. While awaiting Stanton's report, the rest of the regiment would remain in bivouac at Rawhide Creek, sixty-five miles southeast of the Red Cloud Agency—ready to ride at a moment's notice.

How long they would have to wait, no one could say. Some men fished, others caught up on sleep, but just about all debated what should be Merritt's next move to stem the outgoing tide of warriors from the reservations.

They wouldn't have to wait long for word that the Cheyenne were coming.

In a matter of hours those troopers of the Fighting Fifth would vault back into their saddles, and they wouldn't climb back out for something on the order of thirty-six hours.

But waiting was about all they did in Crook's camp.

Every interminable hour that dragged by seemed to
bring renewed grumbling from Crook's officer corps that the army ever relinquished its three posts along the Bozeman Trail. If Forts Reno, Phil Kearny, and C. F. Smith were still manned, they argued, chances were Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse would have never gained a foothold in this hunting ground. And even if the Sioux had made just such an attempt despite the presence of the army, then any campaign by Crook or Terry would be able to operate that much closer to supply depots.

Now with this Sioux campaign grinding on much longer than any military man would have thought possible, it was abundantly clear at every campfire discussion that the officers of the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition believed the army should immediately set about erecting its three posts in the heart of the hostiles' country: perhaps first to reactivate old Fort Reno or a new post somewhere on the headwaters of the Tongue; another in the Black Hills to protect the miners, settlers, and growing businesses flocking there; and a third somewhere on the lower Yellowstone, ideally at the mouth of the Tongue River.

“If the army did that,” Captain Anson Mills told his compatriots that eleventh day of July, “the army would thereby maintain its presence and military influence over the wild tribes so that no hostile elements on the reservations would ever again seek to flee for what the Indians claim as their land, to recapture what they remember of their old life.”

“Their old life is over!” John Finerty snarled. “This is beautiful land—and emigrants damn well ought to come in and snatch it up, take it away from these savages.”

John Bourke asked the newsman, “You don't think we can live with the red man if the Indian stayed to his agencies?”

“No,” Finerty said flatly, plainly still suffering from his harrowing escape. “Better if the whole tribe of Indians, friendly and otherwise, were exterminated.”

“Johnny boy,” Seamus said at their noon fire, “you're
sounding just like General Sherman—even Phil Sheridan himself!”

“Damn right I agree with them!” Finerty growled. “And a lot of these men do too, Seamus. We all detest the red race! Don't you?”