Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Chapter 5

Sunday 25 June 1876

Two hours later the Cheyenne River patrol arose in the cold darkness that greeted those who crossed the high plains even at the height of summer. There would be no breakfast this fateful Sunday morning for Company C, Fifth Cavalry.

Without much said the troopers saddled their mounts, formed up in a column of twos, and set off behind Baptiste Garnier, bearing north up a broadening valley before the horizon to the east even hinted at turning gray.

A half mile from camp the half-breed scout had discovered a flood of pony tracks. In sweeping around the edge of C Troop’s bivouac, the enemy had ventured closer than he had ever come before. This was to be a day that would live on and on in history.

Come the arrival of that same false dawn, some two hundred miles farther to the north as the far-seeing golden eagle might fly, Crow scouts were singing their death songs among some tall rocks on the crest of the Wolf Mountains called the Crow’s Nest. They peered down into the faraway valley of the Greasy Grass and saw the smoke of many, many lodge fires, the dust raised by thousands upon thousands of pony hooves.

But here in Wyoming Territory, Little Bat was making for the Dry Fork of the Cheyenne.

After a march of some six miles they reached the stream that had disappeared beneath its dry bed. Its sandy, rippled course wound lazily through stands of old cottonwood and willow, their roots forced to reach deep for that underground water. Yet deadfall lay matted against the trunks and among the brush, testament to the force and fury of mountain runoff that past spring.

“First of May, I figure we could barely ford this valley,” Stanton said.

“And look at it now,” King replied. “Dry as a bone.”

“Got to find some water, fellas,” Keyes ordered, sending a small detachment upstream, Stanton and a handful choosing to ride downstream.

It was the old crusty major’s call that rallied Company C as well as any bugle could. They found Stanton squatting underneath a steep, overhanging bank shaded by stunted cottonwood and a profusion of willows.

“Better’n nothing at all,” the major cheered, submerging his canteen.

Stanton’s mount stood up to its fetlocks in what clearly had once been a big pool. But at this late season the water was warm and decidedly alkaline, even a bit soapy to the taste. Nonetheless, their thirsty horses did not balk when they were led to the pool two or three at a time to drink their fill.

“We find better by night come,” Little Bat reassured them in his broken English as he mounted up and set out so that he could ride some distance ahead of the company column.

King didn’t see much of the half-breed for the rest of that morning, only glimpses of the horse and rider caught briefly on the crest of a hill as Garnier watched the soldiers coming on, then disappeared again from view, remaining far in the front. One after another, hill after valley then on again, until they finally clambered into the rugged country northeast of the Mini Pusa. This was the land where Sheridan’s intelligence said they would find the great Indian trail—here, where it would cross the valley of the South Cheyenne some distance west of the Beaver River, very near its confluence with the Mini Pusa itself.

Then at noon, as the sun hung hot and sultry, sulled like a wild mule’s eyeball in that great pale sky of summer’s best, King spotted him again. Garnier was coming back across a ridgetop. Once in plain sight of Keyes’s column, he stopped and circled his horse again, ripping his hat from his head and waving it wildly.

“He’s bringing us on, boys,” Stanton observed.

“What you think he’s found?” King asked.

The old major snorted. “If it were Injuns—that halfbreed son of a red-belly would be hightailing it back here instead of signaling us on.”

Keyes turned in the saddle and issued orders for the rest of the column to proceed at its pace, then turned to go on up the trail at a lope with Stanton, King, and two others. Garnier led them down into a wide swale, where he quickly leaped from his mount.

“Every man get off,” Little Bat said. “Leave horses with holder. Him.” He pointed to one of their number.

Keyes nodded to the soldier Garnier had indicated. “You can rest here.”

The half-breed said, “Come with me and see.”

King followed the others trailing out behind the scout, who was clambering on foot up the side of the ridge, making the best purchase he could with his boots in the flaky soil and loose rock gone too long without rain. Time and again they slid, grabbed hold with their hands, and kept on up the slope. Just short of the crest Little Bat signaled for the rest to wait while he peered over.

Taking a few minutes to satisfy himself while the others caught their breath, Garnier finally signaled them on up. At the top the others blew just like horses after a climb, huffing in the midday heat of another scorcher on the plains.

“Take your glasses,” Garnier directed. “Look there. Right over there.”

Keyes and Stanton were slow in getting their looking glasses out. King was the first to peer off to the southeast.

“You see?”

“By damn, I do!” King replied.

Even at this distance it was clearly visible: a broad, beaten trail leading down to the riverbed—pony hooves and travois scouring the fragile earth in a track as broad as anything the young lieutenant could ever hope to see.

“It’s a goddamned highway,” Stanton cursed behind his field glasses.

“And with no sign of ’em anywhere,” Keyes added, slowly swinging his glasses to all points from the north of east, clear down to the south of east—where the warriors would be found fleeing from the reservations.

“Silent and still,” King observed with disappointment, sensing the eerie emptiness of that landscape. “Maybe we’re too late.”

“We better not be,” Stanton growled. “If we are—then maybe Crook, or even Custer himself, will have more on their hands than they bargained for.”

“I can’t help but wonder how Sheridan knew we’d find this big trail right here, right where he said it would be,” King said with no little amazement.

Stanton looked at him. “You mean you don’t know how he figured it out?”

King wagged his head. “Not sitting back there in his office in Chicago, no. Only the Sioux and Cheyenne could know this ground very well.”

“You’re right there, Lieutenant,” Stanton agreed. “But here—watch.”

And with a twig he snapped off some dry sage, the major drew some quick landmarks in the dust.

“This here’s the Big Horns. Where Crook put his base camp, and he’s marching north of there as we speak— going to strike the enemy villages. Now, down here to the southeast”—and he drew a couple of circles—“is Red Cloud and Camp Robinson. Here’s Spotted Tail and Camp Sheridan, you see. So if you draw the Beaver and the Cheyenne and its South Fork on the map like so”—and Stanton scratched in those east-west flowing rivers there in the middle of his map—“where do you think those red-bellies are going to go if they’re of a mind to jump the reservation?”

“I suppose they’d go north toward the Rosebud and the Big Horns, where the rest of the hostiles are, right?” asked Keyes.

“Right, Lieutenant. Now draw me a line from the agencies to that hostile hunting ground Crook and Custer are closing in on.”

King watched Keyes take the twig and draw a straight line heading northwest from reservations.

“That’s right, fellas. That’s how Sheridan knew. On any map you can do the same goddamned thing. Whether it’s a map in Chicago, or a map at Fort Laramie. That line the lieutenant here drew in the dirt crosses right there, by doggy! You look right over there and you’ll see that very same spot—where Little Bat here found us that big trail.” Again he jabbed with the point of his twig as he emphasized, “Simple enough: you want to get from there to there, you got to cross right here.”

The small band with Garnier kept their horses under cover as they pushed on one ridge more, reaching a crest where they were greeted with an even wider panorama, able to make out the great sweep of the valley of the South Cheyenne for more than fifty miles as it flowed toward the north by east into the dim, timbered rise of tumbled ground that indicated just how close they were to the Black Hüls.

“I’ll stay here with Mr. King,” Stanton told Keyes. “I figure you should return to the rest of the company and retrace your steps back to the timber along the Mini Pusa. Loosen cinches, but don’t unsaddle, Lieutenant.”

“You’re going to keep an eye on the trail, Major?” Keyes inquired.

“And you can post a man with a looking glass to keep an eye on us,” Stanton replied. “If we see anything, we can signal and he can alert you. The company can be on its way here in a matter of seconds.”

“Very good, sir,” Keyes said, saluted, and turned down the slope to take two soldiers on the backtrail with him.

The sun stalled there in the sky, seeming to refuse to move at all as the minutes crawled by, every one of them more torture than the last as the growing heat seemed to rise with fiery intensity right out of the ground. Here at midday the air refused to stir, waves of heat shimmering in the middistance. Sometime past one o’clock King was rubbing the kinks out of his leg and watching to the south and west when he noticed a far-off column of dust spiraling high into the air—another sign that this land was without any breeze today.

“Slow but steady, Carr’s bringing ’em on,” King observed dryly. “I’m sure glad I’m not riding with that bunch.”

Stanton turned, training his glasses on the distant dust cloud. “They’re eating their forty acres today.”

Looking into the sky, the lieutenant said, “What I wouldn’t give for a little rain, Major.”

Licking his cracked lips as he turned back to watch the Indian trail, Stanton said, “Me too, Lieutenant. A little rain would do this ground and this army some real good.”

Through the next few hours King imagined he dozed off and on, catching himself nodding, then blinking to stay awake, squirming and shifting positions in the heat of the sun as he kept staring at the unmoving, unchanging, austere horizon where nothing stirred, not even a distant swirl of dust. Minute by minute, ultimately hour by hour. Made harder still knowing the rest of Company C was likely sleeping out the shank of their afternoon down in the shade of the South Fork’s cottonwoods and willows.

As quiet at it was on the Mini Pusa that hot Sunday afternoon, two hundred miles farther to the north an entire regiment was embroiled in a fight for its very life.

But here it was as quiet as it would be at the bottom of a freshly dug grave. Somewhere to the southeast the Indians would be coming, eager and on their way to join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Over to the southwest Carr was bringing on the rest of the Fighting Fifth. It was only a matter of time now, King knew. Wouldn’t be long before the regiment had its hands full.

“I don’t think there’s a damned red-belly stirring today,” grumbled the major. He slapped his glasses against his dusty britches, disgusted.

King continued to peer through his, for a few minutes content to watch the distant flight of a hawk, perhaps a golden eagle, sailing against the cloudless summer blue far to the northeast. Wondering if that bird of astounding eyesight could look down on Crook’s column as it chased Crazy Horse. Wondering if it peered down on the fair-haired Custer as the gallant Seventh Cavalry narrowed the noose around old Sitting Bull himself.

King watched that bird fly far above the hot land, not knowing that somewhere below its wide wings men fell and bled. And lay still in the tall grass, dreaming of eternity’s reward.

Throughout that night and into the morning of the twenty-sixth they kept up their watch over the nearby Indian trail without success. Then, near noon, the head of Carr’s column hoved into sight, which made for a joyous rendezvous in the valley of the Cheyenne. Here Sheridan had ordered them to set up their base of operations and await further instructions while keeping an eye on any warrior activity. Near sundown the lieutenant colonel dispatched Captain Sanford C. Kellogg with his I Company to explore the well-beaten warrior trail behind Little Bat while the other seven troops picketed and hobbled their horses, making camp, and while they set about relaxing for this first of many days of waiting.

And waiting.

Five long, hot summer days of waiting.

On 1 July dust was spotted rising to the southwest, below it a dark column of twos. It was Captain Montgomery’s B Company, bringing the Fighting Fifth up to eight full troops of strength. As well, a courier sent out from Major E. F. Townsend, Laramie’s commander, to explain that Townsend would send supplies along as soon as he could guarantee wagon transportation for them. At the earliest, it would be 6 July before a supply train could depart the North Platte.

There were also dispatches from Sheridan, one notifying Carr of Crook’s predicament, his disappointing affair on the Rosebud, and his present stalemate far to the north, that same dispatch reporting that Terry and Gibbon planned to probe south of the Yellowstone using their cavalry—and what better cavalry to use than Custer’s Seventh? So for the time being Sheridan was recommending the Fifth sit tight on the trail and keep a wary eye open. At the moment, the lieutenant general was not sending the Fifth in to reinforce Crook. Not just yet.

Yet for all the momentous news come from Indian country, it was nonetheless the arrival of a single man that caused the most stir there in the valley of the Mini Pusa. Charles King could see that Eugene Carr immediately recognized the old soldier riding at the head of Montgomery’s company as the troops came to a dusty halt beneath its snapping guidon.

The lieutenant colonel stopped by the officer’s horse and saluted, his eyes squinting into the bright light. “General Merritt, Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr, sir. Welcome.”

Wesley Merritt returned the salute and slid out of his saddle, yanking his sweaty gauntlets from his hands. “Colonel Carr. It’s good to see you again.”

Carr’s face was a study of stony impassivity as he asked, “By your presence here, am I to understand that General Emory has retired, sir?”

“He has. I am come to take over the Fifth.”

Suddenly snapping his back straight, as rigid as any fighting man’s, Carr saluted again. “Yes, sir, General Merritt. May I be given the opportunity to introduce you to your officer corps?”

“By all means, General Carr,” Merritt replied, using Carr’s brevet grade earned during the Civil War. “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be leading this outfit.”

King watched the pair stroll off, followed by Merritt’s aides and a dog-robber who was there to fetch anything the new commander of the Fifth Cavalry should desire. Then the young lieutenant wagged his head.

“What’s wrong, Mr. King?” Stanton asked as he strode up.

“Shouldn’t happen this way.”

“You mean Merritt riding in to take over the regiment?”

“Right, Major. Not in the field like this.”

Stanton nodded. “Carr resents Merritt already, don’t he?”

“No,” King answered firmly. “I don’t think he does. He figured Merritt was up for the post. After all, for a long time Merritt’s been part of Sheridan’s Chicago staff. Carr knew he wouldn’t get it himself—even though the man deserves it, many times over … but that’s not the way things work back in Washington City, do they? Not even the way things work back with Sheridan in Chicago, either. But this, taking over in the field like this. Yanking the field command right out of Carr’s hands when he’s led the Fifth against every kind of fighting Injun you can imagine—”

“A colonel’s not a fighting position, is it?”

King looked at Stanton squarely. “You tell me, Major. With old man Emory as this regiment’s colonel, Carr’s had actual fighting and field command of the Fifth since 1868. Seems to me the government’s going to spend a hell of a lot of money and get a bunch of soldiers killed teaching all these armchair generals like Crook and Terry and Merritt how to fight. But what have you got to say, Major? You were with Reynolds on the Powder River yourself. Reynolds is a colonel. So you tell me, sir. Should Reynolds have been in charge on the Powder … or should he have left the fighting to the men who know how to fight Injuns?”

Turning on his heel, King stomped off, feeling the anger rising in himself like a boil, sensing what he was sure had to be Carr’s own great personal disappointment at being stripped of field command of the Fighting Fifth, here as his beloved regiment stood on the brink of jumping into the Sioux War with both boots.