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

Chapter 13

7-8 July 1876

That Friday afternoon the Sibley patrol was fifty miles from rescue.

Their only hope was to help themselves.

It seemed the soldiers understood that—every last yard they bounded down that hill, across a small, open glade before they entered thicker timber where old, leaning trees interlocked with those younger lodgepole pine still standing and an extensive patch of burned trunks testifying to an ancient forest fire, the whole maze conspiring to slow their flight. From that point on the men began to stumble over deadfall, tripping on rocks hidden in the grass, their soles slipping as they tried to clamber over fallen trees. Yet not a single murmur rose from the lieutenant’s soldiers as they scrambled back to their feet and kept on running down, down, on down through the timber. The air filled only with the rasps of their burning, swollen lungs as the Tongue River came in sight below them at last.

Sweating beneath his heavy coat that he had refused to take off, Seamus caught up with Pourier. Beside Bat he kept on pushing to reach the soldiers who were gradually passing Grouard. The half-breed moved in great pain—but he lumbered quickly enough in his wobbling gait, cursing behind teeth he kept gritted all the way down that rugged mile of descent to the river. Racing ahead of Grouard, the first of the soldiers plunged off the bank of the Tongue, into the icy water, without the slightest thought of taking the time to locate a ford.

“Step on the goddamned rocks!” Pourier huffed as he lunged to a halt at the grassy bank. “Can’t leave a trail for them to follow!”

Hurrying a few yards downstream, Sibley himself started to cross the river atop a fallen tree while still more of his patrol waded right into the Tongue, not heeding the half-breed scout’s warning. Halfway to the far bank the lieutenant’s boots slipped on the loose bark of the rotting trunk, and he pitched headlong into the soul-chilling current. Sergeant G. P. Harrington and Corporal Thomas C. Warren leaped in right behind Sibley, pulling the sputtering lieutenant from the swift current and hauling him to the far bank between them as they struggled against the bobbing froth of mountain snow-melt.

“N-never was much of a swimmer,” Sibley gasped on the far side.

“The river’s running high and wild,” Donegan said. “So much runoff at this season. Ain’t many a man can swim against that current.”

Directly above them stood the foothills, slopes that lay rumpled in one rise and fall after another all the way into the Big Horns themselves. At that moment the forest far above them echoed with a half-dozen volleys of renewed gunfire.

“Won’t be long before they find out we’re gone,” Big Bat moaned as he bent at the waist, catching his breath, his soggy clothes muddying a puddle at his feet.

Seamus gazed back across the Tongue, his eyes searching the far slope they had just scampered down. A sudden, wild cry of half-a-hundred voices raised a furious, shrill call.

He said, “I think they found out, Bat.”

A few of the soldiers began to chuckle behind their hands. More of them joined in until the entire bunch was laughing, slapping one another on the back, congratulating themselves on their escape downhill—roaring at the disappointment the warriors must be feeling. It was good to laugh, Seamus decided. A good, long laugh, for they had escaped from one peril, yet still faced another, if not greater, danger. Between them and Crook lay fifty-odd miles of mountainside, granite spire, timber, raging river, and narrow canyon precipice.

At a time like this a man surely deserved to laugh in the face of danger, even spit in death’s eye.

“Let’s get moving,” Sibley ordered, firmly back in control. He pointed at the slope above them. “We’re going up, Frank?”

Grouard nodded there in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. “We got to go where no Indian on horseback can go. Go where even no Indian on foot will want to go. It’s going to be tough.”

“Only way we’re making it out of here and back to Crook,” Sibley said with resolve. “Take us back to camp, Grouard.”

Into the deepening of dusk and on into the brief alpenglow of twilight descending upon those mountains, the scouts led Lieutenant Frederick W. Sibley and his twentyfive handpicked veterans. Through the rugged breech of granite walls and dizzying mazes of thick timber, where Seamus thought only a mountain goat could find footing and make itself a trail, first Grouard, then Pourier, led the detail upward toward the crest of the divide, ever working south by west as the sun fell and darkness swallowed that high land. The air chilled within moments of the sun’s disappearance. Though not one of them complained just then, from time to time Donegan heard the telltale chatter of teeth, like the clatter of dice in a bone cup.

The moon rose and arched overhead in its slow, hour-by-hour spin toward the western horizon beneath some clouds congealing like grease scum atop a meaty stew. With full darkness upon them the sky suddenly opened up with explosive charges that lit the entire span of granite spires above them, hurling shards of icy hail and wind-driven rain down upon the hapless wayfarers, drenching them all for a second time that day.

Yet all the while the two half-breeds pressed on, despite the ferocious wind that toppled over the weaker lodgepole and made the less determined of the soldiers whine and whimper, begging to stop. On Grouard and Pourier doggedly led Sibley’s patrol ever toward Camp Cloud Peak. Straight on into the teeth of that mountain hailstorm, bent over as they pushed into the mighty gales until even the strongest among them began to lag, soaked to the marrow, chilled to the core, clinging to his last shred of strength.

From the position of the Big Dipper and the North Star once the heavens began to clear, Seamus judged it to be an hour or so past midnight when Baptiste Pourier stopped at the edge of a small, starlit glade near the skyline.

“I gotta rest,” Bat whispered hoarsely, his chest heaving.

“It’s all right,” Seamus confided, following the others quickly scurrying beneath a generous outcropping of overhanging rock. “We come far enough, Bat. Let’s all rest for a while.”

Beneath the shelf of granite they would be out of all but the strongest wind. Here, where they collapsed ten thousand feet or more above sea level. Here where the hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and frightened men could curl up, clutching nothing more than their rifles, and try to catch a few minutes of cold, fitful sleep.

Once that day they had walked themselves dry in the clothes each of them had drenched in crossing the Tongue. Shoddy boots had begun to crack and split. Agonizing blisters troubled almost every toe, rubbed raw with the wet stockings and spongy, ill-fitting boots.

Now they were soaked again, the ground around them white with icy hail.

But they were alive. Not one of them lost. They had escaped from sure death through nothing more than pure pluck and gumption. And though their miserable bellies cried out for food, though every man lay there through that cold night shivering until he feared his teeth would rattle right out of his head—they were alive.

Nearby some voices rose quickly and boiled into anger. Almost frozen with weariness, Seamus nonetheless rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled past most of the others huddled beneath the rocky shelf. At the far end he found Pourier arguing with Sergeant Day.

“Hey—Donegan,” the soldier said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”

Bat growled, “Tell him to leave me be, Irishman!”

Turning to Donegan for help, Day explained, “I told him we shouldn’t kindle a fire.”

Seamus strained to make sense out of it in his numbness—weary, hungry as he was. “Why no fires?”

“Lieutenant’s orders.”

For a moment Donegan stared down at the first feeble flames Pourier had coaxed out of some dry pine needles he found blown back under the rocky outcrop. “He’s probably right, Bat. Fire here at night—”

“Go away, Donegan. Just leave me be.”

“Injins below can spot the light from a long way off—”

Pourier whirled on Seamus, snarling, “I rather be killed by a Injun’s bullet tonight, than I wanna freeze to death. Now you tell this goddamned sergeant to get out of my sight, or I just might gut him myself.”

Donegan was relieved when the sergeant began to back away.

Day grumbled, “You ain’t gonna listen to me, half-breed—then I’m gonna roust the lieutenant and make my report that you was breaking his orders.”

“Go ahead, for all I care!” Pourier snapped. “Don’t make no difference, ’cause I’m gonna have my fire.”

After watching the sergeant shamble off, Donegan thought about going back where he had been. But he promised himself he would do it later. Right now it seemed that such a crawl would take too much effort.

So he asked Pourier, “Mind if I stay right here with you?”

Bat shook his head. “No problem with sharing my fire with you. Every man in this bunch is against lighting a fire, until he can see just how good the warmth feels.”

Turning at the sound of movement nearby, Seamus saw Sibley hobble up on sore feet and sink to the ground.

“Bat—I can’t let you have a fire if I’ve ordered the rest of the men not to start them.”

“Keep your boys warm, it would.”

“But you ought to know better than any of us how dangerous a fire is up here—”

“No more dangerous than anything we done today. No man can see the fire, not with this rock above us, that timber down there.”

“We can be spotted from down there on the side of the mountain—”

“They ain’t following us up here, Lieutenant. Besides, the way I built this little fire, no one gonna see the flames. I’m cold—so I’m gonna warm myself. No matter what you say.”

Sibley shook his head. “I’ll have to put you on report.”

“I don’t give a damn no more. Report me to Crook. Report me to Crazy Horse too!”

In those few minutes Seamus had watched most of the color return to Sibley’s face as he sat so close to the cheery flames.

“All right, Bat—you can keep your fire if you think we’re in no danger.”

“Nope, none.”

The lieutenant seemed to apologize as he shivered uncontrollably a moment. “I am awfully cold myself.”

“You sit right here with us,” Donegan suggested. Sibley only nodded, spreading his hands over the low flames. “Soak up some warmth while you can. It can make a body feel so much better.”

As the minutes crawled by, most of the men inched over to encircle that small fire, drawing not only warmth from it, but what seemed to be hope as well. Just beyond the spill of that dancing light, a soupy mix of snowy rain swirled and jigged in the black and gloomy darkness.

In wide-eyed wonder Sibley watched one of the men in particular as the soldier crawled up to the circle of warmth and comradeship. “Private Hasson—where are your boots?”

Without raising his head to look at the lieutenant, the soldier replied weakly, “Don’t know, sir.”

“You have them here with you?”

He shrugged. “Said I don’t know.”

“Hasson—where’s your boots?”

Shrugging, he whispered, “Lost ’em sometime through the day, Lieutenant.”

“Lost them?”

“Took ’em off to cross one of them creeks,” he said, his dark, sunken eyes never leaving the fire, refusing to look at anyone else.

With a simple gesture of his hands, Donegan made it known to Sibley that it would likely be useless to rant and bellow, much less to punish the man for his careless stupidity.

Moving over beside the lieutenant sometime later, Seamus whispered, “There’s nothing you could ever do gonna punish him worse’n what he’s gonna put himself through tomorrow—being without his boots for all those miles still staring us in the face.”

“I think you’re right, Irishman,” Sibley replied quietly. “I suppose we should all be grateful we escaped with our lives. No matter how little they might be worth at this moment.”

One by one the men curled up where they were, or fell into an exhausted, fitful sleep sitting around Pourier’s small fire.

“You’re wrong, Lieutenant,” Donegan said. “Our lives must be important. Damned important. Seems God Himself has spared us for some reason.”

The lieutenant looked over at Seamus, his eyes brimming with gratitude. “Right again, Mr. Donegan. Every one of these men is someone’s son. Some woman’s husband. Some child’s father. Yes. The life of every man here is worth more than that man can ever imagine. And thank God for reminding us of that.”

The wind rose and fell, howling off the granite peaks above their pitiful shelter. As the rest began to snore with the deep rhythm of slumber, Donegan felt an immense weariness settle over him. Beyond them in the wilderness awaited the demons of hunger, cold, and sudden, bloody death. But, for this night, those demons were held at bay by the flames of that tiny fire.

Seamus prayed. Thanking God, for now he truly believed he would make it back to Samantha. To be there at her side when the babe chose its time to come.

Thanking God for sparing his life, just one more time.

That night the distant flares of lightning streaked with fingers of green phosphorescent light out over the eastern plains, reminding Seamus of a barrage of distant artillery, softening up the enemy’s position before the cavalry was ordered in. He did not want to remember much of what he had seen fighting with the Army of the Potomac, struggled not to recall most of what he experienced riding with Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah. How they had laid waste to the lives of all, not just the Confederate soldiers.

It was that way against the Indians. Total war, Sherman and Sheridan called it. Deprive the enemy of his food supply. Destroy the enemy’s homes. Capture and kill the enemy’s families. And ultimately you’ll bring your enemy to his knees.

Into the chill gray of that first streak of light smearing the east, the scouts had Sibley’s men up and moving out. For no more than three or four hours those weary soldiers had sparred with sleep, shivering within their wool shirts and britches still damp from the day’s exertions and the night’s onslaught of rain and hail. From the site of the ambush they had carried only a Springfield carbine and what ammunition they could stuff into their pockets and belt kits.

Some had been so weary that cold dawn that Sibley allowed them to leave behind 10 cartridges each, 250 in all, which the lieutenant buried beneath a rock before he, Donegan, and Pourier started prodding them to their feet.

“You walk,” Sibley tried cheering them as he put the soldiers into motion behind Big Bat, “you’ll get warm.”

“Damn right. Better’n sitting on the cold ground any longer’n I have to,” grumbled Private George Rhode.

“We’ll be warm already by the time the sun comes up,” the lieutenant cheered.

“If we only had something to eat,” whimpered Private George Watts. “I’d feel so much better.”

Soon, Seamus thought. Soon. “C’mon, Frank,” he said, pulling at Grouard’s arm.

The half-breed tugged his arm loose. “I think maybe I stay here some more. Don’t feel like walking too much today.”

“You ain’t staying here,” Seamus said, looking after the last of the others. A soldier turned around and stared at them dumbly over his shoulder but kept on shuffling down the trail that disappeared into the pines. “No man I know of ever died of what you got.”

“I just wanna rest. No more walking—”

“Up you go,” Donegan huffed, struggling to pull the half-breed to his feet. “Now, walk.”

“Leave me here.”

“Walk, goddammit.”

Grouard’s dark eyes narrowed, and for a moment his hand gripped the pistol he had belted at his waist. Donegan looked at the hand, then at the scout’s eyes, then back to the dark hand, tensing and relaxing on the pistol butt.

“I ain’t going without you, Frank. So—if you mean to stay and get yourself killed, then it’s two of us gonna die here when those Injins find us.”

“Damn you, Irishman!” he swore without opening his teeth.

“Go on, curse me—you black-hearted sore-peckered half-breed,” Seamus said, shoving Grouard off toward the path the others had taken. “Call me every name you can think of, just as long as you keep walking.”

When the bright orb finally did poke its head above the eastern prairie, the sun found them stopped at the edge of a steep precipice, looking down on a southern fork of the Tongue River.

“Ain’t none of us gonna make it out of there alive,” growled Sergeant Oscar Cornwall.

“Can you find us another way around this canyon?” Sibley asked, turning to Grouard.

The half-breed rubbed at his crotch, then straightened. He appeared somewhat strengthened by the walk. Better moving than soaking the cold out of the wet ground. “That’s the way we got to go. South. Ain’t no other way.”

“I can’t ask my men to risk their lives—”

“You don’t have to ask them,” Grouard spat. “You order them.”

“Maybe we can find a way down,” Seamus said suddenly, stepping between the two men as Sibley began to lunge forward. “A way that won’t be so bloody dangerous.”

“All right,” Sibley said quietly, taking a step back.

“C’mon, Frank. Let’s see what we can scare up.”

Within a half hour the pair was back, getting the soldiers on their feet once more, leading the patrol down a little-used game trail they stumbled across. Back and forth it slowly descended through the forest in an undulating switchback that finally reached the left bank of the river far below from the precipice where they started. For the better part of the morning the men had stubbed toes on hidden rocks and stumbled over deadfall, the thin soles of their boots giving little protection from the mountain wilderness. Hour by hour they each grew more tenderfooted until they reached a small meadow on the streambank, where the country opened up to view. Grouard halted, leaning over at the waist, gasping for air in his pain. The rest came down to the meadow one at a time, their chests heaving.

Sibley asked, “How far do we have left to go?”

Peering off to the south, Frank said, “We come halfway.”

“Hear that, fellas?” the lieutenant cheered. “We’re halfway home.”

“And we come through the hardest part,” Donegan added. “The rest can’t be anywhere as bad as what you come through already.”

Downstream the hills rolled gently away toward the eastern plain. To the sore-footed soldiers that direction beckoned like a willing woman with her arms opening to a man.

“We can make good time now that we’re out of these hills and timber,” Sibley declared.

Grouard shook his head and pointed upstream. “No, we got to go there.”

John Finerty stepped forward, asking, “Why, in heaven’s name?”

“Out there,” Pourier responded, “where the soldiers wanna go is some of the best hunting country there is. That means the chances are good we’ll run right into a hunting party.”

“Maybe even some of those red bastards ambushed us yesterday,” Seamus added his voice to the argument. “No, Lieutenant. We can’t dare chance the easy way. If you wanna get back to Crook’s camp, we got no choice but to stay with the country too tough for an Indian to follow us on foot.”