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

Chapter 15

8-9 July 1876

“Time to get your men up and moving,” Seamus said as darkness sank down on the Tongue River. He turned from the lieutenant to watch the men wake one another slowly, most every one of them moving in that painful manner of men gone too long without something in their bellies.

Kneeling by Grouard, the Irishman said, “Let’s go, Frank.”

“Don’t know that I can,” the half-breed complained, shifting from one buttock to the other. “Why’n’t you just leave me to come along later?”

“C’mon now, I ain’t leaving you,” Seamus said. Shifting his rifle to the left hand, he reached down to cup his right under Grouard’s arm.

“I ain’t leaving you neither,” Pourier said, although reluctantly. “You got yourself in this fix with your pecker always wanting to bury itself in any woman you can find, Frank. But I s’pose I’ll lend a hand getting you out of trouble this one last time.”

Grouard twisted, trying to thrust off their hands as they struggled to pull him up. “Just leave me be!”

“You’re coming,” Seamus said as they yanked Grouard to his feet, and he shrugged them off at last, stepping away from both. “You’re coming if I gotta drag you in a litter my own self.”

“No man’s ever gonna drag me into Crook’s camp!” the half-breed spat at Donegan. “If you’re so dead set on me going back with you—I damn well gonna go back on my own two feet.”

They plodded away like men will who have gone too long without sustenance, men who have continued to demand of themselves the ultimate in sacrifice without replenishing their abused bodies with what was needed to keep them going. With any luck at all, Seamus figured, by this time tomorrow they would be eating their fill of everything Camp Cloud Peak had to offer.

Even half-boiled beans, along with some greasy salt pork and that damned hard bread. Anything, anything at all sounded like a feast fit for royalty right now. He sucked on his tongue, figuring he could try fooling his stomach for one more day. Convince it he was eating something, chewing something, swallowing something. If only his tongue. For just one more bleeming day.

“No, Donegan. W-we can’t.”

The Irishman turned and stopped, finding the lieutenant halted five yards behind him. Back ahead of Seamus now, Pourier stopped beside Grouard. Arrayed to either side of Sibley in a ragged crescent were his soldiers. Off to one side stood the rail-thin packer and a gaunt, wild-eyed John Finerty.

Seamus wasn’t able to figure out what was happening just then. “What’d you say, Lieutenant?”

The officer squinted against that first light of sunset. He looked as if he were fighting to find the words. Just the right ones. “I’ve got to think of the men, Donegan. You must understand.”

He wagged his head. Nothing came clear. “I don’t.”

“We’re not going that way anymore.” Sibley pointed off to the foothills, the way the scouts were taking them.

“Where we going, then, Lieutenant—if not back to Crook’s camp?”

“That way,” the officer answered, jabbing a finger at the air. “Take us where the going is easier.”

For a moment Donegan too searched for the right words, how best to explain it to these men who had just reached the end of their string. “You said you was thinking of the men—well, so am I. We head down there where you want to go, chances are we’ll bump right into that war party we saw moving east onto the plains a while back. If not them, we’ll run into some other hunting or raiding party. Damn right—I agree—you best think of the men.”

Sergeant Charles W. Day stepped forward, leaning on his short carbine to say, “We ain’t none of us going with you, Irishman. Staying with the lieutenant. He’s gonna lead us back to Crook down that way—where the going’s easier.”

Seamus looked at the courageous lieutenant, sensing that Sibley had rallied his men all that he could. The officer had done everything good order and the honor of his rank demanded of him. A proud man, he still stood erect, as straight as he must have on that parade at West Point. His chin jutted determinedly. Donegan couldn’t help admiring the man. Couldn’t help but remembering other lieutenants who had led his company in mad charges against J.E.B. Stuart and others. Men who would always do things much more bravely than they did things smart.

But there would never be any faulting them for their courage.

“All right, Lieutenant,” Donegan said quietly, knowing he had already given in. “Suppose you tell me how you figure to lead these men back to Crook, when you don’t know the way.”

Sibley swallowed, licking his cracked, sunburned lips. After he stared off into the distance a moment, he said, “I’ll get them there. I’ll keep heading south along the foothills. And I’ll get them there.” Then for just a moment his eyes softened. They seemed to plead for understanding. “I … I’ve got to try, Donegan. By God, at least I’ve got to try.”

Seamus’s eyes stung a moment, sensing the rise of a deep respect, something more like admiration, for the officer at that moment. “What say you let us lead you, Lieutenant?”

“M-my way?”

Seamus nodded.

“You … you would?” Sibley said, taking a step forward, as if he really didn’t believe.

Seamus turned for a brief moment, his eyes touching the other two scouts. Then he looked back at Sibley. “That’s right. All … three … of … us.”

So it was that they took that great, unexpected gamble with what they thought was left of their shredded, sore-footed, pinch-bellied lives. And made another long night’s march of it into the heart of that Indian hunting ground.

The sky was beginning to gray with the coming of false dawn as they reached the banks of a stream.

Sibley asked, “What is this, Bat?”

Pourier answered, “Big Goose, I say.”

Grouard nodded in agreement, standing wide-footed as he could without actually squatting.

“What time do you have, Sergeant Day?” Sibley asked.

“Just after three A.M., Lieutenant.”

“Let’s keep going,” Seamus told them.

“Cross another creek?” came a whimper from the darkness that swallowed the group behind Sibley and his noncoms.

“That’s right,” replied the lieutenant.

“That water’s cold as ice,” Valentine Rufus said, stepping forward.

Sibley inquired, “Was it you complained?”

“No. It was me, Lieutenant,” and another soldier inched forward.

“Collins. You been holding up till now—”

Henry Collins tried to explain. “I can’t face another crossing. Getting soaked, sir. I’ll not make it to the other side.”

“I’ll help you,” Sibley offered.

“No, Lieutenant. Leave me.”

“Me too, sir,” Sergeant Cornwall added.

The officer tried to coax the pair, cajole them, even threatening them with court-martial if they did not follow.

“You can shoot me now—or I can just wait here for the Injuns to get me, sir,” Collins admitted. “But I ain’t going another step.”

Finally Sibley relented. “If I leave you two here, you must promise to stay right here. Stay back to the brush over there. We’ll send horses for you. You won’t have to cross another swollen river on foot.”

It was just as well, Donegan decided. Let them stay there so the rest could press on while the light was coming on that ninth day of July. Sibley could not risk the lives of the others while he argued with the obstinate pair. Funny, he brooded as they cat-walked down into the cold waters of Big Goose Creek, how men who will resolve to face bullets and war clubs and scalping knives won’t dare set foot again into a mountain stream. Courage is not only a fleeting thing for some, he thought, but a fickle mistress as well.

By the time the detail crossed to the south bank and plodded on, Grouard told Sibley he figured they still had a dozen miles left to go. The cold of the stream poured through what was left of the soldiers’ battered boots cut and carved by rocks and hard abuse. On they limped into the coming of day, heading for the mouth of Little Goose Creek. Haggard and starving, the men fairly dragged their rifles through the dust and grass, the detail getting strung out for several hundred yards through the tangle of willows and cottonwoods.

Near five o’clock they spotted some warriors moving from south to north, off to the east of them. With little or no cover to speak of, none of the men made any effort to conceal themselves. Instead they watched the distant horsemen move on past.

Seamus said, “If they saw us—”

“They had to see us,” Bat interrupted.

Donegan kept his head turned as he walked. “But they ain’t coming.”

“Figured they didn’t see us,” Grouard said.

“No way they could miss us,” Pourier protested.

“Must think we’re from their village.”

Sibley grabbed Donegan’s arm, clutching it in weary desperation as he pleaded, “You don’t think that big village has attacked Crook, do you?”

“Ain’t like Injuns to attack an army camp.”

“Still, they jumped us at the Rosebud,” grumbled Sergeant Day.

“We ain’t got far to go now,” Seamus gave as his only reply. “Just keep moving: we’ll be having breakfast with the rest of Crook’s boys.”

They grumbled, whispered, murmured among themselves. Yet they kept moving. That was most important. Keep them moving.

“The birds!” Sibley squealed suddenly.

Until that moment Seamus hadn’t been aware of them. Those tiny prairie wrens, each no bigger than the palm of his hand. The branches of the trees and willow were thick with them. Chirping and warbling with the coming of day.

“One of ’em ain’t much more’n a mouthful,” Donegan replied.

“A mouthful?” asked Sergeant Day. “I could do with just a mouthful. What do you say, Lieutenant?”

Sibley asked, “Mr. Donegan—care to go bird hunting with us?”

Some of the men threw down their carbines and tore at the buttons to their cavalry tunics. Bare-chested, they crept as close to the birds as they dared, then flung their shirts over the branches. After a few frantic attempts, met only with a maddening flutter of hundreds of wings, Sibley cried out.

“I got one! Dear God—I got one!”

The lieutenant carefully pulled a hand from beneath the shirt he had used as a net and produced a small sparrow. With a sudden snap of the bird’s neck Sibley began yanking clumps of feathers from the creature’s tail, back, and breast. Then as Seamus and some of the others watched, the officer sank his teeth into the raw, red, feathered flesh of the small bird.

Donegan asked, “Don’t you wanna cook him first, Lieutenant?”

The bird between his teeth, Sibley looked up at the Irishman, his eyes glazed in some primordial ecstasy. He licked his bloody lips as he reluctantly took the bird out of his mouth, sucking so he would not lose a single drop of all those juices. Wagging his head, he replied, “Don’t want to take the time to get a fire started.” Then he bit down ravenously again on what was left of the tiny breast.

Pourier wagged his head and said to the lieutenant, “That’s pretty rough.”

“Yes, Bat,” Sibley replied, his mouth turned a bright crimson, “but I’m so hungry that I don’t know what to do!”

In the following minutes others began to capture their prey, devouring the tiny birds raw, the meat and blood still warm.

Donegan said to Pourier, “Let’s see if we can find some of those Injin turnips you told me of.”

Leaving the bird hunters behind as the sky lightened, the pair strode through the brush with their knives ready for digging. From time to time Bat would drop to his knees, showing Seamus the leafy top of the wild plant, uprooting it with his knife. Hastily scraping the moist dirt from the plump tuber, one or the other would split his treasure in half and share what he had just unearthed. At first Donegan thought it tasted like licking the bottom of a stable stall and figured the root couldn’t give him much animal strength—the way the bird meat would those who were devouring the wrens and sparrows. But the prairie turnips just might give him enough that he could limp on in to Crook’s camp.

“Let’s show the lieutenant and his men what to look for, Bat.”

Back among the soldiers, Pourier held out two of the leafy tufts and instructed Sibley’s men on how to find the turnips in the boggy ground. Within minutes the soldiers had scattered to dig up their own.

It wasn’t long before the sun rose off the east, red as a buffalo cow’s afterbirth strewn upon the new prairie grass. The coming of that ninth day of July found Sibley’s shabby, bloodied patrol setting out again. Up each new slope they crawled, more dead than alive, expecting, hoping, praying each in his own way to find on the far side that inviting fringe of cottonwood that would mark their arrival at Little Goose Creek. But disappointment was all they found for the next hour and a half. More and more hills. More valleys. More rugged, rocky ground.

“Look!” Sibley said, loudly.

The party stumbled to a halt, those behind coming along at a clumsy lurch, finally stopping among the rest as they pointed ahead. Two horses grazed near the crest of the next hill.

Seamus warned, “We better wait here, Lieutenant.”

“Yes,” Sibley agreed, motioning for his anxious men to be patient. “We’ll see about things.”

As they watched, the horses eventually turned, and even from that distance the men could see that the animals were saddled. The shimmer of reflected metal flashed beneath the sun’s new light. The glimmer of carbines in saddle boots.

“Mary, our Mother of God!” Finerty exclaimed, lunging forward.

He was the first of the massed wave that hurried out of hiding from the brushy willow, making for the hillside.

“Careful!” Donegan bellowed, struggling to hurry along himself, afraid of what might be a trap.

On the slope of the far hill a pair of men suddenly rose from the tall grass, lumbering toward their animals and yanking their carbines out of saddle pockets.

“Don’t fire!” hollered someone near the front.

Others pleaded weakly, “Please! Don’t shoot!”

“Stand and identify yourselves!”

“Lieu … Lieutenant Frederick … Frederick Sibley. U.S. S-second Cavalry.”

“Shit!” one of the two cried, the butt of his carbine sinking to the grass. “We thought you was dead, sir!”

“We were,” Finerty spoke for them all as he came forward, a dozen of the soldiers right behind him. “Believe me—we were surely good as dead.”

Sibley himself came forward. The two soldiers snapped salutes as the lieutenant asked, “Are you on picket duty?”

“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.