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

Chapter 19

17 July 1876

Dispatch from Crook—What He Will

Do When Merritt Comes

WASHINGTON, July 17—General Sheridan has forwarded the following dispatches to Sherman: I had already ordered General Merritt to join General Crook, but he will be delayed a few days, attempting to intercept the Indians who have left Red Cloud Agency. I would suggest to Crook to unite with Terry and attack and chase the Indians, but I am so far away that I will have to leave them as I have done.

CAMP ON GOOSE CREEK, Wyoming, July 13, via Fetterman, July 15.—My last information from Red Cloud Agency was that the Cheyennes had left there to reinforce the enemy in my front. As this takes away all the disturbing element from that section, I have availed myself of the lieutenant general’s permission, and ordered eight companies of the Fifth Cavalry, under Col. Merritt, to join me at this point. The best information I can get from the front is that the Sioux have three fighting men to my one. Although I have no doubt of my ability to whip them with my present force, the victory would likely be one barren of results, and so I have thought better to defer the attack until I can get the Fifth here, and then end the campaign with one crushing blow. The hostile Indians are, according to my advices, encamped on the Little Horn, near the base of the mountain, and will probably remain there until my reinforcements come up. I received a dispatch from General Terry this morning asking me to cooperate. I will do so to the best of my ability.

GEORGE CROOK

Brigadier General

At three A.M. that Monday morning King’s teeth began to chatter as the coldest hours of the day descended around them. A half hour later the coyotes were still in good voice as the lieutenant picked his way through the bivouac to find Merritt rolled in his blanket beneath a tall cottonwood.

“Colonel?”

The veteran of Beverly Ford and the Rappahannock came awake immediately, sitting up and tapping Forbush beside him. “Thank you, Mr. King. You may now return to your company.”

“It’s time for me to move to our forward observation post, Colonel.”

“Lieutenant London, who I’ve put in charge of A Troop, is ready for you to relay word to me,” Merritt explained. “Send news the moment you see anything. Anything at all.”

King would relay word back to a low ridge immediately behind him, where sat Private Christian Madsen, Company A, as his horse cropped grass in a shallow swale below him. Although a recent immigrant from Denmark, Madsen was far from being wet behind the ears, nor was he a young shavetail recruit. Instead this solid, older soldier Lieutenant Robert London had chosen from his company to carry word to Merritt himself was a cast-iron, double-riveted veteran of both the Danish-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian wars on the European Continent, as well as having served a hitch in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion before coming to America, wandering farther west still to this opening frontier.

After sliding in between Schreiber and Wilkinson atop a commanding knoll, King swept his eyes over the landscape becoming an ashen gray before him. Some two miles away against the southern sky lay a long ridge that extended around to their left, where it eventually lost itself to the rise and fall of the rolling countryside. Farther yet to the northeast stood the sharp outlines of the Black Hills themselves, at that moment brushed with hues of the faintest pastel-rose. As the minutes continued to grind by, both the Hills and that ridge to the south grew all the more distinct as night seeped from the belly of the sky.

In that predawn light King could now make out the shape of an even better observation post, a taller hill rising another four hundred yards off. “Come with me, fellas.”

Minutes later, as all three of them hid just beneath the crest of that small conical mound, the lieutenant found he commanded a full view of everything moving on the land between their post and the distant ridges. Behind them the trees bordering the Warbonnet could be made out in the middistance, the cottonwood and brush laced with a wispy fog rising off the creek as it poured sluggishly toward its meeting with the South Fork of the Cheyenne. Back there waited 330 enlisted men as well as 16 officers, in addition to their surgeon, along with Bill Cody and his 4 other scouts.

Grinding his teeth on nothing for the moment, King thought how just about now the others were pumping life into the small fires they buried in the sand, starting to heat up some coffee. What he’d give for a hot, strong cup of army brew right now. And he brooded that they’d be laying out slabs of that pungent salt pork in their frying pans as the coffee water heated to boiling.

As if it had overheard his thoughts, his own stomach grumbled, protesting. Man just wasn’t meant to fight on an empty stomach.

Due south he could begin to make out the outline of the fabled Pine Ridge that stretched all the way from western Wyoming Territory, on through Nebraska, then angled north toward Dakota. Time and again King swept the whole country with his field glasses, scouring the horizon from east to west in a 180-degree arc. Off to the west in the growing light he could begin to see the deeply chewed trail the Fifth made reaching this point last night. But off to the east—nothing moved.

By 4:30 A.M. all seven companies had saddled their horses and were awaiting action in the cold stillness of the sun’s emergence. The chilled air refused to stir. The silence was almost crushing. Behind the observation knoll, King, Schreiber, and Wilkinson had left their horses with two pickets in a shallow depression. At times the lieutenant could even hear the animals tearing at the abundant prairie grass. King swore he could even hear the thump-thump of his own heart beat as he peered into the distance coming alive with the new day’s ever-changing light. For a moment he studied the faces of the men on either side of him, finding them drawn and haggard with nonstop fatigue, their eyes sunken and draped with liver-colored bags.

“Lieutenant!” Wilkinson called out in a harsh whisper, suddenly coming to life—tapping King on the upper arm.

Immediately he trained his glasses in the direction the corporal was looking. “You see something?”

“Saw something move.”

Schreiber crawled back to the crest of the mound on his belly, shading his eyes against the brightening sky.

“Look, Lieutenant!” Wilkinson gushed. “There … there are Indians!”

“Where?” Schreiber demanded.

Slowly the corporal rose on his hands and knees, bringing one arm up to point to the southeast. “That ridge … can’t you see them?”

It took a few moments, maybe as much as a minute, not any more than that—as King strained his eyes, squinted, twirling the adjustment knob this way with painstaking precision, then back the other direction just as slowly.

“I see ’em, Lieutenant!” Schreiber said.

“Yes,” King replied, the hair rising at the back of his neck. “There’s a second group now.”

A third small knot of five or six horsemen appeared on the distant ridge, then dropped back out of sight. For the time being none of those warriors seemed to be in a great hurry to advance, but instead seemed intent solely on something off to the southwest of where King lay observing the entire panorama with the sun’s rising. Over the next few minutes he counted a half-dozen small parties popping up to the crest of the distant ridges, then turning about and disappearing from sight.

Finally King turned to Schreiber. “Sergeant—send word back to the signalman from A Troop. He’ll alert the command.”

“Tell ’em the Injuns are coming?”

“Yes,” King replied.

Down the backside of the slope the sergeant slid until out of sight. Then he trotted on down to the horse-holders, gesturing as he whispered his message. One of the troopers flung himself into the saddle and tore off toward the lone trooper from A Company waiting on a knoll halfway back to the Warbonnet bivouac.

“Way they’re acting, you think they’ve seen us?” Wilkinson asked as Schreiber crawled back in beside them.

“Don’t think so,” King replied. “They keep popping over, watching something. If they knew we were here, they’d be gone already.”

“That’s right. If they knew we was here,” the sergeant agreed, “we’d never knowed they was there.”

For the next thirty minutes the trio didn’t take their eyes from the southeast as the sun continued its climb. Then King turned at the snort from one of the held horses in the depression below them. Coming up on his resplendent buckskin, Bill Cody led seven soldiers: Merritt and Carr, along with Major John J. Upham and aide-de-camp Lieutenant J. Hayden Pardee of the Twenty-third Infantry as well as three from the colonel’s staff. All of them came to a halt and leaped from their saddles, hurrying up the slope at a crouch behind the scout. Without a word the colonel and his lieutenant colonel trained their own glasses on the distance, watching the dark specks appear and disappear in the distance, now narrowed to less than two miles. From the rear hurried three more of Cody’s scouts—White, Tait, and Garnier—along with several more curious officers loping in from bivouac to have a look for themselves.

Merritt turned to Forbush, his regimental adjutant, asking, “Have the men had their coffee?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then return to the company commanders with my instructions to mount the regiment and have them formed into line.”

“Yes, sir.” Forbush slid down the slope and trotted to his horse.

“What do you think they’re after?” the colonel asked as he turned around to train his eye on the distance.

“Don’t know for sure, General,” Cody answered. “But they’re sure acting like they’re watching something.”

The knoll was growing crowded with soldiers and scouts when King asked, “The Black Hills Road?”

“Could be,” Merritt replied. “It lies somewhere out there.”

“I don’t think so,” Cody argued, shaking his head. He was dressed in a dashing black outfit, tailored in the lines of a Mexican vaquero’s. “The road is off over there—more to the east. And those warriors are watching something coming in from the west.”

“Besides, no one would be using the Black Hills Road now,” Carr agreed with his scout. “They’ve been warned off of it because of the agency scare.”

“That can’t be the Black Hills Road,” King responded. “Off to the west—that’s the Sage Creek Road, on our backtrail.”

“The way those warriors’re keeping themselves hid from the west,” Cody explained, “I’ll lay a wager they’re keeping an eye on something coming from that direction.”

Merritt asked, “Then they have no idea we’re here?”

“Just look at all of them!” Carr marveled.

It was as if the light suddenly ballooned across the entire horizon at that very moment. Every ridge and hill screened from the west was now alive with warriors, all of them excitedly moving about.

Carr wagged his head, rubbing his gritty eyes with two fingertips as he muttered, “What in thunder are they laying for?”

“By glory—that’s it!” Cody bellowed. He pointed west now.

“There! Yes! I see them!” Merritt said.

“Is that—Oh, dear God!” Carr replied. “That’s got to be our own supply train.”

Better than four miles away the white tops of Lieutenant Hall’s company wagons began to pop up on the distant horizon as the light swelled around them. Hurrying his teams as fast as he dared push them, Hall was bringing along those two companies of infantry.

“By doggies!” Cody said, then chuckled. “Those Injuns think they’ve found ’em some easy pickings.”

“All alone on the Sage Creek Road,” Charlie White added.

“But those wagons aren’t filled with plunder,” Carr said with a smile.

Merritt couldn’t help himself, clapping in glee. “Great Jupiter—have we got a surprise in store for them when they ride down to jump those wagons!”

White cheered, “They’ll roll those covers back and let those red sonsabitches have it!”

“I don’t believe this! Hall’s made an all-night march of it,” Merritt announced.

“I, for one, General,” said Carr, “am glad he did.”

With a nod Merritt agreed. “I suppose he’s made himself the bait in our trap, without even knowing it.”

“Nothing those Injuns want better,” Garnier observed, “than a supply train loaded with plunder headed to the Black Hills settlements.”

“Instead,” Cody said, a big smile creasing his face, “those wagons are loaded for bear.”

King interrupted their celebration, pointing in another direction as he said, “Will you look at that, sirs?”

Off to the southeast they saw a bright-colored, plumed band of warriors separate from the hundreds and kick their ponies into motion. At a gallop they rode down into the bottoms and at the base of the hills, staying out of sight from the oncoming wagons. Unknowingly, the nine or ten horsemen were closing the gap between them and the soldiers’ lookout post.

“They spotted us?”

“Naw,” Cody said. “If they knew soldiers were here, there’d be more than just that little bunch coming.”

“What do you suppose they’re about?” Merritt wondered.

“Them,” Cody said gravely.

Every man on that hill now trained his glasses to the southwest. A pair of riders broke into view, riding well ahead of the bow-topped wagons.

“Couriers?” Carr asked.

“I’d bet money on it,” Cody said. “General, Colonel … appears that Hall is sending you word he’s coming in.”

“But those two don’t realize they’re about to get chopped up!” King said. “That band of warriors is going to butcher those couriers before they even know what surprise the rest of the red bastards have in store for the train.”

“Dear Lord—those men are riding to their death,” Merritt muttered.

“Look, General!” Cody said. “There—see that ravine where that war party is riding?”

“Yes.”

“Down there—see—where the ravine’s mouth opens onto the road,” Cody said confidently. “That’s where they’ll likely jump those couriers.”

“I can’t allow that to happen,” Merritt grumbled.

Carr wagged his head and said, “But if we fire on them now, we’ll scare off the rest of the warriors before we can engage them.”

“By Jove, General,” Cody cheered as he got to his feet, dusting off the resplendent braided vaquero costume he wore that day. “Now’s our chance. We can ride out and cut those red hellions off!”

“Yes!” Merritt rose, gripping Cody’s arm. “It’s up to you, Cody. Cut them off!”

The scout turned on his heel and sprinted downslope as Merritt whirled on King, gripping the lieutenant’s arm. “Stay here, Mr. King. It’s your call: watch till that war party is close under you—then give the word! The rest of you come down, every other man of you.”

“Yes … sir!” King saluted and watched the others start their hurried race down the slope to their mounts.

Again the hair on the back of his sunburned neck prickled with anticipation. Two hundred yards behind him to the north he watched as the first of the six companies of mounted troopers moved into line and halted—brought up by their company commanders as soon as Private Madsen had carried word to camp: Indians had been spotted. Now the Fighting Fifth was fronting out in a thin blue line against the green and brown of those rolling hills, horses colored by troops, carbines glittering with a dull blue sheen in that first light of day.

King’s heart was thundering now, and his mouth had gone dry. He tried licking his lips with a pasty tongue as he turned back to the south. In the distance a hundred lances stood out against the summer sky, feathers and scalp locks fluttering on the renewed breeze. The horsemen watched their own ride on down that ravine, ready to cut off the two unsuspecting couriers.

Again Charles glanced over his shoulder. Cody, White, the half-breed Tait, and a half-dozen men from his own Company K waited in the saddle atop anxious animals— tightening gunbelts, straightening clothing, tugging hats down on their brows. All of them with their eyes trained intently on King above them on the hill. Halfway down the slope Merritt, Carr, and their aides waited out of sight.

King was the only man left at the top now that the enemy was drawing dangerously near. Stretched out flat on his belly, he swallowed hard, wishing he had brought his canteen along. Instantly knowing there was no amount of water that would ever wet a man’s mouth when it had gone dry with the anticipation of battle.

He could not give the word too soon, or the warriors would escape. And he could not wait too long—the couriers would be swallowed up before rescue could race round the hill.

Now he could hear the hoofbeats. Or was it the pounding of his heart? No, it was the hoofbeats of those war ponies.

No longer did he need his field glasses to watch the oncoming collision. Everything seemed to loom closer and closer, ever closer.

He turned and flung his voice downhill. “All ready, General?”

Merritt answered, “All ready, King. Give the word when you like.”

That thunder had to be his heart.

No, it was the hammering of those hooves as the warriors reached the last hundred yards of ravine.

Ten seconds.

God—but they were beautiful men: their dark skin made golden in the coming light.

Eight.

The new light reflected off the bright war paint, brass arm bands and bracelets, the silver gorgets.

Six seconds.

The way the wind whipped their hair, the scalp locks tied to fringed leggings and shields, fluttering beneath the jaws of the onrushing ponies.

Four.

What horsemen these, he marveled as he began to reach for the brim of his slouch hat he had laid on the grass beside him. Never again will there be any the likes of these.

Two seconds left.

In my hand I hold your fate. In my very hand, I hold vengeance for the death of Custer’s Seventh!

Then, as the racing warriors burst from the mouth of the ravine, King bolted to his feet, waving his hat and bellowing as Cody exploded away in a blur.

“Now, lads! In with you!”