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

Chapter 36

8-9 September 1876

The Inter-Ocean Special.

CHICAGO, September 4—The Inter-Ocean’s Bismarck special says the latest by couriers arriving to-day from the expedition is as follows: the general feeling among both officers and men is that the campaign has been and is likely to prove an immense wild goose chase. No Indians have been seen of late, with the exception of occasional small bands making their appearance for the purpose of stealing or harassing small parties engaged in the movement of supplies on the Yellowstone. The main column has not succeeded in overtaking slippery Sitting Bull, and is not likely to this season …

August 27 the Seventh cavalry were on Ofalens creek, and Crook had started the day before with his command for Glendive creek … Crook strikes down the south bank, and by this continued movement they expect to bring about a collision with the Indians who are along the banks of the river.

The dark and the rain were as suffocating as being inside a pair of these leather gloves he wore.

Like the lid to a well-scorched cast-iron Dutch oven, the sky seemed to hang above them, right overhead, all but a few inches beyond a man’s reach.

This endless wilderness swallowed every fragment of sound but his own. The jingle of the big curb bit. The squishy squeak of the saddle beneath him, the bobbing, plodding heave of the horse as it struggled on step by step with the rest that followed, and that peculiar sucking, wet-putty pop each time the animal pulled a hoof out of the muddy gumbo and plopped it down onto the prairie again, and again. And again over the next three hours.

Off to their left a little, the prairie sounds changed near midnight. If a man listened just right, he could tell that something out there was different. Not the same monotonous rhythm of the rain hammering the sodden prairie. Frank had Donegan signal back to Mills, stopping the long column. Then Grouard slipped down into the mud and knelt. A moment later a bright corona around the half-breed flared with sudden light as the head scout struck a match, holding it cupped in both hands.

In the halo of that light glittered the reflection of a large pond of water. It was the patter of the heavy rain striking its surface that had been just that much different from the sound of rain hammering the prairie’s sodden surface. Frank crabbed left, then right, until he flicked the burned match into the pond and the whole world was dark once more.

“You saw something,” Donegan said as Grouard emerged from the drizzle.

Climbing into the saddle, Frank said, “Tracks, Irishman. Lots of tracks.”

“What’s that you say, Grouard?”

They turned back to find Mills inching forward. The half-breed said, “Tracks, Colonel. Travois. Ponies. Lots of fresh tracks.” He pointed. “Going south.”

“Won’t be good to bump right into them in this dark. Damnable rain,” Mills grumped.

“No good, we go and do that,” Frank replied.

“Grouard—I want you to ride farther ahead of us. I need you to give us plenty of time to react if you bump into anything. Put Crawford and Donegan out a little wider on both flanks.”

Donegan said, “Hard for us to see the column, Colonel.”

“You’ll just have to do the best you can,” Mills argued. “I don’t want to be surprised by a bloody thing.”

Grouard watched Crawford and Donegan move off into the gloom, then turned about to take up the front of the march. “Wait five minutes, then lead them out, Colonel.”

“Very well,” Mills replied.

Grouard disappeared into the midnight rain and darkness.

For another two hours they probed ahead. And for all their trouble the rain only fell harder and the night grew darker. After eighteen grueling miles feeling their way to the south along the Indian trail, Mills called a halt at the edge of a shallow ravine.

“Stay with your mounts,” was the order passed back through the command. “Sleep if you can on your lariats— until daylight.”

The sergeants nudged them awake at four A.M. on the eighth, rousting them from the cold, muddy ground, driving the men from their soggy blankets. After tightening cinches, shoving the huge curb bits back into the horses’ jaws, and pulling up the picket pins to be stowed in a saddlebag with the lariat, Mills had his patrol on the march again—without a thing to put in their bellies.

No matter, there wasn’t that much to eat, anyway.

On they tramped into the gray coming of that overcast morning as the rain slackened, then drifted off to the east.The sky was gray and black above them. The prairie beneath the bellies of their horses was pretty much the same color, and what small pools of water had collected here and there reflected the monotonous color of the dreary sky overhead.

From the horizon far beyond them emerged some high ground, pale in color, easily visible from a distance. Those buttes were like a beacon in what dim light the jealous clouds permitted the sun to cast upon this rolling land.

It wasn’t long before the fog rolled in, first forming in the low places, down in the coulees. Then like a growing thing it crawled up to take over the prairie itself. Becoming thicker all the time, like Mother Donegan’s blood soup coming to a boil on the trivet she would swing over the hearth in their tiny stone house back on that miserable and humble plot of ground where his father had died trying to grow enough to feed à family.

By seven o’clock Grouard had the soldiers skirting to the east of the northern end of a long and narrow landform that would one day soon be known as Slim Buttes. When he found a brushy ravine filled with plum trees, their branches heavy with fruit, the half-breed suggested a halt. Eagerly the men attacked the brush, stuffing the shiny, rain-washed plums into their mouths with one hand as the other hand pulled more off the branches.

An hour later Mills had them back in the saddle and inching off again through the soupy fog. Uneasily they probed south until noon, when the captain called another halt. This time Grouard brought them into the lee of a low bluff, protected from view to the east, from the prairie. On some good grass the horses were allowed to graze at the end of their picket pins and lassos. Then Mills allowed the men to gather some wood, dig fire pits, and boil some coffee in their tin cups. By one o’clock they were back in the saddle, Lieutenant Emmet Crawford’s battalion taking the lead, something warm now in all their bellies to go with the wild plums they had enjoyed for breakfast earlier.

Having had nothing to eat since leaving Crook’s column, the men knew the plums and coffee were better than nothing at all. Fear is always a poor feast for an empty stomach.

Just past three o’clock, not long after the thickest of the fog lifted, Seamus watched Frank Grouard reappear at the top of a rise more than a mile ahead of the column. Expecting Frank once more to do as he had been doing most of the day, checking on the column’s advance as he kept far in the lead, turning around after a moment to disappear again over the hilltop, Donegan was surprised this time when the half-breed rode back toward the column, at a gallop.

Off on the far left flank Jack Crawford had seen Grouard too and was loping back toward the van of Mills’s column.

“C’mon, ol’ boy. Time to find out what’s got Frank so spooked he’s willing to kill his horse to tell about it.”

The half-breed was already telling his story to Mills and his officers by the time Donegan got near enough to hear snatches of the tale.

“… ridge yonder … some three miles.”

Grouard was pointing. Time and again he turned in the saddle, pointing toward the Buttes that they had been skirting to the east ever since morning.

“Herd of ponies. Forty. Maybe a few more.”

“Sioux?”

By now Seamus picked up all of Frank’s answer. “Chances are good, Colonel. That’s who we been following, ain’t we?”

“You see anything of a village?”

Donegan came to a halt in that knot of horsemen as Grouard replied, “A small one. Down in a little bowl made by a ravine that cuts down from the bluffs. Think the Sioux call it Rabbit Lip Creek.”

Glancing at the western sky and the aging of the day, the captain asked his head scout, “Can we take them at dawn?”

Grouard nodded. “Only time to do it. I saw hunters south of their camp. Coming in with game. Might be other camps nearby.”

The captain licked his lips, then grumbled, “Don’t doubt they’ve found game. Red bastards been running off everything in this country.” Then Mills stood in the stirrups, peering off to the east. “Crawford,” he said, flinging his voice to the scout, “did you pass anything back on your side of the column what might conceal the command for a few hours?”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” Jack Crawford answered. “I can show you a place where we can lay in for a while.”

“Lead us there,” and Mills turned to his lieutenants. “Gentlemen, have the command follow that scout into hiding. We’ll discuss our options once we’re sure we haven’t been discovered.”

“Options?” Lieutenant Schwatka asked.

“Yes,” Mills replied. “Whether or not to attack.”

“I thought our primary mission was to secure food for the column, Colonel,” said George F. Chase.

Mills’s brow knitted in consternation and he said, “Just take your men into hiding, Lieutenant.”

Behind a low ridge northeast of the enemy village, with his troops concealed and pickets posted to guard against their discovery, Mills put the question up for discussion. About half of the officers and noncoms urged caution, voicing concern for attacking an enemy village of unknown strength, while the other half cheered for an immediate attack.

“It’s time we finally got in our licks,” added Adolphus Von Leuttwitz.

“But do we know just what we’re charging into?” asked Emmet-Crawford.

“Sure as hell Custer didn’t,” Chase groaned.

Bubb said, “Colonel Mills, as your second in command, I suggest we send word back to General Crook immediately, before we pitch into anything.”

“Request denied, Lieutenant,” Mills snapped, clearly tiring of the debate. “I’m sure you will all remember certain Academy courses in military strategy—even in philosophy—that teach just how often success, even victory, rests upon a man making his own luck, taking what advantages there are and striking quickly.”

“Besides,” Von Leuttwitz said, “we all know the Indians won’t stand and fight. They’ll scatter before a vigorous cavalry charge.”

Then Mills added, “I want you all to remember that we might do what some of you suggest and make a wide detour of that village—only to find that tomorrow some hunting party discovers our tracks and sets out in pursuit of our tired horses. No, I say—this is our chance to seize the advantage.”

After a spirited argument of it, Mills finally called an end to the discussion and told his officers he had decided they would retire a safe distance, and there the command would wait out Grouard’s scout of the village.

“And if it will make you all feel better, I’ll go with Grouard myself to determine the makeup of the village,” Mills explained, quieting the murmured clamor. “How many lodges and wickiups, how many warriors might be in there.” He looked at the half-breed. “We’ll find out what we’re facing.”

He then ordered Crawford and Donegan to lead the soldiers to the rear and hide themselves in a brushy ravine 150 feet deep with a narrow stream running through the bottom.

At twilight Donegan settled into the soggy mud beside Mills. “Colonel, you figure we ought to send a rider back to alert Crook that you’ve run onto a village?”

Mills turned as if smarting at the question. “I’ll know that answer as soon as I return from making a reconnaissance with Grouard, Mr. Donegan.”

“Didn’t mean to rile you, Colonel. But the both of us can remember what we pitched into over on the Powder River last winter, remember how we expected reinforcements to show up from the rear—”

“My memory isn’t faulty, Mr. Donegan,” Mills snapped, getting to his feet. “This, I assure you, is nothing like that. Our situation is that Crook remains far behind, and unavailable for support.”

“But if we give him a chance to know what we’re pitching into, maybe we could hold off till he could get here.”

“I’ll trust you to keep your nervous worries to yourself, Mr. Donegan—and leave the military planning to me. Your anxiety has already infected Lieutenant Bubb. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I figure it’s dark enough to reconnoiter the enemy’s stronghold.”

Seamus watched the captain move off through the soldiers, who dozed or talked in small groups, smoking their pipes and boiling their coffee over small fires ignited at the bottom of pits. A crumb of hard bread and a scrap of bacon broiled on a stick would have to do while some of the packers boiled down a soup of pork grease and a few handfuls of flour.

Seamus decided he would save what little he had left— certain there would be wounded. At times like this—with the waiting and the unknown and the dread—if a man only thought of someone else, he could feel the presence of something bigger than himself.

Refusing to listen to the growl of his aching stomach, he tried to sleep but only dozed, part of him painfully aware of every new sound in the misty night. Sometime later he made out Grouard’s voice. Donegan went over to hear the half-breed’s report on the layout of the village.

“You went in by yourself and just walked back out with them two ponies?” Seamus asked after Mills had turned aside to organize his lieutenants for the attack. Grouard held the leads to a pair of Indian horses—one a beautiful pinto, the other a sleek black stallion.

“I told the colonel the village might be too big for us. Then he said he didn’t take me for a coward.”

Donegan asked, “Too big—how many lodges?”

Looking away, Grouard answered, “Maybe forty, forty-five lodges.”

Seamus studied the half-breed. “We can take ’em, can’t we, Frank?”

“I went in there, didn’t I?”

“That should prove to Mills you aren’t a coward.”

“Told him the both of us couldn’t go no closer together. He smells like a white man. And the dogs was likely to start barking.”

“But you didn’t answer me straight, Frank: we gonna be able to take that village?”

When the scout did not reply as he continued to stroke the muzzle of the black pony, Seamus said, “How’d you get your spoils of battle?”

Grouard shrugged. “I lived with the Lakota before. I can look Injun.”

“Good for you, Frank. Besides, the warrior those ponies belonged to won’t be needing them pretty soon anyway, right?”

“Injuns don’t need good horses like these—right.”

“But you’re a damn fool to take that chance of getting caught, and getting these sojurs killed with you.”

Grouard glared at Donegan. “Didn’t ever know you to get so worried about a little danger before, Irishman.”

“Maybe you’re right—just say I’m getting nervous in my old age,” Seamus replied. “This a bunch you know?”

Now he wagged his head. “Didn’t see a thing I recognized. Maybeso they’re Sans Arc. Maybe Miniconjou or Burnt Thigh—the Brule. Nobody I know in there.”

Donegan said, “You be sure to come get me when Mills is ready to go in.”

Grouard nodded and moved off with his two new Sioux ponies.

Trudging back to his clump of buffalo-berry brush he shared with Crawford, Donegan glanced at the clouds suspended low overhead. They seemed to hang just beyond the reach of his fingertips. Even in their grayness the clouds reflected the orange dance of the crimson-titted fires buried in their tiny pits. For a moment he stopped and peered off to the southwest, in the direction of that long ridge of buttes, wondering if the hostiles were paying attention to the night sky, hoping they would not notice the far-off glow reflected from so many soldier fires.

Then he tugged his hat brim down and set off again through the rain, hoping the foul weather would keep the Indians in their lodges. Praying.

When he reached the brush, Seamus pulled his collar up around his neck and sank back to the ground, leaning against the wet saddle and closing his eyes, tried for some sleep. Instead of peace he dreamed fitfully on Samantha. Finding her calling him out there in the fog, her voice edged with worry. He could not find her, no matter how hard he tried—going this way, then that, as he plunged madly through the soupy fog and driving rain.

She kept calling to him, never coming any closer. He suddenly shuddered in the cold, awakening himself.

In the darkness he crossed himself, thinking on these starving, worn-out men and animals. Their horses were covered with oozing sores, and what the men had left of their uniforms was now little more than wet rags that clung to their skeletal frames as they shivered in the cold. Some wiped their gun barrels to kill time, or polished their meager supply of cartridges to make the sleepless hours pass.

Sometime before midnight some of Moore’s mules tried to stampede but were kept from escaping by the horse guard. A while later at a clap of nearby thunder some of the cavalry mounts did make a break for freedom, but the troopers rounded them up and brought the horses back, once more driving the picket pins into the soggy ground that simply had no hope of holding those iron stakes secure.

They were a good bunch, Seamus decided. When these men should have been filled with nothing greater than fear at their own survival, nothing greater than despair—most had rallied at the prospect of getting in their blows, their spirits raised at this chance to even the score for the frustrating stalemate on the Rosebud, for Custer’s disaster on the Little Bighorn.

With nothing in their bellies they would be going into battle.

So it was the Irishman crossed himself and started mouthing the words that came back to him despite all the intervening years. Words taught him long, long ago by that village priest back in County Kilkenny. The sort of catechism one never forgot. Here on the brink of battle asking God to watch over and protect, to hold him in the Almighty’s hand.

After all these years wherein he had never darkened the door of a church—to discover that he was still steeped in that faith a fighting man never really lost.