Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

Chapter 15

17 December 1876

BY TELEGRAPH

Steamers Crushed in the Ice at St. Louis

Etc., Etc., Etc.

MISSOURI

Ice Jam at St. Louis—Steamers Caught and Crushed.

ST. LOUIS, December 11.—A reporter lately up from the arsenal gives these additional particulars of the destruction of steamers this month. It appears that nearly all the boats of the Keokuk Northern line were in winter quarters near the arsenal and supposed to be secure from damage. When the ice started these steamers were forced from their moorings and carried down stream. The War Eagle and Golden Eagle, two large and valuable boats, were forced on shore opposite the arsenal wall in such a manner as to block the passage, and the other boats crowded and caused a complete jam. … At 2 P.M. the ice again moved, crushing the boats still closer together, and doing additional damage. Again at 4 P.M. there was another movement of ice which pressed against the boats with terrific power and forced them still farther down, crushing guards, upper decks and wheels and doing great damage…. The hull of the Mitchell was stove in and she filled, but her position prevented her from settling to the bottom.

Headquarters Cantonment at Tongue River

December 17, 1876

To

Philip H. Sheridan

Assistant Adjutant General

Department of Dakota

Saint Paul, Minn.

Sir:

I have to report the occurrence of an unfortunate affair at this place, yesterday….

Those killed were believed to be Bull Eagle, Tall Bull, Red Horse, Red Cloth, and one other prominent Chief of the Sioux nation. I am unable to state the object of Bull Eagle’s coming, but am satisfied he came with the best of motives. I can only judge from the following: When he surrendered on the Yellowstone, after the engagement on Cedar Creek, he was the first to respond to my demands, and, I believe, was largely instrumental in bringing his people to accept the terms of the Government.

[Bull Eagle] seemed to be doing everything in his power for the good of the people, and endeavoring to bring them a more peaceful condition. He appeared to have great confidence in what I told him. I gave him five days to obtain meat; during that time he lost three favorite ponies which were brought to this place. During my absence he came in, bringing five horses that had strayed or been stolen from some citizen in the vicinity, and requested his own….

[The five murdered Sioux] were within a few hundred yards of the parade ground, where they were deliberately placing themselves in the hands of the Government, and within the camp of four hundred Government troops.

[This whole affair] illustrates clearly the ferocious, savage instincts of even the best of these wild tribes and the impossibility of their controlling their desire for revenge, when it is aroused by the sight of their worst enemies, who have whipped them for years and driven them out of their country. Such acts are expected and considered justifiable among these two tribes of Indians, and it is to be hoped that the Sioux will understand that they fell into a camp of their ancient enemies, and did not reach the encampment of this command.

Very respectfully

your obedient Servant

(sgd.) Nelson A. Miles

Colonel 5th Infantry

Brevet Major General U.S.A.

Commanding.

Seamus Donegan took a deep breath—so deep, the cold air hurt within his chest. He nudged the roan and kept the gelding’s nose pointed north.

Down the Tongue all the way to the Yellowstone.

Seamus had been there before. Last summer with Crook and Terry, after Custer got half his regiment wiped out. About the time Nelson A. Miles got itchy to break loose from the senseless thumb twiddling of the two generals and headed toward the Tongue for the winter.

It wasn’t just cold in this country anymore. No. This had become pure hell: one day after another of endless, soul-thieving cold. Then yesterday he was certain the temperature played a card off the bottom of the deck on him. Instead of warming through the day, it got even colder. Mercilessly cold.

And the wind never stopped.

Tugging the thick, wide wool scarf up to the bridge of his nose, Seamus used it to swipe quickly at the tears seeping from his eyes because the galling wind was strong enough, stubborn enough, to sneak inside every gap of his clothing—despite the Irishman’s best efforts to pull his head down inside the big flap collar of his wool-and-canvas mackinaw like a turtle, turning his face to one side as he fought to keep one eye on some landmark off in the distance. North by west.

One eye that constantly watered from that wind beneath the long gray frosted hairs of the wolf-hide cap.

“It’s your’n now, boy,” old Dick Closter had told him that Sunday morning at Crook’s wagon camp on the Belle Fourche. “I’m going back to post—put up my feet and play some cards by the stove. So I figger you need it more’n me.”

“Swear I’ll get it back to you soon as I come down through Fetterman.”

The old mule packer’s eyes had softened beneath the two bushy white beetles nestled on his brow. “You just keep it, son. And remember me as your friend when you wear it.”

Behind him whipped the wide-brimmed hat attached only by that wind string knotted around his neck. Tossed this way and that, it would again one day provide shade from a blazing sun or protect his eyes from the piercing glare off winter snow. Seamus snorted. No glare these last few days—why, the sun had been no more than a buttermilk-pale button in the sky, if that. What with the way the storm clouds danced past one right after the other, day after day. Seamus sniffed and dragged the horsehide gauntlet mitten under his sore, reddened nose.

For three and a half days he had followed Three Bears and the other Lakota scouts, who had led him northwest to the mouth of the Little Powder. He had wanted to push right on down the Powder itself, rather than chance the arduous crosscountry journey. But Three Bears had advised against it. To ride the Powder in the wintertime was a gamble: the Crazy Horse people preferred its valley at this time of the year. Upstream or down, a lone white man was taking a very, very big chance.

So just as the Lakota warrior had scratched out on his map in the snow, Seamus bid the scouts farewell and pushed on across the Powder, then slowly ascended the high divide that carried him over to Mizpah Creek. Many were the times Frank Grouard had told him stories of the Powder and Mizpah country. Prime hunting ground for the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse and He Dog, that was.

That’s when it had struck him—remembering something Grouard had told him about the lay of the land. Something that just might take a day off his trip.

Cold and feeling more alone than he had in a long, long time, Seamus knew full well what a warm fire and new faces could do for his half-numb soul. A little hot coffee and something more to eat than dried meat and army tacks.

That’s when he decided that there would be no question if he should chance cutting at least a day off his ride to that post at the mouth of the Tongue. He would accomplish that by cutting north-northwest, cross-country after leaving the Mizpah, until he struck Pumpkin Creek. After another day and one more freezing winter night Donegan reached the mouth of the Pumpkin … to stand, finally, on the banks of the Tongue, far below where he would have struck the river had he not gambled on the shortcut.

On his left, back to the south, lay Otter Creek; beyond it was Hanging Woman Creek. Grouard had often talked about the warrior bands making camps in that country.

Donegan shuddered and turned down the Tongue.

For the better part of a week now he had been dozing in fits, too cold to get any real rest. What he did more often than not was to pull his head beneath his blankets, his breath warming the skin on his face there in his cocoon, and remember the touch of her fingers on his cheeks. Recalling the sweet smell of the babe’s breath after the child had finished suckling at its mother’s breast and Seamus would rock the boy to sleep. So lonely and cold, it was nothing he could call sleep.

So he poked his warm wool mittens down inside the stiff horsehide cavalry gauntlets and stuffed each of them beneath an armpit, trying to remember just how warm he had been back at Fort Laramie. Just how safe and secure and warm a man could feel in the arms of a woman.

Donegan discovered that his fire had gone out when he awoke in the shapeless early light that eighth morning. With one hand he pulled the two thick blankets back over his head and closed his eyes. Not going to worry about a puny fire now. He would have to be on his way soon enough. Down in that burrow of darkness he listened to the rattle of the wind as it hurtled over him, tormenting the leafless branches of the alder in the cottonwood grove he had chosen last night when the moon and stars had begun to cloud over.

Then he heard the roan snort.

Likely thirsty, he thought.

Cold and shuddering in the dark, Seamus had been forced to camp where there was shelter out of the wind, but no open water, in a copse of saplings and brush near the Tongue.

Slowly, stiffly, he pulled himself out of the wide sack of oiled canvas where his blankets kept him from freezing. Standing, revolving his shoulders to work some of the kinks out of them, Donegan trudged over to the gelding, patting its muzzle.

It took a few minutes, but he found a spot along the bank where the ice didn’t gather so thick. He smacked at it with the butt end of his camp ax, then bent his head over the hole to plunge his chin into the icy cold. His beard quickly freezing as he struggled to his feet, Seamus stood back and let the roan have its first long drink of the day.

To the east the invisible sun was just then beginning to turn the underbellies of the low clouds to an orange fire, pink above. By the time he had saddled, tied his bedroll behind him, and pushed on down the Tongue another five miles, he could see that the thick clouds stretching from horizon to horizon were destined to blot out the sun again for another day.

All around him the wind skipped, whittling its way across a desolate country scarred by winds of a thousand centuries, a thirsty land veined by the erosion of countless springtimes that brought moisture, only to have that moisture sucked right out of the ground come the bake-oven summers.

Plodding slowly, letting the roan pick its own way, Donegan kept the Tongue to his left, winding northward into that afternoon, sensing the path the sun took at his back all the while, until it finally rested for another day near the far, far mountains somewhere beyond the back of his left shoulder. A Sunday, he had figured out. One long week since he had finished that letter to Samantha in those moments before he’d ridden away from the Belle Fourche with Three Bears.

At the muffled crack Donegan pulled back hard on the reins—so hard, it startled him, realizing he must have been half-asleep in the saddle again. A dangerous thing to do, even in this cold. A man who counted on its being far too cold to bump into a hunting party of Lakota might well be a dead man in this country.

Nudging the horse into the trees, where he might have a chance to see them before they saw him, Seamus waited and listened. Another muffled crack. Then more, all muffled, in a ragged rhythm. And in the space between some of those cracks, he imagined he heard voices.

Straining his eyes through the bare, snow-slickened branches of the trees, he studied the far side of the Tongue, the slope leading up from the river. The sounds came from beyond that rise of ocher earth mantled in patches of dirty white. He decided he had to know.

Leading the horse out of the brush, Seamus moved to the riverbank, plopped one boot down on the ice, thumped it good with a heel to test it, planted both feet down and jumped several times, then yanked on the reins. Slowly, deliberately, measuring each step, Donegan began to cross, eyes flicking from the opposite bank to the place where he would plant each foot. Yard by yard he moved across the opaque, shimmering ice, where he could sometimes make out the Tongue River bubbling beneath its thick, protective coat.

Now the voices grew louder, one voice more so than the others, sternly snapping; then more of that clack-clunk of wood against wood. In minutes Seamus was at the top of the hill, brazenly putting the skyline at his back because he knew, he remembered, he recognized those sounds. Donegan held his breath as he stared down on the wood detail. A dozen soldiers wrapped in heavy buffalo-hide or wool coats, muskrat caps tied under their chins, axes and saws in their mittens, and a sergeant standing up on a pile of wood in the first of two wagons, bellowing his orders as the men finished filling the bed of the second wagon up to the gunwales.

Each of those resounding clunks of wood like a step taken closer to home for a lonely wayfarer.

Then he blinked, not really sure his ears weren’t playing tricks on him. Suddenly those faint, brassy notes floating his way on the cold wind.

“God-blessit!” the sergeant bawled in his mass of gray-and-black whiskers. “I tolcha idjits! Said they’d blow retreat afore you’d get this detail done, din’t I, you slackards! Now we have to bust our ever-livin’ humps to get back afore dark!”

Again the trumpet blew those homecoming notes. And Seamus felt the cold tighten his throat, remembering the sound of that call at Fort Laramie just before they would fire the sunset gun. Retreat for the day. Which meant supper, and shelter for the coming of night.

Below him now sharp commands cracked above the six-mule teams, whips snapped, and the loads groaned as wagons lurched into motion with a creaking rumble across the hard, icy ground. Beside both wagons the dozen soldiers strung out on both sides, having laid their long Springfields at a shoulder now.

Grabbing hold of the horn, Seamus swung himself into the saddle with an ungainly grunt, settled his coat and the thick buffalo-hide leggings, then hurried the roan into motion along the ridgetop, watching the first of the soldiers at the back of the procession turn to look up his way, suddenly stumbling, regaining his footing, and pounding on the back of the man in front of him.

They both whirled about, beginning to yell and point, and a moment later the wagons shuddered to a halt as the whole outfit turned about to watch the lone rider lope down the hillside, cutting this way and that around the snowy turnip heads of greasewood.

“S-sojurs!” he sang out as loud as he could in joy, finding his voice a croak after so many days of not using it.

“Just who the hell you be?” the slit-eyed sergeant demanded. “Keep a eye on this’un, fellers. And that hill too. Might be more of ’em.”

“Just me,” Seamus pleaded as he reined up. “Donegan’s the name.”

“Where the blazes you come from?” asked the soldier closest. “Up from Glendive by the south bank?”

With a wag of his wolf-hide cap Donegan grinned, for the moment just letting his eyes dance over the faces raw and chapped by the brutal wind and cold. How good it was to see such faces, men, soldiers. Even if they all had guns pointed at him.

“No, not Glendive,” he answered with an unused voice. “Over from the Belle Fourche. And the Crazy Woman Fork of the Powder far to the south. Beyond that—I come all the way from the Red Fork Canyon where Mackenzie’s Fourth drove the mighty Cheyenne into the snow.”

“Y-you from Crook’s bunch?” the sergeant squeaked in disbelief. He wiped a dribble of tobacco juice from his lower lip.

“None other,” Seamus said, sliding out of the saddle clumsily with those thick buffalo-hide leggings. He stomped over to stop in front of the sergeant, pulled off his horsehide gauntlet, and held out his bare hand in the cold. “I’ve got a letter from Crook for your General Miles.”

They shook and the old file muttered, “I’ll be go to hell, boys … if this feller don’t look like he’s come through hell to get here.”

“You really come from Crook?” another soldier gasped, shuffling up close to look the Irishman up and down as if he had to be an apparition.

With a shudder of his head the sergeant asked, “That ain’t no bald-face? It true you come right up through all that country down yonder?”

“I been eight days doing it, fellers,” Donegan replied, licking an oozy lip, then shoved the wolf-hide cap back from his forehead a bit. “And I sure got me a hankering for a hot cup of coffee right about now.”

“By God, if we all don’t have such a hankering our own selves!” roared an old soldier who shoved his way into the knot around Donegan.

“Lookee there under his hat, Sarge!” another man piped up. “He come up from Crook’s country … an’ still got him his hair!”

The sergeant’s eyes finally began to twinkle as he pounded the Irishman on the shoulder. “So, you gol-danged civilian—maybeso while we finish our li’l walk back to the post yonder … you can tell us how come your scalp ain’t hanging from Crazy Horse’s belt right about now.”