Wolf Mountain Moon: The Battle of the Butte, 1877

Chapter 31

8 January 1877

When Casey’s men hit the steepest of the snowy slopes right below the tall butte itself, it was immediately clear to everyone watching that those soldiers would never make it to the top of the cone.

Not in those bulky buffalo coats and leggings, they weren’t. Not on that slippery ice. And not with the legions of warriors doing everything in their power to make as much trouble as they could for the soldiers below.

A bullet smashed into a wheel on the Napoleon gun carriage, sending splinters over the Irishman and the chief of scouts.

“Kelly!” Miles hollered. “You and Donegan—front and center!”

Loping to a stop before the colonel, Seamus could see that Miles’s red face glowed from more than the bitter cold.

“Casey’s going to get himself bogged down,” the colonel growled, clearly impatient with his inability to drive the warriors back.

Donegan declared, “If he ain’t already stopped dead in his tracks, General.”

He glared right into the Irishman. “I hired you on to guide for Kelly—and scouting is all I ever expected you to do, Mr. Donegan.”

But just the way the colonel had said it made Donegan think there was a bit more on his mind. “If you’ve got something what itches you, better you scratch it here and now.”

Miles cleared his throat. “You feel like taking a ride up to Major Casey?”

Seamus licked his cracked lips. “To tell him what?”

“Move him south along the base of the ridge.”

Gazing across that six hundred yards or more, Donegan asked, “How far, General?”

For a moment Miles held the field glasses on the slopes of the jagged ridgeline that extended south by east from the knoll and ran all the way past that tall cone. He turned back to Donegan. “I want him to push along the side of those buttes until he gets himself past that high pointed one.”

“There’s no mistaking it, General,” Kelly observed.

“Until he gets past that big one,” Seamus repeated the order. “All right.”

In the colonel’s eyes shimmered deep appreciation. “You’ll go?”

Seamus looked at the other civilian. “Unless Kelly wants to ride.”

“Have at ’er, you ol’ horse soldier,” Kelly cheered.

“And one other thing, Donegan,” Miles interrupted, suddenly snagging the Irishman’s arm. “Tell him I’ll have support coming his way.”

“Who, General?”

“Major Butler’s company.”

Seamus nodded. “Butler—good.”

“And McDonald too,” Miles said with finality. “You tell Casey I’m sending him all that support so he’ll have every chance to press his attack there where the enemy is gathering in their greatest numbers.”

“A battalion ought to make the major happy,” Donegan replied.

“Another hundred men ought to help him drive those red buggers off the heights, for good!” Miles roared.

In his clumsy buffalo-hide overshoes, Seamus had all he could do to keep his footing as he trotted along the shallow slope of the plateau toward the supply train where the stock was corralled when he suddenly became aware of just what he was setting off to do. More than that, it struck him what task Casey’s men—along with those of Butler and McDonald—now had staring them in the eye.

Reaching the horses, he quickly snatched up the reins to Miles’s own big animal, led it away from the rest, then stuffed his buffalo-hide-wrapped boot into the hooded stirrup with no room to spare. Rising quickly, Seamus settled uneasily upon the McClellan saddle, memories washing back over him of past days, past battles fought from a McClellan.

He grumbled a little under his breath as the horse sidestepped beneath a strange rider, trying to find a good place for his tailbone. Pushing back against the cantle, he shoved down on the stirrups as the horse twisted its head nervously, aware that this was not to be an ordinary ride.

“Easy, fella,” Donegan cooed, leaning forward against the animal’s ear.

At least the stirrups felt long enough for what short ride he figured to make of it. He didn’t plan on having his butt banging that ungodly cavalry saddle seat for very long either. He’d ride flat out if the horse was up to it, through the snow and the bullets, taking the weight of it all in his knees, leaning out over the animal’s withers.

“Hep, hep-a!” he urged, kicking the horse in the flanks, moving it out of the corral, where two companies of soldiers had forted up with the wagons.

Raising himself off the saddle, Seamus eased the animal into a lope, working up into a gallop with a little more urging. It seemed eager to run, perhaps eager to gallop if only to get away from the mules and the clatter around the supply train, to be unfettered.

That roar off to his right was the Rodman gun. Pope must be putting his gun crew back to work, perhaps this time to soften up the snowy heights before Casey and the rest went in afoot. Good thinking that was.

But far ahead, low on those slopes, he watched as the black smears became figures, and the figures became men struggling through the snow: slipping, falling down, struggling back up on their hands and knees, attempting to fire a round now and again every few yards they gained.

What if Miles’s offensive did not work? What if Casey and the rest got bogged down in the snow below those cliffs—trapped the way Captain Alex Moore’s men had been trapped on the Powder River last winter^*—caught there like sitting ducks, where the warriors would have a field day with them before Casey could withdraw, leading what men he had left still alive? What then?

To fort up with the wagons?

What chance did they stand doing that? Not with this outfit already short on rations … not here in the dead of winter with the thermometer reluctant to rise anywhere close to zero. If Casey’s offensive failed, then that’s exactly what they’d have to do: retreat and fort up. Every man waiting to freeze to death, to starve, or to be picked off by a tightening noose of Sioux and Cheyenne.

What ghost of a chance would any of these men have of making it back to the mouth of the Tongue River alive if this offensive of Casey’s failed?

The heights still bristled with Indians, hundreds of them—all parading back and forth, yelling, blowing their whistles, hurling arrows down among the soldiers.

Every soldier had hoped the two guns would frighten and demoralize the warriors. In the past, artillery had always been successful in accomplishing that. It took the fighting steam right out of the warrior, confused him, and sometimes broke his spirit, his willingness to press on.

But today—that three-inch Rodman and the twelve-pounder simply weren’t accomplishing much of anything beyond making a lot of noise and kicking up a lot of snow when the shells sailed on over the ridgetops. The Indians were still on the heights, and it seemed as if there were more of them than before.

Especially the closer to the base of the buttes he got with Miles’s horse.

Into the back of Casey’s A Company Seamus slowed, swinging out of the saddle even before the horse came to a complete stop. “Major Casey!”

“Here!”

“Donegan—company of scouts!”

The major was close enough now that he started to salute, then instead held his hand out to the Irishman. He anxiously looked out on Donegan’s backtrail across that gently rising, open ground as if expecting more than just one lone man.

Casey swallowed hard. “You’ve come to help?”

Seamus quickly looked left and right at the soldiers, old and young, as they peered at him expectantly. Their cheeks were rosy—a few already frostbitten, gone milky white. Most eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. What eyes weren’t filled with fear were filled with questions.

“I have come to help,” Seamus answered, dragging a mitten under a runny nose. “The general sent me with word.”

Casey grinned, his eyes coming alive as he cheered, “We’re to pull back off this godforsaken slope?”

“I’m afraid not, Major.”

Over the grumbling of the soldiers in the background, Donegan went on to explain what Miles wanted A Company to do in traversing the side of the slope.

“Back there,” Seamus said, turning—finding the soldiers coming—pointing at them. “Take a look. That’s Butler’s company. And McDonald must be right behind him.”

“Butler and McDonald?”

“Yes, Major. They’re coming up to give you the strength it will take to hold the base of this ridge.”

Casey wagged his head. “Don’t you mean the strength I need to take the ridge and drive off the enemy?”

In that instant Seamus looked up at the top of the bluffs, saw the odds staring down at them … and suddenly realized that there was no better place to be than at the center of the action. If he failed here, it would be a quick death. Better than having to retreat, fort up, and die of starvation, or freeze to death.

There was but one choice now.

Donegan looped the reins over the front of the McClellan, then slapped the colonel’s horse on the flank twice to send it on its way. He watched a moment more, the muffled hoofbeats carrying it down the long slope onto the gentle descent of land that stretched toward the river, the corral, and other animals. The big stallion knew where it was going.

He turned back to the officer.

“I’m with you, Major Casey—no matter what now. But I gotta tell you: I don’t think we’re ever going to get your men up this ridge.”

The soldier’s eyes narrowed on Donegan, then peered over the scout’s shoulder at those two oncoming companies who would bolster his command. “We’re soldiers, Mr. Donegan. So we’ll do what the general orders.”

Seamus’s eyes smarted as he said, “Very good, Major.”

“You’re the one I heard was a sergeant in the Second Cavalry during the Rebellion? Army of the Potomac?”

“Yes—but that was a long time ago.”

“I’ve always figured a soldier once, a soldier you’ll always be, Mr. Donegan.” Casey tapped the Winchester, then gazed into the Irishman’s eyes. “You any good with that repeater?”

“Fair enough.”

“You feel like leading out this morning, Sergeant Donegan?”

Seamus took a deep breath, looking along the slope they would be traversing, sage and cedar puffing out of the deep snow, broken ground cut by a hundred erosion scars. “When it comes time to charge, there’s no better place to be than at the point, Major.”

“Very good. Sergeant! Form up the men and follow the scout. I’ll wager he’ll see us through this Cakewalk if anyone can.”

The young sergeant nodded. “Lead on, Mr. Donegan.”

Starting away on foot, cutting sharply to the left, Seamus heard Casey barking orders to the men who were following him into hell. After ten yards the first snow kicked up in front of him as a bullet thudded into the frozen ground with a muffled thump. Donegan quickly glanced over his shoulder—finding the men with Butler and McDonald double-timing it now. Casey was waving them on as his own A Company trudged past the captain in the deep snow that had drifted to at least three feet in places with the incessant wind.

Overhead the sky continued lowering, clouds beginning to hover right over the heights where the warriors leaped back and forth, taunting the soldiers. Seamus was getting close enough to see that they had started several fires up there on the top of the ridge, black smudges of smoke slowly rising into the heavy air as the snow continued to come down all the harder. Several warriors hunkered around each fire, warming hands and feet, then rose to return to the firing line.

Behind him Seamus heard the soldiers grunting, laboring, struggling as much as he in the cold, dry air. One of his buffalo moccasins slipped. Donegan went down hard. His knee cried out in pain. Standing the repeater under him, he got back to his feet painfully and quickly rubbed the knee.

“You think we got us a chance at this?”

Turning, Seamus found an old corporal at his shoulder. “As much a chance as we can make of it.”

The graybeard grinned a moment. “That’s the spirit. Something these young sprouts don’t have. You was cavalry, they say?”

“Yep.” They set off again in front of the skirmish line.

“I was foot. I fit all the way from Manassas to Appomattox Wood. Always been foot.” Then the old corporal turned aside to help one of the other men struggle back to his feet in the clumsy leggings and rubber-coated arctic boots. “Union man, I take it.”

“Right again.”

“I seen worse’n this, mister,” the old soldier sighed. “Atlanta. Now, that was a seige.”

“Atlanta,” Seamus huffed, having heard all the stories. His chest was starting to burn as they struggled their way along the jagged face of the ridge.

“Right up under their goddamned gun walls,” the soldier continued. “So close we could hear their gun crews talking that Johnny talk. Day after goddamned day, never knowing what day it would be my turn to get blown asshole from cock-bag with their canister and grape. So we just huddled in there and some of the boys did a little praying too. Best thing to do until they ordered us to move out. A little praying.”

“It help?” Seamus asked, hoping.

After a moment of raspy breathing the old soldier admitted, “No. Them what prayed got blowed to brains and bone just the same as the rest of us. It … it was like God wasn’t on duty them days of war. Not for four goddamned long, bloody years … God wasn’t listening to no man’s prayers. So I give up praying. No one was listening anyhow.”

Bullets slapped off the snowy tops of some loose sandstone shale nearby, ricocheting with a whine.

“Now might be a fine time for you to try again,” Seamus suggested.

The old soldier grabbed his elbow suddenly, looked into Donegan’s eyes, and quickly licked his tobacco-stained lower lip with a leathery-looking tongue. “I just might do that, stranger. Just might see if God’s back on duty for us ol’ soldiers … like you an’ me.”

Minutes ago Wooden Leg had spotted his sister among the rest of the captives as they’d been herded away from the soldiers’ camp and brought to the base of the low plateau where the Bear Coat had uncovered his two wagon guns.

His heart leaped.

At least the ve-ho-e hadn’t killed them the moment this fight had started. Such had been Wooden Leg’s greatest fear.

But his second-greatest fear was that once the warriors had the soldiers completely surrounded and under siege, the white men would use the women and children to bargain with—perhaps even kill right before the warriors’ eyes as the red hoop grew tighter and tighter around the Bear Coat’s men.

“Wooden Leg!” Black Hawk yelled. “Come with us! We’re following Big Crow to the top of the ridge to the east!”

He looked over Black Hawk’s shoulder, in the direction where more and more warriors were flowing now as some gray, dull light seeped along the edges of that cold dawn sky. “I want to stay where I can watch Crooked Nose Woman.”

Yellow Weasel loped up to say, “You can do nothing here!”

Wooden Leg felt frantic, watching the way the soldiers ducked the incoming flights of arrows, the way a stray bullet now and then sang off the iron of the wagon guns, splintered a wheel, how his sister huddled her body over that of a child with each new volley from the attacking warriors. How he wished that they could rush down and rescue the captives … wishing at least that he could stand before the hundreds of other warriors and convince them that their arrows and bullets might well kill the women and children.

He cried, “Do you see how we are endangering our own people? I must find a way to slip in there and—”

“The best that you can do to help your sister is to fight with us this day,” Black Hawk replied with an edge to his words, sounding as one would correct a younger brother. “Crooked Nose Woman knows you are a warrior, that you will be fighting to free her and the others. There is nothing to be done here.”

Yellow Weasel said, “Look, Wooden Leg! See how the soldiers are starting to walk along the bottom of the hill. Let’s follow Big Crow and the rest to stop them from slipping around behind us!”

At that moment the Tse-tsehese war chief named Big Crow stopped and turned so suddenly that the long feathered trailer on his warbonnet slurred across the crusty snow like a sidewinder snake.

“Ohmeseheso!” he shouted. “Maybe we can even circle behind them!”

Beaver Claws cried out, “And sneak up behind those ve-ho-e in their silly buffalo coats and leggings!”

“I would like to kill some soldiers today!” Wooden Leg admitted with a roar. “They took my sister, and the little ones—and now they deserve to die!”

“Quick or slow, it does not matter to me!” boasted Wolf Tooth. “Just as long as we spill ve-ho-e blood!”

“Hurry, Tse-tsehese!” squalled Big Crow. “We must be over there on top of that ridge before the soldiers ever get close to the foot of Belly Butte!”

“Look!” warned Leff-Handed Wolf. “Even more ve-ho-e are coming!”

Wooden Leg turned to peer down into the valley, his eyes narrowing with unmitigated hate. “Have faith, Uncle! No matter how many the Bear Coat sends against us—not one of the soldiers will reach the top of these hills alive!”

^*Blood Song, vol. 8, The Plainsmen Series.