A Cold Day in Hell (21 page)

Suddenly Pope was above them. “Form a hollow square!” he bawled against the din of those booming Springfields, the crack of the Winchester repeaters from the encircling warriors. “Goddammit—form a square and hold those bastards off!”

Then Pope was kneeling over McPhelan in the next moment, his hand on the old sergeant’s shoulder. “You gonna be all right, gunny?”

The red-rimmed, smoke-ravaged eyes were tearing in gratitude. “Ain’t nothing but a flesh wound, sir.”

Pope’s eyes glistened too. “That’s good, ’cause I’d hate to lose you, I would. We still got work to finish here.”

“L-looks like we can hold ’em off, Lieutenant,” McPhelan whispered. “Just keep the boys in their square—and we’ll make the devil dance a different tune.”

Gesturing with a nod up at Yellowstone Kelly, the lieutenant said, “The scout here brought word from the general: Miles wants us to drive off the last of the warriors around those watering holes right over yonder and hold on to ’em for the night.”

McPhelan coughed, then said with a rasp, “We get the sons of bitches drove off—have some of the boys drag me over to them water holes and bring me my rifle. I can still shoot with the best of ’em if they come at us again, sir.” He coughed a loose, fluid-filled rasp. “I’d like me a drink, in a real bad way.”

Patting the sergeant’s shoulder, Pope replied quietly, “Damn right you can have that drink of water.” He signaled to have a canteen brought to him. “And your rifle too. God, am I proud to have you fighting on my side, Sergeant.”

With E Company holding its own and the water holes securely in their grasp at the rear of the column, Miles continued to pursue the hostiles until sundown, then turned about and led the rest of the command back to the ridge Lieutenant Rousseau’s H Company had cleared of hostiles. Here on the high ground that commanded a view of the entire countryside the order was given to bivouac for the coming night.

During the day the tenor of battle had constantly reminded the soldiers that these were the warriors who had mutilated the Custer dead. But the gallant Fifth had fought hard since first light, scratching their way after the fleeing Sioux across more than eighteen miles of uneven, rugged ground, through smoke
and flames. Now, as night came down, the weary, blackened, cinder-smudged men found their spirits raised.

They had held off odds of two, perhaps three, to one … and survived against the best Sitting Bull and Gall could throw at them. No longer would anyone boast that the Sioux were invincible.

“From what I can make of the various reports,” Miles said, raising his head from his concentration over his field desk strewn with papers as twilight oozed light from the sky, “there were at least half a dozen Sioux casualties.”

“Hard to tell,” Kelly said with a shrug, then sipped more of his coffee nearby. “The way they always drag off their wounded. Could’ve been more.”

For a moment the colonel pressed his full lips together thoughtfully. “Their biggest loss isn’t in the casualties—is it, Kelly?”

Luther wagged his head. “No, General. You hurt ’em worse by getting your hands on everything they had to leave behind.”

“Not just getting my hands on it,” Miles replied, staring down at the ruins of the abandoned village, “but in destroying it. Among the captured herd we found some of the Seventh Cavalry horses. Damn well used up, they are—no more than skin and bones now.”

“Doesn’t surprise me a wit, General,” Kelly replied. He stuffed a hand inside his coat, patting among his vest pockets for a cheroot, maybe even some chew. Something to enjoy with his coffee. “You decided if you’re marching back to Tongue River in the morning?”

Miles looked up at Kelly, stared hard for a moment as if his scout had gone crazy, then shook his head. “No, by God—I plan on following Sitting Bull all the way to Canada if I have to!”

T
hrough that long, cold night the grass fires glowed like flickering, crimson patches across the prairie below as Nelson Miles moved back and forth through his command like a man possessed.

The Sioux shouted and called out on all sides of their bivouac. Occasionally one of the pickets fired a shot or two at some noise, at a shadow, at one of the ghostly forms flitting in and out and around the abandoned village, intent on salvaging what they could from the army’s destruction.

At long last the eastern sky showed signs of resigning itself to day. Miles had his men awakened, guard rotated, and coffee put over what fires the men could keep lit with the meager supply of wood they scrounged after the Sioux had set the prairie ablaze the previous day. As soon as it was light enough for the command to move across the uneven ground, the colonel gave the order to form up and moved out that Sunday, 22 October.

Almost immediately two dozen warriors appeared along the high ground beyond the decimated village, backlit with the rose of sunrise. They swept far to the right, heading for the rear of the march where Pope’s E Company easily drove them away from the supply wagons. Then it grew eerily quiet as the Fifth continued its march into the coming of sunrise. After the deafening racket and din of yesterday’s fight, the utter stillness of this morning lay like a heavy, suffocating cloak upon each and every wary man.

The scouts led them east along the clearly marked Sioux trail. Easy enough to follow the travois scars on the prairie. That, and the wisps of smoke from the fires the hostiles set all along their flight. Stifling curtains of thinning gray obscured the rising sun, turning it a pale-orange button as the soldiers plodded on across the blackened prairie where ash rose up to clog their nostrils, sting their eyes, choke their every breath.

As much as his brain told him the enemy had fled on through the night to put as much ground between them as possible, Nelson’s heart nonetheless hoped that for some reason they
didn’t have as much of a jump on his command as he might otherwise fear. All along the wide, hoof-pocked trail the scouts and forward units came across abandoned lodgepoles and camp utensils, refuse abandoned along with a few lame ponies and mules—even more possessions taken from the bodies of Custer’s dead.

Personal things, the sort almost every soldier carried: photographs from family and loved ones, ledgers and journals, gauntlets and hats, a watch or blood-smeared blue tunic.

“They’re heading east, General,” Luther Kelly reported that midmorning as he reined up, bringing his mount around in a tight circle, having just returned from a scouting foray with Billy Cross and Vic Smith.

“No sign of them angling off to the north?” Miles inquired anxiously. No matter what—he had to keep himself between Sitting Bull and that border.

Kelly shook his head. “They’re hurrying for Bad Route Creek, east of here.”

By midafternoon the rising wind gave such muscle to the smoldering prairie fires on both flanks of his march that Miles ordered a halt as the men choked and sputtered helplessly, a wall of flame advancing right for them. Into the fury of that blanket of smoke and ash the colonel sent out two companies to start backfires before the entire command was finally able to continue its wearying pursuit.

It wasn’t long before the warriors figured out the soldiers had countered their strategy. More than three hundred horsemen suddenly bristled from the hilltops, spilling over the crests in a shouting, screaming, boiling mass, aiming straight for the plodding foot soldiers.

Platoon by platoon was ordered to strengthen both flanks as sergeants bellowed out their orders for the men to drop to their knees, aim, and fire before the next squad was brought up into position while the first reloaded. Above the steady, deep booming of those big Springfields, Miles made out the discordant rattle of the smaller weapons and the old muskets the Sioux were using to harass their march. A long-distance battle, and a slow crawl they made of it, throughout the agonizing hours that Sunday afternoon.

Marching in a hollow square, with four companies of skirmishers thrown out in front spaced five paces apart, two companies on each side and two at the rear, and with one final company bringing up the rear of the supply train and another
supporting the Rodman gun, they made eighteen miles before the sun sank out of the clear, cold sky and the warriors disappeared.

The land breathed a sigh of relief as the men made their bivouac and lit their fires. Stars winked into sight. The night grew colder than any gone before.

Come the morning of the twenty-third, Miles put them to the march in that same magnificent formation, up and down the broken country in a hollow square. But this day they saw no Sioux, reaching the Yellowstone late in the afternoon nearly opposite the mouth of Cabin Creek. His exhausted men had put another twenty-eight miles under the soles of their boots that day—more than forty-two miles from their initial engagement with the Sioux at Cedar Creek.

Nelson stood watching Kelly and four other scouts head back his way, urging their mounts back to the north bank of the river. Miles had ordered the five of them to cross the Yellowstone to determine the depth of the ford. In midriver Luther Kelly eased out of the saddle and settled his boots into the river that had christened him for life. While he stomped around in the coming dusk, checking out the sands of the shifting bottom, Vic Smith probed on over toward the south bank. In the distance smoke hung in the air from the enemy’s fires.

How Miles wanted to cross now as the Sioux were making camp there on the south side of the Yellowstone. If only to be sure Sitting Bull was really settling in for the night, praying the chief would not pull a rabbit on him and suddenly turn back north, recross the Yellowstone, and make a dash for Canada. That was Nelson’s deepest, most unspoken fear as Luther Kelly splashed up the bank, into the cottonwoods, and dismounted near him.

“They’re across, by God,” the scout said, dripping from his waist down, shuddering with cold as the wind came up at twilight.

“And still moving south?”

Kelly looked over at Smith, who nodded; then Kelly said, “By all accounts, General.”

“How deep is it?”

Kelly gazed down at his britches. “I’m wet to the waist. No deeper than that. Your men can make it in fine order.”

‘You don’t think those Sioux will try to shake us and recross tonight?”

With that easy shrug of his, the mild-mannered Kelly regarded
the south bank a bit, sniffled, then looked back at Nelson to say, “They’re every bit as tired as your men are, General Miles. Maybe even more tired. I can’t see ’em doing anything but stopping for a few hours—stopping to feed their children, bandage their wounded, and shiver out this goddamned cold night until they can start running again.”

Miles felt himself bristle with resentment. “Sounds to me like you don’t agree with my giving, chase?”

There was the scout’s quick, disarming smile, and Kelly said, “Nothing of the kind, General. Not many men would have the bottom you and this outfit have to herd those Sioux the way we’ve done. Pushed ’em real hard.”