Sioux Dawn, The Fetterman Massacre, 1866 (45 page)

“Two…” Brown quickly echoed.

“NO!”
Metzger shouted, leaping.

“THREE——”

He flinched as both heads flung backward, spraying red coronas as bullets slammed through bone and brain. Brown and Fetterman gone.

Cowards lead other men to their deaths, he thought. Then realized he was thinking in German.

Click.

The hammer fell. Again he pulled the trigger.
Click
His .44-caliber revolver empty. Metzger hurtled it at a warrior crouching on the boulder overhead, about to leap.

He backed up, searching for a weapon. Scooping up Fetterman's pistol, he pulled the trigger.
Click
Empty.

Saved the last bullet for himself.

Adolph stumbled over bodies, searching. His back slammed against the rocks. The bugle jabbing his ribs. He yanked the braided cord over his head, gripping the bugle like a short club. Swinging. Swinging. Listening to that whistle of the dry breeze in the horn's bell. Hearing startled grunts from warriors he hit as they swarmed over him. His tin bugle a shapeless thing in his hands.

Dear Gott—I'm the last!

Left to right, then back again, little Adolph swung, battering his enemies with that dented horn. It sang in his hand, as beautiful as any call to Boots and Saddles. Thinking now only of twilight … and taps.

No suicide, he thought in German.
I have always been a soldier. I will die a soldier.
Recalling the mountains of his boyhood home. Hearing the sweet, sweet notes of a distant bugle call.

Bringing the soldiers home at last.

*   *   *

Crazy Horse heard the others hollering from the top of the spur, shouting that soldiers had reached the crest of the ridge.

Like fevered ants the warriors set about their grisly work. Shouting. Laughing. Cutting and hacking. Stripping bodies. Cutting off hands and feet. Gashing legs. Disemboweling. Scalping forehead to nape, including ears. Firing one arrow after another into the naked soldiers. Every corpse stiffening in the cold. Each body looking helpless, like the pale, white-belly of fish snagged from a summer stream.

Crazy Horse jerked, hearing the iron-hoofs clatter up the frozen slope. Only a soldier horse, chased by two young Miniconjou. A big, white soldier horse. Reins dragging from its jaw. Saddle swaying beneath its belly. Arrow shafts quivering from its withers and rear flanks. It clattered over the hill, the boys in joyous pursuit.

The warrior next to him screeched his victory song, holding aloft a soldier's manhood parts in his bloody hand. The Oglalla danced a moment with his trophy, then stuffed them into the soldier's gaping mouth. Next he pried apart the white man's belly, hauling the entrails across into the dirt and trampled snow. Blood turned the ground black and slick. Quickly freezing.

Crazy Horse watched the first soldiers appear along a brow north of Lodge Trail Ridge. Unmoving. They dared not ride into the valley.

“Brothers!” Crazy Horse exhorted his friends, “Invite these soldiers to come and join these!”

Many laughed, jeering the soldiers—urging, taunting these new troops. Each warrior feeling they could defeat anything the soldiers might throw at them this day. Unafraid. Daring. Mighty.

The dog darted past him. Crazy Horse leaped back, hand clamped to his mouth. Blindly scurrying in and out of the warriors, the animal scampered for the top of the ridge.

“Kill the soldier dog!” one warrior shouted. “I saw it march into the trap with the soldiers!”

“No,” shouted White Bull. “Let it go. We have our dead. Let the dog carry his news to the soldier fort.”

“No!” Crazy Horse screamed, surprising himself. From the wolfskin quiver at his back he ripped his bow and a single arrow. His arrow struck the dog midstride. It toppled over, legs a'quiver. Then lay still.

“Nothing!” Crazy Horse glared at White Bull. “Nothing shall live this day. No one is to allow even a dog to escape our great victory!”

With no more whitemen to butcher, the warriors retrieved every arrow that had not been broken, blunted or bristled from a soldier's body. Although he had no way to accurately count, Crazy Horse marveled that so many arrows had been fired in so short a time. More than two thousand warriors, each having more than twenty arrows in his quiver … all that in the space of time it takes the sun to move two lodgepoles. A very short battle.

Below him, near the creek, others dragged their dead and wounded aboard ponies or travois. Marching back across the icy creek. Over the hills to their battle-camp. Leaving nothing but their dead ponies behind.

Dark smears upon the cold ground to mark the fall of each warrior.

While it had been a great victory, Crazy Horse realized theirs had been a costly fight. He nosed his pony toward the creek, assured he was the last to abandon the battlefield. Steam from soldier wounds tissued like filmy gauze into the cold air. A trooper's horse struggled in death, legs flailing. His nostrils stank with death.

As he gazed over his shoulder at the soldiers waiting atop the bare spur of ground, the young Oglalla warrior sensed that his people had won but the first battle of a long, long and ugly war.

Chapter 36

At the Big Piney, Ten Eyck's soldiers removed their shoes and wool stockings. After crossing the ice-swollen water, they put the warm, dry socks and shoes on once more. Forming into columns. Seventy-six in all. Captain Ten Eyck and Lt. Winfield Scott Matson, along with surgeons C. M. Hines and Jeremiah Ould. Seventy-six, that is, plus one Irishman.

To Seamus it had seemed like a dreadfully long time, but Ten Eyck had moved his troops out in less than a quarter hour, the foot soldiers jogging double-time down the road to the icy crossing.

As they left the creek behind, Donegan listened to the distant rifle-fire echoing beyond the ridge. Shots growing more scattered. No longer any volleys. Sporadic. And fading.

He looked at Ten Eyck.

“I hear it, Donegan. Sounds like Fetterman's beat off the attack … run the savages off.”

Donegan wagged his head. “That, or it's all over, Cap'n.”

Ten Eyck steered clear of Fetterman's route along the base of the Ridge. Nor did he stay on the Bozeman Road. Instead, the cautious Dutchman led his rescue detail to the right.

“Captain, why're you taking us way off over here?” Lieutenant Matson demanded, galloping up.

“The high ground ahead's better for a defensive stand. I'll take the men——”

“Defensive stand?” the lieutenant snorted. “Better to show these red bastards we're ready to attack … or we'll need rescuing ourselves!”

“I want something from you, I'll ask for it!” Ten Eyck snapped.

“The colonel said you were——”

“Carrington isn't here, is he, Lieutenant?” Ten Eyck snapped. “I'm taking the advice of Donegan here—leading the men to the safety of that high point ahead. From there we can see what lies before us … and defend ourselves if need be.”

The young lieutenant glared icy daggers before he wheeled away.

The last gunshots echoed from the heavy sky as Ten Eyck's soldiers reached the crest. He signaled a halt. Like black, maddened ants scurrying over the snow, the valley of the Peno below swarmed with warriors.

“Dear God! There's not one of Fetterman's men in sight!” Surgeon Hines gasped, bringing his horse to a halt beside Ten Eyck.

Up the slope raced some young warriors, slapping and thumbing their buttocks. Yelling obscenities. Taunting. Urging these new soldiers down into the valley.

“Fetterman's men're down there.” Donegan sighed. Both Ten Eyck and Hines glanced at him, disbelieving. “We just don't see what's left of 'em yet.”

“Orderly!” Ten Eyck cried out.

“Captain?” Pvt. Archibald Sample raced to Ten Eyck's side.

As he dragged a small tablet from his tunic pocket and licked the end of his pencil, Ten Eyck ordered, “I want you to take this message to the colonel. Fast as that horse will carry you.”

Sample blinked, seeing only the officers and surgeons on horseback, realizing he was handed the dangerous assignment because he had left the fort mounted. Archibald swallowed.

“Mark the time, orderly,” Ten Eyck demanded.

“Twelve forty-five, sir.”

“Very good,” and he saluted Sample. “God's speed, son.”

Sample bolted away, across the spur to the crest of the ridge, heading for the Big Piney Crossing and Fort Phil Kearny.

“Cap'n,” Donegan announced, “looks like the Injins done with your boys down there.”

Ten Eyck followed the Irishman's arm. Like a wave ebbing from the shore, the Sioux fell back from the slope. Still taunting. A stunned gasp swept over Ten Eyck's foot-soldiers as they witnessed the first of the carnage. Long distance.

Naked bodies—starkly white in the hazy, winter light. Mottled with dark, black patches. Bits and pieces of once-warm humanity freezing beneath a sky that spat loose an icy flake now and again.

Seamus Donegan had seen his fill of death. Yet nothing like this.

Gettysburg had been about the worst of it. The rains coming like a blessing from heaven at the end of that final, third day—settling the dust that choked every man's nostrils … washing the blood and brains from the rocks and leaves. Settling the stench of young lives snuffed by the gods of war. He had seen his fill of death.

Yet even Seamus Donegan was unprepared for what he found at the bottom of Lodge Trail Ridge.

*   *   *

Just past the Big Piney Crossing, orderly Sample watched twenty-eight soldiers jogging down the road from the fort. He reined up as the soldiers ground to a halt.

“Where you coming from?” a young private demanded of Sample.

“And who's asking?”

“Private Seth Aikens, C Company, Second Cavalry—that's who.”

“What the hell's cavalry doing out here?” Sample inquired. “And where's your horses?”

“Ain't got any,” he answered. “'Bout every last horse rode out with Fetterman. So, the colonel dispatched us to help Captain Ten Eyck.”

“That's where I just come from.”

“Where's he?”

“Up the ridge.” He pointed. “Yonder a ways.”

“We'll push on,” Aikens said, turning to fling an arm toward the twenty-seven behind him.

“Don't look like there's none of your cavalry left what rode with Fetterman!” Sample hollered after the dismounted, double-timing horse soldiers.

When no one answered him, the orderly nudged heels against his fatigued mount, kicking the animal into a hand-gallop once more.

His mind raced as the cold wind scarred its way across his cheeks.
Maybe the colonel seen something from the fort we didn't see. We was behind the ridge for a long time. Maybe the fellas in the fort watched Fetterman whip them Indians.

Halfway up from the crossing a rumble of iron-tired wheels clattered over the brow of a hill. Close enough to cause Sample's mount to shy to the edge of the road. He watched as three drivers sang out to their teams, yanking back on reins, leaning into brakes. Behind two wagons and an army ambulance rode some forty armed men.

“Ho, son!” the lead driver hollered out. Dressed in civilian clothes.

“You with Fetterman?”

“Un-unh,” and he shook his head. “Colonel's orderly, Private Sample.”

“Name's Sam Marr, son.”

“You coming from Pine Island?”

“Nope. Me and the rest come outta the fort. Civilians. Your colonel had us load three thousand rounds of Springfield and two cases of Spencer for Fetterman's men. Where's the fight?”

“Ain't no fight, Mr. Marr. Likely all dead.”

“Don't say!” he gasped, glancing round at some of the civilian teamsters and woodcutters who edged close. “Ten Eyck whipping the Injuns now?”

He shook his head. “If the captain tries, like as not he'll get his ass whupped something fierce too.”

Marr looked around again. “Thank you, son. We best skedaddle now. Likely someone'll need our help up yonder.”

Except for the pounding of his horse's iron shoes on the frozen road, the silence shrank in around Private Sample once more. Up the gentle rise, across some trampled snow, and through the main gates on the north wall, all without slowing his lathered mount. Amid shouting sentries and the excited, hopeful screams of dashing children, Sample skidded up in a shower of icy crystals at headquarters steps. Just as Carrington leaped off the porch.

“Ten Eyck sent me!” he shouted, sliding from the saddle, flinging his reins to another soldier.

“Tell me!” Carrington ordered.

“Here, sir.” He slapped the crumpled paper into the colonel's hand.

Carrington poured over the scrawl, trying to make sense of it. “I can't read some of this, Sample! What's going on up there!”

“Captain says he can't see nothing … can't hear nothing of Fett … Captain Fetterman!” Sample gushed.

“Where in God's name!”

“The Injuns are on the road below him … shouting for him to come down.”

Carrington shook his head, glancing at the window of his home. Seeing two worried, women's faces staring back at him. “How many Indians are there?”

“I don't rightly know, sir. Just … the valleys for miles 'round filled with the screaming bastards. Don't see how Fetterman live through it … if he gone down in that valley.”

“I've sent reinforcements. You meet them on the road?”

“Yessir. Captain Ten Eyck wanted one of them mountain guns of yours.”

“A howitzer?”

“Yessir.”

He brooded a moment longer. “I want you to take a message back to Ten Eyck.”

“My horse is used up, Colonel.”

“We'll get another,” and he waved at a soldier to bring a mount from the stables. Quickly he scrawled his message across the back of a sheet of foolscap.