Wolf Mountain Moon (19 page)

Somewhere deep inside him he knew he had to let them go on believing they were nearing the post. Keep them moving … and believing that it was just beyond the next hill, perhaps. So he reminded them. Then, when they were beyond that rise and the fort still did not loom into sight, Frank told them he was certain the post lay just around the next big bend in the Missouri.

“Yes, yes,” one of the soldiers cried. “I remember it 'sactly that way. Same's the lieutenant said!”

And so they somehow continued to stumble on through the darkness, and into the coming gray of day.

The sun never appeared at sunrise that Friday, the eighth of December. Nothing more than a dull lightening patch at the horizon behind the fury of the storm rumbling east. On through the snowdrifts they persevered, mules pulling the
weakest among them, soldiers prodding their fellow soldiers, Baldwin clutching the horse's reins for dear life so that he himself would not fall there beside the trail. Praying that the stumbling horse would not go down.

Not until they reached Fort Peck.

Images danced and swam in front of him with the stark-white landscape: the spiderwebs of leafless brush and tall cottonwoods, the stark outline of ridge and bluff top against the graying sky here two, maybe three, hours past sunrise. Dim mirages leaped out of the darkness at the periphery of his vision so sudden, they scared him, bringing him instantly awake. So otherworldly was it all that Frank wondered at times if he was still alive.

Each time he worried, Baldwin worked up the strength to call out to the soldiers around him, to hear his own voice, mostly, before he slipped completely away. “C'mon, men! Just a few more yards! Yes—I think I see it now!”

Frank found himself longing to see the post materialize out of all that white more than anything since he had wanted sweet, pretty Alice Blackwood to marry him during the insurrection of the Southern states. Trying so hard to remember her face with his cold, numb mind while he licked at his frozen lips that cracked and oozed—how did her mouth taste on his … then heard the soldiers up front with the mules shout.

He looked up, expecting to find Alice before him, hoping she could wrap her arms around him and make him warm again.

But it was only a group of buildings swimming dark and shadowlike out of the frozen mist that coated every branch and rock. Buildings. Logs stacked on top of one another. At first he could smell the smoke, then saw each curl rising from the stone chimneys.

“W-we made it, boys!” His voice cracked with cold and emotion as he turned, nearly stumbling in the deep snow as his horse continued on without him.

Baldwin jerked in a grotesque, wild motion to free his frozen, cramped hand from the reins so he could lurch back along the column, hollering at the top of his lungs.

“We made it, boys!” he bellowed. “I see it! There's fires and food and shelter. Keep going! Keep going!”

Later that morning after the men had shed their empty haversacks and dumped weapons in the corners of every cabin within Fort Peck's stockade, the battalion gave Baldwin three cheers, and then three more for those men who had kept the mules pulling the ropes, and finally three cheers for the old files so good with their bayonets. And when the cheering died down and the men had wiped their eyes dry once more, those three companies of the Fifth Infantry roared their huzzahs to Frank Baldwin for pulling them all through that blizzard.

Not an animal down. Not one man lost.

Chapter 11
8-14 December 1876

A
s soon as it was light on the morning of the eighth, Leforge and Lieutenant Colonel Whistler dispatched a party of ten Crow warriors with what pack mules Quartermaster Randall could spare, each one loaded down with enough grain and forage to see Captain Snyder's column all the way in to the Tongue River Cantonment. They even carried sketchy and inaccurate news claiming Samuel J. Tilden had been elected president back east.

Snyder's battalion would not drag into base until the afternoon of the tenth, having put more than 330 miles behind them in their month-long hunt for the roaming Sioux.

After recuperating for a day and most of the next night, Luther S. Kelly himself pulled out again early on the ninth with two more of Leforge's Crow scouts, this time starting north on the trail hoping to locate Miles's battalion. Chances were good they would be found somewhere on the divide above Big Dry Creek.

Early on their second morning out, Kelly and the two Crow trackers were heating up some coffee and broiling some antelope flank steaks when they heard a pair of distant shots come to them on the wind. Without a word he immediately kicked snow into their fire, gave sign, and the three of them
quickly saddled. Mounting up, they cautiously pushed north more than a mile, keeping to the ravines and coulees so they would not be caught against the skyline.

On a patch of ground lying in the gentle saddle between two rounded knolls, it was clear even from a distance that the snow had been disturbed. They waited a few moments there, smelling the air, listening for more gunshots, watching the hilltops. Only then did they inch forward to stop on that patch of ground where it appeared a small herd of buffalo had sought shelter during the recent blizzard.

One of the Crow motioned the others over, pointing to the ground across the side of the hill. A recent set of boot prints. Then a second set, the tracks coming around the brow of the hill to join the first.

These were definitely white men. And Luther figured the only white men out and wandering about had to be soldiers.

After mounting up and pushing on with the Crow for close to a mile, Kelly found he could smell woodsmoke before he ever saw its wispy trail rising beyond the ridge. The three rode as close as they dared with the horses, then dismounted and crept in the rest of the way on foot.

Around the base of a low ridge crusted with wet, frozen snow, the three dropped to their bellies, staring at the distant figures. Slowly they made out the scene: no lodges; a heap lot of wagons and mules; and the men all wore soldier clothes. It was clear from all the activity around the wagons, what with the teams being backed into their hitches, that this bunch was preparing to break camp.

“Bear Coat,” Luther said out loud as he stood, his hands making sign.

The Crow followed him back to their horses, where they mounted up and rode on in to the soldier bivouac, frightening the first of the outlying pickets as they appeared at the top of the snowy hill. In a moment more soldiers were being deployed, readied for attack, until they realized there were only three horsemen coming slowly toward the camp.

“Kelly!” roared Miles as the three approached. “By Jupiter, it's good to see you!”

“Haven't froze yet, General,” Luther replied. “Though it wasn't for want of a blizzard trying.”

“We were caught in it too. Had to leave a few of our
mules behind, but we didn't lose a man in all that muck,” Miles explained, extending an arm to point at one of the last fires still going. “Care for a cup of coffee?”

“Don't mind if I do, General.”

“How's Captain Snyder's battalion faring?”

“We lost a lot of our stock. But he was just a day shy of making it back to post when I lit out to find you.”

“You came from Snyder's battalion?”

“No,” Kelly replied. “He sent me on in for grain. I've come out from the cantonment.”

Miles sipped at the last of his coffee. “You and Snyder have any luck—any contact with the Sioux?”

“Nothing, General.”

Miles wagged his head. “Damn. I was sure you'd catch him in the Big Dry.”

“Not so much as a track. No sign.”

“So with Snyder going in—how do you come to be out here, Kelly?”

Luther smiled. “Come looking for you, General. Started on your backtrail.”

Rubbing his bare hands over the fire, Miles said, “How'd you find us?”

“We—that pair of boys and me—were having our breakfast when we heard gunshots from this direction.”

“Likely the hunters I've had Captain Ewers send out this morning before we put back on the trail.” The colonel glanced at the two scouts standing by their ponies, watching the white men at the fire. “What band are they?”

“Crow.”

Miles clapped his bare hands exuberantly. “So Hargous got me some Crow, did he?”

“Tom Leforge brought 'em in. Couple weeks back now.”

“How many, Kelly?”

“I was told Leforge brought eighty warriors with him. There's a few women came along.”

Miles waved a hand for the pair of scouts to join them at the fire. “That's what I told Hargous to convince the Crow to join us: bring their women and families if need be. If that's what it took to bring in some Crow, then so be it.”

“You need that many scouts?”

“Hell, I don't need any of 'em for scouts, Kelly,” Miles said, holding out his tin for more coffee.

Luther watched the colonel's dog-robber pour coffee in all four cups, then asked, “If you don't need 'em for scouts, why did you send for the Crow?”

“Fighting men, Kelly. Simple as that: fighting men. Congress has cut the army's budget again—so Washington's cut down the total number of scouts to less than three hundred.”

“How you going to pay them?”

Miles grinned over the edge of his tin cup. “There's plenty of Sioux ponies and plunder to raise—plenty of Sioux scalps for the taking, I figure. For Leforge's Crow that ought to be pay enough.”

Kelly nodded. “True enough that there's many winters of bad blood between the Crow and Lakota,” Kelly agreed. “So you don't figure you have enough soldiers to take on Sitting Bull fixed just the way you are, General?”

“Never know,” Miles admitted. “And that's the rub, Kelly. The army sure as hell won't send me the help I've requested. Not cavalry. Not a proper battery of artillery. And they sure as hell aren't shipping me reinforcements.”

“You s'pose they need those men somewhere else?”

Miles licked the drops of coffee off his mustache and said, “I hope the men I need aren't being sent to help George Crook and Ranald Mackenzie … that's for damned sure!”

The army's strength the previous spring had been a little over 25,000 men out of a U.S. population of 46,246,000. Then came the Custer disaster—which meant that the call went out for more enlistments and larger company strength. Throughout the summer “Custer's Avengers” signed on, enthusiastically trained at places like Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, then marched off to fight Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

Within weeks a nervous Congress got into the act.

Since they had ultimate control over the purse strings for Sam Grant's and Bill Sherman's army, Capitol Hill started paring things down. With as bad as the economy was suffering in the country, one sure way to save was to hack away at the size of the army. After all, Congress believed they were doing nothing more than carrying on the long-held American predisposition against standing armies. Unlike Britain, Prussia,
France, and Russia, the U.S. had never had itself a need to support a large “peacetime” army.

Finishing his coffee, Kelly declared, “Despite the miles and the weather, these men look to be in fighting trim, General.”

“Yes, I suppose we're fortunate that we've come through the last weeks as well as we have, considering. What else is news down at Tongue River?”

“Lakota and Cheyenne horsemen raided a couple of nights back,” Kelly explained. “Rode in right after the blizzard.”

“Raided? What'd they come for?”

“The beef, General. That herd you had brought down the Yellowstone from Fort Ellis came in. The civilian wranglers had it near the post.”

“All of the beeves?”

“Maybe half.”

“Damn,” the colonel muttered. “Where'd those warriors come from—”

“Riders coming in, General!”

Interrupted, Miles stood immediately, accompanied by Kelly and the Crow trackers as he moved away from the fire. “More riders?”