Wolf Mountain Moon (51 page)

“Very good, General! With your compliments,” Casey replied, moved back one step and saluted as he slapped his heels together.

Miles and the rest watched the captain hurry off to gather his officers, who then formed up their men at the top of the knoll and quickly told them of the task at hand. The sky was continuing to lower minute by minute as the clouds scudded out of the west, and the wind was coming up as Casey eagerly moved out at the head of A Company. Their neat formation quickly became a ragged square as the sixty-some men pushed around the base of the high knoll and onto the long, narrow neck of the plateau that gradually rose toward the cone.

Of a sudden Casey and his officers stopped, whirled about, and cried out in warning.

As a group the entire company dropped to their knees, hunched over as the arrows began to whisper down among them. Miraculously no man was seriously hurt as the officers carefully peered up from beneath their sealskin caps, rising immediately to order the men to their feet again. Every one of them yanked the arrows from a man next to him, the iron points barely penetrating the thick buffalo-hide coats and layers of wool. Some men had been grazed, scratched, or poked—but none complained of serious wounds as Casey bawled for them to strike out again.

In those long, thick, heavy buffalo-hide coats and leggings the men of A Company lumbered on across the uneven, broken ground and slick snow, that shifting square of soldiers crawling forward at an insect's pace like some dark many-legged creature inching over the clumps of sage and crusty snowdrifts.

Again the officers sang out as the arrows arched into the air, calling for the men to halt and hunker there at the base of the butte where the slope began to rise more sharply. Just above them more warriors clustered suddenly, yelling, taunting,
shaking their weapons in the falling snow. A few knelt to take aim with their carbines.

Half sliding, half falling to one side as he struggled back to his feet, an angry Casey bellowed the order for his first ranks to fire a volley up the side.

A dozen men stepped forward by rank and closed file.

“Sergeant! Fire on those Indians! Push those red buggers back!”

“Clear that slope of the bastards!” an old noncom hollered as he waved the next rank up to fire their volley.

Waving his pistol over his head, Casey repeated, “Sweep that slope clean of the bloody demons!”

Slowly, three short paces at a time, the warriors fell back and A Company continued to move forward a foot at a time. Men stumbled, spilled, sprawled across the sharp slope, then pulled themselves out of the snow clumsily in their heavy winter gear. Throwing open the trapdoors on the Springfields the best they could with their bulky mittens, more often than not each soldier spilled at least one or sometimes two .45/70 cartridges into the deep snow before they got a fresh round chambered and the trapdoor locked down.

On the heights the racket of cries and shrieks and taunts grew in volume. For the first time that morning the warriors recognized that the Bear Coat was not just defending his position but was instead beginning to take the offensive. Shouts of derision and dismay were hurled down on the soldiers, no matter where they were on that battlefield.

“Lieutenant Bailey!” Miles cried out as soon as Casey moved his company away from the knoll and began their ascent.

“Sir!”

“My compliments to Captain Butler. Tell him he is to bring his company and McDonald's D up to this knoll.”

“Yessir.”

Miles lunged out with his arm, staying the young aide-decamp. “Tell the captain that together they will be replacing Major Casey's A Company protecting these heights.”

“Very good, General.”

“Go!”

Seeing the young officer on his way, Miles turned, as in afterthought, staring to the northwest, gazing down into the
bivouac area they had abandoned not all that long ago at first light. “Kelly, Donegan!”

Both of the scouts trudged over as the snow began to fall a little thicker, and the wind cut a little crueler as it blustered across that high ground.

“I've called up those two companies from down in the bottom. Which means we're going to be short of a rear guard if I don't do something, fellas,” Miles said quietly when the two civilians had reached his side.

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” Kelly replied.

Miles looked into Donegan's face now. “Tell me what you think, you old horse soldier. Wouldn't cavalry play havoc with my rear?”

“Soft on the backside the way it's going to be—bleeming right they would, General.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Miles grumbled, then slapped the peeled branch across his other palm again and again as he struggled with it. “All right, I'll dispatch a company over to that high ground across the river, to the north—there.”

Donegan followed where he was pointing, then nodded in approval. “Very good, sir: no horsemen would dare charge through that throat of land if you can put some riflemen on the front part of that ridge.”

“Exactly! I'll seal up my back door and protect my rear!” Miles exclaimed with satisfaction as he turned quickly to watch Adjutant Baird urging his mount back up the short slope of the plateau. “No need to dismount, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“Another ride—this time to Lieutenant Cusick detailed down with the wagons. Tell him I need his F Company to take their entrenching tools from the supply train, ford the ice, and dig themselves some rifle pits on the front slope of that ridge over there.”

Baird looked in the direction Miles pointed the stick. “Across the river. Dig rifle pits on the front of that near slope. Understood, sir.”

He snagged hold of the adjutant's reins and stepped up to the lieutenant's knee. “And tell Cusick that his men must burrow in and not let anything cross the river,” Miles emphasized. “They are protecting … Tell the lieutenant that F Company is all we have for a rear guard now.”

Baird blinked, then saluted as his horse sidestepped nervously, jerking the reins away from Miles. Its ears stiffened, eyes wide with all the shrill whistling and the crackle of gunfire, sensing the tenseness of its rider. “Yes, General. Cusick's men are now our only rear guard.”

“On the double, Lieutenant!”

“I'l1 tell him, sir. On the double!”

Donegan watched the young adjutant yank the reins to the side, wheeling his horse around to spur it away, down the side of the plateau, kicking up balls of snow and clods of red earth. Near the supply train Baird reined up and began relaying his orders to those soldiers of the Twenty-second Infantry. A few of them turned, glanced up the slope at the knoll where Miles stood, then wheeled again to dive into the supply wagons, where they pulled out the leather scabbards containing their eight-by-three-inch steel entrenchment tools. No shovels for the work at hand.

As he watched a moment more, Seamus said a little prayer for those foot soldiers who had their work cut out for them. Not only would they have to hack rifle pits out of some frozen, rocky, sandstone-encrusted soil … but they would have to cover their own backsides while they accomplished it.

Alone on the far side of the river, F Company would now be expected to protect a vulnerable rear flank.

Chapter 31
8 January 1877

W
hen 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.