Wolf Mountain Moon (58 page)

But how these wretched five-year-hitch recruits held the line and gritted their teeth to keep them from chattering right out of their heads as they ducked Sioux bullets and arrows for
no more than a paltry thirteen dollars a month … Seamus realized he would never know.

Without fail it always made his heart swell with pride to be fighting shoulder to shoulder among such brave men. Men as common as dirt—unlettered, ill-mannered in the presence of the gentler sex or their superior officers, more often than not unwashed, and most as lacking in the common graces as any of their species might be … but every last one of them made brave by circumstance and the events that caught them up and hurtled them along into history. Common, ordinary, everyday soldiers who many times back at their post didn't exhibit the good sense to pour piss out of a boot … soldiers who became something altogether different in the face of the enemy.

Ordinary men who showed their extraordinary courage in the face of extraordinary circumstances.

As soon as the war chief fell up there on that snowy ledge above them, two—then three—warriors darted out to attempt to retrieve his body. Now the soldiers had themselves a new target. But while the men fired one round after another without much thought, Seamus began once more to brood on just how much ammunition was being wasted.

“Captain Butler!”

At the call Donegan twisted about in his clumsy coat, finding the colonel's young aide-de-camp galloping up to the rear of the skirmish line C Company had dotted across the deep snow, perforated with Edmond Butler's fighting men.

“Over here!” the captain called.

“Sir! The general sends his compliments,” Lieutenant Bailey gushed breathlessly. “Yes? Yes, soldier?”

“The general respectfully wonders if you've bogged down, Captain. He asks me to communicate that he would like to see your line advance up the slope, sir.”

His horse pawed at the snow anxiously. Butler glanced at the hillside with a knowing squint. “Up … up the slope?”

“Yes, Captain. The general extends his wishes that we don't get bogged down because the Indians are in control of the battle.”

“Well, the goddamned Indians
are
in control of the heights!” Butler roared, exasperated.

Some of the men twittered behind him but shut up the instant Butler heeled around on them, fixing them all with his glare. He wheeled back on the orderly just as quickly.

“Captain—General Miles wishes to attack those heights—”

“Very well,” Butler interrupted. “Give the general my compliments and tell him it will be our honor to charge the slopes that lay in my front.”

With a salute Hobart Bailey started to rein aside, but Butler leaned over and snagged the soldier's bridle, stopping the horse with a jerk.

“Mr. Bailey, please convey to the general my immediate and crucial need for ammunition. My men are nearly out, and if we are to face the muzzles of those enemy guns … I'll need resupply.”

“Ammunition, sir?”

“Yes”—and Butler pointed an arm right at the heights—“if the general asks us to do the impossible, at least give us more bullets.”

“Ammunition—yessir!”

Butler freed the lieutenant's reins and slapped the mount at the same time, sending the young officer off toward the knoll where Miles would likely be standing among his gun crews, surveying the battlefield as a whole. Meanwhile, with the way the snow was beginning to come down in heavy, dancing sheets, Seamus realized Miles wouldn't have a bloody idea what was really going on this far to the south. If anything, Butler's men were no more than tiny, fuzzy specks of flotsam indistinct against the snowy hillside the general expected them to assault.

Calling his officers to the side of his mount, Butler told them in his thick brogue, “Gentlemen, you likely heard our orders.”

“We're expected to take the summits,” grumbled one of the sergeants.

“Prepare the men,” Butler told them succinctly. “Get them up out of the snow and ready to move forward.”

A soldier asked, “We aren't going to wait for the ammunition, sir?”

“We've been ordered to advance, Corporal,” Butler snapped. “Now, pass the order along and see that your men
are instructed to be conservative with their shots. Any more questions?”

When there were no further questions, the others turned away, moving quickly among the half a hundred, ordering the soldiers off their bellies and their rumps, to stand in the freezing wind, nervously awaiting the next command from the man who sat on horseback.

“Advance!” Butler cried, yanking back on the reins so his horse jerked to a halt.

Seamus found himself admiring this Edmond Butler—not just because they both were Irish born and therefore brother Patlanders. But Donegan couldn't help but admire the officer this Butler was turning out to be under fire. In this era of a clear class distinction between officers and their enlisted, Edmond Butler appeared to be one of the few who did not rub his company's nose in it.

Glad was he to find himself among the men of C Company for the dirty little task that lay before them this stormy morning.

He moved off with Butler's soldiers, turning once to look behind him at the disappearing form of that young rider on his way to the artillery knoll. The swirling snow swallowed Lieutenant Bailey in one gust, and he was gone.

Donegan prayed that Miles would send ammunition in time to save Butler's men from disaster. That, or C Company might well have to dig down through the snow and find rocks to throw at Crazy Horse's warriors arrayed shoulder to shoulder up there on the ridge. At least two hundred of them … waiting for Butler's fifty-some.

Four-to-one odds along with struggling through three feet of snow into the teeth of a high-plains blizzard. It just didn't get any more army than this.

Were they warm? he wondered. Was Samantha staying fed? And most of all—was she not worrying about him?

He had tried his best with that last letter almost a full month ago … to tell her she had nothing to worry about even though he was not coming home when he had promised. Coaxing her to stay warm and fed, and to be without worry—that again was his prayer as he stumbled over the sagebrush in a ragged forager's charge with the rest of Butler's men.

Now some of the soldiers on Casey's left were rising, beginning to move out with Butler's right flank, lunging through the snowdrifts like crippled cows in their bulky, wet winter clothing, some firing off a shot every five yards or so—and each time sternly reminded by their sergeants to conserve their ammunition.

Ahead of them on the slopes the warriors darted from side to side in that thick atmosphere of pasty snow falling down, flying sideways, in a fury all around at once. Every now and then a bullet struck near Donegan, ricocheting against a rock buried under the crusty snow with a sharp crack. Or a dull thud of a sound when they smacked into the frozen earth. A high-pitched whine when they just sailed on past his ear.

Damn this face mask, he cursed, tugging on it to be sure he could see through the eyeholes he himself had cut two days before they had marched south away from the Yellowstone.

Of a sudden those sounds coming from the high ridge changed. Blinking his frosted eyelashes, Seamus squinted, trying to focus on the distance ahead of them. The warriors had seen them coming—that much was for certain. Appeared the enemy was massing just about everything they had right in front of Butler's outfit now. Warriors streamed along the top of the ridge, the noise growing as the Sioux and Cheyenne yelled and yelped. Their numbers swelled again and again. Multiplied—disappeared in the snowstorm. Then reappeared larger than ever.

Cavalry were always taught not to let the number of enemy concern them—after all, cavalry had the benefit of horse and saber.

But this wasn't the War of Rebellion no more, Seamus brooded. And Butler's outfit wasn't mounted on no god-blessed horses. And, besides—the frontier cavalry didn't use its bleeming sabers anymore, anyhow.

So he counted and counted those forms on the ridge, and he walked and walked, slipped and fell, and rose to walk again, estimating that there were more than 450 warriors waiting for the soldiers on the top of the ridge. And more were coming.

Maybe as many as a third of the warriors on that entire battlefield were now clustered in front of Butler's outnumbered C Company.

But on and on the sixty-some of them marched, men
grunting and grumbling as they slipped and slid on the icy snow. Picking themselves back up and cursing as they lunged back into line. Remaining undaunted in the face of the daunting task: scale the heights, even into the very jaws of the enemy guns.

Just as it had been when he had watched Captain Guy V. Henry among his men during that deadly retreat at the Rosebud,
^*
Seamus was proud to watch this Edmond Butler urge his weary, stumbling horse through a wide gap that opened in the lines to make a big, conspicuous target of himself out in front of them all—the animal lunging forward until Butler reined up and turned about, there before the oncoming ranks of his men, his pistol clutched in his woolen mitten, his other hand tugging the blanket scrap over his face to the side once more so the men could hear his voice, so his men could see his own resolve.

“C'mon, you doughboys!” he cried, his arm waving high in the air. “We can do it! C Company can do it!”

Up and down that scattered line now other voices called out, sergeants and corporals and even privates rallying their fellows with cheers, hoots, and hollers. Working themselves up for the impossible.

“I ain't got no more bullets, Cap'n!” a frantic soldier bawled somewhere to Donegan's right.

“Give the bloke a shell or two!” a sergeant ordered.

Another man shouted, “I need some shells too!”

“Share what you got with your bunkies, goddammit!” an old soldier snapped at them as he pushed aside the wool mask that hung from the front of his muskrat cap.

Butler loped the horse in front of a trio of soldiers now as they were exchanging cartridges. He shouted down to them, “Make them last till the general sends more—”

As if it happened in a slow, watery blur—the captain's horse began to spin round even before Donegan heard the smack of lead against solid flesh. A wet and sodden sound. The animal grunted as it came about, its hind legs going out from under it as surely as if it had been hamstrung by a pack of wolves. The sound of the horse's wheeze accompanied its
fall to the ground as Butler flew off into the deep snow, landing in a heap.

A half-dozen men were there in a matter of moments, some going to their company commander, pulling him out of the snow, others kneeling protectively between him and the heights to block any more enemy bullets, while two went to the horse that struggled to rise.

Butler came up to his knees there in the snowdrift, shoving the soldiers aside, then jerked to a stop, fixed and motionless as he stared at the animal's fight to get its legs under it.

“Is … is there a chance?” the captain asked in a weak voice.

One of the soldiers kneeling at the animal's side took his mitten away from the horse's chest, holding it up, slick and glittering with blood. Huge ash-curl snowflakes instantly clung to the moist, dark blotch. “No, sir, Cap'n. Not a chance, this one.”

“K-kill … it.” Butler struggled to get the words out. “Kill it now!”

As the captain lunged to his feet, surged forward out of the snow, the half-dozen soldiers stepped aside to allow Butler through. He stood motionless as the lone infantryman stepped back, brought up his Springfield, then stalled.

Now Butler's voice was calm, suddenly devoid of emotion. “Shoot my horse, soldier.”

Bringing the hammer back, the soldier started to shake as he brought the muzzle down behind the horse's ear and pulled the trigger all in one motion. Donegan turned away at that instant, pushing on into the snow. He'd seen more than his share of good, strong animals die on the ground with bullets in their brains.

Behind him he heard Butler call out to his men.

“Company C—get moving!”

Everywhere now the voices took up the call again.

Donegan heard the huffing behind him. He turned to find Captain Butler trudging forward on the double through the deep snow, leading his soldiers on foot, straining to stay out in front, having made a fine target of himself—good officer that he was.

“Bring up the left flank!” Butler's voice cried out.

A moment later the captain ordered, “Don't string out on the right!”

As they moved forward, that one man's voice rang above all the rest. “C'mon, men! C'mon and look 'em in the eye. This goddamned day is ours to win or lose!”

Right when they reached the sharp side of the slope, the men began to cheer; a few fired back at the hundreds of warriors on the top of the ridge above them, now no more than a hundred yards away. Many of these soldiers could do little more than cheer and march, stumble and follow along, as Butler led them against the enemy. Most had no ammunition left.

Seamus suddenly wondered if this was the place. If this hillside would be where it would all come to an end, fighting among men who were flat out of bullets, these men who were long on courage.

He wondered if a good Catholic should say a prayer at the very moment he stared death in the eye, wondered if he should say something silently to Samantha and the boy that God Himself might whisper to her heart the next time Sam prayed.

On all sides of him now the men were yelling, working up their courage as they flung themselves against the sheer face of the ridge, the Sioux and Cheyenne close enough that he could make out feathers and paint, the birds tied in the hair, the amulets hung around the necks—even in this Montana blizzard.

Seamus was among brave men once more. He was a warrior, making war on other warriors. Though they might not have many bullets left, Butler's C Company was not without its courage that cold winter day.