Wolf Mountain Moon (60 page)

I
t wasn't just those rifle cartridges that gave Butler's men a boost when they were preparing to pitch into the Sioux and Cheyenne with little more than their bayonets.

Seamus realized it was the sudden appearance of Frank Baldwin himself. Perhaps the fact that the lieutenant's personal effort beyond the call of duty reminded them that they were not alone in charging this hillside. Reminded them that Miles and the gun crews and the rest of the corps were with them.

No matter that the ammo case split apart, landing on its corner in the snow and splitting open against the red sandstone shale that dotted the crumbling slope. There were enough cartridges there to rally an entire battalion.

In excited knots of frantic, lunging fever, the men dropped to their knees in the deep snow to retrieve the individual cartridge boxes, yanking off gloves and mittens with their teeth as they cried out, stuffing that bare flesh down into the snowdrift to retrieve two or three of the brass cartridges as if they were life itself.

Life itself for now.

In the midst of the scramble Butler turned and stepped away from Baldwin and his horse, shouting to rally the men.

The other officers and noncoms took up that call. “Let's go finish this fight!”

For a moment longer Seamus regarded the bearded soldier on the horse—recognizing him as one of Miles's staff for this Tongue River campaign—then turned slightly to see just what that horseman named Baldwin was studying to the north. Off in the middistance came four animals, long-eared, most likely mules. Two riders pulling the other two along, that pair with crates on their backs. They trotted as fast as they could through the ground snow being blown into ever-higher snowdrifts.

“Captain Butler!” Baldwin called to the man preparing his outfit to continue their climb. “Look, sir!”

Butler stopped short and turned. “What the devil are they?”

Baldwin shouted, “More ammunition, sir!”

The captain shook his head in relief. “Bring 'em on, by Jove! Now we will see this job through!”

“Permission to deliver ammunition to the other companies?”

Nodding to Baldwin, Edmond Butler said, “By all means, Lieutenant. By the great Jehovah, this is our day!”

In a matter of heartbeats the line had begun inching forward once more, this time rallied, resupplied, and stronger for it. But the terrain was still just as much an enemy as the Sioux and Cheyenne awaiting them on the top of the ridge. Snowdrifts, clumps of cedar and buckbrush, narrow slashes of erosion jagging down the side of the butte—all of it broke apart Butler's smooth skirmish line into little groups of no more than a handful of soldiers here, a half-dozen soldiers there.

But they were all heading in the same direction: up into the face of the enemy.

For the next twenty harrowing minutes the Indians massed on the heights—screaming in a rage more than ever, firing down at the soldiers who had now come closer than they ever had before to reaching the tops of those bluffs. Every now and then a man cried out as the gap between the enemies narrowed, as the two sides lunged close enough to see the eyes of their foe.

A warrior fell with a painful bellow, and immediately others
dragged him back from the edge, another man stepping up to fill the hole.

Below, a soldier called out, going down noisily—begging for help from those nearby. Or another fell silently, not making a sound, nor uttering a word, as he sank slowly, slowly into the snow turned red and mushy with the soldier's warm life spilling out this winter day. A soldier here and there knelt by the fallen, to stay by the wounded until the day was won and the hospital stewards reached the battlefield.

On pushed the rest, up the rugged slopes, past the pitch and heave of this broken ridgeline, around the pine and cedar, over the sagebrush and shale, firing as they went, stopping to kneel, reloading now that they had a few more bullets to make a fight of it.

Now that the warriors began to step back. Back. Back some more from the edge as the soldiers crawled the last few yards to the top of the ridge—stumbling over the first of the breastworks abandoned by the Sioux and Cheyenne. Some fell, scrambling back to their feet as they continued to pursue the retreating red lines.

By now Baldwin had urged his horse to the right to join McDonald's men with more ammunition, rallying them against the last of the warrior holdouts refusing to leave their rocky fortress, an enemy reluctant to retreat.

In their eager enthusiasm at gaining the summit, most of McDonald's and Butler's men trampled right on past the fire rings where the enemy had warmed themselves.

Only a few soldiers looked down in their advance upon that trampled ground to notice the crimson smears, the pools of mushy red snow—realizing for the first time just how much damage they had inflicted on the enemy. So much damage that the enemy could no longer stand their ground.

Now that the soldiers had gained the heights—the day was decided.

Into the whirling ground blizzard the Sioux and Cheyenne disappeared down the far slope. They still screamed in fury at the soldiers as they caught up their ponies, loaded their wounded and dead, then slipped away into the thick veil of that frigid Montana snowstorm—perhaps daring the white men to follow their retreat.

Seamus prayed Miles would not.

These soldiers of his—at least the three companies making this courageous charge on the bluffs—they had had themselves more than enough fight for one day. They deserved to hunker around a fire and eat a warm meal, wrap themselves in a blanket or two. They deserved to savor the delicious reward of victory this day.

Just for the present, if only for today.

Because Donegan knew how fleeting a battlefield victory could be in this matter of war with Indians. For the most part the army had been winning each engagement with the hostiles across the last ten years—yet this war remained unwon.

When? he wondered as a few of the men began to raise a cheer on the heights, slapping one another on the back and dancing a jig there in the trampled snow atop the ridgeline. Some were waving arms and rifles and muskrat or sealskin caps to signal their victory to those comrades down on the plateau with Miles and his two field pieces.

When would these dirty little battles ever be over and this whole bleeming war a thing of the past? When would the Indians quit running away to lick their wounds, preparing to fight another day? When would it no longer be necessary for the army to poke, and prod, and probe into the wilderness to locate the roaming villages? When would he himself be forced to find another way to support his loved ones?

To find something else a simple man with big hands and ready courage could do to feed his family.

Seamus looked south beyond the far slope of that narrow ridgeline, seeing the last of the warriors disappear into the thickening veil of the blizzard—knowing they had families hidden away in some valley to the south, perhaps not all that far away. Families, wives and children, to protect.

And then he realized.

The battles would go on, the villages would continue to flee into the wilderness, the warriors would continue to fight until they could see nothing but misery for their families, nothing but pain for their women, and nothing but hunger for their little ones by continuing the fight. When there was no more buffalo, no more game to hunt … when there was no more peace for the camps no matter the season … when there was nothing but death and despair and hunger and constant harrying off the reservations—then the warriors would
have no other choice but to protect their families the best way they could.

Only then would the warriors bring in their wives and children to the food and blankets and protection of the agencies.

Just past noon that Monday, after a five-hour engagement, the last shot rang out, muffled by the blizzard that had descended upon the valley of the Tongue River. Miles gave Pope the order to cease his bombardment of the Indian retreat.

“They're out of range now,” the colonel said with a mix of satisfaction tinged with resignation. “Your job is done for the day, Pope.”

But Miles turned to Dickey and Ewers, whose companies had spent the battle protecting the guns and the plateau. He ordered them in pursuit of the enemy.

“Take out their rear guard if possible,” he commanded.

Ewers asked, “To their village if need be, General?”

With a wag of his head a weary-looking Miles said, “Follow them as long as the two of you deem it practical with this hellish weather closing down on us. We'll have camp ready below for your return.”

Seamus watched more than a hundred men march out on the double, plunging into the ground blizzard, trudging on the trampled backtrail of retreat, grunting with exertion as the snow billowed around them, led after an undefeated enemy by a handful of officers on horseback. It did not take those two companies long to disappear into the storm.

The Irishman wagged his head at the futility of their mission: to chase on foot after Indians escaping on horseback.

“I hope they'll turn back before long.”

Seamus turned to find the old soldier coming up to stop beside him. “The fight's over,” Donegan replied. “Now all Miles has to do is stay alive until he gets back to the Yellowstone.”

“Sounds like you ain't counting yourself in.”

“I'm not,” Donegan admitted. “Heading south.” The man's thick brows beetled up. “Follering them Sioux?”

Shaking his head, the Irishman replied, “Got a family
waiting for me down to Laramie. I ain't seen 'em in too damn long already.”

The soldier asked with disbelief, “Going through Crazy Horse country?”

“I made it once already. I figure I can do it again.”

“Man can do anything,” the soldier agreed, “if he wants it bad enough and sets his mind squarely on it.”

“My
heart's
set on it.”

“C'mon, then,” the old soldier said, turning Seamus away from the ridgetop. “If you're leaving come morning on such a fool's ride south, then let's feed you some proper victuals this last night you'll spend with the Fifth!”

Wooden Leg hung back for the last of the fighting, with those last warriors to abandon the ridge with Crazy Horse.

Some wanted to stay and fight the soldiers hand against hand … but once the
ve-ho-e
began to break over the lip and land on the top of the ridge in ones and twos, it was plain to see that their battle was lost.

The final few warriors gathered just south of the steep slope of Belly Butte and fired into those first soldiers to pursue them across the top of the bluff. With more and more of the white men pouring over the breastworks, firing their guns so hot and so fast that they just surely had to have all the ammunition in the world, Crazy Horse and Hump, Little Big Man and Little Wolf, began to shout for everyone to pull back.

“We will fight these soldiers another day!”

That cry burst from every throat.

“Another day!”

Down below on the southern slope where the young boys held on to the last of the war ponies, Wooden Leg found his horse. Sweeping the crusty snow off its back, he flung himself across its foreflanks. Turning once, he saw that the chiefs had fanned out on foot across the south slope—the last to retreat—assuring that all the wounded had been gathered up and carried from the ridge. Just since leaving the top of the butte, the clouds had tumbled in. Overhead, the storm had grown so thick that the cone of Belly Butte had disappeared in the blinding white swirl.

Sick at heart with another retreat, Wooden Leg sawed the rein and kicked the pony into motion. It snorted as it leaped
away, perhaps in more of a hurry than Wooden Leg to be far from this terrible place.

His heart lay heavy and cold in his chest, remembering another winter battle, another winter retreat, another journey into the wilderness to escape the soldiers.
^*

With the next beat of that weary heart he heard the distant, muffled boom of the big wagon gun.

Hopo!
The soldiers were still shooting, even though there were no more warriors on the ridge to shoot at.

But a moment later Wooden Leg understood. The incoming whistle rushing out of the blizzard clouds warned him.

No longer was that big-throated gun aiming for the ridge. Now the soldiers were shooting at the retreating Indians.

Off to the right near the riverbank where no horsemen rode, the shell exploded harmlessly, but with enough clatter and a shower of rocks to hurry on any of those who believed they could tarry behind for long. As the ridge disappeared behind him in the swirling fury of the storm, Wooden Leg listened to another boom of the wagon gun. He rode a little farther. And heard another boom, more distant. Finally the last of the gun's roars—muffled and sodden through the thickening storm.

Then there were no more. And the quiet that wrapped itself around the young warrior was deafening.