Wolf Mountain Moon (64 page)

Luther Kelly and his scouts got the soldiers no more than seven miles north along the Tongue River that tenth day of January. After more than a day of rain the soggy ground began to freeze in the afternoon, the sky clouded up, and it began to snow all over again.

For the next two days it was much of the same: cold, snow, half rations, slogging back and forth across the Tongue time and again, the drenched soldiers shivering around smoky fires each evening, complaining of frostbitten toes and fingers, ears and noses.

Bernard McCann died quietly on the afternoon of the twelfth as the regiment was going into camp. Surgeon Tilton had never expected the young private to recover from his terrible leg wound but in the last four days had done all he could to put McCann at peace. Like Corporal Rothman, the other soldier killed at Battle Butte, McCann was wrapped securely in a tent half, bound by rope, and laid among the cargo in a wagon.

The following morning the Fifth Infantry marched on, covering no more than fifteen miles on the thirteenth, making their bivouac in one of their southbound camps. Once again the mercury in Tilton's thermometer froze at forty degrees below zero.

One day they were able to cross the Tongue River on the ice, though the following would find the ice softening and splintering, drenching soldiers, wagons, and mules—all hands called out to throw ropes to those who floundered in the ice floes, to pitch in and haul their fellows from the icy dangers. Not a mile went by that at least a dozen soldiers didn't fall out, some shuffling to one side of the trail and some to the other, tearing off their boots and socks, rubbing cold snow on their frostbitten toes or fingertips.

At one point Kelly spotted an old soldier scooping up a handful of the crusty ice from the ground, massaging the end of his nose with it.

“Goddamn it! Goddamn it!” the old file muttered.

“What's the matter?” Kelly inquired. “Nipped your nose?”

“Yeah—my nose and fingers and bloody well everything else—goddammit!”

Each night the men lumbered into bivouac with wet boots. The unlucky ones were ordered right on out to guard duty and did not get a chance to dry their footwear properly. But for all the complaints about the leaking overshoes and the frozen screws barely holding the boot soles in place, Tilton and Tesson did not have to amputate a single toe among that hardy regiment of foot soldiers.

A stalwart bunch they were, trudging toward home mile after mile, no man immune from the bouts of coughing that plagued them all day long, fevers and aches that kept many of the soldiers from getting any real rest at night. In the cold and the darkness the restless insomniacs huddled close to the fires, so close that many of the soldiers scorched their clothing—singeing the skirts of their long buffalo coats, leggings, and even their overshoes.

On Sunday the fourteenth the command reached the site where they had buried Private William Batty on their chase after the village. Although they hadn't seen any Indians since the ninth, Miles ordered pickets put out to guard against a surprise attack while relays began chipping away at the frozen earth until they recovered Batty's corpse. After the surgeons rewrapped the body, it was placed in the back of a wagon with the other two soldiers, and the march was resumed for the rest of the afternoon until they reached the site of their fifth southbound camp about the time a new blizzard swept down upon them.

Icy, frozen snow hurtled out of the north into their faces, accompanying their struggles for the next three days. So terrible had the weather become once more, so miserable were the men trudging half-bent at the waist into the gales, that Luther Kelly was reminded of Napoleon's army trudging through the snowy, wind-hewn steppes of Russia.

Just past two o'clock on Thursday, the eighteenth of January, the van of the column hoved into sight of the cantonment. In the near distance garrison guards cried out their news to others at the post. Men burst from the log cabins, pulling on coats and hats and mittens. As Miles and his weary
winter warriors approached, the regimental band came loping out, formed a square, and began their rendition of “Marching Through Georgia.”

“Just look at the men, will you, Kelly?” Miles suggested, having turned in the saddle to watch the faces of those trail-hardened soldiers behind them as they drew step by step ever closer to Tongue River Cantonment. “Grinning from ear to ear!”

“How could any of them be unhappy, General?” Luther asked. “They've marched more than two hundred miles through the roughest conditions, crossed the Tongue River more than a hundred fifty times going and coming—and now they see their barracks again at long last, where they can take shelter out of the winds and eat warm food after weeks of cold bacon and frozen hardtack—”

“Not to mention a good scrubbing!” Miles roared, giving himself a sniff. “Whew! I do believe I'm fit only to bunk in with my horse, Kelly!”

Without another word Luther reined his horse slowly to the side and let the colonel and his staff continue toward the cantonment's crude log buildings. Garrison soldiers waved their hats. Those returning warriors all raised their muskrat and sealskin caps, some pitched high in the raw air as cheers and huzzahs scared birds from the bare branches of surrounding trees. They were home, these men who had endured more over the last two months than most humans could ever imagine.

They were home. Home.

And so that sentiment made Luther rein up there on the low rise, turning to gaze south … south by east … wondering, now that eight days had passed, just how much ground the Irishman had been able to cover—alone as he was in hostile country, plunging through the same icy sleet and driving blizzards.

Was he halfway there? Kelly wondered. Had he bumped into any hunting bands or war parties? Had he managed to stay out of sight and keep his hair?

Would he make it home to his family?

As the wind knifed cruelly across the side of his face,
Luther adjusted the wool muffler over his cheek, tugging it over his nose. And then he thought he knew.

A man like Seamus Donegan simply didn't know the meaning of the word “failure.” No “can't.” No “won't.”

“Fare you well, friend,” Kelly said in a whisper on that hilltop near Tongue River Cantonment, his words whipped from his lips and carried south on that brutal wind blustering out of the arctic regions. “Fare you well … until we meet again.”

Chapter 39
10-16 January 1877