Wolf Mountain Moon (9 page)

At breakfast on the twenty-fifth, having struggled more than a hundred miles from Fort Peck, Miles called Andrew S. Bennett to his fire.

“Captain.”

“Good morning, General.”

“I'm reinforcing your company to the strength of fifty-two men, Captain.”

“You have something in mind for me to do?”

“I want your ? Company to proceed on down this freight road to Carroll City.”

“Yes, sir,” Bennett said with enthusiasm. “What's our assignment?”

“Some of the agency hang-abouts at Fort Peck told our half-breed interpreter that a trader was supplying ammunition to Sitting Bull's hostiles there.”

“And you want me to take that trader into custody?”

“No,” and Miles shook his head. “Just see that you seize every last cartridge the son of a bitch has.”

“How much might this trader have?”

With a shrug and a scratch at his cheek Miles said, “I have no idea, Captain. But I'll assign you a half dozen of our wagons to carry the ammunition.”

“Where shall I rejoin you, General?”

“You will find us in the Black Buttes area—where I plan for all of us to rendezvous with Captain Snyder's battalion.”

Chapter 4
25-26 November 1876

T
hat Saturday afternoon of the twenty-fifth, after Bennett's B Company departed for Carroll City to confiscate that trader's ammunition, the rest of Miles's column reached the banks of the Missouri River itself, directly opposite the mouth of Squaw Creek a little below the Musselshell River. Here the command established its bivouac across a rich, fertile bottomland where grass grew thick not only for their livestock, but for an abundance of buffalo, elk, antelope, and deer.

One problem with the varying weather, besides the trail becoming soggy for the foot soldiers, was that the Missouri River itself was no longer a solid sheet of ice. Instead the rolling surface of the wide river was pocked with huge, bobbing chunks of ice the size of immense boulders, crashing and crushing against one another with a constant, noisy, grating rumble.

Assessing the situation upon reaching the north bank that Saturday, Miles called for his most trusted subaltern.

“Mr. Baldwin, I'm putting you in charge of constructing a raft suitable for moving the troops across.”

“I'll move the men and you'll caulk and float the wagons, General?” Frank inquired.

“That's right. But we need a raft big enough to move a good number of the troops across at a time.”

“What dimensions do you recommend?”

Miles gazed up at the cottonwoods that lined the banks. “As big as you think your work details are capable of, Lieutenant.”

All through that cold night the soldiers labored within a ring of bonfires that gave them light and provided some measure of warmth as they sweated: chopping, hewing, hammering, and lashing—voices joking and buoyant as the men worked or slept in relays. By the following morning, the twenty-sixth, Baldwin was ready. Not only had his crews constructed a rope-and-log raft eighty feet long by twelve feet wide, but they had cut down several long cottonwood saplings they would use to pole their way across the river. In addition, another group of soldiers had removed one of the wagon boxes from its running gear, nailing waterproofed canvas over the box itself to make the craft more riverworthy in floating numbers of the men across the Missouri.

But that morning as the sun emerged into a gray sky, the Missouri appeared to be running all the faster, all the more crowded with the noisy, jarring rumble of ice floes. Nonetheless, at that point Miles would not be deterred. He was not about to be kept from reaching the south bank, where he could continue his pursuit.

“Simply put,” the colonel told Baldwin, “the Fifth must push on in its hunt for Sitting Bull, no matter the obstacles thrown in our way.”

With a great shout and hearty exclamations from those hundreds watching on shore, more than ten soldiers threw their shoulders against the huge raft, shoving it across the thick ice frozen against the north bank to launch the craft into the slushy Missouri. Accompanying Baldwin on that maiden voyage was Miles himself, Lieutenant James W. Pope, and a dozen foot soldiers, nearly every one of them equipped with a twenty-foot-long sapling. In a matter of moments those poles proved themselves totally worthless against the increasing depth and speed of the current that hurled huge chunks of ice against the upstream side of the raft, where the icy river began to lap over the men's feet, then washed around their ankles,
and eventually swirled crazily around their calves the farther they went.

Just shy of the halfway point the raft lurched with a sudden jar that nearly toppled most of the men. Scrambling to hold on to the ropes, the men cried out in fear and surprise, cursing their luck. As the craft slowly came around with the persistent force of the current, the huge cottonwood timbers groaned threateningly.

“Pole men!” Baldwin ordered, fighting to keep his footing as the raft wobbled, one end free and bobbing in the current, the other snagged on a submerged tree. “Hold 'er! Hold 'er!”

The ropes strained and creaked. Cottonwood timbers grated and shuddered against one another. The river flung ice into their frail craft.

“We're stuck fast, General!” Pope cried.

Miles demanded, “You saying we've gone aground?”

“I think we're caught on a sawyer,” Baldwin decided. “A snag. Something huge, just below the surface that's keeping us from going on.”

“And from going back too,” Miles said, assessing their precarious situation.

“All right, men,” Baldwin cheered. “Let's put our backs into it! Heave!” he grunted along with the others shoving against their poles, pushing with the power of their legs against the mighty river's current. “Heave! Heave!”

As suddenly as they had been jarred by the snag, a rifle shot cracked the cold air. In that heartbeat every man onshore turned to look this way and that. A second rifle shot rang out from the pickets Miles had thrown around their bivouac. In a moment it began to strike home that they might well be under attack.

Miles stood clumsily, steadying himself against the bobbing of the icy current. Flinging his voice to the north bank, he demanded, “What's the meaning of that firing?”

A voice onshore cried, “Indians coming!”

Beside the Missouri his soldiers milled, called out to one another, turned this way and that as the officers began to shout their commands.

“Damn it all!” Miles grumbled as he sank to his knees on the rocking raft.

Baldwin couldn't agree more. Here they were, caught at
midriver, helpless and without weapons while the main body of the column was damn well caught with its pants down watching this river crossing.

“Fall in!” Miles shouted through the gloves he cupped round his mouth. His red face showed his frustration and growing anger. “Fall in, dammit!”

Captain Ewers shouted, “Assembly, General?”

“Damn right,” the colonel replied, cupping his hands to hurl his voice at the north shore once again. “Bugler—sound assembly. Look lively! Look lively, now!”

Confined as they were to their position on the river below the steep banks, Baldwin could see nothing beyond those soldiers right on the bank, men darting here and there to begin forming up company by company, their lieutenants and sergeants barking orders before the first outfits started scrambling up the shelf onto the prairie itself, where another shot rang out just then.

Just one. Still no general firing, no yelps and war whoops. Yet Baldwin knew those cries of battle could come at any minute when the warriors swooped down on the main body of the Fifth.

But as quickly as the first shot had surprised them all, the first half-dozen soldiers onto the prairie turned back against the flow of the hundreds, waving their arms, shrieking above the panic as they split the ranks to trot down among the general's nervous staff onshore. In less than a minute Bailey was at the water's edge, shouting out to the raft.

“What's he say?” Miles demanded of the men around him.

Baldwin repeated, “Bailey's saying it's only a false alarm, General.”

“No Indians?” Pope inquired.

“Says it was elk,” Frank explained with a wag of his head. “One of the pickets started shooting at a herd of goddamned elk.”

“Who announced that it was Indians?” Miles growled.

“Some nervous Nelly,” Baldwin said, then chuckled. “General, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in that man's shoes when you get your hands on him!”

“Damn right,” Miles growled. “Here we are without weapons, at the mercy of this blessed river—”

The raft suddenly convulsed against the powerful current, shifting a little more to the side as it came around and stopped—even more firmly locked against the snag.

As the following minutes rolled by, the men found their raft beginning slowly to list even more to one side in the ice-laden current, forcing more of the slushy river over the sides of their raft, pushing a swirl of bitterly cold water up to froth around their knees. Clinging to the ropes for their lives, the soldiers began to shiver, their teeth chattering as Baldwin and Pope shouted back and forth to those on the north bank.

It wasn't long before some of the men in Wyllys Lyman's I Company had the canvas-covered wagon-box boat down the shore and into the water, a complement of soldiers kneeling inside at the gunwales, using army spades as paddles. Again, sheer muscle was pitted against the growing strength of the river's frightening ice floes. As the rescuers bobbed close, one of Baldwin's soldiers tossed the end of their longest section of rope to those in the wagon box. Lyman's men promptly tied it off before the wagon boat was carried on across the Missouri's current.

Struggling against the powerful current and the battering of the huge grating ice chunks, the soldiers from I Company finally paddled their way to the south shore, where Private Thomas Kelly leaped over the gunwale and waded through the chilling water that boiled up to his armpits, dodging hunks of ice to clamber eventually onto a section of solid ice. Once there, he crabbed onto the bank. On firm footing at last, Kelly shook himself like a dog before his trembling hands fought to tie off the other end of the long rope around a cottonwood of generous girth.

That task completed, the men of I Company pulled themselves to the south bank, where several of the soldiers remained behind in the hope that the rest of their regiment would soon be joining them before nightfall. Then those left of the wagon-boat crew turned around inside their craft and dipped their spades into the river once more, pushing back toward the raft as the hundreds on the north bank erupted into a spontaneous cheer.

When Lyman's soldiers reached Baldwin's raft, the lieutenant tossed them the end of another length of one-inch rope he had secured to his tilting craft still snagged near the middle
of the river. As the wagon boat slipped away into the current, its crew paddling for the north bank a soldier slowly played out the rope connected to the raft. Thunking, scraping, groaning—more and more ice chunks smacked against the side of the wagon box, slid along the side with a noisy, frightening racket, then bobbed free, floating on downriver.

Of a sudden the solitary wagon-box soldier reached the end of that rope. “Goddammit—help me, for the love of God!”

Nearly all the rest of the paddlers dropped their shovels into the bed for those next desperate moments at midstream, every one of them clutching the rope as the current shoved against them, starting to urge them downstream in a bobbing arc.

“There's no way we can do this, General!” Baldwin shouted above the cries of the men on both shores who watched helplessly, the soldiers trapped in both rivercraft wobbling with the icy current. “They just don't have enough rope to make the north bank!”