Reap the Whirlwind (32 page)

“Better,” Black Elk told them, “to die fighting the white man than to sell the bones of your relatives to the white man.”

Hopo! There would be much honor in the coming fight!

And a good day to die!

It was one of the funniest damned things Seamus had seen in his life!

One hundred and seventy-five of Major Alexander Chambers’s infantrymen gathered in the bottomland near the Crow and Shoshone camps, each of those foot soldiers volunteering to ride into battle, but first required to break to saddle the wary mules recruited from Charlie Russell’s wagon train. Captains Andrew Burt and Gerhard Luhn, as well as some veteran sergeants and old files among the infantry companies, offered to teach the “walk-a-heaps” soldiers what they could about riding a cantankerous, half-broke mule.

First order of the morning was getting each stubborn animal to take the regulation army bridle, followed by cinching on the clumsy McClellan saddle doubly secured by both surcingle and girth straps. As the reluctant novices rose into their saddles, the fun began.

Mule ears went down as tails and heels shot up. Squeals and cries and heer-awwws reverberated along the forks of Goose Creek. Saddled backs bowed as the animals uncorked all their nasty best beneath the wide-eyed, airborne infantrymen. Off the soldiers flew into that summer blue sky, flung out of the saddle in pairs or groups, catapulted this way and that to a wild chorus of cheers and hoots from bystanding cavalrymen. For a mile in each direction the bottomland was agog with apish mules, jack-toyed soldiers, broken saddles, and cheering, guffawing spectators.

It wasn’t long before many of the warriors came to watch. As one after another of the rebellious mules unhorsed their hapless riders and tore off for the brush, the
Crow and Shoshone allies swept in to grab reins, swinging up and into the white man’s saddles to show just what a superb horseman was the warrior of the plains. Every time applause broke out from the bystanders—all boredom bucked right out of Crook’s camp.

Donegan nonetheless brooded. If Crook had intended to mount his infantry on the mules all along—why, the general had gone and wasted more than a week, his men and those stubborn mules idling as they waited for the allies to show up.

While a thousand soldiers hastily prepared for the final march on the enemy village, the 262 allies were every bit as busy. Before sunrise Captain George M. “Black Jack” Randall of the Twenty-third Infantry, Crook’s military chief of scouts, had dispatched five Crows to ride north, searching for sign of the enemy in the country drained by the headwaters of the Rosebud. Meanwhile in their camps that morning of the fifteenth, both Crow and Shoshone cleaned their weapons, sharpened knives and axes, freshened the paint on their ritual clothing, and looked to their war ponies with special attention.

Near midday they lined up in orderly fashion near Quartermaster John V. Furey’s wagons to receive their four-day rations and ammunition. Those warriors who needed guns received what the army could spare of government weapons, as well as the forty rounds of ammunition allocated to each Indian scout.

Just as important, Captain Furey issued every one of the 262 Crow and Shoshone a long strip of bright-red cloth each warrior was instructed to tie around his upper arm.

“This way,” the interpreters told the warriors, “in the heat of battle the white soldiers will be able to recognize you as an ally and can see you are not their enemy.”

That afternoon the tribes wagered on foot races they held on a course 150 yards long.

Excitement was growing high among both white and red allies, all anxious for the final assault on the enemy. Crook himself made no bones that he was spoiling for a fight after the disastrous Powder River debacle. That martial fervor was highly contagious: what marked that army
gathered at Goose Creek was that each man shared a common belief in his invincibility. Spirits soared.

Despite the jovial air to the bivouac, Donegan kept to himself there at what John Bourke had christened “Camp Cloud Peak,” composing what Seamus knew would be his last letter to Samantha for some days to come—at least until they had engaged the enemy and returned to Crook’s wagon camp here at the forks. Perhaps he might even write his next letter from the banks of the Yellowstone when Crook joined up with Gibbon or Terry in a week or so. Along with the sixty-five Montana miners, twenty of Tom Moore’s packers had volunteered to ride along with Crook’s soldiers and allies to give battle to the villages of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. The rest of the mule skinners were staying behind with Russell’s teamsters at the wagon corral.

To keep from letting any of his own gnawing doubts about an early return to Laramie come through what he was expressing, Seamus instead told his wife of Crook’s plans as the general prepared to cut loose to strike the Sioux.

He wrote that just after the bugler had blown “retreat” the night of the fourteenth, Crook had summoned his officers and scouts, as well as Tom Moore and wagon master Russell, to headquarters. There beneath his own battle flag, the expedition commander issued his terse orders.

“Day after tomorrow, we’re cutting loose from the wagon train,” he declared. “Each of you company commanders will see that your men carry four days rations of hard-bread, coffee, and bacon in their haversacks or saddle pockets. One hundred rounds of rifle or carbine ammunition for each belt or pouch. Tents are to be left behind, packed in the wagons. Only one blanket per man. Gentlemen, make no mistake: we are stripping for pursuit of the enemy.”

“You’ll be leaving us behind, General?” Russell asked.

“Yes. Quartermaster Furey will be left in charge, along with a guard of one hundred infantrymen who are unable, or for some other reason do not want to make, the ride north.”

“Ride, General Crook?” inquired Major Alexander Chambers. “My infantrymen?”

“Yes, Colonel,” he said as he turned to Chambers. “All of your foot soldiers can ride.”

“If you can break those mules,” Tom Moore declared sourly.

“I’m leaving that up to you and Russell, Tom,” Crook said, clearly bristling. “You’ve got tomorrow to get it done.”

“Tomorrow?” Russell grumped.

“Make the most of your time, men. This column is pulling out before dawn on the sixteenth.”

This time Crook turned to Captain Furey, expedition quartermaster. “Major, I suggest you select the most defensible place as early as possible tomorrow and get your wagon camp moved to it. I am recommending the junction of the creeks—where you’ll have water on two sides, and it will be easy to fort the wagons on the third side.”

“Very good, General.”

“You will await word from me after our attack on the Crazy Horse village,” Crook explained to his quartermaster as well as the rest. “If we are successful in driving them away, we will load what dried meat and other food we can confiscate in their camp, and march north to effect a junction with Terry or Gibbon. Perhaps both, if they themselves have joined up on the Yellowstone.”

It was not long after Crook had adjourned that brief meeting that Cosgrove’s Shoshone had come riding in from the south. So that night a great bonfire had roared near headquarters, where the general held a grand council with his new allies. In a huge crescent, two men deep, the officers of the expedition arranged themselves. Opposite them sat the war chiefs and headmen of the Crow and Shoshone battalions. Near him at the center Crook had his staff, his three half-breed scout-interpreters, as well as the chiefs of the two tribes who had each selected one spokesman to parley with Lone Star Crook. The warriors from both tribes laughed heartily whenever one of the translators made a mistake.

Clearly it was a time of joy for these red horsemen,
Seamus thought. A time to be forming alliances in hopes of destroying an ancient enemy.

The Lone Star now led some 1,325 men against the Sioux and Cheyenne: cavalry and infantry, Crow and Shoshone, packers and Montana miners too.

Repeating his orders of earlier that evening to the allies, the general went on to ask if the Indians had anything they wished to ask, or to add. When both Old Crow and Luishaw requested that they be allowed to scout for their old enemies in their own way, Crook agreed.

“You can search for the Sioux and Cheyenne the way you always have,” he told them. The general stood near the center of the council, his hands in his pockets, appearing half-bored with the long proceeding of multiple translations. “It is of no concern to me how you do it. The only thing that matters is that you find the enemy for me. You do that—my soldiers will do the rest.”

Nodding with approval at the general’s words, Old Crow asked to speak a few words.

“Lone Star has heard the heart of his Indian brother. These are our lands. They have long been our lands. The One Above Spirit gave this land to our grandfathers’ grandfathers. But in recent seasons the Lakota and the Shahiyena came here to steal the land from us. They hunt in our mountains. They fish in our streams. They steal our ponies. They have murdered our women and children.”

Wails and laments arose from the circle of warriors.

“What white men have done these things to us?” Old Crow continued his speech. “The face of the Lakota is red … but his heart is
black!
Yet the heart of the pale face has ever been red and true to the People of the Raven.”

Now the warriors answered with loud grunts of approval.

“The scalp of no white man hangs in our lodges,” the chief added. “But in Lakota lodges white scalps are as thick as quills on the back of a porcupine. Yes, Lone Star will lead us against our enemies. Our war is with the Lakota and only them. We want our lands back. We want their women for our slaves—to work as our women have been forced to toil in their villages. We want their ponies for our young warriors, their mules for the burdens of our women.
These Lakota—too long they have trampled upon our hearts. And now we shall spit upon their scalps!”

Cries and yelps became deafening.

“Lone Star can plainly see our young men have come to fight. No Lakota shall ever see the back of a Crow warrior. We do not retreat. Where Lone Star’s soldiers go, there will my warriors be at their shoulders. Is Lone Star now content? Together we shall make war on our enemy!”

The old chief and Crook shook hands amid a rising crescendo of cheers from soldier and warrior alike as the general’s council adjourned.

When the conference broke up near ten-twenty P.M., Seamus was sure the entire camp would grow quiet. After all, there had been much excitement for the civilians and soldiers that day what with the arrival of the allies. Certain that the Crow and Shoshone would be weary from their long trip to join the soldiers, Donegan had rolled up his mackinaw for a pillow, pulled his blanket to his chin, closing his eyes.

—and immediately opened them when the first peal of an ear-splitting war song cracked the night air like a thunderbolt. Drums suddenly joined in, with a chorus of at least two hundred more voices adding their strength to the celebration both tribes were holding in their camps. A few warriors passed back and forth from village to village on horseback, screeching out their prayers asking for many Sioux scalps, beseeching the Almighty to avenge the deaths of loved ones at the hands of the enemy they were now stalking. Some prayed for Sioux plunder, the spoils of war. Others pleaded for Sioux ponies.

Near his bivouac, Seamus listened as the lowing cattle grew restless with the noise before suddenly bolting for the hills about the time a soft summer rain began to fall. No great loss he figured: the herd had been whittled down to all of six.

As the allies continued their dance in the cold rain, the second of Crook’s soldiers passed to the ages. A victim of an unknown malady, Private William Nelson of the Third Cavalry went to his Maker with the ringing of war songs in his ears. A wild and fitting requiem for any fighting man come to breathe his last in Indian country.

At sunset on that night of the fifteenth, Seamus walked with John Finerty and Bob Strahorn at the rear of the long funeral procession winding its way toward the brow of a grassy hill where Nelson was to be buried with full military honors. After Captain Guy V. Henry again read the service from his
Common Book of Prayer
, seven of Nelson’s fellow soldiers from L Company fired three volleys over the open grave.

It was but a matter of heartbeats before Donegan felt the ground shudder with the thunder of hooves as more than two hundred Crow and Shoshone galloped up in a swirl of noise and blazing color, screeching and brandishing their weapons—certain that the soldier camp was under attack by the Sioux.

But, as Donegan explained in his letter to Samantha, as soon as Pourier made the allies understand that the soldiers were burying one of their own, the warriors fell silent as if suddenly struck with a common coup stick. In a great crescent they sat atop their ponies at the far edge of the gathering for what remained of the ceremony, their feathers and unbound hair fluttering on the breeze as the sun sank red and lonely behind the Big Horns.

Nowhere near as lonely as he was for her.

When You See Our Mountains