Reap the Whirlwind (48 page)

Didn’t Lone Star realize the danger of allowing the Lakota possession of those heights? From there, after all, they could fire down into the walk-a-heaps doing their best to find something to hide behind.

Lone Star would have to make up his mind soon, or Plenty Coups knew this battle would be lost. If the soldiers came to fight—then they would have to take that hill and hold on to it.

But if Lone Star’s soldiers did not come to fight and win, then the Crow might as well go on home now. Go home to protect their families and pony herds when the victorious Lakota spread across this land that had once been Apsaalooke hunting ground.

If Lone Star’s soldiers had not come here to the Rosebud to defeat the Sioux for all time to come—then the Crow would have to fight alone, to protect their own.

“
P
rivate Lemly!” George Crook shouted, wheeling about when he was sure Bourke had made it back to the infantry’s lines with that wounded bugler.

“Sir?”

“Front and center, Private!”

“Yes, sir!”

“My compliments to Major Van Vliet,” Crook began, using the officer’s brevet rank. “Carry him my instructions to rejoin my command.”

“Certainly, sir,” Lemly said, turning a moment to glance to the high bluffs across the Rosebud before he left to catch up his horse.

It was the highest ground overlooking all of the battlefield. And at the moment not only were some Sioux still pressuring Van Vliet’s two companies, enemy horsemen were also beginning to pour down off the slopes of the
conical hill, plunging into the head of Kollmar Creek on the north side of the Rosebud.

Royall’s young adjutant asked, “Is that all, General?”

“Just tell him to make it double time,” Crook added. “I’ll need him to replace Mills and Noyes.” He watched the soldier’s eyes squint as he gazed into the east, finding the battalion forming up for its march on the village.

“You’ve dispatched them to another part of the fight?”

“Leaving momentarily—to the enemy camp, Private. Now—get Van Vliet in here and quick before these Sioux seal up that bottomland along the creek and he’ll never be able to cross. We’ll be pulling in all the units to follow on Colonel Mills’s rear and support his attack on the village.”

Lemly saluted. “Yes, sir! I’ll do my best.”

He returned the private’s salute. “I know you will. God’s speed, son.”

17 June 1876

T
he single most important reason I marched this expedition
out of Fetterman more than two weeks ago was simply to find the goddamned village of Crazy Horse!” George Crook had explained to Anson Mills more than an hour before. “To find that village—and destroy it!”

Crook had gone on to expound in precise detail the direction of his thinking: why he believed the village to be in his immediate front, perhaps no more than seven or eight miles north down Rosebud Creek.

Having to contend with three separate battles along some three miles of battle line, the general nonetheless still believed he had his situation under enough control to detach Captain Mills with the three troops of the Third Cavalry under his immediate command to make a charge on the village. Despite Crook’s assurances to the contrary, Anson Mills realized there remained some very solid reasons for the general to be concerned about the progress of their fight over the last few hours.

Crook had the infantry under Burt and Burrowes dug in along the southwest side of the ridge, while in those rocks on the north rim of the bluffs he had posted the Montana miners and Tom Moore’s packers. Although casualties had been minimal to this point, the expedition
surgeons had set up their open-air field hospital on the slope just south of where Crook established his headquarters.

Having been summoned by a courier, Mills reached that bustle of activity around the general and waited, listening in as officers came and went with reports. Only then did the captain realize they were fighting a battle that had stretched itself across better than three miles of rugged Montana terrain. Perhaps most worrisome to George Crook was Royall’s predicament on the far left. Five troops of horse soldiers—one full third of the general’s cavalry—were more than a mile away, all but out of sight and contact, off fighting what had the makings of a tough scrap of it.

Now as Mills stood waiting, the general dispatched Royall’s orderly, Henry R. Lemly, to carry word to his cavalry commander: immediately rejoin the left side of Crook’s line in preparation for withdrawal and a march on the village.

That done and with Lemly on his way, the long-whiskered general finally turned to Mills.

“As I was explaining when you came up,” Crook declared, “to my way of thinking, the only reason these bastards are fighting the way they are would be to protect the flight of their families in that village. We’re close, Colonel Mills. Damned close. And I want your battalion to assure that those Crazy Horse people don’t escape me again. Like they did to Reynolds on the Powder River!”

“That fiasco was a most bitter pill for me to swallow, General. I was there when the colonel ordered his retreat.”

Crook screwed up his lower lip and chin within that strawberry-blond beard, then nodded. “Yes, Colonel. Now we both have a chance to redeem the honor of your regiment. Gibbon and Terry and even Custer are off somewhere in the north—doing God only knows what. But we’ve hit the bonanza! It’s our Wyoming column that’s struck pay dirt!”

Mills couldn’t help but catch some of the contagious excitement radiating from the unkempt expedition commander in his nondescript private’s uniform and battered,
floppy top hat, faded from months in the sun and miles on the trail.

“Frank?” Crook called the half-breed over, then turned back to Mills. “I’m sending Grouard with you. He’ll be your guide. No one knows this Sioux country better than Grouard here. Frank, take a dozen of the Crow along with you.” Then the general turned back to the officer, both his hands balled into fists he shook before him. “Take that village, Captain. And hold on to it until I bring up the rest of the command.”

Returning with the scout to his battalion, Mills asked, “Do we follow the creek, Grouard?”

The half-breed nodded. “It takes you straight to the many old campsites used by the Crazy Horse Lakota.”

A grim smile formed on Mills’s lips as they reached his men. He was confident Grouard would get him there. After all, the scout had performed some pretty amazing feats in locating the Crazy Horse village once before—last winter, in the middle of a blizzard, during the black of that subzero night. Here, with the sun in full glory overhead and with nothing more difficult than the banks of the Rosebud to follow—for a moment Mills wondered why Crook was sending Grouard along with him at all.

Why, a blind man could stumble across that encampment by accident!

This was nothing short of the plum assignment a cavalry commander waited years for: to capture the most feared and respected warrior chief on the northern plains. Maybe even Sitting Bull as well. Mills allowed himself to imagine how Nannie would feel, there to watch as he was promoted to major.

Hell! Capturing Crazy Horse would net him a sure lieutenant colonelcy! And from there it would be one easy step before he commanded his own regiment. Perhaps even his beloved Third … after Crook’s court-martial moved that white-headed incompetent Reynolds out of the way.

Forming his three companies into a column of fours well below the crest of the ridge in the hope of concealing his intentions for as long as he could from the enemy, the captain led his cavalry out on a right oblique, southeast toward the bottomland beside the creek where Grouard
took them toward what was widely known as the east bend of the Rosebud. After covering less than two hundred yards, the last of Crook’s infantry had disappeared from the captain’s view. With every moment the rest of that broad battlefield fell farther and farther behind them as well. As they marched smartly toward the end of the ridge where the creek turned back to the north, the rattle of rifle fire grew more and more faint.

As the dusty column drew close to the bend, a few hostiles appeared on the crests of the hills to their left and in their front, feathers, headdresses, and long hair lifted on the hot breezes. But otherwise silent, watching the horse soldiers.

“Lieutenant Paul,” Mills called back to his adjutant after ordering a brief halt. “Take my compliments to Captain Sutorious. Ask him to mount a charge with his full company and drive those warriors from their position on those hills.”

“Yes, Captain.”

In a handful of moments, Alexander Sutorious, the Swiss-born captain who had come up through the ranks, was leading his E Company past the remaining two troops of cavalry, ascending the gentle rise until he called a halt and formed his sixty men into a broad company front. They set off at a gallop for the distant horsemen dark as pitch against the skyline, making a picturesque charge against those two dozen or so warriors watching the progress of Mills’s command. The warriors fell back, beyond the crest as the horse soldiers struggled up the slope. At the top of the highest rise Sutorious halted his troopers for a few minutes.

Mills decided they were delaying to be sure the warriors were skeedaddling from the far side.

As he led his E Company back to rejoin Mills, Sutorious pulled off and came to a halt before the battalion commander while his troops continued on past to resume their place at the rear of the column.

“Mission accomplished, sir,” Sutorious said, his words heavy with his Prussian-Swiss accent.

“That was a pretty charge, Captain. Well done. Let’s be on with our march on the village.”

Behind Grouard and the twelve Crow, they again moved out down the west bank of the Rosebud but only went another half mile before a courier came galloping up to the head of the column with word from Captain Noyes that he was hurrying his five companies of the Second Cavalry to join Mills. After ordering another brief halt here, Henry Noyes appeared around the base of the hills. Leaving his five troops back in the line of march, the captain came to the van to report to Mills.

“The general’s compliments, sir.”

“Major,” Anson addressed Noyes by his brevet rank, looking past the captain to see that newsman Finerty and John Bourke among the arriving battalion. His eyes went back to Noyes. “Crook sent you?”

“It wasn’t long after dispatching you to march on the village that the general decided it would be a good idea to reinforce you with my battalion. We are at your disposal.”

Mills smiled mechanically at the officer around whom so much controversy swirled because of that cold day beside the Powder River. Noyes had ordered his men to dismount, build fires, and boil coffee while Mills and Teddy Egan were pinned down in the enemy village, in desperate need of reinforcement. “I am much pleased to have your troops along, Major. If you are ready to fight—I’m sure we’ll get our share of it today.”

Noyes stiffened somewhat, yet it seemed he made a conscious effort not to show affront. “Thank you, Colonel. It will be a pleasure fighting alongside you and the men of the Third.”

“Your companies can take up position as rear guard as we resume our march, Major.”

“Very well, sir.”

Noyes saluted and reined away, loping back along the length of the column of fours as Mills ordered his attack force back into motion, marching into the gentle east bend of the Rosebud. He now led eight full companies of cavalry—more than 475 men—surely more than enough to capture the enemy’s village with most of their warriors off battling Crook and Royall.

Just after the creek had turned back north, Mills sent orders to Noyes to take his five companies across the creek
and to move parallel beside his own three companies of the Third. Now they were marching on both sides of the sluggish stream, with flankers thrown well out on left and right to prevent a surprise ambush. As well, Anson Mills ordered twenty troopers from Lieutenant Joseph Lawson’s A Company of the Third to stay close where they could act as couriers who would maintain contact between both battalions in Mills’s attack force.

They put two more miles behind them after the bend in the creek before Mills ordered another halt, calling his eight company commanders to the front of the march while the troopers dismounted and tightened girths. There, in the still, hot air of that midday, coming out of the saddle at a spot where they could still hear the distant but heavy gunfire from far to the west, Mills pointed out how the valley was beginning to narrow.

“Looks to be no more than one hundred twenty-five, maybe one hundred fifty yards wide at the most,” Captain Noyes observed.

“The village got to be close now,” Sutorious said.

Mills only half listened. The greater part of his attention was fixed on the Crow scouts who had gone ahead a few hundred yards to probe the shrinking shadows of the canyon. Catching Grouard’s eye, he signaled the half-breed over.

“Are those guides of yours as nervous as they’re acting?” the captain asked.

Grouard nodded. “From what I understand of their talk—they don’t like the way the canyon is …” And he motioned with his hands, as if searching for a word.