Reap the Whirlwind (49 page)

“Getting smaller?” Mills asked.

“Yes,” the half-breed answered.

“Are they scared of ambush?” Noyes inquired.

“Forget the Crow—how about you, Frank?” Mills asked, reading something on the half-breed’s face that Grouard wasn’t doing much good in concealing.

“Yes,” he eventually admitted. “It could be a good place for an ambush.”

“We saw those warriors on the hills back yonder,” said Lieutenant Lawson of A Company, Third Cavalry.

Mills turned to Sutorious, asking, “Could those same
redskins who fled your men have gone north to set up an ambush, Captain?”

“When I drove them off,” explained the affable Sutorious, “they did go north. I watched them for a few minutes until they disappeared beyond the hills. Could be they ride this far.”

“Maybe they watched until you drove them off,” said Thomas Dewees of the Second Cavalry. “Then went to tell the others.”

“Could be,” agreed Lieutenant William Rawolle. “Maybe they figured out that we’re coming for the village, so they rode off to tell the rest who are waiting for us up there.”

“Damn right,” growled Lieutenant Samuel Swigert. “Waiting for us in ambush.”

“That’s why we haven’t been opposed,” Captain Elijah Wells, commander of E Company, Second Cavalry, spoke for the first time. “They want to sucker us down that goddamned canyon!”

“Wells might be right,” Noyes declared. “You said those Injuns just fell back when Sutorious went after ’em. They want us to keep going.”

Dewees grew animated, saying, “That canyon is where they want us to go!”

“Hey! Listen!” John Bourke hollered above the hubbub and mumbling.

For a moment that knot of officers fell quiet, straining to hear what sounds the hot air carried: distant but growing gunfire from the west, its rattle and crackle, rise and fall, floating over the pine-studded hills.

Mills wanted the matter brought to a head. “Grouard—do you think we’re riding into a trap?”

As the officers all turned on him, the half-breed did not flinch. Calmly, he nodded once. “Lots of brush. Trees down. Deadfall all over that canyon yonder. A bad place to go riding into. Yes. Up there a trap waits for your soldiers.”

“Dammit—isn’t there a better route?” Mills snapped. “Another way to approach the village without going through this canyon where there may or may not be some trap prepared for us?”

With a shrug Grouard replied, “I could lead you up
those hills, out of the valley to the west.” He pointed, then shrugged again. “Probably the same way Crazy Horse brought his warriors south to run into Crook.”

Mills snorted, grinding a heel into the grass of a deep, emerald green. “All right. That’s what we’ll do. Give that route a try, gentlemen. Unless there is some dissent I’ve haven’t listened to?”

Waiting a moment, Anson glanced at the faces of the captains and lieutenants, where he read some resolve, as well as a great deal of relief that he was not asking them to plunge on down the creekbed toward a possible surprise ambush. Finally he said, “Let’s get your sergeants to ready your outfits for an attack on the village at any moment. Make sure cinches are tightened, weapons are loaded, and we’ll resume the—”

“Riders coming in!”

They all turned as one when the voice called from back along the column.

“Now who the hell do you think that is?” Noyes asked as they watched to the south, catching their first glimpse of a pair of horsemen flogging their mounts in the direction of Mills’s rear guard.

“Afraid I’m not so much concerned about
who
they are, Major Noyes,” replied Anson Mills, his ears growing more attuned to the distant firing that had become more and more distinct, “as I am worried about just what news they’re bringing us.”

“
S
weet Mither of God!” Seamus Donegan bellowed when he heard the news. “Royall might as well put a gun to his head right now!”

“I’ll ask you to keep your voice down, and your opinions to yourself, Mr. Donegan!” snapped Guy V. Henry.

The Third Cavalry captain had just finished telling his battalion how William B. Royall’s orderly, Lieutenant Lemly, had dared to ride alone through the enemy’s bullets to deliver Crook’s orders to the colonel, demanding that Royall’s troops immediately begin to extend their right flank so that the battalion could reengage with the left of the main body of Crook’s line. There, Burt and Burrowes
were dug in and having a fierce time of it against repeated assaults by enemy horsemen.

Little did Crook or any of the rest of the infantry officers at the center of the ridge know just how fierce Royall’s end of the fight had become.

Instead of issuing his command to begin an orderly withdrawal of all five of his cavalry troops, Royall inexplicably sent his adjutant, Lieutenant Charles Morton, with orders for Captain Charles Meinhold to take his B Company, Third Cavalry, east down a ravine so that they could join up with Chambers’s infantry under Crook’s main command. Royall then sent word to his remaining four company commanders, Henry, Reynolds, Vroom, and Andrews, to extend their front even farther to the right so they could fill in the gap left by Meinhold’s departing troops as Company B began its perilous descent down the ravine toward Crook’s hill.

“There’s too many holes in our line—and they’re all too bleeming big!” Donegan grumbled as he peered over the broken ground.

“Royall already argued with himself over it,” Guy Henry explained. “We all agreed that to make a wholesale retreat to the right as Crook ordered would risk the certain loss of the whole battalion down in that ravine.”

As the most exposed segment of Royall’s battalion, Henry’s D Company held on to the far left flank of the colonel’s thinning line only by the skin of their teeth and a fingernail.

“By the devil—I see you’ve decided your men should fall here with the Sioux surrounding us and closing in, rather than lose them in that goddamned ravine where they can at least try to make it back?” Seamus snarled, his voice rising in nasty exasperation with pig-headed officers.

Henry was clearly angry, his voice growing louder, “You don’t understand—”

“With you blathering officers it’s only a matter of deciding what ground, isn’t it, Colonel? Deciding just where your horse sojurs are going to fall and die!”

“You’ve got no right to—”

“We’re bloody close to being doomed right now.”

A moment before, the captain’s face had been crimson
from the neck up. He now went pale as a Sunday tablecloth. His lips a thin line of controlled emotion, Henry gritted out the words, “I’ll have you resume your position along the line, Mr. Donegan.”

“Mark my words, Colonel—someone must convince Royall he’s making a mistake sitting on his hands right here,” Seamus continued, even though Henry was waving for a few soldiers to hurry over. “You can get these boys to drag me away for now—but I’ve fought alongside William B. Royall before. You ask him. He knows me. Knows I make sense, Colonel.”

Just as five soldiers got there to latch on to the Irishman, Henry suddenly motioned them away again. “You know Royall? Fought with him?”

“Down to Summit Springs when Carr pitched into Tall Bull’s Dog SOLDIERS.”
^*

“That was seven years ago,” Henry replied as if shaking it off. “Take my word for it, Mr. Donegan: Royall’s a different man now.”

“Listen—your own company is the most exposed. Your men have the most to lose. Won’t you even talk to the colonel about my idea?”

Henry finally nodded. “All right, I’ll go and make your case.”

“He’ll remember me and Bill Cody.”

“I said I’ll go!” Henry snapped, his eyes raking the battlefield where the enemy pressed his horse soldiers, inching forward screeching and howling, blowing their whistles and rattling pieces of rawhide to spook the horses being held not far down the slope. “Time for you to get back on the skirmish line, Mr. Donegan. It’s there I can most use your gun.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

As Seamus scurried back to the far left of the dangerously thin line, he caught a final glimpse of the last of Meinhold’s B Company disappearing down the ravine, heading southeast across that open, unprotected ground toward Crook’s line. First to move out were the horse-holders
and their frightened charges. Under the harassing fire from the Sioux, Donegan saw one of the horses go down clumsily as the troopers fought a rear-guard action against the warriors surging in upon them once the hostiles realized the small group was detaching itself from the main body.

With howling ferocity the Sioux fell upon the company’s left. Pushing his flankers out, with the rest of his men inching slowly from one crest to the next in skirmish formation, Meinhold made painful progress. Then just before those harried troops disappeared from view into the jaws of the ravine, Donegan watched a bullet strike one of the soldiers, his carbine tumbling from his grip, his right arm useless. Two others immediately scrambled to help drag along their wounded bunkie before the trio disappeared over the slope.

“We gonna make it out of here?” asked a frightened soldier.

“Sure we are,” Reuben Davenport replied before Seamus had a chance to utter a word. He glanced at Donegan. “Aren’t we, Irishman?”

No sense in letting them know what the odds were. He quickly looked over the dozen or more soldiers all staring at him, waiting for his answer. Never any sense in dwelling on the odds.

“Why, boys—we’ll be drinking whiskey back at the wagon camp inside of two days.”

A voice bellowed its order from the right along the line. “Pulling back!”

“We’re retreating?” Davenport asked, some sudden worry clouding his face like summer thunderheads.

A new voice to the right shrieked, “Goddamn—the line’s giving way!”

“Oh, Jesus!” someone else cried out in supplication.

Seamus squinted beneath the wide brim of his hat as the order came relayed down the line from company to company, platoon to platoon. Across the rugged ground to the south and west of them, the warriors were up and moving forward in greater force than they had all morning.

“Appears we are pulling back, fellas. Them Sioux spotted
Meinhold’s retreat—so that’s only made them red bastards all the more bold.”

He jammed the worn stock of the Henry repeater to his cheek and brought one of the enemy horsemen into his sights. Squeezed the trigger.

“For sure—we’re pulling back?” Davenport asked as if it had become a prayer.

Seamus nodded, bringing the repeater away from his cheek and twisting the receiver at the muzzle so that he could reload in preparation for their retreat. “Yeah, Reuben. Maybe Crook’s got plans for us to march on the village too.”

“March on the village?” Davenport wheedled, his eyes widening.

“The one named Lemly—lieutenant what brought Crook’s orders back to Royall—he said the general’s planning to send some companies north along the Rosebud with Mills to attack the Crazy Horse village,” Donegan explained.

“Say, fellas,” one of the older soldiers grumbled nearby, “don’t you wish you were in on that charge?”

“By damned—wouldn’t that be a hot time!” another old file gushed. “Wish I was in on that goddamned charge. Get in some licks, I would.”

“With Crook ordering Royall to pull us back in retreat,” Seamus continued to explain to the newspaperman, “I’d wager what the general has in mind is wanting every last man with him when he goes to support Mills when he jumps that Injin camp.”

For a moment Davenport seemed almost disappointed as he replied, “Damn—but that’s where the real action is gonna be now: with Mills blasting into Crazy Horse’s camp!”

“Glory bless—but you’re a chuckle-headed idiot!” Donegan snarled at the civilian.

“What the devil do you mean?”

“Here’s the stand where things are hottest, you stupid son of a bitch! It’s action you want? Just you keep your head down and your eyes skinned when we start moving back, Reuben Davenport. We ain’t none of us yet come out of this fix alive. Not by a long chalk we ain’t.”

Moon of Fat Horses

B
ack and forth across the broken ridges their battle against
Three Stars had raged. A few warriors lay dead, carried back to the women wailing on the slopes of those hills to the northwest. Many more were wounded, flesh torn or bones broken by the bullets from so many powerful soldier guns.

Yet what hurt Wooden Leg the most was the sight of all those ponies lying crippled, or dead. Carcasses scattered for almost as far as his eye could see.

Already it had been a costly fight—but still the sun had fully half its journey yet to go across the sky.

Just as Crazy Horse had told the old ones—those counselors, the headmen and chiefs—this was to be a far different fight than any they had fought before. This time they had resisted fighting as individuals in pursuit of personal coups. This time each man became one of the whole, following the commands of the battle chiefs as the tide of the long, bloody struggle waxed and waned back and forth, like the tossing of the tall stalks of buffalo grass in the summer breeze.

“You have the scalp, Wooden Leg?” Crooked Nose asked breathlessly as he brought his pony alongside.