Reap the Whirlwind (59 page)

“Damned superstitious of ’em, I’d say,” Bourke continued. “According to White Face, the Sioux who are camped on down the Rosebud are as many as the grass. That’s just the way Bat translated: as many as the grass. The scout warned Crook all his men would be killed if they attacked that camp. Said the spirits had vowed that all the white men would be killed if they attacked a village. Then White Face rubbed his two palms together, out flat like this—and stomped off. Leaving Bat to explain his surly impudence and all the rest to Crook.”

“So that’s when Crook decided to head back here?” Donegan asked.

“Not quite then. While we were dismounted there in the canyon and he was talking over the matter with the scouts, Crook sent me and Nickerson to all the company commanders to inquire as to their ammunition supply.”

Donegan said, “That wasn’t good news at all.”

“But being desperately short on cartridges wasn’t the only thing that made up the general’s mind for him,” Bourke continued. “The last straw came when Grouard
said he wasn’t marching any farther. That killed Crook’s march right then and there.”

“He believes Grouard about an ambush, eh?”

“I’d say he trusts that half-breed like he’s never trusted any other scout,” Bourke answered. “Without Grouard, without those Crow willing to go one more furlong—Crook had no choice but to turn around and come on back here where he left the infantry to guard the surgeons.”

“Got a mite lonely here without you, Johnny boy,” Closter said with a gentle grin radiant within that tobacco-stained white beard. “Just us civilians and infantry left to protect all the wounded.”

It was just past four P.M. when a dejected Crook returned to the battlefield littered with the carcasses of horses and warrior ponies. As the cavalry troops broke up into messes and began to build their fires, the general ordered Major Chambers to have his infantry post rotating pickets on the high ground of the conical hill where sentries remained until seven P.M., when twilight began to sink over the northern plains.

Bourke sighed, saying, “As much as Crook wanted to snatch a victory right out of the jaws of the standstill we fought to against Crazy Horse this afternoon, I think he’s still got plans to make a full-scale night march against them.”

“Tonight?” Donegan asked.

“Yes. Crook’s called an officers’ meeting for sunset,” the lieutenant declared. “Going to discuss with his company commanders this matter of marching his cavalry north under the cover of darkness … so he can strike the enemy camp at dawn.”

17 June 1876

A
s twilight eased down on the valley of the Rosebud, it
reminded Seamus Donegan of another summer evening ten years gone. Another twilight, with darkness coming on, having fought for much of that long day against Sioux horsemen at the Crazy Woman Crossing of the Bozeman Road into Montana Territory.

As the air started to cool, the mosquitoes came out in thin vapors that drifted over the camp Crook’s troops made along the creek bottom and across the gentle slopes. From the hospital the surgeons had established for themselves down among a copse of trees standing beside the sluggish Rosebud, Donegan occasionally heard a muffled shriek of pain or yelp of agonized torture as a probe was eased into a bullet wound, or the knife worked over sundered flesh. Or, worse yet—the raw-toothed saw began its grisly labors separating bone from bone, limb from limb. What was still alive from what was destined to die.

But with the advent of night came one blessing: at least the huge, droning flies disappeared after tormenting man and beast throughout the long day, meaning some small measure of relief for the wounded, including Guy V. Henry.

For most of the afternoon the Third Cavalry captain
had not been without constant care. Because the surgeons unanimously believed he could not last the night, they made certain that Henry was given what comfort they could provide for this lone officer among the day’s casualties. Stewards and enlisted men were called to rotate shifts in keeping the flies fanned away from the blood still crusting on the frightful wounds, from the oozy eyes swollen shut. Meanwhile, clouds of the big green-bottle horseflies and their smaller, darker cousins had descended to crawl and bite at the rest of the wounded.

Henry’s spirits remained remarkably high throughout the afternoon and into the evening as one after another of his men and fellow officers came to pay their respects, talk about the battle, speak of home and give what cheer they could. That long afternoon’s summer heat, compounded by the severe bleeding from his wounds, intensified the captain’s craving for fluids. For more than an hour Lieutenant William Rawolle sat at Henry’s head, gently spoonfeeding his friend some red-currant jelly made soluble in water so that it could be easily swallowed.

With the return of Crook’s second march down the Rosebud, bivouac had been ordered on the same ground where the soldiers had been enjoying their morning rest at the moment they were attacked, so the wounded would not have to be moved. Besides, water was at hand. With the creek as the southern border, the various cavalry and infantry units formed the four sides of a camp square, with their horses and mules left to graze in the center.

By the time Crook called his officers’ assembly that evening, there was an official count completed on the battle. While the soldiers themselves had used up more that twenty-five thousand rounds of ammunition, the Crow and Shoshone had shot up ten thousand rounds on their own, which left the expedition with no more than ten cartridges per man.

Captain George Randall also reported that his Indian scouts had collected the scalps from thirteen Sioux and Cheyenne warriors abandoned on the field by their people unable to claim those bodies fallen so close to the soldier lines. Captain Andrew Burt stated that he had counted 150 dead horses and ponies scattered for nearly three miles
along the ridges, as well as a few old blankets, war bonnets, and other plunder left behind in the fury of the fray, if not by the enemy’s precipitous retreat.

While there was no reasonable way to tally the Sioux and Cheyenne casualties, medical director Albert Hartsuff gave his preliminary report of nine soldiers killed, all of whom had fought under Colonel Royall on the left flank of the battle. Besides Captain Guy V. Henry, the one officer wounded, there were another twenty wounded enough to require medical attention. The civilian packers and Montana miners had suffered no losses.

As for the general’s allies, Baptiste Pourier told the assembly of the one death—a Shoshone boy caught and killed near the creek bottom during the battle—with another seven scouts seriously wounded. Bat said that the war chief Old Crow had been shot through the kneecap in the early fighting and had stoically refused to allow the surgeons near his leg with their knives and sawblades.

Lieutenant Rawolle reported that some of his men had gone out late that afternoon with the expressed purpose of exploring those positions the enemy had used so effectively against them. What they found at several locations were piles of empty cartridges. In one place they counted more than five hundred cases, representing at least four different calibers. At another position they found a dump of sorts, cluttered with empty ammunition boxes. The message was clear: let none of George Crook’s officers fool themselves into thinking the enemy was not well armed.

When the preliminary oral reports were out of the way and he had asked that the various company commanders submit their written reports in three days, the general finally got to the heart of things for that weary assembly.

“Gentlemen, our wounded need proper attention. Better than what we can give them here. Though I have considered the option of transporting our casualties on travois or by mule litter as we hurry in pursuit of the enemy, I’ve come to the decision that to do so would be a most unthinkable act of barbarity against those very men who have borne the high cost of this battle.”

“Then are you considering sending the wounded back
to the wagon camp on Goose Creek under an escort, General?” asked William B. Royall.

“No, Colonel. I would need to provide such a mission with an escort of sufficient strength that would only serve to dilute my already weakened force. No. Besides, gentlemen—this strike force of ours was originally rationed for no more than four days. If we had struck the enemy village—a village which I am dead certain has now flown, scattering to all parts of the compass—and gone ahead to defeat that camp in battle, we could have marched on north to rendezvous with either Gibbon or Terry on the Yellowstone. But now, with that village fleeing and likely dispersing in all directions, I can’t make a reasonable argument for continuing our chase without rations.”

“I don’t think anyone will take issue with me, General,” Anson Mills declared, “when I say we’ve lost all hope of surprising the village now—which was at the heart of our original plan.”

“What we need besides rations and ammunition,” Crook went on, “is reinforcements. Perhaps we can pull up some of the units General Sheridan transferred from the south to prevent more of the agency Indians from bolting the reservations and joining the hostiles here in the north country. I won’t know what additional manpower I can expect until I can communicate with division headquarters.”

“I agree that we might well need reinforcement,” Royall stated. “If we expect to storm the hostile camps of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse instead of being surprised by them.”

“That brings something up I wanted to discuss, General,” Major Alexander Chambers said. “What good was it having the Crow and Shoshone with us as our guides, trackers, scouts … if we were so completely and utterly surprised?”

“I take exception to your characterization of our scouts,” John Bourke said as he leaned forward from the group encircling Crook. “No man here could have expected any more from our scouts. Not only were they courageous, but gallant as well.”

“They likely saved our hash,” Captain Peter Vroom
stated. “Not only at the start of the battle, but in my fight at the top of the hill.”

“Gentlemen,” Crook said, holding both hands up to quiet his murmuring officer corps. “You can save just this sort of discussion for your camp fires and after-dinner conversation. I, for one, have no complaints of any kind with our allies. So, if there are no further matters requiring discussion, this meeting is adjourned. We will move out for our base camp at dawn.”

After supper with Closter and a handful of Tom Moore’s packers, Seamus ambled up the slope until he reached the sandstone rocks where the civilians had held off a series of enemy charges that day. There he sat and loaded his pipe, smoking it as he stared off to the north while the deep hues of twilight bled to black and the first stars winked into sight just beyond his reach. When the high prairie night grew chilled, the Irishman turned away from the darkness to the north and faced about, moving back down the slope through the many twinkling watch-fires around which the cavalry and infantry units were gathering in muted, brooding conversations.

“I, for one, think the lives of this outfit were saved by the battle taking place right here, taking place
when
it did this morning,” John Finerty declared that evening at a small fire where many of the correspondents had gathered with a few of Tom Moore’s packers to talk of the fight.

“Hell,” Reuben Davenport grumbled as Donegan came up to the group. “No matter where or when, we were caught flat-footed, and we’re lucky we came out of it as cheap as we did.”

“Listen, Davenport—had the Crow not discovered the enemy, and had they not jumped us right here,” Finerty protested, “why, if we had carried out the general’s original plan without being molested on our march down the river—our whole force of eleven hundred men would have been in the hostile village at noon.”

Seamus asked, “And what do you suppose would have happened then, Finerty?”

Scratching his two days of chin growth, Finerty replied, “In light of the events of this day, it is not improbable that all of us would have settled there permanently.”

“An early grave, for sure,” said T. B. MacMillan.

“I’ve got to agree with you on that,” Bob Strahorn of the Rocky Mountain
News
said. “Five thousand able-bodied warriors, well armed, and under the capable leadership of that red Satan, Crazy Horse himself, would have given Crook all the trouble the general was looking for when he pitched into that village.”

“If we’d made the village at all,” grumbled T. B. MacMillan, like Finerty, from Chicago. “Sounds to me like they were already in the process of luring us down the river toward their trap when our scouts fortunately ran into some of the warriors who were going to swoop in around on our rear and jump our backs when the moment of ambush arrived.”

“If that had happened, right now we all would be sharing a lot in common with Potts, that poor soldier I saw them bringing in this afternoon,” Finerty groaned. “Growing black and swollen from lying out in the sun, more than a dozen arrows bristling from his anatomy.”

Davenport asked, “Is it true Grouard told Crook that he recognized Crazy Horse among the war chiefs during the fight?”