It was a welcome treat for the battalion after more than three weeks of hard marching. They had crossed uncharted territory, making their own way and creating the wagon road that General Kearny wanted to California. They had been on shortened rations, and game had become scarce. When something was killed their appetites were so ravenous that they ate head, feet, hide, tripe, and everything else that was possibly edible. At the ranch the hunters killed over twenty of the wild cattle—most of which were bulls—and they had taken a day to build frames of mesquite and dry the meat. Once they marched on, they constantly saw signs of the wild bulls but rarely cows or calves. Even now, more than a week later, they were still seeing the bulls on a regular basis.
“That’s why that meat those Indians sold us was so good, wasn’t it?” Josh asked. A short time after the battalion left the ranch, several Indians had ridden into camp with about two hundred pounds of very fat and juicy meat.
Tuttle grunted. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Indians have rounded up the cows and calves and have got them corralled somewhere.”
“Probably,” Josh agreed. “I hope they come selling some more.”
Just then they heard the bugler sound assembly. Tuttle shouldered his knapsack and picked up his musket. “We’d better go. Don’t want to miss roll call.”
Josh grinned. “If we’re late, they can bust you to private. But what can they do to me?”
The sergeant growled something which he didn’t understand. Josh laughed and shouldered his pack as well. Together they started to where the rest of the men were lining up.
The battalion left the San Pedro River shortly after departing camp and wound their way through some low hills for a couple of hours, then dropped down to the river again. The drovers took the cattle ahead of the main column so that they could water at the river while the men came up to join them. As they were approaching the river bottoms, suddenly rifle shots rang out. Startled, Josh swung his musket off his shoulder, looking around wildly. There was another shot, then another. Sergeant Tuttle had his rifle at the ready now too and bawled at the men to stay alert. Cries of “Ambush” and “We’re under attack” ran up and down the line. Men scrambled for protection as they readied their weapons. Josh found himself behind a large rock, his mouth suddenly dry and his heart pounding.
After a minute or two, one of the officers came riding down the line. “It’s all right,” he called. “Some wild bulls got in with our cattle and the drovers had to shoot them.”
Sheepishly the men got to their feet again, laughing and talking in relief.
“We’ll take an hour’s break at the river,” the officer said. He gave the men a mocking look. “Keep your weapons handy, men. You never know what’s going to jump out at you.” Then he rode away, laughing uproariously to himself.
Josh sat beside the river—not really much more than a wide creek at this time of year—holding his stomach. After some of the water they had been forced to drink over the last several weeks, this was delicious and he had drunk until his belly hurt. Across the stream, the drovers were skinning and cleaning the bulls they had shot earlier. Every now and then the air would stir slightly and he would smell the ripe odor of blood and death. But he could live with that. There would be fresh meat tonight. It would be tougher than saddle leather, but it would be fresh.
He turned to where Sergeant Tuttle and the rest of his platoon were lying side by side, hats over their eyes to protect them from the sun. Now, that wasn’t a bad idea, he thought. They still had half an hour before the call to move again would sound. Josh had learned that in the army you grabbed sleep whenever and wherever you could. With a soft moan of pleasure, he lay down in the soft sand and closed his eyes.
Three minutes later, just as his mouth was sagging in that final relaxation before sleep, there was a bellow from somewhere behind him. He opened his eyes. It was deeper than that of an ox. Then there was a scream and a rifle shot. He sat bolt upright, looking around in confusion.
The riverbed itself was wide and mostly sand, with the stream being only a few feet wide, but all along the banks there were thick stands of underbrush—willows, manzanita, some mesquite and other desert brushes. As he leaped to his feet, a dark shape burst out of the undergrowth about fifty yards from where he and the others were standing. It was a huge bull, black as a coal bin, with massive horns that curved to wicked-looking tips. It whirled to the right, hooves kicking sand outward. Directly in front of it was one of the few wagons the battalion still had with them. With a bellow that rumbled like thunder, the beast lowered its head and charged. Men yelled and exploded in panic. There was a tremendous crash as the bull hit the wagon at full charge. One horn went through the wood sideboard as if it were paper. The wagon rocked violently; then, as the bull lunged forward, twisting with its massive neck, the wagon lifted and slowly tipped over, spilling sacks and boxes out as it hit the ground.
“Watch out!” It was Sergeant Tuttle. Josh whirled around. Three bulls burst out of the trees right behind them. “They can smell the blood,” Tuttle shouted, throwing his musket up to his shoulder. He fired and a puff of smoke rolled outward from the barrel. There was a grunt and the lead bull went down, its muzzle plowing a track in the riverbed. The other two swerved, one to the right and one to the left, the latter coming directly toward Josh. He fumbled for his rifle, which was still tangled in its sling from when he had lain down with it. He freed it and snapped off a shot. The bull, no more than ten feet away, jumped and flashed past him.
Now the noise of rifle shots, screams, bellows, and cries was everywhere. A horrible sound split the air. Josh whirled, reloading even as his eyes took in what was happening. The bull that had overturned the wagon now turned on the mule team. The overturning wagon had caught the mules in the traces and they were down, all tangled up with one another. The bull stood over the nearest mule, its head down and one horn buried almost to its full length in the mule’s belly. With astonishing speed, the bull withdrew, its horn showing bright red, then lunged again and gored the mule a second time. Another horrible shriek was torn from the fatally wounded animal.
Beside Josh a man dropped to one knee, took aim, and fired. The bull leaped sideways, then fell to its knees, bellowing wildly. Finally it rolled over, almost landing on the mule that it had just killed.
Josh swung around. Bulls were coming out of the underbrush too quickly to count now. Eight! Ten! A dozen! The air was filled with dust, and it was difficult to see clearly in all directions. But one thing was evident. This was not just a stampede. Tuttle was right. These were animals infuriated by the smell of the blood of their own kind. They were thundering masses of destruction, bent on charging and destroying anything that moved.
Josh saw a younger bull whirl in full stride as it caught sight of Amos Cox, one of Josh’s fellow privates in Company D. Cox was running as hard as he could in the soft sand, trying to reach the protection of a wagon. It was incredible to Josh that the huge bull could move so quickly. Josh yelled, but Cox either didn’t hear or was so intent on escape that it didn’t register. He was fast—sheer terror adding greatly to his speed—but he wasn’t fast enough. In four or five great leaps the beast reached Cox. Again there was that terrible sweep of horns, the massive upthrust of the shaggy head. Cox screamed as he went flying over the bull’s back. There was a flash of red on the horn and Josh knew that his friend had been gored.
The bull swung around, spraying dirt and dust and gouging great furrows with its hooves. It had its victim down and was ready to finish what it had started. There wasn’t time to think. There wasn’t time to aim. Josh raised the rifle and fired as the animal started slowly forward. It flinched heavily; then, bawling like a steamboat’s whistle, it turned and ran back into the brush.
Josh dropped to one knee again, frantically groping for a cartridge. There was another scream. Just ten yards away a bull had a man pinned up against a wagon. Fortunately the man was between the horns. He was yelling and screaming and beating on the animal’s head. Another man ran up and fired point-blank into the bull’s head. It went down. The man went down as well, writhing on the ground in agony.
“Josh! Behind you!”
Again Josh whipped around at Tuttle’s cry. Another bull burst from the thicket and was headed straight for him. For one split second, Josh froze. He was still loading the musket and had no chance for a shot. He saw the crazed eyes and the nostrils flaring like bellows. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the puff of smoke from Tuttle’s rifle, and he heard the explosion; but Tuttle missed and the bull came on, puffing and snorting. For one instant Josh thought about Amos Cox trying to outrun the beast; then his instincts took over. He fell on his musket, throwing his arms over his head. He felt the ground tremble and heard the pounding hooves bearing down on him. Then for a moment they stopped and he felt something graze his shoulder and dirt rain down on him. There was a great thud, and then the pounding of hooves moved away from him. The animal, losing its moving target, had jumped over what was now no more than a log and raced on, looking for something else to destroy.
As Josh turned his head to see what had happened, three men shot the animal at the same time. It ran another ten yards, sloshing into the river, then finally went down with a tremendous splash.
“Whoo-ee!” Tuttle said, running up and helping Josh to his feet. “That was close.”
“You’re telling me?” Josh gasped, still not sure that he was all right. Not wanting to make the same mistake again, he started jamming another cartridge in the musket as he tried to recover his breath.
There was a shout from behind them, and they both spun around. Downstream a few rods, Colonel Cooke was riding his white mule, racing up and down, shouting commands. Yet another bull had exploded out of the underbrush. It was enormous, the largest yet, and was as black as the inside of a hog’s belly. It trotted forward, swinging its head back and forth, puffing like a railroad engine. Colonel Cooke instantly pulled his mule to a halt so as not to draw attention to himself. Then suddenly a man came running out in front of him.
Someone yelled for the man to hold still, but he trotted onward another eight or ten paces. Seeing the movement, the bull roared, lowered its head, and leaped forward. It headed straight for the moving figure. As Josh peered more closely he recognized Corporal Lafayette Frost of A Company. The corporal stopped, planted his feet, then calmly raised his rifle and took aim.
The bull had come out of the brush about a hundred yards from Colonel Cooke. Now with blinding speed it had cut that distance by half. Everyone froze at the sight of this single man standing calmly as he waited for the animal’s charge.
“Load your weapon, Corporal!” Colonel Cooke shouted, thinking that the soldier had obeyed orders and was marching with his weapon unloaded. Frost didn’t move. He stood there as cool and unruffled as if he were watching a pheasant come out of the weeds instead of twelve hundred pounds of raging fury. Frost waved an arm, as though he didn’t want the bull to lose sight of him.
Cooke swore, thinking the corporal was so terrified that he had lost his senses. “Run, you fool!” he screamed.
Corporal Frost moved only enough to lower his head and sight down the barrel. The huge beast was down to thirty yards and was closing with breathtaking swiftness.
“Run!” someone else shouted.
Frost stood his ground. Then, just as it was certain that the bull was on him, Frost fired. He must have hit it squarely between the eyes, for the bull dropped as if someone had cut its legs out from under it. It slammed into the ground in a great cloud of dust. For a moment, Josh couldn’t see what had happened, and then the dust slowly dissipated. Corporal Frost stood where he had been before, the only discernible change being that his rifle was lowered now. Barely six paces directly in front of him the bull was in its last death struggle, the legs jerking spasmodically.
Chapter Notes
Whole novels and books could be written—and have been—about the incredible march of the Mormon Battalion. The details given in this chapter all come from the various journals but are only a small portion of what these Latter-day Saints experienced on their way to California (see
MB,
pp. 70–85;
CHMB,
pp. 165–207;
SW,
pp. 232–93).
On 3 December 1846 the Mormon Battalion reached Rancho San Bernardino (not the same as the current San Bernardino in California but located just below the present Mexican-U.S. border near the state line dividing Arizona and New Mexico). Before they reached the deserted ranch, they began seeing hundreds of wild cattle, mostly bulls. Eight days later as they were marching along the San Pedro River, dozens of wild bulls suddenly shot out of the brush and attacked men, animals, and wagons. One mule was killed, a wagon was tipped over, and three men were injured. A bull ran Amos Cox down and gored him in his leg. Witnesses say he was tossed ten feet into the air, completely over the bull’s back. Albert Smith was hit by a bull but managed to stay between its horns. He was badly bruised and suffered three broken ribs. One lieutenant, while frantically trying to reload, dropped two cartridges into the chamber of his rifle. One exploded, taking off the upper joint of his thumb. Levi Fifield was charged by a bull, but he dropped to the ground. The bull jumped over him and ran on, leaving him very frightened but without injury. It is not known how many bulls were actually killed in what came to be known as “The Battle of the Bulls.” Two men counted nine carcasses in one spot. Some said at least twenty were killed and two or three times that many wounded. (See
MB,
pp. 94–95;
CHMB,
pp. 219–21.)
Colonel Cooke himself would later say, according to battalion member William Coray, that the march of the Mormon Battalion “had not a parallel in the world” (cited in
MB,
p. 121). This is an exaggeration born of Cooke’s personal enthusiasm, but there is no question but what in U.S. annals it is one of the longest infantry marches in history, if not the longest.