“Hell, this is as much a mystery to me as any man,” Bourke replied with a shrug.
“Crook ain’t said a thing to you where we’re going or for why?”
With a shake of his head the lieutenant answered, “Only thing I know is that the general conferred with Mackenzie about making this march.”
Seamus’s eyes narrowed. “Mackenzie?”
“That’s right. I was there when the two of them studied the general’s maps.”
“Looking for what?”
“Where best to make the crossing of that country between the Little Powder and the Belle Fourche.”
“By the saints! That’s back to that god-bleeming desert country we crossed last September!”
Nodding, Bourke replied, “About sixty miles worth of desert crossing, Seamus.”
“No wood, no graze, and damn well no water to speak of!”
“Sixty miles of it,” the lieutenant said. “But both Crook and Mackenzie figure the gamble is worth the test.”
“To save some days?”
“Exactly. About ten days by the looks of things on the maps.”
“Crook wants Crazy Horse even more’n I ever dreamed he could hunger to get his hands around that red savage’s throat.”
That day they put twenty miles under them before stopping for the night at Buffalo Springs on the Dry Fork. Then Crook kept them there—in camp and in the dark—for both the fourth and the fifth. As did many of the men during that interminable wait, Seamus wrote his loved ones.
Finally on the morning of the sixth Crook moved them out again, marching only seven miles in the wind-driven snow, where they found little water—what there was proved to be muddy and loaded with alkali salts—as well as finding they had no firewood. The command had all but emptied the wagons of forage for their animals, and there was little hope of any reaching Mackenzie’s men from the south anytime soon, what with the severity of the recent storms likely blocking rail shipments to Medicine Bow Gap, the same horrid weather blocking wagon shipments from there north to Fort Fetterman on the North Platte.
The men huddled together as best they could through the night, suffering greatly, as did their horses, while winter continued to pummel the high plains. Just before dawn the surgeons reported that the mercury in their thermometers hovered at thirty below zero. Hundreds of men reported cases of frostbitten fingers, toes, noses, and ears at sick call upon awaking.
They packed up in light marching order in a severe snowstorm that morning of the seventh, ordered to make ready for the fifteen-mile march north by east that would take them to the Belle Fourche. Off in the shimmering, icy distance to the south stood the hulking monoliths of the Pumpkin Buttes, orange and ocher against the newly fallen snow. Only the leafless branches of cottonwood and willow marked each frozen water course winding its way down to the Belle Fourche. Few if any birds were seen roosting along the line of march, while far overhead the great longnecks honked, these last to hurry south in great undulating vees. For as far as the eye could see, the land lay beneath a solid sheet of white—more desolate, bare, and destitute of life than ever Seamus could have imagined it.
In camp late that night after the wagons had finally rolled in so the men could boil their coffee and prepare supper of what deer, elk, antelope, jackrabbits, and even a few porcupines they had managed to kill along the trail that day, a few soldiers grumbled their bitter recriminations about Crook, sharing their tales of how the general had punished another command and its horses three months earlier.
“Some say Crook figures to find Crazy Horse near Slim Buttes,” Billy Garnett explained.
“Now, that’s hard to believe,” Seamus said. “Surely the general’s smart enough to know those Lakota aren’t still in this country, that they’re gonna move on after all this time. That’s better’n four months now!”
With a shrug Garnett replied, “Can’t figure what Crook’s thinking. Only know what we all know: the general’s been wanting that red son of a bitch for the better part of a year now.
“Sweet Mither of God! Crook ain’t gonna find Crazy Horse anywhere near them Slim Buttes or the Black Hills country.”
“Shit!” Garnett scoffed with a grin. “So, mister know-it-all, why don’t you tell me why in the hell Crook’s gonna take us off in this direction if he doesn’t expect to find Crazy Horse in this here country?”
But for the life of him … Donegan couldn’t come up with a single good answer.
* The Big Horn Mountains.
* Blood Song, Vol. 8, The Plainsmen Series.
* Sioux Dawn, Vol. 1, The Plainsmen Series.
Chapter 44
8 December 1876
THE INDIANS
Mackenzie’s Official Report—What Crook Says.
CHICAGO, December 1.—The official report of Colonel Mackenzie was received to-day. It states that about noon on the 24th, while marching in a southwesterly direction towards the South Pass of the Big Horn mountains, five advance scouts met him, reporting the main camp of Cheyennes about fifteen or twenty miles distant. About sunset the command began moving toward the hostiles, reaching the village after daylight, completely surprising the Indians, and compelling them to vacate the village suddenly, taking refuge in a ravine. After a brisk fight, lasting an hour and skirmishing until night, they capitulated. The entire village, having 173 lodges, was destroyed, 500 ponies captured, and 25 Indian bodies found. It is almost certain that a much larger number were killed. Five soldiers and one officer were killed on our side, and twenty-five wounded, besides one Shoshone scout belonging to the United States. Fifteen cavalry horses and four horses of the Indian scouts were killed. The command moved to the camp on Powder River, whence this report was made on the 26th instant. Lieutenant McKinney, of the Fourth cavalry, who was killed, was one of the most gallant officers and honorable of men. General Crook, in transmitting the above report, says: “I cannot commend too highly this brilliant achievement and gallantry of the troops. This will be a terrible blow to the hostiles, as the Cheyennes were not only the bravest warriors but have been the head and front of most of the raids and deviltry committed in this country.”
What or who George Crook was relying upon for his information about where he would find the Crazy Horse people was as much a mystery as anything in the world. Perhaps he was doing no more than grasping at straws in his hope of finding his archnemesis.
But for some reason the general clearly had grown satisfied that the Oglalla warrior bands had now abandoned the country of the Rosebud and Tongue River and were wandering east toward the country of the Little Missouri and the Moreau.
In explaining his intent to prolong the campaign, the general wrote Sheridan:
I shall endeavor to ascertain these points before leaving here, so that in case they leave the Rosebud country, I will not make that march as it would unfit the horses of the command for any further service this winter, and in case Crazy Horse has gone to Slim Buttes, I will go there via the Black Hills.
“You see, Mr. Donegan,” Crook explained in his tent that night of 8 December along the frozen banks of the Belle Fourche, “General Mackenzie and I have decided against pursuing the defeated and impoverished Northern Cheyenne.”
Mackenzie himself cleared his throat, then stated, “Instead we think better of marching the expedition down the Little Powder, where the general desires to establish a temporary base of operations.”