And there to wait for death to come on the wings of Winter Man’s hoary cold.
Today, just as they had done from that first night of flight, the able-bodied warriors would go ahead of the march until they were almost out of sight. There the young men would gather wood and kindle a new fire with a coal carried from one of the old fires where the People sat waiting, trying to warm themselves. When that new fire blazed, sending its shimmering waves of heat into the cold of that vast mountain wilderness, a lone warrior would ride back to signal the others to come ahead. The many would reluctantly rise, setting off toward the distant blaze, where they would again sit and rest while a new fire was kindled farther down the trail toward the Hunkpatila of Crazy Horse.
They were leaving a trail chopped with the footprints of the old and the small ones, footprints spotted with blood. As well as a trail of pony carcasses. A few times each day a horse would be slaughtered for food to feed the many cold, empty bellies. As the warm green hide was stripped off to be wrapped around cold children, or cut into crude boots to protect frozen feet, some of the half-dead old ones stumbled over to stuff their own hands and feet into the warm gut piles steaming in the terrible cold. Just enough warmth to allow them to trudge on, on through the wilderness to find the Oglalla wintering on the Tongue.
One of his old friends, White Frog, had been wounded four times in the battle as he drew bullets to himself protecting the women and children. Although he stumbled with the agony of his wounds and oftentimes fell in the snow, White Frog nonetheless struggled to be one of the first who led the others from fire to fire, cheering them on.
Behind White Frog proudly walked Comes Together, White Frog’s woman, clutching their infant son beneath her hide dress, sharing what warmth she had with the tiny, sick child.*
“Ma-heo-o!” Little Wolf called out as loudly as he could with a hoarse throat. “Hear your people! We belong only to you! When you remain steadfast to us—not even the power of the ve-ho-e can ever destroy us!”
A generous portion of the meat butchered from those buffalo killed during last night’s folly was distributed among the wounded that Homer Wheeler was escorting back to the wagon camp on the Crazy Woman. Those soldiers who could eat found themselves strengthened for the arduous journey that Tuesday, 28 November—their third day struggling through a mix of sand and deep snow icing the hilly country.
Well after sunrise the lieutenant’s detail loaded the frozen dead onto the backs of the restive mules once more, preparing to move out with their ghoulish cargo. Then the travois were attached to the mules, each set of poles strapped to their aparejos pair by pair. The wounded had not been moved since sundown the day before, placed at that time in two rows, their feet to glowing fires, their travois pitched at an incline upon pack saddles for their comfort.
“Sir?”
Wheeler turned, finding one of his men coming up. “What is it, soldier? We’re preparing to move out.”
“I know, Lieutenant,” the private answered, grave worry carved on his face. “It’s … it’s private McFarland, sir. He’s … well—he’s gone out of his mind.”
“Out of his mind?”
“I don’t think he’ll make it through the day,” the soldier replied. “He’s in a real bad way.”
Sighing, Wheeler said, “All right. See that you make him as comfortable and warm as you can. Then get him hitched up with the others. There’s nothing we can do that the surgeons haven’t already done for him.”
“You mean … them surgeons say he’s gonna die anyway?”
“That’s no concern of yours,” Wheeler snapped impatiently. “You have a job to do for Private McFarland while he’s still alive. So you go do it.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and turned away.
Already Homer could hear the chanting as the Indian scouts were the first to pull away from last night’s bivouac. Throughout most of the last two days’ march they sang over the few scalps Mackenzie had allowed them to take from the Cheyenne, holding the hair aloft at the end of long wands where the bloody trophies tossed in the fitful, icy wind.
Not long after they set off that morning, Wheeler spotted three Shoshone horsemen sitting motionless atop their ponies at the side of the trail. As he drew closer, the lieutenant recognized the greasy blanket coat the middle warrior wore. Homer halted before them. “Anzi,” he said, not surprised to see the pain written across the Indian’s face.
“Melican medicine man,” the wounded warrior said, the mere sound of his words echoing the agony of his wound as he stoically remained hunched over in the saddle.
“Want to ride,” said one of the other two riders in his broken English. He and his companion supported a wobbly Anzi between them.
“Ride?”
“There, Melican medicine man.” Anzi pointed at the travois just then going past them.
“On one of the litters?” Wheeler asked in consternation. “You want to lay down in a travois?”
“Yes, yes, medicine man,” Anzi gasped, seized with pain. “No whiskey—Anzi do no good.”
“No whiskey, Anzi,” Wheeler replied sourly. “And I’m afraid I don’t have a litter for you either.”
“No?” asked one of Anzi’s companions.
“No,” Wheeler repeated. “The one you got out of two days back is now carrying a sick soldier.”
“Soldier sick as me?”
“No,” the lieutenant admitted. “But you gave up your travois when you found out we had no more whiskey.”
“Yes, whiskey. Whiskey good for Anzi.”
“No travois, Anzi,” Wheeler replied, beginning to feel his patience draining. “You’ll make it.”
“To Cluke wagon camp?”
“Yes. Hang on. You’ll make it there. And—you’ll find more whiskey there too.”
“Whiskey. Anzi not die he got whiskey in belly with bullet.”
With the remnants of a grin, Wheeler reined away and rejoined his hospital group as they plodded east away from the mountains.
An occasional snowflake lanced down from the intermittent clouds rolling off the Bighorns and onto the plains as Wheeler’s men and mules plodded on in a ragged column, surrounded by their escort of two troops of cavalry. It wasn’t long before they heard the dim reports echo back along the trail as soldiers began to shoot their played-out horses—daring not to leave them for the Cheyenne to capture. While the country was nowhere near as rugged as the mountain trail had been, that day’s journey nonetheless required the skill and hard work of Wheeler’s crew in crossing every steep-sided ravine and ice-banked stream, easing their way down and back up every snowy slope.
“Lieutenant Wheeler, sir!”
Homer turned in the saddle, recognizing the young soldier riding up from that morning. The lieutenant halted and reined about, awaiting the man.
“Sir, it’s McFarland,” he said as he came to a stop before Wheeler.
“Is he dead?”
“All but, Lieutenant.”
“C’mon,” Wheeler said as he put heels to his weary, ill-fed horse, moving back along the column.
Private Alexander McFarland’s attendants had pulled their patient, mule, and travois out of column and halted. Two of them had even removed their hats, holding them clutched at their chest as they stood over the soldier’s body suspended in its blankets. The wind repeatedly tousled their hair into their red-rimmed eyes that bespoke of grief silently endured.
Leaping down from his saddle, Wheeler bent over the private, placing his ear over McFarland’s nose and mouth. He heard nothing at first, but waited for something, anything. Then came a long, low death rattle deep within the dying man’s chest.
“Sir?”
Without looking up at the soldier near his shoulder, Wheeler kept his ear over McFarland’s face a moment more, then straightened. “We’ll wait here a little longer, men.”