“Those ponies will remember our smell?” Yellow Eagle asked in a whisper.
“It does not matter. We move among them slowly,” Young Two Moon asserted, “they will come to know our smell.”
“Then we can take them home to our people,” Turtle Road declared.
It was as Young Two Moon had said it would be. They went among the unguarded herd, stroking the ponies, breathing in the nostrils of some of the mares, then slipped horsehair ropes around the necks of ten ponies. These few the young warriors led up the long slope to the north. In the dark, silvery silence of that winter night, many of the herd followed obediently.
And once beyond the hilltop, Young Two Moon signaled the others.
“Now we ride!”
With quiet yips of excitement, the warriors leaped to the backs of the ponies they had brought to this place from the Peopic’s march and quickly got the herd of eight-times-ten moving into the snowy night.
“It is a blessing upon us!” Little Wolf cried out as the ten warriors returned just before dawn with the horses. “Now more of the old ones and the ones crippled with cold can ride.”
They continued that day down Lodgepole Creek* all the way until the People reached the “Big Lake”† before following their scouts over the divide to the head of Crow Standing Creek,† where darkness caught them for a third cold night, forced to huddle out of the wind and snow, taking shelter down in the coulees and draws near the frozen streambank.
It was to this camp early in the morning that Big Head and Walks Last returned from their ride with five others back to the burned village in the Red Valley. They had gone back to search for any ponies that might have run off into the hills then wandered back to the People’s camp once the soldiers deserted the canyon. None of the seven warriors brought in any horses.
The white man had taken them all.
THE INDIANS
Gen. Mackenzie’s Fight—List of Casualties.
NEW YORK, November 29.—a dispatch dated in the field, November 25, via Fort Fetterman the 27th, gives the following additional particulars of General Mackenzie’s fight on the 25th: The hostiles had been having a war dance all night, and were not taken by surprise by the attack which was made at sunrise. The village was located in a canyon running nearly north and south. It contained about 200 lodges, with perhaps five hundred warriors. General Mackenzie’s fighting force numbered nearly one thousand men. Most of the enlisted Indians behaved well at the start but after the first heat of the charge very many of them relapsed into apparent indifference to everything except plundering the abandoned tepees of the Cheyennes, and trying to run off horses. About twenty Indians that can be counted were killed, and doubtless many more have fallen behind the rocks. About five or six of our forces have been killed. The following is a partial list of casualties: Killed—Lieutenant John A. McKinney, Fourth Cavalry; Corporal Ryan, Company D, and Private Keller, Company E. Wounded—Sergeant Thomas H. Forsyth, Corporal W. J. Lynn, Corporal W. H. Pool, Corporal Dan Cunningham, Jacob Schlafer, privates E. L. Burk, G. H. Stickney, J. E. Talmadge, August Streil, Issac Maguire, Charles Folsom, Joseph Mc Mahon, Edward Fitzgerald, Alexander McFarland, George Kinney, Henry Holden, William B. Smith and David Stevens.
The fight in that red canyon would eventually claim one last victim—its daring cavalry commander.
But for now, ever since returning to the Crazy Woman camp, rumor had it Crook was going to return the troops to winter quarters. There’d be no more god-awful chasing around in the cold and the snow.
For Richard I. Dodge, it was just about the best news he had heard through this whole insufferable campaign.
Then at eleven A.M. that Thursday, 30 November, one of Crook’s men came by to pay a courtesy on the colonel, informing Dodge that the general was dispatching twenty-five of the best men on the strongest horses to follow up the rumor that there was a large band of Cheyenne warriors in the neighborhood under a chief called White Antelope, ready to attack the wagon camp. Earlier that morning Crook had sent out Luther North and four Pawnee to push north through the deep snow to Clear Creek, where they were to look for sign of the fleeing village.
Then at noon what cavalry wasn’t on guard duty turned out to solemnly commit five of their number to the frozen, rock-hard Wyoming ground. Between two long double lines of silent mounted men, the thirty pallbearers trudged with their blanket-wrapped corpses to the common grave. Nearby sat the sad-eyed spectators—Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, Shoshone and the others—in all their wild finery as they witnessed this most final of the white man’s rites.
All morning long soldiers had struggled in relays to force open the breast of the earth just enough to admit these five young soldiers. As the hundreds fell silent, two officers read from the Book of Common Prayer, then Crook said a few words over the grave. In the end seven guns were fired in three relays, the last sharp rattle disappearing over the windswept hills before a lone trooper took up the mournful notes of “Taps.” As the quiet returned to the valley of the Crazy Woman, one of the men from the Third played a sad dirge on his tin fife, each plaintive note quickly carried off by the stiffening wind.
Lieutenant McKinney’s body rested in the back of a freight wagon—to be returned east by way of wagon and rail, there to be buried among his people.
Yet for all the excitement of Mackenzie’s return, and later the melancholy of the burial, for once there wasn’t all that much for his infantry to do that afternoon but rotate the guard and watch the cavalry troops grain and water their horses, besides wolfing down their poor Thanksgiving dinner of fried bacon and flapjacks.
Clutching a cup of steaming coffee, Dodge returned to his tent and his diary, where he confided his first intimations of a troubled Ranald Mackenzie, who seemed to be plagued by second thoughts about the success of his Dull Knife fight.
Altogether it has been a very successful affair. It might have been much more so had McKenzie possessed as much administrative and political sagacity as he has gallantry in the field. Still it is no time, nor is there any cause for grumbling. The affair stamps our campaign as a success even if nothing more is accomplished. I only regret that my portion of the command had no share or lot in the affair. All say that had the Doboys been there not an Indian would have escaped. If I had been allowed to go, we would have had a more complete story to tell.
Indeed, for much of last night and into today, Dodge found Mackenzie consumed with chastising himself for not pressing the warriors once the Cheyenne encapsulated themselves in the rocks. While both Crook and especially Dodge offered their words of encouragement, the cavalry commander nonetheless appeared to be snared in a deepening well of despair, delusion, and melancholia.
Dodge went on to pen in his diary:
We found [Mackenzie] very downcast—bitterly reproaching himself for what he called his failure. He talked more like a crazy man than the sane commander of a splendid body of Cavalry. He said to an officer that if he had courage enough he would blow his brains out. [The other officers present] went out soon, and Mac opened his heart to me. He is excessively sensitive. He said he had often done better with a third of the force at his command here—that he believed he degenerated as a soldier as he got older—that he regarded the whole thing as an utter failure. He even stated that he was sensitive lest someone might attribute cowardice to him—and much more of the same kind.
He was so worked up that he could hardly talk and had often to stop and collect himself. I bullied him and encouraged him all I could—told him that he was foolish and absurd to talk so, that we all regarded the affair as a grand success and that his record was too well known for anyone to attribute cowardice to him. I left him feeling much better, but he was in such a state that I thought it right to tell General Crook about it. The General was greatly worried and soon left my tent, I think to send for Mac and get him to play whist or something.