“Injun pony,” Alfred Sharpe observed as the officers looked the wounded animal over.
A pad saddle was lashed around its middle with a single surcingle. Several blankets were tied behind the saddle. It wore a single rawhide rein, as well as a picket rope trailing behind the animal.
“I’ll bet that pony threw off the bloody savage and he had to fetch himself a ride with the other red bastard,” one of the men surmised.
Otis pulled on his gloves and looked into the sky at the emerging sun. “Time we got under way, gentlemen. Mr. Smith, see that this animal is put out of its misery.”
Just before seven A.M. on that bright, clear Sunday morning, the fifteenth of October, they resumed their journey. The drivers formed up the wagons into four long lines to make their way across the rolling, broken ground as the soldiers went into position to form a square surrounding the train. In the rotation of the march, Lieutenant Sharpe’s company that day drew duty as the advance guard for the column. When his foot soldiers stepped out in lively fashion, making good time just in front of the first wagon and the rest of the escort, the lieutenant began to recall Sunday mornings he had enjoyed back east.
Peaceful Sabbath, he ruminated as the frosty air began to warm, sensing some contentment flood over him with those fond memories. How pleasant it would be back in the States today, he thought: to hear the church bells ringing and to see the good people coming into church. He almost imagined he could hear the sweet tones of the organ, the choir raising their voices in song with the old hymns, and that oft-repeated proscription of the preacher from Sharpe’s youth, “The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him—”
The rattle of rifle fire cruelly shattered his reverie into a thousand tinkling pieces like the falling of broken glass. Officers shouted orders while most of the men bellowed oaths. Mules brayed and bucked in their harnesses. Timbers creaked and wagon tongues groaned as teamsters and green soldiers fought to control the unruly, frightened animals hitched to those ninety-four wagons. Immediately in their front the two point men, half-breed scout Robert Jackson and Sergeant Patrick Kelly, were whipping their horses back to the column, laying low in the saddle, bullets sailing over their heads as a band of horsemen suddenly appeared behind them, racing in hot pursuit. The hat flew from Sergeant Kelly’s head in the mad chase. Immediately a warrior reined around and dismounted, picking up the spoils and planting the hat atop his braided scalp lock and feathers while the rest of the horsemen drew up and halted just inside rifle range, taunting Sharpe’s soldiers as hundreds more made their show along the nearby bluffs, hollering and screaming like devils incarnate.
“Sergeant!” Alfred Sharpe bellowed.
“Sir!”
“Left front into line!” he called out the order.
“All right, you young sappies!” the sergeant growled as he whirled on his heel. “You heard the good lieutenant yer own selves now! Left front into line!”
Jackson and Kelly dusted to a halt among Sharpe’s company and dismounted hurriedly. The swarthy half-breed scout collapsed to the round, ripped off one of his moccasins and held it to the sky for all to see, poking a finger through a new bullet hole. Sergeant Kelly inspected the track of a bullet that had ripped the thick shoulder of his dark-blue wool coat, the torn cloth now fluttering in the breeze.
Otis reined up on horseback immediately behind his forward company. “Mr. Sharpe—detach with ten men and deploy to that hill on your right! The rest of your company will move forward under Mr. Conway, putting pressure on those bastards holding that bluff. Drive them from it, Mr. Conway—is that understood?”
William Conway saluted anxiously. “Yes, sir!”
As Conway formed up the rest of H Company, Sharpe counted off his ten and jogged to the right, slowed by the steepness of the slope of that hill where they would have a commanding field of fire against the bluff where the enemy horsemen swarmed. While Otis kept the train moving and the rest of the foot soldiers came up double-time to bring their Long Toms to bear on the Sioux, the warriors began to fall back as bullets landed among them. Still they persisted, swarming on this flank or that, moving like a stream of quicksilver where they thought the soldiers weakest. As soon as that position along the rumbling wagon train was bolstered, the horsemen would dart off to put pressure on a new position while the wagons slowly punched safely through the defile and made the gradual climb up to the top of the rolling prairie.
“This is Sitting Bull’s bunch, men!” the lieutenant colonel reminded them from horseback, first here, then there, above his men—making one fine target of himself. “These are the devils who butchered Custer! We have them! By Jehovah—we have them now!”
For more than an hour the long-range skirmishing dragged on as Otis kept his civilian and soldier teamsters urging their mules with every crack of the whip, hauling those wagons along the road as they inched closer and closer to the Yellowstone River. Behind them and in front, more and more Sioux boiled like an anthill before the coming of a thunderstorm.
“Lookee yonder, Colonel! We got some folks coming in!”
At the cry from one of Sharpe’s men, the lieutenant and Otis whirled, spotting the three men sprinting on foot, headed directly for the soldier line from the nearby timber that bordered the north bank of the Yellowstone.
“Hold your men at ready, Mr. Sharpe,” Otis ordered.
“Why—them’s soldiers!” someone shouted.
“Bluecoats—sure enough,” Sharpe replied with a wag of his head. “But look there at the rest of them Indians riding lickety-split to cut ’em off, Colonel.”
Right behind the sprinting trio came a mass of warriors spurring their little ponies like angry hornets.
“Lay down some covering fire, by God!” Otis screeched. “Don’t let those red sonsabitches cut those men off!”
Sharpe hurried H Company into position on the prairie, squad by squad stepping forward to use their far-reaching weapons most effectively. Here and there among the Sioux, riders fell back, but others kept on racing for the three men on foot. Suddenly, at just the right range, the last of the Sioux skidded to a halt and gave up the chase as the trio kept running for their lives until they reached the front of H Company. As they lunged among the soldier lines, gasping and grunting for wind, it was plain as paint to see they were Indians dressed in soldier clothes.
“Don’t shoot!” Sharpe ordered his men, then he turned on the three. “Get your goddamned hands up!”
A dozen men had their rifles pointed at the trio as the three bent at the waist, weak-kneed from their spring, sucking in air as if every breath might be their last. Their eyes were wide, staring round at all the muzzles pointed their way.
“C-c-cap’n Miner here?” one of the trio huffed breathlessly in a thick, half-breed English.
“Yes, he’s with us,” Otis replied. “I’m Colonel Otis. Who the hell are you?”
“Otis? You the soldier chief from Glendive?” the swarthy man gasped, glancing at the other two with him. “We come from Miles.” He pointed to the other two, both of them clearly Indians, then put his two hands to his head to make wolf ears—the plains sign for scout. “His scouts. Miles send us find Miner and wagons.”
“This is it, mister.”
The scout looked over his shoulder at the swirling Sioux. “Miles, he want us find wagons. We ain’t seen wagons for so long.”