Crow Necklace, the youngest among them, wanted action, whispering, “Let’s go down there, make our charge, and drive off some of those horses.”
“No,” Hail scolded between his chattering teeth.
“We can steal those horses,” Crow Necklace persisted. “It will be easy, and we can return to our families with something to show for this cold journey!”
“No,” Hail snapped, his eyes watching the soldier scouts below them on the slope. “If we do as you suggest, we might not ever make it home to our families.”
“Hail is right,” Young Two Moon asserted. “Look, Crow Necklace—the snow is deep. There are many people down there. They could overtake and capture us. Look, see how far it is now to the foot of the mountains where our village lies. Our ponies are tired from the last three days. The enemy’s horses are strong. And it is a long, level stretch of ground where we would have to run—we would not even make it into the breaks before they would catch us.”
They lay on the frozen ground among the squat sage for most of that day,* afraid to move for attracting attention. Not until late in the afternoon as the sun pitched into the southwest did the soldiers and the soldiers’ Indian scouts begin driving in all their horses for the night. Still the four wolves waited as the soldier fires began to glow, the dancing flames shimmering against the skeletal cottonwood trees and willow, the orangetitted flames reflected off the low, heavy clouds. How Young Two Moon yearned for some of that warmth for himself.
Long after dark they pushed themselves back from the brow of the hill and crept down toward the soldier camp, finding the horses all tied in long lines to picket ropes strung between the bare trees.
“I think we should leave our ponies here,” Young Two Moon suggested. “Two of us should go in, and two of us should stay with the horses.”
Hail nodded. “It is a good plan. If the soldiers or their scouts catch the two, then the others can mount up and escape in the dark.”
“I will go,” Young Two Moon said emphatically. “Who chooses to go with me?”
Eagerly Crow Necklace replied, “I will go with you!”
Turning to the younger man, Young Two Moon said, “This is good, for we may have ourselves a chance to get some soldier horses down there.”
“High Wolf and I will wait for you here,” Hail said. “Be careful.”
Young Two Moon gripped Hail’s wrist and looked into his friend’s eyes. “If you hear guns, or we do not come back soon—mount up and ride like a snow wind back to our village. Tell my family that I died doing my duty for my people.”
Hail grinned, saying, “You will be back. And you will be the one to tell the village of these soldiers yourself. Now, go. And we will rest here with the ponies until you return.”
“That young Cheyenne they caught up on Clear Creek is named Beaver Dam,” Frank Grouard told the white and half-breed scouts huddled by the fire late that Tuesday night, 21 November.
“Young and stupid!” snorted Baptiste Pourier.
Seamus Donegan shrugged. “Maybeso, Big Bat. But out in this weather, the way a man has to bundle himself up to keep out the cold—I couldn’t tell one Injin from another. Can’t blame the boy for making that mistake, I can’t. G’won, Frank—tell us what Crook learned.”
“Smart it was, for them Lakota and Arapaho scouts Crook sent out wasn’t wearing a bit of soldier gear—being fifty miles off in enemy country,” Grouard continued his story. “So this Beaver Dam come right up to them, figuring them to be a scouting or hunting party from Crazy Horse’s village. They waited till the boy was in the middle of ’em—jabbering away about all the villages in the neighborhood, him answering all their questions and such—before they grabbed the boy, tied him up, and hurried him back here to the general.”
“Means there must be Cheyenne in the country,” Seamus said.
“Damn if there ain’t a big bunch of ’em over on a branch of the Powder,” Frank went on. “But that youngster claimed he come from a small village of only some five or six lodges. He told Crook that his people would get afraid if he didn’t show up after he’d been out hunting—then they’d likely scamper off for Crazy Horse’s camp.”
“I’ll bet that got Crook’s attention!” Pourier said.
“Bloody well right,” Donegan agreed. “Crook’s been wanting to get eye to eye with Crazy Horse for the better part of a year now. Where’s Beaver Dam’s village, Frank?”
“Said it was up on the head of the Crazy Woman Fork.”
“He tell Crook where the Crazy Horse band was camped now?”
Grouard nodded. “A long ways off from here. Clear up on the Rosebud, near where we had our little fight with him in June.”
“That’ll be a goddamned long march—it will, it will,” Seamus muttered, stomping the deepening snow to shock some feeling back into a numbing foot. The cold was simply too much even for the double pair of socks he wore in the tall stovepipe boots he always bought two sizes too large. He feared he might lose some toes to the surgeon before this trip was over.
“So now Crook’s give out orders to all the units: moving northwest toward the mountains as soon as it’s light,” Frank explained. “He wants this expedition to come back with a worthy trophy.”
Big Bat cried, “Like Crazy Horse’s scalp!”
“The whole outfit’s moving in the morning?” Donegan asked.
“Yep, the whole shebang,” Grouard replied. “At least for now.”
“I figure Crook’ll break off Mackenzie soon enough—once he’s found the Crazy Horse village,” Seamus added as the wind seemed to stiffen and the snowfall thickened. “Damn,” he muttered again, stomping his feet. “Think I’ll go do what some of the others is doing, fellas: taking this last chance to write down a few words to send back to Fetterman with one of Teddy Egan’s couriers tomorrow. Too cold to sleep anyways.”
After midnight Crook sent off a Second Cavalry courier to race the ninety miles back to Fetterman with his wire to Sheridan:
Scouts returned to-day and reported that Cheyennes have crossed over to that other side of the Big Horn Mountains, and that Crazy Horse and his band are encamped on the Rosebud near where we had the fight with them last summer. We start out after his band to-morrow morning.
It was better that the two of them act as bold as they could. So Young Two Moon and Crow Necklace walked right along the string of horses on the picket lines, in among the soldiers and their tents as if they were two of the Indian scouts. Their bravado worked.
At the near edge of the camp a large fire blazed where many Shoshone and Arapaho scouts were busy cleaning weapons, drinking coffee, and playing several noisy games of “hand” on blankets and buffalo robes. There beside the fire a handful of their own people stood, singing Cheyenne war songs.
But they were not prisoners! Who were these Cheyenne in the soldier camp?
“I think that is Old Crow,” Crow Necklace whispered right against Young Two Moon’s ear. “And the other, he looks like a friend of my uncle’s—named Satchel.”
“I know of Satchel,” Young Two Moon replied, his gall rising. “Now I realize why these Tse-Tsehese are here. This Satchel is a relative of Bill Rowland at the White River Agency.”
“The white man married to one of our women?”
“Yes. That must be why they are here,” Young Two Moon replied. “Bill Rowland brought them here to find our camp in the mountains. To capture our ponies and take away our guns—just like the soldiers are doing at the White River Agency.”