But here in Wyoming Territory, Little Bat was making for the Dry Fork of the Cheyenne.
After a march of some six miles they reached the stream that had disappeared beneath its dry bed. Its sandy, rippled course wound lazily through stands of old cottonwood and willow, their roots forced to reach deep for that underground water. Yet deadfall lay matted against the trunks and among the brush, testament to the force and fury of mountain runoff that past spring.
“First of May, I figure we could barely ford this valley,” Stanton said.
“And look at it now,” King replied. “Dry as a bone.”
“Got to find some water, fellas,” Keyes ordered, sending a small detachment upstream, Stanton and a handful choosing to ride downstream.
It was the old crusty major’s call that rallied Company C as well as any bugle could. They found Stanton squatting underneath a steep, overhanging bank shaded by stunted cottonwood and a profusion of willows.
“Better’n nothing at all,” the major cheered, submerging his canteen.
Stanton’s mount stood up to its fetlocks in what clearly had once been a big pool. But at this late season the water was warm and decidedly alkaline, even a bit soapy to the taste. Nonetheless, their thirsty horses did not balk when they were led to the pool two or three at a time to drink their fill.
“We find better by night come,” Little Bat reassured them in his broken English as he mounted up and set out so that he could ride some distance ahead of the company column.
King didn’t see much of the half-breed for the rest of that morning, only glimpses of the horse and rider caught briefly on the crest of a hill as Garnier watched the soldiers coming on, then disappeared again from view, remaining far in the front. One after another, hill after valley then on again, until they finally clambered into the rugged country northeast of the Mini Pusa. This was the land where Sheridan’s intelligence said they would find the great Indian trail—here, where it would cross the valley of the South Cheyenne some distance west of the Beaver River, very near its confluence with the Mini Pusa itself.
Then at noon, as the sun hung hot and sultry, sulled like a wild mule’s eyeball in that great pale sky of summer’s best, King spotted him again. Garnier was coming back across a ridgetop. Once in plain sight of Keyes’s column, he stopped and circled his horse again, ripping his hat from his head and waving it wildly.
“He’s bringing us on, boys,” Stanton observed.
“What you think he’s found?” King asked.
The old major snorted. “If it were Injuns—that halfbreed son of a red-belly would be hightailing it back here instead of signaling us on.”
Keyes turned in the saddle and issued orders for the rest of the column to proceed at its pace, then turned to go on up the trail at a lope with Stanton, King, and two others. Garnier led them down into a wide swale, where he quickly leaped from his mount.
“Every man get off,” Little Bat said. “Leave horses with holder. Him.” He pointed to one of their number.
Keyes nodded to the soldier Garnier had indicated. “You can rest here.”
The half-breed said, “Come with me and see.”
King followed the others trailing out behind the scout, who was clambering on foot up the side of the ridge, making the best purchase he could with his boots in the flaky soil and loose rock gone too long without rain. Time and again they slid, grabbed hold with their hands, and kept on up the slope. Just short of the crest Little Bat signaled for the rest to wait while he peered over.
Taking a few minutes to satisfy himself while the others caught their breath, Garnier finally signaled them on up. At the top the others blew just like horses after a climb, huffing in the midday heat of another scorcher on the plains.
“Take your glasses,” Garnier directed. “Look there. Right over there.”
Keyes and Stanton were slow in getting their looking glasses out. King was the first to peer off to the southeast.
“You see?”
“By damn, I do!” King replied.
Even at this distance it was clearly visible: a broad, beaten trail leading down to the riverbed—pony hooves and travois scouring the fragile earth in a track as broad as anything the young lieutenant could ever hope to see.
“It’s a goddamned highway,” Stanton cursed behind his field glasses.
“And with no sign of ’em anywhere,” Keyes added, slowly swinging his glasses to all points from the north of east, clear down to the south of east—where the warriors would be found fleeing from the reservations.
“Silent and still,” King observed with disappointment, sensing the eerie emptiness of that landscape. “Maybe we’re too late.”
“We better not be,” Stanton growled. “If we are—then maybe Crook, or even Custer himself, will have more on their hands than they bargained for.”
“I can’t help but wonder how Sheridan knew we’d find this big trail right here, right where he said it would be,” King said with no little amazement.
Stanton looked at him. “You mean you don’t know how he figured it out?”
King wagged his head. “Not sitting back there in his office in Chicago, no. Only the Sioux and Cheyenne could know this ground very well.”
“You’re right there, Lieutenant,” Stanton agreed. “But here—watch.”
And with a twig he snapped off some dry sage, the major drew some quick landmarks in the dust.
“This here’s the Big Horns. Where Crook put his base camp, and he’s marching north of there as we speak— going to strike the enemy villages. Now, down here to the southeast”—and he drew a couple of circles—“is Red Cloud and Camp Robinson. Here’s Spotted Tail and Camp Sheridan, you see. So if you draw the Beaver and the Cheyenne and its South Fork on the map like so”—and Stanton scratched in those east-west flowing rivers there in the middle of his map—“where do you think those red-bellies are going to go if they’re of a mind to jump the reservation?”
“I suppose they’d go north toward the Rosebud and the Big Horns, where the rest of the hostiles are, right?” asked Keyes.
“Right, Lieutenant. Now draw me a line from the agencies to that hostile hunting ground Crook and Custer are closing in on.”
King watched Keyes take the twig and draw a straight line heading northwest from reservations.
“That’s right, fellas. That’s how Sheridan knew. On any map you can do the same goddamned thing. Whether it’s a map in Chicago, or a map at Fort Laramie. That line the lieutenant here drew in the dirt crosses right there, by doggy! You look right over there and you’ll see that very same spot—where Little Bat here found us that big trail.” Again he jabbed with the point of his twig as he emphasized, “Simple enough: you want to get from there to there, you got to cross right here.”
The small band with Garnier kept their horses under cover as they pushed on one ridge more, reaching a crest where they were greeted with an even wider panorama, able to make out the great sweep of the valley of the South Cheyenne for more than fifty miles as it flowed toward the north by east into the dim, timbered rise of tumbled ground that indicated just how close they were to the Black Hüls.
“I’ll stay here with Mr. King,” Stanton told Keyes. “I figure you should return to the rest of the company and retrace your steps back to the timber along the Mini Pusa. Loosen cinches, but don’t unsaddle, Lieutenant.”
“You’re going to keep an eye on the trail, Major?” Keyes inquired.
“And you can post a man with a looking glass to keep an eye on us,” Stanton replied. “If we see anything, we can signal and he can alert you. The company can be on its way here in a matter of seconds.”