“Very good, sir,” Keyes said, saluted, and turned down the slope to take two soldiers on the backtrail with him.
The sun stalled there in the sky, seeming to refuse to move at all as the minutes crawled by, every one of them more torture than the last as the growing heat seemed to rise with fiery intensity right out of the ground. Here at midday the air refused to stir, waves of heat shimmering in the middistance. Sometime past one o’clock King was rubbing the kinks out of his leg and watching to the south and west when he noticed a far-off column of dust spiraling high into the air—another sign that this land was without any breeze today.
“Slow but steady, Carr’s bringing ’em on,” King observed dryly. “I’m sure glad I’m not riding with that bunch.”
Stanton turned, training his glasses on the distant dust cloud. “They’re eating their forty acres today.”
Looking into the sky, the lieutenant said, “What I wouldn’t give for a little rain, Major.”
Licking his cracked lips as he turned back to watch the Indian trail, Stanton said, “Me too, Lieutenant. A little rain would do this ground and this army some real good.”
Through the next few hours King imagined he dozed off and on, catching himself nodding, then blinking to stay awake, squirming and shifting positions in the heat of the sun as he kept staring at the unmoving, unchanging, austere horizon where nothing stirred, not even a distant swirl of dust. Minute by minute, ultimately hour by hour. Made harder still knowing the rest of Company C was likely sleeping out the shank of their afternoon down in the shade of the South Fork’s cottonwoods and willows.
As quiet at it was on the Mini Pusa that hot Sunday afternoon, two hundred miles farther to the north an entire regiment was embroiled in a fight for its very life.
But here it was as quiet as it would be at the bottom of a freshly dug grave. Somewhere to the southeast the Indians would be coming, eager and on their way to join Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. Over to the southwest Carr was bringing on the rest of the Fighting Fifth. It was only a matter of time now, King knew. Wouldn’t be long before the regiment had its hands full.
“I don’t think there’s a damned red-belly stirring today,” grumbled the major. He slapped his glasses against his dusty britches, disgusted.
King continued to peer through his, for a few minutes content to watch the distant flight of a hawk, perhaps a golden eagle, sailing against the cloudless summer blue far to the northeast. Wondering if that bird of astounding eyesight could look down on Crook’s column as it chased Crazy Horse. Wondering if it peered down on the fair-haired Custer as the gallant Seventh Cavalry narrowed the noose around old Sitting Bull himself.
King watched that bird fly far above the hot land, not knowing that somewhere below its wide wings men fell and bled. And lay still in the tall grass, dreaming of eternity’s reward.
Throughout that night and into the morning of the twenty-sixth they kept up their watch over the nearby Indian trail without success. Then, near noon, the head of Carr’s column hoved into sight, which made for a joyous rendezvous in the valley of the Cheyenne. Here Sheridan had ordered them to set up their base of operations and await further instructions while keeping an eye on any warrior activity. Near sundown the lieutenant colonel dispatched Captain Sanford C. Kellogg with his I Company to explore the well-beaten warrior trail behind Little Bat while the other seven troops picketed and hobbled their horses, making camp, and while they set about relaxing for this first of many days of waiting.
And waiting.
Five long, hot summer days of waiting.
On 1 July dust was spotted rising to the southwest, below it a dark column of twos. It was Captain Montgomery’s B Company, bringing the Fighting Fifth up to eight full troops of strength. As well, a courier sent out from Major E. F. Townsend, Laramie’s commander, to explain that Townsend would send supplies along as soon as he could guarantee wagon transportation for them. At the earliest, it would be 6 July before a supply train could depart the North Platte.
There were also dispatches from Sheridan, one notifying Carr of Crook’s predicament, his disappointing affair on the Rosebud, and his present stalemate far to the north, that same dispatch reporting that Terry and Gibbon planned to probe south of the Yellowstone using their cavalry—and what better cavalry to use than Custer’s Seventh? So for the time being Sheridan was recommending the Fifth sit tight on the trail and keep a wary eye open. At the moment, the lieutenant general was not sending the Fifth in to reinforce Crook. Not just yet.
Yet for all the momentous news come from Indian country, it was nonetheless the arrival of a single man that caused the most stir there in the valley of the Mini Pusa. Charles King could see that Eugene Carr immediately recognized the old soldier riding at the head of Montgomery’s company as the troops came to a dusty halt beneath its snapping guidon.
The lieutenant colonel stopped by the officer’s horse and saluted, his eyes squinting into the bright light. “General Merritt, Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr, sir. Welcome.”
Wesley Merritt returned the salute and slid out of his saddle, yanking his sweaty gauntlets from his hands. “Colonel Carr. It’s good to see you again.”
Carr’s face was a study of stony impassivity as he asked, “By your presence here, am I to understand that General Emory has retired, sir?”
“He has. I am come to take over the Fifth.”
Suddenly snapping his back straight, as rigid as any fighting man’s, Carr saluted again. “Yes, sir, General Merritt. May I be given the opportunity to introduce you to your officer corps?”
“By all means, General Carr,” Merritt replied, using Carr’s brevet grade earned during the Civil War. “I can’t tell you how proud I am to be leading this outfit.”
King watched the pair stroll off, followed by Merritt’s aides and a dog-robber who was there to fetch anything the new commander of the Fifth Cavalry should desire. Then the young lieutenant wagged his head.
“What’s wrong, Mr. King?” Stanton asked as he strode up.
“Shouldn’t happen this way.”
“You mean Merritt riding in to take over the regiment?”
“Right, Major. Not in the field like this.”
Stanton nodded. “Carr resents Merritt already, don’t he?”
“No,” King answered firmly. “I don’t think he does. He figured Merritt was up for the post. After all, for a long time Merritt’s been part of Sheridan’s Chicago staff. Carr knew he wouldn’t get it himself—even though the man deserves it, many times over … but that’s not the way things work back in Washington City, do they? Not even the way things work back with Sheridan in Chicago, either. But this, taking over in the field like this. Yanking the field command right out of Carr’s hands when he’s led the Fifth against every kind of fighting Injun you can imagine—”
“A colonel’s not a fighting position, is it?”
King looked at Stanton squarely. “You tell me, Major. With old man Emory as this regiment’s colonel, Carr’s had actual fighting and field command of the Fifth since 1868. Seems to me the government’s going to spend a hell of a lot of money and get a bunch of soldiers killed teaching all these armchair generals like Crook and Terry and Merritt how to fight. But what have you got to say, Major? You were with Reynolds on the Powder River yourself. Reynolds is a colonel. So you tell me, sir. Should Reynolds have been in charge on the Powder … or should he have left the fighting to the men who know how to fight Injuns?”
Turning on his heel, King stomped off, feeling the anger rising in himself like a boil, sensing what he was sure had to be Carr’s own great personal disappointment at being stripped of field command of the Fighting Fifth, here as his beloved regiment stood on the brink of jumping into the Sioux War with both boots.