Quickly glancing over his shoulder, he reassured himself that he wasn’t so far from camp that he couldn’t make it back on foot, even in those damned worn-out brogans. Headed his way loped Captain Anson Mills, trailed by a hastily assembled squad of troopers from his M Company following him out of camp.
Looking again to the north, he saw the trio of riders ease off the top of that nearby hill, urging their mounts down toward the stream where Finerty stood with other fishermen.
A growing chorus of voices behind him told the newsman that the camp had indeed been alerted. Perhaps it was only some of the men who had gone to the site of the Sibley ambush early that morning with Washakie and his warriors. But as the breeze nudged aside some of the gray haze, Finerty saw that the trio rode army horses, not the smaller Indian ponies. Of the riders two wore dusty blue tunics while the third sported a greasy gingham shirt. Kepis rested on all three heads.
“Them’s soldiers!” someone shouted as Mills and his men rattled and jingled past, prodding their horses down into the creek and splashing up the far side without slowing.
“Soldiers?” Finerty said, realizing the trio was just that as he tossed aside his handmade willow fishing pole and stood staring at the water. “Shit. Not again,” he grumbled, then lumbered down into cold water, soaking his old shoes one more time.
Wet to the knees, John slogged up the north bank and trotted after Mills and his detail, reaching them about the time the captain halted his M Company and awaited the approach of the trail-ragged trio.
When they halted, all three horsemen saluted wearily. It was a moment before one of the trio licked his lips and asked, “Captain?”
“Mills—M Troop, Third Cavalry.”
“This is General Crook’s camp?”
“It is,” Mills replied. “Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
“Benjamin F. Stewart, sir. Private, E Company. Seventh U.S. Infantry.”
“Good Lord,” Mills murmured almost under his breath. “Are you attached to General Terry’s Dakota column?”
One of the others nodded and said, “James Bell, E Company, Captain Mills. Yes, sir. We come from General Terry’s camp on the Yellowstone.”
“Mouth of the Rosebud, sir,” the third gushed. “William Evans, I’m with E Company too.”
“The three of you … rode down from the Yellowstone?”
“Yes, sir,” Stewart answered. “We have dispatches from Terry. We’d appreciate you taking us to see General Crook.”
Lieutenant Charles King was one of the first to be electrified by the news from Captain Thaddeus Stanton that reached Colonel Wesley Merritt by courier just past noon, the fifteenth of July.
Camp Robinson
Saturday July 15 1876
General
A considerable number of Sioux Warriors left here for north this morning. The Cheyennes are also going … The Indians think you are still at Sage Creek & along there, and count on getting by you easily … The agent here is thoroughly stampeded by the threatening bearing of the Indians since the Custer fight … Thinks there are not troops enough to protect the agency in case of trouble.
I will wait here until I hear from you. Send a small escort when you wish me to join you …
Stanton
General Merritt
P.S. 12. m. It seems now that the Cheyennes left last night—all except a few old men & women. So you will have to hurry up if you catch any of them. About 100 Indians, wounded in Crook’s fight, are reported to be distributed among their friends here … Indians leaving here will doubtless scatter in any direction in small parties, to get by you. Let me know where & when to join you.
Stanton
The Cheyennes have disposed mostly of their lodgepoles, and take their families on ponies.
“The Cheyenne are breaking!”
Through their bivouac now the word spread like wildfire through the Fifth Cavalry: the colonel had decided to postpone their march north to reinforce Crook for the week it would take to countermarch and catch the escaping Cheyenne in a trap. Surely his superiors would understand that such an action must take precedence over Sheridan’s orders to join the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.
Two things were clear from Stanton’s dispatch: the agency Cheyenne still believed the Fifth was off to the northwest, blocking the route they must travel to reach Sitting Bull’s confederation; in addition, the Cheyenne appeared fully confident in their ability to elude the pony soldiers.
Much shorter but every bit as urgent was Major Jordan’s own dispatch to Merritt:
I have the honor to report that I have just received reliable information that about 800 Northern Cheyenne / men women and children / containing about 150 fighting men, and a good many Sioux all belonging to Red Cloud Agency are to leave here tomorrow for the north … it is my belief that a good many Indians have been leaving since the receipt of the news of the disaster of Lieutenant Colonel Custer.
“Now we’ll slam the door shut on them,” King vowed.
“We better,” said Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Carr. “If we don’t get there in time, those Cheyenne will join with the hostile Sioux who already wiped out half the Seventh. And once together, no telling what trouble the united tribes could cause. Why, I can imagine how easily they would roll right over the settlements in the Black Hills.”
Carr had reason to be concerned. Only a few weeks had passed since Sheridan had appointed him the commander of a new “Black Hills district” carved out of Crook’s Department of the Platte.
“Deadwood, Custer City … all the rest,” King agreed, imagining what slaughter there would be should the warrior bands strike the far-flung settlements and small pockets of miners and prospectors.
According to Major William H. Jordan, commander at Camp Robinson, at least eight hundred Cheyenne were moving north to join Sitting Bull’s hostiles. But this would be something different: this time the regiment was not chasing the Indians; now their task was instead to cut across the warriors’ trail. Here they were no more than a day’s ride from Fort Laramie at that moment, so it would take what Merritt called a “lightning march” if there was to be any hope for the Fifth turning on its heels to be far to the northeast when the Cheyenne showed up.
“To get there,” King said with exasperation as he looked at the old map Carr had spread across the scarred top of his field desk, “these eight companies will have to remain undiscovered while we march across three sides of a square, riding like the wind itself.”
“Yes,” Carr agreed, dragging his fingertip across the paper, “while the enemy traverses the fourth side.”
“And,” King said, looking into the eyes of that veteran campaigner, “when this weary outfit finally gets there— we’ll still have to be ready to fight the very devil.”
Within an hour of receiving the dispatches from Stanton and Jordan, trumpeters blew “Boots and Saddles” over that camp at Rawhide Creek. In a matter of minutes the regiment was on the march. Merritt had waited long enough. And though they realized they might well be outnumbered at least two to one, his men had nonetheless been itching for this moment.
The Fifth would again prove its mettle.
Merritt was leaving a small guard of the Ninth Infantry to escort his wagon train under the command of the regiment’s own Lieutenant William P. Hall, with orders to come on at all possible speed, even to catching up after the rest of the troops had gone into bivouac after dark. At the same time that the column of fours set out for the west, to fool any lurking scouts into believing that they were merely heading for Fort Fetterman country and not backtracking for the Niobrara, the colonel dispatched a courier racing toward Camp Robinson with orders recalling Stanton, and yet another horseman sent galloping south to Laramie to inform Sheridan of Merritt’s intentions and reasons for disobeying his commander’s orders.