Into the shimmering heat of that afternoon the troopers pushed their animals. The Cheyenne would have no more than a short twenty-eight-mile journey to the northwest to reach the crossing come Monday morning. On the other hand, after a trip of thirty-five miles with what they had left for light that day, the Fifth would still have to endure a forced march of more than fifty miles on Sunday to be there before their quarry had flown.
Fourteen miles later a short halt was called at Rawhide Creek. While the men watered their horses by companies, some of the soldiers waiting their turn filled their bellies with the hardtack they had stuffed into their haversacks from Hall’s wagons. In half an hour they were back in the saddle, this time riding north by west. When the sun keeled over toward the far mountains at five P.M., Bill Cody turned their noses square north for the Niobrara, reaching the river by sunset.
Finally at ten P.M. the order was given to halt, picket the horses, and go into bivouac for what they had left of that night’s darkness. They unsaddled under the tall, naked buttes at the mouth of the Running Water near the Cardinal’s Chair. They had completed their grueling thirty-five-mile march as planned.
After Carr assigned Captain Edward M. Hayes of G Troop to post pickets around the herd and establish a running guard through the night, the rest of Merritt’s command lay upon the cold ground and huddled under their blankets. Come morning those four hundred troopers realized they still faced the daunting prospect of putting in a march of more than fifty miles. If in the next few hours their horses could just get enough of the skimpy buffalo grass to eat …
“The Fifth’s done it before,” Eugene Carr reminded the veterans at officers’ call that night. “You men who were with us in sixty-nine when we tracked down the Cheyenne that time can tell the new boys. This has always been the sort of outfit that can do the impossible. We’ve always put in longer marches than any other outfit—and popped up where the enemy didn’t expect. And now, men—we’re going to do it again. By damn, we’re going to do it again!”
Just as King was drifting off to sleep at midnight, Lieutenant Hall rolled in with his train, traces jangling like sleighs, mules snorting with the smell of water in their nostrils, and an entire company of infantrymen bellowing in hunger, rubbing sore rumps as they clambered down from the wagons. The young lieutenant laid his head back down on his arm, filled with a renewed and respectful awe at what those men of Hall’s had just accomplished: the way they had kept those vital and cumbersome supply wagons moving across that broken, rugged ground, no more than two hours behind the cavalry.
It wouldn’t be the last of William P. Hall’s surprises.
Beneath the stars at three o’clock that Sunday morning the men were rousted from their blankets by sergeants growling commands up and down the rows of sleeping troopers. The men awoke to find breakfast waiting for them—although there would be nothing fancier than bacon and bread to wash down with their coffee. What they got was served in the chill predawn darkness with only a few minutes to spare for a man to relieve himself before he had to throw a saddle on the back of his weary horse and slip a bit into a set of reluctant jaws after the animals were fed their own good breakfast of oats from a nose bag, compliments of Hall’s supply wagons.
By five o’clock the men were pressing their knees against horses’ ribs, following Merritt upon his high-strutting gray, bidding farewell to the valley of the Niobrara, marching north. By midmorning they had crossed the rugged divide between the waters of the Niobrara and the Cheyenne, turning hard on to the east where an hour later, at 10:15 A.M., the head of the column once more hoved into sight of the palisaded walls of the Sage Creek stockade. Lieutenant Taylor of the Twenty-third Infantry and half his H Company came to stand at arms, welcoming back the cavalry. But the Fifth was to enjoy less than an hour out of the saddle while horses were watered and the troopers wolfed down rations from their haversacks.
About the time Hall rumbled in with his train, Carr was already preparing his men to move out. After every company replenished its ammunition supply from the freight wagons—each man ordered to carry every last cartridge he could in his thimble belt and belt kit, as well as filling every spare pocket—the troopers mounted up with three days’ rations in their haversacks and marched away east by northeast as Merritt conferred with Hall. They decided to leave the lieutenant’s large supply wagons behind at the stockade. After watering the thirsty stock only the smaller company wagons rolled away from Sage Creek, emptied and stripped bare of everything. Within the gunwales of those bumpy, hard-ribbed wagons Merritt crammed two companies of infantry, belonging to the Twenty-third and the Ninth.
By noon Carr slowed the column’s pace to four and a half miles per hour along that stretch of the Black Hills Road. Less chance of raising a telltale cloud of dust over the summer prairie that would betray the regiment’s approach. At two-thirty the lieutenant colonel again called for a halt beside a dry creekbed. No watering the horses this time. From there they followed Cody and White due east, leaving the well-traveled road for the trackless prairie.
At five P.M. Merritt ordered a halt for watering their trail-weary stock, then pushed on into the lengthening shadows. More torturous miles across the treeless, rolling heave of undulating grassland. Far off to the south stood the tall, austere, striated Pine Ridge that sheltered the reservation from all but the most brutal of cold winter winds. Almost as far away to their left lay the dark, rumpled corduroy of the Black Hills.
Hours later at sundown King spotted a distant line of meandering green, far ahead on the pale prairieland. Cottonwood, willow, and alder, and another of those rare water courses that crisscrossed this arid country. Minutes later Cody and Buffalo Chips loped back to the head of the column, their long hair caught in the wind as they tore their hats from their heads and waved them for all to see.
“Trail’s in sight!” Buffalo Bill shouted, bringing the big buckskin around in a tight circle; a cascade of dust sent in a rooster tail made a rosy gold in the sun’s dying light.
Merritt stood in his stirrups, gazing into the distance like an old cavalryman. “Any hostiles in sight?”
“Not a goddamned one,” Buffalo Chips White replied.
Instantly nettled, Carr demanded, “We haven’t missed them, have we? Are we too late?”
Cody wagged his head. “Trail’s old. Nothing new’s come this way.”
Carr and Merritt gazed at one another, their lips thin lines of determination, but their eyes twinkling with intense expectation, glittering with the satisfaction of an impossible task well-done.
Down to the timber the Fifth rode, the end clearly in sight. By nine o’clock and the coming of dark, the troopers had unsaddled and made camp close beneath the bluffs. Here the narrow creek swept around in nearly a complete circle, forming the high ridge that would protect the regiment’s cooking fires the men buried deep in pits from discovery.
In thirty-one hours this group of weary animals and trail-hardened men had covered more than eighty-five miles.
“I couldn’t be any prouder of you,” Merritt told his subordinates that night during officers’ call.
“We’re in their front,” Carr reminded the men. “The enemy will be here in the morning.”
“And we’ll be ready for them,” Merritt vowed.
“General, sir?” King asked.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Do we know the name of this little creek?”
Merritt turned to his scouts with a gesture.
Cody stepped forward, loosening the colorful silk tie knotted around his neck. “It’s a tributary of the South Cheyenne, Lieutenant.”