King pursued his answer, saying, “Do we have a name for it—for the record, I mean?”
With a nod Cody replied, “Only what the Indians call
it.”
“What is that, Mr. Cody?” he pressed. “What do the Indians call this creek?”
“Lieutenant King,” the famous scout answered in that hush surrounding them all, “it’s called the Warbonnet.”
Chapter 18
13-17 July 1876
Crook Heard From at Last—Still In
Camp at Cloud Peak—Terry Wants
Him Up North
CHEYENNE, July 15—The following is from Crook’s Camp Cloud Peak, July 12, via Fetterman tonight: Three soldiers from General Terry’s command, at the mouth of the Big Horn, have just arrived. General Terry’s dispatch to Crook confirms Custer’s fate, and implies very plainly that had Custer waited one day longer Gibbon would have joined him. Terry is anxious for Crook to join forces, make plans and execute them, regardless of rank. The Indians are still hovering about the Little Big Horn, one day’s march from here. They have fired into camp every night of late, and tried to burn us out by setting the grass on fire all around.
On the 6th, Lieutenant Sibley, of the Second cavalry, with twenty-five men and Frank Gruard and Babtiste Pouerier as scouts, went on a reconnaissance. They were discovered and surrounded and followed into the timber of the Big Horn mountains, where, by hitching their horses to trees and abandoning them, the men were enabled to escape on foot by way of a ravine in the rear. They all got back alive, and probably this diversion saved the company from a grand attempt of stampede or capture.
The Snake Indians, two hundred strong, joined us here yesterday, but unless you come soon no offensive operations will be likely to take place until your arrival.
The Fifth cavalry, from Cheyenne Crossing, and a wagon train and additional infantry are due from Fetterman to-day. The health of the command is good. Gen. Gibbon’s reserve forces were met by the victorious Sioux, dressed in Custer’s men’s clothes and mounted on their horses, firing into the soldiers. The Indian village passed gave evidence of white men’s presence, kegs of whiskey, etc., being found. Signal fires supposed to be in reference to the incoming wagon train, are visible to the east of Crook’s camp on the extreme south waters of Tongue river.
When none of his civilian scouts would volunteer—no matter how much money was offered—those three hardy privates had stepped forward to carry General Terry’s messages away from that camp along the Yellowstone on the morning of the ninth. With separate copies of the dispatches sewn into each man’s clothing, the trio left the mouth of the Rosebud at sundown. It had taken them three nights of travel, lying in cover throughout each day, as they threaded their way through a wilderness overrun by the hostiles they knew had already devoured half of Custer’s gallant Seventh.
From the Little Bighorn battlefield, the trio simply wandered south in the wake of the fleeing village. When the trail divided for the first time at Lodge Grass Creek, the soldiers chose the left-hand trail, which led them over to the upper Rosebud where the Indian trail again divided. Many travois headed east, toward the Tongue. But a pony trail continued south, up the Rosebud toward the country in which, they’d been told, they might locate Crook’s camp.
Although ragged and exhausted, Bell, Evans, and Stewart sat for hours before huge assemblies of Crook’s troops relating horrific stories about the battle scene and the carnage Terry’s men had discovered beside the Little Bighorn. There wasn’t anyone more astonished that the trio had managed to poke their way through enemy country than George Crook himself. Off hunting eighteen miles from camp in the Bighorn Mountains that morning of the eleventh, he eagerly read Terry’s letter in silence as soon as Mills brought it directly to him. Crook immediately called in his hunters and escort and hurried back to Goose Creek.
“Gentlemen,” the general addressed his subalterns after a bugler summoned them for officers’ call, “I think we can all agree that there are too many in this army who have underrated the valor and the numbers of our enemy, along with their willingness to fight.”
“All we want is another crack at them, General,” Mills said.
Apparently he spoke for most of them, officers eagerly nodding their heads in agreement.
“But I want you all to listen to General Terry’s letter— before we go galloping off into God only knows what,” Crook instructed.
“The great and to me wholly unexpected strength which the Indians have developed seems to me to make it important and indeed necessary that we should unite, or at least act in close cooperation. In my ignorance of your present position, and of the position of the Indians, I am unable to propose a plan for this, but if you will devise one and communicate it to me, I will follow it … I hope that it is unnecessary for me to say that should our forces unite, even in my Department, I shall assume nothing by reason of my seniority, but shall be prepared to cooperate with you in the most cordial and hearty manner, leaving you entirely free to pursue your own course …”
Asked Lieutenant Colonel William B. Royall, “Have you decided upon a course of action, General?”
“Only what it has been all along,” Crook replied, disappointing many of the most eager to get on with the campaign. “To await the arrival of the Fifth Cavalry before resuming the campaign.”
All that night there raged heated debates over what should be Crook’s course of action, as well as many murmured complaints about the man more and more of them referred to sneeringly as “Rosebud George.” To many of the enlisted and some in the officer corps as well, it was beginning to appear irresponsible, if not downright criminal, to allow the enemy to withdraw from their front without doing a thing to find out when they’d left, and where they were headed.
Yet what was hardest to take was that after three defeats at the Powder, the Rosebud, and on the Little Bighorn in that many months, it appeared the army had lost its will to win the Sioux campaign, if not lost its nerve altogether.
The following day, a Thursday the thirteenth, Major Alexander Chambers returned from Fetterman, bringing a train of supply wagons stuffed to the sidewalk with food, ammunition, and news from home, escorted north to Camp Cloud Peak by seven companies of the Fourth Infantry. Official dispatches from Omaha told the general to expect a detachment of Ute coming up from Colorado Territory, hungry for a chance to get in some blows against their old enemies. Chambers personally handed over private letters to Crook from Sheridan, which informed him that Merritt’s Fifth Cavalry was on its way back to Fort Laramie, from there to Fetterman, with orders to hurry with all dispatch to reinforce Crook’s impatient Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition.
“Seamus!”
Donegan turned at the sound of John Bourke’s voice, finding the young lieutenant trotting his way.
Bourke huffed to a halt and held an envelope out at the end of his arm. “Mail call!”
“Truly? For me?”
Slowly the lieutenant dragged the envelope sensuously under his nose, inhaling deeply. “This just came up with Chambers’s train from Fetterman. I think this one for you came from someone you know at Laramie.”
My dearest Seamus—
How frightened I am for you. I’m frightened for me too. We’ve just received news of a terrible massacre to some soldiers gone to fight the same Indians you are searching for.