“You must exercise the utmost vigilance,” Mason told his troopers before scattering them to their posts. “Since this is not the sort of picket duty where you can keep yourself awake by walking, you’ll just have to stay alert the best you can. Keep your bunkie awake, whatever you do.”
After finding a knoll where he could leave Schreiber and Wilkinson, King rejoined Mason to walk the rounds.
Upon reaching the Warbonnet, Bill Cody had gone alone to the southeast, returning a half hour later at slap-dark to report that the hostiles must still be to the southeast. No fresh sign. It was so quiet out there that Charles figured there couldn’t be an Indian inside of a hundred miles of their bivouac. But then the hills and ridges surrounding their camp slowly came alive as coyotes set up a disharmonious chorus that rose and fell, rose and fell again. At least, King rebuked himself for hating the noise, these coyotes might well warn us of the enemy’s approach.
The first hour passed, then the second, and finally at one o’clock Mason and King set out again on their hourly prowl along the outer perimeter of their defenses. They were challenged at every sentry post, and the pair responded with the countersign. But upon nearing a post established down in the willows by the stream, there came no challenge to halt and identify. Creeping closer, they found the young soldier dozing in the shelter of the eroded bank.
King sneaked in behind the picket and wrenched his carbine out of his hands. Instantly the surprised soldier leaped to his feet, Mason scolding him.
“Soldier—don’t you realize the enemy might have forward scouts, feeling their way north?” the captain explained.
“Y-yes, sir.”
“You’re aware sleeping on duty is a court-martial offense?”
The soldier swallowed with an audible gulp. “S-sir, am I—”
King interrupted, handing the soldier his carbine. “We’ve got to be ready, all of us. This is your post. It’s up to you.”
Contrite, he took his rifle, clutching it across his chest. “I promise, sirs. Promise I won’t let you down.”
Chapter 19
17 July 1876
Dispatch from Crook—What He Will
Do When Merritt Comes
WASHINGTON, July 17—General Sheridan has forwarded the following dispatches to Sherman: I had already ordered General Merritt to join General Crook, but he will be delayed a few days, attempting to intercept the Indians who have left Red Cloud Agency. I would suggest to Crook to unite with Terry and attack and chase the Indians, but I am so far away that I will have to leave them as I have done.
CAMP ON GOOSE CREEK, Wyoming, July 13, via Fetterman, July 15.—My last information from Red Cloud Agency was that the Cheyennes had left there to reinforce the enemy in my front. As this takes away all the disturbing element from that section, I have availed myself of the lieutenant general’s permission, and ordered eight companies of the Fifth Cavalry, under Col. Merritt, to join me at this point. The best information I can get from the front is that the Sioux have three fighting men to my one. Although I have no doubt of my ability to whip them with my present force, the victory would likely be one barren of results, and so I have thought better to defer the attack until I can get the Fifth here, and then end the campaign with one crushing blow. The hostile Indians are, according to my advices, encamped on the Little Horn, near the base of the mountain, and will probably remain there until my reinforcements come up. I received a dispatch from General Terry this morning asking me to cooperate. I will do so to the best of my ability.
GEORGE CROOK
Brigadier General
At three A.M. that Monday morning King’s teeth began to chatter as the coldest hours of the day descended around them. A half hour later the coyotes were still in good voice as the lieutenant picked his way through the bivouac to find Merritt rolled in his blanket beneath a tall cottonwood.
“Colonel?”
The veteran of Beverly Ford and the Rappahannock came awake immediately, sitting up and tapping Forbush beside him. “Thank you, Mr. King. You may now return to your company.”
“It’s time for me to move to our forward observation post, Colonel.”
“Lieutenant London, who I’ve put in charge of A Troop, is ready for you to relay word to me,” Merritt explained. “Send news the moment you see anything. Anything at all.”
King would relay word back to a low ridge immediately behind him, where sat Private Christian Madsen, Company A, as his horse cropped grass in a shallow swale below him. Although a recent immigrant from Denmark, Madsen was far from being wet behind the ears, nor was he a young shavetail recruit. Instead this solid, older soldier Lieutenant Robert London had chosen from his company to carry word to Merritt himself was a cast-iron, double-riveted veteran of both the Danish-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian wars on the European Continent, as well as having served a hitch in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion before coming to America, wandering farther west still to this opening frontier.
After sliding in between Schreiber and Wilkinson atop a commanding knoll, King swept his eyes over the landscape becoming an ashen gray before him. Some two miles away against the southern sky lay a long ridge that extended around to their left, where it eventually lost itself to the rise and fall of the rolling countryside. Farther yet to the northeast stood the sharp outlines of the Black Hills themselves, at that moment brushed with hues of the faintest pastel-rose. As the minutes continued to grind by, both the Hills and that ridge to the south grew all the more distinct as night seeped from the belly of the sky.
In that predawn light King could now make out the shape of an even better observation post, a taller hill rising another four hundred yards off. “Come with me, fellas.”
Minutes later, as all three of them hid just beneath the crest of that small conical mound, the lieutenant found he commanded a full view of everything moving on the land between their post and the distant ridges. Behind them the trees bordering the Warbonnet could be made out in the middistance, the cottonwood and brush laced with a wispy fog rising off the creek as it poured sluggishly toward its meeting with the South Fork of the Cheyenne. Back there waited 330 enlisted men as well as 16 officers, in addition to their surgeon, along with Bill Cody and his 4 other scouts.
Grinding his teeth on nothing for the moment, King thought how just about now the others were pumping life into the small fires they buried in the sand, starting to heat up some coffee. What he’d give for a hot, strong cup of army brew right now. And he brooded that they’d be laying out slabs of that pungent salt pork in their frying pans as the coffee water heated to boiling.
As if it had overheard his thoughts, his own stomach grumbled, protesting. Man just wasn’t meant to fight on an empty stomach.
Due south he could begin to make out the outline of the fabled Pine Ridge that stretched all the way from western Wyoming Territory, on through Nebraska, then angled north toward Dakota. Time and again King swept the whole country with his field glasses, scouring the horizon from east to west in a 180-degree arc. Off to the west in the growing light he could begin to see the deeply chewed trail the Fifth made reaching this point last night. But off to the east—nothing moved.
By 4:30 A.M. all seven companies had saddled their horses and were awaiting action in the cold stillness of the sun’s emergence. The chilled air refused to stir. The silence was almost crushing. Behind the observation knoll, King, Schreiber, and Wilkinson had left their horses with two pickets in a shallow depression. At times the lieutenant could even hear the animals tearing at the abundant prairie grass. King swore he could even hear the thump-thump of his own heart beat as he peered into the distance coming alive with the new day’s ever-changing light. For a moment he studied the faces of the men on either side of him, finding them drawn and haggard with nonstop fatigue, their eyes sunken and draped with liver-colored bags.