“Lieutenant!” Wilkinson called out in a harsh whisper, suddenly coming to life—tapping King on the upper arm.
Immediately he trained his glasses in the direction the corporal was looking. “You see something?”
“Saw something move.”
Schreiber crawled back to the crest of the mound on his belly, shading his eyes against the brightening sky.
“Look, Lieutenant!” Wilkinson gushed. “There … there are Indians!”
“Where?” Schreiber demanded.
Slowly the corporal rose on his hands and knees, bringing one arm up to point to the southeast. “That ridge … can’t you see them?”
It took a few moments, maybe as much as a minute, not any more than that—as King strained his eyes, squinted, twirling the adjustment knob this way with painstaking precision, then back the other direction just as slowly.
“I see ’em, Lieutenant!” Schreiber said.
“Yes,” King replied, the hair rising at the back of his neck. “There’s a second group now.”
A third small knot of five or six horsemen appeared on the distant ridge, then dropped back out of sight. For the time being none of those warriors seemed to be in a great hurry to advance, but instead seemed intent solely on something off to the southwest of where King lay observing the entire panorama with the sun’s rising. Over the next few minutes he counted a half-dozen small parties popping up to the crest of the distant ridges, then turning about and disappearing from sight.
Finally King turned to Schreiber. “Sergeant—send word back to the signalman from A Troop. He’ll alert the command.”
“Tell ’em the Injuns are coming?”
“Yes,” King replied.
Down the backside of the slope the sergeant slid until out of sight. Then he trotted on down to the horse-holders, gesturing as he whispered his message. One of the troopers flung himself into the saddle and tore off toward the lone trooper from A Company waiting on a knoll halfway back to the Warbonnet bivouac.
“Way they’re acting, you think they’ve seen us?” Wilkinson asked as Schreiber crawled back in beside them.
“Don’t think so,” King replied. “They keep popping over, watching something. If they knew we were here, they’d be gone already.”
“That’s right. If they knew we was here,” the sergeant agreed, “we’d never knowed they was there.”
For the next thirty minutes the trio didn’t take their eyes from the southeast as the sun continued its climb. Then King turned at the snort from one of the held horses in the depression below them. Coming up on his resplendent buckskin, Bill Cody led seven soldiers: Merritt and Carr, along with Major John J. Upham and aide-de-camp Lieutenant J. Hayden Pardee of the Twenty-third Infantry as well as three from the colonel’s staff. All of them came to a halt and leaped from their saddles, hurrying up the slope at a crouch behind the scout. Without a word the colonel and his lieutenant colonel trained their own glasses on the distance, watching the dark specks appear and disappear in the distance, now narrowed to less than two miles. From the rear hurried three more of Cody’s scouts—White, Tait, and Garnier—along with several more curious officers loping in from bivouac to have a look for themselves.
Merritt turned to Forbush, his regimental adjutant, asking, “Have the men had their coffee?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then return to the company commanders with my instructions to mount the regiment and have them formed into line.”
“Yes, sir.” Forbush slid down the slope and trotted to his horse.
“What do you think they’re after?” the colonel asked as he turned around to train his eye on the distance.
“Don’t know for sure, General,” Cody answered. “But they’re sure acting like they’re watching something.”
The knoll was growing crowded with soldiers and scouts when King asked, “The Black Hills Road?”
“Could be,” Merritt replied. “It lies somewhere out there.”
“I don’t think so,” Cody argued, shaking his head. He was dressed in a dashing black outfit, tailored in the lines of a Mexican vaquero’s. “The road is off over there—more to the east. And those warriors are watching something coming in from the west.”
“Besides, no one would be using the Black Hills Road now,” Carr agreed with his scout. “They’ve been warned off of it because of the agency scare.”
“That can’t be the Black Hills Road,” King responded. “Off to the west—that’s the Sage Creek Road, on our backtrail.”
“The way those warriors’re keeping themselves hid from the west,” Cody explained, “I’ll lay a wager they’re keeping an eye on something coming from that direction.”
Merritt asked, “Then they have no idea we’re here?”
“Just look at all of them!” Carr marveled.
It was as if the light suddenly ballooned across the entire horizon at that very moment. Every ridge and hill screened from the west was now alive with warriors, all of them excitedly moving about.
Carr wagged his head, rubbing his gritty eyes with two fingertips as he muttered, “What in thunder are they laying for?”
“By glory—that’s it!” Cody bellowed. He pointed west now.
“There! Yes! I see them!” Merritt said.
“Is that—Oh, dear God!” Carr replied. “That’s got to be our own supply train.”
Better than four miles away the white tops of Lieutenant Hall’s company wagons began to pop up on the distant horizon as the light swelled around them. Hurrying his teams as fast as he dared push them, Hall was bringing along those two companies of infantry.
“By doggies!” Cody said, then chuckled. “Those Injuns think they’ve found ’em some easy pickings.”
“All alone on the Sage Creek Road,” Charlie White added.
“But those wagons aren’t filled with plunder,” Carr said with a smile.
Merritt couldn’t help himself, clapping in glee. “Great Jupiter—have we got a surprise in store for them when they ride down to jump those wagons!”
White cheered, “They’ll roll those covers back and let those red sonsabitches have it!”
“I don’t believe this! Hall’s made an all-night march of it,” Merritt announced.
“I, for one, General,” said Carr, “am glad he did.”
With a nod Merritt agreed. “I suppose he’s made himself the bait in our trap, without even knowing it.”
“Nothing those Injuns want better,” Garnier observed, “than a supply train loaded with plunder headed to the Black Hills settlements.”
“Instead,” Cody said, a big smile creasing his face, “those wagons are loaded for bear.”
King interrupted their celebration, pointing in another direction as he said, “Will you look at that, sirs?”
Off to the southeast they saw a bright-colored, plumed band of warriors separate from the hundreds and kick their ponies into motion. At a gallop they rode down into the bottoms and at the base of the hills, staying out of sight from the oncoming wagons. Unknowingly, the nine or ten horsemen were closing the gap between them and the soldiers’ lookout post.
“They spotted us?”
“Naw,” Cody said. “If they knew soldiers were here, there’d be more than just that little bunch coming.”