Later that Saturday morning the Ree came to Grouard, plainly confused, wondering why Three Stars was merely backtracking a soldier road instead of pursuing the Sioux trail.
“Sweet Mither of God! If this isn’t a glorious start,” Donegan grumbled. “We’re told we’re giving stern chase to the enemy, when all we’re about is going on a grand fishing trip!”
“Ain’t you ever fished for Sioux?” Grouard asked, looking disgusted. “Terry and Gibbon done a lot of it lately. The secret is, you just don’t ever bait your hook.”
With a nod Seamus replied, “Yeah—so you don’t ever have to worry about catching something.”
Stripped to the bone, packing along two days’ less rations than that pitiful fifteen days’ supplies would have allowed them, and without bringing along a single nose bag of grain for their gaunt, worn-out animals, they pointed their column to the northeast. Crook had his men marching into fire-blackened prairie, a country cut with a hundred muddy, alkaline creeks, making for the Little Missouri badlands.
That afternoon about four o’clock the command settled into the adhesive mud along the West Fork of O’Fallon’s Creek after marching more than twenty miles, a camp made all the more miserable by a wind-driven rain. At sundown many of the command saw signs of abundant game, but the general had issued strict orders against firing any weapon. Even the company trumpeters had been instructed to pack away their bugles. The enemy was out there, came the explanation.
Just where, it was any man’s guess.
North by east the infantry led them out at seven A.M. the following Sunday, the twenty-seventh, marching into a rolling country that showed no evidence of timber. Near noon they reached the main branch of O’Fallon’s Creek, where the packers had a problem forcing some of their mules across. In two more hours Crook had them in bivouac on the East Fork of O’Fallon’s, a small blessing for those older veterans who were already showing signs of approaching sickness: rheumatism and neuralgia.
Late that afternoon eight Arikara scouts rode in from Terry’s command with his instructions to the Ree that they were to serve the Wyoming column, as well as carry a letter for Crook.
I have had a reply to my dispatch to Whistler. Rice was not attacked, but the steamer Yellowstone was. I shall return, cross over, march enough north to determine, if possible, whether the Indians have made for Dry Fork, and if they have not, or if I believe there is still a considerable body of them on the river, I shall turn to the right. I shall cover the country west of Glendive Creek and be at the Creek in five days, unless I go north.
I shall send a steamer to Buford with orders to take on supplies and come up to Glendive and await orders. She will supply you.
Beginning to worry about the prospect of scurvy running rampant through the command, Crook met with his officers and instructed them to have the men eat the cactus and Indian turnips found in abundance along the line of march. That night a few soldiers pulled the spines from some prickly pear and tried frying it in their skillets over greasewood fires sputtering in the incessant drizzle. Most tried a single bite, then turned away to spit out what they had in their mouths.
“I’ll chance the scurvy,” one old file growled after hacking up the slimy pulp.
The sun put in an appearance at dawn on the twentyeighth, lifting the men’s spirits. Throughout the day the air stayed cool and the column covered a good piece of ground, finally going into camp on high ground that overlooked the valley of Beaver Creek still off to the east, and the sun-scoured badlands of southern Montana, with Cabin Creek just below them.
Grouard and Donegan took the eight Arikara scouts to look over the country around the Little Missouri still in their front. They hadn’t gone far when they began to run across recent sign. The farther they pushed to the east, the more nervous grew the half-breed and the Ree. Smoke was seen off in the distance behind the rise and fall of the land, great, smudgy columns spiraling into the sodden air.
“These Corn Indians seen with their own eyes what the Sioux did to Custer’s men,” Grouard said, trying to explain why he was choosing to return to Crook’s camp.
“You’re ‘bout as jumpy as they are, Frank.”
He pressed his thick lips together and nodded, turning his horse about. He pointed, saying, “I’m laying there’s more’n three hundred lodges down there. Over there and there too. All together, that makes more warriors than you and me wanna tangle with. You remember that graveyard beside the Little Horn, don’t you?”
Seamus nodded. “I remember.”
Many of the officers refused to believe Grouard’s report that night when the scouts wandered in close to dark, just as the rain blotted out the first stars. But it wasn’t just the rain that soaked them all again that night of the twentyeighth. A prairie hailstorm, with stones half the size of a hen’s egg, hammered man and beast, chilled the air more than twenty degrees, and left every last one of them frozen to the gills.
With the advent of a fierce lightning show, followed by the frightening hail, a few of the Fifth Cavalry’s horses broke free of their picket pins and started their run. Most of them floundered in the creek. Some died, others had to be shot after breaking their legs in that mad dash to freedom.
As far as Seamus Donegan was concerned, the only good thing to be said about that night was that the storm hadn’t succeeded in stampeding all their stock. Instead of breaking free, most of the horses and mules huddled in packs, frightened, making the most pitiful of humanlike noises throughout that long, miserable night.
It was already becoming clear to any horseman in that command that most of their animals simply didn’t have enough strength to stampede. All those horsemen could do was pray the stock would have enough strength to last out Crook’s chase.
Later the Irishman learned that the lightning had struck the prairie not far from their southernmost pickets, starting a grass fire that was whipped along in savage style by the wind but was as quickly extinguished as soon as the hailstorm blew in and the rains arrived.
On Tuesday, the twenty-ninth, the column awoke to another beautiful dawn coming in the wake of another terrible night. As the sun came up, it found most in the command using their folding knives to peel the thick gumbo from their shoes and boots.
“Can hell be much worse than this?” asked Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka of the Third Cavalry, his teeth chattering, as Donegan walked his weary mount out of camp.
“No, not at all. Hell would be a lot warmer, Lieutenant.”
“Good point, Irishman! A grand point! Warmer indeed!”
Off the infantry plodded, with the cavalry bringing up the rear behind Tom Moore’s pack-train. This day Seamus rode the right flank, ranging far ahead, allowing the horse to have its head as much as he dared. This act was a little kindness that made his heart feel better, what with the way he had stared at the horse’s ribby sides that morning, stared at the bony flanks as he flung the saddle blanket over its galled spine.
“You remember that deal we struck back on the Powder a couple weeks back,” he whispered to the animal now, though there was not another human ear within miles of him. “You just remember that now.” He patted the horse’s neck. “Just stay under me and don’t go down … and I promise I won’t let you fall.”
Reining up atop a ridge to let the horse blow, Seamus watched the winding progress of the infantry far off to his left. “Soon enough, ol’ boy—there’ll be plenty of your kind falling what won’t get back up. But you just remember our bargain.”
His eye drawn by a glimmer of distant movement, Donegan turned to the east, finding Grouard and three of the Ree miles off in the van but loping back toward the head of the column. In the middistance, scout Jack Crawford reined up, waiting. Grouard’s group halted momentarily where Charlie White sat atop his horse; then together the five kicked their mounts into a lope for Crawford.