In the halo of that light glittered the reflection of a large pond of water. It was the patter of the heavy rain striking its surface that had been just that much different from the sound of rain hammering the prairie’s sodden surface. Frank crabbed left, then right, until he flicked the burned match into the pond and the whole world was dark once more.
“You saw something,” Donegan said as Grouard emerged from the drizzle.
Climbing into the saddle, Frank said, “Tracks, Irishman. Lots of tracks.”
“What’s that you say, Grouard?”
They turned back to find Mills inching forward. The half-breed said, “Tracks, Colonel. Travois. Ponies. Lots of fresh tracks.” He pointed. “Going south.”
“Won’t be good to bump right into them in this dark. Damnable rain,” Mills grumped.
“No good, we go and do that,” Frank replied.
“Grouard—I want you to ride farther ahead of us. I need you to give us plenty of time to react if you bump into anything. Put Crawford and Donegan out a little wider on both flanks.”
Donegan said, “Hard for us to see the column, Colonel.”
“You’ll just have to do the best you can,” Mills argued. “I don’t want to be surprised by a bloody thing.”
Grouard watched Crawford and Donegan move off into the gloom, then turned about to take up the front of the march. “Wait five minutes, then lead them out, Colonel.”
“Very well,” Mills replied.
Grouard disappeared into the midnight rain and darkness.
For another two hours they probed ahead. And for all their trouble the rain only fell harder and the night grew darker. After eighteen grueling miles feeling their way to the south along the Indian trail, Mills called a halt at the edge of a shallow ravine.
“Stay with your mounts,” was the order passed back through the command. “Sleep if you can on your lariats— until daylight.”
The sergeants nudged them awake at four A.M. on the eighth, rousting them from the cold, muddy ground, driving the men from their soggy blankets. After tightening cinches, shoving the huge curb bits back into the horses’ jaws, and pulling up the picket pins to be stowed in a saddlebag with the lariat, Mills had his patrol on the march again—without a thing to put in their bellies.
No matter, there wasn’t that much to eat, anyway.
On they tramped into the gray coming of that overcast morning as the rain slackened, then drifted off to the east.The sky was gray and black above them. The prairie beneath the bellies of their horses was pretty much the same color, and what small pools of water had collected here and there reflected the monotonous color of the dreary sky overhead.
From the horizon far beyond them emerged some high ground, pale in color, easily visible from a distance. Those buttes were like a beacon in what dim light the jealous clouds permitted the sun to cast upon this rolling land.
It wasn’t long before the fog rolled in, first forming in the low places, down in the coulees. Then like a growing thing it crawled up to take over the prairie itself. Becoming thicker all the time, like Mother Donegan’s blood soup coming to a boil on the trivet she would swing over the hearth in their tiny stone house back on that miserable and humble plot of ground where his father had died trying to grow enough to feed à family.
By seven o’clock Grouard had the soldiers skirting to the east of the northern end of a long and narrow landform that would one day soon be known as Slim Buttes. When he found a brushy ravine filled with plum trees, their branches heavy with fruit, the half-breed suggested a halt. Eagerly the men attacked the brush, stuffing the shiny, rain-washed plums into their mouths with one hand as the other hand pulled more off the branches.
An hour later Mills had them back in the saddle and inching off again through the soupy fog. Uneasily they probed south until noon, when the captain called another halt. This time Grouard brought them into the lee of a low bluff, protected from view to the east, from the prairie. On some good grass the horses were allowed to graze at the end of their picket pins and lassos. Then Mills allowed the men to gather some wood, dig fire pits, and boil some coffee in their tin cups. By one o’clock they were back in the saddle, Lieutenant Emmet Crawford’s battalion taking the lead, something warm now in all their bellies to go with the wild plums they had enjoyed for breakfast earlier.
Having had nothing to eat since leaving Crook’s column, the men knew the plums and coffee were better than nothing at all. Fear is always a poor feast for an empty stomach.
Just past three o’clock, not long after the thickest of the fog lifted, Seamus watched Frank Grouard reappear at the top of a rise more than a mile ahead of the column. Expecting Frank once more to do as he had been doing most of the day, checking on the column’s advance as he kept far in the lead, turning around after a moment to disappear again over the hilltop, Donegan was surprised this time when the half-breed rode back toward the column, at a gallop.
Off on the far left flank Jack Crawford had seen Grouard too and was loping back toward the van of Mills’s column.
“C’mon, ol’ boy. Time to find out what’s got Frank so spooked he’s willing to kill his horse to tell about it.”
The half-breed was already telling his story to Mills and his officers by the time Donegan got near enough to hear snatches of the tale.
“… ridge yonder … some three miles.”
Grouard was pointing. Time and again he turned in the saddle, pointing toward the Buttes that they had been skirting to the east ever since morning.
“Herd of ponies. Forty. Maybe a few more.”
“Sioux?”
By now Seamus picked up all of Frank’s answer. “Chances are good, Colonel. That’s who we been following, ain’t we?”
“You see anything of a village?”
Donegan came to a halt in that knot of horsemen as Grouard replied, “A small one. Down in a little bowl made by a ravine that cuts down from the bluffs. Think the Sioux call it Rabbit Lip Creek.”
Glancing at the western sky and the aging of the day, the captain asked his head scout, “Can we take them at dawn?”
Grouard nodded. “Only time to do it. I saw hunters south of their camp. Coming in with game. Might be other camps nearby.”
The captain licked his lips, then grumbled, “Don’t doubt they’ve found game. Red bastards been running off everything in this country.” Then Mills stood in the stirrups, peering off to the east. “Crawford,” he said, flinging his voice to the scout, “did you pass anything back on your side of the column what might conceal the command for a few hours?”
“Yes, sir, Colonel,” Jack Crawford answered. “I can show you a place where we can lay in for a while.”
“Lead us there,” and Mills turned to his lieutenants. “Gentlemen, have the command follow that scout into hiding. We’ll discuss our options once we’re sure we haven’t been discovered.”
“Options?” Lieutenant Schwatka asked.
“Yes,” Mills replied. “Whether or not to attack.”
“I thought our primary mission was to secure food for the column, Colonel,” said George F. Chase.
Mills’s brow knitted in consternation and he said, “Just take your men into hiding, Lieutenant.”
Behind a low ridge northeast of the enemy village, with his troops concealed and pickets posted to guard against their discovery, Mills put the question up for discussion. About half of the officers and noncoms urged caution, voicing concern for attacking an enemy village of unknown strength, while the other half cheered for an immediate attack.
“It’s time we finally got in our licks,” added Adolphus Von Leuttwitz.
“But do we know just what we’re charging into?” asked Emmet-Crawford.
“Sure as hell Custer didn’t,” Chase groaned.