Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

“With this bunch of worn-out men and what we’ve got left of horses?” Seamus asked, incredulous. He snorted a sour laugh. “You’re serious? He wanted us to traipse after them Sioux and squash ’em, eh?”

“I bet ol’ Crazy Horse figured he would find just Mills’s men here,” the lieutenant said.

“He and the rest got themselves a good surprise, then, didn’t they?” Seamus replied.

“Those Sioux were wise to retreat when they did after running into more soldiers than they counted on.”

“Wasn’t but an hour’s scrap, was it?” Donegan asked, trying to coax a young child to his knee with the offer of a hard cracker.

“She’s a tough one, Irishman,” Bourke replied. “A real screamer. You get anywhere close to her, she’ll shriek your ears off.”

“You wanna try?” Donegan asked, holding the cracker to the lieutenant.

“Maybe I have something that’ll help.” Bourke pulled his field haversack off his shoulder and fished around inside until he pulled out the small tin of fruit preserves. “Lemme see your belt knife.”

With Donegan’s knife the lieutenant spread the wild-currant jam atop the hardtack, then held it out for the young girl, who could be no more than five years old.

“Take it, it’s washtay. Wauwataycha,” Bourke told the youngster in her own tongue.

No matter—at first she refused even to consider the offered treat, but eventually crept forward, snatched the cracker out of the soldier’s hand, then darted back to her place among the other captives. There she squatted in the smoke of the fire and took her first bite of the sweet. Her eyes lit up, and her tongue swirled across her lips so that she wouldn’t miss a morsel. Seamus chuckled at just how fast the youngster devoured that cracker.

As she stuffed the last crumbs into her mouth, the girl crawled right over to Bourke’s knee and squatted as if completely unafraid, looking up at the lieutenant with imploring eyes, her hand held out.

“Looks like you’ve made you a friend at last, Johnny!”

“It does, at that,” Bourke replied. “Have you any more tacks?”

“This is my last,” Donegan replied, pulling the cracker from his mackinaw pocket.

“We don’t have to take your last.”

“Go ahead. I’ll rustle up some more of that pony meat for supper tonight. Hate to admit it, but I’m beginning to grow quite fond of four-legged riding stock.”

Fitting that a crimson sunset flared for but an astonishingly beautiful moment over those pale-gray buttes dotted with emerald evergreens: an appropriate requiem, perhaps, for a people who had already witnessed the zenith of their greatness.

Below the chalky terraces glowed the remains of some three dozen bonfires, each one what had once been a Sioux lodge. Across the hillsides flickered much smaller dots of reddish embers where gathered the battle-weary soldiers once more wolfing down the dried meat and berries they had captured and held on to as victors. On the heights as well as down across the eastern flats Crook posted a strong line of pickets while silence crept in once more to rule this wilderness. As a soft rain returned to patter on blankets, coats, and gum ponchos, some of the camp guards heard strange noises and cried out their challenges, only to find they had captured a riderless enemy pony abandoned in the Sioux retreat and now wandering in to the sound of humans.

Unlike the miserable bivouacs of the last two weeks, tonight one heard songs, jokes, and laughter. Once more men were eager about their prospects. Many of those who days before had been grumbling that the general ought to be hanged were this night heard to boast, “Crook was right, after all!”

They ate their fill in the rain, gathered at their hissing fires, caring not about the morrow.

“C’mere and try some of this, Seamus,” John Finerty called out.

“What’s on the menu there, newsman?” Donegan asked.

“Pony.”

“Had me some already,” and he squatted near the reporter.

“Not cooked fresh you haven’t,” Finerty replied. “See? I’ve become quite a connoisseur, Seamus. Cavalry meat, played out, sore-backed, and fried without salt is stringy. Leathery, and tasting just like a wet wool saddle blanket too. Downright nauseating.”

“I’ve tasted my fill of that too, thank you.”

Again Finerty offered the Irishman a piece, saying, “Now, a full-grown Indian pony has the flavor and appearance of the flesh of elk.”

“And you’re an expert on elk, are you, now?”

“I’ve been hunting many a time with Crook, haven’t I?” Finerty protested. “But perhaps best of all—a young Indian colt tastes like antelope, Seamus. Or mountain sheep.”

“So what of mule meat?” asked Robert Strahorn from across the fire with a full mouth.

The reporter from Chicago shuddered. “Mule, eh? Fat and rank, perhaps best described as a combination of all the foregoing—with a wee taste of pork thrown in.”

“There’s some that think a mule loin is just about the best thing in the way of prairie victuals,” .Seamus told them, “second only to buffalo.”

Finerty sneered, “And what sort of dunderhead would that be?”