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

“Make your shots count, boys!” a stalwart, bearded sergeant hollered above his platoon as the rattle of gunfire reverberated from the buttes like hail off a snare drum. He was outlined against the sky by the black smudges of smoke drifting up from what was left of American Horse’s village. “Don’t throw your lead away without making them red bastards pay!”

It was one thing for a soldier to stand and hold off the enemy. Altogether different was it for a soldier to be asked to do the same while falling back.

Atop a grassy rise a lieutenant abruptly reined up his horse beside that old Irish sergeant conspicuously moving up and down his line of kneeling men, exhorting his platoon as they held off the screaming onslaught, gun smoke thick as thunderclouds about their heads. “Sergeant!”

“Yessirlieutenant!”

“How many goddamned times have I got to tell you to keep down?”

“Sir, I—”

“Now, by God!” the lieutenant interrupted. “I want you to keep your head down. So do it—now!”

“B-but, sir—”

“Sarge,” the officer said, his tone a bit softer as he leaned forward to confide, “if I lose you—I just might lose this whole damned outfit. Now, just do as I ask and keep your blessed head down.”

By and large the cavalrymen on that last line remained quiet in that cold morning’s fight, perhaps only speaking low to the bunkie beside them, sharing a handshake and a quick, guttural cheer when one of their number spilled a warrior from his pony, maybe even issuing a yelp of pain or a call for aid when a Sioux bullet found its mark and the soldier crumpled into the mud and grass, clutching a leg or arm or belly while his fellows rushed to carry him along in their ordered retreat.

“What … what day is it, sir?” a wounded man asked of the officer bending over him.

“Sunday,” Charles King answered as two soldiers came up to lift their wounded comrade between them.

“Sunday,” the soldier repeated with a pained grimace as he was raised. “I imagine back home it’s about time Ma is leaving for church.”

For a moment King just stared at the wounded trooper’s back, forced to think on Sunday and church and home. Forced to recall what had happened to Custer and his men on a bloody Sunday not long ago.

Had it not been for Carr’s skillful batdefield maneuvers and his ability to hold his men under what might have otherwise been overwhelming pressure during one attempt to outflank his command, the troopers of the Fifth Cavalry might have suffered a rout. But the lieutenant colonel spun Kellogg’s I Company on the right so they were there waiting when the galloping horsemen came over the rise— straight into the teeth of more than fifty Springfield carbines.

What really took most of the starch out of the warrior charges, however, was Carr’s order for each unit to leave a half dozen of its best shots lying concealed just behind the brow of the next hill while the rest of the companies continued in retreat, acting as bait to pull the Sioux into a headlong rush. On the horsemen charged; then with a single word from the lieutenant colonel, two dozen marksmen rose from the mud and onto their knees, slamming rifles into their shoulders and aiming point-blank at the mounted, painted, feathered, and screaming enemy within spitting distance. Ponies reared in the face of those exploding muzzles, men cried out in pain, others dashed in to pull bodies from the no-man’s-land as soldiers flipped up the trapdoors and slammed in another copper case while the angry screams haunted that thin line and the eagle wing-bone whisdes keened like a banshee’s wail off the pale buttes above them.

When the Sioux retreated, the fight was all but over.

In this hot, grimy, hour-long skirmish—that fourth of the Battle of Slim Buttes—Carr’s dismounted Fifth cavalrymen turned back every one of the Sioux charges, knocking down five of the enemy while the soldiers themselves suffered three wounded before the warriors were eventually turned back into the pine-covered hillsides. From the flanks of the troopers’ slow, foot-by-foot withdrawal, the hostiles had kept up a withering fire for the better part of an hour as the troops retreated up and down for more than two miles.

It was proof enough for even the hardiest veteran that they had failed to dampen the Sioux’s fighting spirit.

It was only then that Sitting Bull’s warriors drifted away and let off their attack. At long last Mason’s battalion was freed to step out in a lively effort to catch up to the retreating column and their led horses, now long out of sight.

But if the Sioux had shown they were still full of fight, so had Carr’s Fifth Cavalry.

Yet now it appeared Crook was hardly interested in consolidating his minor victory, not the least bit in bringing the enemy to a full-scale fight.

The general may have believed he was marching his expedition south.

To the Sioux, Three Stars was retreating.

Chapter 44

10-11 September 1876

Camp Owl River, Dakota

September 10, 1876

General Sheridan, Chicago.