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

After so many days of rain without letup, no one much noticed that the sun did not put in an appearance that morning as the men and ponies snorted frostily in their climb up the slopes of the terraced buttes. Again the clouds hovered close, fog shrouded the land for as far as a man could see with field glasses, and it began to rain.

Seamus pulled the big collar on his canvas mackinaw up around his neck and prayed the little grass-fed Indian pony beneath him had the bottom to carry him all the way to Deadwood.

Chapter 45

11 September 1876

Crook Heard From.

CHEYENNE, September 11—General Crook has been heard from under date of the 2nd. He has followed- the trail to the Little Missouri without finding any Indians. The trail was found to split in several directions. Crook thinks the southern band may have moved backward toward the mountains, and he is somewhat apprehensive for his wagon train. It is expected that he will move in that direction.

When Baptiste Pourier led Crook and the rest of the column away from that miserable bivouac on the morning of the eleventh, John Finerty climbed stiffly into the saddle and shivered almost uncontrollably, not knowing if he could ever again count on being warm and dry.

In the early light of dawn Lieutenant Von Leuttwitz had awakened from a feverish nightmare that convinced him his leg had been exhumed from its grave by the hostiles, who desecrated it. Crook dispatched Captain Julius Mason with a small battalion of Carr’s Fifth Cavalry to take their backtrail to the destroyed village.

As the rest of the command began to climb south by west up the muddy slopes, the cavalrymen mounted on their horses began fo press at the rear of the infantry, where a good-natured banter began to fly back and forth between the men.

Upon passing some of the foot soldiers, a trooper turned and leaned down from his saddle, asking one of the infantrymen, “Casey, old man! How are your corns this fine morning? Tell me, now—is it fine walking? Wouldn’t you rather be riding a fine horse like this one?”

With a snort of derision the old soldier answered in his peatiest brogue, “To hell wid your harse, I say! And g’won wid you too, you weak-brained idjit! Why, we’re gonna walk your harse off his four legs and then we’ll eat him!”

Above them that dawn the very heights of the chalk-colored buttes blocking their path remained shrouded in a thick fog that rained a cold and constant drizzle down on the men and animals. Up, up they climbed, most of the cavalry forced to dismount and drag their horses behind them, inching back and forth to switchback their way upward into the numbing mist, strung out in a long single column snaking its way into the clouds across the face of the pine-dotted escarpment.

Finally at midmorning they stood on the southern edge of the jagged cliffs and looked down upon the great endless prairie as barren as the surface of the moon. Finerty could see nothing on the foggy horizon that would inspire hope. Nothing like the dark and jagged outline of the Black Hills. Down, down Big Bat led them, Crook’s men dropping once more into the muddy wilderness. Their only choice was to push on, or lie down and die right there.

By noon the drizzle had ballooned into sheets of rain as the head of the column reached a formation called Clay Ridge. Again there was no way to detour east or west. As they climbed into the badlands and skirted what they could of the narrow ravines and coulees cut by centuries of erosion, the horses and mules slipped and stumbled crossing the naked, muddy slopes with men on their backs. And when the soldiers climbed down from the saddles, they found their boots sinking in the sticky gumbo that refused to release them, tiring out the weary men as they continued to plod forward lugging up more than a pound of prairie with every step—climbing and descending, climbing and descending all the more, marching ever southward, following what had to be an old Indian trail, if nothing more than a game trail.

Just when Finerty felt his lungs could take no more, just when he was certain the burning muscles in his legs would not last another step, those foot soldiers marching in the vanguard of the cavalry reached a sheer ledge. By the time the newsman got to the ledge, he looked out and feared for the worst—unable to see a thing. Peering into the mists and dancing sheets of rain that obscured the prairie below them, it appeared the whole world had been swallowed up by the sky. Then John caught a glimpse of the faint blue column a hundred yards below and to the left. The infantry at the head of the column was descending slowly, disappearing into the maw of a gray cloud bank.