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

All around them on those bluffs rose rocky spires that resembled the sharp pinnacles on houses of worship as they scraped the underbellies of the gray clouds that continued to rain down on them, a geographical formation that prompted Finerty to propose they should rechristen the place Church Spire Range. But such sacred thoughts did not last, pushed aside by the temporal, earthly necessity of putting one foot in front of the other.

Throughout that day more of the army’s mounts gave out, pushed just about as far as they could go without forage. While some of the horses and mules were abandoned, most were shot. At one difficult ravine Finerty watched a trooper ahead of him pull and drag his horse as far as it would go. It shuddered at last and sank to its knees, head lolling to the side as it rolled, its ribby sides heaving.The grim-faced soldier removed the saddle, then knelt beside his mount, yanking up the mule ear on his holster as he patted the horse’s foam-flecked muzzle. After a few moments he finally worked up the courage to fire a single bullet into his old companion’s brain.

Rising from the mud, the trooper gathered kindling and struck a fire before returning to his horse, this time to kneel beside the rear flank, where he cut out a tender steak he then began to roast over the yellow flames in that cold and dreary mist. In the space of a half hour the soldier got to his feet once more, shouldering his carbine to march on, joining the other stragglers at the rear of the column.

It wasn’t long before Crook ordered a short halt, telling Tom Moore to lighten the loads on his pack-mules by burying hundreds of pounds of heavy ammunition. After that they struggled on in desperation across that rugged ground, the wounded in their litters and travois suffering more than any others. All through the day Von Leuttwitz had grumbled in pain, begging his stewards to stop, again pleading with those men from Captain Williams H. Andrews’s I Troop of the Third Cavalry for a pistol he could use to shoot himself. And at every crossing of a tiny stream, at every jolting descent over a narrow ravine, the lieutenant cursed the mules, cursed the nearby troops, cursed the skies and all of creation in two languages.

At midafternoon Baptiste Pourier crossed a fresh and sizable trail of lodgepoles and unshod pony hooves pointing south for the agencies.

“They might be some of them what come back to help American Horse’s people by attacking us,” Bat declared. “Looks like we’re moving them and other camps in for the winter. You wanna follow, General?”

Crook wagged his head, as weary and worn down as any one of his soldiers. “No. We’re going where I can feed these men, where I can recruit more horses—and only then can I continue this campaign.”

As the day wore on, the watchfulness of the rear guard and the flankers on both sides of the column waned, and these weary, starving men lost all fear of attack. It was nothing more than an ordeal, a crucible of survival.

Major Alexander Chambers’s infantry continued to set the pace, and it wasn’t long before they were again outdoing the cavalry that struggled to keep up with their failing mounts. Farther and farther behind, the stragglers strung out in the rear. More and more often one would hear the pop of pistols as the troopers put their horses out of their misery. Then in the midst of all the grumbling and the complaints, Finerty heard a bit of rousing belly laughter erupt among the last of the foot soldiers slogging just ahead of him. He lumbered up to find out what could be so amusing.

“Oh, and for sure,” replied one of the Irish among those infantrymen to Finerty’s inquiry, “we were just laughing at a new joke making its way back along the column.”

John sighed. “Good. I’d be willing to hear anything that could give me a smile right about now.”

The soldier grinned and replied, “This evening we’re going to tell all those big, strong cav’rymen with their big, strong mounts that if Gen’ral Crook marches this expedition long enough and far enough, why—the infantry will eat all their damned harses!”

Farther and farther the column stretched itself out as more and more animals gave out and weary men collapsed by the side of the trail, gasping and begging for a chance to rest. Ahead of them lay a seemingly limitless stretch of wasteland that made the strongest man among them groan with despair. In his mind Finerty fought to describe the scene, to arrange his adjectives just so for his eastern readers. “A ghastly compound of spongy ashes, yielding sand, and soilless, soulless earth, on which even greasewood cannot grow, and sagebrush sickens and dies,” he composed. “The meanest country under the sun.”

But, he laughed to himself—there simply wasn’t any sun.