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

In Lieutenant Bubb’s absence the chief butcher and his men had to answer the demands of almost two thousand ravenous soldiers and civilians, expertly dividing what they were given each night in the way of ponies to be slaughtered for supper. This night the butcher stood there in his blood-crusted woolens, shaking his gleaming knife at a dark-skinned Mexican prospector up from the southern border of Texas, one of Major Stanton’s Montana Volunteers. In a spicy blend of two languages the Mexican threatened the butcher for killing a Sioux pony the volunteer had had his eye on and was anxious to save for his very own use once the expedition broke up back at Fort Laramie.

Back and forth they argued, the chief butcher brandishing his big and very lethal knife, the Mexican pounding his chest with one hand and provocatively wagging his gun in the other until Lieutenant Colonel Carr stepped in and broke it up. Scattering the curious spectators, Carr turned on the volunteer.

“Go on now. Get back to your camp and cause no more problems tonight, or I’ll see you put under arrest and thrown in irons at the first military reservation we come to!”

With menace in his dark eyes, the sullen Mexican turned about, intending to take up the reins to the Indian pony he had ridden up to the commissary, the same Sioux pony he had been riding since the capture of the enemy’s herd.

“Dios!” he exclaimed, shoving his shapeless hat back on his brow. “Dónde … where is my horse?”

Up stepped four of the butcher’s assistants. The first flung down a frayed bridle at the civilian’s feet. The second dropped an old and tattered saddle blanket into the mud. Then the grinning third dropped a scarred and much-used saddle atop the filthy blanket. And the final butcher’s assistant stopped in front of the Mexican to hold out a long, thick strip of fed meat on the end of his huge butcher knife.

“Your pony?” the assistant asked. “Why, mister—General Merritt told us we needed just one more horse to make enough provisions for tonight’s mess. Saw yours standing right there. Closest to commissary … so we knew you wouldn’t mind.”

The volunteer began to sputter in that heated blend of English and Mexican, mad enough to spit nails when Carr once more stepped between him and the butchers.

The lieutenant colonel tore the lean meat off the butcher’s knife and slapped it into the Mexican’s hands. “Looks like this is your ration for the night. I’d suggest you go cook that steak before it goes bad on you.”

Chapter 46

12 September 1876

The worst was yet to come.

When the men rose stiffly that Tuesday morning, no one had any idea what awaited them as they morosely stood around the smoky fires in that darkness before dawn and tried to warm themselves in what soul-robbing fog and mist clung to the banks of Owl Creek.

This was to be the day strong men reached the end of their ropes and lay down to die in the mud beside that endless trail crossing an unforgiving wilderness.

No sooner had Crook given his command for the column to form up than the rain moved in, starting gently at first but within an hour falling in such solid sheets that a man had to hunch his shoulders up and turn sideways against the force of the storm, just the way horses and mules would turn their rumps against a howling norther. Lumbering into the gales, the infantry led out at four A.M., Clements’s train of wounded in their midst, each one grumbling in his own private misery beneath the onslaught of Mother Nature’s worst. An hour behind them the cavalry set out. Nearly two of every three troopers were already afoot, stumbling along through the thickening quagmire beside those in their company still mounted on the bony horses.

Under Crook’s orders Major John J. Upham selected 150 men from the Fifth Cavalry, all mounted on the best of the captured ponies, to follow up that lodgepole trail they had crossed the day before. Given the limited rations the commissary could provide from its dwindling supplies— two ounces of dried buffalo meat per man, a few coffee beans, and what pony meat each soldier had managed to save from last night’s supper—Upham’s troopers disappeared into the mist, heading south by east down Avol Creek toward Bear Butte.

With the old arrow wound stiffening his shoulder in a hot pain, Charles King watched his friends leave, gratified that his horse, Donnybrook, wasn’t deemed strong enough to go with Upham’s patrol. Nonetheless, he was still very much perplexed and confused by Crook’s decision to send out that scouting party.