Cry of the Hawk

Disgusted, Connor finally gave the order to turn about and begin a march back up the Tongue to find a place with sufficient graze for his sizable herd. On the morning of the eighth, the general again ordered North’s Pawnee out toward the Powder River, while Captain J. L. Humfreville would take his K Company to scout toward the Rosebud under Shad Sweete.

Four hours out, a light rain began to fall. Two hours after that the wind shifted, shouldering out of the north and bringing with it a taste of winter. Within another hour, a wet snow was plastering man and mount alike with a thick coating of ice. They pushed on into the mouth of that storm quickly becoming an early plains blizzard and reached the Rosebud late on the afternoon of the ninth.

After four days of struggling through the blinding, swirling snow, Shad led Captain Humfreville’s men back to Connor’s camp on the eleventh. He reported to a dejected general they had found no sign of the other two wings of the Powder River Expedition.

Yet not more than a handful of hours later North’s Pawnee scouts rode in with news not in the least welcomed by any of Connor’s command. The trackers had run across a large recent encampment of white men. The ground was littered with hundreds of dead horses, some of which had been shot. Most, however, had evidently frozen to death on their picket lines, their carcasses lying as orderly as they were.

North gravely informed Connor, “General, each of those dead horses looked like it had been damned near starved to death before that blizzard came in to finish them off. Animals run hard and not given time to graze or forage. When that norther hit—wasn’t a owl hoot of a chance any one of those mounts had enough fat on its ribs to keep from freezing.”

12

Fall, 1865

“SOME OF THOSE men offered me five dollars for a single tack,” Jonah Hook said in wonder to Shad Sweete. “Even up at Rock Island where most of us was rotting away—never saw a man in that bad a shape.”

“More’n just hunger, Jonah. That bunch of raggedy beggars was lucky to get out of Injun country with their hair.”

“All had to walk out—some of ’em in boots falling apart.”

“Never knew a boot anywhere as good as a Cheyenne moccasin, son.”

For days before the Pawnee scouts had finally discovered the location of the desperate columns, the Walker and Cole battalions had been under a constant state of siege, able to move very little on foot, able to do nothing more than hold back the thousands of Sioux and Cheyenne warriors by judicious use of their mountain howitzers.

“Injuns hate those big wagon-guns,” Shad had explained. “They call them the guns that shoot twice: once when they are fired and a second time when the shell explodes.”

Once he had the demoralized, ragged remnants of the two lost wings rejoined with his own command, General Patrick Connor had turned his force south and returned to Fort Connor on the Powder River to recuperate the men, arriving the last week of September. But the second day of that much-needed recuperation brought an early end to the Powder River Expedition.

“Connor’s madder’n a wet hornet.” Bridger settled in the riverbank shade where Sweete and Hook had been watching the lazy ripples of the murky river.

“Why’s that redheaded Irishman mad now?”

“Got dispatches up from Laramie, Shad.” Bridger sighed. “You remember hearing that wolf-howl days back.”

Hook watched the two old mountain men exchange a mysterious, knowing look.

“Howl like that always means some bad medicine coming, Gabe. Sure didn’t think it’d hit this soon.”

“What’s this you two are saying about a wolf-howl means bad medicine?” Jonah asked.

Sweete looked at Bridger. “We aren’t exactly talking about a real wolf-howl, Jonah.”

“Go ’head and tell the lad,” Bridger prodded.

“It’s downright ghosty, Jonah. A cry of a wolf like what me and Gabe heard few nights back—means only one thing. Spirits. Bad medicine. And a man in his right mind best be getting clear of these parts. Something fearsome always happens after a man hears that ghosty howl. Always has. Always will.”

“Whoa, Shad. You saying that wolf call you two heard some time back meant to tell you those soldiers were starving?”

Sweete shook his head. “I can’t say. Just that as long as we been out here in these mountains and plains, both Gabe and me learned to trust to what the critters tell us. Animal spirits can smell a lot more’n what any of us can.”

“That wolf smelled something bad coming?”

“Like death on the wind,” Sweete replied matter-of-factly. He turned back to Bridger to ask, “What’s doing with Connor?”

The old trapper sighed. “The stiff-necks back in Washington City putting an end to all Injun fighting for a while.”

They both sat upright, but Sweete spoke first. “The devil, you say? What’s the army supposed to do—sit on its thumbs? Dumb idjits, expecting they can talk peace to these war-loving, free-roaming bucks.”