On my return from the agency, the Fifth Cavalry was sent out to scout the country between there and the Black Hills. We operated along the south fork of the Cheyenne and about the foot of the Black Hills for two weeks, and had several small engagements with roving bands of Indians during that time.
All these bands were ugly and belligerent, and it was plain from the spirit they showed that there had been a general understanding among all the redskins thereabout that the time had come to drive the white man from the country.
Brevet-General Wesley Merritt, who had lately received his promotion to the colonelcy of the Fifth Cavalry, now took command of the regiment. I regretted that the command had been taken from General Carr. I was fond of him personally, and it was under him that the regiment made its fine reputation as a fighting organization. I soon became well acquainted with General Merritt, however, and found him to be a brave man and an excellent officer.
The regiment did continuous and hard scouting. We soon believed we had driven all the hostile Indians out of that part of the country. In fact, we were starting back to Fort Laramie, regarding the business at hand as finished, when a scout arrived at our camp and reported the ma.s.sacre of General Custer and his whole force on the Little Big Horn.
This ma.s.sacre occurred June 25, 1876, and its details are known, or ought to be known, by every schoolboy. Custer was a brave, dashing, headlong soldier, whose only fault was recklessness.
He had been warned many times never to expose a small command to a superior force of Indians, and never to underestimate the ability and generalship of the Sioux. He had unbounded confidence, however, in himself and his men, and I believe that not until he was struck down did he ever doubt that he would be able to cut his way out of the wall of warriors about him and turn defeat into a glorious and conspicuous victory.
The news of the ma.s.sacre, which was the most terrible that ever overtook a command of our soldiers, was a profound shock to all of us.
We knew at once that we would all have work to do, and settled grimly into the preparations for it.
Colonel Stanton, who was with the Fifth Cavalry on this scout, had been sent to the Red Cloud Agency two days before. That night a message came from him that eight hundred warriors had left the agency to join Sitting Bull on the Little Big Horn. Notwithstanding instructions to proceed immediately by way of Fort Fetterman to join Crook, General Merritt took the responsibility of endeavoring to intercept the Cheyennes and thereby performed a very important service.
For this job the general selected five hundred men and horses. In two hours we were making a forced march back to War Bonnet Creek. Our intention was to reach the Indian trail running to the north across this watercourse before the Cheyennes could get there. We arrived the next night.
At daylight the next morning, July 17, I proceeded ahead on a scout. I found that the Indians had not yet crossed the creek. On my way back to the command I discovered a large party of Indians. I got close enough to observe them, and they proved to be Cheyennes, coming from the south. With this information. I hurried back to report.
The cavalrymen were ordered to mount their horses quietly and remain out of sight, while General Merritt, accompanied by two or three aides and myself, went on a little tour of observation to a neighboring hill.
From the summit of this we saw the Indians approaching almost directly toward us. As we stood watching, fifteen or twenty of them wheeled and dashed off to the west, from which direction we had come the night before.
Searching the country to see what it was which had caused this unexpected maneuver, we observed two mounted soldiers approaching us on the trail. Obviously they were bearing dispatches from the command of General Merritt.
It was clear that the Indians who had left their main body were intent on intercepting and murdering these two men. General Merritt greatly feared that they would accomplish this purpose. How to aid them was a problem. If soldiers were sent to their a.s.sistance, the Indians would observe the rescuers, and come to the right conclusion that a body of troops was lying in wait for them. This of course would turn them back, and the object of our expedition would be defeated.
The commander asked me if I had any suggestions.
"General," I replied, "why not wait until the scouts get a little nearer? When they are about to charge on the two men, I will take fifteen soldiers, dash down and cut them off from their main body. That will prevent them from going back to report, and the others will fall into our trap."
The general at once saw the possibilities of the scheme. "If you can do that, Cody, go ahead," he said.
I at once rushed back to the command and jumped on my horse.
With fifteen of the best men I could pick in a hurry I returned to the point of observation. I placed myself and my men at the order of General Merritt, and asked him to give me the word at the proper time.
He was diligently studying the country before him with his field-gla.s.ses. When he thought the Indians were as close to the unsuspecting scouts as was safe, he sang out:
"Go on now, Cody, and be quick about it. They are going to charge on the couriers."
The two soldiers were not more than a hundred yards from us. The Indians, now making ready to swoop down, were a hundred yards further on.
We tore over the bluffs and advanced at a gallop. They saw us and gave battle. A running fight lasted for several minutes, during which we drove them back a fairly safe distance and killed three of their number.
The main body of the Cheyennes had now come into plain sight, and the men who escaped from us rode back toward it. The main force halted when its leaders beheld the skirmish, and seemed for a time at a loss as to what was best to do.
We turned toward General Merritt, and when we had made about half the distance the Indians we had been chasing suddenly turned toward us and another lively skirmish took place.
One of the Indians, who was elaborately decorated with all the ornaments usually worn by a great chief when he engaged in a fight, saw me and sang out:
"I know you, Pa-ho-has-ka! Come and fight with me!"
The name he used was one by which I had long been known by the Indians.
It meant Long-Yellow-Hair.
The chief was riding his horse to and fro in front of his men, in order to banter me. I concluded to accept his challenge. I turned and galloped toward him for fifty yards, and he rode toward me about the same distance. Both of us rode at full speed. When we were only thirty yards apart I raised my rifle and fired. His horse dropped dead under him, and he rolled over on the ground to clear himself of the carca.s.s.
Almost at the same instant my own horse stepped into a hole and fell heavily. The fall hurt me but little, and almost instantly I was on my feet. This was no time to lie down and nurse slight injuries. The chief and I were now both on our feet, not twenty paces apart. We fired at each other at the same instant. My usual luck held. His bullet whizzed harmlessly past my head, while mine struck him full in the breast.
He reeled and fell, but I took no chances. He had barely touched the ground, when I was upon him, knife in hand, and to make sure of him drove the steel into his heart.
This whole affair, from beginning to end, occupied but little time. The Indians, seeing that I was a little distance from my pony, now came charging down upon me from the hill, in the hope of cutting me off.
General Merritt had witnessed the duel, and, realizing the danger I was in, ordered Colonel Mason with Company K to hurry to my rescue. This order came none too soon. Had it been given one minute later two hundred Indians would have been upon me, and this present narration would have had to be made by some one else. As the soldiers came up I swung the war-bonnet high in the air and shouted: "The first scalp for Custer!"
It was by this time clear to General Merritt that he could not ambush the Indians. So he ordered a general charge. For a time they made a stubborn resistance, but no eight hundred Indians, or twice that number, for that matter, could make a successful stand against such veteran and fearless fighters as the Fifth Cavalry. They soon came to that conclusion themselves and began a running retreat for the Red Cloud Agency.
For thirty-five miles, over the roughest kind of ground, we drove them before us. Soon they were forced to abandon their spare horses and all the equipment they had brought along. Despite the imminent risk of encountering thousands of other Indians at the Agency, we drove our late adversaries directly into it. No one in our command had any a.s.surance that the Indians gathered there had not gone on the warpath, but little difference that made to us. The Fifth Cavalry, on the warpath itself, would stop at nothing. It was dark when we entered the reservation. All about us we could see the huddling forms of Indians--thousands of them--enough, in fact, to have consummated another Custer ma.s.sacre. But they showed no disposition to fight.
While at the Agency I learned that the Indian I had killed in the morning was none other than Yellow Hand, a son of old Cut Nose, who was a leading chief of the Cheyennes. The old man learned from the members of Yellow Hand"s party that I had killed his son, and sent a white interpreter to me offering four mules in exchange for the young chief"s war-bonnet. This request I was obliged to refuse, as I wanted it as a trophy of the first expedition to avenge the death of Custer and his men.
The next morning we started to join the command of General Crook, which was encamped at the foot of Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains. They had decided to await the arrival of the Fifth Cavalry before proceeding against the Sioux, who were somewhere near the head of the Big Horn River, in a country that was as nearly inaccessible as any of the Western fastnesses. By making rapid marches we reached Crook"s camp on Goose Creek about the third of August.
At this camp I met many of my old friends, among them being Colonel Royal, who had just received his promotion to a lieutenant-colonelcy.
Royal introduced me to General Crook, whom I had never met before, but with whose reputation as an Indian fighter I was of course familiar, as was everybody in the West. The general"s chief guide was Frank Grouard, a half-breed, who had lived six years with Sitting Bull himself, and who was thoroughly familiar with the Sioux and their country.
After one day in camp the whole command pulled out for Tongue River, leaving the wagons behind. Our supplies were carried by a big pack-train. Down the Tongue we marched for two days of hard going, thence westerly to the Rosebud River. Here we struck the main Indian trail leading down-stream. From the size of this trail, which was not more than four days old, we estimated that at least seven thousand Indians, one of the biggest Indian armies ever gathered together, must have gone that way. It was here that we were overtaken by Captain Jack Crawford, widely known East and West as "The Poet Scout." Crawford had just heard of the Custer ma.s.sacre, and had written a very creditable poem upon receipt of the news. His pen was always ready, and he made many epics of the West, many of which are still popular throughout the country.
Jack was a tenderfoot at that time, having lately come to that country.
But he had abundant pluck and courage. He had just brought dispatches to Crook from Fort Fetterman, riding more than three hundred miles through a country literally alive with hostile Indians. These dispatches notified Crook that General Terry was to operate with a large command south of the Yellowstone, and that the two commands would probably consolidate somewhere on the Rosebud. On learning that I was with Crook, Crawford at once hunted me up, and gave me a letter from General Sheridan, announcing his appointment as a scout. He also informed me that he had brought me a present from General Jones, of Cheyenne.
"What kind of a present?" I inquired, seeing no indication of any package about Jack.
"A bottle of whisky!" he almost shouted.
I clapped my hand over his mouth. News that whisky was in the camp was likely to cause a raid by a large number of very dry scouts and soldier men. Only when Jack and I had a.s.sured ourselves that we were absolutely alone did I dare dip into his saddle pockets and pull forth the treasure. I will say in pa.s.sing that I don"t believe there is another scout in the West that would have brought a full bottle of whisky three hundred miles. But Jack was "bone dry." As Crawford refused to join me, and I was never a lone drinker, I invited General Carr over to sample the bottle. We were just about to have a little drink for two when into camp rode young Lathrop, the reporter for the a.s.sociated Press to whom we had given the name of Death Rattler. Death Rattler appeared to have scented the whisky from afar, for he had no visible errand with us. We were glad to have him, however, as he was a good fellow, and certainly knew how to appreciate a drink.
For two or three days the command pushed on, but we did not seem to gain much on the Indians. They apparently knew exactly where we were and how fast we were going, and they moved just as fast as we did.
On the fourth day of our pursuit I rode about ten miles ahead of the command till I came to a hill which gave a fine view of the surrounding country. Mounting this, I searched the hills with my field-gla.s.ses.
Soon I saw a great column of smoke rising about ten miles down the creek. As this cloud drifted aside in the keen wind, I could see a column of men marching beneath it. These I at first believed to be the Indians we were after, but closer study revealed them as General Terry"s soldiers.
I forthwith dispatched a scout who was with me to take this news to Crook. But he had no more than gone when I discovered a band of Indians on the opposite side of the creek and another party of them directly in front of me. For a few minutes I fancied that I had made a mistake, and that the men I had seen under the dust were really Indians after all.
But very shortly I saw a body of soldiers forming a skirmish line. Then I knew that Terry"s men were there, and that the Indians I had seen were Terry"s scouts. These Indians had mistaken me for an Indian, and, believing that I was the leader of a big party, shouted excitedly: "The Sioux are coming." That is why the general threw out the skirmish line I had observed.
General Terry, on coming into the Post, ordered the Seventh Cavalry to form a line of battle across the Rosebud; he also brought up his artillery and had the guns unlimbered for action, doubtless dreading another Custer ma.s.sacre.