Wolf Mountain Moon Read Free Page B

wind tumbling across the icy crust of the snow. That, and the thoughts tumbling through his head.
    So quiet was it out here that he could dwell on Sam and the boy. Out here where the mind had far too much time to think, and the heart had far too much time to ache.
    He was a man being paid well to do a dangerous job, Seamus reminded himself, and yanked the wolf-hide hat down against the stiffening wind. No doubt that he had made sure his little family was taken care of with army scrip … whether or not he returned to them from this lonely journey. This was simply a job too good for a husband, a father, a family man to pass up.
    Just the sort of man the army might look for when it needed a fool to set off on a fool’s errand.
    Fool or not … Seamus loved Sam and their boy more than he loved life itself.
    * The Yellowstone River.
    â€  Devil’s Tower

Chapter 1
26 October-3 November 1876

    S itting Bull had given him the slip again.
    There wasn’t much that could gall Nelson A. Miles the way that did.
    After he had managed to stay right behind the warrior bands he’d flushed and fought at Cedar Creek, * nearly all the Sioux leaders had given up their flight—some even turning themselves over to the soldier chief as hostages in good faith that their followers would return to their reservations. The arrival of supply wagons on Thursday, 26 October, ultimately convinced chiefs like Pretty Bear and Lame Red Skirt, Bull Eagle and Small Bear, even White Bull and Foolish Thunder, to give up rather than cause their people to suffer the continued harassment of the Bear Coat’s “walk-a-heaps.”
    But not Sitting Bull.
    The irascible Hunkpapa had managed once again to elude his white nemesis when he splintered off from the other Lakota leaders, taking no more than thirty lodges with him across Bad Route Creek to sneak away, slipping down the north bank of the Yellowstone while the soldiers were in hotpursuit of the greater part of that village continuing to flee south from Miles’s Fifth Infantry.
    At first, however, despite the walk-a-heaps’ harassment, the bands remained committed to their traditional philosophy of fighting and fleeing, which enabled them to hunt buffalo and live their lives in the manner of their grandfathers. The best Miles could manage was to get them to say they would talk a bit.
    Which suited the colonel just fine … for the moment. In the meantime he had ordered his train of empty wagons on east those twenty-four miles to the Glendive Cantonment for supplies.
    By the time that supply train returned, carrying enough rations to permit the Fifth Infantry to continue its chase another twenty days, Miles’s hunch had paid off in a big way: those wagons had indeed proved to be the straw that broke the will of the Northern Sioux to resist.
    When they came to the army’s camp to talk terms of surrender, Lame Red Skirt and the other Miniconjou chiefs repeated their assertions that their people lacked clothing for a long winter’s march; besides, their horses were far too poor to make the journey—yet they vowed their intention of going in to the agencies.
    â€œLook upon my wagons,” Miles explained to the headmen through his interpreters. “With my supplies I can follow you wherever you attempt to go.”
    The dark eyes of those Lakota seated in council with Miles regarded the wagons filled to the gunwales with boxes and barrels and kegs of supplies. They could see for themselves that the soldiers were dressed warmly around their fires, their bellies full while the fragrance of frying pork perfumed the winter air … at the same time their people cried out in hunger, suffered with the cold as the season advanced and the creekbanks began to rime with ice.
    Miles had them just where he wanted them. But now that they were ready to surrender, he damn well couldn’t take the massive village back to Tongue River Cantonment with him. There