Read Online Wolf Mountain Moon by Terry C. Johnston - Free Book Online Page A

the column was damn well caught with its pants down watching this river crossing.
    â€œFall in!” Miles shouted through the gloves he cupped round his mouth. His red face showed his frustration and growing anger. “Fall in, dammit!”
    Captain Ewers shouted, “Assembly, General?”
    â€œDamn right,” the colonel replied, cupping his hands to hurl his voice at the north shore once again. “Bugler—sound assembly. Look lively! Look lively, now!”
    Confined as they were to their position on the river below the steep banks, Baldwin could see nothing beyond those soldiers right on the bank, men darting here and there to begin forming up company by company, their lieutenants and sergeants barking orders before the first outfits started scrambling up the shelf onto the prairie itself, where another shot rang out just then.
    Just one. Still no general firing, no yelps and war whoops. Yet Baldwin knew those cries of battle could come at any minute when the warriors swooped down on the main body of the Fifth.
    But as quickly as the first shot had surprised them all, the first half-dozen soldiers onto the prairie turned back against the flow of the hundreds, waving their arms, shrieking above the panic as they split the ranks to trot down among the general’s nervous staff onshore. In less than a minute Bailey was at the water’s edge, shouting out to the raft.
    â€œWhat’s he say?” Miles demanded of the men around him.
    Baldwin repeated, “Bailey’s saying it’s only a false alarm, General.”
    â€œNo Indians?” Pope inquired.
    â€œSays it was elk,” Frank explained with a wag of his head. “One of the pickets started shooting at a herd of goddamned elk.”
    â€œWho announced that it was Indians?” Miles growled.
    â€œSome nervous Nelly,” Baldwin said, then chuckled. “General, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in that man’s shoes when you get your hands on him!”
    â€œDamn right,” Miles growled. “Here we are without weapons, at the mercy of this blessed river—”
    The raft suddenly convulsed against the powerful current, shifting a little more to the side as it came around and stopped—even more firmly locked against the snag.
    As the following minutes rolled by, the men found their raft beginning slowly to list even more to one side in the ice-laden current, forcing more of the slushy river over the sides of their raft, pushing a swirl of bitterly cold water up to froth around their knees. Clinging to the ropes for their lives, the soldiers began to shiver, their teeth chattering as Baldwin and Pope shouted back and forth to those on the north bank.
    It wasn’t long before some of the men in Wyllys Lyman’s I Company had the canvas-covered wagon-box boat down the shore and into the water, a complement of soldiers kneeling inside at the gunwales, using army spades as paddles. Again, sheer muscle was pitted against the growing strength of the river’s frightening ice floes. As the rescuers bobbed close, one of Baldwin’s soldiers tossed the end of their longest section of rope to those in the wagon box. Lyman’s men promptly tied it off before the wagon boat was carried on across the Missouri’s current.
    Struggling against the powerful current and the battering of the huge grating ice chunks, the soldiers from I Company finally paddled their way to the south shore, where Private Thomas Kelly leaped over the gunwale and waded through the chilling water that boiled up to his armpits, dodging hunks of ice to clamber eventually onto a section of solid ice. Once there, he crabbed onto the bank. On firm footing at last, Kelly shook himself like a dog before his trembling hands fought to tie off the other end of the long rope around a cottonwood of generous girth.
    That task completed, the men of I Company pulled themselves to the south bank, where several of the soldiers