Terrorized by the lightning, the buffalo stampeded past the men in a wet, dense river of flesh that flowed around the rocks on both sides. They were all spattered by copious quantities of mud; for Johnson, it was a peculiar sensation, in that “the mud covered our clothing, our hair, our faces, and we grew heavier as we became transformed into mud-men, until finally we were all bowed over by the immense weight of it.”
They eventually could see nothing, and could only listen to the thundering hooves, the snorting and grunting, as the dark shapes hurtled past them, ceaselessly. It seemed as if it went on forever.
In fact, the herd had stampeded past them, without interruption, for two hours.
Johnson awoke, his body stiff and aching. He was unable to open his eyes. He touched his face, felt the hard caked mud, and peeled it away.
“I was greeted by a sight of utter desolation,” he later recalled, “as if a hurricane or a whirlwind had struck us. There was only choppy mud as far as the eye could see, and our pitiful human party picking their way through it. Whatever of our camp outfit had been protected by the rocks was safe; everything else was gone. Two tents trampled into the mud so deeply we could not locate them in the morning; heavy pots and cook pans dented and twisted by the passage of thousands of hooves; tattered fragments of a yellow shirt; a carbine shattered and bent.”
They were greatly discouraged, particularly George Morton, who seemed to be in profound shock. Cookie argued to turn back, but as usual Cope was indomitable. “I am not here to excavate trifling possessions from mud,” he said. “I am here to excavate prehistoric bones.”
“Yes,” Cookie said. “If you ever get there.”
“We will.” He ordered them to break camp and pull out.
Little Wind was particularly grim. He said something to Cope, and then galloped off to the north.
“Where’s he going?” George Morton asked in alarm.
“He doesn’t believe the buffalo stampeded because of lightning,” Cope said. “He says they don’t do that.”
“I’ve known ’em to do it,” Isaac said, “in Wyoming. Stupid and unpredictable, buffalo are.”
“But what else could it be?” Morton said, still alarmed. “What does he think?”
“He thinks he heard gunshots just before the stampede began. He is going to look.”
“He’s going to contact his fellow red men,” Isaac muttered, “and tell them where to find some nice white scalps.”
“I think it’s all ridiculous,” Morton said petulantly. “I think we should give it up and stop these wild chases.”
The shock of the stampede must have unnerved him, Johnson thought. He watched Morton poke through the mud, looking for his sketch pad.
Little Wind was gone an hour, and he came back riding hard.
“One camp,” he said, pointing north. “Two men, two or three ponies. One fire. No tent. Many rifle shells.” He opened his hand, and a cascade of copper jackets tumbled down in the sunlight.
“Well, I’ll be!” Sternberg said.
“It’s Marsh’s men,” Cope said grimly.
“Did you see them?” Morton asked.
Little Wind shook his head. “Left many hours.”
“Which way did they go?”
Little Wind pointed east. The same direction they were going.
“Then we’ll come across them again,” Cope said. He clenched his fists. “I’d enjoy that.”
Badlands
The Judith River, a tributary of the Missouri, flowed from the Little Belt Mountains and connected with large creeks in a confusing meander of waterways.
“There’s damn good trout in those waters,” said Cookie. “Not that I expect we will be fishing.”
The Judith River basin itself consisted of badlands, rocky outcrops that formed, for the eye, into mysterious shapes, demons and dragons. A place of gargoyles, said Toad.
Toad’s arm was now swollen and red; he complained of pain. Sternberg said privately he thought Toad would have to be sent back to Fort Benton, where the army surgeon could amputate his arm with the benefit of whiskey and a bone saw. But nobody mentioned it to Toad.
The scale of the rock formations in the Judith badlands was enormous; great cliffs—Cope called them “exposures”—reaching hundreds of feet into the air, in places towering more than a thousand feet above them. With pastel bands of pink and black rock, the land had a stark and desolate beauty. But it was a harsh land: there was little water nearby, and it was mostly brackish, alkaline, poisonous. “Hard to believe this was a great inland lake, surrounded by swamps,” Cope said, staring at the soft sculpted rock. Cope always seemed to see more than the others did. Cope and also Sternberg: the tough fossil hunter had the practiced eye of a plains explorer; he always seemed to know where to find game and water.
“We’ll have water enough here,” he predicted. “It won’t be the water that troubles us. It’ll be the dust.”
There was indeed an alkaline bite in the air, but the others did not mind it so much. Their immediate problem was to find a campsite near a suitable place for excavation, and this was no mean task. Moving the wagons over the terrain—there were no wagon trails here—was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.
They were also nervous about Indians, because they saw plenty of signs around them: pony tracks, abandoned cook fires, the occasional antelope carcass. Some of the cook fires looked recent, but Sternberg professed complete indifference. Even the Sioux weren’t crazy enough to stay in the badlands for long. “Only a crazy white man’d spend all summer here,” he laughed. “And only a crazy, rich white man would spend his vacation here!” He slapped Johnson on the back.
For two days they pushed the wagons up hills and braced them down hills, until finally Cope announced that they were in a suitable bone region, and they could make camp at the next good site they found. Sternberg suggested the top of the nearby rise, and they pushed the wagons up a final time, coughing in the dust of the wheels. Toad, unable to help because of his swollen arm, said, “Do you smell fire?” but no one did.
As they came to the top of the rise, they had a view over the plains and a meandering stream, with cottonwoods growing alongside it. And stretching as far as they could see were white teepees, each with a thin column of smoke issuing from them.
“My God,” Sternberg said. He quickly estimated the number.
“What do you make it?” Isaac said.
“I make it more’n a thousand teepees. My God,” Sternberg said again.
“I am persuaded,” said Isaac, “that we are dead men.”
“I reckon,” said Cookie Hill. He spat on the ground.
Sternberg didn’t think so. The question was what tribe of Indians they were. If they were Sioux, then Isaac was right; they were as good as dead. But the Sioux were supposed to still be farther south.
“Who cares where they’re supposed to be?” Cookie said. “They’re here, and so are we. It’s that Little Weasel, he led us here—”