Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (33 page)

Up and down the line the green, uninitiated soldiers
completed that same mechanical process in the midst of the rifle fire and cursing, sure that this horse-work had to be part of some mystical ritual in preparation for battle.

It won’t hurt
, some of them thought.
Won’t hurt at all to do just what the veterans do.

“Bugler!” Custer called to Sergeant Voss. “’Boots and Saddles’! To horse, men!”

“Seventh Cavalry! Prepare to mount!” Cooke shouted after Voss blew his command.

Up and down the columns came the rattle of carbine and bit chain.

“Cooke! Get back to Keogh and Jimmy—have them hold the hillside for a bit more; then have them to break it off and follow, guarding the rear of our march. We’re going into the village!”

“The village, General?” Cooke gasped.

“There,” Custer pointed down the coulee at the tiny sliver of river they could see between the sides of the mouth.

“To the river, General.”

“And, Billy,” he barely whispered. “Tell them both to keep an eye on our backsides. What with all the new boys—see that we aren’t cut up from behind until I have our position in the village assured.”

“Rear guard, sir. Right. Until Benteen and McDougall come up.”

He slapped a hand on Cooke’s broad shoulder, staring up into the Canadian’s handsome face. “You got it, soldier. Let’s ride!”

Cooke twisted round in the saddle to fling his voice back at the columns of dusty blue. “Mount!”

Stretching up the neck of the Upper Medicine Tail Coulee, sergeants bawled their commands. “MOUNT!”

“We’re riding down on ’em, boys!”

“MOUNT!”

“By God—it’s what we’ve waited for!”

“MOUNT!”

“—right into hell if we have to!”

Behind those hundred twenty odd voices rustled and squeaked saddle leather as the troops pushed into their
McClellans and steadied their snorting, wide-eyed horses. It wasn’t only the smell of water nearby that made the animals skittish. They must have sensed the growing tension in the air, felt that unfamiliar rigidity of the riders atop their backs. In some way those big, muscular horses knew the moment was at hand.

What they had been trained to do would now be put to the test.

Custer smiled grimly as he heard that reassuring sound of men and animals merging into one four-legged, double-fisted fighting machine.

His dust-reddened eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his big hat, he peered down the coulee at that narrow sliver of river.

The crossing, Autie. Just make it to the crossing.…

Down below was the ford where he could cross into the village, thereby drawing pressure from Reno in hopes that his five companies could push the warriors back. He had practiced the maneuver enough during the war, just the way his instructors at the academy had drilled it into his head. Just as the great Clausewitz had written. Indeed, all those great European masters of tactical warfare had preached the same thing.

You pinch an army at its waist, or better yet—nail an enemy’s feet to the ground while you battered its head.

Too late now to pinch the village at its waist
, Custer realized.

All that was left for him to do to save this campaign—and his destiny—was to hope that Reno occupied the Sioux downstream while his own five companies flailed at the head of the enemy camps. He sensed that head was right down this coulee at the ford of the Little Bighorn.

To do what he hoped would require fast action from both McDougall and Benteen. If there was the slightest delay by either one, his five companies would be swallowed—

“Mr. Cooke: troops—front into line!” he bellowed back at Cooke and the rest, Vic prancing round and round in a tight circle, her master tall in the stirrups, hat waving. “Seventh Cavalry … ahead by column-of-twos …
center guide
—at a gallop!
Forward—ho!
”

Mitch Bouyer heard Custer bellow the command, but he sat a moment watching as the soldiers burst away at a hand gallop. It had to be one thing or another, the half-breed scout decided.

Seeing the general’s brother riding past, the half-breed heeled his Crow pony into motion, galloping alongside Tom.

“Bouyer!” young Custer hollered out, a wolf-slash smile cutting his face above the pointed blond beard.

“I tell you what I think of your brother.”

Tom’s smile disappeared. “What!”

“Either Custer’s insane, or he’s bent on committing suicide.”

“You bastard!”

“And he’s just mad enough to take a couple hundred men with him straight into hell.”

“I swear you’ll get—”

“Tom!” Custer shouted from the head of the columns, waving to bring his brother up beside him as they ground out of the upper Medicine Tail and down onto a flat leading toward the lower coulee that would take them directly to the river ford.

“For Reno … it can only be a footrace now!” he yelled at his younger brother when Tom reached his side.

“There’s no fight left in the man!”

“We’re going to attack with everything we have. Remember. Should anything happen—I’m counting on you. Always have, Tom.”

“I know—”

“Hush!” Custer commanded. “Get back to Keogh and Calhoun. Remind them I’m counting on them too—to support the rear of the command. Whatever they do—guard our rear!”

As they raced into the neck of the lower Medicine Tail, the ford came into view. Beyond the river, over on the west bank, stood hundreds upon hundreds of lodges.

“May God have mercy on our souls, Autie!” Tom whispered under his breath as he yanked his horse around in a haunch-sliding circle that took him up the sharp side of the coulee. He kicked savagely at the animal so he could
spur back to give Keogh and Calhoun Autie’s message. They must know they were in charge of protecting the rear flank of Autie’s wild, hopeful charge into the village.

“May God have mercy on our souls!” he repeated to himself, remembering those were the same words he whispered to himself before every battle of the Civil War, before every wild charge into the face of enemy grapeshot and minié balls.

May God have mercy on our souls!

With the Gatling-gun pounding of iron-shod hoofs, the three companies hammered down the last few yards of the Medicine Tail, accompanied only by the whine of dry leather and the harsh jangle of bit and crupper. Carbines cried out like tired wagon springs as they were yanked from their scabbards.

And above the leader whipped that proud banner: the blood crimson and summer-sky blue crossed by a pair of silver white sabers. Custer wanted the Sioux to know Peoushi—the Long Hair—had arrived.

F
EW
of the
wasichu
scouts and soldiers riding into Miniconjou ford had any idea how frighteningly accurate were the scouts’ predictions of the strength of the Sioux village across the river.

Custer himself knew of the venal Indian agents falsifying their counts on official reports sent to Washington City to assure an uninterrupted westward flow of goods and annuities. Yet in that summer of 1876, the army could only begin to guess how far the agents would go to cover their tracks.

Instead of nine thousand six hundred ten Indians residing that summer at the Spotted Tail Agency, there were in reality only two thousand three hundred fifteen.

The rest were gone visiting friends and relatives in that great summer encampment along the Greasy Grass.

Instead of twelve thousand eight hundred seventy-three at Red Cloud, there were only four thousand seven hundred sixty.

Down at Cheyenne River only two thousand two hundred eighty instead of seven thousand five hundred eighty-six.
And over at Standing Rock, where there should have been seven thousand three hundred twenty-two Sioux that summer, all but two thousand three hundred five had left to join Sitting Bull.

The warriors were gathering, their souls burning for the fight of Bull’s mighty vision. Still they came, more warriors and families had arrived each day to join up until this greatest of all villages stretched for more than three miles up and down the valley of the Pa-zees-la-wak-pa.

Already better than fifteen thousand joyous celebrants sharing the old life in the valley of the Greasy Grass this last week of the
Moon When Chokecherries Grow Ripe
. Using the ages-old means of counting three warriors of fighting age for every one of those two thousand lodges, a man could easily see how any soldier’s bowels could pucker to consider that in that camp slept, ate, danced, and courted something between forty-five hundred and six thousand warriors ready to carry arms against any invading army.

And of those, better than half were seasoned, hardened veterans of plains warfare.

Not only the veterans—every fighting male snarled for a fight. Every one with a father, brother, uncle, or cousin who had been killed by the soldiers. In every male boiled blood hot for those soldiers destined by the Dream to ride down on their camp circles. For if any army was brazen and foolish enough to march down on this greatest of all gatherings in Lakota history, this epic encampment would be the last sight to greet their terrified, death-glazed white eyes.

In those few days it had taken them to cross the divide after fighting Red Beard Crook, the Sioux learned of another army in the country. Scouts had seen the Fireboat-That-Walks-on-Water up on the Yellowstone for days now. Some had even noticed the dust of a large compliment of soldiers marching on the Rosebud where Crazy Horse had scattered Red Beard’s forces a few days earlier.

And now on this balmy evening a crippled and leathery old Sans Arc village crier hobbled through his camp. As white men reckoned with time, it was a Saturday, the
twenty-fourth of June, in the year of 1876. The crier’s high, reedy voice sang out that unthinkable news.

“Soldiers are coming, people! Heed my words! The Dream says it is so. Soldiers come with tomorrow’s sun!”

Neither the Sans Arc nor any other camp circle paid the old man any heed. Surely Crook or any other soldier-chief wouldn’t be crazy enough to attack so large a gathering. It would be unthinkable. Yet more than a few did remember the details of Bull’s vision.

The soldiers would fall into camp almost as if committing suicide.

Others had heard that scouts reported seeing dust clouds on the divide. Some saw trails of iron-shod hoofprints.

That afternoon leaders of the various bands decided it best to post camp sentries on those ridges and bluffs east of the river to prevent any glory-seeking young warriors from dashing headlong out of camp to hunt down soldiers. If an army was indeed coming to fight the Sioux, then let those pony soldiers march all the way into the camps as Sitting Bull had foretold.

No warrior had the right to capture glory for himself by striking the first coup and ruining The Bull’s vision. Instead, the old men wanted this to be a battle to cloak the entire nation in glory and honor.

By sundown that warm Saturday evening, camp guards rode along the bony ridges east of the Greasy Grass like the spine of a sway-backed old mare. Soldiers were coming. Everyone knew. The words sat on every lip. Nervous and impatient, the Sioux and Cheyenne would have to wait for the army to ride down on their camps.

Up at the northern end of that village in the Cheyenne camp, four young warriors announced they would sacrifice themselves during the coming battle with the pony soldiers. As twilight settled over their Goat River, a dance and celebration got under way for Little Whirlwind, Close Hand, Cut Belly, and Noisy Walking. This was to be their last night on earth. Their last night among friends, they boasted before everyone in camp. Tomorrow they would give their lives in battle.

As the sun sank like a red-earth ache behind the distant
Bighorn Mountains, a solitary figure slogged out of the river on foot, trudging up that slope at the far northern end of the long ridge. Up from the fragrant thickets of crabapple and plum and wild rose, he climbed into the tall grass and wild buffalo peas. Not a one of the posted camp guards challenged the lone Hunkpapa chief come here to sing his thunder songs and pray for guidance now that his great vision was about to see fulfillment.

With a purple sky deepening to black out of the east, this short, squat man left behind little bags of tobacco and red-willow bark, each bag tied to a short peeled willow shaft he had jammed into the ground near the crest of that hill at the northern end of the pony-back ridge. His powerful thunder medicine told him that here on this most hallowed ground, the last desperate fight would take place.

Here on the knoll, Sitting Bull prayed his final blessing for those
wasichu
soldier souls soon to be sacrificed, given to propitiate the Great Powers of the mighty Lakota nations.

Dawn of the next day stretched over the valley of the Greasy Grass, and with the first pale light to the east along the brown, hoary caps of the Wolf Mountains, a high, shrieking death wail erupted through the sleepy Hunkpapa camp.

Four Horns, the wife of Sitting Bull’s uncle, had died as this new day was born.

Filled not only with grief but with a renewed awe at the mysterious workings of the Great Powers, The Bull knew this woman’s death presaged the great victory of his dream.

Far back into the memory of any of the old ones, it had been told that with the death of the wife of an important man would come a momentous event.

Sitting Bull closed his eyes and prayed again for those blessings he had asked on the hill above the river. From that very knoll the soldiers would see the entire village spread before them.

From that dry, grassy crest the troopers would see why the powerful Wakan Tanka had turned them over to the fury of the Sioux.

*           *           *

Farther north in the Oglalla camp, a Canadian half-breed who spoke passable English sat at a smoky dawn fire, refusing to lay his head down for sleep. Unlike most of the warriors, who had gone to their robes just before dawn, this nameless one sat staring into those yellow licks of flame darting along the dry cottonwood limbs, sensing the portent of some great event. What stirred him most already this cool gray morning was the strange behavior of Crazy Horse.