The Red Hills (15 page)

But he was dead too. Breathing counted breaths. Like a clock running down. Inexorably.

Finally.

Crow clambered away from the cave, up the steep slope into the warmth of the sun. Taking a last look back at the helpless form of Menges.

Some men might have felt pity at that moment. Perhaps even taken out a gun and given their enemy the mercy of a final quick passing.

It was an idea that never occurred for a moment to the man called Crow. Why waste ammunition on a man who you knew was already dead?

He reached his horse and mounted it, heeling it away from the gorge of the Yellowstone River towards the west.

Behind him Silas Menges held on to what was left of his life until sometime in the early hours of the next morning when he slipped from the stones and strangled to death.

Crow finally caught up with Trooper Edward Simpson several days later. A couple of hundred miles south and west of the rotting corpse of Silas Menges.

Custer and his patrol of the Seventh had left Fort Abraham Lincoln in the middle of May and Trooper Edward Simpson had been sent to join the unit shortly after the court-martial. It was the only part of the debt that remained before Crow could begin to think about what he was going to do for whatever portion of his life was left.

It was hard going.

Crow had never seen signs of so many Indians as he saw that early summer in Montana. There were camps, deserted, with clear evidence of hundreds upon hundreds of lodges. Thousands even. He wondered as he rode whether Custer had any idea of the swelling numbers of the Plains Indians preparing to take the field against the pony soldiers for one last great battle before the sun dance ended and the final buffalo was slaughtered.

He'd met Autie Custer. Young boy wonder. Longhaired hero with his fiercely protective and striking wife, Libbie. There was something doomed about Custer, and Crow had never been able to quite put his finger to what it was.

There were also strange links with Crazy Horse. Both men were roughly of an age — neither yet forty. And both men had risen rapidly to become famed leaders of their own people. Yet there the similarities ended and the differences began.

Custer was flamboyant with his flowing hair and exotic uniforms. Always the leader, cutting a dash at the front of every charge. Proud and desperately ambitious for greater honors.

Crazy Horse was also to be seen at the front of every charge, but he wore no bright paint. No eagle-feather headdress.

The higher he rose among the Sioux, the more humble and modest he became.

While Custer was interested only in racing forwards, Crazy Horse wished only to be allowed to remain motionless.

Now Crow could see that destiny was bringing them together.

By June twenty-fifth Crow had tracked Custer's column to close by the Big Horn River. Near to its tributary, the Little Big Horn. Indian signs were so clear that he simply couldn't believe that Custer was going on at the speed he was. Any man in his right mind would have paused and allowed his men time to rest. To gather strength for an attack upon the Sioux and their allies at a time and place of his own choosing. But the grasslands of Montana make any distant observation difficult. You can ride over a bluff and find an army hidden there.

Crow knew well enough that the favorite tactic of Crazy Horse was to lead an enemy along until it was time to close the jaws of the cunning trap.

He was tempted to push his black stallion along faster to try and warn Custer of the possible danger. But he was certain that Autie wouldn't have listened to him. A brother officer had once said about Custer that he would even have queried a command from God Almighty on the Day of Judgment.

But Simpson was there. The last link in the broken chain.

He set spurs to his horse and moved it on through the June evening, trying to catch the fast moving column.

Crow was too late.

It was all very simple.

The Indians were there in a mighty sprawling village away to the west.

Custer came in from the east having further weakened his tired command by splitting it into three, giving part to Reno and part to Benteen. Keeping the main part for himself.

Crow had circled around the tail of the Dakota column of soldiers and managed to get to the bluffs on the south side of the river. Far enough away to be safe.

Close enough to witness.

He saw Reno's men pursue a small number of Indians along the valley at about three in the afternoon of the twenty-sixth. He'd checked the time with his gold hunter watch. Lying flat in the dry grass and staring intently across at the drama.

Outnumbered, the blue-coats straggled their way up across the river and seemed to hold a defensive position on the bluffs, well up-river.

But where was Custer?

Crow watched, his eyes keener than any white man, and realized like a shock of cold water that the General simply didn't know where the main body of the Sioux were. A vast dust cloud hovered away over the hills, showing the village was on the move. God knows there had been enough warning of the numbers of the Indians. But Custer seemed as if he was going on alone.

Along the flank of the low hills opposite. Crow saw the line of men, galloping to the left, kicking up their own curtain of dust. Then there was shooting.

A bugle. Sounding once in the heat of the afternoon.

Gunfire. Crackling across the plains. Puffs of white powder smoke dotting the grass across the valley of the Little Big Horn.

It was over. The smoke and dust obscured what was happening, but Crow knew it was over. Unless Custer managed to reach the top of that steep slope with a reasonable number of his men alive, then it was finished. That was the only chance. Autie had just enough dash and personal courage to attempt it.

Crow wondered whether Crazy Horse had enough cunning to anticipate it.

There was a swirl of action near the rim of the bluff, and a burst of violent shooting.

And after that there was nothing. Silence.

Custer had been first attacked by the Sioux at around four in the afternoon. By five o'clock on the gold hunter, it was over.

There was still shooting at spasmodic intervals over to the right where Crow guessed Reno and possibly Benteen were holding out on the top of the hill.

And then darkness came.

At first light on the morning of June twenty-seventh, Crow walked his stallion down the flat grasslands, and forded the Little Big Horn, out of sight of the soldiers high above him to the far right. The valley was deserted except for scattered corpses. Before the light failed on the previous evening, Crow had watched the Indians withdrawing in the direction of Big Horn Mountains to the west. Leaving the besieged pony soldiers some four miles up-stream.

The battle was over.

Nothing remained but the dead. The Indians had removed their own corpses. It had been a massacre. From the positions of the mutilated bodies of the Seventh Cavalry, Crow could see he had been right. There were small groups of dead all the way up towards the top of the hill. Custer had tried. By God, he had tried! But Crazy Horse had checked him. Within twenty paces of the rim of the bluff, where he could have made a stand, there was the largest gathering of bodies.

Standing among the silent dead was a horse. A claybank gelding, its body streaming blood from bullet and arrow wounds. It whinnied as it saw Crow approaching, and tried to walk towards him. But it was too badly injured and stood still again.

They were all there.

Men Crow had known over many years.

Autie and his brothers Tom and Boston Custer. Miles and Keogh. Calhoun and Cooke. Many of them so badly cut about as to be barely recognizable. Strangely, Custer's corpse was hardly touched. A bullet wound in the forehead and another in the chest. But his hair was shorter than when Crow had known him and he wondered if the Sioux had even recognized Yellow-hair.

And there was another body. A single arrow protruding from between the shoulder-blades. The feathered end snapped off short. Hit in the back. Scalped, black blood crusted over the top of his raw skull and matting his face.

Trooper Edward Simpson. Running from Crow's wrath.

Running from one death, only to find another.

So it was over.

Crow didn't stay, swinging his long lean frame back into the saddle, his black shadow stretching out over the battlefield of the Little Big Horn, covering the bodies. The shadow etched deep by the morning sun-rise. Away down the valley he could just make out a cloud of dust that he guessed must be the relief column.

Coming too late to save Custer, they would be in time to bury his command.

Crow turned his horse's head to the west. The debts had been settled and all he had to do now was to carry on and find a way of living.

Maybe bounty-hunting.

Killing was easy — it was living that was hard.