Blood Dance (13 page)

“No, nor do I care. But listen: I can offer you this as a peace offering. My men and I, we hit a big load not long back. We’ve got the gold hid out. You let bygones be bygones, and I’ll see that you get a share, because I certainly don’t need a man at my back with a gun.”

“You should have thought of that before you did what you did,” I said. “And you haven’t got any gold. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been trying to jump my claim. I don’t bargain with polecats.”

Carson shrugged, gave me a venomous look. “Have it your own way,” he said.

“I will.”

Dead Thing ended up throwing in with the Crow scouts. He must have been saying nasty things about the two Crow with Carson, because he sat on the ridge with the scouts and after a bit they all looked at the Crow and burst out laughing.

Those two with Carson looked as downbeat as stepchildren with a shrew aunt. I thought maybe Dead Thing was saying things about their lack of honor and the other Crow were eating it up.

After a bit, another Indian, a pretty big fellow, walked up to the Crow and spoke to the scouts. From the way he was dressed I took him to be a Ree.

The Crow moved out, and Dead Thing came over to me. I was about middle ways of the column—I was supposed to fall into the rear, but hadn’t found Carson that good of company, and truth to tell, I hoped being away from him would give him the urge to run so I could follow and finish the job.

Dead Thing said, “Bloody Knife, the Ree, says that all those who want to fall out can. The Crows, my brothers, are leaving. They say to go down to the Greasy Grass is suicide.”

The Greasy Grass. That had been in my dream. The old Indian with the buffalo headdress had said that.

“You’re telling me to hightail it?”

Dead Thing nodded.

“You?”

“I stay until Carson moves.”

“Same here.”

My plan was to wait until the cavalry left for their attack and we were on the hill alone. At that time I still thought they were going down to engage the Indians and would leave us civilians out of it. I was wrong.

After a short while a man that looked like I thought Custer should have looked came over to where I squatted holding my horse’s reins, and knelt down beside me.

“The general says we all go down,” he said bluntly.

“I don’t believe I’m in this man’s army.”

“You’ve just been drafted,
soldier.
And if you don’t like the decision, just make a run for it. The men here have orders to put a hole in anyone who does.”

“In that case I’m proud to enlist.”

The man smiled at me and stuck out his hand. “Tom Custer.”

“General Custer’s brother?” I asked, shaking hands.

“Yes.”

“What’s the situation here? Can you say?”

“Renegade Sioux. We intend to engage them in a surprise attack.”

“They know you are here,” Dead Thing said suddenly.

Tom Custer looked up at Dead Thing.

“No, I don’t think so.”

Dead Thing laughed. “You sent your scouts away. You know they know. It is the horse soldiers you try to fool. They know too.”

Tom Custer’s lip quivered.

“Perhaps. But no one stays on this ridge. First off, you would be sitting ducks for the Sioux, and secondly—”

“You need every gun you can get because you figure yourself in a tight spot,” I said.

Tom Custer stood up. “Perhaps.”

“Understandable,” I said.

Tom Custer left us. I looked up at Dead Thing. That crazy Crow was smiling.”

…them that died on the Greasy Grass…

I r Sgn=ignemembered those words that had come to me while I fasted, and they came to light down on my head once again.

I remembered the One Who Makes the Buffalo Fall Down, and what he had said. “The grass will scream from the thunder of the horses, from the pain of the dying.”

“Does your head come clear?” Dead Thing said, and I looked at him oddly. The Crow took hold of his horse and led it away.

It was getting pretty close to noon when Custer divided his command. He had led us all down into a dry creek bed and it was there that he had divided us into four groups. This was probably his biggest blunder. Benteen—I didn’t even know that was his name, but found later from reading accounts by people who had not been there—went to the left. Reno—I learned of him in the same way as Benteen—was the center. Custer was the right flank and the ammunition train brought up the rear. Dead Thing, Carson, his men, and me, ended up with the ammunition train. I supposed Custer figured to keep us mostly out of the fight, but have our guns handy if he needed them.

Actually, I don’t think General Custer gave a hoot and a holler what the civilians did. If we had wanted to ride over that ridge that was fine by him. I had a feeling that everyone but Custer, and me—for I was still ignorant of how serious the situation was; I had Carson on my mind—was aware of just how bad things were. I think it was Tom who wanted the extra gun hands. He could see the handwriting on the wall, but just did not want to admit it. Too proud, like his brother.

Me, I just wanted to kill Carson and get it over with. I had trailed that sonofabitch for a long time now, and truth to tell, I did not really have a boiling hatred for him. It had passed. I just knew that I would not rest until I had the job done, or Carson did a job on me.

That was the fact of it, and I was not sure if this was duty or honor driving me, maybe a little of both. Hell, in spite of what I said, maybe sometimes they are the same thing.

Something strange happened just before Custer decided to send us back to the ammunition train. We came upon a tepee with a body in it. Some Sioux had cashed in his chips right there, and as they were very much for the play it as it lays style, they had just left him.

I figured him to be one of the Sioux that had been hurt in that battle on the other side of the Rosebud. (At that time I thought that battle had been Custer’s play too, but later found out it was Crook, and for all practical purposes, he too had lost to the vengeful Sioux.)

Oddly enough, Custer had the tepee set on fire by his Crow scouts, the bulk of whom took Bloody Knife’s advice, and shortly after that incident skedaddled. Actually, a couple had already beat it before getting that far, and it gave me a crawling sort of feeling in my gut to see them go. Indians had a way of sensing the future, I’d learned that much from Dead Thing. Now my dream was coming back, my vision of the grass covered in blood and of the Man Who Makes the Buffalo Fall Down’s prediction.

Even at that stage, white attitudes of believing only what you could see, smell and touch, were still ruling my thinking. And I didn’t even think of trying to make a break for it.

Besides, there was Carson.

Now it may come to you to wonder why the Crow were allowed to leave—and later the Ree were dismissed, although the Indian who Dead Thing had called Bloody Knife did not go.

Truth is, those Indians were going to do what the hell they wanted to do anyway. They were hired to scout, not fight. No matter what they might have been ordered to do, they would go first chance they got. Not a matter of cowardice, just common sense.

White men are infested with this idea we call duty, and I supposed that Tom thought we would be more willing to stick around, and that the Indians with us would stay since they rode with us in the first place, and had probably been infected with the same oddball white man disease.

And to put it a little more on the head, those Indians had a hell of a lot better chance of passing through this country than we did, and “our” Indians—meaning Dead Thing and the those two with Carson—had bound themselves to us. You can say what you want about conniving redskins and such, but it isn’t true. The Indian is a man of honor. Which isn’t exactly the same thing as a man of duty. The first you do because it feels right, the second you do so no one will laugh or sneer at you.

We went back to wait with the ammunition train. There were just a few of us: some soldiers, Carson, his four men, Dead Thing and myself. I was keeping a tight eye on the major. I felt my moment was coming up, and I intended to play my hand smoothly.

We were following along behind the others when we heard gunfire just over the bluff. That would be the direction Reno had taken.

I saw Custer stand up on his stirrups and wave his hat frantically, signaling Reno, I presumed.

And it was at that moment the major made his break.

It had been an idiot thing to do. I had lost awareness of Carson for only an instant, and in that instant he shot a trooper in the back of the head, and wheeled his horse to get away.

His men did the same, cut down on the troops around the ammunition train and broke hard to the left. I took a slug in the thigh and it went through my horse’s side and dropped the animal dead as a rock.

Dead Thing strung an arrow and put it dead center of Carson’s back. The major swayed to the right, but righted himself, rode hard bending over his mount.

I hit the ground with the Winchester in my hand. When I looked up, one of Carson’s Crows was falling from his horse with an arrow in his left eye.

The other Crow jerked up his Springfield and shot Dead Thing full in the chest, tore a hole in him the size of a derby hat. As my Crow brother toppled from his horse, I shot his assailant in the head—Hickok’s advice or not.

When I got to my feet, I saw that the two white men who had been with Carson were dead on the ground, shot by troopers from the ammunition train.

I looked around for Carson. He was weaving in the saddle, veering toward the east. He went over the bluff and out of sight.

I got my Sharps out o S Sh>I looked f my saddle boot, and with my Winchester in one hand and the Sharps in the other, I was ready for action.

A trooper rode up and said, “What in hell goes on here?”

Another trooper said, “Some men went berserk here and tried to kill this man and the Crow. They got the Indian.”

I could see that the first trooper, who had some rank, wanted more of an explanation than that, but there wasn’t time. Down below there was a popping and snapping of gunfire. I guessed that was Reno.

The trooper extended his hand and pulled me up behind him. We wheeled and rode down to the front of the ammunition train, but suddenly the trooper tossed back his head and tossed out of the saddle. Some Indian had picked him off at long range, probably with a Sharps. I had not even heard the shot.

There wasn’t anything to do for him, he was as dead as Dead Thing. I spurred the horse and went over the bluff in the direction Carson had taken.

On the other side of that bluff was a surprise. I didn’t see Carson, but I’ll tell you as straight as a Cheyenne arrow, I had never seen so many goddamned Indians in my entire life. There were literally a thousand or more.

To the north, I could see Custer and his command, and I rode to catch up with them. I should have gone the other way.

No sooner had I brought up their tail than Custer was whipping around. The Sioux were on us like bees on honey. To the sound of the retreat those troopers and I made for higher ground, a hill on the high, northern end of the bluffs.

We were moving up toward the hill at a pretty good clip when suddenly a thousand warriors or more topped it and looked down on us. Carson was in front of them, riding like hell. I tossed the Winchester across my thighs and steadied the Sharps against my shoulder, picked him right out of the saddle. And that was all she wrote for the major.

No one seemed to notice.

Had the situation been different I might have found beauty in our position. Above were thousands of Sioux, and probably some Cheyenne. They seemed to set on that ridge for an eternity, but it was probably only moments. It was like some sort of colorful painting; the Indians with their feathers and paint, lances, arrows and rifles.

One warrior rode up and down their immediate center waving a Winchester above his head. He wore only a breechcloth and a feather in his hair. I suspected this was Crazy Horse.

He was chanting the Sioux war cry, “Hoka Hey, Hoka Hey,” and suddenly all those on the bluff and those behind Custer’s force picked it up. It was terrifying.

And then the dying began.

The rear attack had already dropped a number of troopers and their mounts, and with the union forces of those on the hill, Custer’s men and horses began to fall like hail.

My horse was shot out from under me and I went down. Damned if that wasn’t getting to be a habit.

Troopers who still had living horses were pulling them down and barricad S an="0em">

Arrows came like rain and rattled around the defenders with devastating effect. I dropped a few Indians before the Winchester was hit by a stray bullet and made useless. I couldn’t even get it to cock. The impact of the bullet had really shook my hands up and it was all I could do to keep them from quivering.

Somewhere along the line I had lost the Sharps—I believed it to be under the horse I had been riding—and was down to my revolver. I propped up good behind the dead animal and drew my handgun. I decided to save a shell for myself rather than let the Sioux take me.

I picked off a Sioux who came out of the dust swirl on foot. Dropped another on horseback. And when next I looked around it was me, Custer and one trooper left. It had happened that fast. We got whittled down in less than twenty minutes.

I never did see what happened to Tom Custer and didn’t know anyone else there. Later, I learned Custer had lost another brother, Boston, and a brother-in-law.

The trooper who had been lying down behind his horse firing his Springfield suddenly stood up and jerked up his horse, too. The animal was bristling with arrows, but still alive. He stepped into the stirrups and was swinging astride when Custer yelled, “Hold it, trooper.”

Like a fool the general stood up, and with one quick motion the trooper jammed his revolver against Custer’s temple and fired. That was all for General Custer.

The soldier on the horse bolted the animal and rode straightaway into the dust storm of Sioux.

This all takes a bit in the telling, but it happened in seconds, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. Besides, I was down to my last round, the bullet I thought had my own name on it, not that of some deserting soldier.