Little Big Man (64 page)

We had reached some five hundred yards of the ford when we seen the first enemy on our front all day: several Sioux was riding in slow circles just this side of the river, either to tease us into chasing them or as a signal to others in hiding. The camp was now concealed owing to the stand of cottonwood along the far shore. Then the Sioux vanished, and from behind a little rise above the ford appeared four warriors. They brandished their weapons overhead and shouted at us:
“Hey-hey-hey-hey-hey.”

At which Custer forthwith halted the column.

I knowed that sound too well: it was the Cheyenne war cry. Then I done a funny thing. From unstudied instinct, I throwed my carbine to the shoulder and pulled off a shot. Missed them, and Custer started shouting at me, his eyes blooded and his face blackening with rage.

“You swine,” he says, “who gave you that order to fire?
I
am in authority here. I’ll have you shot for this. I don’t care how highly placed your connections, you rotten spy, be they in the White House itself. This is what comes of your damned Indian policy, corrupt agents, venal politicians.”

I think in his warped mind he had come to identify me with President Grant. Now he drew his pistol and I guessed was going to shoot me down, but like a madman will, he suddenly changed his whole mode of thought, and spurring his mare, cried: “Forward, the gallant Seventh! CHA-A-A-A-A-RGE!”

Now the trumpeter, spooked by this performance, sounded the Dismount call upon his instrument, but even that was too thin to be heard beyond the leading troop, and I reckon them behind couldn’t see much for the dust, so what you had was Custer larruping down the coulee. then Cooke, Bouyer, and me strung out between, and then that first company climbing off their horses.

Meanwhile, down at the ford, five hundred more braves had swarmed across the Greasy Grass, and more was coming like bees out of a shaken hive.

CHAPTER
28
The Last Stand

IT WAS BOUYER
who reacted first. Riding a fleet Crow pony, he overtook the General and detained him, seizing Vic’s bridle. The Indians was firing at them, and Bouyer was wounded, I think: a dark stain showed on his buckskin shirt, but he never paid it no mind.

Cooke meantime got the troop remounted, after they delivered some answering fire as skirmishers, for it was obvious we would have to get out of that narrow place to where the cavalry could maneuver.

Now Custer suddenly recovered, the charge was sounded properly, and down Medicine Tail we dashed, almost to the water, and the Indians, most of them dismounted, fell back, though not so far we could have negotiated the ford against them, the Greasy Grass being clogged with warriors, hundreds on ponies and more wading chest-deep.

Another ravine opened at a forty-five-degree angle to the right, and we plunged into and up it, coming to a hogback ridge which we gained, galloping along the grass-covered bench under heavy Indian fire, though I don’t believe we had yet lost many men, maybe a few near the ford, but the command was still in good organization, riding in column of fours. A mile or so north the ridge reached its summit, and I reckoned Custer was a-heading there as the best place to make his stand.

But when you run from an Indian, be it orderly withdrawal or not, he gets amazingly encouraged, figuring he has the momentum on you. We had started to attack the village and been stopped by four Cheyenne, then drove off: that’s how them hostiles saw it, and events was proceeding to prove them right. I don’t know why

Custer had halted at that first puny demonstration, four savages against our two hundred. Maybe in his crazy view he thought that was the entire enemy force and was caught by the idea that Indians was so brave. I don’t think he could endure the thought of another person than he having the capability of courage in the grand degree.

Only they wasn’t just four and had not showed foolhardy gallantry, but was rather demonstrating to gain time while others crossed the river behind them and still more lay concealed in the ground towards which we would be deflected. They was using strategy.

A peculiar reverse of roles took place that day upon the Little Bighorn. Reno had been sent to charge the village and instead was himself charged. Custer, going to envelop the enemy, had got it done to his own self. In their last great battle the Indians fought like white men was supposed to, and we, well, we was soon to arrive at the condition in which we had planned to get them, for this wasn’t the terrain for cavalry and our order commenced to dissolve somewhere along that flight.

And now come a new host of Indians from the south. Led by the great war chief Gall, though we didn’t know it then, who had just repulsed Reno and besieged him upon that bluff where Custer had took his first look at the village. They was at least a thousand strong, and riding in dread certainty.

Meanwhile, on the slope towards the river, the Gray Horse Troop was getting all cut up by Indians hidden in the draws along there, and finally they was run into a deep ravine and piled up on one another and slaughtered by Sioux shooting down from above, with only a couple of riderless horses left to plunge wildly up the vertical cutbanks.

Custer was still acting well. He throwed Calhoun’s company against Gall as dismounted skirmishers, but them Sioux forthwith left their own ponies and advanced crawling through the sage, shooting arrows from concealment, hundreds at a time, which having reached the limit of their lofty arcs, descended in fearful volleys, piercing men who could not see an enemy to fire at.

Some Indians encircled the troopers detailed as horse-holders, every fourth man in the company, and leaping forth stampeded the mounts with screams and flapping blankets. So Calhoun was henceforth pinned in place. They then begun to diminish his line from
both ends towards the center, knocking off the skirmishers one by one, and at last come out of the grass in a great naked brown wave, yelling
Hoka Hey!
, the Sioux war cry, from a multitude of guttural throats, and washed over him.

That’s what struck me, the sight of savage flesh, for the Indians was stripped to the breechclout and most was not painted nor wearing their bonnets and other gewgaws usual to their battle costume, and taking no coups except upon the dead. Most fought afoot, with no frenzied displays of courage, and taking every advantage of cover. My God, there was a lot of the latter on that awful field: it was like a big sponge, with its gulches and draws, and now and again as if a mighty hand was a-squeezing it, it seemed to heave and savages would well out of every nook, drowning another portion of the command, then be absorbed once more into concealment.

But they took quite as much toll upon us when in hiding, with them arrow-volleys swishing through the sky, and had their rifle sharpshooters too, though there wasn’t near as many guns on the Indian side as some people think; they simply used well the few they had, most of them not repeaters, either.

I had a seven-shot Winchester carbine, but would have give anything to trade it for the old Sharps single with which I had hunted buffalo, for we in Custer’s party was now upon the summit of the ridge, farthest distant from the enemy as befits a general in defensive action. Below us and on a lower rise was Tom Custer’s sorrel-mounted troop, and to the left, Keogh riding to fill the gap caused by Calhoun’s collapse; then that deep draw into which the Gray Horse Troop had been run and slaughtered, and farther to the right, one platoon of Captain Yates’s F Company, at this moment being rolled up by a great press of savages who shortly spilled through and engaged Tom and the remaining platoon of F.

So there was much to watch of the meanest kind of sight, and nought to do at that range. I mean for me: for Custer there was plenty, and he was so far doing it fine, though at the disadvantage of being by personality and training a cavalryman to the core, which is to say, having the offensive character. He had never been backed up this way before and denied the possibility of his beloved charge. Our horses was worthless here, and some of the men in headquarters detail had started to shoot theirs and make a breastwork of their carcasses, for any fool could see the ridge would soon be engaged. And to show you how normal the General was at this time, he had
Lieutenant Cooke take down the names of the troopers who did this and swore to court-martial them on the return to Fort Lincoln.

This was the next second after sending a courier to move Keogh against the Sioux what had run over Calhoun, who was after all Custer’s brother-in-law and now evidently deceased, though as the time passed we could see less and less through the gigantic pall of gunsmoke and milling dust that was turning the middle afternoon into late twilight.

So when Keogh in turn got his, we knowed it mainly from the volume of hostile yells, and then come Tom Custer’s men, dismounted and their horses lost, backing foot by foot up the rise towards our position.

Right about then, the first shot sounded from behind us, where there was a sharp slope to the northwest which fell into an encircling ravine. No one had paid that ground much mind, what with thousands of hostiles on the other three sides, so it had filled up unopposed with Indians who had traveled the long way around, another thousand if there was one, and now advancing up against us, they commenced to sound their cries:
Hoka Hey, Hoka Hey
, and some yelled the name of their great people,
Lakota! Lakota!
The Men! The Men!—but predominant even over these was the simple, throaty
Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey
that started like a funeral drum and then increased in tempo to where it was a madman’s raving, though without disorder, a directed passion if you can imagine that, the wild and merciless fixed upon a single aim and undistracted. They was Cheyenne, and they was at the center of the world.

That first shot killed Custer’s horse, hit white-stockinged Vic in her pretty sorrel head, under the left eye. She fell gradually, front legs as if in a dainty bow, giving the General time to step off before the hindquarters toppled over and crashed.

The most glorious cavalryman of all was now unhorsed. He looked a little bewildered, but was soon brung straight by the sight of the oncoming Cheyenne, so ordered the troops to do what he had but lately condemned: shoot the remaining mounts and arrange them into a breastwork. Before that was done, we had several casualties.

Utterly surrounded now, with C Troop backed up against a cutbank below our knoll and nothing in Keogh’s direction but smoke and, when that parted occasionally in the slow wind, Indians, Indians, Indians, ever closer and in greater amount, the wonder
being that there was ground enough to hold them, and I thought of Bouyer’s prediction that they exceeded the number of our bullets. He had been a wise man and a brave one, and I seen him fall as we swung away from the ford, closest any member of the command ever got to the big village on the Greasy Grass, and him a breed.

The other Crow was long gone back to their people, though maybe that Curly watched part of our fight from a distant rise, for the next day he reached the
Far West
upriver and give a story of the massacre that no one believed. But he was not there upon our ridge. We had no friendly Indians left, the Ree having went with Reno. Nor did the Sioux and Cheyenne have any whites on their side, as has sometimes been said by them who wouldn’t believe savages could fight so well: bitter ex-Confederate officers, squaw men, renegades,
etc.
Not so. Our adversary was 100 per cent red. It was simply that they no longer fought for fun, but was out to kill us in the most effective manner, with the least damage to themselves. Despite their swelling numbers, with your rifle at the shoulder you had hardly a target. They was creeping and crawling, and could vanish behind a tuft of grass no larger than your hat; a scrawny sagebush hid a score. But then go to reload and see them gain thirty yards.

Nevertheless, our boys was keeping the Springfields busy, until what Bottsy had mentioned as the weakness of that piece commenced to show: the action heated up under constant use, and the fiery sun, though blotted out by the blue murk, contributed no little, and them ejectors stuck, the spent shell locking in the breech. Some worked at it with their knives, breaking off the blades to no purpose. That type of thing might make for a panic while a hundred Indians slither towards you personally, but the fact is that I never saw no disorder among our troops once the situation turned desperate. The Sioux later claimed that a whole platoon down on Keogh and Calhoun’s front committed suicide; I never saw such and won’t believe it happened.

There wasn’t no cowards up on the ridge. When the carbines jammed, the men used their revolvers, about as effective as spit-balls like the schoolboys throwed back in Missouri. And the Indians being so numerous, it was hard to see a casualty among them when we dropped one, so had no encouragement from whatever toll we took.

Counting what was left of Troop C below the cutbank and those
of us up top, I reckon we now numbered seventy-five to a hundred. No more firing could be heard from the direction of Keogh, and it had long since been silent towards the right, where Yates’s command and the Gray Horse Troop had obviously gone under, though you couldn’t see through the pall.

I was working my Winchester constantly towards the Cheyenne and might have hit a few from behind the carcass of that Ree pony, who I had shot in the forehead in necessity but regret, for he done a a fine job when the chips was down. I didn’t know then that his old master Bloody Knife had been rubbed out down in the valley with Reno, but on looking back, I reckon
he
did: his big sad eyes showed a willingness to go when I pushed the Colt’s barrel between them, and them saddle sores had rubbed open again in the course of that wild ride, so it was in several ways a favor to him. He continued right useful in death, being soon all porcupined with arrows, which in his absence would have perforated yours truly, now half under his belly, for them high-arching volleys was on the increase, hundreds of steel points descending through the murk, like it was raining razors. Fellow near me, sprawling flat, got stapled down in two, three places, but never killed until threshing about to free himself he fetched his head high enough for a bullet, collecting several, expiring still fastened.