Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (39 page)

Tom slowly stuffed the pistol in its holster before he dashed back to his brother’s side.

Those high, clear notes sailing on the dry air, like cottonwood down lifting over the ridge and the villages below, brought most of the warriors to a staggering halt for a few precious moments.

Soldier trumpets!

Their murderous fire slackened … shrieking cries died off.

Even some of the army horses near that hilltop acted as if they recalled something in their past, some tatter of memory stirred on this dusty slope by those brass horns.

From behind the trees and clumps of grass the old men, women, and young boys peeked to see just what was taking place with the pony soldiers up the hill.

Surely, this blowing of the shiny horns must be some powerful magic these soldiers are performing.

“This is no
medicine!
” Cheyenne warrior Old-Man-Coyote screamed bitterly. “We sing out our battle songs, the soldiers do the same with their death songs now! We have them beaten, brothers. They are singing in death. Join me now! Come spill their blood this fine day!”

First a handful, then a wave of Cheyenne and Sioux swept up Calhoun’s hill behind Old-Man-Coyote.

Raggedly, grimly, the soldiers fired back. Not in volleys this time. Independent. More frantic now as the enemy tide swept upward.

The big horses reared. More broke free of men scrambling into the stirrups.

All of them headed for the river below.

Calhoun’s troopers held—staying behind as the others scattered along the ridge, running north.

L Company laid down a destructive fire into the charging warriors, doing the best they could with the men they had left. Careful aim from a kneeling position—then plopping down behind the tall grass to reload and perhaps to struggle with the carbine’s shell ejector. The shells they kept inside the leather pouches or on the cartridge belts were coated with a sticky verdigris that acted like a cement inside the superheated chamber of the Springfield carbines. Sometimes all the ejector did was to rip off the base of the shell from its tubing, leaving the soldier with a useless, army-issue club. Silently they fought a knife into the jammed breech beneath the trapdoor, in utter frustration breaking off the tips of knife blades.

Cursing as the Sioux worked their way closer up L Company’s hill … ever closer.

The old ones hit a warrior near every time. Yet more came on—more still on painted, wide-eyed ponies looming out of the blue powder smoke and yellow dust like demons in a ghost charge. Some even rode the big army horses now instead of their Indian ponies. Better to lose a soldier horse to the soldiers’ bullets than a prize war pony or buffalo runner. Most of these daring warriors wore the bloody blue tunics or gray shirts of Reno’s dead.

A warrior wearing a tunic or blouse and riding an army horse found he could gallop that much closer to the hilltop
positions before he was discovered and shot at. Slowly, inexorably—the warriors tightened the noose.

The bugle calls ended. More troopers darted like wild men along the ridge, following the general’s body, following Tom Custer.

A retreat? No, the Sioux and Cheyenne watched these men running for their lives … running to steal a few more precious minutes of life.

A handful of those staying behind fired their carbines with one arm from the hip as they dragged wounded friends up the hillside until they reached the top, where Calhoun stood like a steadfast oak, bellowing orders all round, shouting encouragement.

He could afford to be courageous now, Jim Calhoun could.

Most of the men were throwing aside their useless Springfields and grabbing others, or pulling out their revolvers. The Indians inched close enough for pistol work now. Almost close enough for hand-to-hand—close enough that a man could hit them with chaw spit if his mouth hadn’t gone dry.

Those wounded and dragged uphill cried out as they bounced over sage, yanked toward the spot where Calhoun’s L Company remained behind to cover Custer’s retreat down the ridge.

“Just hold ’em back, goddammit!” Calhoun hollered, his eyes straining to catch a glimpse of where his brother Fred had disappeared in the dust. “We’ve gotta hold the bastards off and buy our boys some time—
goddamn sonuvabitch!”

Calhoun watched the corporal’s brains splatter across the front of his checkered shirt but did not stop to wipe off the blood and gore. Jim sensed himself growing more numb with every click of the hammer on his pistol. Around him drew the last shreds of his gallant command. Crittenden was nowhere to be found.

Probably one of the many bodies I had to leave down the slope,
he brooded, slamming cartridges into the cylinder.
Sergeants Mullen and Bender and Cashan—all gone now.

Their bloodied bodies littered the thirsty soil just outside a ring of horses atop the knoll. Three veterans who had
gone out to drag others to safety sacrificed their own lives in the process.

Try as he might, Calhoun couldn’t locate Sergeant Findeisen through the smoke and dust that lent the hilltop an opaque, daguerreotype look. Nowhere in the blur could he see chevrons.

Doesn’t matter much anyway
. Calhoun already knew who he was going to choose for the ride. First Sergeant James …

“Butler!” Calhoun bellowed like a castrated calf, his left arm aching horribly where a bullet had raked a furrow along the elbow. Blood dripped off the hand. The arm hung useless now, swinging like a beef quarter, raw meat suspended lifeless from his big shoulder.

“Sir?” Butler crawled on his knees and hands, crabbing up. His leathery face was smudged with burnt powder and other men’s blood.

“You’re the last one left,” Jim hissed breathlessly above the noise.

“Last, sir? Sergeants—oh … yes, sir. I’ll rally the squads, sir.”

“Shuddup and listen to me, Butler!” Calhoun said it more softly than he had expected. “A horse—not hit yet. Find one. Make the ride out of here. Save yourself if you can do it. I’ll give you what cover fire I can. Ride south—off that way—yonder to find Benteen … the pack train. Just—get—somebody.”

“Ride, Lieutenant?”

“Ride, Butler! Goddammit—like you never have before!”

“Yessss
sir!
”

Butler appeared to come alive of a sudden, slapping a salute against his bloody, hatless brow and wheeling to find a mount. When he had one of the sorrels captured, he stuffed two extra pistols in his belt. Leaping atop the bloody McClellan saddle, the sergeant found the stirrups cinched much too short. A small man. Maybe one of the boys. But no matter.

He spurred back to Calhoun.

“Lieutenant—I’ll bring ’em back, sir!” Butler shouted above the ear-splitting noise of battle and men dying.

Butler nearly brought the weary horse over on one haunch, yanking hard on the reins and kicking savagely at the animal’s flanks. Probably figuring there was one last, mad dash left in the horse and nothing more. Tufts of yellow dust erupted from its flying hooves as Sergeant Butler sped away, butt in the air, head down along the animal’s lathered neck. Like a jockey, reins clutched inches from the bit.

Off the spine of grassy ridge, right down into Two Eagle’s Sans Arc warriors he rode, surprising hell out of the Sioux with his crazy courage.

Calhoun fought back the stinging tears of frustration and grief. Perhaps saddest that he would never again hold his dear Maggie.

Sweet, sweet Maggie Custer. Funny
, he thought, swiping the hot sting from his eyes,
funny that I still think of her as a Custer and not a Calhoun. But—that woman will always be a Custer. She might’ve taken my name to wear for all the world to see, but beneath Maggie’s freckles she remains a Custer through and through.

He had lived for her, Jimmy Calhoun had. And now, he would die for her. For her brothers. For the general.

Jim just hoped Butler would be in time to save Keogh, Smith and the others up there … strung out along the ridge like dry beans scattered across his mother’s floor back home.

Home. Maggie. God, I love you!

The tall, thick-shouldered lieutenant cursed his useless left arm and flung some more of the bright, sticky blood across the toes of his boots.

Damn, but I’m going to miss them all! Every goddamned one of you! We had a time, didn’t we, boys!

“Ride, Butler!” he cried out with everything left in him at the disappearing back of the sergeant so far away, past the first warriors.

He might make it yet
, Jim Calhoun prayed.
Too far away to hear me now.

“Ride, Butler—goddammit, ride!”

If any man could make it through the Sioux, it would be
Sergeant James Butler. There wasn’t a better horseman in the Seventh.

Sorry, Butler. It’s just too late for L Company now. We’ve held ’em off long enough.

Calhoun turned and saw I Company in position north along the spine, Keogh’s men hunkering along the east slope while the Indians worked their way up from the river side.

L Company just didn’t have many men left now … men who could fire a weapon at the damned Sioux creeping closer and closer …

How many do I have left now?

He wondered that as the bullet smacked into the side of his gut with a wet thud. Slamming him with the power of a mule kick.

That was a funny sound. Something I’ve never heard before. Look, you’re bleeding, goddammit, Jimmy. Don’t hurt much though. Not like this gaddamned arm!

Calhoun struggled to his feet.

“Uhhhnnnn!”

That one burns, dammit!

He fired at the warrior he figured had shot him in the lung.…

Right in the lights! Man don’t live if he’s shot in the limits
.…

The warrior couldn’t believe that the big soldier just stood there, rocking on the balls of his feet, refusing to go down.

But Calhoun’s gun was empty long, hot minutes ago. He clicked the hammer over and over and …

“Ride, Butler, ride!”

Then two more rounds tore through his body, blowing huge, fist-sized holes out through the front of his chest. Jim Calhoun stared down at what was left of him. More numb than ever now.

Suddenly he felt the hot flourlike yellow dust beneath his wet cheek and wondered if he had been shot in the head. It was wet beneath his cheek.

Then Calhoun realized he was crying.
Good-bye, Maggie! Good-bye, Mother!

Jimmy Calhoun heard the pounding of moccasined feet. Damned close now.

“We did our best, General!”

With the high, thin call of his eagle wing-bone whistle stuffed between his thick lips, Gall brought his warriors to their feet behind him.

As one they rose on command and surged toward the top of the hill where Calhoun had desperately held on as long as his men and his own strength could stem the tide. Some warriors knelt like sharpshooters with their rifles, covering the advance of the light cavalry that thundered past them toward the crest of the hill, whipping their ponies over Calhoun’s handful of hold-outs.

The last few troopers alive were bowled over by the overwhelming onslaught, their screams of pain smothered beneath the hundreds of throats crying out with a vengeance for fifty years of broken promises and shattered treaties. Stone clubs swung against skull bone and shoulder blade. Old pistols fired point-blank into fear-taut, white faces. Hawk and stone alike smacked with a wet thud again and again and again as the wounded were toppled.

Soldiers scattered like so much chaff in the wind along the southern tip of their last ridge.

Hump killed the flag-bearer himself. At first he fired his Henry into the young man’s chest. The private slumped to his knees near Calhoun. He was no more than a boy, really—barely eighteen and struggling to keep from falling any farther.

He gripped the shaky guidon pole as if it were life itself. Stars-and-stripes guidon—Company L. Calhoun’s gallant men who stayed behind to cover the general’s retreat.

Rally round the flag, boys!

Lieutenant Calhoun kept hollering at his standard-bearer there in the last moments, spitting up blood with every order.

Just keep that flag up, son—so the rest know we’re still here. So Custer knows we’re still fighting!

But Hump rode right over the boy, yanking the pole
from the youth’s hands as the pony trampled the boy’s body into the yellow dust already slick with other men’s blood.

A wild Miniconjou war cry leapt from his throat as Hump heard the wet thrump of his pony’s hoofs slash downward, crushing that young soldier’s body.

All round the flag-bearer the last of the troopers went down as well. The smack of lead into flesh like a war song gone mad of its own.

At long last—they would teach the soldiers not to attack villages of women and children.

Near the north end of Calhoun’s Hill there were still a few, just a handful who rose on cue and dashed off to the north, heading for Keogh and his I Company.

Kill Eagle, a Blackfoot Sioux, freed a primeval cry from his throat, pointing at the escaping few.

After them screamed the feathered hawks like predators swooping after fleeing field mice. Soldiers hoping to make it those few hundred yards … each one blinded by tears stinging his eyes from the hot wind, the dust—perhaps the pain of seeing your deepest, most fervent prayers go unanswered.

Then the warriors swooped down on these too from the back of their swift ponies—clubbing, slashing, gouging with their gore-soaked lances. When there were no more, the Sioux turned back to the hill where Calhoun’s men had made their stand. Turned back to that bloody ground looking for more of the hated enemy to kill.

But here on Calhoun’s Hill, there were no more. Only the hot breeze remained to whisper through the tall, wet grass. No one left to cry out now.

There were no more.

D
OWN
in the Cheyenne village, Monaseetah came back from the prairie. She had fled to safety in the hills with the others when news of the attack raced like wildfire through the villages. Now she joined those who warily returned to their camps.