Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (42 page)

The southern flank would not fall if Myles Keogh and his hard-files had anything to say about it. Grim-eyed, sunburned, saddle-galled veterans every one, they fired slow and sure and steady at the advancing Sioux just the way they had worked over Confederates at Bull Run, Shiloh, Gettysburg.

One target at a time. One shot at a time. These men with Myles Keogh knew how to fight.

Myles Keogh would show the lot of them how to die.

“The canteens are dry, Autie,” Tom whispered in a crackle near his brother’s ear. “Too many wounded, can’t
keep ’em quiet. Hollering for water. It’s beginning to drive the men mad.” He knew Autie must be desperate for water himself.

“The river … just—get to the river,” Custer sputtered, coughing. “Open a route down to the river … now.…”

Custer struggled again to rise, pulling on Tom until he sat upright, gritting those pearly teeth against the excruciating pain of that seeping hole in his chest.

He pointed. “Down there,” indicating the deep scar of the ravine. “Send a detail down there to secure … the coulee … we get water … there—”

Custer collapsed. It was more than he could bear, holding himself up that long. Issuing orders to the end.

“I’ll do it, Autie,” Tom replied, the iron back in his voice.

“No, you won’t, Captain,” Lieutenant Smith slid in beside the general, his own words full of granite. “My men’ll do it. We’ll go down to secure that ravine for water carriers. If we intend to hold out as the general wants us to—we’ll need water. Begging pardon, Tom, but you needs stay here. In command. With the general.”

Tom sensed his heart swell with the courage of the young lieutenant’s offer. “Very well, Fresh. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you, sir.” He turned to go.

“Smith?” Sounding like a rusty iron wagon tire dragged down a gravel road, Tom’s words caught the lieutenant up short.

Smith glanced over his shoulder, studying that red spot on Tom’s cheek, remembering the bullet wound and a young cavalry officer single-handedly charging a Confederate artillery position at Saylor’s Creek eleven long summers before.

“Good luck, Smith.”

“Thank you, Cap’n. We really don’t need luck though. Just the kind of sand you showed at Saylor’s Creek, Tom. That, and some time.”

“You’ll buy the time for us, Fresh.”

“Promise you—we’ll give our best!”

Smith slapped a smart salute and headed downhill toward his chewed-up E. Company.

With sergeants John Ogden and James Riley, Smith selected thirty-six more men, three squads with a corporal to lead each. Without much ado the squads stood ready at horse. Sending a hearty wave back up the hillside to the commander, Smith’s men mounted what was left of the big horses.

“Front into line … guide front …
center!
Forward at my command—
charge!
”

Into the maddening yellow dust that fuzzed the slope like dirty cotton gauze, the men dashed toward the river below.

Smith knew well enough that his brave action could serve to inspire those left behind on the hill, men whose spirits were flagging. If his detail could only show some aggressiveness against the circling red noose, the command might be able to hold the warriors off for another—who was to say?

Tom stood, saluting that mad dash.
God only knows if we can hold out long enough for Gibbon and Terry to come up
, he thought to himself, reloading both pistols now.
But first we have to cut and hold a route to the river. And that’s just what Smiths about to do for me, and for Autie.

Monaseetah watched the group of four-times-ten mount their big horses and gallop downhill from the hilltop, believing that Custer himself must surely be in that brave group on horseback.

Always leading his men.

“He comes for me!” she sang out with the certainty of it, clambering to her feet that he might see her.

“Hiestzi! I am here! Husband—I wait for you!”

A young Cheyenne warrior leapt to his feet nearby, dragging her down among the tall grasses as random carbine shots from the knoll lobbed her way, kicking up spouts of yellow dirt.

“He is my husband!” she protested at the warrior, who pinned her down in the grass.

He was sweaty and smelled of rancid bear grease in his
braids, in the paint smeared across his cheeks and under his mouth. All of it furred now with the dust everywhere. He stank.

“Hiestzi returns for me at last,” she pleaded with the young warrior to understand, smelling his foul breath in her face, suffocating her. “He promised to come back for me. I must go to him!”

“Hiestzi is not here. The Red-Beard sent his soldiers against us again. Yellow Hair is far, far away.” He tried to calm her, clamping a dirty, sweaty hand over her screaming mouth. But try as he might, Monaseetah remained hysterical, biting and kicking now. Shrieking at the top of her lungs when he yanked his hand back in pain.

“Hiestzi! I wait for you!”

She suddenly lay still, panting beneath the warrior’s weight. “Don’t you see? He has returned for me exactly as promised! He has come for me now in the Moon of Fat Horses!”

Right after propping himself up to watch Smith’s charge down the hill, Custer thought he heard something out of place among the chants and curses, something not belonging with the wing-bone whistles and drums, or the cries and grunts of dying men. Something high-pitched, like an arrow in flight, yet sweet to his long-ago memory. A voice he recalled from the past … a long winter gone.

It can’t be true
, Custer decided, wrestling down the pain threatening to overwhelm him and drive him into blessed unconsciousness.

You’re suffering too much, Autie … this wound … the blood spilled—that’s all it is
, he told himself.
It’s just pain. You can fight it now the same way you’ve fought everything else all your life … scratched your way up from nothing to Boy General. Just fight the pain
—

“Yellow Hair!” There it came again.

That voice! Where? Ohhh, God … a man can only do so much! I tried to reach you. No! It’s not true … not here … most certainly not now!

“Yellow Hair!”

The voice climbed again above the din of battle and the
cries of the dying—scratching at his ears without stop. He strained his dust-reddened eyes and licked at the blood-crusted, alkali-cracked lips, hungering suddenly for the taste of her mouth as if it had been yesterday’s hot summer sun rising when last he saw her … waving from that wagon as he waved back—promising he would return for her.

Knowing now that he had never really stopped wanting her.

It cannot be
, Custer’s fevered mind burned.
But Lord! This hunger for her is like something solid I can’t escape … aching across all these years.

He struggled to prop himself up higher, ears pricking to locate the voice.

Downhill! Monaseetah’s coming to take this all from me … ohhh, God!

The pain caused him to double up as he pushed himself to rise. He spit out a little stomach bile. All that was left in his stomach now.

Yes, Autie—you want her perhaps even more than life itself right now.

He wanted her to touch him one last time—now that everything was slowly fading out behind his eyelids, looking more and more like a gray pool of sleet on the northern plains that struggled to capture winter’s light.

He could not have the presidency now … he could not reach out and touch Libbie. For so long Libbie had kept herself from him.

This Montana hillside held him prisoner as surely as his restless soul would wander no more. This is where he would die.

Yet … before he closed his eyes, Custer wanted her to hold him one last time.

Hold him just long enough to last into forever.

After charging downhill only five hundred yards, the first of Smith’s men yanked on their reins, drawing to a halt after effectively scattering the Sioux and Cheyenne before them.

They had driven the warriors out of the ravine itself, flushing them down the slope before their wild charge—but
the soldiers suddenly did something most unexpected by white or red alike. They stopped dead in their tracks for no apparent reason. At least no reason any man on that hill could figure out.

No reason at all—for they hadn’t counted on Lame-White-Man and his Cheyenne Crazy Dog soldiers.

A Southern Cheyenne war chief, visiting relatives up north for that summer gathering of the great camp circles, Lame-White-Man had led a strong contingent of warriors from the upper camps across the river at the mouth of the deep ravine, throwing his force against the pony soldiers entrenched on the hill under Tom Custer. He was himself a many-scarred veteran and not likely to frighten easily, buckling as did the youngsters under the charge of Smith’s forty.

“Brothers!” the Lame One shouted, rising to his feet. “We must stand our ground. Do not quail before these pony soldiers. They are but dust in the wind. We are many. We are mighty. Hold your ground! This is your day!”

Many of the warriors retreating in panic before the troopers halted, looking back over their shoulders. Now they saw for themselves. Exactly as Lame-White-Man declared—the soldiers were not many. And they were not following.

Perhaps by magic
, some thought,
the Lame One has turned back the soldiers!

With renewed courage the Cheyennes wheeled about, starting back up the slope to where the lone war chief stood his ground, exhorting his young men to join him in this battle against the forty.

The Lame One hobbled a bit, but despite his limp he marched steadily upward, closing on the place where the soldiers reined back, drawing their snorting horses together in a confused mob.

By the time the soldiers had dismounted near the side of the long ravine, Lame’s warriors had edged closer under continued fire. The smell of Indians on the wind drove the big horses mad with fear. They reared and bucked and pulled at their holders.

Suddenly a few older Cheyenne boys leapt from the
sage, waving blankets and shouting at the frightened horses, scaring the encircled soldiers into full-scale panic.

First the horses bolted away, careening downhill toward the river, their stirrups and saddlebags of ammunition clattering through the tall grass and past screeching warriors. Thirsty far too long. It was easy work for the young boys and old men at the river to round these last horses up, head them downstream. The white man’s animals wanted nothing more than to be near the water.

With dry throats of their own, Smith’s soldiers gazed longingly downhill. Their mounts gone … any means of escape gone as well. Hope disappeared like a puff of yellow dust in the dry breeze.

Everywhere the air filled with sound, crushing at their ears. Burnt powder stung nostrils, clinging to the hillside like dirty coal-cotton gauze. Dust burnt eyes into dark, reddened sockets. And still more warriors splashed across the shining ribbon of the river, swarming over the hillside like red ants from a nest Custer had stirred with a big stick.

“Here!” Sergeant John Ogden’s voice rose above the shrieks of the enemy and cries of panic among the young soldiers. “Follow me to the ravine!”

No one needed to suggest the ravine more than once to those men. Up here on the slope, they were helpless and exposed, naked to the painted enemy. Nearly all of them dashed off on Ogden’s heels, scrambling downhill and sliding into the ravine they had intended to secure and hold until Gibbon’s boys arrived.

As soon as the soldiers scrambled over the edge, Lame-White-Man exhorted his warriors into the mouth of the coulee itself, charging up toward the milling, frightened, trapped soldiers.

Panic began to spread its evil curse like wildfire among the thirty-eight at the bottom. With the charge of the Cheyennes up the ravine, the young soldiers began a furious scramble to escape their self-made trap. The sides of that gully were irregular, dotted with stunted cactus, bunchgrass, and gray-leafed sage. Not much for a man to hold onto in clawing his way out.

They found themselves caught like fish in a drying
puddle, ready for the killing. Better to try to clamber back uphill.

Time and again they pocked at the south wall with attempts to dig their way up the sides of the ravine. Kicking holes out for their boot-toes and digging furrows for their fingertips, some fought the side of that ravine as hard as they would fight their panic. Until they slid exhausted to the floor of the coulee, able to fight their fear no more. Confused and terrified, some fired aimlessly into the air. Then panic won the day.

As Smith himself crawled through sagebrush, he listened to the loud reports of carbine and pistol fire erupting from the ravine. He glanced back on that slash of a coulee as he pulled himself uphill at an agonizing pace, watching blue powder smoke belch from the ravine, thinking his troops were giving a hard time of it to the Cheyenne.

If only they’ll hold out
, Smith prayed,
I’ll bring some more men down, and we can secure the route for the general.

Just as he had promised he would.

Yet as the young lieutenant crawled away, an entirely different scene from the one he imagined occurred in the bottom of that ravine. Instead of shooting at the warriors crawling up the ravine, the desperate soldiers turned their weapons on themselves.

With a powerful and contagious despair, a single trooper put his pistol muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger. Mesmerized, his comrades watched, helpless to stop him. That lonely soldier’s private panic now spread like cholera.

Another man jammed his pistol against his heart. Two soldiers up near the far mouth of the ravine shot each other in the head as the Cheyenne raced over their still-trembling bodies.

To the approaching warriors the troopers were touched by the Everywhere Spirit to kill themselves. In utter awe the young warriors watched, disbelieving—some rubbing their eyes, others holding hands over their mouths in awe so their souls would not fly away. Suicide was something far from the Indian experience.

Of a sudden Cheyenne chief Two Moons was among the
warriors on his pale horse, rallying the fighters to charge up the coulee behind Lame-White-Man. To throw themselves right into the milling, confused, suicidal soldiers. “This will be the last day you see your war chief, Two Moons! Come watch me! I die with honor!”