Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (48 page)

To all five of these scholars, I offer my undying gratitude.

You must remember that the events herein portrayed are by and large drawn from the actual documents of the time and from eye-witness testimony, dealing with a short timespan from the moment the Seventh U.S. Cavalry marched out of Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory until the setting of the sun on that bloody hillside in Montana Territory, 25 June, 1876. Certain conversations and descriptions have been supplied by the author where the silent tongues of the dead—red man and white alike—could not speak for themselves here one hundred fourteen years later.

Why is it that no other battle so captured the public imagination of its time? Why has no other single military event remained in our national memory as the Custer fight? It has, like no other event of its kind, come to symbolize, for good or bad perhaps, the essential character of the American Frontier West: the determination and grit of its characters, and the tragedy that always stood ready to challenge any man gutsy enough to pit himself against both the land and the redman who vowed to defend his last, best hunting ground.

This is essentially, in my estimation, a story of those ordinary men, both white and red, who dared pit themselves against a fate that drove so many to hurl their bodies against enemy iron, steel and lead that hot summer day. And thereby became heroic.

I believe that the essential facts herein presented are faithful not only to the gallant memories of the courageous officers and enlisted men of the Seventh Cavalry, but faithful as well to the memories of those valiant red horsemen who rode against Custer’s pony soldiers in the name of freedom and their ancient way of life on this dusty, sage-covered ridge where I sit at this moment, on another afternoon of 25 June, these one hundred fourteen years later.

Back along the hilltop at the monument it is noisy today—what with the celebration of an anniversary, with the comings and goings of those who pull off the interstate highway to drive by in slow parade, for but a few minutes
to stop and peer across this forlorn piece of ground, perhaps to read a stone here and there. But few will ever allow themselves the time and the quiet to listen to the ghosts.

Where I sit late this afternoon, it is quiet. Here on Calhoun’s Hill. Where so many historians across this last century of controversy agree that the only real resistance was put up against the Sioux after Custer’s two hundred fought their ragged way up this slope from the river below.

From here I can look to the north and make out the bustle and swarm of visitors around that huge stone monolith marking Last Stand Hill. From where I sit among the sage, I can gaze across the east slope of the ridge, see the white of the markers glaring beneath the high-plains sun, each stone tablet plotting the fall of one who stood and fought beside that irascible Irishman Keogh. In the end, as I always do, I turn and look southwest, across several folds of this rumpled blanket of a landscape, and I imagine I can see across that distance the mouth of Medicine Tail Coulee, where it opens at the Minniconjou Ford on the Greasy Grass itself.

Where Custer began singing his death song that hot afternoon.

Up here, where I sit alone, it is so quiet at this moment that I can hear the breeze nudge the grass into whispers, a breeze that taunts this hallowed ground, pushing gently through the gray-bellied sage with a mournful keening of memories too-long unspoken. Here, on this quiet, lonely hill, I stay while the sun sets, listening to the ghosts that will forever haunt this place.

Ultimately, it is the ghosts who have told their story here across the pages of my book.

This story is their whispers heard among the grass and sage that blankets this hallowed, bloody ground where they fought and fell.

Their whispers.

Custer Battlefield
Montana Territory, U.S.A.
25 June, 1990

Terry C. Johnston captures the spirit and
drama of a unique era in American history
in his magnificent novel,
DANCE ON THE WIND
, which marks
the return of a great fictional character
by a storyteller at the height of his power.

Now, the award-winning author of
Dream Catcher
and
Carry the Wind
presents a novel that marks the return of one of the most beloved characters in frontier fiction—mountain man Titus Bass, made famous in the bestselling, critically acclaimed trilogy
Carry the Windy BorderLords
, and
One-Eyed Dream
In the first book of an exciting new saga, Johnston takes us back to the early years of this extraordinary individual as a young Titus Bass blazes a trail of danger and adventure across the American Frontier. From the banks of the upper Ohio to the vast, unexplored expanse of the lower Mississippi, Bass comes of age on a journey across a volatile, violent country of riverboatmen and river bandits, knife fights and Indian raids, strong liquor and stronger women. Like America itself, Titus looks west and sees the future … and he’s willing to risk everything to seize it.

Turn the page for an exciting preview of Terry C. Johnston’s
DANCE ON THE WIND
, available now in paperback wherever Bantam Books are sold.

Slick as quicksilver the boy stepped aside when the mule flung her rump in his direction.

Only problem was, he had forgotten about the root that arched out of the ground in a great bow nearly half as tall as he stood without his Sunday-meeting and schoolroom boots on. The end of it cruelly snagged his ankle, sure as one of his possum snares.

Spitting out the rich, black loam as fine as flour in this bottomland, Titus Bass pulled his face out of the fresh, warm earth he had been chewing up with a spade, blinking his gritty eyes. And glared over his shoulder at the mule.

Damn, if it didn’t look as if she was smiling at him again. That muzzle of hers pulled back over those big front teeth the way she did at times just like this. Almost as if she was laughing at him when here he had just been thinking he was the one so damned smart.

“Why, you …,” the boy began as he dragged himself up to his knees, then to his bare feet in that moist earth chewed by the mule’s hooves and his work with iron pike and spade.

On impulse he lunged for the fallen spade, swung it behind his shoulder in both hands.

“Put it down, Titus.”

Trembling, the boy froze. Always had at the sound of that man’s voice.

“Said: put it down.”

The youth turned his head slightly, finding his father emerging from the trees at the far edge of the new meadow they were clearing. Titus weighed things, then bitterly flung the spade at that patch of ground between him and his father. The man stopped, stared down at it a moment, then bent to pick it up.

“You’d go and hit that mule with this,” Thaddeus Bass
said as he strode up, stopped, and jammed the spades bit down into the turned soil, “I’d have call to larrup you good, son.” He leaned back with both strong, muscular hands wrapped around the space handle like knots on oiled ropes. “Thought I’d teached you better’n that.”

“Better’n what?” the boy replied testily, but was sorry it came out with that much vinegar to it.

Thaddeus sighed. “Better’n to go be mean to your animals.”

Titus stood there, caught without a thing to say, watching his father purse his lips and walk right on past to the old mule. Thaddeus Bass patted the big, powerful rump, stroked a hand down the spine, raising a small stir of lather near the harness, then scratched along the mare’s neck as he cooed to the animal. She stood patiently in harness, hooked by leather and wood of singletree, the quiet murmur of her jangling chains—the whole of it lashed round a tree stump young Titus Bass had been wrenching out of a piece of ground that seemed too reluctant to leave go its purchase on the stubborn stump.

Titus flushed with indignation. “She was about to kick me, Pap.”

Without looking back at his son, Bass said, “How you know that?”

“She was hitchin’ her rump around to kick me,” Titus retorted. “Know she was.”

“How hard you working her?”

Dusting himself off, he replied in exasperation, “How hard I’m working her? You was the one sent me out here with her to finish the last of these goddamned stumps.”

Thaddeus whirled on his son, yellow fire in his tired eyes. “Thought I told you I didn’t wanna hear no such language come outta your mouth.”

He watched his father turn back to the mule’s harness, emboldened by the man’s back, braver now that he did not have to look into those eyes so deeply ringed with the liver-colored flesh of fatigue. “Why? I ain’t never figured that out, Pap. I hear it come from your mouth.
Out’n Uncle Cy’s mouth too. I ain’t no kid no more. Lookit me. I be nearly tall as you—near filled out as you too. Why you tell me I can’t spit out a few bad words like you?”

“You ain’t a man, Titus.”

He felt the burn of embarrassment at his neck. “But I ain’t no boy neither!”

“No, you rightly ain’t. But for the life of me, I don’t know what you are, Titus.” Bass laid his arms over the back of the tall mule and glared at his son. “You ain’t a man yet, that’s for sure. A man takes good care of the animals what take care of him. But you, Titus? I don’t know what you are.”

“I ain’t a man yet?” Titus felt himself seething, fought to control his temper. “If’n I ain’t a man yet—how come you send me out to do a man’s job then!”

“Onliest way I know to make you into a man, son.”

He watched his father turn and survey the stump partly pulled free from the ground, some of its dark roots already splayed into the late-afternoon air like long, dark arthritic fingers caked with mud and clods of rich, black earth.

Thaddeus straightened. “You wanna be a farmer, Titus—the one lesson you gotta learn is take care of the animals gonna take care of you.”

The words spilled out before he wanted them to. “Like I told you before, Pap: it’s your idea I’m gonna be a farmer.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed, the lids all but hiding the pupils as he glowered at the youth. “You not gonna be a farmer like your pap, like your grandpap and all the Basses gone before you … just what in blue hell you figure on doing with your life?”

“I… I—”

“You ain’t got it figured out, do you?” Thaddeus interrupted. “And you won’t for some time to come, Titus. What else you think you can do?”

Titus watched his father step back in among the
leather, metal, and wood of the harness, tugging at it, straightening, adjusting the wrap of log chain his son had placed around the resistant stump.

“I like hunting, Pap.”

Without raising his head from his work, Bass said, “Man can’t make a living for his family by hunting.”

“How you so damn sure?”

The eyes came up from the singletree and penetrated Titus like a pair of hot pokers that shamed him right where he stood.

“Sounds like you’re getting a real bad mouth these days, son. Time was, I’d taken a strop of that harness leather to your backsides teach you to watch your tongue better.”

Titus felt his cheeks burn. No, he wouldn’t let his father raise a strap to him ever again. In as low and deep a voice as he could muster, the boy replied, “You’ll never lay leather on me again.”

For the longest moment they stared at one another, studying, measuring the heft of the other. Then his father nodded, his shoulders sagging a bit wearily. “You’re right, Titus. If you ain’t learned right from wrong by now, it ain’t gonna be me what’s teaching it to you. Too late now for me to try to straighten out what needs to be straightened.”

Titus swallowed, blinking back the tears of anger that had begun to sting his eyes as he stood his ground before his father. Suddenly confused that his father had agreed with him. It was the first time in … He couldn’t remember if his father had ever agreed with a single damned thing he had ever said or done.

Thaddeus Bass patted the mule on the rump and stepped closer to his son. “But you heed me and heed me well: if I ever hear of you using such words around your mam, if I ever catch you saying such things under my roof—then we’ll see who’s man enough to provide for his own self. You understand me, son?”

With that dressing Titus filmed under his damp collar.
“I ain’t never cursed under your roof, and I sure as hell ain’t never gonna curse in my mam’s hearing.”

“Just make sure you don’t, son,” his father replied, stepping back of the mule and taking up the harness reins. “It’d break your mother’s heart to hear you use such talk—what with the way that woman’s tried to raise you.”

Turning, Thaddeus Bass laid the leather straps in his son’s hands. “Now, get back to work. Sun’s going down.”

Titus pointed over at the nearby tree where he had stood the old longrifle. “I been at this all day, and I ain’t had a chance to go fetch me no squirrel yet.”

“It’s fine you go playing longhunter when you get your work done, Titus. That stump comes out’n that ground and gets dragged off yonder to the trees afore you come in to sup at sundown.”

His stomach flopped. “If’n I can’t get the stump up afore the sun goes down?”

His father looked at the falling orb, wagged his head, and said, “Then you best be making yourself a bed right here, Titus.”

Anger was like a clump of sticky porcupine quills clogging his throat with bile. Time and again he tried to swallow as he watched his father’s retreat across the field. Thaddeus Bass never turned as he headed purposefully for the far trees. Above the verdant green canopy beyond the diminishing figure rose a thin, fluffy column of smoke from the stone chimney of their cabin. He wondered what his two brothers and sister were doing right then.

Grinding the leather straps in his hands, Titus seethed at the injustice. He knew the rest of them would eat that night and sleep on their grass ticks beneath their coverlets. While he’d be right here in the timber, sleeping with the old mule and the other critters. Mayhaps that wasn’t all so bad—but his belly was sure hollering for fodder.