Seize the Sky

CHAPTER 8

FOR better than a hundred fifty summers, the Sioux had journeyed to Bear Butte with the short-grass time. Bear Butte, close by the east slope of their sacred Paha Sapa.

Every summer the great pilgrimage to the Black Hills had traveled from the four winds, to meet in celebration of their ancient way of life. Summer after summer the mighty Teton bands gathered until their combined herds numbered thirty thousand gnawing at the rich grasses along the forks of Bear Butte Creek.

Here the seven circles of the mighty Lakota nation raised their lodges like bare brown breasts uplifted to the sky in praise, thanksgiving, and celebration of life.

But for the past two summers, the Sioux had been driven from their ancient land where the great Wakan Tanka ministered to His people’s needs. Bear Butte lay within shooting distance of the obscene mining camp called Deadwood Gulch, Dakota Territory. Really nothing more than a collection of saloons, sutlers’ tents, and prostitutes’ cribs.

Yet stain enough still on this holy place, enough to force the Sioux away. No more could the Lakota gather to celebrate with thanksgiving at Bear Butte. Not while the white men tore greedily at the Mother’s dark breast, searching voraciously for the yellow rocks that made white men crazy.

So the great council of the Teton Sioux tribes had declared their move to the Rosebud this summer to be good. With the coming of the first snows of last robe season, word had spread from camp to camp, across the agencies and reservations—announcing that the clans would steer far from their Paha Sapa.

This summer, farther west. Not on the Powder. No, not on the Tongue either.

The great summer joy would gather to celebrate under Sitting Bull along the Rosebud.

In the Sore-Eye Moon of last winter, those of Old Bear’s band of Northern Cheyenne who had survived Red Beard Crook’s attack on their snowy camp huddled in the darkness in the hills above the headwaters of Pumpkin Creek. Below them soldiers set fire to lodges and robes, clothing and dried meat, while some of the brave young warriors slipped in and stole back their fine herd of Cheyenne ponies from Colonel Reynolds’s young, foolish soldiers.

“Hush,” Monaseetah cooed to her boys, shivering in her one blanket.

“I am hungry,” Sees Red snapped. He was seven winters now and had learned that when he wanted something, he had to demand it like a young warrior.

His mother stroked his black hair. “We will eat soon.”

“When?” he demanded.

“Soon,” she whispered, hunkered down in the scrub oak and cedars with knots of other survivors who had fled from the soldiers. She held her two sons against her body, staring down the long slope at the bright fires. Fires glowing warm and inviting now. Fires that were once their lodges, their lives, in this winter valley.

She was reminded of a camp along the Little Dried River in the southern country when she was but a girl of thirteen summers, a camp where white soldiers butchered and defiled her mother. Then she remembered Black Kettle’s village along the Washita in the southern territories as well, when she was seventeen winters. A camp where the soldiers killed her father.

“How long will we stay here?” Sees Red asked.

“You ask too many questions.” She pulled him closer. “Why can’t you be like Yellow Bird? He is content to sit here with his mother, watching the fires, and wait for the others to begin our long walk.”

“Yellow Bird is not like us, Mother,” Sees Red said darkly.

She gazed down at the quieter of her two sons, stroking his light-colored hair. Hair not at all like his brother’s. “He is your brother.”

“Others tell me that we truly are both your sons but with different fathers.” Sees Red sniffed, feeling arrogant again. “I am Shahiyena, Mother.”

“Yes, you are Cheyenne.”

“He is not.” Sees Red jabbed a dirty finger at his little brother.

“He is Cheyenne,” Monaseetah protested, shivering. “From my body … Yellow Bird is Cheyenne.”

“No, Mother. He is white, like the soldier-chief who is his father. My father was a Cheyenne warrior.”

“Yes, Sees Red. But Yellow Bird’s father was also a great warrior.”

“No! He was white—an earthman!”

She nodded. “It is true, Yellow Bird’s father is white, but he is the greatest of all soldier-chiefs—a powerful warrior among his people.”

Sees Red pouted a few moments, glaring flint arrow points at his little brother in his sixth winter now. “He is not like me or my friends. Not like us, Mother.”

“Hush,” she replied, beginning to rise. “Come, now. The others are going.”

“Going where, Mother?” Yellow Bird spoke for the first time since he had been yanked from his warm bed and dragged from the cozy lodge to the safety of this hilltop.

“I do not know, my sons. But,” she gazed back over her shoulder at the blazing twinkle of many fires lighting the snow, reflecting red orange on the low clouds overhead, “we no longer belong here.”

She cried silently that Black Night March, tears freezing on her cheeks as she shuddered with more than the cold. Time and again she stopped, rewrapping the one wool blanket around them all, the one blanket she had to share with her two sons. Reminding herself it had been right to leave the Indian Territories of her people, to live with her cousins among the northern bands where she could be free. With the hope still burning in her breast that one day her husband would find her.

Through the deep snow and darkness of that long winter night, Old Bear’s Northern Cheyenne struggled on, guided by stars and the wind that hurried them along the ridges of that icy country, carrying only what they had on their backs. They told each other to keep moving. Those who stopped too long would not be with them when the morning sun reached into the sky.

Near daybreak some of the young warriors appeared on the hilltops, signaling with their blankets and robes.

“They ride ponies, Mother!” Yellow Bird cried. “Ponies!”

“Yes …” Monaseetah cried too, with silent tears.

Down from the gray slopes, the young men drove their recaptured ponies, leading the mustangs into the scattered remnants of Old Bear’s band. First the old ones were lifted out of the snow and set atop the strong young backs of the Cheyenne ponies, clutching manes and thanking the young brave protectors of the helpless ones.

Then the women and children.

“Now! We ride to The Horse’s camp,” shouted White-Cow-Bull, an unmarried Oglalla warrior from Crazy Horse’s village who had been visiting friends among Old Bear’s people when Crook and Reynolds attacked.

He directed the rest of his Oglalla brothers and some of the Cheyenne warriors to ride as sentries along the far ridges, searching the land for sign of more soldiers as he led the survivors in the line a bee would take to its hive. Once their noses were pointed north, White-Cow-Bull galloped back along the ragged column of stragglers. He reined up beside the beautiful Cheyenne woman.

“You are warm?” he asked.

“I am.” She did not take her eyes off the broken, trampled snow beneath her pony’s nose.

“And the boys?”

Monaseetah held them both in front of her on the pony’s back. “Warm too.” She knew the handsome Oglalla warrior had eyes for her alone.

He waited a long, aggravating moment, as if searching for something more to say to the woman who did not want to talk to him.

“We ride to The Horse’s camp now, Monaseetah. You will survive. Your sons will survive as well. We have strong ponies between our legs now, and the Cheyenne have always been a strong people. You will survive—and you will remember the night the soldiers burned your village!”

White-Cow-Bull suddenly yanked his pony away from the slow march, leaving the woman behind. He hammered his heels against the pony’s ribs as he galloped toward the front of the column, kicking up a spray of snow into the new red light emerging at the edge of the world.

“Ride, Shahiyena!” the Oglalla shouted down the line. “Follow me to freedom!”

For three days the Cheyenne marched before coming to the camp of Oglalla chief Crazy Horse. There the Sioux took in their friends, giving them clothes to replace the frozen, tattered remnants of what they had carried away on their backs from Old Bear’s winter camp.

Empty, gnawing bellies were filled from the store of dried buffalo and antelope put away for this winter season by the Oglalla. Old Bear’s people warmed themselves around Sioux fires, talking about the Black Night March they had survived. After three days it was decided that together Crazy Horse would lead them all to join up with Sitting Bull’s Hunkpapas.

When at last all three bands would camp together, they could decide how to defend themselves from the soldiers who had come to force them back onto their reservations.

Three more suns rose and fell before they found The Bull’s Hunkpapa village along the Creek of Beavers, nestled for protection against the late-season snows beneath the Blue Mountains.

After many hours of council, it was decided the survivors of Red Beard’s attack could travel with the Sioux. The three formed an alliance for the protection of those Northern Cheyenne of Old Bear. After all, the tribes agreed, the soldiers had attacked a Cheyenne village. Not the Sioux. The soldiers had not burned and plundered an Oglalla or Hunkpapa winter camp.

Talk was that the soldiers must be hunting Cheyenne once more, as they did on the Little Dried River in Colorado Territory twelve winters ago. As they stalked down the Cheyenne on the Washita eight winters gone.

This three-way alliance was formed for their mutual safety during the buffalo-hunting season drawing near. And because the Cheyenne themselves were the hunted ones, they would act as the point of the march on these nomadic wanderings come the short-grass time.

Following the march leaders were the Oglallas, while the Hunkpapas of Sitting Bull would act as rear guard. It was The Bull’s contention that the best way to avoid trouble was to stay as far from the white man as possible. If they could but avoid the army, he reasoned, there would be no worry of attack.

Slow marches of a few miles each day that winter-into-spring as the three villages moved up the Powder. With the full warming of spring awash over the northern prairies, they marched over to the Tongue.

And slowly, slowly, on to the Rosebud.

Every day The Bull sent out runners to the other bands trapped in bitter despair on the reservations.

“Look what I have!” Bull boasted. “You on the agencies have nothing but what the white man chooses to give you … when he chooses to give it. While I and the others have what Wakan Tanka has always given His people. Come, bring your guns! We will hunt in the old way. On our old lands. Where the white man will bother us no longer.”

All through the spring and the first reaching of the short-grass to the sun, many trails from north and south and east slowly began to merge together like strips of sinew wrapped into bowstring. Days of spring sped into summer, and one by one the little tracks of a lodge or two moved off the agencies, eventually joining others, their travois poles scratching the earth like the little streams and creeks feeding the mighty torrent of a river.

The Sioux were now as they had not been for many, many winters. Once again they were gathering with the old spirit, the old courage, the ageless power. There flowed a new life vibrant in every man, woman, and little babe strapped on the travois. They would go where the white man could not reach them.

Sitting Bull would take his people to those ancient hunting grounds, where they would not be bothered by the white man.

Sitting Bull would take them to the Rosebud.

By four o’clock that first afternoon, Custer halted the command on those open, minty bottomlands fragrant along the west bank of the Rosebud. Here the westerly breezes sweeping down from the Wolf Mountains would drive away troublesome mosquitoes come nightfall. The river at this point ran some thirty to forty feet in width, only three to five feet in depth, clear running but slightly alkaline, and with a gravel bottom that caressed the tired feet of many a trooper wishing to cool himself in its pleasant ripples that evening.

At sunset “Officers’ Call” was sounded by Custer’s chief trumpeter, Henry Voss. Word buzzed through camp that the officers would find Custer’s bivouac beneath his headquarters’ flag tied to a bullberry bush in the direction of the march.

By the time Fred Benteen, senior captain in the regiment, had squatted in the grass near the general’s bedroll, he could see Custer was nowhere near as jovial as he had been that morning nor the previous evening. Benteen unbuttoned his blue blouse and swatted at a troublesome mosquito, sensing a sudden and serious mood seeping along the Rosebud as the last stragglers trotted up.

Fred scratched at the reinforced crotch of his cavalry trousers, then pulled out his ever-present pipe and stoked the bowl to a cheery glow.

“Cooke, how do we stand?” Custer barked with a taste of iron to it.

“All present and accounted for, sir!”

“Very good.” Custer paced a moment, gathering his thoughts. “Since we’re all here now, let me begin. I’m sure we each have better things to do that spend endless sessions listening to orders of march. Most of you have accompanied me many times before. You’ll find little changed on this journey.”

Tearing off a small limb from the bullberry bush spread like an awning over his bedroll, Custer continued. “I want to be assured that this scout is successful. And, I believe, success is marked by finding the Sioux. Am I correct, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir!” Calhoun answered, then nervously glanced around at some of the more silent of his fellow officers.

“To assure our success, I am reminding you all of some of the primary orders of march I must insist upon upholding—the most important of which is that each of you must see that your trumpeters bury their bugles in their saddlebags and don’t bring the bloody things out again until I order them brought out. There will be no more trumpet calls except in the gravest of emergencies. Good,” he answered himself, slapping the limb across his left palm.

“At five A.M. each day we will begin our march. Five—promptly! That means your troops should be rousted by three for breakfast and to ready their mounts. You company commanders are experienced men and know well enough what to do, plus knowing when to do what’s necessary for your men, so there are but two things I feel should be regulated from headquarters: when to move out and when to go into camp at the end of each day’s march.”

He paced a moment, tapping an index finger against his lips. “All other details, such as reveille, stables, watering, halting, grazing—everything will be left to the judgment and discretion of the troop commanders. I want you all to keep paramount in your minds you must remain in supporting distance of one another and don’t dare get ahead of the scouts I will have out at all times in advance of our columns. And please, gentlemen—don’t lag behind the main body of the march. I don’t want any stragglers butchered. Understood?”

When he heard mumbling agreement from most of the weary men, Custer plunged ahead. “From all the intelligence General Terry has gleaned, in addition to the scout of Major Reno here, who found much evidence of lodge fires on that reconnaissance, we just might meet something in the order a thousand Sioux warriors. Now, fellas—if what the reports say is true about the Indians jumping the reservations like gnats off a hot plate this summer to join up with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse … well, it looks like we might run onto something closer to fifteen hundred warriors.”

“Fifteen hundred?” Wallace gulped.

“That’s right, Lieutenant.” Custer took a couple steps toward Wallace.

“But, sir. There’s only some six hundred of us!”

Custer said, “Six hundred of the finest, anvil-hardened troopers who ever sat their asses atop McClellan saddles west of the Missouri—and don’t you ever forget that!” He waved the limb over their heads, pointing downstream at the regiment going about its evening mess. “I’ll put those six hundred up against twice that fifteen hundred warriors any day, Lieutenant!”

“Hear! Hear!” Tom cried, but quieted when Custer flicked a disapproving glance in his direction.

“But to put your mind at ease—from the reports of Indian agents up to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, it looks as if we won’t find an opposing force of more than fifteen hundred. Now, General Terry offered me Brisbin’s cavalry and the Gatlings—”

“General?”

He turned. “Just a moment, Captain Keogh. You must all understand my reasoning. If those fifteen hundred warriors can defeat our Seventh Cavalry, by jiggers, they’re gonna defeat a larger force.” He looked at Keogh. “Captain, your question?”

“Personally speaking now, General.” Keogh pricked all ears with his thick, foggy brogue. “I’m happy you didn’t bring them others along. We all know each other here. We’re all friends, ain’t we now? And we all know just how the next man’s going to act in a scrap of it. I say we’re far better off not having Grasshopper Jim’s Second Cav along to muddle things up for us.”

“What Myles says is true, boys. With our regiment acting alone, there won’t be a problem with harmony. The addition of Brisbin’s unit would’ve caused jealousy and friction.”

“Tell ’em why you turned down the Gatlings, Autie,” Tom suggested with a grin as he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Simply put, I figured the guns are pulled by condemned and inferior animals. Our march will be over terrain difficult enough as it is. The heavy, cumbersome guns and those busted-down animals would hold us back, perhaps at a most critical moment when I must maneuver as cavalry on the field of battle was meant to maneuver—turning in precision at the drop of a hat.”

Custer stepped back to the awning. “Now, our marches each day will be from twenty-five to thirty miles each. I remind each of you to husband your troop’s rations and be very watchful of the horses’ condition. As I said before, we just might be out longer than we’ve rationed ourselves for. If we strike the hostiles’ trail, gentlemen—I intend to follow it … right on into Nebraska or back to the Missouri River if need be. We’ll find those Sioux and their camp followers. Make no mistake of that. We’re not going in to our station until we have those warriors in our death grip!

“Boys,” Custer continued, “I’ll eat mule jerky and drink bad water if I have to, for as long as I have to. Simply because George Armstrong Custer is going to track those warriors right into hell if he has to!”

Benteen watched Custer bend the bullberry branch in half, finally snapping it with a resounding crack.

“I’ll be glad to entertain any suggestions, gentlemen,” he concluded quietly, “if those suggestions are presented in the proper manner by an officer of this command.”

Benteen took notice of some of those faces that had been staring off at the river, gazing up at the clearing sky, or down at their dirty boot-toes, suddenly snap up. Something strange in the commander’s comment snagged Benteen’s attention like a fishing hook snagging a cutthroat trout.

This just wasn’t the Custer he had come to know during their last decade together. Whereas the general was normally snappy and often sarcastic, now Custer’s mood appeared contemplative, brooding.

Damned near somber, Benteen mulled.

If you were of the inner circle, then bless you. If you stood on the outside looking in, as did Frederick W. Benteen—then pity you, soldier.

So those who knew Custer best now hung not only on his words at this moment, but his tone and the distant look of those haggard eyes. Tom, Calhoun, Keogh, Cooke, Moylan, and Godfrey. For the general to become something different here on the first day of their march—it was enough to make a sensible man grow edgy, watching over his shoulder for ghosts.

Benteen himself wondered as Custer droned on, thinking Custer must certainly feel trapped within the strictures of Terry’s rather general and ambiguous orders. He grows despondent, Benteen brooded, yearning to be free of Terry. Instead, the arrogant, crowing bastard may well hamstring himself on the sharp horns Terry’s designed for him.

Then, while others studied Custer, Benteen’s gaze was drawn to brother Tom.

Benteen figured no others would read that hollow despair round his blue eyes. If he knew any man as well as he knew Custer, Fred Benteen thought he understood Tom Custer.

Yet only Tom would truly understand that ever since the Washita, Autie had grown increasingly afraid. Not of death. Never that. No man could ever seriously entertain the idea of George Armstrong Custer wetting his pants over the thought of death.

No, instead it seemed Custer was afraid of risking his last great victory earned along the Washita in Indian Territory eight long winters behind them. Only Tom realized that his brother now stood the chance of winning for himself a seat among Washington’s powerful—and this close to the precipice, Custer might also stand to suffer a complete defeat of all his hopes and dreams.

Yes. Benteen understood it now, watching the way Tom gazed at his older brother. Tom looks at him like Peter himself looked at Christ. The young one knows how crucial it is for big brother to have everything successful and glorious. From here on out there can be no taint of defeat or withdrawal for the Seventh. Custer will be satisfied with nothing short of victory. This close to the edge of greatness, a man often teeters when looking back to see just how far he’s come in so short a time.

“I want it understood,” Custer continued, “that I’ll allow no grumbling in the slightest and shall demand exact compliance with orders from every officer. Not only my orders, but every officer’s as well.”

The general wiped his empty palm over his bristling mustache, watching his men with intensity. “It has come to my attention recently that some of my actions have been criticized to Department HQ by a few of you officers.”

Here he goes, Benteen thought, fidgeting.

“Criticism going right to Terry’s office. Now, I’ll always take recommendation from even a junior-grade second lieutenant in my command, but I want that recommendation to come to me in the proper manner.”

Bending to rip open the flap of his canvas haversack, Custer yanked forth a smudged, field-weary copy of Army Regulations from which he read the pertinent section regarding the offense in criticism of actions of commanding officers.

“I put you each on notice.” He ground his words out as he slammed the book shut. “Should there be a repeat of this offense among any one of you in the future, I shall take the necessary steps to punish the guilty party.”

To Benteen, Custer’s challenge polluted the air like the acrid stench of burnt gunpowder as the general let his words sink all the way to the core of every man. Benteen couldn’t llet it pass. Although he had never been one to provoke Custer needlessly, neither was he a bootlicker who would let this challenge pass.

“General.” Benteen took a step forward. “If I may be so bold. Appears you’re lashing the shoulders of all—just to get at some. Now, as your entire officer corps is present, wouldn’t it do to specify the officers whom you accuse?”

Benteen knew well enough the answer to his own query. He stood toe to toe with Custer, as the same man who years ago mocked the general in his scandalous letter exposing Custer’s questionable actions immediately after the Battle of Washita when Major Joel Elliott and his men were abandoned to their fates and the butchery of the Kiowas.

“Captain—” Custer glared at the bulky Missourian with flinty eyes, though the salutation came out barely whispered above the hush. “I want my words to be a steel bit—and that bit shoved in the mouth that should wear it.”

Benteen ground a boot-heel into the soft grass. “Then, General, would you be kind enough to tell me—before my fellow officers—if I’m the one who’s been grumbling and complaining to HQ about you?”

“Captain, I’ll not be catechized by you, or any man on regulations, nor the management of my own command. However, for your information—here before these fine men—I will state that none of my remarks were directed toward you. I know of no grumbling on this or on any other campaign, by you.”

A sad smile graced Custer’s sunburned face as his sapphire eyes took on a distant glow. “I know I can rely on each and every one of you from here on out. I always have. Whether you knew it or not. I’ve relied on my officer corps like they were my own family. Sure, there’ll be bickering in a family—just like the Custer household back in Monroe. Right, Tom?”

“Sure, Autie.” Tom never took his eyes from Benteen.

“We are family, gentlemen. We will support each other in what the future brings. We’re horse soldiers, after all.”

A man didn’t have to be standing right beside Custer to hear sentiment catch in his throat as the general rasped out the name of his beloved regiment: “We’re the Seventh. We’ll succeed only by hanging together, above dissension … or we’ll die alone in miserable solitude because we failed each other.”

With those last words Custer flung the limb aside and brought his right hand up, saluting his subordinates in a rare gesture of fellowship. Nervously, as they glanced furtively at one another, one by one the men of this command brought their right arms up to answer the sudden, unexpected salute from their general. It was an odd, uncanny feeling that shot like a thunderbolt through that assembly on the banks of the Rosebud at twilight.

Never before had Custer saluted them first.

He brought his arm down snappily, forcing a grin to crease his sunburned face. “That will be all, gentlemen. We march at five.”