Seize the Sky

CHAPTER 14

SINCE the march would be resumed shortly after eleven P.M., so the command could inch as close to the Sioux as possible before daylight and thereby choose the best concealment for the day, many of the men didn’t see any sense in trying to get back to sleep.

From Custer’s meeting, some of the officers headed off in small groups, groping their way through the dark back to their companies. A larger group stayed the shank of the evening with reporter Mark Kellogg, who enthusiastically led a political discussion on the questionable future of the frontier army should a nonarmy president be elected come fall.

Nearby, a lonely soldier licked the nub of his pencil, then scratched in his journal beneath the pale light of a candle:

The political discussions are still going on. Kellogg gets in a real sweat, as do some others. There’s a lot hangs on what’s done at the conventions. St. Louis will tell whether the army is cut, rumors report.

Captain Myles Moylan, one of the few original officers with the Seventh, invited his friends to his bivouac to sing some songs before they would have to be off rousting their units for the night march. After “Little Footsteps Slow and Gentle,” and the ever-popular “Annie Laurie” were given voice, the young officers ended with “The Good-bye at the Door” and the “Olde Hundredth.” Then, to the surprise of most, a few began to belt out “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” dedicated to Custer.

Back in the shadows a few of the old-timers solemnly discussed what scout Charley Reynolds had done to surprise them earlier in the evening before riding off with Varnum’s scouts to ascend the Crow’s Nest. While the lieutenant’s Indians huddled in wait nearby, Lonesome Charley, as he was widely known, committed himself to a path of far-reaching consequence.

Reynolds distributed the contents of his personal haversack among his best friends.

“I damn well don’t want your shirt, Charley! How many times I’m gonna tell you?” an old line-sergeant friend had ranted. He was angry simply because Charley’s actions made him feel mighty uneasy. “You going and giving away everything you own in the goddamn world like this—I just don’t know!”

“You and me been down some roads together, Rufus,” Charley quietly pleaded with Sergeant Hutchinson of B Company. “Please, I want you to have the shirt.”

It had been just like touching the cold hand of death itself to take that shirt from his quiet friend, but Hutchinson eventually tore it out of Reynolds’s paw and raced off for his own unit, not knowing what else to say to an old friend who in his heart believed he was to die in the coming battle.

“You, Riley—you’ve always admired this, ain’t you?” Charley asked, pulling a denim shirt from his war bag and holding it beneath a lantern.

Sergeant Riley had tried sneaking off when it became plain why Reynolds had invited some of his old friends to visit him this evening. The sergeant had to admit he had always liked the shirt—its preacher pleats running down the front to surround the buttons like neat rows of farmer’s crops laid out in a plowed field. But he had never wanted the shirt that bad.

For an experienced plainsman like Reynolds to believe he was staring his last fight in the face was enough to shake even a veteran old file down to his sweaty boots.

Most of the troopers left their stock under saddle that night. Not much sense in removing the McClellans for the short time those saddles would stay empty. Only a few of the old hands thought enough of their animals to remove the saddles and sweated indigo blankets before they ripped up handfuls of twisted grass to scour the horses’ sweaty backs. All round those sleepless, cold-gutted old-timers the rest of the camp snored and rumbled, grabbing what relief sleep could give them.

Over at Tom Custer’s C Company, Private Peter Thompson had fallen asleep not long after the officers’ meeting ended and the serenade concluded. Sometime later he awakened in total darkness from a dream about riding with a detachment of cavalry attacked by warriors.

Thompson bolted upright from his saddle blanket, dripping cold and with a dry mouth. He blinked, then blinked again—surprised to find his friends still asleep on the ground. He splashed some cool water on his face from a canteen while he calmed down. Then laid his head on an arm and closed his eyes. As Thompson drifted off to sleep, the horrifying dream picked up where it had left off.

The only difference now was that Thompson watched his fellow soldiers chased over the hill. Suddenly the private was left alone, surrounded by a horde of warriors. A blood-chilling scream shattered his ears. He whirled around to find a Sioux charging up, war-ax brandished as he raced toward the lone trooper. Just as the wildly painted Sioux drew close enough to strike—Thompson awoke, stunned and muttering his prayers for deliverance from death, sweating like a whiskey cooler on a humid summer’s day.

When he could finally rise on his trembling legs, shaken and unable to speak, Thompson knew he’d never fall asleep again in his life, afraid of what he’d see when he closed his eyes.

Determined to walk to the picket-line where his horse was tethered, Thompson wandered through the camp of sleeping men scattered on the ground, appearing to him as if they were dead. Among the mounts the frightened soldier noticed for the first time how gaunt and poor the animals all were becoming under the severity of the regiment’s march up the Rosebud.

And under his breath, Private Peter Thompson cursed General George Armstrong Custer for punishing those animals and his men so damned hard right before he would ask them to fight the Sioux.

Then he prayed some more.

Down near the southern end of camp, striker Burkman had seen no sense in curling up beneath his coat for an hour or so before the command would push off up the divide. Instead, John stayed up with Custer while the general scribbled in his journal, from time to time sipping at the cool creek water he poured from Burkman’s battered, blackened coffee pot.

Across his taut, sunburned cheeks, the orderly sensed the breeze darting past like a snowshoe hare scampering off from a winter-gaunt wolf. Here, there … then gone.

At times a quick burst of phosphorescent green lightning would illuminate the starless canopy overhead, eerie fire igniting itself out of the low, solid cloud banks that made Burkman feel closed in, surrounded. Smothered. Anxious and afraid, Burkman decided he would wait up with his boss, his commander, his master. And see the new day in as they drove over the divide to corner their quarry.

Custer had been confiding matters to his journals, words and thoughts he knew someday would see the public eye. From his hand, on those pages, were discussions he held with himself about this person or that, often wrenching up from his bowels his deepest and most sensitive feelings about where he had been and where he was certain Destiny herself called him.

And while Custer knew the coming battle was his road to Olympus, another part of him hinted that he might be marching to Valhalla, that sacred hall of Odin, the Norse god of war. There Odin—the supreme deity of Norse legend—received the souls of heroes slain in glorious battle. Odin would forever be there to welcome the heroes home.

Custer set his pencil back to work beneath the flickering candlelight as the breezes tousled the paper where he struggled to put down his thoughts upon this lonely, lonely night of homecoming:

I have never prayed as others do. Yet on the eve of every battle in which I have been engaged, I have never omitted to pray inwardly, devoutly. Never have I failed to commend myself to God’s keeping, asking him to forgive my past sins, and to watch over me while in danger.… After having done so, all anxiety for myself, here or hereafter, is dispelled. I feel that my destiny is in the hands of the Almighty. This belief, more than any other fact or reason, makes me brave and fearless as I am.

As General George Armstrong Custer closed his leather-covered journal and rose to his feet, stretching the kinks out of his trail-weary back, his dog Tuck raised her muzzle to the low, ominous sky overhead, howling.

The hair along Burkman’s spine stood on end. Then the striker began to cry quietly. So the general would not hear.

John oft understood animals better than he understood the ways of man. Frightened, with a crushing sense of dread, Private John Burkman remembered dogs can sense death coming a long, long way off.

All along the bluffs their brassy voices ricocheted.

Horse guard roused company sergeants from their brief, troubled sleep. Sergeants nudged men from their slumber with a tap of a toe and an urgent word. And with that spreading commotion, the horses and mules grew excited until it seemed the whole valley reverberated with the noise of men and animals as an army began a new march.

Because of that thick dust adding to the black inkiness of the night, Myles Keogh’s I Company and others had to grope blindly along the trail, listening to the plunk of a carbine, the rhythmic ping-ping-ping of a bouncing tin cup tied to someone’s saddle or the comforting clatter of iron-shod horses scuffing over the rocks up ahead. Still, at times some of the lagging troops had to stop and whistle or holler out to the men ahead just to get a response so they could resume their ride into the darkest jaws of night.

At long last the march became more struggle than it was worth, and Custer’s quiet command was whispered back along the strung-out columns.

“We’re to rest here for the rest of the night, boys,” Keogh growled. “Pass it along. Take care of your mount, then grab some winks.”

Another blessed halt, the Irishman ruminated, pulling a flask from his three-strap saddlebag.

They had marched some ten miles in total darkness and would wait here for the coming of morning in this deep defile at the foot of the divide. Most of Keogh’s men went about unsaddling their weary mounts as suggested, rubbing them down with twists of dried grass. Some of I Company realized only too well how their lives were irretrievably tied to their horses. All the good care a soldier gave his animal today just might save his life tomorrow or the day after.

Here and there other troopers built small fires in the lee of brush or rocks. Coffee was boiled, a black potion strong enough to disguise most of the bitter tang of alkali in the water of the creek they followed up the slopes of the Wolf Mountains.

A potion more fit for the likes of hell than those poor souls about to descend the valley of doom come first light.

Close to two-thirty A.M. Varnum and his scouts reached the Crow’s Nest, some twenty-five miles from where they left the columns behind. Red Star, the young Ree, along with a Crow named Hairy Moccasin, was assigned to push into the highest reaches of the Nest, there to watch for the graying of the sky at dawn.

Meanwhile the rest would lay their heads upon a curled arm and sleep down in a pocket at the foot of the Nest, awaiting word from the two with eyes at the top of the divide looking into the valley of the Greasy Grass.

That first faint light to touch this northern prairie was slipping out of the east when Hairy Moccasin hooted soft as a night owl to his fellow Crows. Below him just some twenty feet, scattered upon the ground like sleeping children, the Crow scouts stirred from their cold beds, attentive to the mournful owl hoot from above. Quietly, one by one, the Crows began to chant their personal death songs, singing their prayers to the Grandfather Above.

To the eerie wail of those songs the Rees awakened. Several rushed to try squeezing into the narrow neck at the top of the Nest. The Crows, flushed with anger, bitterly shoved the Rees back, huskily jabbering in Absaroka.

The Crow asked for Varnum. No one else would they allow to the top but Custer’s pony soldier.

Wiping gritty sleep from his eyes, the lieutenant elbowed his way through the anxious Rees and scrambled up to join Hairy Moccasin and Red Star. White-Man-Runs-Him breathed hot on Varnum’s neck, standing right behind the white man to peer into the awakening valley below. In the graying light Charlie thought he was able to spot those two Indian lodges the scouts told him they had run across in their travels last evening before returning to the command with the portentous news for Custer.

Then the scouts directed Varnum to look far beyond and to the north, into that distant valley of the Little Bighorn.

“Look for worms,” they signed with their hands, fingers a wriggling mass of movement.

Again the soldier strained his tired eyes, this time looking for worms they said would be wriggling across the valley floor. Still he could see nothing of the herd, blaming his trail-weary eyes, reddened and irritated by the gritty dust of the march. Besides, he rationalized, he had just ridden some seventy-five miles without much sleep to speak of. No wonder his eyes weren’t working as they should.

In disgust Varnum slid back down to the pocket below the Nest and drew out his tablet and pencil he used to scratch a hurried message to Custer.

“Here, Red Star,” Charlie whispered, holding up the dispatch for the Arikara scout to see, using his poor sign language to explain the important mission. “I want you to go to the pony chief—”

The growing excitement and buzz among the Crows and Rees diverted Varnum’s attention at that moment. On his feet he could himself see why the Indians were hopping mad. Down below on the east slope of the divide, the regiment’s camp fires could be plainly seen only ten miles off, glowing like hundreds of pinpricks of orange red light scattered across the landscape. A purple twist of smoke curled lazily from each fire into the cool dawn air.

“I understand,” the white man tried to explain with his hands. “If we can see those fires, then the Sioux can see them too.”

The angry scouts bobbed their heads, grim faces a mixture of rage and fear. Varnum pulled his watch out of a pants pocket and noted the time. Four forty-five A.M.

“Red Star. Go. Give to Custer.” He tapped the folded paper one more time, nudging the young scout off toward the ponies.

By now some of the Rees had climbed into the Crow’s Nest themselves, studying the wide valley of the Greasy Grass beyond. Eventually the light grew more and more favorable for spotting the villages. Still, the scouts watched until absolutely certain. Then the Rees too filled the air with their own death chants.

“Otoe Sioux! Otoe Sioux!”

Varnum listened, frantically trying to sort out the babble, trying to remember the meaning of the Arikara words.

“Otoe Sioux!”

“Plenty!” the soldier whispered to himself, snapping his fingers as he recalled. “No,” he muttered. “More than plenty. Otoe means too many!”

Charlie gulped unconsciously, staring up at those Rees crowded in the Crow’s Nest, each one moaning with the sad refrains of his private death chant. Some scratched their faces, drawing blood, while others tugged at their un-braided hair, pulling strands out.

“Sioux everywhere,” Varnum murmured his own death song that cool dawn. “Too many Sioux.”

Because of some recent fears that Red Beard Crook would follow them over from the Rosebud after Crazy Horse’s warriors had battled the white soldiers to a standstill only eight suns ago, the Lakota chiefs kept a constant string of young scouts riding out from the camps in the valley of the Greasy Grass west of the divide.

Day and night, the scouts came and went.

Following little Ash Creek east up the divide from the Greasy Grass, Standing Bear and a handful of Hunkpapa warriors ran across a startling discovery: iron-shod horse tracks! And they were very fresh. A trail coming up to the crest of the divide, from below on the Rosebud.

Eighteen ponies, maybe more, Standing Bear concluded.

“Perhaps Red Beard is returning for another try at our great gathering of tribes, little brothers!” Standing Bear whispered to his scouts.

“One thing about the white man,” laughed Round-Face-Woman, a young warrior, “they can be very persistent.”

“Pretty stupid at times,” snorted another young scout.

“But—always persistent,” Standing Bear echoed, ending the discussion.

Just beyond the eastern slope of the crest, the scouts spotted the smoke rising from the regiment’s fires, the distinct smell of bacon and coffee carried on the morning breeze as the cool air was harried up and out of the valley toward the high places.

Yet this fresh trail seemed to lead off to their right.

Strange, Standing Bear brooded, those soldiers are camped below and to our left … while this fresh trail wanders up the divide to our right—

“Aiyeee! There!” Round-Face-Woman shouted, pointing up the slope, toward a pinnacle of rocks high on the divide to their right.

It was true. Several Indians hid themselves up there, looking over the edge into the valley of the Greasy Grass as the sun slipped its red ball of fire over the edge of the earth far to the east. Indians by their dress and hair … mostly their hair.

Sparrowhawks! Standing Bear figured. Maybe some corn eaters along by the look of things. And yes! A white man with them.

“Little brothers, these surely must be spies from Red Beard Crook’s soldiers.”

“We will ride back and give warning,” Grass-That-Sings cried out, urging his pony aside.

“I do not think Red Beard will attack this day,” Standing Bear whispered confidently. “He would not get close enough to our villages until the sun stands high in the heavens. And we all know soldiers prefer to attack at dawn. Have no fear, little brothers, that Red Beard will try our warriors in battle this day.”

The younger scouts agreed and snatched up their reins.

Up, up through the trees they climbed until coming to those bare rocks they had to cross before they could descend into the cover of shady trees and concealing shadows on the far side of the divide.

And that’s when Varnum spotted them: A handful of Sioux hurrying into the valley of the Little Bighorn with their urgent message of warning.

At daylight there were still a few soldiers and officers stretched out on the ground, some curled under a bush or with a saddle blanket pulled over them. Most of the troops hunkered red-eyed and wasted, clutching cups of strong, alkaline coffee and content not to have to think about much of anything at all.

Only a handful of these half-dead soldiers paid any attention to the lone Arikara scout who loped into camp, searching for the pony soldier-chief himself.

Tom Custer saw him coming first. He stood at the fire Burkman fed to heat some coffee the general wanted.

“Autie, you best quit wetting those bushes down now. Button up your britches and come on over here.”

Custer came back to the fire as he buttoned up his buckskinned pants. Tom pointed out the Ree scout headed their way on horseback, coming in at a slow walk now.

“You remember that one’s name, Tom?”

“Can’t say as I do.”

“Find Fred Gerard, wherever he might be sleeping off last night’s whiskey. Bring him here immediately. I figure we’ve got us some news coming down from Varnum.”

As Tom loped off on foot to search for the interpreter, Custer held out his tin cup, not even looking back at Burkman.

“Striker! Coffee, please.”

John watched the young Indian dismount, then poured a cup for Custer. The general signed his offer of coffee. Red Star nodded and held out his hands; from them the single rawhide rein looped back to the lower jaw of his horse. Burkman picked up his own tin cup and poured the thick, scalding brew into it for the scout.

As he squatted down at the fire with his cup cradled in one hand, Red Star reached inside the neck of his shirt and pulled out the dispatch scribbled by Varnum.

Custer ripped the tablet page open with more eagerness than most men would know in a lifetime.

Crows see LARGE pony herd in the valley.

North on Little Horn. I have not spotted it, but all the scouts see the herd north in valley. They see dust—smoke too. Come see.

“You damned bet I’ll come see for myself, Lieutenant Varnum!” Custer danced a little jig around the morning fire for Red Star and Burkman right then and there.

“This is just the news I’ve been waiting for!” He stuffed the message inside his shirt.

Bellowing like a bull elk in the rut, Custer raced over to Vic and leapt upon the mare bareback. Seizing the reins, he tore off through the regiment’s camp to spread the word all by himself. The fringe on his buckskins snapped and popped like corn parching as the blaze-faced sorrel’s mane fluttered, creating a stirring sight for those grumbling soldiers rousted from their sleep by the general himself.

“Get up! Get up you lady-thumping rummies! We’re marching at eight!” he hollered at the top of his lungs.

“General … over here!” It was Calhoun’s recognizable baritone. Keogh dashed up beside him, winded from his run.

“By God, we’ve got them cornered now, Jimbo!” Custer gushed happily. “The scouts have spotted the village just on the other side of the divide. They’re within reach!”

Custer hammered his heels against Vic’s ribs and burst off to continue spreading the word.

“How far away, General?” Myles Moylan asked, sensing the familiar fever of impending battle already pumping in his veins.

“Twelve, maybe fifteen miles on the other side of the divide!”

“We’ll whip ’em for sure, General!” Moylan cheered, throwing his huge fist into the air.

“Pray they don’t run, Myles,” Custer reminded him anxiously, his sunburned face suddenly serious. “Just pray they don’t run on me now. I so desperately need to catch them right where they are.”

Back at his fire a few officers had already gathered with Tom.

“Where’s Gerard, Tom?” Custer demanded gruffly, eyes scanning the group for his interpreter.

“Couldn’t find him,” Tom shrugged, staring back into his coffee cup.

“You just didn’t look under the right bush!” Custer flared.

He wanted Gerard, and he wanted him now. The general was certain Red Star had more to tell than Varnum’s terse note could ever say. And Custer wanted that too. All of it.

He wheeled and tore off, never dismounting.

“Whaaaa!” Gerard growled moments later, blinking as he peered up into bright morning light and that tall man standing over him, thumping the heel of his boot with the toe of his own. “What in glory hell’s wrong with you, Custer?”

“Get your flea-bitten, hung-over ass moving, Gerard!” he barked. “You’re holding up my victory.”

Gerard allowed his aching head to plop back to the saddle blanket he had pulled into the bushes with him. “Ohhh …”he moaned. “That’s all, is it? Well, General, when you find the Sioux, you come tell me then.”

“How’d you like to ride back to Lincoln in irons, Gerard? If you make it back alive at all.”

Frederic F. Gerard opened one raw, bloody eye again and stared up into the new light of day shimmering round the tall man towering over his bed in the bullberry thicket. He had known Custer for most of three years now. Long enough to know the general was damned well dead serious.

“I’m coming, General.” He struggled to sit up, feeling of a sudden he might lose last night’s supper … then remembered he didn’t have any supper last night. While others had eaten, Fred had only nursed his deep, abiding thirst.

Running a thick tongue over sandpaper teeth, it felt like a guard had tramped back and forth all night long inside his mouth … and with a pair of muddy boots on as well.

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll wait five minutes at my headquarters fire,” Custer advised sternly, climbing to the saddle. “Then, I’ll send a guard detail to fetch you, Gerard.”

Custer was gone as quickly as he had come, through the trees and milling troopers preparing horses and mules for the march that would be ordered at eight.

By the time Gerard staggered up, bleary-eyed and heavy-headed, Bloody Knife, Stabbed, One Feather, Soldier, Curly Hair, and others were gathered at Custer’s fire. Each one talked low and solemn with young Red Star.

No longer wearing a light, easy expression on his face, Custer was intent on the business at hand. He handed his reins over to Burkman and dropped to one knee in the circle of solemn Arikara scouts. Their somber expressions and grave speech generally went unnoticed as Godfrey, Moylan, Keogh, Calhoun, and others eased up to listen in on Custer’s discussion with the Rees.

“What’s that he said?” Custer interrupted Gerard. He recognized something in Bloody Knife’s tone from their years together. After all, the bold Ree scout had ridden this trail with Custer many times in the past. Custer could sense something serious in the color of the aging Ree’s words.

Gerard turned back to Bloody Knife. When the scout had finished, the dry-mouthed interpreter blinked at Custer.

“Bloody Knife says there’re too many Sioux over in that valley.”

“Yes?” Custer replied, feeling a surge of anger. “We know there are many—”

“He says, General,” Gerard interrupted uncharacteristically, “we’ll find enough Sioux over there to keep us fighting for two, maybe three days.”

“Oh, now …” Custer wagged his head as the peg-toothed smile widened, azure eyes twinkling distantly at the officers round him. “I guess we’ll just have to get through them in one day.”

Rising to his feet, Custer dusted his hands off on his buckskin britches. He simply didn’t have more than one day to get the job done.

Even if the Sioux village was a little strong, the warriors would probably wage only a staying action, merely holding the troops off while their women and children and old people escaped into the hills. Like the Washita the men would fight only until the weak ones had escaped.

“Let’s go to the valley!” Custer commanded. “Saddle up your men, fellas. We’re moving out to catch us some Sioux!”