Seize the Sky

CHAPTER 20

AS the cheering died, the dusty soldiers in Custer’s five companies listened. The low booms of the trapdoor carbines were swallowed up by the higher crack of Henry and Winchester repeaters down in the valley.

A matter of heartbeats more, and that carbine fire started moving south—no longer driving north in the direction of Reno’s attack.

“Cooke!” Custer wheeled Vic. “Dammit, man—follow me! The rest of you—prepare to move out at a charge on my return!” He raked his spurs into the sorrel’s flanks viciously.

Something cold in Billy Cooke’s guts told him he had better start worrying. Not just the sounds rising from the fight in the valley. But that cloud crossing Custer’s face. Custer knows, Cooke thought. He knows.

The general skidded to a halt on the bluff once again, straining his eyes directly below, to his left South. And for the very first time he saw the rest of the village.

“How’d we miss them before?” he muttered to Cooke, wagging his head. “In haste.”

“Or hope, General,” Billy replied.

“But there they are … hidden for the most part.”

Even with his naked eyes, as red and tired and strained as Custer’s, the adjutant could pick out some of the blanket-covered wickiups along the river.

More frightening still was the sight of the riders racing out of that thick timber after Reno’s retreating cavalry—hundreds of warriors in a yellow cloud of dust, waving their blankets and robes. Naked for the most part. Brandishing rifles or lances, bows and pistols. From every throat rose a horrendous war cry as they spilled across the open ground toward the retreating draggle of Reno’s demoralized soldiers.

Like hornets spilling out of an overturned nest, massing for the kill.

“My God!” Custer sputtered under his breath, hand at his silky mustache in frustration.

“What now, General?” Cooke swallowed, stoically straightening himself in the saddle.

Custer gazed at him with those cold blue eyes. “This village is bigger than anything … why, it’s as big as our bloody scouts tried to tell me!”

Cooke watched him blink repeatedly, trying to clear his eyes of the stinging tears of anger clouding his vision.

“What now, you ask?” Custer repeated Cooke’s question. He grit his teeth together, as if chewing some tough piece of jerky, something even harder to swallow.

Then Custer answered himself and Cooke both. “We proceed with our attack, Mr. Cooke. Just as planned.”

The general yanked off his big hat, hoping someone below, some officer would see him high atop this ridge, would realize that though Custer’s five companies were not charging in direct support of Reno’s men, that Custer’s troops were preparing to leap into the fray nonetheless—to pull the major’s butt out of the fire.

Maybe some man below would see him waving … and know Custer wanted them to pull back to a single defensive position until he came up with support.

“Bring up the pack train. Yes.” he said. “The pack train and Benteen. By god, bring Benteen up!”

Back and forth in the dry, hot air he waved that huge, cream-colored hat for them all to see. Not waving goodbye as many below would think. But, waving as if to say:

“Stop, you damned fools! Hold up and defend yourselves! By god—we’ll come! Ride right through hell if we have to … but—we’re coming! We’re coming!”

As Custer yanked Vic back toward the columns, his guts felt about as heavy and cold as a stone. He needed that pack train to come up.

If McDougall will only race overland … he might make it here in time.

Custer realized as he raced back that his five companies would need that ammunition to make a stand of it so the pressure could be cut loose from Reno.

His eyes scoured the country ahead, measuring, considering, and deciding to take the five companies right behind him until he could find where to make a crossing and divert some of the warriors in his direction, taking pressure off the demoralized Reno forces.

And then he found it. A wide, shallow coulee, running to his left. The river!

Yes, in the direction of the river. And at the mouth of a coulee, I can find a ford! By jiggers, this is a godsend … a bloody miracle!

Sawing the big mare’s head hard to the left, Custer led his column-of-twos down into the wide coulee to that rhythmic clatter of iron-shod hoofs on hard-baked ground, to that familiar jingle and clink of harness, to that hard squeak of dry McClellans.

Reassuring sounds to an old soldier.

Two by two by two …

The five companies turned quarter flank and left oblique, following their general down Medicine Tail Coulee until at last they could see the first glimmer of the river below. That’s when the first shots whistled overhead; that’s when the first arrows hissed past, smacking a horse here and there.

To their right, above the columns on the sage-covered hillside, pranced half-a-hundred naked warriors, stripped for action in the tall grass. All round Custer the yelling broke out, confused and frightened men shouting, swamping the hard-boiled, calming orders of the veterans. He had to get a grip on the men before the raw ones broke.

“Captain Keogh!” Custer bellowed, racing back along the columns until he reached the Irishman. “Dismount your battalion! Fall behind the horses! Skirmish by fours!”

“Aye, General! ’Bout gawdamned time I give these bleeming bastards a what-for!” Keogh raged.

Custer turned away as Keogh’s and Calhoun’s companies dropped from their horses at the rear of the march, every fourth man holding four mounts while the other three soldiers jogged a distance up the northern slope of Medicine Trail Coulee. There under Keogh’s command on the left and Calhoun’s command farther up the slope on the right, the order to fire in volleys rose above the clamor of confusion and pain.

“First platoon! Fire!” Keogh shouted, arm waving as he moved amid his riflemen.

“Second platoon! Fire! By God, Fire!” Jimmy Calhoun hollered every bit as loudly.

“Cut the bastards apart!” Keogh screamed, flecks of spittle dotting his red lips he wiped now, wishing for a drink.

“We’ll butcher the sonsabitches, Myles!” Calhoun shouted back to his partner.

“Teach ’em what-for, we will, Jimbo!”

Volley after volley fired into the Indian position as the warriors spread out a bit more, dropping back uphill, a bit more concealed. Then some more heads appeared over the rise. More arrived from beyond the top of the ridge. Halfway again to a hundred of them now.

Custer’s mind worked quickly as he galloped back to the head of the columns where Tom, Yates, and Smith waited. Better not get yourself pinned down here in this bloody coulee … you’ll never get out. Just get Benteen back here. He’s the one who can help.

“Tom!” he yelled. Just seeing Tom’s bright, smiling face, his eyes alive with the glory of the coming fight, did his heart good.

“By God, Autie—we’re going to cut them up today!” Tom tore up, skidding a dusty cascade over his older brother.

His blue eyes darted round. “Cooke, get me Martini!”

“Trumpeter!” The Canadian wheeled about, shouting.

The Italian bugler nudged his horse forward from Yates’s command, halted before the general, saluting. He had stayed close to Custer, as ordered, assigned to duty under the general’s banner for the day.

“Trumpeter, you’re charged with carrying a vital message!” Custer blurted it out, not remembering John Martini had enough trouble with English as it was, much less stuttered, angry English. The words continued like a Gatling gun of speech. “Get back to Benteen as fast as you can ride. Tell him to come on quick and bring the packs of ammunition from the train. We’ve got a big village, and we’ll need his support.”

Adjutant Cooke chewed his thirst-swollen tongue as he listened to Custer’s sour prediction of their odds at coming out of the fight. As quickly Cooke realized bugler Martini would never remember the whole message, much less understand it to the point of spitting it back for Benteen or McDougall.

Meanwhile a numbed and very frightened Martini nodded dumbly at the general, saluted, and turned to dash off blindly on his mission.

Cooke caught the bugler up short. “Martini! Hold there! Just a minute, boy!” he barked, ripping open his shirt pocket and tearing out a small tablet on which he scribbled his message with the short nub of a pencil.

Pressing the notebook down on a knee, Cooke rammed the pencil across the page, finishing his desperate plea, then tore the page from his tablet.

Benteen:

Come on. Big village.

Be quick. Bring packs.

W. W. Cooke

P.S. Bring Pacs.

“Now get this to Captain Benteen. You go quick. Benteen. Ride fast!”

With a sharp nudge Cooke pushed Martini on his way.

The bugler’s horse leapt round in a tight circle. He was gone up the far side of the coulee, away from the firing and confusion and noise and fear, riding as fast as his played-out horse could carry him.

“What’s that all about, General?” Cooke asked, his attention snagged up the side of the coulee where Tom Custer berated Private Peter Thompson.

“Appears the horse has marched its last,” Custer replied calmly as he studied the hilltop warriors harassing Keogh and Calhoun.

After Tom had ordered Private Thompson to abandon his played-out horse and make his way on foot back to the pack train, he reminded the young soldier to be sure he took along his extra ammunition. Best not to leave it on the horse still struggling in vain to rise on its front legs. Plain for any horseman to see the animal was done in from the intense heat and long march over the divide.

Terrified, the young private lumbered off to the south on foot, following in the dust of trumpeter Martini and obsessed with the vivid details of the dream that had troubled his sleep last night: Sioux surrounding troopers on their worn-out horses; screeching warriors lifting scalping knives and tomahawks above the bloody bodies of his butchered friends; the feel of an Indian’s hot breath close at his neck as the Sioux raised his club above him.

Thompson shuddered, deciding to stay to the coulees. He was alone now. Alone except for the sun and sage … and the sounds of Reno’s men being butchered on the slopes below.

Hell, Thompson thought. I’m really alone after all.

Most of the young, raw soldiers who had watched Thompson’s ordeal now turned their attention back to the fight raging in the upper end of the Medicine Tail. They studied the older veterans, men such as Keogh and Calhoun, Fresh Smith and Sergeant Major Sharrow. Then those young recruits too dropped to tighten saddle cinches for a hard ride ahead. Perhaps even a hard fight of it should any more warriors pop over that rise to the north.

Up and down the line the green, uninitiated soldiers completed that same mechanical process in the midst of the rifle fire and cursing, sure that this horse-work had to be part of some mystical ritual in preparation for battle.

It won’t hurt, some of them thought. Won’t hurt at all to do just what the veterans do.

“Bugler!” Custer called to Sergeant Voss. “’Boots and Saddles’! To horse, men!”

“Seventh Cavalry! Prepare to mount!” Cooke shouted after Voss blew his command.

Up and down the columns came the rattle of carbine and bit chain.

“Cooke! Get back to Keogh and Jimmy—have them hold the hillside for a bit more; then have them to break it off and follow, guarding the rear of our march. We’re going into the village!”

“The village, General?” Cooke gasped.

“There,” Custer pointed down the coulee at the tiny sliver of river they could see between the sides of the mouth.

“To the river, General.”

“And, Billy,” he barely whispered. “Tell them both to keep an eye on our backsides. What with all the new boys—see that we aren’t cut up from behind until I have our position in the village assured.”

“Rear guard, sir. Right. Until Benteen and McDougall come up.”

He slapped a hand on Cooke’s broad shoulder, staring up into the Canadian’s handsome face. “You got it, soldier. Let’s ride!”

Cooke twisted round in the saddle to fling his voice back at the columns of dusty blue. “Mount!”

Stretching up the neck of the Upper Medicine Tail Coulee, sergeants bawled their commands. “MOUNT!”

“We’re riding down on ’em, boys!”

“MOUNT!”

“By God—it’s what we’ve waited for!”

“MOUNT!”

“—right into hell if we have to!”

Behind those hundred twenty odd voices rustled and squeaked saddle leather as the troops pushed into their McClellans and steadied their snorting, wide-eyed horses. It wasn’t only the smell of water nearby that made the animals skittish. They must have sensed the growing tension in the air, felt that unfamiliar rigidity of the riders atop their backs. In some way those big, muscular horses knew the moment was at hand.

What they had been trained to do would now be put to the test.

Custer smiled grimly as he heard that reassuring sound of men and animals merging into one four-legged, double-fisted fighting machine.

His dust-reddened eyes hidden beneath the shadow of his big hat, he peered down the coulee at that narrow sliver of river.

The crossing, Autie. Just make it to the crossing.…

Down below was the ford where he could cross into the village, thereby drawing pressure from Reno in hopes that his five companies could push the warriors back. He had practiced the maneuver enough during the war, just the way his instructors at the academy had drilled it into his head. Just as the great Clausewitz had written. Indeed, all those great European masters of tactical warfare had preached the same thing.

You pinch an army at its waist, or better yet—nail an enemy’s feet to the ground while you battered its head.

Too late now to pinch the village at its waist, Custer realized.

All that was left for him to do to save this campaign—and his destiny—was to hope that Reno occupied the Sioux downstream while his own five companies flailed at the head of the enemy camps. He sensed that head was right down this coulee at the ford of the Little Bighorn.

To do what he hoped would require fast action from both McDougall and Benteen. If there was the slightest delay by either one, his five companies would be swallowed—

“Mr. Cooke: troops—front into line!” he bellowed back at Cooke and the rest, Vic prancing round and round in a tight circle, her master tall in the stirrups, hat waving. “Seventh Cavalry … ahead by column-of-twos … center guide—at a gallop! Forward—ho!”

Mitch Bouyer heard Custer bellow the command, but he sat a moment watching as the soldiers burst away at a hand gallop. It had to be one thing or another, the half-breed scout decided.

Seeing the general’s brother riding past, the half-breed heeled his Crow pony into motion, galloping alongside Tom.

“Bouyer!” young Custer hollered out, a wolf-slash smile cutting his face above the pointed blond beard.

“I tell you what I think of your brother.”

Tom’s smile disappeared. “What!”

“Either Custer’s insane, or he’s bent on committing suicide.”

“You bastard!”

“And he’s just mad enough to take a couple hundred men with him straight into hell.”

“I swear you’ll get—”

“Tom!” Custer shouted from the head of the columns, waving to bring his brother up beside him as they ground out of the upper Medicine Tail and down onto a flat leading toward the lower coulee that would take them directly to the river ford.

“For Reno … it can only be a footrace now!” he yelled at his younger brother when Tom reached his side.

“There’s no fight left in the man!”

“We’re going to attack with everything we have. Remember. Should anything happen—I’m counting on you. Always have, Tom.”

“I know—”

“Hush!” Custer commanded. “Get back to Keogh and Calhoun. Remind them I’m counting on them too—to support the rear of the command. Whatever they do—guard our rear!”

As they raced into the neck of the lower Medicine Tail, the ford came into view. Beyond the river, over on the west bank, stood hundreds upon hundreds of lodges.

“May God have mercy on our souls, Autie!” Tom whispered under his breath as he yanked his horse around in a haunch-sliding circle that took him up the sharp side of the coulee. He kicked savagely at the animal so he could spur back to give Keogh and Calhoun Autie’s message. They must know they were in charge of protecting the rear flank of Autie’s wild, hopeful charge into the village.

“May God have mercy on our souls!” he repeated to himself, remembering those were the same words he whispered to himself before every battle of the Civil War, before every wild charge into the face of enemy grapeshot and minié balls.

May God have mercy on our souls!

With the Gatling-gun pounding of iron-shod hoofs, the three companies hammered down the last few yards of the Medicine Tail, accompanied only by the whine of dry leather and the harsh jangle of bit and crupper. Carbines cried out like tired wagon springs as they were yanked from their scabbards.

And above the leader whipped that proud banner: the blood crimson and summer-sky blue crossed by a pair of silver white sabers. Custer wanted the Sioux to know Peoushi—the Long Hair—had arrived.