Trumpet on the Land: The Aftermath of Custer's Massacre, 1876

Chapter 21

17 July 1876

Right from the first jump Bill was ten lengths ahead of the rest. And the way his long-legged horse was eating up the ground as it charged around the foot of the hill, there was no way any of them were going to catch him.

Cody pulled the pistol from his belt and thumbed the hammer back.

By Jove! He was going to be the first there to surprise the enemy. The first to wade into them. How he prayed he would be the first to raise a scalp. Yes, by glory: to take a scalp … a scalp for Custer!

“This is for you, Armstrong,” he whispered into that summer wind whipping at his eyes as he laid low along the neck of the big buckskin surging forward with dilated nostrils. “May you rest in peace after this day—avenged at last!”

No theater had ever offered him a finer stage than this. Bill could never remember playing before such an enthusiastic audience as the soldiers he knew were now watching him at this moment. If the fates did indeed deem that a man’s life must—in the great totality of all things—be summed up in one supremely delicious moment … then this was his. To win or lose in the coming combat mattered not. Only the game of it all. To playact before the perfumed and starched set back east, that simply was not living.

Laying one’s last breath on the line, pitting his life against these foes—gambling it all in the adventure and lust of the chase … now this was living. This was his moment!

In the far distance the sharp-edged, grassy southern ridges boiled with movement as two hundred warriors bolted from hiding, hungry for taking Hall’s wagon train at last. They hadn’t yet seen Cody and his rescue party.

Those Cheyenne have no idea the Fifth lies in wait to ambush them!

But what was the prettiest of all was how that small war party suddenly turned atop their racing ponies as they burst out of the ravine onto the Black Hills Road, the wind whipping their hair, surprised to find Cody and that handful of soldiers hot on the braid-bound tails of those war ponies.

Cody aimed—fired his pistol at their wide, glistening backs.

Suddenly like a boulder parting a mountain stream, the warriors reined left and right in a savage maneuver, most of the them slipping to the sides of their animals as the hooves kicked up great, glimmering, golden cascades of dust into the new sunlight. Stunned with surprise, they nonetheless turned to confront their attackers.

Two of the war party fired off shots at the hilltop behind the onrushing Cody, one shooting from under the neck of his pony.

In an instant Bill looked them over, deciding on the one he wanted more than the rest: he rode a gorgeous gray horse, larger than the smaller ponies. Wearing that splendid feathered bonnet, he must surely be a chief—and if not a chief, then at least a mighty warrior. A worthy opponent.

With the gunfire the Cheyenne ponies pranced and reared, frightened as the white men closed on them. Under the necks of their animals the warriors fired a volley. Most had only a foot locked over a rear flank, only a hand visible clasped into a braided loop of mane. Bill heard a bullet whine past. Another so close he made out the snarling hiss. Surely close enough now—he pulled back on the hammer again, deciding to try a shot at that warrior in the magnificent headdress, the warrior who was shouting, the breeze whipping the long tail of his warbonnet.

At the very moment he leveled the pistol over his buckskin’s head and squeezed off the shot, the war chiefs pony reared in fright, its eyes grown as big and white as Lulu’s china saucers, its nostrils flaring. Cody was close enough that he saw the lathered moistness gathered at the crude, rawhide hackamore the warrior used for a rein.

When the big gray animal came down on its forelegs, it stumbled to the side, careening crazily away from Cody’s rush. The war chief doubled over at the waist, grasping his thigh and losing his hold on the pony as it keeled over, spilling its rider. Into the grass the warrior tumbled, rolling in a heap as the pony crashed to the dust, legs kicking wildly, head thrashing, fighting to rise. Closing the last few yards, Bill watched his fallen enemy shove his warbonnet back from his brow as he picked himself out of the dirt, struggling onto one knee, his other legging bloodied.

In that next breath the buckskin collided with the fallen pony, legs a’jumble, spilling in a blur.

Spinning tortuously, Cody felt himself hurled into the air. Flung to the ground with enough force that it knocked the breath from his lungs, he rolled and rolled through the grass, clutching the pistol that dug into his ribs with each tumble. Dazed for a moment as his body skidded to a stop, he spat dirt from his mouth, swiped it from his eyes. Blinking, he found his enemy rising with a struggle twenty paces away, no more … and bringing up his pistol.

Jerking his thumb down, he found the hammer still cocked as he wobbled to his feet, unsteady, light-headed. Turning to the left so that he presented as little a target as possible, he coolly extended the right arm to its full length and brought the front blade down on his enemy. There on the warrior’s chest, that amulet, that fetish—that gorget of yellow hair. That savage totem taken from one of the warrior’s victims.

Barking, the Cheyenne’s pistol spat fire.

With a jerk Cody knelt to make himself smaller at the Cheyenne’s shot. Then not really aiming—Cody snapped off his shot a heartbeat later—without thought, hesitation, or aiming.

Sensing it, by instinct. If a man had to think about making such a shot, he would most times think of nothing more as a dead man.

Pitching backward, the warrior crumpled into the grass as Cody heard the thunder of hooves. How his ears rang from the fall. He shook his head violently to clear it, but still the thunder drew ever closer. A few feet away the war chiefs legs kicked just as the dying pony’s had thrashed. Bill dashed toward him, his thumb drawing back the pistol’s hammer once more, arm held out from him, muzzle pointing at the magnificent, near-naked body he approached.

Standing over the warrior, Cody looked first at the hole opened in the middle of the Cheyenne’s chest. Then his gaze crawled across the Indian’s face, watching the open eyes glaze. It seemed all breath suddenly went out of the warrior as he stared up at his enemy; his body seized with one last, great convulsion, then went limp.

With shrill war cries three of the other six Cheyenne immediately kicked their ponies into motion, dashing up the shallow slope for Cody. Screaming, brandishing their lances and war clubs, light reflected from one rifle barrel. A hundred yards behind them came at least half a hundred more, intent on rescuing the body of their fallen chief. Breaking the ridge behind them, fully two hundred more horsemen raced for the spoils in those wagons of the white men.

Then as suddenly as they had put themselves in motion, the three naked riders reined up, wheeled hard about, and tore off in the opposite direction. Spurring down the slope and up the far side, they mingled among the rest starting to turn on their heels, beginning to retreat.

Whirling about at a crouch, Bill found Mason’s K Company thundering up, that guidon snapping in the breeze above them. It was for this moment he had returned home to the west, here to his plains. On impulse he yanked the butcher knife from his belt scabbard, then bent over the fallen warrior, slashing the narrow thong that tied the bonnet beneath the dark chin. Rolling the body over onto one shoulder, Cody dragged the feathered headdress free with his left hand, then turned just as Captain Mason and his men were almost upon him.

Holding the fluttering, feathered trophy high at the end of his extended arm, Cody stood in triumph over his vanquished enemy, bellowing at the top of his lungs as the captain and the first row of troopers shot past.

“First scalp for Custer!”

In a rumble they swept past, a blinding blue blur of dust and eager, frightened faces—hollering out their cheer at him as wave upon wave of fighting men chased the rest of the war party that had turned and fled as soon as their leader was spilled.

“First scalp for Custer!”

Over and over he yelled his valiant oath at the passing horde of cheering horsemen, Cody standing there above his enemy as the stinging yellow dust swirled about him, bellowing until his throat grew as raw as grated flesh. Shaking the bonnet in the air, in victory, in revenge.

“First scalp for Custer!”

King was bounding side to side in sheer exuberance by the time Merritt and Wilkinson raced the rest of the way up the slope as Cody bolted around the base of the hill.

For a moment the war party disappeared from view behind a low ridge in that broken country. They emerged, suddenly to wheel about just as Cody and the others were swallowed up by the landscape. Surprised and confused, the Cheyenne milled for a moment, some of their ponies rearing. The last of the seven horsemen to emerge from the ravine reined up in the confusion, fighting to bring his animal under control halfway between Cody and the knoll, where King stood watching in stunned, openmouthed silence.

Flinging his lance aside, that warrior yanked a rifle to his shoulder and fired a shot.

With a shrill whistle the bullet sailed past the hilltop.

Merritt growled, “By Jupiter—that red bastard’s firing at us!”

Immediately Corporal Wilkinson asked, “Permission to fire at that son of a bitch, General?” “Granted!”

The soldier slapped his Springfield carbine to his shoulder and snapped off a shot at the moment the warrior slipped behind his pony.

King thought he saw the Cheyenne’s shadowy form peek beneath the animal’s neck—then a second shot whined right past Merritt.

“Get that son of a bitch!” shouted the colonel.

As Wilkinson yanked up on the trapdoor and ejected the hot copper cartridge, King gazed into the middistance. “Look to the front, General. Look! Look! Here they come! By the dozens!”

The nearby ridge bristled with horsemen tearing on a collision course for Cody and his party, making for the hill where the lieutenant stood taking in the whole panorama.

Merritt whirled about and shouted down the slope, “Send up the first company!”

In the next moment the colonel sprinted off, joining Forbush below, where both leaped into the saddle. King watched them wheel left to the east around the base of the hill, spurring at an angle to catch up with the first company Lieutenant Colonel Carr had put in motion. Deciding it was time for him to leap into the action, King darted down the hill for the horse-holders. He was surprised to find Donnybrook frightened, the horse shying from him, jerking wild-eyed to break free as the lieutenant freed the throatlatch and snagged hold of the reins. The horse reared once, yanking cruelly against that crippled right arm wounded by the Apache in Arizona Territory. Rearing a second time, Donnybrook pulled King off the ground, making him wince with gut-felt pain in that arm as he gritted, short-reining the animal as he struggled to stuff his boot into the hooded stirrup while the fractious horse continued to prance around in a tight circle.

With Carr’s order to charge the enemy, Captain Mason had taken his K Company across that last two hundred yards of flat ground south of the creek, speeding on toward the base of the hill where King now spurred his mount to overtake his platoon as the entire company slowed. Ahead of them lay open ground, with mounted Cheyenne bristling from every hilltop across a mile-wide front.

“Drive them, Mason!” Carr shouted as he pulled his horse out of that formation moving forward at a walk. “But look out for that main ridge!”

Julius Mason wasn’t long in bawling, “Front into line!”

Left and right the blue-clad horsemen of K peeled off at a walk into a broad phalanx for the charge.

“Bugler!” Mason bellowed.

Those most stirring, brassy notes rose to the summer sky as the horses of K Company burst out of their walk, rolled into a lope, then surged into an uneven gallop. Beneath him, all around him, King heard the heaving chests of the mounts as the animals carried their wiry riders down the slope and across the Black Hills Road, on up the side of a ravine and into that open country scarred by coulees and the erosion of a million springtimes.

On they tore, on past Cody, who stood there in his dusty black theater outfit above a single fallen warrior, holding aloft a feathered warbonnet, shouting out to Mason’s troops as they galloped past.

“First scalp for Custer!”

K closed on half a mile before the enemy finally realized what they were facing. At a quarter of a mile some of the Cheyenne fired their rifles and pistols at the charging blue phalanx. It took a few moments for the painted, feathered horsemen to spread themselves as if to receive the charge, ponies racing both east and west to flank the oncoming pony soldiers.

“They get behind us—we’ll have our hands full!” Mason growled.

Looking over his shoulder, King saw that Carr had ordered another company into the pursuit. The stunning bandbox grays of Robert H. Montgomery’s B Troop were breaking to the rear and right around Mason’s K. Just sixty yards behind them Sanford C. Kellogg’s I Company came front into line and immediately spurred their mounts into the charge. Now 150 men rode straight for the enemy that, for the moment, still had those three companies easily outnumbered two to one.

Looking back at the Cheyenne who a moment before had been closing in around his company, King found the warriors reining up, shouting excitedly at one another, firing random and wild shots. Almost immediately the retreat began: first as a trickle, then a swelling tide as the surprised warriors clearly recognized they were about to be overwhelmed. In panic they whirled about and kicked their ponies into a furious rush toward the south.

Their wild and frantic scattering reminded King of chaff flung carelessly across a floor.

At the summit of the next ridge Mason halted his company after a chase of more than three miles. Their excited horses jostled and bumped one another as the soldiers swallowed down the surges of their own adrenaline, watching their foes disappear into the ebb and flow, rise and fall of that rolling, grassy landscape, escaping farther and farther with every breath the troopers and horses gulped hungrily. The ground all around them had been littered with reservation blankets and agency provisions, anything of any weight the warriors could discard in their flight.

Suddenly a loud, booming volley of gunfire rumbled off the western hills. Followed by a second rattling volley. Squinting, with his back to the early light, King found them. No more than a half mile off to the west Lieutenant William Hall had hurriedly halted and corralled his wagons. Those concealed infantrymen had scrambled from beneath the dirty oiled canvas and were already deployed in platoons by their sergeants, admirably accounting for themselves with their Long Tom Springfields, helping to send the Cheyenne on their way.

“That bunch gets back to the reservation,” Captain Mason groaned, “we can’t touch ’em.”

“Sure as sin,” King agreed. “Those Cheyenne get back across that line, they’ll belong to the Indian Bureau again.”

Clattering to a halt on K’s right and left flanks, the other companies came up noisily, men hollering, horses neighing.

“Permission to pursue the enemy?” Montgomery shouted above the angry murmurs and curses of his men as they watched the enemy disappearing through the hills and coulees like ants scurrying over a picnic blanket.

“Yes!” Kellogg bellowed his assent as he stood in the stirrups, joining the other officers in looking for their regimental commander. “I still want a piece of those red bastards my own self!”

“We ought to try catching them before they’re the agent’s good Indians again!” Corporal Wilkinsorr grumbled.

“You just gimme a chance, and I’ll make them all good Injuns!” Sergeant Schreiber bellowed. “Just like Phil Sheridan wants to make all Injuns good Injuns!”

Far, far in the distance the soldiers could see the Cheyenne village of travois clutter and pony herds turning about and beginning to scatter into the morning’s haze that lay against the stark emerald beauty of the Pine Ridge. Little Wolfs people had heard the distant gunfire and, seeing the first of the retreat heading back their way at a gallop, were fleeing in a panic.

“Run, you cowards!” King shouted, his voice joining the rest as they flung their curses at the backs of the retreating Cheyenne. “Run, you beggarly, treacherous rascals!”

Corporal Wilkinson hollered, “You tell ’em, Lieutenant!”

Charles King did feel up to venting his spleen: “For years you have eaten our bread, lived on our bounty. You’re well fed, well cared for. You, your papooses and ponies are fat and independent—but you have heard of the grand revel in blood, scalps, and trophies of your brethren, the Sioux,” he hollered at the dust the Cheyenne left behind. “And now that you have stuffed your packs with the Great Father’s rations, stuffed your pouches with heavy loads of his best metallic cartridges, you hurry north. But run, you cowards! Go—for this is no fight of yours!”