Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (32 page)

“Appears to be nothing more than a camp of women and children.” Cooke scratched a long sideburn.

“Where’d all them goddamned bloody warriors come from?” Keogh growled. “The friggin’ bastards what are giving Reno hell down there?”

“I suppose they’re only the camp guard,” Tom replied. “The warriors left behind while all the others gone out to hunt buffalo—”

“Buffalo?” Keogh spouted.

“That’s right, you stupid, thick-headed Mick!” Tom barked with a slap to Keogh’s shoulder. “Remember? That skinned carcass we ran across yesterday.”

The dark Irishman nodded. “Ahhh, yes. The buggers’re out hunting, aren’t they, Tommy me boy? Leaving the home fires under the care of the camp guard.”

“A most reasonable assumption, fellas,” Custer added, putting the field glasses to his eyes once more.

The Cheyenne village popped into focus for him again. Only now the camp was in motion, women and children scurrying to and fro, hurrying west from the village, scampering into the meadowlands and rolling hills stretching toward the Bighorns. Other figures wrangled ponies into camp or were loading travois.

“Damn! They’re tearing down and fixing to escape as we speak!” Custer jammed the Austrian binoculars into his saddlebags. “Best we get down there now and make a
crossing so we can get a noose around that village before it slips off on us.”

“Damn right,” Tom agreed. “That weak-kneed bastard Reno has botched his attack. The frigging Sioux got him penned down while the village escapes.”

“The second-oldest trick in the Indian book,” Cooke said.

“And the first?” Tom asked.

Cooke swung a fist at young Custer’s shoulder. “Sucking the army into an ambush with a decoy, you stupid, whiskey-fogged poltroon!”

Tom swung back playfully as Custer pulled Vic off the bluff.

“C’mon, boys,” the general shouted. “I must get down there and now! My worst fear is that the Sioux have already slipped through my grasp!”

“Don’t worry about a goddamned thing, Autie!” Tom cried. “We’ll go capture the village, and when the warriors return, they’ll have to surrender to us without a shot! We’ll have their women and children as hostages!”

“Capital idea, Tommy!” Cooke cried.

“And this time, Autie,” Tom said as he galloped up beside his older brother, “
I’ll
take me a pretty Injun squaw to warm my robes!”

Keogh and Cooke laughed along with young Custer, but the general was too far into his battle plans to care that he had been made the butt of his brother’s joke. Everything as clear as rinsed crystal now: north to capture the village … as all the pieces fell into place.

What Custer and his officers simply didn’t realize at that moment was that most of the warriors in the camps below, who were only then receiving the news of Reno’s attack, had been sleeping off a long night of dancing and celebrating over their recent victory against Red Beard Crook.

“By God’s own back teeth, boys!” Custer shouted. “We’ve caught them napping!”

As he galloped back to his five companies waiting impatiently for action, the three officers close on Vic’s heels, Custer stood in the stirrups, shouting, “Hurraw,
boys! We’ll get these Sioux in a blink of an eye! And soon as we’ve thumped ’em soundly, we’ll go back to our station!”

“Lincoln! Lincoln! Lincoln!” yelled those ready for a victorious homecoming.

A
S
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.

“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.