Seize the Sky: Son of the Plains-Volume 2 (43 page)

“Nastano!”
Lame-White-Man hollered. “Come—Two Moons will lead us to kill these soldiers!”

“Hey! Hey!” Two Moons replied, his voice high and shrill and buoying above the commotion in the ravine. “These are only children. They are ready for us to kill them! Do not be afraid of children!”

With his words of encouragement ringing in their ears, the warriors rushed up the coulee, carrying hawks and lances and knives. Each one ready for hand-to-hand of it. Coup counting in close combat.

But not a single soldier remained standing to resist that Cheyenne charge. Every one lay dead.

The white men had killed themselves and each other.

F
ARTHER
up that bloody, carcass-littered hillside, the hold-outs watched it happen.

Angrily, bitterly now, they poured their fire down into the Cheyennes busy over the dead troopers, warriors pounding in the head of any white man still breathing. Stone clubs mashing heads with a soppy, wet thud. The carbine fire of those at the crest ultimately took its toll, forcing the Cheyenne back to the mouth of the ravine to seek cover.

There the warriors found the three casualties of their brief skirmish. Two young Cheyennes picked off by soldier marskmen up the hill. And Lame-White-Man himself.

A dark sense of despair descended upon the hill. Their plan to open up a route to the water supply had failed. What was worse, Custer’s officers had to watch as friends committed suicide, giving in to panic and defeat exactly as they had done at Keogh’s position.

Now all that was left for the hold-outs was to make a stand here on this last hill for as long as possible.

“Autie.” Tom knelt beside his brother, whispering loud enough to be heard over the gunfire banging away on all sides. “There ain’t many of us left now.”

Custer struggled bravely against the pain in his chest and the waves of nausea that threatened to engulf him. By holding his brother’s arm, Custer sat up a bit straighter, swallowing hard against the dry knot of blood coagulating at the back of his throat.

“Boston?” Custer asked.

Tom shooked his head, scratching his cheek stubble. He gazed downhill a few yards, silent.

“Autie?” Custer asked. “Young Autie?”

Tom only wagged his head of greasy hair, having lost his hat at the ford before their mad rush. He dared not try to speak just yet, afraid of what might spill out. Somewhere on that ride up from the river he had seen Autie’s body, among the trampled grass and sagebrush and stunted cactus. Trampled in retreat.

“I never should’ve brought them,” Autie whispered angrily. It was the longest sentence he had spoken in over an hour. Ever since he ordered them to follow him down the Medicine Tail and into the village.

“Never made the village,” he coughed, then smiled weakly at Tom. “Never gonna make it to Washington. Not now, Tom—I’m sorry.”

“Hush,” Tom said gruffly. “Just be quiet now.”

“How many …” He coughed the words free, clutching his bubbling chest. “How many left?”

“I’d say forty, maybe.” Tom answered, slewing his eyes over the hillside. “Maybe as many as fifty. We’re fairly chewed up, but—”

“Dr. Lord? God, can’t he help me? Give me some laudanum, something so I can get on my feet? Must take command before it’s too late for the rest! Find Lord for me!”

Tom pushed a struggling, emaciated brother back down, against the horse carcass. “It’s too late for that now, Autie.”

“Lord … too?”

“Yes. He did what he could for you. Told us that. Said it’s a little too late for the rest of us too.”

“Damn you, Tom! Goddamn you! We don’t give up!” Custer sputtered, glazed eyes narrowing darkly.

Tom shook his head sadly. “No, Autie. We Custers don’t ever give up, do we? It’s just—the only thing left is to do as much damage as we can while men and ammunition hold out.”

“I ordered every man to bring a hundred—”

“Not anymore,” Tom interrupted, patting Custer’s shoulder. “Most of the horses are gone too. Some carbines jamming badly. Men having to hunt through the bodies for a usable weapon … cartridges in the pockets, on belts.”

“I see.” Custer gritted his teeth as another wave of nausea hit him; he doubled over, supported by Tom as he puked up more yellow bile and pink froth.

When the grip of it had released him, Custer sagged against the stinking, bloated horse carcass, staring down the slope to the south and west. “My God! Where’d they all come from?”

“The village you were hunting, Autie.”

At their feet lay the thousands upon thousands of lodges, erected in orderly camp circles along the twists and bends of the Little Bighorn. All the villages spread out before Custer like the mighty nations of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne paying homage, bowing in reverence at his feet.

“Dammit, Tom! Where’s Benteen with the …” And he sputtered up some more chunks of pink lung along with frothy blood, spitting them into the yellow dust at his side. “Benteen and the ammunition I ordered hours ago—”

“Less than two hours, Autie.”

He gazed up at Tom, wonder mixed with fear in his eyes.

“We’ve been whipped in less than two hours?”

Tom nodded. “Yes. And Benteen hasn’t come yet. Maybe we can hold out till that white-headed bastard does get his ass up here with ammo and more men. If …”

“If what, Tom?”

“If Benteen can break through the goddamned Sioux to get to us.” His eyes held Autie’s for a long, long moment.

“I understand,” Custer replied gravely, lips spreading in
a chin red line of determination. “Help me sit up a bit more, will you, brother?”

Everywhere around their dusty command post, men were methodically butchered by arrow and bullet alike. Custer’s own private desperation and long-hidden fear of failure finally overwhelmed him as he watched his men, beloved troopers of his Seventh dying all round him like dry leaves tumbling from a mighty oak at autumn’s first slashing wind.

“Get the field glasses.”

Through them Custer peered hopefully to the south and west, where he had left Reno and Benteen to their fates.

“By God, I need his ammunition,” he finally exclaimed with a wet, gushing sound. “Benteen’s gotta make it through to us.”

“Gotta be soon, Autie.”

“General?”

“George?” Custer was genuinely happy to see Yates, buoyed by a hometown face here beside him in the final minutes, when a lot of the pain subsided. He swallowed hard, releasing silent, salty tears as he peered into the grim, blackened face swimming before his.

“General, there’s thirty-four of us left on the hill,” Yates reported. “No telling how many Reno’s got left now after he got cut up in the valley.”

“I was planning to batter the head,” Custer rambled, staring into the bone yellow sky. “If Reno had only held their feet down while I—”

“General? General Custer?” Yates grabbed Custer’s chin, pulling his sunburned face so he could look Custer in the eye. “It’s not Reno, it’s not Benteen I’m worried about.”

“Benteen?” Custer snapped alive with a spark ignited from some place deep within him. “Benteen’s coming, you say?”

“No, sir,” Yates answered. “I can’t believe he’s coming, not now.”

With no small agony Custer pulled himself upright against the carcass, lifting DeRudio’s Austrian field glasses to his eyes. For long, anxious moments he trained the glasses on the hills to the south and east. Suddenly the
commander noticed shapes and color shimmering through the thick dust and haze rising off the landscape. Through the waves of heat he saw a mass of shimmery blue … then the mirage separated into column-of-twos.

“By the love of God!” he gasped, blood oozing from his lips. “It’s Benteen! He’s coming, boys! By all that’s—Benteen’s coming!”

Tom yanked the binoculars from his brother, disbelieving, knowing Autie was close to a rambling fool by now.

But he wanted to believe so badly himself. With everything he had in him, Tom wanted to believe. He strained his eyes on those hills far away and squinted through the haze. Sure enough, he found blue columns loping north, a motley mixture of companies on different colored mounts. The rescue columns galloped past a high point some few miles south of Custer’s hill, marching north.

“Damn, if you aren’t right, Autie!” he shouted.

Then Yates took up the cheer, scurrying here, then hunkering in a crab walk to carry the word elsewhere. With the captain’s good news, each knot of hold-outs immediately raised tired voices and carbines in the air at the prospect of rescue. Even Keogh and his crew of old-files hollered along the spine with gritty joy.

“How long, sir?” Lieutenant Cooke asked, his dark, handsome eyes boring into Tom’s.

Young Custer studied Cooke’s face, remembering the times they had courted the Wadsworth sisters together—summer picnics and winter sleigh rides. Wondering now if Cookey had been as lucky as he to get his hand inside so many perfumed blouses, feel the soft coolness of so many naked alabaster thighs in the shadows of a shaded bower—

Tom brought the field glasses to his eyes, staring into the shimmering southlands. He could not believe what he was forced to watch now, refusing to accept what he saw happening on that faraway high-point. For the longest time he stared, numbed, his mouth hung half open, like a voyeur caught peeking at something obscene.

When he finally brought the glasses from his face, Tom swallowed down his own despair, gathering strength for what needed saying. Laying the glasses on Autie’s chest, he
told them. “Looks like Benteen won’t be coming after all.”

“Not coming?” Cooke growled.

“He’s been overwhelmed,” Tom explained, gazing now at his brother’s gaping chest wound, wet and bright beneath the high light. “Turned around … a goddamned rout.”

“Tom?”

He looked into Autie’s questioning eyes, glazing and sunken ever more now. “Yes, brother. They’re retreating. Trapped and surrounded. Just like us.”

Within that stinking compound made of some seventy dead horses littering the hillside, just below its crest, the air went deathly silent while it all sank in.

The only sound for the longest time was the random Indian bullet smacking into those huge, bloating carcasses. With every hit noxious gas escaped with a moist hiss, adding to the despair creeping over that yellow slope.

Lieutenant W. W. Cooke—Canadian adventurer who came south to fight in the Civil War and afterwards joined Custer’s newly formed Seventh U.S. Cavalry at Fort Riley to fight Indians rather than return home—rose awkwardly to one knee.

“Well, gentlemen,” he began in that soft, winning way of his that had won the friendship of many a man and the heart of many a pretty lady. “General, sir. I’ve a job to do. And I’m still of one body and soul so, I’ll be about it.”

Cooke stood, a fairly large man for the time and exceedingly fleet of foot. He more than any other man had won regimental footraces held at forts Riley, Hays, and Abraham Lincoln. “Just this last month we celebrated my thirtieth birthday, boys.”

“I remember it well, my friend,” Tom said, placing a hand on Cooke’s shoulder. “What a celebration that was. We truly drank the day away!”

“Aye.” Cooke licked his burning lips. “Wish I had some of that whiskey right about now.” He sounded sorry there wasn’t any left after caring for the wounded with what whiskey had been carried to the hillside in some saddlebags. “But there’s been many a time in the past that I knew for sure the way my life was going, I’d never make thirty.
And look at me!” He chuckled with dark humor. “I’m thirty now and stuck on some goddamned hillside in—who knows where? Going to buy myself a small piece of this goddamned barren ground! Made it to thirty—only to die a month later!” He started to cackle wildly.

Tom Custer lunged at Cooke, gripping his shoulders in a close, fierce embrace. When Tom pulled back, he said “Billy, why don’t you go right over there?” He pointed out a position on the perimeter that needed some bolstering. “Looks like we could use a top shot covering that slope.”

Behind his tears, Cooke swallowed hard. “I am a good shot, you know.”

“The best, Billy.” Custer himself struggled to raise a hand to his adjutant. “I ought to know … choosing you to lead our sharpshooters at the Washita.” He winced with a swell of pain. The gray veil passed over his eyes. “You remember the Washita, don’t you fellas? The high point for the Seventh Cavalry. You remember, don’t you?”

Cooke knelt again beside Custer, wrapping one of the bloody freckled hands in both of his.

“Aye, General.” Cooke nearly choked on the sob, some slow, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and into those thick black Dundrearies. “It’s been a hell of a pleasure knowing you, sir! One hell of an honor too. May I shake your hand, General?”

“Of course, Billy Cooke.” Custer did not fight to hide his tears any longer. “You’ve been one of my closest allies all along. I’m going to miss you too.” His eyes gone gray searched each of them out now. “Miss all of you.” Then he gazed back at Cooke. “Remember one thing for me, Lieutenant Cooke …” He waited, clenching his eyes against the pain like a hot poker dragged slowly through his rib cage. “Remember, we’re taking no prisoners this time.”

At first, none of them knew how to take that. Then the general opened his eyes. They seemed to sparkle with some renewed light. It wasn’t only a glistening of tears. Some small flicker of fire still burned bright behind those sapphire eyes.

He was having a rough time breathing. So much pressure
on his chest that he wanted to cry out. Instead, he would issue his last orders.

“Spread out. Keep your heads down. And remember, we take no prisoners this trip out.”

Cooke clutched the general’s freckled hand quickly a last time, then was gone up the north slope in a crouch, crabbing in the direction where he would keep an eye on a band of warriors massing down the side of the hill.

God, it looks like better’n a thousand of the heathen bastards down there now
, Cooke thought to himself as he skidded through the yellow dust and around stinking bodies.

And out front of them all sat a warrior with light-colored unbraided hair, perched regally atop a prancing horse painted with bloody handprints on its hips, an arrow and a scalp drawn along the neck of the animal. Close enough for Cooke to marvel at the princely bearing of this one.