by John Jakes
“Careful. That looks like a drop-off,” Dutch Henry warned. Belly down, they crept on the edge. A slope sheered away; difficult for horses, though not impossible.
They were gazing out on a shallow river valley. “Got to be the Washita,” Dutch Henry said. The river ran right below, silver in the moonlight, chuckling at them. Its course was roughly east and west. About two miles east, to their left, the river looped to the north and disappeared behind a spur of the hills.
Beyond some open ground on the river’s far side, a dark mass suggested more heavy timber. Little else could be seen despite the brilliant moon and incredible display of stars in the heavens. Charles sniffed. He and Dutch Henry both smelled the smoke from across the river.
Over in the timber, a dog barked. Charles’s hair almost stood on end. A few seconds later he heard the wail of a baby.
“Can’t see the lodges from up here,” Dutch Henry said. “Maybe if I get lower, I can count ’em against the sky.”
He scrambled down the slope, leaving Charles with the thickening smell of smoke in his nostrils. A tinkling bell suddenly showed him the pony herd, a darker mass of shadow that flowed away behind the timber.
Shortly, Griffenstein came scrambling up again. “We got ’em,” he whispered. “The tipis are back in those cottonwoods. Right around fifty of ’em. Let’s go.”
While they stole away Charles thought, Fifty. But whose are they?
Custer tilted the face of his pocket watch toward the moon. “About three and a half hours till dawn. We’ll go in then. Main, gather the officers on the double.”
They were together within minutes. Quickly, Custer revealed that they’d tracked the war party to its base, which the column would attack at first light. Charles could hear the excitement that generated. Venable even forgot about giving him intimidating stares.
With unconcealed enthusiasm, Custer improvised his plan on the spot. He split his seven hundred effectives into four detachments, three to support the main one, which would lead the attack from the bluff where Charles and Griffenstein had observed the village. One of the detachments would advance at the sound of band music. Elliott’s and Thompson’s detachments were to start toward their positions immediately.
“The men remaining here may dismount until it’s time to move forward. They may not speak above a whisper. There is to be no other noise. They may not walk around, and even if they’re freezing to death, they’re not to stamp their feet. No matches are to be lit for pipes or cigars. Any man who disobeys will answer to me personally. Venable, do me a favor. Take Maida and Blucher to the rear and give them to Sergeant Major Kennedy to hold until we advance.”
Venable didn’t like this odd, menial duty, but he didn’t argue. He whistled softly. The staghounds, well trained, leaped to follow him. Custer’s fringed gauntlet swept over the other dogs hanging around near the officers. “Main, you and Griffenstein kill these strays.”
Charles felt as though a picket pin had been hammered into his head. “What, sir?”
“You heard me. We want surprise on our side. These dogs could give us away. Get rid of them, and right now.”
Charles stared and Custer gave it right back, his eyes like black skull-sockets in the gloom. Dutch Henry laid a mitten on Charles’s shoulder, either to soothe him or restrain him. Captain Hamilton got things going, ordering a couple of lieutenants: “Bring up some ropes. We’ll muzzle them before we do it.”
Charles jumped at Old Bob, intending to pick him up and run him to the rear. Custer snapped, “No. I said every one of them.”
“I won’t do it.”
Custer gave him a long look. “Turning tender-hearted, are we? Get over it before we attack the village.” He stalked off, his tiny gold spurs winking in the moonlight.
“Get away from here. Don’t watch,” Dutch Henry whispered.
The lieutenants rushed up with ropes. The men surrounded the dogs, ten in all, and after some struggle and a couple of chases to catch runaways, got them all muzzled and leashed. Charles, meantime, walked into the woods and leaned his forearm against a tree trunk, his face turned toward the village. Then a frantic yelping, though the muzzles controlled its volume. The yelping continued for a while, and so did the sound of frantic claws tearing the crusted snow. Charles didn’t know who cut the throat of Old Bob, but he saw the limp yellow body in the redolent heap with all the others. He walked past it quickly. The air was nearly cold enough to freeze the bitter tears in his eyes.
The flanking detachment began to move out in order to get in position by daylight. Those in the main column had a chance for a little more rest. The moonlit snow resembled a strange park of military statues. Motionless soldiers, stood, sat, or lay by their horses. Every man held a rein. A few wrapped their caped coats around their heads and tried to sleep. Most were too tense.
Some of the officers huddled together, looking stout in their heavy overcoats. They whispered with suppressed excitement. Jack Corbin’s pony began to stamp and whinny. Corbin couldn’t control him. Charles stepped over and pinched the pony’s nostrils shut and held them until the pony quieted down. Another Cheyenne trick Jackson had taught him. Corbin whispered his thanks.
Charles crouched beside Satan, passing the rein from hand to hand. Something in him felt wrong, dangerously explosive. California Joe replenished his liquid courage from his seemingly limitless supply of demijohns. He passed the jug to Dutch Henry, who watched for officers, then drank swiftly. Milner offered the jug to Charles. Charles shook his head.
“You don’t seem exactly raring to go,” California Joe remarked. “Should be a right lively scrap. ’F we hang on to our edge and surprise ’em, we shouldn’t have much trouble, either. I thought that’s what you wanted. I thought that’s why you signed on. Cheyenne Charlie, just bustin’ to kill him some—”
“Shut up,” Charles said. “Just leave me alone or I’ll ram that jug down your throat.”
He stood up, walked away. “ ’S got into him?” California Joe asked.
Dutch Henry could only shrug.
As the moon descended behind the timber, a thick ground fog began to boil up and spread, creating an eerie effect. Custer kept opening his pocket watch and snapping it shut. Finally, it was time. He tucked the watch away and pushed down the ivory-handled butts of his Webley Bulldog pistols to snug them in the holsters. He issued his last orders. Haversacks to be dropped. Overcoats and sabers to be left behind. No firing until he gave the signal.
Feeling heavy, filthy, tired, Charles swung his right leg over Satan. Custer saw that the column was formed, summoned his trumpeter up beside him, and started to walk Dandy forward through the trees. The ground fog stirred and eddied around the animal’s knees.
Suddenly a great gasp went up from the men. Charles turned to the east, where Dutch Henry pointed. There above the trees glimmered a golden spot of light.
“Morning star,” someone said.
The planet was more like a military rocket, blazing as it ascended slowly and majestically while they watched. Custer’s face seemed to pick up a little of that awesome golden light.
“By God,” he said in a reverent tone. “By God. This expedition is blessed. That’s the sign.”
They advanced to the irregular bluff above the river. The muffled thudding of so many shod horses sounded thunderous to Charles. Surely there would be some response from the sleeping village. There was; a dog barked. Within seconds, half a dozen more joined in.
Custer held up his right hand and started down the slope. Dandy slipped and skidded, but reached the river without mishap. Others began to descend, the scouts to the right of the trumpeter, who was leading the bandsmen down.
Charles had his gypsy robe tucked up and his Army Colt ready in his belt. He held the Spencer across his knees with one hand. Slowly, with creakings and jinglings and occasional muffled expletives, the force descended to the Washita. Down at the level of the river, where the water turned the air noticeably colder, Charles had a new perspective on
the cottonwoods on the other side. Through them, amid them, against the faintly paled sky, he now saw the crossed poles of many tipis.
Whose?
“Trumpeter—” Custer began.
In the dark woods, someone fired a warning shot. Custer said something wrathful. Then several things happened at once. There was a noise on the open ground across the river; whinnying, as of many ponies suddenly disturbed. They’d probably smelled the white men’s horses.
From the background of the dark woods, a man with a rifle broke and ran toward the river. Custer saw the Indian coming and raised one of his pistols. “Trumpeter, sound the charge,” he yelled, firing from horseback. The Indian flew backward, his rifle spinning out of his hand.
The trumpeter sounded the call. To the far left and right of Charles, and behind him as well, men shouted and cheered. Before the trumpeter finished, the band burst into “Garry Owen,” and the Seventh Cavalry poured over the Washita to strike the village.
50
SATAN CARRIED CHARLES OYER the Washita with a great leap. He hugged the piebald with his knees, was dashed with icy spray when Satan landed in the shallows on the other side. They galloped up the bank. To one side, he saw Griffenstein, a revolver in each fist, a smile on his bearded face.
The daylight was coming. The bleached hide covers of the tipis showed clearly among the cottonwoods. The pictographs were distinctive; there was no doubt that it was a Cheyenne village. To the left and right of the main force, the support columns were moving in, hallooing and cheering. Charles even heard a rebel yell.
The van of the attack swept toward the tipis across a level areas broken by low knolls. The earth shook from the pounding of the horses. Suddenly the sun cleared the horizon, and streaks of orange shimmered on the great curve of the Washita where it bent away north, just east of the village.
The Cheyennes poured from the tipis as the troopers rode down on them. The men struggled with their bows and rifles. Charles was dismayed by the sight of many woman and young children. Some of the sleepy youngsters were crying. The women wailed in fright. Dogs barked and snapped. The sudden fire from the charging cavalry worsened the bedlam.
Breath plumed from Charles’s mouth. He was within fifty yards of the first tipis in the trees, but some troopers had already reached them. One shot a dog snapping at the horses. Another put a bullet in the breast of a gray-haired grandmother. The women screamed louder as their men staggered forward to defend them. Against the mounted blue lines they had no chance at all.
The charge carried Charles into a lane between tipis with smoke curling out of their tops. Griffenstein rode ahead of him, pistols cracking. A spindly old man defending himself with the faded red shield of his youth stared at the troopers with stunned eyes. Dutch Henry put a bullet into his open mouth. A great flying fan of blood spread behind the man. It splattered his tipi like paint.
Charles had to rely on Satan not to fall among the panicked Indians, who were yelling and clubbing at the soldiers, and to avoid the cook fires smoldering in the lane. His mind seemed benumbed. He’d yet to fire the Spencer.
Satan took him on down the lane to the far side of the village. There Charles wheeled back, nearly knocked from his saddle by a collision with two troopers executing the same maneuver. On their faces, in their glinting eyes, he saw an eagerness that didn’t distinguish between warrior and woman, society soldier and stripling.
A platoon in double column led by First Lieutenant Godfrey, of K Troop, dashed out of the cottonwoods and away from the village. Waving hats and swinging ropes, the men in the column split right and left, circling the pony herd, which was already beginning to trot away southeast to escape the noise. The troopers managed to turn and surround the ponies. Observing, Charles wondered why General Custer went to the trouble. The ponies were Indian bred and trained; they’d be useless as cavalry remounts.
Powder smoke began to drift in heavy layers. Charles headed Satan back up another lane. He guessed the village to be about the size of their first estimate, fifty tipis. On his left, three troopers pulled one down. Inside the collapsing hide cover, he heard the high-pitched voices of terrified children. The troopers jumped off their horses and riddled the fallen tipi.
The pace of the charge in the lanes slowed now. Men from the detachment that had encircled the village came in, adding to the confusion. Directly ahead of Charles, a woman ran from behind a tipi, a bedraggled woman with unbound hair, holding a small white boy against her shoulder. She clutched the back of his head protectively. Her hands and face were weathered pink; a white woman.
She screamed at the soldiers. “My name is Blinn. Mrs. Blinn.” The captive, Charles remembered. “Please don’t hurt Willie or—” A volley of shots jerked her like a marionette. Half of the little boy’s head sheared off as he and his mother crashed into a tipi, tearing the cover and falling through.
Vomit rose in Charles’s throat. He booted Satan past the torn tipi. The slain boy was no older than his own son.
The lanes filled with troopers excitedly firing despite the bucking and balking of their horses. Charles saw one corporal with a bloody sleeve, but no other sign of Army casualties. He walked Satan forward, peering through the trees to the open ground they’d crossed in their charge from the river. There, seated on Dandy on the highest of the knolls, Custer observed the fighting through binoculars.
Down a short lane between tipis, Charles spied Dutch Henry kneeling on the bullet-pierced body of a Cheyenne, whose head he lifted with one hand while he cut quickly around the scalp with the other. The victim was still alive. He screamed. His face was seamed and old. Sixty winters, or more. Charles turned away.
Not all the Cheyennes were so frail and defenseless. Here and there he saw boys of twelve or thirteen using a knife or lance in suicidal duels with soldiers. One of these youngsters leaped from behind a tipi to confront Charles. He was barefoot, wearing only leggings. From the black braid over his right ear dangled a battle memento: someone’s cross of tarnished brass, pierced and tied by a thong. The boy had a delicate face. Traces of red showed on his chest. He was either a young Red Shield initiate, or one who aspired to that and imitated his elders by painting himself. All of this registered in the seconds it took for the boy to fit an arrow to his bowstring.
Charles raised his right hand, using sign to tell the youngster to run. The boy’s face convulsed with rage as he released the bowstring. Charles flung himself down behind Satan’s left side. The arrow sailed over instead of skewering him.
He kicked his left boot out of the stirrup and dropped to the ground with the Spencer. Satan trotted away between the tipis. In the smoky grove, there was now almost constant screaming and wailing from the women. Charles gestured with the rifle and yelled in Cheyenne. “Run away. Run before you’re killed.” He didn’t know why he hazarded his own life this way, except that he’d never bargained on revenging himself on greybeards and children.
The boy wanted no mercy. He fitted another arrow to the bow. Charles dodged to the right, hoping to dive behind the boy’s tipi. The boy pulled the arrow back. Charles was still in the open, running bent over. He saw the bowstring go taut. There was no choice. He fired.
The bullet struck the boy’s belly with close-range force, ripping it open and lifting him off the ground. He spun and landed on his back in the coals of a banked fire. His hair began to smoke. Charles ran to him and dragged him out of the fire. The metal cross was already hot, scorching his fingers. Charles’s mouth tasted bitter; sweat ran down the bridge of his nose into his eyes. A surge of imagination showed him things the dead boy would never see. Another prairie spring; another prairie winter. The great bison herd migrating and covering the land. The adoring eyes of the first woman he took—
Shaken, he tore the brass cross from the boy’s braid and jammed it in his pocket. Something demanded that he keep a reminder of what he’d done.
He went on foot to search for Satan. By now the scene inside the village was totally chaotic. The central
part was held by the Seventh. Small isolated groups of Cheyennes had taken cover behind trees and in a shallow ditch and a ravine. Detachments quickly formed to concentrate fire on them, and kill them or drive them out. Women attempted to flee in the midst of the shooting, some clutching babies in cradleboards, some literally kicking their youngsters to hurry them along. Wherever the women ran into a line of troopers, they gave up. Most did, anyway. Charles watched an obese old squaw with a small knife fling herself at three troopers. Rifle fire cut her down.
He caught Satan, who was whinnying loudly, not liking the strange smells and sounds of the melee. Charles mounted and galloped toward the side of the village where they’d attacked first. He thought he recognized pictographs on a large tipi over that way. He knew he was right when he saw two Indians on a single pony racing away from the tipi in the direction of the sun-sparkling river. Even through the dense smoke and at a distance, he knew it was Black Kettle, with Medicine Woman Later riding in front of him.
Their pony reached the bank of the Washita. There, a quartet of troopers caught up with them. Black Kettle raised his hands to plead for mercy. A volley hit him and his wife and hurled them both off the pony and into the stream. The frightened pony trampled Medicine Woman Later before gaining the other bank.
“Christ!” Charles said. Intense revulsion was rising in him. All his past pledges to himself and his boast of wanton vengeance shamed him. Wooden Foot Jackson wouldn’t want this—a blood price taken in the lives of children, mothers, the peace chief who had befriended the Jackson Trading Company and shielded it for a season from the wrath of Scar.
He jammed the Spencer in the saddle scabbard, put his head down, and raced for the river.
A flying wedge of eight or ten horsemen came up behind him, broke around him, streamed on eastward, churning up muddy snow. A grinning face looked back at him. “Here goes, Main—a brevet or a coffin.” Whooping like boys, Major Elliott and his troopers galloped away. Soon, from the east, Charles heard intermittent gunfire.
