Below me the hillside was covered with dead and dying, and with little clusters where shots still rang out – a few desperate wretches taking as many Sioux with them as they could. There were hundreds of figures running, riding, and some just walking, across the slope, and they were all Indians. Most of them were hurrying across my front to the struggle still boiling just below the hilltop where Custer’s group were dying. There may have been a score of them, I can’t tell, standing and lying and sprawling in a disordered mass, the pistols and carbines cracking while the mounted wave of war-bonnets and eagle feathers rode round and through and over them, the clubs and lances rising and falling to the yells of “Hoon! Hoon!” while Gall’s footmen grappled and stabbed and scalped at close quarters. There was no guidon flying, no ring of blue shoulder to shoulder, no buckskin figure with flowing locks and sabre (he was one of the still forms in that crawling mêlée); no, there was just a great hideous scrimmage of bodies, like a Big Side maul when the ball’s well hidden – only here it was not “Off your side!” but “Hoon!” and the crash of shots and flash of steel. That was how the 7th Cavalry ended. Bayete 7th Cavalry.
Elsewhere it was already over. Far down to my left a mob of Indians were shooting and stabbing and mutilating over a long cluster of blue forms – that would be Calhoun’s troop. Straight ahead below me, to the right of the long gully, the cavalry dead lay thick where Yates and Tom Custer and Smith had died with their troops – but far down there was still a group mounted on sorrels, and I could see the puffs of smoke from their pistols.
All this I took in during one long horrified second – it couldn’t have been longer or I wouldn’t be here. I doubt if I even checked stride, for one glance behind showed a dozen mounted braves and a score running, and they all had Flashy in their sights. To the left and below the slope was thick with the bloodthirsty bastards – all you can do is see where the enemy are thinnest and go like hell. I swerved right in full career, for there was a break of perhaps ten yards in the mob surging up to join in the massacre of Custer’s party. I went for it, sabre aloft, bawling: “I surrender! Don’t shoot! I’m not an American! I’m British! Christ, I ain’t even in uniform, blast you!”, and if anyone had shown the least inclination to say: “Hold on, Lacotahs! Let’s hear what he has to say”, I might have checked and hoped. But all I got was a whizzing of arrows and balls as I tore through the gap, rode down two braves who sprang to bar my path, cut at and missed a mounted fellow with a club, and then I was thundering down the right side of the gully towards the group on their sorrels – and they weren’t there! Nothing but bloody Indians hacking and stabbing and snatching at riderless beasts. I tried to swerve, aware of a mounted lancer coming up on my flank, a painted face beneath a buffalo helmet; he veered in behind me, I screamed as in imagination I felt the steel piercing my back, hands were clutching at my legs, painted faces leaping at my pony’s head, my sabre was gone, an arrow zipped across the front of my coat, something caught the pony a blow near my right knee – and then I was through the press,78 only a few Indians running across my front, when an arrow struck with a sickening thud into the pony’s neck. As it reared I went headlong, rolling down a little gully side and fetching up against a dead cavalryman with his body torn open, half-disembowelled.
I lay sprawled on my back as two of those screaming brutes came leaping over the bank. They collided with each other and went down, and behind them the buffalo-cap lancer was sliding from his saddle, jumping over the other two, swinging up his hatchet. His left hand was at my throat, the frightful painted face was screaming a foot from mine. “Hoon!” he yelled, and his hatchet flashed down – into the ground beside my head. His breath was stinking against my face as he snarled:
“Lie still! Lie still! Don’t move, whatever happens!”
Up went his hatchet – and again it missed my face by a whisker, and his left hand must have been busy with the dead trooper’s innards, for a bloody mess was thrust into my face, and then he had a knife in his hand; it flashed before my eyes, there was a blinding pain on top of my skull, but I was too choked with horror, physical horror, to scream, and then he was on his feet, yelling exultantly.
“Another of them! Kye-ee! Go find your own, Lacotahs!”
I didn’t see this, blinded with pain and human offal as I was, but I heard it. I lay frozen while they snarled at each other. There was blood running into my eyes, my scalp was a fire of agony – oh, I knew what had been done to me, all right. But why hadn’t he killed me?
“Just lie still. I’m robbing your corpse,” growled a voice close to my ear, and his hands were delving into my pockets, tearing at my coat, dragging my shirt half over my bloodied face – the laundry would certainly refuse my linen after today. Who the hell was he? I wanted to shriek with pain and fear, but had just wit enough not to.
“Easy does it,” muttered the voice. “Scalping ain’t fatal; it’s just a nick. Have you any other wound? If you haven’t, and understand what I’m saying, move the little finger of your right hand the least bit … good … and don’t move another muscle – there are six of ’em within twenty yards, and I’m just muttering curses to myself, but if you start thrashing about, they may be curious. Lie still … lie still …”
I lay still. By God, I lay still, with my head splitting, while he emptied my pockets and suddenly shouted:
“Get away, you Minneconju thief! This one’s mine!”
“That’s not a pony-soldier!” snarled another voice. “What’s that shining thing you’ve got?”
“Something too good for you, scabby-head!” cries my boy. “This is a white man’s clicky-thing. See – it has a little splinter that moves round. Oh, you can have it if you like – but I’ll keep his dollars!”
“It’s alive, the clicky-thing!” cries the other. “See, it does move! Hinteh! Hiya, what do I want with it? Give me the dollars, eh, Brulé – go on!”
I heard a jingle of coins, and someone shuffling away, and all around me, through the waves of pain and fear, I could hear a ceaseless chorus of groans and screams and exultant yells, and one awful bubbling high-pitched shriek of agony – some poor bastard hadn’t been killed outright. Occasional shots, wailing voices raised in chants, and all about my head flies buzzing, crawling on my head; I was matted with blood and stifling with filth, and the sun’s heat was unbearable – but I lay still.
“He’s gone,” growled my unseen preserver. “Didn’t want your watch – lie still, you fool!”
For I had jerked automatically as it dawned on me – to the Minneconju he’d spoken Siouxan, but all the words he’d addressed to me had been in English! Good English, too, with a soft, husky American accent. There it was again: “Keep lying still. I’m going to sit up on the bank above you and sing a song of triumph. For the destruction of all the pony-soldiers, d’you see? Right … there’s no one here but us chickens at present, but it won’t get dark for another four hours, I guess. Then we’ll get you away. Can you play possum that long? Move your pinky if you can … that’s the ticket. Now, take it easy.”
I was past wondering; I didn’t care. I was alive, with a friend close by, whoever he might be. For the rest, I still hadn’t taken in the horror of it. Half a regiment of US cavalry had been massacred, wiped out, in barely quarter of an hour.79 Custer was dead. They were all dead. Except me.
“Don’t go to sleep,” said the voice. “And don’t get delirious, or I’ll dot you a good one. Right, listen to this.”
And he began to chant in Siouxan, about how he had slain six pony-soldiers that day, including a Washechuska English soldier-chief with a watch from Bond Street which was still going and the time was ten past five. Which beggared imagination, if you like. Then he went on about what a great warrior he was, and how many times he had counted coup, and I lay there with the flies eating me alive. Ne’er mind, worse things can happen.
I must have slept, in spite of his instruction, or more likely it was a long faint, for suddenly I was cold, and an arm was round my shou
lders, easing me up, and water was being dashed in my face and a cloth was sponging away the caked blood. A bowl was held to my parched mouth, and the American voice was whispering:
“Gently, now … a sip at a time. Good. Now lie still a while till I get you smartened up.”
I gulped it down, ice-cold, and managed to get my gummed eyelids opened. It was dusk, with stars beginning to show, and a chill wind blowing; beside me knelt the fellow in the buffalo-helmet, a fearsome sight and no prettier when he grinned, which he did when I croaked for information who he might be.
“Let’s say a resurrectionist. Can you walk? All right, I’ll carry you a piece, but then you’ll have to sit a pony. First of all, let’s get you looking like one of the winning team.”
He dragged off my clothes, and somehow got me into a buckskin shirt and leggings. My head was aching fit to split, and wasn’t improved when he insisted on putting his buffalo-cap on it. In the dim light I saw his long hair hung to his shoulders, and his face was bright with paint; American or half-breed, he’d taken pains with his make-up.
“Now, listen close,” says he. “There are still braves and women around, collecting the dead.” Sure enough, the evening was being broken by the high-pitched keening of the death-songs; against the night sky I could see figures moving to and fro, and there were pin-points of torch-light all over the slope. “All right, we’re going downstream, to a ford farther along; that way we can skirt the village, and I’ll get you to a place where you can lie up a spell. Hoo-hay, let’s go.”
I could just stumble, with him holding me. Then there was a pony, and he was helping me up; I reeled in the seat, with his arm about me, but although my head was bursting with pain I managed to balance, just. Then we moved slowly forward through the gathering night, down a slope and under cottonwoods; I could hear the river bubbling near. But I was like a man in a dream; time meant nothing, and I was only now and then aware that I was still astride a pony, that it was splashing through water, that we were mounting a slope. Twice I was falling from my seat when he caught me and held me upright. How long we rode I can’t tell. I remember a moon in the sky, and a hand on my shoulder, and then I know I was lying down, and a deep voice was speaking in Siouxan, from very far away.
“… put the grease on his head, and if it becomes angry send for me. No one will come, but if they do, and they are of our people, tell them he is to stay here. Tell them that this is my word. Tell them the One-Who-Catches has spoken …”
* * *
b Torture.
Chapter 21
When you’re past the fifty mark, you don’t mend as quickly as you used to. For one thing, you don’t want to; where once on a day you couldn’t wait to be off your sick-bed and rampaging about, you’re now content to lie still and let any handy ministering angels do their stuff. When I was a brat of a boy I went through hot hell in Afghanistan, had a fort collapse on me, and broke my thigh – and a few weeks later I was fit enough to gallop an Afghan wench with my leg in a splint and old Avitabile egging me on, and get beastly drunk afterwards. Not at fifty-three; if they’d paraded the Folies Bergère past me a month after Little Bighorn I’d have asked for bread and milk instead, and damned little of that in case it over-excited me.
I was in a delirium for the best part of a fortnight, they tell me, and near carried off by what sounds to have been pneumonia. When I came to, I was weak as a rat, and only able to move sufficiently to gulp down small mouthfuls of blood soup, which is capital stuff for a convalescent, but hard to come by unless you have a supply of fresh buffalo meat to hand. Apparently my hosts did – or I should say host, for there was only one of him, most of the time.
He was a ’breed called Joe Bright Deer, so he told me – and that was about all I could get out of him, at least where my miraculous rescue was concerned. Who the man was who’d pretended to kill me, and had genuinely scalped me (although pretty superficially) presumably to add verisimilitude for the benefit of Sioux bystanders, and had brought me here – wherever here was – he simply would not say, except that it hadn’t been him. I pestered him about the last thing I remembered, asking who the One-Who-Catches might be, and he said that the One-Who-Catches had seen me, and would come again, possibly. In the meantime I could shut up, and have some more blood soup.
This took place in a cave, which was a fairly comfortable spot as caves go, with all the gear of a Mountain Man, buffalo robes, rawhide-and-wood furniture, and a good fire going. As I mended, Joe Bright Deer let me go as far as the cave-mouth for exercise, and I could see we were in hill country, with a good deal of conifer forest; somewhere in the Big Horn Mountains, I guessed. Outside the cave he wouldn’t let me go, and since I was still fairly weak I didn’t argue. Something told me I would find out all I wanted to know, if I sat tight long enough; in the meantime Joe was ready to talk about one subject in which I was tolerably interested, and that was the massacre I had survived.
Yes, Custer was dead, and every man who’d been on that slope with him. It seemed that he had gone up the Rosebud, but instead of skirting the Indian camp to the south, as Terry had instructed, had decided to take a slap at it himself, and to blazes with waiting for Gibbon. He’d split his force, sending Reno to charge into the camp with about 120 men from the south, while Custer himself took five troops round the flank to fall on the other end of the village. Well, I knew what had come of that, none better; in the meantime, Reno had managed to withdraw and hold out on a bluff until Terry and Gibbon arrived a day later. The Sioux, meanwhile, had decamped.
Everyone has had their say on this famous fiasco, and if you want mine, it’s this. Custer was going to win an astonishing victory and refurbish his fame – very well. But having sent in Reno – a piece of arrant folly unless he was totally ignorant of the Indian strength – he then compounded his lunacy by launching his own attack even after he knew full well what that strength was. I saw that village from the bluffs, just as he did, and I’d not have attacked it with anything short of two regiments. It was just too damned big, and patently contained several thousand of the orneriest Indians in America. There are those who say Reno should have pushed harder, and others who say Custer could have charged through and met up with Reno – all my eye. He had one chance, and that was to hightail it the minute he got a good look at the village. But by then he’d put Reno in the stew, and had to go ahead. Mind you, George was such a fool of an optimist, and so obsessed with victory, that I daresay even at the ford he was still believing he had a chance. But the moment he was out on the slope he was done for, and he must have known it.
I’ll say two other things. If the 7th had had decent carbines, they might have sickened the Sioux and been able to hole up on the hill, as Reno did. And that was Custer’s fault, too. He should have tested those pieces before he went near the Powder country – tested ’em until they were red-hot, and he’d have seen them jam. T’other thing – Reno deserved the clean bill he got from the court-martial. I didn’t know him, much, but Napoleon himself couldn’t have done any better. If Custer had done half as well, there’d be a few old troopers still telling stretchers about how they survived the struggle up Greasy Grass hill.
Well, I’ve told you what I know about Custer, and you may judge for yourselves. He wasn’t a bad soldier, though. Most commanders make a few mistakes, and no one hears about them. He made three in turn – sending in Reno, going in himself, and coming out the wrong way too late. As a result, he lost a pretty bloody skirmish – it wasn’t a battle, really – but it shocked America, and he’ll never live it down. For his troopers – well, if any of ’em ran, they didn’t catch up with me. For the Sioux – it was their great day, for all it took thousands of them to knock over a few score. Gall gave them a victory, and Crazy Horse made siccar, as my wife would say.c
But that’s by the way. A historic catastrophe it may have been, but to me it was the penultimate link in my American story, which was now drawing to a close twenty-six years after John Charity Spring had brought me over t
he Middle Passage. You may think it was the strangest of all my stories – but, d’you know, as I come to its final pages it seems perfectly logical; inevitable, almost. I might have known how it would be.
I’d enjoyed Joe’s hospitality for the best part of a month, and was nearly whole again and feeling restless, and one evening as we were having a pipe at the fire, suddenly there was an Indian in the cave-mouth; I hadn’t heard him come, but there he was, a splendid figure in black fringed leggings, with paint on his chest but none on his face, eagle feathers in his braids, and a pistol on his hip. He watched us in silence for a minute, and nodded to Joe. I’d seen him before, I knew, but it took me a moment to place him.
“One-Who-Catches,” says Joe.
“No, he isn’t, either!” I exclaimed. “I know you – you’re Young Frank Standing Bear! I met you in Chicago with Spotted Tail – and then you and Young-Man-Afraid rode herd on us at Camp Robinson!” I regarded him in amazement. “Is Spotted Tail here?”
He shook his head. “The chief sits with his people at White River.”
“But … he sent you? To me?”
He said nothing, and I stared from him to Joe in bewilderment. “But … what’s all this nonsense about One-Who-Catches? If you’re him, then I’ve been hearing about you ever since I was kidnapped by Jacket and taken to the lodges of the Sioux! What d’you want with me?” Another thought struck me. “And where’s the man who brought me away from the Custer fight?”
He still said nothing, and then with one of those slow, graceful hand-motions he signalled Joe to leave the cave. He gestured me to sit, and sank down cross-legged opposite me, his hands on his knees. There wasn’t a flicker of expression on the hawk face as the dark eyes studied me carefully; he seemed to be absorbing every hair of me, very thoughtful, and I didn’t care for it a bit. Finally he says:
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