Blood Bond

by William W. Johnstone

  “It is to be a great battle,” Medicine Horse told them after they had eaten. “Be prepared not only to fight, but to die.”

  They assured him they were ready.

  Medicine Horse left his lodge to stand outside. He had made peace with his gods and with himself. He smiled and hefted his Winchester. It was much lighter now that he had emptied it of shells.

  * * *

  “This is as close as we’d better go, Brother,” Two Wolves said, pulling up.

  They were about three miles east of the valley of the Little Bighorn. They watered their horses and filled their canteens at a small spring and then backed off some distance, allowing the animals a chance to come in at night and drink without being alarmed by human scent.

  The two young men had been silent most of the day, riding very carefully and cautiously. That, and the fact that they both felt the battle was only hours away. They made a cold camp and rolled up in their blankets.

  “Bodine?” Two Wolves whispered from his blankets.

  “Yeah?”

  “I feel a great sadness in my heart.”

  “I know. I feel . . . some of what you feel. But not to the degree that you’re experiencing.”

  “I plan to ride closer in the morning.”

  “We’ll ride together.”

  * * *

  Colonel Travers stepped out of his quarters and stood in the cool darkness. He lit a cigar but it did not taste good and he snubbed it out against the porch railing. He turned to his orderly.

  “Find Lieutenant Gerry for me, please. Tell him I want to see him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lieutenant Gerry stepped out of the night into the dim light on the porch. “Sir?”

  “I have no orders to do this, Gerry. But I do have some leeway in the orders from Dakota Command. We’ll leave two companies at the garrison, under the command of Lieutenant Walters. You and I will lead four companies out of the fort at three o’clock in the morning. We’re heading for the Rosebuds.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Each man will have four days’ hard rations. One hundred rounds for his carbine and twenty-four rounds for his sidearm.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Order the garrison to quarters and tell the sergeants to roll the men out at two o’clock. You will meet me at my quarters at that time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And God have mercy on our souls if Bodine was right.”

  “Permission to speak, sir?”

  “Of course.”

  “He probably was right, sir.”

  Travers sighed. “I know, son. That’s what’s got me so worried.”

  * * *

  On June the 22nd, General Alfred H. Terry had ordered Custer to take his men, about six hundred and fifty soldiers plus scouts and pack train drovers, to go to the southern end of the Little Bighorn Valley. And to wait there.

  General Terry and his men were to reach the northern end of the valley on June the 26th, thus putting the Sioux and Cheyenne encampment in a box.

  Custer had been advised to take it easy; be careful and don’t be greedy. To wait for them.

  Then General Terry gave Custer permission to depart from his written orders if Custer found “sufficient reasons to do so.”

  * * *

  The dawning of Sunday, June the 25th exposed a very hot, dry, and dusty day. By dawn, Custer had been on the march for over an hour, pushing straight toward the Little Bighorn River.

  Colonel Travers, at the head of four companies of cavalry, was just entering the eastern edge of the Rosebud Mountain range.

  Bodine and Two Wolves had ridden to within a mile of the river and picketed their horses in a natural corral. They proceeded on foot, carefully, toward a ridge that overlooked the valley of the Little Bighorn.

  “Jesus God!” Bodine whispered, as he looked at the encampment that stretched for nearly four miles.

  “I told you,” Two Wolves returned the whisper.

  “There must be seven or eight thousand down there.”

  “Yes. About thirty-five hundred warriors. The Ghost Dancing was concluded last evening. They are ready.”

  Bodine took his field glasses and watched several Indian boys fishing along the banks of the Little Bighorn. A man wearing a war bonnet joined the boys, but the distance was too great for Bodine to make out the man even with the aid of the binoculars. One of the boys, Spotted Hawk, would later relate that it was another boy’s uncle, White Shield, a war chief, who had left his dressing for war when he became concerned about the boys’ safety along the river.

  “It looks so peaceful,” Bodine said, laying aside the field glasses.

  “It is anything but that. Brother, what can we do to stop this tragedy?”

  “Nothing. I tried to warn Travers. You and I tried to warn Custer. There is nothing we can do except watch it unfold.”

  As the morning progressed, the day grew warmer and the young men on the ridge, overlooking what would soon be one of the bloodiest battlefields in all of the Indian wars, dozed under the sun, waiting for history to unfold before their eyes.

  * * *

  By midday, Custer’s scouts had firmly located the Indian encampment and reported back to him.

  Again, they warned him that the Indians were many. As Crow King had said, “Plenty as leaves on the trees.”

  Custer again ignored the warnings and prepared to attack. He ordered a detour from his set route and set his new route to attack from the ridge overlooking what is now called Reno Creek.

  Then, making a decision that many military officers thought he should have been court-martialed in absentia for doing, Custer split his command.

  Custer sent Captain Frederick W. Benteen with about a hundred and twenty men to scout for Indians to the southwest. He sent Major Marcus A. Reno with one hundred and forty men to attack the southern end of the huge encampment that Custer could not adequately see because of dust, hills, and trees.

  “I’ll continue north along the bluff,” Custer told his officers.

  Custer then sent a trooper back to the pack train to hurry it along. The pack train carried nearly thirty thousand rounds of ammunition, various equipment, and food and water.

  * * *

  “Dust,” Two Wolves said, poking Bodine in the ribs and bringing him out of his doze.

  “Hell, there’s dust everywhere,” Bodine griped, trying to see something through his field glasses. All he could see was a blisteringly hot day filled with haze and dust.

  “My father’s people are at the north end of the village, near the ravine at the curve of the river. See what is happening there if you can.”

  Bodine again lifted the glasses and brought the Cheyenne encampment into focus through the dust and the haze of the hot Sunday afternoon. “Lots of activity down there. But nothing hurried.”

  “More dust over there,” Two Wolves pointed out. He put his ear to the ground. He could hear nothing.

  Bodine lifted his glasses, focusing on the Hunkpapa Sioux village camped near timber along the curving Little Bighorn.

  “They sure are getting ready for something,” he said.

  Two Wolves glanced up at the sun. “It’s about two o’clock.”

  Less than one hour remained until Custer and his men of the Seventh Cavalry would ride into destiny.

  Chapter 31

  Colonel Travers halted his column and consulted a map. He had been following the river, but where in the hell was Custer and his Seventh? He took out his watch and clicked it open. Three o’clock. And how many more miles to go?

  Travers waved his companies forward.

  Major Marcus Reno told his bugler to sound the charge and they hit the Hunkpapa Sioux village, catching them completely by surprise. This village was under the leadership of Chief Gall. During the first charge of the cavalry, two of Gall’s wives and several of his children were killed, and that action probably spelled Reno’s downfall. Gall rallied his warriors and drove Reno and his men back into the t
imber along a curve of the Little Bighorn. But that position was anything but secure. Gall, furious over the killing of his wives and children, pressed the attack and according to many survivors’ own words, the cavalrymen became panic-stricken at the size and fury of the Hunkpapa force and left the timber, crossing the Little Bighorn in something of a rout and taking up positions on the high bluffs on the north side of the river where they dug in deep. But since the pack train was more than an hour behind them, the men were forced to dig in with knives, spoons, and tin cups.

  Major Reno had already lost forty men, thirteen were wounded, and many were missing. Some of them would never be found.

  Gall said the killing of women and children “made his heart bad.” After that, he fought with a small axe, swinging it with a vengeance.

  Upon hearing the gunfire, Benteen and his command returned to find a badly shaken Reno and what was left of his mauled command.

  Bodine and Two Wolves were helpless to do anything except lie on the ridge and watch the slaughter.

  Not knowing that Reno and Benteen were under such heavy attack, Custer and his five companies—numbers vary between two hundred and ten and two hundred and forty men—had galloped north. They were out of sight of the village, along the ridge on the other side of the Indian encampment and the battles.

  Sioux and Cheyenne scouts, who had been sent out to spy on General Crook’s command, had returned, and they saw Custer and his men. They raced back to the village with the news. More than two thousand Sioux and Cheyenne were mobilized and set out to intercept the troops coming toward them from the lower end of the village.

  Few among them knew it was Yellow Hair until the battle was over.

  But Medicine Horse knew.

  The Sioux and Cheyenne were armed with at least forty-one different types of rifles and pistols, many of them with Winchester repeating rifles, some with muzzle-loading muskets, others with the traditional bows and arrows and lances. As the army retreated, the Indians gathered up the weapons from the dead and from the ground where panic-stricken men had thrown them in their haste to get the hell out of that area. Some were armed with only coup sticks. As was Medicine Horse.

  The combined forces of Sioux and Cheyenne spotted Custer as he and his command topped the ridge just north of Reno’s embattled position. Because of the dust and the haze in the gunsmoke-filled air, Custer did not see what dire straits Reno was in and continued on north, on the ridge, pursued by at least two thousand hostiles.

  Custer tried to get off the ridge and did manage for a time to fight briefly near the river, but within minutes was forced back onto the ridge and continued on north, losing men with each Indian assault.

  By this time, most of the Indians who had been fighting Reno and Benteen had left the creek to pursue the companies of cavalry on the ridge. Only Captain Thomas Weir and his few men stood in their way.

  With most of the pressure off Reno and Benteen, they managed to fortify their positions on what would come to be known as Reno’s Hill.

  They did not know what was happening to Custer.

  Bodine lowered his binoculars. “I can’t see anything, Brother. I don’t know what’s happening over there.”

  “I do,” Two Wolves spoke the words grimly. “It is as my father said: the beginning of the end.”

  All the soldiers who had been along the river, from all commands, had now pulled back to the ridges, many of them losing their horses and many of them losing their rifles, forced to fight with six-shooters, and since they only were issued twenty-four rounds of ammunition for their sidearms, conditions were becoming somewhat more than desperate for the men of the Seventh Cavalry.

  Bodies of cavalrymen littered the ground between the river and the ridges.

  Bands of Cheyenne, led by Contrary Belly, Yellow Nose, and Chief Comes In Sight, began leading charges up the ridges, getting very close to the soldiers. Yellow Nose actually got inside the perimeter of the troops and grabbed the company guidon from the hands of a soldier and counted coup on the man with it, striking the soldier with the staff and then riding off, leaving the man alive and bewildered.

  After that charge, the badly frightened horses of the cavalrymen broke and ran free. Out of the seven companies of troops on the ridges, only four companies still had mounts. With no place to run.

  Two Wolves had the field glasses and through the murky haze could see the frightened horses galloping riderless down the ridges, across the river, and tearing through the Indian village. He pointed that out to Bodine.

  “If that means what I think it does,” Bodine said, “it’s a slaughter over there.”

  More shooting and screaming were heard from the top of the ridge, and as more Indians left to pursue Custer and his troops, that much more pressure was taken off Reno, Benteen, and Weir. They were now able to recover somewhat and take better stock of their situation, which was still very grim.

  Custer and his men had now retreated to a point just above the Miniconjou and Blackfoot camps in the village. Custer dispatched a man with orders to locate Benteen and return with help.

  The courier did not make it and Benteen, Reno, and Weir would not know what had happened to Custer and his men for another thirty-six hours. No one is really sure what happened to the courier. The courier may have been part of the twenty-six troopers of Company E who presumably died in and around what is known as Deep Ravine. No one knows. Their bodies would never be found.

  Custer and his troopers had now crossed what is known as Deep Coulee and ran right into Gall and his hundreds of warriors. Medicine Horse was with Gall and through the dust and gunsmoke and confusion, recognized Yellow Hair, but was unable to reach him. Meanwhile, a band led by White Shield was attacking soldiers led by Tom Custer, George Custer’s brother and commander of Company C. White Shield thought this was Colonel Custer and pressed the attack, slaughtering them all and counting coup upon the badly mutilated body of Tom Custer. He was so badly mutilated that later he could only be identified by the initials tattooed on his arm.

  With the men of Company C now dead or out of action, White Shield led his group of braves toward George Armstrong Custer’s besieged band of cavalrymen, who had now retreated to Calhoun Hill. They were not far from where they would make their last stand.

  Boston Custer, a civilian scout, died a few hundred yards from his brother, Tom. Their nephew, eighteen-year-old Harry Reed, who had come along for the adventure of it, died a few feet away from Boston.

  From Reno Creek to Calhoun Hill, dead soldiers were being stripped of their clothing and then mutilated so their spirits would not be able to enjoy a final resting place, but would instead be forced to wander forever and ever.

  Now, with many Indians dressed in army clothing, a Cheyenne, Lame White Man, was shot and killed and scalped by his own people, who mistook him for an army scout.

  Custer and his men had now reached Last Stand Hill, with the warriors of Crazy Horse and Gall all around them.

  Brave Wolf, who was the fighting chief of the Cheyenne, would later state, “I saw such brave men as those who fought and died with Yellow Hair on the hill. It was hard fighting; very hard fighting. They did not panic but fought well and stayed together. I have been in many battles. But I never saw such brave men in all my life. They died well on the hill.”

  Benteen and Reno were still pinned down, but they had suffered no more deaths; mostly they were under observation from the Indians who surrounded them. They had been strengthened by the arrival of thirteen more men—twelve soldiers and one civilian scout. They had been hiding in the timber along the river.

  “It can’t go on much longer,” Two Wolves said. “Surely all the soldiers must be dead by now.”

  Bodine agreed, with neither of them able to know about Reno and Benteen and the troopers still on the ridges above the Little Bighorn.

  Bodine looked up through the dusty haze at the sun. “About five o’clock.”

  At Last Stand Hill, the fighting had intensified with the Indi
ans closing in.

  Medicine Horse charged up the hill, waving his coup stick. Custer looked up, surprise in his eyes as he recognized Medicine Horse. Custer lifted his pistol and shot Medicine Horse through the chest. The chief tumbled from his horse and crawled up the hill. He whacked Custer on the leg with his coup stick, rolled over, and died with a smile on his lips.

  Custer and his few remaining troopers held to their battle formation to the last.

  On the ridge above the valley of the Little Bighorn, Two Wolves screamed and threw his hands to his head as a great pain filled his brain, almost blinding him with its intensity. He put his head to the earth and moaned as the pain began to lessen.

  Bodine looked around to see if someone was shooting at them. He could see no one.

  “What’s wrong, Brother?”

  “My father is dead.”

  Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer fell to his knees after being shot through the left side. Bleeding badly, Custer summoned all his will and struggled to rise to his boots. He continued fighting until moments later he was shot through the temple. Without uttering another sound, he fell to the hot, dry earth and died. Many Indians have stated that he was the last in his command to die on Last Stand Hill.

  Custer’s body was stripped naked, but he was neither scalped nor mutilated. A sign of respect from the Indians who fought him and killed him.

  Last Stand Hill grew quiet as the Indians left and the blood of the dead was soaked into the hot, dry earth.

  It was almost over.

  Chapter 32

  The Sioux and Cheyenne warriors left Last Stand Hill to the women and the children, who stripped and mutilated many of the bodies. Many of the soldiers were mutilated beyond recognition.

  Money was taken from the bodies, but since the Indians had no use for it, it was given to the children to play with.

  Buttons were cut off the uniforms as trinkets, and all the weapons and ammunition and what horses were left were taken.

  The battle now shifted to the ridges where Reno and Benteen and their men were trapped. But they had grown in number, with more soldiers wandering in from their hiding places and the pack train reaching them, finally coming over the ridge about two hours behind the main body.