An Obituary for Major Reno

by Richard S. Wheeler

  That seemed an omen too.

  The next day, June twenty-third, a Friday, Custer led his silent, sweating column another thirty-three miles up Rosebud Creek, passing several village campsites en route, each one fresher than the one before. The Crow and Arikara scouts, under Lieutenant Varnum, studied manure and dung, kitchen leavings, and pronounced their verdicts.

  “Could be just a couple of days away now,” Varnum reported.

  Bouyer affirmed it. “We’ll be on top of them sonsofbitches before they know it,” he said.

  Custer called an early halt and sent his scouts wide and far ahead while solstice daylight persisted. The pack train had fallen behind and did not show up until dusk, much to Custer’s displeasure. No commander going into battle wanted to be separated from his reserve ammunition. But Custer was oddly subdued, and was content merely to urge the mule skinners to resolve their problems.

  Reno approached him: “This is as far up the Rosebud as I scouted,” he said. “From now on, you’ll be penetrating unknown terrain.”

  Custer nodded curtly. Neither man, apparently, wanted to be reminded of Reno’s scout, but the major felt obliged to let his commander know.

  Custer’s response, given to Varnum, was to throw his scouts out still farther ahead and wider, not only to look for lodge trails breaking away from the main body, but to discover any signs of activity to either side of the creek.

  Reno didn’t sleep well that night. He kept imagining he heard thunder, but the terrible rumble of war was all in his mind.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ALL THAT HOT SATURDAY OF JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH, THE SEVENTH Cavalry rode through thickening silence. Every trooper who had bothered to kick open the brown manure left by Indian ponies discovered bright green within. The fierce June sun had not completely cooked the horse apples brown. Some vast Sioux village lay just ahead, maybe over the brow of the next hill or just across a divide.

  Reno heard only the creak of saddle leather, the occasional soft snuffle of a horse blowing, the rhythmic clop of hooves, and sometimes the whipsaw of wind. He was unsure what his role would be: Custer had dissolved the order of command upon leaving the Yellowstone and now Reno had no companies in his charge, nor did any other senior officer. Whatever the lieutenant colonel had in mind, he kept locked within himself.

  The command rode through a broad grassy valley caught between dark slopes covered with long-needled jack pine, passing three huge campsites as the day wore on. Men didn’t talk; they rode toward battle caught up in their own thoughts, sharing nothing with the men who rode beside, or before, or behind. Some studied the slopes, half expecting a flight of arrows to burst from the dark shadows where the pines crowded close.

  The trail was huge now, a full mile wide, trampled grass furrowed by travois and dotted with horse manure. This was no ordinary village, but a savage congregation larger than anything ever seen by any officer or enlisted man, a village that bristled with aggrieved warriors itching for a fight, a village many times larger than the entire Seventh Cavalry. Men stared unbelieving at the trail and its debris.

  That afternoon they arrived at a campsite with a brushy lodge at its center where some sort of sacred ceremony had occurred, something the scouts called a Sun Dance, which was holy to the Sioux and Cheyenne. The grass for a mile around had been chewed down by the ponies. The sacred place raised the hackles of many a man, and drove them all even deeper into their private reverie.

  Reno was caught in his own silence. Now and then he saw the Crow and Ree scouts trotting out or racing in with information, which was delivered at once to Custer at the head of the command. Reno wasn’t privy to what was being conveyed by the scouts, but he surmised they had no news; real news would have resulted in a halt, orders, preparations.

  He felt sweat soak his blouse under his armpits, and bead on his brow. Half the men had purchased straw hats from the sutler, and these were cooler than the army-issue forage caps. Their eyes were inflamed by heat, the glare of the blistering June sun, dust, and tiredness, and that worried Reno. His own eyes stung and hurt from squinting.

  Custer halted his command at four thirty, in bright daylight, hoping to rest the column. The troopers wearily stepped down to grass, headed for the bushes, splashed water from Rosebud Creek over their faces, and looked to their horses. The place was an Eden: wild rosebushes in full yellow bloom crowded the valley, while an occasional willow dotted the bottomland.

  Custer summoned Lieutenant Varnum: “I want the scouts to keep a sharp lookout for lodge trails leaving the main trail. I want the whole village, not a part of it. Don’t let them scatter.”

  Reno watched several details of Crow and Arikara scouts trot off toward the ridges as the late afternoon progressed toward the long June evening, and then came news. The scouts reported that the huge trail turned right abruptly and headed straight over the divide to the valley of the Little Bighorn. The Crows, who called this country home, knew of a high place where one could observe the surrounding country. Custer immediately sent Lieutenant Varnum, chief of scouts, with his Crows and Rees, to see what could be seen.

  Custer called his officers together. “The scouts tell me this trail is not even two days old. We’re close. We’ll move out at midnight,” he said. “We’ll climb the divide and conceal ourselves and rest. Tomorrow, we’ll reconnoiter, and on the twenty-sixth we’ll attack at dawn. That’s always the best time, when we can cut right through the village. It’s a large village, but not difficult work for the Seventh if we catch it at the right moment. Tell the men to look to their mounts, eat field rations, and sleep. We’ll pull out at midnight and use the cover of darkness for our purposes.”

  Custer was still in a strangely gentle mood. The younger officers concluded their meeting with the commander by singing beloved songs: “Annie Laurie,” “Little Footsteps Soft and Gentle,” and then a surprise to Major Reno’s ears: the Doxology. Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below … and then, at the last, for their commander, “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  There was nothing to do but rest, so saddle-worn men sprawled gratefully in the grass. Reno patrolled the command, checking on the stable guard, the pickets, the company messes, looking for signs of trouble or infractions of the order to keep a strict silence. These were weary men, half starved from poor rations, nothing but coffee and hardtack that gentle evening, their faces blistered and burned, their hands browned to the color of roasted chestnuts. But the noncoms, along with the company commanders, had done their jobs well, and this was a force ready to fight at a moment’s notice.

  At twelve thirty in the morning, the command, so briefly rested, mounted in deep darkness and rode toward the divide between the Rosebud and Little Bighorn Valleys. It would be slow going, a moonless night march over unfamiliar ground, guided by the Crows who knew the country. One moment trees would rise out of the darkness, the next moment they were climbing a grassy slope. Reno heard a distant owl.

  Reno’s horse felt weary under him; he didn’t doubt that the rest of the mounts were weary as well, deprived of rest and forage. Led now by the scouts and Bouyer, the command pierced the night along the fresh trail, climbing long slopes, the air acrid with the resinous scent of pine and sweated horses. Reins were useless; one could only let one’s mount follow the one ahead.

  A black sky lorded over them. In many ways night riding was easier than a day’s ride; a man didn’t have to squint, and the soft breezes kept him cool. And the horses picked their way without guidance. But sheer tiredness was an enemy now. By three thirty, shortly before dawn in that latitude, the men were ready for a rest, and Custer settled them in a hollow just below the divide, telling them to keep their horses saddled but to get some shut-eye if they could.

  At dawn of Sunday, June twenty-fifth, Varnum and his scouts returned from the Crow’s Nest, as the high place was called. Varnum reported that his scouts swore they could see the Sioux camp, crawling with horses and sending smoke into the dawn he
avens, but the lieutenant could see nothing, not even through some field glasses offered to him, and he was skeptical.

  “I’ll have a look,” Custer said. He turned to Reno. “Be ready to move out at eight.”

  He and Varnum and the scouts trotted off to the Crow’s Nest for another look.

  A light overcast kept the early morning cool. Scouts patrolled in all directions, soaking up information like the antennae of bugs, making sure there would be no bitter surprises. But there was a surprise, after all.

  Captain Keogh came rushing forward with news, which he gave to Tom Custer in the absence of the commander. Earlier, Captain Yates of F Company had sent a sergeant with a detail to go back several miles to recover a lost case of hardtack, found Indians looting it, and shot at them. The Indians had scattered. So the command had been discovered. Custer’s intent to surprise the village and strike at dawn a day and a half hence, had shattered in a stroke of bad luck.

  Custer learned of it when he returned from the Crow’s Nest. He couldn’t see the damned village either, but trusted his Indian scouts. If they said the village was there, it probably was.

  Then Tom Custer broke the bad news about the skirmish over the hardtack box to his brother. Custer instantly called his officers together once again, and paced back and forth before them, his mind working feverishly on a plan, the bright gaze from his sun-baked face swinging from man to man, seeking accord at this moment of truth. His voice was taut and tight and high.

  “We’ve been discovered. That changes everything. The sooner we march, the better chance we have,” he said. “We’re going to attack when we get there, midday if need be. We can’t surprise them but we can hit them before they’re ready, painted up for war, and armed. Those Indians we surprised won’t get to the camp much before we do. All right, gentlemen, let’s move, and I want total silence.

  “Judging from the lodge trail, we’re attacking the largest camp ever seen in North America,” he said. “The Seventh Cavalry.” For a moment he gazed at horizons, seeing something over the hills, something beyond what the rest of the officers would ever see. “It will be a fight to remember.”

  The bone-weary and ill-rested column started up again, topped the divide, and followed a rough trail downslope, screened by the terrain and jack pines which quickly gave way to arid grasslands, and still they rode while the morning slipped away and the heat built along with their thirst.

  At midday and under a fierce sun, Custer called a halt and organized his command. His long-bearded adjutant, Lieutenant Cooke, told Reno that the major would command Companies A, G, and M, and that the commander desired that six enlisted men and one noncom from each company be posted to Company B to protect the pack train.

  “Is that all?” Reno asked.

  “That’s all,” said Cooke, who then dashed off to make other assignments.

  Reno could pretty well guess the rest: Captain Benteen would have a battalion, Captains Keogh and Yates would each have a battalion.

  The column reorganized itself, with companies gathering behind their commanders while the lieutenant colonel watched impatiently. The men detailed to guard the pack train headed to the rear. Custer, surrounded by his trumpeters, his staff, his guidons, his aides, seemed charged with energy and impatience, and something else: wild joy. He pulled off his fringed buckskin coat and tied it behind his cantle. He wore a light colored slouch hat, Wellington boots, buckskin trousers, and a blue flannel shirt.

  Many times had Reno watched men prepare for battle. Those heading toward the pack train found themselves collecting letters and lockets from those who were about to fight. Miniatures of wives, last wills, locks of hair in envelopes, sometimes even greenbacks stuffed into an envelope with a name written upon it, all sent to the safest place by men who thought they might not live to see the sun rise again. This would be no routine skirmish; every man knew that. The awesome lodge trail over those hills told them all they needed to know.

  Now Custer sent orders to his commanders: Company B, under Captain McDougall, would guard the pack train and follow twenty minutes behind. Benteen had Companies D, H, and K, about a hundred and thirty men, and would ride an oblique left, scouring the west side of the Little Bighorn Valley for outlying encampments. Reno would have the Arikara scouts and a hundred and twelve troopers and would attack the village head-on, at the center. Custer himself would lead five companies, C, E, F, I, and L, along with Tom Custer, their nephew Autie and the newsman, Mark Kellogg, on the right flank.

  “The general says to make haste, attack, and he’ll support you,” Cooke said. “Understood?”

  Reno nodded. “Is that all of it?”

  Cooke nodded.

  “Will there be any further reconnaissance? Do we know where the village is?”

  “Varnum and his scouts have already started ahead. They’ll direct us.”

  Reno watched Benteen’s command strike northwest and disappear from sight. It wasn’t clear to him what role Custer intended for Benteen to play in the fight unless he was to keep the Sioux from fleeing in all directions, as had happened so often in the past. For days, the commander had been obsessed with keeping the village from flying apart under attack. If Benteen’s role was to drive outlying camps toward the center, that would accord with the thing that had been on Custer’s mind and which was consuming him, and would account for Benteen’s disappearance.

  Neither was it clear to Reno just what sort of support Custer planned to offer when things got hot. Would Custer follow? Attack from the right flank? But how could he, when he didn’t know the terrain? They were riding into battle with only the sketchiest notion of where that village was, and how the separated forces would support one another.

  Reno did not even know what Benteen’s explicit orders were, or whether Custer would attempt to attack this village from several quarters, as he had at the Washita. Or where and how the three commands would link up.

  Reno bit down hard on the stump of a dead Baltimore cigar and led his column by fours into battle.

  For the next two hours Reno and Custer, on opposite sides of the little creek they were following, kept their columns riding by fours at a fast horse-saving trot as they approached the village. They were traversing rough, dry ground with gulches leading down to the creek, some of them choked with sagebrush and an occasional cottonwood. It was dry, and the fast-moving commands stirred dust.

  They reached a meadow with a lone tepee in it, and swiftly discovered it was the final resting place of a dead warrior. Custer ordered it burned. Then Custer signaled the major to move forward, and soon Marcus Reno and his soldiers and scouts were alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RENO RAISED AN ARM AND SWUNG IT FORWARD. HIS COLUMN, STILL riding by twos, broke into a fast trot that covered ground. He saw nothing that looked like an enemy village, only hilly terrain on the right, mostly grassy, with dense sagebrush in the gulches and copses of cottonwoods dotting a vast valley.

  He led the command across the Little Bighorn, which was deeper than expected, three to four feet of cold water, and reformed it by fours on the other side, while water dripped from the legs and bellies of the mounts. Thirsty horses paused in the middle for a drink, and troopers turned their hats into scoops, and drank as well.

  The crossing and forming into fours took longer than Reno wanted, but men and horses had slaked their thirst. After the crossing men dismounted and tightened their saddle girths. Girard, a scout Reno distrusted, told him there were plenty of Indians ahead. Reno nodded. He had yet to see one.

  The Crow and Arikara scouts worked ahead and on the left. They were to cut off the Sioux horse herd and drive it away from the village. Reno could no longer see Custer’s column, which was lost from view somewhere to the right. He felt the sweat build under his arms and soak his blouse, felt beads ooze from his forehead and drip down his cheeks. Reno assuaged his thirst with a good suck from his flask.

  Attack.

  They swung into an open plain and he could see clou
ds of dust rising ahead, obscuring whatever lay beyond it. The hostiles were raising a screen, which meant this assault was expected, and would be resisted by armed and ready warriors. They seemed a vast distance off. The attack had begun much too far from the village, and the approach had taken so long that his mounts, already worn from days of travel, were slowing. But he refused to worry about that.

  Behind him rode a column containing many troopers who had never been in a fight. They carried fifty rounds of .45 caliber ammunition for their carbines, and another twenty-four rounds for their Colt revolvers. They had an additional fifty carbine rounds in their saddlebags. Each weapon had its uses; both were wildly inaccurate when fired from a running horse.

  The Ree scouts peeled off to the left, heading for the Sioux horse herd, and ran into scattered shots from defenders. Reno clamped down hard on his dead cigar. His newly appointed adjutant, Lieutenant Hodgson, pulled up beside him.

  “Where’s Custer?” he asked.

  “He said he’d support us.”

  “We’ll need support. That’s a lot of Indians. And they’re not running from us, either.”

  It was true. These Indians, still a mile off for the most part, were swiftly raising dust and running in small groups to either side of Reno’s column. A hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred. Beyond counting. Knots and groups, dark dots against green grasses. Swarms. Bright red, bright yellow. White and black. Coppery bodies. Some mounted, some on foot. Some dodging and darting, some stolidly running straight into battle. Some carrying lances. Most armed with bows. Some carrying rifles or muskets that glinted dully. More Indians than Reno had ever before seen. Too many. It was time to form a line.

  “Tell them to form a line of battle, Ben. Moylan and French up front, McIntosh in reserve.”

  The adjutant dashed off, while Reno slowed. He called his striker, Mcllhargy, to him. “Find General Custer and tell him the Indians are in front of me in strong force,” he said. His striker spurred his mount to the right, where Custer was thought to be. The command sweated through most of another mile without coming under fire, but Reno could see, through the haze, large parties of Indians swarming toward his flanks, right and left, while a body of defenders was gathering dead ahead.