Too far to signal. Benteen might head for Custer, wherever Custer was, and bypass Reno’s defensive perimeter.
“Moylan!” he yelled.
The captain rushed up. Reno pointed at the tiny figures far away. “Mount your company. We’re going to get Benteen. He may not know we’re here.”
“Yes, sir,” Moylan replied, and dashed to his company, which retreated from the perimeter and formed into a column. They trotted south with Reno, along the bluffs until they attracted Benteen’s attention. After a hesitation, Benteen turned his command toward the bluffs, and minutes later his fresh troops ascended a gulch and rode into the hilltop perimeter.
“They’ll have the pack train behind them,” Moylan said. “Cartridges!”
Benteen rode up, and the combined column headed toward Reno’s defensive position. “Where’s Custer?” Benteen asked.
“Damned if I know,” Reno said. “We haven’t seen him. Not a message. Some sharp volleys a while ago off to the north. Pretty hot there.”
“What’s your situation, major?”
“Bad! Driven out of the valley; they threatened to engulf us. We were flanked. Retreated to those woods. Couldn’t hold. Lost a quarter of my men and some scouts, mostly crossing the river there beside those cottonwoods. Heavy hostile force north and west and now east of us. Surgeon DeWolf killed. Lost Hodgson and McIntosh. We’re low on ammunition, troopers deep into saddle reserves.”
“No Custer?” Benteen stared sharply at Reno. “Washita again?”
Reno shook his head.
“My orders are to come quick, help Custer,” Benteen said. “Only he didn’t say where. ‘Village ahead. Come quick. And bring the packs.’ I’ve got the packs a mile or two back.”
“Twenty minutes? Damn!”
“You going to strike out for Custer, major?”
“Not yet; not with empty carbines. We can’t go find him with a dozen or twenty cartridges to a man. You have spares; please distribute them to my men.”
“Of course,” Benteen said.
“I’ll send Hare back to cut out the ammunition mules from the pack train and drive them ahead. When we’re resupplied we can move.”
They reached the knobs and swiftly drove the horses into the basin in the middle that protected them from all sides but the east.
Reno found Lieutenant Hare: “You’ve got a fresh horse. Quick, go back to the pack train, cut out the ammunition mules, and rush them ahead. We’re stuck until we can resupply.”
“Yes, sir, right on it, sir.”
Reno watched the lieutenant dash south toward McDougall’s slow-moving pack train, where an additional twenty-four thousand rounds were being carried by the mules.
Benteen swiftly organized his command: K Company facing north toward a higher ridge that would cause trouble; D Company under Captain Weir facing east across a vast grassy flat, next to Wallace’s G Company, which joined to Moylan’s A Company facing southeast, and Benteen’s H Company along the south-stretching ridge.
Tom Weir approached Reno. “Where’s Custer?”
“North. We haven’t seen him. He promised to support us and didn’t.”
“Have you tried to reach him?”
“We were rolled back.”
Captain Weir, a tough and gallant Civil War veteran, paced. “We need to find out,” he said.
“I intend to. We’re low on ammunition and can’t do much until the packs come. I’ve sent Hare back to cut out the ammunition mules and drive them ahead.”
“We’ve heard some hot firing. We’ve got to reach him. My troops are fresh and armed.”
“Not yet. We can’t support you,” Reno said. “I can’t send men into a hot fight with fifteen or twenty rounds.”
Weir stalked away, burning.
When Hare rode in with the ammunition, the quartermaster men were slow to move and tended to huddle behind their mules.
“Get them out of there and working,” Reno snapped. “Get those rounds out, company by company!”
Wallace nodded and blistered the ears of the packers and those who were lounging around.
They brought three shovels and a few axes, and these were instantly distributed and put to work as men threw up works with anything at hand, including knives and mess plates and tin cups. Others dragged crates and saddles and sacks into the line, anything to stop a bullet. Others dug at the hot dry turf with knives and fingers, trying to erect something, anything to lie behind.
But there was only hot wind, fierce sunlight, and a parching fear that took the moisture right off a man’s tongue. The fight seemed distant for the moment, with hardly the crack of a rifle to strike fear into hearts. But some men looked longingly at the river, knowing that a man could die as easily from thirst as from a bullet.
Benteen came up. “What are you going to do about Custer?”
“What’s Custer going to do about us?” Reno snapped.
“I would like to probe north.”
“After men have some ammunition. It’s being distributed,” Reno said.
“They have it now. The sergeants have seen to it.”
“Where’s Weir?” Benteen asked.
“I don’t know. He wanted to link up with Custer and I told him to wait.” Reno peered around. “Don’t see him. Don’t see D Company, either, damn him. Edgerly’s not here either. The whole damned company took off on a scout.”
Benteen grunted. Weir, commanding D Company, was one of Custer’s coterie.
“Where were you?” Reno asked, tartly.
“The lieutenant colonel ordered me to ride a left oblique and search the valleys leading off the river, looking for runaways.”
“He said nothing to me about it,” Reno said.
Benteen wiped away the sweat. “He keeps his purposes to himself. I received a message directing me to keep on searching those valleys. His purpose was plain enough: he was remembering Washita where there were Cheyenne villages strung all along that river that he didn’t know about, and those villages got him into trouble. He didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. That’s how he looked at this, I think: find the villages and drive them ahead.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Reno said. “He was heading into a big fight. I thought you’d attack from the left flank while I took the center and Custer the right flank. That’s classic Custer. Hit the village from all sides.”
“The next orders told me to hurry up, bring the packs, and join him. So I tried.”
“It took you long enough.”
Benteen didn’t respond, and turned away. Reno didn’t like the angry look on the man’s face.
“Where are the rest of the packs?” Reno asked.
“Coming in. They were stretched all over hell and gone. Damned skinners couldn’t keep together.”
“Are they guarded?”
“McDougall’s on it, sir.”
Indeed, one by one, laden mules were popping over the crest of the ridge along the south, and being hustled into the basin where livestock and the wounded were collecting. Quartermaster men raced to drop each pack and open it.
“Captain, take over here. I’m going after Hodgson.”
“Sir?”
“Take over. You’re in command up here for a while. That boy’s down there, dead or wounded. If he’s dead I want to get his class ring and papers.”
“Sir?”
“Detail two or three troopers to cover me.”
Benteen stared at Reno, his face crawling with unspoken thoughts. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“Good. Keep the troops digging in. There’s not a rock or a tree up here for cover.”
“The noncoms have it well in hand, major.”
Reno headed for the herd in the hollow. Behind him, Benteen shouted commands at two or three men, and shortly Reno was joined by two troopers.
“Come with me,” Reno said. “Cover me. I’m going after Lieutenant Hodgson.”
They nodded.
Moments later he swung easily into his saddle and
the troopers followed, leading spare horses, across the lines, out into the fields of fire, in this case the precipitous gulches leading down to the river where Hodgson’s body lay.
There were no Indians now. They had abandoned the woods where they could do no good, to fight elsewhere. It was oddly quiet. His horse jolted as it picked its way downslope.
He found Ben Hodgson lying facedown, unmolested, his blouse browned with drying blood. No life flickered in him. Reno stood a moment, hat in hand, grief running hard within him. Then he rolled Hodgson over, pulled stained papers from his pockets, and tugged hard until the West Point class ring slid off. This he dropped gently into his own pocket.
“Sorry, Ben. I’ll get those to your family,” he said.
He heard scattered shots. The troopers saw no targets but stood at the ready. Reno slowly mounted, grief burdening him, and the three clambered up the slope again, under the guns of his command.
Benteen greeted him: “Weir went on a scout to the north, to a high point for a look. Took D Company with him. There seems to have been a big fight a few miles north. That’s all anyone knows.”
“Unauthorized scout,” Reno snapped, but his own unauthorized scout came to mind. “All right.”
“Packs are mostly in, ammunition’s being distributed; now how about letting me probe?”
Reno nodded. “Probe, yes. Link up with Weir. Find Custer if you can, find him if he hasn’t quit us.” A thunderous anger was building in Reno, a white-hot hatred of Custer for betraying the rest of his command. The man was probably halfway to the safety of Gibbon’s column now after things got too hot.
Benteen didn’t wait. He was off, shouting orders, summoning troopers, calling for mounts. Sniper fire was raining in now, pops here and there, zings, bullets thumping earth. The Indians were rounding the flanks and settling in for some sharpshooting from every ridge surrounding this knob. No longer could officers or men navigate from one place to another. Reno paced from company to company, and then came to a decision: it was time to move the entire column, wounded and all, toward that sonofabitch Custer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WEIR’S D COMPANY HAD HEADED NORTH ALONG THE RIDGE AND VANISHED. Benteen’s command followed. Reno called his men to mount up. Moylan’s A Company had charge of the wounded, and these would be carried in blankets on foot. It was that or abandon the wounded. There were eight of them who could not ride, and it would take forty-eight troopers, six to a blanket, the whole of A Company, to carry them. And there would have to be a rear guard behind the packers, who were hastily reloading the mules.
The tides of war had swept past him, and now Reno intended to obtain momentum. There had been hot volleys off to the north, but now only sporadic firing drifted upon the breezes. They would find Custer, or rather, chase after him on his flight toward Gibbon’s column.
“Mount your companies,” Reno called.
He watched troopers abandon their shallow defenses and rush to their horses while noncoms strove to put order into the maneuver.
“Advance by twos,” Reno called.
The troopers twisted north, past a knoll and along a sloping ridge dotted with jack pine. The column looked ragged. Moylan’s A Company walked behind, burdened with the blood-soaked and bandaged casualties. It was late afternoon but the June sun shone high in the heavens, blistering the earth.
Benteen’s fresh troops had ridden smartly north, ready for anything, and looking for Weir and D Company, still farther ahead. The disjointed columns rode a precipitous cliffside faced with gulches, while below the Sioux and Cheyenne were swarming south from whatever had taken place on that smoky crest on the northern horizon. Some were reaching the pine-covered lower slopes and were firing up at the column, while troopers answered as best they could at the fleeting glimpses of the enemy.
But before Reno’s battered column could reach Benteen, they ran into Benteen’s retreating troops, protected by Lieutenant Godfrey’s rear guard. It had gotten too hot up there. What seemed like thousands of warriors were swarming through the jack pine, engulfing the column. Weir, too, had pulled D Troop back and was riding with Benteen’s column, his face gray with anger and frustration.
Weir glared at Reno as he rode by, accusation in his face. There had been bad blood between them ever since Reno had brought charges against Weir for drunkenness on duty during the boundary survey. But now there was another kind of accusation filling his eyes: Too late. Too slow.
Reno wheeled his column and retreated, by fours, back to the hilltop. A bullet from below blew one of Benteen’s troopers out of his saddle as the howling warriors dogged the column every inch of the way. It wasn’t a rout this time; the troopers made it to their defensive knolls, and settled into their positions along the perimeter. But now the hostiles had arrived in strength; bullets peppered the command, finding their marks now and then. The hilltop was naked, without breastworks, and vulnerable.
Reno swiftly assessed the site; it was the best available, close to water and defensible if men could dig in. Nothing else was. He had been right all along. Weir and Benteen and their fresh troops had now tasted what Reno had been up against, but from the bitterness in Weir’s face it hadn’t changed the lieutenant’s mind any: all this was Reno’s fault.
The rest of that afternoon the clifftop was a perfect hell, and there was no safe place in that barren ground, especially for Moylan’s A Company, whose line stretched across the open end of the horseshoe, exposed to the eastern ridges. Reno’s commanders ducked and dodged to their former positions, saw to defenses, put the quartermaster troops to work.
They all heard the unique crack of shots from the Springfield carbines that had been in Custer’s command. The Seventh Cavalry carbines were being used against them now, which boded ill. The carbines had good range, farther than most of the Indians’ repeating rifles, and those bullets were hitting everywhere.
It was almighty dry up there.
“Save your water; don’t drink. Suck on a pebble,” the noncoms were advising.
Reno stepped aside, pulled his flask from his bosom, lifted it, and swallowed a good slug of fiery whiskey and then another. The flask was nearly drained, and there would be no more. He capped it and put it in its nest. A teamster stared at him.
“Get down,” Reno snapped.
The worst trouble lay on the eastern side, Moylan and Wallace’s perimeter. And that’s where the warriors were dealing death, one bullet at a time, fired by superb marksmen.
“Kill wounded horses and drop them there,” Reno commanded.
Stable sergeants pulled wounded horses out of the pack, led them to the defensive line, slit their throats, and let them collapse there. No sooner was a horse down than troopers positioned themselves behind it. Reno stared, disgusted at the bloody business. He hated the destruction of good horseflesh.
Troopers were firing back now, taking aim, conserving their ammunition. They all knew they were in for a siege. One of them lifted a canteen, only to have a bullet yank it from his hands. Water gurgled into the earth.
“No water. Save it!” yelled a corporal.
The sun sank lower in the northwest, blinding troopers guarding the bluffs there. The battle had settled into the slow crackle of sharpshooting. Gunsmoke drifted across the hilltop, mixed with the smell of fear and sweat.
The surgeon, Porter, crawled over to Reno. “Wounded need water, fast, or they’ll die,” he said.
“Benteen, get a canteen to the wounded,” Reno yelled.
Benteen shook his head, but finally found half a canteen and gave it to Porter.
“Men losing blood need water and plenty,” Porter said. “They seize up and die.”
Reno studied the river below, glinting silver and seductive and beckoning in the late light, wondering how the hell anyone could get down there and live long enough to get back up the hill. He pulled his last stogy from his pocket, bit the end off savagely, and stuffed it into his mouth. He didn’t have enough saliva to wet it, but it felt good.
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The dying day wrought new crisis. Indians creeping up a draw from the river bottoms almost reached the lines, and only a burst of shots turned them back. Benteen crawled over to Reno: “You’ve got Indians so close on your side they’re pumping bullets into the backside of my lines,” he said.
“We’ll scare them off,” Reno said. “All right, men, get ready. We’re going after that bunch.”
Reno watched his men turn, look to their carbines, gird themselves for the rush.
“Charge!” he yelled.
Reno ran with the charge, right in the thick of it, forty, fifty yards, to the brink and down, driving scores of howling Sioux before them. Benteen watched from the perimeter.
“Now back,” Reno yelled. They had accomplished their purpose. No one was hurt. The Sioux were driven a hundred yards down, and Benteen’s line was out of their range. The panting men, too dry to sweat anymore, slowly retreated up the bluff, still pumping an occasional shot down the slope, and settled into their shallow trenches.
He was damned thirsty. The sally had done the job. But the afternoon and evening had taken a terrible toll. Seven more men had been killed and twenty-one wounded that evening, and the moaning of the wounded pierced everyone’s ears that night.
Reno wondered what the hell was the matter with himself: Weir had acted on his own to find Custer. Benteen had suggested advancing behind Weir, organized a sally on Reno’s side of the perimeter, while Reno had watched passively. He wasn’t thinking. He could find no reason for it; he just wasn’t thinking, acting, or reacting to danger the way he should be. He was being stupid.
But once Benteen had suggested what to do, Reno put himself in the thick of it, leading that sally and keeping the men steady and bringing them back. Not the whiskey; he couldn’t even feel the dram he had downed to steady himself. Not anything, just tired. It was around nine. He had been fighting since two o’clock, nonstop; Benteen and Weir and their command didn’t even taste lead or fire a single round until they headed out to find Custer. Maybe that was all there was to it.
When it was too dark to see targets, the Sioux sharpshooters quit, but not without firing an occasional round into the hilltop, just to keep the exhausted command sleepless and worried. Far below, out on the flats, huge bonfires lit the sky, shooting up plumes of orange sparks, and soon drumming reached the ears of the troopers. There was a huge scalp dance going on down there, or worse.
An Obituary for Major Reno Page 9
