An Obituary for Major Reno

by Richard S. Wheeler

  The village was on the move. That much Reno knew. Pickets and scouts could see the squaws dropping the lodge covers and loading ponies, and hurrying away, amid a great exodus westward out of the valley and toward the distant mountains. By four that afternoon the sharpshooters on the ridges had vanished, or were silent, and a few men began to stir, after hugging the grassy wastes for two days.

  Reno kept the command on the hilltop, but moved it closer to water, and waited. The size of the village awed every man on that cliff top; thousands of ponies, many dragging travois, hauled thousands of households away from the valley of the Little Bighorn. An endless line of women, children, old people, dogs, colts, mules, and mounted warriors paraded across the distant horizons, so many they were beyond counting. This was no ordinary village; this was the larger part of a nation abandoning its homeland to the enemy, going who knew where?

  “Jaysas, will you look at that,” Godfrey said. “Is that what we ran into? We’re lucky to be alive.”

  Reno pulled his battered dead cigar from a blouse pocket and jammed it into his still-parched mouth. He thought better while chewing on the butt of a cigar.

  The Sioux leaving for some reason, and that had to be the approach of Gibbon’s column. They were heading west, not south; not toward Crook, who was off to the south somewhere. Gibbon was to meet Custer this very day, the twenty-sixth of June, on the Bighorn River, and Gibbon’s men were no doubt not far off. And no doubt had Custer and his shattered command with him.

  “All right, we’ll send water parties down. Take the horses by fours to water and bring them back here,” Reno ordered. “Doctor the horses, sort out the injured ones.”

  Benteen approached. “Are you planning, sir, to stay up here?”

  “For the moment, captain. It’s a place that can be defended, and I don’t know of any other. We have fifty-two litter cases here, and no way to take them down. There’s not a litter in the command and no way to fashion any.”

  Benteen nodded. “They’re pulling out. Look at ’em. That line stretches from the village over the brow of those benches miles to the west. Is it possible that we were engaging two or three thousand warriors?”

  “That many, yes.”

  “You’re looking for Custer?”

  “Varnum’s on it. He’s been unable to talk the scouts into riding, but I think they’ll try now.”

  “We were luckier than Elliott,” Benteen said.

  Reno let it pass. Custer’s abandonment of Elliott was ever on Benteen’s mind and topped his list of grievances against the commander of the Seventh.

  “We’ve got to signal. Build fires. Get a man out to that high ground where Weir had his look at the village.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  Now at last the more daring men sat up, and not even the cautioning of the noncoms could keep them lying low. But no bullets sang into the command. Some few even stood, waited for the details to bring water, stretched, visited with each other.

  “You look sharp for the enemy,” yelled one top sergeant who was not about to let his men wander.

  But the fight was over. They would soon hook up with Custer, and there would be a lot of recounting of what happened. Custer’s men would pull out pipes and tell about their sharp and bloody fight and friends lost; Reno’s men would pull out pipes and tell about the siege of their hilltop.

  And Reno knew he would have to justify his retreat to timber and up to the top of the bluffs, and that he would see the disdain in Custer’s eyes once again. It irked him. It was Custer who should do the explaining: why hadn’t he come to Reno’s aid?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THAT MELANCHOLY EVENING OF THE TWENTY-SIXTH, RENO SET ABOUT to put his command in order while he waited for Gibbon’s column. He sent men down to the river crossing to recover the body of Lieutenant Hodgson and bury the brave officer carefully. He had horses and mules taken by turns to water, grained, and attended to. He ordered that the dead on the hilltop be buried. He moved the defense perimeter south, closer to water but still high. He sent Varnum’s scouts out to look not only for Sioux who might be lurking about, but also for the column.

  The men rested as the night deepened. The worst was over, but Reno and his officers would not lower their guard.

  That night, Lieutenant DeRudio came back from the dead, along with Private O’Neill. They had hidden south of the battle area and had seen the huge village pass them by, only five hundred yards distant from their hiding place. The procession was three miles long and a half mile wide, a great dense mass of horses drawing travois, men, women, and children.

  The mystery of Custer’s whereabouts deepened, but Major Reno believed that would be resolved when Gibbon’s column appeared.

  The next morning, June twenty-seventh, he wrote General Terry:

  I have had a most terrific engagement with the hostile Indians. They left their camp last evening at sundown due south in the direction of the Bighorn Mountains. I am very much crippled and cannot possibly pursue. Lieutenants McIntosh and Hodgson and Dr. DeWolf are among the killed I have many wounded and many horses and mules shot. I have lost both of my own horses. I have not seen or heard from Custer since he ordered me to charge with my battalion (three companies) promising to support me.

  I charged about 2 P.M. but meeting no support was forced back to the hills. At this point I was joined by Benteen and three companies and the pack train rear guard (one company). I have fought thousands and can still hold my own but cannot leave here on account of the wounded. Send me medical aid at once and rations.

  —M. A. Reno

  Seventh Cavalry

  As near as I can say I have over one hundred men killed and wounded.

  RENO SUMMONED TWO OF VARNUM’S REE SCOUTS AND TOLD THEM TO seek out the column, and if they ran into Sioux, to work around the hostiles and reach Terry. But the messengers returned soon thereafter accompanied by one of Terry’s scouts, Muggins Taylor, who carried a note from Terry to Custer saying that Crow scouts had reported that Custer had been whipped but that Terry didn’t believe it.

  So Gibbon’s column was near. Reno sent Lieutenants Varnum and Hare with some soldiers to find the column and direct it to the hilltop redoubt. Reno could only wait. Then, in the middle of that morning of the twenty-seventh of June, General Terry, Colonel Gibbon, and their staffs reached Reno’s command, riding up the gulch from the river.

  “General!” Reno said, welcoming Brigadier Alfred Terry and his command. They looked gray from hard travel.

  Reno stared up at faces so solemn, countenances so grave, that he knew the news was very bad.

  Terry slowly dismounted and handed his reins to his aide de camp.

  “You have no news of Custer?”

  “None, sir.”

  “You would not know, then, that his entire command lies on a ridge three or four miles north.”

  “Custer? Entire command?”

  “To the last man, major.”

  Reno stared, pulled off his straw hat, and braced his legs to keep his knees from buckling under him.

  “It is such a sight that I would never hope to witness, major.” Terry’s voice coarsened and then broke. He spoke harshly, words spitting from his mouth like lead balls, his gaze fixed on some distant slope. “His men lie naked, scattered over a broad area of slope and ridge, with about fifty gathered around the brave general at the crest of a low hill there. He lies only a few feet from his brother, whose body has been so ruined by those devils that only a certain arm tattoo identifies him.”

  Reno felt the air in his lungs hang there. The news paralyzed his body.

  “We learnt much of your story riding this way, guided by your officers, major. We rode over the debris of a village beyond counting, larger than any ever imagined. And its warriors took our brave Custer from us, and every brave man.”

  The news rocked Reno and his men. They could hardly fathom news so terrible. Custer dead. His entire battalion dead. Dead, stripped, mutilated.

  Reno
sighed, turned toward the peaceful horizons, and felt sorrow and dread and revulsion steal through him.

  “We have had a bad time too, sir, but not like that.”

  “I know you have, major. As we rode up these bluffs from the valley, we saw your dead, all of them stripped and butchered in a most ghastly manner.”

  “We have over a hundred dead and wounded, sir. Most of the wounded are litter cases, lying yonder. We need medical help.”

  Terry stared at the distant rows of bloody, bandaged soldiers. “Oh, oh,” he said. He turned to an adjutant, nodded, and the young man raced off.

  “I shall want your story entire, major. Show us this place, and we will follow along with you.”

  Reno waited for the commanders to dismount, and then slowly, painfully, led them around the hilltop, pointing to the ridges where Sioux sharpshooters laid down their deadly fire, pointing to the shallow rifle pits scraped out with knives and axes and mess plates.

  He pointed down upon the sunlit flats, far below. “I attacked in good order, sir, about there. When it became plain that the hostiles were in strong force, I put my reserve company into the line, and we proceeded forward in a skirmish line right about there, beyond those trees. When it became plain that we were being flanked, right and left, probably five or six hundred by then and more running up, our only chance was those woods there …”

  Terry and Gibbon listened gravely, following the battle as Reno’s voice and pointing hands unfolded it to them.

  They came to the hollow where the wounded lay in orderly rows, some lost to consciousness, others weeping, others groaning.

  Terry removed his forage cap, and Reno saw the man’s tears streaking his graying whiskers.

  There was First Sergeant William Heyn, of Company A, his torso wrapped in bloody bandaging. Beyond was Sergeant Weihe, of Company M, staring at nothing but the sky, his legs wrapped in brown-stained bandages. Next was a private, Newell, his head wrapped, his left leg rising and falling. And beyond, the scout, White Swan, his buckskin leggings soaked in caked blood, and over a way, Privates Holmstead, Foster, and Deihle, Company A, their torsos naked save for swathes of filthy bandaging. Henry Black and John Cooper, privates with Company H, lay with eyes closed, mouths open. Near him was the heroic saddler Michael Madden, one leg a bloody stump, his gaze turned away from the burning sun.

  “There, sir, is a brave man who lost a leg getting water for us under heavy fire,” Reno said.

  Terry knelt, clasped the saddler’s hand. Madden managed a smile.

  They walked among these suffering men, laid in rows, unprotected from the ruthless June sun.

  Terry found Dr. Porter changing the dressing of Private Cooney of Company I, unconscious and plainly a man in desperate condition.

  “Thank you, doctor,” Terry said. “Thank you.”

  The doctor nodded, but continued to snip away foul bandaging stained by suppurating wounds. “I need supplies and surgeons or mates,” he said brusquely.

  “It is coming as fast as we can bring up the column.”

  The surgeon nodded. Reno knew from the man’s pallor that Porter himself was near collapse.

  “How many spades did you have here?” Terry asked.

  “Two. And some axes.”

  “These rifle pits. It’s amazing.”

  “Men do what they must, with cups, knives, and fingers.”

  “Was there any alternative defense position?”

  Reno beckoned. “We’ll ride, and you’ll see.”

  He soon led the commander of the Department of Dakota out the ridge toward that high point where Tom Weir had tried to find and reach Custer. They followed the path Benteen had taken with his command; the path Reno had taken, once he put his shattered command in order and distributed ammunition from the packs.

  “Not here, definitely not here,” Terry said.

  They reached the bluff that fell precipitously to the north and west. “Weir reached this point, sir. And Benteen also. But it got too hot for them. The Sioux were swarming this way, threatening to cut them off. Apparently the Indians had … completed their fight with Custer, and now we faced the brunt of it. We made it back to our hill and dug in for a siege.”

  “There was no way to reach Custer? With seven companies?”

  “Benteen’s three fresh companies, sir. Mine had been shot up badly, lost a third, and we were low on ammunition until the packs arrived. Another fourteen or fifteen men were missing. We took our wounded when we came this way, each on a blanket carried by six men on foot.

  “That task consumed all of those left in Company A, leaving me with three fresh companies, Benteen’s men, two badly shot-up companies from my battalion with many wounded horses, not enough mounts for everyone, and the rear guard with the packs. We had less actual strength than Custer’s five fresh companies.

  “But Weir and Benteen tried to reach Custer and were nearly engulfed; they turned back and were retreating when I came up with what was left my battalion, the wounded, and packers.”

  Terry nodded. “So you never got there.”

  “Sir, we were expecting him to reach us, as he promised. ‘Attack and I’ll support you,’ he said. We had no idea …”

  “You heard the Custer battle?”

  “A little, earlier. We knew he was in a hot fight. We couldn’t see him. Weir planted a guidon on that bluff so our position would be known to Custer. But then we heard nothing, and soon we were fighting for our lives.”

  Terry’s intelligent gaze measured distances, calculated strategies, and finally came to rest on Reno. He nodded.

  They turned and rode back. Below, carrion birds were feasting on something. The foulness of death hung in the air. The rot and stench of dead horses and mules hung over the hilltop.

  They returned to the trenches.

  “Major, it’s time to bury the dead,” Terry said. “We’ll bivouac down on the flat, there, about where you charged the village. You’ll want to detail men to the hillside where Custer fell. We’ll lend you shovels. Call on me and Colonel Gibbon for whatever you need. And do begin a report.”

  Reno saluted.

  His men would bury their friends.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IT FELL TO THE SEVENTH TO BURY ITS DEAD IN THE HARD YELLOW CLAY of the Little Bighorn. Major Reno threw Varnum’s scouts out wide to alert the command against surprises, and detailed each company to look to the fate of one of the lost companies.

  The sight that greeted them on that hill, that June twenty-eighth, afflicted the heart of every surviving man. Custer’s command lay scattered along the ridge, white bodies in trampled green grasses, each corpse mutilated, smashed, brutalized often beyond recognition. Some would go to their graves unrecognized, beyond identification.

  But most they knew. Men they had trained with, talked to, shared mess with, fought beside, brawled against, prayed with at many a Sunday retreat, lay lifeless. Not just lifeless, for the villagers had violated the dead so that they might never rest in peace.

  Reno, on a commandeered horse, rode through the killing fields, followed the retreat of Custer’s battalion, saw where each company had made its stand, where it had volleyed, retreated, loaded, and volleyed again. A fresh breeze blew the scent of death away, leaving only the tang of sagebrush in the warm air. It was a perfect summer day, for those who lived.

  Terry and Gibbon and their staffs continued to ride the battlefield while Reno and his beleaguered Seventh borrowed shovels, chopped shallow trenches in the hard earth, and laid their comrades to rest with barely enough cover to keep the wolves away.

  Everywhere officers with pencils and pads of paper were recording names, identifying remains, hunting for missing officers, driving a stake into the ground where each officer fell. They wrote a name on a scrap of paper, stuffed the paper into an empty cartridge, and drove the cartridge into the stake marking the grave.

  Mystery hung in the air. What had happened? How had it happened? Who was there to tell the tale? Somewhere, off in
the shrouded south, were thousands of men and women and children who knew exactly what had happened and had participated in it all. They would tell their tales to one another and dance to their great triumph, and sing their songs.

  But for those white men on the field of battle, aliens in this wilderness, there was only the silence of the dead, and the few clues that scuffed grass, piles of expended cartridges, dead horses, and broken bodies could supply. What had happened was scarcely imaginable; it was so improbable that soldiers stared, unbelieving, refusing to countenance the evidence of their own eyes. This could not happen. The savages had not the means to achieve this.

  Men vomited. Others sat down in the grass and sobbed. Others could not be induced to shovel, even when top sergeants yelled at them. But most of the Seventh worked slowly, fearfully, doing what had to be done, ever afraid that the demons would return and kill the rest.

  The troopers found several wounded cavalry mounts, heads hanging low, suffering from injuries beyond repair, and these they put down. Yet one remained. Captain Keogh’s Comanche, seven times wounded but proud of eye and determined to heal itself.

  Lieutenant Varnum gently led Comanche to the major.

  “Sir, this horse is different. He was the captain’s. We want to take him with us, keep Comanche as our own. He is the spirit of our regiment,” Varnum said.

  Reno studied the hurting animal and nodded. “He is that. Let him live. He alone survives. He will be taken care of for the rest of his days, and I will so order it. One life has been spared.”

  So Comanche was led away by the saddlers and his wounds were dressed. Troopers came to him just to see him, to touch him, to wonder what his eyes had seen, to remember the feisty Irish Captain Keogh, who fell with Custer.

  Reno watched while his men cut into the clay with spades and laid George and Tom Custer side by side in a deeper grave. The commander had not been brutalized, save for a slash on his thigh. A bullet wound through his chest probably was not fatal, but one through his skull certainly was. Reno pulled off his straw hat when the men finally shoveled clay over the remains. A hasty burial for the commander as well as the rest. Gallant warriors both. There was no time.