Seize the Sky sotp-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Good luck, Smith.”

  “Thank you, Cap’n. We really don’t need luck though. Just the kind of sand you showed at Saylor’s Creek, Tom. That, and some time.”

  “You’ll buy the time for us, Fresh.”

  “Promise you—we’ll give our best!”

  Smith slapped a smart salute and headed downhill toward his chewed-up E. Company.

  With sergeants John Ogden and James Riley, Smith selected thirty-six more men, three squads with a corporal to lead each. Without much ado the squads stood ready at horse. Sending a hearty wave back up the hillside to the commander, Smith’s men mounted what was left of the big horses.

  “Front into line … guide front … center! Forward at my command—charge!”

  Into the maddening yellow dust that fuzzed the slope like dirty cotton gauze, the men dashed toward the river below.

  Smith knew well enough that his brave action could serve to inspire those left behind on the hill, men whose spirits were flagging. If his detail could only show some aggressiveness against the circling red noose, the command might be able to hold the warriors off for another—who was to say?

  Tom stood, saluting that mad dash. God only knows if we can hold out long enough for Gibbon and Terry to come up, he thought to himself, reloading both pistols now. But first we have to cut and hold a route to the river. And that’s just what Smiths about to do for me, and for Autie.

  Monaseetah watched the group of four-times-ten mount their big horses and gallop downhill from the hilltop, believing that Custer himself must surely be in that brave group on horseback.

  Always leading his men.

  “He comes for me!” she sang out with the certainty of it, clambering to her feet that he might see her.

  “Hiestzi! I am here! Husband—I wait for you!”

  A young Cheyenne warrior leapt to his feet nearby, dragging her down among the tall grasses as random carbine shots from the knoll lobbed her way, kicking up spouts of yellow dirt.

  “He is my husband!” she protested at the warrior, who pinned her down in the grass.

  He was sweaty and smelled of rancid bear grease in his braids, in the paint smeared across his cheeks and under his mouth. All of it furred now with the dust everywhere. He stank.

  “Hiestzi returns for me at last,” she pleaded with the young warrior to understand, smelling his foul breath in her face, suffocating her. “He promised to come back for me. I must go to him!”

  “Hiestzi is not here. The Red-Beard sent his soldiers against us again. Yellow Hair is far, far away.” He tried to calm her, clamping a dirty, sweaty hand over her screaming mouth. But try as he might, Monaseetah remained hysterical, biting and kicking now. Shrieking at the top of her lungs when he yanked his hand back in pain.

  “Hiestzi! I wait for you!”

  She suddenly lay still, panting beneath the warrior’s weight. “Don’t you see? He has returned for me exactly as promised! He has come for me now in the Moon of Fat Horses!”

  Right after propping himself up to watch Smith’s charge down the hill, Custer thought he heard something out of place among the chants and curses, something not belonging with the wing-bone whistles and drums, or the cries and grunts of dying men. Something high-pitched, like an arrow in flight, yet sweet to his long-ago memory. A voice he recalled from the past … a long winter gone.

  It can’t be true, Custer decided, wrestling down the pain threatening to overwhelm him and drive him into blessed unconsciousness.

  You’re suffering too much, Autie … this wound … the blood spilled—that’s all it is, he told himself. It’s just pain. You can fight it now the same way you’ve fought everything else all your life … scratched your way up from nothing to Boy General. Just fight the pain—

  “Yellow Hair!” There it came again.

  That voice! Where? Ohhh, God … a man can only do so much! I tried to reach you. No! It’s not true … not here … most certainly not now!

  “Yellow Hair!”

  The voice climbed again above the din of battle and the cries of the dying—scratching at his ears without stop. He strained his dust-reddened eyes and licked at the blood-crusted, alkali-cracked lips, hungering suddenly for the taste of her mouth as if it had been yesterday’s hot summer sun rising when last he saw her … waving from that wagon as he waved back—promising he would return for her.

  Knowing now that he had never really stopped wanting her.

  It cannot be, Custer’s fevered mind burned. But Lord! This hunger for her is like something solid I can’t escape … aching across all these years.

  He struggled to prop himself up higher, ears pricking to locate the voice.

  Downhill! Monaseetah’s coming to take this all from me … ohhh, God!

  The pain caused him to double up as he pushed himself to rise. He spit out a little stomach bile. All that was left in his stomach now.

  Yes, Autie—you want her perhaps even more than life itself right now.

  He wanted her to touch him one last time—now that everything was slowly fading out behind his eyelids, looking more and more like a gray pool of sleet on the northern plains that struggled to capture winter’s light.

  He could not have the presidency now … he could not reach out and touch Libbie. For so long Libbie had kept herself from him.

  This Montana hillside held him prisoner as surely as his restless soul would wander no more. This is where he would die.

  Yet … before he closed his eyes, Custer wanted her to hold him one last time.

  Hold him just long enough to last into forever.

  After charging downhill only five hundred yards, the first of Smith’s men yanked on their reins, drawing to a halt after effectively scattering the Sioux and Cheyenne before them.

  They had driven the warriors out of the ravine itself, flushing them down the slope before their wild charge—but the soldiers suddenly did something most unexpected by white or red alike. They stopped dead in their tracks for no apparent reason. At least no reason any man on that hill could figure out.

  No reason at all—for they hadn’t counted on Lame-White-Man and his Cheyenne Crazy Dog soldiers.

  A Southern Cheyenne war chief, visiting relatives up north for that summer gathering of the great camp circles, Lame-White-Man had led a strong contingent of warriors from the upper camps across the river at the mouth of the deep ravine, throwing his force against the pony soldiers entrenched on the hill under Tom Custer. He was himself a many-scarred veteran and not likely to frighten easily, buckling as did the youngsters under the charge of Smith’s forty.

  “Brothers!” the Lame One shouted, rising to his feet. “We must stand our ground. Do not quail before these pony soldiers. They are but dust in the wind. We are many. We are mighty. Hold your ground! This is your day!”

  Many of the warriors retreating in panic before the troopers halted, looking back over their shoulders. Now they saw for themselves. Exactly as Lame-White-Man declared—the soldiers were not many. And they were not following.

  Perhaps by magic, some thought, the Lame One has turned back the soldiers!

  With renewed courage the Cheyennes wheeled about, starting back up the slope to where the lone war chief stood his ground, exhorting his young men to join him in this battle against the forty.

  The Lame One hobbled a bit, but despite his limp he marched steadily upward, closing on the place where the soldiers reined back, drawing their snorting horses together in a confused mob.

  By the time the soldiers had dismounted near the side of the long ravine, Lame’s warriors had edged closer under continued fire. The smell of Indians on the wind drove the big horses mad with fear. They reared and bucked and pulled at their holders.

  Suddenly a few older Cheyenne boys leapt from the sage, waving blankets and shouting at the frightened horses, scaring the encircled soldiers into full-scale panic.

  First the horses bolted away, careening downhill toward the river, their stirrups and saddlebags of amm
unition clattering through the tall grass and past screeching warriors. Thirsty far too long. It was easy work for the young boys and old men at the river to round these last horses up, head them downstream. The white man’s animals wanted nothing more than to be near the water.

  With dry throats of their own, Smith’s soldiers gazed longingly downhill. Their mounts gone … any means of escape gone as well. Hope disappeared like a puff of yellow dust in the dry breeze.

  Everywhere the air filled with sound, crushing at their ears. Burnt powder stung nostrils, clinging to the hillside like dirty coal-cotton gauze. Dust burnt eyes into dark, reddened sockets. And still more warriors splashed across the shining ribbon of the river, swarming over the hillside like red ants from a nest Custer had stirred with a big stick.

  “Here!” Sergeant John Ogden’s voice rose above the shrieks of the enemy and cries of panic among the young soldiers. “Follow me to the ravine!”

  No one needed to suggest the ravine more than once to those men. Up here on the slope, they were helpless and exposed, naked to the painted enemy. Nearly all of them dashed off on Ogden’s heels, scrambling downhill and sliding into the ravine they had intended to secure and hold until Gibbon’s boys arrived.

  As soon as the soldiers scrambled over the edge, Lame-White-Man exhorted his warriors into the mouth of the coulee itself, charging up toward the milling, frightened, trapped soldiers.

  Panic began to spread its evil curse like wildfire among the thirty-eight at the bottom. With the charge of the Cheyennes up the ravine, the young soldiers began a furious scramble to escape their self-made trap. The sides of that gully were irregular, dotted with stunted cactus, bunchgrass, and gray-leafed sage. Not much for a man to hold onto in clawing his way out.

  They found themselves caught like fish in a drying puddle, ready for the killing. Better to try to clamber back uphill.

  Time and again they pocked at the south wall with attempts to dig their way up the sides of the ravine. Kicking holes out for their boot-toes and digging furrows for their fingertips, some fought the side of that ravine as hard as they would fight their panic. Until they slid exhausted to the floor of the coulee, able to fight their fear no more. Confused and terrified, some fired aimlessly into the air. Then panic won the day.

  As Smith himself crawled through sagebrush, he listened to the loud reports of carbine and pistol fire erupting from the ravine. He glanced back on that slash of a coulee as he pulled himself uphill at an agonizing pace, watching blue powder smoke belch from the ravine, thinking his troops were giving a hard time of it to the Cheyenne.

  If only they’ll hold out, Smith prayed, I’ll bring some more men down, and we can secure the route for the general.

  Just as he had promised he would.

  Yet as the young lieutenant crawled away, an entirely different scene from the one he imagined occurred in the bottom of that ravine. Instead of shooting at the warriors crawling up the ravine, the desperate soldiers turned their weapons on themselves.

  With a powerful and contagious despair, a single trooper put his pistol muzzle to his head and pulled the trigger. Mesmerized, his comrades watched, helpless to stop him. That lonely soldier’s private panic now spread like cholera.

  Another man jammed his pistol against his heart. Two soldiers up near the far mouth of the ravine shot each other in the head as the Cheyenne raced over their still-trembling bodies.

  To the approaching warriors the troopers were touched by the Everywhere Spirit to kill themselves. In utter awe the young warriors watched, disbelieving—some rubbing their eyes, others holding hands over their mouths in awe so their souls would not fly away. Suicide was something far from the Indian experience.

  Of a sudden Cheyenne chief Two Moons was among the warriors on his pale horse, rallying the fighters to charge up the coulee behind Lame-White-Man. To throw themselves right into the milling, confused, suicidal soldiers. “This will be the last day you see your war chief, Two Moons! Come watch me! I die with honor!”

  “Nastano!” Lame-White-Man hollered. “Come—Two Moons will lead us to kill these soldiers!”

  “Hey! Hey!” Two Moons replied, his voice high and shrill and buoying above the commotion in the ravine. “These are only children. They are ready for us to kill them! Do not be afraid of children!”

  With his words of encouragement ringing in their ears, the warriors rushed up the coulee, carrying hawks and lances and knives. Each one ready for hand-to-hand of it. Coup counting in close combat.

  But not a single soldier remained standing to resist that Cheyenne charge. Every one lay dead.

  The white men had killed themselves and each other.

  CHAPTER 26

  FARTHER up that bloody, carcass-littered hillside, the hold-outs watched it happen.

  Angrily, bitterly now, they poured their fire down into the Cheyennes busy over the dead troopers, warriors pounding in the head of any white man still breathing. Stone clubs mashing heads with a soppy, wet thud. The carbine fire of those at the crest ultimately took its toll, forcing the Cheyenne back to the mouth of the ravine to seek cover.

  There the warriors found the three casualties of their brief skirmish. Two young Cheyennes picked off by soldier marskmen up the hill. And Lame-White-Man himself.

  A dark sense of despair descended upon the hill. Their plan to open up a route to the water supply had failed. What was worse, Custer’s officers had to watch as friends committed suicide, giving in to panic and defeat exactly as they had done at Keogh’s position.

  Now all that was left for the hold-outs was to make a stand here on this last hill for as long as possible.

  “Autie.” Tom knelt beside his brother, whispering loud enough to be heard over the gunfire banging away on all sides. “There ain’t many of us left now.”

  Custer struggled bravely against the pain in his chest and the waves of nausea that threatened to engulf him. By holding his brother’s arm, Custer sat up a bit straighter, swallowing hard against the dry knot of blood coagulating at the back of his throat.

  “Boston?” Custer asked.

  Tom shooked his head, scratching his cheek stubble. He gazed downhill a few yards, silent.

  “Autie?” Custer asked. “Young Autie?”

  Tom only wagged his head of greasy hair, having lost his hat at the ford before their mad rush. He dared not try to speak just yet, afraid of what might spill out. Somewhere on that ride up from the river he had seen Autie’s body, among the trampled grass and sagebrush and stunted cactus. Trampled in retreat.

  “I never should’ve brought them,” Autie whispered angrily. It was the longest sentence he had spoken in over an hour. Ever since he ordered them to follow him down the Medicine Tail and into the village.

  “Never made the village,” he coughed, then smiled weakly at Tom. “Never gonna make it to Washington. Not now, Tom—I’m sorry.”

  “Hush,” Tom said gruffly. “Just be quiet now.”

  “How many …” He coughed the words free, clutching his bubbling chest. “How many left?”

  “I’d say forty, maybe.” Tom answered, slewing his eyes over the hillside. “Maybe as many as fifty. We’re fairly chewed up, but—”

  “Dr. Lord? God, can’t he help me? Give me some laudanum, something so I can get on my feet? Must take command before it’s too late for the rest! Find Lord for me!”

  Tom pushed a struggling, emaciated brother back down, against the horse carcass. “It’s too late for that now, Autie.”

  “Lord … too?”

  “Yes. He did what he could for you. Told us that. Said it’s a little too late for the rest of us too.”

  “Damn you, Tom! Goddamn you! We don’t give up!” Custer sputtered, glazed eyes narrowing darkly.

  Tom shook his head sadly. “No, Autie. We Custers don’t ever give up, do we? It’s just—the only thing left is to do as much damage as we can while men and ammunition hold out.”

  “I ordered every man to bring a hundred—”
/>   “Not anymore,” Tom interrupted, patting Custer’s shoulder. “Most of the horses are gone too. Some carbines jamming badly. Men having to hunt through the bodies for a usable weapon … cartridges in the pockets, on belts.”

  “I see.” Custer gritted his teeth as another wave of nausea hit him; he doubled over, supported by Tom as he puked up more yellow bile and pink froth.

  When the grip of it had released him, Custer sagged against the stinking, bloated horse carcass, staring down the slope to the south and west. “My God! Where’d they all come from?”

  “The village you were hunting, Autie.”

  At their feet lay the thousands upon thousands of lodges, erected in orderly camp circles along the twists and bends of the Little Bighorn. All the villages spread out before Custer like the mighty nations of the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne paying homage, bowing in reverence at his feet.

  “Dammit, Tom! Where’s Benteen with the …” And he sputtered up some more chunks of pink lung along with frothy blood, spitting them into the yellow dust at his side. “Benteen and the ammunition I ordered hours ago—”

  “Less than two hours, Autie.”

  He gazed up at Tom, wonder mixed with fear in his eyes.

  “We’ve been whipped in less than two hours?”

  Tom nodded. “Yes. And Benteen hasn’t come yet. Maybe we can hold out till that white-headed bastard does get his ass up here with ammo and more men. If …”

  “If what, Tom?”

  “If Benteen can break through the goddamned Sioux to get to us.” His eyes held Autie’s for a long, long moment.

  “I understand,” Custer replied gravely, lips spreading in a chin red line of determination. “Help me sit up a bit more, will you, brother?”

  Everywhere around their dusty command post, men were methodically butchered by arrow and bullet alike. Custer’s own private desperation and long-hidden fear of failure finally overwhelmed him as he watched his men, beloved troopers of his Seventh dying all round him like dry leaves tumbling from a mighty oak at autumn’s first slashing wind.