“Get the field glasses.”
Through them Custer peered hopefully to the south and west, where he had left Reno and Benteen to their fates.
“By God, I need his ammunition,” he finally exclaimed with a wet, gushing sound. “Benteen’s gotta make it through to us.”
“Gotta be soon, Autie.”
“General?”
“George?” Custer was genuinely happy to see Yates, buoyed by a hometown face here beside him in the final minutes, when a lot of the pain subsided. He swallowed hard, releasing silent, salty tears as he peered into the grim, blackened face swimming before his.
“General, there’s thirty-four of us left on the hill,” Yates reported. “No telling how many Reno’s got left now after he got cut up in the valley.”
“I was planning to batter the head,” Custer rambled, staring into the bone yellow sky. “If Reno had only held their feet down while I—”
“General? General Custer?” Yates grabbed Custer’s chin, pulling his sunburned face so he could look Custer in the eye. “It’s not Reno, it’s not Benteen I’m worried about.”
“Benteen?” Custer snapped alive with a spark ignited from some place deep within him. “Benteen’s coming, you say?”
“No, sir,” Yates answered. “I can’t believe he’s coming, not now.”
With no small agony Custer pulled himself upright against the carcass, lifting DeRudio’s Austrian field glasses to his eyes. For long, anxious moments he trained the glasses on the hills to the south and east. Suddenly the commander noticed shapes and color shimmering through the thick dust and haze rising off the landscape. Through the waves of heat he saw a mass of shimmery blue … then the mirage separated into column-of-twos.
“By the love of God!” he gasped, blood oozing from his lips. “It’s Benteen! He’s coming, boys! By all that’s—Benteen’s coming!”
Tom yanked the binoculars from his brother, disbelieving, knowing Autie was close to a rambling fool by now.
But he wanted to believe so badly himself. With everything he had in him, Tom wanted to believe. He strained his eyes on those hills far away and squinted through the haze. Sure enough, he found blue columns loping north, a motley mixture of companies on different colored mounts. The rescue columns galloped past a high point some few miles south of Custer’s hill, marching north.
“Damn, if you aren’t right, Autie!” he shouted.
Then Yates took up the cheer, scurrying here, then hunkering in a crab walk to carry the word elsewhere. With the captain’s good news, each knot of hold-outs immediately raised tired voices and carbines in the air at the prospect of rescue. Even Keogh and his crew of old-files hollered along the spine with gritty joy.
“How long, sir?” Lieutenant Cooke asked, his dark, handsome eyes boring into Tom’s.
Young Custer studied Cooke’s face, remembering the times they had courted the Wadsworth sisters together—summer picnics and winter sleigh rides. Wondering now if Cookey had been as lucky as he to get his hand inside so many perfumed blouses, feel the soft coolness of so many naked alabaster thighs in the shadows of a shaded bower—
Tom brought the field glasses to his eyes, staring into the shimmering southlands. He could not believe what he was forced to watch now, refusing to accept what he saw happening on that faraway high-point. For the longest time he stared, numbed, his mouth hung half open, like a voyeur caught peeking at something obscene.
When he finally brought the glasses from his face, Tom swallowed down his own despair, gathering strength for what needed saying. Laying the glasses on Autie’s chest, he told them. “Looks like Benteen won’t be coming after all.”
“Not coming?” Cooke growled.
“He’s been overwhelmed,” Tom explained, gazing now at his brother’s gaping chest wound, wet and bright beneath the high light. “Turned around … a goddamned rout.”
“Tom?”
He looked into Autie’s questioning eyes, glazing and sunken ever more now. “Yes, brother. They’re retreating. Trapped and surrounded. Just like us.”
Within that stinking compound made of some seventy dead horses littering the hillside, just below its crest, the air went deathly silent while it all sank in.
The only sound for the longest time was the random Indian bullet smacking into those huge, bloating carcasses. With every hit noxious gas escaped with a moist hiss, adding to the despair creeping over that yellow slope.
Lieutenant W. W. Cooke—Canadian adventurer who came south to fight in the Civil War and afterwards joined Custer’s newly formed Seventh U.S. Cavalry at Fort Riley to fight Indians rather than return home—rose awkwardly to one knee.
“Well, gentlemen,” he began in that soft, winning way of his that had won the friendship of many a man and the heart of many a pretty lady. “General, sir. I’ve a job to do. And I’m still of one body and soul so, I’ll be about it.”
Cooke stood, a fairly large man for the time and exceedingly fleet of foot. He more than any other man had won regimental footraces held at forts Riley, Hays, and Abraham Lincoln. “Just this last month we celebrated my thirtieth birthday, boys.”
“I remember it well, my friend,” Tom said, placing a hand on Cooke’s shoulder. “What a celebration that was. We truly drank the day away!”
“Aye.” Cooke licked his burning lips. “Wish I had some of that whiskey right about now.” He sounded sorry there wasn’t any left after caring for the wounded with what whiskey had been carried to the hillside in some saddlebags. “But there’s been many a time in the past that I knew for sure the way my life was going, I’d never make thirty. And look at me!” He chuckled with dark humor. “I’m thirty now and stuck on some goddamned hillside in—who knows where? Going to buy myself a small piece of this goddamned barren ground! Made it to thirty—only to die a month later!” He started to cackle wildly.
Tom Custer lunged at Cooke, gripping his shoulders in a close, fierce embrace. When Tom pulled back, he said “Billy, why don’t you go right over there?” He pointed out a position on the perimeter that needed some bolstering. “Looks like we could use a top shot covering that slope.”
Behind his tears, Cooke swallowed hard. “I am a good shot, you know.”
“The best, Billy.” Custer himself struggled to raise a hand to his adjutant. “I ought to know … choosing you to lead our sharpshooters at the Washita.” He winced with a swell of pain. The gray veil passed over his eyes. “You remember the Washita, don’t you fellas? The high point for the Seventh Cavalry. You remember, don’t you?”
Cooke knelt again beside Custer, wrapping one of the bloody freckled hands in both of his.
“Aye, General.” Cooke nearly choked on the sob, some slow, fat tears rolling down his cheeks and into those thick black Dundrearies. “It’s been a hell of a pleasure knowing you, sir! One hell of an honor too. May I shake your hand, General?”
“Of course, Billy Cooke.” Custer did not fight to hide his tears any longer. “You’ve been one of my closest allies all along. I’m going to miss you too.” His eyes gone gray searched each of them out now. “Miss all of you.” Then he gazed back at Cooke. “Remember one thing for me, Lieutenant Cooke …” He waited, clenching his eyes against the pain like a hot poker dragged slowly through his rib cage. “Remember, we’re taking no prisoners this time.”
At first, none of them knew how to take that. Then the general opened his eyes. They seemed to sparkle with some renewed light. It wasn’t only a glistening of tears. Some small flicker of fire still burned bright behind those sapphire eyes.
He was having a rough time breathing. So much pressure on his chest that he wanted to cry out. Instead, he would issue his last orders.
“Spread out. Keep your heads down. And remember, we take no prisoners this trip out.”
Cooke clutched the general’s freckled hand quickly a last time, then was gone up the north slope in a crouch, crabbing in the direction where he would keep an eye on a band of warriors massing down the sid
e of the hill.
God, it looks like better’n a thousand of the heathen bastards down there now, Cooke thought to himself as he skidded through the yellow dust and around stinking bodies.
And out front of them all sat a warrior with light-colored unbraided hair, perched regally atop a prancing horse painted with bloody handprints on its hips, an arrow and a scalp drawn along the neck of the animal. Close enough for Cooke to marvel at the princely bearing of this one.
If I didn’t know better, Billy Cooke thought, he looks grill enough to be a Fifth Royal Lancer, that one!
That solitary warrior sat watching, studying the holdouts upon the rise. As if deciding whether or not to crush such a pitiful last reserve of wasichu soldiers.
“Tom?”
“I’m right here, Autie. Not going to leave you now. Won’t ever leave you, brother.”
Custer reached out for him, his eyes glazed so badly he could barely see. And Tom, his hand was there, holding onto his own with a fierce grip. He fought down the bile that rose with the pressure filling his chest, heavy on his belly.
“G-get me … get me to the top,” Custer gasped. “I’ve got to … just get me to the top.”
“Sure, Autie,” Tom answered, his voice wavering. He glanced up to the top. It was still some fifty feet away. “Should I drag you?”
“Yes …” He winced in more pain, sensing he didn’t have long now. What with the effort it took to speak, to stay conscious. “Just get me to the top.”
Tom Custer stuffed the pistol in his holster, then thought better. He picked up two more Colts from soldiers who wouldn’t be needing them any longer and stuffed them both in his belt. Only then did he lean over and snag both hands around Custer’s collar, beginning to pull him over the summer-cured grass and sage.
Up … up … up the hill.
He wants to be close to the top, Tom kept reminding himself as he dragged the deadweight behind him. Get him to the top. Damn, but you’re heavy, he wanted to complain out loud.
But the exertion was enough. Tom didn’t want to waste his energy in this heat by talking.
Just get Autie to the top of his god … damned … hill.
Late June in Montana Territory.
The hillside ablaze with the splash of tiny flowers and budding blossoms. Across the tall-grass slopes lay scattered patches of locoweed like carpets spread over hardwood floors. So many flowers strewn in wild profusion across the rumpled-bedspread hillsides: pink and rose, lavender and blue, each one sleepily nodding its head at him in the soft June breeze.
Custer knew exactly how they felt. He wanted to go to sleep too … wanted so badly to go to sleep for a long, long time.
But he could smell them. And with their seductive scent, those wildflowers reminded him the time for picking drew near.
Young Indian girls would come up this hillside and gather the sweet peas and buffalo beans, carrying their treasure back down to their camp circles, where they would boil and mash the fruit to be eaten greedily with a tender hump roast.
He could remember those meals, Custer could. Why, even now he could see her as one of those young girls skipping giddily up this slope, with each gay step working her way between the bodies of men or bloated, gassy horse carcasses, completely oblivious—as if death hadn’t opened its fetid bowels and littered itself across this colorful hillside. As if the foul refuse of war really wasn’t here at all to defile this slope where young girls went to play and whisper together about their young lovers down in the villages at the river below.
Flowers all purple and magenta, white and fire orange and a delicate pink. The color of his own skin under this merciless sun. Pink.
He had to make it to the top of the hill. If only Tom could get him there.
Custer turned his head slightly, blinking several times, trying to clear his eyes.
There it was! Right under the edge of bright sky!
Just make it to the top of the ridge, Tom. I’ll be safe there. See everything from up … higher. Keep climbing, Tom. Good, brother! We’re getting close. Get me up there on the ridge where the earth touches the sky. I can see it! Lord, I can see it clearly now—earth as brown as her slim body … rising to meet the sky the way her musky earth-scent breasts rose to meet my lips as I covered her.
That’s it, Tom! Up there where no man has ever gone before … your destiny, Custer. It’s your destiny alone, always has been yours alone to go where no man has trod.
Up just a little higher … higher still … up where I can seize the sky.
Less than twenty of them still breathed on the hill under that hot, merciless sun. Twenty, if you counted the wounded who could still hold a gun.
When Tom Custer, George Yates, and Fresh Smith led the rest of them out of the Medicine Tail and up the slope to that hogback spine of grass-strewn ridge to join with Keogh and Calhoun, there had been something close to two hundred twenty-five soldiers and civilians riding hell-bent for election to cover their asses and get someplace where there weren’t so damned many screaming Indians.
By the time Tom and the rest left James Calhoun and Myles Keogh behind along the ridge, Custer had with him about a hundred and twelve stragglers limping onto that last hill north along the hogback.
After Smith’s men had slaughtered themselves in the ravine and the lieutenant himself struggled to crawl back to the general’s position, there were about sixty soldiers left, grim-lipped and squint-eyed, to stare back down the slope at the warriors closing the noose. Time and again their fierce, resolute little ring tightened round the general’s command. Each of those still alive by some cruel twist of fate’s own sleight of hand, understood by now that none of them were walking out of this valley.
No man found breath to joke about riding out either. A couple of men had tried that earlier. Corporal Foley and another.
Harrington, Tom thought. Maybe it was him. Haven’t seen the man in a long time.
Both riders had succeeded in getting off a ways, each followed by warriors on ponies fresh and spirited for the chase. Then each soldier shot himself in the head before the warriors could catch them alive.
So no man on that hillside joked now about riding out of here. There was no one laughing anymore.
Tom had about had it from the drag uphill. He stopped to rest and catch his breath, yanking at the big blue bandanna knotted round his neck. Already sopping wet. Still he used it to wipe his brow while he dropped to the dust and grass beside his brother. He had watched that horrifying whirlwind of frightened horses, panicked men, and finally the suicides sweeping west along the ridge. He had seen it nibble away at the will to live … the will to try.
How long ago?
How long had it been since Smith had led them down? How long since the lieutenant had been cut off on his retreat uphill?
Poor, sad, Fresh Smith, Tom thought dryly, running his gummy tongue around the inside of his mouth, sour with the taste of old whiskey.
With the scars of a horrendous wound suffered in the Civil War, Smith couldn’t raise his left arm above his shoulder, couldn’t even put on his tunic without a struggle. So when his right arm was mangled by a Cheyenne bullet as he crawled away from the suicides in the ravine, Smith found himself fair game for any glory-seeking young warrior.
A Cheyenne Crazy Dog had stood over him seconds later, reveling in his triumph. Poor Smith, hampered now by two useless arms, spread-eagled on the hillside while the warrior carved his scalp off. Still alive.
The scream …
Tom would always remember that paralyzing sound. A friend, this Lieutenant Algernon E. Smith. Yes, Fresh was one to always do his best. But he just couldn’t make it back up the hill as his men slaughtered themselves in that ravine below. His scream …
So as the warrior did his gruesome work on Smith’s scalp, Tom Custer ground his teeth, swiped the hot tears from his eyes, and sat down calmly, bracing Autie’s hunting rifle over the bloated ribs of a dead horse. He drew and held his breath. Let half of it go.
Reluctantly he had opened his eyes to the bright, white-hot sunlight once more. The Cheyenne warrior was standing every bit as tall, flinging his anger up the side of the hill at the man above who had killed the helpless soldier, robbing him of pleasure in slowly butchering the wasichu trooper wearing metal bars on his shoulders.
“Goodbye, Lieutenant Smith,” Tom had whispered, choking on gall, pulling the Remington back. Then he slumped behind the horse carcass until Autie moaned.
How long ago now?
Now nearing the top of the hill, dragging his brother, the sun seemed brighter.
All of the civilians gone now.… Had no damned business coming along, Tom brooded.
Kellogg was somewhere down by the river. He had never made it very far out of the Medicine Tail at all. Riding that poor slow mule he loved and coaxed all the way from Lincoln. The mule had cost the reporter his life as those five companies made their last mad dash up the slope out of the slopes and away from the river.
Boston and young Autie.
Harry. Just should’ve called you Harry. Not named you after your famous uncle. Maybe you’d still be back in Monroe right now if they’d let you be just plain Harry. You’d be flirting with girls down at the mercantile … or sneaking in for a swim up to Hansford’s place … swinging on that rope and dropping into the cool, rippling water. Instead, you’re lying dead, baking on the hot sand of a nameless Montana hillside.
Tom eventually gazed down at Autie. Custer was still breathing, but his eyes were half closed, as if he were asleep. Only the whites of his eyes showing. Sleeping through these last few minutes. Quickly Tom pulled all three pistols from his belt and checked them for live rounds. Replacing some spent cartridges, young Tom put one back in the holster, one in his belt, and the third he clutched in his sweaty hand.
Lord, the soft, pliant breasts I’ve held with this hand, he thought, staring down at it dirty, bloody now. What pleasure you gave the girls, Tommy lad. No more of that now.
Seize the Sky sotp-2 Page 34
