by Tony Roberts
The land flattened out beyond the hill and they rode towards the lip of the ridge and down towards the river once more.
Custer, leading the column, halted, his arm raised. He brought his glasses up and surveyed the land across the river. Even without glasses, the troopers could see masses of women and children moving north through scrubland and along a creek. Hordes of them. Custer brought his glasses down abruptly and signalled a turnabout. His yellow buckskin jacket clearly visible, he rode through the lines of soldiers and took them back towards the flat land and beyond it, the second hill.
“Why we going back?” McFaddean asked.
“I suspect Custer needs Benteen’s men to deal with all this,” Casey said heavily. “He’s realized he hasn’t got enough men! Too damned late, of course.”
“What do you mean?” Travers asked.
Casey nodded to the right where groups of natives were moving up the ridge towards them. There were nearly a hundred now, and more were behind them. “We’ve got a problem.”
Custer led the men to the ridge, then ordered a skirmish line. The men dismounted. E Company arranged themselves on the slopes of the hill while Casey and F Company were below them, on the grassy ridge.
More natives were coming up, and the carbine fire began to be almost continuous. Casey knelt, loading, aiming, and squeezing off a shot, trying to choose a target. The rapidly moving warriors were difficult to pick off, though, but at least for the moment the troopers could keep the enemy at a distance.
Custer and his staff stood close to the rear, on the hill, and watched as the numbers of Indians gradually increased. Casey kept on looking over his shoulder at them, but they were looking to the east. Clearly hoping Benteen or someone was going to come to their aid.
“Where are they?” Travers grumbled, squeezing off yet another shot at a native riding across their line of sight, Winchester raised in one hand. Arrows came arcing their way and the troopers hunkered down even lower, trying to make themselves as small as possible in the long grass. A few horses were lying dead and those provided good cover. At least for the moment.
Shooting to the east, on the hill where the rest of the battalion were, intensified. “Christ, look at those poor bastards!” McFaddean exclaimed, looking to his left.
All of a sudden, so it seemed, a huge attack from all directions had engulfed L Company and then the men could be seen running. The natives hacked and clubbed at the fleeing men and they crashed into C Company trying to give them support. All at once the other units were swept away and the survivors came running, wild-eyed to the shocked men of E and F Companies.
Casey gritted his teeth. “Alright, fellahs,” he said grimly. “Now it’s our turn. Keep shooting. It’s your only chance.” He knew it was hopeless. With nobody coming to their help, they were now surrounded and hugely outnumbered. The Indians were closing in on all sides and sheer weight of numbers was going to tell.
He aimed carefully at a warrior riding from his left to right and fired. Missed. Damnit! Another round rammed into the breech and another target picked up. Some of the hostiles were now on foot, seeking to get in amongst the hated white men and butcher them. One, gripping a tomahawk and a pistol, came up the slope towards him. Casey shot him through the chest and the warrior pitched backwards almost in slow motion.
Musson was muttering in French to Casey’s right, expletives, if Casey’s hearing was on the mark. It was hard to tell with the constant discharges of carbines. There was precious little cover and they were so exposed where they were, but they couldn’t go anywhere. The whoops of the excited Sioux and Cheyenne filled the air, and they knew that in a short while they would overwhelm the last group of ‘long knives’ who had dared to attack them.
Casey wiped sweat from his brow, gritted his teeth and placed his pistol on the ground before him. He had an inkling he would need it pretty soon. Shots rained at them and a man two to his left grunted and flopped to the ground, arms limp. The scarred mercenary grimaced; each one on the hill who was shot meant the firepower keeping the Indians away from them diminished. It was merely a matter of time.
Another native came riding past. Casey’s snapshot took the horse in the flank and it tumbled to the ground with a scream, spilling its feathered rider. Musson took a second man in the thigh and the Indian rolled to the ground, clutching his bleeding wound.
An arrow struck a man behind Casey and there was a grunt and the impression the man had collapsed; Casey didn’t look. He guessed, having witnessed and experienced enough in his time. Another shot. Shit, that was close!
A shout. “The Colonel’s down!”
Custer had been hit.
The discipline of the troopers broke. E Company, higher up the slope, grabbed what horses they could and mounted up, intending to charge down the hill and break through the encircling lines to safety. The men of F Company watched in dismay as the break out swept down the hill away from the biggest concentration of Indians, coming from the direction of the other hill where the rest of the battalion had been destroyed.
Casey and his comrades watched helplessly as the natives converged on the fleeing men and swarmed over them.
Now there remained just the men from F Company and a few others, less than fifty. The natives began to close in.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The lines of Indians came closer, shooting as they came. The reduced fire from the shrinking numbers of men could no longer keep them off. Casey swore and blasted one warrior backwards. “Dumb fucking mess this was!” he exclaimed.
He looked to his left. McFaddean was lying face up, a bullet wound in his throat. Poor bastard, taken cleanly before he knew it.
Travers shrieked in terror as his carbine jammed, and two natives rushed him. Casey twisted and picked up his pistol. The first shot blew the nearest one away, but the second struck Travers in the neck with his tomahawk and followed up with a knife into the guts. Casey shot this man through the chest. Then he turned back to face his front. Travers was gone.
Musson reloaded and fired again. “I survived Sedan only to die on this shit hole of a hill in the middle of nowhere,” he complained. “Fuck.”
Casey grunted; there wasn’t much else to say. He glanced to his right. Three men lay dead in a heap, but two more were still shooting, desperation all over their faces. The natives were getting closer, picking off trooper after trooper. Many of the surrounded men were wounded but they fought on, knowing there was going to be no mercy shown by the Sioux and Cheyenne.
Scores of warriors were coming forward on foot, shooting with rifles or bows. Casey edged backwards. “Come on, Musson, back to the command post; there’s not enough of us left to hold this position.”
Musson rolled over and crawled after Casey. They slid over bodies of the fallen, human and equine, and turned around just as a knot of Indians came at them, taking advantage of the break in shots. Casey rammed a round into the breech and raised the muzzle just as a warrior bounded over the last corpse before the Eternal Mercenary. The bullet took the man in the chest and pitched him back the way he’d come.
The next native dodged around the falling body and came for Casey, tomahawk scything through the air. Casey blocked it with his carbine and stuck the muzzle of his pistol against the brave’s ribs and squeezed the trigger. The blast sent the man backwards, blood and gore spraying in an arc, a lot of it coating Casey.
Musson shot a third but then got overwhelmed by two more and he grunted as two blows smashed into his body. Casey turned his pistol and gunned the two down in a blink of an eye. Musson lay on his back staring sightlessly at the sky. “Au revoir, mon brave,” Casey said sadly.
Sergeant Kenny gritted his teeth as Casey came to lay next to him. “Still with us, Long?”
“For the moment; shame the rest aren’t.” Casey frantically reloaded his pistol. He swore long and loud at Custer, lying a short way behind on top of a horse and another man, two bullet wounds marking his body. “We needed our sabers. Dumb stupid idea to leave
them behind.”
“Too late to bitch about that, Long. Concentrate on the fight!”
Casey reloaded his carbine. A few scattered shots kept the natives back, then a group of men, encouraged by Kenny, got up and broke out, shooting as they went. Casey shook his head. Futile to try. He picked one more off but it made little difference. The fifteen men who tried to escape were shot down and butchered.
Now there were only a handful left and the hordes of natives came in at them, screaming in triumph. Casey blew the first away, then used his carbine as a club, beating first one, then a second aside. His pistol took care of a fourth, then another came at him from the left, someone he glimpsed and thought he recognized, but he had little time to see for certain. A blinding blow to the head ended his resistance and blackness engulfed him.
___
A shaft of agony caused him to groan, and his hand came up to touch the painful area of his scalp. Hissing, he gently clutched it, then opened his eyes. At first he thought he was blind, then gradually his eyes got used to the poor light levels. He was in a tepee.
He turned to the left. He was lying on the ground. A figure squatted by the entrance, a native warrior, motionless, staring at him. “Tucker?” Casey asked shakily.
“I am now called He Who Fights Again”, the young man said, moving at last, standing up.
“You spared me,” Casey said, sitting up, and wincing as shafts of pain burst through his mind. “Why?”
“You saved me and my sister. I have repaid that debt. When I saw you there on the hill, I knew the spirits had put me there for a purpose.”
Casey groaned. Damned pain. It was like having a knife rammed into his head. “Indeed. I have to thank you in that case. So, what now?”
He Who Fights Again came to squat next to Casey. He was proud, his demeanour showed it. “We have rubbed out Yellow Hair and his army. A few fight on beyond Greasy Grass, but they are not important. They have learned that we are not a people to dismiss and treat badly. They will have to respect us now. They will have to leave us alone and allow us our roaming land and hunting grounds.”
Casey puffed out his cheeks and lowered his head. “I doubt they will. They will want revenge. I fear for your people’s future, I honestly do. You haven’t got the numbers on your side, and the buffalo herds are being slaughtered to starve you into submission. Maybe you have won a great victory here today, but in time, well, you’ll all have to give up.”
“We will see,” the young man replied. “For now, I go with my people north and east. You are free to rejoin your people if you wish; another army is close, the one under the man you call Terry.”
“Oh, General Terry is finally here?”
“A day or two away. He will have to rescue the others first. We will be gone by then. Come.”
Casey was helped up and bowed low to emerge from the tent. An amazing sight met his eyes. All around there were camp fires aglow and natives dancing around them, war bonnets on their heads, celebrating with the Victory Dance. Drums boomed, voices cried out in triumph.
Casey grinned weakly, then sucked in his breath again. His scalp was very tender. Even though He Who Fights Again had averted the edge of the tomahawk’s blade from the blow, it still had done damage. If he hadn’t been immortal, he suspected that he might still have been out cold.
“My people will not be forgotten even if we are vanquished, Scarred One.” The young warrior nodded to Casey. “I shall call you that, if you are happy with the name.”
“Scarred One,” Casey said thoughtfully. “Yes, why not? It describes me well. As does your name. Tucker doesn’t really suit you.”
“It does not, and it is a white man’s name which I refuse to use. In the morning we shall be gone. You have the freedom to follow your own path. I have been given the promise from my tribe that nobody will harm you – especially as you no longer have the hated army uniform.”
Casey noticed for the first time that his regulation trousers were no longer on him; instead he had a pair of dull brown buffalo skin leggings. His shoes were the same, as was his shirt. His hat had gone, of course, and he was bareheaded. “I think I will use the excuse of this defeat to vanish. Officially I will have died in the battle, which is a good way to vanish.”
“So what will you do next?”
He shrugged and looked up into the sky. “My fate will take me somewhere. I think things will get quite nasty here for a while as Congress will look for revenge. I have no wish to see what happens next, nor to take part in it. And,” he sighed deeply. “I have a woman in Bismarck who’ll mourn me. There will be a hell of a lot of questions if I turn up there.”
“You will leave her?” the warrior asked, incredulous.
“I must. She’ll get an army pension and she’s got a job there. She’s young. She’ll mourn me for a while, then remarry. She’s a pretty one and won’t have any trouble getting attention from some young suitor. No, this outcome is the best for me. Time to disappear I think.” He extended a hand to the young Sioux, who, after a moment’s hesitation, shook it.
“Shame more white men are not like you.”
“I know, but I’m a kind of unusual sort of guy. Look after yourself, He Who Fights Again, and be true to your heart.”
He walked off, leaving the natives to continue celebrating their great victory at the place they called Greasy Grass.
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