by Sharon Ihle
Barney returned with the rope then, gasping and out of breath, and stood there waiting for his next order.
"Tie him," Custer said. "Bind his hands behind his back as tight as you can, then do the same to his feet. It wouldn't be a bad idea to connect the hands and feet with another length."
"Lord almighty," Barney muttered, near tears as he began to tie his friend. "What'd he do, General?"
"He 's insubordinate, and he's a traitor, Lieutenant. Those are the charges for now." He glanced up, watching for his officers, and added, "I suspect when I return from the battlefield, I'll be adding more."
"A traitor, General?" Barney choked out. "I can't believe that of Jacob."
"You are not to second-guess me. You are to guard this tent and guard it with your life. Is that understood, or would you like to join the private?"
"Understood, sir." Barney snapped off a salute, then marched to the opening in the tent. Taking up a position just outside the flap, he observed as the general joined two other officers a few feet away.
"We have to ride out tonight," Custer said to the surprised officers.
"Tonight? But the men and horses are exhausted," Major Reno complained.
"And we're already ahead of schedule," Captain Benteen said, trying to sound respectful to a man he abhorred. "Maybe you have forgotten that General Terry warned us not to get greedy about this. He said we're supposed to wait until Sunday when we're at full manpower and go in all at once."
"There's no time for that," Custer barked, impulsively adding a statement that wasn't entirely true. "And General Terry isn't in charge of you men, I am. I say we go tonight and take them by surprise. I have word the Sioux know we're here, and they also know that we don't plan to march on them for a couple of days."
Major Reno's brows shot up. "Where'd you hear that?"
"That doesn't matter," Custer said. "What does is that we get our plans straight. Here's what we'll do."
The three men hunkered down and Custer began to draw a diagram in the soft earth with a stick. "I think it'll be best if we separate into three groups and surround the Sioux. There will be no running away from us this time. Reno, take your men to the southern end of the Little Bighorn Valley. Benteen, you go straight to the southwest. I'll take my group up north along the bluff. That ought to do it."
"That ought to do it," Major Reno echoed, exchanging glances and a disgusted shake of his head with Benteen. "That might just do it all right."
The following afternoon Dominique walked along the banks of the river, remembering the conversation she'd had with Jacob just six days ago. She gazed into the water, so clear the pebbles lining the bottom stared back at her like little eyeballs, and wondered if he had managed to do the impossible. Had Jacob found a way to turn her uncle's army back?
She glanced up and noticed a large dirty cloud rolling toward her from the south. A dust storm? she idly wondered. Then Dominique heard the screams of women and children, the shouting of a general alarm. She jumped to her feet, her heart in her throat, and began running toward the great dust cloud.
As she neared the rolling apparition, soldiers suddenly appeared through the earth-colored fog. Dominique slid to a stop and buried her fist in her mouth. "No," she screamed, strangling on her knuckles, her fear. "Please, no."
Dominique stood there, paralyzed by her terror and by the unwillingness of her mind to accept the message her vision sent.
Then she witnessed the unspeakable.
Amid the rifle fire, the screams of terror and agony, she watched a United States Cavalryman run down a fleeing woman, a squaw she recognized as one of Chief Gall's wives, and then fire point-blank into her unprotected back. The bullet passed through the Indian woman's body and through that of the child she carried in her arms as well.
Dominique swooned, nearly fainting, but her anger, her rage, quickly cleared her head. Able to propel her legs again, she charged the soldier, screaming as she ran. "Stop it. Stop it, you bastar.!"
As a screaming woman approached him, the soldier turned in his saddle and raised his rifle. When he peered down the sights and positioned his finger on the trigger, a cloud of beautiful red-gold hair filled the sights. "Huh?" he said, startled, as he looked up from the gun. "Well, I'll be damned."
She was upon him now, and before the soldier could say another word, Dominique grabbed the barrel of the rifle and jerked it out of his hands. Swinging it as hard as she could, she arced it upward and cracked the soldier alongside the head with the butt of the weapon.
After the man hit the ground, Dominique tossed his rifle toward the river, then pulled herself up onto his horse. Wheeling the animal around, she plunged headlong into the dust cloud, screaming as she rode, "Who's in charge here? Where is General Custer? Take me to the general."
Surprised soldiers parted, making way for the madwoman as she galloped through their ranks, but none tried to stop her until a horse veered up alongside her and a big hand reached out and grabbed her reins.
"Whoa, now," Major Reno called out. "Easy, now."
Dominique glanced over at the officer, but didn't really look at him. She repeated her demands. "Take me to General Custer. This must stop now."
"Dominique? It is you, isn't it?"
Catching her breath, working to slow her rapid pulse, she studied the officer more closely. "Major Reno? For God's sake. Stop this."
"Take it easy, girl. I'll get you to safety."
"No. Where's my uncle? Make him stop this."
In spite of her protests, Reno kicked his mount in the flanks and began leading her away down thorough the column to the rear. "He's not with this group," he shouted above the din, "but he's going to be mighty thrilled to see you. I'll have a soldier take you to safety."
"But I don't want to go to safety." She grabbed at the reins, but Reno held fast. "I want this stopped, you murderer. Stop it now."
"Dominique, I'm sure you've been through hell these past weeks, but I can't take time to explain anything to you right now." He beckoned to a soldier, a sergeant major he trusted implicitly, then said to her, "Go with this man. Your uncle will explain all this later if you're still interested."
She opened her mouth to object, to complain about the outrageous cruelties she'd witnessed, but then Dominique remembered Jacob's words. "If the soldiers come into our camp, show yourself and go with them." She'd promised him that she would.
Swallowing hard, fighting the urge to look back at the Hunkpapa village, Dominique bit her lip and allowed the sergeant major to lead her away from the battle.
All through the night and into the next day Jacob worked to free himself from his bonds. Finally, as bright sunlight trickled in through the crack in the tent flap, he pulled a raw and bleeding wrist through the loop and quickly removed the rest of his bindings. His head pounded and he was disoriented. Crawling on his hands and knees, he silently made his way to the opening and peered out. All was quiet, save for a few summer birds singing their love songs. Jacob stuck his head through the flap, then ducked back inside. Barney sat on a chair to his right. From his quick observation, the lieutenant appeared to be asleep.
Jacob rubbed his aching temple. A Lakota warrior wouldn't even have to stop and think. He would simply reach through the opening and break Barney's neck. But Jacob could no longer think like a warrior, could barely think at all. There had to be another way out.
Again peering through the opening, Jacob inched the flap open. He studied his sleeping friend for a moment, then he struck. He whipped his arm around Barney's head, firmly clasping his palm across the surprised soldier's mouth, and dragged him inside.
"Do not fight me," Jacob implored in a whisper. When Barney's struggles ceased, he relaxed his grip but kept his hand over Barney's mouth. "I am sorry, friend. But I do what I must. Do you understand?"
Wild-eyed, confused, Barney nodded.
"I cannot explain everything to you now," Jacob went on. "But I must go after the general and try to stop him. This war cannot happen. P
lease forgive me for what I must do now."
And before Barney could understand or have any sense of danger, Jacob smashed him across the back of his head with his own gun. "I am sorry, my friend."
Jacob quickly bound him with the ropes he'd just escaped from, then checked his pulse. Relieved to feel life surging through Barney's veins, he whispered, "Rest well, my friend. Enjoy your long and happy life." Then he stole from the tent.
The camp was nearly deserted. On cat feet, Jacob crept over near the supply wagon where the surplus horses grazed. After choosing the fittest animal, Jacob silently coaxed it through the dense timber and heavy undergrowth, walking alongside the horse until he was well out of earshot of those who were left behind. Then he mounted up and urged the horse into a gallop.
He rode hard and fast, stopping only to allow his mount to rest. Hours later, Jacob pulled up and listened to distant echoes. Off to the south, where his own Hunkpapa village lay, he could make out the vague popping of occasional rifle fire. Ahead, to the north along Custer's path, tremendous bursts of gunfire resounded. There could be only one decision.
Heartsick, he galloped toward the northern bluffs. As he rode, the wind carried an ominous warning, a message of death to his ears, and a deep sense of failure nearly overcame him. Still, Jacob forged ahead.
By the time he reached the battlefield, an eerie silence had settled over the valley. Jacob rode to the top of a small bluff, then groaned as he made a visual sweep of the area. Puffs of dust and gun smoke rose above the dead, a shroud of sorts protecting the lifeless skin from the sun's burning rays. Sickened by the carnage, the mountain slopes carpeted with the bodies of red men and white men alike, Jacob slid down off his mount and fell to his knees in despair.
"Why?" he screamed, pounding his fist into the earth. "Why didn't anybody listen to me?"
In shock, unable to accept what his eyes told him, Jacob got to his feet and began walking through the field of bodies. Even in his dazed condition, he began to understand the futility the soldiers must have felt as their numbers were overwhelmed by his people. Many of the men died behind barriers constructed with the bodies of their own horses, shot no doubt by their loving masters in a last ditch effort to save themselves.
Jacob called a halt to his journey and sucked in a huge gulp of air as he caught sight of a thatch of red-gold hair. As he moved toward the fallen leader, Jacob's shoulders slumped and he groaned in frustration as he looked down on Custer's almost peaceful features. A small bullet hole near his temple and a dark stain at the side of his blue shirt were the only hints that the great general had not simply fallen asleep.
Again Jacob said, "Why? Why couldn't you have listened to me?" He rubbed his eyes, then glanced around. Boston and Tom Custer lay nearby, their faces much more gruesome in death, the loss of their lives somehow more terrible. Thinking of Dominique and the white burial custom, Jacob looked around for a tool with which to dig a common grave for the Custer brothers. For her, he would try to save them from the final indignity.
Then up ahead he noticed movement. When he looked toward the ridge, he saw several warriors descending the slopes. His people would return to the field now to collect their wounded and dead. Then, to complete the final ritual they would strip, scalp, and mutilate their enemies to prevent their passage to the heavens.
As the Indians drew closer, Jacob recognized his father, Gall. Wearing his full headdress, he was a regal sight, a dramatic antithesis of the testament to death all around him. When the chief waved, acknowledging and greeting his son, Jacob's response was to turn his palms up and shrug, mutely asking the same question of his father that he'd asked of his wife's dead uncle.
From behind Jacob, a dying Cheyenne warrior caught the movement through hazy eyes. Spotting Jacob's cavalry uniform, determined that not even one of the soldiers would live to tell this tale, he raised his rifle.
"Death to all Long Knives," he screamed as he began firing.
Jacob turned at the sound, but he was too late. He caught the full impact of the first round against his skull.
Two other bullets slammed into his body as he fell to the bloodied earth, but Jacob never felt them tear open his flesh.
Chapter Twenty
June 27, 1876
Dominique paced up and down in her small cabin on the steamship, the Far West. As she walked, she loosened the collar of the shirt she'd borrowed from an officer, and then eyed her buckskin wedding dress, which lay on the bunk. The heat was especially stifling in the confines of the cabin. But here she was, decently covered in a man's long-sleeved flannel shirt and a skirt hastily thrown together from one of the ship's fine tablecloths. Again she eyed the more comfortable buckskins, then sighed and crossed over to the porthole.
Where was Jacob? she asked herself for the thousandth time. What had become of her uncles? She stared out at the Little Bighorn River and at the calm waters and un- scarred landscape where the ship was docked. Only a few miles upriver, the battle still raged. The memories of the horrors she'd witnessed added to the perspiration on her brow. Hoping to catch a gust of fresh air, Dominique pushed the porthole open. The minute her fingertips touched glass, the crew below began shouting. She froze.
A horse burst through the bushes near the water's edge. Dominique lurched against the glass panel, her heart thundering in her ears, and strained for a better view. Then she noticed the lathered animal carried a naked Indian. Dominique watched, dry-mouthed, as the savage waved his rifle, but she slumped with relief when the crew members surrounded him in greeting.
"Sioux, Sioux, Sioux," the Indian screamed as he fell to the ground.
Dominique ran out of her room to the top deck of the steamship. Leaning outward, she shouted down at the men below. "Captain Marsh? Please, Captain Marsh. What's happened? Is there word from the Seventh?"
The ship's pilot turned and regarded the panic-stricken woman. Holding up his hand to her, he whispered to a crew member so that Dominique would not hear his words. "What's Curly trying to tell us, Baker?"
The crewman shrugged as he studied the stick figures the Indian was drawing in the dirt. "I'm not sure, Captain."
"Sioux, Sioux. Absaroka. Boom, boom," the savage shouted, stabbing his finger into his chest. "Boom, boom, absaroka."
"Oh, hell, Captain. He's talking about the cavalry. I think he's trying to say we've been whipped."
Marsh glanced up at Dominique, then shook his head. "I can't tell her that on the word of a half-crazed Indian, especially after what she must have gone through in that Sioux camp. Try not to look so damned upset. Pretend he's just babbling on about nothing of any consequence."
Changing expressions as he turned back to the ship, the captain smiled up toward the railing. "It's nothing, Miss DuBois. Just one of your uncle's Crow scouts who got separated from the main group. You go back to your cabin and rest now. I'll be sure to inform you when I hear any news about your family."
But Dominique knew there was something more, some horrible news the Indian was trying to tell them about. Disheartened, she turned and slowly walked back to her cabin. Beyond tears, she stretched out on the narrow bunk, and tried to find a way to escape from the nightmare her life had become.
She slept in snatches, always alert to the slightest sound, and worked at filling her mind with hope. When the dawn broke, Dominique rose and crossed over to the porthole.
She was staring out, remembering her past, wondering what was left of her future, when again the quiet was shattered. A single frantic rider exploded through the willow thickets. This time the stranger wore the uniform of a soldier. And this time she was unable to move.
Certain she couldn't bear to hear his message, Dominique waited in her quarters. Her eyes dull, her hopes reduced to a bare flicker, she observed as the crew helped the exhausted man from his horse.
After a few moments, Captain Marsh looked up toward her window. He quickly turned away, then started up the gangplank.
Dominique swallowed hard, knowing he would soon
bring her the news she'd been dreading. Holding her head high, she marched to her door and opened it, then stood there waiting to receive him.
Captain Marsh approached the cabin and uttered a gasp as he realized the door was open. "Oh, Miss DuBois, excuse me, I don't mean to intrude."
"Please come in, Captain. I've been expecting you," she said, her voice sounding as if it belonged to someone else. "I have a feeling you finally have some news for me."
Marsh removed his hat, bowing his gray head as he tried to find the right words. "Yes, I'm afraid I do. Why don't you have a seat?"
"I'd rather stand, if you don't mind. Please, just tell me what you've found out. What's happened?"