“No,” Custer said, and that caused a thought to race through my mind: Then, General, you must be deaf, for the captain would criticize you to anyone from a mule skinner to that newspaper reporter tagging along with us.
“None of my remarks has been directed toward you, Captain Benteen.” Not colonel, our white-haired malcontent’s brevet rank. Custer could play that game, for whether a general or lieutenant colonel, he still outranked the captain.
“Does anyone else have anything to say?”
No one spoke, so Custer pulled out his pocket watch and suggested that we all synchronize our watches to Chicago time. As stems were wound, Lieutenant Calhoun said that his wife had sent him a cake, which now traveled with the pack train. “After we meet and defeat the savages,” he said, “every officer in the regiment shall have a slice.”
Custer laughed, said he hoped it was a chocolate cake, and dismissed our assembly.
As I walked with Lieutenant Donald McIntosh and Lieutenant Godfrey toward our bivouac, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the general sitting on a box in front of his tent as his striker, Burkman, pulled off his boots.
“Godfrey,” I said softly, “I believe General Custer is going to be killed. At least, I think he believes that.”
Godfrey stopped, his face paling. “What makes you think so, Wallace?”
“Asking us for our opinions, our suggestions? I’ve never heard Custer talk in that way before.”
* * * * *
The next morning, after crossing the meandering Rosebud several times, we finally came across the lodgepole trail Major Reno had found and followed during his “scout.” A few miles later, we came into the abandoned campsite of the Indians, and this was a most numbing experience. Again, I shot a nervous glance at Godfrey, and found him sucking in a deep breath.
We thought the great campsite we had found along the Yellowstone River had been enormous. The grass here had been almost eaten down to the sand, meaning this village had a great many horses.
General Custer saw things differently. “Here’s where Reno made the mistake of his life,” I overheard him telling Lieutenant Charles Varnum, who commanded our Indian scouts. “He had six troops of cavalry and rations enough for a number of days.” He laughed, sounding more like the boy general we knew and less like that somber one from last night. “He’d have made a name for himself if he’d pushed on after them.”
We made thirty-three grueling miles that day. Yet I could not sleep that night.
* * * * *
On June 24, on another hot, sun-baked morning, we came to yet another old campsite. This one proved even more unnerving, not because of its size, but because of the scalp found hanging from what a Ree scout said was a dance lodge. The scalp, which the general passed around, was grotesque, but the Indians seemed troubled by something different.
Having no interest in fondling what had once belonged to a living white man, a soldier, in all likelihood, I turned my attention to the Arikarees, who pointed at odd drawings. Lieutenant Varnum signed with one of the scouts, and looked toward Custer. The general was busy talking to the newspaper reporter and Major Reno. That was rare, I thought—not meaning his conversing with Mr. Kellogg, but with Major Reno. The Crow scouts arrived, and Custer hurried toward them.
Our guidon flapped in the wind. Troopers wandered about the site, some looking for plunder, some trying to guess the size of the village we now pursued.
I stepped toward Varnum. “What is it that excites them so?”
Varnum spit. We had both been graduated from West Point in 1872, so he knew he could trust me. Pointing at the symbols, he said, “Those are drawings of dead men. White men.”
“Yes.”
“All of their heads face east, toward the Dakotas, toward the Black Hills.”
“And that means?”
“To the Arikarees, it means the Sioux medicine is strong. Too strong.”
Varnum’s face looked pale, sad, and I started to joke with him that he wasn’t the superstitious sort, but then I remembered my own feelings after hearing General Custer talk at camp two nights earlier.
“God.” Varnum straightened.
I whirled to see Lieutenant Godfrey bending to pick up the staff of the guidon. The wind had blown it down. He stuck it back into the sod, but almost immediately another gust of wind knocked it to the ground.
Another omen? I shut my eyes against such a thought.
General Custer signaled for us to join him, and my heavy boots carried me to our officers’ conference.
“The Crows have found fresh tracks. Four ponies, one man afoot.”
“Have they spotted us?” Lieutenant McIntosh asked.
“I don’t think so,” Custer said. “Not yet. And to keep it that way, we will march on separate trails. That should reduce the dust. Captains, you will go slowly. I do not wish any troop to overtake the scouts.”
“It’s a big camp,” someone said.
“Yes, it is. And I don’t want it to be a smaller one. If any of you find trails leading away from the main trail, I desire to know of it immediately. We don’t want these boys to scatter.”
“No trails are leading out, sir,” Varnum said.
“Let’s hope that stays true, Mister Varnum. It’s a big village, gentlemen, but don’t worry. What the Seventh can’t lick, the entire US Army can’t lick.” He smiled again. “I believe we shall find the village tomorrow. We will attack on Monday. And mayhap we’ll be back in Philadelphia to celebrate at the Centennial. Wouldn’t that be crackerjack?” Before anyone could answer, he asked, “Where the devil is Colonel Benteen with the pack train?”
“He’s having a devil of a time, General,” Colonel Keogh said. “Or was the last time I saw him.”
“It’s the mules, sir …” someone said.
Custer waved off the excuse. “He’ll catch up. He’ll have to. Let’s ride, gentlemen. Ride into the valley. You have your orders. Dismissed.”
So onward we rode. Deeper into the valley. And as I rode, watching the ridges, the skies, words I long thought I had forgotten escaped from the darkest recesses of my mind. My lips mouthed them silently at first, but soon, as we approached the place where we would camp on the night of June 24, 1876, I heard myself saying them.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Chapter Twelve
Captain
Tom Custer
“What I’d hate,” Bos says as he picks at his breakfast, “is to get killed by a tomahawk.”
“Me, too,” little Harry Reed says.
“You’re a Custer, Bos!” Autie comes over, slapping our brother Boston’s back. “You’ll live forever.”
“I’m not a Custer!” Harry fires back, smiling, but he isn’t happy. He’s nervous as hell.
“The blazes you aren’t!” Autie argues. “We call you by my nickname sometimes, don’t we?” Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer lifts his mug of coffee. “We’re all blessed with Custer’s luck!”
Which reminds me of a joke, so I tell my older brother, “I do hope you live forever, Autie, and mine is the last voice you hear.”
We laugh. Jimmi Calhoun steps inside to ask what’s so funny, and we start laughing again.
I even laugh.
But the laughter dies, and I find my flask to sweeten my coffee. Then I decide: Who the hell needs coffee?
Two Medals of Honor. Brevetted to first lieutenant after Waynesboro, to captain after Namozine Church, to major after Sayler’s Creek. Part of my right cheek
is still blacked from a powder burn, another medal I reckon I won during the Rebellion. I arrested that man-killing savage, Rain-In-The-Face, at the Standing Rock Agency, and thought for sure my sun would set before I ever got him to the Fort Lincoln stockade, where, damn it all to hell, some friendlies helped that sumbitch escape. Hell, I even chased after that gunman—assassin is a better word—Wild Bill Hickok down in Kansas after he shot down two of our troopers.
Live forever? Hell, I have lived forever.
Autie comes over, takes my flask, begins screwing on the cap.
“Really, Tom,” he says in stern rebuke. Libbie has turned him into a teetotaler. “It’s three o’ clock.”
Three in the morn. Dawn comes early in this country.
Something flashes through my mind. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have watched the sun rise this morn? Might have been your last.
With a shrug, I reach for my tin cup. Autie paces nervously—I don’t think he’s even touched his coffee, and his breakfast is already cold—while Bos and Harry chatter quietly. Outside, I hear and smell the second helping of salt pork Autie’s striker is frying up for breakfast.
And I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Bos asks.
Another shrug, and I say, “Nothing.”
What I was thinking was: Salt pork, lousy coffee, and three sips of rye. Is that fitting for a man’s last breakfast?
Yet that is something I shall not let my relations know.
This feeling I have been unable to shake. In all my years in this man’s army, never have I been overcome by such dread. And, despite Autie’s cocksureness, I fear he is of a similar vein. But, being Custers, we shan’t let anyone see those pessimistic outlooks.
Sergeant Hughes sticks his head inside the tent. “Beggin’ the general’s pardon, sir, but that Ree scout, Red Star, just rode in. Says they’ve found a big village.”
“Bully!” Autie tries to put his coffee on the table Private Burkman has set up, but misses it completely, and coffee spills onto the ground.
“Excellent!” Jimmi Calhoun pumps his fist in the air.
“Yeah,” Harry Reed and Bos chime in, but their voices betray their true emotions.
Wetting my lips, I follow my brother, as his aide-de-camp, into the morning.
Live forever, eh? Forever ends today.
Chapter Thirteen
Private
John Burkman
This ain’t for no damned newspaper. I’m just tellin’ you it, is all. Ain’t for no newspaper. Ain’t for nobody, ’less you want to tell Mrs. Libbie some of it.
Mrs. Libbie, oncet she told me that she didn’t know how the gen’ral and herself could get along without me.
She said that. Ask her. She’ll tell you it’s so.
They call me Old Neutriment. ’Cause back at Fort Lincoln, I’m always raidin’ the kitchen. But that grub ain’t for me. Usually, it ain’t. It’s for Gen’ral Custer’s dogs. Hell’s fire, he must own pract’ly a hundred of ’em. Or the gen’ral hisself. Or Mrs. Libbie. Sometimes, I admit, it’s for me, ’cause I gets hungry.
Old Neutriment. Don’t care for that handle. Prefer what Mrs. Libbie calls me. Old Standby. ’Cause that what I was to ’em fine people.
Now, the gen’ral. He sure loved them hounds of his’n. That’s how come he asked me to serve as his striker. Most troopers, they frown upon that job. Say it ain’t fit. Say it’s for cowards. Or for coloreds or Chinamen. But I don’t mind. And I ain’t no damned coward. Was one of the first from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, to join the fight against the Rebs. Seen the elephant at Bull Run. Seen it many a time. Ain’t no damned coward. I’m a soldier. Been soldierin’ longer than most of the boys in this here regiment.
Back to ’em hounds. I loved ’em dogs. All dogs. Some, their mamas died, so I had to raise ’em from pups. That’ll bond you to ’em. Love hosses, too. So that’s how come the gen’ral chose me. And how I come to love him so.
Oh, we had our share of disagreements. He had a mean temper, but so did I. But I’d learnt to control mine. Least, ’round Gen’ral Custer, and Mrs. Libbie. You couldn’t get angry at Mrs. Libbie, but the gen’ral, well …
Anyhows, the gen’ral, he taken some of his hounds with him. Like he’s goin’ huntin’. On this campaign, he taken with him Bleuch, Tuck, and Lady. They’s good huntin’ dogs. Good hounds. Full of energy, full of spunk. Like Gen’ral Custer hisself.
And Gen’ral Custer, he’s a good man. A great man.
Loved to talk. Fact is, when I’d go to sleep whilst he was still conversin’, he’d toss dirt clods at me till I waken up, and I’d roll over, cussin’, and see him just sittin’ there, grinnin’, and I’d take to grinnin’ my ownself, and the gen’ral would start talkin’ ag’in. Hard to get any sleep around him, yes, sir. Mighty hard.
So oncet that Injun scout rode in, we finally knowed where the hostiles was. Breakfast ended real quick-like, and ever’body was in a commotion. I seen little Harry Reed, just bustin’ his gut, gettin’ ready, and I hurried over to him, and I tell him, “Harry, don’t go with the gen’ral today. ’Pears like they’s goin’ to be considerable fightin’. You stay and guard camp.”
Harry whirled. That kid could be as hot-headed as his uncle. “Me, stay!” he shouted. “When there will be a fight? Why, John, you’re crazy. That’s what I came out West for, to see an Indian fight.”
Couldn’t argue none with him, and I knowed I couldn’t argue with the gen’ral, but I tried. Not for young Harry Reed. For me.
The gen’ral was runnin’ like a chicken with his head cut off, yellin’ orders at officers and sergeants, wavin’ me over. “Saddle Vic,” he says to me. I knowed why he wanted Vic. His other horse, Dandy, he’s a good one, too, but Vic is short for Victory, and the gen’ral, he can be a touch superstitious. So I got Vic ready, and handed him the reins, and says I to him, I says, “’Pears like I ought to be goin’ along, Gen’ral.”
He leaped in his saddle like he hadn’t heard. But his ears was always sharp, and he knowed what I said, and he turned to me, frownin’ at first, but then his face started relaxin’, and he smiled. “No, John,” says he. “You’ve been doing guard duty three nights in succession. You’re tired out. Your place is with Captain McDougall and the pack train. But if we should have to send for more ammunition, you can come in on the homestretch.”
Wouldn’t let me argue none with him. Turned Vic around, and loped over to one of his trumpeters. By then, all the soldiers was ready. One of ’em turned to me and shouted, “Hey, Old Neutriment! Shall we bring you a scalp, or do you want a live squaw?”
Then the dogs, the gen’ral’s hounds, they’s up in a roar, barkin’ and pullin’ at their chains. And I knowed Bleuch, knowed that if he gotten loose, wouldn’t be no stoppin’ him. He’d be racin’ ahead of the gen’ral’s entire command. Likely to warn the Injuns that the wrath of God was comin’. So I run over to the dogs, and I grabbed chains and collars, and they’s tuggin’ on me so bad, and my heart’s just breakin’ as the gen’ral rode off.
Couldn’t hardly see ’em no more, ’cause tears was blindin’ me so.
And I recollected after we’d just left the fort, how Mrs. Libbie, her eyes red from all her own cryin’, she had come to me, and she had said, “Good bye, John. You’ll look after the gen’ral, won’t you?”
I just leaned down, and whispered in Bleuch’s ears. I told him, “Damn it all to hell. Gen’ral Custer’s gone and left me. Wouldn’t let me come with him. How can I keep my promise to Missus Libbie? How can I look after the gen’ral now?”
Chapter Fourteen
Half Yellow Face
The trail we follow is big. Many big. Many warriors. We know this. Even some white men in blue coats know this.
The one called Godfrey once asked the white-eye scout, Charley Reynolds, how many Indians he think we follow. Godfrey say one thousand five hun
dred.
Reynolds say, “You think you can whip that many?”
Godfrey say, “I guess so.”
I laugh. Reynolds laughs. Reynolds tells soldier, “Well, we are going to have a damned big fight.”
Big damned fight. Reynolds, who signed me what was said, knows. I know.
Long Hair thinks he shall have easy fight. He read no signs. Lakota medicine is strong. Big strong. Long Hair medicine is weak. Long Hair even cut own hair before leaving the soldier fort. No long hair. Short. Remind me of story a black robe told us at soldier fort, about a big, strong man who let white woman cut his hair. When hair was gone, he lost power. Was weak. Got eyes burned out. Made into slave. Finally he die. Maybe so same with Long Hair.
Me, other Arikarees, and Crows join Peaked Face, the white bluecoat leader of us Indian scouts, and pick our way at night into Mountains of the Wolf. As sun rises, we look down to where all hills seem to go flat.
There, for first time, we see how many Lakotas and other bad Indians we are about to fight. It is the pony herd, and there are more horses than stars at night.
Peaked Face looks through his see-far glasses, lowers them, rubs his eyes with the rag around his neck. “Too much dust,” he says. “Not enough sleep. I can’t see a damned thing.”
I do not know what those white man words mean, but I can tell that he not see pony herd.
A Crow scout speaks to Mitch Boyer. I sign to Boyer, who can see that herd. He turns to Peaked Face, and says, “Varnum, look for worms on the grass. They say that’s what horses will look like from this distance.”
Peaked Face tries again, but, frustrated, cusses white man words, and lowers see-far glasses. “I just can’t see them.”
Boyer now is as frustrated as Crows and me. “Well, they are there, damn it.”
“I believe you, Mitch,” Peaked Face says. “I just can’t see them.”
Peaked Face can’t see, but he knows we speak truth. That much I can see.
I can see something else, though, and it is not Lakota ponies. It is smoke from the fires of the bluecoats. Cooking breakfast.
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