So there I laid, cursing me luck. Watching men hurry to the river and back, water sloshing. By the saints, not long afterward, here came Private Peter Thompson again, bloody bandage around his hand, but game he was, desperate, or maybe he was still just bloody thirsty. Three trips at the least he made it to the river and back.
Me? I’d made it only one, and hadn’t made it all the way back.
Me head be lifted, and I tasted water. Blinked away sweat and pain, saw Sergeant Hutchinson letting water spill from a canteen into me lips.
“How long have I been out?” asked I.
He didn’t answer. The son of a bitch corked his canteen, then picked me up over his shoulders.
“Put me down!” I cried. “You’re not risking your hide for the likes of me.”
Like I said, I be not a small man. How Sergeant Hutchinson managed to carry me, well, he must have been kin to Hercules. Oh, he staggered. He stopped. A few times he almost fell. And for a spell, I cursed him and his mother and his mother’s mother—though I reckon what I wanted to do was kiss that big heroic fool. Didn’t get a chance. Not to kiss him. Not to thank him. Not even to curse him much more, because that pain, that god-awful pain, sent me into a blinding, deep sleep.
* * * * *
When I return from the dead, I could smell the stink all around me. Knowed where I be. In that hospital, surrounded by mules, surrounded by death. Private Wilber Darcy was right beside me. Reckon he had taken a bullet fetching water, too, and that young sawbones was working on him, putting a splint on his leg. Nope. Darcy hadn’t caught a bullet, just merely busted his leg. I smacked me lips, but didn’t have guts to look down at me legs. But it didn’t take long till I knowed I was still a whole man. The pain told me that fine doctor had yet to saw the right leg off.
Doc Porter turned to me, and not a poker player he was.
“Thank you for the water,” he told me as he unwrapped the bandage around me leg.
Already I could smell something that wasn’t dead horses, wasn’t mule shit. ’Twas me leg.
“Do I get some whiskey before you get your saw, Doc?” I asked.
Doc Porter studied me, and damn me soul if there wasn’t tears in his eyes.
“As much as you can hold, Mister Madden,” he said.
Mister, said he. A fine educated man like that doctor calling me mister. Reckoned that I’d need to get used to that. For once me leg was gone, they wouldn’t be calling me trooper or private or saddler or you damned ignorant Irish bastard no more.
“You don’t know how much I can hold, Doc,” I said with a grin, and the doc, he grinned back.
“Fire!” some fool shouted. “Fire. Colonel Benteen! Major Reno! The Indians … they’re burnin’ us out!”
The doc stood. Curiosity must have gotten the better of him, because he began making his way out of the depression, past the bloating, rotting, fly-covered carcasses of mules and horses. I stared into the sky, looking for smoke. Could smell it, and it smelled like roses compared to what I had been smelling. Couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see the doc no more.
But he would return. He’d come back and, sometime soon, off me leg he’d saw.
Ah, but here’s the way legends are made, thought I.
They’ll say Saddler Mike Madden, fond of grog he was, and that won’t be a lie. They’ll say that they sawed off his right leg above the knee, then gave him some whiskey. Maybe brandy. They’ll say that Mike Madden then smacked his lips, looked that sawbones in his eyes, and—this, they’ll swear as pure gospel—Madden, he says, “Doctor, cut off me other leg!”
That’s what the legend will be. That’s what they’ll say, but it won’t be true.
The truth be that they did cut off me leg. And I bawled like a baby.
Other laddies, even Sergeant Geiger, they would give them medals. Me? I got a discharge and a crutch. But, blimey, I hadn’t done it for the glory. Not really. Hadn’t done it for no stinking medal. Hadn’t done it to show ’em all that I was a hero.
Criminy, I’d done it ’cause I’d been thirsty.
Chapter Forty-Three
Sergeant
John Ryan
Back at Fort Lincoln, they told us Indians can’t shoot with a damn. Oh, they were handy with bows and arrows, but give one a Springfield or Sharps or repeating rifle, and they couldn’t hit an officer’s ass at two paces.
Bam! The fourth man on my right sat up.
“Get down!” I shouted, and started to curse, but then I saw the hole in that trooper’s forehead, and I knew that he couldn’t hear. He was dead. His brain just hadn’t told the rest of his body yet.
The corporal next to him, reached up, tugged on his comrade’s blouse, and that poor dead bastard sank into the grass.
“Lucky shot,” the corporal said. Those proved his last words. He had just spoken when that sickening sound of a bullet striking flesh reached my ears, and the corporal gasped. “I am killed,” he said, and slumped over.
I slid toward him, grabbed his wrist, felt for a pulse that wasn’t there, and crawled back up to my position, staring at the high ridge. Five hundred yards away, it had to be.
My keen eyes detected that faraway puff of white smoke before the bullet kicked up dirt and grass into my face, and I slid down a mite, cursing, rubbing the crud out of my eyes so that I could see again.
Footsteps sounded, followed by a hard whoosh as Captain French dropped right beside me.
“Did you see where those shots came from, Sergeant?” the captain asked.
My eyes kept blinking furiously, but I hooked my thumb back toward that peak. “Top of that knoll over yonder, Captain,” I answered.
Captain French crawled up a bit, then slid down. “Jesus Christ!” he snapped. “Who the hell is shooting, Buffalo Bill Cody?”
The chuckle in my throat died there, as another soldier cried out in pain, followed by the faint report of the rifle. The trooper rolled down, leaving a trail of blood pumping out of his shoulder. I could see by then. Could hear, too, for that trooper was cutting loose with every foul oath in the soldier’s curse book. Two of the boys came down to plug his bullet hole, and slide him farther out of the line of fire.
“Get that man to Doctor Porter,” Captain French ordered, and those two volunteers were happy to obey that order. Happy to get away from that sharpshooting son of a bitch of an Indian.
Captain French kept looking at that ridge through his field glasses. I just shook my head. That Indian had killed the fourth man to my right. Then he had killed the third. He had barely missed blowing off my head. He had just wounded the second. The gentleman next to me had been one of the volunteers to assist the wounded trooper to the field hospital.
There was no mirth inside my soul, but I laughed.
“My number’s up, Captain,” I said. “You might want to move down a few spots, sir.”
The captain jacked a shell into his repeating rifle. His was a fancy rifle, not a carbine, but a long rifle of heavy caliber with one of those brass long scopes affixed to the top. Custom made, he had told me back at Fort Lincoln.
He pointed at my rifle. Mine was a Spencer, a .56-46, and not one of those god-awful Springfield carbines the Army saddled upon its cavalrymen. My Spencer didn’t have a fancy telescopic sight, but I was already adjusting the tang sight.
“You ready, Sergeant Ryan?” the captain asked.
“I’d rather die fighting than just lying here waiting to get my head shot off, sir.”
Captain French leaped up, and I followed him, yelling, “Onward, boys. Let’s kill that bastard!”
Six boys came right behind us, while the rest of M Troop provided a covering fire. Those staying behind shot straight ahead, while Captain French, the boys, and me wheeled right. Dust flew up on that hilltop, me firing that Spencer as fast as I could jack another shell into the breech, the captain emptying his Wincheste
r, the other lads firing and reloading their single-shot Springfields.
“Fall back!” the captain shouted, which I echoed, and we ran through the smoke from our shots and the dust we’d stirred up, sliding back behind cover. I reloaded the Spencer, waiting for my lungs to catch up, for my heart to resume beating.
Captain French leaned forward again, peering through his field glasses. Five minutes passed. Then ten. At last he rolled over, sticking his glasses in the case, and winked at me.
“Either we killed him, or scared him off,” he said.
“Hope it’s the former,” I said, “but I’ll gladly take the latter.”
* * * * *
Ah, but those savages were not done. A few moments later, they opened fire, maybe the most intense enfilade I’d seen since the Rebellion. My three wounds from Ream’s Station a dozen years earlier resumed aching. Sweat streamed down my forehead and into my eyes, and I reached for my canteen, to drink, thanking those brave souls who had risked their lives to quench my thirst.
The firing ceased. Resumed less than an hour later, but not as awful, not as consistent.
Then someone shouted, “Fire!” He called out for Reno, for Benteen. He yelled, “The Indians … they’re burnin’ us out!”
Captain French knelt a few rods over, so I hurried to him, staring at the smoke.
“They’re not burning us out, sir,” I said. “Too far away.”
“Diversion,” Captain French said. “At least, that’s my guess.”
We watched. We waited. Suddenly a bird chirped. I tried to recall the last time I had heard any natural noise. All around us was this calm, this silence.
“Bet they’re mountin’ an attack,” said some trooper, lying prone. “Bet they’ll be rushin’ us. To wipe us out.”
“That’s enough talk, Trooper,” the captain said.
We waited. Waited, sweated, prayed. Major Reno came by. He seemed, well, sober.
“What do you make of this, Mister French?” he asked, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“There are Indians on the other side of the river,” Reno said. “Just sitting on their horses.”
“Could be they want to draw us out. Lead us into an ambuscade.”
“Captain,” I said, and pointed. “Major.”
Slowly we stepped closer to the edge of our fortress.
It was shortly past seven o’clock. Beyond the burning grass, through the smoke, we saw an amazing, numbing sight.
To the west, the sun, a bright orange ball, sank through the smoke and dust. Other soldiers came out of their positions, standing, watching. For the longest while, no one spoke.
We simply stared. The Indians appeared to be … leaving.
I adjusted my sight, knelt, aimed. The Spencer bucked against my shoulder. Captain French fired his Winchester once, then again. I pulled the trigger one more time. Turned out to be the last shot fired, I later figured, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
“They’re out of range, Sergeant,” Major Reno said.
“Yes, sir, but this makes me feel better.”
Rising to my feet, I lowered the Spencer. The Indians looked like a moving carpet of brown, stretching what seemed to be a mile and a half wide, and perhaps three miles long. And, Lord Almighty, the number of horses they had. You couldn’t count them all.
“My God,” Major Reno said, and he turned to Captain Moylan, who had just walked up to our gathering. “Look what we have been standing off.”
Someone shouted three cheers. A few others joined in with their own hip-hip-hurrahs. I didn’t know if they were cheering us, thinking we’d driven off those savages, or cheering the Indians, for letting us live.
We watched, till the sun set, till darkness enveloped our hill.
* * * * *
That night, two scouts, a trooper, and Lieutenant Charles DeRudio made their way up the hill. The officers call DeRudio “Count No-Account,” but he had returned to the woods to pick up a flag. That flies high with me, and I don’t believe those who say he went back to the flag merely to hide. Since Major Reno had retreated, Lieutenant DeRudio, Trooper O’Neill, and scouts, Gerard and Jackson, had been hiding in the woods, practically spitting distance to the Indian village. And we thought we’d been through hell.
Gerard said the Indians must be pulling out, but Reno thought it must be a trick.
“You should have stayed put, DeRudio,” Captain Moylan said, spoiling our joyous reunion. “Those savages will hit us tomorrow. Wipe us out. For sure.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Julia Face
It was said that the Greasy Grass Fight, which is how we Lakotas called the battle, was the greatest Indian victory.
I do not remember it as such.
As the second day of the Greasy Grass Fight ended, new songs were sung in the Oglala circle.
Sad songs.
Many of us had forgotten the previous day, when we had crushed Mila Hanska. When we had killed Pehin Hanska.
From a ridge with other women, I had watched the first day’s fight. I could vaguely remember the strong-heart songs we had sung. I could just recall walking to the hills, after the last of the wasicus was dead, to find our husbands, our loved ones.
One thing burned into my memory, however, was me frowning at our warriors, who acted as if they had consumed much mini wakan, “the water that makes men crazy.” All around them were dead wasicus, stripped naked so that their white bodies glistened in the sun. Warriors kept shouting, “Look, I have found coffee!”
“I have a new holy iron!”
“Tobacco! Tobacco! I now have much tobacco!”
“Two horses I have caught. They will make me rich.”
I could remember finding my husband, which made my heart glad, and following him to our circle.
I could remember our Sahiyela friends saying that we had killed Pehin Hanska—Long Hair—Hi-es-tzie is how the Sahiyelas call him, but it means the same. Long Hair. Dead. I could remember the Sahiyelas and, later, many Lakotas singing songs about our great victory, about the death of Long Hair.
But as the second day closed, more of us mourned. More of our children cried.
Bodies of brave Lakotas, of brave Sahiyelas, were brought into a tepee, where we housed the dead.
I slashed my arms, for I mourned, too. Thunder Hawk lived, but my brother-in-law was no more.
It was a sad evening. Many sadder ones would soon follow.
Yet that evening our older leaders and our warriors met. They had to decide what to do.
Lakota women do not take part in matters like this, but my husband told me what was said.
“We should grind them into dust,” said my husband.
“Mount our ponies when dawn comes,” said Rain-In-The-Face. “Ride up that hill. Kill them all.”
“There are many wasicus with many holy irons,” Sitting Bull cautioned.
“Hokay hey!” yelled my husband. “Tomorrow will be a good day to die.”
“We have defeated those warrior white men twice,” a silver-haired Sahiyela said. “They will not trouble us ever again.”
Sitting Bull’s head slowly shook. “Mila Hanska will always trouble us.”
Then, an old Minneconjou lowered his pipe. He said, “If we let these wasicus go, it will show the Great Father that the Lakotas have compassion, too. These past several days, we have already shown them our strength. It will send a message to the wasicus. That is something to consider.”
Rain-In-The-Face and Crazy Horse frowned upon this idea. So did my husband.
There was something else to consider, too. Two Hunkpapa scouts rode in. They told us that more Mila Hanska, many more, were marching down from the Elk River.
The old Minneconjou shook his head. “They come like locusts.”
�
�They will always trouble us,” Sitting Bull repeated.
So it was decided that we would leave the Greasy Grass. We would let live those Mila Hanska hiding on the hill. We would leave, to protect our women, our children. Besides, too many sad songs could already be heard in all the circles.
“Good Weasel,” Sitting Bull said, “send runners to our warriors. To all the circles.”
“What is the message?” Good Weasel asked.
Eyes turned to Crazy Horse, who nodded. Crazy Horse agreed with the elders. There was a time to fight, and a time to stop fighting.
“Tell them,” Crazy Horse said, “that the Greasy Grass Fight has ended.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Colonel
John Gibbon
“Mister Bradley,” I said, “that is the most outrageous exaggeration … dare I say, outright lie … I have ever heard in all my years in this man’s army.”
Generally I refrain from rebuking a junior officer so stiffly, and I hated chastising Lieutenant James Bradley in front of the men, but he left me no choice.
“Surely, Lieutenant,” Major Brisbin sang out, equally appalled at the young officer’s report, “this is some grievous error.”
Mr. Bradley glanced at the Crow scout beside him, straightened his shoulders, and stared in defiance at me. “I have not known Little Face to exaggerate, lie, or make an error, sir.”
“But did he see Custer?” Brisbin railed. “Did he see this—” the major practically laughed, “this … massacre with his own eyes?”
“No, sir,” Bradley replied. “As I said, Little Face ran into three Crows who had been with Custer. They said he was killed, his entire command wiped out. They said there were so many Indians on the Little Bighorn that no soldiers could be left alive.”
“Then how are those scouts still alive?” I inquired.
Bradley pointed south. “Here they come,” he said. “You can ask them yourself, sir.”
* * * * *
Of course, the Crows hadn’t seen Custer killed, either. They had simply fled. Or so our interpreter said.
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